D&D 5E Handling spells that take a long time at the table?

[Blue]

I suppose that could be. Historically, I have a pretty keen sense for keeping all the players roughly equally engaged. Recently, with these higher level spells, it does seem like I'm having to... worker harder, I guess... to get roughly equal engagement from non-spellcaster players when the spellcaster players are taking more time than they were before.

This came up recently in another thread. If you are having casters get unfair amounts of spotlight in the various pillars of play, run more encounters.

Because often the issue is that fewer encounters are run, leaving more slot to spend outside combat. Every spell spent in one pillar of play is one not available for other pillars of play by nature of the casting system (excluding Warlocks). While running fewer, harder encounters may balance out risk and attrition needs, it does not maintain the balance between the various resource recovery models. Frankly, fewer encounters favors logn-rest recovery over at-will.

So if you are running say 3-4 encounters per day, that's a ton of extra slots that can be used to replace cantrips in combat (upping their combat effectiveness) and/or to use for utility in other pillars of play (upping their effectiveness there).

This wouldn't be as visible in the lower tiers of combat where there are less total spell slots, but it's perhaps at it's most important now that you've hit Tier 3.

 

[Tony Vargas]

This came up recently in another thread. If you are having casters get unfair amounts of spotlight in the various pillars of play, run more encounters.

It's been the case that you /needed/ a certain number of encounters/day for the game to work, for, like, 17 of the last 19 years (and the couple of years it arguably wasn't - the 'need' was complained about louder than ever before or since) - and, really, though it wasn't publicized as highly, for all the preceding history of the game, as well, it's just that, back in the day, at 1st level, all y'needed was a second encounter.... ;P

Because often the issue is that fewer encounters are run, leaving more slot to spend outside combat. Every spell spent in one pillar of play is one not available for other pillars of play by nature of the casting system

Well, y'know, 'cept a few Rituals here & there.

 

[Lanefan]

If a character doing what a character would reasonably and logically do in the fiction happens to take up a lot of table time, or put one player in the spotlight longer than the others, then so be it. It's part of the game, and in theory all involved will realize that.

Sure, both player and DM are obliged to be efficient as they can when dealing with these situations; but a DM arbitrarily shutting down or time-limiting these things; or players deliberately not choosing these things due to metagame reasons, is IMO just wrong. You gotta let the characters do what they wanna do.

 

[Shiroiken]

I've found that most of those spells, just like having the Rogue scout ahead, can still be active opportunities for the other players (just not their characters). Usually when divination magic is involved (especially those that ask questions), the group discusses what should be asked or how it should be used. This should be especially true when dealing with experienced players who work together. While some spells may allow a player an opportunity to provide a nice narrative (such as describing the Hero's Feast), most of that should be just one time opportunities to prevent it from bogging down the game, regardless of any issues of spotlight hogging.