D&D 5E "But Wizards Can Fly, Teleport and Turn People Into Frogs!"

[Ahnehnois]

Because spending rounds doing nothing, or having spells fizzle far more often than the fighter's attacks miss, or declaring that wizards can only be played well by people who enjoy bookkeeping, isn't a very rewarding experience for many players if you're playing the wizard even if things average out (or even if you come out on top) in the long run.

That's kind of a dire view of it, don't you think?

I don't think many D&D players require instant gratification in the form of being able to produce an effect each round (and if they do, why not make them choose between a one-round magic missile and a three-round death spell?). And why not cut down on the bookkeeping by giving even high-level characters only a few spells per day, rather than dozens? Why not have spells that drain your health or vitality, preventing spamming and forcing tough choices? There are tons of ways of doing limitations and costs.

More importantly, why not create classes that offer different play experiences for different people? We can have the super-complicated wizard, the kind-of-complicated sorcerer, and the pretty-simple warlock. That way everyone can play an arcane spellcaster, but wizards retain their Vancian (and thus complicated and confusing) nature.

I'd say the opposite: it sucks that mages COULD ignore hp so easily. HP is a great system for allowing everyone to contribute to slaying an enemy in combat. It's more versatile than binary Save or Die powers because you can succeed a little (do less damage) in exchange for more accuracy, mobility, defense, conservation of resources, etc. I really like the 5e system where any ability that effectively removes an enemy from combat can only insta-kill if the enemy's hp are low enough that you could probably hack them down in one or two good slashes anyway. (But they still mostly do good damage even if they can't auto-kill.)

The problem with hp is that the range of what you can do with it is so narrow. There's really only two states: alive and dead (and a small window of dying that effectively takes you out of the game short-term anyway). It doesn't allow you to hinder the enemy very readily, nor are there mortal wounds, permanent injuries, or any specificity in the nature of the damage. Of course, different people will want to treat those subjects in different ways, but at the moment, they're ignored completely.

I do agree that it's very odd that magic is the thing that bypasses the system so readily; some spells almost seem like patches to the system to add more realism in. For example, you can blind someone with Glitterdust, but there isn't much rules support for throwing dust at someone's eyes. You can cast a Confusion spell on them, but you can't whack them in the head and give them a concussion. You can cast Shriveling on them and disable a limb, but you can't actually attack that limb.

Neither of us thinks that mages should be the sole purveyor of these abilities; I guess where we differ is that when they're taken out of the spell descriptions, I'd rather they be put into the combat chapter.

And if your DM doesn't let you say you beheaded an Orc when you kill it with your ax I'd have a word with him.

Well, yeah. But can you behead him with one swing, or do you have to hit him five times before he becomes beheadable? That's the issue.

 

[Ariosto]

Can they also fight (by whatever means) as effectively as fighters? In that case, they are not well-balanced in terms of abilities!

The premise in the original D&D game was that the types had different 'costs' associated with them. The chief cost for magic-users was survival (unlikelihood thereof).

 

[drothgery]

That's kind of a dire view of it, don't you think?

I don't think many D&D players require instant gratification in the form of being able to produce an effect each round (and if they do, why not make them choose between a one-round magic missile and a three-round death spell?). And why not cut down on the bookkeeping by giving even high-level characters only a few spells per day, rather than dozens? Why not have spells that drain your health or vitality, preventing spamming and forcing tough choices? There are tons of ways of doing limitations and costs.

There are lots of ways of doing limitations and costs. But many of them lead to a far less rewarding play experience.

I really think most people do need to contribute meaningfully in each round of combat, or at least attempt to. Otherwise it leads to players becoming disengaged with the game. And it's been pretty well established that health/vitality draining mechanics for spell casting, however well they might work in novels, just don't work well in tabletop RPGs because it's just too hard to balance them properly. I won't play anything that looks like a vancian wizard anymore, despite wizards really being my favorite archetype (and I'll only play clerics in 3.x because there's nothing even close to an acceptable non-vancian substitute) because even with spell components highly abstracted (by the rules in 3.x and by actual play experience in 2e) spell bookkeeping is hard enough.

 

[timASW]

I think that 5e's doing a pretty good job of balancing fighters and wizards now. I would prefer it if casters also had to declare their spell at the start of the round and then any hits before it was cast could disrupt it like older editions though. That was always a decent balancing factor.

