D&D 5E (2024) Mearls has some Interesting Ideals about how to fix high level wizards.

[tetrasodium]

This is really not what I experience. I have this experience even with experienced people who know many classes and spells, but they forget some details about it etc.

And even beginners who have problem with the system do not want to play a champion fighter. The only person I know who liked the champion fighter is one guy who likes to min max and play a champion for a one shot.

No he has a point with low level caster players who regularly dawdle while lost on their turn. Players who can't be bothered to read the rules take longer than average when they decide what playing a powerful and effective spell caster is just as low effort as the rogue constantly asking if they get sneak attack on that when they couldn't be bothered to remember how sneak attack works.

Nobody talks about redesigning rogue to "fix" sneak attack for those players, they correctly admit sneak attack isn't hard to understand and acknowledge that the player should read the class section more closely and remember it or play a class with less considerations (like some fighter and barbarian builds). There's no reason to design the most potentially complicated class with a prime goal of addressing the problema faced those when those players say no after getting told to do better or that they should really pick a different class

 

[J-H]

I think part of the "problem" here is the trouble people have keeping track of their spells. That's not a "the spells are bad" problem (aside from a few). That's an interface problem.

When you're in combat, you're usually not saying "I want to cast a 4th level spell right now." You're saying "It's a mob of Killer Goblins! What AOEs do I have?"

Look at the WOTC designed character sheet. How do you pick out the AOE spells easily? Do you remember the difference between Fire Ball, Fire Storm, Fire Bolt, Fire Fingers, and Fire Cloud? Which one is going to conflict with the Haste spell you're Concentrating on?
Look at the printouts from D&D Beyond's character sheets. Do they give you enough info to know what a spell does?

Here's a spell summary from a Bard I played at a one-shot last year. How long does it take to find my choices?

A high-level wizard is going to have more options, but proper sorting is going to divide those ~25 prepared spells into two over-categories (Concentration & Non-) and then 4-8 sub-categories. If the player knows what his intent is, the list of options is greatly narrowed.

By providing a summary by each spell in a standardized notation, the need to pull out a book or an app is limited to the spells which have a lot of detailed options, such as Contagion or Wish.

WOTC could do this. They could also divide up the character sheet by action types instead of burying reactions and bonus actions in lists of class features. They have not.

 

[el-remmen]

I think Earth, Water, Fire and Air "elementalists" should really be considered more like 4 seperate classes

While my ideal is one subclass with four possible choices of focus.

(My 5e hack has sorcerer and wizard as subclasses of a mage class)

 

[tetrasodium]

I think part of the "problem" here is the trouble people have keeping track of their spells. That's not a "the spells are bad" problem (aside from a few). That's an interface problem.

When you're in combat, you're usually not saying "I want to cast a 4th level spell right now." You're saying "It's a mob of Killer Goblins! What AOEs do I have?"

Look at the WOTC designed character sheet. How do you pick out the AOE spells easily? Do you remember the difference between Fire Ball, Fire Storm, Fire Bolt, Fire Fingers, and Fire Cloud? Which one is going to conflict with the Haste spell you're Concentrating on?
Look at the printouts from D&D Beyond's character sheets. Do they give you enough info to know what a spell does?

Here's a spell summary from a Bard I played at a one-shot last year. How long does it take to find my choices?
View attachment 427442
A high-level wizard is going to have more options, but proper sorting is going to divide those ~25 prepared spells into two over-categories (Concentration & Non-) and then 4-8 sub-categories. If the player knows what his intent is, the list of options is greatly narrowed.

By providing a summary by each spell in a standardized notation, the need to pull out a book or an app is limited to the spells which have a lot of detailed options, such as Contagion or Wish.

WOTC could do this. They could also divide up the character sheet by action types instead of burying reactions and bonus actions in lists of class features. They have not.

Those bolded questions are absurd. Nobody who read and learned their class abilities asks those questions by the time they can cast them all unless they are starting with a higher level PC they don't know how to play. Have you never played a spellcaster with more depth than "hmm do I cast repelling agonizing Eldritch blast or my upcasted fireball the next two rounds and then guilt the group into another short rest"?

Edit: it's been a while but I too know what all those spells do despite it being a while since playing a PC with them

 

[Horwath]

Do you remember the difference between Fire Ball, Fire Storm, Fire Bolt, Fire Fingers, and Fire Cloud? Which one is going to conflict with the Haste spell you're Concentrating on?

yes, as a matter of fact, yes I do.
If I'm playing a caster that has those spells.
otherwise, I might check what they do exactly.

Simple rule for DMs, If a player does not know what the spell does, their PC does not have that spell prepared.

 

[Tigris]

There's no reason to design the most potentially complicated class with a prime goal of addressing the problema faced those when those players say no after getting told to do better or that they should really pick a different class

If most classes (most classes are spellcasters) are for many players too complicated then yes this is an issue. If many people "need to do bettet" than maybe the system should.

