D&D 5E What, if anything, bothers you about certain casters/spells at your table?

[Hussar]

Not sure if you realized this, but how 5e uses expensive material components as a throttle for casting certain spells is exactly the 4e throttle for overcasting rituals.

And ritual casting in 5e still requires those material components.

In other words, any ritual the designers wanted to limit the usage of already has the exact 4e resolution already in place, expanded out to also covering if they are casting as a spell as well. And the others they don't care if you use as much as you want with just a cost of time.

In other words, everything you are ranting about already exists.

Except that most of the spell components are consumed in the casting. There are exceptions, sure, but, most of the time, there aren't. I mean, sure, Leo's Hut requires a small crystal bead, but, since that isn't something with a price, any spell focus will do. Wall of Force? Nope. Forcecage? One time expense of 1500 gp, not consumed. Forbiddance? One time expense of 1000 gp, not consumed. So on and so forth. Most expensive components are just one time expenses.

 

[Hussar]

Personally, there aren't any spell that bother me. If some spells or casters don't fit the setting, I just remove them. For instance, in last adventure i ran, there were only two casters - clerics and wizards. That's it, no caster subclasses, no half casters ( paladins do exists, but they can only burn slots for smite, no spells for them), ranger and bard were just custom backgrounds.

Goodberry - material component is limitation. It uses mistletoe as component. Unless you brought a bunch of it, you need to find some. Mistletoes don't grow everywhere. Also, one house rule i use, since it fits the theme of transmutation school. It transforms berries from sprig into those of goodberry (similar to goodberry in 3x). RAW, goodberry is more in line with conjuration than transmutation.

I get why they buffed Tiny hut. I gives players reliable method for obtaining safe location to do short/long rest. But it's not that op. Yes, enemies can't enter, shoot at you, shoot spells at you, but you can't do that either. So smart ones will just wait out till PCs get out.

Nope. You can cast Goodberry with your focus since it has no price cost. And Druids come with Mistletoe as a focus.

 

[Hussar]

That's the advantage of playing live at a table with your friends... there are already so many other things going on around the table with people talking, eating snacks, using the bathroom, that there's no "continuous game flow" to worry about.

But, it does disrupt game flow. Having someone at the table shout out "Stop" at random points in combat after combat is disrupting game flow. I dunno about the tables you sit at, but, we're not talking in the middle of the game, and bathroom breaks are done when it's not disruptive. I certainly would hate to play a table where "continuous game flow" wasn't worried about. Blech.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

It can reflect something in the world. If the party walks from Fallcrest to Baldur’s Gate and never has a day in which more than a single combat encounter takes place, then walks from Baldur’s Gate to Neverwinter and the same is true, then, by observation, the characters know that they are unlikely to have 4 encounters before their next long rest. Asking them to pretend otherwise is asking them to play their characters as obtuse.

In game, it just says something about how many monsters populate a certain area.

Sure, that makes perfect sense.

But we weren't discussing the PCs making observations of "certain areas". We were talking about a consistent max number of combats between long rests throughout the game world, regardless of area. Well, that's what I was talking about anyway - but perhaps did not make it clear enough.

 

[Irlo]

What Bothers Me - Part One: Cantrips

I'd like to see most of the damaging cantrips be toned down -- either eliminating the scaling damage or reducing the size of the damage dice (or both). I'm onboard with giving casters magical at-will attacks, but I don't like that they overshadow weapons (and eventually overshadow 1st level spells). I'd like more cantrips to provide effects other than damage to make combat more interesting, less of a hit point slog.

I've never experienced the guidance problems described here, but that's only by chance. As a player, I avoid the cantrip. As a DM, my players haven't used it. If it were in play, I would find it annoying.

I dislike booming blade. It most circumstances I wouldn't mind, but when I did see this in play it was in the hands of a rogue who used it for nearly every single melee attack. Constant fiddling with tokens to mark the affected target, deciding on the fly how that target would react to it, and interrupting the target's turn to roll for damage (if it moved) quickly became tiresome.

What Bothers Me - Part Two: Casters

The Eldritch Knight is a huge disappointment. I want to want to play one, but I look at the severely limited magic use, and I can never work up any enthusiasm.

What Bothers Me - Part Three: Other Spells

As a DM, I find a player's use of bane to be annoying. Multiple targets, multiple saving throws, extra d4s. That said, as a player, I really do enjoy using the spell and it's been fairly effective, but I only do so in online play-by-post games. I would never use it in person, esp. with an inexperienced or harried DM.

Phantasmal force needs more guidance about appropriate uses and limits. As a player, I like the spell. It's flexible and allows for creative illusion, but I'm very careful not to push the envelope, using it for what seems to me reasonable purposes with reasonably limited effects. As a DM, I saw this in play with only a few characters. One player immediately tested to see how far he could push the spell. At the time, I was relatively new to 5e and was unfamiliar with the spell until it was cast, and I made a bad call on the spur of the moment (or maybe just an overly-generous one) that effectively removed the target from the fight for the duration. After that, the player never used it again, apparently as dissatisfied with the result as I was.

