D&D (2024) Martial vs Caster: Removing the "Magical Dependencies" of high level.

[HammerMan]

Hm, only being able to know a limited number of spells...oh like a Sorcerer?

Or warlock. Both I think more balanced then wizard (still would need to increase non casters)

 

[Minigiant]

So what, the game is balanced if casters only get the blandest spells? What are the rest of the spells doing in the PHB then? Taunting you like you're a dog and the DM is holding a treat just out of reach, lol?

I think it's funny that the same game that used to have a slot machine that could dispense everything from potions of delusion to artifacts is somehow balanced by just not letting people have certain spells.

It should have been that specializes only got spells in the their specialty or school on level. And up to a certain spell level.

 

[James Gasik]

Or warlock. Both I think more balanced then wizard (still would need to increase non casters)

What you need to do is remove the reason for Clerics and Wizards to have all the spells that they do. When I play a Cleric or Wizard, I know my party is relying on me to have the right spell for the problem at all times. So I struggle to fill my spell list and keep as many of these on tap as possible. D&D is designed in a way that, by default, many things only have magical solutions.

Got diseased, cursed, turned to stone, polymorphed? Need a caster to fix it.
Have to travel 1000 miles in a day? Caster.
Can't find a way into the Fortress of the Warlock King? Caster.

When I was playing Pathfinder 1e, a lot of people seemed to think that Clerics were no longer necessary; they said "oh, all we need is a wand of cure light wounds, and Oracles are way cooler than Clerics!". And I just shook my head, because soon they were running afoul of status effects that require specific spells to remove, and the Oracle didn't have enough spells known to cover it.

Even in my current game, I struggle with my Wizard to keep magic on tap for the party's needs, and I often have to make concessions to them. I didn't want to learn Fireball, preferring to use different spells, but after we got beat up by Trolls, they insist I keep a Fireball on tap, lol. And I'm often jealous of the Cleric, who can just pray for entirely different spell lists every day, using any splat book allowed, where outside of my crummy 2 free spells per level, I'm reliant on captured spellbooks, downtime, and a good chunk of my free gold, lol.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Which is a solvable problem.

If Skyrim can get away with lootable spells then so can DND.



That doesn't not make them bad game design. Spells like those two not only have detrimental effects mechanically but also induce a lot of undue influence on how the game is perceived; ie, that same framing problem I mentioned earlier. Its these spells that keep pushing casters into the erroneous "demigod" status they don't actually occupy, and this complicates the question of what people are going to be okay with by a lot.

A game like DCC only gets away with spells that consequential because 1, every spell is like that, and 2, every spell is as liable to backfire on the caster as it is to go better than intended, even with Spellburn.

5e doesn't have any such drawbacks nor the fundamental design philosophy, and isn't going to get it without moving to 6e.

Either the spells themselves need to be nerfed dramatically or they need to be explicated to DM only content period.

Neither of those things are going to happen though without moving to 6e either.

 

[James Gasik]

It should have been that specializes only got spells in the their specialty or school on level. And up to a certain spell level.

I wouldn't mind that, but as my previous post points out, there's a lot of spells that the developers kind of assume that a party has access to, in order to deal with certain challenges the game presents. So if you're going to limit spellcasters, you need to take that into account.

As an example, Paizo's developer team actually designed very specifically around the existence of certain spells; for example, they assumed at 5th level, melee characters would have haste for major encounters. This of course leads to some issues when nobody can cast haste, and their attempts to patch this (like making a haste variant for divine casters) didn't actually help much. Their failing was that designing the game around reasonably optimal play by a classic party (Fighter/Rogue/Cleric/Wizard) falls flat when there are more specialized classes, and not everyone has equal access to the silver bullets built into the game.

This puts the onus on the DM to provide workarounds, and not every DM realizes this (and sometimes, like in the case of AL DM's, they might actually have their hands tied preventing them from doing so).

 

[Krachek]

Wait. So the magical dependency is when a DM has created a magical dependency - entirely arbitrarily?

By linking victory conditions expressly to possessing a single spell, that’s not a magic dependency that’s a disintegration dependency. What if the caster wizard didn’t happen to have disintegrate?

There wasn’t a single way to stop the ritual without bringing down the wall of force? That seems like a serious problem with the DM not a problem with the system. Or am I seeing this wrong?

the OP state a Wall of force protecting a sacred key.

The first error would be to use Wall of force into the description to players unless a trained arcanist identify the effect.
An invisible barrier leave some hope and interpretation both side of the screen.

Then there are the mood and time frame of the session. do we need a rapid solution or the table can afford another quest to solve the problem?

does the players accept the challenge of this invisible barrier?
Or are considering that the DM work against them again?

Do the DM use floating challenge, or stick to his notes: it’s a wall of force, I write that six month ago! or the DM just improvise this invisible barrier during the break and can smoothly downsize it?

 

[CreamCloud0]

Even in my current game, I struggle with my Wizard to keep magic on tap for the party's needs, and I often have to make concessions to them. I didn't want to learn Fireball, preferring to use different spells, but after we got beat up by Trolls, they insist I keep a Fireball on tap, lol. And I'm often jealous of the Cleric, who can just pray for entirely different spell lists every day, using any splat book allowed, where outside of my crummy 2 free spells per level, I'm reliant on captured spellbooks, downtime, and a good chunk of my free gold, lol.

and i suppose they'd get all offended if you said 'well if you want me to learn fireball for you then you're going to need to cough up the gold i need to scribe it into my spellbook'

 

[Emberashh]

Neither of those things are going to happen though without moving to 6e either.

I know, I said that lol.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Okay, so here's the thing about all the talk about tearing down casters: as much as I am a fan of deleting the wizard, casters lost all their fiddly, annoying restrictions so as to allow their players to be able to play the fantasy of being a wizard and not the world's worst gun. That and to offer the experience of a pop culture wizard while desperately holding on a legacy casting system from a specfic novel the creators really liked that doesn't mesh with any other pop culture wizard.

The main problem here vis-a-vis martial characters is that once they got their fantasy, the wizard players who would become designers pulled the ladder up after them and now simply refuse to let martials get the fantasy, hiding behind the fig leaves of 'simplicity' and 'verisimilitude' and 'just give up and be magic already'.

 

[Krachek]

Got diseased, cursed, turned to stone, polymorphed? Need a caster to fix it.
Have to travel 1000 miles in a day? Caster.
Can't find a way into the Fortress of the Warlock King? Caster.

Disease and curse, I would say « At last! ». Two years ago I play a character under a curse for a some sessions, it was cool, he didn’t die of that.

Turn to stone, can be a good time to play another character for some sessions giving time for the party to find a solution.

Travel 1000 miles. Being force to stole a flying ship. My dream!

Cant find way. Black mail, corrupt guards, find some traitors to the King.

In all cases the party didn’t need the solution on board. External Npc or buying items can do the job.