D&D 5E The Decrease in Desire for Magic in D&D

[GMforPowergamers]

It is a new thing. Rings of Wizardry were incredibly rare

those were incredible powerful... you could double the number of spells you prep for a level...

 

[DND_Reborn]

those were incredible powerful... you could double the number of spells you prep for a level...

Yep, and the chance of finding one in a lair treasure was less than 1 in 6000.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Yep, and the chance of finding one in a lair treasure was less than 1 in 6000

for a good reason

 

[James Gasik]

I also forgot to mention Pearls of Power.

 

[DND_Reborn]

I also forgot to mention Pearls of Power.

Recalling one spell (typically 5th or lower level) is certainly useful, but not really a big deal IME.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I also forgot to mention Pearls of Power.

Oh man I got a 2e wizard way back when that got 3 of these (2 for 1st level and 1 for 3rd) and I also had a ring of prot and bracers of armor... I was all decked out and it was amazing. (Not to derail but I still 100% did not dominate the game)

 

[Maxperson]

Which sounds like a good idea but then you start to get into the 'HP are meat' debate and I don't know if you want to go down that route? It's not like you can guaratee not to take any hits, there's gotta at least be some thresholds going on here. You'll also end up with way more wack-a-mole healing.

If you're going to turn hit points into meat, you should also go with armor as DR to minimize the death spirals. So if you get hit, the damage still has to be great enough to get past the damage reduction your chain mail gives you. If wounded you'd still be afforded some protection from the future hits that are happening more often.

 

[Minigiant]

If you're going to turn hit points into meat, you should also go with armor as DR to minimize the death spirals. So if you get hit, the damage still has to be great enough to get past the damage reduction your chain mail gives you. If wounded you'd still be afforded some protection from the future hits that are happening more often.

In my Homebrew Urban Fantasy game, each racial warrior archetype got an additional defense.

The Dwarf and Dragon Warriors gets DR as their skin turns to stone or metal or regrows dragon scales.
The Elf or Gnome Warrior gets Glamours that take hits for them.
The Dhamphir and Fiendish Warrirors gets to bonus defenses but can blooddrink to regain Health
The Werewolf Warrior get more Health.
The Angelic Warrior can self heal using Spirit
The Human Warrior can ether spend their Spirit to cast shields or use their increased focus points to increase their Defense (AC) to the point that they are very hard to hit.

Base D&D would probably be only okay with the DR and increased AC.

 

[Lanefan]

See above. Rarity is irrelevant if the argument is "the game includes things to mitigate these problems." Are they present, or not?

You seem to be wilfully ignoring the rather large difference between ever-present and rarely-present.

Yes, things exist in the game that mitigate problems; but it's by no means guaranteed that any given character or even any given party will ever see some of them.

Every party will eventually get access to Continual Light. Not every party will see a Bag of Holding but one does show up now and then, and few if any will ever see a Ring of Wizardry (in 40 years I've never seen one either as DM or player).

Why are you standing in fireball formation? This is, again, what I mean about being able to mitigate the weaknesses. Tactics alone can significantly protect you from this issue. (Also: talk about an incredible chore, rolling such saves! No wonder they didn't survive to WotC D&D.)

Fireball formation is unavoidable in close quarters, unless you want the party so spread out that they end up being fed to the foes one at a time.

Also, see above. Rolling a save vs spell (or whatever) for every single item on your person is an incredibly tedious thing.

Every single item, yes. Every single magic item plus important non-magical items, no; if you just get on with it efficiently.

I'll always have people roll for their backpacks, for example, as loss of one means it's way harder to carry a bunch of small thngs around. Ditto their mundane armour, sheids, and weapons. And allmagic items must save. But trivialities like the pair of gambling dice someone has, I'm not nearly as concerned about.

Likewise, rolling to see whether you're allowed to get better at the core of your class fantasy is frustrating. It's not that these things are necessarily "complicated," as you put it, but that they are tedious, frustrating, distracting, or simply just not very fun.

Whatever happened to the idea of overcoming frustration itself being part of (or maybe even much of) the fun?

Again, rarity is irrelevant, because people will keep trying until they can get such a thing. Which, incidentally, is another reason people wanted to skip past a bunch of the inhibiting or mitigating factors from early editions: everyone understood that you'd keep rerolling Bob (Bob XXII replaced Bob XXI after he died of ear seeker, who replaced Bob XX after she died of a severe overdose of fire, who replaced Bob XIX after he died from falling damage, who...) until you succeed.

This Bob-the-many idea is, IME, utter hyperbole.

Maybe twice have I ever seen someone come right back with the same character after the preceding one died; and once of that twice was me when a cool character idea I had didn't get out of its first session (and in fact didn't even last long enough to introduce itself!), I came right back with the same character idea again - or as close as the dice would let me. And we go through a lot of characters.

Far more often, I see one player style a character after that of another player's character that has turned out to be successful.

If you're going to repeatedly make new characters and try again, much of the alleged excitement of high-lethality games drains away because it becomes a spin of the roulette wheel. Will the ball land on the right spot this time? Who knows, but you know it is essentially guaranteed to do so if you keep spinning long enough, and there's no cost to spinning again.

This is a very large point: the game is (and IMO should be) largely predicated on luck once game mechanics rear their heads.

While it's fair that you didn't find them such, a lot of people did--and do. Inventory management, for example, is something that a number of computer RPGs do, and most players don't like it very much. Instead of being an area where if you do well, good things happen, it is an area where unless you do well, bad things happen. When there's no reward for success, only punishment for failure, it becomes hard to see why the mechanic adds value to the game.

The lack of punishment is the reward.

 

[Lanefan]

Here's the info from AD&D 1E DMG. I still remember the cringes I would see when a player failed a save vs. Disintegrate. First the PC goes poof and then so does about 90% of their stuff LOL!

View attachment 262547

Wiht only very minor modification, this is what I still use. I think I've added maybe one more save category and one or two more item types, but that's it.

Lightning is the nasty one most often encountered by typical parties. Disintegration is rare.