Paul Farquhar
Legend
Yeah, for example one of those mysteries (and teachers know this too) is it doesn't matter what answer you give, so long as you give it with CONFIDENCE. Show uncertainty and the players will rip you apart!
D&D General The DM Shortage
In practice, I've seen this argument swing in the other direction much more often.
As in, most DMs I've seen are much more likely to give magic a pass because "it's magic..." Than skill use or "good roleplaying." Usually out of (IMO completely misplaced) sense of realism or the dreaded verisimilitude.
An example from play (this one happens to be from Pathfinder 1e, but would easily apply to D&D):
Party is trying to get into a warehouse and needs to get past a guard. The party rogue has Diplomacy and Bluff in the double digits. He attempts talk the parties way past. But (it becomes clear) the DM has simply decided the guard won't budge. He allowed a skill contest roll, but it seemed to be just for show. The player rolled near 30 and the guard couldn't have matched his roll(s). No progress, guard won't let the group through.
The party mage then casts charm person, guard fails the save and the group is through, easy peasy.
I've seen countless variations on this because too many DMs give "it's magic..." a pass.
So wotc designed a system that has balance welded to the unreasonable expectation that the gm will somehow force six to eight medium to hard encounters into an adventuring day where they have little control over recovery even though wotc doesn't write adventures like that for the same reasons few gm's want to run that grind fest. But somehow in that light it's the gm & wizard that are the problem when a pc tries to bypass stuff without any resource spend?...
It's the GM that's the problem when they unreasonably give magic a pass while holding skills to a different standard, yes.
This isn't just a 5e problem (my example wasn't even from 5e), and what you're describing is 1) not what I was responding to 2) doesn't change the fact that "it's magic..." gets too much of a pass imo.
But to answer your offshoot. If the GM allows "it's magic..." to consistently win over other solutions AND allows the group to dictate the pace of play (such as allowing them to rest when they want etc.) Then casters will have a significant advantage under the current paradigm. It's not an easy thing for (especially new) DMs to catch and WoTC does a terrible job of spelling it out. Instead, perpetuating the falsehood that classes are equal regardless of play style.
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I see what you're saying, Mort, and yes, D&D has long had a bias that spells > skills/ability checks when it comes to solving problems. That, again, however, isn't empowering a player unduly in of itself- spells are (mostly) a limited resource. You use a spell to circumvent a problem, that's one less spell you can use that day.
The issue here is, as Tetrasodium points out, that the DM has the power to keep spellcasters in check by making them loath to use their spell slots willy nilly. They also have the power to rule on how spells function (and I'm not talking about rewriting them, though that's also in their wheelhouse if need be, but simply interpreting what WotC wrote- and didn't write in spell descriptions). And finally, at least in the Wizard's case, they have the power to keep the Wizard from gaining a large potential spell list by limiting things like enemy spellbooks or scrolls, and not giving the Wizard the time or money to scribe new spells into their book.
But a lot of DM's don't. It's not terribly fun to force extra combats, or insist on X combats per diem. I don't know how common this is in the wild, but most of the younger DM's I know are inspired by video games and want to make these big setpiece battles, where getting more than two fights into a session is a challenge- ironically, these DM's might have been better served by 4e's design, in which most of your resources are per encounter, not game day, but that's not how current D&D really works.
So the number of spells you can use hews more closely to the number of combat turns you have, and once these big fights are over, everyone is fuming on hit points and wants to take a long rest. This results in spellcasters having spell slots laying around at the end of sessions, and it doesn't take much of that before caster players realize they have power to burn, so why not cast spells at every opportunity?
5e's design does not, in my opinion, overly empower the player (or their character). The DM still has all the power to set the pace of their game. The issue is, some DM's do not do this, because it's not very much fun. If you come into the game via public play, you'll see that when you play nothing but adventures you can knock out in a few hours, there's no way to drain everyone's daily resources, and so the modules don't even try- see above for how that affects spellcaster play.
