I likewise apologize if my response came out harsh or as a "you're doing it wrong" sort of thing? Harsh doesn't phase me, personally.
Thank you. Overall, I found your tone perfectly fine; I don't feel you did anything that
warranted an apology, but I very much appreciate that you were willing to give one.
In answer to your question: It may just be a matter of my personal perceptions, really. Magic just feels more...special...or believable (versimilitudinous?) when there are usage limits on it to me. There ARE balance considerations as well, which I cited.
De gustibus non disputandum est, of course, but there are other factors too. Consider
Harry Potter's magic system. Does its seem non-magical to you? Perhaps you do, though I fear you'd lose me there. But if you don't, why? It's even more repeatable and powerful than 5e cantrips. Or take Gandalf, who lights his pipe with magic all the time, and could do way more if he didn't obey the Valar (and Eru Ilúvatar by proxy.) Given LOTR is a sort of gold standard for "magical" magic, what is the salient difference?
Cards on table: I think two factors are at play here. First, you
know all the magic--it's all listed in the book. With Harry, half the premise is that
he's learning what magic can do; with Gandalf, you don't know his limits. Second, the fact that it's
your choice. You are a passive witness of Harry and Gandalf; you actively choose D&D spells.
It breaks my subconscious perception of thermodynamics and thus suspension of disbelief to be able to conjure fuel-less fire or acid from nothing all day long without apparent energy source or limits.
But this is different. Magic, by definition, breaks thermodynamics and conservation.
Our universe's laws just...
aren't laws in a universe with D&D magic. The best you get is something like Newton's laws:
excellent approximations in "narrow" cases (that is, when not in Einstein town or Heisen-burg, gosh I'm so punny!
)
Breaking physical laws just a little bit vs. frequently is a distinction without a difference. Either way, they aren't physical laws anymore, because that's literally what "physical laws"
means, that they aren't broken anywhere.
From a dramatic standpoint, I think physical damage resistance and regeneration should be terrifying to a foe. And with how easy they are to bypass in 5e, even completely inadvertently, with basic, no-cost energy cantrips they just aren't.
This I'll grant! But there are wrinkles. Over 100 creatures have (conditional) immunity to nonmagical weapons, and over 280 have conditional resistance. Over 90 have regeneration. Yet if we look at those which have
both regeneration and one of those other two...we come up really short, with only five. Two of them are deity-level beings (Juiblex and Tiamat, the latter having no turn-off clause), two (constructs: bone worm and stone juggernaut) don't have a turn-off clause for their regeneration, and only the last ("spirit troll") has such a clause. So...on the one hand, creatures who have all three are essentially non-existent, but creatures who have only one are almost plentiful. This develops into something that is extremely punishing for any party that doesn't have a spellcaster, again creating a situation where it is the spellcaster's best interests that the whole party must align itself around and which the DM must align their whole combat design around.
If magic is going to cause this many problems, doesn't that mean we should (a) re-evaluate how magic is done, so it doesn't cause problems like this, and (b) look for ways to let off the pressure, so that players will be encouraged to do the things we
want them to do, to have the thrilling, terrifying experiences you're (implicitly) advocating for?
A +1 sword isn't terribly exciting if everyone and their mother has one sitting in their desk drawer.
Personally, I think this is an artifact of...let's call it
insufficient zeal on the part of DMs and players in describing things, rather than any consequence of the item being magical. Because I can make a totally "mundane" sword incredibly special, and I can make an absolutely unique one-of-a-kind powerful sword
really boring if I so wish. That's a power that has never been taken from DMs. Consider:
As you lift the sword, you instantly feel the art that the forgemaster put into its making. The balance is impeccable, even while in the scabbard, which feels almost weightless and yet incredibly sturdy on its own. You draw the blade, and it fair hums as it leaps from its sheath. Gleaming Arkhosian steel, unblemished by the ages. This was no ordinary soldier's blade: it was clearly made for a cavalry officer, as marked by the three cranes, delicately carved into the blade and filled with beautiful sky-blue mythril wirework inlay. Though the sword would be large even in the hands of a full two-meter-tall dragonborn, it is in no way clumsy, and can be wielded single-handed or two-handed as you like. Your skill with a longsword would serve you well with this much more imposing blade; alternatively, you could eschew your shield, and truly bring the pain to your foes.
Vs.
It's a +4 Cold Iron Holy Avenger. Probably the only +4 weapon ever made, anywhere.
Had I reversed these, the latter would have the lavish descriptions that bring an item to life, and the former would have been "it is a longsword that deals 1d10 damage (versatile 2d6), and counts as a greatsword for feat purposes when wielded with both hands." The item being "magical" isn't, and never was, rooted in the
mechanics thereof. It is, and always was, rooted in the
attention it gets, the descriptions. Meaning, narrative weight, and purpose: these are the things which create "magical" feeling. Mechanics will always be "meh"chanics without that.
Progressing from "I like things this other way" to pushing things things at another's throat is more of an... individual choice afaict.
It's a metaphor for how knock-down, drag-out this sort of conversation becomes.
Yes, it did. And there would ultimately come a point in level progression where magic-users would be casting powerful magic all day long. But in practical levels and situations, there would often occasionally be fights where the caster would not want to waste spells. Or where a whole bunch of minions got in the caster's face and put a lockdown on slower (e.g. non-blasting) spells. That was usually when the dagger or darts came out.
