Maxperson
Morkus from Orkus
Can you tell me the difference between a spell that causes a fiery explosion and a magical ability that causes a fiery explosion?
D&D 5E The challenges of high level adventure design.
You can only really pull ot off once, though. I don't think you have to lean on world shaking consequences for high level adventures. Hercules' 12 labors did not save the world.
In D&D? They are completely different things. D&D isn't Hero or M&M. It doesn't have a construct-a-power system that you slap some themes and limitations on. Spells are actual things that exist in the world in addition to.in the game book.
Look, it's not a maxim I'm trying to force on anyone else. I'm just saying that dragons as casters of the same magic as PCs is, to me, weak sauce. It's lazy and unimaginative. The same goes for fiends and celestials with spell like abilities, or even using spells for illithid psionics.
Maxperson
Morkus from Orkus
Not in D&D. With dragons. You don't want dragons to have spells, but you are okay with them having magical abilities. Why not just think of dragon spells as dragon abilities?
I agree, but I also think high level "campaigns" are mostly silly. Your goal is to have a nice little ending with maybe 1-3 adventurers to capstone your game and then go on to the next one. But having a campaign that is just non-stop epic threats just feels really weird after a while.
Hercules' 12 level is also not high level dnd, its midlevel at best. Most of the monsters Herculus fights are mid CR type creaturers. Rerouting the river to clean the stables, move earth is 6th level, control water is 4th. And hell with enough time, you could use the mold earth cantrip to do a lot of the work.
Greecian myths are models for mid level dnd at most, truly high levels (like 15-20) is just an entirely different ballgame.
There are lots of really good Superman stories that don't rely on saving the world either.
And I would argue with the "goal" of high level being a few capstone adventures. It can be that. It can also be the fantasyland equivalent of an ongoing superhero campaign.
I don't have to. I just design abilities for the dragons -- and demons and abominations and whatevers. Again, I'm not trying to convince you of anything. I'm saying it is not convincing for the solution to boring, lazy dragon design to be boring, lazy spell like abilities or spellcasting.
MarkB
Legend
Superman's pretty much the equivalent of a high-level Fighter or Paladin, though - awesome abilities, some of them quite surprising in application, but not the broad array of capabilities.
A full D&D party is more like the Justice League, and they don't tend to get called out all together for anything much smaller than a planetary-scale crisis.
I don't know what to tell you. I have lots of experience running high powered games (in various systems and genres) that haven't relied on the save the world trope. I've done that too, of course, but it isn't necessary. But if folks can't imagine how that could be, I won't lecture.
Uni-the-Unicorn!
Hero
I’m of 2 minds. I like 4e monsters with bespoke abilities, but I also like the added flexibility of a limited spell list and not wasting all of that space on the stat block. A combination of the 2 is ideal I think.
Take 5e dragons. If you add the lair actions as part of the stat block, that shows unique and interesting dragon magic. I would then be fine with rounding them out with a few spells complying with the spellcasting variant. Then I can use them or not.
