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[tetrasodium]

How many of these reports of "difficulty targeting AOE spell" issues are from trying to do tactical grid play without something like battlemat & minis/ grid paper & skittles/ whiteboard & markers/etc and how many of them are blaming AOS for an optometry issue?

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Trying to place the AOE to target max number of opponents and min (hopefully 0) Allie’s then describing spell then rolling damage all the while the DM has to roll all the saves.
8d20 vs AC is much quicker

I am mostly talking damage but only cause a control spell is worse. “Okay so this grabs targets and creates hazardous terrain”

Let’s use fireball. Since it is your example.
Let’s say the fight JUST started and no one is in melee (no Allie’s to worry about) we start with counting out the area and seeing if we can get all the enemies. Let’s say we can hit 4 of them. Then the caster rolls a ton of d6 s and adds then (Roll20 speeds this part up) then the DM has to look up 4 dex saves check to see if they have magic and or fire resist then roll 4 saves and figure out half and quarter damage depending on make/miss save and resist.

Fighter with 3 attacks action surge 3 more will pull longbow shoot 6 times roll 6d20 to hit and on hits roll damage.

Both then (or maybe first for melee) count squares to move.


Fireball no that one we mostly know by heart but we have to look up burning hands or cone of cold for size and most others for range and figure who we can and can’t hit.

I would say mechanic vs fluff is about the same for both with us.

Because the fighter (or any even a hexblade or blade singer or armor artificer) has made so many melee attacks and can do it no issues. The caster (again it can be the same bladesinger or hexblade in this case) has a dozen spells so they have to adjust for the one they are useing. If it is. The most common one they use it goes easier but never as easy as “x attacks”

You gotta know I ain’t reading all that.

The discussion already concluded. Everyone else has moved on.

 

[mamba]

You do realize that my post is still like... on the message board, right? Just taking it out of context with zero extra effort and then adding that you did so right under it isn't going to work all that well.

which one, the one I just quoted a part of or the original one where you said flight is no issue?

Flight is not an issue. Poor guidance in encounter design that favors ground pounders on a wide open plain and the idea that the flyer does not care about their party is the issue.

Yeah, flight is an issue, and I ignored the rest of your most recent post because to me the reply was so bad I dismissed it outright instead of bothering to reply to each part

So you can reach flying creatures by climbing or jumping? yeah, not really

You can go around barricades? Very much depends, have fun going around a castle to get the defenders from the other side.

The rest was no better, but I did not feel like responding to each one

 

[mamba]

And the ranged character can increase the distance. That is known as "kiting".

yeah, there are limits to that, unlike when you fly, and no one is following you around for six rounds like you seem to believe (further down in your post)

And if you are doing solo play, and have the range to completely out range your opponent, you likely have the range to make multiple turns of attacks. Most enemies aren't major threats after you've had six free turns to shoot them.

great, so the assumption is you are outside their range, can stay outside that range indefinitely while being able to hit them, and they make no attempts to hide

Yeah, if this is how your fights play out I agree, then flying does not make things much worse

But they are for the rest of the party. And if you have sharpshooter a barrier is only effective if it is total cover. And if your enemy has total cover from you... you have total cover from them.

But they can have close to full cover while you have none. Ever seen these narrow slits in castle walls? They exist to shoot arrows from while being essentially in full cover.

Additionally, Roofs are a thing. Those are barriers to the sky. As are trees. Or are we assuming a perfectly flat plain with only grass and a wall.

I did not say no encounter can deal with them, I disagreed with the notion that they are no issue for encounters in general

You are absolutely correct. Which is why Find Familiar is so useful, with its tiny flying creature that can get into hard to reach places and is a 1st level ritual. Additionally, there is the small matter of the REST OF THE PARTY who cannot get to that hard to reach place. "Well, the flier will tie a rope-" cool, just like a familiar can.

