D&D 5E What, if anything, bothers you about certain casters/spells at your table?

[M_Natas]

It’s the problem though with a dms proffered method leading to a radically different power effect in game.

Some dms are happy to track every players AC and can just say “hit or miss”. Others prefer to call out the attack and let the players do the work of confirming it’s a hit or miss.

The fact that two very reasonable methods of play lead to a radically different power scale for a 1st level spell…might indicate the problem is with the spell

The problem with Shield, but also with Silvery Barbs, Luck feat and even to a part Counterspell is that the disrupt the order of play.
Like, Shield is literally a Time reverse spell, because it triggers when you are hit by an attack. So first you ate hit by the attack and retroactively you can decide, no, I don't wanna be hit by that attack. You are literally changing time with it. The same with Silvery Barbs.

Other spells or abilitites that are like "do this when the dice a rolled but not an outcome declared" are not much better, because you have to interrupt the game before people do the calculations in their head.

It interrupts the flow of the game and is quite bad game design.

At least Guiadance doesn't disrupted the essence of time and counterspell needs to be cast when a spell is cast (so even before any roll is done to determine if the spell was successful).

 

[Hussar]

Other spells or abilitites that are like "do this when the dice a rolled but not an outcome declared" are not much better, because you have to interrupt the game before people do the calculations in their head.

The other issue with this is for those of us who play VTT. The outcome is almost certainly known, because so many of the results are automated. We've basically just shrugged with this and all those powers are basically just reroll abilities, because there's no realistic way to do it otherwise.

 

[FrozenNorth]

And yet the actions one type of Fighter would take would be consistently different from the type of actions another type of Fighter would take.

Good point. The Bravura Warlord played very differently from an Inspiring warlord or a Tactical Warlord.

 

[DEFCON 1]

The problem with Shield, but also with Silvery Barbs, Luck feat and even to a part Counterspell is that the disrupt the order of play.
Like, Shield is literally a Time reverse spell, because it triggers when you are hit by an attack. So first you ate hit by the attack and retroactively you can decide, no, I don't wanna be hit by that attack. You are literally changing time with it. The same with Silvery Barbs.

Other spells or abilitites that are like "do this when the dice a rolled but not an outcome declared" are not much better, because you have to interrupt the game before people do the calculations in their head.

It interrupts the flow of the game and is quite bad game design.

Although your statement assumes that every part of combat is happening in "real time" (in-world) as the story of the fight going along blow-by-blow... whereas other people might see the combat rules as merely the mechanical representation of what is happening and it's only after the mechanical part is completed that the story of how the fight goes is illustrated.

So a Shield spell turning a hit to a miss wouldn't be "turning back the clock"... but rather the 'attack roll / hit declaration / Shield casting / hit negation' is all one packet of mechanical use that once calculated, results in the combat narrative of "someone tried to hit the spellcaster with an attack but the caster got the Shield spell up in time to block it."

Not saying looking at it one way over the other is better or preferable... but just that it explains why one way isn't objectively "wrong" and why WotC doesn't seem to mind the side they have chosen. Because there are people who look at how to represent combat from both sides-- where some think Shield et. al. are bad spells because of the issues you presented, and others who think it all works fine.

 

[TwoSix]

Other spells or abilitites that are like "do this when the dice a rolled but not an outcome declared" are not much better, because you have to interrupt the game before people do the calculations in their head.

It interrupts the flow of the game and is quite bad game design.

Yea, but the converse to this would be requiring all actions to proceed linearly, and always finish resolving before anyone else can take an action.

That sort of procedure would neuter any sort of reaction defensive ability, and would significantly damage important fantasy tropes like wizard duels, parrying blades, and using a quick spell to knock aside an attack.

 

[billd91]

The problem with Shield, but also with Silvery Barbs, Luck feat and even to a part Counterspell is that the disrupt the order of play.
Like, Shield is literally a Time reverse spell, because it triggers when you are hit by an attack. So first you ate hit by the attack and retroactively you can decide, no, I don't wanna be hit by that attack. You are literally changing time with it. The same with Silvery Barbs.

Other spells or abilitites that are like "do this when the dice a rolled but not an outcome declared" are not much better, because you have to interrupt the game before people do the calculations in their head.

It interrupts the flow of the game and is quite bad game design.

At least Guiadance doesn't disrupted the essence of time and counterspell needs to be cast when a spell is cast (so even before any roll is done to determine if the spell was successful).

It may interrupt things a bit, but it's only a little bit, particularly for something like shield. And it may help keep players engaged because they may have to pay attention to other players' turns to use some of these abilities.

The same issue applies to a paladin's smite power, which can be declared after rolling to hit and knowing the result. And I'd argue it's actually good design compared to predecessors. Remember the paladin's smite from 3e? You declared it before the attack roll, got a bonus to hit... and if you missed, too bad. That daily resource was burned. It was terrible.

 

[TwoSix]

It may interrupt things a bit, but it's only a little bit, particularly for something like shield. And it may help keep players engaged because they may have to pay attention to other players' turns to use some of these abilities.

The same issue applies to a paladin's smite power, which can be declared after rolling to hit and knowing the result. And I'd argue it's actually good design compared to predecessors. Remember the paladin's smite from 3e? You declared it before the attack roll, got a bonus to hit... and if you missed, too bad. That daily resource was burned. It was terrible.

I mean...I don't think gambling a spell slot on a "hit or miss" scenario is necessarily bad design. There are plenty of spells in 5e that are attack rolls, no effect on a miss, and I don't think they're bad.

The problem with 3.X smites was that they were generally undertuned compared to the effect you could get with saving the slots for low-level buffs.

The 5e smite is certainly more potent, and obviously feels better in play, of course. But I don't think we'd necessarily want every attack to be an auto-hit just so it feels better; the flow of "miss-miss-hit" is generally important to the D&D feel, I'd say.

 

[Stalker0]

You make that sound like more work than it is. You just roll behind the screen, and ask the player what their AC is.

My point is there are several very simple ways dms do this differently, yet the power difference with spells like shield is very large.

 

[DEFCON 1]

The 5e smite is certainly more potent, and obviously feels better in play, of course. But I don't think we'd necessarily want every attack to be an auto-hit just so it feels better; the flow of "miss-miss-hit" is generally important to the D&D feel, I'd say.

For D&D I'd agree with you... it's baked into the game.

But the new MCDM game they are making actually has removed the attack roll altogether for precisely the reason you say-- it "feels better" in their opinion to feel like you haven't wasted your turn. So every attack hits and its the damage roll that determines just how potent or impotent you were.

Granted... I'll be curious to see if the "bad damage roll" merely supplants the "missed attack roll" as feeling as though a player has wasted their turn... but we won't get a sense of that until the game gets released.

 

[DEFCON 1]

My point is there are several very simple ways dms do this differently, yet the power difference with spells like shield is very large.

Exactly. Which is why every table needs to houserule their game to make sure it works just as they'd prefer it to... rather than wait on WotC to change their rules to fit the table's desires. Hopefully you and all the rest of us are doing this, otherwise we are hobbling ourselves up every time we play for no good reason.