D&D 5E (2024) Less (and different) spellcasting?

[Remathilis]

People also like swinging swords and defeating wizards with cunning and elbow grease. Not all things must be magic.

Hmm. If only there were classes that did that. Like fighters, rogues, monks and barbarians.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Hmm. If only there were classes that did that. Like fighters, rogues, monks and barbarians.

Sounds like you think four choices is sufficient.

So that means if two of the six casters classes were redesigned there would still be plenty of options left.

 

[Indaarys]

Magic doesn't need to be overemphasized in game design to still be super cool high fantasy stuff, and definitely doesn't need to be overpowered either.

For instance, in the game Im writing I have a subclass you can choose for the Necromancer that I call the Path of Blood. As you might guess, its all about being more or less a blood mage, in the context of a class thats designed to be a Summoner.

One of its initial unique spells that you get is the Blood Blade. You target a wounded enemy for some amount of damage, and you summon to yourself the blood of that enemy, which forms into a weapon of your choice, with that weapons damage type(s) and special features. The weapon can only deal the amount of Composure (HP) you drained from your target, but can be used as though you're skilled with it.

A more mid-range spell is the Blood Wall. You again target a wounded enemy, and if they fail their save, their blood vessels and nerve endings erupt from the wound, and form a magically impassable wall up to 100' across and as tall as the targeted enemy. The enemy meanwhile is effectively paralyzed, and begins to lose Composure with every subsequent turn thats taken. If the wall is targeted by anyones attacks, the enemy takes the damage, and when they drop to zero, the wall fails.

These are both very useful and thematic spells, but also aren't stupidly overpowered (relative to my game anyway) or encroaching too much on what an equivalent martial character could do.

And the key there is that these are combat spells. As far as Im concerned, you can go completely hog wild with combat spells without causing an issue as long as you keep the damage rates in check relative to other classes.


But when you add similarly bonkers utility magic into the mix, thats when things start to break. The simplest hotfix in these cases, IMO, is for utility spells to have a chance to fail.

But, you can go deeper with it. DCCs magic is at times absurdly more powerful than anything we see in 5e, and it does utilize the chance of failure fix, but it does so by greatly elaborating on what kind of failures can happen, generating a lot of possibilities that are additive to the game experience.

Failing in DCC is part of the fun, and despite its magic system being nutso powerful, it doesn't suffer for it like 5e does with considerably less powerful magic.

And indeed, this is the same idea Im going to be going for in my own game. For me, utility magic mostly doesn't exist at all as formally defined spells, though neither does combat magic for that matter. Instead, most spells, unless they're class specific like the mentioned Blood spells, will have to created by players as part of the game.

And while some of the options will be for very basic utility spells (which will be considerably tough to get and will take investment, but can actually be cast without any failure chance), most utility magic you might want to try for has to be improvised instead, which comes with baked in degrees of success/failure, and will be quite difficult to be reliably consistent with even as a dedicated mage, if you don't take the time to invest in not just the required skills, but also the equipment that you'll need to craft to improve your odds.

 

[Remathilis]

Sounds like you think four choices is sufficient.

So that means if two of the six casters classes were redesigned there would still be plenty of options left.

I didn't say that was. I'm just getting frustrated with the people who think D&D should be some low magic game when the audience for it has in general wanted more magic, not less.

A while back, there was a poll on this board (which heavily skews grognard these days) and three out of the top four classes people wanted added were magic based (psion, a caster with spell points. Gish, an arcane half caster, and shaman, a summoner/spirit primal class). The warlord, was the only non-magical class people asked for. That tells me there is still a healthy appetite for magic classes.

 

[Dausuul]

Combining ideas from several different threads, I'm imagining a world (that will never occur, at least not under WotC's watch) in which:

• Rangers don't have normal spell slots. Instead they have something like Warlock Invocations, in which they get to pick and choose their favorite toys, some of which may involve spells.
• Paladins don't have spells at all. Instead they are designed like Battlemasters or Sorcerers, in which they have a resource they can spend on Smites. They get to pick from a list of Smites, getting more choices at higher levels, and swapping them out whenever they gain a level. They still get Lay on Hands, Auras, Channel Div, Fighting Style, Divine Sense, Faithful Steed, etc.
• Druids become half-casters, but their Shape-shifting becomes more powerful, plus some innate nature-y magic (like talking to animals, etc.)
• Sorcerers don't have spell slots. Instead they use the Five Torches Deep mechanic. (Briefly: no limit to spells cast per day, but every time you cast you make an Arcana check, and on a failure you can't cast that level spell until a long rest. Also, bad stuff can happen on a failure.)
• Bards become half-casters, also with an Invocation-like mechanic.

