D&D 5E Casters should go back to being interruptable like they used to be.

But thet needs to be accounted for in the game design itself.
Fights would need to be made easier, because your remove a lot of power from the party with such a change.
A hard encounter would become double deadly if the casters are nullified.

Like in my campaign where I play a wizard. We have no martials, but we can still win, even though a more balanced party would probably be more effective.

But the proposed change of being able to easily interrupt spells would kill that party instantly.

At the moment 5e is playable with any class combination. You can play the game with an all caster, all martial or even single class combination and still be fine and the DM doesn't have to rebalanced the challenge-difficulty, because a hard encounter will still be a hard encounter and an easy one an easy one.
An all fighter party is in the same power category as an all wizard party, the differences are in the 10-30% range.

With the proposed change, an all wizard party would loose 80-90% of its power, because all their spells would be interrupted. It is a difference of aa magnitude in power level.

That would be needed to be accounted for.

At the moment in 5e, all classes are equally powerful. The difference between the worst and best class with the worst and best subclass being maybe 50%.

The proposed change would instantly make all casters be 10% as effective because they can't reliable do their thing anymore. Because without spells casters don't have any power at all. Without spells a casters is maybe as effective as a commoner in a fight.

You suddenly have classes that are a magnitude more effective and powerful than other classes. The game balance would be totally utterly destroyed.

And in that instance with interruptable spells the my party would have been TPK'ed because the only one being able to do reliable damage than would have been the rogue.
3/4 of the party would have been reduced to be as effective as commoners (a caster without spells is barley better at fighting than a commoner).
And so far all the parties I played in or DMed for a primarily casters/specialists and not martials.

I agree in principle, they shouldn't feel special in the game world. But at the same time, they are special.
Because Non-Special people who get in 1 to 7 combats a day with monsters that will rip you apart would kill any non special person quite quickly.
It is always a balance act. Like the world shouldn't level with the players, but the adventures should be achievable by the characters and not have an ancient red dragon attack a level 1 party because it would be realistic in this world.
It seems like you're complaining about the potential for "poor GM-ing".

The potential to be interrupted =/= the certainty of being interrupted.

Being interrupted 100% of the time would involve a similar amount of "poor GM-ing" as when a GM creates terrain with impassable physical obstacles between the party and their intended destination.

The difference is that the GM would have to work harder to be irritating since they'd need to have creatures in reaction range of the spellcasters at all times with a reaction to spend, and an attack effective enough to hit and cause the interrupt, vs. just saying there's a 200ft wide lava river between your party and a door they need to get through or the door is sealed with magic.
 

log in or register to remove this ad


There are ways the fighter can keep them from going, such as Sentinel or features from the Cavalier subclass, not to mention using terrain features if you aren't in a dungeon. ;)
Yes, but these are things the Fighter has to opt in and build for. Sentinel has a serious cost, that of an ASI (sure Fighters get more, but the first doesn't show up to level 6, and it competes with other things players want to do). And Cavalier is not a popular subclass.

Players mostly want their Fighters to be damage machines, and aren't terribly concerned with protecting other players. That's why 5e is designed to be a "everyone must tend to their own defense" game. If you want to change that paradigm, you have to fully change it, not just one part of the equation.
 

I think about combat differently. I am trying to hit a creature and am not scoring damage does not mean I am not making any contact at all.

Likewise, if I am doing hit points of damage it may be that the creature is wearing down or tiring, but I don’t know that I would know specifically I am whittling down “hit points.”

If the fighter is making me hustle and block (I.e. hitting and doing hit points in damage) I don’t know that I would switch targets.

(I mean I would as a player if I was doing some unavoidable metagaming. But would an orc necessarily break off a fight with a warrior to go for a (in game terms) a softer target?
Hasn't the game for years advised that you should always "go for the pointy hats"? Or the healers? Especially if you consider their magic to be game-changing.
 

Ok, so in summary, it seems that what we'd need to do here is:

1) make ranged attacks and spells that require actions and somatic components interruptible.
2) remove or weaken the concentration limitation on spells.
3) EDIT: remove the limitation on spells that allow for saves each turn.
4) make melee characters stickier by default.

If all of these changes were made, I wouldn't have any complaints...but I do think that some people would complain about this more than the current rules, if you can believe it.
 
Last edited:

why are you making spells interuptable and then weakeniing spells that allow for saves each turn? shouldn't that be doing away with saves each turn and making those spells suck or save?
 


why are you making spells interuptable and then weakeniing spells that allow for saves each turn? shouldn't that be doing away with saves each turn and making those spells suck or save?
Oops, that made more sense in my head when I typed it. Edited, hopefully for clarity.
 



Remove ads

Top