Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jack the Lad" data-source="post: 6362516" data-attributes="member: 6777377">Okay. I've just got back from my 5e game. Let's do this.You're moving the goalposts again. The statement of yours that I was responding to reads "casters [might not] have had access to the spell to begin with".My answer was to quote the rules which state that they automatically gain access to their pick of every Wizard spell at the appropriate level(s). They do not have to rely on the DM to give it to them, so they will always have had access to a given spell.Whether they chose a particular spell is another thing entirely, and one that you harp on a lot. Unfortunately, you can't have your cake and eat it on this. In your white room, the Wizard seems to have no spells at all. The fact is - and I know this because I've done it - a Wizard will pick the spells that seem best to them, and as I have demonstrated over and over again there are many, many spells that are overpowered in an enormous variety of situations and against an enormous variety of enemies. You simply don't need the perfect spell for a given situation to outperform and obsolete non-casters.Not to mention that if you don't have spells, it is because you cast them earlier. At some point you used them and they had the overpowered effects that I'm talking about.Again, though, the idea that casters will run out of spells and/or enter into an encounter without spells is just not borne out in play for me. You don't need multiple spells to trivialise an encounter, especially at higher levels, and it's a rare encounter indeed that lasts more than 3 rounds in any case.Again, you don't need the perfect spell(s). You can prep many more than you need, and 5e's spell preparation is probably the most flexible and permissive yet; you're completely free to prepare niche/utility spells without the risk of wasting slots.That seems strange to me, especially as you didn't make this defence when pemerton queried the point originally.Either way, I took the interruption by damage of Concentration spells into account in my earlier posts. I also talked about the War Caster + Resilient combo (or alternatively War Caster + Transmuter's Stone in order to take Resilient for Wis saves). This trivialises DC10 Concentration checks - which, as I've explained, are the overwhelming majority of the checks you will be making, even at the highest levels - very, very quickly:<img src="http://i.imgur.com/8wGzChe.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />If this is the case, I would love to hear some of your experiences from actual play. What spells are your casters using in combat? How often do they run out? Have you been allowing your players short rests after each encounter? Have they been using healer's kits? How much damage are players taking in combat? Have you run any encounters with the latest exp budget table? How have you found the Fighter's ability to push on after an encounter in which they take damage? I've found that they tend to run out of healing before casters run out of spells.Most importantly, what's the highest level you've played 5e at, and at what point during the development process did you do so?This is not a trick question, or a challenge. I'm genuinely very interested to hear other groups' experiences and the differences in playstyle that might have caused them to be as different from mine as they seem to have been.  Restrained does not prevent the casting of spells with somatic components. If that's your houserule, great, but I think if we start talking about houserules the conversation quickly becomes far too broad to be meaningful.The Fighter having access to a weapon and armour is an important factor in their being able to fight, and he might not have them all of the time.That aside, Wizards do fine without using spells that require components not covered by their pouch or arcane focus. True Polymorph, for instance, has no additional components. That's the one that lets you permanently turn into an Adult Red Dragon.That aside, level 7+ Wizards can Fabricate several suits of plate armour per day, and those sell for 750 gold. Given any kind of downtime whatsoever, he can afford whatever he wants.This is actually quite revealing, and serves as a useful insight into your perspective. If you think Fireball is a powerful spell, or if Wizards in your games are primarily casting damage spells like Fireball, I can easily see why you would have experienced them running out of spells and not seeming all that overpowered.You're responding here to my response to the point you raised about monsters having 'spell resistance'. I pointed out that a Stone Golem - described in the fluff as almost impervious to spells and with advantage to all saves against magic - still fails 2 of its saves every time and 2 of its saves the vast majority of the time. It's also flat out immune to charm, exhaustion, fear, paralysis, petrification and poison, but it just doesn't matter. Like, two options that sprang to mind while typing this: trap it under a hemispherical Wall of Force and ping it to death with cantrips over the next 10 minutes - no save. Fly or Levitate out of reach and ping it to death with cantrips - no save.If your Wizard is standing there throwing 8d6 fireballs at its 178 HP, you won't see these problems. But this is the kind of thing I'm talking about with single spells beating encounters. The Wizard doesn't even need a party in this situation.I haven't mentioned Fireball myself, or indeed any kind of damage-dealing spell. See the Stone Golem example above for more on this. Wizards who are casting blasting spells every round probably will perform comparably to a Fighter, if not slightly worse. That's the least effective way to play a Wizard and it has been for a very long time indeed.Again, how many times have casters run out of spells in your game? How many times have they not had the components they needed for a spell?Now this is a huge big red flag for me. Magic is defined because there's no real life magic by which to calibrate it?Where are the real life Fighters, capable of killing a dragon with a sword and being hit in the face with an axe 10 times without slowing down? They don't exist. There is no real life metric for that.And that's one of the many reasons that allowing casters to do anything because 'it's magic!' and noncasters to do only 'realistic' things because they're not is awful.</blockquote>

Verification