D&D 5E 5E Spells Per Day

[Kinak]

Unfortunately, it's hard to say if the numbers are good without knowing what the encounter day will look like. Which, in practice, means that whether casters have way too many spells or way too few is back in the hands of each GM.

I'm not even really sure what benchmark we were supposed to be using for the playtest. In my experience, it seemed like we got a few rounds per combat and only a couple combats a day... in which case the listed number of spells is way too many for combat casters.

It's hard to say if there even is a right answer for out-of-combat healers. Their spell slots increase the length of the adventuring day, while also serving as actions in the combats they're extending to reach. And the longer they reach, the thinner the rest of the party's daily resources are stretched.

But before we can worry about esoteric stuff like that, we'd need to know what the encounter day is doing to look like. I don't remember any guidance on that in the playtest packets and they've apparently revamped monster math since then, so we can't even say how many rounds an individual fight will last.

Cheers!
Kinak

 

[bogmad]

But before we can worry about esoteric stuff like that, we'd need to know what the encounter day is doing to look like. I don't remember any guidance on that in the playtest packets and they've apparently revamped monster math since then, so we can't even say how many rounds an individual fight will last.

Cheers!
Kinak

I think they went out of their way to not put things like expected x encounters per day because a perceived backlash against strict encounter breakdowns in 4e. They want to be able to say "it depends on what kind of game the DM is running" without proscribing anything. I'll admit, it does make things a little more difficult for the DM, but from my experience with the playtest the system is welcoming enough a DM can simply run a game the way he wants with just some practice and getting a feel for the rules.

That said, I wouldn't be surprised to see some guidelines for different encounter days in the DMG or other dm advice sections.

 

[Cybit]

The lower cap on spells is probably the lesser of the two major nerfs casters receive; Concentration is the much harder nerf (and it sort of pushes casters to not hoard their spells for a single encounter) IMO. Look at all the spells that require concentration, and know that you can only ever cast one of them at a time.

That said, smart players + rituals can be very powerful, but it requires a degree of planning and foresight that is far beyond what 3E casters required.

 

[DDNFan]

The lower cap on spells is probably the lesser of the two major nerfs casters receive; Concentration is the much harder nerf (and it sort of pushes casters to not hoard their spells for a single encounter) IMO. Look at all the spells that require concentration, and know that you can only ever cast one of them at a time.

That said, smart players + rituals can be very powerful, but it requires a degree of planning and foresight that is far beyond what 3E casters required.

+1

Not only the fact that you can only concentrate on one thing at a time, but you could lose your spell if you take damage, in the final rules, apparently.

The decision whether to use a concentration spell or not is much harder, since it could potentially be wasted if you are engaged by an enemy (concentration loss rules pending. We've been playing with them provisionally based on L&L articles).

In my experience, up through level 11 or so (the max I've seen in play so far), melee characters more than hold their own against casters for all these reasons.

Casting spells as a ritual and regaining spell slots is in my opinion, the least they needed to do to make casters even playable. If you had to decide at the start of the day how to use your spell slots (on which spells), that would have made it next to impossible. What happens when your fly or bless spell is interrupted by a stray arrow? Cast it again. But without the rules on allocating spell slots on the fly, the concentration mechanic would have made casters next to useless in combat, and very easily pinned down my a mundane arrow. Don't forget, losing your fly spell not only entails the loss of that spell slot, but also a 1st level slot for feather fall. And then another casting of Fly, with the use of another action to do it. On top of possibly killing the flying wizard. These are major nerfs to casters, which will keep their power down and mean you need to play them very cautiously.

Suddenly, every single arrow or club attack is an at-will Dispel Magic spell. That's extremely powerful and a very fundamental design difference and innovation. It will make melee combat very jumpy, and make wizards want to invest in their AC quite a bit more than they have in the past, even if they do tend to lurk in the back during combat.

This is great, and should hopefully silence the casters vs caddies comments that always degenerate into edition warring (and are essentially edition warring comments, whether they are true or not. In 2nd edition, it was difficult to play a caster. It required skill and cunning just to survive. Not so much in 3rd and much less so in 4th).

 

[Kinak]

That said, I wouldn't be surprised to see some guidelines for different encounter days in the DMG or other dm advice sections.

It would be nice. I don't mind flagrantly ignoring guidelines, but it's nice to know when I'm ignoring them

Cheers!
Kinak

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Suddenly, every single arrow or club attack is an at-will Dispel Magic spell. That's extremely powerful and a very fundamental design difference and innovation. It will make melee combat very jumpy, and make wizards want to invest in their AC quite a bit more than they have in the past, even if they do tend to lurk in the back during combat.

This is great, and should hopefully silence the casters vs caddies comments that always degenerate into edition warring (and are essentially edition warring comments, whether they are true or not. In 2nd edition, it was difficult to play a caster. It required skill and cunning just to survive. Not so much in 3rd and much less so in 4th).

Being realistic about how casters work in a given edition isn't edition-warring - making value judgments about the given edition and sneering at it on that basis is.

