D&D 5E L&L for November 18

[Grydan]

΅

Here, I disagree. Something that you can use once or two times per day for a limited time and many times happens to be situational have to be more powerful than something that you can freely at will.

If it's situational, then it's likely to be situational for the feat-user as well. And he can't choose to prepare a different feat on days where he doesn't expect to need to be sneaky.

The ability to do something at-will trumps the ability to do it X times per day only to the extent that there's a need to perform the task more than X times per day on a regular basis.

 

[steeldragons]

Except it's just as fair to say that there are situations where being able to be stealthy is of no use, and someone can swap their Invisibility spell for something that is useful in that situation. At which point they get extra flexibility and extra power. Flexible and Powerful isn't axiomatically worse than Always Available.

Except, it would seem...and I am really just guessing here, that for the design team Flexibility makes something/= "More Powerful" by virtue of its flexibility.

A feat, you pick once. You have it available all of the time. It does 1 thing.

A spell, you can pick as often as you like or you can choose [a different spell] to do something completely different. But "the spell" [generically] is flexible. This makes it, automatically, more powerful than "the feat" which only lets you do 1 thing. The spell is [for lack of a better term] "internally" balanced by virtue of being limited in duration and resource (how many slots/points/whatever you have).

So, yeah, spell is more powerful than feat...because of the options/flexibility inherent to it.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I'm into this. The ranking makes enough sense to me (though I'd almost rather have backgrounds trump spells! But ah, well).

The bit about Invisibility instantly made me think of the spell-using assassins and illusionists I've seen as a counter-point, but then I was like, "Wait, these guys should probably have class features from being "Illusionists" that make them better at using Invisibility, to bring them on par with the Theif!", and so I'm pretty happy with the modularity there!

Take for example the Solid Fog spell in 3e, a spell which ostensibly does no harm but can without a save more or less remove a large group of combatants from a fight. How do you equate that with a fighter's ability to remove a monster from the fight by chopping up all its hit points

It's easier than you might think, especially if you take 4e maths as a starting point. In that case, a monster party has an expected damage output in each round, and stopping that output has a value in terms of HP. A Solid Fog that stops all enemies from attacking for a round is akin to a party avoiding X attacks, or "healing" X damage.

 

[dbm]

There are three factors which need to be kept in mind with spells:

1. How easy is it to have a specific spell available to you ("in your spell book")?
2. How easy is it to predict what spell you will need in any given time frame?
3. How easy is it to change the set of spells you have ready for use ("memorised")?

Item 1 used to be a big part of the game - finding new spells was a challenge. In more recent editions all casters have had access to all spells; change that back.

Item 2 depends on the GM making the world less predictable and controllable. Sure, you might have been expecting to sneak into the castle with Invisibility but the portcullis is down so you actually need Spider Climb instead. Or you get ambushed on the way and would rather have learned Acid Arrow or so on...

Item 3 was discussed up thread - it used to take a long time to memorise your spells and was not easy to do 'in the field'. Bring that back.

All these factors should limit magic and consequently when you get all your ducks lined up the caster should be rewarded with a 'wow' moment.

 

[DEFCON 1]

In terms of the Spells vs Feats ranking, as Falling Icicle mentioned above the reason why Spells do (and in my mind probably should) have priority over Feats is because Spells are in fact a large part of the Class's overall ability group and class power. Whereas Feats are just an add-on to all classes (that many tables won't even use).

So to drop a de facto part of the spellcasting Class's abilities to a lower priority than a feature that isn't even going to be used by a percentage of the playerbase does not appear to me to be the right call. Spells being higher priority than Feats makes more sense.

 

[TwoSix]

If you think back to earlier editions of D&D, it took hours to re-learn all your spells. To the point where it would take days at a high level. Use this as a house rule and suddenly spell casters can only rest when in really safe environments, generally between 'adventures'.

I've had an idea floating around in my head about introducing a class of spells that take longer to prepare than 1 night rest, and calling them "weeklies." Basically spells that you can't prepare out in the wild, you need preparation that can only be done in a safe place over a period of several days. Put the arcane big blasts or encounter bypassers, and the divine big heals, as spells that you can only do once per adventure.

