Is magic the easy button? No. In 5E, Wizard ritual casting from a spellbook, Leomund's Tiny Hut, Detect Thoughts, and Zone of Truth are the Easy Button. I've been playing since the blue cover pre-Basic edition, and Wizards were impossible to play way back then. Now they're very very easy. The number of 1E and 2E wizard bodies buried beside roadways is enormous. Some blame cantrips for things being too easy, but I don't buy that. Being able to fall back on Fire Bolt or Chill Touch are the equivalent of the fighter having a bow and 40 arrows. I agree that "feeling like a wizard/caster" is important, since other classes can generate that "feel" quite easily. Player buy in is key. To make things feel less "easy", I think the setting is important. Dark Sun is on the far end of the scale, with Eberron on the other end. When I made Tholl, I faced "easy magic" with laws. Like darker versions of Marvel where mutants and other heroes were registered, so were casters. Magic was regulated and controlled. Heroes who chose to buck this risked arrest, but certainly had greater freedom in the wilds. It was up to the players how they chose to address this. As far as the DM's struggle with these easy spells, reading the entire spell is necessary. - Leomund's Tiny Hut is a dome, not a sphere. It has a maximum number of living creatures in it. Insects burrow from below, as to several monsters. - Zone of Truth can tell if someone passed or failed a save, but does not compel anyone to say anything. Targets can "invoke the right to remain silent" if you will. - Detect Magic doesn't tell if something is cursed. DMs do not use enough cursed magic. That's not the game's fault. - Detect Thoughts scans surface thoughts for free. Sure. What are the chances that the target is actually thinking about the needed info? What if they're thinking of a song that's stuck in their head? What if they're having inappropriate thoughts about the caster? What if they're going over a shopping list? The caster should use role playing to direct or trick the target into dropping important information. It should not be free. If a DM wants more challenges in their worlds, it's up to them to create these challenges.
I think that more than detect magic, the real issue is Identify. My Forge Cleric has both, and it's needed since our campaign has a lot of "poke around the ancient ruins to find out how it works" moments. I use Detect Magic as a general scan to find out which part of the room is actually magical, then Identify to get all the details. I have also grabbed Tiny Hut (through ritual caster feat), but that's mostly because organizing guard turn during long rests got boring (and we weren't allowed to sleep in heavy armor)
Mike Gould You are absolutely correct. There are plenty of ways for dungeon masters to account for these utility spells and make the game challenging. The Animated Spellbook channel has a video about how to manage the goodberry spell in a survival setting... long story short, make the material components consumed with each casting. The dm is given a lot of power over the rules of the game, so it is up to the dm to make things work. Cheers!
Curses are great I remember a cursed item from 1st that compelled you to return it to it's original location no matter the cost the curse only took hold once the item was out of your possession. We had 3 party members get hit by it fun times were had it is still one of my favorite sessions.
More magic just gives me, the DM, more opportunities to get creative with how I am going to challenge my players. I try not to restrict what they have but instead take it into account. There are different ways to challenge players, and if you want a survival bent, throw enough problems at them that using magic to solve the food issue is wasting resources you need for other threats. That gives characters with survival skills some opportunity to shine.
I always reminds my players, no matter what game we're playing, that if they have access to it, then the enemy probably has an equivalent. I also keep loose track of supplies that are considered perishable by asking if they have xyz. If they, then I immediately challenge them to find a solution to the deficit. If they come up with a repeatable solution, I just start asking if they use it. If not, then they'll face this issue again some time, and they know it. Then they start trying to find solutions. I'm okay with magic fixing the issue and moving on to other things, like character interaction and roleplaying and combat. 5e to me doesn't feel like magic is taking the fun out of it, it just changes the challenge types, rhythm, power, and flavor. My most recent campaign have all suffered from magic flow issues, like dead zones and surge points. That is a new and frightening challenge for players, especially those with casters or reliant on magic items. Also, I don't mind curses. I'm kinda new to 5e, but I've made good use of curses in the past. It's a pretty good way for a concerned user of magics to protect his prized possessions that the party might want to snatch. In one campaign, the Wizard that our Thief wanted to pick pocket had his belt pouch alarmed with a contingency shocking grasp and sleep. Taser-pouch made a shocking result to his go-to way of getting around fighting interesting high level opponents. And landed him in hot water with local authorities. It also became something our party was willing to pay good coin to build for themselves. Adjust as you go. The real world does. Fantasy literature and games do. It's s normal thing to evolve and change. If you want to guide the direction of change, it's your prerogative as a DM. Just make sure everybody who stays at the table to play understands and agrees. Maybe pause to discuss if someone feels put out by your changes. But keep calm and play on!
Exactly. Instead of complaining about the problems the party can solve with magic, make the use of magic a basic assumption when you design your challenges. It's the new normal, so obviously greater challenges need to be dropped on the players to compensate. Work _around_ their magic, just as you work around their generally expanding power that comes from level ups.
@@Bluecho4 operating under that assumption it makes nearly impossible for normal folks. If the world takes into account what your player's characters have what chance do peasants have. Just some food for thought. Nerdarchist Dave
@Sean Fisher I'm not super impressed with the cerebral might it takes to ritual cast Leomund's Tiny Hut. But I do love when player's use resources in new and interesting ways that I have thought of. Nerdarchist Dave
The situations Player Characters deal with are _never_ the same as those of normal folk. They're _always_ getting into trouble, because the DMs go out of their way to engineer such things. "Realism" takes a back seat to the needs of the game, _because_ it is a game. Moreover, PCs go out of their way to _find_ trouble. There's a reason peasants sit on their farms, rather than delving into dungeons. They huddle in their villages and cities, erecting walls to keep out the monsters, and hire adventurers to take care of great threats. Commoners avoid trouble like the plague, because they _aren't_ prepared to deal with it. Adventurers _look_ for trouble, and not only tend to find it, but tend to motivate other characters to focus on the PCs. Especially when the PCs start making names for themselves, and proving themselves to be badasses. That sort of thing attracts stronger foes, and encourages weaker foes to get stronger, to band together with other antagonists, and to alter their tactics to deal with the party.
I had that impression as well when I started playing an Arcane Trickster, but my DM reminded me that reading the spell well was a gift of information. I thought EVERY spell consumed the components. Not so much. That made me a lot happier about picking up Chromatic Orb for a spell. That would have gotten expensive quickly.
A big difference between early D&D and recent D&D is that the small problems disappeared from the game. You don't have to worry about running out of torches if the wizard can just cast light as a cantrip as often as they want to. Even when magic was able to solve every problem, you still had to use one of the very few spell slots you had for it and couldn't do so indefinitely. Personally, I like the small problems and I come from a game in which you can't use nearly as much magic as in D&D. How it works is like this: if you are good, you have about 40 mana at low levels. Most spells cost about 7-11 mana and you regenerate 1d6 per rest. The cheapest spells cost about 3 mana. Thus, even casting an average spell per day wears you out. Furthermore, every spell basically is a skill check that may fail. However, some spells are really powerful. For example, you can summon a demon at level 1 that obliterates every encounter. There are three problems, though. If you fail, bad things may happen, for example, you may fail to control the demon and he now goes after you. Also, summoning this demon costs you about 30 mana - often more. Lastly, spells take much more time than classical fighting. For example, summoning a major demon is a ritual that takes about 30 minutes. As a result, you don't generally want to go all out and use magic as the last option. As a result of this experience, feeling like a wizard to me was having access to great power but being hesitant to use it. Magic in D&D5 sometimes still feels magical as you have the solution to pretty much every problem. It just doesn't feel valuable and rare. About the survivalist aspect: for me, this more boils down to the need for preparation. When you start a journey, you start with finding out how long the way is, how the opportunities for resupplying are and you wager on the time you'll need. Characters who are good at wilderness skills are very valuable since they can hunt, forage or fish in order to get supplies, they also can predict the weather in order to give you an idea of what equipment you'll need and of how long the journey will take you. I like the scenes in which the party set up camp and argue over who's gonna be on watch duty. I like it when some characters are gathering wood for the camp fire while other characters prepare the food. I love making player characters paranoid because a hedgehog is making a lot of noise. I don't think that those concerns should necessarily be present if the party reaches high levels, though. The game should change based on how experienced the characters are. Another aspect that's sadly missing is that some magic comes at a cost. Haste was always a very powerful spell, but you used to age one year if you cast it. You used to consider if doing that was worth the sacrifice, but it was much more powerful to what a noncaster was able to do.
No disrespect, and please understand where I am coming from, but this topic reminds me so much of how technology has changed the real world over the last 30+ years. I was born in 1984. As a child, they taught us how to use card catalogs, yet by the time I was 13, you could look up what you wanted in the computer, and by the time I was 17 or 18, it was all online. We live in a world where the smart phone is something regular children have. Again, growing up, I had to open a book and look things up, scouring over pages, learning how to use an index, appendix and more... yet now we can find the answer to damned near any question we could care to ask within seconds by voice or a tap of a finger. All of this without magic. So... in the fantasy world of D&D, of course spell casters will work hard to solve the problems of hunger, thirst and shelter, which are essential needs of every living creature. That stuff is far more important than a fireball spell. Also... since I still have your attention... how can we complain about this in a game where normal humanoid creatures have enough HP at level 10+ to withstand the breath of a dragon, or the various other things which would kill anybody instantly... but not D&D characters because of RPG numbers and game mechanics? The things adventurers survive from encounter to encounter break the verisimilitude of the game for me regularly and remind me that we are playing a game. As the guards in Skyrim say, I used to be an adventurer like you until I took AN ARROW (a single arrow) to the knee. Yes, like athletes who tear a ligament or break a bone, you are done. But in D&D? Nah, you are at 1 HP, take a long rest, get some lay on hands and we are all good. We should have third degree burns, scars, missing limbs and sight, and so forth. Magic solves this and nobody complains for a second... so what is the big deal about making food or shelter again?
It's a great point. If magic actually existed, one of the _first_ things anyone would work out would be things like Create Food and Water. For all the people in these comments lamenting that spells like this are "the easy button" and "ruin challenges" just consider for a second how idiotic it would be if no one in a magical world had bothered to come up with a spell to feed people. I mean, you've got spells that create illusions, summon aid from alternate realities, raise the dead, see through walls and kill people in creative ways. But I can't get _a sandwich_ up in this bitch?
Thanks, but what don't you like about how I view HP? A level 8 black pudding does 19 damage (13 of which is acid). A level 1 barbarian has roughly 14HP. When he starts the adventure, a lvl8 Black Pudding can one shot a barbarian human, who is more powerful than just some average human. However, if that same barbarian fought a lot of things and went on adventures, his human flesh, his human bones, his human muscles somehow grew to such a point that he now has 77 of these HP points and the exact same acid which would have killed him instantly, only deals about 24% damage to him. I watch the RUclips/Twitch show Critical Role, which I am sure you know of and if you do not then you must see it for yourself. In a fight with an ancient red dragon, they took damage from his fire which should have left them looking like the Nazis in Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark with their skin melting off, or Sara Conner in Terminator 2 when she had a nightmare of a nuclear attack on L.A. Instead of being roasted to a crisp and the Dragon winning... nobody but the bad guys died that day. Thanks to unrealistic RPG numbers and magic.
@@PaulGaither I think hp is much more abstract than the way you described it, if I thought of it that way I'd have an issue with it too. When your 1st lv barb takes that hit he may have just stood square and got dropped By 5th lv he knows how to roll with the punches so to speak and brushes off the blow.
Back in my day, we had one spell and a dagger and if we cast that spell we had to wait till we slept 8 completely uninterrupted hours to get it back. That was when wizards were REAL magic users! . Ok, I played 1E. I played the manila wargaming pamphlets before 1E even
@@nickwilliams8302 Fair. But from a world-building perspective .... unless there are very few magic users, there would be massive consequences to the aesthetic ... IMHO, D&D isn't really built to sustain a low-magic setting, especially 5e. Additionally, in those settings, you're almost always meta-gaming if you throw dedicated anti-mage tactics and units at the party, and certain specialized sub-classes will be very weak. I'd probably just cap all characters at level 6, and make all the higher magic a heavy narrative investment to cast, and slightly modify spells as Cowan suggests ... make the material components more expensive, or be consumed when casting, so the world doesn't break (I'm looking at you, goodberry).
@@liamhogan4369 honestly I don't think we have seen a setting designed around the pervasive existence of low level useful magic in 5e. It would not be a medieval world with magic. Create food+water, lesser restoration, druidcraft, mending, and others would suggest a very different world where life is longer and perhaps less difficult than in those ages. However, as magic begets magic it would also be much more dangerous. Now a dark sun situation where magic is killing everything, but perhaps the use of magic is what creates the monsters of your world.
@@davidlewis5312 You're right, Darksun and Forgotton Realms are built around cataclysmic spells and ancient magical empires, and Eberron is built around 3rd edition magic item walmarts and crafting. Maybe a campaign set in the past of Forgotten Realms? But that would focus less on low-level magic. Honestly, 5e's dedicated campaign setting would probably be what we're looking for; all elves have a cantrip, for example. Addendum: actually, I think the clockwork expansions from Pathfinder 1e might be pretty close. The presence of all that low-level magic weakened dimensional barriers ... so Lovecraftian horrors popped in to say hello. The only real defense against them were magically animated mindless constructs, immune to their flesh and mind warping powers. The world just didn't have enough high-level casters to fight them off, in fact high-level wizards and sorcerers were among the first enthralled or driven insane. Thus, mostly only low-level casters were left. Just lower the AC by 10 or so and increase hitpoints by 50%. That should convert most monsters over.
As someone who has been playing off and on since 1982, I will tell you that playing a magic user in 1st or 2nd sucked. Do one thing, then hide all day and pray this is the one night of the month the DM allows you to sleep? No thanks. How is having a character that cannot participate fun? 3rd and beyond made it possible for low-level spellcasters to participate more fully. It is up to the DM to find new ways to challenge players. But if you're one of those hateful 'everyone dies or I can't have fun' antagonist DMs, like 90% of the ones I dealt with in high school and college, don't cry. There are still plenty of ways to "challenge" your players to death. If you're clever enough. Or you can just go run a few games of Paranoia.
I am thinking that these spells don't need a nerf, the DM just needs to be smart enough to think of ways around them. Most of these spells can be dealt with by smart enemies, Detect thoughts is a VSM spell(as in REALLY obvious), so any BBEG that sees you cast it will instantly switch their surface thoughts to "how do I kill this guy"(a normal peasant however has no idea what you are doing, as they don't understand magic). Scrying can be countered by nondetection or being on another plane. Detect magic doesn't mention the details, only what school of magic(and a REALLY smart villain would use a conventional non-magical trap instead). And anything with more than a minute cast time can be interrupted by enemies if any are nearby(so those spells are only useful if you are in a safe location).
I house ruled the same bonus that cleric go t the mages got the same bonus but for intelligence . I also made the house rule that allowed mages to use padded and leather armor also every one got the same constitution as fighters plas max hp at 1st level . So a mage with a constitution of 18 gets 4 hp for his class plus 4 hp for his constitution bonus for a total of 8 hp at 1st level , I also allowed mages to use a few non traditional weapons to help them survive like the handcrossbow just so at 1st level they wert a 1 spell casting character during combat just standing in the back hiding and doing nothing the rest of the time . It helped single class mages to survive longer .
The weakness of magic-users (I can give it up any time I want to, honest!) was a great spur to role playing. There you were, brain the size of a planet, needing the neanderthals to protect you. So you had to be ultra useful outside or before combat, make real friends in the party, play the high IQ with tact. They knew that you would turn into something very useful well before they reached name level, but by then you would be a team, using all your talents together to exploit any possible synergy. In the early days the magic user was often the planner, sometimes a schemer, but he grew to be a character. And few fighters could resist the practical flattery of being asked to help a magic-user with quarter staff practice, or being thanked for the training that saved his life.
About Identify in 1E / 2E: If played by the rules, NPCs also had to invest 8 hours to cast that and had a max. chance of 90% (if level 9+) to actually identify one of the item's functions. Otherwise, you couldn't even try again until you gained another level. Want to know what that important magic sword does? Tough luck, that NPC failed his roll and you'll never find out, because NPCs don't usually level up. Better find a new identification NPC and ditch your character's "friend", because he's now useless. Of course, you always had a 7% chance to learn something incorrect. Which was a total headache in bookkeeping, because you got the info that it was a +3 sword against goblins, but it really wasn't, so the GM always had to adjust the values on the fly. I'm so happy that bullshit got ditched!
In theory, if you're running 1 encounter per long rest, yes, magic is OP. But as our party discovered the last few sessions...if you don't get a long rest in 3 days and are tapped out, your party is screwed. We were attacked twice during long rests and we just couldn't recover, and lost 2 pc's.
Also, the more Combat Encounters between LR's, can actually be a nightmare to Sorcerers, especially early leveled Sorcerers, since they don't regain spent Slots AND Points back until they do a LR. Now while that does apply to the other Classes that can cast spells [minus Warlock], they at least have other options should they run out of Slots, not to mention Wizard's Arcane Recovery; which I know is a 1/Day during a SR do they regain a certain amount of Slots that has a combined level [any combination] that is ≤ to the Wizard's level (rounded up), & the Slots can only be Level 1-5. Wizard's get even easier at level 18 as they are able to cast 1 level-1 & 1 level-2 spell at will without expending a slot at their lowest level. Sorcerer's don't get any such luck, & Warlocks are Warlocks ;)
@@Altyrell I agree that Wizards and Warlock have it the easiest early and late game. We recently started a side campaign (Phandelver) and we have a bard and me as a sorcerer, and the sorcerer really does suffer until he gets to about lvl 3 compared to other spellcasters. Warlocks seem weak due to only having 4 spell slots at max lvl, but they are all lvl 5 slots and they get a 1 time use of lvl 6+ spells between LR's, and they have invocations.
