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

[Zardnaar]

Not guidancing Stealth, I can understand - unless it's done more than a round before the actual act. In Social it'd be like a invocation before the start of a public speech, I can see it being used there but possibly ruffling some feathers. Guidiancing an Intimidation would be a little weird, though it might be along the lines of "May you put the fear of my god in these Heathens." It's these sort of things that make me want to make the players roleplay the verbal part of Guidance, at least the first few times (or in unusual/tense) circumstances.

In the end, I do wish there was a minute (or more) cooldown between Guidance uses, even if the task itself didn't take more than a round to complete.

Divine Soul and metamagic opens up new options.

In some cases I can see Guidance working but the PVs violate the law or social norms while using it.

 

[Shardstone]

I've never enjoyed survival in classic D&D games because I find the focus on food, water, and getting lost just something I personally do not enjoy. I much more enjoy travel in the vein of the LotR movies, where it's cinematic, scenic, and you zoom in when you happen upon something interesting (or it happens upon you).

Because of this, I don't find the spells that impact survival all that problematic. Actually, I find them interesting, because since humans love to exploit technology, and magic certainly is a type of technology, the things you could achieve with goodberry and tiny hut are enormous. This has led me to some very fun worldbuilding, and it has allowed me to introduce new arcane survival challenges. Certain blogposts have helped a lot with this.

I think if you have issue with spell survival, you should embrace more mythic locales. These are places with certain "laws," and when those "laws" are broken, bad htings happen. Maybe you can't expose skin in this one region, and doing so means you are immediately cut by stinging winds haunted by the souls of gnolls that died here, hungry to taste flesh just one more time. Maybe in this region, you have to stay quiet because sound is greatly amplified, and one loud note can create a thunderwave centered on yourself. These kinds of arcane challenges are present even in Sword and Sorcery fiction, and I feel you can really make them fit just about any tone of campaign. I mean, LotR BOOKS had the mountain Moria was in be alive, old, and cranky! So low or high magic, these allow you to create new survival challenges that can push your players into new directions without having to just focus on food and water.

 

[Zardnaar]

I've never enjoyed survival in classic D&D games because I find the focus on food, water, and getting lost just something I personally do not enjoy. I much more enjoy travel in the vein of the LotR movies, where it's cinematic, scenic, and you zoom in when you happen upon something interesting (or it happens upon you).

Because of this, I don't find the spells that impact survival all that problematic. Actually, I find them interesting, because since humans love to exploit technology, and magic certainly is a type of technology, the things you could achieve with goodberry and tiny hut are enormous. This has led me to some very fun worldbuilding, and it has allowed me to introduce new arcane survival challenges. Certain blogposts have helped a lot with this.

I think if you have issue with spell survival, you should embrace more mythic locales. These are places with certain "laws," and when those "laws" are broken, bad htings happen. Maybe you can't expose skin in this one region, and doing so means you are immediately cut by stinging winds haunted by the souls of gnolls that died here, hungry to taste flesh just one more time. Maybe in this region, you have to stay quiet because sound is greatly amplified, and one loud note can create a thunderwave centered on yourself. These kinds of arcane challenges are present even in Sword and Sorcery fiction, and I feel you can really make them fit just about any tone of campaign. I mean, LotR BOOKS had the mountain Moria was in be alive, old, and cranky! So low or high magic, these allow you to create new survival challenges that can push your players into new directions without having to just focus on food and water.

If you lean into it it's fine.

Short of getting killed in combat at level 3 you can walk into the wilderness fine ignoring the elements, diseases, food and weight.

 

[Blue]

I would argue 5E doesn't help with this, it just reframes the argument.

Since the bit you were quoting was explicitly addressing delays from player browsing stat blocks to figure out what to summon, please explain how that delay is still there / as prevalent when the player isn't picking what to summon.

Note, the part you quoted didn't have to do with running the summons, please don't move the goalposts and address that instead.

 

[Shardstone]

If you lean into it it's fine.

Short of getting killed in combat at level 3 you can walk into the wilderness fine ignoring the elements, diseases, food and weight.

Pretty much, yeah. To me, that's ok. If characters have magical powers, it's ok to get creative with challenging them to new kinds of survival challenges.

The new Max show, Scavenger's Reign (which I highly recommend), is all about man vs wild on an alien planet. No one has super powers. However, the concerns are never about food or water, but instead about weird alien storms, dealing with bizarre and sometimes hostile alien life, and fending off others who want your resources. These things, IMO, are what make for truly compelling exploration scenarios, and while food and water can be interesting, they aren't the most important concepts to the genre.

 

[Zardnaar]

Pretty much, yeah. To me, that's ok. If characters have magical powers, it's ok to get creative with challenging them to new kinds of survival challenges.

The new Max show, Scavenger's Reign (which I highly recommend), is all about man vs wild on an alien planet. No one has super powers. However, the concerns are never about food or water, but instead about weird alien storms, dealing with bizarre and sometimes hostile alien life, and fending off others who want your resources. These things, IMO, are what make for truly compelling exploration scenarios, and while food and water can be interesting, they aren't the most important concepts to the genre.

You can make it work. I'm a Castles and Crusades game and the had to return to base after depleting their resources. 5E you can chug along fine.

This is why I still like 2E and C&C. They're good when you want a different tone of game.

If you want domains well B/X is the best at that style. 2E is best DM toolbox edition.

After that it's basically personal preferences.

My ideal D&D would be an advanced 2E using B/X mechanics and some modernisms. Yes I can use THAC0 I'll happily play it of the DM insists on it.

I would prefer not to.

 

[Blue]

The problem with this is - it would slow the game to a crawl of every caster would announce - "I'm starting to cast a spell! Does anybody wants to counterspell it?"

