Spell Philosophy you would like to see

[Tony Vargas]

Agreed. I don't think that should mean Magic is always the worst option however because, then it sucks.

Not worst, hardest. I expect it'd often be the best option.

Even in your own example the Mage isn't doing anything anyone else can't do, he's just reflavoring it.

He is, actually, the Theif can perform the task, but not in /time/.

I, personally, would be happy if the 5e mages rocked Exploration and Social, but blew chunks in combat. But it won't fly, Fireball, Lightning bolt, Cone of Cold. Sacred cows of magic boom.

I'd be very disapointed if anyone was forced to suck in 1/3rd (or 2/3rds, as the fighter seems poised to) of the game.

So. I agree that combat magic should be risky, or costly, or at least throttled back to 2 rounds of awesome a day and mostly Magic Missiles.

Actually, I see nothing wrong with magic being more available. What's the point of being able to do the impossible, if you can't do it when it counts?

 

[Elf Witch]

Curious. Did he get really lucky, or was there some other factor at work here?

Anyway, as in all things, the b-word applies. Most of the time, though, the danger is more that magic makes mundane efforts irrelevant than the other way around. Surely there is a happy medium between "the wizard's knock and invisibility spells put the rogue's Open Locks and Stealth skills to shame", and "the rogue outclasses the wizard in his knowledge of Arcana, History and Spellcraft."

He has got more skill points and has them for some reason in spellcraft and arcana so he will usually roll better. The history was luck on his part he has only one rank in ti but was rolling natural 20s which in our game gives you a plus 10.

I am all for bringing magic in line with other classes just not making it harder to be a mage.

 

[HeinorNY]

"Magic is always the hard way."

But it has always being the hard way.
Magic-users need to spend years of study to learn how to cast spells, and constant focus on their arcane studies during their career to become a successful wizard.
They need the spellbook that requires special inks and that means of alot of investments in gold and time. And if he loses his spellbok he is pretty much screwed.
His spells can be disrupted, they can be resisted, the damage they inflict can be halved or be the minimum possible. The M-U might find himself without the proper spell he needs in the ocasion, and he needs to cast them wisely, otherwise he won't have them when he really needs them.
Magic in D&D is unpredictable, limited and mostly unreliable, and the magic-user needs to handle that every day.

Fighters just have a much easier and simpler life.

 

[tlantl]

But it has always being the hard way.
Magic-users need to spend years of study to learn how to cast spells, and constant focus on their arcane studies during their career to become a successful wizard.
They need the spellbook that requires special inks and that means of alot of investments in gold and time. And if he loses his spellbok he is pretty much screwed.
His spells can be disrupted, they can be resisted, the damage they inflict can be halved or be the minimum possible. The M-U might find himself without the proper spell he needs in the ocasion, and he needs to cast them wisely, otherwise he won't have them when he really needs them.
Magic in D&D is unpredictable, limited and mostly unreliable, and the magic-user needs to handle that every day.

Fighters just have a much easier and simpler life.

Except in 3e (Pathfinder) where you could suddenly take a level in a class that traditionally took years to learn even the basics of. Hell you didn't even have to stop to train in the class you already had. As soon as you got the XP it's instant level up.

I think a lot of things about spell casters in recent editions need to be rethought. Druids and wizards suddenly being able to polymorph into huge monsters unfettered. A Druid's animal companions going from being a friend and ally that he needed to protect to being cannon fodder to throw at the bad guys totally changed the flavor of the class.

Maybe fixing these things could go a long way to bringing mages and clerics to where they were before they were given free reign.

 

[Aloïsius]

I would like to not have the "lesser/greater/ultimate" version of the same spell. A simple, elegant way to have that would be the possibility for this kind of spell to be cast on a higher level slot.
We already know that fireball deals 5d6 damage. Ok, but that's as a 3th level spell. When you cast it using a 5th level spell slot, it should be doing a lot more damage (let say, 9D6...). If we don't have this kind of mechanism and if spells don't scale, then we will get a bazillion redundant, boring spells (fireball, slightly better fireball, fireball with a lot of smoke, fireball that push you back, fireball that really hurts and so on).
It would be a waste of paper and a waste of variety : for each cure spell that ends up duplicated at every spell level, you have to sacrifice one fun, original interesting spell.

Also, note that using spell slot this way allow to easily make the transition for mana point system, like 3.5 psi...

 

[billd91]

Except in 3e (Pathfinder) where you could suddenly take a level in a class that traditionally took years to learn even the basics of. Hell you didn't even have to stop to train in the class you already had. As soon as you got the XP it's instant level up.

Technically, mechanically, you can. But this is also where the rubber hits the road in the difference between role playing and roll playing. The role player who decides to take a level of a class that should take years to master works it in - perhaps it's in the back story of the character. Perhaps he role plays out a burgeoning interest in the arts as his character develops.

