It’s not really a minor critique, it’s actually rather major in that it applies to a whole lot of spells. And there are many adjectives I would use to refer to the Magic system of D&D, but “awesome” isn’t one of them. I much prefer the way magic works in other games, like the WoD games for example, at least the older edition, not sure about the current one as I haven’t used it. Don’t get me wrong, 5e’s magic system is miles better than it was in older editions, but it is still pretty flawed if one really objectively considers it carefully. Like, I get it, some spells are meant to represent more powerful versions of lower level spells, but they could instead create a system where that stuff grows more organically and it would solve a lot of problems. Alas, that would require abandoning the pseudo-Vancian spell slot system, and then it wouldn’t really be D&D anymore.
Well, 5e is probably the most popular edition yet, and I think it appears that you're in the minority on disliking the spell system that's currently in place. Regardless, I'm not completely sure that remodeling D&D's magic system once it's become a renowned and featured part of the game that's inspired a bunch of copycat RPGs would be a good idea; It would run the risk of alienating players because of such a massive change to a functional and important system.
But hey, maybe I'm wrong and there are only a couple of people on Earth who like how fifth does magic. It would be cool if Wizards sought data for this.
Oh, I completely agree on all points except that it’s not that I dislike the spell system, I just think it could be much, much better. But even I recognized in the last line of my post that if they changed it significantly then it wouldn’t be the same game anymore. That would inevitably alienate players, which is the last thing they would do since, as you pointed out this is the most successful edition the game has ever seen.
All I said was that I don’t think it’s “awesome,” and since awesomeness is entirely subjective means we can both be right. Ne?
My question is, why would a 20th level Wizard be interested in raiding a podunk village of mud farmers in the first place?!? At that point the PC is pro’ly raiding the castle in the capital city, and there they have have 50-60 full time guards on per shift, plus another 50-60 for the rest of the city per shift. Ne?
Because they the sacred stones. Didn’t you see Temple of Doom?
You mean the one where the evil Spellcaster sent his minions into the villages instead of doing it himself because he had more important things to do?
I see this all the time in build recommendations for sorcerers but I am going to say Absorb Elements. I just don’t get why it is a recommended spell when the half the features are useless to the class it is most recommended for. Big meh for me.
For sorcerors or wizards - especially in tier 1 absorb elements and shield are next to useless. I know - everyone loves shield ( and absorb elements) but You have at best 4 L1 slots to use these on and they only last a round. Shield has no upgrade for upcasting and frankly absorb elements isn’t much better - resistance (1/2 damage) for 1 round and 1d6 added damage +1d6 additional damage for each level of upcasting. Yes they are at least reaction spells and shield does give you +5 AC for that one round but in a day in a dungeon with several fights your out of L1 spells in nothing flat and could probably do better using your upper level spell slots for damage not these spells. They should either last for say 5 rounds (a typical + fight) or be cantrips so they can be spammed round by round.
Absorb Elements and Shield are both perfectly fine as-is. They're among the few 1st level spells that actually get better the higher level a caster gets because they're competing less and less or the same spell slots that other spells are.
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"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.
Absorb Elements and Shield are both perfectly fine as-is. They're among the few 1st level spells that actually get better the higher level a caster gets because they're competing less and less or the same spell slots that other spells are.
Absorb Elements and Shield are okay in tiers 2+, and are totally worth it in the 4th-tier, but they’re traps in tier-1 play.
I guess these posts makes sense. I have yet to get a sorcerer out of T1 play so I am probably a bit ignorant on this. :P
Yeah, in T-1 there’s usually something way more beneficial to spend your limited spell slots on, but once you get to higher levels (T-3+), you end up spending 1st-level slots on stuff you used to cast as rituals simply to save time since you have little else to spend those slots on much of the time. That’s when practical reactions spells really become useful, and they’re what keep people casting low-level spells as rituals to save those 1st-level slots. Once you get a Wizard to 18th level though, you can spam shield like a cantrip though, so those 1st-level slots become less relevant again.
Arcane Lock, Barkskin, Cloud of Daggers (you can never expand it beyond a five foot cube? Really?), Dust Devil, Magic Mouth.
