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

[concjo]

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.

Yep, that was the question. There seems to be flaws in that as well. Now invisiblity or silence while you're scoping out guards literally can last all day because that's the encounter? If you then have a DM determine how long you can actually sit there before an encounter power actually goes away without combat (as to not abuse the power all day), isn't that akin to the DM making up how many minutes you've been sitting there?

I can see some benefit for not having to track some powers, but i still see some areas where it is still an issue determining how much time to let them sit there. I personally don't mind the time requirements/tracking all that much, but it's good to hear opinions on it.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Now invisiblity or silence while you're scoping out guards literally can last all day because that's the encounter? If you then have a DM determine how long you can actually sit there before an encounter power actually goes away without combat (as to not abuse the power all day), isn't that akin to the DM making up how many minutes you've been sitting there?

Yup, the players know they can't sit in wait for hours on end and have the spell continue as they do so, and thus they wouldn't ever try to. And on top of that... I wouldn't set up the encounter such that they needed to sit in wait for 8+ hours because I just don't find that all that compelling a story. And on the smallest chance that I did... they'd know going in that the scout would have to do so without invisibility/silence buffs and instead rely on their own stealth.

In any event... I'm not wasting my own time tracking the passage of minutes or hours in order to find out when the spells wore off. That is not in the least bit fun as far as I'm concerned.

 

[Incenjucar]

Until the start of your/it's next turn abilities are basically for things like full defense, where you want them to be able to take advantage of it between turns, but to not be able to have it going during a turn. If, in 4E, everything lasted until the end of your next turn, you could full defense one round, then barrel through enemies the next round with an AC bonus for something you stopped doing.

 

[BobTheNob]

Getting rid of these durations is one of the things I like about 4e.

Ditto for me. I have poo-pooed 4e in alot of ways but this is one of the things 4e (IMO) got right.

I got so sick and tired of 3e "there is a fight around the corner, lets stop the game and spend an hour sorting out buffs" and then "Has that spell run out? With the 15+ different things I had to keep track of on my character alone I lost track".

This argument that 4e gave you too much to keep track of. Compared to what? 3e? 3e was a nightmare for keeping track of all of the effects in play.

4e's approach had a simplicity to it
* Combat "pre-buffing" was out (one of my biggest game bug-bears). Buffing was more of a natural consequence of committing to combat
* Durations were simple. You didnt count them, they just had an instruction for when they ended. End of encounter might have been a bit "gamy", but damn it was easy and we never once got it wrong.
* Short durations were a good way to prevent "I have 20 effects increasing my to-hit at once" type of game breakers.

Im sorry they didnt have the game effect you were after, but frankly I find it a bit surprising people want the 3e way back, I hated that.

Perhaps there is another way....

 

[CM]

I got so sick and tired of 3e "there is a fight around the corner, lets stop the game and spend an hour sorting out buffs" and then "Has that spell run out? With the 15+ different things I had to keep track of on my character alone I lost track".

And god forbid someone cast greater dispel on you.

 

[Hussar]

And god forbid someone cast greater dispel on you.

Want to see a game come to a screaming halt? This is how you do it.

 

[slobster]

Want to see a game come to a screaming halt? This is how you do it.

"The wizard casts dispel magic and his minions attempt to grapple you."

 

[Aehrlon]

....things 4e (IMO) got right.

I got so sick and tired of 3e "there is a fight around the corner, lets stop the game and spend an hour sorting out buffs" and then "Has that spell run out? With the 15+ different things I had to keep track of on my character alone I lost track".

This argument that 4e gave you too much to keep track of. Compared to what? 3e? 3e was a nightmare for keeping track of all of the effects in play.

4e's approach had a simplicity to it
* Combat "pre-buffing" was out (one of my biggest game bug-bears). Buffing was more of a natural consequence of committing to combat
* Durations were simple. You didnt count them, they just had an instruction for when they ended. End of encounter might have been a bit "gamy", but damn it was easy and we never once got it wrong.

