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

[CreamCloud0]

This is certainly a case where I would most likely create a specialized and pre-defined Necromancer spell list for them to use, and would have no problem incorporating a few cleric or druid necromantic spells into it if they made sense.

i never played 4e personally, but from what i understand of them i think spell tags were actually a pretty good concept, you put an ability on the necromancer or whatever other caster that says they can learn any spell that has the apropriate tag(not school),and bam, your necromancer can actually take a bunch of apropriate spells, even if some of them don't fit neatly into an apropriate damage type or spell school. or are on their class's specific spell list.

 

[nevin]

Yes and no. My players know me well enough that I am always willing and able to adjust the mechanics of the various things in the game if we all feel there is something lacking or underpowered or whatnot for whatever theming they want to go with. So having a necromantic spell that is on par power-wise to Fireball does not bother me out of hand-- and if a player was to ask about it, I'd certainly work with them on it.

But at the same time, just doing a standard energy swap rather than upping the power of another spell that is actually necromantic is kinda lame in my opinion. If the spell effect and how it works is the same as every other 'ball' spell ever cast in all our previous campaigns (except that this one is 'necrotic' rather than 'fire')... from my narrative-loving perspective it falls flat. It's like that player who seemingly plays a 'rogue' every campaign no matter what class they actually select. It's fine that they do... but it doesn't exactly set my world on fire.

I mean to me, all eight wizard schools should feel and play differently at the table, otherwise what's the point? So playing a 'necromancer' that feels no different than an 'evoker' other than every spell effect is "black and purple" rather than "red" or "blue" or "white" is meh to me. But as this is strictly a 'Me' issue and not a 'Player' issue... I don't make a big deal about it. I let them play what they want... but always appreciate it when they try something original or different. And if that means coming up with a whole new advancement system for the animal companion of the player who wishes to play a Beastmaster Ranger? I'm all for it!

Of course then we have 8 different classes and all 8 different classes need utility spells, combat spells and enough flavorful spells that they can be played without the others. To do that properly wizards would have to completely make each school of magic a seperate and equally playeable in all kinds of games, list of spells. Then do away with the generic everyone uses this list of spells. done right it could be amazing but no one who's tried anything similar since D&D started has pulled anything like it off. Though I'd personally love to see necromancy be only in the pervue of clerics of death and life and first thing I'd do would be to remove necromancy spells from all players that didn't have a god or patron to grant them, leaving only 7 schools of magic to flesh out. The biggest problem with this over the years has been that flavorful often means a few classes get massively awesome spells like fireball, timestop, clone etc and everyone else gets stuff that doesn't compete on any level. Making 7 or 8 different spell lists that all have roughly the same generic utility is much harder than it sounds and possibly requires the death of a few sacred cows. Then to make that work you have to stop letting other classes get wizard or cleric spells and make them thier own lists, and of course then you need to make seperate but equally useful spell lists for each domain and do away with general spell lists for clerics. Which because of things like healing and ressurection become an impossible task because healing and a few other things always are always the most useful.

So basically to do it you have to completely redesign D&D magic for everyone and not destroy enough sacred cows that the masses revolt. I can't imagine wizards under hasbro being willing to attempt that.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Ironically, this means you would in fact prefer how 4e did it.

A few classes got the Ritual Caster feat for free (Cleric, Druid, Wizard, and Bard, IIRC). Some even could get a couple rituals a day without cost (Wizard and Bard, IIRC). Anything else, you had to either buy or find ritual components, and maybe drop a feat on Ritual Caster in the first place. Or you could just buy (or find) scrolls, which didn't require any further components.

Players--allegedly--hated this. They felt they were being shortchanged, having their precious, precious lewts stolen from them for icky ritual casting components.

That's why ritual casting is completely free (apart from a casting time) for 5e. And guess what! It turns out that that is stupidly powerful, so almost no spells are actually allowed to be rituals, even when it would make sense for them to be so.

It's almost like there are consequences for mucking about with the internal rules for a well-designed system. Especially if you're effectively hot-wiring it to remove all the safety checks.

Doubly funny because we've had years and years of folks complaining that 5e is swimming in gold with little or nothing to spend it on due to the dearth of rules for it (which even the halfhearted efforts we've gotten took years to deliver.)

The thing is, these are different groups of people. That's the difference between players (who were doing the complaining about rituals back in 4e) and DMs. Players want more power for their PCs, and hate having less, even if it's for their own good. DMs generally look at the bigger picture.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I don't have issues with any of the spells... I only have issues with my players and their decisions on which spells they choose to take.

Is Fireball "overpowered" compared to other 3rd level spells? Yeah, maybe, but that doesn't bother me. What bothers me though is the player who says they want to play a Necromancer in theming and background... and yet throws nothing but Fireballs during combat because it's the "best" 3rd level spell. To me, if you want to play a necromancer, play a necromancer! Use necromancy skill in all kinds of interesting and cool ways! You do so, I will be helping you out as the DM to be the most interesting and best necromancer ever!

But I won't usually do that if you just default to a metagame idea of "I want to make sure we win at all the combats!" by just throwing Fireballs and Lightning Bolts more than playing a thematically consistent character. That's the easiest way for me to just shrug my shoulders and lose interest in your character's progression through the campaign. I'm fine with you playing your character that way and won't stop you... I just won't be all that enthused about trying to spotlight your PC at various points in the story because there's nothing to hold onto.