Other then that I kind of like casters being able to crap on the rogues schtick in older editions. Sometimes no one wants to play a sneaky character and it really sucks to either force someone into playing a class they dont like or having your warriors bash every lock in with sledge hammers and just eat every trap in order to continue through an adventure without one.

Rogues are kind of a problematic class in that a lot of people simply dont like the overall theme of them but they are still very, very important in most sorts of low level play. So I have always found it to be more of a feature then a bug that your wizard could sacrifice some of his magical utility in order duplicate a few rogue abilities when it really mattered.

Thats one thing I really hope they dont lose from the game thats eventually released.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Most people do need to contribute meaningfully in each round of combat, or at least attempt to. Otherwise it leads to players becoming disengaged with the game.

Well, we're not going to agree on that one.

And it's been pretty well established that health/vitality draining mechanics for spell casting, however well they might work in novels, just don't work well in tabletop RPGs because it's just too hard to balance them properly.

Really? I don't remember that being established. I mean, it's also pretty hard to balance them if you don't use these kinds of costs. And the 3e examples-albeit few and far between-seemed to work pretty well and haven't generated a ton of blowback.

I won't play anything that looks like a vancian wizard anymore, despite wizards really being my favorite archetype (and I'll only play clerics in 3.x because there's nothing even close to an acceptable non-vancian substitute) because even with spell components highly abstracted (by the rules in 3.x and by actual play experience in 2e) spell bookkeeping is hard enough.

We can agree on that though. I've tried to simplify and "un-Vance" my casters as much as I can without rewriting the rulebooks because it's too much work to track them.

There are lots of ways of doing limitations and costs. But many of them lead to a far less rewarding play experience.

Maybe, but that's no reason not to keep looking for ones that don't. The original point here was that it seems like WotC has abandoned that pursuit entirely.

And it seems that we might agree that the model of memorization and spell slots (or daily and encounter powers) also doesn't create a rewarding experience.

 

[ZombieRoboNinja]

The problem with hp is that the range of what you can do with it is so narrow. There's really only two states: alive and dead (and a small window of dying that effectively takes you out of the game short-term anyway). It doesn't allow you to hinder the enemy very readily, nor are there mortal wounds, permanent injuries, or any specificity in the nature of the damage. Of course, different people will want to treat those subjects in different ways, but at the moment, they're ignored completely.

I do agree that it's very odd that magic is the thing that bypasses the system so readily; some spells almost seem like patches to the system to add more realism in. For example, you can blind someone with Glitterdust, but there isn't much rules support for throwing dust at someone's eyes. You can cast a Confusion spell on them, but you can't whack them in the head and give them a concussion. You can cast Shriveling on them and disable a limb, but you can't actually attack that limb.

Neither of us thinks that mages should be the sole purveyor of these abilities; I guess where we differ is that when they're taken out of the spell descriptions, I'd rather they be put into the combat chapter.

The quote I was responding to mentioned Finger of Death and PW:K, and you mentioned knockout and beheading, as alternatives to ablating HP, so I was thinking SoDs. As for status effects, fighters and/or rogues or monks can already cause fear, taunt, knock down, push back, and stun with various maneuvers and skill tricks. In the meantime, Wither Limb and lots of other weird mAgical status effects are gone. I agree there are areas for expansion on the martial side, like blind and maybe sever/break limb, but the two are a lot more comparable in variety of combat status effects than was the case in 3e IMO.

 

[drothgery]

Really? I don't remember that being established. I mean, it's also pretty hard to balance them if you don't use these kinds of costs. And the 3e examples-albeit few and far between-seemed to work pretty well and haven't generated a ton of blowback.

It's very hard for that kind of system to not end up with either ineffectual/unuseable magic (because the costs are high enough no one is willing to use it, ala the Force in the first two versions of WotC Star Wars) or broken magic (because the costs are low enough that it's not really a limit). And the costs are entirely dependent on pacing.

Maybe, but that's no reason not to keep looking for ones that don't. The original point here was that it seems like WotC has abandoned that pursuit entirely.

Tilting at windmills is rarely a rewarding exercise. It's a lot easier to narrow the scope of what any one class (and especially any one individual caster) can do with magic than to try to balance Batman wizards.

And it seems that we might agree that the model of memorization and spell slots (or daily and encounter powers) also doesn't create a rewarding experience.

Well, memorization and 3.x levels of slots is excessive, though I think short fixed-list classes (ala the specialist-in-a-box warmage, beguiler, and dread necromancer) are at least playable with a minimum of hassle, and chosen-list classes (ala sorcerers or bards) are only a hassle at level up. 4e-style AEDU was never problematic to me.

