D&D 5E Analyzing 5E: Overpowered by design

[Celtavian]

You know what? You win. Congrats. You've discovered secrets the rest of us are blind to, that will work flawless in every campaign, and have mastered the system. And you clearly also know the inner workings of my game better than my players, nay, even MYSELF.

For me now, I'm done with this thread.

Now it is game specific rather than edition specific. I don't know your game. If you're creating encounters that disallow wizards from using their more powerful tactics, so be it. Don't tell me that other classes are more powerful because they can pew-pew better under your game circumstances.

Thank you, sir. It is quite true whether sarcasm is intended on your part or you are truly conceding the argument.

As far as working flawlessly in every campaign, I would hope my DM is not that poor. No tactic, including Crossbow Experts or Sorlocks, should work in every campaign.

As far as not working as often as you claim and not worth using, that was nothing but false assumptions and lazy thinking on your part. It took a while for me to figure out the wizard, a lot of reading. I did it. As I said, the power is there for the taking.

I bid you good gaming. I hope one of your wizard players does play the class to its maximum capabilities in one of your campaigns. I would hate for your player to think he is only "most useful", when he is quite powerful in his own right.

One last tactic, but this one is too damn cheesy for me to ever allow. You could technically chain simulacrum using wish at higher level. You could simulacrum yourself, rest a day, get your wish back, have your simulacrum cast simulacrum, then repeat the process until you have a small army of wizards. It would take some set up. You could it relatively cheap if you needed to do it for a particularly difficult encounter. You could also use this process to have your Simulacrum provide you with some damage resistances and maybe some gold absorbing the pain of the 33% chance of never being able to cast wish again. I'm fairly certain any DM that allows this will be unhappy fairly quickly. They'll have to close this loophole fairly quickly.

 

[Malovaan]

Divination lets you see the plant.

If there are no huge mushrooms in your Underdark, it is rather different from the one I'm familiar with.

Unfortunately for your scenario, mushrooms aren't plants. If there's no light down there, you aren't going to find any large plants to "Transport Via Plants" by.

 

[Eejit]

Unfortunately for your scenario, mushrooms aren't plants. If there's no light down there, you aren't going to find any large plants to "Transport Via Plants" by.

You are correct, when discussing real life. However looking at Myconoids in the MM it appears that 5E classes fungi as plants.

 

[Sunseeker]

You are correct, when discussing real life. However looking at Myconoids in the MM it appears that 5E classes fungi as plants.

It's worth noting the scientific and lay differences in usage between the word "plant", for the layperson a fungs is a plant, even though scientifically they are separate kingdoms. D&D simply doesn't have room to differentiate between biological kingdoms and I doubt the spells care one way or the other. You could certainly rule this way in a game of course, though I'd feel a little bad for anyone who wants to use these abilities (which are obviously counterparts to other magical-stepping abilities such as shadowstep) in a fungal or underground situation.

It is also worth noting that the study and recognition of fungus as a unique kingdom differentiated from plants is a fairly new science (1500's ish). Members of a pseudo-magical dark-age-themed society would likely consider both fungi and plants to be "plants".

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

One last tactic, but this one is too damn cheesy for me to ever allow. You could technically chain simulacrum using wish at higher level. You could simulacrum yourself, rest a day, get your wish back, have your simulacrum cast simulacrum, then repeat the process until you have a small army of wizards. It would take some set up. You could it relatively cheap if you needed to do it for a particularly difficult encounter. You could also use this process to have your Simulacrum provide you with some damage resistances and maybe some gold absorbing the pain of the 33% chance of never being able to cast wish again. I'm fairly certain any DM that allows this will be unhappy fairly quickly. They'll have to close this loophole fairly quickly.

Simulacrum chains are infamous among 5E players (at least on the Internet). Proposed fixes range from halving the spell slots of a simulacrum to disallowing Wish-casting by simulacra to strictly enforcing the rules for simulacrum obedience (only to its own caster, so you have to play telephone to relay orders all the way down the chain). I personally haven't decided on a fix yet because I have never hit the issue, but my favored solution is "change Simulacrum to be a 9th level spell". It doesn't completely eliminate the issue (because epic boons can give you multiple 9th level slots) but it de-trivializes the exploit. I'd probably also enforce obedience chains.

 

[jayoungr]

Fungi are certainly vegetable, rather than animal or mineral. That's good enough to put them in the "plant" category for most casual speakers, and presumably that's the sense that the D&D writers were thinking of as well.

 

[Malovaan]

Fungi are certainly vegetable, rather than animal or mineral. That's good enough to put them in the "plant" category for most casual speakers, and presumably that's the sense that the D&D writers were thinking of as well.

I'm not sure about "certainly vegetable", phylogenetically they're much closer to animals than to plants.

But I won't labour the point, fair enough if the consensus view is that the writers probably intended fungi to be lumped in with plants. In which case I take back my comment that you wouldn't be able to 'travel via plants' to a big mushroom in the underdark, if thats what the writers may have intended. Unfortunately for me, if I tried this at our table I imagine I'd get laughed out of the room xD

 

[jayoungr]

I'm not sure about "certainly vegetable", phylogenetically they're much closer to animals than to plants.

Yes yes, again, you're right from an academic biological perspective. But if you're playing twenty questions with someone who's not a biology student and they're thinking of a mushroom, I'll bet you they tell you the answer is vegetable.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

But I won't labour the point, fair enough if the consensus view is that the writers probably intended fungi to be lumped in with plants. In which case I take back my comment that you wouldn't be able to 'travel via plants' to a big mushroom in the underdark, if thats what the writers may have intended. Unfortunately for me, if I tried this at our table I imagine I'd get laughed out of the room xD

The people you play with must be a bit like those people who snicker at the Bible for including bats as "birds" in Leviticus 11, when everybody knows they're really mammals: so fond of their own definitions that it never occurs to them that anyone might be using a different definition. For D&D purposes, the only definition of "plant" that matters is the one on page 7 of the MM. (If it weren't for that, you could make a good case that fungoid creatures ought to be classified as Oozes.)

Such people probably also snicker at calling an Iron Golem a "creature" instead of an "object."

 

[evilbob]

There are several options to make the game grittier in the DMG; others have probably posited a few of their own. The most important thing to take away is: the game is intended to be modded, and it is only as good as you make it. If something doesn't sit well with you, feel free to change it up, but you shouldn't have to change much to get the feel you want.

Sucks for the people who either don't want, or lack the time, to mod the game, doesn't it?

Your point is fair, but I would be surprised if the number of people who didn't make some kind of house rule or even just a tiny modification to the game didn't approach 100%. That was sort of the whole point to 5.0 development, as I saw it; they said, "we know you're going to mod the game - you pretty much all do - so let's put together a great core and let you mod away as you see fit; we'll even give you a 'starting mod suggestions' chapter in the DMG." I think when you're talking about a game as personal and as intimate as D&D, the base assumption being "mod as you see fit" is an ok one, because that's the point of D&D: it's something special and unique to all of us. So yeah, while I agree that simply saying "if you don't like it go change it" sounds flippant and dismissive, it honestly is the right answer. The game is made to be molded to your image of what it should be. That's a feature, not a bug.