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Why does 5E SUCK?
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<blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 7272570" data-attributes="member: 996"><p>It's the same in that they both do damage at range and have no hard times/day limit. It's different in that the crossbow doesn't scale with level while the cantrip does, and that you can run out of crossbow bolts... So, not the same: better. </p><p></p><p> You're ahead of the game from 5th through 7th, tied at 8th, and only fall a maximum of 2d behind at 10th. Hardly seems terrible.</p><p></p><p> A 5e wizard starts out able to prepare several spells and has two slots, he gets better from there. At 5th, he's probably prepping 8 or 9 spells, and casting from 9 slots, the 1e 'Magician' is memorizing into 6 spell slots, even if the 5e wiz were also stuck memorizing into slots instead of rock'n spontaneous casting, he'd be ahead by one spell of each level. The inflection point is sometime after 12th level (at 11th the 5e wiz has 6th level spells, the AD&D MU gets 'em at 12th, and, while at very high levels - levels 5e doesn't even go to, the MU chart gets rediculuous, it's not like a lot of folks played at those levels, and it'd be a very, very long slog to get there).</p><p></p><p> That's what happens with traditional Vancian, you can't afford to mix it up much, even when you do, you have one or two uses of an unusual spell, tops, and are giving up the more usual suspects. In 5e, you have a defensive spell or two, a solid scalable damage spell if you want to be able to punch above the cantrip baseline, and from there you're prettymuch free to use your remaining spells prepped - and you have one or two remaining, even at 1st level, how you see fit. If the oddball choices you prep don't come up, you still blow all your slots on the stand-bys that do - and if they do come up a lot, you spam them. It's a vast upgrade in flexibility from the challenges of playing an MU back in the day.</p><p></p><p>Well, there's that /too/. No interruption, not even an AoO for casting in melee, not even a penalty for casting save spell in melee, able to cast in almost any circumstance (in 1e the list of things you couldn't do while casting was daunting - you couldn't even go down on one knee to get better cover from a low wall, you had to be upright, gesturing & manipulating components with both hands! - since 3e you've been able to move & cast, cast while prone, etc), barely inconvenienced by components, not needing to blow slots on rituals, never wasting a spell slot because you memorized something that didn't come up, always able to fall back on cantrips when the target doesn't /quite/ warrant a spell, able to re-charge the odd spell on a short rest...</p><p>....I'm probably leaving something out again, the advantages heaped on 5e casters are so many, varied, and occasionally even subtle, it's hard to marshal the whole list...</p><p>...oh, less healing burden because of HD...</p><p></p><p> It was still D&D, and it was notable as the closest D&D ever came to balancing casters & non-casters. To do so, it nerfed spell far harder than 5e, and cut spells/day down to a handful. 5e doesn't return to the full glory of 3.x CoDzilla & God-Wizards, but it's Tier 1 casters have it much easier by way of compensation for being less wildly overpowered at their most 3.x-RAW-optimized. </p><p></p><p>Even so, it's not like 5e comes in 2nd-to-last ahead of a distant/nearly-balanced 4e, it's just off the 3.x peak of caster supremacy....</p><p></p><p> Depends on your 1e DM even more than your 5e DM. I've known some who'd allow magic armor & shield bonuses to apply to many of your spell saves, for instance, even without that, a high-level target likely has a pretty good save, and, on a save, either version of Disintegrate does nothing. But, in 5e, you can use it against a target with a bad REF save and there's little chance of it saving.... Max damage is 105, and it does work (he has 4 hps left) it just doesn't also disintegrate him. Waiting until the enemy has been whittled down enough that it likely will work (after about 35 hps of damage on that 13th level fighter, and that isn't long to wait the way damage flies around in 5e) is the obvious tactic - in that way, it's more like the 1e Power Word: Kill.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Tony Vargas, post: 7272570, member: 996"] It's the same in that they both do damage at range and have no hard times/day limit. It's different in that the crossbow doesn't scale with level while the cantrip does, and that you can run out of crossbow bolts... So, not the same: better. You're ahead of the game from 5th through 7th, tied at 8th, and only fall a maximum of 2d behind at 10th. Hardly seems terrible. A 5e wizard starts out able to prepare several spells and has two slots, he gets better from there. At 5th, he's probably prepping 8 or 9 spells, and casting from 9 slots, the 1e 'Magician' is memorizing into 6 spell slots, even if the 5e wiz were also stuck memorizing into slots instead of rock'n spontaneous casting, he'd be ahead by one spell of each level. The inflection point is sometime after 12th level (at 11th the 5e wiz has 6th level spells, the AD&D MU gets 'em at 12th, and, while at very high levels - levels 5e doesn't even go to, the MU chart gets rediculuous, it's not like a lot of folks played at those levels, and it'd be a very, very long slog to get there). That's what happens with traditional Vancian, you can't afford to mix it up much, even when you do, you have one or two uses of an unusual spell, tops, and are giving up the more usual suspects. In 5e, you have a defensive spell or two, a solid scalable damage spell if you want to be able to punch above the cantrip baseline, and from there you're prettymuch free to use your remaining spells prepped - and you have one or two remaining, even at 1st level, how you see fit. If the oddball choices you prep don't come up, you still blow all your slots on the stand-bys that do - and if they do come up a lot, you spam them. It's a vast upgrade in flexibility from the challenges of playing an MU back in the day. Well, there's that /too/. No interruption, not even an AoO for casting in melee, not even a penalty for casting save spell in melee, able to cast in almost any circumstance (in 1e the list of things you couldn't do while casting was daunting - you couldn't even go down on one knee to get better cover from a low wall, you had to be upright, gesturing & manipulating components with both hands! - since 3e you've been able to move & cast, cast while prone, etc), barely inconvenienced by components, not needing to blow slots on rituals, never wasting a spell slot because you memorized something that didn't come up, always able to fall back on cantrips when the target doesn't /quite/ warrant a spell, able to re-charge the odd spell on a short rest... ....I'm probably leaving something out again, the advantages heaped on 5e casters are so many, varied, and occasionally even subtle, it's hard to marshal the whole list... ...oh, less healing burden because of HD... It was still D&D, and it was notable as the closest D&D ever came to balancing casters & non-casters. To do so, it nerfed spell far harder than 5e, and cut spells/day down to a handful. 5e doesn't return to the full glory of 3.x CoDzilla & God-Wizards, but it's Tier 1 casters have it much easier by way of compensation for being less wildly overpowered at their most 3.x-RAW-optimized. Even so, it's not like 5e comes in 2nd-to-last ahead of a distant/nearly-balanced 4e, it's just off the 3.x peak of caster supremacy.... Depends on your 1e DM even more than your 5e DM. I've known some who'd allow magic armor & shield bonuses to apply to many of your spell saves, for instance, even without that, a high-level target likely has a pretty good save, and, on a save, either version of Disintegrate does nothing. But, in 5e, you can use it against a target with a bad REF save and there's little chance of it saving.... Max damage is 105, and it does work (he has 4 hps left) it just doesn't also disintegrate him. Waiting until the enemy has been whittled down enough that it likely will work (after about 35 hps of damage on that 13th level fighter, and that isn't long to wait the way damage flies around in 5e) is the obvious tactic - in that way, it's more like the 1e Power Word: Kill. [/QUOTE]
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