Even then, at Level 3, the Sorcerer still needs to be careful until (s)he gets more SP's. Also depending on what Pact/Patron Combo the Warlock goes, they can be exceptionally well despite only have 4 lvl-5 slots & 1/LR lvl 6/7/8/9 (1each). Especially if they choose the right set of Invocations to compliment the Pact/Patron that they chose. With the Hexblade/Pact of Blade Warlocks being the more capable of being "broken" [benefiting the Player], especially if they don't Pact a Magical Weapon. Because Pact of Blade Warlocks (that don't Pact a Magical Weapon) save costs on weapons as they're able to chose the form the weapon takes each time it is summoned. So they are able to change from handaxe to sickle to dagger to any other Simple Melee Weapon. Which, when paired with the Hexblade, extends to Martial Melee Weapons as well (so you could go from Handaxe to Rapier). Even if the Pact of Blade doesn't go Hexblade, picking up the "Improved Pact Weapon" Invocation, makes a drastic improvement. IPW = You can use any weapon summoned with your PoB feature as a spellcasting focus for your warlock spells. IN ADDITION, the weapons gains a +1 to both the Attack Roll & Damage Roll, unless it is a magic weapon that already has a bonus to those rolls. ALSO, the PoB Warlock is no longer confined to summoning Melee Weapons as the weapon they conjure can now be a Short or Longbow, Light or Heavy Crossbow. Which can be useful, because while it takes an Action to summon, "dismissing" requires no action, so with PoB Warlocks with IPW, they can (if attacking targets that are at range): 1st Turn: - Summon a Longbow or a Heavy Crossbow - Attack a Target that would be at range (150' LB, 100' HC; beyond this will cause you Disad on the Attack Rolls) 2nd+ Turn: - Dismiss the LB/HC [NAR] as soon as the Target ends their movement 60' of you [50' for Dwarf, Halfling, Gnome, Goblin], so that on your next turn you can spend an Action summoning a Melee Weapon while they'll have to spend their turn moving to be 30'/25' out from you. Then after this, on your next turn, you'll be able to move to meet/attack them. Which, depending on how far out they were at, will be weakened by the time you close in to melee attack them. Yes I know that that's a lot of work, but depending on the circumstances, can be very beneficial, & the DM's might not be expecting that to happen. Or conversely, the Warlocks could do the reverse, should they have to "fall back" into a Support type role to help provide Ranged Covering Fire.
@@Altyrell That's exactly why Warlock is one of the best, if not the best, classes in the game. Lets disregard the combat capabilities of the class, Warlock still has a lot to offer with it's Invocations and cantrips. Although most see Pact of the Blade and pick it instantly, if you ask me, the other 2 pacts are better for the other 4 subclasses. The Tome grants you extra cantrips, while the Chain gives you a familiar which has a TON of uses outside of combat, but also in it.
Started in 3.5/Pathfinder, so when I ran a D&D Basic one shot a while back the low magic system shocked me. Still, it added a flare that I really enjoyed. I like both systems of magic for different reasons. I like the classic because it adds a layer to survival, but I like the current because it allows players to have multiple avenues to solve problems.
As another old school gamer that started back in 1E, I still find the game enjoyable. I enjoy a high magic setting, where magical creativity can be employed to mimic technology. I have no issues with the cleric casting "Create food and water" as he is using spell slot for that lowering the number of heals he may do. "Locate object" and other divination spells are blocked by materials, so if I really want to hide it I place it in a lead box that is then hidden again (so yeah a good perception can still find it). Most of the divination spells also include the fact that you must know (as in have seen before) the item you are looking for. So far no mage that I have played with lately casts "Leomund's" to rest in. In 1E I had a staff that would store spells and I kept a "Leomund's Tiny Hut", "Alarm" and "Unseen Servant" stored in it and would refill it during my rest. I like seeing how players can be creative with their magic. Here's to many more years of D&D magic!
As a rule of thumb: if a spell seems like it would be game-breaking, reread the description. The "fix" for most of those people out there complaining that some spell or other is ruining their game is very frequently to just apply the restrictions in RAW. Even seemingly simple things like asking a player what their PC is doing with their hands can pull people up short.
Scrying is a 5th lvl spell, by the time you have that spell. Scrounging around for information about an item or a person SHOULD NOT be the focus of the story anyway.
Actually, Scrying was not that useful for my character - the BBEG was on another plane. Also all it does is help you locate them, they will not necessarily be doing anything important you can listen in on(you need to time it properly to get it to listen in on important conversations). (nondetection counters it too).
I always love a great conversation reminiscing about the old days. Jumping from 1E to Pathfinder/5E was quite the shock for me with regards to Cantrips and number of spells spellcasters had access to.
I was a 1st edition player, too. We instituted an INT bonus for magic users akin to the cleric WIS bonus for spells. It helped a bit. Regardless, starting with 2 HP was pretty much a death sentence.
House rule we used to go by was that you get your max HP at 1st level. So, a Magic-User would never have less than 4 HP unless they had a low CON score. Funny that they mention the "Max HP at 1st level" at the 4:00 mark just as I was typing this.
This is why I'm experimenting with creating a homebrew adaptation of the Elder Scrolls magic system, wherein spells come in 5 tiers of mastery, and spell casting is limited by a finite pool of magical energy that gradually regenerates. Higher tier spells cost more, and depending on character level, and level of mastery in a magic school, some higher tier spells can be beyond your abilities, because your pool of energy is too small. Alternately if a higher level spell is within you your abilities, but above your mastery level, casting it once or twice may burn through your entire pool of energy, forcing you to choose between more spells or bigger spells. Additionally is the issue of the regeneration of that magic pool being halved during combat.
this is actually a great video and my main problem with this edition, everything seems to be on "easy mode", in order to challenge the players the GM must always deploy "cheap" tricks, the difficulty does not come naturally through the rules, my humble opinion
I really don't get this. I do agree that certain types of challenge become irrelevant once the PCs start getting serious levels under their belt. But the PCs greater powers open up vistas for greater adversaries.
run the game more. in reality the players find everything a cakewalk, or immediately die and require dice fudging to fix. Players become gods too quickly and outpace the monster manual. DM has to contrive everything, following the rules will lead to a very braindead campaign, thats a failure of design imo. @@nickwilliams8302
I've always found it very easy to overcome some of these challenges, if I want a certain theme or concept to a game, I will go over this in Session 0. I like to outline what spells the party may or may not be able to use, because they don't exist, and I generally have a good response to this.
Great subject, evenly covered. As a person who prefers OSR, I appreciate your mention of some of the ways the newer editions have altered the game, both what you can do with it and the type of experience the raw give players. Obviously I feel 5e gives away too much. I have tried to dial it back to give a more OSR feel, but get resistance from players who of course want all the stuff in the books, even the optional stuff, and the article they found online. Players have always been that way, but I think giving in to their pressure can ruin the game. And it often does ruin the game as I, the referee, lose interest. Thanks for another great video, guys.
Way back when, thieves had very low experience point requirements because they were expected to die a lot from traps and getting caught while sneaking. Low skills + high stakes = roll another thief and catch back up. This is also why 2nd Edition gave rogues tons of experience for successful use of class skills and for looting treasure. I have an edition of Basic D&D containing an example of play where the thief dies opening a chest and the other players don't even pause to shrug before they loot it and move on. They would have had a stronger response to losing a ten-foot pole. I have no idea why the cleric experience requirements were almost as low. Decent spell options, serviceable combat skills, potentially great armor, great saves in really vital areas... as long as you have Wisdom 13+ and enough Strength for your equipment, the class weaknesses can be managed handily. They had a lot of weird game theories then, though. They thought that 3d6 six times in order for ability scores when most ability bonuses didn't really kick in without a 15+ was acceptable because statistically, characters that survive a long time tend to be those that rolled high during character creation, so players were expected to go through a lot of character deaths until they got lucky on initial stats and lived to become high level. And 2nd Edition didn't really fix the system that originally went with that thinking because it was only changed enough to shift royalties while getting it to stores as fast as possible.
Spells per day in 5e is less than it was in 3e though, for reality-altering spell tiers - which is pretty good, IMO. You don't see level 20 characters who can cast Wish 6 times a day.... Plus, there's ways around those utility spells if you really do want to roleplay some kind of survival. Low magic, or wild magic zones are the easy way of doing it, but you could also simply house rule spells like goodberry if you *really* want your players to be in survival mode. Leomund's Tiny Hut is perfectly safe to sleep in, sure, but it's also visible to passing monsters who can simply hang around until the spell ends. Sure, Mordenkainen's Magnificent Mansion doesn't have that limitation, but it's also a 7th level spell slot - characters under level 20 only have 1 7th slot per day in 5th (and only 2/day at 20), which makes it pretty expensive to the spell economy on days when you have an encounter - it may not be the 7th level spell you want to cast that day. I remember the nostalgia. I cut my teeth on the red books, and have played extensively on everything but 4th. Honestly, I like what 5th has changed. Having recently played a 2nd ed campaign for nostalgia, you could not pay me enough to make me want to deal with THAC0 and the other eccentricities of 2e again.
Turn Identify into a Spell that you have to upcast to identify more properties. Level 2 identify will tell you If it has a + to hit/damage and it will tell you other passive effects like add 1d6 fire damage on a hit. Identify cast with a level 3 spell slot can tell you if it has activateable abilities. LEvel 4 slot tells you a key word for the item to use an activated ability like Invisibility is cast with the item when you say "im not really here". LEvel 5 spell slot can tell you the source of the magic powering the item: is it divine/Fiendish/Aberantt/Elemental/Nature/ or arcane magic
I started back in 1992 and I don’t miss playing a mage at low levels that had the one spell and then hid behind who ever he/she could or get killed . Cause with a THAO of 20 you where not going to do much with that dagger.
I agree. Though higher level magic could be ridiculous, as it sometimes seems now, I don't miss being super squishy at low levels. Having cantrips be free is a cool adjustment, but even that can be abused. Ritual magic is a great way to expand utility, too. I think if these things get out of hand in your setting, just focus on what makes them possible or effective and find a realistic counter. Requiring a targetable focus that someone could take out and ruin the caster's utility temporarily? Requiring the use of material components that are consumed on casting? Reducing the available opportunities to take rests? Breaking rests? Opponents or settings resistant or immune to certain annoying spell effects? Some other more creative approach? Some combination of these things? Anyway, when fighters become what keeps a wizard alive when the magic becomes less effective or available, then we get a bit back to the roots of the game, without making it too much of a squishy bloodbath. My suggestion? Talk about it with you players/GM and decide on how anything you dislike can or might be mitigated. Agree at the table, before play or during a session 0, or even as they come up, and things will go better. If the DM dislikes the flow disruption of the Halfling Diviner with three feats dedicated to luck, then it should be discussed at the table. Maybe disallowing certain features to stack in the interest of maintaining flow? Maybe something else. As long as the whole table agrees, including the player planning on that ludicrously unbalanced build, and the campaign continues to be fun, you're golden. It's part of why WotC has stated in the books that it's your game and you should pay it how you want. Communicate, adjust, play, enjoy. Repeat as needed.
I think a lot of this depends on the DM. Many of the spells have workarounds that work, and if you take the encounter-heavy route 5e seems intended to be played as, spell slots are a resource you have to manage. Take Leomond's Tiny Hut for example. Against any intelligent enemy, its not that great. Against mindless beasts and monstrosities, you are safe. Lets say there's a group of Drow, however. Dispell Magic, you're now vulnerable, I hope to hell you had a watch set up else it could well be a TPK. Group of Bandits. They see the hut, and set up an Ambush. As soon as the hut goes down, a surprise round goes to the bandits who attack from hiding, and dish out a hefty Alpha Strike removing a lot of the advantage of having just rested. In a cave with Kobolds? They dig and make traps around the hut, or collapse the cavern roof on top of it. Even mindless enemies like Zombies can become a threat here. A horde just keeps building, as all the zombies in the area can sense the life inside the hut, but can't reach it, and lack the brain to try and do something else. The party wakes to a hundred zombies sitting outside waiting to eat their brains. Encounter wise, we've got a semi-survival theme going in a campaign ATM. Not full survival as it just gets tedious marking off rations and such every day, but we have to make sure we've got a source of food and water wherever we go, and if we don't, we tend to have just one or two days rations. We recently went on a 3 day trek. First day, we did half a dungeon, then rested. Second day, we finished off the dungeon, went through 2 combat encounters, snuck past one to conserve resources, and got lucky with not rolling a 4th. The druid had 1 spell left at the end of this, which he had only prepared during the dungeon rest as a precaution, and it was what managed to sate our thirst for the night. Had we not skipped the first encounter, we'd be exhausted, which is not a great state to be in ATM. If you give players a long rest after every combat or two, yeah, Spellcasters become really OP, as they have an unlimited pool of spells. If you don't, they have to work towards conserving their spell slots much more. Bard and Druid in the party tend to just cast cantrips and weapon attacks most of the time, because their spell slots need to be saved for the actually hard encounters that almost kill the party. Sorcerer gets to cast more thanks to burning through a lot of Sorcery points, but he also has fewer of the great utility spells. Magic Item identification is definitely much easier in 5e, however. If you want to focus on the mystery of the items, then you'll need to house rule it, but I feel its got its pros and cons. Older magic item identification could slow the game down a lot, or just be underwhelming spending money on what is essnetially a lootbox in the game, hoping you get an item you want, then find out its something not that great that's worth less than the 100 gold you paid to identify it. If you plan out every drop, then it could work, but if you use loot tables... It has a lot of potential to go wrong. Different things work for different styles of games, and if you want a different style, you've always had to houserule it. Older DnD had its own issues with various styles of games too. Having different systems to draw inspiration off for different campaigns is only a good thing IMO.
*As soon as the hut goes down, a surprise round goes to the bandits who attack from hiding* That makes no sense, some of the party might have heard the ambush being set up while sleeping especially if someone only half sleeps like any elf. And if anyone wakes up before the 8 hours they can probably look around and notice something is amiss. *Lets say there's a group of Drow, however. Dispell Magic, you're now vulnerable* I'm sorry dude this is metagaming on the part of the DM. Do drow parties always run around with dispel magic specifically for killing PCs? With all of the horrors in the underdark not the least of which include horrific creatures with terrifying magical ability why would the drow find a hut off the beaten path that they cannot enter and think "Well we better dispel it, there might be weak humans inside," as opposed to "We better leave this alone in case a priestess conjured this and will hang us upside down by our balls if we mess with it" What you're doing is spawning a group of enemies who know what the spell cast is, have the exact tools needed to remove the spell and **know** that there isn't anyone on their side or anyone more important than them inside. That is the definition of metagaming.
Exactly. If the party's magic is trivializing the game, it means the DM needs to step up their own. The spell slot needed to cast Leomund's Tiny Hut or Create Food And Water becomes much more precious when the party is being hounded on all sides by threats. Especially if the DM isn't just throwing strong monsters at the party and frequently, but is using them intelligently. So the party casters are forced to seriously contemplate whether they can get by with just cantrips or weapon attacks, or whether they _need_ to burn a spell slot to deal with problems.
@@AntoineVello *Some of the party might have heard the ambush being set up* While sleeping, I'm going to go with probably not. The party doesn't wake up from the sleep spell because they hear a fight going on around them. Sleep as a condition is broke by damage, or by being shaken awake by an ally. This is, indeed, a reason to keep watch while in the hut. For a party that assumes they're invulnerable? They're in trouble. If you really want to do it, stealth check with advantage for the bandits vs Player Passive Perception, but honestly I don't think that'd apply. Further, even if the watch notices bandits around, the bandits can see the hut, and walk off 150 ft and set up their ambush. Its not right outside the hut, its an AMBUSH, not a "Lets just wait here" and see what happens. They'd be stealthed, and motionless, outside of Darkvision range, but within normal range for longbows. This seems like a pretty normal way for bandits to deal with a fortified camp; hide so they don't know you're still around, then attack when they remove fortifications. I'd say the DM is power gaming on the side of the players if the bandits didn't do this, as its such an obvious strategy any creature with an int above 8 should think of it. If the party decides that they think the bandits are setting up an ambush, and wake up a few minutes before the hut falls so that they can prepare themselves - sure, no surprise round. If they fall for the ruse and think the bandits decided to leave them along, they're surprised. *Do Drow parties always run around with dispell magic specifically for killing PCs?* Who said this was specifically for killing the PCs? The Underdark has a ton of magical creatures and effects that can mess with the Drow. Deurgar use magic to grow massive or turn invisible, other Drow have spells to gain advantage, Deep Gnomes have their own magic that could be annoying. If they find somewhere to raid, they're going to want dispell magic to remove the wards set up to protect the area. Its simply incidental that they ran into the players. I wouldn't force a Drow encounter all the time, but it is a risk in the Underdark. Run into Hook Horrors? Your barrier holds, they walk away. Run into a party of drow with a level 5 spellcaster? Dispell Magic is a standard spell for Drow to learn, so yeah, you're in more trouble. Its also not about there being a weak human inside, but about following whatever orders they were given. Why are the Drow here? "Oh, sounds like fun to wander through the underdark"? Hell no, that's stupid. They have a purpose in going out, whether to scout for enemies, hunt for slaves, or perform some task to benefit their house at the cost of anothers. In all cases, coming across an invulnerable hut, they'd have 0 reason to assume a priestess put it up. They'd likely assume some other race put it up, and would dispell it to try and capture those slaves, eliminate the enemies, or if it was an opposing house priestess, ensure she never returns home. Drow aren't Kobolds, they don't cower and hide from potential threats. They're sadistic and cruel. The only other races they even begrudgingly accept tend to be illithids, and high rank demons. Turning them into reskinned Kobolds just so your party can remain invulnerable is a silly idea. What you're actually doing, is spawning a group of enemies, potentially based on a random die roll, that has a caster with a pretty normal spell, who are sadistic and cruel, and on a mission where they could, via common sense, understand that this thing isn't meant to be here, and can probably discern it is magical in nature. I'm not suggesting you force this encounter every time your players try to sleep, but there is a risk they will come across a group with the ability to dispell the hut. Sometimes, they'll be safe and it'll help. Sometimes, they won't be safe and need to be prepared for an ambush just as much as they would any other rest. It isn't an instant-win spell, its simply a useful one. Changing creature personallities and actions, or standard mechanics such as sleep, to turn it into an instant win spell is metagaming. Don't be an ass of course, but you're well within your rights to send enemies that can counter a Tiny Hut against the players. I have no idea why you'd think you couldn't.
... I prefer low magic (as it makes destructive and flashy magic more like a superweapon) with mundane use magic (natural no cost magic for mages-- like washing dishes, lighting candles with a touch etc-- we have a house list of what's allowable under mundane use to keep mages feeling magical without them being the easy button-- if they try to use these in combat it's often the false hope button or insane but effective button but makes for great roleplay) being part of what others consider creepy and unnatural about mages. I don't appreciate the frantic gameplay of 5th. The "everyone is very magic" really removes a lot of the grit from the game and I tend to run low magic, gritty campaigns.
