D&D 5E 07/29/2013 - Legends & Lore It’s Mathemagical!

[Majoru Oakheart]

And in my opinion it's a heck of a lot better than not having your save DC go up at all regardless of the spell slot you cast a spell. To have your Sleep spell be a DC 14 save if you cast it with a 1st level spell slot OR a 9th level spell slot does not sit right either. If you're spending a 9th level slot to cast Sleep... it should be harder for enemies to resist in my opinion.

I agree. However, I'm a little concerned if that's the formula since saves appear to be going up by +6 over 20 levels, but DCs would appear to go up by 9, given the 9 levels of spells. It means the higher level you get, the harder it is to save against spells you would expect to face.

 

[VinylTap]

I like the spell DCs scaling by the slot it's cast in if there's a way to still make those lower level slots useful. Sure you can cast sleep at a higher slot, but then you've still wasted that slot and you still have all those low level slots sitting there unused.

There's two solutions I see.
1) have weaker monsters still be viable opponents for higher level characters so a caster can decide who to waste his high slot spells on instead of just blowing his high slots and being useless.
[So far this seems to be shaping up, except a lot of this depends on what the DMs style is and could vary a lot table to table]

2) Make sure there are a LOT of useful utility spells at lower levels so that while a caster may waste all his damage spells on higher slots he still has a reason to dip into the lower slots to cast a spell every now and then and he doesn't feel useless when those rarer, higher slots are spent

1) Bounded accuracy my friend. This is all covered, although it will depend a lot on what the DM decides to throw at you.

2) While I can't say this for sure... that seems like a likely direction. Not all spells require a saving throw either, usually just the offensive ones.

 

[Warbringer]

I agree. However, I'm a little concerned if that's the formula since saves appear to be going up by +6 over 20 levels, but DCs would appear to go up by 9, given the 9 levels of spells. It means the higher level you get, the harder it is to save against spells you would expect to face.

But they are limited in number (see how few spells the caster gets at high level)

The change in general will mean for every spell harder to resist, 2 or 3 are easier (in terms of resources available)

 

[Chris_Nightwing]

Mearls has expanded a little on this on his Twitter.

It looks like all classes will progress from +1 to +6 at the same rate.

If you aren't proficient in something, you don't get the bonus. If you're somehow specialized, you get double the bonus.

I have mixed feelings about this. It's simple, which is good, and should allow the skill system to be optional on a player by player basis. But it also lacks nuance.

Also, because no class is going to get double the bonus to attacks, all classes get the same attack bonus. I can live with that, but it feels a little strange.

Ugh, one of my least favourite features of 4th edition: everyone progresses at the same rate. One of the major advantages of bounded accuracy was that you didn't need this, because the specialist and the untrained characters wouldn't be that far apart. Fighters could get +6 to hit with weapons and Wizards nothing (unless they invested), skill modifiers would be capped at some bonus so the stealthy Rogue could still dabble in acrobatics, whilst the Thief-acrobat could be better than average at both. We've been reduced to three levels: you can't do it - no bonus, you can do it - bonus according to your level and you're great at it - double that. Where's the nuance?

 

[DEFCON 1]

Players at my table already have trouble remembering their save DCs, and they only have one to worry about. Now they need to internalize that they have to remember their save DC, that each spell level has a different DC, and which DC corresponds to which spell level. And every time they gain a level or get a bonus, we have to do all this math again. Mike's earlier tweeted idea has literally none of these problems.

Well, look... if players at your table can't be bothered to read their character sheets to find the big "Save DC 14" written there... that's their problem, not WotCs. I don't want the designers to hamstring their own designs in order to placate lazy players. If they can find their attack bonus and damage for their attacks on their character sheet... they can find their Save DC.

10 + ability mod + slot level. You either memorize this simple formula, or you make a little chart on your sheet that writes the DC for each slot level. But let's not make this into rocket surgery.

 

[Chris_Nightwing]

If it is what I would imagine it is... your save DC would be 10 + ability mod + slot level. That doesn't seem that complicated to me.

And in my opinion it's a heck of a lot better than not having your save DC go up at all regardless of the spell slot you cast a spell. To have your Sleep spell be a DC 14 save if you cast it with a 1st level spell slot OR a 9th level spell slot does not sit right either. If you're spending a 9th level slot to cast Sleep... it should be harder for enemies to resist in my opinion.