Couterpoint: that's what multiple campiangs I'm in (two playing, on running) and it doesn't slow it down significantly.

Every table I ever played at was: "I'm casting fireball!" "The Evil Wizard Monster is casting ice storm!" ect.pp.

Great, they are playing with house rules that make the spell OP. A table having house rules does NOT make the spell OP.

I mean, I agree that is the design intend that a caster first announces his wish to cast a spell and secondly say what the spell is, but it is never played like that. Nobody got time for that

As said, we do, and it doesn't add a lot of time.

Of course, because we do that, counterspell isn't OP so no everyone has it so it comes up far less.

In other words, this is entirely a problem of the table's own making on a balanced spell. They (a) make it OP, (b) because it's OP everyone always has it, (c) because all casters and foes have it, the call response would come up more often and make playing it correctly take more time.

This is the exact case of "after the roll but before if it's known if it's a success or not" that comes up for other things - if the DM just blurts out "it's a success!" or "it failed!" before a chance to evaluate, it makes the ability more powerful.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

I understand everything you are saying, but it doesn't actually address the question I asked. Which is "why is it meta"? You too have called something that the characters can regularly experience "meta" to act on, please let me know why. Not anything about is it good or bad or consequences, but why are you calling it meta?

Ah, ok. Your question is reasonable. The PCs could presumably notice that they are only having 1-3 skirmishes a day. PCs acting on that knowledge could be argued to be in-game. But why is 1-3 combats the limit? Is that a strict characteristic of the game world? Is it really true that there is no possibility of having more than 3 combats in any given day, where combats last <1 minute on average? Is that the argument?

I mean, a campaign world could be designed in which combat simply cannot happen more than 3x per day - as anything is possible in a fantasy world. But, for the vast majority of campaign worlds, this really only leaves one logical explanation: the players via their PCs are choosing to expend all resources by the end of the third combat b/c the players know with some degree of certainty that they are gonna get that long rest to refresh their PCs' resources before being challenged to battle again. That makes it meta. Let me be clear: not that there's anything wrong with that. Metagaming is not a dirty word to me and I won't use it as such. IMO, it's an unavoidable aspect of RPGs which, once I learned not to be bothered by it, has made all the difference in my gaming experience.


ETA: the 1-3 encounters number came from the post by @TwoSix way back yonder

 

[Blue]

What would that be based on in-game? An all-powerful being that sets up the encounters? I just don’t get what in the world would tell you that 3 to 4 encounters is all you will ever face no matter where you are or what you are doing.

blink

Okay, you seem to be ascribing all sorts of things to what I actually said to what you want me to have said to make your point.

I never said that "3 to 4 encounters is all you will ever face no matter where you are or what you are doing".

I asked why it is meta for characters to recognize patterns in what they are doing.

"Hey Brandar, I notice that I usually have a lot of spell slots left over when we bed down for the night."
"Yeah Gandaldore, we only push through about three combats each day before Heralda is out of healing and we rest. Sometimes four."
"Oh, they I could cast some more."
"Still keep some in reserve, but yeah. the quicker you burn them, the less healing we'll need."

Seems like a perfectly reasonable conversation for characters to have. Entirely based on in-world information they can see.

Player A: Hold off on that spell, we’re deep in this dungeon and there could be something tough down here based on the legends

Player B: Naw! We’ve already had three encounters before this. I can blow it all.

And that's also something character can observe - that the current circumstances are different, such as being deep in a dungeon.

Just like characters can notice a foe is harder and go all out.

Of course, if that kind of meta-thinking works for your table, knock yourself out. Far be it from me to say all degrees of meta-thinking are verboten, but I definitely have a line there.

This is another case where I fell you are putting words in my mouth. I never defended "meta-thinking". What I said was asking why characters noticing their normal patterns is meta.

Please, you're attacking for things that I didn't say, and trying to turn every case to absurd extremes, such as 3-4 being the only thing they can face, or ignoring circumstances like being deep in a dungeon when the conversation is explicitly about them noticing circumstances.

I thought with my example about noticing the temple overrun with undead I was being clear about specifically talking about things the characters can notice.

 

[Blue]

Ironically, this means you would in fact prefer how 4e did it.

A few classes got the Ritual Caster feat for free (Cleric, Druid, Wizard, and Bard, IIRC). Some even could get a couple rituals a day without cost (Wizard and Bard, IIRC). Anything else, you had to either buy or find ritual components, and maybe drop a feat on Ritual Caster in the first place. Or you could just buy (or find) scrolls, which didn't require any further components.

Players--allegedly--hated this. They felt they were being shortchanged, having their precious, precious lewts stolen from them for icky ritual casting components.

That's why ritual casting is completely free (apart from a casting time) for 5e. And guess what! It turns out that that is stupidly powerful, so almost no spells are actually allowed to be rituals, even when it would make sense for them to be so.

It's almost like there are consequences for mucking about with the internal rules for a well-designed system. Especially if you're effectively hot-wiring it to remove all the safety checks.

Doubly funny because we've had years and years of folks complaining that 5e is swimming in gold with little or nothing to spend it on due to the dearth of rules for it (which even the halfhearted efforts we've gotten took years to deliver.)

Not sure if you realized this, but how 5e uses expensive material components as a throttle for casting certain spells is exactly the 4e throttle for overcasting rituals.

And ritual casting in 5e still requires those material components.

In other words, any ritual the designers wanted to limit the usage of already has the exact 4e resolution already in place, expanded out to also covering if they are casting as a spell as well. And the others they don't care if you use as much as you want with just a cost of time.

In other words, everything you are ranting about already exists.