D&D 5E Why Has D&D, and 5e in Particular, Gone Down the Road of Ubiquitous Magic?

[TheLoneRanger1979]

I could get onboard with that makes casting a spell feel like an event as opposed to just meh in a similar way to when a fighter uses action surge you know its going down. As for rangers 0spells please.

Bolded by me. That is exactly what i feel. I would rather trade some of the ranger and palading casting for encounter or daily features that would add both meaning and identity to the class. And yes, i agree, the paladins are still probably in a better spot with their spell to smite conversion.

 

[n0nym]

I'm not a fan of ubiquitous magic either. For my next campaign, I'd like magic to be scarce without limiting class selection. I especially want to limit attack cantrips because I think a spellcaster doing nothing but "Eldritch Blast" or "Fire Bolt" every round breaks the feeling that magic is rare and wonderful.

How do you think it can be achieved ?

I thought of allowing the spellcasters to gather magical energy during several rounds in order to augment the power of the next cantrip they cast. It feels less spammy and more "magical" to me. I'm still not sure how it should work rule-wise. What do you think ?

 

[Kabouter Games]

I apologize for coming in late. Some topics take off so fast casual users like me can't keep up. I didn't read the entire thread, so if this dredges up some battle that's already been settled, I beg your forgiveness. This leaped out at me and begged support and elaboration.

I think the at-will cantrips make it seem more "Potterverse", more than anything else.

It's driven, I expect, by the McDonald's Effect.

People like to play casters (because, magic - it's a fantasy game after all), and as such they want their character to be magical, and that means being able to cast spells. As the default response to most things, from attacking monsters to locked doors to stubborn shopkeepers.

In previous editions, written in a different time with different assumptions and expectations of the real world to today, the concept of 'serving your time' as a fragile one/two shot caster with a Saturday night special crossbow as protection was acceptable, because paying your dues and then reaping rewards of your investment was worth it, and an accepted 'thing', culturally.

However, nowadays, people - especially the younger generations, but including us older folks who've got used to it, expect everything pretty much on demand - coffee just the esoteric way we like it, food fast and plentiful and ready to eat on the go in a much less formal way than before (hence the McDonald's Effect). As time has gone on we expect other things on tap too - wifi, your OS to boot in a moment, instant communications via email rather than waiting for the post, instant gratification via Likes rather than waiting to tell your mates that cracking joke you thought of the next time you see them, etc.

And so, when we play a game, having stopped by en route to grab a quick burger and fries and a cappufrappumoccachino with unicorn milk and chocolate dusting sustainably handmade by blind Gabonese virgins, and check our phone to say hi to our best friend who is shark hugging on a boat 100 miles off the coast of Vanuatu, why would we then sit down at a table and be happy to play a fantasy character who can cast one magic missile before quivering in fear for the rest of the session?

No, we want to cast spells with as little consideration as we send texts. Because the real world allows us to fulfil so many things from the get go, the fantasy world we choose to inhabit should provide the same freedom.

I can't really add much to this. Pretty much nails it, for the practical underpinnings.

I would like to add some more justification.

Let's remind ourselves of Clarke's Third Law Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. We live in a real world saturated by ubiquitous technology. Everything has electronics in it. Even your car key has a microchip in it. Your dog probably has a microchip in it. There's RF flying about all over the place. Both the dog's and the key's chips, for example, wake up when a handheld scanner sends a radio signal asking, "Are you there?" The chip powers itself by soaking up that RF, so it can reply, "Yep." Then a more complicated machine conversation takes place.

We take it for granted, don't even notice it. To a person from even 100 years ago, we are living in a Potterverse! Touch the screen of a pocket-sized instrument, and within minutes a man bearing a pizza will ring your doorbell.

When you think about it in those terms, D&D 5e's magic isn't at all surprising. The game assumes we're playing in worlds where magic takes the place of technology. Magic is what heals injuries, not sutures. A CAT scanner will never even be developed, because you don't need technological diagnosis techniques when you can just cast cure wounds. You don't need cheap, disposable crap from developing nations, because you can take that heirloom vase you just broke to the hedge wizard to have mending cast on it. These are worlds where there will never be an Industrial Revolution, because with magic there is no need for technology.

I've been playing this game since casting your one spell and cowering behind the Fighter is how you spent an evening. Things move on. I don't think that's "ruining" the game by "Potterfying" it. It's just how it is. It's different. If you don't like that, fine; use the optional rules for the gritty, R E Howard feel you want or ditch 5e altogether and go full grognard.

