D&D 5E Please understand your spells

[Ancalagon]

Some of you may remember "that bard" from my other thread?

"I can cast haste? It does what? I had no idea I had access to such power"

 

[MechaPilot]

Anyone have any good advice for how to deal with this? I'm tired of having to read every spell for every class and attempt to memorize what they do, then educate my players on how that works and shut down the game in the process while I look the spell up, tell them how it works and make sure they use it properly. I've got enough on my plate as DM that I shouldn't have to run my player's characters as well.

As a DM, I refuse to memorize all the spells. I have so many Internal Revenue code sections and Treasury Regulations and Statements of Financial Accounting Concepts floating through my head that I just don't have the space for it all (my brain needs a backup drive). When a player says he/she is going to use a spell, I make the player tell me what it does (if they don't know, I make them look it up and give me a summary). If it sounds wrong, I look it up. If it sounds right, then we go with it, and whoever the player was simply has to deal with it if he/she didn't properly recall or didn't bother to look up everything the spell does.

However, when I run a monster with spells or spell-like abilities I research the spells ahead of time and take notes where needed. That's part of the work that goes into running the game properly, even if it can be a pain sometimes, but it does (admittedly) contribute to my willfully including fewer caster foes in the game than I otherwise would.

 

[MechaPilot]

I miss the clarity of 4th Edition. Every spell, every class's trick, was written in a concise and consistent format. There were the occasional confusions, but any player could play any class. 5th Edition is sometimes written in long fluff-filled paragraphs of Gygaxian prose which need to be carefully filtered and parsed to find the actual rules.

For my own campaign, I have decided to start rewriting our witch's spells into 4E Power format for the casual player in my game.

We could have had the best of both worlds if they gave us adequate stat blocks for spells in 5e as a quick-reference tool. But that doesn't sell additional merch, like spell cards.

 

[Sunseeker]

We could have had the best of both worlds if they gave us adequate stat blocks for spells in 5e as a quick-reference tool. But that doesn't sell additional merch, like spell cards.

I'd probably still buy spell cards, which don't really even include the verbosity of many spells anyway, so it would seem that a "spell card" like stat block for the spell could be easily sold on a card, while a fluff-tastic version could be in the PHB.

Anyway, all the advice so far is essentially what has been going through my head, we'll see how he rolls next week and see if it is a continued problem. Beyond that, I do kinda like the idea of "if the player doesn't know, the DM makes it up as he pleases" as an answer.

 

[MechaPilot]

Anyway, all the advice so far is essentially what has been going through my head, we'll see how he rolls next week and see if it is a continued problem. Beyond that, I do kinda like the idea of "if the player doesn't know, the DM makes it up as he pleases" as an answer.

Although I usually make a player look it up when he/she doesn't know, simply making it up on the fly is certainly not a bad way to go, and it's definitely in line with the whole rulings-not-rules philosophy of 5e. Plus, a lot of the spells have stayed mostly the same over the years and editions, with a few tweaks here and there, so your memory of a spell from an earlier edition is probably just as viable as the new spell descriptions.

 

[Rod Staffwand]

I'll give a pass to new players and players of new characters in a game but, otherwise, I require players understand how their spells, feats and powers work. If I'm going to spend time prepping a game, they can spend a bit of time familiarizing themselves with their character. Write down the essentials and be prepared to look up the esoteric tidbits (preferably ahead of time). Heck, 5E makes it a lot simpler than 3.X...

I was playing a high-level wizard in Pathfinder but I switched to a rogue (a ROGUE!) because I got tired of flipping through my 30 page "spellbook" to resolve everything quick enough for my satisfaction (and I was the 'fastest' player in that tedious slogfest).

 

[Nellisir]

I make them read the spell to me.

 

[Sunseeker]

I'll give a pass to new players and players of new characters in a game but, otherwise, I require players understand how their spells, feats and powers work. If I'm going to spend time prepping a game, they can spend a bit of time familiarizing themselves with their character. Write down the essentials and be prepared to look up the esoteric tidbits (preferably ahead of time). Heck, 5E makes it a lot simpler than 3.X...

Emphasis mine. THIS. Just soooo much THIS. I spend, on average, 8 hours a week prepping, creating new content, adjusting existing content, filling in gaps I've realized I've missed and attempting to predict the direction the party is going to head and refreshing myself on what the party should expect to encounter tonight. I work 40 hours a week. That's an entire unpaid workday worth of time, EVERY WEEK prepping the game. (I don't find this unreasonable), so the least they can do is be familiar with their one character.

I was playing a high-level wizard in Pathfinder but I switched to a rogue (a ROGUE!) because I got tired of flipping through my 30 page "spellbook" to resolve everything quick enough for my satisfaction (and I was the 'fastest' player in that tedious slogfest).

My sentiments exactly, this is why I like Fighters, Barbarians, Rogues, even Open Palm Monks and heck, spell-to-smite Paladins. It's real simple, it's real straight forward and it's really quick to play, I like that.

I make them read the spell to me.

Sure, but if they can read the spell to me, then they can read the spell to themselves, and therefore know what it does right? Even with that, it still means I need to stop what I'm doing and listen to them. The latter is really what I'm trying to avoid, it just bogs down combat. One guy at the table has all his spells memorized and his turns go by in a flash, which I honestly feel bad about when I have to spend 5 minutes straightening out someone else.

I don't feel like the guy was trying to cheat me, so I'm not worried about him adding another couple dice, or increasing the range or effects ect... It was just a matter of being prepared that annoyed me as he is usually a prepared person. The guy who has most of his spells down at least knows what the ones he likes does, I don't blame a person for being unfamiliar with spells they rarely use but really, it shouldn't be on me to have to keep them in check...especially when his reading was that far off.

 

[Ancalagon]

Just so I understand, what are we dealing with here?

Scenario A:
GM: So John, what does your character do?
John: I cast melf's acid arrow on the ogre!
GM: And that does what again?
John: It does acid damage and er *flips pages* ah I have to attack *rolls* made it! the damage... *glances down* 2d4 per round!

Scenario B:
GM: So John, what does your character do?
John: I cast a spell
GM: Okay, which spell?
John: Well I'm out of magic missile so... *glances at character sheet* erm... Melf's acid arrow?
GM: And that does what again?
John: *bovine look*
GM: Well?
John: Acid?

In scenario A, all John really has to do is to look up his spell when it's not his turn. That way when he announces he's casting his spell, he knows what it does he just read it! All this needs is a slight adjustment in table behavior.

Scenario B well... that's not so good.


In other words, are we talking about a player who constantly refers to the PHB for spell info, or someone who's clueless?

 

[Ovinomancer]

Tier 1 players? You gotta be kidding me. D&D isn't a competitive sport...

Pretty sure he means tiers of play, like 1-5 1st tier, 6-10 2nd tier, etc, as in character power tiers. Kinda illuminates the intended point of player a higher level character when you don't have the basics down, which is what I think he meant. Doesn't really make it that much better, though....