I do kinda feel like some of the spells are really situational. Spare the dying is barely used (In the campaigns I've played in), And so is counterspell, Against no casters it is 100% useless. Don't even get me started on see invisibility
Identify is useful if you don't want to spend a short rest, if you want to identify several items in the same time you could figure out one by taking a short rest, or if you don't want to attume to the item.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Yes, so an average damage of 10.5 fire damage against 9 cold damage. Given the number of creatures with fire resistance compared to the number with cold resistance that minor difference becomes moot.
Now, compare the spell to Thunderwave, which has the same damage, of a better damage type (thunder resistance is less common than cold resistance), in a better shape (15' cube covers more volume than 15' cone), with a secondary effect.
In my personal experience, you're more likely to have foes directly in front of you instead of surrounding you on all sides. It's also easier to protect allies when using cones vs spells centered in an aoe around self. Also, the 300ft of loud noise really disqualifies it from a lot of situations, particularly in dungeons when you haven't encountered enemies yet, which is like half the game.
Yes, so an average damage of 10.5 fire damage against 9 cold damage. Given the number of creatures with fire resistance compared to the number with cold resistance that minor difference becomes moot.
Now, compare the spell to Thunderwave, which has the same damage, of a better damage type (thunder resistance is less common than cold resistance), in a better shape (15' cube covers more volume than 15' cone), with a secondary effect.
In my personal experience, you're more likely to have foes directly in front of you instead of surrounding you on all sides. It's also easier to protect allies when using cones vs spells centered in an aoe around self. Also, the 300ft of loud noise really disqualifies it from a lot of situations, particularly in dungeons when you haven't encountered enemies yet, which is like half the game.
Thunderwave doesn't go off in a square around you. It goes off in a square-shaped blast that is adjacent to you. So it's got the same effect as Burning Hands, but twice the area gets hit.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Then you have spells that completely break the mold and are way overtuned to the extent its hard NOT to pick them.
Examples:
Fireball, Animate Objects, Conjure Animals.
Mix this with the terrible spell options and you have a lot of very similar builds. Even if you do not optimize most builds will have these spells.
It is weird when they introduce a new spell that is just worse than the existing options (see most of the damage spells from WIldemount) that have good flavor but I hardly see anyone talk about/use because frankly better options exist.
We need another larger tome of spells like Xanathars.
Find the Path is bad in a similar way: it does find paths, but only to places you're already familiar with and have an item from, which would be fine at a much lower spell level.
I often think most every spell in the game would be better if all spells were written to function at first level and their upgrades came about from spellcaster features, so any onus from a bad spell's design would be on the caster. I'll give an example:
Suppose we take Burning Hands as a canonical example of a good spell (we could pick literally any spell for this, just need a starting point), but we're taking issue with Aganazzar's Scorcher with being a bad spell (per the DMG rules for CR, it's actually considered actively worse than Burning Hands, so it's my example), so we're removing it from the game. Instead, we give spellcasters access to this as a class ability - think of it like Warlock invocations. I'm writing it as though all spells only exist at level 1, but spells retain their RAW for up-casting - so an L2 Burning Hands ships at 4d6 - and you can know or prepare spells at higher levels than base, which simply locks them into upcasting.
When you choose a spell to know or prepare that has a range in the shape of an X foot cone, you can instead choose for the shape to be a 2X foot line, and if the spell rolls for damage, increase its damage die by 1.
Hey presto. Now you can make the Scorcher from scratch, and its damage die will be 4d8, not 3d8 - much more reasonable for an L2 spell. For certain I picked an easy example and much more challenging ones exist, but you get the idea: in order for a spell to exist at higher level, it has to be actually better than upcasting a spell at a lower level, and all spells are subject to this criterion, since the core structure of spells guarantees that there is always lower level competition.
True Strike is a viable spell for certain characters... except that it specifically applies next turn, which can be surprisingly hard to work around. It's great for rogues, because it provides another option for turning your Sneak Attack on (if you have prep time), and not bad for crit fishers, but that whole "you have to wait until next turn" thing makes it hard to work with--especially compared to most "next turn" effects, which tend to be the looser "until the end of your next turn." This has the effect of locking out the ideal use case, an Eldritch Knight's War Magic (make a single weapon attack as a bonus action after casting a cantrip), and also interferes with using True Strike with any option that would let you cast it as a bonus action. Which leaves... mainly good for stealthing rogues, and anyone else who desperately needs to guarantee they get a hit in.