Anyway, them's mah thots. Thanks for letting me vent them.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

I'm not a fan of ubiquitous magic either. For my next campaign, I'd like magic to be scarce without limiting class selection. I especially want to limit attack cantrips because I think a spellcaster doing nothing but "Eldritch Blast" or "Fire Bolt" every round breaks the feeling that magic is rare and wonderful.

How do you think it can be achieved ?

I thought of allowing the spellcasters to gather magical energy during several rounds in order to augment the power of the next cantrip they cast. It feels less spammy and more "magical" to me. I'm still not sure how it should work rule-wise. What do you think ?

Put yourself in the shoes of the player of a Wizard or Sorceror or similar. What would you want to be doing on your turn when you're not burning spell slots:

Nothing; you have to miss this round because you're "building power" for a later spell?

Using a low-power spell or 'cantrip' to contribute a little to the party?

Getting out a mundane weapon like a crossbow or staff and attacking with it?

 

[DEFCON 1]

I would rather trade some of the ranger and palading casting for encounter or daily features that would add both meaning and identity to the class.

Yeah, if only Rangers had a daily feature that would allow them to mark the quarry they were hunting so the could do more damage against it, or be so good at dealing with animals that they could understand what they were thinking and convince them to help, or be able to call out into the wilds and get more animals to show up and assist, or be so good at stealthing through the woods that they can help the rest of the party cover their tracks, or have such good eyesight that they can see better in the dark and track down and locate animals and objects they are hunting for.

If only!

 

[Azurewraith]

Yeah, if only Rangers had a daily feature that would allow them to mark the quarry they were hunting so the could do more damage against it, or be so good at dealing with animals that they could understand what they were thinking and convince them to help, or be able to call out into the wilds and get more animals to show up and assist, or be so good at stealthing through the woods that they can help the rest of the party cover their tracks, or have such good eyesight that they can see better in the dark and track down and locate animals and objects they are hunting for.

If only!

Nothing a Druid can't do on that list other than hunters mark(why is this a spell and not a feature?) They do get pass without trace right?(right?) That's part of the issue to me is that rangers are to druids what paladins
are to cleric, that is a conversation for another thread that has been flogged to death. The paladin is splitting more from cleric though now its not deity based.

 

[TheLoneRanger1979]

Nothing a Druid can't do on that list other than hunters mark(why is this a spell and not a feature?) They do get pass without trace right?(right?) That's part of the issue to me is that rangers are to druids what paladins
are to cleric, that is a conversation for another thread that has been flogged to death. The paladin is splitting more from cleric though now its not deity based.

Beat me to it. I probably should have bolded the "meaning and identity to the class". Also, i can see why some people would go for the hunter's mark, but in my eyes this was never a ranger's trademark.... not until 4E.

I still stand by my words. I would give up some (belay that, most) casting for a defining feature. Even now the class is relatively ok if you take away all its spells. A feature or two to break up monotony between the current ASI's and features would be ok. Same for the paladin. Or if we are really lazy, just live them as they are and trade spells for ASI's. A bit problematic, especially for the paladin, because the smites do burn spell slots.

 

[Arilyn]

I apologize for coming in late. Some topics take off so fast casual users like me can't keep up. I didn't read the entire thread, so if this dredges up some battle that's already been settled, I beg your forgiveness. This leaped out at me and begged support and elaboration.



I can't really add much to this. Pretty much nails it, for the practical underpinnings.

I would like to add some more justification.

Let's remind ourselves of Clarke's Third Law Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. We live in a real world saturated by ubiquitous technology. Everything has electronics in it. Even your car key has a microchip in it. Your dog probably has a microchip in it. There's RF flying about all over the place. Both the dog's and the key's chips, for example, wake up when a handheld scanner sends a radio signal asking, "Are you there?" The chip powers itself by soaking up that RF, so it can reply, "Yep." Then a more complicated machine conversation takes place.

We take it for granted, don't even notice it. To a person from even 100 years ago, we are living in a Potterverse! Touch the screen of a pocket-sized instrument, and within minutes a man bearing a pizza will ring your doorbell.

When you think about it in those terms, D&D 5e's magic isn't at all surprising. The game assumes we're playing in worlds where magic takes the place of technology. Magic is what heals injuries, not sutures. A CAT scanner will never even be developed, because you don't need technological diagnosis techniques when you can just cast cure wounds. You don't need cheap, disposable crap from developing nations, because you can take that heirloom vase you just broke to the hedge wizard to have mending cast on it. These are worlds where there will never be an Industrial Revolution, because with magic there is no need for technology.

