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

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Fanaelialae]

Considering a shadow monk of those levels has at will teleportation how is that not ubiquitous magic? Note the idea of blasting is just one issue. The bigger issue in my mind is that groups are using spells every round. Doesn't really matter if it's blasting or not. The proliferation of combat magic just lends itself to homogenizing casters.

I'll point you to what I was responding to, in case the specifics slipped your mind:

Three groups without a single character capable of casting a single offensive spell? That is impressive. How did it go? So all casters took nothing but information gathering and skill buff spells?

We were specifically discussing offensive magic. I never claimed that they were non-magic parties. Although the fact that the monk used his teleportation all of once or twice over the course of ten levels (he considered his Shadow Monk abilities largely useless, which never made sense to me but hey...) certainly helped give it that kind of feel.

 

[Neonchameleon]

We were specifically discussing offensive magic. I never claimed that they were non-magic parties. Although the fact that the monk used his teleportation all of once or twice over the course of ten levels (he considered his Shadow Monk abilities largely useless, which never made sense to me but hey...) certainly helped give it that kind of feel.

Bwuh? In my last session playing a level 4 Shadow Monk I think I cast more spells than the party wizard and bard combined if you ignore Firebolt. Pass Without Trace is awesome (and completely saved our bacon), Silence is a mage-killer, and being able to Darkvision up the party was really useful. And Minor Image = Best Cantrip. (I don't think I used a single point of ki for anything other than utility spells).

 

[ChrisCarlson]

All I do every session is look for excuses to use my shadow monk teleport!

 

[Fanaelialae]

Bwuh? In my last session playing a level 4 Shadow Monk I think I cast more spells than the party wizard and bard combined if you ignore Firebolt. Pass Without Trace is awesome (and completely saved our bacon), Silence is a mage-killer, and being able to Darkvision up the party was really useful. And Minor Image = Best Cantrip. (I don't think I used a single point of ki for anything other than utility spells).

I agree that they're very useful abilities. However, he never used Minor Image, Pass Without Trace or Silence as far as I can recall. I think he cast Darkness once (to provide the party members concealment to take cover behind, because they were being pelted from afar). Darkvision he used a handful of times, but still not too often. I even tried to convince him to use his abilities more often, but he wasn't having it.

Part of it had to do with the fact that he really enjoyed Flurry of Blows, Patient Defense, Step of the Wind and Stunning Strike, so he didn't want to waste Ki on other abilities. Another factor was that the Fighter had a straight-forward personality and preferred to meet the enemy head on, rather than sneak around. As for why he didn't use his shadow teleportation and invisibility powers more than once or twice, I can't say. When I asked he simply said that he didn't see them as being all that useful. Of course, part of that may have been that he was playing a 5 Intelligence character. He's a really good role-player, so in hindsight he may have been looking at it from the viewpoint of his character.

 

[Mark CMG]

D&D has always been relatively high magic.

Naw, not always but certainly in the last couple editions, and maybe in the waning years of 2E with the Skills & Powers and other books that were a precursor to 3.XE.

But if you compare it to, say, OSR or 1e, magic (ignoring magic items) was a relatively rare class feature. Entire classes had no access to it, and (. . .)

Yup, that's the other extreme for D&D.

We were specifically discussing offensive magic.

Yup, you sure were then the old switcheroo was enacted. lowkey13 was ignoring that I was pointing that out, myself, then arguing both sides of the subject.

 

[Azurewraith]

I agree that they're very useful abilities. However, he never used Minor Image, Pass Without Trace or Silence as far as I can recall. I think he cast Darkness once (to provide the party members concealment to take cover behind, because they were being pelted from afar). Darkvision he used a handful of times, but still not too often. I even tried to convince him to use his abilities more often, but he wasn't having it.

Part of it had to do with the fact that he really enjoyed Flurry of Blows, Patient Defense, Step of the Wind and Stunning Strike, so he didn't want to waste Ki on other abilities. Another factor was that the Fighter had a straight-forward personality and preferred to meet the enemy head on, rather than sneak around. As for why he didn't use his shadow teleportation and invisibility powers more than once or twice, I can't say. When I asked he simply said that he didn't see them as being all that useful. Of course, part of that may have been that he was playing a 5 Intelligence character. He's a really good role-player, so in hindsight he may have been looking at it from the viewpoint of his character.

Sounds like they should of picked open hand. I can't count the times I have debated over if that cloud cover counts as dim light or branches of trees just so I can port around or vanish

 

[TBeholder]

1) Trying to appeal to MMO crowd.
2) Trying to cover failures in the rest of the system, which otherwise could break the game. I doubt many of those were tested at all for such an incomprehensibly extreme case as an all-Warrior party.
3) In 3e that was just the unhinged skill system dragging everything else to Davy Jones' Locker (without Concentration etc even 3e as is could be almost decent). And then the latter teams looked back on 3e...