D&D General IS the 5 min work day a feature or a bug?

[Vaalingrade]

The All or Nothing restriction-breaker magic isn't bad. I'm not against it. I just think that it should be, in 5e terms, a Tier 4 thing.

I'm against it. I'm eliminating all 'you can only magic your way out, you need a plot coupon to pass' abilities from my system. A wall of force can be punched down if you're badass enough; a big, dumb wizard who hits people with their wand, for example.

 

[James Gasik]

From what I recall, caster supremacy 100% kicked in when Stoneskin became a thing (7th level) - 2e stoneskin put 3e and 5e stoneskin to shame. Practically allowing casters to ignore weapon damage.

Really any spell that lets you ignore weapon attacks goes here. Shield can grant a pretty significant AC. Levitate or Fly puts you out of melee reach. Protection from Missiles or Wind Wall means you never have to worry about arrows or javelins. Blur and Mirror Image can do wonders as well. Stoneskin is really good at it's job, but expensive, and I ran into a lot of DM's who went out of their way to be jerks about it (calling a handful of thrown rocks "multiple attacks", or finding ways to deprive parties of diamond dust) rather than just ban the spell.

A friend of mine had a Wizard with a Cloak of Displacement, and that "first attack of the day always misses" clause would drive one of the DM's we played under insane, because he always forgot about it.

Probably the best strategy we ever came up with was inspired by Vale of the Mage- we put a (I think it was a Hat of Disguise. I don't recall if the Ring of Chameleon Power or Robe of Blending allowed for this or not) magic item on the Wizard who then disguised himself to look like a guy in full plate with a shield, so as to give monsters no reason to attack him over other characters.

As and aside, allowing casters to not instantly lose their spells when hit was actually a house rule that we used in 2e, the DM allowed for a Wisdom check, simply because we lost too many characters due to Clerics constantly losing their cure spells in combat, so I was perfectly fine with 3e's Concentration skill.

 

[overgeeked]

If you have fireball, the goblins you face won't be standard goblins. If you used fireball in a previous encounter, even monsters that had never seen that spell would know it was coming and would know that it's suicidal to form up in a handy AOE space.

If I hit something like this, the goblins would set some kind of trap, ambushes, be prepared to attack from all sides. Maybe have a few "brave volunteers" along with a bunch of straw dummies approach under the cover of a smoke screen to obscure the subterfuge. Or they set traps or just run away.

I love Tucker's Kobolds so much.