Success just matters more than theme to most people, IME.

 

[nevin]

The thing is, these are different groups of people. That's the difference between players (who were doing the complaining about rituals back in 4e) and DMs. Players want more power for their PCs, and hate having less, even if it's for their own good. DMs generally look at the bigger picture.

OH I don't know I'd argue DM's tend to make the same mistakes when they design powers and spells for thier Villains. Villains doing things players can't do IME causes a lot of these arguments.

 

[Minigiant]

Of course then we have 8 different classes and all 8 different classes need utility spells, combat spells and enough flavorful spells that they can be played without the others. To do that properly wizards would have to completely make each school of magic a seperate and equally playeable in all kinds of games, list of spells. Then do away with the generic everyone uses this list of spells. done right it could be amazing but no one who's tried anything similar since D&D started has pulled anything like it off. Though I'd personally love to see necromancy be only in the pervue of clerics of death and life and first thing I'd do would be to remove necromancy spells from all players that didn't have a god or patron to grant them, leaving only 7 schools of magic to flesh out. The biggest problem with this over the years has been that flavorful often means a few classes get massively awesome spells like fireball, timestop, clone etc and everyone else gets stuff that doesn't compete on any level. Making 7 or 8 different spell lists that all have roughly the same generic utility is much harder than it sounds and possibly requires the death of a few sacred cows. Then to make that work you have to stop letting other classes get wizard or cleric spells and make them thier own lists, and of course then you need to make seperate but equally useful spell lists for each domain and do away with general spell lists for clerics. Which because of things like healing and ressurection become an impossible task because healing and a few other things always are always the most useful.

So basically to do it you have to completely redesign D&D magic for everyone and not destroy enough sacred cows that the masses revolt. I can't imagine wizards under hasbro being willing to attempt that.

Well you could easily create spells that show the differences between the approaches to necromancy for a wizard, cleric, and warlock.

A cleric displaying raw spiritual power but lacking grace and customization due to less knowledge of the dead.
A wizard being more focused on the corporal science of death and undead creating unique undead and unique effects.
A warlock emulating their patron and mostly only doing vampire and mummy attacks.

But like the trend of 5e, you have to go further than "Meh. let the DM handle it."

 

[Micah Sweet]

Maybe not "Necroball", but yes, if you were going to attempt to play a School of Necromancy Wizard and use nothing but Necromancy spells, you'd run into a problem very quickly because many of those Necromancy spells are terrible.

3rd level spells, and you have Animate Dead that gives you a crummy CR 1/4 creature that eats up your bonus action, Bestow Curse, a touch range save or suck that requires concentration (max 10 rounds), Feign Death (how is this a level 3 spell?!), Life Transference, which asks a d6 HD class to take 4d8 damage to heal an ally (who probably has more hit points) twice that amount, Speak with Dead that probably won't work against anyone you'd want to speak with, Spirit Shroud that only works against foes who are way too close to you, Summon Undead that costs 300 gp a shot and only has at most 30 hit points, Vampiric Touch which requires concentration, is touch range, and lets you do 3d6 damage a turn to a single target, in exchange for a trickle of hit points that won't matter after something hits you a few times, and...uh....that's it.

Just about any non-Necromancy spell of 3rd level would be better than this dreck!

3pp fixes a lot of this (like it fixes everything ). Mage Hand Press, for example, has a very fun Necromancer class. Level Up's necromancy support is also solid.

 

[Micah Sweet]

OH I don't know I'd argue DM's tend to make the same mistakes when they design powers and spells for thier Villains. Villains doing things players can't do IME causes a lot of these arguments.

I wouldn't know. My NPCs operate on the same system as the PCs (albeit sometimes more abstractly). If a PC wanted to use an ability a comparable NPC had, they can learn it.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Well I'm not saying every school should be the same.

But if 3rd level is a formative and important level for spells, each school should have an important overpowered 3rd level combat spell of their flavor.
Vampiric touch should be stronger.

Either that, or proud fireballs should be tamped down.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Of course then we have 8 different classes and all 8 different classes need utility spells, combat spells and enough flavorful spells that they can be played without the others. To do that properly wizards would have to completely make each school of magic a seperate and equally playeable in all kinds of games, list of spells. Then do away with the generic everyone uses this list of spells. done right it could be amazing but no one who's tried anything similar since D&D started has pulled anything like it off. Though I'd personally love to see necromancy be only in the pervue of clerics of death and life and first thing I'd do would be to remove necromancy spells from all players that didn't have a god or patron to grant them, leaving only 7 schools of magic to flesh out. The biggest problem with this over the years has been that flavorful often means a few classes get massively awesome spells like fireball, timestop, clone etc and everyone else gets stuff that doesn't compete on any level. Making 7 or 8 different spell lists that all have roughly the same generic utility is much harder than it sounds and possibly requires the death of a few sacred cows. Then to make that work you have to stop letting other classes get wizard or cleric spells and make them thier own lists, and of course then you need to make seperate but equally useful spell lists for each domain and do away with general spell lists for clerics. Which because of things like healing and ressurection become an impossible task because healing and a few other things always are always the most useful.

So basically to do it you have to completely redesign D&D magic for everyone and not destroy enough sacred cows that the masses revolt. I can't imagine wizards under hasbro being willing to attempt that.

Doesn't mean it isn't a good idea. We don't need WotC to do it either. That's what 3pp and homebrew are for.