Rogues can already get advantage by hiding as a bonus action and two subclasses give them reliable Sneak Attacks without help or advantage (Swashbuckler and Inquisitive.) A hidden rogue also already has advantage so True Strike doesn't really help further. It's usually not good for crit fishers either since at best you're giving up one d20 on your current turn to roll two on the next, when you could've just attacked on both turns and maybe scored two criticals. For any character that uses bonus action attacks or Extra Attack you're giving up multiple d20 rolls to roll one extra die next turn. It can be slightly useful with the Elven Accuracy feat since that gets you an additional d20, but you still have to give up concentration and you run the risk of wasting your turn if the situation changes next round and you end up having to do something else.
Spare the Dying is a decent idea, but not really applicable in most cases. Its effect can be replicated by a Medicine check or a healer's kit, and most characters which have access to StD are liable to also have access to proper healing magic (which stabilises and also makes you conscious again). Considering how few cantrip choices you have available, it has to compete with Guidance, Sacred Flame, Light(which honestly has the same issue to a lesser extent, except most people just like the idea of Light better than carrying a flashlight or a pile of torches), and Mending for Clerics, and has even more competition for Artificers. This leaves it as something that you'll use it you get it for free, but in most cases isn't worth the opportunity cost of voluntarily choosing it. (Also, it can be abbreviated as STD, which you really don't want if you have immature players at your table.)
The nice thing about Spare the Dying is that it's reliable. Medicine checks can fail, which means not only did you waste your action, but your buddy might also not make it to the next round. Healer's Kits are consumable, weigh you down, and you need to have it within easy reach or else you might need to waste another action to get it out of your backpack, Bag of Holding or pack mule.
In my opinion Sacred Flame and Light already do such a good job of covering your bases that I'd rather give up my third cantrip slot for Spare the Dying than give up one of my limited skill proficiencies for Medicine or add more to my carrying load. Guidance is also nice but I've also been in plenty of situations where I was already concentrating on something else and couldn't cast it. Mending is very niche and while I won't say it's a bad cantrip, there's many adventures or quests where it might not come up for long periods of times.
What I was getting at with Rogues is that True Strike is a strong way to guarantee that you'll get a Sneak Attack next turn regardless of anything short of your concentration being broken. It does require the prep time I mentioned, which means it's useless when already in attack range (or close enough to enter attack range this turn), but it can be a good choice while approaching a target. Basically, you use it when you're one turn away, and guarantee that you won't lose sneak attack opportunity even if someone finds you while you're hiding, another character gets too close for a swashbuckling duel, or the target wins the IF contest. That doesn't necessarily mean that it's a good spell, of course, just that there's at least one situation where it can be a perfectly viable choice. xD
For crit fishers, there are other options, for sure. I envision most dedicated crit-fishing builds as being aimed at pumping a ton of resources into a single burst for maximum damage, though, and that sort of strategy can benefit from skipping one turn to double your crit chance next turn. It's not the best option, for sure, but it is, in fact, not actively bad for crit-fishing. ^_^
That's a fair point about Spare the Dying, though, albeit an uncommon perspective on it. Carrying load tends to be a highly situational thing since a lot of DMs just plain ignore encumbrance in 5e, though, which... is probably the biggest deciding factor here, since the amount of attention paid to encumbrance directly determines Spare the Dying's usefulness. xD
Yeah, Find Traps finds traps that are in your line of sight at the time you cast the spell. Which is not 100% useless, if you want to figure out how to reach that treasure on a pedestal in the middle of the obviously trapped room (hello Indiana Jones) it might help you avoid the traps, but it's certainly not useful often enough to bother keeping the spell prepared.
The fact that Frost Fingers is being thrown into this conversation is a bit silly. Yes, its probably slightly worse than Burning Hands/Thunderwave, but both of those spells are considered to be very solid first level spells. It also has utility that, while niche, can be incredibly useful. Its by no means "Absolutely Terrible". At worst, its 'Slightly Underwhelming'.
The same goes for a large majority of spells. There is a pretty large gap between "incredibly powerful" and "absolutely terrible", but that often gets ignored and people dive headfirst into dramatic hyperbole. Aside from a few one-off spells with legitimate issues (Find Traps is a great example), 95% of spells are perfectly functional and will get the job done.
