D&D General Mike Mearls says control spells are ruining 5th Edition

[Zardnaar]

The DMG and XGTE give pretty good guidance on exactly how many and what kind of magic items to give the party in 5e.

There is no "rule" in 5e saying you should not give out magic items. You absolutely need to give out magic items unless you are constantly making specific considerations in the monsters and challenges you select.

What is true is that the CR on monsters do not assume that the party will have Specific Magic Items at Specific Levels. AC is not tuned assuming all 8th level characters will have +2 weapons, for example.

This.

Being able to easily aquire what you want chucked in 3E and 4E.

 

[Minigiant]

The DMG and XGTE give pretty good guidance on exactly how many and what kind of magic items to give the party in 5e.

There is no "rule" in 5e saying you should not give out magic items. You absolutely need to give out magic items unless you are constantly making specific considerations in the monsters and challenges you select.

What is true is that the CR on monsters do not assume that the party will have Specific Magic Items at Specific Levels. AC is not tuned assuming all 8th level characters will have +2 weapons, for example.

You "needed" to give out "magic weapons" and "magic armor", have a replacement, or avoid a lot of traditional D&D monsters

You needed to give out "magic trinkets" and "magic wonderous items", have a replacement, or avoid a lot of traditional D&D challenges.

You didn't need to give out "+X magic weapons" and "+X magic armor"

HOWEVER

a lot of humaniods and some monsters in simple ROG design relied on a magical +X to saves either via magic items (PCs) or innately (monsters).

5e goofed on this.

 

[Lanefan]

Interesting proposal

Let us run through 3 examples

FIREBALL
1e-2e method
5th level wizard casts 3rd level spell Fireball - 8d6
6th level - 9d6
8th level - 11d6
10th level - 13d6
15th level - 18d6

You misread what I originally said.

It's d6 damage per level. Period. Thus, 5th-level wizard gets 5d6, 8th-level gets 8d6, 15th level gets 15d6, etc.

variant 5e, increase potency on upcast
wizard casts 3rd level spell Fireball - 8d6
4th level spell - 10d6
5th level spell - 12d6
6th level spell - 14d6
7th level spell - 16d6
9th level spell - 18d6

This and your other examples also fail to note two things about upcasting (one benefit, one flaw): the flaw is you're using a higher-level slot that you could use for other things, while the great big benefit is that you can use all your upper-level slots to cast Fireball plus use your 3rd-level slots; meaning in effect you can do far more Fireballs in a day than just your 3rd-level slots would indicate.

My proposal would be to ditch upcasting completely, meaning that while your Fireballs might get a bit more bang for the buck at higher levels you wouldn't be able to cast nearly as many of them: you'd be hard-limited by the number of 3rd-level slots you have.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

You misread what I originally said.

It's d6 damage per level. Period. Thus, 5th-level wizard gets 5d6, 8th-level gets 8d6, 15th level gets 15d6, etc.

This and your other examples also fail to note two things about upcasting (one benefit, one flaw): the flaw is you're using a higher-level slot that you could use for other things, while the great big benefit is that you can use all your upper-level slots to cast Fireball plus use your 3rd-level slots; meaning in effect you can do far more Fireballs in a day than just your 3rd-level slots would indicate.

My proposal would be to ditch upcasting completely, meaning that while your Fireballs might get a bit more bang for the buck at higher levels you wouldn't be able to cast nearly as many of them: you'd be hard-limited by the number of 3rd-level slots you have.

But if there are 4th, 5th and 6th level spells that serve a similar purpose to Fireball (AoE/Damage), you end up with literally "more bang" per day if these spells all auto-scale. And that's a bigger issue than being able to cast 3rd level spells at 5th level and having more spells per day, at least the lower level spells are weaker than the higher level ones.

