evilbob
Adventurer
The thread title is a little dramatic, but now that 5.0 is a little older and campaigns are a little more along, how are people feeling about spells that are not save-or-die, but rather save-or-can't-do-anything? (Mid-campaign spells, typically.) I find they tend to create two weird situations that turn gameplay a bit "meh" for us:
First, if the party casts a save-or-win spell (we have a bard with hypnotic pattern, for example - and now polymorph), it means that this character either single-handedly destroys the encounter... or, they wasted a turn. Thanks to how human beings work (perception bias and whatnot), even a 50/50 split on this means the player tends to believe they waste turns far more often than they save the day... which means they think combat is boring and they aren't good at it. Or, they trivialize the encounter, which is fine - but also a bit anticlimactic, especially when it's some sort of boss. Or you run into the even worse situation, where suddenly all bosses are curiously immune to charm or whatever... Thus negating this character's One Big Thing. It's a tricky line to walk, in my opinion.
Or, you have the opposite, where the monsters cast on the players - which in my opinion is the worst of all. This means the player has to save, or skip one or more turns - which is awful. It's helpless + frustrating + disengaging all in one. I've never seen a phone get pulled out faster, and when the phones come out, that player is going to take a long time and a lot of effort on my part to come back. On the other hand, pretty much all monster attacks can be categorized as a) does damage to one or more PCs, b) incapacitates a PC in some manner. And when I'm running a game, just throwing around damage every turn gets to be a chore - not to mention how slow it can get when you have lots of baddies. It also tends to encourage simplistic thinking - "ok, who do I hit this round" - as opposed to interesting play - "I drop the chandelier on his head to capture him!" - because every round is just a series of numbers until the battle is over.
Part of this is definitely due to our playstyle, as we tend to have fewer battles against bigger foes (especially since our particular party can do things like kill a CR 13 purple worm in one round at level 9 - it was their 4th encounter of the day). We just don't have time to play out more than ~4 or 5 battles in one session, and most of them aren't big combat players (it's just not their favorite), so combat is fewer and further between - which means One Big Thing spells have a MUCH bigger impact, and players losing a turn is a larger percentage of all combat rounds being done that night.
I've tried upping the number of bad guys so One Big Thing spells don't do as much, but then if the One Big Thing spell doesn't hit - oh boy. They are screwed. Plus, it just takes forever to run so many monsters. Ultimately, what ends up happening is that we just run even fewer encounters... but that just makes both problems bigger.
Anyway, just wondering how others have navigated these spells and whether or not they have been as much of an issue.
First, if the party casts a save-or-win spell (we have a bard with hypnotic pattern, for example - and now polymorph), it means that this character either single-handedly destroys the encounter... or, they wasted a turn. Thanks to how human beings work (perception bias and whatnot), even a 50/50 split on this means the player tends to believe they waste turns far more often than they save the day... which means they think combat is boring and they aren't good at it. Or, they trivialize the encounter, which is fine - but also a bit anticlimactic, especially when it's some sort of boss. Or you run into the even worse situation, where suddenly all bosses are curiously immune to charm or whatever... Thus negating this character's One Big Thing. It's a tricky line to walk, in my opinion.
Or, you have the opposite, where the monsters cast on the players - which in my opinion is the worst of all. This means the player has to save, or skip one or more turns - which is awful. It's helpless + frustrating + disengaging all in one. I've never seen a phone get pulled out faster, and when the phones come out, that player is going to take a long time and a lot of effort on my part to come back. On the other hand, pretty much all monster attacks can be categorized as a) does damage to one or more PCs, b) incapacitates a PC in some manner. And when I'm running a game, just throwing around damage every turn gets to be a chore - not to mention how slow it can get when you have lots of baddies. It also tends to encourage simplistic thinking - "ok, who do I hit this round" - as opposed to interesting play - "I drop the chandelier on his head to capture him!" - because every round is just a series of numbers until the battle is over.
Part of this is definitely due to our playstyle, as we tend to have fewer battles against bigger foes (especially since our particular party can do things like kill a CR 13 purple worm in one round at level 9 - it was their 4th encounter of the day). We just don't have time to play out more than ~4 or 5 battles in one session, and most of them aren't big combat players (it's just not their favorite), so combat is fewer and further between - which means One Big Thing spells have a MUCH bigger impact, and players losing a turn is a larger percentage of all combat rounds being done that night.
I've tried upping the number of bad guys so One Big Thing spells don't do as much, but then if the One Big Thing spell doesn't hit - oh boy. They are screwed. Plus, it just takes forever to run so many monsters. Ultimately, what ends up happening is that we just run even fewer encounters... but that just makes both problems bigger.
Anyway, just wondering how others have navigated these spells and whether or not they have been as much of an issue.
