D&D General Weapons should break left and right

[GrimCo]

Prior to 3e there were very few spells - mostly illusions - that weren't just fire and forget. Your spell had a set duration, and that's how long it lasted.

Only played one wizard in 2e, didn't survive first session. Never tried editions older than that. So i'll take your word, but it kind of makes sense, since wizards are artillery from wargame days.

Agreed, I've never liked pre-memorization.

Good riddance to that.

Meanwhile once the fighting stops the martials and other non-casters can just take a seat 'cause the wizard can solve everything through casting rituals all day? Sorry, that's not gonna fly.

Wizards can't solve everything trough rituals and using 10 minute to cast ritual isn't always best course of action. But it's more problem of martials, particularly fighter, being poorly made for other pilars and niche protection. Solution isn't nerfing casters, it's buffing non - casters with interesting abilities that contribute in other pillars. In 3.5 days, i used Warblade as default fighter and Crusader as default paladin type, removed cross class skills and made all skills class skills for everyone and buffed skill points for most classes. With that tweak, non casters gained more useful stuff to do.

I've played in and run a mana pool (i.e. spell points) system for ages and found that while it works great at low levels it gets rather badly broken as the levels increase. That's why I went to wild-card (i.e. no pre-mem.) slots for my current campaign. Homebrew system and a work in progress, it still needs work at high levels and was just fine at low.

Broken i what ways? Tried it, was fun. In combination with no prememorization. We also tried few other house rules. One was roll for cast. No slots. You can cast spell how many times you want. But, DC is 11+spell level. And for every two castings of same spell in a day, it goes up by 1. Wanna do 6 magic missiles at level 1? Be my guest, it starts with DC12 and ends with DC14 ( you roll prof mod + casting stat mod). First time you fail, spell is locked until long rest. Bad roll can lock your spell on first casting. Good rolls can get you far.

I really don't want any sort of always-on casting a la rituals or cantrips; I prefer fewer bigger-bang spells (no concentration required, decent duration or damage), while the martials are the go-all-day types.

I relly want all classes to have few big bang nova options and then few all day long options. Give my martial a whirlwind attack that can hit multiple opponents in single swing or ability to strike ground with hammer and make all opponents in radius fall prone. Something that makes them awesome few times per day ( on par with spell slots). When all the cool stuff is spent, fighter can go boink all day with regular attack, casters can have their cantrips and rituals.

One other element we've all overlooked so far is that wizards get access to all sorts of magic items - most notably, wands - that can replicate spells and thus keep them feeling magical long after their slots are exhausted.

So does every other class in 5e and everyone who took UMD in 3.x/PF1. UMD was one of the most useful skills for that reason.

A very sad but true observation. I live in hope that the pendulum will start swinging back someday.

And i hope it doesn't. Preferences.

 

[Horwath]

I actually want to see ritual casting given a greater seat at the table. The limiter would be cost. Make ritual casting more expensive, so that the caster won't make the non-casters take a back seat, but can come through with flying colors sometimes.

Just need to make ritual caster feat more open.
have it give ability to write in EVERY ritual spell in the game,
max level for rituals is 1/2 your level(round up).

wizard get this for free with the spellbook feature.

then non-casters can take it and not be limited to 1st level spells.
Sure, it costs a feat, maybe add floating +1 ASI so it's not a such a big opportunity cost for martials. I'ts not like DC or attack are big things for rituals.
or maybe make it Origin feat without the ASI

 

[Lanefan]

I'm imagining the social classes would be something like 'Zealot' where it's all about standing and spreading your beliefs, or a 'Noble' class where it's about ingratiating yourself and using the social structure of society, or a 'Meek' where it's all about spying and eavesdropping by being easily looked over and ignored. I'm someone that's more than willing to play a mechanized social system, I fell in love with Exalted 3e for this exact reason--warts and all

Hmmm. Interesting.

You have:
Zealot - spreading beliefs by any means necessary
Noble #1 - ingratiating and using social structure to advantage (I'd rename this one 'Diplomat' as I've a different Noble below)
Meek - blends into the crowd and uses that anonymity to gather information

Some possible ideas:
Sage - knows things (or pretends to!) and uses that knowledge to persuade others
Observer - stands apart and watches social patterns develop i.e. who talks to who and in what manner, as opposed to the Meek who is more interested in what they actually say
Noble #2 - apex social standing within the group/hall/town/realm (whichever scale suits) and knows it, and uses it to advantage
Sidekick - acts mostly as support or social agent or adviser for someone else (yes there's people who would play this!)
Goon - limited social skills beyond intimidation but can still be effective
Entertainer - knows how to gather and work a crowd, good with stagecraft or tale-telling, good distraction for others

Observer and Goon are there as options for the less socially-inclined players at the table, those who would otherwise play the strong silent type or the lone wolf.

These are straight off the top of my head, so not very fleshed-out and there's probably lots more options I'm missing.

