D&D 5E Truly Understanding the Martials & Casters discussion (+)

[TheSword]

This conversation takes me back to the halcyon days of spell sequencer, Synostodwoemer, Chain Contingency, Spell Trigger and the Crown Jewel - Elminster’s Evasion… ahhhhh the heady days of god wizards. How the mighty have fallen.

 

[tetrasodium]

Contingency is a really interesting spell. You have a tough choice to make though. Do you cast it with a simple common defense spell and have it go off in the first encounter you get to, then having to cast it again and lose a precious 6th level slot. Or put it on something less common like an emergency escape and have it not go off.

To me, using to avoid having to cast mirror image on round 1 buys you one spell action in one combat once per period. It’s a very incremental benefit. Maybe handy if you have nothing else to do with it.

Wizards can’t easily get that healing magic. The most useful spell would probably be greater restoration but that’s a no go.

Emergency escape is always difficult. You either trigger it off a conscious trigger like a command word or gesture (free action) in which case it isn’t happening when paralyses/unconscious/asleep/feebleminded etc or it takes affect on an unconscious trigger in which case you can’t choose your dimension door location if you’re unconscious/asleep/feebleminded, or worse you’re dying and your friends can’t find you because you’re invisible etc.

Probably worth saving for a spell you know you’ll cast every so often but not every day. Save you having to memorize it and save the round to cast it. Polymorph for instance.

IME 5e's ultra low risk of death to anything but the GM choosing to execute a PC & the trivial cost/huge benefit of healing word/healing light/etc tends to make contingency less about the old school safety net uses than using it as a surprise ace in the hole. Even then it tends to run into the same kind of "very incremental benefit" problem you noted because 5e removed all of the old stuff that allows anyone to interrupt a spell being cast with the free AoO that casting it granted.

 

[FrogReaver]

Sure but in any "real" situation you can't predict the number of rounds.

This is true, but the effect of knowing your number of rounds ahead of time is going to be fairly minor. It's also something that can't be helped unless we declared actions on a round by round basis and let some referee randomly roll and call the encounter when that number of rounds was over with neither of us knowing ahead of time.

Plus the lower number of rounds slightly favors the wizard (less time to expend slots).

In some ways yes, but a more holistic picture indicates there's some tradeoffs.

• Wizard's get concentration spells as well. Lengthening the encounter means those spells are active more rounds.
• Fighter's superiority dice and action surge uses are fixed in this comparison. Lengthening the adventuring day means they overall have less relative impact than they would in a shorter adventuring day.

Sure, but keep in mind that IF the wizard gets hit then any concentration spell potentially drops (so in addition to not taking damage mirror image is essentially an auto save to the concentration check - that's not minor)

Certainly a possibility. But I think the impact on this will be fairly minor. There's just not going to be alot of difference in the damage of an equal level fireball spell under the target assumptions and the damage of a multiround concentration spell over 3 rounds.

We also are talking through any additional specific criteria for this. For example, my proposal was that if he takes a concentration boosting feat or ability like war wizard gets that concentration becomes such a minor issue (especially coupled with the fireball point above).

Anyway, I'm not the one modeling and this is a (relatively) minor point - so I should stop harping on it. Other than to say, it's one of the MANY things wizards get an edge on re: survivability.

I'm don't think that they actually are more survivable - at least not when it comes to taking hits via defensive options. If we can't mobility, range and staying away from enemies I think there's a strong case for the Wizard.

 

[FrogReaver]

I think maybe a better analysis might be how many resources does each class need to expend to survive the day.

The wizard has hit dice and spells, the fighter has second wind and hit dice.

If there's a deficit after extending all available resources, you make up for it in external healing and disclose the amount of healing required as indicator of the level of "drain" on the party each class represents.

Edit: this might be a bit of a slider for the wizard as spell slots used for defense are not used for damage, so "drain" at different levels of damage output might be useful

Edit 2: of course this slider would be imperfect since high damage output is also a form of damage mitigation..

The more I think about it the less I'm worried survivability differences. IMO. In most adventuring days both characters are going to make it through with never dropping to 0. Out of the days the less survivable one drops to 0, it's likely the more survivable one will as well a few rounds later. There's extremely few cases where a less survivable character falls to 0 where the more survivable character never does.

So I'm mostly happy with as long as the Wizard sets level 1 and 2 slots to defense/mobility that I think more survivability and the benefits it provides is going to have very little impact. You need to reach a minimum threshold, but after that the gains for more survivability tend to be minor.

As a side question though I am interested in finding a better way to compare survivability as I find it a very interesting question.

 

[TheSword]

The more I think about it the less I'm worried survivability differences. IMO. In most adventuring days both characters are going to make it through with never dropping to 0. Out of the days the less survivable one drops to 0, it's likely the more survivable one will as well a few rounds later. There's extremely few cases where a less survivable character falls to 0 where the more survivable character never does.

So I'm mostly happy with as long as the Wizard sets level 1 and 2 slots to defense/mobility that I think more survivability and the benefits it provides is going to have very little impact. You need to reach a minimum threshold, but after that the gains for more survivability tend to be minor.

As a side question though I am interested in finding a better way to compare survivability as I find it a very interesting question.

I think that is a respectable position to take. I think it’s reasonable to limit the scope of any investigation… so as not to go loopy and get dragged down all sorts of rabbit holes.

Hopefully @EzekielRaiden will consider some defensive buff spells (blink, mirror image etc) reasonable across the day, both in terms of 1st round activation, consumption of spell slots, and occupying memorization space. How they quantify is up to them of course.

 

[Oofta]

Animate objects is SO situation dependent. In the right conditions - it's a devastating spell. But there can be vast swaths of time where there is no opportunity/point in casting it! I suppose the wizard can carry around a bag of knives (10+) and that could get pretty nasty.

Just carry a bag of ball bearings. Helps if your DM (i.e. me) let's you dump the ball bearings as your object interaction.

 

[Maxperson]

If it's 8 encounters, that's on the higher end of the normal adventuring day, so lower number of rounds seems reasonable.

7 encounters is mid ground for 6-8. At 4 rounds average, that's 28 rounds of combat. By going to 8 fights of 3 rounds each, you are only in 24 rounds of combat. You're basically fighting only 6 encounters for the average of 4 rounds. You've essentially picked the very lowest number of encounters for an adventuring day..

 

[FrogReaver]

7 encounters is mid ground for 6-8. At 4 rounds average, that's 28 rounds of combat. By going to 8 fights of 3 rounds each, you are only in 24 rounds of combat. You're basically fighting only 6 encounters for the average of 4 rounds. You've essentially picked the very lowest number of encounters for an adventuring day..

If enough people want to move it to 4 I don’t have any issues. Your thoughts @EzekielRaiden ?

 

[Maxperson]

If enough people want to move it to 4 I don’t have any issues. Your thoughts @EzekielRaiden ?

You guys should just do the average numbers of 7 encounters of 4 rounds each. Mid ground all the way around.

 

[Gammadoodler]

7 encounters is mid ground for 6-8. At 4 rounds average, that's 28 rounds of combat. By going to 8 fights of 3 rounds each, you are only in 24 rounds of combat. You're basically fighting only 6 encounters for the average of 4 rounds. You've essentially picked the very lowest number of encounters for an adventuring day..

Fair enough. Since I can't say I've ever actually seen this 'normal' adventuring day happen at a table in play, my judgement may be skewed.