I like 5e because it allows casters to be effective and is more fast paced. I remember playing 3.5 and no one wanted to be a caster due to not having alot they can do and be the east target. It is true that it is much easier, yet I've had more role play scenarios from players with 5e. Magnificent mansion can be dispelled if they can find the door, Comprehend languages takes 11 minutes to cast as a ritual, Identify can be thwarted by legendary items, (not necessarily broken items, but really old and forgotten items to which they need legend lore for. At any point they can be interrupted and that progress is lost. I personally feel it is mostly a table to table effect, though I have these rituals on my wizard I opt not to always use them to make more chaos. It's in the chaos (for my group) that I find so enjoyable because it makes for a better scenario. If you don't want to take these spells away but also dislike the abuse of them make it a rule that you can only cast so many rituals per day so they have to be smart about what they use. Leomund's tiny hut is a broken spell if you have time, i agree. We often use it in one of our groups, but our horses can't fit in there with us so they are susceptible to being attacked in the night. Easily enemies can surround them and just wait. I hope some of these suggestions can help other DM's out there! This is just some ways our DM works around it. PS. Love you guys, keep making this great content!
Great discussion guys! I cut my teeth way back in the days of...5e. So yeah, I always find it interesting to hear a comparison of how each of the earlier editions worked. One note, however, is that in 5e, while you can learn a lot about a magic item from spending a short rest studying it, you still need identify in order to make sure that the item isn't cursed. Not that it's that hard. In one of the games I run, the wizard has and uses identify on every item as a ritual. He has better things to do with his short rests. (Usually studying one of the tomes I gave him and picking up interesting bits of lore.)
If you want to make stuff tough, just bring back Potion Miscability! Nothing like a fighter under a potion of heroism and down to 1 hp and the potion of Extra Healing not working. : ) You also have to remember that back in the AD&D days, you had to be a certain few races to cast Arcane Spells and most races could never reach double digit levels as an arcane caster.
I like the idea that the short rest thing essential just gives you a hint after mucking about with the item for a certain amount of time. For example, you get a jug of alchemy, and as you are messing about with it, you mention how you could go for a beer, and all of a sudden, the jug is full of beer. It does not tell you everything, but it gives a strong hint to what it can do, and might bring down the numbers for an arcana check or something like that. Plus, you can get a fun scene where now your part has to make drunk checks in the middle of a dungeon.
One of the cool things about 5E is the ability to tweak it to suit the tastes of the group. The DMG has some great suggestions on how to do this. When a group can take a long or short rest is something that can be tweaked significantly. Applying fatigue and other factors can also create challenges for groups that are on a rough journey through the wilds. Lemound's Tiny Hut is cool, however, it is a 3rd level spell, and a simply dispell magic makes it go away, no save. While 90% of the time this is probably not a big deal, you can certainly shake up your players by having an Orc chieftan surround the hut with a large contingent of orcs and then have the shaman dispell it. THAT encounter will get the heart racing.
I am currently preparing for a new campaign and trying to set it in a low fantasy world where magic is rare and un trusted. Trying to change 5e to a low fantasy is proving difficult, as I'll basically have to get rid of most of the classes or tweek them so that they don't rely on magic. But that is more work than i thought so i am looking for another system that does low fantasy well.
Nice video, somewhat agreed, because as the Dm you should sometimes limit the stretch of those spells... specially if suvival in the wild is the objective of your particular game
I love the video, and I'm a new player (5e). My dms so far have been pretty easy on the utilities casting, I can tell that it could become an issue for my current campaign (dragon heist). Also I'm writing my own campaign and it could be a big spoiler for the plot twist in mine. What I decided on was to be a stickler for ingredients for spells and WHERE the party can find them. It makes writing the campaign ALOT toughter on me because I have to think about what is consumed by the spell and how many the shopkeep or corpse should be able to provide. And I'll have to be very much on my toes, also was thinking about making food be bigger part then it is in the campaign I'm playing. Also I think in home brew (not based in standard forgotten realms) it's easier to control the PC from behind the screen. I think if the player knows less of your world they will likely not be so ready to throw around spells like that or meta when to cast identify on the obelisk outside of the tomb of the 9 gods, or like on the hand of veckna. I love this edition and have no desire for it to be different, I think dms need to remember they are a higher level then the gods that made torel ( at least they are if they make a stat block for them). If PC ruins plot twist then make a better one, or use what they learn to misdirect them later. We are literally the combined laws of physics in the world we put them in. Happy gaming guys, and btw I love your videos, they help me alot thank you
Just face it. If you want to run a campaign where the PCs don't constantly have magic on tap, you need to be playing something other than 5e. But also, I'm not convinced that "ruining the game" is anywhere _near_ a reasonable description of the effect of utility spells. What kinds of fun are being foiled by not having the PCs ignominiously starve to death in the wilderness? How does the game suck because the PCs can spend a bit of time and find out whether the stuff they just murdered a tribe of Goblins to get is magic or not? My last PC was a Warlock with Eldritch Sight. If the other players were all feeling cheated of some kind of fun by my character being able to instantly Detect Magic pretty much at will, they certainly never said anything about it.
I agree. 5E is what it is. It would be easier to just play a different game than to attempt to hack it down to size, then spend the rest of the campaign plugging holes. A more brute force approach would be to just ban all full casters and run a 5E-lite campaign.
@@M0ebius Yeah, but the game is balanced on the assumption that the party will have access to magic. I'm looking through Modiphius Entertainment's "Conan" RPG at the moment. That seems a pretty good system for running a pulpy sword-and-sorcery game.
Nick Williams If you ban full-casters, you’d still have half-casters. Less slots, slower progression, greater opportunity cost to picking spells. Sprinkle in some liberal access to spellscrolls and you can still achieve some sembalance of normal game play.
Any good story needs consequences. A good ttrpg needs consequences. Travelling should be exciting, an ordeal, something to overcome not just malaise and boredom, glossed over because "who cares?" Players should have to prepare for things ahead of time using wits and foresight, actually thinking like real people not able to just magic away exhaustion, or shortages of food and water or cold etc. It's not that using magic to solve an issue is a problem. It's having that magic instantaneously sort out all of your problems without you even having to consider them. If you were smart and used magic to somehow protect you from the cold or to aid you in catching food and so forth, great. Fantastic. That's smart. You're using your head. D&D is mindless in it's magic system though when it comes to such things. You don't use magic to make catching food easier by coming up with a smart way to utilise it, you just magically poof it into existence, no effort from character or player needed at all. Most things should not come so easy. Finding out if something is magic is fine and not a big problem at all but identify is. Again, it's just a case of one and done. Instant information. Removes the mystery and thus story that may be being told. The magic in D&D does this constantly in every facet of the game. It actively detracts from storytelling and roleplay.
Jhakaro But DnD is not meant to simulate every aspect of reality. The problems you are meant to solve primarily revolve around combat, and secondarily around social situations. You apply your wits and foresights toward THOSE problems, and from the way you solve them you derive consequences. You are expecting the game to present problems that frankly a majority of players simply aren’t interested in solving. Fighters aren’t expected to solve the problem of how to optimize his workouts and nutrition. Rogues aren’t expected to solve how best to practice parkour. The game handwave those things because frankly people aren’t interested. If what you want is a game about solving mysteries, there are better games for that than DnD 5E.
Playing a cleric rn. Yeah, knowing what you are doing before the long rest especially if it's more environment/ skill check based can be huge. We had a fishing session a few weeks back where we had to hunt a giant octopus to satisfy a sentient whale. So the night before I use divination to ask where the largest octopus is in a 30 mile radius. Next day have water walking preped. A few sessions later we were in an under water exploration bit so I prepared control water. Allowing safe passage through a bit of high pressure water. Also having suggestion, command, inflict wounds, hold person. Casters are always lovely support and utility. And decent- excellent damage output
Zee Bashew did a short on this. Wanted to make a survival setting but had to deviate hard from the rules or strictly not have a magic character, because magic can completely eliminate the food problem.
I started on 3rd, but in 4e you could actually cover all the party bases with martial power source classes if you wanted to. Of course, magic weapons and equipment were expected as far as character progression, but that is another monster altogether.
Sure, or use the optional rule that makes a short rest one night and a long rest one week. Give the PCs some quest with a time constraint and the pressure is on.
jethrovaningen That sounds super fun for a few sessions, but extremely tedious for an entire campaign. 5e overall makes everything hit extremely hard but with very low HP, so a few bad rolls and the party would be on the verge of death.
M0ebius Plenty of people find resource management tedious but it is a part of classic D&D and I enjoy the minigame. If your group is used to having long rests at will and find it hard to adapt it might be unfun. If you set the tone well, hopefully at the start of the campaign, I've found that playing somewhat more deliberate and with less focus on combat can be very rewarding! Also I've found that one week long rests help a lot with pacing. I've seen games where the party levels up twice over the course of four sessions while less than a single day had passed ingame. That just seems silly to me. Obviously the DM has to adapt as well. No matter what edition, NPCs hit exactly as hard as the DM wants them to hit... He can't really blame the monsters that he decided to put there for being too strong ;-)
For the cantrip Spells add in a Mana system where the you have to meditate and roll to regenerate Mana points to cast a cantrip. For utility spells like the magic Manor add in a fail rate with a D100 with lower fail rates the more they use it.
13:00 Gee, I wonder. It seems like our group is still stuck in the old ways. We don't have thought about this spells to mitigate long rests. We even went the other way. It seemed like a cool RPG moment if two characters were to hold watch together and some conversations could be started.
I think that some spells need to be tweaked in order to make them more playable. That being said, in 40 years I've NEVER seen an RPG that was perfect and didn't need some changes made. That's fine...no system can predict every situation. I hate Goodberry, for example. Small change: The Material spell component (a sprig of holly IIRC) is consumed. If you're in a deep delve, likely no holly growing nearby and the berries can't be stored. Make the casters keep track of components. The Zealot Barbarian has a trait where any sort of Revive spell cast on them has NO material spell components. In a long game that can save the party a TON of time and money.
Although I am a newbie. I like that way you can mix and match you character. So each class having an option / subclass to have some magic gives a lot of diversity without the need to multiclass.
I loved my 4e swordmage being able to teleport to my marked target as a reaction if they attacked someone else. I just want to recapture those Nightcrawler antics.
I started in 4e and I actually am planning a lower magic setting for my next 5e game. HUGE spell, class, and race restrictions, but I am adding in things for martials and making crafting way more important. So if you were trying to figureout what a magic item does you would need proficiency in the tools used to craft it, otherwise, find an NPC. In adiition changing up some stuff. Like lets say for the outlander, I actually plan to have them choose a favorite terrain and they can get there boon only in that region.
The 1E and 2E magic user XP table was whack. In the early levels you were slow. Then from levels 5 through 10 the brakes were OFF! After that, back came the brakes. I think there are some spells that need nukage if you want to have a game with, say, a survival theme. Create Food and Water would be a very good example.
One thing that I try to do is choose spells or abilities based on character background and personality. Something I may choose may be almost completely non-beneficial but if makes sense for the character.
My favorite early edition wizard was the 2nd ed. 'Witch' kit from The Complete Wizards Handbook. It was essentially the first foray into what would become the foundation of the Warlock. Magic item selection at level one? Yes please! I'll equip darts for 3/1 attacks, buy a Guard Dog & cast Armor on it.
I rule that Identify consumes the pearl(literally, the wizard has to eat it). Now the players have to find a single pearl worth 100g. Thats going to be very tough.
Too tough, IMHO. If you're going to alter the spell so it consumes the component, alter the component to something cheaper. There's still a cost, just not a ridiculous one. In the Tyranny of Dragons campaign, getting an NPC to cast Identify cost 20gp. A component costing 10gp would seem the highest one could plausibly set. Two other things though, that lead into the same point. First, this is not a "ruling". This is homebrew: an alteration to RAW. Which is not bad, in and of itself. It's your game, after all. But this is not just your interpretation of the rules; this is you _changing_ the rules. You need to be clear that is what you are doing here. Secondly, why is the PCs being able to cast Identify a problem for your game that needs to be "fixed" in the first place? Seriously. How is it harming your game to the extent that you think it necessary to alter the rules? Where this is going is set out in this article: theangrygm.com/why-are-you-doing-this/ Essentially, if you cannot state clearly how an alteration to the rules will make your game better, you should not alter the rules.
@Sean Fisher Um, no. If a spell requires a priced component, your PC needs to find and acquire that component. You're just hacking the rules in the opposite direction.
I think the 5e magic system is a work of art. I started playing at the tail end of 1st edition... just as 2nd was coming out. Those wizards were nothing like the wizards I had read about or imagined. 5e brings that magic pop that makes the wizard a living Swiss army knife.
It's all about how the DM interprets the spells affects and rolls with them. Locate Item/Creature, it's in that general direction. Critical Roll season 2 did this with the under water search for the 2nd orb for Fjord's quest. Identify, gets you everything on the weapon, but just attuning to it in the field only gets you part of its abilities (Craven Edge in Critical Roll season 1).
1E and 2E are about the journey from zero to hero. 3E and onward are about the journey from hero to superhero. 5E is a great superhero game but I don't play D&D to feel like a superhero. It's much more interesting for me to play with a slightly underpowered group of clever adventures who rely on cunning ruses. There is little reason to get in character and come up with fun and creative ways to gain an advantage or solve a problem, when you can just press a button on your character sheet. Powercreep sells, but restrictions breed creativity. For that reason I prefer the first two editions and OSR.
I started as a DM to introduce friends to the adventure from zero to hero I played back in 2e. Didn't realize 5e gave players so much magic until I started running it.
i actually love the idea of the wheel of time books , in which you have a casting ability , in the role playing game it was charisma . (id prefer for it to be the 3 it is now including intelligence and charisma . so that the best casters would need all 3) , but in that world you don't learn another spell ( or weave as its called ) ,until you are high enough level and someone casts it in front of you ,you then make the appropriate check to see if you can learn it (int for wizard,wisdom for cleric , and charisma for sorc or bard and so on . if you fail the check you need to have some else cast it again in front of you or on you . and try the check again until the spell is learned. therefore magic tends to get lost quite easily . and casters hold their secrets . if you have never read the books , they are amazing .
any spell with a ritual indicator, i would rule can only be done as such, so no quick casting of any of those spells. also another way is to combine spells into the same ones, and limit the number of them. This will add versatility and also bring them down to where they are not casting too many. you tie them to the cantrips, (fire bolt) would be fire spells, and each spell level you could do more with this like fan it out in front of you (burning hands) and at 2nd spell level shoot farther more damage scorching ray. But doing this you might have to overhaul the whole magic system and that would be a bit of a task.
Interesting thoughts, particularly on survivalist styles of game. In a way it turns a lot of the creativity back onto the DM in terms of interpreting and integrating the newer, more versatile structures. That being said, its just as versatile for us as GMs too and all of our NPCs can access the same features AND in most cases reverse any effect a PC or party can. For example, theres no reason you cant create situations where the use of magic may be more of a problem for the party than a help and even an option of last resort. Think things like wild magic, creatures that can sense and target magic use or even situations where conjured food is `tainted` by unwholesome energy corrupting the ley lines etc. Theres a ton of methods to make utility magic choices far more challenging for a party. The same goes for layered exposure of items. There is no reason your identify spell hs to reveal all or even any of the magical properties of an item. I often use wards and magical properties cast on to items to deliberately mislead PCs. Given the new 5e world why would these items not be hidden or obfuscated by their owners knowing the simplicity of using those kind of spells. Then you get the PCs all interested in finding out about it and it can become a new story thread. For me many of the `problems` you mention seem to be simple adaptation issues in gamecrafting and for us old blokes a little bit of rockbrain making us a tad slower to find ways to get around that wish spell.
I've seen how one can use easy fixes to get harmed as much as help... For instance, you go into a cavern and clear up a room then cast Tiny Hut to rest up. Well, you are safe for your 1 hour short rest, but that also gives 1 hour for a grunt to notice you and grab their commander causing 2 or 3 encounters to gather and surround your hut and ready to attack you after the hour. And the higher spells like Private Sanctum is like hiding in a box... None can come in and you might be safe, but you don't know if someone will be waiting for you when you come out either...
I am playing in a Pathfinder game where the gm assumes we have Detect magic and detect evil active at all times. He just describes everything in that light. It does kind of sap some of the mystery out of things. In my 5e I have altered the magic system. Some people think it is a bit over the top. I forced some spells on to a ritual only list. Capped most spellcasting at 5th level spells but added some of the more popular spells to the ritual list, requiring magic users to invest time and effort in to rewriting the fabric of the univers. I continue spell slot progression allowing lower level spells to still be cast at upper level slots. So far the balance is ok.
One really broken spell is mold earth for druids, it can be used to craft bridges, make make shift pit traps, shields, cover, a quick gaurd tower , collapse buildings, create buildings, and many other things. One time i killed an entire room of enemies by just making the foundation of a building weaken.
I haven't played anything other than 5th edition, but I can definitely see how the utility spells can be considered an easy button. With that said, the first campaign I was in was very combat oriented and all the spellcasters of the group ignored most non-combat spells (I was a pure fighter that saw magic as an impersonal way of fighting). Now that I'm playing a Wizard (just made it to level 4 last session), I'm trying to make full use of utility spells to keep us on guard like Lair Sense from Kobold Press' Deep Magic: Dragon Magic. Current campaign isn't as combat heavy as the last fortunately, so we really get a chance to RP our way out of encounters instead.
So this is entertaining. Couple points. Wizards of coast needed to make a new product that felt similar. Selling the same game every time isnt going to sell in this niche market. 2 you can always strip things down, thats always seems easier then adding. 3 if you embrace it you can include counter magics or things that feed off of what they use. Also gives the bad guys all the same tools.
As a DM I always made sure my 1st lvl players had a wand of missiles and some scrolls to increase their utility. Basic stuff. Scrolls for bluffs and defense. As the levels got higher if I needed it to offset spells like Leomonds Hut, well the forest or area was cursed and those spells failed or were underpowered. Still had an effect but not what was intended. In the dungeons, there was this nice spell called a spell engine , bunch of orcs chose this place to ambush because there is a permanent spell engine in the room that sucks in spells. Fall back or hand to hand.