Yeah, Find Traps finds traps that are in your line of sight at the time you cast the spell. Which is not 100% useless, if you want to figure out how to reach that treasure on a pedestal in the middle of the obviously trapped room (hello Indiana Jones) it might help you avoid the traps, but it's certainly not useful often enough to bother keeping the spell prepared.
I encourage you to read the Find Traps spell description.
You sense the presence of any trap within range that is within line of sight. A trap, for the purpose of this spell, includes anything that would inflict a sudden or unexpected effect you consider harmful or undesirable, which was specifically intended as such by its creator. Thus, the spell would sense an area affected by the alarm spell, a glyph of warding, or a mechanical pit trap, but it would not reveal a natural weakness in the floor, an unstable ceiling, or a hidden sinkhole. This spell merely reveals that a trap is present. You don’t learn the location of each trap, but you do learn the general nature of the danger posed by a trap you sense.
What this spell actually does is It tells you if a trap is anywhere in your line of sight. It doesn't tell you where the trap is. The trap might be way off on the horizon. The spell just says that there is a trap somewhere in your line of sight.
That means that if the trap is right next to you, but not in your line of sight (for example, it might be under a rug you are about to step on, if you step on a certain point on the rug, the trap will be triggered, but the rug isn't part of the trap), the spell will give you no indication that a trap is there.
So, I think it is being overly-generous to say that the spell finds traps. It detects the presence of traps somewhere in your line of sight. That is all.
What this spell actually does is It tells you if a trap is anywhere in your line of sight. It doesn't tell you where the trap is. The trap might be way off on the horizon. The spell just says that there is a trap somewhere in your line of sight.
Find Traps has a range of 120ft, so "way off on the horizon" is a non-issue. Realistically, this spell will be used indoors, so it's unlikely to even reach it's full range.
Look at a door, check for traps. Look down a hallway, check for traps.
That, plus the "general nature of the danger posed by the trap..." should be enough information to make an educated guess. The game may not account for "facing" in combat, but realistically, one could use their hands as blinds to focus the effect upon a smaller area, if they really needed to.
It would be nice if this were a Ritual spell though. It's a bit rough for a 2nd level spellslot.
What this spell actually does is It tells you if a trap is anywhere in your line of sight. It doesn't tell you where the trap is. The trap might be way off on the horizon. The spell just says that there is a trap somewhere in your line of sight.
Find Traps has a range of 120ft, so "way off on the horizon" is a non-issue. Realistically, this spell will be used indoors, so it's unlikely to even reach it's full range.
Look at a door, check for traps. Look down a hallway, check for traps.
That, plus the "general nature of the danger posed by the trap..." should be enough information to make an educated guess. The game may not account for "facing" in combat, but realistically, one could use their hands as blinds to focus the effect upon a smaller area, if they really needed to.
It would be nice if this were a Ritual spell though. It's a bit rough for a 2nd level spellslot.
I disagree that "the general nature posed by the trap" should be enough information to tell you where the trap is. Also, using your hands as blinds means that you are either stumbling around in a hostile situation with a dagger (or similar) inches from your eyeball or you aren't carrying any weapons. Plus, it kinda seems like you are more looking for the absence of a trap (ignoring that that won't even work as per my comment about a rug above) than you are finding traps. While that will work in some situations, it doesn't take a lot of imagination to come up with many situations where it won't.
Yes, so an average damage of 10.5 fire damage against 9 cold damage. Given the number of creatures with fire resistance compared to the number with cold resistance that minor difference becomes moot.
Now, compare the spell to Thunderwave, which has the same damage, of a better damage type (thunder resistance is less common than cold resistance), in a better shape (15' cube covers more volume than 15' cone), with a secondary effect.
In my personal experience, you're more likely to have foes directly in front of you instead of surrounding you on all sides. It's also easier to protect allies when using cones vs spells centered in an aoe around self. Also, the 300ft of loud noise really disqualifies it from a lot of situations, particularly in dungeons when you haven't encountered enemies yet, which is like half the game.
Thunderwave doesn't go off in a square around you. It goes off in a square-shaped blast that is adjacent to you. So it's got the same effect as Burning Hands, but twice the area gets hit.
Oop, upon further investigation, you're totally correct. My b!
Yes, so an average damage of 10.5 fire damage against 9 cold damage. Given the number of creatures with fire resistance compared to the number with cold resistance that minor difference becomes moot.
Now, compare the spell to Thunderwave, which has the same damage, of a better damage type (thunder resistance is less common than cold resistance), in a better shape (15' cube covers more volume than 15' cone), with a secondary effect.
