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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Someone" data-source="post: 5977500" data-attributes="member: 5656">It's not just about balance. About the 15 minute game day, first I’ve never had or for that matter heard about a player who specifically though along that line – blow all his spells in the first couple encounters, then retreat, but I had that specific headache as a DM since I rarely design or play pure dungeon crawls and prefer adventures with more plot. This often leads to fewer combats per day as those kinds of adventures often demand fewer but more meaningful  combats and have less places for orc and pie encounters. That’s why I find facepalm-worthy 5e’s assumption of a certain number of combats / combat rounds per day. My adventures don’t work like that unless I plan to do a dungeon crawl Caves of Chaos style. D&D may be ultimately best at the game of the murderhobo gang of looters, but it’s not the exclusive way people play it.This leads to combats where spellcasters had a lot of power unless I go out of my way to drain their spells, make the enemies more resistant against magic, or just give the non casters much more power through magic items or whatnot.Second, the amount and power of utility spells in past editions were astounding and made running an adventure a game of spells. This doesn’t come just from game experience – I’m a frequent Story hour reader, and I’ve not found a high level campaign which doesn’t play like this. First, the investigation starts with some spells, then they try to locate the bad guy whose identity they just divined with more spells, but find out he’s protected from their spells with more spells. (This means the party either has at least a mage and a cleric, or it’s going nowhere, and the bad guys either have a mage or they’re toast in the first 5 minutes of the game) They cleverly go around those with ingenious use of spells, like scrying an associate instead of the BBEG. They travel there using more spells, beat the traps with spells and confront the bad guy, at which point the fighter types use their one and only trick they’ve built their entire concept around and do their leaping charge or whatever, dealing a ton of damage. Which leads to the third point. Fighter types have always been ultimately boring unless the only thing you care is about tons of damage, which they were capable to do no doubt, but paled in comparison to the number of fun tricks the spellcasters were able to do. I like the concept of playing a fighter, but I also like having mechanical options for many reasons – that’s why I enjoyed the psychic warrior in 3.5 and the love the 4e fighter.</blockquote>

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