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*Dungeons & Dragons
Maxwell's Silver Hammer: On Spells, Design, and the feeling of Sameyness in 5e
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<blockquote data-quote="Neonchameleon" data-source="post: 7917683" data-attributes="member: 87792"><p>A huge question this leads to is which you are more concerned about. Waste of paper when reading a book, or wasting the DM's time and energy (and thus everyone else's) when actually playing the game.</p><p></p><p>If you are using the monster in play and it has "spell like abilities" (or even spells) then as a DM, in order to run that monster rather than merely read about it, unless it's one of the dozen or spells you have actually memorised, then in order to run the monster you don't just need the monster's statblock open but you also need the pages (plural) in the PHB in order to use all the referenced spells. This makes it far slower and more awkward to use at the table, degrading everyone's experience as the DM needs to be continually flicking between rulebooks. You save a very little designer time and a little paper by undermining the experience of the people actively trying to use this stuff - the DM and the players.</p><p></p><p>If you make things better in play by duplicating the text of the spells being used onto the monster statblock then you are wasting a <em>lot</em> of paper while making everything seem cookie cutter.</p><p></p><p>If on the other hand you use the paper you need to use to make the game flow better to actively customise the effects you can add obvious colour like the vampire hypnotising through eye contact and the succubus charming through a kiss even if the outcome is completely mechanically the same. And you can make unique effects meaning your monsters seem more mysterious and magical.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Less boring <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> And here are two of my problems. First: Why should everything the fighter does be boring? And second why aren't the mages allowed to express their magic through crossbow-equivalent spells?</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Which means they will be using crossbows most of the time - which is even more boring.</p><p></p><p>But you still haven't answered <em>how the cantrips nerfed the utility of higher level spells</em>.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>That depends how you are tweaking things.</p><p></p><p>Let's say that a damage cantrip takes n rounds to cast where n>1 and does a number of damage based on how many rounds. Why does this cantrip need removing? It too replaces the crossbow and because it takes >1 rounds to cast it neither overshadows it nor the crossbow.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Neonchameleon, post: 7917683, member: 87792"] A huge question this leads to is which you are more concerned about. Waste of paper when reading a book, or wasting the DM's time and energy (and thus everyone else's) when actually playing the game. If you are using the monster in play and it has "spell like abilities" (or even spells) then as a DM, in order to run that monster rather than merely read about it, unless it's one of the dozen or spells you have actually memorised, then in order to run the monster you don't just need the monster's statblock open but you also need the pages (plural) in the PHB in order to use all the referenced spells. This makes it far slower and more awkward to use at the table, degrading everyone's experience as the DM needs to be continually flicking between rulebooks. You save a very little designer time and a little paper by undermining the experience of the people actively trying to use this stuff - the DM and the players. If you make things better in play by duplicating the text of the spells being used onto the monster statblock then you are wasting a [I]lot[/I] of paper while making everything seem cookie cutter. If on the other hand you use the paper you need to use to make the game flow better to actively customise the effects you can add obvious colour like the vampire hypnotising through eye contact and the succubus charming through a kiss even if the outcome is completely mechanically the same. And you can make unique effects meaning your monsters seem more mysterious and magical. Less boring :) And here are two of my problems. First: Why should everything the fighter does be boring? And second why aren't the mages allowed to express their magic through crossbow-equivalent spells? Which means they will be using crossbows most of the time - which is even more boring. But you still haven't answered [I]how the cantrips nerfed the utility of higher level spells[/I]. That depends how you are tweaking things. Let's say that a damage cantrip takes n rounds to cast where n>1 and does a number of damage based on how many rounds. Why does this cantrip need removing? It too replaces the crossbow and because it takes >1 rounds to cast it neither overshadows it nor the crossbow. [/QUOTE]
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Maxwell's Silver Hammer: On Spells, Design, and the feeling of Sameyness in 5e
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