It's not just damage per attack and per round that was messed up. Much of the problem is rooted in pointless changes like the shift from 3 functional& thematic saves+totally neutral SR to a pointlessly minced to and distinguishable 6 saves +arbitrary feeling LR...or the fact that rather than casters using things like sling crossbow and racially proficient bow with mediocre results when not casting from a spell slot they can now be expected to pump out cantrips with scaling numbers of dice based on tier.
All of that kinda stuff degrades the impact of spike damage at cost abilities by raising the floor dramatically. Even worse is that with the shift to neovancian prep the system no longer has meaningful trafeoffs for the "at cost" part because any slot can be dynamically used on the fly as needed
I think the original sin lies with 3.0 and how saves scale. 4E used the nuke it approach but threw the baby out with the bath water.
6 saves. We are stuck with them until 6E. Go back to 3 imho add youre level to all saves or something. Landing them reliably should require debuffs imho.
Right now I would be happy bring back scaling damage, nuking control from orbit and improving SR/MR.
You can still summon, buff etc. 2 hybrid control/support and 3 strikers seems the most meta party ATM.
I think the original sin lies with 3.0 and how saves scale. 4E used the nuke it approach but threw the baby out with the bath water.
6 saves. We are stuck with them until 6E. Go back to 3 imho add youre level to all saves or something. Landing them reliably should require debuffs imho.
Right now I would be happy bring back scaling damage, nuking control from orbit and improving SR/MR.
You can still summon, buff etc. 2 hybrid control/support and 3 strikers seems the most meta party ATM.
One should really be doing this exercise on an excel worksheet to see if there are any issues with any of the spells.
The 1e-2e method is obviously better.
Hopefully I haven't made too many mistakes.
Not true and 5e itself has over a decade of lip service aimed at GM's supporting me on that. For over a decade now we have heard over & over again how every problem of 5e's creation is a positive feature because the GM can just choose to ignore or fix it (including the one mearls brought up about melting boss monsters because PC's output 5-6x expected damage). That trend continued endlessly even when doing so would require the GM to redesign & rebuild the core system itself because 5e provides them with no tools or support in service of design choices like "Magic items are OptIoNaL".
I bring that up as an example of support for why LFQW was not caused by self scaling spells that predate the problematic shift to neovancian prep+flexible upcasting because LFQW was caused by the GM failing to engage in "a vital task of the DM". Said "vital task" even had guidance and an entire 78 page chapter in the DMG providing tools to the GM even before endless splatbooks & supplements added to that toolbox with additional mechanical tools & magic items themselves.
While not as blunt or easily quotable, even the ad&d 2e DMG had similar advice in its magic items section like this one about player motivation/incentive & others throughout the chapter in question.
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.
Not true and 5e itself has over a decade of lip service aimed at GM's supporting me on that. For over a decade now we have heard over & over again how every problem of 5e's creation is a positive feature because the GM can just choose to ignore or fix it (including the one mearls brought up about melting boss monsters because PC's output 5-6x expected damage). That trend continued endlessly even when doing so would require the GM to redesign & rebuild the core system itself because 5e provides them with no tools or support in service of design choices like "Magic items are OptIoNaL".
I bring that up as an example of support for why LFQW was not caused by self scaling spells that predate the problematic shift to neovancian prep+flexible upcasting because LFQW was caused by the GM failing to engage in "a vital task of the DM". Said "vital task" even had guidance and an entire 78 page chapter in the DMG providing tools to the GM even before endless splatbooks & supplements added to that toolbox with additional mechanical tools & magic items themselves.
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While not as blunt or easily quotable, even the ad&d 2e DMG had similar advice in its magic items section like this one about player motivation/incentive & others throughout the chapter in question.
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 completely agree that idea of next to no magic items in 5E was stupid from the start, it's even worse as there is no replacement for magic items in terms of gear upgrades(and not waiting 3 levels for a fullplate is no upgrade, especially when someone dex based is already maxed in AC from gear at level 1).
being 15th level fighter with same trash sword you got in boot camp is really not good design, and no DM that I played with or I DMed kept to no magic items rule.
+1 items are expected from levels 3-5 to start being available to the party. Or something similar in power. +X items are really boring. But they still describe getting better gear than training swords.
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.
One should really be doing this exercise on an excel worksheet to see if there are any issues with any of the spells.
The 1e-2e method is obviously better.
Hopefully I haven't made too many mistakes.
Except the 1e method was often fairly quirky about when it was applied. For example, ice storm had no path to increase its damage in that edition. And that was part of the problem - some spells got a lot more powerful on level-up, others didn't even if they were based on a higher level spell slot (ice storm's 4th level slot vs fireball's 3rd).
2e made the decision to cap the damage increase based on the PC's level on the rationale that a 3rd level spell slot should not be packing the damage of a 9th level spell slot no matter what the level of the caster using that lower-level slot. 3e's monster hit point increase may have undermined the value of the caps, but I don't think it completely undermines the rationale - just the details. 5e does a lot to fix the details by giving the higher caster more damage but not for free, rather in return for upcasting into a higher spell slot. I think THAT'S the better design decision. The only question is the specific detail - how much of a damage increase is the right pace.
