D&D 5E How would imposing no stacking of magic affect 5E game balance?

[Blue]

It comes up. All. The. Time. Bless is a big culprit. It + paladin aura, all the time. Any magic weapon in the party + Bless, all the time. Haste + any magical defense, all the time. Sacred weapon + Bless + magical weapon, all the time.

Sounds like your problem may be Bless, not general stacking. That's a spell that many consider powerful and some say is overpowered. What if just it didn't stack.

If you still want nothign to stack, here's my thoughts. The design team reduced the various bonuses already (+3 max magic item instead of +5, Concentration, etc.) in order to keep them small enough to stack. If you want to keep the same math without allowing stacking, I'd change magic weapons to +1/+3/+5, and allow concentration to be maintained on two spells at once (since now buff spells will be much less useful).

If you don't want to keep the same math, well that's the difference right there. Monsters will outpace players vs. the base game, so will be tougher at higher levels.

 

[Umbran]

Well, it's always possible to make your new rules the rules of your world, to wrap the limits in a veneer of flavour and setting specific handwaving.

Yes, but let us look at that from a different perspective: It is always possible to tie yourself into a pretzel trying to codify into rules what can be handled more simply by throttling the reward system.

Remember the lesson of Dr. Victor Frankenstein - the fact that something is possible, does not make it wise, or the right thing to do

 

[aramis erak]

Strawman! And drink!


Haste isn't on the bard's list and the fighter and rogue won't get the spell until 14th level, also known as when the wizard and cleric will have 7th level spells. A front line character casting a concentration based spell doesn't have the same *oomf* as finger of death or ressurection.


1) Aren't the modules notoriously stingy with magic items? (I seem to remember only a couple +1 weapons in all of Hoard of the Dragon Queen and one +1 armour.)
2) I don't think an article on the development of the game counts as "off-handed" or "twittered".
3) I'm still not convinced stacking is an issue. In actual play, buff spells only come up every few fights. Fights are over fast and the benefit of a minute long buff is often outshined by an instantaneous effect.
4) I like that the spells have an effect rather than are wasted. There's something not-fun about the buffer not being able to do their job because the character already has a morale bonus or enhancement bonus.

HotDQ has a couple +1's and an armor, but the expeditions each give out a magic item, so players playing in an expeditions-rich store are going to be bristling with magic items. The average in Corvallis is about 2 magic items for each 5th level PC.

 

[Jester David]

Yes, but let us look at that from a different perspective: It is always possible to tie yourself into a pretzel trying to codify into rules what can be handled more simply by throttling the reward system.

Remember the lesson of Dr. Victor Frankenstein - the fact that something is possible, does not make it wise, or the right thing to do

Just devil's advocating that, if you are having problems with stacking, you can change the rules of how magic works, and make that part of your setting.

HotDQ has a couple +1's and an armor, but the expeditions each give out a magic item, so players playing in an expeditions-rich store are going to be bristling with magic items. The average in Corvallis is about 2 magic items for each 5th level PC.

Adventurer's League is a small percentage of players compared to the total number of groups, and Expeditions is a smaller subset. Expeditions games where magic items fit a character at a table and were kept by a regular players and where those characters play with magic users that might regularly buff are going to be even rare. It's a statistically irrelevant sampling.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Actually, it does, for two reasons.

First off, if you look at real-world magical traditions, across cultures, they do have rules. There are things you can expect from them, and ways they work. Those ways are not necessarily science-rational, but there are rules, regardless. The feats magic can perform are grand, but magic is still structured.

Second, this is not just magic, it is magic in a *game*. Games have rules. The players will typically want, and expect, there to be rules they can divine and think about and use.

Of course, and a non-stacking variant is just such a rule. The rationale for it when it comes to magic is easily dealt with, since magic can be as varied and fantastic in it's reasons for not working, as it can be in what it can do.

RL 'magical thinking' is very facile that way. If you believe in magic, when it works, you attribute it to the magic, when it doesn't, you have a ready rationalization.
It's really no problem.

It's only if you knuckle under to a player trying to use a 'science-rational' (or engineering-rational, or legal-precedent-rational) approach to your rationalization that you create a problem. It's magic.

If the point is "keep the bonuses small" you can achieve this without any weird stacking rules

The variant in question isn't a weird rule, it's quite clear and simple.