In my personal experience, you're more likely to have foes directly in front of you instead of surrounding you on all sides. It's also easier to protect allies when using cones vs spells centered in an aoe around self. Also, the 300ft of loud noise really disqualifies it from a lot of situations, particularly in dungeons when you haven't encountered enemies yet, which is like half the game.
Thunderwave doesn't go off in a square around you. It goes off in a square-shaped blast that is adjacent to you. So it's got the same effect as Burning Hands, but twice the area gets hit.
Oop, upon further investigation, you're totally correct. My b!
Heh, I made the same mistake when I first read the spell.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I disagree that "the general nature posed by the trap" should be enough information to tell you where the trap is. Also, using your hands as blinds means that you are either stumbling around in a hostile situation with a dagger (or similar) inches from your eyeball or you aren't carrying any weapons. Plus, it kinda seems like you are more looking for the absence of a trap (ignoring that that won't even work as per my comment about a rug above) than you are finding traps. While that will work in some situations, it doesn't take a lot of imagination to come up with many situations where it won't.
(1) Find Traps is an instantaneous effect, there would be no stumbling around.
(2) The "absence of traps" is usually just as valuable as anything else. Players are generally checking for a trapped door or chest, a positive or negative ping gives you the information you need.
(3) While it's largely up to the DM, your rug example is wrong. If a rug is deliberately placed over a pit trap to conceal it, it's part of the trap, and would be detected as such. If the rug fell on the trap serendipitously, then sure, it would hide the trap. (Someone specifically attempting to thwart this spell likely could by building the trap indirectly.)
(4) "The general nature of the danger posed by the trap" again depends on the DM, but if the "general nature" includes "falling", then you can easily glean that it's a pit trap, thus the floor is trapped. If the "general nature" is "impaling", then you can safely assume that something is going to extend from a surface. At lower levels, mechanical traps are going to be fairly predictable. Simply knowing its "general nature" can lead a thoughtful person to correct assumptions more often or not. One wards a door, not a random patch of wall.
At higher levels, a spell-based trap is likely going to fall into a small handful of categories. A related Arcana check will point a finger in the right direction. Knowing that an area is warded with magic is enough to justify using Dispel Magic in said area.
Ultimately, precision isn't necessary. Knowledge of a type of trap is typically enough to take precautions to avoid it. Whether a pit trap is 5ft wide, or 20ft long, you can avoid both by climbing on the walls, or conjuring a meat bag to trigger the trap safely.
As long as the DM isn't being deliberately antagonistic, players can achieve a lot with relatively little.
5e's version of Identify is mainly meant for use with the DMG variant rules that make it harder to identify magic items without using magic, I believe.
It has it's uses and I think it mainly gets a pass because the people that generally take it (wizards) don't have to prep it to ritual cast it. Sometimes you just don't have an hour to sit around to identify something and the 11 minutes is much easier to make work.
On topic I really do wish WotC would spend some more time in the next edition revamping spells and making more options competitive, for instance lets look at frost fingers, worse damage, worse targeted save means that on average anyone will pick burning hands over frost fingers.. but if it had a kicker too it like reducing speed to zero or removing reactions it would have something going for it to offer you some other reason to take it.
I also want them to do something about third level spells they kept fireball and lightning bolt strong because 'legacy' but all it's done is turn other third lvl attack spells into pretty crap-tastic choices. You could argue Tidal wave for instance knocks prone on a fail but average 18 dmg vs average 28? That's a large disparity, not counting how Tidal wave also hits less targets than fireball.
As someone else said 'flavor is meaningless if nobody chooses them' and when the vast majority of your wizards/sorcerers are taking fireball at lvl 5 for an attack spell, than your other options are almost meaningless fluff on the pages. Frost Fingers/Tidal wave might not be terrible spells but the only time they are getting picked is during a thematic build
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dude just say counter spell is overpowered
Identify is useful if you don't want to spend a short rest, if you want to identify several items in the same time you could figure out one by taking a short rest, or if you don't want to attume to the item.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Find Traps doesn't even find traps.
That's a pretty good example of a useless spell.
In my personal experience, you're more likely to have foes directly in front of you instead of surrounding you on all sides. It's also easier to protect allies when using cones vs spells centered in an aoe around self. Also, the 300ft of loud noise really disqualifies it from a lot of situations, particularly in dungeons when you haven't encountered enemies yet, which is like half the game.
