D&D 5E What rules would you like to see come back in 5E?

[sunshadow21]

I always found the old interrupt mechanic actually made playing a caster more interesting, rather than a pain. It's not just that it's more difficult, it's that low-level spells have a place.

My long-running 2e campaign had a ton of magical duels. Low-level spells were both harder to disrupt and were better equipped to disrupt your enemies' spells.

First and second level damage spells actually start to look pretty interesting in that situation.

Cheers!
Kinak

Yes, but tack on the increased ability to save/resist them that came with 3E, and you end up with double jeopardy. Add on the the chance that situation might change from when you start and when it goes off that you get with complicated initiatives, another common limiter in pre 3E games, and it becomes next to impossible to predict if the spell is going to be worth the effort. Throw in the fact that older style casters had nothing but spells to rely on in battle, and you really have a problem. It isn't that any one of the above methods is bad, it's that any combination of more than two of them wreaks havoc. It's the same reason that in PF, you find that spells either have an attack roll or have SR, but you almost never see a spell with both; both of them, combined with some kind of save, would simply be too much. You can't go back to the old mechanics without junking the new ones, and I guarantee that a lot more people will balk at scaling back easy to understand saves than people will call for bringing back older style spell interruptions combined with complicated initiative rules. It's not just spell interruption that has changed, but the whole way the entire magic system is viewed, especially in how it relates to the greater combat rules; later versions have a different view of both magic and combat, making spell interruption both less necessary (due to other limiting factors, such as higher chance to shrug off part or all of the effect) and more difficult to implement. PF is the closest you'll likely find to spell interruption that doesn't get widely ignored; it still encourages lower level spells in certain situations while not making it virtually impossible to cast the higher level stuff. If you want to make it a bit tougher or a bit easier, you can just change the multiplier attached to the spell level and the rest of the system remains untouched.