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

[ForeverSlayer]

Most 4e buffs last "until end of your next turn". It's in 3e where you had them all the time (in 3.5 the durations are nerfed, though).

4e problem was there were too much different modifiers, and you needed a lot of re-calculation because they lasted just a few rounds, so you couldn't have them added to your PC sheet (in 3e, you can have your attack and damage shown in your PC sheet including your friend Bull's Strength and Greater Magic Weapon, as they are active in every single combat you have during the day

I'm not sure if you are understanding me correctly. In 3rd edition, once you had a buff it was usually there for a while. In 4th edition you had modifiers coming at you left and right almost every single round, when you had one modifier going away two or three more may be coming in to take it's place. We used to go through I don't know how much scratch paper because of all the little nit picky modifiers that used to come up. 3rd edition was no where near as bad.

 

[Dour-n-Taciturn]

100 rounds in only 3 hours, that's quick. I'm serious. One of the encounters I remember involved a combat with 200 some odd minions, it lasted nearly 8 hours (we took breaks now and then, had lunch, dinner...). I don't recall how many rounds that involved, 20?

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

I want a mix of durations, but without the headaches of having to keep track. So I'd be fine with: instantaneous, 1 round, one encounter, one day, one week, concentration, permanent as options. Or perhaps tie magic a bit more to the game world, and have long-term effects end at sun-up or sun-down for the "daily" spells.

 

[Falling Icicle]

I want to see long spell durations, but I also want them to keep it simple. I hated the old X/level spell durations of pre-4e, especially those that required you to track the duration of buffs and summonings round by round in combat. I also hated all of the one turn length status effects there were to keep track of in 4e.

Most non-instant combat spells, like summonings, wall of fire, haste, etc. should just last the entire encounter. I'd like to see long term buffs like mage armor simply last all day. With the smaller number of spells per day that they're talking about for 5e, I don't see this breaking the game. I just want the number of things that I have to keep track of mid-combat left to a minimum.

 

[Hussar]

Only rituals should be permanent a long casting time and permanent price for a long duration benefit sounds fair

But... spell casters get there large area effects, martial effects should be virtually permanent.

I can remove an enemies eye with the hook of my weapon penalized there ranged attacks forever.

I can hamstring somebody that's right bipeds fall and everybody slowed ... how long does that last?

A spear blow to the head can result in a change of personality... ie alignment change.... no not for ten minutes,

Martial needs an advantage most of its effects against npcs at minimum need to be permanent, dont you think?

I think that this really is a thing that should be explored a bit further. I'm not sure how well it would work though. Most NPC's don't reoccur very often. So, if you, for example, blind an NPC, that NPC is likely going to be dead rather than reoccurring.

But, I do think that there is a place for larger scale effects for martial characters.

 

[vagabundo]

In 3rd edition, buffs almost always came from spells while in 4th edition you had them in everything, even down to where you move. 4th edition holds the title for "all the time" modifiers.

That can be true of 4e in combat. 3e's problem for me was that it leaked into time after the encounter. I had players trying to rush to the next combat encounter before some of their buffs expired. All very messy.

As I said I'm in favour of longer term spell effects, but it has to be a scheme that makes sense and not x/level.

Isn't that kind of self-regulating? If the players don't want to track the durations, they won't load up the buffs.

That said, I'm not opposed to streamlining. 3.5 could have stood a bit more reduction in bonus types to prevent stacking of effects.

If only that was true. Unfortunately players pick powers and spells on their coolness and power. In my experience they are quite happy to fudge the complexity and have an uncanny ability to ignore the fine print of spells - almost always in their favour.

Having a streamlined system is a must IMO.

 

[pemerton]

I want a return to spells with durations like round/level, minute/level, hour/level, concentration/+2 rounds etc

I don't. They push the focus in play in the wrong direction for me. Instead of focusing on the conflicts at hand, and the stakes, they make everyone at the table focus on the minutiae of timekeeping, distances moved, etc. (10 min/lvl is just about the worst for this, I think, although at low levels 1 hour/lvl is also bad.)

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

 

[Balesir]

But I don't care much for 'encounter' as a definition of duration. It's too vague and variable for my tastes. And I know plenty of players who will argue for 'encounter' meaning one thing when it's to their advantage and another thing when it isn't. Or they'll compare two encounters of different lengths and point to some perceived unfairness, between the amount of trouble they were able to cause in one encounter compared to how the same effect caused them so much more trouble in another.

I think the answer to this is easy - put the length of the effect in the players' hands, with consequences. When I run 4e "Encounter" duration means until the next Short Rest - which the players choose to take (or not). Either they keep their buffs but don't recover Encounter powers or get to use healing surges freely, or they get to use surges freely and recover Encounter powers but lose the buffs. Simples.

The only duration I find a problem in 4e is "lasts until the start/end of the turn of the one who imposed the status". I really wish that one would go away, as it's a PITA to track. I'm fine with:

- Instantaneous
- Start of the affected creature's next turn
- End of the affected creature's next turn
- Save ends
- Encounter (i.e. next Short Rest)
- Day (i.e. next Extended Rest)

"Sustain" is fine for effects that aren't statuses on another creature, and this is mostly what 4e uses them for, to be fair. Things like Stinking Cloud, Conjurations, Wall of Fire and so on are fine if they can be sustained by spending an action every turn to keep them up - and it's self-limiting, in the sense that a caster only has so many actions and so can only sustain so many effects.

Durations in "rounds" or "minutes" I always found combined the worst of all worlds. They need tracking (the idea of "announcing round number" seems weird, to me, since 'rounds' don't mean much once action of any sort starts, especially if delays and such like mix things up) and yet are still arbitrary outside combat, since the DM has to guesstimate how long all sorts of things take (and, as a former project manager, I know just how accurate that tends to be!) Not to mention that in a pseudo-medieval setting, such measurements would be quite anachronistic, to say the least...

 

[SLOTHmaster]

[P]erhaps tie magic a bit more to the game world, and have long-term effects end at sun-up or sun-down for the "daily" spells.

I like that idea. Not only would it be easier to track, it has a very fantasy feel to it. I can't imagine Cinderella's fairy godmother telling her "this spell only lasts until... one sec... level 15 means... 1 minute and 32 seconds after midnight."

 

[eamon]

The only duration I find a problem in 4e is "lasts until the start/end of the turn of the one who imposed the status". I really wish that one would go away, as it's a PITA to track. I'm fine with:

- Instantaneous
- Start of the affected creature's next turn
- End of the affected creature's next turn
- Save ends
- Encounter (i.e. next Short Rest)
- Day (i.e. next Extended Rest)

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. The extra detail just doesn't add much, and I'm convinced you could rewrite effects to avoid that type of duration easily enough. I don't want to remember whether something was until turn start or end; there are so many different effects around that's just bound to be confusing.

E.g, the 4e warden gets an extra defense boost when he takes a second wind in addition to the standard defense boost. However, one of them lasts until the start and the other until the end of his next turn. Do you know which is which? And how this interacts with delays and readied actions? Not pretty.

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.

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.

Couple the multitude of weird corner-cases surrounding save-ends effects with the extra tracking they impose and I'd just like to see em re-imagined. If no simpler, more natural implementation can be found, I'd prefer them to be left out rather than included as-is. The idea isn't bad, it's just too much of a hassle and sometimes jarring when the corner cases emerge.