D&D 5E As a DM - Your Top 3 Most Hated Spells

[Lanefan]

I don't expect a tutorial on Magic, but if there's a way to clarify briefly, that would be great. My interest is not really to understand Magic, but to try to wrap my head around this notion of building deliberate 'trap' options into a game, on which this seems to be a variant. I've never been able to understand a motive for doing so that didn't seem a little... antisocial.

There's a philosophical reason - the idea of learning by trial and error, and through discussion with other players; @Tony Vargas already kind of touched on this.

There's also a practical reason: to keep the mill rolling they need to churn out hundreds of new unique cards every year, and not all of them are going to be perfect. So, instead of fighting this they decided to go with it and almost make it a feature; that yes, some of these cards are going to be dogs and it's up to you-the-players what to do with them.

 

[Charlaquin]

Since I know next to nothing about Magic, a) it's not surprising this makes no sense to me; and b) it might not be important to have it make sense to me. But. This makes no sense to me. It sounds like you are saying these 'testing' cards are introduced to 'teach' players not to make a mistake, which, but for the existence of the testing cards, they could not make. And if it's possible to make the mistake in the absence of the 'testing' cards, then why aren't the negative consequences of those situations sufficient to teach players not to make the mistake?

I don't expect a tutorial on Magic, but if there's a way to clarify briefly, that would be great. My interest is not really to understand Magic, but to try to wrap my head around this notion of building deliberate 'trap' options into a game, on which this seems to be a variant. I've never been able to understand a motive for doing so that didn't seem a little... antisocial.

So, keep in mind, Magic is a very complex game. There are many ways a card might be above or below the curve, sometimes both at once. And the curve itself fluctuates from set to set. On top of all this, the cards are designed and developed by fallible humans, and sometimes mistakes are made. Accordingly, there will always be some cards that are overpowered and some that are underpowered, no matter how carefully WotC tries to balance it. But the closer to balanced the game is, the harder it is to evaluate cards. This is something all players learn over time of course, but by intentionally including a few cards in each set that are obviously bad, you give players the opportunity to recognize that not all cards are created equal, and to show them what to look for. Additionally, they fill an important role in limited, by increasing the power delta at the lowest rarities.

 

[MostlyHarmless42]

Honestly? The only spells I actively am not a huge fan of are Teleport and Planeshift. Not because I am afraid of the players using them to go into a bosses lair or escape, but because I'm more annoyed by the easy way they allow players to simply say "and now this is a game set on another continent or the plane of fire" completely at random with no warning. They can literally derail an entire campaign if you are actually trying to have a certain type of story or game.

 

[Phion]

Surprised I have not seen Wall of force yet

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

I am not surprised: numerous threads mentions that high-level plays isn't common (and that the game "breaks down" at high level): if we go by them and campaign usually end by 10th level, it's possible a 5th level spells isn't common enough to irritate GMs.

1. Guidance. I want to take a piss. I cast Guidance. I want to order a sandwich and don't know how much to tip. Guidance. Everything I do in life, Guidance.

I make my players describe their spells at least a little. With Guidance, I am "enforcing" it. So, basically, the cleric in our group who continuously cast Guidance is always going "wait! we need to pray to the Traveller for help before unlocking this door" "wait, let's pray to Kol Korran before entering this shop our barter will be favourable" (and so on... polytheism helps a lot). It actually makes the cleric sound like a real cleric. And sometimes the others PCs goes "oh, shut up, what can go wrong if I just open this coffin, no need to pray to Dol Arrah..."

I'm more annoyed by the easy way they allow players to simply say "and now this is a game set on another continent or the plane of fire" completely at random with no warning. They can literally derail an entire campaign if you are actually trying to have a certain type of story or game.

I think it's a problem better resolved by establishing with players beforehand what kind of campaign they are going to take part (and they can accept or discuss the premise before). If they just want an epic distraction of a dungeon crawl on the plane of fire, I think the best way for them is to express it to the GM and let him imagine something for an adventure before enacting it. I think a sane group wouldn't just get to the plane of fire and expects the GM to improvise entertainment for them without warning... I can see the problem arising, though.