The metaphor for Vancian is that it's like a game where you have an unlimited ammo pistol and a per-level limited rocket launcher but you only gain more rocket launchers as the game progresses. I can imagine this design for some an advanced class but as the basis for more than half the classes in the game? ridiculous. I would prefer being able to have a limited selection of unlimited fire spells and then can cast a super powerful fire spell once or twice per day.

At a certain level this sounds fine but how does it advance to and beyond this point? Does the selection of unlimited-fire spells increase, or does the number of big-booms per day increase, or ?

I'm assuming you're using 'fire' to mean something more than just artillery, as the most effective (if boring!) casters IME focus more on utility spells than on damage.

 

[Horwath]

I'm imagining the social classes would be something like 'Zealot' where it's all about standing and spreading your beliefs, or a 'Noble' class where it's about ingratiating yourself and using the social structure of society, or a 'Meek' where it's all about spying and eavesdropping by being easily looked over and ignored. I'm someone that's more than willing to play a mechanized social system, I fell in love with Exalted 3e for this exact reason--warts and all

Honestly, "social" classes should be dropped from the game as a concept.

you character should be as social as much as you want to invest in Charisma and proficiency/expertise in Cha skills.
Also, casters(ALL) should pick their primary attribute from Int/Wis/Cha to add more variety between casters, even from same "class"

want a "sage", sure, primary Int, focus on Arcana, History, Religion, Nature
want an "observer", primary Wis, focus on Insight, Perception, Survival, Medicine
want a "face", primary Cha, focus on Deception, Persuasion, Intimidaton

this would be helped in all mental "assaults" and spells were equally distributed between int, wis and cha.

to add "skillfulness" to all characters, add bonus skill proficiency at levels 2,5,9,13 and 17. Add extra expertise at levels 3,7,11,15 and 19.
maybe you can exchange +skill for +3 tool or languages.

 

[Lanefan]

Only played one wizard in 2e, didn't survive first session. Never tried editions older than that. So i'll take your word, but it kind of makes sense, since wizards are artillery from wargame days.

In both 1e and 2e they do a lot more than just artillery; by 3e Evoker (the blaster option) had become one of the weaker Wizard options. The designers did this knowing full well people would play them anyway, as caster players tend to love their blast spells.

Wizards can't solve everything trough rituals and using 10 minute to cast ritual isn't always best course of action. But it's more problem of martials, particularly fighter, being poorly made for other pilars and niche protection. Solution isn't nerfing casters, it's buffing non - casters with interesting abilities that contribute in other pillars.

The problem with buffing other classes being the go-to solution is power creep.

In 3.5 days, i used Warblade as default fighter and Crusader as default paladin type, removed cross class skills and made all skills class skills for everyone and buffed skill points for most classes. With that tweak, non casters gained more useful stuff to do.

The problem with 3e skills was the underlying (and in some cases openly stated) idea that if you didn't have ranks in a skill you couldn't even try it. Anyone should be able to try anything, even if their odds of success aren't great; with ranks in the relevant skill just making you better at it.

Broken i what ways? Tried it, was fun. In combination with no prememorization.

In 1e-2e where some low-level spells are very useful no matter what level you are, being able to casts tons of them a day can make mages way too powerful (says he, who plays 1e mages in a spell-point system - I'm arguing against my own characters! ).

We also tried few other house rules. One was roll for cast. No slots. You can cast spell how many times you want. But, DC is 11+spell level. And for every two castings of same spell in a day, it goes up by 1. Wanna do 6 magic missiles at level 1? Be my guest, it starts with DC12 and ends with DC14 ( you roll prof mod + casting stat mod). First time you fail, spell is locked until long rest. Bad roll can lock your spell on first casting. Good rolls can get you far.

Interesting idea but the player-side tracking must be nasty: you'd have to have a separate daily track for every spell you know (which at higher levels can be a lot), showing how many times you've cast it today and whether it's blocked for the day.

I relly want all classes to have few big bang nova options and then few all day long options. Give my martial a whirlwind attack that can hit multiple opponents in single swing or ability to strike ground with hammer and make all opponents in radius fall prone. Something that makes them awesome few times per day ( on par with spell slots). When all the cool stuff is spent, fighter can go boink all day with regular attack, casters can have their cantrips and rituals.

I don't at all mind the idea that some classes are nova-style while others are reliable chuggers - kinda like the tortoise and the hare - as a balancing mechanism. Some classes lend themselves better to one or the other - I'm having a hard time thinking how a nova-style Rogue would work, for example - but I suppose one could try designing nova-style versions and chugger versions within each broad class group e.g. a nova warrior and a chug-along warrior, a nova mage and an always-on mage, etc.

So does every other class in 5e and everyone who took UMD in 3.x/PF1. UMD was one of the most useful skills for that reason.

One of the things 1e did was restrict a whole lot of magic items to certain classes. Most wands could only be used by mages, for example; combat-enhancing potions could only be used by warrior types, and so on. In some ways this makes sense, and it somewhat forces the mage-like items into the hands of mages and the fighter-y items into the hands of warriors.

