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

[DND_Reborn]

While I get where you’re coming from, I think you are overselling 5e here. In a no-to-low magic 5e campaign, you are pretty much limited to 4 classes out of 13 (depending on how you feel about monks), and you have to spread them out pretty carefully to fulfill all roles.

If your preferred playstyle is low magic, I can definitely see getting tired of the lack of class choice after 2 or 3 characters.

There's a stark difference between low-magic and no magic. In low-magic you really aren't limited to just 4-5 classes IMO.

For low magic, as far as classes are concerned, remove sorcerer and warlock and all magical subclasses for non-casters. So, for me anyway, I could easily see all the other 10 classes.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Yep, that type of production amazes me. I can't imagine it as a DM. The old player in me has wonder how you get to know your characters if you only have them for a year or so? IME it takes a lot of time to discover what makes a character tick and to build storylines. As a DM I can't imagine accomplish that with 4-6 PCs in a year. Of course I realize everyone plays differently, but it really is foreign to me!

I normally say it takes a good month and/or 2 levels to get to know who my character really is... but like our epic game that ran 3rd to 20+ 3 or 4 epic boons I knew that character after game 3... but she was NOTHING like what I thought she would be when I drew her up... (and that character did last over a year, more like 19 months)

 

[Garthanos]

4e encouraged using skills broadly and action movie epically, particularly in skill challenges. It explicitly authorizes the arcana skill to be used to detect magic and in essentials to be used to affect some magical effects and possibly do some open ended minor magical things.

Arcana altering the effects of a ritual was in the DMG2 but really all skills were empowered and very open ended. There was a paradigm where skill effects could often accomplish similar if not necessarily identical things to magic mentioned explicitly in skill powers (utility powers) and martial practices (like rituals) but also looking at the "powers" built into skills (like the probably overpowered intimidation, acrobatics reduction of falling damage and so on.) AND yes skill challenges were indeed where the scale for skills was brought to the front very early on.

A biggy the ritual magic and a skill check were explicitly supposed to be capable of accomplishing the same amount of story impact. This was not something the DM had to guess, aye the detail of the implementation was a bit of judgement and imagination but the goal was well declared.

Whether using basilisk blood to unfreeze people stoned by a stone-eyed basilisk (as opposed to the other 4e MM basilisk, the venom-eye basilisk which has a poison gaze and no petrification ability at all) would be up to the DM, but there is no specific lore in the 4e MM to suggest such a solution. It would be the DM solely deciding whether that is something that can work or not.

4e does not specifically address whether fresh basilisk blood can be used to unstone people, whether it is limited to those stoned by basilisks, whether there needs to be alchemical transmutation for that to occur, or whether it has no effect whatsoever.

Regardless of the details specific for the basilisk.... Does anyone actually see any similar systems encouraging DMs to go with saying yes and empowering ability from skills as comparable to spells, in 5e though?

 

[Garthanos]

It may be slightly tertiary to the fundamental concept being discussed here, but processed Basilisk blood is explicitly called out as a potential solution in its monster manual entry, with no mention of the blood as inherently magical, versus the supernatural power of its gaze.

I do not have my books handy right now, but thanks for that.

 

[Garthanos]

There's a stark difference between low-magic and no magic. In low-magic you really aren't limited to just 4-5 classes IMO.

Unless you stay low level as in no fire balls and remove cantrips I am not sure you can call it low magic if you do have spell caster classes. (everyone seems to have their own idea of what "low magic is" )

 

[Garthanos]

This was one thing I appreciated about 4e. Even with the roles, most classes dabbled in other roles. Most martial classes leaned a bit into the striker role, most divine into the leader role, most arcane into control and most primal into defender.

Warlord had a dash of defender so its not even fully set in that fashion

 

[HammerMan]

Warlord had a dash of defender so its not even fully set in that fashion

Warlord was the break out hit of 4e and WotC biggest misstep was not including it in 5e

 

[dave2008]

Is PC death off the table in your games? That might be part of the reason.

No. My players are pretty careful so it doesn't happen often, but it happens. And since no one ever plays a cleric, and we play in a low magic setting, a death typical means the end of a character. Resurrection of any kind is very difficult in our setting.

That being said, I am not following your logic. Are you saying character death, or the lack thereof, would make one get to know their player better or worse?

 

[dave2008]

There's a stark difference between low-magic and no magic. In low-magic you really aren't limited to just 4-5 classes IMO.

For low magic, as far as classes are concerned, remove sorcerer and warlock and all magical subclasses for non-casters. So, for me anyway, I could easily see all the other 10 classes.

Yes, we play low magic and I don't feel the need to restrict* classes really at all. We hold to the belief that the PCs are special. So right now our 15th level wizard is the most powerful magic user in the whole world. Next most powerful is s 12th level cleric and then most magic users (and classes in general) top out in the 5th-8th lvl range and those are "elites" with most not getting past 3rd.

*I don't restrict classes, but some spells are off the table.

 

[dave2008]

I normally say it takes a good month and/or 2 levels to get to know who my character really is... but like our epic game that ran 3rd to 20+ 3 or 4 epic boons I knew that character after game 3... but she was NOTHING like what I thought she would be when I drew her up... (and that character did last over a year, more like 19 months)

Well it takes us about 4-6 months to get through a level, so...