Thunderwave doesn't go off in a square around you. It goes off in a square-shaped blast that is adjacent to you. So it's got the same effect as Burning Hands, but twice the area gets hit.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Then you have spells that completely break the mold and are way overtuned to the extent its hard NOT to pick them.
Examples:
Fireball, Animate Objects, Conjure Animals.
Mix this with the terrible spell options and you have a lot of very similar builds. Even if you do not optimize most builds will have these spells.
It is weird when they introduce a new spell that is just worse than the existing options (see most of the damage spells from WIldemount) that have good flavor but I hardly see anyone talk about/use because frankly better options exist.
We need another larger tome of spells like Xanathars.
Find the Path is bad in a similar way: it does find paths, but only to places you're already familiar with and have an item from, which would be fine at a much lower spell level.
I often think most every spell in the game would be better if all spells were written to function at first level and their upgrades came about from spellcaster features, so any onus from a bad spell's design would be on the caster. I'll give an example:
Suppose we take Burning Hands as a canonical example of a good spell (we could pick literally any spell for this, just need a starting point), but we're taking issue with Aganazzar's Scorcher with being a bad spell (per the DMG rules for CR, it's actually considered actively worse than Burning Hands, so it's my example), so we're removing it from the game. Instead, we give spellcasters access to this as a class ability - think of it like Warlock invocations. I'm writing it as though all spells only exist at level 1, but spells retain their RAW for up-casting - so an L2 Burning Hands ships at 4d6 - and you can know or prepare spells at higher levels than base, which simply locks them into upcasting.
Hey presto. Now you can make the Scorcher from scratch, and its damage die will be 4d8, not 3d8 - much more reasonable for an L2 spell. For certain I picked an easy example and much more challenging ones exist, but you get the idea: in order for a spell to exist at higher level, it has to be actually better than upcasting a spell at a lower level, and all spells are subject to this criterion, since the core structure of spells guarantees that there is always lower level competition.
What I was getting at with Rogues is that True Strike is a strong way to guarantee that you'll get a Sneak Attack next turn regardless of anything short of your concentration being broken. It does require the prep time I mentioned, which means it's useless when already in attack range (or close enough to enter attack range this turn), but it can be a good choice while approaching a target. Basically, you use it when you're one turn away, and guarantee that you won't lose sneak attack opportunity even if someone finds you while you're hiding, another character gets too close for a swashbuckling duel, or the target wins the IF contest. That doesn't necessarily mean that it's a good spell, of course, just that there's at least one situation where it can be a perfectly viable choice. xD
For crit fishers, there are other options, for sure. I envision most dedicated crit-fishing builds as being aimed at pumping a ton of resources into a single burst for maximum damage, though, and that sort of strategy can benefit from skipping one turn to double your crit chance next turn. It's not the best option, for sure, but it is, in fact, not actively bad for crit-fishing. ^_^
That's a fair point about Spare the Dying, though, albeit an uncommon perspective on it. Carrying load tends to be a highly situational thing since a lot of DMs just plain ignore encumbrance in 5e, though, which... is probably the biggest deciding factor here, since the amount of attention paid to encumbrance directly determines Spare the Dying's usefulness. xD
I've never seen Find Traps cast in all the games of 5e I've played over the years. Kind of waiting for it actually.
Player: My character thinks there might be a trap ahead. I'm going to cast Find Traps.
DM: There is a trap ahead.
Player: Do I know where exactly?
DM: No.
Player: Do I know how many?
DM: No.
Players: So you're saying that I burned a 2nd level slot and all it did was confirm what I kind of thought already?
DM: Yeah, pretty much.
Yeah, Find Traps finds traps that are in your line of sight at the time you cast the spell. Which is not 100% useless, if you want to figure out how to reach that treasure on a pedestal in the middle of the obviously trapped room (hello Indiana Jones) it might help you avoid the traps, but it's certainly not useful often enough to bother keeping the spell prepared.
The fact that Frost Fingers is being thrown into this conversation is a bit silly. Yes, its probably slightly worse than Burning Hands/Thunderwave, but both of those spells are considered to be very solid first level spells. It also has utility that, while niche, can be incredibly useful. Its by no means "Absolutely Terrible". At worst, its 'Slightly Underwhelming'.
