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

[eclair~]

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

The whole point of bounded accuracy is that +x items could be a nice boon to the player while not being vital for characters to remain viable.

 

[Distracted DM]

The whole point of bounded accuracy is that +x items could be a nice boon to the player while not being vital for characters to remain viable.

Yeah, but with all the bonuses 5e PCs can stack having non-attunement +1/2/3 items seem very unnecessary.

 

[Lanefan]

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

Yeah, that was not the point of the exercise.

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.

Yes, exactly. The other things that can (but for any given spell don't have to) scale by level are range and duration.

For Hold Person it could probably be locked in at two targets and left there.

 

[Lanefan]

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

If 5e had scrapped basic + magic weapons, every DM and their little dog would have immediately added them back in. Net result: the same as current.

I suspect the bigger flaws might have been a combination of over-reliance on bounded accuracy (5e-specific) and trying to tighten down the math too much (all WotC editions).

In TSR-era D&D with its much looser math, going from a +0 sword to a +1 to a +2 doesn't really make all that much difference, other than becoming able to hit some specific creatures that require magic to hit, but it makes the player happy.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

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.

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?

Yes. They aren't casting 1st level Magic missiles or Mage Armor anymore. They could, but the lowest slot they might have is, say, 3rd level, so if they cast Magic missile or Expedtious Retreat at all, they will likely cast it at least upcast to 3rd level. A Wizard in this scenario might have only 5-8 spell slots to use per [time unit of spell recovery]. Each such spell is a big deal, a great responsibility, and needs to be carefully weighted. They might still be able to prepare all those many neat utility spells and combat spells they can prepare now, but for example, they can't start dominating both combat and out-of-combat situations with spells, because there are no cheap utility spells they can throw around while reserving the higher level spell slots to defeat enemies.

 

[Distracted DM]

I believe 13th Age, and maybe some other ttrpgs as well, have lower level spell slots phase out as the character levels up.

Cuz yeah in 5e casters have scaling cantrips, there's little reason for them to cast a 2nd level acid arrow when they can throw a 3d10 fire bolt or ray of frost.

 

[Minigiant]

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.

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.

I pondered a fantasy heartbreaker that's more or less work like that.

Fear, Fireball, and Fly are 3rd rank spells and cost a 3rd rank slot. Every Fireball you shot is one less Fear or Fly. You can't upcast spontaneously.

An Evoker Wizard or Red Dragon Sorcerer can prepare Fireball 4th Rank to use Fireball as a 4th rank spell. But this requires a preparation. And you only get your Casting stat -10 preparations. Upcasting is a limited class feature.

If you are a wizard of 18 Intelligence, preparing

Fear
Fireball
Fireball 4th
Fly

uses up 1/2 your preparations.

Magic items, such as magic staffs, let you cast spells that you don't have prepared via spell slots, spell strain, or spell points. And that's why you go out your way to find them. And this is why most casters don't carry their attack spells on themselves but do via their magic items. And when you go against enemy casters like goblin hexers, evil cultists, and imperial warmages, the best strategy is to disarm them. AKA let the martials rush or shoot them.

It's also makes targeting every save very difficult because targeting every save loses up more of your preparations and sucks up your ability to do non-offensive magic.

So spell casters offensively either go all in versus one save OR keep a wide array of targets saves and weaked spread of abilities.

 

[Minigiant]

I believe 13th Age, and maybe some other ttrpgs as well, have lower level spell slots phase out as the character levels up.

Cuz yeah in 5e casters have scaling cantrips, there's little reason for them to cast a 2nd level acid arrow when they can throw a 3d10 fire bolt or ray of frost.

That is another option I pondered.

• You get 10 spell slots a day
• You can cast any spell with those slots Fireball, Mage Armor, and Wish is the same slot.
• Some spells (Wish, Miracle) are limited to once a day.

Long Rest Pact Magic. Or how some 2024 monsters work.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

it’s the gun, not the gunslinger, isn’t it? How else do they get hurt by a misfire, did they shoot themselves in the foot?

The gun doesn't get 4 iterative attacks. The user does.

A PF1e gunslinger who is supremely skilled (level 16+) makes four attacks per Full Attack, because they are extremely skilled with gunslinging.

As a result of this thing--arising out of their skill with gunslinging--they now encounter dozens of misfires every day. They are in no way even slightly better at preventing misfire than they were when they first trained to use a gun.

 

[Scott Christian]

We've had over a decade of wotc trying to force d&d into supporting a no magic item tolkein style baseline play expectation. It's well past time for wotc to admit that's not d&d to the point that zero of Wotc's own adventures are designed for it. D&D is and always has been a game that is absolutely swimming in magic items.

I really think this part should be a greater focus on what is being accomplished by "fixing" (non-sarcastic quotes) spells. It is just as much about the narrative function of the game than the dps/dmg/scaling.

Cantrips are a great example of this. Want a narrative where magic is being blasted every six second, 3 seconds if there are two casters, 2 seconds if there are three casters? That is just as much a narrative piece as it is mechanical. Once something is normalized, it is expected. Video games certainly normalized "blast-casting." The latest normalization was "bamfing," the ability to teleport from place to place during combat. Obviously, this all leans into narrative just as much as mechanics.

As for spell scaling:

Better fix would be to just let damage spells auto-scale with level like they did in 1e-2e, and ditch upcasting completely.

Fireball: 3rd level spell, does d6* per level based on your caster level. Boom. Simple. Done.

* - or d8, if d6 isn't enough.

I am not of fan of this, nor am I a fan of decreasing types of saves. If you are going to stick with the narrative that cantrips can be blasted all the time, I think the best thing to do is rethink:

• The resources (not just components) it takes to cast spells, and/or
• the amount of spells able to cast, and/or
• the uniqueness of the spell.