D&D 5E Levels Above 10?

[Raith5]

Siloing is the separation of combat and non-combat spells/abilities for the purposes of selecting them (as practiced in 4th ed). In 4th ed "utility" spells/abilities were not offensive powers but either defensive, healing abilities or social abilities and these did not compete with offensive powers.

 

[Grimmjow]

well then i too would like siloing

 

[variant]

I would never ever want siloing.

 

[Grimmjow]

why not?

 

[Li Shenron]

why not?

It forces you to have combat spells if you only want to have utility spells, and viceversa.

It's based on the idea that "everyone should be useful all the time!". What if I don't want to be useful all the time? What if I want to shine in combat and cool off a bit during exploration, or viceversa? What if I want to be useful in combat but using only utility spells in a creative way, rather than blasting fireballs?

IOW, siloing is restrictive.

 

[Grimmjow]

It forces you to have combat spells if you only want to have utility spells, and viceversa.

It's based on the idea that "everyone should be useful all the time!". What if I don't want to be useful all the time? What if I want to shine in combat and cool off a bit during exploration, or viceversa? What if I want to be useful in combat but using only utility spells in a creative way, rather than blasting fireballs?

IOW, siloing is restrictive.

oh i see lol. Well then maybe we shouldn't have siloing unless they can come up with a way to let us choose between which one we want.

 

[pemerton]

It forces you to have combat spells if you only want to have utility spells, and viceversa.

It's based on the idea that "everyone should be useful all the time!". What if I don't want to be useful all the time? What if I want to shine in combat and cool off a bit during exploration, or viceversa? What if I want to be useful in combat but using only utility spells in a creative way, rather than blasting fireballs?

IOW, siloing is restrictive.

I don't agree with this; all you need is the choice not to fill one of your silos.

I get the impression that what you're looking for is the ability to trade off - that is, to sacrifice ability in one "pillar" so as to improve ability in another "pillar". That's a legitimate PC build approach - points-buy games do it, for example - but it's quite restrictive too. It's just that it gives rise to a different set of restrictions, mostly around encounter and scenario design.

It also means that certain PC builds which seem like they should be possible in the world of the fiction become impossible at the table. For example, the best fighters will tend to be socially inept, the best athletes mediocre fighters, etc.

My question back to you is: it's fine that you want your PC not to participate in social scenes, etc. But why should you therefore be entitled to domiante combat scenes? (Or vice versa.) What's the rationale behind permitting trade offs?

 

[MoonSong]

That up to 4e, it was entirely possible to choose how much you wanted to get involved in combat. Then they decided to silo spells and took away the choice. In 3.5 I played a lot of sorcerers, and out of them only one was a blaster, the rest relied on weapons for combat -if they had any comabt capability at all-. Enter 4e and ALL sorcerers suddenly became blasters, I also played lots of rogues, most of them conmans, charaltans or even just very cunning people, only a few focussed on milking SA damage on the battlefield. Enter 4e, all rogues became skirmishing thiefs, whether you wanted it or not.

The same can be said about clerics and healers, a high focus on out of combat that got taken away on the transition to the new edition. You no longer could preppare only heals and fight the mundane way -or opt not to fight at all-. Also the emphasis on combat delayed the inclusiion of illussion spells,a nd when they got added, BAM they also made damage.

The biggest reason: "Why should I be gimped on the things I want my character to be good at in order to be good at things I don't give a damm about?"

 

[Raith5]

I have a preference for siloing because it enables interesting non combat options to be mechanically reflected in the PC. They dont get penalised in combats for having these abilities and everyone has some non combat abilities and tricks.

It is an also an aspect in 4th ed which shows the game was far more than just combat orientated game system.

 

[Li Shenron]

oh i see lol. Well then maybe we shouldn't have siloing unless they can come up with a way to let us choose between which one we want.

It would be definitely better, but still consider this: imagine you have two separate "silos", one pool of combat spells and one pool of exploration spells.

In "hard siloing" you must have both; should you not be interested in using spells during exploration, well bad for you because you just have to. You could just totally ignore that silo, but very very few players like having a chunk of character sheet and pretend it isn't there, if they are not using it they want something else to replace it.

If you can choose one or the other silo (if I understand your suggestion), you can be either one type of caster or the other, but you cannot mix them up or be a balanced caster who is decent at both.

If you allow mixing up the two silos... then it's the same as not having silos at all! It might still help to have them as "guidelines" however, if this makes it easy for some player then it's fine for me.

I don't agree with this; all you need is the choice not to fill one of your silos.

I get the impression that what you're looking for is the ability to trade off - that is, to sacrifice ability in one "pillar" so as to improve ability in another "pillar". That's a legitimate PC build approach - points-buy games do it, for example - but it's quite restrictive too. It's just that it gives rise to a different set of restrictions, mostly around encounter and scenario design.

See my answer to Grimmjow above.

It also means that certain PC builds which seem like they should be possible in the world of the fiction become impossible at the table. For example, the best fighters will tend to be socially inept, the best athletes mediocre fighters, etc.

My question back to you is: it's fine that you want your PC not to participate in social scenes, etc. But why should you therefore be entitled to domiante combat scenes? (Or vice versa.) What's the rationale behind permitting trade offs?

The rationale is exactly that being able to choose between being good at 2 roles or being very good at 1 role is a perfectly valid and interesting strategic choice in character building.