It almost seems as if most of these issues stem from the Dungeon Master’s incapability to create scenarios in order to challenge a wizard. A lot of people seem to rely on house rules in order to deal with magic. Here is where I say they are playing the wrong game. 5th edition in many ways forces the players and the Dungeon Master to embrace roleplay and creativity. There are so many scenarios you can do to create a sense of magical importance or magical insignificance. Nullification fields, cursed magical objects, anti-mage emissaries and all sorts of elements that can hamper magic in the roleplay sense. Outright nerfing these spells or limiting them with mechanics seems to defeat the purpose of a roleplaying game. This also applies to feats like sharpshooter or great weapon master. It really is up to the Dungeon Master to create scenarios in order to challenge the player. Falling back to arbitrary house rules is a slippery slope to a bad night, the last thing you want to do is punish players for following rules. 5th edition is a roleplay heavy edition after all, so why not approach these problems with roleplay elements? In World of Darkness: VTM, you could literally impregnate people without touching them with magic, you could dominate people into doing favours for you, get people to vouch for you. You could even detect thoughts and -emotions- to greater extent. Despite these "game breaking" spells and rituals there were roleplay and social consequences for doing so. I feel as if most people that come to 5e especially from a more gamified system of rules like Pathfinder are finding it odd that suddenly, roleplay is filling the gap. Roleplay and the need for DM creativity are more essential than magic items and feat bloated rules.
A way I solved this with my party was I had them on a quest to infiltrate and assassinate the leader of a militant cult that sought to return the so called divine power to their deity, and any non combat magic, summon feast or whatever it is called, would trigger a large combat, this led to some very fun and unique roleplay...
"you're in a dangerous situation in the woods, your caravan is running low on food an-" "no it isnt i cast a spell with no chance of failure and no interaction with the world around me, it just happens because i say so" May as well pack up the game or go and play a crpg by yourself. RPGs thrive on interaction, spells in 5e tend towards "just doing things" rather than interacting with the world. They overwrite it. gl
I agree with Scout rogue in this balance because of the ambush ability they get at level 13. They have advantage on their initiative which is awesome and the first target they attack for that round everyone has advantage on their attack roles against that creature so everyone can take a good chunk of health against the big guy for a turn before dealing with the mooks and if it is a 5 v Boss the first turn of combat can really help out with the battle. Bard would be good with spell casting since they don't need material components but I think Lore was good choice since they can give the creature disadvantage on their roles.
Some misconceptions here about magic in earlier editions. In AD&D, you had more spells per day (6, 6, 6, 6, 5, 4, 3 for Druids, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 7 for Clerics,, 7, 7, 7, 7, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6 for Magic Users) than in 5E. Spells like Create Food and Water also existed for Druids and Clerics (create Water is level 1!), Divination, Scrying, Detect Lie, Tongues, and Locate Object were ALL on the Cleric list and absolutely used all the time, and the Cleric could change their spells every day just like they do now. Wizards had Identify as a level 1 spell, and you didn't need to go around finding some person to cast that spell for you. Spells like Hallucinatory Terrain were used to provide a PERMANENT super dense forest that could be rested in without fear of interruption. Casters were actually far MORE powerful in previous editions, aside from the slow leveling and the low hit points. Yes, at the very early levels (1-5) you had fewer spells than you do now. But after that? You just gain more and more and more and more until you have more than double the number of spells per day people have today. Level 5: 4, 3, 2 today vs 4, 2, 1 then. Level 10; 4, 3, 3, 3, 2 today vs 4, 4, 3, 2, 2 then. Level 15; 4, 3, 3, 3, 2, 1, 1, 1 today vs 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 2, 1 then. Level 20: 4, 3, 3, 3, 3, 2, 2, 1, 1 today vs 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 4, 3, 3, 2 then. Level 25: 4, 3, 3, 3, 3, 2, 2, 1, 1 today vs 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5 then. Level 29, 4, 3, 3, 3, 3, 2, 2, 1, 1 today vs 7, 7, 7, 7, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6 then. It really, really sounds like you just weren't paying as much attention, you didn't read your spells correctly, and you don't remember accurately. Casters in previous editions were FAR stronger than they are today.
The Animated Spellbook had an episode on Goodberry and survival games. He suggested making Goodberry _consume_ its material component, so they keep having to find more mistletoe.
I think in a world of High Fantasy magic should be abundant. I only got into D&D in 5E so its the only version of the game I have played, but it feels right. I hope I can get my grp to start home brewing our own world to play in soon and I plan to have magic everywhere(at least to those who can afford it) we have just been using the Forgotten Realms so far.
My groups do not have a mage that has the huts. Most DM's do not care about food or water that I played with. The fun is trying to figure out when the big fight to burn through all the spells and not before.
Great video. I prefer the new 'meta' for magic if you will. I homebrew all of my stories/plot. We've been playing for a year twice a month and the party is 4th level about to hit 5th (milestone leveling system). If the party wasn't able to use cantrips they'd be dead. I would argue that the cantrips system in 5e encourages more combat which most intermediate to new players enjoy more anyway. I've had two sessions which were all roleplay but the rest of a decent amount of combat and the PC's have to solve mysteries after the combat. No 'detect magic' or 'detect good and evil' has solved a puzzle or plot hook yet. I would argue that the 'easy button' approach gets the party more involved with the actual story as you aren't wondering around looking for food or asking someone to identify a +1 dagger. A session of random encounters as you look for a stream for drinking water sounds like I'd go home and do something more entertaining.. like painting a garage.
I agree. The kinds of "challenges" that magic renders obsolete are generally the kind that players experience more as "annoyances." And also: "No 'detect magic' or 'detect good and evil' has solved a puzzle or plot hook yet." You must be one of those smartarse DMs who design good encounters or plots instead of throwing your players some poorly thought out schlock then whinging like a bitch because a PC cast a spell and "ruined" the challenge.
Well @@nickwilliams8302, you are the first person to say something nice to me on the internet so expect a prize in the mail! I want my adventures to be carried out by plot development. As things unfold and the smoke clears the PC's hopefully are paying enough attention to see what is actually transpiring in front of them. If the DM's plot is as simple as detecting something as magical then maybe they should just advertise their story as "Trials of the Champions" where you seriously just run around and kill stuff in interesting environments. Basically you get to play a God of War game.. but without awesome graphics.
@@marcusg5665 Even if a particular challenge _can_ be solved with a single well-chosen spell, it's only GMs who think that "breaks" the encounter. The player experience is usually a feeling of accomplishment at having devoted resources to a utility spell that solved the problem so efficiently. I mean, no one watches a game of golf and _complains_ when a player completes a par-four hole in a single shot. They say, "Awesome! A hole in one!" But just like you can't win a golf tournament with a single awesome shot, you can't beat a well-designed adventure with a single spell.
Fair points all. Nothing I can disagree with here, there are always going to be ways to cleverly challenge players in fun and interesting ways regardless of the power the rules grant them.
D&D has always been an encyclopedia of fantasy options. Any of the issues in it can be solved relatively well (albeit time consuming) by discussing options allowed in a given campaign when the social contract is written between the players and DM. Want a survival campaign - disallow Outlander background and any spell that covers creation of food/water or establishes safe campsites. Want a low magic campaign - only allow Barbarians, Fighters, Rogues, and/or allow X number of "rare" race/class choices to keep the amount of magic limited. D&D 5e has 9 out of 12 classes that get magic before their archetype comes into play, and among those three, two of them have archetypes that are partial casters. Hoop jumping is part of the job of all participants in a D&D game as it is forming. I highly suggest trying out niche campaigns that limit the options to a highly curated subset of options and seeing just how much fun you can still have, and how much new joy comes into play when you don't have the go-to options that neutralize exploration and social pillars of play.
I’d say it’s combat spells that are more problematic because in my experience people always never have any utility spells. They’re all about that damage and little about solving problems
J Hansen must be a group thing. My Halfling Bard just hit 4th level and have mainly utility spells (and two healing). Admittedly I've used minor illusion to assist with intimidation, prestidigitation to get back at a snarky guard and Unseen Servant to blind someone, but no designated combat spells. In case you were wondering Cantrips: Minor illusion, prestidigitation and mending. 1st level: Cure wounds, healing word, identify and unseen servant 2nd level: Enhance ability, magic mouth and suggestion. As a somewhat creative player I find these spells much more rewarding than vicious mockery, firebolt (or ball) and so forth. They fill one single need, whereas the others fill, imho, most need.
I don't know how spell components are dealt with in 5e, but that could be another way to hamper it. As long as your spellcaster has their component pouch, they can cast spells. As the party walks through the forest, a shadowy figure races past. The spellcaster attempts to attack the shadowy figure with an attack of opportunity, but the magic fizzles. The spellcaster looks down and his pouch has been cut off his person by the shadowy figure. Magic now becomes something to seek, not something that can be fully relied upon.
I'm relatively new to dnd; I started in 5e. I really like the way magic works. Obviously, it's very powerful, but there are limitations that come along with being a spellcaster. As far as pure combat, wizards have a lot of really useful stuff to turn the tide of battle. Still, they can't deal the raw damage that an open hand monk or barbarian can dish. For me, wizards using utility spells to solve problems in an out-of-the-box type of way is good. I think it encourages creativity. If the entire campaign were just grinding combat roll by roll, it wouldn't be nearly as fun.
19:00 its not like the older editions were all thrown onto a pile and burned with 5E's release. If you like the older styles, there is a ton of cheap content out there at used book stores or retailers.
We've actually have said that numerous times throughout our videos. We are huge 5e fans, but that doesn't mean there weren't aspects from previous editions that didn't have merit. Nerdarchist Dave
One thing that it made me think of for items is that cursed weapons/items aren't really an issue when you can identify anything ahead of time - it seems like when I was playing 2ed you almost didn't find out what an item did until you actually used an item. You'd have the wizard hold the wand and close his eyes and hope it didn't blow everyone up - that's a bit extreme, but it was often hit and miss trying to figure out what stuff did. And the existence of cursed items meant you really had to be careful when you came across a weapon or item in some horde or tomb - everyone sort of looking at each other saying, "why don't you take the ring.." lol
As far as identify goes, home rule that you need to be a certain level and stat mix to identify higher rarity tiers and possibly make it so it has to be cast at a higher level for those tiers
Was I the only Magic-User in 1st edition that used darts and made ample use of hirelings and henchmen? Nobody EVER mentions darts for MU's... Yeah, it's one point of damage less than a dagger but they weigh 1/2 as much and cost a fraction of what a dagger does. Don't get me wrong, it still wasn't easy, but if you wanted to survive, you had to bring the right tools. Henchmen and hirelings were tools every bit as much as that 10' pole.
You can run survival by creating other methods of expending the resources of spell slots. Create food and water, or scavenge due to other issues that may arise.
Comparing 1/2e to 5e is a bit unfair. The current design is built for playability rather than simulation :) A lowbie Wizard was casting one and done; the fighter was king of the field. Until about 7th level and the paradigm shifted. Past 10th level the Wizards start to wonder why they even have fighters. (For reference, play Baldur's Gate with and without casters (I suggest BG because it is a 2e game that you can play without finding a group...) and see which one is 'easier' and when it becomes easier) Almost all of the spells you mention by name have been in the game forever. Speak With Dead, Tongues, Leomund's Secret Hidey Hole of DM's Annoyance... Ritual casting makes many spells much more viable than they were, imagine having to choose between Leo's Hut or Fireball... Easy choice, no? Now, you get the best of both: prep Fireball, Ritual Leo's Also the way the game is set up is different: let's talk Hit Points, for instance. IIRC, a 1/2e ogre had about 19 HP, max of 29. Now, they are 59 HP. Fireball is known to be a powerful spell, and once upon a time a 6th level caster throwing Fireball could clear a room of ogres (avg damage of 21 on 6d6). Now a Fireball is only going to piss them off, with an average damage of 28 on on 8d6. Heck, even two Fireballs is not likely to kill an Ogre! So, with things like HP bloat, the game will be vastly different, and access to magic is definitely part of that.
We are allowed to make homebrew settings? I thought the official players would mock u as breaking the rules for not running published adventures in their published settings these days.
Jennings Cunningham If you talk to your players at Session 0 about your game...they can accept to play low magic or not. My group only uses home brew settings...
0:53 It's the "fifth" edition, but I thin we're more than five iterations in, given OD&D and Basic (and arguably 3.0--as separate from 3.5--and Expert, Master, and Immortals as add-ons to Basic). BTW, Dave, you are looking sharp in this video!
Second ED identify was killer. It did not always tell you what the idem was and it reduced your CON by 8 for a bit (so low can and you pass out after casing the spell). we have a mage that if we were in town could identify but would be passed out on the beds after casing. Also in 5ED I came into a game on session 2 with all 1st levels and I was using a Warlock. When i walked into the game with mage hand the DM has to change a few things because I was able to bypass some of those very low level traps. But that passed very quickly.
I mean utility spells are taking up spots where the more effective combat spells for boss fights would be. I recently started playing a wizard and making that choice between a utility spell and a combat spell made the morning memorization of spells tough but fun for me. Part of the reason my dm would let me play Old Warlock Intelligence Warlock with Wizard levels. But he told me it had to be an Old God warlock to be intelligence based. That way I could use Smite to burn any other wizard spells in combat. It was pretty fun.
I took Druidworks on whim before I knew we would be in a sailing/wilderness exploration game. Being able to predict the weather has been extremely useful.
I am currently running a low magic campaign and extending rest is the best thing I ever did : short rest 1 night and long rest 1 week of down time. I also don't have to give as much loot because the PJ are crafting and selling wares.
I added a spell failure mechanic to my current campaign. A d20 is rolled for every spell cast; attack spells use the attack die. Any roll of 5 or less is a spell failure which spawns a d12 roll on my failure table. The players love it for the bizarre stuff that happens. Recently a cleric was trying to mend the wheel of the wagon carrying vital supplies. The spell failed badly and a fireball was cast instead, destroying everything. The entire game play for the evening changed directions because of it. Another time the players often recount is when a near last ditch cantrip 'failed' and a quad damage lightning bolt hit everything in a radius; quad because the mechanic was double damage, but the foes were vulnerable to the damage type. Anyway, the decision to use magic is always weighted against the consequences.
Minor Waterdeep Dragon Heist Spoilers: As a DM I'm pro spells, because while the players have access to them, so does my endless supply of NPCs. Ran a fun encounter last night (Waterdeep, Gralhund Villa) where the party was loitering out front and were spotted by the gardener. After a lot of arguing back and forth and orders to leave that went ignored, I brought over 2 house guards (veterans) from the villa who obviously regarded the party as threats (little did they know, the guards were fighting the Zhentarim inside, and the appearance of more potential hostiles was not taken kindly). Some dogs in the yard were thrusting their heads through the bars to bark at the party, who still didn't take the hint that they had been spotted and were being told to leave. The party's sorcerer had had enough at this point. He approached the gate, thrust a hand through and cast burning hands, killing the 2 dogs for being a nuisance. The garderner who owned the dogs was secretly a Cult Fanatic: when he saw his dogs die he flew into a blind rage, charged the gate and grabbed at the Sorcerer. I do an unarmed melee attack for Inflict Wounds, crit, and drop him with 6d10 damage, instantly putting the fear of God in them. The Air Genasi Bloodhunter in the party uses Levitate to get to the top of the wall to drop down on the enemy, but on the Fanatic's next turn he uses Command to order her, "Back." She steps backwards off the wall and now has to burn another action to get in. The rogue meanwhile uses a turn to unlock the gate and rush the Fanatic. The crossbowmen turn to fire on him while the Fanatic, on his turn, uses Thaumaturgy to slam the gate shut. The Waterdeep Heist doesn't have a description of the front gate of the Gralhund Villa, so I had described it as an ornate double-gate with the locking mechanism built into the left-hand side, rather than a chain and padlock. I had done that specifically because I'd wanted to use Thaumaturgy to make the engagement more tense, locking some party members out. What I had not expected was to catch the squishy rogue alone. He's downed quickly by the guards, who now have a hostage while the party rolls Athletics checks to scale the wall. Only the cleric makes it, but he's torn between jumping down into the yard to fight or remaining a target atop the wall for the guards with crossbows. The Fanatic decides for him with another, "Back!" command. I mention this story because I would regard Thaumaturgy a utility spell in this instance that made the fight more engaging.
Is magic the easy button? No.
In 5E, Wizard ritual casting from a spellbook, Leomund's Tiny Hut, Detect Thoughts, and Zone of Truth are the Easy Button.
I've been playing since the blue cover pre-Basic edition, and Wizards were impossible to play way back then. Now they're very very easy. The number of 1E and 2E wizard bodies buried beside roadways is enormous.
Some blame cantrips for things being too easy, but I don't buy that. Being able to fall back on Fire Bolt or Chill Touch are the equivalent of the fighter having a bow and 40 arrows. I agree that "feeling like a wizard/caster" is important, since other classes can generate that "feel" quite easily. Player buy in is key.
To make things feel less "easy", I think the setting is important. Dark Sun is on the far end of the scale, with Eberron on the other end. When I made Tholl, I faced "easy magic" with laws. Like darker versions of Marvel where mutants and other heroes were registered, so were casters. Magic was regulated and controlled. Heroes who chose to buck this risked arrest, but certainly had greater freedom in the wilds. It was up to the players how they chose to address this.
As far as the DM's struggle with these easy spells, reading the entire spell is necessary.
- Leomund's Tiny Hut is a dome, not a sphere. It has a maximum number of living creatures in it. Insects burrow from below, as to several monsters.
- Zone of Truth can tell if someone passed or failed a save, but does not compel anyone to say anything. Targets can "invoke the right to remain silent" if you will.
- Detect Magic doesn't tell if something is cursed. DMs do not use enough cursed magic. That's not the game's fault.
- Detect Thoughts scans surface thoughts for free. Sure. What are the chances that the target is actually thinking about the needed info? What if they're thinking of a song that's stuck in their head? What if they're having inappropriate thoughts about the caster? What if they're going over a shopping list? The caster should use role playing to direct or trick the target into dropping important information. It should not be free.
If a DM wants more challenges in their worlds, it's up to them to create these challenges.
Ahhh, cursed items. The memories :)
I think that more than detect magic, the real issue is Identify.
