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

[Vaalingrade]

A griffin has never existed on Earth, therefore it is a fantastic beast; and therefore it cannotn exist in a non-magical setting.

So... xenomorphs are magic.

As are antimagic fields and null magic zones.

Got it.

 

[Lanefan]

I wasn't thinking Safe+Risky option but I could see the Risky option basically integrated into a spell the same way you have upcasting integrated into various spells, maybe with the Safe option basically replacing Cantrips to save on pages? Like you could upgrade Firebolt into Fireball by taking the risky option after a certain level?

Numerous things here.

First, I've never liked upcasting. Spells getting better with level as a matter of course e.g. duration 1 round/level or damage 1d6/level is fine, and nicely reflects the added power a caster has as her levels advance.

Second, something I've always had issues with is two-spells-in-one write-ups. Here, I'd want Firebolt and Fireball to be kept as two completely different spells, each with its own risky and safe version if desired (though IMO there should be no such thing as a "safe" Fireball). Otherwise, looking up "Fireball" will only take you to a pointer saying "see the write-up for Firebolt", i.e. more page-flipping. The 1e books are awful for this.

And some spells would be migrated to a more robust Ritual system, and some of the biggest game breaker would be moved to the DMG as treasures (no one learns 'Wish' through level up, for exemple, but any caster can receive it as a epic boon or high level treasure).

I maintain spells-learned should never be chooseable by the caster, but gated behind random rolls as to what's available and-or what your trainer happens to give you at level-up. I also like the idea of learning a new spell not being a guaranteed process (exception: spells gained at level-up, because someone's showing you how to do it), but rather there being a chance of blowing it; and you can't try that spell again until either your level or your intelligence score increases.

 

[CreamCloud0]

A griffin has never existed on Earth, therefore it is a fantastic beast; and therefore it cannotn exist in a non-magical setting.

Personally I don’t really like the inherent direct correlating of fantastical with magical, sure griffons wouldn’t exist outside a magical world, but they shouldn’t be inherently magical and magically dependant, requiring it to survive like a fish needs water, maybe a griffon couldn’t access the subtle wind magics it needs to fly in an anti-magic zone but not so much collapse under it’s own weight.

 

[Fanaelialae]

What's absurd about removing 3e-style multiclassing? There are plenty of other ways.

And the straw man thing was a joke.

Okay.

Because you're throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

There are not a lot of other ways (that I'm familiar with) that produce satisfying results.

There's 2e style multiclassing which is only available at character creation. If you remove that restriction it either becomes absurdly good or unusable, depending on the experience system it's coupled to. (To say nothing of the fact that this type of progression basically requires XP, and won't really work with something like milestones.)

2e style dual classing is a wonky and ludicrous approach even before examining it from a balance perspective.

There's feat style multiclassing like we saw in 4e, which worked okay in 4e (but not phenomenally) but wouldn't work in a system where you aren't regularly getting feats because having to wait four levels to multiclass is fundamentally unsatisfying. Many campaigns will end in that time.

Is there some perfect multiclassing solution you're aware of that I'm overlooking here?

While I agree that 3e style multiclassing isn't perfect, I don't agree that it can't be improved to work well. We've even had some suggestions to that end in this very thread.

Hence why I think your suggestion is similarly absurd to fixing spellcasting by removing spellcasters. (You know, there are fully functioning RPGs out there without playable spellcasters. Even fantasy RPGs.)

 

[Undrave]

Because not everyone likes the stress of press your luck anymore than they like the homework of Vancian casting.

Too bad you’re messing around with the basic fabric of reality, that rubber’s band gonna spring back and slap you in the face sometimes If you don’t want to, just stick to the more safe options and don’t over exert yourself.

...the main limiter to casters is the fact they're limited in what they can do by their available number of spell slots. Rituals should all become slot-using spells. Cantrips, if kept, should have a limit to how many per day one can cast.

Remove these limits and casting will get even more out of hand than it already is.

I'm replacing the limits with danger. The more you try to reshape reality, the more dangerous it is to you. I could even see one of the consequences to be to disable your spell casting until the next long rest.

I don't mind Cantrips, because they are, in effect, refluffed weapon attacks. They help sell that 'this guy is a spell caster' and they're some of the least impactful spells people learn.

I think rather than versions of each spell, you could have a generic "unintended consequences" table (or maybe a table for each spell level/school/some other classifier).

That could work.

Damage dealing spell: You take the damage.
Illusion and Divination: You get blinded/confused.
Transmutation: You fall down paralyzed for a time.
Echantment: Any enchantment already in place fizzles out, your proficiency bonus becomes 0 for a turn.
Summons: They turn against you and your ally and you can't dismiss them anymore.
Mind reading and other Psionic stuff: You take psychic damage

Stuff like that.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Because not everyone likes the stress of press your luck anymore than they like the homework of Vancian casting.

These people must be miserable playing normal D&D as the dice are used to resolve life or death decisions all the time.

 

[Vaalingrade]

These people must be miserable playing normal D&D as the dice are used to resolve life or death decisions all the time.

You typically aren't using dice to hurt yourself directly.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

A griffin has never existed on Earth, therefore it is a fantastic beast; and therefore it cannotn exist in a non-magical setting.

Protoceratops, however, did exist on Earth; as did Dodo Birds, Quaggas, and a bunch of other things. They are normal creatures, if extinct.

I'm looking at it from the angle of "what is it that allows all these fantastic things to exist in the game world that don't or didn't exist in our own world"; and the answer, of course, is the presence/existence of magic.

This doesn't make much sense to me. Evolution could have gone myriad of other ways. There could have been countless completely normal animals that for one reason or another didn't manage to develop. And there also were a ton that did, but we don't know about them as the fossil record is lost! Are humans magical to intelligent dinosaur descendants in an alternative timeline where the Chicxulub impact never happened and thus humans never evolved?

 

[Undrave]

Second, something I've always had issues with is two-spells-in-one write-ups. Here, I'd want Firebolt and Fireball to be kept as two completely different spells, each with its own risky and safe version if desired (though IMO there should be no such thing as a "safe" Fireball). Otherwise, looking up "Fireball" will only take you to a pointer saying "see the write-up for Firebolt", i.e. more page-flipping. The 1e books are awful for this.

Well, in that case 'Firebolt' wouldn't exist. It'd just be 'Fireball' but the safe version is just you lobbing a softball sized ball of flame at 1 dude, while the normal version would be the one that explodes into something big enough to hit multiple people (maybe the range could have a little randomness to it so you COULD hit your allies by accident? Like it's got a random 15/20/25 radius?)

I maintain spells-learned should never be chooseable by the caster, but gated behind random rolls as to what's available and-or what your trainer happens to give you at level-up. I also like the idea of learning a new spell not being a guaranteed process (exception: spells gained at level-up, because someone's showing you how to do it), but rather there being a chance of blowing it; and you can't try that spell again until either your level or your intelligence score increases.

Random spells feel like it could screw you over and take away agency... I'd rather have restrictions on school you can pick from instead so you know what you get into at first level. I don't mind the chance of not learning found spells, I just wouldn't want to make it too fiddly a system.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

You typically aren't using dice to hurt yourself directly.

Aren't you? You decide to do dangerous things like jump over a chasm or charge a troll and then the dice are rolled to see whether it goes poorly for you.