Magic Mouth has always struck me as a Cantrip level spell (well, since they introduced cantrips). I can see it as a second level if you give it the ability to speak a spell...
Cloud of Daggers is actually more limited than another 2nd level spell -- Cordon of Arrows.
Barkskin, while one of my fave spells, is useful at higher levels, but it doesn't get *more* useful -- it's just a super simple buff. Should be level one.
And Arcane lock is like Magic Mouth -- really basic spell, should be a cantrip. never gets better (harder to break through, tougher to dispel, etc).
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Sure, if you use custom “guards” that are essentially little better than a commoner, but when the rest of us talk about “guards” we mean guards.
City guards are quite literally just commoners. In the exact same way that the guy who visits my workplace at night to do a round and fiddle with a clock, is a commoner. He has zero magical powers, is middle-aged, somewhat out of shape, the sum of his armaments are a flashlight and a keyring, and his actual combat experience is a big round zero.
Same for the random dude in the town or village who was issued a cudgel and a fancy hat. City guards are not classed, and they don't have multiple hitdice.
According to RotFM, any town with 100 inhabitants would have more than 25 on the city watch
That is literally in-sane. That's a quarter of everyone.
Now, if we were talking the emergency militia in case northern raiders come, that's different. That would be anyone who can hold a bow or pitchfork. Copenhagen - where I live - is a city of some 1½ million people, and the police has 3300 employees - around half of them administrative. Going by that logic (which is propably imprecise, but likely not wildly off) a city of 1000 should have 1 - one - city guard. One guy. With a cudgel and a fancy hat. And no magic powers or additional hitdice.
By way of comparison, btw, the NYPD had 36000 employees - and New York is around 6 times larger, at just under 9 million people. So comparable, but more cops per capita than in peaceful Denmark. So maybe a town of 1000 people might have ....... two guys with cudgels and fancy hats. One would be captain of the guard. And he'd still be just 1 HD. But maybe he'd have a +1 for his Wis score too.
Addendum: I take full responsibility for bad mental math, rounding errors and so on. A city of 500 (!) people would have 1 cop.
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
No, a rando security guard is a commoner. A “guard” in a podunk town in the middle of nowhere is pro’ly a commoner. A city guard is a cop with body armor, an actual weapon, and training. Popo, the fuz, 5-0, ya dig?
In a settled, peaceful place (Denmark) the number of guards needed for a settlement is minimal. A settled but not so peaceful place (NYC, CORMYR) you typically need a few more including a few tat are “leveled” (while most police never their guns in “anger” there is a small percentage that do and get skilled at dealing with “the criminal element”. On a frontier, and most small towns in D&D are best thought of as frontier towns you need more and better. Most western/frontier town Marshalls were probably fairly skilled - you might not be completely sure which side of the law they were really on but they were skilled 😳. Whether it’s towns like Tombstone (with the Earps), Dodge City or Wichita (Bat Masterson, Hickok) or regions - the Texas Rangers, the US Marshall’s of the Indian territories or other pre state federal territories I would not call most of their officers “commoners” they were the equivalents of leveled PCs/NPCs. The same should hold true for our worlds - the skilled “guards” are mostly on the frontiers with a smattering in the middle/upper ranks of city. In that sense our adventurers are rather like the comic book heros - the folks that come in to deal with bbegs when local law enforcement can’t.
Philadelphia where I live is a settled but not so peaceful city of 5,785,000, and the police force has more than 6,500 sworn officers and 800 civilian members. That’s 1 sworn officer for every 900ish people, and we have a police shortage crisis and need a lot more cops on the force. (Like, a whole lot more.) And I can guarantee you that they are not just “commoners with cudgels and fancy hats” but a highly trained, well armed paramilitary force. So congrats to Copenhagen, but I think your peaceful setting has somewhat skewed your perspective.
In addition, modern cities/towns/villages don’t have to worry about being attacked by boards of bandits come to sack and raze the place, or wandering monsters looking to consume the population. One would have to include actual military organizations like the National Guard/Army Reserve to the numbers to account for that level of defense, and then your numbers go waayyy up, as do their capabilities.
Arcane Lock, Barkskin, Cloud of Daggers (you can never expand it beyond a five foot cube? Really?), Dust Devil, Magic Mouth.
