James Gasik
We don't talk about Pun-Pun
Maximillian's Earthen Grasp, perhaps?
D&D General Mike Mearls says control spells are ruining 5th Edition
- Thread starter THEMNGMNT
- Start date
I still have all of my cards but I stopped buying in the late '90s. The thing about having 12 multilands and a sol ring (no Mox) and the cards I mentioned is that they were cheap, cheap, cheap to cast. That was my mana and, I think, one City of Brass (from Chronicles).
AnotherGuy
Hero
There is possible middle ground for those that like save-or-suck and those that prefer making a saving throw every round.
This is but one such example.
(a) Spell is cast, if the victim succeeds proceed to condition 2. The round thereafter you shake off the effect completely.
(b) Spell is cast, if the victim fails proceed to condition 1. Thereafter make a saving throw every round and once you succeed proceed to condition 2 as per (a) above or in the case of Petrification follow the path based on the success or failure of the saving throws.
Hold Person
1. Restrained
2. Staggered (stiffened) - half movement, no bonus action
Sleep (I know it works on hit points but in the instance where it worked differently and for the sake of the example)
1. Unconscious (asleep)
2. Staggered (drowsy) - half movement, no bonus action
Petrification
1. Restrained - Paralysed - Petrified
2. Staggered (stiffened) - half movement, no bonus action
This is but one such example.
(a) Spell is cast, if the victim succeeds proceed to condition 2. The round thereafter you shake off the effect completely.
(b) Spell is cast, if the victim fails proceed to condition 1. Thereafter make a saving throw every round and once you succeed proceed to condition 2 as per (a) above or in the case of Petrification follow the path based on the success or failure of the saving throws.
Hold Person
1. Restrained
2. Staggered (stiffened) - half movement, no bonus action
Sleep (I know it works on hit points but in the instance where it worked differently and for the sake of the example)
1. Unconscious (asleep)
2. Staggered (drowsy) - half movement, no bonus action
Petrification
1. Restrained - Paralysed - Petrified
2. Staggered (stiffened) - half movement, no bonus action
Last edited:
EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
Wanted to come back to this.
4e did not "strip them out for the most part". A lot of the things folks want are in there. They've just been rebuilt to fit into the paradigm of a combat system where "combat" means "set-piece" and attritional stuff is handled in other ways.
It's sort of like how a lot of folks claim that 4e removed most utility spells. If you look at rituals...most of the utility spells are in there! And a whole bunch of others were added too! They just now cost attritional resources, rather than being an inherent X-per-day use get-out-of-problem card. Which goes to show another side of the attrition-tension thing @I'm A Banana spoke about: D&D players don't actually have a self-consistent, rational stance on whether they want attrition or not. They want both "fight the dungeon" things and "fight the boss" things. But they don't want any of their own abilities to be on the scale of "fight the dungeon" things--they want those abilities to be available on demand with rapid deployment, precisely the opposite of "fight the dungeon" play. But they want "fight the dungeon" to be just as important as "fight the boss".
That thing, right there, is a self-contradictory desire. You cannot have all three of those. It's like asking for a shape with three sides, and three right angles, that exists in a flat, Euclidean plane. You can have any two of those things! But you cannot have all three. Each one individually sounds reasonable (because it is), but collectively they add up to a request for something impossible.
I find a significant number of things where folks demand "tradition" despite wanting modern gameplay often move in this direction. E.g. Zardnaar's argument for why a mix of both saves and attacks should be used. Allegedly, we want simplicity and accessibility, but then "players like throwing dice" and this bizarre assertion that saving throws create player agency while attack rolls don't...even though whether the boss attacks you or you roll a saving throw makes no difference in terms of your agency, at all, whatsoever.
EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
That's....not a selling point.Not at all.
Sure the lower-level parties might never get access to them, but their higher-level opponents do...
Spells: they're not just for PCs any more.
EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
Sounds like the condition track, no?
If so, perhaps we could even make it have either 3 or 5 steps as desired for any particular effect, like so:
Hold Person (concentration; see text)
-2: Paralyzed for one minute, concentration no longer required
-1: Stunned and Restrained
0: Dazed (can only take one of: action, bonus action, or move) and Restrained
+1: Dazed and Slowed
+2: Slowed until end of next turn, spell ends
This way, a spell isn't wasted if the target immediately succeeds on their first saving throw. They could fail the second, and still have some effect no matter what. You're taking a minor gamble; if the creature has a 50/50 chance to make its save, then it's liable to keep vacillating between -1 (one net failure) and +1 (one net success), but if it passes that first save, there's a 50% chance that it only suffered two turns of debility.
