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

[Willie the Duck]

I know some folks liked 4e but that was a design that I never want to see again.

There's multiple things about 4e which are quintessential 4e. One can like one aspect of 4e (the power options retained and usable at the moment), while disliking others (battlemat dependence). The nice thing about 'remaking 4e,' as people are calling it, is that one can have one without the other.

And no one wrote a good 4E adventure with 1 maybe 2 exceptions.
They wrote an edition even the designers struggled with.

Yes, despite the resurgence in '4e did it right' framing that has come out in recent years, I think there's clearly missteps in that edition that people would like to not repeat. That's why a spiritual re-do is so tempting.

a lot of 4e fans are kinda sensitive

I'm not going to do anything with this opening, only pointing out that you left it there.

Three, it seems clear that Mearls' primary goal is to leave the Wizard's total power functionally untouched, which likely isn't going to sit well with 4e fans, since there's still quite a gap between an optimized Wizard and an optimized Fighter, even if we presume that his proposal worked perfectly as proposed.

Barring additional information, I think we owe any person proposing a rule change to the benefit/hindrance of one class/playstyle the good faith assumption that they are going to do a re-balance with other classes/playstyles at the end. He's changing the tire (actually just discussing the eventual changing of the tire, I suppose) -- after that comes tightening each bolt partway, then more, than 'til they snug.

 

[Stormonu]

Just NO. I don't want the return of 4E in any form or fashion.

If you can't handle the cognitive load, don't play a wizard or don't play a high level wizard. Don't destroy the wizard class for the sake of "simplicity".

 

[Tigris]

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).

adding complexity to make it more Pathfinder/4e like. 5e being in the relative middle means it never satisfies in either direction.

No. There are at least 2 axis:

1 is depth. Coinflip vs highly tactical boardgame.

1 is complexity. Streamlining vs overcomplification.

(And for osr likers another axis is deadliness: 1 hit wonder vs undying hero).


4E did a lot for streamlining. Making things as sinple as they can be. Of course it was not perfect, but it did focus on that.

• Using cards for tracking of spells instead of spell slots
• Having lower number of total spells (replacing old ones with new ones)
• Using bloodbowl like non euclidean movement
• Using 1 square not 5 fantasy measures
• Making all classes have the same general layout
• Having low number of conditions
• Using precise clear language, completly separating fluff from ability text
• Writing directly what abilities do, having only low number of keywords. (And only 3 of them do anything (and these 3 were a bad design..))
• Reducing the number of skills, making it clear what skills can do
• Making attack modifiers actually smaller and simpler. (Monsters and players (in average) +1 per level in 3.5 this was +1 and more)
• Multi attacks being an exception not the norm (some powers do) and they use same modifier for all attscks normally
• It had almost no feat trees, but mostly singular conditions.
• Etc.

PF2 is the opposite of streamlining. Things like "a fighter gets +2 to his attacks" is hidden in 1 proficiency table and 2 class features and 3 keywords.


Yes 5E might be simpler than 4e (if you pick the simplest classes), but even 4e still had a lot of streamlining 5e still misses

- encounter building. In 4e a normal encounter is 1 level X monster per level X enemy as simple as possible. 5e has different monster XP modifier depending on amount of monsters.

- Clear and precise language in abilities

- Simple and precise formula to up and downscale monsters

- reducing the number of prepared spells especially in high level just replacing low level spells

And other more streamlined game like Beacon, which still are more tactical (also than PF2) have even more streamlining like

- only use small numbers for modifiers health etc. From level 1 to 10

- reduce the number of spells and class features further to only have distinct and effective ones with no repetition.

- etc.


OSR games on the other hand do want simplification but dont want to be like beacon because thats mostly a tactical boardgame.

 

[Mort]

Hence why it's everyone's second favorite; never what they want, but enough of a compromise to be acceptable.

5e is my favorite version of D&D. The one I like to play the most and the one I like to DM the most, by far.

I've DM'd and played every version of D&D from 1e forward, most for their entire run.

Of my two groups, so about 11-12 people total, it is the favorite of about 75% with a some who prefer 3e, some who prefer Pathfinder and some 4e. But still about 75% prefer 5e after having played those systems.

From people I've played with at conventions and talked to at game shops, MANY, also prefer 5e.

While I expect you were being hyperbolic (at least I think so) the everyone's second favorite assertion is just dead wrong.

 

[Remathilis]

5e is my favorite version of D&D. The one I like to play the most and the one I like to DM the most, by far.

I've DM'd and played every version of D&D from 1e forward, most for their entire run.

Of my two groups, so about 11-12 people total, it is the favorite of about 75% with a some who prefer 3e, some who prefer Pathfinder and some 4e. But still about 75% prefer 5e after having played those systems.

From people I've played with at conventions and talked to at game shops, MANY, also prefer 5e.

While I expect you were being hyperbolic (at least I think so) the everyone's second favorite assertion is just dead wrong.