At the same time, of course, these adventures give limited short rests, which puts undue stress on the short rest recovery classes; I've seen people try to play a Warlock in AL and get to cast one whole spell that wasn't Eldritch Blast per session.
As an aside, D&D One wants to address this by making short rest resources into "x uses per day", but I'll wager WotC will do nothing to address game days with fewer encounters.
The hit points and hit dice healing players have access to now are subject to the same problems as spell slots. The DM has the power to make players be more frugal about healing, and take less risks, only if they want to enforce a higher amount of encounters per "game day". This is good if you're tackling a long adventure and the average encounter is "you enter a 30' x 30' room. There are four Orcs here, seated at a table, eating some sort of stew, no doubt prepared in the kitchens of room 2G. They spring up and attack!"
This is not so good if the average encounter is "you exit into a large courtyard. The lizard priest is atop a raised platform, about to plunge a dagger into the heart of the captured elven princess to enact his ungodly ritual. He is flanked by four Lizardman Acolytes. Between you and the priest are six burly Lizardman Elites, and the Lizardman Commander, who is astride a Riding Beast. Large stone braziers sit atop 5' high pillars in the corners of the room, and the floor is a multicolored mosaic of large tiles, each with a particular significance to the the lizard folk- you know from experience that some of these tiles are trapped, but so far, the only color you know to avoid is fuschia."
So it's not that there is some imbalance in "power" for the DM, it's simply that the game is asking them to run adventures in a very particular manner, that even WotC themselves obviously finds tedious and boring, and they have yet to address this with even optional rules.
The issue here is, as Tetrasodium points out, that the DM has the power to keep spellcasters in check by making them loath to use their spell slots willy nilly. They also have the power to rule on how spells function (and I'm not talking about rewriting them, though that's also in their wheelhouse if need be, but simply interpreting what WotC wrote- and didn't write in spell descriptions). And finally, at least in the Wizard's case, they have the power to keep the Wizard from gaining a large potential spell list by limiting things like enemy spellbooks or scrolls, and not giving the Wizard the time or money to scribe new spells into their book.
But a lot of DM's don't. It's not terribly fun to force extra combats, or insist on X combats per diem. I don't know how common this is in the wild, but most of the younger DM's I know are inspired by video games and want to make these big setpiece battles, where getting more than two fights into a session is a challenge- ironically, these DM's might have been better served by 4e's design, in which most of your resources are per encounter, not game day, but that's not how current D&D really works.
So the number of spells you can use hews more closely to the number of combat turns you have, and once these big fights are over, everyone is fuming on hit points and wants to take a long rest. This results in spellcasters having spell slots laying around at the end of sessions, and it doesn't take much of that before caster players realize they have power to burn, so why not cast spells at every opportunity?
5e's design does not, in my opinion, overly empower the player (or their character). The DM still has all the power to set the pace of their game. The issue is, some DM's do not do this, because it's not very much fun. If you come into the game via public play, you'll see that when you play nothing but adventures you can knock out in a few hours, there's no way to drain everyone's daily resources, and so the modules don't even try- see above for how that affects spellcaster play.
At the same time, of course, these adventures give limited short rests, which puts undue stress on the short rest recovery classes; I've seen people try to play a Warlock in AL and get to cast one whole spell that wasn't Eldritch Blast per session.
As an aside, D&D One wants to address this by making short rest resources into "x uses per day", but I'll wager WotC will do nothing to address game days with fewer encounters.
The hit points and hit dice healing players have access to now are subject to the same problems as spell slots. The DM has the power to make players be more frugal about healing, and take less risks, only if they want to enforce a higher amount of encounters per "game day". This is good if you're tackling a long adventure and the average encounter is "you enter a 30' x 30' room. There are four Orcs here, seated at a table, eating some sort of stew, no doubt prepared in the kitchens of room 2G. They spring up and attack!"