The same goes for a large majority of spells. There is a pretty large gap between "incredibly powerful" and "absolutely terrible", but that often gets ignored and people dive headfirst into dramatic hyperbole. Aside from a few one-off spells with legitimate issues (Find Traps is a great example), 95% of spells are perfectly functional and will get the job done.
I encourage you to read the Find Traps spell description.
This spell merely reveals that a trap is present. You don’t learn the location of each trap, but you do learn the general nature of the danger posed by a trap you sense.
Besides Weird, True Strike, and Find Traps, another example of a bad spell is Legend Lore.
A 5th level spell that just lets you do the equivalent of a History skill prof? And can't be cast as a ritual?
At the very least, Legend Lore should be an upcast of an Identify spell so that Bards of Lore don't have to spend a spell known slot just for it.
Find Traps has a range of 120ft, so "way off on the horizon" is a non-issue. Realistically, this spell will be used indoors, so it's unlikely to even reach it's full range.
Look at a door, check for traps.
Look down a hallway, check for traps.
That, plus the "general nature of the danger posed by the trap..." should be enough information to make an educated guess. The game may not account for "facing" in combat, but realistically, one could use their hands as blinds to focus the effect upon a smaller area, if they really needed to.
It would be nice if this were a Ritual spell though. It's a bit rough for a 2nd level spellslot.
I disagree that "the general nature posed by the trap" should be enough information to tell you where the trap is. Also, using your hands as blinds means that you are either stumbling around in a hostile situation with a dagger (or similar) inches from your eyeball or you aren't carrying any weapons. Plus, it kinda seems like you are more looking for the absence of a trap (ignoring that that won't even work as per my comment about a rug above) than you are finding traps. While that will work in some situations, it doesn't take a lot of imagination to come up with many situations where it won't.
Oop, upon further investigation, you're totally correct. My b!
Heh, I made the same mistake when I first read the spell.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
(1) Find Traps is an instantaneous effect, there would be no stumbling around.
(2) The "absence of traps" is usually just as valuable as anything else. Players are generally checking for a trapped door or chest, a positive or negative ping gives you the information you need.
(3) While it's largely up to the DM, your rug example is wrong. If a rug is deliberately placed over a pit trap to conceal it, it's part of the trap, and would be detected as such. If the rug fell on the trap serendipitously, then sure, it would hide the trap. (Someone specifically attempting to thwart this spell likely could by building the trap indirectly.)
(4) "The general nature of the danger posed by the trap" again depends on the DM, but if the "general nature" includes "falling", then you can easily glean that it's a pit trap, thus the floor is trapped. If the "general nature" is "impaling", then you can safely assume that something is going to extend from a surface. At lower levels, mechanical traps are going to be fairly predictable. Simply knowing its "general nature" can lead a thoughtful person to correct assumptions more often or not. One wards a door, not a random patch of wall.
At higher levels, a spell-based trap is likely going to fall into a small handful of categories. A related Arcana check will point a finger in the right direction. Knowing that an area is warded with magic is enough to justify using Dispel Magic in said area.
Ultimately, precision isn't necessary. Knowledge of a type of trap is typically enough to take precautions to avoid it. Whether a pit trap is 5ft wide, or 20ft long, you can avoid both by climbing on the walls, or conjuring a meat bag to trigger the trap safely.
As long as the DM isn't being deliberately antagonistic, players can achieve a lot with relatively little.
It has it's uses and I think it mainly gets a pass because the people that generally take it (wizards) don't have to prep it to ritual cast it. Sometimes you just don't have an hour to sit around to identify something and the 11 minutes is much easier to make work.
On topic I really do wish WotC would spend some more time in the next edition revamping spells and making more options competitive, for instance lets look at frost fingers, worse damage, worse targeted save means that on average anyone will pick burning hands over frost fingers.. but if it had a kicker too it like reducing speed to zero or removing reactions it would have something going for it to offer you some other reason to take it.
I also want them to do something about third level spells they kept fireball and lightning bolt strong because 'legacy' but all it's done is turn other third lvl attack spells into pretty crap-tastic choices. You could argue Tidal wave for instance knocks prone on a fail but average 18 dmg vs average 28? That's a large disparity, not counting how Tidal wave also hits less targets than fireball.
As someone else said 'flavor is meaningless if nobody chooses them' and when the vast majority of your wizards/sorcerers are taking fireball at lvl 5 for an attack spell, than your other options are almost meaningless fluff on the pages. Frost Fingers/Tidal wave might not be terrible spells but the only time they are getting picked is during a thematic build