5e is my preferred D&D as well, but it's because it's already a compromise of the crunch of 3e and the simplicity of BECMI. (Though I think 5.24 pushes things a little closer to 3e then Basic). That said, it's not perfect and there are things I would want done differently, but I find the more you stray from 5e's core to what you feel would fix your personal bugbears, the more you end up moving towards one of the two extremes. Hence my "second favorite" line; it's not perfect but it's downsides don't take away enough to ruin it. Whereas I don't feel I could seriously play either 3e or Basic. 3e is too fiddly for me now and Basic doesn't have enough meat to keep me interested.

 

[payn]

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.

So you been dumping hard on PF2, but your conclusions are quite strange compared to my experience. PF2 may look complex, but everything is so completely silo'd that its actually rather simple. The engine doesnt allow "build absurdities" because its so tightly bound. It does a great deal to go out of its way to stop multiclass building to the point doing so is going to make underpowered PCs. PF2 is not complexity at all.

I agree with you that I dont necessarily think its the solution to D&D, but what you state is not actually how the game presents or plays, ime.

 

[Willie the Duck]

I think Earth, Water, Fire and Air "elementalists" should really be considered more like 4 seperate classes than 4 subclasses in DnD 5 terms. You don't really want the Earth Elementalist lobbing Earthballs.

The best option (for them) would be each getting a complete list of their own spells, each relatively balanced (against each other, and other spellcasting classes), but also slightly different and individually themed (fire casters with their fireballs maybe having the biggest AoEs to represent explosions, but earth spells hit harder, etc.). Having them not all then land on the wizard spell list (as they always did in AD&D and 3e) would stop it from being just another pay day to generic wizards. This of course wildly increases the amount of spells in the game, and specialized knowledge you need to onboard every time you choose another class. So there are downsides.

I’m neutral on the idea here but I also don’t know that I’ve ever encountered the problem described at the table. I have seen people struggle with high level play but I think that was more because we played a high level adventure with brand new characters rather than play up through the levels. There’s a difference between learning a character and their abilities over time, and being overwhelmed all at once. But I’ve only made it to what I would call high level play a couple of times…period.

So is this really about players struggling with high level wizards, or is it about the scarcity of high level play at all?

I think it is a fine working hypothesis as to (the commonly perceived notion) that high-level play is rare. I've heard people complain about the complexity -- but then I've also heard people complain about the overall support (few modules, etc.), the challenge of working your way up to that level (especially in TSR editions), or just the preferred scale of character play (do you want to be a scrappy dungeon-crawler or an epic hero traipsing across dimensions, etc.). Mind you, each person and each group is different, but even there, I don't think we really know the admixture of each reason for the rarity (if we even agree it is real).

That said, even if it is a solution to a problem you, I, or the guy over there doesn't think is really that big of an issue, I think we can analyze the proposed solution for relative merit regardless.

anything before level 5/6 is snoozefest mechanically.

Maybe this is more applicable in the TSR editions, but I always found 3rd level to be where the game really 'turns on.' I mean, think of the problems that can be bypassed just by iconic 2nd level spells like Alter Self, Invisibility, Knock, Levitate, (for this edition Misty Step,) See Invisibility, Silence, and Spiderclimb? Any plot gated by guards, doors, something up high, or something you can't see.

 

[Minigiant]

Just NO. I don't want the return of 4E in any form or fashion.

If you can't handle the cognitive load, don't play a wizard or don't play a high level wizard. Don't destroy the wizard class for the sake of "simplicity".

The logical answer is

More Classes​

D&D has long time missed a simple Intelligence based cantrip class that can cast high level spels 1/day.

Like a warlock but no Invocations but more cantrips.

 

[J-H]

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

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.

I'm glad all of your players have read the PHB and memorized their class features. They can probably even level up their characters away from the table and not during game time. Congratulations! That's not a universal experience. If fixing the interface and data presentation prevents some players from being locked out of playing 50%+ of the classes in the entire game, then it's time to fix the interface. It's certainly simpler than re-writing the rules!

Real world examples from the 5 people I currently DM for in real life across 2 campaigns:
One of my players has been playing a Tempest Cleric from level 1 across 75 sessions and 2.5 years. His character is level 19. Within the last 5 sessions he has tried to cast Word of Radiance at a foe 70' away and had to be reminded of his "lightning damage & knockback on someone who hits you" class feature. If he had to have his spell effects memorized, he would only have about 5 spells prepared. Two of my 3 players in that long-running campaign still double check how much healing they get from a healing potion despite sometimes going through potions like they're water.

Another of my players is my 9 year old son playing a druid for the second time. He's probably had about 30 hours of druid play across 20(?) 1.5 hour sessions and still has to look up the size of Erupting Earth despite it being his go-to blasting spell. Actually, I should probably type up a sorted spell summary for him.

 

[SkidAce]

Creating the equivalent of prestige classes seems like a great idea to me, especially because it allows you to explicitly break from what people expect of the core PHB classes and do whatever is right/fun for those higher levels.

It all circles back around eventually doesn't it?