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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James Gasik" data-source="post: 8774068" data-attributes="member: 6877472">D&D has always been a strange beast.  At low levels, the game is low magic.  But that changes as you reach higher levels of play.  Magic becomes more plentiful, and many campaign settings follow suit, with high level spellcasters becoming powerful NPC's who shape them in dramatic ways.Mystara had an entire nation (Alphatia, I think?) governed by a council of like 100 36th-level archmages.  Greyhawk was reshaped by high level magic in both ancient and current times.  The Forgotten Realms is lousy with powerful wizards, with Magocracies existing in the past (like Netheril) and the present (Thay, Halruua).  Even Krynn had the High Orders of Sorcery who policed who could use arcane magic and how in the setting.Think of all the things high levels adventures include- ancient dragons, mighty liches, travel to other planes of existence, powerful artifacts, remnants of ancient, advanced civilizations.  These somehow coexist in a game where eating a damn berry instead of a day's rations can cause some DM's a fit.One of my first 3e games, the DM who had graduated from 2e started the game with us in a desert prison.  We had to plan our escape, and the next part was supposed to be a gritty survival game.  Little did he realize what my Cleric and our Druid were about to do. I could farm out Endure Elements to the party and create water.  As I leveled, soon I could remove fatigue, and even create food from nothing!And the DM kind of freaked out about it, griping about the new edition's "power creep", until I pulled out the 2e PHB and showed him that this was nothing new- he'd just never seen it done before, in all the years he'd played.Of course, there was a good reason for that.  I didn't have to prepare nothing but Cure X Wounds spells, since I could turn any spell into healing if need be.  Which meant I was free to load up on other interesting spells.5e makes this even worse, as you can prepare quite a few different spells, and cast them freely.  So it's not that the game has gotten more magical, but that players are more free to actually look at their spell list, and prepare some niche utility spells they might not have back in AD&D.Now I will grant, some spells have gotten stronger.  I'm not sure why Tiny Hut is now a mobile fortress.  Back in the day, I'd use Shrink Item to carry around a wooden house when we needed to camp, now all I need is a level 3 spell slot!I won't defend abuse of Tiny Hut, but when people say that "using a rope trick to get a short rest whenever you want one is deserving of a TPK", that gets an eyebrow raise from me.The spells were deliberately put into 5e.  There's no way around that fact.  This is the game, working as intended.  I don't mind if someone wants to run a low magic gritty game, but 5e wasn't designed with that sort of gaming past the first few levels.Honestly, looking back at earlier versions of D&D, I don't think any edition was- it was simply that the game was broken up into tiers of play, and the lower tiers could be pretty harsh.  You were intended to level past that, but how many games really did?</blockquote>

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