D&D 5E WotC: Please do something about divine spells known bloat in 5e

[Dionysos]

I'm loving 5e so far. I have my early release PHB and it is awesome.

I know that books of player's options are coming, even if they follow through in their plans to make fewer of them this time. And every (non 4e) edition has had a problem whereby druids and clerics just get outright stronger with every player book that contains spells. This is because those classes just automatically know all of the spells on their class lists. Wizards have to hunt down new spells and pay money to add them to their spell books. Other spellcasters simply have a very limited number of spells known. But when a new book comes out that contains divine spells...wham! Suddenly the already versatile druid and cleric classes get a lot more powerful.

So, I'm mentioning this now, before any of the splatbooks come out. Please don't let 5e include this annoying fail state. I don't know if the answer is to make clerics and druids swap out spells from new books for their old spells, or maybe something else. Whatever it is, please get rid of this irritating oddity that makes certain classes automatically grow on power with the publication schedule. It seems like it will be easy to fix, but it needs to be planned for before it suddenly becomes an issue.

 

[ZombieRoboNinja]

I'm loving 5e so far. I have my early release PHB and it is awesome.

I know that books of player's options are coming, even if they follow through in their plans to make fewer of them this time. And every (non 4e) edition has had a problem whereby druids and clerics just get outright stronger with every player book that contains spells. This is because those classes just automatically know all of the spells on their class lists. Wizards have to hunt down new spells and pay money to add them to their spell books. Other spellcasters simply have a very limited number of spells known. But when a new book comes out that contains divine spells...wham! Suddenly the already versatile druid and cleric classes get a lot more powerful.

So, I'm mentioning this now, before any of the splatbooks come out. Please don't let 5e include this annoying fail state. I don't know if the answer is to make clerics and druids swap out spells from new books for their old spells, or maybe something else. Whatever it is, please get rid of this irritating oddity that makes certain classes automatically grow on power with the publication schedule. It seems like it will be easy to fix, but it needs to be planned for before it suddenly becomes an issue.

A lot of people seem to be looking at the PHB and complaining about issues they foresee 2 years from now. I don't think a structural "fix" is needed here; if WOTC is going to be stupid and introduce power creep, they can do so just as easily with new martial feats and subclasses as they can with new spells. If they want to avoid power creep, they will make sure that new spells are either very specialized in effectiveness or tied to a particular subclass.

 

[Dionysos]

Well yeah. But this particular thing was a problem in 1e, 2e and 3e and was never addressed in those editions. Nor was it publicly talked about in the 5e process. So this is a commonly recurring problem. That is different from the purely hypothetical martial power feat creep you discuss.

 

[Mistwell]

If you want to send a message to WOTC, there are probably a half-dozen better ways to do it than posting it at ENWorld. You can email Mike.Mearls@Wizards.com for a start. Or tweet him. Or post to the D&D facebook. Or email customer service at Wizards. Or open a customer service ticket at Wizards.com. Or post in the Future Products section of the WOTC message boards.

 

[ZombieRoboNinja]

Well yeah. But this particular thing was a problem in 1e, 2e and 3e and was never addressed in those editions. Nor was it publicly talked about in the 5e process. So this is a commonly recurring problem. That is different from the purely hypothetical martial power feat creep you discuss.

I don't know about 1e or 2e, but in 3e WOTC couldn't really do much about the issue thanks to third-party splatbooks. And Mearls actually did talk about this at some point; he said basically what I did, if I recall. Sorry I don't have an actual source for that.

Anyway, martial power creep wasn't "purely hypothetical" in 3e or even 4e; the difference is that in 4e everyone "crept" at about the same pace, and in 3e martial characters were already so far behind that the creep didn't matter. But yeah, remember mercurial greatswords and monkey grip? Stuff like that could easily mess up class balance in 5e, where you don't start with martial classes miles behind wizards and clerics, and you also don't have uniform class structure to keep everyone pretty much on par.

 

[Evenglare]

Interestingly enough, depending on if I see fit, sometimes I make the clerics carry spell books the same as wizards for this very reason.

 

[Henry]

If you want to send a message to WOTC, there are probably a half-dozen better ways to do it than posting it at ENWorld. You can email Mike.Mearls@Wizards.com for a start. Or tweet him. Or post to the D&D facebook. Or email customer service at Wizards. Or open a customer service ticket at Wizards.com. Or post in the Future Products section of the WOTC message boards.

Mistwell speaks wisdom. Like the proverbial minister preaching to the choir, it would be better if you also sent this to the intended target, using one or more of the easily provided channels.

But, since you posted here...

I've never really had a problem with this regardless of edition. While i do think that the increasing number of offensive spells since 3.0 edition in 2000 has diluted the wizards' and sorcerer's main trick somewhat, you still don't have priests casting fireballs and power word kills and phantasmal killers, by and large. As long as there is still a relatively strong dividing line between clerics and wizards for spell themes, i still don't have any parties who are happy going adventuring without a wizard type in the mix.

 

[Jester David]

They've acknowledged this is a potential problem and said that they plan to be careful about adding new divine spells for that reason.
The problem will come when there's a wave of staff turnover (inevitable with WotC) and the new staff don't realize this.

 

[Dionysos]

That is definitely encouraging to hear that they are aware of the problem!

 

[Mort]

Simple, though of course unofficial, fix:

If the cleric wants to add a spell from a new book, he must replace a spell currently on his list.