Find Familiar, the spell that takes an hour to cast and results in a familiar that cannot attack, very useful in combat

 

[Remathilis]

To be honest, the problem with 4e wasn't all classes acting like wizards, it's actually a big move to balance classes with each other. The real problem with the 4th edition is the system itself. Look at the 5th edition, it's a much more reliable and mature system, especially with bounded accuracy. For me, WotC should have only 4 classes (the warrior, the mage, the specialist and the priest), well balanced among themselves, than leaving 12 without any guidelines.

Do you want a barbarian or a monk? Just choose The Fighter class and choose unarmored defense. Do you want a Warrior? Just choose armored defense and so on. The same with weapons. You don't need rage and other stuffs to create a barbarian. At heart, the barbarian is a fighter like the fighter himself. The same can be said for Sorcerer & Wizard and Druid & Cleric. They wasted a lot of time trying to differentiate classes that are so difficult to balance with each other. WotC should look at what they did with Warlock and then recreate it for all 4 classes, letting the player choose every skill or specialty their character should have.

Lastly, let martials (aka warriors and specialists) have moves like spells. They deserve it. There is no need to be that simple and there are so many players that want this, if you don't agree with me you should just look at some threads and videos about martial arts vs spellcasting. It's time to move on and let martials be way more deep mechanically.

At that point, if you have four board generic classes that are all balanced, just make all the abilities available to anyone and get rid of the class system.

 

[Charlaquin]

...without ever playing the game! Truly a remarkably clairvoyant set of people!

Huh? 4e released in 2008

 

[Vaalingrade]

which one, the one I just quoted a part of or the original one where you said flight is no issue?

Ooo, the original where you ignored everything said after I said flying wasn't an issue! That one, please!

The rest was no better, but I did not feel like responding to each one

If you don't want to actually engage in a discussion, you can just not instead of just cherrypicking, mischaracterizing and removing context.

 

[Yaarel]

I was relistening to the video in the Original Post.

I am reconsidering my view on the playtest Warlock that has partcaster spell slots.

My first view is, the Warlock is very much a fullcaster. The 2014 Warlock is what a fullcaster looks like when using Short Rest refreshes.

When switching to a Long Rest refresh, to represent the Warlock as if a partcaster is jarring.

Crawford in the video makes a good point. Essentially, the fullcasters have the spell progression take up too much design space in the base class. There isnt enough design space for other kinds of base class features. (Nevermind there isnt enough space for meaningful subclasses.) If the playtest gave the Warlock a fullcaster spell progression, there would be insufficient design space for things like Warlock Invocations and diverse subclasses.

For me, the most important requirement of a fullcaster is the ability to cast slot 9 spells at the highest tier. The playtest Warlock can still cast the most powerful spells via the new Invocations. I can work with this. I agree, ample design space for various kinds of Invocations is central to Warlock concept.


This makes me wonder. Maybe the fullcasters have a design problem. At the higher class levels, the low slots have too much bloat. The bloat can be problematic by lacking ease or pleasantness of options during gameplay − issues like choice overload and so on. But the bloat can also be an annoyance such as spamming the Shield spell.

Maybe we can rethink the fullcasters, or at least doublecheck if we prefer the 2014 fullcaster progression.

Maybe the fullcasters do better to look more like the playtest Warlock?

What if. The low slots bloat slims down dramatically. Instead, there are only a few low slots. All of the extra design space is repurposed for interesting class features, and great subclass choices.

Or maybe, the fullcasters use spell points. Say, the fullcasters have a number of spell points equal to 1 + the class level. (The cost of a spell is its slot. So a Fireball costs 3 points. Wish costs 9 points. One cant cast Fireball until class level 5, or Wish until level 17.) This spell pool refreshes every Long Rest. But. All of the extra design space, is used for things resembling Warlock Invocations. This extra design space lets Bladesingers be awesome at gishy melee combat, lets Evokers do fun stuff.


The Warlock is definitely a fullcaster. Maybe we can doublecheck what a fullcaster can be.

 

[Vaalingrade]

If they gave the Warlock enough extra Invocations to balance it out, maybe. But they did not.

 

[Argyle King]

Assuming it's fine to have Eldritch Blast be the most damaging cantrip because it is balanced around being Warlock-specific, what does that mean for when feats or multiclassing give Eldritch Blast to a different class?