Spells definitely shouldn't scale just with caster level if caster level also gets you more spell slots overall. Ideally, a 10th level Wizard or Sorceror might have no more 1st and 2nd level spell slots as they all upgraded to higher level spell slots, but he might have the same number of spells per day as a 5th level Wizard - but they're all higher level now.

The quadratic wizard is a result of both spell slots and spell effect scaling with level. Fixed damage per spell rank but the option to upcast them at higher levels seem like an attempt to counter this effect.

 

[Zardnaar]

But if there are 4th, 5th and 6th level spells that serve a similar purpose to Fireball (AoE/Damage), you end up with literally "more bang" per day if these spells all auto-scale. And that's a bigger issue than being able to cast 3rd level spells at 5th level and having more spells per day, at least the lower level spells are weaker than the higher level ones.

Spells definitely shouldn't scale just with caster level if caster level also gets you more spell slots overall. Ideally, a 10th level Wizard or Sorceror might have no more 1st and 2nd level spell slots as they all upgraded to higher level spell slots, but he might have the same number of spells per day as a 5th level Wizard - but they're all higher level now.

The quadratic wizard is a result of both spell slots and spell effect scaling with level. Fixed damage per spell rank but the option to upcast them at higher levels seem like an attempt to counter this effect.

Quadratic wizard us more the non damaging spells.

Fireball didn't break 3E. With 5E hit points a 3E fireballs weaker until lvl 9 and 10.

And fireballs fairly mediocre most of the time.

 

[tetrasodium]

The DMG and XGTE give pretty good guidance on exactly how many and what kind of magic items to give the party in 5e.

.

It describes how they are a catch 22 no win tool that ultimately forces the GM to choose between what foundational level system design elements they want to completely overhaul or write off as unusable while tiptoeing around acknowledging it as a system level problem by assigning responsibility to the GM.

Spoiler: One heck of a 'tool'

What a helpful "Dungeon Master tool" provided when all the GM needs to do is never use them & never use a different tool or redesign the base system math around using them if they do.

There is no "rule" in 5e saying you should not give out magic items. You absolutely need to give out magic items unless you are constantly making specific considerations in the monsters and challenges you select.

What is true is that the CR on monsters do not assume that the party will have Specific Magic Items at Specific Levels. AC is not tuned assuming all 8th level characters will have +2 weapons, for example.

Deciding expectations for magic items and designing the math around those expectations is the base system's responsibility. Unlike the 3.x example above, 5e does not even provide the GM with mechanical tools for doing so & it can not do so because those tools would require drastic overhaul of the base system math that PCs already by default drastically outmuscle with 5-6x expected capability.

I'm not seeing the "pretty good" part. Yes there are charts & things claiming to be related "rules", but those are not things the system math is tuned to account for to the point that it expressly makes clear they are assumed to not be in use.

 

[tetrasodium]

But if there are 4th, 5th and 6th level spells that serve a similar purpose to Fireball (AoE/Damage), you end up with literally "more bang" per day if these spells all auto-scale. And that's a bigger issue than being able to cast 3rd level spells at 5th level and having more spells per day, at least the lower level spells are weaker than the higher level ones.

Spells definitely shouldn't scale just with caster level if caster level also gets you more spell slots overall. Ideally, a 10th level Wizard or Sorceror might have no more 1st and 2nd level spell slots as they all upgraded to higher level spell slots, but he might have the same number of spells per day as a 5th level Wizard - but they're all higher level now.

The quadratic wizard is a result of both spell slots and spell effect scaling with level. Fixed damage per spell rank but the option to upcast them at higher levels seem like an attempt to counter this effect.

It's not about the damage of upcasted fireball or those other higher level spells.

Not being able to upcast spells means that web needs to compete with other 2nd level spells for 2nd level spell slots while fireball needs to compete with other 3rd level spells for 3rd level slots. Likewise those level 4+ spells have similar competition at their slot level with other spells of that level.

