D&D General What Should Magic Be Able To Do, From a Gameplay Design Standpoint?

[Micah Sweet]

never said they did. I just don't like dealing with people finding food in my games. I don't have pet squirrels I have players trying to be the heroes. Nothing about that is fun on any level for me. I know a lot of people like those little mini-games within the game. They just annoy me. Have fun with it but It's never going to be a regular thing in a game of mine. Just no fun there for me.

And that's fine of course. But I will take exception to your description of PCs playing in games whose playstyles aren't your preference as "pet squirrels" (not even sure what that means, but it feels uncomplimentary), nor your implication that caring about survival, or encumbrance, means you aren't "heroes" by whatever definition you are using for that term.

 

[Micah Sweet]

and at some point they get bags of holding or portable holes. DND isn't really a game for worrying about survival resources.

Your D&D, and perhaps official D&D as presented by the current IP owners, isn't that sort of game. That as large a claim as you can credibly make here.

 

[nevin]

I mentioned this before, but, I think it got lost in the scrum.

Imagine a simple fix. In order to learn a higher level spell of a given school, you needed to learn two spells from that school, but, one level lower. So, 2 1st level spells would let you learn a 2nd level spell from that school. Considering most casters only gain 2 spells known per level, that would sort out the arcane casters pretty well.

You could go broad - learning lots of lower level spells, or you could go deep - focusing your learned spells into a single school or two.

Would this not massively sort casters out?

Problem is that it is a great idea to build out specialty mages and potentially make being a generalist harder but since they've never solved the fact that some specialties suck due to the game being primarily combat focused it will simply lean even harder into all mages going into a few directions due to utility in most games. I think for this to work you'd have to completly rework magic from the ground up spells and all and kill at least a half dozen sacred cows.s

 

[Micah Sweet]

An interesting idea, though it requires leaning much deeper into the idea of spell schools than I ever have.

Level Up expands the idea of spell schools greatly, opening design space for finer class and subclass granularity. IMO it's good stuff.

 

[nevin]

And that's fine of course. But I will take exception to your description of PCs playing in games whose playstyles aren't your preference as "pet squirrels" (not even sure what that means, but it feels uncomplimentary), nor your implication that caring about survival, or encumbrance, means you aren't "heroes" by whatever definition you are using for that term.

fair my apologies for saying it that way. The characters are playing to be heroes. Looking for food isn't heroic or fun at least for me or most players I"ve had since I started running games long ago. Never got anything but whining or pushback when I ran those kinds of games. Not once has anyone ever thanked me for that kind of game or even indicated they had fun doing it. But as I said you enjoy your game your way.

 

[Lanefan]

Anecdotal but my lived experience differs. I have to believe that for every Master box sold that at least 4 people played at 26+. There were two recessions in the 80s plus an almost-recession; we spent the money on the black box, we were by gosh going to play it!

BECMI had - in theory at least - a much greater playable level range than did 1e.

Back in the days where I could play in multiple campaigns per week, I was in at least 5 ad&d 1e games that played to ~20th. In college I ran a 2e game from 3rd to 20+. I had 6 players that were there for the whole campaign and another 5 that weere present for the last 5 levels. And I have no idea how many one-shots were played in the dorms at higher levels, but it was a lot. I remember one guy that ran nothing but high level 1e ad&d at 2 little regional college cons , so he accounts for a couple dozen high level casters on his own.

Heck, after Primal Order by Wizards of the Coast hit stores in 1993 I was in a 2e campaign that started at 20th level.

That's very much counter to my own experience. In well over 40 years of 1e-like games the highest level PC of any kind I've ever seen is 15th and the highest I've DMed was 12th. The highest level mage I've seen is 12th.

No, I mean the "should I actually cast a spell" paralysis.

More anecdotal but outside of convention one-shots many casters would just....throw darts. There was this risk/reward logic process where casters would decide if right now was a good enough situation to use one of their precious, precious spells that they might not get back until after the adventure was complete.

This was a well known stereotype of casters. If you ever read the Knights of the Dinner Table comic, the character Brian was the stereotypical optimizer who runs numeric simulations on his characters to figure out the statistical values of any action in advance, and if the math said the long-term outcome was better to hold action and wait for more targets, he by golly would hold action and the rogue was on their own against that troll.

If you look at a lot of "old school" gaming, the whole notion of "getting rest" during an adventure is disliked by a non-trivial swath of GMs. I mean, Level Up/A5e doesn't even allow a Magnificent Mansion (an extradimensional space with an invisible, locked door that can't be picked, magic servants, plush furniture and tons of food & drink) to qualify as "Shelter" for a rest. The casters had legitimate reasons to be miserly with spells. New players who wanted to cast spells were often advised to wait until "it was worth it."

Inability to rest properly for more than a single night has been rare in our games; if it's been more common in yours I can see the casters being reluctant to use their spells.

That said, Clerics also need to rest; your groups must have been constantly short of healing.

 

[CleverNickName]

As usual, the modern game has largely done away with the hunt for treasure as the motivating impetus behind play, so the "gear or gold" question is moot.

I've been tinkering with ideas on how to bring that back in modern play (aot another retroclone, either.)

 

[Lanefan]

Yes, you misunderstood. You don't need two spells for each new spell. Just two spells at a lower level. So, 2 1st level evocations would let you take unlimited 2nd level evocations. So on and so forth. Once you have "Opened" a new level, it stays open.

I might even cap it on a one-for-one basis, meaning if you want three 2nd-level evokations you'd need three 1st-level ones. Problem there is you'd need to make sure there's enough low-level spells to go around...or make some low-level spells count for more than one school each.

 

[Lanefan]

fair my apologies for saying it that way. The characters are playing to be heroes. Looking for food isn't heroic or fun at least for me or most players I"ve had since I started running games long ago. Never got anything but whining or pushback when I ran those kinds of games. Not once has anyone ever thanked me for that kind of game or even indicated they had fun doing it. But as I said you enjoy your game your way.

The bolded is, to me, a not-always-correct assumption despite WotC's best attempts to market it that way.

And yes, playing out the process of gathering food etc. gets boring after the first few times, but for me the answer is to assume the gathering process becomes SOP after a while and thus doesn't need to be played through every time - until and unless something disrupts that SOP e.g. the PCs are becalmed at sea for a long time or are lost in the desert, etc.

 

[Greg K]

and at some point they get bags of holding or portable holes. DND isn't really a game for worrying about survival resources.

Getting bags of holding or portable holes depends on the DM. It will not happen in any game I run and I have not seen them available at any table- where I have played.