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

[James Gasik]

Or my favorite, your playing a good spellcaster and 70 percent of all the spells you find are a necromancer or sociopaths wet dream. Because "that's what those guys would use". It's so lovely to get spells that you can't sell or use because it would be an evil action to do so.

Yes, I had a fun conversation with my party's Cleric when we found a scroll of Animate Dead. "How do you feel about applied Necromancy for fun and profit?".

Very few of the spells I find end up being prepared. Meanwhile, every fight, my party says "why don't you just cast Fireball"?

"Uh, these are Bone Devils. They're magic resistant and immune to fire."

"...but you could try casting Fireball, right?"

 

[James Gasik]

this is why most experienced DM's have backup encounters or fudge stuff behind the screen. I'm not a huge fan of fudging but if it's going to break the game sometimes the best choice is accept the best solution is the one you don't like. But sounds like your DM needs to get better at encounter design. It takes experience and time to learn to adjust things for your party. that just takes practice. but wizards are the chaos in the machine. they are designed to blow things up and force a reset on the battlefield. some DM's resist that Idea and it sucks for them.

Well I don't have any complaints about my DM. He's chosen to run a published adventure as by the book as he can, since juggling game prep around his job does suck up a lot of his free time. And he's been really cool about rulings and not nerfing things at the table (even when I think he should...). He generally wants us all to have fun.

It's just the adventure (Scarlet Citadel by Kobold Press) has some really brutal enemy choices, so there's been a lot of fights where we've survived by the skin of our teeth.

 

[nevin]

It's true that being a melee character can be very frustrating in D&D. All of your actions are all or nothing- either you hit and do damage, or you sit on your hands. Enemies have lots of hit points, and they can do some horrible things to you. The first time I saw a 5e Chuul devour a Champion Fighter, I had no desire to enter melee, lol.

If there's some wacky status effect, chances are, the melee is going to suffer from it. If anyone is going to drop to 0 and need outside assistance to keep playing the game, it's probably the melee. And you're not really given the tools to deal with it.

Even in AD&D, Fighter-types had great saving throws all around, but not so much anymore. I can understand why a melee character would feel frustrated when the guy they're based with wiggles his fingers and ruins their day, and the only salvation they have comes from a pointy hat 50' away using counterspell.

But there's lots of other things monsters can do that aren't spells that are just as unfriendly, so any advantage gained runs the risk of making things worse for the players all around. Melee characters need survivability buffed more than casters need to have spellcasting made less reliable, IMO.

in 5e I'd argue melee is freakishly survivable. to the point I often on these forums call it the Anime edition. Even Wizards are more survivable than any other edition if you want to go that far. If you are seeing melee getting wiped a lot in 5e your DM is probably throwing stuff way over the limit on recommended encounter design at you. but i've never run or played any of the kobold stuff in 5e maybe it's jsut harder.

 

[Gammadoodler]

and all of those things affect casters. Point please......

Not sure if this was a reply to me, but the point was that a caster can be Frightened, Poisoned, Prone, Restrained, Grappled and have 5 levels of Exhaustion, in the middle of an active war zone and their ability to cast save or buff spells is 100% unaffected.

It is unintuitive, anti-thematic, unbalanced, and unnecessary and true of PC and enemy casters.

It's wild to me to insist that the only counterplay available against casters must be other casters and hp depletion.

 

[James Gasik]

in 5e I'd argue melee is freakishly survivable. to the point I often on these forums call it the Anime edition. Even Wizards are more survivable than any other edition if you want to go that far. If you are seeing melee getting wiped a lot in 5e your DM is probably throwing stuff way over the limit on recommended encounter design at you. but i've never run or played any of the kobold stuff in 5e maybe it's jsut harder.

So maybe you've never seen this damned thing in play, but it's pretty much the poster child for my point, and it's far from unique. It hits you, you're just grappled. No check required. It can have two melee characters in it's grip at the same time, and while they're likely to have Con save proficiency, being poisoned for one minute and paralyzed is pretty much a death sentence.

 

[Clint_L]

Not sure if this was a reply to me, but the point was that a caster can be Frightened, Poisoned, Prone, Restrained, Grappled and have 5 levels of Exhaustion, in the middle of an active war zone and their ability to cast save or buff spells is 100% unaffected.

Well, except for the fact that they are about to be very dead. But sure, they can get a bless off. Game is broken.

It is unintuitive, anti-thematic, unbalanced, and unnecessary and true of PC and enemy casters.

It's wild to me insist that the only counterplay available against casters must be other casters and hp depletion.

Really? The only counterplay?

My monk needs to stop immediately targeting and stunning spellcasters! Our barbarian should never have taken Mage Slayer - what a waste of a feat! And HP depletion doesn't seem that weak when you can action surge and your target only has 30 HP.

I can't speak for your games. But we are not finding spellcasters to be all-powerful or even unbalanced.

 

[James Gasik]

I don't like to bring up Mage Slayer since it's an optional rule, and you do have to opt into it- and the game supposedly works just fine without it. As for Monks, sure, they have an option. But does that mean all parties need to have a Monk or take Mage Slayer? Seems to go against the "you don't need to have specific classes" thing WotC has going on here.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I don't like to bring up Mage Slayer since it's an optional rule, and you do have to opt into it- and the game supposedly works just fine without it. As for Monks, sure, they have an option. But does that mean all parties need to have a Monk or take Mage Slayer? Seems to go against the "you don't need to have specific classes" thing WotC has going on here.

Does WotC ever claim that the game works fine without a reasonable balance of classes?

 

[James Gasik]

Does WotC ever claim that the game works fine without a reasonable balance of classes?

Hm. I'm pretty sure they have, and if they don't, 1, I'd feel pretty dumb constantly repeating it, and 2, I'd wonder where I got that impression from.

 

[Gammadoodler]

Well, except for the fact that they are about to be very dead. But sure, they can get a bless off. Game is broken.

Really? The only counterplay?

My monk needs to stop immediately targeting and stunning spellcasters! Our barbarian should never have taken Mage Slayer - what a waste of a feat! And HP depletion doesn't seem that weak when you can action surge and your target only has 30 HP.

I can't speak for your games. But we are not finding spellcasters to be all-powerful or even unbalanced.

Or..instead of bless...

meteor storm..or
blink..or
plane shift..or
maze..or
dominate monster..or
hold person..or
fireball..or
teleport..or
force cage..or

..one of the many other options available which are completely unaffected by the caster having 10 different status effects applied to them.

I'm sure none if these could impact things in any significant way..

Fair enough though, the monk, and only specifically the monk, does have access to stun, one of the few conditions that actually means anything to an enemy spellcaster..Just gotta make sure that the monk isn't afflicted with any of the status conditions which have zero impact on spellcasting.