It's not that I want to completely re-tool 5e to resemble 1e.
I get that, my 1e books have held up better than others I've used a lot less.
You could just run 1e, right?
And, I mean, 5e made a LOT of compromises to be more like TSR-era D&D, generally, so since fans of 3e & 4e have already been inconvenienced to make 5e more acceptable to you, going and dumping it for the classic game it tried so hard to emulate, for your benefit, would be a bit...
...just a bit.
So, yeah, there's that.
It's that I want to de-Magic 5e.
Okay, let me explain this first. When people ask me what I dislike about 5e, my response is always the same- there's too much magic.
In the context of D&D, when people talk about 'low' or 'high' magic, they often mean completely different things. They might mean few/no or tons of magic /items/ ('low magic' vs 'Monty Haul'). Or, they might mean that their are few casters in the world, but no restrictions on PC casters, or great restrictions on casters both PC & NPC. Or, they might mean castes are powered up or nerfed.
As a matter of style, in TTFRPGs, I prefer the occasional big bang to the constant little pew pew pew.
So, not less magic, at all, just keep magic feeling that much more powerful/important, by keeping it consistently on the high end of the power scale.
So I have two issues that I would want to fix if I was fixing 5e:
A. Cantrips.
I am saying that I want to remove cantrips.
Straightforward enough and requires little if any adjustment to the game, overall. Casters can, when they need to dish out a little damage, swing/throw a weapon or plink with projectiles like everyone else. You might make Extra Attack more ubiquitous, for instance, giving sub-classes that don't already get Extra Attack at 5th a single Extra Attack at 11th.
B. Spell equivalency.
This is a slightly harder one to grok, but once you see it, you can't un-see it in 5e. It's like the old, "If all you had was a hammer, every problem looks like a nail" issue with class design and balance in 5e. The basic "unit of currency" in class design in 5e is the spell; it is ingrained into the system that almost everything (from monster effects, to many invocations for Warlocks, to magic items) are treated as spells. Martial classes are turned into spellcasters simply to give them abilities that would better be handled as abilities.
Sure. MM was even up-front about it. Even when a class sub-class doesn't get spells, any limited-use abilities it does get will be stacked up to spells and equivalent to them in some way. In the Happy Fun Hour where he roughed out a "Warlord" sub-class, he used spells as a benchmark for it's shouty healing and other abilities.
Seems like a non-issue, since it's behind the scenes. Just because a BM's CS die maneuvers have been designed/balanced against a low-level spell benchmark doesn't make them in any way spells - they can't be dispelled or counterspelled or anything like that, they're maneuvers in the fiction.
So I've been pondering this for a while and I thought I'd throw this out for general discussion. While I think it might be possible to approach the cantrip issue, the more I think about the spell equivalency issue, the more I begin to realize that this might be too hard-baked into the 5e DNA to change.
It's a balancing and design-effort-saving convention, but you could certainly go off its rails if you don't care about balance and have more time/talent to invest in designing for the game than... well, ..er...the folks who get paid..to .. y'know... as their career…
...yeah, nevermind.
Any thoughts on the issue? What are the best approaches you've found for de-Magicking 5e?
My issue with magic being, well, too much, in 5e is very different from yours. I see no problem with minor magics like cantrips or even combat-effective ones on par with weapons. They match genre, where there's no particular limitation on how often you use magic, more often it's how fast or when you're able to use it, or what risks you take or prices you pay to do so. Minor magics on tap all the time fits. More powerful ones taking a long time work up - rituals - also fits. The sore thumb: Vancian uber-magicks you can toss off in a few seconds and use every single day as long as you'd like without much effort or consequence - not Earth-shattering, but society-altering, potentially.
So, I'd de-magic 5e by removing slots. Entirely. Cantrips and Rituals could stay. Spells that don't have a specific cast-as-ritual option could still be ritually cast but they'd take significant time. Minutes of concentration per spell level, for instance, so generally right out for combat (except maybe when besieging an enemy stronghold?)
That, alone, would go a long way. But, for more detail - and more plot devices - it'd also make more powerful magic feel more magical if it were further restricted in when/how it could be used or what consequences it might set in motion. A sorcerer using subtle spell to talk some unsuspecting guards to sleep and rescue a friend might work any time - it's a low-level spell, it's not defying the natural order much at all.
Summoning a demon, OTOH, might only be in the hour following midnight (exactly mid-night, mind you, and there are no clocks, so watch the sky carefully), the more powerful the demon, the more restrictions... only on the dark of the moon, only once every 13 years from the date it was consigned to the abyss, only when "The Stars Are Right!' etc.
Casting the same spell repeatedly might make it harder each time, or un-do the effects of prior castings, or inflict consequences on the caster, the area around him or the beneficiaries of his efforts in 'poetic' (in)justice ways.