Hmm, some interesting points. I've played a lot of both 3.5, 4E & Pathfinder. If you had a ton of buffs, it could be more work to keep track of but it but there are ways to make it easier. Personal buffs are kept track of by each player for their character. Group buffs we wrote on a dry erase board with the total number of rounds; add a hash the beginning of each round. Also, for standard ability buffs (Say DEX for instance) you can "pre-calculate" your new bonuses with the buff included. Having played both ways, I preferred 3.5/PF to 4E. And NONE of the groups I played with ever had to stop a game to figure out buffs.

4E also severely weakened a lot of spells and made them virtually useless outside of combat. Invisibility comes to mind. In AD&D & 2E it lasted 24 hours. In 3.5 it was 1 min/LV. 4E, only 1 round. Rituals vs Spells: A spell should be a spell whether it's cast before, during or after combat. 1&2E had some last way too long, 3.5 & 4E shortened many of them too much. I'm hoping to see more of a happy medium in D&D Next. Rituals always just seemed to be too much of a pain in the butt to me personally.

RE Durations: "until the end of the encounter" is not a hard and fast number; to me, spell durations should improve with each level, in most cases anyway. It it lasts until the next encounter, great! Your DM will have to adjudicate how much game time passed between the end of the previous combat and the start of the new one. As I have played in games that were not completely "hack'n slash" this was rarely an issue. If we could figure out a way to avoid that roving band of orcs, we did so to achieve our objective without depleting our resources... you know, keep the big guns for the big encounter. Just my 2 CP

 

[Dour-n-Taciturn]

No durations increasing per level, please! Someone mentioned in a previous post how this relates to wizard quadration. Duration should be fixed, conditional, or by concentration, maybe increasing with feats or if a Vancian system is used, by using a higher spell level slot.

When I played 3.5, I remember having a half-dozen attack values calculated for my cleric with buffs, same with AC and saves. And yes, Dispel Magic, cast or as fields that the DM put up when the party had pre-buffed, ARGGHHH!!!

 

[Balesir]

I mostly agree. However, I think the list could be shortened further; There's really no necessity to include "Until the Start of the Affected creature's Next turn - It just makes things confusing. Make everything last until the end of a turn, and be done with it.

For reasons like Total Defence and Second Wind and the like I think both are necessary, but I really don't find having a column each for those on a tracking sheet a big deal (I'm thinking mainly of DMing and tracking statuses for all monsters - besides that, tracking my statuses for one PC is frankly trivial).

You'll also need to include durations such as end of your current turn (in addition to end of your next turn) for many self-buffs.

Generally I think they ought to be "Start of your (= "affected creature's") next turn". You normally want those buffs when enemies attack you, and those you don't are usually useless if you aren't attacking them...

As an aside, another element I think 4e got right was having all buffs be to final attributes, not to characteristics or the like. Boosting something that rolls on bonuses into all sorts of other things (like +2 Strength, for example, as opposed to +1 to hit - or even +1 to hit and +1 damage) just causes endless hassle and confusion.

Personally, I'm also not a fan of save-ends effects, at least as they're sometimes used in 4e. There are just too many odd unintuitive tactical corner-cases; e.g. that you're immune to an effect if you're already affected by it (whereas with explicit durations, the longer effect takes precedence). Then there's the odd stacking and merging rules with things like save ends both and effects such as "ongoing poison", "slowed", "slowed with ongoing poison", or "ongoing poison and acid". The idea is neat, but it just doesn't work as far as I'm concerned.

I know what you mean, but I think that was poor implementation, too. Just say that the effects don't stack but the saves do. In other words, if a character gets hit with three "ongoing 5 poison damage" effects, they only take 5 poison damage per turn (i.e. the effects don't stack), but they must save against all three (i.e. make three successful saves in total) before they stop taking the damage.

I think WotC just bottled out into thinking "this is too hard", here, when I don't think it's hard at all - it's entirely intuitive, to me and most of the folk I play with, and it makes a lot more sense in terms of monster relative power and so on.