I've been playing this game since casting your one spell and cowering behind the Fighter is how you spent an evening. Things move on. I don't think that's "ruining" the game by "Potterfying" it. It's just how it is. It's different. If you don't like that, fine; use the optional rules for the gritty, R E Howard feel you want or ditch 5e altogether and go full grognard.

Anyway, them's mah thots. Thanks for letting me vent them.

You are right. Magic is everywhere in a typical D&D campaign. The designers and many players, however, state that magic is rare and special. There is a push to lower the frequency of magic items. Your analogy with tech is a good one. But in a 5e campaign, as recommended, there are lots of engineers and very few gadgets! I think there is a disconnect here. Either magic should be everywhere, for example an Arabian Nights kind of story, or if it is rare, we shouldn't have so many magic casting classes. As written in the PHB, 5e is trying to do both. With more support material coming out from other publishers, hopefully this will change, and we will all have enough material to design specific worlds.

 

[Kabouter Games]

You are right. Magic is everywhere in a typical D&D campaign. The designers and many players, however, state that magic is rare and special. There is a push to lower the frequency of magic items. Your analogy with tech is a good one. But in a 5e campaign, as recommended, there are lots of engineers and very few gadgets! I think there is a disconnect here. Either magic should be everywhere, for example an Arabian Nights kind of story, or if it is rare, we shouldn't have so many magic casting classes. As written in the PHB, 5e is trying to do both. With more support material coming out from other publishers, hopefully this will change, and we will all have enough material to design specific worlds.

I agree, though I think we're kind of debating at cross purposes.

For the purposes of adventuring - that magic which is useful to manipulating how the characters interact with the world - magic is rare and special. There are only so many wands of fireball and flame tongue swords. Cure wounds spells are to them as advanced medical science is to us. Herbalism can attend to certain maladies, just as taking Emergen-C can help you overcome a cold. We know that certain properties of certain substances, prepared in a certain way, and in the hands of trained professionals, inhibit bacterial growth. But in a fantasy world, "athelas in the hands of a king" curing infection is magic. The village wise woman can set a broken bone, just like a knowledgeable layman can do here. But for the CAT-scan sort of maladies, or in-combat healing, you need magic, just as you need cutting-edge medical technology here (I don't know if you've seen recent advances in stem-cell therapies to regrow body parts, for example). Magic is as ubiquitous to denizens of fantasy worlds as technology is to us because there's always a certain level of magic permeating everything. After all, magic is what makes dragons work. But magic useful to player characters - stuff that alters how you affect dramatic outcomes - is rare and special.

There are a lot of engineers involved in making any single technological device work, too - how many engineers worked on the iPhone? More than one, and they each had a little bit of the puzzle to solve. The Industrial Revolution and its impact on manufacturing makes the iPhone ubiquitous. In Faerun, lots of wizards did a little work on what became a wand of magic missiles, but there's no assembly line in Kara-Tur to crank out thousands of copies. It takes one wizard, obsessed enough with the thing to spend the time and effort, to make one. So they're rare and special.

That's how I see it, at any rate.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Bolded by me. That is exactly what i feel. I would rather trade some of the ranger and palading casting for encounter or daily features that would add both meaning and identity to the class. And yes, i agree, the paladins are still probably in a better spot with their spell to smite conversion.

"One spell every encounter or two" is how things tend to play out at my table already, if you don't count the Shadow Monk's ubiquitous Pass Without Trace between encounters. High-Deadly encounters will see more spells, but I honestly think we probably cast more spells during exploration as during combat, and not many spells during combat. (Not counting Shield, a typical encounter might see a Hex to enable easier grappling, a Bless, a Hypnotic Pattern, or a Darkness from the Shadow Monk--but not all four because that's overkill unless you're heavily outnumbered. I'm also not counting times when the party is split, because they cast more spells at those times to make up for the missing PCs.)

Maybe we are just stingy, or maybe I'm underestimating combat spell use. (Or maybe I'm cheating in my analysis by not counting Shield. Is Shield the most commonly-cast spell at your tables?) Or maybe it is because I keep difficulty and encounters-per-location unpredictable, so spellcasters have an incentive to keep something in reserve in case something nasty turns up.