Look further and it means that there is more need to decide which spells to prepare rather than preparing one spell like fireball to use across a bunch of slot levels. Casters wind up having to make tough choices like if they should prepare this or that level N spell instead of both plus Y spell for somee other slot level with acceptingbthat level N slots are only really useful for one particular spell

Put it in simpler terms: Take a spell caster like cleric wizard and/or druid, give it some number of me dls like 12 and compare how your spell prep changes if you can and can't upcast to higher level slots. Don't forget that sorcerer and wizard are limited to knowing/preparing spells they chose while leveling up& can't just prepare from class list like cleric/druid

 

[Lanefan]

But if there are 4th, 5th and 6th level spells that serve a similar purpose to Fireball (AoE/Damage), you end up with literally "more bang" per day if these spells all auto-scale. And that's a bigger issue than being able to cast 3rd level spells at 5th level and having more spells per day, at least the lower level spells are weaker than the higher level ones.

What if each level had its own AoE damage spell (except 3rd by tradition has two: Fireball and Lightning Bolt) but each of those spells does a different type of damage. If for example you want AoE cold damage you have to use Ice Storm, a 4th level spell; at 5th level there could be an AoE acid damage spell, at 6th an AoE radiant/necrotic damage spell (depending on caster's alignment), and so on.

Spells definitely shouldn't scale just with caster level if caster level also gets you more spell slots overall. Ideally, a 10th level Wizard or Sorceror might have no more 1st and 2nd level spell slots as they all upgraded to higher level spell slots, but he might have the same number of spells per day as a 5th level Wizard - but they're all higher level now.

I don't get this - are you saying a 10th level Wizard shouldn't be able to cast 1st level spells any more? If not, what are you saying?

The quadratic wizard is a result of both spell slots and spell effect scaling with level. Fixed damage per spell rank but the option to upcast them at higher levels seem like an attempt to counter this effect.

If slots are hard-contained it helps a lot. By "hard-contained" I mean that the only way to cast any spell is to use a slot of that spell's level to do it. Thus, instead of looking at having (hypothetical) 5-4-3-2-1 slots and thinking you've got 15 slots in total, you have to look at it as 5 separate silos demarkated by level, each with its own list of spells-available. And when you run out of slots for a level, that's it: no more spells of that level for you today.

So sure, this caster could rock 3 Fireballs, 2 Ice Storms, and a 5th-level AoE damage spell; but she couldn't do 6 Fireballs.

 

[AnotherGuy]

You misread what I originally said.

It's d6 damage per level. Period. Thus, 5th-level wizard gets 5d6, 8th-level gets 8d6, 15th level gets 15d6, etc.

Okay, but that is then strictly a change for Fireball, Cone of Cold and Ice Storm are correctly represented.

This and your other examples also fail to note two things about upcasting (one benefit, one flaw):

Yeah, that was not the point of the exercise.

My proposal would be to ditch upcasting completely, meaning that while your Fireballs might get a bit more bang for the buck at higher levels you wouldn't be able to cast nearly as many of them: you'd be hard-limited by the number of 3rd-level slots you have.

Okay but to be thorough besides damage done on upcasting there are spells such as Hold Person that when upcasted allows you to add additional persons being potentially affected. If you were to remove upcasting you would have to stipulate for these spells that at every x levels you could add an additional person affected by the spell.

 

[AnotherGuy]

The DMG and XGTE give pretty good guidance on exactly how many and what kind of magic items to give the party in 5e.

5e had a missed opportunity by not scrapping the + magic weapons and armour which broke Bounded Accuracy and instead focusing on

Adamantine, Blessed, Cold Iron, Darkwood, Dragon Scale, Mithral, Silvered etc... to overcome monster resistances and immunities.

What 5e did do is allowed for the breaking of Bounded Accuracy with + weapons and armour and then double-down by giving us an Artificer to ensure that each and every party could break BA.
It is lazy ass design.

Thankfully 5e is easy enough to fix and so that is what I did.