My Forge Cleric has both, and it's needed since our campaign has a lot of "poke around the ancient ruins to find out how it works" moments. I use Detect Magic as a general scan to find out which part of the room is actually magical, then Identify to get all the details.
I have also grabbed Tiny Hut (through ritual caster feat), but that's mostly because organizing guard turn during long rests got boring (and we weren't allowed to sleep in heavy armor)
Mike Gould You are absolutely correct. There are plenty of ways for dungeon masters to account for these utility spells and make the game challenging. The Animated Spellbook channel has a video about how to manage the goodberry spell in a survival setting... long story short, make the material components consumed with each casting. The dm is given a lot of power over the rules of the game, so it is up to the dm to make things work. Cheers!
Game Time with Professor John Ah, yes. Zee Bashew. I love his work.
Curses are great I remember a cursed item from 1st that compelled you to return it to it's original location no matter the cost the curse only took hold once the item was out of your possession. We had 3 party members get hit by it fun times were had it is still one of my favorite sessions.
More magic just gives me, the DM, more opportunities to get creative with how I am going to challenge my players. I try not to restrict what they have but instead take it into account. There are different ways to challenge players, and if you want a survival bent, throw enough problems at them that using magic to solve the food issue is wasting resources you need for other threats. That gives characters with survival skills some opportunity to shine.
I always reminds my players, no matter what game we're playing, that if they have access to it, then the enemy probably has an equivalent. I also keep loose track of supplies that are considered perishable by asking if they have xyz. If they, then I immediately challenge them to find a solution to the deficit. If they come up with a repeatable solution, I just start asking if they use it. If not, then they'll face this issue again some time, and they know it. Then they start trying to find solutions. I'm okay with magic fixing the issue and moving on to other things, like character interaction and roleplaying and combat. 5e to me doesn't feel like magic is taking the fun out of it, it just changes the challenge types, rhythm, power, and flavor. My most recent campaign have all suffered from magic flow issues, like dead zones and surge points. That is a new and frightening challenge for players, especially those with casters or reliant on magic items. Also, I don't mind curses. I'm kinda new to 5e, but I've made good use of curses in the past. It's a pretty good way for a concerned user of magics to protect his prized possessions that the party might want to snatch. In one campaign, the Wizard that our Thief wanted to pick pocket had his belt pouch alarmed with a contingency shocking grasp and sleep. Taser-pouch made a shocking result to his go-to way of getting around fighting interesting high level opponents. And landed him in hot water with local authorities. It also became something our party was willing to pay good coin to build for themselves. Adjust as you go. The real world does. Fantasy literature and games do. It's s normal thing to evolve and change. If you want to guide the direction of change, it's your prerogative as a DM. Just make sure everybody who stays at the table to play understands and agrees. Maybe pause to discuss if someone feels put out by your changes. But keep calm and play on!
Exactly. Instead of complaining about the problems the party can solve with magic, make the use of magic a basic assumption when you design your challenges. It's the new normal, so obviously greater challenges need to be dropped on the players to compensate. Work _around_ their magic, just as you work around their generally expanding power that comes from level ups.
@@Bluecho4 operating under that assumption it makes nearly impossible for normal folks. If the world takes into account what your player's characters have what chance do peasants have.
Just some food for thought.
Nerdarchist Dave
@Sean Fisher I'm not super impressed with the cerebral might it takes to ritual cast Leomund's Tiny Hut. But I do love when player's use resources in new and interesting ways that I have thought of.
Nerdarchist Dave
The situations Player Characters deal with are _never_ the same as those of normal folk. They're _always_ getting into trouble, because the DMs go out of their way to engineer such things. "Realism" takes a back seat to the needs of the game, _because_ it is a game.
Moreover, PCs go out of their way to _find_ trouble. There's a reason peasants sit on their farms, rather than delving into dungeons. They huddle in their villages and cities, erecting walls to keep out the monsters, and hire adventurers to take care of great threats. Commoners avoid trouble like the plague, because they _aren't_ prepared to deal with it.
Adventurers _look_ for trouble, and not only tend to find it, but tend to motivate other characters to focus on the PCs. Especially when the PCs start making names for themselves, and proving themselves to be badasses. That sort of thing attracts stronger foes, and encourages weaker foes to get stronger, to band together with other antagonists, and to alter their tactics to deal with the party.
When I originally played we kept track of spell components. Lots of sand and rose petals.
I had that impression as well when I started playing an Arcane Trickster, but my DM reminded me that reading the spell well was a gift of information. I thought EVERY spell consumed the components. Not so much. That made me a lot happier about picking up Chromatic Orb for a spell. That would have gotten expensive quickly.
Yes, my old wizards were cutting off parts of almost everything as it may useful
A big difference between early D&D and recent D&D is that the small problems disappeared from the game. You don't have to worry about running out of torches if the wizard can just cast light as a cantrip as often as they want to. Even when magic was able to solve every problem, you still had to use one of the very few spell slots you had for it and couldn't do so indefinitely.
Personally, I like the small problems and I come from a game in which you can't use nearly as much magic as in D&D. How it works is like this: if you are good, you have about 40 mana at low levels. Most spells cost about 7-11 mana and you regenerate 1d6 per rest. The cheapest spells cost about 3 mana. Thus, even casting an average spell per day wears you out. Furthermore, every spell basically is a skill check that may fail. However, some spells are really powerful. For example, you can summon a demon at level 1 that obliterates every encounter. There are three problems, though. If you fail, bad things may happen, for example, you may fail to control the demon and he now goes after you. Also, summoning this demon costs you about 30 mana - often more. Lastly, spells take much more time than classical fighting. For example, summoning a major demon is a ritual that takes about 30 minutes. As a result, you don't generally want to go all out and use magic as the last option.
As a result of this experience, feeling like a wizard to me was having access to great power but being hesitant to use it. Magic in D&D5 sometimes still feels magical as you have the solution to pretty much every problem. It just doesn't feel valuable and rare.
About the survivalist aspect: for me, this more boils down to the need for preparation. When you start a journey, you start with finding out how long the way is, how the opportunities for resupplying are and you wager on the time you'll need. Characters who are good at wilderness skills are very valuable since they can hunt, forage or fish in order to get supplies, they also can predict the weather in order to give you an idea of what equipment you'll need and of how long the journey will take you. I like the scenes in which the party set up camp and argue over who's gonna be on watch duty. I like it when some characters are gathering wood for the camp fire while other characters prepare the food. I love making player characters paranoid because a hedgehog is making a lot of noise.
I don't think that those concerns should necessarily be present if the party reaches high levels, though. The game should change based on how experienced the characters are.
Another aspect that's sadly missing is that some magic comes at a cost. Haste was always a very powerful spell, but you used to age one year if you cast it. You used to consider if doing that was worth the sacrifice, but it was much more powerful to what a noncaster was able to do.
No disrespect, and please understand where I am coming from, but this topic reminds me so much of how technology has changed the real world over the last 30+ years.
I was born in 1984. As a child, they taught us how to use card catalogs, yet by the time I was 13, you could look up what you wanted in the computer, and by the time I was 17 or 18, it was all online.
We live in a world where the smart phone is something regular children have.
Again, growing up, I had to open a book and look things up, scouring over pages, learning how to use an index, appendix and more... yet now we can find the answer to damned near any question we could care to ask within seconds by voice or a tap of a finger. All of this without magic.
So... in the fantasy world of D&D, of course spell casters will work hard to solve the problems of hunger, thirst and shelter, which are essential needs of every living creature. That stuff is far more important than a fireball spell.
Also... since I still have your attention... how can we complain about this in a game where normal humanoid creatures have enough HP at level 10+ to withstand the breath of a dragon, or the various other things which would kill anybody instantly... but not D&D characters because of RPG numbers and game mechanics?
The things adventurers survive from encounter to encounter break the verisimilitude of the game for me regularly and remind me that we are playing a game. As the guards in Skyrim say, I used to be an adventurer like you until I took AN ARROW (a single arrow) to the knee. Yes, like athletes who tear a ligament or break a bone, you are done. But in D&D? Nah, you are at 1 HP, take a long rest, get some lay on hands and we are all good. We should have third degree burns, scars, missing limbs and sight, and so forth. Magic solves this and nobody complains for a second... so what is the big deal about making food or shelter again?
It's a great point.
If magic actually existed, one of the _first_ things anyone would work out would be things like Create Food and Water.
For all the people in these comments lamenting that spells like this are "the easy button" and "ruin challenges" just consider for a second how idiotic it would be if no one in a magical world had bothered to come up with a spell to feed people.
I mean, you've got spells that create illusions, summon aid from alternate realities, raise the dead, see through walls and kill people in creative ways.
But I can't get _a sandwich_ up in this bitch?
Absolutely an excellent point, and the very reason I prefer low magic settings.
I despise your view of hit points. But great reply.
Thanks, but what don't you like about how I view HP?
A level 8 black pudding does 19 damage (13 of which is acid). A level 1 barbarian has roughly 14HP. When he starts the adventure, a lvl8 Black Pudding can one shot a barbarian human, who is more powerful than just some average human. However, if that same barbarian fought a lot of things and went on adventures, his human flesh, his human bones, his human muscles somehow grew to such a point that he now has 77 of these HP points and the exact same acid which would have killed him instantly, only deals about 24% damage to him.
I watch the RUclips/Twitch show Critical Role, which I am sure you know of and if you do not then you must see it for yourself. In a fight with an ancient red dragon, they took damage from his fire which should have left them looking like the Nazis in Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark with their skin melting off, or Sara Conner in Terminator 2 when she had a nightmare of a nuclear attack on L.A. Instead of being roasted to a crisp and the Dragon winning... nobody but the bad guys died that day. Thanks to unrealistic RPG numbers and magic.
@@PaulGaither I think hp is much more abstract than the way you described it, if I thought of it that way I'd have an issue with it too. When your 1st lv barb takes that hit he may have just stood square and got dropped By 5th lv he knows how to roll with the punches so to speak and brushes off the blow.
Back in my day, we had one spell and a dagger and if we cast that spell we had to wait till we slept 8 completely uninterrupted hours to get it back. That was when wizards were REAL magic users! . Ok, I played 1E. I played the manila wargaming pamphlets before 1E even
"If it is ruining the DM's plans, the DM needs better plans"
This. A thousand times this.
@@nickwilliams8302 Fair. But from a world-building perspective .... unless there are very few magic users, there would be massive consequences to the aesthetic ... IMHO, D&D isn't really built to sustain a low-magic setting, especially 5e. Additionally, in those settings, you're almost always meta-gaming if you throw dedicated anti-mage tactics and units at the party, and certain specialized sub-classes will be very weak.
I'd probably just cap all characters at level 6, and make all the higher magic a heavy narrative investment to cast, and slightly modify spells as Cowan suggests ... make the material components more expensive, or be consumed when casting, so the world doesn't break (I'm looking at you, goodberry).
@@liamhogan4369 fuck goodberry, if you want to run a slightly realistic game, goodberry ruins it. It makes rangers more useless.
@@liamhogan4369 honestly I don't think we have seen a setting designed around the pervasive existence of low level useful magic in 5e. It would not be a medieval world with magic. Create food+water, lesser restoration, druidcraft, mending, and others would suggest a very different world where life is longer and perhaps less difficult than in those ages. However, as magic begets magic it would also be much more dangerous. Now a dark sun situation where magic is killing everything, but perhaps the use of magic is what creates the monsters of your world.
@@davidlewis5312 You're right, Darksun and Forgotton Realms are built around cataclysmic spells and ancient magical empires, and Eberron is built around 3rd edition magic item walmarts and crafting.
Maybe a campaign set in the past of Forgotten Realms? But that would focus less on low-level magic. Honestly, 5e's dedicated campaign setting would probably be what we're looking for; all elves have a cantrip, for example.
Addendum: actually, I think the clockwork expansions from Pathfinder 1e might be pretty close. The presence of all that low-level magic weakened dimensional barriers ... so Lovecraftian horrors popped in to say hello. The only real defense against them were magically animated mindless constructs, immune to their flesh and mind warping powers. The world just didn't have enough high-level casters to fight them off, in fact high-level wizards and sorcerers were among the first enthralled or driven insane. Thus, mostly only low-level casters were left.
Just lower the AC by 10 or so and increase hitpoints by 50%. That should convert most monsters over.
As someone who has been playing off and on since 1982, I will tell you that playing a magic user in 1st or 2nd sucked. Do one thing, then hide all day and pray this is the one night of the month the DM allows you to sleep? No thanks. How is having a character that cannot participate fun?
3rd and beyond made it possible for low-level spellcasters to participate more fully. It is up to the DM to find new ways to challenge players.
But if you're one of those hateful 'everyone dies or I can't have fun' antagonist DMs, like 90% of the ones I dealt with in high school and college, don't cry. There are still plenty of ways to "challenge" your players to death. If you're clever enough.
Or you can just go run a few games of Paranoia.
I am thinking that these spells don't need a nerf, the DM just needs to be smart enough to think of ways around them.
Most of these spells can be dealt with by smart enemies, Detect thoughts is a VSM spell(as in REALLY obvious), so any BBEG that sees you cast it will instantly switch their surface thoughts to "how do I kill this guy"(a normal peasant however has no idea what you are doing, as they don't understand magic). Scrying can be countered by nondetection or being on another plane. Detect magic doesn't mention the details, only what school of magic(and a REALLY smart villain would use a conventional non-magical trap instead).
And anything with more than a minute cast time can be interrupted by enemies if any are nearby(so those spells are only useful if you are in a safe location).
I house ruled the same bonus that cleric go t the mages got the same bonus but for intelligence . I also made the house rule that allowed mages to use padded and leather armor also every one got the same constitution as fighters plas max hp at 1st level . So a mage with a constitution of 18 gets 4 hp for his class plus 4 hp for his constitution bonus for a total of 8 hp at 1st level , I also allowed mages to use a few non traditional weapons to help them survive like the handcrossbow just so at 1st level they wert a 1 spell casting character during combat just standing in the back hiding and doing nothing the rest of the time . It helped single class mages to survive longer .
The weakness of magic-users (I can give it up any time I want to, honest!) was a great spur to role playing. There you were, brain the size of a planet, needing the neanderthals to protect you. So you had to be ultra useful outside or before combat, make real friends in the party, play the high IQ with tact. They knew that you would turn into something very useful well before they reached name level, but by then you would be a team, using all your talents together to exploit any possible synergy. In the early days the magic user was often the planner, sometimes a schemer, but he grew to be a character. And few fighters could resist the practical flattery of being asked to help a magic-user with quarter staff practice, or being thanked for the training that saved his life.
About Identify in 1E / 2E: If played by the rules, NPCs also had to invest 8 hours to cast that and had a max. chance of 90% (if level 9+) to actually identify one of the item's functions. Otherwise, you couldn't even try again until you gained another level. Want to know what that important magic sword does? Tough luck, that NPC failed his roll and you'll never find out, because NPCs don't usually level up. Better find a new identification NPC and ditch your character's "friend", because he's now useless.
Of course, you always had a 7% chance to learn something incorrect. Which was a total headache in bookkeeping, because you got the info that it was a +3 sword against goblins, but it really wasn't, so the GM always had to adjust the values on the fly.
I'm so happy that bullshit got ditched!
@Lance Clemings Oh, very true, it's easy to explain why the spell works better now. The point was that the old style was in no way better.
In theory, if you're running 1 encounter per long rest, yes, magic is OP. But as our party discovered the last few sessions...if you don't get a long rest in 3 days and are tapped out, your party is screwed. We were attacked twice during long rests and we just couldn't recover, and lost 2 pc's.
Totally. One encounter per long rest makes spellcasters and nova characters way too strong.
Also, the more Combat Encounters between LR's, can actually be a nightmare to Sorcerers, especially early leveled Sorcerers, since they don't regain spent Slots AND Points back until they do a LR. Now while that does apply to the other Classes that can cast spells [minus Warlock], they at least have other options should they run out of Slots, not to mention Wizard's Arcane Recovery; which I know is a 1/Day during a SR do they regain a certain amount of Slots that has a combined level [any combination] that is ≤ to the Wizard's level (rounded up), & the Slots can only be Level 1-5.
Wizard's get even easier at level 18 as they are able to cast 1 level-1 & 1 level-2 spell at will without expending a slot at their lowest level. Sorcerer's don't get any such luck, & Warlocks are Warlocks ;)
@@Altyrell I agree that Wizards and Warlock have it the easiest early and late game. We recently started a side campaign (Phandelver) and we have a bard and me as a sorcerer, and the sorcerer really does suffer until he gets to about lvl 3 compared to other spellcasters. Warlocks seem weak due to only having 4 spell slots at max lvl, but they are all lvl 5 slots and they get a 1 time use of lvl 6+ spells between LR's, and they have invocations.
Even then, at Level 3, the Sorcerer still needs to be careful until (s)he gets more SP's. Also depending on what Pact/Patron Combo the Warlock goes, they can be exceptionally well despite only have 4 lvl-5 slots & 1/LR lvl 6/7/8/9 (1each). Especially if they choose the right set of Invocations to compliment the Pact/Patron that they chose. With the Hexblade/Pact of Blade Warlocks being the more capable of being "broken" [benefiting the Player], especially if they don't Pact a Magical Weapon.
Because Pact of Blade Warlocks (that don't Pact a Magical Weapon) save costs on weapons as they're able to chose the form the weapon takes each time it is summoned. So they are able to change from handaxe to sickle to dagger to any other Simple Melee Weapon. Which, when paired with the Hexblade, extends to Martial Melee Weapons as well (so you could go from Handaxe to Rapier). Even if the Pact of Blade doesn't go Hexblade, picking up the "Improved Pact Weapon" Invocation, makes a drastic improvement.
IPW = You can use any weapon summoned with your PoB feature as a spellcasting focus for your warlock spells. IN ADDITION, the weapons gains a +1 to both the Attack Roll & Damage Roll, unless it is a magic weapon that already has a bonus to those rolls. ALSO, the PoB Warlock is no longer confined to summoning Melee Weapons as the weapon they conjure can now be a Short or Longbow, Light or Heavy Crossbow.
