EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
I'm a bit late to the party here, but you're referring to "reserve feats." These would allow you to perform an action (not technically a spell proper, but rather a supernatural ability) for which the powers keyed off your strongest spell that met certain requirements. Picking the alphabetically first one, Acidic Splatter, based off the highest slot you had dedicated to an acid spell, you could throw a blob of acid (touch attack) to a range of 5 ft/level, dealing 1d6/level acid damage.
I thought reserve feats were an interesting idea, worthy of being investigated, but felt that 4e's At-Wills were a better fulfillment of the intended goal.
Oh, most definitely. It's one of the really funny rhetorical turnarounds I've seen from 5e fans, where 4e was derided as "superheroes with magic" and as inherently crazy ultra-magical, while 5e was sold (by fans far more than WotC) as a return to yesteryear, a "AD&D 3rd Edition" that would restore the sensibilities of 2e but with modern mechanics.
In practice, it's ended up being 95% 3e sensibilities, with magic power not so much "reduced" as...more like flattened. The uppermost top end is objectively less powerful than 3e's uppermost top end (where nigh-infinite shenanigans are hardly even difficult for many spellcasters), but the bottom end has repeatedly converted numerous class features, supernatural effects, and other things into specifically spells--even things that aren't really in need of being spells. If you'll permit a geometric metaphor, we started with an insanely tall (=extreme power) but narrow (=restrictive access) rectangle of power. Folks had hoped 5e would lop off the top of the rectangle but otherwise keep things the same. It did not. Instead, it stretched the rectangle out while keeping the area fixed: more classes have magic, nearly all of them, but the most intensely magical classes can't achieve the stuff they could before. Just about the only thing different is that 5e made gestures in the direction of fewer magic items, but that wasn't particularly popular as far as I can tell.
Which is part of why it's tricky to say that either game is "lower" magic than the other. Do we define high vs low magic by how (in)accessible it is, or by its maximum potential power? 3e has power off the charts, but several classes with no magic at all (Fighter, Rogue, Barbarian, semi-arguably Monk). 5e has a lower (but still pretty high) ceiling, but every class can be magical, and arguably only Fighter and Rogue can be played as 100% non-magic.
My apologies if my Warlock exacerbated those concerns. I did try to stick to ol' reliables rather than weird BS!It's something I've long disliked about 5e. Mostly because it makes the game SOOO finicky. Every freaking round having to spend time with casters placing their area effects just right, then someone else uses a spell that hasn't been seen in a while, so, we have to go back and check the rules, then the third player is back to placing the spell in exactly the right place. Meanwhile the poor non-caster player is sitting there with a thumb in, waiting to make those two attack rolls and a move.
Yes, I'm taking a break from D&D for a while... why do you ask?
