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

[Lanefan]

That's like saying we should have heavy gravity zones where it's impossible to wear armor or swing weapons because it's narratively useful to have the occasional situation where armed combat is turned off.

Zone of extreme magnetism for the win, baby! Seen one of those in the past - all kinds of fun until we figured out how to switch the magnets off. Till then, all the tanks were glued to the ceiling.

I don't mind areas of altered magic, like on other planes, diminished magic, or even wild magic (which can be fun for a little while), but telling a player "no, you can't do jack here" is ridiculous.

It's only ridiculous if you assume - which I do not - that everyone at the table has to be involved all the time.

Otherwise, it's no different than your character being incapacitated for a while by some other means e.g. paralyzed, dead, whatever.

 

[DND_Reborn]

So these...

Well then the question becomes.

What changed?

Why was it okay before but not okay now?

are rhetorical questions then?

Because this...

It says you don't know why.

already answers them.

To answer your other questions:

Did you skip an edition? YES (little 3E, no 4E)
Did you play multiple all caster parties? No
Did your DMs run casters heavy on both NPCsand monster? No

 

[Fanaelialae]

Sure, I've seen documentaries on the incredible things people can do via skill and training, but we have blind-fighting already and frankly those acts to channel ki and harden their bodies (like literally the spear tip would not go into the monks body!) required intense focus and psyching themselves up for it--not literally steel-skin.


That is a fault of 5E design. In 1E, spells were random (unless you had a very nice DM!) and you still had to roll to learn them--I had a few magic-users in those days who failed to learn fireball OR lightning bolt.

Frankly, blind fighting sucks. In every edition (except those where it doesn't exist). It gives you a slight edge if your opponent is also blinded, but that's about it. It hardly meets a criteria sufficient to playing a conceptual blind swordsman.

This drives at my point. The D&D design for martial characters has generally to be to "err on the side of reality", resulting in fundamentally mundane characters. Meaning that martials generally can't even accomplish what accomplished people from the real world can achieve, much less their mythic counterparts.

If having the fighter wear a headband of the third eye allows the mythic blind swordsman to actually be designed "erring on the side of awesome/myth" while still preserving the sense of verisimilitude of the mundane martial crowd, I'd be all for it. Because it's the type of fluff I can easily ignore (obviously, so long as it is designed with the intent to be unobtrusive, such as these items not requiring attunement).

As to spells, I would say that the fault lies in design far earlier than that of 5e. As early as 2e, casters were allowed to choose their spells (even though it required a check to do so successfully). By 3e, I believe the check to learn new spells was only required for spells found in acquired spell books, not on level up. However, this isn't a trend that's likely to be reversed anytime soon. (The magic loving contingent would have a conniption if WotC tried.) So, IMO, the best open direction to take the design would be to make some magic items martial class features.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Sure, I've seen documentaries on the incredible things people can do via skill and training, but we have blind-fighting already and frankly those acts to channel ki and harden their bodies (like literally the spear tip would not go into the monks body!) required intense focus and psyching themselves up for it--not literally steel-skin.

Yes...and the point is, those are things that can be done here, in our mundane world where fantastical things essentially never happen.

What about a world where fantastical, but not strictly magical, things happen relatively often? What might such diligent training produce?

That is a fault of 5E design. In 1E, spells were random (unless you had a very nice DM!) and you still had to roll to learn them--I had a few magic-users in those days who failed to learn fireball OR lightning bolt.

As I said before: impeding the use of the powerful thing, making it more annoying and/or difficult to use. A technique a lot of players today don't find particularly satisfying, which is the major reason why it isn't used.

 

[Cadence]

Nods, believable, 20 minutes would take good stamina though. Yeh I do not find 4 per 6 seconds overly impressive and there are archers that can do full draw accurate attacks in 1.5 seconds and they are definitely highly skilled though not legendary and there is a snapshot technique that can bring it on faster. A legendary archer is doing a dozen shots before the first hits the target (Hiawatha?)

Of course the D&D sword swinger or archer is going after moving targets, gets a movement of their own, and gets to dodge incoming attacks that the modern speed practitioner probably isn't (Legalos not withstanding).

I wonder how far an undefending/unmoving attack rate would go for some of this.

Get triple your normal attack rate - you give up movement for the turn, all attacks against you before your next the have advantage and you fail any STR and DEX saves before your next turn. If movement is taken at the start of the current turn, double your normal attack rate instead of triple.

(Essentially mimicking the various conditions that make one non-responsive).

 

[HaroldTheHobbit]

Except, you kinda are, unless you can get your whole group to learn a new system, or you're one of those rare groups of non-D&D players.

Thankfully, me and my table of old grog friends play different games. I will wrap up our 2ish years 5e campaign in a couple of months, after that it's Savage Pathfinder and one of the adventure paths, after that it's WFRP4e, after that it's most probably Cthulhu and the Masks campaign - kind of a 5 year plan. And then it may be back to whatever D&D is by then, who knows.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Frankly, blind fighting sucks. In every edition (except those where it doesn't exist). It gives you a slight edge if your opponent is also blinded, but that's about it. It hardly meets a criteria sufficient to playing a conceptual blind swordsman.

This drives at my point. The D&D design for martial characters has generally to be to "err on the side of reality", resulting in fundamentally mundane characters. Meaning that martials generally can't even accomplish what accomplished people from the real world can achieve, much less their mythic counterparts.

If having the fighter wear a headband of the third eye allows the mythic blind swordsman to actually be designed "erring on the side of awesome/myth" while still preserving the sense of verisimilitude of the mundane martial crowd, I'd be all for it. Because it's the type of fluff I can easily ignore (obviously, so long as it is designed with the intent to be unobtrusive, such as these items not requiring attunement).

