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

[M_Natas]

Yea, but the converse to this would be requiring all actions to proceed linearly, and always finish resolving before anyone else can take an action.

That sort of procedure would neuter any sort of reaction defensive ability, and would significantly damage important fantasy tropes like wizard duels, parrying blades, and using a quick spell to knock aside an attack.

It is still clunky. If I would redesign it from scratch, I would get rid of those abilities and make monsters and players announce a round before what they ate intending to do.
So, at the end of its turn, the big dragon would charge its breath weapon, preparing it for the next round. Now the players can react on their turn to the incoming breath weapon. The wizard is starting to cast a spell, by pulling a spell component like sulphur out, now the players can decide if they want to interrupt that casting ect.pp.

But I think rhat needs another thread ^^

 

[M_Natas]

Counterspell shouldn't be a big issue if you play by the rules. It's quite limited unless the DM is house ruling you know the spell, and it's pretty trivial to get around even in those cases.

• RAW you don't know the spell you are counterspelling until it is already cast and then it's too late. So you are guessing that this is an important spell, and guessing at the level you want to counterspell. People messing it up is the #1 reason they think it's OP. Xanathar's has a way to know the spell - but it takes your reaction.

The problem with this is - it would slow the game to a crawl of every caster would announce - "I'm starting to cast a spell! Does anybody wants to counterspell it?"

Every table I ever played at was: "I'm casting fireball!" "The Evil Wizard Monster is casting ice storm!" ect.pp.

I mean, I agree that is the design intend that a caster first announces his wish to cast a spell and secondly say what the spell is, but it is never played like that. Nobody got time for that

 

[el-remmen]

Just a question: characters notice that they do a few encounters per day. Why would it be "meta-analysis" for the characters to act on that?

What would that be based on in-game? An all-powerful being that sets up the encounters? I just don’t get what in the world would tell you that 3 to 4 encounters is all you will ever face no matter where you are or what you are doing.

Player A: Hold off on that spell, we’re deep in this dungeon and there could be something tough down here based on the legends

Player B: Naw! We’ve already had three encounters before this. I can blow it all.

That makes no sense to me. Heck, even if it happened to generally be the case it would annoy the heck out of me as both another player or the DM if that was the basis for an in-game choice.

Of course, if that kind of meta-thinking works for your table, knock yourself out. Far be it from me to say all degrees of meta-thinking are verboten, but I definitely have a line there.

It's like saying the characters notice the abandoned temple complex is swarming with undead, but it would be meta for them to prepare for it.

It is nothing like that. One is a clear in-game reasoning. The other would be based on what is total coincidence from the POV of the PCs (unless they decide this is the gods’ doing or something, I guess).

 

[FrogReaver]

So Saturday night we cast web and a level 3 aoe concentration spell in a smallish room full of baddies and held the door closed. It turned what should have been a hard encounter into a cakewalk. We did this same thing a couple more times as well.

It was awesome! In my opinion it’s anecdotal evidence casters have too many strong situational buttons and too much ammunition for them.

To me the biggest bother is that casters can easily be built to be more survivable than most any martial.

Casters naturally can take advantage of range, they can have easily get medium armor and shields - making their ac higher than most any non-shield using martial - without any subsequent drop offs in offensive capabilities. They have defensive spells and/or healing to supplement, and they usually can have a few subclass anbilities to greatly aid in survivability.

 

[Micah Sweet]

See, there's the difference. I actually took the time to read the playtests, at least some of them, and saw that they had made many of the changes that will make my game more fun. Plus I had seen the changes that they had done in both Tasha's and the later books, with their newer monster design, and realize that yuppers, I'm happy with that.

I'm not thrilled with the lack of changes to the classes. But, outside of that? Yeah, sign me up.

Hey, buy what you want; I don't care. But suggesting you make the changes you want yourself is not inherently worse advice than hope that WotC does it for you.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

Lots to gnaw on in this thread! I'll keep it simple for now and just address this one:

Guidance spamming.

We, too, have a player who likes to shout "guidance!" Some playstyle and guideline aspects help keep this from getting out of hand for us, including:

1. During exploration, everyone gets to say what they are planning to do with their turn before the DM adjudicates. If you want to use guidance (or Help/Working Together or some other buff), now is the time. We also use 10 minute turns in exploration - so if the task takes more than the 1 minute duration of guidance, the spell is not going to be helpful if the DM calls for an Ability Check.
2. It is a touch spell - the PC granting guidance must be next to the PC receiving it.
3. It has a verbal component - is it ok for the caster to make some noise and/or be overheard casting a spell in the scene?

The suggestion upthread to have the player roleplay the casting of this spell is a good one, IMO. It's nice when players can give everyone at the table a clear sense of what their PC is doing in the scene.

 

[Zardnaar]

Lots to gnaw on in this thread! I'll keep it simple for now and just address this one:

Guidance spamming.

We, too, have a player who likes to shout "guidance!" Some playstyle and guideline aspects help keep this from getting out of hand for us, including:

1. During exploration, everyone gets to say what they are planning to do with their turn before the DM adjudicates. If you want to use guidance (or Help/Working Together or some other buff), now is the time. We also use 10 minute turns in exploration - so if the task takes more than the 1 minute duration of guidance, the spell is not going to be helpful if the DM calls for an Ability Check.
2. It is a touch spell - the PC granting guidance must be next to the PC receiving it.
3. It has a verbal component - is it ok for the caster to make some noise and/or be overheard casting a spell in the scene?

The suggestion upthread to have the player roleplay the casting of this spell is a good one, IMO. It's nice when players can give everyone at the table a clear sense of what their PC is doing in the scene.

Guidance can be hard to use in social and stealth.

 

[TwoSix]

I mean, I agree that is the design intend that a caster first announces his wish to cast a spell and secondly say what the spell is, but it is never played like that. Nobody got time for that

Once you have 1 or more casters with counterspell, and you have a bunch of caster enemies, you DO start to play like that. Better to have clarity upfront at the cost of time, than arguing over counterspell retcons.

 

[Stormonu]

Guidance can be hard to use in social and stealth.

Not guidancing Stealth, I can understand - unless it's done more than a round before the actual act. In Social it'd be like a invocation before the start of a public speech, I can see it being used there but possibly ruffling some feathers. Guidiancing an Intimidation would be a little weird, though it might be along the lines of "May you put the fear of my god in these Heathens." It's these sort of things that make me want to make the players roleplay the verbal part of Guidance, at least the first few times (or in unusual/tense) circumstances.

In the end, I do wish there was a minute (or more) cooldown between Guidance uses, even if the task itself didn't take more than a round to complete.

 

[Blue]

I'm not @el-remmen but, at our table, players are welcome to make meta-analysis decisions

I understand everything you are saying, but it doesn't actually address the question I asked. Which is "why is it meta"? You too have called something that the characters can regularly experience "meta" to act on, please let me know why. Not anything about is it good or bad or consequences, but why are you calling it meta?