D&D (2024) Spells. What needs adjusted?

[OldSchoolGamerGirl]

When you only have the one mechanic and are afraid of making the player add numbers together, what were they going to do?

yeah but you could have had it work like bless or guidance and add a die or make it a bonus action to cast or something

 

[tetrasodium]

Honestly the devs have over valued DOT for a long time. 3e and 4e had the same problems, anything that was DOT just never did enough damage.

I think they feared the once in a blue moon scenario where a spell would activate for a full minute and do more damage than anything else ever and people would cry imbalance. but the truth is that is just so incredibly rare, dnd fights are just too short to be having those kinds of effects.

One houserule in 4e I used that you could for DOT was the notion of "immediate and continuous saves until passed".

For example in 4e you had effects that would do "ongoing 5 damage (save ends)". So each round you would take the damage and make a save (though remember a 4e save is 10+ on a d20, no modifiers except for very specific ones). I houseruled some effects to be "take 5 damage, immediately make a save. If you fail, immediately take another 5 damage and make a save. Continue until you pass".

That gives some real potential fear and oomph to those kinds of spells, though it does require a lot of lucky rolls to get the "big damage".

3.x DoT spells were generally conjuration & ignored spell resistance. That made them somewhat reliable against SR:yes monsters

 

[Willie the Duck]

General: All the 'become a monster-manual entry' and 'gain a(/several) monster manual entry(/entries) as additional combatants' spells (summons, shapechanges, etc.) need a reexamination, Simulacrum most of all. Spells with only a few ways of getting around them (Force Cage and force in general) as well.

There are some very effective builds that make Magic Missile for a ton.

Those are generally based on getting damage-adds intended for single die effects which happen to affect each magic missile in the spell because of a confluence of specific wordings that are unlikely to survive an edition update.

 

[Stalker0]

General: All the 'become a monster-manual entry' and 'gain a(/several) monster manual entry(/entries) as additional combatants' spells (summons, shapechanges, etc.) need a reexamination, Simulacrum most of all. Spells with only a few ways of getting around them (Force Cage and force in general) as well.


Those are generally based on getting damage-adds intended for single die effects which happen to affect each magic missile in the spell because of a confluence of specific wordings that are unlikely to survive an edition update.

Yeah I’m never going to buy the interpretation that MM can trigger 3 concentration saves on the same caster with a 1st level spell.

 

[James Gasik]

When you only have the one mechanic and are afraid of making the player add numbers together, what were they going to do?

Add another die to the roll of course, like Guidance and Bless!

 

[James Gasik]

General: All the 'become a monster-manual entry' and 'gain a(/several) monster manual entry(/entries) as additional combatants' spells (summons, shapechanges, etc.) need a reexamination, Simulacrum most of all. Spells with only a few ways of getting around them (Force Cage and force in general) as well.

What really strikes me about this facet of 5e design is that the developers knew this was a bad idea after 3.5; see the "Polymorph Subschool" in Complete Arcane where they attempted to fix this very problem.

And yet, despite knowing it was bad, they went ahead and did it again anyways...

 

[Horwath]

make them like the 4e defenses and pull form best of 2 stats too

I would like it better if it uses both stats.

Fort: str+con
ref: dex+int
will: wis+cha

then with pointbuy you can have better saves if you do not buy expensive stats.
I.E. with racial +1/+1/+1 you can have

16,16,16,8,8,8. total bonuses +6, or
14,14,14,12,12,12. total bonuses +9. On average +1 on all 3 saves

 

[OldSchoolGamerGirl]

I would like it better if it uses both stats.

Fort: str+con
ref: dex+int
will: wis+cha

then with pointbuy you can have better saves if you do not buy expensive stats.
I.E. with racial +1/+1/+1 you can have

16,16,16,8,8,8. total bonuses +6, or
14,14,14,12,12,12. total bonuses +9. On average +1 on all 3 saves

i like it, and I never thought of it that way. bif thumbs up