Let the hatred commence, but I would love a D&D that looked like this.

I don't agree with all of these ideas, but I love the goal of giving the classes more variety in their casting mechanics.

 

[Bill Zebub]

I didn't say that was. I'm just getting frustrated with the people who think D&D should be some low magic game when the audience for it has in general wanted more magic, not less.

A while back, there was a poll on this board (which heavily skews grognard these days) and three out of the top four classes people wanted added were magic based (psion, a caster with spell points. Gish, an arcane half caster, and shaman, a summoner/spirit primal class). The warlord, was the only non-magical class people asked for. That tells me there is still a healthy appetite for magic classes.

Also keep in mind that what I was proposing was in most cases not to take magic away but to just give more options that don’t use the standard Vancian-slot spellcasting mechanic.

 

[TwoSix]

Also keep in mind that what I was proposing was in most cases not to take magic away but to just give more options that don’t use the standard Vancian-slot spellcasting mechanic.

Agreed. To my mind, one of the main asks when people want new classes is more variety. Personally, I want to see multiple types of power/resource methods for warrior/martial types. I also want to see multiple types of power/resource methods for caster types.

 

[Remathilis]

Also keep in mind that what I was proposing was in most cases not to take magic away but to just give more options that don’t use the standard Vancian-slot spellcasting mechanic.

The title of your thread literally says "less [...] Magic" in it!

Two of your suggestions are "reduce full caster to half" while also adding with invocations (basically taking the only really interesting thing warlocks have going, and they are still functionally close to full casters). You've also eliminated the current two half casters. Your final tally looks like this:

Bard: half arcane caster
Cleric: full divine
Druid: half primal
Ranger: no longer a caster
Paladin: no longer a caster
Sorcerer: I don't know what you're doing with that, but anything that gambles its abilities is a non-starter. Delete it from the book in that case.
Warlock: full(?) Arcane caster. My opinion on pact magic is low already, but I'm sure you're not going to like my solution.
Wizard: full arcane caster.

Considering that there would be no full primal caster and no half divine, you could probably save a lot of space by eliminating the primal list and making druids half divine casters. Further, if you're going this far, bite the bullet and make sorcerer and warlock one class.

You will have significantly cut down on the magic in the game. Have fun with it, but I won't be buying it.

 

[MoonSong]

Also keep in mind that what I was proposing was in most cases not to take magic away but to just give more options that don’t use the standard Vancian-slot spellcasting mechanic.

But in all cases you are trying to do that by taking away from existing classes, more 'options' at the cost of existing ones. Which many times does away with what people like from those classes like about the classes. And your choice of which classes get spared and which classes are 'prescindible' is skewed towards messing up with the interesting stuff while keeping the wizard and cleric intact. Which isn't very palatable.

 

[Bill Zebub]

The title of your thread literally says "less [...] Magic" in it!

Nice edit.

Two of your suggestions are "reduce full caster to half" while also adding with invocations (basically taking the only really interesting thing warlocks have going, and they are still functionally close to full casters). You've also eliminated the current two half casters. Your final tally looks like this:

So...in this paragraph you are acknowledging that it's cool that the Warlock has some unique design space. And yet your overall argument (over our last few exchanges) is that it's totally fine that so many classes uses the same Vancian mechanics. I don't get it. If it's cool that the Warlocks are more distinct from other casters, wouldn't you want there to be more differentiation across all the other magical classes?

I mean, you don't have to, that's fine. But I guess I don't understand what you actually value.

Bard: half arcane caster
Cleric: full divine
Druid: half primal
Ranger: no longer a caster
Paladin: no longer a caster
Sorcerer: I don't know what you're doing with that, but anything that gambles its abilities is a non-starter. Delete it from the book in that case.
Warlock: full(?) Arcane caster. My opinion on pact magic is low already, but I'm sure you're not going to like my solution.
Wizard: full arcane caster.

Considering that there would be no full primal caster and no half divine, you could probably save a lot of space by eliminating the primal list and making druids half divine casters. Further, if you're going this far, bite the bullet and make sorcerer and warlock one class.

You will have significantly cut down on the magic in the game. Have fun with it, but I won't be buying it.

You don't have to like my ideas, but you're still misrepresenting them. While it's true that I'm talking about reducing the amount of casting...as in, Vancian spell lists/slots...I'm suggesting it get replaced with other magical abilities.

You're treating the "magic" and "Vancian casting" as synonyms. In previous posts you were using the word "magic" but now suddenly it's mostly "caster". There's a distinction between those two things. And what I'm suggesting is less spellcasting, specifically of the Vancian sort, and not less magic.

Again, if what you love is Vancian casting then, yeah, you're not going to like my ideas. But at least argue against what I'm actually saying.