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

[TwoSix]

For D&D I'd agree with you... it's baked into the game.

But the new MCDM game they are making actually has removed the attack roll altogether for precisely the reason you say-- it "feels better" in their opinion to feel like you haven't wasted your turn. So every attack hits and its the damage roll that determines just how potent or impotent you were.

Granted... I'll be curious to see if the "bad damage roll" merely supplants the "missed attack roll" as feeling as though a player has wasted their turn... but we won't get a sense of that until the game gets released.

For sure. I mean, the "auto-hit", damage only attack rule isn't new; Into the Odd was exploring that design space as an OSR game ten years ago. And I imagine a low damage roll getting deflected into 0 damage/no effect is just as irritating as rolling a 2 on your attack die in D&D.

 

[Stalker0]

Exactly. Which is why every table needs to houserule their game to make sure it works just as they'd prefer it to... rather than wait on WotC to change their rules to fit the table's desires. Hopefully you and all the rest of us are doing this, otherwise we are hobbling ourselves up every time we play for no good reason.

Or…should these types of mechanics be changed to mechanics more friendly to multiple styles?

 

[TwoSix]

Or…should these types of mechanics be changed to mechanics more friendly to multiple styles?

That's a WotC problem, not a "Me as a DM trying to make my table better" problem. "Fix your own table, don't worry about WotC" tends to be @DEFCON 1 's point.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Or…should these types of mechanics be changed to mechanics more friendly to multiple styles?

Don't waste your time trying to guess just how many styles can get "fixed" by whatever rules changes you think there should be. You'll drive yourself crazy and have no way of proving it one way or the other anyway. Either that or you'll just force yourself to believe that number is large enough to thus justify why your views on what the rules should be are in fact the correct ones.

While I will never be able to stop folks for getting themselves all worked up over the game rules WotC produces... I will always be here to just remind them there's nothing wrong with just "letting go" and stick to making their own table work fine for them instead.

 

[Stoutstien]

Rerolls are a while different issue. Spells are ripe with it but it's not necessary in isolated problem

 

[Micah Sweet]

Turns out, when you give players the freedom to choose between 2-3 dozen options, the cream will rise to the top. When the options have little to no intersection with the unique flavor or identity of that character, the best options will tend to be quite uniform.

At any given level, there are usually anywhere between two and five excellent, stand-out, nearly-universally-good spells for any given class, which should always be top picks. Anything else is either neat but unnecessary, genuinely worthless, or a Ritual you should keep in mind but rarely prepare.

But remember, spells ensure that characters aren't samey like they were in the edition that must not be named!

Well, they at allow the possibility that characters aren't same like they were in the edition that must not be named. And most folks IME experienced that feeling through how the rules worked and were presented, not what spells they cast.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It's not really a risk though, unless the DM wants to end the campaign. I mean, sure, the DM (me) could do it, but, then what? "Hey guys, you failed those saving throws, three of the five characters are now completely unrecoverable. All that time you spent in this campaign? Yeah, that's down the toilet."

Yeah, that's a fantastic end to a campaign.

Honestly, themes the breaks. If that happened to me I would just make a new character in whatever plane the majority of the party ended up in, and then we would probably quest to find the rest of the group where ever they ended up.

Actually, that sounds awesome.

 

[Stormonu]

It may interrupt things a bit, but it's only a little bit, particularly for something like shield. And it may help keep players engaged because they may have to pay attention to other players' turns to use some of these abilities.

The same issue applies to a paladin's smite power, which can be declared after rolling to hit and knowing the result. And I'd argue it's actually good design compared to predecessors. Remember the paladin's smite from 3e? You declared it before the attack roll, got a bonus to hit... and if you missed, too bad. That daily resource was burned. It was terrible.

You mean like how you might burn a 2nd level Scorching Ray to have all the rays miss or cast Hold Person and the victim makes the save? It happens, it sucks to be on the active caster's side, but it's part of the game.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Don't waste your time trying to guess just how many styles can get "fixed" by whatever rules changes you think there should be. You'll drive yourself crazy and have no way of proving it one way or the other anyway. Either that or you'll just force yourself to believe that number is large enough to thus justify why your views on what the rules should be are in fact the correct ones.

While I will never be able to stop folks for getting themselves all worked up over the game rules WotC produces... I will always be here to just remind them there's nothing wrong with just "letting go" and stick to making their own table work fine for them instead.

Which is why most of my WotC ire is focused on what they do with the lore they own, not the rules I can satisfactorily change myself.

 

[billd91]

You mean like how you might burn a 2nd level Scorching Ray to have all the rays miss or cast Hold Person and the victim makes the save? It happens, it sucks to be on the active caster's side, but it's part of the game.

There is a place for it, but there are points where that design isn't ideal and interrupting that flow or changing it so decisions are made after results are known are also good design.