Magic Mouth has always struck me as a Cantrip level spell (well, since they introduced cantrips). I can see it as a second level if you give it the ability to speak a spell...
Cloud of Daggers is actually more limited than another 2nd level spell -- Cordon of Arrows.
Barkskin, while one of my fave spells, is useful at higher levels, but it doesn't get *more* useful -- it's just a super simple buff. Should be level one.
And Arcane lock is like Magic Mouth -- really basic spell, should be a cantrip. never gets better (harder to break through, tougher to dispel, etc).
THe more I think about it, the more I am worried about the way that Cloud of Daggers and Cordon of Arrows are not only unbalanced against each other, but that they both scale poorly.
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Yes at tiers 3&4 absorb elements and shield can be reasonable spells but they are traps in tier 1&2 and should either moved down or up or something
They're good where they are. Players just need to remember that every spell is not optimal at every tier of play- by the time Arcane Armor stops being terribly useful, you can replace it with Shield.
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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.
Absorb Elements and Shield are both examples of the opposite problem from what the OP was talking about -- they're spells that become more useful at higher levels without upcasting, whereas the OP was talking about spells that upcast poorly. Which is... most spells, tbh.
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Oh, I completely agree on all points except that it’s not that I dislike the spell system, I just think it could be much, much better. But even I recognized in the last line of my post that if they changed it significantly then it wouldn’t be the same game anymore. That would inevitably alienate players, which is the last thing they would do since, as you pointed out this is the most successful edition the game has ever seen.
All I said was that I don’t think it’s “awesome,” and since awesomeness is entirely subjective means we can both be right. Ne?
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You mean the one where the evil Spellcaster sent his minions into the villages instead of doing it himself because he had more important things to do?
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Sounds good to me!
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HERE.So, what other spells would folks identify as falling under this umbrella?
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I see this all the time in build recommendations for sorcerers but I am going to say Absorb Elements. I just don’t get why it is a recommended spell when the half the features are useless to the class it is most recommended for. Big meh for me.
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For sorcerors or wizards - especially in tier 1 absorb elements and shield are next to useless. I know - everyone loves shield ( and absorb elements) but You have at best 4 L1 slots to use these on and they only last a round. Shield has no upgrade for upcasting and frankly absorb elements isn’t much better - resistance (1/2 damage) for 1 round and 1d6 added damage +1d6 additional damage for each level of upcasting. Yes they are at least reaction spells and shield does give you +5 AC for that one round but in a day in a dungeon with several fights your out of L1 spells in nothing flat and could probably do better using your upper level spell slots for damage not these spells. They should either last for say 5 rounds (a typical + fight) or be cantrips so they can be spammed round by round.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
Absorb Elements and Shield are both perfectly fine as-is. They're among the few 1st level spells that actually get better the higher level a caster gets because they're competing less and less or the same spell slots that other spells are.
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.
Absorb Elements and Shield are okay in tiers 2+, and are totally worth it in the 4th-tier, but they’re traps in tier-1 play.
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Yeah, in T-1 there’s usually something way more beneficial to spend your limited spell slots on, but once you get to higher levels (T-3+), you end up spending 1st-level slots on stuff you used to cast as rituals simply to save time since you have little else to spend those slots on much of the time. That’s when practical reactions spells really become useful, and they’re what keep people casting low-level spells as rituals to save those 1st-level slots. Once you get a Wizard to 18th level though, you can spam shield like a cantrip though, so those 1st-level slots become less relevant again.
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Well, by the time you hit level 18 you're rather overflowing with options anyway.
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.
Arcane Lock, Barkskin, Cloud of Daggers (you can never expand it beyond a five foot cube? Really?), Dust Devil, Magic Mouth.
Magic Mouth has always struck me as a Cantrip level spell (well, since they introduced cantrips). I can see it as a second level if you give it the ability to speak a spell...
Cloud of Daggers is actually more limited than another 2nd level spell -- Cordon of Arrows.
Barkskin, while one of my fave spells, is useful at higher levels, but it doesn't get *more* useful -- it's just a super simple buff. Should be level one.