Which can be useful, because while it takes an Action to summon, "dismissing" requires no action, so with PoB Warlocks with IPW, they can (if attacking targets that are at range):
1st Turn:
- Summon a Longbow or a Heavy Crossbow
- Attack a Target that would be at range (150' LB, 100' HC; beyond this will cause you Disad on the Attack Rolls)
2nd+ Turn:
- Dismiss the LB/HC [NAR] as soon as the Target ends their movement 60' of you [50' for Dwarf, Halfling, Gnome, Goblin], so that on your next turn you can spend an Action summoning a Melee Weapon while they'll have to spend their turn moving to be 30'/25' out from you. Then after this, on your next turn, you'll be able to move to meet/attack them. Which, depending on how far out they were at, will be weakened by the time you close in to melee attack them.
Yes I know that that's a lot of work, but depending on the circumstances, can be very beneficial, & the DM's might not be expecting that to happen. Or conversely, the Warlocks could do the reverse, should they have to "fall back" into a Support type role to help provide Ranged Covering Fire.
@@Altyrell That's exactly why Warlock is one of the best, if not the best, classes in the game. Lets disregard the combat capabilities of the class, Warlock still has a lot to offer with it's Invocations and cantrips. Although most see Pact of the Blade and pick it instantly, if you ask me, the other 2 pacts are better for the other 4 subclasses. The Tome grants you extra cantrips, while the Chain gives you a familiar which has a TON of uses outside of combat, but also in it.
Started in 3.5/Pathfinder, so when I ran a D&D Basic one shot a while back the low magic system shocked me. Still, it added a flare that I really enjoyed. I like both systems of magic for different reasons. I like the classic because it adds a layer to survival, but I like the current because it allows players to have multiple avenues to solve problems.
As another old school gamer that started back in 1E, I still find the game enjoyable. I enjoy a high magic setting, where magical creativity can be employed to mimic technology. I have no issues with the cleric casting "Create food and water" as he is using spell slot for that lowering the number of heals he may do. "Locate object" and other divination spells are blocked by materials, so if I really want to hide it I place it in a lead box that is then hidden again (so yeah a good perception can still find it). Most of the divination spells also include the fact that you must know (as in have seen before) the item you are looking for. So far no mage that I have played with lately casts "Leomund's" to rest in. In 1E I had a staff that would store spells and I kept a "Leomund's Tiny Hut", "Alarm" and "Unseen Servant" stored in it and would refill it during my rest. I like seeing how players can be creative with their magic. Here's to many more years of D&D magic!
As a rule of thumb: if a spell seems like it would be game-breaking, reread the description. The "fix" for most of those people out there complaining that some spell or other is ruining their game is very frequently to just apply the restrictions in RAW.
Even seemingly simple things like asking a player what their PC is doing with their hands can pull people up short.
Scrying is a 5th lvl spell, by the time you have that spell. Scrounging around for information about an item or a person SHOULD NOT be the focus of the story anyway.
Actually, Scrying was not that useful for my character - the BBEG was on another plane. Also all it does is help you locate them, they will not necessarily be doing anything important you can listen in on(you need to time it properly to get it to listen in on important conversations). (nondetection counters it too).
@@doombybbr it doesn't even help you locate them in most cases.
I always love a great conversation reminiscing about the old days. Jumping from 1E to Pathfinder/5E was quite the shock for me with regards to Cantrips and number of spells spellcasters had access to.
I was a 1st edition player, too. We instituted an INT bonus for magic users akin to the cleric WIS bonus for spells. It helped a bit. Regardless, starting with 2 HP was pretty much a death sentence.
House rule we used to go by was that you get your max HP at 1st level. So, a Magic-User would never have less than 4 HP unless they had a low CON score. Funny that they mention the "Max HP at 1st level" at the 4:00 mark just as I was typing this.
This is why I'm experimenting with creating a homebrew adaptation of the Elder Scrolls magic system, wherein spells come in 5 tiers of mastery, and spell casting is limited by a finite pool of magical energy that gradually regenerates. Higher tier spells cost more, and depending on character level, and level of mastery in a magic school, some higher tier spells can be beyond your abilities, because your pool of energy is too small.
Alternately if a higher level spell is within you your abilities, but above your mastery level, casting it once or twice may burn through your entire pool of energy, forcing you to choose between more spells or bigger spells.
Additionally is the issue of the regeneration of that magic pool being halved during combat.
this sounds really cool
this is actually a great video and my main problem with this edition, everything seems to be on "easy mode", in order to challenge the players the GM must always deploy "cheap" tricks, the difficulty does not come naturally through the rules, my humble opinion
I really don't get this. I do agree that certain types of challenge become irrelevant once the PCs start getting serious levels under their belt.
But the PCs greater powers open up vistas for greater adversaries.
run the game more. in reality the players find everything a cakewalk, or immediately die and require dice fudging to fix. Players become gods too quickly and outpace the monster manual. DM has to contrive everything, following the rules will lead to a very braindead campaign, thats a failure of design imo. @@nickwilliams8302
I've always found it very easy to overcome some of these challenges, if I want a certain theme or concept to a game, I will go over this in Session 0. I like to outline what spells the party may or may not be able to use, because they don't exist, and I generally have a good response to this.
Great subject, evenly covered. As a person who prefers OSR, I appreciate your mention of some of the ways the newer editions have altered the game, both what you can do with it and the type of experience the raw give players. Obviously I feel 5e gives away too much. I have tried to dial it back to give a more OSR feel, but get resistance from players who of course want all the stuff in the books, even the optional stuff, and the article they found online. Players have always been that way, but I think giving in to their pressure can ruin the game. And it often does ruin the game as I, the referee, lose interest. Thanks for another great video, guys.
Way back when, thieves had very low experience point requirements because they were expected to die a lot from traps and getting caught while sneaking. Low skills + high stakes = roll another thief and catch back up. This is also why 2nd Edition gave rogues tons of experience for successful use of class skills and for looting treasure.
I have an edition of Basic D&D containing an example of play where the thief dies opening a chest and the other players don't even pause to shrug before they loot it and move on. They would have had a stronger response to losing a ten-foot pole.
I have no idea why the cleric experience requirements were almost as low. Decent spell options, serviceable combat skills, potentially great armor, great saves in really vital areas... as long as you have Wisdom 13+ and enough Strength for your equipment, the class weaknesses can be managed handily.
They had a lot of weird game theories then, though. They thought that 3d6 six times in order for ability scores when most ability bonuses didn't really kick in without a 15+ was acceptable because statistically, characters that survive a long time tend to be those that rolled high during character creation, so players were expected to go through a lot of character deaths until they got lucky on initial stats and lived to become high level. And 2nd Edition didn't really fix the system that originally went with that thinking because it was only changed enough to shift royalties while getting it to stores as fast as possible.
Spells per day in 5e is less than it was in 3e though, for reality-altering spell tiers - which is pretty good, IMO. You don't see level 20 characters who can cast Wish 6 times a day.... Plus, there's ways around those utility spells if you really do want to roleplay some kind of survival. Low magic, or wild magic zones are the easy way of doing it, but you could also simply house rule spells like goodberry if you *really* want your players to be in survival mode. Leomund's Tiny Hut is perfectly safe to sleep in, sure, but it's also visible to passing monsters who can simply hang around until the spell ends. Sure, Mordenkainen's Magnificent Mansion doesn't have that limitation, but it's also a 7th level spell slot - characters under level 20 only have 1 7th slot per day in 5th (and only 2/day at 20), which makes it pretty expensive to the spell economy on days when you have an encounter - it may not be the 7th level spell you want to cast that day.
I remember the nostalgia. I cut my teeth on the red books, and have played extensively on everything but 4th. Honestly, I like what 5th has changed. Having recently played a 2nd ed campaign for nostalgia, you could not pay me enough to make me want to deal with THAC0 and the other eccentricities of 2e again.
Turn Identify into a Spell that you have to upcast to identify more properties. Level 2 identify will tell you If it has a + to hit/damage and it will tell you other passive effects like add 1d6 fire damage on a hit. Identify cast with a level 3 spell slot can tell you if it has activateable abilities. LEvel 4 slot tells you a key word for the item to use an activated ability like Invisibility is cast with the item when you say "im not really here". LEvel 5 spell slot can tell you the source of the magic powering the item: is it divine/Fiendish/Aberantt/Elemental/Nature/ or arcane magic
I started back in 1992 and I don’t miss playing a mage at low levels that had the one spell and then hid behind who ever he/she could or get killed . Cause with a THAO of 20 you where not going to do much with that dagger.
I agree. Though higher level magic could be ridiculous, as it sometimes seems now, I don't miss being super squishy at low levels. Having cantrips be free is a cool adjustment, but even that can be abused. Ritual magic is a great way to expand utility, too. I think if these things get out of hand in your setting, just focus on what makes them possible or effective and find a realistic counter. Requiring a targetable focus that someone could take out and ruin the caster's utility temporarily? Requiring the use of material components that are consumed on casting? Reducing the available opportunities to take rests? Breaking rests? Opponents or settings resistant or immune to certain annoying spell effects? Some other more creative approach? Some combination of these things? Anyway, when fighters become what keeps a wizard alive when the magic becomes less effective or available, then we get a bit back to the roots of the game, without making it too much of a squishy bloodbath. My suggestion? Talk about it with you players/GM and decide on how anything you dislike can or might be mitigated. Agree at the table, before play or during a session 0, or even as they come up, and things will go better. If the DM dislikes the flow disruption of the Halfling Diviner with three feats dedicated to luck, then it should be discussed at the table. Maybe disallowing certain features to stack in the interest of maintaining flow? Maybe something else. As long as the whole table agrees, including the player planning on that ludicrously unbalanced build, and the campaign continues to be fun, you're golden. It's part of why WotC has stated in the books that it's your game and you should pay it how you want. Communicate, adjust, play, enjoy. Repeat as needed.
I think a lot of this depends on the DM. Many of the spells have workarounds that work, and if you take the encounter-heavy route 5e seems intended to be played as, spell slots are a resource you have to manage.
Take Leomond's Tiny Hut for example. Against any intelligent enemy, its not that great. Against mindless beasts and monstrosities, you are safe. Lets say there's a group of Drow, however. Dispell Magic, you're now vulnerable, I hope to hell you had a watch set up else it could well be a TPK. Group of Bandits. They see the hut, and set up an Ambush. As soon as the hut goes down, a surprise round goes to the bandits who attack from hiding, and dish out a hefty Alpha Strike removing a lot of the advantage of having just rested. In a cave with Kobolds? They dig and make traps around the hut, or collapse the cavern roof on top of it. Even mindless enemies like Zombies can become a threat here. A horde just keeps building, as all the zombies in the area can sense the life inside the hut, but can't reach it, and lack the brain to try and do something else. The party wakes to a hundred zombies sitting outside waiting to eat their brains.
Encounter wise, we've got a semi-survival theme going in a campaign ATM. Not full survival as it just gets tedious marking off rations and such every day, but we have to make sure we've got a source of food and water wherever we go, and if we don't, we tend to have just one or two days rations. We recently went on a 3 day trek. First day, we did half a dungeon, then rested. Second day, we finished off the dungeon, went through 2 combat encounters, snuck past one to conserve resources, and got lucky with not rolling a 4th. The druid had 1 spell left at the end of this, which he had only prepared during the dungeon rest as a precaution, and it was what managed to sate our thirst for the night. Had we not skipped the first encounter, we'd be exhausted, which is not a great state to be in ATM. If you give players a long rest after every combat or two, yeah, Spellcasters become really OP, as they have an unlimited pool of spells. If you don't, they have to work towards conserving their spell slots much more. Bard and Druid in the party tend to just cast cantrips and weapon attacks most of the time, because their spell slots need to be saved for the actually hard encounters that almost kill the party. Sorcerer gets to cast more thanks to burning through a lot of Sorcery points, but he also has fewer of the great utility spells.
Magic Item identification is definitely much easier in 5e, however. If you want to focus on the mystery of the items, then you'll need to house rule it, but I feel its got its pros and cons. Older magic item identification could slow the game down a lot, or just be underwhelming spending money on what is essnetially a lootbox in the game, hoping you get an item you want, then find out its something not that great that's worth less than the 100 gold you paid to identify it. If you plan out every drop, then it could work, but if you use loot tables... It has a lot of potential to go wrong.
Different things work for different styles of games, and if you want a different style, you've always had to houserule it. Older DnD had its own issues with various styles of games too. Having different systems to draw inspiration off for different campaigns is only a good thing IMO.
*As soon as the hut goes down, a surprise round goes to the bandits who attack from hiding*
That makes no sense, some of the party might have heard the ambush being set up while sleeping especially if someone only half sleeps like any elf. And if anyone wakes up before the 8 hours they can probably look around and notice something is amiss.
*Lets say there's a group of Drow, however. Dispell Magic, you're now vulnerable*
I'm sorry dude this is metagaming on the part of the DM. Do drow parties always run around with dispel magic specifically for killing PCs? With all of the horrors in the underdark not the least of which include horrific creatures with terrifying magical ability why would the drow find a hut off the beaten path that they cannot enter and think "Well we better dispel it, there might be weak humans inside," as opposed to "We better leave this alone in case a priestess conjured this and will hang us upside down by our balls if we mess with it"
What you're doing is spawning a group of enemies who know what the spell cast is, have the exact tools needed to remove the spell and **know** that there isn't anyone on their side or anyone more important than them inside. That is the definition of metagaming.
Exactly. If the party's magic is trivializing the game, it means the DM needs to step up their own. The spell slot needed to cast Leomund's Tiny Hut or Create Food And Water becomes much more precious when the party is being hounded on all sides by threats. Especially if the DM isn't just throwing strong monsters at the party and frequently, but is using them intelligently. So the party casters are forced to seriously contemplate whether they can get by with just cantrips or weapon attacks, or whether they _need_ to burn a spell slot to deal with problems.
@@AntoineVello *Some of the party might have heard the ambush being set up*
While sleeping, I'm going to go with probably not. The party doesn't wake up from the sleep spell because they hear a fight going on around them. Sleep as a condition is broke by damage, or by being shaken awake by an ally. This is, indeed, a reason to keep watch while in the hut. For a party that assumes they're invulnerable? They're in trouble. If you really want to do it, stealth check with advantage for the bandits vs Player Passive Perception, but honestly I don't think that'd apply.
Further, even if the watch notices bandits around, the bandits can see the hut, and walk off 150 ft and set up their ambush. Its not right outside the hut, its an AMBUSH, not a "Lets just wait here" and see what happens. They'd be stealthed, and motionless, outside of Darkvision range, but within normal range for longbows. This seems like a pretty normal way for bandits to deal with a fortified camp; hide so they don't know you're still around, then attack when they remove fortifications. I'd say the DM is power gaming on the side of the players if the bandits didn't do this, as its such an obvious strategy any creature with an int above 8 should think of it. If the party decides that they think the bandits are setting up an ambush, and wake up a few minutes before the hut falls so that they can prepare themselves - sure, no surprise round. If they fall for the ruse and think the bandits decided to leave them along, they're surprised.
*Do Drow parties always run around with dispell magic specifically for killing PCs?*
Who said this was specifically for killing the PCs?
The Underdark has a ton of magical creatures and effects that can mess with the Drow. Deurgar use magic to grow massive or turn invisible, other Drow have spells to gain advantage, Deep Gnomes have their own magic that could be annoying. If they find somewhere to raid, they're going to want dispell magic to remove the wards set up to protect the area. Its simply incidental that they ran into the players. I wouldn't force a Drow encounter all the time, but it is a risk in the Underdark. Run into Hook Horrors? Your barrier holds, they walk away. Run into a party of drow with a level 5 spellcaster? Dispell Magic is a standard spell for Drow to learn, so yeah, you're in more trouble.
Its also not about there being a weak human inside, but about following whatever orders they were given. Why are the Drow here? "Oh, sounds like fun to wander through the underdark"? Hell no, that's stupid. They have a purpose in going out, whether to scout for enemies, hunt for slaves, or perform some task to benefit their house at the cost of anothers. In all cases, coming across an invulnerable hut, they'd have 0 reason to assume a priestess put it up. They'd likely assume some other race put it up, and would dispell it to try and capture those slaves, eliminate the enemies, or if it was an opposing house priestess, ensure she never returns home. Drow aren't Kobolds, they don't cower and hide from potential threats. They're sadistic and cruel. The only other races they even begrudgingly accept tend to be illithids, and high rank demons. Turning them into reskinned Kobolds just so your party can remain invulnerable is a silly idea.
What you're actually doing, is spawning a group of enemies, potentially based on a random die roll, that has a caster with a pretty normal spell, who are sadistic and cruel, and on a mission where they could, via common sense, understand that this thing isn't meant to be here, and can probably discern it is magical in nature. I'm not suggesting you force this encounter every time your players try to sleep, but there is a risk they will come across a group with the ability to dispell the hut. Sometimes, they'll be safe and it'll help. Sometimes, they won't be safe and need to be prepared for an ambush just as much as they would any other rest. It isn't an instant-win spell, its simply a useful one. Changing creature personallities and actions, or standard mechanics such as sleep, to turn it into an instant win spell is metagaming.
Don't be an ass of course, but you're well within your rights to send enemies that can counter a Tiny Hut against the players. I have no idea why you'd think you couldn't.
To identify a new item quickly, just use the scroll of town portal and visit Deckard Cain...yeeeeah riiiiight
Stay Awhile and listen.
... I prefer low magic (as it makes destructive and flashy magic more like a superweapon) with mundane use magic (natural no cost magic for mages-- like washing dishes, lighting candles with a touch etc-- we have a house list of what's allowable under mundane use to keep mages feeling magical without them being the easy button-- if they try to use these in combat it's often the false hope button or insane but effective button but makes for great roleplay) being part of what others consider creepy and unnatural about mages. I don't appreciate the frantic gameplay of 5th. The "everyone is very magic" really removes a lot of the grit from the game and I tend to run low magic, gritty campaigns.
I like 5e because it allows casters to be effective and is more fast paced. I remember playing 3.5 and no one wanted to be a caster due to not having alot they can do and be the east target. It is true that it is much easier, yet I've had more role play scenarios from players with 5e. Magnificent mansion can be dispelled if they can find the door, Comprehend languages takes 11 minutes to cast as a ritual, Identify can be thwarted by legendary items, (not necessarily broken items, but really old and forgotten items to which they need legend lore for. At any point they can be interrupted and that progress is lost. I personally feel it is mostly a table to table effect, though I have these rituals on my wizard I opt not to always use them to make more chaos. It's in the chaos (for my group) that I find so enjoyable because it makes for a better scenario.