And even then, the player character, by virtue of being part of a story far beyond the experiences of the normals in the world around him, can have any range of experiences to justify why he should have power beyond what it normally takes to mine, smelt, and forge an iron wall by mundane means.

 

[HeinorNY]

Except in 3e (Pathfinder) where you could suddenly take a level in a class that traditionally took years to learn even the basics of. Hell you didn't even have to stop to train in the class you already had. As soon as you got the XP it's instant level up.

That's a classic example of rules that are cold and are about the pure mechanics of the game, they are not responsable for the idiosyncratic results of their use.
You could create a wizard character and tell the DM he just woke up one day and decided to become a magic user, the next day he was a Level 1 Wizard. The rules can't prevent that either. If that makes no sense in your campaign, as the example you gave in your post, then why use the rules that way? It's your game, not the rule's game.
People are running the game and the DM has the final word always.

 

[tlantl]

That was one of the many things about 3e that got me frustrated with the rules. they seemed to make changes in the way things worked just to make changes.

Each change caused another set of changes until they defied simple logic. The seemingly too powerful multi-classing rules of 1e/2e looked like they needed changing but what they came up with turned out to be far worse than the rules they replaced.

Taking away the controls that limited the power of classes, spells, or how combat works can do far worse damage than the slight imbalance that is perceived in the offending rules.

I used to have to have a mountain of material ready for game day because we'd play through it all in the six or eight hours we were together. when we switched to 3e that same mountain of stuff took a month to play through because of the horribly long winded combats we suffered through.

Players leveled too quickly and never seemed to be satisfied with the stuff they had, always wanting 20th level powers from the start. In ten years of D&D before 3e I had never gotten a magic user past eleventh level. The highest any player at my table reached was seventeenth level and it took him six years to do it.


What I would like from the developers regarding spells is some real thought on how to give players the power spells are capable of with some serious consequences for their use. I don't want a player at my table abusing polymorphs and hastes and other things that should be used in moderation lest the caster becomes the thing they polymorph into or age several years each time they cast a haste spell.

 

[Li Shenron]

1) If there is a roll to hit, there should be no Saving Throw for the damage portion of the spell, (just like weapons).

2) Some partial effect even with a successful save, in 3e high levels it was too easy to have high Saving Throw bonuses.

3) Set durations, not random durations.

4) No Spell Resistance, ( monsters can have save bonuses for rider effects...a hag might all be immune to Hold Person, but should take Magic Missle damage).

5) No Categorical Nerfs to classes of magic...ie Undead are immune to Charm or Illusion magic.

I can take 1) to 4), but not 5). There have to be situations where one character's main schtik doesn't work (or doesn't work well), otherwise players will never be thinking out of the box.

It also eleminates the dilemma of wanting to play a 3e Beguiler, but the game is Undead heavy ...

What dilemma? Either the DM adapts the campaign, or the player plays another character. And I would normally favor the second, since there are also other players at the table and adapting to all of them may be impossible.

 

[Elf Witch]

That was one of the many things about 3e that got me frustrated with the rules. they seemed to make changes in the way things worked just to make changes.

Each change caused another set of changes until they defied simple logic. The seemingly too powerful multi-classing rules of 1e/2e looked like they needed changing but what they came up with turned out to be far worse than the rules they replaced.

Taking away the controls that limited the power of classes, spells, or how combat works can do far worse damage than the slight imbalance that is perceived in the offending rules.

I used to have to have a mountain of material ready for game day because we'd play through it all in the six or eight hours we were together. when we switched to 3e that same mountain of stuff took a month to play through because of the horribly long winded combats we suffered through.

Players leveled too quickly and never seemed to be satisfied with the stuff they had, always wanting 20th level powers from the start. In ten years of D&D before 3e I had never gotten a magic user past eleventh level. The highest any player at my table reached was seventeenth level and it took him six years to do it.


What I would like from the developers regarding spells is some real thought on how to give players the power spells are capable of with some serious consequences for their use. I don't want a player at my table abusing polymorphs and hastes and other things that should be used in moderation lest the caster becomes the thing they polymorph into or age several years each time they cast a haste spell.

There are ways around this. In the first 3.0 game I played in we played every week for two years and only hit ninth level. The DM tossed out the XP charts and slowed the XP progression down.

I like the fact that Pathfinder has three XP progression charts. I know that WOTC when developing 3E looked at how long most campaigns last and made the discovery that most don't last longer then a year. So they designed it to got from 1 to 20 in that time.

I think a lot of the fixes they did were good ones. Multi classing was one of them. It gives the ability to really define your character concept. Is it able to be abused by min maxers yes it is.

Spells casters really needed fixing no one but maybe a baby should be able to be killed by a house cat and playing a wizard at earlier levels was rather sucky at times. Most players I knew didn't want to play them unless they knew for sure that the campaign was going to be a long one.

Getting hit and losing one of your very limited spells sucked big time and I thought giving the wizard a save was a great idea.

Comparing polymorph in 2E to 3E the spell is not as stronger as it was back then.