And Arcane lock is like Magic Mouth -- really basic spell, should be a cantrip. never gets better (harder to break through, tougher to dispel, etc).
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
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City guards are quite literally just commoners. In the exact same way that the guy who visits my workplace at night to do a round and fiddle with a clock, is a commoner. He has zero magical powers, is middle-aged, somewhat out of shape, the sum of his armaments are a flashlight and a keyring, and his actual combat experience is a big round zero.
Same for the random dude in the town or village who was issued a cudgel and a fancy hat. City guards are not classed, and they don't have multiple hitdice.
That is literally in-sane. That's a quarter of everyone.
Now, if we were talking the emergency militia in case northern raiders come, that's different. That would be anyone who can hold a bow or pitchfork. Copenhagen - where I live - is a city of some 1½ million people, and the police has 3300 employees - around half of them administrative. Going by that logic (which is propably imprecise, but likely not wildly off) a city of 1000 should have 1 - one - city guard. One guy. With a cudgel and a fancy hat. And no magic powers or additional hitdice.
By way of comparison, btw, the NYPD had 36000 employees - and New York is around 6 times larger, at just under 9 million people. So comparable, but more cops per capita than in peaceful Denmark. So maybe a town of 1000 people might have ....... two guys with cudgels and fancy hats. One would be captain of the guard. And he'd still be just 1 HD. But maybe he'd have a +1 for his Wis score too.
Addendum: I take full responsibility for bad mental math, rounding errors and so on. A city of 500 (!) people would have 1 cop.
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
No, a rando security guard is a commoner. A “guard” in a podunk town in the middle of nowhere is pro’ly a commoner. A city guard is a cop with body armor, an actual weapon, and training. Popo, the fuz, 5-0, ya dig?
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In a settled, peaceful place (Denmark) the number of guards needed for a settlement is minimal. A settled but not so peaceful place (NYC, CORMYR) you typically need a few more including a few tat are “leveled” (while most police never their guns in “anger” there is a small percentage that do and get skilled at dealing with “the criminal element”. On a frontier, and most small towns in D&D are best thought of as frontier towns you need more and better. Most western/frontier town Marshalls were probably fairly skilled - you might not be completely sure which side of the law they were really on but they were skilled 😳. Whether it’s towns like Tombstone (with the Earps), Dodge City or Wichita (Bat Masterson, Hickok) or regions - the Texas Rangers, the US Marshall’s of the Indian territories or other pre state federal territories I would not call most of their officers “commoners” they were the equivalents of leveled PCs/NPCs. The same should hold true for our worlds - the skilled “guards” are mostly on the frontiers with a smattering in the middle/upper ranks of city. In that sense our adventurers are rather like the comic book heros - the folks that come in to deal with bbegs when local law enforcement can’t.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
Philadelphia where I live is a settled but not so peaceful city of 5,785,000, and the police force has more than 6,500 sworn officers and 800 civilian members. That’s 1 sworn officer for every 900ish people, and we have a police shortage crisis and need a lot more cops on the force. (Like, a whole lot more.) And I can guarantee you that they are not just “commoners with cudgels and fancy hats” but a highly trained, well armed paramilitary force. So congrats to Copenhagen, but I think your peaceful setting has somewhat skewed your perspective.
In addition, modern cities/towns/villages don’t have to worry about being attacked by boards of bandits come to sack and raze the place, or wandering monsters looking to consume the population. One would have to include actual military organizations like the National Guard/Army Reserve to the numbers to account for that level of defense, and then your numbers go waayyy up, as do their capabilities.
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Yes at tiers 3&4 absorb elements and shield can be reasonable spells but they are traps in tier 1&2 and should either moved down or up or something
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Thank you for getting us back on topic.
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THe more I think about it, the more I am worried about the way that Cloud of Daggers and Cordon of Arrows are not only unbalanced against each other, but that they both scale poorly.
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They're good where they are. Players just need to remember that every spell is not optimal at every tier of play- by the time Arcane Armor stops being terribly useful, you can replace it with Shield.
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.
Absorb Elements and Shield are both examples of the opposite problem from what the OP was talking about -- they're spells that become more useful at higher levels without upcasting, whereas the OP was talking about spells that upcast poorly. Which is... most spells, tbh.