There are more. I might come back to this.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Having someone at the table shout out "Stop" at random points in combat after combat is disrupting game flow.

So we'd prefer a game without reactions? Without opportunity attacks? Without legendary actions? (maybe those are OK, they don't interrupt the turn as much...)

I'm curious about the psychology at work there. Reactions offer some off-turn options, some way for characters to stay vigilant and reactive as the enemy does things, a way to encourage seeing combat in your mind's eye as a changeable milieu even as the rules adjudicate that milieu on a round basis, etc. It can be a nice moment of power for a player when their off-turn action stops something potentially devastating from happening to the party.

It does shout "Stop!", but I guess...what's so bad about a player yelling "Stop!"? That's half the appeal of a 4e Fighter!

 

[el-remmen]

Originally I was thinking of this thread only in terms of spells that "ruin" exploration or become "must always prepare/cast" type spells, which as I said, is not an issue in my experience mostly based on my playstyle and current set of players.

But there are things that bother me, like. . .

I am not a fan of at-will cantrips (esp. damaging ones) at all. I don't think they break the game or anything, but aesthetically I think they undermine the "magic" of magic and make it into a repeatable infinite resource like a common sword and more reliable than arrows (which can run out)!

I want to use a spell roll system (kind of like a reverse re-charge ability) that limits cantrips, but you never know what that limit is because it changes day to day. You roll the check every time you cast a cantrip and if you eventually "fail" your check the casting is wasted and you can't try again until after a long rest. You are less likely to cast Vicious Mockery or whatever over and over if this is the case - and you might try to mix it up.

This doesn't happen with higher level spells because they use a finite resource, while a lucky caster might be able to cast cantrip umpteen times if they are lucky and their spellcasting skill bonus is good.

I have not tried to introduce this in my current games yet because I thought about it after we had already started and in one group spamming cantrips is never a problem.

Oh and I'd go back to making some spells not work on certain targets due to Intelligence or whatever. Like vicious mockery should not work on creatures of animal intelligence or maybe aberrations.

I hate anything that makes magic into just another form of technology - as such it should be arcane, unreliable, and expensive whenever possible, not just something that "everyone would have" and thus would fundamentally change the world far more than most D&D settings are changed by magic's existence.

I'd make Continual Flame a 5th level spell. As it is right now, I have it require 500 gps in ruby dust, not just 50.

Those are personal preferences of course, and I don't necessarily think that D&D has to be that way out of the box because all D&D rules are toolsets to me and the tweaking it is part of the appeal of the game. As I have said elsewhere, I am just not that interested in D&D (or any RPG really) without the DIY aspect.

 

[TwoSix]

I dunno about the tables you sit at, but, we're not talking in the middle of the game, and bathroom breaks are done when it's not disruptive.

We're at about 75%.

75% random trash talk, and 25% actual game play.

 

[jmartkdr2]

Hmmm....that does make me ponder. Perhaps for casters it would be interesting to make just a ranged spell attack. If it misses, its assumed it was just a cantrip and no major loss. If it hits, the caster can choose to do cantrip damage or burn a spell slot for a 1st+ spell effect.

Could maybe do it for save effects, but I'd be very wary of doing so - would probably lower spell slots in some way since you're ensuring your spells never fail.

Might be better to start with a cantrip and then allow the caster to spend spell slots* to empower it in various ways. IE: you hit with a fire bolt, do you want to
1. boost the base damage (chromatic orb)
2. shoot another one (scorching ray)
3. make it hit a radius (fieball)
4. have it hang around for a bit (wall of fire)
5. boost it and add radiant (flame strike)


The fun part is ray of frost should have its own, distinct set of boosts.

But that's a whole new spell system. You'd need to really tighten up spell slots since they'd never really get wasted.

*(an even less accurate name in this example)

 

[CandyLaser]

One thing that I've wanted to do for some time is adapt the system from the "Paths of Power" article from Dragon #216 into 5e. The basically idea was that all the wizard spells (for AD&D 2e) were arranged in paths of conceptually related spells rather than schools. The paths had somewhat evocative names and contained ten or so spells (though some were bigger than others). For instance, the Scabrous Road contained the spells chill touch, choke, ghoul touch, spectral hand, mummy touch, pain touch, vampiric touch, paralyze, mummy rot, ghoul gauntlet, lich touch, and energy drain—basically, all the necromancer touch attack spells. You had a limited number of paths you could learn from, but if you knew every spell on a path that you could cast at your level, it didn't count against that limit. It naturally leads to more focused, thematic casters and invites interesting worldbuilding ideas, like secret paths known only to certain teachers or groups, or rival schools featuring practitioners of different paths of magic. It always seemed to me a good way to moderate spellcaster power by restricting access to spells without feeling arbitrary—maybe you can learn silvery barbs, but you can't get it without losing access to shield and feather fall, etc.