D&D (2024) How to reign in full casters for 1D&D? Maybe remove 6th to 9th level spells as a Variant rule.

[Belen]

because in reality, you can't.

players will take a long rest when they feel they want a long rest. period.

What will you do nuke the campaign? sure, you can, but what will that get you?

You can say you can take 1 long rest per 24 hour period.

I also think you can add fatigue rules if they are resting too often. The characters bodies will loose their circadian rhythms and they will find it difficult to rest.

Players will always cheese the rules. My players always take Tiny Hut, for instance. One time, the enemies figured it out and they collapsed a tunnel on the group. The characters were buried alive. The only person to survive was the high-con fighter.

 

[Belen]

At high levels, DMing, I count on players to be able to find solutions to almost any problem especially from 17th on when 9th level spells come online and where classes start to get their high level features. IMHO a lot of what you're trying to take away from casters is simply part of the game in a high magic fantasy world. Mordenkainen's Sword is strong but by no means 'broken.' If you're 15th level and can use a 7th level wizard spell, you're using concentration and a probably trivial gold cost to do 3d10 force over and over. OK, but compare that to the Eldritch Blast Cantrip as the same 15th level Wizard who picked it up. You're doing 3d10 over and over at range, at will, splitting it into multiple attacks. Not to mention what you can do at the same level with Simulacrum. At 15th level, the fighter can easily do 3d10 with a longsword, with no cost over and over, add strength, occasionally do 6d10 and probably add other effects from his maneuvers if he's the Battle Master, plus whatever his magic weapon does, or if he's the Eldrtich Knight, he might do 3d10 and still cast a spell. The fun depends on what character you want to play. IMHO if you've played a martial character to 15th level and you're feeling under powered, you're either missing opportunities, or being treated unfairly by the DM.

Agreed. The casters in my last campaign kept complaining that things were dead before he got a turn. He always had low init and it was funny that he often played clean-up.

 

[tetrasodium]

You can say you can take 1 long rest per 24 hour period.

I also think you can add fatigue rules if they are resting too often. The characters bodies will loose their circadian rhythms and they will find it difficult to rest.

Players will always cheese the rules. My players always take Tiny Hut, for instance. One time, the enemies figured it out and they collapsed a tunnel on the group. The characters were buried alive. The only person to survive was the high-con fighter.

No @Horwath accurately stated the risk of shutting down resting with heavy handed use of fiat. That risk is murdering the campaign. The rest rules in 5e are designed with a Red carpet ensuring that players can rest whenever they want after a fight. That red carpet is rolled out so thickly that players feel like they are being wronged in ways deserving of outrage if they are denied that rest or suffer meaningful consequences because the gm changed the rules against them.

It's the entirely predictable result of not considering the GM's needs in basic foundational rules like resting &recovery.

 

[Bluenose]

simply going back to vancian casting would solve a lot of the problems complained about in this thread & others.

A great many of the problems we're repeatedly discussing were issues in 3.x which had pretty pure Vancian casting. I don't think that recommends the solution you're proposing.

 

[Belen]

No @Horwath accurately stated the risk of shutting down resting with heavy handed use of fiat. That risk is murdering the campaign. The rest rules in 5e are designed with a Red carpet ensuring that players can rest whenever they want after a fight. That red carpet is rolled out so thickly that players feel like they are being wronged in ways deserving of outrage if they are denied that rest or suffer meaningful consequences because the gm changed the rules against them.

It's the entirely predictable result of not consiytge GM's needs in basic foundational rules like resting &recovery.

I would not run a group with such players. There are fewer GMs and always someone wanting to find a group.

 

[Quickleaf]

personally, while higher level spellcasting power shenanigannery is a factor to spellcasters breaking open the game i think an equal if not more significant part of their power comes from simply having so many lower level slots that they can spend them constantly to solve problems without really worrying about running out for the most part, increasing the number of lower level slots would only magnify this issue.

110% agree. I was going to make the same point, and you already stated it very eloquently.

 

[tetrasodium]

I would not run a group with such players. There are fewer GMs and always someone wanting to find a group.

The post you quoted was about how the rules go out of their way to encourage players to make particular conclusions. A gm can churn through players endlessly to avoid "such players", but the rules are still going to be there encouraging the sort of disconnect described no matter how far from "such players" that the gm ultimately selects to continue playing at their table.

 

[Stalker0]

I feel like the simplier route for this idea is make it where you can’t get more than 10 levels in a spellcaster class. Just make 10 the limit, than they have to multi class to something else

 

[Undrave]

Nearly every caster PC quickly settled into a rather static spell list where they might swap a couple spells. That was even quicker because the bread and butter spells were pretty stable with just the same couple oddball just in case niche spells getting rotated to some other oddball niche spells.

I had the same result with my Druid and Clerics in 5e after a while and it honestly makes the flexibility feels wasted. What's the point of that being a rule if you never bother to use it?

 

[tetrasodium]

I had the same result with my Druid and Clerics in 5e after a while and it honestly makes the flexibility feels wasted. What's the point of that being a rule if you never bother to use it?

What flexibility are you referring to, can you elaborate? The neovancian(?) Style used in 5e does more to eliminate the opportunity cost of preparing a niche spell over some other spell or having some allotment of a given spell instead of a different allotment than adding flexibility. Scrolls were always a thing for flexibility, they just had a cost in terms of time gold and sometimes container interactions or DC reductions from using a scroll instead of slot.

The further a PC gets up in levels that opportunity cost removal gets more apparent. You don't have a PC prepping a small number of high level spells that depends on their high level slots and dedicating those slots to that combo of spells no matter if they are useful or not. Now you have a PC prepping all of the high level spells that could be useful and using them in whatever ratio is useful. That didn't happen before because the opportunity cost for high level spell scrolls was pretty significant and a possible DC drop that went with it might make a given spell not so worthy of scribing.

Late edit: they did the same opportunity cost removal to martials by allowing movement weapon switching and the option to pause mid attack chain to stare at the gm waiting for some kind of status update before deciding how to continue.