If you don't want to take these spells away but also dislike the abuse of them make it a rule that you can only cast so many rituals per day so they have to be smart about what they use. Leomund's tiny hut is a broken spell if you have time, i agree. We often use it in one of our groups, but our horses can't fit in there with us so they are susceptible to being attacked in the night. Easily enemies can surround them and just wait. I hope some of these suggestions can help other DM's out there! This is just some ways our DM works around it.
PS. Love you guys, keep making this great content!
We converted to Dungeon Crawl Classics. Haven't looked back. Best magic system I've seen in ages.
Great discussion guys! I cut my teeth way back in the days of...5e. So yeah, I always find it interesting to hear a comparison of how each of the earlier editions worked. One note, however, is that in 5e, while you can learn a lot about a magic item from spending a short rest studying it, you still need identify in order to make sure that the item isn't cursed. Not that it's that hard. In one of the games I run, the wizard has and uses identify on every item as a ritual. He has better things to do with his short rests. (Usually studying one of the tomes I gave him and picking up interesting bits of lore.)
If you want to make stuff tough, just bring back Potion Miscability! Nothing like a fighter under a potion of heroism and down to 1 hp and the potion of Extra Healing not working. : ) You also have to remember that back in the AD&D days, you had to be a certain few races to cast Arcane Spells and most races could never reach double digit levels as an arcane caster.
I like the idea that the short rest thing essential just gives you a hint after mucking about with the item for a certain amount of time. For example, you get a jug of alchemy, and as you are messing about with it, you mention how you could go for a beer, and all of a sudden, the jug is full of beer. It does not tell you everything, but it gives a strong hint to what it can do, and might bring down the numbers for an arcana check or something like that. Plus, you can get a fun scene where now your part has to make drunk checks in the middle of a dungeon.
One of the cool things about 5E is the ability to tweak it to suit the tastes of the group. The DMG has some great suggestions on how to do this. When a group can take a long or short rest is something that can be tweaked significantly. Applying fatigue and other factors can also create challenges for groups that are on a rough journey through the wilds.
Lemound's Tiny Hut is cool, however, it is a 3rd level spell, and a simply dispell magic makes it go away, no save. While 90% of the time this is probably not a big deal, you can certainly shake up your players by having an Orc chieftan surround the hut with a large contingent of orcs and then have the shaman dispell it. THAT encounter will get the heart racing.
As a player just starting dnd .. going from a fighter to a wizard I quickly realized slightly how the magic is op
Well, as it (D&D5e) stands it's fantastic for high fantasy settings; wouldn't rate it for the low magic settings to be honest.
I am currently preparing for a new campaign and trying to set it in a low fantasy world where magic is rare and un trusted. Trying to change 5e to a low fantasy is proving difficult, as I'll basically have to get rid of most of the classes or tweek them so that they don't rely on magic. But that is more work than i thought so i am looking for another system that does low fantasy well.
Nice video, somewhat agreed, because as the Dm you should sometimes limit the stretch of those spells... specially if suvival in the wild is the objective of your particular game
Still need to set a watch, or someone is going to eat or steal your horses.
Alarm and most parties have an elf which helps.
Sure, if we've got an elf he becomes the emergency rations before the horses; really useful, them elves.
@@Pchlster I thought that's what dwarves are for. More meat on their bones.
Identify in 1e was a colossal time wasting event. You couldn't even get the command words for wands, staves, and rods.
I love the video, and I'm a new player (5e). My dms so far have been pretty easy on the utilities casting, I can tell that it could become an issue for my current campaign (dragon heist). Also I'm writing my own campaign and it could be a big spoiler for the plot twist in mine. What I decided on was to be a stickler for ingredients for spells and WHERE the party can find them. It makes writing the campaign ALOT toughter on me because I have to think about what is consumed by the spell and how many the shopkeep or corpse should be able to provide. And I'll have to be very much on my toes, also was thinking about making food be bigger part then it is in the campaign I'm playing. Also I think in home brew (not based in standard forgotten realms) it's easier to control the PC from behind the screen. I think if the player knows less of your world they will likely not be so ready to throw around spells like that or meta when to cast identify on the obelisk outside of the tomb of the 9 gods, or like on the hand of veckna. I love this edition and have no desire for it to be different, I think dms need to remember they are a higher level then the gods that made torel ( at least they are if they make a stat block for them). If PC ruins plot twist then make a better one, or use what they learn to misdirect them later. We are literally the combined laws of physics in the world we put them in. Happy gaming guys, and btw I love your videos, they help me alot thank you
We are happy to be of service. Glad you find our videos helpful.
Nerdarchist Dave
Just face it.
If you want to run a campaign where the PCs don't constantly have magic on tap, you need to be playing something other than 5e.
But also, I'm not convinced that "ruining the game" is anywhere _near_ a reasonable description of the effect of utility spells. What kinds of fun are being foiled by not having the PCs ignominiously starve to death in the wilderness? How does the game suck because the PCs can spend a bit of time and find out whether the stuff they just murdered a tribe of Goblins to get is magic or not?
My last PC was a Warlock with Eldritch Sight. If the other players were all feeling cheated of some kind of fun by my character being able to instantly Detect Magic pretty much at will, they certainly never said anything about it.
I agree. 5E is what it is. It would be easier to just play a different game than to attempt to hack it down to size, then spend the rest of the campaign plugging holes.
A more brute force approach would be to just ban all full casters and run a 5E-lite campaign.
@@M0ebius
Yeah, but the game is balanced on the assumption that the party will have access to magic.
I'm looking through Modiphius Entertainment's "Conan" RPG at the moment. That seems a pretty good system for running a pulpy sword-and-sorcery game.
Nick Williams If you ban full-casters, you’d still have half-casters. Less slots, slower progression, greater opportunity cost to picking spells. Sprinkle in some liberal access to spellscrolls and you can still achieve some sembalance of normal game play.
Any good story needs consequences. A good ttrpg needs consequences. Travelling should be exciting, an ordeal, something to overcome not just malaise and boredom, glossed over because "who cares?" Players should have to prepare for things ahead of time using wits and foresight, actually thinking like real people not able to just magic away exhaustion, or shortages of food and water or cold etc. It's not that using magic to solve an issue is a problem. It's having that magic instantaneously sort out all of your problems without you even having to consider them. If you were smart and used magic to somehow protect you from the cold or to aid you in catching food and so forth, great. Fantastic. That's smart. You're using your head. D&D is mindless in it's magic system though when it comes to such things. You don't use magic to make catching food easier by coming up with a smart way to utilise it, you just magically poof it into existence, no effort from character or player needed at all.
Most things should not come so easy. Finding out if something is magic is fine and not a big problem at all but identify is. Again, it's just a case of one and done. Instant information. Removes the mystery and thus story that may be being told. The magic in D&D does this constantly in every facet of the game. It actively detracts from storytelling and roleplay.
Jhakaro But DnD is not meant to simulate every aspect of reality. The problems you are meant to solve primarily revolve around combat, and secondarily around social situations. You apply your wits and foresights toward THOSE problems, and from the way you solve them you derive consequences.
You are expecting the game to present problems that frankly a majority of players simply aren’t interested in solving. Fighters aren’t expected to solve the problem of how to optimize his workouts and nutrition. Rogues aren’t expected to solve how best to practice parkour. The game handwave those things because frankly people aren’t interested. If what you want is a game about solving mysteries, there are better games for that than DnD 5E.
Once I learned THAC0 it was the easiest system. I would love to play a mixed rules game of D&D from 2e to 5e but my favorite is 3.5
Playing a cleric rn. Yeah, knowing what you are doing before the long rest especially if it's more environment/ skill check based can be huge. We had a fishing session a few weeks back where we had to hunt a giant octopus to satisfy a sentient whale. So the night before I use divination to ask where the largest octopus is in a 30 mile radius. Next day have water walking preped. A few sessions later we were in an under water exploration bit so I prepared control water. Allowing safe passage through a bit of high pressure water. Also having suggestion, command, inflict wounds, hold person. Casters are always lovely support and utility. And decent- excellent damage output
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Zee Bashew did a short on this. Wanted to make a survival setting but had to deviate hard from the rules or strictly not have a magic character, because magic can completely eliminate the food problem.
I started on 3rd, but in 4e you could actually cover all the party bases with martial power source classes if you wanted to. Of course, magic weapons and equipment were expected as far as character progression, but that is another monster altogether.
The Survival problem is simply solved by a small trick. Don't let them take that long rest >:) hahaha
Sure, or use the optional rule that makes a short rest one night and a long rest one week. Give the PCs some quest with a time constraint and the pressure is on.
Warlocks for the win)
Or this wilderness they have to cross is a null magic area, magic creatures avoid it but natural creatures are more bold here.
jethrovaningen That sounds super fun for a few sessions, but extremely tedious for an entire campaign. 5e overall makes everything hit extremely hard but with very low HP, so a few bad rolls and the party would be on the verge of death.
M0ebius Plenty of people find resource management tedious but it is a part of classic D&D and I enjoy the minigame. If your group is used to having long rests at will and find it hard to adapt it might be unfun. If you set the tone well, hopefully at the start of the campaign, I've found that playing somewhat more deliberate and with less focus on combat can be very rewarding!
Also I've found that one week long rests help a lot with pacing. I've seen games where the party levels up twice over the course of four sessions while less than a single day had passed ingame. That just seems silly to me.
Obviously the DM has to adapt as well. No matter what edition, NPCs hit exactly as hard as the DM wants them to hit... He can't really blame the monsters that he decided to put there for being too strong ;-)
For the cantrip Spells add in a Mana system where the you have to meditate and roll to regenerate Mana points to cast a cantrip. For utility spells like the magic Manor add in a fail rate with a D100 with lower fail rates the more they use it.
13:00 Gee, I wonder. It seems like our group is still stuck in the old ways.
We don't have thought about this spells to mitigate long rests. We even went the other way. It seemed like a cool RPG moment if two characters were to hold watch together and some conversations could be started.
I think that some spells need to be tweaked in order to make them more playable. That being said, in 40 years I've NEVER seen an RPG that was perfect and didn't need some changes made. That's fine...no system can predict every situation. I hate Goodberry, for example. Small change: The Material spell component (a sprig of holly IIRC) is consumed. If you're in a deep delve, likely no holly growing nearby and the berries can't be stored. Make the casters keep track of components. The Zealot Barbarian has a trait where any sort of Revive spell cast on them has NO material spell components. In a long game that can save the party a TON of time and money.
Video Summary: Back in my day ...
Hey get off my lawn punk.
Nerdarchist Dave
@@Nerdarchy :D
Although I am a newbie. I like that way you can mix and match you character. So each class having an option / subclass to have some magic gives a lot of diversity without the need to multiclass.
I loved my 4e swordmage being able to teleport to my marked target as a reaction if they attacked someone else. I just want to recapture those Nightcrawler antics.
The 1e wizard did get cantrips after Unearthed Arcana. The hide cantrip was epic.
Oh jeez, so the who needs a rogue issue reaches all the way back to 1e?
I started in 4e and I actually am planning a lower magic setting for my next 5e game. HUGE spell, class, and race restrictions, but I am adding in things for martials and making crafting way more important. So if you were trying to figureout what a magic item does you would need proficiency in the tools used to craft it, otherwise, find an NPC. In adiition changing up some stuff. Like lets say for the outlander, I actually plan to have them choose a favorite terrain and they can get there boon only in that region.
The 1E and 2E magic user XP table was whack. In the early levels you were slow. Then from levels 5 through 10 the brakes were OFF! After that, back came the brakes.
I think there are some spells that need nukage if you want to have a game with, say, a survival theme. Create Food and Water would be a very good example.
One thing that I try to do is choose spells or abilities based on character background and personality. Something I may choose may be almost completely non-beneficial but if makes sense for the character.
My favorite early edition wizard was the 2nd ed. 'Witch' kit from The Complete Wizards Handbook. It was essentially the first foray into what would become the foundation of the Warlock. Magic item selection at level one? Yes please! I'll equip darts for 3/1 attacks, buy a Guard Dog & cast Armor on it.
I rule that Identify consumes the pearl(literally, the wizard has to eat it). Now the players have to find a single pearl worth 100g. Thats going to be very tough.
Or he just waits until it comes out. ;-)
Too tough, IMHO. If you're going to alter the spell so it consumes the component, alter the component to something cheaper. There's still a cost, just not a ridiculous one. In the Tyranny of Dragons campaign, getting an NPC to cast Identify cost 20gp. A component costing 10gp would seem the highest one could plausibly set.
Two other things though, that lead into the same point.
First, this is not a "ruling". This is homebrew: an alteration to RAW. Which is not bad, in and of itself. It's your game, after all. But this is not just your interpretation of the rules; this is you _changing_ the rules. You need to be clear that is what you are doing here.
Secondly, why is the PCs being able to cast Identify a problem for your game that needs to be "fixed" in the first place? Seriously. How is it harming your game to the extent that you think it necessary to alter the rules?
Where this is going is set out in this article:
theangrygm.com/why-are-you-doing-this/
Essentially, if you cannot state clearly how an alteration to the rules will make your game better, you should not alter the rules.
@Sean Fisher
Um, no.
If a spell requires a priced component, your PC needs to find and acquire that component. You're just hacking the rules in the opposite direction.
@Sean Fisher
What the fuck are you on?
@@nickwilliams8302 really shitty supply of drugs apparently.
I think the 5e magic system is a work of art. I started playing at the tail end of 1st edition... just as 2nd was coming out. Those wizards were nothing like the wizards I had read about or imagined. 5e brings that magic pop that makes the wizard a living Swiss army knife.
It's all about how the DM interprets the spells affects and rolls with them. Locate Item/Creature, it's in that general direction. Critical Roll season 2 did this with the under water search for the 2nd orb for Fjord's quest. Identify, gets you everything on the weapon, but just attuning to it in the field only gets you part of its abilities (Craven Edge in Critical Roll season 1).
1E and 2E are about the journey from zero to hero. 3E and onward are about the journey from hero to superhero. 5E is a great superhero game but I don't play D&D to feel like a superhero. It's much more interesting for me to play with a slightly underpowered group of clever adventures who rely on cunning ruses.
There is little reason to get in character and come up with fun and creative ways to gain an advantage or solve a problem, when you can just press a button on your character sheet. Powercreep sells, but restrictions breed creativity. For that reason I prefer the first two editions and OSR.
jethrovaningen Different strokes for different folks. I like being an uber-efficient death machine in combat, and save the RPs for outside of combat.
jethrovaningen Absolutely agree!
I started as a DM to introduce friends to the adventure from zero to hero I played back in 2e. Didn't realize 5e gave players so much magic until I started running it.
Hallelujah! Brilliant way of putting it, I couldn't agree more!
So not my experience. But it is a diverse game.
i actually love the idea of the wheel of time books , in which you have a casting ability , in the role playing game it was charisma . (id prefer for it to be the 3 it is now including intelligence and charisma . so that the best casters would need all 3) , but in that world you don't learn another spell ( or weave as its called ) ,until you are high enough level and someone casts it in front of you ,you then make the appropriate check to see if you can learn it (int for wizard,wisdom for cleric , and charisma for sorc or bard and so on . if you fail the check you need to have some else cast it again in front of you or on you . and try the check again until the spell is learned. therefore magic tends to get lost quite easily . and casters hold their secrets . if you have never read the books , they are amazing .
any spell with a ritual indicator, i would rule can only be done as such, so no quick casting of any of those spells. also another way is to combine spells into the same ones, and limit the number of them. This will add versatility and also bring them down to where they are not casting too many. you tie them to the cantrips, (fire bolt) would be fire spells, and each spell level you could do more with this like fan it out in front of you (burning hands) and at 2nd spell level shoot farther more damage scorching ray. But doing this you might have to overhaul the whole magic system and that would be a bit of a task.
Interesting thoughts, particularly on survivalist styles of game. In a way it turns a lot of the creativity back onto the DM in terms of interpreting and integrating the newer, more versatile structures. That being said, its just as versatile for us as GMs too and all of our NPCs can access the same features AND in most cases reverse any effect a PC or party can.
For example, theres no reason you cant create situations where the use of magic may be more of a problem for the party than a help and even an option of last resort. Think things like wild magic, creatures that can sense and target magic use or even situations where conjured food is `tainted` by unwholesome energy corrupting the ley lines etc. Theres a ton of methods to make utility magic choices far more challenging for a party.
The same goes for layered exposure of items. There is no reason your identify spell hs to reveal all or even any of the magical properties of an item. I often use wards and magical properties cast on to items to deliberately mislead PCs. Given the new 5e world why would these items not be hidden or obfuscated by their owners knowing the simplicity of using those kind of spells. Then you get the PCs all interested in finding out about it and it can become a new story thread.
For me many of the `problems` you mention seem to be simple adaptation issues in gamecrafting and for us old blokes a little bit of rockbrain making us a tad slower to find ways to get around that wish spell.
I've seen how one can use easy fixes to get harmed as much as help... For instance, you go into a cavern and clear up a room then cast Tiny Hut to rest up. Well, you are safe for your 1 hour short rest, but that also gives 1 hour for a grunt to notice you and grab their commander causing 2 or 3 encounters to gather and surround your hut and ready to attack you after the hour.
And the higher spells like Private Sanctum is like hiding in a box... None can come in and you might be safe, but you don't know if someone will be waiting for you when you come out either...
I am playing in a Pathfinder game where the gm assumes we have Detect magic and detect evil active at all times. He just describes everything in that light. It does kind of sap some of the mystery out of things. In my 5e I have altered the magic system. Some people think it is a bit over the top. I forced some spells on to a ritual only list. Capped most spellcasting at 5th level spells but added some of the more popular spells to the ritual list, requiring magic users to invest time and effort in to rewriting the fabric of the univers. I continue spell slot progression allowing lower level spells to still be cast at upper level slots. So far the balance is ok.
One really broken spell is mold earth for druids, it can be used to craft bridges, make make shift pit traps, shields, cover, a quick gaurd tower , collapse buildings, create buildings, and many other things. One time i killed an entire room of enemies by just making the foundation of a building weaken.
