D&D (2024) It Is 2025 And Save Or Suck Spells Still Suck (the fun out of the game)

[NotAYakk]

Aside: I think dropping it to 1 save prof every 3 CR (so 6 at 18), then one double-prof per 3 CR (so 4 double-prof at 30) would work better. You'd get the same at level 30, but the spell save success dip in the middle is a bit less steep.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I like this discussion and I'm happy to be a part of it!

Getting tripped up over the exact wording of Suggestion isn't important: it's clear from the description that one legitimate usage is removing an enemy from a combat. Targeting that concentration check, counterspell, and LRs are really your only counters.

Like many others mentioned, I still remember a combat against mind flayers from 15 yrs ago where the PCs were stunlocked repeatedly and how boring it was. "Never again." Turn denial just isn't fun.

Doom points / LRs are a great bandaid, but it does just feel like another gamey layer. "Gotta burn through those 5 LRs then we nuke it" becomes the plan, which isn't really narratively satisfying, as others have mentioned. I've also noticed how many 2024 monsters have "advantage on saves vs spells" which seems like another bandaid. Casters end up becoming auto-win or useless, neither of which are fun.

Along those lines, 2014 monks are the most powerful class I've seen in play. Even my never-min-max player quickly figured out his job was to stunlock the most dangerous opponents (multiple) each battle. The lack of stun immunity made many "deadly" encounters trivial. Even LRs aren't enough: monks can attack like 5 times in a row, boom there's your LRs gone in round 1.

Something else to underline: 2024 PCs are far more powerful than 2014s. This is pretty well established, but it still caught me off guard by how MUCH. Using 2024 PCs to finish the Tiamat campaign nearly nuked a god in 3 rounds. They just do so much martial damage now - it's nuts. And save or win effects were harder to land in the olden (3.5) days - that's just not true any more. Save or win used to be like a 1/3 chance, now it's 2/3 or better. And you can target multiple enemies at time. Hold Monster used to be so unreliable you'd never take it: now you always would.

Finally: save or suck spells do suck. They are too much of a risk/reward: if you miss, your turn was completely wasted. If you hit, you win. I like the PF2 suggestion of "levels of effect" but also dear god that's so much bookkeeping. 4e actually did a good job like others mentioned - and was roundly rejected.

We already have the super gamey HP whittling metagame, maybe save or suck should do damage on a fail, and make monster saves higher? I don't know. There's probably not a simple fix: someone would have thought of it. Reworking magic is AN answer but it's also the hardest and we tried that already and people rejected it. I'm thinking the 2024 MM should have raised monster saves by like +2 across the board, in addition to the big HP bump.

I don't think official D&D can fix it. Too many factors pushing for more PC power and more flash. You'll have to look to other publishers for your design innovations.

 

[Micah Sweet]

That is interesting: what if the Gm gets "Doom Points" based on encounter numbers disparity? That is, the ratio of PCs to monsters (as the encounter is designed) equals the number of Doom points/LRs the GM starts the encounter with. So if it is 4 PCs against a boss monster and its lieutenant, then the GM gets 2 Doom Points.

That's not exactly any more "narrative friendly" than the existing system. By which I mean that it still makes the fiction pretty stilted.

 

[James Gasik]

bad guys continuing the story based on events and actions that the players caused or created is not spot nerfing or revenge fudging. Now if you meant to limit the statement to DM's just punishing players for winning fine, but saying the baddies and other NPC's shouldn't come back and react appropriately due to past events that's silly. I'm not sure which you meant with that post.

There should be a caveat here, I think. Bad guys have to survive contact with the PC's in order to react to their efforts. Now maybe other campaigns are different, but in the ones I play in, there aren't often survivors to tell the tale...

Plus, how quickly one can react is questionable. If I run an encounter with my PC's and they are stymied by the resistances or special abilities of an enemy, even if they can somehow run away, what can they do in a short term?

You'd need a long rest to change out spells, if your class even allows it. You can't just retrain feats. If you need different weapons, you need to go out and acquire them (ditto with any sundries, including scrolls and potions). This all takes effort, and isn't going to happen overnight.

I've heard a lot of people justify, for example: "well monsters know to finish off fallen foes because Clerics" and then I go through encounter after encounter with no NPC's healers in sight. Or having NPC casters just randomly have scrolls of Dispel Magic to foil some strategy of the PC's- where did these scrolls come from, and what did they have to do to acquire them, and why haven't they needed to use them on something else before now?

It's ok to make changes to the game in order for it to continue to run smoothly. But you can't just say using DM fiat isn't using DM fiat. I once played a Fire happy Sorcerer who did lots of bonus fire damage (PF1e game) through various means.

Suspiciously, a lot more enemies with fire resistance showed up, which came to a head with a group of mercenaries who all had protection from fire potions ready. The DM was like "well, people have heard of you, so they know to prepare..."

And I was like "First of all, who, among our enemies has been spreading this information? Our last adventure had us fighting undead for a week! What, did some ghost go whisper to the mercenaries "hey man, you better have fire resistance to fight these guys"? And also, the last time we were in a major city, we were barely able to find 5 potions of healing- how did these 12 guys each get a potion of fire resistance?".

If he felt he needed to use these tactics to deal with an extra potent Fireball decimating his encounters, well, he's the DM. I guess he's gotta do what he's gotta do. But don't try to snow the players with a voodoo shark (an explanation that just raises more questions than it answers)!

 

[Horwath]

I do have to admit that I'm getting a bit annoyed at those Bard spells that essentially take out NPCs and Monsters out of action for most of the encounter. Especially when the effects are anti-climactic or comical when things were kind of serious.