With this, it's a tactical choice, and you can't easily dismiss the value by saying "oh well it fails half the time so don't bother". It's too complex to permit a simple evaluation--tactical analysis is required in order to know if it's worth using or not.
And, in contrast to what I said to Lanefan above, this is something that absolutely should work both ways. Players absolutely should be subject to effects of this kind just like they subject their opponents to such. Because now they've got choices, they've got responses they can make. Especially if we bring back what 4e did, making support-focused characters good at helping others break out of these effects.
It'd also give a potential mechanical niche for the Controller role, which 4e lacked: they could have a feature which lets them partially negate successful enemy saves, meaning the opponent stays where they are on the condition track, but only a very limited number of times per encounter (presumably, two, just as Leaders got two heals per encounter). That's a powerful tool, but you want to use it judiciously. Just blowing your two "that success didn't happen" effects ASAP might help early on, but the same can be said of blowing through your Leader heals right way rather than saving them for a rainy round.
Pure spitballing, of course. Would need much design effort to ensure that it makes sense. But the core idea seems sound to me, and wouldn't require any major effort on anyone's part beyond what you were already doing for the condition track.
Last edited:
AnotherGuy
Hero
Yes exactly.
Queen Bavmorda "Is that the extent of your power, little one?"
It always reminds me of that scene which I have etched in my memory from the movie Willow where Willow throws a petrification pebble at Queen Bavmorda and she catches it. Her forearm immediately begins petrifying as she uses (a) Dispel Magic, (b) Counterspell or (c) Saving Throws every round to shake* off the petrification effect
Since she doesn't actually cast a spell, I tend to lean towards (c) and I always felt save or suck spells are better off with a condition track bringing to life the effects of the spell.
It is best to keep the track simple for the base game, but if you wanted something more involved there are a number of ways to skin it such as upcasting the Hold Person spell could lengthen the track. I'm just throwing ideas out.
*She first clutches her forearm attempting to stop the petrification and once successful she literally shakes the stiffness off, dispersing sand and dust.
Last edited:
Yeah, well, I'm built different, I guess!
While you're happy to have one of your players sitting around on their cell phone or whatever for an hour or so while everyone else at the friend group hangout we built is having fun in a group activity, I'm trying to make sure everyone at the part is enjoying themselves.
Honestly, this conversation makes me feel like the window is shifting hard enough that within the next few years 3e is gonna be "OSR Content" 'cause this really feels like someone shouting "Life isn't fair!" and me responding "So make it fair."
Horwath
Legend
for a NPC yes, for PCs, not even close.
Hard CCs on PCs that last more than a round are complete "insert swear word here".
we played 3.5e few years back and at 3rd level, out 1st fight and friend failed Will save vs cause fear, DM rolled 4 on duration, that is 8 rounds that you are effectively out of the fight, so luckily it was online so he played Starcraft 2 for next 2hrd while we had out combat, that ironically lasted for 7 rounds.
after that, we told the DM; you will NEVER do that again, and he didn't, and campaign lasted to 9th level.
EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
Plus, let us point out the rhetorical trickery employed here. (Note that I am arguing to the thread at large; I know you don't need to hear this.)
"Tough. Not evryone [sic] is going to be involved every moment, fact of life."
What does that actually mean? "You won't be involved in every single moment." A pretty milquetoast thing. There will be some number of moments where you aren't involved.
But what is that being used to claim? "You not being involved for long stretches of time is completely okay." No! No it is not! And that's a completely different statement from the previous one, not at all justified by the rather banal fact that moments where you aren't directly involved sometimes happen.
Hard lockouts for extended periods of time should be rare. When they come up, there should be things players can do about them--just as there should be things opponents can do about them. Players should not be pulling out their phones while they wait for something interesting that might actually involve them this time. That, too, is a fact of life. Boring your audience in the long stretches between things relevant to them is bad.
Plus? Realism is only one element of game design, and it is not the most salient in all parts of things. Realism requires that every character relieve themselves on the regular. Does that mean we force heavily-armored characters to doff all their armor three to six times a day to go piddle in a hole? Does that mean we expect players to have a plan for digging out a latrine hole every time they make camp, and how to cover it again every time they break camp? I should think no one in this forum would say "yes" to those questions. Realism is good when it provides useful or beneficial things, like making the experience feel more vivid and tangible. But being realistic is not the end-all, be-all of game design.
So whether or not "not everyone is going to be involved every moment" is a "fact of life" is not, in and of itself, the reason to do something. People cannot make fireballs appear by doing a hand jive and chanting while holding a ball of bat poop and sulfur. Fact of life. And yet we have characters in-game who can do precisely that. Being a fact of life isn't enough, even if the underlying argument were sound to begin with.
Similar Threads
