D&D 5E I want a return to long duration spells in D&D Next.

[triqui]

Another one of the many things I didn't like about 4th edition was the short duration spells. I want a return to spells with durations like round/level, minute/level, hour/level, concentration/+2 rounds etc.... I hated that most all spells had the "end of your next turn", "beginning of your next turn" etc durations. I don't mind some spells having short durations but I want a return of the longer duration ones.

"minute/level" or "hour/level" was part of the quadratic wizard problem. When a Wizard goes from level 6 to 7, not only he gets more spell slots, but also the spells he has are more powerful. Hence, while the non spell casters advance linearly (they learn new abilities), casters advance quadratically (they learn new abilities, and every ability they have becames more powerful).

It's a better solution to have "until end of encounter" or "1 day" durations, and balance the spells acordingly to that.

 

[drothgery]

"minute/level" or "hour/level" was part of the quadratic wizard problem. When a Wizard goes from level 6 to 7, not only he gets more spell slots, but also the spells he has are more powerful.

Yup. At 1st level, a minute per level or even 10 min/level (or a turn per level in 2e-speak) was probably only good for one encounter. At 20th, a minute per level will likely be good for multipe encounters and 10 min/level is essentially all 'day' (you might not have a 15 min adventuring day, but you probably won't have a 3 1/2 hour one, either).

 

[triqui]

Yup. At 1st level, a minute per level or even 10 min/level (or a turn per level in 2e-speak) was probably only good for one encounter. At 20th, a minute per level will likely be good for multipe encounters and 10 min/level is essentially all 'day' (you might not have a 15 min adventuring day, but you probably won't have a 3 1/2 hour one, either).

Double that with metamagic extend, and 7 hours is your workday shift.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I understand where you're coming from, but how did you track it if your rogue was able to sneak up gather some info, then characters buff. Next round is useless, there's no combat. Was there something else in 4E that accomodated that?

If I'm understanding what you're asking... for us, encounters were encounters even if initiative hadn't been rolled. So a buff that got applied to a rogue that lasted "an encounter" could be used for the scouting, the return, and then the travel back with or without subsequent combat. The "encounter" was whatever the encounter was... even without combat.

I find that much more manageable to deal with than having a duration of "4 minutes", and then having to guesstimate how long it takes for the rogue to sneak up, scout, sneak back, pass on the info to the group, then move back up again. Too fiddly. Just say the buff lasts "an encounter" and then the rogue do his thing without needing to keep track of the minutia.

 

[Incenjucar]

Maybe a 1 minute/level spell cast by a 6th level caster.

Rounds are six seconds so there are 10 rounds in a minute. A spell that lasts 6 minutes is going to be 60 rounds.

Oh geeze you mean counting rounds during the whole adventure. That would be incredibly tedious and annoying for me, and would pull me right out of the narrative. I have no interest in being a glorified egg-timer.

What is this nobody stuff? Plenty of people call out the rounds because spells and other effects are by round. When you get back to the top of the initiative then you start another round.

You asked a question and I answered that question. Nobody that I game with counts rounds, at least not to my face. In 4E there's no need to, as rounds are pretty much just relative to adjacent rounds. I'm not a fan of making things sound like a boxing match or a fighting game, personally. Round-counting would pull me out of the fiction.

People complained about 4th editions combat taking so long because you had so many micro actions going on. Some of you have posted tips to help the combat go faster and say that combat was okay for you. Now when some of us talk about how making things easier for 3rd edition such as tracking buffs you look at us like we have grown a third head or something.

I have never had that problem, so I cannot really speak for that segment.

 

[Dausuul]

My experience is that day-long duration, or hour/level duration, equals permanent buff. This means that merely learning the spell is tantamount to gaining a magic item. Unless learning new spells is much more difficult than it was in 3E, balancing such a spell requires nerfing it to such an extent that it's hardly worth the bother.

I'm not totally opposed to the return of long-duration spells, but they should have some disincentive to stacking them up every day. Material components are one such disincentive, though a notably unreliable one. Another would be to put limits on how many you can stack or even learn, or to include drawbacks as well as benefits.

In general, I would prefer to have spell durations be one of the following: Instantaneous, concentration, until negated, X minutes, or Y hours. (I don't want spells with a duration of Z rounds because it's a massive pain to track.)

 

[Janaxstrus]

1 round
10 rounds
10 minutes
1 hour
24 hours

I am fine with all of those, depending on spell power.

Endure elements? 24 hours
something like Righteous Might? 10 rounds
Flight? 10 minutes
Overland Flight? 1 hour

 

[Dragonblade]

There needs to be two types of spell durations. Encounter and all day. Tracking rounds, minutes, tens of minutes, hours is just an annoyance.

From a balance perspective, I'm cool with all day spells if wizards have fewer spells slots. In 3e wizards have way too many slots, but if you got only say 1 spell slot per character level, so a 5th level wizard only has 5 spell slots in total, well then they basically trade in one of their precious few slots for an all day effect.

I like that a lot.

 

[Stormonu]

"minute/level" or "hour/level" was part of the quadratic wizard problem. When a Wizard goes from level 6 to 7, not only he gets more spell slots, but also the spells he has are more powerful. Hence, while the non spell casters advance linearly (they learn new abilities), casters advance quadratically (they learn new abilities, and every ability they have becames more powerful).

It's a better solution to have "until end of encounter" or "1 day" durations, and balance the spells acordingly to that.

I don't think that's necessarily so; a rogue can use Sneak all day long; a wizard might get only use of invisibility all day.

 

[SLOTHmaster]

Longer durations could help to reduce the 15 minute workday phenomenon.