Sure, but again, the problem is and has always been that the Wizard's player has
some control over whether this happens--and to what degree when it does. Hence, they have every reason,
even if they want what is best for the party, to behave selfishly: to set up situations so that they will always have the most spells possible, and to minimize, mitigate, or montage their way out of situations where they don't have any (relevant) spells available. That is the fundamental incentive of the existing Vancian spellcasting rules, and it is an incentive which points
away from the intended experience of play, whether one desires Old School "High Gygaxian" murderhole dungeon-heistery or New School "High-Flying Action" fantastical set-pieces, or basically anything else that isn't specifically Casters & Caddies.
We
can do better--and we can ask WotC to do better. We can ask for a game that doesn't reward players for blowing their entire spell slot load in 1-3 encounters and then expecting a rest. That is an achievable goal. We just need to have the will, and the patience, to pursue it.
Seemed like that was the base expectation for adventuring, full stop.
And there are various ways to encourage players to think in this way. Giving them the incentive to do so--making it not only fun but
rewarding--is one of the best ways to accomplish that. Well, that and finding ways to make it so the things the players are enthusiastic about also
just so happen (read: framing scenes) to make such "mundane item" stuff the path of least resistance to reaching or seeing the things they're enthusiastic about.
The flip-side being that more widely applicable spells or tools tended to be less effective for any given purpose.
In an absolutely abstract sense, I agree, but D&D magic isn't abstract.
Fly is generally useful for anyone.
Chromatic orb is a guaranteed spell pick for anyone who can get it, because it's extremely versatile.
Invisibility is both powerful
and widely-applicable (there's a reason Plato used the Allegory of the Ring.) And with the way 5e does Rituals, you don't even need to sacrifice spell slots to have a number of useful, powerful spells on tap whenever you need them, so long as you have 10 minutes to spare.
Kind of the DM's responsibility to maintain balance.
Given the significant responsibilities already hung upon the DM's shoulders, I would prefer to mitigate this as much as possible. It is doable.
I like to see my players trying to use things creatively, myself? Doesn't mean I have to let them get away with it every time.
Okay, but how do you then deal with the players' perfectly legitimate response of "why did this work before, in essentially identical circumstances, but it doesn't work now? How is that fair?" This is another reason why I have such a poor opinion of any rules system which, in whole or in part, advocates for "viking hat" DM theory. In putting emphasis on just how absolutely powerful and unlimited the DM is, the game discourages seeking understanding and consensus, and instead pushes dominance and autocracy. But because players pretty obviously don't like being pushed around or denied a choice, the rules(/advice/etc.) must then emphasize sleight of hand and pretense, an attitude of "I know better than you what you actually want," further separating DM from player and cementing counter-productive power relationships.
As it happens, spells which allow or facilitate (to an unreasonable degree) a 5mwd are the most likely to suffer DM-side alterations in my games.
Okay. What about all the non-spell ways to pursue that? How do you keep up a constant, sustained time pressure to prevent such things while still making it remotely plausible? Doing so for a handful of sessions, maybe even an entire adventure, that's plausible. Being under such sustained assault that 3-4 hours of regular resting is totally fine, but 8 hours of resting would be
completely unacceptable unless it just cannot be avoided....that's a much bigger ask.
By "on the fly" I meant suddenly giving the BBEG charm immunity or extra HP in response to a particular tactic one wasn't expecting.
That is something multiple users on this very forum have explicitly (in the case of adding HP) said they like that 5e supports them doing.
I'm still not entirely clear on what you mean by "rug pull" or "illusionism" if you're referring to something else?
"Rug pull" is either the part above, where you allow a plan to work on Session 12 but then forbid it on Session 14 for reasons the players either couldn't know in advance, or which they
should have known in advance but because you didn't decide on them until Session 14 started, they "knew" something that (in a Doylist sense) "became" untrue. This is something the 5e DMG supports doing.
Illusionism is the DM technique that involves giving the
appearance of real choices and consequences for player choices, while actually obviating those choices and giving fixed consequences. The classic example is the "quantum ogre," where the players may choose to go south to the Blue Forest or north to the Black Mountains. They make their choice, and along the way, they are attacked by an ogre. The players will then, quite rationally, think, "
Because we went south to the Blue Forest, we encountered an ogre; if we had gone north, we would have avoided it." But this is not true with a DM who practices illusionism, because the DM will put that ogre on
whichever path the players choose. This gives the
appearance of having choices with consequences, but actually results in a perfectly linear adventure with the only difference being set-dressing. Unlike the previous, where it is more passive support (in the "you literally have to ask your DM if your class features work today, because they might decide they don't" sense), illusionism is much more directly mentioned, e.g. that bit of advice about skipping having a DC entirely and just letting the roll alone determine success (IIRC, it was something like 8 or less fails, 16 or more succeeds, everything in the middle, do whatever you think is best, "
your players will never know.")
Every bit as condescending as the immediate post (not yours) it was in response to I hope.
Not in my opinion. This is, of course, somewhat subjective. But I think it is quite valid to say, "hey, it's real easy to have rose-colored glasses about stuff you've gone through, especially if any concerns that might have come up weren't big enough to be worth mentioning at the time." One of the big foibles of the "never disagree during session" approach is, quite simply, that by the time a disagreement
can be broached, things have moved on so much it may not be worth the effort anymore. As a result, issues that aren't addressed when they occur may never
get addressed, and it is quite easy to interpret that incorrectly as an
absence of issues, rather than deferral-induced abandonment.
These sort of veiled attacks are never productive nor do they deescalate conflict.
