1 Minute Duration Spells

[Falling Icicle]

While I generally like the way they're handling spells in 5e, one thing that raised a big red flag for me was all of the spells with 1 minute durations. Granted, this is a big improvement over 1 round/level, but it still has a major problem. Many combats may last longer than 10 rounds (1 minute). This forces me to keep track of the duration of these spells, and I absolutely hate having to do that.

Why not just make the spells last for the entire encounter/5 minutes like in 4e? That way, I can just cast a buff or summon or whatever and not have to worry about tracking it round by round to see when it will run out.

 

[variant]

Because if they added encounter durations, most of the non-4e players will not touch the game with a 10 foot pole.

 

[Falling Icicle]

Because if they added encounter durations, most of the non-4e players will not touch the game with a 10 foot pole.

So make it 5 minutes then.

 

[Campbell]

I prefer one minute duration spells to something like 5 or 10 minutes. There's a definite trade off. With 1 minute spells you need to track spell duration during combat, but casting buffs has a definite cost because stacking buffs during prep becomes more difficult. With 5 minute spells time spent outside of combat needs to be tracked more carefully and players will feel pressured to rush to the next encounter because 'buffs man'. Plus you can really stack lower spell level buffs making it much harder to balance melee clerics. 4e side stepped the issues involved with buff rushing because the amount of damage being thrown around alongside of plentiful healing surges and encounter powers pressured parties to take a short rest after every encounter.

 

[Ahnehnois]

I never liked keeping track of those things. I'd rather see them have substantially longer, non-level-based durations. Why not 1 hour? 10 minutes, at least. Some could be handled as cantrips or in magic aura fashion or as feats.

Duration does need to be an objective unit of time though.

 

[Sunseeker]

Different spells should have different measures. Spells intended to be for combat use should be measured in rounds. Spells intended for more general use should either have really long durations(you have Darkvision for the next 24 hours), or in short, single-roll increments(you get a +5 to your next perception check).

Long duration spells should be measured by rests. Moderate ones would expire at your next "short rest", longer ones would expire at your next long rest. This would require spells to be constantly "refreshed", forcing casters to use spells, instead of relying on long-duration spells and buff-stacking over longer periods of time.

 

[tbk409]

I agree 1 minute is an inconvenient duration. Combat very rarely lasts that long, but often enough that the obsessive part of me wants to track it just in case. We ended up assuming under a minute fights in 3e, making these basically "encounter" spells, but it always kind of bugged me. It is certainly not of any real concern to me, though.

 

[Croesus]

re: 1 minute durations. Anyone who doesn't want to track the exact number of rounds can simply houserule those spells to equal one encounter. Simple, no ripple effects, done.

With 5 minute spells time spent outside of combat needs to be tracked more carefully and players will feel pressured to rush to the next encounter because 'buffs man'.

Agreed.

 

[Falling Icicle]

re: 1 minute durations. Anyone who doesn't want to track the exact number of rounds can simply houserule those spells to equal one encounter. Simple, no ripple effects, done.

This is what's commonly known as the Rule 0 Fallacy: "it's not broken if you can fix it."

 

[Croesus]

This is what's commonly known as the Rule 0 Fallacy: "it's not broken if you can fix it."

There's also the fallacy that a rule is broken if someone doesn't like it. This rule is a matter of preference, no more, no less.

If you don't like it you can lobby for it to be changed, ignore it, live with it, or houserule it.