For example, you're right about 4E cloth casters not requiring skill and cunning beyond other classes - but equally they weren't more powerful than other classes, so that made sense. If you then said "and thus 4E inherently sucked", that'd be edition-warring.

If 5E takes us back to 2E-like levels of care required, that has upsides and downsides. Upside is less chance of cloth casters becoming dominant across the board. Downside is that less-game-skilled players will find them harder to deal with (and in my experience, most new-to-D&D or new-to-RPGs players want to be either wizards or rangers), but hopefully some good guidance on default spell selection and the like can help them there.

 

[Dausuul]

While patterns are nice, I think they can force mechanics in an unbalanced direction.

I would rather have a well tailored mechanic that was less symmetrical than a pattern driven rule that ultimately doesn't scale as well as it should.

Agreed. I like pretty patterns as much as anybody, but I like a balanced, fun game much better. And creating a balanced, fun game is plenty hard enough without also having to make the class progression tables look elegant.

As far as spells go, I'm quite happy with the current progression. Keep in mind a couple of things:

• As of the last public playtest, wizards get "floating spell recovery" allowing them to get back half their level in spell slots each day. So an 18th-level wizard, has, in effect, a bonus 9th-level spell slot (or a 5th and a 4th, or three 3rd, et cetera).
• On the levels when they don't get new spell levels, wizards get special class abilities instead. Some of these are very potent.
• By tightly limiting access to high-level spells, WotC ensures that low-level spells remain important even very late in the game.
• There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. If wizards got more high-level spell slots, high-level spells would have to be nerfed to keep things balanced. I'd rather have those spells remain powerful and impressive.

 

[DDNFan]

Being realistic about how casters work in a given edition isn't edition-warring - making value judgments about the given edition and sneering at it on that basis is.

For example, you're right about 4E cloth casters not requiring skill and cunning beyond other classes - but equally they weren't more powerful than other classes, so that made sense. If you then said "and thus 4E inherently sucked", that'd be edition-warring.

If 5E takes us back to 2E-like levels of care required, that has upsides and downsides. Upside is less chance of cloth casters becoming dominant across the board. Downside is that less-game-skilled players will find them harder to deal with (and in my experience, most new-to-D&D or new-to-RPGs players want to be either wizards or rangers), but hopefully some good guidance on default spell selection and the like can help them there.

The difference between you and I is that if you said "D&D Next inherently sucks because X", I would say, "you're more than welcome to your own opinion" and move along.

I'm just too laid back to get caught up in telling others what they're allowed to think sucks or not. If you want to live your life that way, and look for reasons to feel offended, then be my guest. I wish you all the best.

Yes, I do think 4th ed inherently sucks because three very weak spells per day at level 9 is an insult to the classes' history. Sorry if that bothers you, but this is a thread about D&D Next and there's a reason I'm not posting about 4th ed rules, because I wouldn't have many kind words to say.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

The difference between you and I is that if you said "D&D Next inherently sucks because X", I would say, "you're more than welcome to your own opinion" and move along.

Forgive me, but I don't believe that you would say that. Further, I wouldn't say the former.

I'm just too laid back to get caught up in telling others what they're allowed to think sucks or not. If you want to live your life that way, and look for reasons to feel offended, then be my guest. I wish you all the best.

Yes, I do think 4th ed inherently sucks because three very weak spells per day at level 9 is an insult to the classes' history. Sorry if that bothers you, but this is a thread about D&D Next and there's a reason I'm not posting about 4th ed rules, because I wouldn't have many kind words to say.

Yeah, and obviously that is edition-warring, it's just lackadaisical edition-warring, which doesn't change what it is. Also, you misinterpreted my post completely - I wasn't suggesting you were saying that at all (I almost used 2E as the example!). Yet you decided I was! This rather undermines claims that your attitude is "laid-back"!

The point is, as I said, whatever the edition, it's okay to point out power imbalances and similar issues - only when you throw insults and make value judgments does it become warring. If 5E has issues of this kind, it is right that they will be discussed. If not, great!

FYI, I actually think 5E is looking okay in this department, right now - we shall see if that continues as spells and Feats and whatever the PrC equivalent is accrete over time.

 

[marleykat]

As of the last public playtest, wizards get "floating spell recovery" allowing them to get back half their level in spell slots each day. So an 18th-level wizard, has, in effect, a bonus 9th-level spell slot (or a 5th and a 4th, or three 3rd, et cetera)

That particular ability is only good for recovering 1st-5th level spells. It's nice but that is exactly where you have multiple slots already. It's a problem when you can only have 1 6th-8th level spell slot because you can't really even use it to power up a lower level spell. Why would you? I am okay with 1 9th level slot because that can be explained and is logical. Even though I would prefer 2. I might just experiment with something like Cantrips 5+level a day then 4/4/4/3/3/3/2/2/2 and see if it's too unbalanced.

I understand what there goal is and in fact the reason for the unlimited cantrips is to offset the limited slots with arcane recovery. But all it's really doing is letting you be great at using a bunch of low level spells and hoarding your 4 big dailies like 4e.