D&D 5E The Decrease in Desire for Magic in D&D

[Garthanos]

Honestly?
It’s SFX budget. If I could do whatever it is without a green screen and whatnot then I’m probably good.
So throwing an ogre? Sure. That’s just wire-fu. Jumping over a building? No worries. Hold your breath for three days? No problem.
Blast fire from my fingertips? Ok that one’s probably a bit too far.

Hmmmm not quite that but Cuh Cuhlainn when deep in his battle rage started generating body heat so high his touch would burn people and he couldnt turn it off after the fight had to be doused with water...

 

[Garthanos]

Of course the D&D sword swinger or archer is going after moving targets, gets a movement of their own, and gets to dodge incoming attacks that the modern speed practitioner probably isn't (Legalos not withstanding).

I wonder how far an undefending/unmoving attack rate would go for some of this.

The snap shot archery I have seen was done very mobile it seems if you practice for it ... its not very disabling

 

[Hussar]

Hmmmm not quite that but Cuh Cuhlainn when deep in his battle rage started generating body heat so high his touch would burn people and he couldnt turn it off after the fight had to be doused with water...

Fair enough. But, then again, that probably wouldn't need a green screen to do. Just have him smoke and smolder a bit. Not quite launching balls of flame anyway.

Like I said, something like that would actually be pretty cool. It's obviously fantastic, but, doesn't really step on the caster's toes. Heck, we already have monsters like a Rhemoraz that get so hot they'll melt steel. Why not have that built into a class?

 

[Garthanos]

Fair enough. But, then again, that probably wouldn't need a green screen to do. Just have him smoke and smolder a bit. Not quite launching balls of flame anyway.

Like I said, something like that would actually be pretty cool. It's obviously fantastic, but, doesn't really step on the caster's toes. Heck, we already have monsters like a Rhemoraz that get so hot they'll melt steel. Why not have that built into a class?

Yeh it works as radiant heat damage to anyone who got near him when he was in a rage or bloodied or some such (there was a magic item in 4e that could be changed into a GMT which worked well for it)

Can vorpal strike be a rare trained thing... well why not?

 

[Cadence]

The snap shot archery I have seen was done very mobile it seems if you practice for it ... its not very disabling

Cool! So adjust it to allow some movement?

How do they do being shot back at or standing in the midst of armored melee combatants? Would the attacks of opportunity against them have advantage, for example?

 

[Dausuul]

Like I said, something like that would actually be pretty cool. It's obviously fantastic, but, doesn't really step on the caster's toes. Heck, we already have monsters like a Rhemoraz that get so hot they'll melt steel. Why not have that built into a class?

We do. Barbarian, Path of the Storm Herald, desert aura. While raging, you deal fire damage to creatures within 10 feet once per round. It's pretty much on the nose.

(Except that it costs a bonus action, which is deeply annoying. The bonus action mechanic has its uses, but 5E shoves far too much stuff into it.)

 

[tetrasodium]

The snap shot archery I have seen was done very mobile it seems if you practice for it ... its not very disabling

They also tend to have the advantage of being able to pierce foam & paper targets with a weak bow/partial draw. Stance & such isn't very important when you only need a couple of tens of pounds on the draw.

 

[Garthanos]

They also tend to have the advantage of being able to pierce foam & paper targets with a weak bow/partial draw. Stance & such isn't very important when you only need a couple of tens of pounds on the draw.

He tested with light chain armor, this seems very much a melee archery.

It would not work if you needed to fire the distance of army sized battle fields, but in melee hmmmm .

 

[Garthanos]

Cool! So adjust it to allow some movement?

How do they do being shot back at or standing in the midst of armored melee combatants? Would the attacks of opportunity against them have advantage, for example?

The guy demoing it did a move where he rolled and came up firing 3 shots in like 1.5 seconds. He was pointing out that he figured out how to do this without spending the kind of learning time the historic archers he was trying to emulate and they would have been much better and likely been able to do it with stronger bows and various other details he was likely worse than they were. It came off as very melee archery... to me this all this just makes the high end warriors too close to realistic. When I want all of the characters to be legendary and actually mythic at high end game.

 

[Gammadoodler]

More importantly, with such an obvious and (more importantly) total solution off the table, it might force the designers to get more creative.

Perhaps you get a suppress spellcasting spell. Spell level 1, universal (present in all traditions.) When cast, it causes one person to be incapable of using or benefiting from spellcasting of the chosen level or lower--they cannot have those spells cast upon them, nor cast those spells personally. They make a save against its effects at the start of each turn. This induces opportunity costs: if you want to completely shut down a target's magic, you need to spend a high-level spell slot, but you never truly know what magic they might have. This would, of course, mean that creatures should have a note on any actions that are considered to be spells identifying what level, e.g. appending an "SL#" tag, such as "SL5" to indicate that a particular action is considered the use of a fifth-level spell. The absence of such a tag indicates it isn't a spell in the first place. Cantrips would, of course, be SL0.

This is something I just came up with entirely off the cuff, so there's no guarantee that it's good or wise. It just illustrates that a world where "turn magic completely off (except the things we don't want turned off)" isn't an option can actually enrich the experience rather than impoverishing it, if in its absence we come up with something more productive/interesting.

On the DM side, frankly, I would much prefer DMs needing to actually be creative with limitations they invent, rather than just resorting to the tired "your powers are shut off" trope. Kryptonite is never interesting in and of itself with Superman, and this is no different.

I think one of the troubles with creating "sensible" limitations to casting in D&D is that in its current form, casting is near 100% game mechanic.

As far as I'm aware, there is nothing that discusses the mechanics for creating a spell effect. By the way its described, anyone with hands and access to a spell focus should be able to do it, but this isn't the case. It's similarly unclear as to what makes some spells more difficult than others to perform, what physical/mental/mystical skills allow a caster to be a prepared or spontaneous caster, what in-world resources are consumed as part of casting a leveled spell, etc.

How do you impose setting-based limitations when the resources and mechanics involved are functionally unexplained?

"You need magic to counter magic" is only true because there isn't enough information to do much else.