 

[Lanefan]

Honestly, "social" classes should be dropped from the game as a concept.

I think @GobHag is proposing that each character would have two classes - one social, the other combat, mix and match - and that there'd be solid mechanics to support both (i.e. way more in-depth social mechanics than we have now).

Personally I'd likely never play this, but it's a very interesting thought exercise nonetheless.

 

[James Gasik]

I relly want all classes to have few big bang nova options and then few all day long options. Give my martial a whirlwind attack that can hit multiple opponents in single swing or ability to strike ground with hammer and make all opponents in radius fall prone. Something that makes them awesome few times per day ( on par with spell slots). When all the cool stuff is spent, fighter can go boink all day with regular attack, casters can have their cantrips and rituals.

Yeah, they tried that with 4e. Which has since gone on to be called everything from "D&D Tactics" to "Not-D&D" and has become the "black sheep" of the franchise. I used to think it was an idea that was too far ahead of it's time to succeed. Now I wonder if we'll ever get there. I expect when 7e comes out in another 15-20 years, people will still be having these same discussions.

 

[GrimCo]

Yeah, they tried that with 4e. Which has since gone on to be called everything from "D&D Tactics" to "Not-D&D" and has become the "black sheep" of the franchise. I used to think it was an idea that was too far ahead of it's time to succeed. Now I wonder if we'll ever get there. I expect when 7e comes out in another 15-20 years, people will still be having these same discussions.

AEDU was great as a concept. 4e is arguably best designed edition insofar as it has clear focus and it's designed around specific style which it does well. 4e was ahead of it's time. 4e looks like evolved version of 5e, while 5e looks more like evolved version of 3.x. Execution of 4e was clumsy, book layout not so great ( PF2 is very 4ed-ish in design philosophy and mechanical structure).

3ed Bo9S is template for how good martial classes should be designed. 5e Battlemaster is sorry pale shadow, a nerfed and gimped version of Warblade.

 

[AnotherGuy]

I actually want to see ritual casting given a greater seat at the table. The limiter would be cost. Make ritual casting more expensive, so that the caster won't make the non-casters take a back seat, but can come through with flying colors sometimes.

Our house rule
Levels 1-2 cost 1 HD
Levels 3-4 cost 2 HD
Levels 5-6 cost 3 HD
etc...

And if you run out of HD you may gain Levels of Exhaustion at rate of 1 LoE = 1 HD.
Then again our recovery system is also grittier than the standard.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

RPGs are different than any other category of game and yet they're still games.

I explained througfully that when I said RPGs are nto games I meant very specific board games, because you compared them to Risk in particular. Keeping harping on it after I explained, in reply to explanation even, feels like you ignored what I just said because it's easier to pretend I said something you can mock.

Casting limits are gamist-first, I won't dispute that. Thing is, what other not-too-complicated mechanism can you use to make it such that the casters don't render non-casters obsolete within the first half-hour of the campaign?

Well, giving non-casters actual abilities isntead of enforcing they're useful by putting arbitrary limits on casters, sounds like a good idea.

As for breaking 3 to 4 weapons per combat, that's also complete overkill. Yes weapons should break now and then, but nowhere near that often. Once per half dozen sessions on average, maybe.

A bit exagerrated, but see the above post comparison between Conan and Legend of Zelda. Conan breaking his weapon, a single isntance in the story, controlled by the writer, is dramatic. Players in Breath of the Wild knowing their weapon WILL break and thus carrying around ridiculous amounts of weapons and never even using good ones because they may need them later, is comical.

Maybe read that post again. I said the opposite: that while when you run out of gas in Risk you cannot play any more, when you run out of gas in D&D you can keep playing.

Then why compare it to Risk in the first place?

Moreover, even if your character dies outright you can keep playing: just roll up another one and carry on.

So if I run out of spells and I want to keep playing I should just kill my character off? I'm sure actually getting more of the game this way than pretending I'm useful without spells.

With this bit I largely agree, other than the bolded which to me is a very minor consideration at most. I throw the challenges at 'em - sometimes they're pushovers, sometimes they're deadly, most of the time they're somewhere between that - and they handle said challenges as best they can. Any story that arises (ideally) only becomes evident in hindsight; sometimes I'll have a storyline in mind going in but they're always free to ignore it or stand it on its head if that's their preference.

If a challenge has no story element, especially one tied to player motivations, there is no challenge because every solution is always focused fire. I don't drop the challenges on my players either for the sake of it or with preplanned story in mind, but I give them opportunnities to create their story. That's how I see being a GM.

Warriors, more than any other class type, are also limited by how many hit points they have, that being the resource they most often expend during the adventuring day.

Every class is limited by hit points and argurably non-fighting classes are limited mroe because they effectively are told to not go into combat at all because they don't have enough hit points.