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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Herremann the Wise" data-source="post: 5970841" data-attributes="member: 11300">I voted for both mechanics and advice.I notice two attitudes that concern me here:1) People saying that they've never noticed it and so why bother addressing it.2) People acknowledging it as something the DM is doing wrong, as if they are not keeping their world believable.My 5MW experiences that you are more than welcome to debate:In a 3.x Age of Worms campaign, the wizard/archmage became so strong that encounters were basically run at two speeds - the wizard at full and the wizard slightly less than full. [Now remember we are talking very high level here (up to 19th) but the issues started becoming pronounced around the 13th level mark]. The disparity in party level between these two situations was incredibly noticeable.As such, picking a median level meant that an encounter was a walkover for the party at full but very dangerous if the party was down on resources with the wiz/arch being the most obvious factor. Now the advice (that seems quite trite to me having been in the above situation) is that one should have time sensitive scenarios as well as believable encounters (and wandering monster encounters to boot). Now this is fine to a point at lower levels. But there becomes a point in power level where this no longer works because:a) You can only run so many time sensitive scenarios before the group get sick of being pulled from one situation to the next (loss of player agency).b) The group becomes so powerful that they effectively determine the "when" 9 times out of 10 encounters they face. There is too much powerful magic and powerful defensive magic where the PCs effectively decide whether they fight or not.Now you could contrive scenarios to combat this but they would not be believable. You can artificially create time sensitivity or you can artificially create an enemy that can get through the party's defenses to force an encounter but neither of those things are something I like to pull on players just to challenge them. By contriving such a thing, I feel that I'm loosing the DM curtain from its rod and revealing the man behind the screen - which to me is effectively giving up on providing that believable world. Admittedly high level 3.x is its own beast but the 5MW is pretty much a given if you are trying to maintain a believable world. [4e addressed this for me but did not completely fix it; I think 5e can do better again if they try.]And so, this is why I would like mechanics that reduce the range of a party at their best and a party at their worst so that they don't feel the need to stop unless it is due to their health, and I don't feel the need to challenge their resources just to have a combat where the mundane guys get to have a turn. I would hope for advice on the system so I can have some measure of DM agency to keep things going - so I know what expected levers I have to maintain my world. I suppose the big issue here is the Vancian mechanics. An idea:What if rather than getting all your spells back in a one hour study session, you instead spend a greater amount of time studying to prepare a single spell but this could be done at any time, rather than just after an extended rest (with the higher the level, the longer the time - let's say 10 minutes per level of the spell). In this way, the wizard can have a break and prepare their big spell(s) and keep going. It is only when the wizard dries up all their resources that they are going to have to have some serious time off to get them all back. I'm sure you could play with the rate here to catch the sweetspot. I see two advantages with this:1) Lower level casters have more control over their resources and do not runout as often.2) The power disparity between a group at max resources and a group at a lower resource level is lessened as it is easier for a wizard to keep their power level up. [The assumption is that a wizards highest spell is significant but not over-powered.]Food for thought anyway.Best RegardsHerremann the Wise</blockquote>

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