I haven't played anything other than 5th edition, but I can definitely see how the utility spells can be considered an easy button. With that said, the first campaign I was in was very combat oriented and all the spellcasters of the group ignored most non-combat spells (I was a pure fighter that saw magic as an impersonal way of fighting). Now that I'm playing a Wizard (just made it to level 4 last session), I'm trying to make full use of utility spells to keep us on guard like Lair Sense from Kobold Press' Deep Magic: Dragon Magic. Current campaign isn't as combat heavy as the last fortunately, so we really get a chance to RP our way out of encounters instead.
So this is entertaining. Couple points. Wizards of coast needed to make a new product that felt similar. Selling the same game every time isnt going to sell in this niche market. 2 you can always strip things down, thats always seems easier then adding. 3 if you embrace it you can include counter magics or things that feed off of what they use. Also gives the bad guys all the same tools.
As a DM I always made sure my 1st lvl players had a wand of missiles and some scrolls to increase their utility. Basic stuff. Scrolls for bluffs and defense. As the levels got higher if I needed it to offset spells like Leomonds Hut, well the forest or area was cursed and those spells failed or were underpowered. Still had an effect but not what was intended. In the dungeons, there was this nice spell called a spell engine , bunch of orcs chose this place to ambush because there is a permanent spell engine in the room that sucks in spells. Fall back or hand to hand.
It almost seems as if most of these issues stem from the Dungeon Master’s incapability to create scenarios in order to challenge a wizard. A lot of people seem to rely on house rules in order to deal with magic. Here is where I say they are playing the wrong game. 5th edition in many ways forces the players and the Dungeon Master to embrace roleplay and creativity. There are so many scenarios you can do to create a sense of magical importance or magical insignificance. Nullification fields, cursed magical objects, anti-mage emissaries and all sorts of elements that can hamper magic in the roleplay sense.
Outright nerfing these spells or limiting them with mechanics seems to defeat the purpose of a roleplaying game. This also applies to feats like sharpshooter or great weapon master. It really is up to the Dungeon Master to create scenarios in order to challenge the player. Falling back to arbitrary house rules is a slippery slope to a bad night, the last thing you want to do is punish players for following rules. 5th edition is a roleplay heavy edition after all, so why not approach these problems with roleplay elements?
In World of Darkness: VTM, you could literally impregnate people without touching them with magic, you could dominate people into doing favours for you, get people to vouch for you. You could even detect thoughts and -emotions- to greater extent. Despite these "game breaking" spells and rituals there were roleplay and social consequences for doing so. I feel as if most people that come to 5e especially from a more gamified system of rules like Pathfinder are finding it odd that suddenly, roleplay is filling the gap. Roleplay and the need for DM creativity are more essential than magic items and feat bloated rules.
A way I solved this with my party was I had them on a quest to infiltrate and assassinate the leader of a militant cult that sought to return the so called divine power to their deity, and any non combat magic, summon feast or whatever it is called, would trigger a large combat, this led to some very fun and unique roleplay...
"you're in a dangerous situation in the woods, your caravan is running low on food an-"
"no it isnt i cast a spell with no chance of failure and no interaction with the world around me, it just happens because i say so"
May as well pack up the game or go and play a crpg by yourself. RPGs thrive on interaction, spells in 5e tend towards "just doing things" rather than interacting with the world. They overwrite it.
gl
This gave me a lot to think about! Sharing with my D&D group Sunday!
I agree with Scout rogue in this balance because of the ambush ability they get at level 13. They have advantage on their initiative which is awesome and the first target they attack for that round everyone has advantage on their attack roles against that creature so everyone can take a good chunk of health against the big guy for a turn before dealing with the mooks and if it is a 5 v Boss the first turn of combat can really help out with the battle.
Bard would be good with spell casting since they don't need material components but I think Lore was good choice since they can give the creature disadvantage on their roles.
Some misconceptions here about magic in earlier editions. In AD&D, you had more spells per day (6, 6, 6, 6, 5, 4, 3 for Druids, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 7 for Clerics,, 7, 7, 7, 7, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6 for Magic Users) than in 5E. Spells like Create Food and Water also existed for Druids and Clerics (create Water is level 1!), Divination, Scrying, Detect Lie, Tongues, and Locate Object were ALL on the Cleric list and absolutely used all the time, and the Cleric could change their spells every day just like they do now.
Wizards had Identify as a level 1 spell, and you didn't need to go around finding some person to cast that spell for you. Spells like Hallucinatory Terrain were used to provide a PERMANENT super dense forest that could be rested in without fear of interruption.
Casters were actually far MORE powerful in previous editions, aside from the slow leveling and the low hit points. Yes, at the very early levels (1-5) you had fewer spells than you do now. But after that? You just gain more and more and more and more until you have more than double the number of spells per day people have today.
Level 5: 4, 3, 2 today vs 4, 2, 1 then.
Level 10; 4, 3, 3, 3, 2 today vs 4, 4, 3, 2, 2 then.
Level 15; 4, 3, 3, 3, 2, 1, 1, 1 today vs 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 2, 1 then.
Level 20: 4, 3, 3, 3, 3, 2, 2, 1, 1
today vs 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 4, 3, 3, 2 then.
Level 25: 4, 3, 3, 3, 3, 2, 2, 1, 1 today vs 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5 then.
Level 29, 4, 3, 3, 3, 3, 2, 2, 1, 1 today vs 7, 7, 7, 7, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6 then.
It really, really sounds like you just weren't paying as much attention, you didn't read your spells correctly, and you don't remember accurately. Casters in previous editions were FAR stronger than they are today.
The Animated Spellbook had an episode on Goodberry and survival games. He suggested making Goodberry _consume_ its material component, so they keep having to find more mistletoe.
I think in a world of High Fantasy magic should be abundant. I only got into D&D in 5E so its the only version of the game I have played, but it feels right. I hope I can get my grp to start home brewing our own world to play in soon and I plan to have magic everywhere(at least to those who can afford it) we have just been using the Forgotten Realms so far.
My groups do not have a mage that has the huts. Most DM's do not care about food or water that I played with. The fun is trying to figure out when the big fight to burn through all the spells and not before.
Great video. I prefer the new 'meta' for magic if you will. I homebrew all of my stories/plot. We've been playing for a year twice a month and the party is 4th level about to hit 5th (milestone leveling system).
If the party wasn't able to use cantrips they'd be dead. I would argue that the cantrips system in 5e encourages more combat which most intermediate to new players enjoy more anyway. I've had two sessions which were all roleplay but the rest of a decent amount of combat and the PC's have to solve mysteries after the combat. No 'detect magic' or 'detect good and evil' has solved a puzzle or plot hook yet.
I would argue that the 'easy button' approach gets the party more involved with the actual story as you aren't wondering around looking for food or asking someone to identify a +1 dagger. A session of random encounters as you look for a stream for drinking water sounds like I'd go home and do something more entertaining.. like painting a garage.
I agree. The kinds of "challenges" that magic renders obsolete are generally the kind that players experience more as "annoyances." And also:
"No 'detect magic' or 'detect good and evil' has solved a puzzle or plot hook yet."
You must be one of those smartarse DMs who design good encounters or plots instead of throwing your players some poorly thought out schlock then whinging like a bitch because a PC cast a spell and "ruined" the challenge.
Well @@nickwilliams8302,
you are the first person to say something nice to me on the internet so expect a prize in the mail!
I want my adventures to be carried out by plot development. As things unfold and the smoke clears the PC's hopefully are paying enough attention to see what is actually transpiring in front of them.
If the DM's plot is as simple as detecting something as magical then maybe they should just advertise their story as "Trials of the Champions" where you seriously just run around and kill stuff in interesting environments.
Basically you get to play a God of War game.. but without awesome graphics.
@@marcusg5665
Even if a particular challenge _can_ be solved with a single well-chosen spell, it's only GMs who think that "breaks" the encounter. The player experience is usually a feeling of accomplishment at having devoted resources to a utility spell that solved the problem so efficiently.
I mean, no one watches a game of golf and _complains_ when a player completes a par-four hole in a single shot. They say, "Awesome! A hole in one!"
But just like you can't win a golf tournament with a single awesome shot, you can't beat a well-designed adventure with a single spell.
@@nickwilliams8302 PREACH
Fair points all. Nothing I can disagree with here, there are always going to be ways to cleverly challenge players in fun and interesting ways regardless of the power the rules grant them.
D&D has always been an encyclopedia of fantasy options. Any of the issues in it can be solved relatively well (albeit time consuming) by discussing options allowed in a given campaign when the social contract is written between the players and DM.
Want a survival campaign - disallow Outlander background and any spell that covers creation of food/water or establishes safe campsites.
Want a low magic campaign - only allow Barbarians, Fighters, Rogues, and/or allow X number of "rare" race/class choices to keep the amount of magic limited. D&D 5e has 9 out of 12 classes that get magic before their archetype comes into play, and among those three, two of them have archetypes that are partial casters.
Hoop jumping is part of the job of all participants in a D&D game as it is forming. I highly suggest trying out niche campaigns that limit the options to a highly curated subset of options and seeing just how much fun you can still have, and how much new joy comes into play when you don't have the go-to options that neutralize exploration and social pillars of play.
I’d say it’s combat spells that are more problematic because in my experience people always never have any utility spells. They’re all about that damage and little about solving problems
J Hansen must be a group thing. My Halfling Bard just hit 4th level and have mainly utility spells (and two healing). Admittedly I've used minor illusion to assist with intimidation, prestidigitation to get back at a snarky guard and Unseen Servant to blind someone, but no designated combat spells.
In case you were wondering
Cantrips:
Minor illusion, prestidigitation and mending.
1st level:
Cure wounds, healing word, identify and unseen servant
2nd level:
Enhance ability, magic mouth and suggestion.
As a somewhat creative player I find these spells much more rewarding than vicious mockery, firebolt (or ball) and so forth.
They fill one single need, whereas the others fill, imho, most need.
I do miss the mystery of needing things identified. Not the spell components! Thanks for activating those memories.
I don't know how spell components are dealt with in 5e, but that could be another way to hamper it. As long as your spellcaster has their component pouch, they can cast spells. As the party walks through the forest, a shadowy figure races past. The spellcaster attempts to attack the shadowy figure with an attack of opportunity, but the magic fizzles. The spellcaster looks down and his pouch has been cut off his person by the shadowy figure. Magic now becomes something to seek, not something that can be fully relied upon.
I'm relatively new to dnd; I started in 5e. I really like the way magic works. Obviously, it's very powerful, but there are limitations that come along with being a spellcaster. As far as pure combat, wizards have a lot of really useful stuff to turn the tide of battle. Still, they can't deal the raw damage that an open hand monk or barbarian can dish. For me, wizards using utility spells to solve problems in an out-of-the-box type of way is good. I think it encourages creativity. If the entire campaign were just grinding combat roll by roll, it wouldn't be nearly as fun.
19:00 its not like the older editions were all thrown onto a pile and burned with 5E's release. If you like the older styles, there is a ton of cheap content out there at used book stores or retailers.
We've actually have said that numerous times throughout our videos. We are huge 5e fans, but that doesn't mean there weren't aspects from previous editions that didn't have merit.
Nerdarchist Dave
One thing that it made me think of for items is that cursed weapons/items aren't really an issue when you can identify anything ahead of time - it seems like when I was playing 2ed you almost didn't find out what an item did until you actually used an item. You'd have the wizard hold the wand and close his eyes and hope it didn't blow everyone up - that's a bit extreme, but it was often hit and miss trying to figure out what stuff did. And the existence of cursed items meant you really had to be careful when you came across a weapon or item in some horde or tomb - everyone sort of looking at each other saying, "why don't you take the ring.." lol
As far as identify goes, home rule that you need to be a certain level and stat mix to identify higher rarity tiers and possibly make it so it has to be cast at a higher level for those tiers
Was I the only Magic-User in 1st edition that used darts and made ample use of hirelings and henchmen? Nobody EVER mentions darts for MU's... Yeah, it's one point of damage less than a dagger but they weigh 1/2 as much and cost a fraction of what a dagger does. Don't get me wrong, it still wasn't easy, but if you wanted to survive, you had to bring the right tools. Henchmen and hirelings were tools every bit as much as that 10' pole.
Why bother being a "magic user" if you are hardly ever using magic?
You can run survival by creating other methods of expending the resources of spell slots. Create food and water, or scavenge due to other issues that may arise.
Comparing 1/2e to 5e is a bit unfair. The current design is built for playability rather than simulation :)
A lowbie Wizard was casting one and done; the fighter was king of the field. Until about 7th level and the paradigm shifted. Past 10th level the Wizards start to wonder why they even have fighters. (For reference, play Baldur's Gate with and without casters (I suggest BG because it is a 2e game that you can play without finding a group...) and see which one is 'easier' and when it becomes easier)
Almost all of the spells you mention by name have been in the game forever. Speak With Dead, Tongues, Leomund's Secret Hidey Hole of DM's Annoyance... Ritual casting makes many spells much more viable than they were, imagine having to choose between Leo's Hut or Fireball... Easy choice, no? Now, you get the best of both: prep Fireball, Ritual Leo's
Also the way the game is set up is different: let's talk Hit Points, for instance. IIRC, a 1/2e ogre had about 19 HP, max of 29. Now, they are 59 HP. Fireball is known to be a powerful spell, and once upon a time a 6th level caster throwing Fireball could clear a room of ogres (avg damage of 21 on 6d6). Now a Fireball is only going to piss them off, with an average damage of 28 on on 8d6. Heck, even two Fireballs is not likely to kill an Ogre! So, with things like HP bloat, the game will be vastly different, and access to magic is definitely part of that.
I really enjoyed the music I got from my way of the shadow munk. Or was a very useful character, but also had specific limitations so it was balanced.
Watched this video a couple of times and I always learn something new from it!
I preferred it when there was less magic overall. Ever class having magic is not a good thing in my eyes.
100% agreed. There's a simple and realistic pleasure to be had by the mundanity of magicless characters.
Then just don't play 5e? Or alternatively, homebrew that there aren't a lot of people who can use magic in your world
We are allowed to make homebrew settings? I thought the official players would mock u as breaking the rules for not running published adventures in their published settings these days.
Jennings Cunningham If you talk to your players at Session 0 about your game...they can accept to play low magic or not. My group only uses home brew settings...
0:53 It's the "fifth" edition, but I thin we're more than five iterations in, given OD&D and Basic (and arguably 3.0--as separate from 3.5--and Expert, Master, and Immortals as add-ons to Basic). BTW, Dave, you are looking sharp in this video!
You are correct. Thank you.
Nerdarchist Dave
No the Easy Button is force cage.
Yea I've seen it wreck a DM before.
Nerdarchist Dave
Second ED identify was killer. It did not always tell you what the idem was and it reduced your CON by 8 for a bit (so low can and you pass out after casing the spell). we have a mage that if we were in town could identify but would be passed out on the beds after casing.
Also in 5ED I came into a game on session 2 with all 1st levels and I was using a Warlock. When i walked into the game with mage hand the DM has to change a few things because I was able to bypass some of those very low level traps. But that passed very quickly.
I mean utility spells are taking up spots where the more effective combat spells for boss fights would be. I recently started playing a wizard and making that choice between a utility spell and a combat spell made the morning memorization of spells tough but fun for me. Part of the reason my dm would let me play Old Warlock Intelligence Warlock with Wizard levels. But he told me it had to be an Old God warlock to be intelligence based. That way I could use Smite to burn any other wizard spells in combat. It was pretty fun.
I took Druidworks on whim before I knew we would be in a sailing/wilderness exploration game. Being able to predict the weather has been extremely useful.
I am currently running a low magic campaign and extending rest is the best thing I ever did : short rest 1 night and long rest 1 week of down time. I also don't have to give as much loot because the PJ are crafting and selling wares.
I added a spell failure mechanic to my current campaign. A d20 is rolled for every spell cast; attack spells use the attack die. Any roll of 5 or less is a spell failure which spawns a d12 roll on my failure table. The players love it for the bizarre stuff that happens. Recently a cleric was trying to mend the wheel of the wagon carrying vital supplies. The spell failed badly and a fireball was cast instead, destroying everything. The entire game play for the evening changed directions because of it. Another time the players often recount is when a near last ditch cantrip 'failed' and a quad damage lightning bolt hit everything in a radius; quad because the mechanic was double damage, but the foes were vulnerable to the damage type. Anyway, the decision to use magic is always weighted against the consequences.
Minor Waterdeep Dragon Heist Spoilers:
As a DM I'm pro spells, because while the players have access to them, so does my endless supply of NPCs. Ran a fun encounter last night (Waterdeep, Gralhund Villa) where the party was loitering out front and were spotted by the gardener. After a lot of arguing back and forth and orders to leave that went ignored, I brought over 2 house guards (veterans) from the villa who obviously regarded the party as threats (little did they know, the guards were fighting the Zhentarim inside, and the appearance of more potential hostiles was not taken kindly). Some dogs in the yard were thrusting their heads through the bars to bark at the party, who still didn't take the hint that they had been spotted and were being told to leave. The party's sorcerer had had enough at this point. He approached the gate, thrust a hand through and cast burning hands, killing the 2 dogs for being a nuisance. The garderner who owned the dogs was secretly a Cult Fanatic: when he saw his dogs die he flew into a blind rage, charged the gate and grabbed at the Sorcerer. I do an unarmed melee attack for Inflict Wounds, crit, and drop him with 6d10 damage, instantly putting the fear of God in them. The Air Genasi Bloodhunter in the party uses Levitate to get to the top of the wall to drop down on the enemy, but on the Fanatic's next turn he uses Command to order her, "Back." She steps backwards off the wall and now has to burn another action to get in. The rogue meanwhile uses a turn to unlock the gate and rush the Fanatic. The crossbowmen turn to fire on him while the Fanatic, on his turn, uses Thaumaturgy to slam the gate shut. The Waterdeep Heist doesn't have a description of the front gate of the Gralhund Villa, so I had described it as an ornate double-gate with the locking mechanism built into the left-hand side, rather than a chain and padlock. I had done that specifically because I'd wanted to use Thaumaturgy to make the engagement more tense, locking some party members out. What I had not expected was to catch the squishy rogue alone. He's downed quickly by the guards, who now have a hostage while the party rolls Athletics checks to scale the wall. Only the cleric makes it, but he's torn between jumping down into the yard to fight or remaining a target atop the wall for the guards with crossbows. The Fanatic decides for him with another, "Back!" command. I mention this story because I would regard Thaumaturgy a utility spell in this instance that made the fight more engaging.