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

[Undrave]

Delete the wizard.

The Wizard is problematic

 

[Bill Zebub]

How about a system where you can choose between "safe and reliable" moderately powered magic, and "dangerous and risky" powerful magic?

Wouldn’t that just be spell level?

 

[Minigiant]

I actually like frontloading class abilities, and the lack of frontloading is, in a way, my main gripe with modern iterations of D&D.

Frontloading is fine if it's equal and proportional to power level when multiclassing.

The "desire for less magic" is also fueled by the sneaky frontloading of spells being not in the class section. You don't visualize all a caster gets in a quit glance at the class section. Then all these independent powerful spells show up and you are like "what?".

But straight 3E multiclassing was a mistake. Your second class should have fewer automatic class features.

 

[James Gasik]

In 5e if you have one concentration spell going you can cast other spells, just not other concentration spells without dropping concentration on the first one.

It is a pretty elegant solution for those who consider the multiple ongoing buffs of 3e/Pathfinder to be a problem. It also limits a bunch of big save or suck spells such as hold person or dominate person.

The downside of course, is that your local Fighter doesn't get that many buffs, because most of them aren't worth the concentration to cast as opposed to other spells...

 

[Micah Sweet]

That's true insofar as it goes. But by the same reasoning if we simply get rid of casters all the issues with spellcasting go away...

That's a straw man argument. You can represent having varied abilities in ways other than 3e-style multiclassing.

 

[James Gasik]

Wouldn’t that just be spell level?

You'd have to define what level of spells you consider to not be problematic- for example, say you're fine with 3rd level spells. So any caster can use up to level 3 spells without issue (including upcasted versions). But using a level 4 or higher spell has an increased chance (say, I don't know, 5% for 4th, 10% for 5th, 15% for 5th, 20% for 6th, 25% for 7th, 30% for 8th, and 35% for 9th) of spell failure or mishap, depending on circumstance.

Going back to my memories of 2e, though, I'm pretty sure the result would be very few high level spells would be cast, if ever, based on how often I saw people willing to risk even a 5% loss of a spell due to magic resistance.

 

[Fanaelialae]

The downside of course, is that your local Fighter doesn't get that many buffs, because most of them aren't worth the concentration to cast as opposed to other spells...

I think that's simply reflective of how the spells are balanced. If (for example) Haste was so powerful that it averaged a similar impact on encounters as Hypnotic Pattern, then I think it would see far more regular use. Haste doesn't allow a save, so it would actually be the better option in many cases.

 

[Micah Sweet]

You'd have to define what level of spells you consider to not be problematic- for example, say you're fine with 3rd level spells. So any caster can use up to level 3 spells without issue (including upcasted versions). But using a level 4 or higher spell has an increased chance (say, I don't know, 5% for 4th, 10% for 5th, 15% for 5th, 20% for 6th, 25% for 7th, 30% for 8th, and 35% for 9th) of spell failure or mishap, depending on circumstance.

Going back to my memories of 2e, though, I'm pretty sure the result would be very few high level spells would be cast, if ever, based on how often I saw people willing to risk even a 5% loss of a spell due to magic resistance.

I think that's a individual player issue. If you can't handle your amazing magic on relatively rare occasions not working properly, that seems to me something that person should work out.

 

[James Gasik]

I mean, if you ask me, AD&D multiclassing was more heinous than 3e. Get all your class abilities at first level, continue to advance both classes, for the low low cost of being what, a level, level and a half behind everyone else in the party?

The difference of course, was that classes didn't work well together- you can't wear armor and cast wizard spells, you can't wear more than leather armor and use thieving abilities without penalty (and no helmet if you want to detect noise!), you can't use good weapons as a cleric, you can't wear more than studded leather and use ranger abilities, and multiclassed druids were about the worst of all worlds.

So sure, you could be a Fighter 9 or a Cleric 8/Fighter 8, but can't use anything better than a heavy mace (or morningstar? can't remember if those shed blood or not).

3e didn't get rid of these issues, but they made them easier to overcome, like variant armor materials and wands of mage armor being available.

 

[Fanaelialae]

That's a straw man argument. You can represent having varied abilities in ways other than 3e-style multiclassing.

It's as much a strawman argument as yours was, which was kinda the point...

Just because some implementations of 3e multiclassing might not have worked perfectly, doesn't mean that it can't be done well.