It isn't even erring on the side of actual reality though, where things like Legolas-style archery are actually within the bounds of human ability. It's erring on the side of "what a typical North American moderately-affluent nerd thinks reality is." Fighters aren't even designed to be as capable as real-world Olympic athletes, let alone awesome characters out of fantasy, regardless of level.

As to spells, I would say that the fault lies in design far earlier than that of 5e. As early as 2e, casters were allowed to choose their spells (even though it required a check to do so successfully). By 3e, I believe the check to learn new spells was only required for spells found in acquired spell books, not on level up. However, this isn't a trend that's likely to be reversed anytime soon. (The magic loving contingent would have a conniption if WotC tried.) So, IMO, the best open direction to take the design would be to make some magic items martial class features.

Well, as noted in my previous post, some of the antipathy here is completely justifiable. No one wants to have to jump through 17 annoying hoops to get to do The Cool Thing. The problem is, tradition has forced the power level of magic to remain extremely high or even to push it higher, while having constant pressure to remove the annoying, tedious, or frustrating mechanics that get in the way of using magic.

It's pretty reasonable to ask, "Why should I be the only person in the party who can fail a roll and, as a result, simply be unable to use my class abilities?" The problem is, the answer should be, "Because your class abilities were designed to be too powerful to be easily-accessed," but no one has the gonad gumption to actually say that anymore, because that would be admitting stuff that pro-spellcasting partisans have been denying for decades. So the answer often has been, "Huh, I guess there really isn't much reason for that, is there? Let's get rid of that dumb annoyance then!"

Spellcasters can no longer have their cake and eat it too. But taking their cake away is verboten, they'll howl bloody murder until they get it back and an apology for having the audacity to take it away in the first place. The second option was to give non-spellcasters nice things. That had most of the same folks howling bloody murder again, claiming everyone had been turned into casters and a whole bunch of other complaints, so evidently that option is verboten as well. The only remaining option, then, is to spread around the love.

Which is why I said that our current state of affairs has, perfectly naturally, arisen from the old one. "Spellcasting is technically optional but practically necessary" has, by degrees, morphed into, "spellcasting is technically avoidable but practically everywhere." Because that's the only solution to the "spellcasting is too stronk" problem that won't make the pro-spellcasting partisans cry havoc and let slip the dogs of (flame)war.

 

[Minigiant]

So these...

are rhetorical questions then?

Because this...

already answers them.

To answer your other questions:

You answers explain why.

By skipping Late 3e and all of 4e, you missed the times in D&D were

1. Nonmagical characters and monsters were expanded and explored to be on the same levels asspellcasters
2. New nonspellcasting magic were explored to narrow down the strengths and weaknesses of spell-casting and lower its presence.

You went from High Magic and Spells 2e to High Magic and Spells 3e to High Magic and Spells 5e. Then got bored of it.

 

[Zubatcarteira]

So you want to take out the one thing that can truly stop magic dead in its tracks?

Seriously?

Yes, in an extremely magical world where half of everything needs magic to exist, maybe there shouldn't be a spell that turns off magic entirely, so we can actually characters have characters do cool things without wondering if they can wrestle a giant in an anti-magic field, or need Sage Advice explaining that dragons or Ki aren't affected even though they're both magic explicitly.

There's already stuff that blocks specific magic, plenty of anti-divination spells and items, some for enchantment, there are ways to block teleportation and conjurations, it's just that magic is endlessly versatile and can do pretty much anything, so trying to counter each one is pretty futile in the end. Maybe it needs to be toned down a bit and get some more clear limits.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Yes, in an extremely magical world where half of everything needs magic to exist, maybe there shouldn't be a spell that turns off magic entirely, so we can actually characters have characters do cool things without wondering if they can wrestle a giant in an anti-magic field, or need Sage Advice explaining that dragons or Ki aren't affected even though they're both magic explicitly.

There's already stuff that blocks specific magic, plenty of anti-divination spells and items, some for enchantment, there are ways to block teleportation and conjurations, it's just that magic is endlessly versatile and can do pretty much anything, so trying to counter each one is pretty futile in the end. Maybe it needs to be toned down a bit and get some more clear limits.

More importantly, with such an obvious and (more importantly) total solution off the table, it might force the designers to get more creative.

Perhaps you get a suppress spellcasting spell. Spell level 1, universal (present in all traditions.) When cast, it causes one person to be incapable of using or benefiting from spellcasting of the chosen level or lower--they cannot have those spells cast upon them, nor cast those spells personally. They make a save against its effects at the start of each turn. This induces opportunity costs: if you want to completely shut down a target's magic, you need to spend a high-level spell slot, but you never truly know what magic they might have. This would, of course, mean that creatures should have a note on any actions that are considered to be spells identifying what level, e.g. appending an "SL#" tag, such as "SL5" to indicate that a particular action is considered the use of a fifth-level spell. The absence of such a tag indicates it isn't a spell in the first place. Cantrips would, of course, be SL0.

This is something I just came up with entirely off the cuff, so there's no guarantee that it's good or wise. It just illustrates that a world where "turn magic completely off (except the things we don't want turned off)" isn't an option can actually enrich the experience rather than impoverishing it, if in its absence we come up with something more productive/interesting.

On the DM side, frankly, I would much prefer DMs needing to actually be creative with limitations they invent, rather than just resorting to the tired "your powers are shut off" trope. Kryptonite is never interesting in and of itself with Superman, and this is no different.