This is not so good if the average encounter is "you exit into a large courtyard. The lizard priest is atop a raised platform, about to plunge a dagger into the heart of the captured elven princess to enact his ungodly ritual. He is flanked by four Lizardman Acolytes. Between you and the priest are six burly Lizardman Elites, and the Lizardman Commander, who is astride a Riding Beast. Large stone braziers sit atop 5' high pillars in the corners of the room, and the floor is a multicolored mosaic of large tiles, each with a particular significance to the the lizard folk- you know from experience that some of these tiles are trapped, but so far, the only color you know to avoid is fuschia."
So it's not that there is some imbalance in "power" for the DM, it's simply that the game is asking them to run adventures in a very particular manner, that even WotC themselves obviously finds tedious and boring, and they have yet to address this with even optional rules.
overgeeked
B/X Known World
The DMG has optional rules for this exact thing. Epic Heroism, p267. Five minute short rest, one hour long rest. They suggest doing much harder encounters to compensate.
You are still assuming that anyone at the table is capable of acting reasonably in the situation you describe in post#962. Given the design constraints of 5e nobody can. Even just Looking at the skills part is rife with design problems. The 5e system is designed for a party of one or two players of almost any class no matter what type of game is being run & it creates several problems even before considering the GM's expectations to run a grindfest & some of them even create new problems.
In other situations the skill system is designed in ways that rob specialists of their skill niche. Having their own skill niche devalued & given to anyone else makes them less likely to see any reason why they should lean in to support the rogue's effort to persuade the gm over casting the niche spell they can cast to do it while they shrug off the rogue's plight in that scenario. The GM likewise has their own set of unreasonable design choices impacting them though & can really only choose the caster's route for successful circumvention. The rogue too is not acting reasonably in complaining about the caster being allowed by spell slot but not rogue by no resource consumption skill check because they are ignoring what the GM is expected to enforce & actively trying to upend it in a way that negatively impacts everyone else at the table.
Never said spells were player empowering, but that they were character empowering.
That said, spells are only a limited resource if the players are not allowed to dictate the pace of play. If the players are allowed to dictate the pace, then they will always have sufficient spell resources for any given issue and the fact that they have "used a resource" is meaningless because that resource is regained before its absence can be felt.
Yes, sort of. The DM has to make a conscious, concerted effort to take these measures - above and beyond whatever world building they are already doing. More importantly the DM has to KNOW to do these things, which is not well spelled out - certainly not in the DMG. Most DMs learn to do this AFTER casters ran away with their first campaign.
This is exactly right, and what arguments that proclaim "Martials can go all day..." completely miss. Martials have a very limited use resource too, HP, and it tends to run out LONG before the casters run out of all their spells (yes casters have limited HP too, but generally it is the task of the martials to do their best to make sure their HP gets hit before the caster's HP).
But again, this is negated if the players can set the pace of play. If they can, HP and spell depletion don't matter that much.
I think the issue is that pacing is not stressed as part of DMing - and it REALLY needs to be. As for it not being fun. I think teaching/learning how to properly pace an adventure leads to significantly increased fun at the table.
But yes, I'll agree that many modules don't really bother with this, they are set on telling a fixed story and pacing is outside of that.
Good points. I'll just stress that in 5e, like in prior editions of D&D, the DM has just about ALL the power. There is no point in talking about imbalance. The correct discussion (IMO) is how the DM should apply the power for optimal fun at the table (which may not be the same for every group) and how best to teach DMs to apply the power for maximum fun.
Swarmkeeper
Hero
No system is going to cure bad GMing, though.
I mean, same scenario in 5e wouldn’t happen if the DM is running by the Ability Check rules/guidance to only call for a roll if there is uncertainty in the outcome. The DM in this case seems to have decided the guard is unpersuadable for… reasons. No roll. (To be clear, those reasons better be really good and telegraphed and not simply DM fiat, otherwise we’re back to bad DMing).
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