 

[DMZ2112]

If it's situational

Whether or not a feat is situational isn't the issue; it's more a factor of its availability as a resource. Simplest case: if an applicable situation arises three times in one adventure, the feat is available on all three occasions, no questions asked. The spell is only available once, unless it is recast each time. The spell has to provide greater benefit because it represents resource expenditure.

 

[Sadrik]

I think they have done some pretty neat things with 5e but they are off on their priority rankings idea.

A priority ranking for D&D is a list of character option categories, such as classes and proficiencies. The priority ranking places the most important elements at the top of the list and the least important ones at the bottom. In terms of D&D’s content, classes sit at the top of the list, followed by races, spells, backgrounds, and feats.

The ranking answers the following question: What wins in a contest between option A and option B?

If my class gives me the ability to become an awesome archer, I should be a better archer than other characters whose classes give them no archery ability, but who took feats or can cast spells on themselves to gain that ability. Class is ranked higher on the list than spells or feats. Therefore, class wins.

First, it depends what it is you are talking about and this list is mixing apples and oranges. I will assume he is talking about "class features", "race features", and "background features", if so, then we are on the same page. You would never weigh a whole class against one feat or spell. That said, this is insightful into their design approach. I would have mixed it differently.

A Background feature
A Race feature
A Class feature
A Spell
A Feat

The reason I feel the background, albeit it does little, it is the biggest character choice when finding your PCs place in the world. So your choice should matter. This will provide your proficiencies which are key to your overall character concept and mechanically give you a tremendous amount of abilities. Example if stealth all the time whenever you want is important to your character concept pick a background that gives you this proficiency.

Then race is the next big choice. It gives you similar stuff similar to background.

Class is third, it is the mechanical construct you make your way in the world with. It also provides your biggest set of abilities. It can also add to the two choices you already selected.

Then feats and spells. These, if it were my game to design would be two halves to the same coin. Any supernatural ability would be a spell and any non-supernatural ability would be a feat.

One other class design point too. I would strip the class features out of classes and give them feats/spells instead. If it was a supernatural ability, add it to that classes spell list. If it was a non-supernatural ability I would add it to that classes feat list. Spellcasters get lots of spells and non-spellcasters get lots of feats. Then there are lots of 1/2 and 1/2 classes too. Simple design. Not the direction they went but hey...

 

[Gundark]

I would never place race in front of class. It harkens back to only choosing certain race and class combinations. Now with 5e that gap is less pronounced that it used to be.

 

[Sage Genesis]

Chalk me up as another person who thinks spells ought to be rated lower than feats.

First, casters have a pretty easy time adjusting their selection of spells as they go. Beyond the basic ability to change loadout every single day, they (or at least some of them) can recover spent slots, prepare spells in a matter of minutes (remember that you don't have to prepare all spells at once), use ritual versions, or employ scrolls and potions. A feat, meanwhile, is selected once at the expense of increasing ability scores and is set in stone forever after.

Second, feats are rare. You don't really get that many of them. The Fighter is arguably the feat poster child and he gets seven of them at most by the time he's level 18. The Mage has for more tools at his disposal than that.

Third, feats gobble up your ability score improvements. You are making a very real opportunity cost by selecting a feat. Spells don't have that. They only compete with other spells, but it's not as if simply holding prepared spells reduces your stats (now there's an idea for a game...).

Fourth, there is an argument that spell selection has to be carefully made because some spells can wind up being useless. That's a double-sided sword though that punishes feats far more severely, because feats also have to be selected beforehand... and can still wind up being of little help. But due to the factors listed above, spells can both adjust more quickly (or even at all) and there's a good chance that where one spell is useless, another one prevails. Did the Mage prepare Invisibility only to be foiled by a portcullis? Should he have prepared Spider Climb instead? Gosh, if only if you could prepare and use both at once... Oh wait, that's right, you can. At level three.

A feat that never came up during an adventure was an unfortunate waste. A spell that never came up during an adventure was a trivially small investment, and was replaced the next morning with a spell that did come in handy.