 

[pemerton]

Most of my 4E knowledge comes from the core books and does not include most splatbooks or Essentials (or dragon magazine which contain about 30% of those rituals).

The majority of utility powers are just "combat but do not damage".

In the PHB, for wizards 9 of 19 utility spells are non-combat; for warlocks that's 8 of 18. (I'm counting fly, climb and stealth spells as non-combat here.) The others tend to be defensive buffs or movement/positioning buffs.

I'm not sure that a bare majority is really "most" - and once you consider that some of those buffs (eg damage reduction) can also be used out of combat I would say that a majority have clear out-of-combat utility.

Rituals? Yes they are non combat. The whole handful of them. No comparison to all the non combat spells which were removed in 4E. (Not to mention that the ritual mechanics were bad making them mostly an ignored feature and that they were not really traditional spells as everyone could learn them).

And in the beginning of 4E there were "a bit" fewer rituals (47 to be exact, not counting item creation).
But ok, big hands but still not all that impressive and yes, later in its production cycle 4E increased the number of Rituals. But they certainly saw less use than in older editions as they cost money for each casting (which is a much more regulated resource in 4E) and had a big casting time attached to them.

I'm not sure why item creation doesn't count in totalling the 49 rituals in the PHB (Enchant an Item was a spell back in AD&D, after all).

And I'm not sure what your basis is for saying that rituals were "mostly an ignored feature" which "certainy saw less use than in older editions". Is this based on your own play? Survey data?

My own experience is that rituals see quite a bit of use. The 20th wizard-invoker PC in my game knows 36, with levels from 1st to 18th, and has just taken the Expert Ritualist feat to boost his ritual casting skill checks. (I'd add - the trivial cost of low level rituals makes them de facto at will. I don't think money is an especially good tool for balancing usage, but it certainly doesn't get in the way of it! Nor does casting time - 10 minutes doesn't mean "uncastable", just "not castable while fighting".)

The problem with hp is that the range of what you can do with it is so narrow. There's really only two states: alive and dead (and a small window of dying that effectively takes you out of the game short-term anyway). It doesn't allow you to hinder the enemy very readily, nor are there mortal wounds, permanent injuries, or any specificity in the nature of the damage.

Well, in 4e there are three states - alive, bloodied and dead - plus a 4th state - dying - for PCs.

You can also link effects to gaining and losing hit points, for more variation.

 

[pemerton]

people generally considered fighters and wizards to be balanced in 4th edition, even though the exact same thing was true of that edition too! Fighters may have gotten powers just like wizards, but those powers were limited to strictly martial-themed things. Fighters couldn't fly, teleport, throw fireballs or do anything blatantly reality-bending. They certainly could do some things that were amazing and even stretched belief, but they were always feats of physical prowess, never anything outright magical.

It depends on your definition of "magical".

4e is open-ended in a way that I don't think 3E is (and AD&D probably tends not to be either). For instance, what can a paragon or fighter do with a skill check in 4e? The rules don't really tell us, though there are hints: to open a force portal is a DC 30 STR check; to break through a 1' thick masonry wall is DC 35; so either feat is eminently feasible for an epic fighter.

In my own game, when the fighter PC was having his dwarven thrower artefact reforged as a mordenkrad, he successfully held the weapon steady in the forge with his bare hands - despite the tremendous magic enemy it was giving off - so that the artificers could grab it with their tongs (successful Endurance check). That was around mid-paragon. And a few levels later, when the same character was swallowed by a purple worm and in danger of dying, the ranger-cleric flew into the worm's gullet on his flying carpet to rescue him (successful Acrobatics check).

This is the sort of stuff that I think can help martial PCs remain on a par of effectiveness with spellcasters. I find it is easier with firm guidelines for adjudicating DCs, and also the appropriate damage to impose as cost when skill checks are failed (or only partially successful).

 

[delericho]

The interesting thing, though, is that people generally considered fighters and wizards to be balanced in 4th edition...

I would begin by questioning the assumption that I've bolded. I was going to say more, but what I'd written read like a massive anti-4e-rant, so I decided to withold it. However, given the open-ended nature of ritual magic (and especially the "fly, teleport, and turn people into frogs" applications), and also given that (I think) Wizards have received more splat-material expansions than any other class, I would be inclined to question whether the classes are actually balanced.