I also think you could easily remove about half of the spells in the game with little noticeable impact, once you consider how many spells are minor variations or just seldom taken. Possibly three quarters.
Maybe at AL tables and/or powergamer tables.
And I know that, whatever spell you mention, you will get folks on a forum like this claiming that it is the best spell ever because reasons. I see a LOT of character sheets, though, and the reality is that a relative handful of spells see 90% of the action.
You see a small fraction of all the sheets in use, literally no matter who you are or what you do that puts “a LOT” of sheets in front of you.
I’ve run D&D at the public library, and at local events, and my D&D groupis actually an overlapping set of 4 different groups, and I’ve seen sheets with cookie cutter spell selection a vanishingly small number of items.
Neither of our anecdotes prove anything.
An interesting exercise is to make a list of just the vital spells for each class, the ones that are must-haves.
Only for the purpose of buffing up some of the least used spells that are seldom used because they don’t execute their fiction well.
Simulacrium. I don't see how you do that in a "as thematic" and not-broken way... maybe if they shared spell slots with the caster you could pull it into a usable spell, but even then...
Just don’t allow the Sim to make a Sim. Or more than one Sim of the same person will self destruct the older one regardless of who made it. Whatever. Having one simulacrum that costs 100g per hp to repair, 1500 to create, can’t regain spell slots, and can’t learn, just doesn’t seem all that OP to me.
If you need soemthing to nerf it, make it use the caster’s HP or HD in creation, and you can’t regain them while the sim exists.
leomands tiny battle bunker
Not gonna lie, I’d love that spell, if it were made for that purpose. D&D needs a group protection combat spell like that. Let those protected shoot spells and whatever else out of it, maybe high level version even trickles in some healing while inside, and incoming attacks are needed in some way, scaling with spell slot level.
I’d also love a similar but there-and -gone reaction version that is just like shield but for an area, makes a dome, spells are blocked unless the caster can overcome your spell DC with a Spellcasting check, “we can’t be touched for a few seconds or longer if the caster maintains it as an action and keeps concentration, making checks every time the dome is hit by anything” spell.
Maybe the protective dome has HP, and takes damage after the first round it’s up, and the caster has to use an action and make concentration checks to keep it going every time the dome takes damage, and can spend spell slots to “heal” the dome.
This I really like. I'd love "spell chains" where you learn the spell and it has significant differecnes at certain upcast milestones. We have a few that sort of touch it, like losing the need for Concentration on Hex, but having a "magical shelter" spell that covered Rope Trick, Leomund's, And Mordy's Magnificent Mansion would be cool.
While I dislike the specific example, I agree with the sentiment.
Of course, we'd also need to revamp ritual casting to allow upcasting.
I’d love it if they did that anyway.
It's the "how do we allow group stealth" hack. Because of course Magic will fix everything and there's no way to do it via one character's skill. Really, they can solve by using that as an example for Group Skill Checks.
This is why I like the idea of Rogue getting the ability to help while breaking the action economy when making the same check as another PC, if the rogue has expertise in the skill.
For the magic solution, I’d make PWT a ranger class feature that auto-scales with ranger level, keep it as a Druid spell but increase the level or make it a level-scaling spell, perhaps capping out with a level 6 casting being a group invisibility.
For general use I’d make the group check rules very clear and present in the PHB and maybe make helping others easier in a group check generally, but rogues with expertise do it even better.