If all the complexity of a system lie in its spells then its another issue, because also beginners want to play spellcasters the same way not all experienced players want to play spellcasters.

5e spells also are often unnecessarily convoluted because of the "natural language" crap. And some even require twitter posts for clarification what exactly they are allowed to do because of being vague.


I get it some people feel clever by remembering lots of spells by heart. But not everyone does.

 

[Minigiant]

I've always got the impression that this is a problem that solves itself.

Either campaigns end before it reaches high-level, or the players who choose to play wizards that reach high-level are those 1-in-5 that Mike mentioned that actually can handle the load of the large number of spells.

A player who gets confused by all their spell options in a high-level game doesn't remain playing a high-level wizard in a high-level game very long. They either quit or the game goes poorly enough that the DM ends the campaign and starts back at level 1.

This idea that high-level play needs to be fixed in order to get more people to play high-level play to me is just barking up the wrong tree. High-level play just isn't that important. Not so important that we need to make it as easy as we can for more players to be able to play it without getting confused. If players want to play high-level play... they will play high-level play, and learn how to do it effectively. And if they can't? Then they won't. And that's completely okay!

It's like people who ski. Those that want to be able to ski Black Diamond trails will learn how to do it and become proficient enough to ski Black Diamond trails. But there's absolutely zero things wrong with Green Circle and Blue Square trails and most people are perfectly happy to just ski those... especially considering there's nothing inherently better with Black Diamond trails and you aren't missing anything by not skiing them. So why would anyone go out of their way to change how Black Diamond trails work in order to get more people to ski them? That's missing the point of having the different levels of trail in the first place.

Correlation does not imply causation

The way a high level spellcaster is set up and designed is not the way anybody really wants to play them. It's only kept that way out of tradition.

This is why other games who do go to high level do not have the same problem, because their designers are not nudged by the community to keep certain elements.

However, I do not think the DND community truly feels too bonded to the spell slot system in the way that much of the way it is used when it gets to high level..


4/3/3/3/3/1/1/1/1 isn't as vital as y Abilty scores and rolling d20s to attack.

 

[tetrasodium]

If most classes (most classes are spellcasters) are for many players too complicated then yes this is an issue. If many people "need to do bettet" than maybe the system should.

If all the complexity of a system lie in its spells then its another issue, because also beginners want to play spellcasters the same way not all experienced players want to play spellcasters.

5e spells also are often unnecessarily convoluted because of the "natural language" crap. And some even require twitter posts for clarification what exactly they are allowed to do because of being vague.


I get it some people feel clever by remembering lots of spells by heart. But not everyone does.

That "if" is doing a lot of lifting and your post doesn't seem to be making any effort whatsoever to support it. Instead you continue on while treating it as a self evident thing with universal acceptance rolling into another "if" with no attempt at supporting it either. The only real solid point that you make is to correctly knock "natural language" for the mess it is

 

[Remathilis]

Definitly not.

PF2 is far far far away from what people want to create. People want to streamline things and make it easy to understand.

PF2 is exactly the opposite. It wants to create depth by complexity and has as the target audience people who like to feel clever by having system mastery.

Sure these people also play 5e and like to create overpowered multi class abstrusities, but PF2 is not in any way a fix for 5e.

PF2 is a game created for 1 specific target audience, which cares about complexity especially.

You can fix a lot of things in D&D without going anywhere in the PF2 direction. Making classes more balanced can be done in the 4e way, by giving martials also cool varied things with ressources, not just making basic attacks numerical superior.

Making high level wizards less complex is also about streamlining, the opposite of PF2.

Incorrect. People who want to fix 5e do so in one of two directions: adding crunch and complexity (pf2) or removing it down to the studs (SD). The two represent opposite ends of the spectrum with 5e in the center. So the question of how you fix a given problem in 5e inevitably ends up simplifying the game to make it more OSR like or adding complexity to make it more Pathfinder/4e like. 5e being in the relative middle means it never satisfies in either direction, but it also doesn't offend enough to have people stop playing. Hence why it's everyone's second favorite; never what they want, but enough of a compromise to be acceptable.

But any real attempt at overhaul is going to drag the game in one direction or another, and that will be bad for the losing side and the game in general. Which is why I preferred a revised 5e to a different 6e.

 

[Horwath]

If most classes (most classes are spellcasters) are for many players too complicated then yes this is an issue. If many people "need to do bettet" than maybe the system should.

most classes are spellcasters because WotC decided that anything more complicated than walking in 5E must be coded as a spell.

If all the complexity of a system lie in its spells then its another issue, because also beginners want to play spellcasters the same way not all experienced players want to play spellcasters.

1st level spellcasters are not complicated to people that actually read PHB for their respective spells.

5e spells also are often unnecessarily convoluted because of the "natural language" crap. And some even require twitter posts for clarification what exactly they are allowed to do because of being vague.

this is actually true. More technical language would be better.

I get it some people feel clever by remembering lots of spells by heart. But not everyone does.

"feel" clever?