I agree with your last statement - but doesn't this make the whole spell level, spell slot system a needlessly complex exercise? If you want to cast sleep, it's to achieve a particular effect. If you want to cast fireball, it's to achieve a particular effect. If you are low level, those effects are modest and easy to save against, if you're high level they are spectacular and harder to save against (at least for the same enemies). You get 'better' spell slots to cast 'better' spells as your level gets 'better' - so why can't we just give you a fixed number of spells you can cast in a day and ignore what level they are cast at? Just use your caster level as the signifier for how powerful they will be, get rid of spell levels/slots. This also sidesteps the trick of simply using low level slots for non-save spells and utilities that lead to caster domination.

 

[RangerWickett]

Ugh, we're going back to save DCs for spells that are 10 + stat + spell level? Hooray for making low-level spells less useful, once again.

o why can't we just give you a fixed number of spells you can cast in a day and ignore what level they are cast at? Just use your caster level as the signifier for how powerful they will be, get rid of spell levels/slots. This also sidesteps the trick of simply using low level slots for non-save spells and utilities that lead to caster domination.

Yes, I like this idea. They need to be slaying more sacred cows to capture the flavor of fantasy narratives and have good gameplay, rather than sticking with weird 'atomic valence' spell levels.

 

[DEFCON 1]

There's two solutions I see.
1) have weaker monsters still be viable opponents for higher level characters so a caster can decide who to waste his high slot spells on instead of just blowing his high slots and being useless.
[So far this seems to be shaping up, except a lot of this depends on what the DMs style is and could vary a lot table to table]

2) Make sure there are a LOT of useful utility spells at lower levels so that while a caster may waste all his damage spells on higher slots he still has a reason to dip into the lower slots to cast a spell every now and then and he doesn't feel useless when those rarer, higher slots are spent

Lower level monsters still being viable opponents even at higher levels was definitely something they seemed to have wanted since the beginning. So those lower spell slots could still be useful (and actually tactically interesting.)

If you're a 9th level character (and thus have 5th level spell slots) and get attacked by a bunch of orcs... do you use that 5th level slot to cast Sleep (and thus getting more HP to put down and potentially unnecessary increase in Save DC), or do you only use a 3rd level slot instead? Trying to judge the power of a spell versus the power of the enemy would be a part of playing the class.

As far as #2... indeed, all those spell slots would/should probably get filled by those spells that have ritual versions that were used at lower levels. So a 1st level character who wants Comprehend Languages at their disposal would ordinarily cast CL with a ritual in order to save the spell slot for something like Magic Missile. But at 9th level, Magic Missile with a level 1 spell slot is kinda useless... so instead you now can cast Comprehend Languages with a single action instead of a ritual now.

Spells evolve from ones that you used to cast as rituals at low level into ones you cast with your lower spell slots at high level. Which makes all the sense in the world to me.

 

[GX.Sigma]

Don't get what bonus, the stat bonus?
...
Effectively, a dexterous cleric +3 is as useless at "Dex" checks as a clumsy one -3 ... hmmm, not liking. Could have major pain points in multi-classing.

I don't think that's what he means; ability modifiers will still matter. I think it's more like:

Everyone gets a "level bonus" (my term, not theirs), based on your character level. Maybe it's 1/3 your character level, or maybe there's a chart at the front of the book.

Everyone gets their level bonus to all attack rolls, saving throws, and ability checks (this replaces base attack bonus, save progression, and skill competency).

Classes may grant you double your level bonus to specific things. For example, there might be a Thief class feature that says something like "you get double your level bonus to Dexterity checks to disable mechanical devices" (this replaces specialized or class-defining skills).

Each player can choose to opt into a skills system, whereby you can assign ranks to specific skills instead of this double-ness (though you still get your base level bonus to all checks).

 

[DEFCON 1]

Ugh, we're going back to save DCs for spells that are 10 + stat + spell level? Hooray for making low-level spells less useful, once again

No.. the spells themselves are still useful. It's the spell SLOTS that lose their usefulness. A level 17 caster has NINETEEN spell slots. How often will a character ever use those 4 1st level slots except in the case of a utility spell that doesn't need or have a more powerful version? Use them for Alarm and Comprehend Languages all you want (rather than having to use ritual versions of them anymore.)