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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 9411529" data-attributes="member: 2067">Okay, cook on that...I think there's some nuance here that you're missing. 4e shoved nearly everything into a spells (er, POWERS) category. Much more than 5e does! And for a similar reason to the reason for spell-ifying things: there's benefits to a standardized approach that heavily benefit your point (b) above. There's fewer sub-systems to learn, fewer exceptions to the general rule. One fairly consistent system is easier to learn than a scattered bundle of loosely related systems, even if it's reasonably complex (which spellcasting and 4e powers both are, I'd say)I agree in principle that one-size-fits-all is not a great road to travel down, and I think the homogeneity and narrative emptiness of 4e powers shows what happens as you near an end of that curve. I don't want 5e to go in that direction. But I don't think it's clearly bad design in every case. There's a case for spell-ifying mechanics that needs to be evaluated more on a case by case basis than on a blanket condemnation of turning things into spells. If you're close to being a spell already, maybe we gain a lot of efficiency and understanding by making you into a spell. D&D has spells, you're not going to be able to play D&D and ignore the spellcating mechanic entirely, any more than you're going to be able to avoid rolling a die and adding modifiers, and I think that's OK in principle. It's not too much to expect most players to grok the mechanics for spellcasting, even if they don't engage with them much.  Even your Champion Fighters might pick up a magic shield that casts a spell.The 2024 edition is evidently taking steps to address that by giving monsters more specific actions and relying less on the Spellcasting trait and system knowledge. It seems like they see the book flipping and lookup and see it as an issue and are taking steps in monster design to address it. I think this is broadly a good thing.I don't think the quantity of spells is much of a damning thing, any more than 4e's profound mass of powers was much of a damning thing. I do like that 5e tends to not make a unique spell or ability for EVERYTHING, which enables some degree of knowledge to cross between game functions. If I have access to fireball as a sorcerer or as a wizard or from a necklace of fireballs, I don't need to learn a new slightly different version of fireball for each. But spell-ifying things that are not spells eats away at that.I am deeply skeptical of this kind of critique of 5e as a hot mess or as bad design, a critique of technique. Design has a goal and a reason, and understanding it in context is so much more valuable than dismissing it as bad. Even most of the deep jank of some 1e and 2e choices have a way they make sense, a way to appreciate what people were thinking at the time, and a way to realize that "improvements" can also leave behind some valuable design elements. Dismissing the work of dozens of very good and very thoughtful professional game designers working in one of the most demanding environments possible in this little industry on the TTRPG played by the most people in the world as "bad design" feels exceptionally shallow and not a little elitist. There absolutely can be bad design, even in 5e, but most of the time the reality is more complex than this simple dismissive label.I don't think turning everything into spells is intrinsically bad design (it certainly makes them easier to remember and reinforces knowledge of an important subsystem), but I do think that the experience of playing a game where every action shares that mechanic feels repetitive, without meaningful choice or characterization. The 2024 edition doesn't seem like it will be as bad as 4e in that regard, but given the appeal to the designer of this design trend, it's definitely worth calling out areas where isn't satisfying.</blockquote>

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