Phantasmal Force, Tasha's Laughter and Dissonant Whispers are the biggest culprits so far. I wish some monsters had resistance to this kind of thing but eh, I'll follow my own advice and prepare to have things go slapstick all of a sudden.

one thing a DM has, is more monsters, you always have more.
one good thing that I have is potions of "Summon X" if battle is going too bad for NPCs too fast.
point is that PCs win the encounter, but not too easy.
having 2/4 or 3/5 PCs knocked out during every encounter is a good difficulty setting.

and Dissonant Whispers is not hard CC spell, it just wastes reaction and movement, if not used in combination of 2 or more AoOs, damage and effect are not really good.

 

[Distracted DM]

one thing a DM has, is more monsters, you always have more.
one good thing that I have is potions of "Summon X" if battle is going too bad for NPCs too fast.
point is that PCs win the encounter, but not too easy.
having 2/4 or 3/5 PCs knocked out during every encounter is a good difficulty setting.

and Dissonant Whispers is not hard CC spell, it just wastes reaction and movement, if not used in combination of 2 or more AoOs, damage and effect are not really good.

I really dislike the "you can just throw more monsters at them!" reply to issues with PC power.

1. If your answer to "they took a big enemy out of the fight" is "so I added another big enemy to the fight!" that could seem cheap and fiat-ey to the players if it's happening frequently... and it's going to happen frequently, because the core PC power problem hasn't been addressed.

2. Throwing more monsters at them means turning combats into even longer potential slogs. I like combat, but just adding more monsters to challenge PC resources is going to feel grindy to me. To make it more NOT grindy is going to take more work on my part- because we haven't addressed the core PC power problem.

Blah, I could go on but I just have issues with 5e PC power relative to monsters.

 

[TheSword]

A bit late to the party so apologies if someone has mentioned these points before.

The big weakness to Suggestion is that it is concentration. That instantly ends the effect of the spell if the caster is taking enough damage. Suggestion used in the way described sets an objective for the intelligent dragon to end the suggestion effect on its ally. It also sets an objective for the party - protect the bard. These objectives are good for combat in my opinion, making it more than just two sides whacking each other indiscriminately. I’d beg for these opportunities to add meaning to combat.

On that basis I’m surprised you chose to attack the monk. Suggestion only has a range of 30ft. If you had targeted the bard (and bearing in mind a young dragon has fly 80 plus another 30ft range for the breath so should have a pretty darn good threat range) then the suggestion would almost certainly of ended.

For me Tasha’s reveals a different problem. Players dealing enough damage to kill a creature in one round. Every single hit should have been giving the dragon another save with advantage. With a further save at the end of the round. With 127 hp and a +3 Wis save that must have been a very unlucky dragon. I don’t think it’s fair to blame Tasha’s for bad luck.

Personally I like some spells that step outside the hp bloat paradigm to resolve combat encounters in different ways. You still have a half dragon out there with a goal to avenge its mother. That’s an interesting outcome of using the spell. Certainly more interesting that a scorching ray.

A few follow up questions. Are you giving PCs boosts to their save DCs or ability stats? A level 4 character should be topping out at around DC 14.

Same for to hit rolls. A level 4 PC should be topping out at around +6 to hit. Even with attacks of opportunity the AC18 dragon should be tanking a lot of hits.

If your players can deal 127 damage in two rounds to an AC 18 creature then you probably need to use higher CR creatures to challenge them. If you were just unlucky with dice rolls, then that’s ok. But let that be reason the encounter went quickly rather than the existence of Tasha’s and Suggestion.

 

[TheSword]

The question was whether the forced movement in this case (2024) triggered OA? The OP says it does, but I thought forced movement never triggered OA.

We've never had the forced movement in 2014 trigger OA, as that would contitute obviously dangerous movement.

Again not sure if this has been answered but Dissonant Whispers take the creature to use one of its own actions (in this case a reaction) to move. That is different to an eldritch blast moving a creature back 10ft or a gust of wind. So dissonant whispers doesn’t count as forced movement in the context of AO

 

[Horwath]

I really dislike the "you can just throw more monsters at them!" reply to issues with PC power.

1. If your answer to "they took a big enemy out of the fight" is "so I added another big enemy to the fight!" that could seem cheap and fiat-ey to the players if it's happening frequently... and it's going to happen frequently, because the core PC power problem hasn't been addressed.

2. Throwing more monsters at them means turning combats into even longer potential slogs. I like combat, but just adding more monsters to challenge PC resources is going to feel grindy to me. To make it more NOT grindy is going to take more work on my part- because we haven't addressed the core PC power problem.

Blah, I could go on but I just have issues with 5e PC power relative to monsters.

solo monsters are always bad idea for encounter, action economy will be the end of them.

if you do not want to add 2nd wave of monsters as reinforcements, there can always be healing magic available or just adding more HP to monsters.

lowest goblin does not need to have 7HP, he can have 15HP,

but, more monsters are better against CC and weaker against AoE attacks, so there is always a trade to be made.


and in general, where can be explained easily, every monster should have some AoE potential to damage few PCs with a single action.


I.E:
my favorite is combo Fireball+Summon elemental(fire) potion.
Action,
throw up to 60ft
detonate Fireball(8d6) and summon fire elemental(4th level spell) for 1 minute(no CONC) that acts immediately.

 

[Reynard]

That's not exactly any more "narrative friendly" than the existing system. By which I mean that it still makes the fiction pretty stilted.

I'm not sure what you mean. It isn't intended to be narrative friendly. It is intended to help balance one shot spells with a couple floating LRs.