This is my first post on this forum, please forgive me if I'm bringing up a dead horse or anything of the kind. It's also going be long, so please be patient with me. Before I bring up the topics I want to discuss, I'd like to tell you a little bit about myself.
I've very recently started to DM for a 5e campaign. While it's my first experience as a DM, I have been around D&D since the AD&D days. Before 5e, the last time I was involved with D&D was 3.5. I completely skipped 4th edition as I determined early on that it wouldn't be for me and walked away. When I did, I didn't think I'd ever come back to D&D. Fortunately, to my great joy, 5e fixed most of the issues I had with 4e and so I rediscovered my love of the game.
Prior to becoming a DM, I almost exclusively played wizards. The wizard is, by far, my favourite class, but I also love other spell casters and have the most fun while playing them. Of course, as DM, I need to present a wide variety of NPCs, but spell casters remain where my heart truly lies.
Regrettably, I have noticed something that really deeply distresses me in the most recent published adventures. Spell caster NPCs have been stripped of what, for me, is their defining characteristic: spell slots and spells known/ spells prepared. I first noticed this in Candlekeep Mysteries and again in the Wild Beyond the Witchlight. I find this change really puzzling. What is even more baffling to me is that people actually like the fact that spell casters have been turned into creatures with a small number of limited use per day abilities.
I can see that this might make things easier and quicker at the table, but then...Why have spell casters at all? There are plenty of non spell caster creatures with use per day abilities and now these new spell casters are indistinguishable from them. They're just another monster with cool limited use abilities. All the really fun stuff is gone, isn't it? What am I missing?
I just don't get it, and it's killing my fun! My group is on hiatus at the moment, but I'm dreading having to go back to the table. I can't get this out of my head, it's killing my motivation and I haven't be able to prep for the next session at all. Instead, I spend hours of my time on D&D Beyond, typing long, overly emotional, posts (like this one) that I ultimately delete instead of posting. Perhaps that's what I should have done with this one as well...but I have to stop and find a way to move on.
Maybe just posting my thoughts for other people to see will help, so here goes. Maybe, if I find out I'm not alone is disliking the change, that will also help.
If this doesn't help, then I don't know what else to do. I don't want to kill the campaign because of something like this! It should be minor... but it's not. I would be much obliged if a more experienced DM gave me the benefit of their experience here. Maybe if I could understand the benefits of this change, and how they outweigh the costs, I'd find a way to reconcile myself to it.
You might gather that, for me, this a huge deal and, while I feel I have good reasons for my reaction, I'm self aware enough to realize that the amount of stress this is causing me is completely out of proportions with its actual impact on my life. Perhaps one of the reasons I'm (over) reacting this way, is that this is very similar to some of the early warning signs that caused me to walk away from D&D when 4e was rolled out. I'm afraid I'm seeing history repeating itself.
That bings me to my next topic: what (if anything) does this mean for the recently announced 5.5? Will we see this kind of change migrate from NPCs to PCs? One of the weakest parts of 5e is, in my opinion, that that monsters and PC follow different rules. That's something I really hope to see addressed in 5.5e...However, I'm now terrified that if the reconcile the two rulesets, PCs will also loose access to their rich lists of spells known/ spells prepared in favour of a small number of use per day abilities.
If that kind of change happened, would people also like that? Am I scaring myself silly with an imaginary problem? Perhaps it's a silly question, but I'd have thought that getting rid of spell lists and spell slots for spell caster monsters would be equally unlikely. Now I ask.
Even if the (unlikely?) event that this change to spell casting does not migrate to PCs, it will almost certainly do so to the 5.5 version of all of the great spell casters in 5e. That brings me to my last topic, what happens to D&D Beyond when the transition to 5.5 takes place? Will we still have access to the old 5e content? I'm not really concerned for the content that I've payed for, but creatures in the free base rules might be changed regardless of preference. So, for example, will the 5.5 lich and the 5.0 lich both be available? Or will we lose access to the 5.0 version?
Thank you to those who've read through my wall of text to this point. I would greatly appreciate knowing what more experienced people see coming and any help that people can give me with my other issue.
While I don't think they've specifically said the motivation, my assumption is that it's because spellcasting monsters are a big headache for the DM. A typical non-spellcasting monster has maybe three actions you have to keep track of (and most things aren't even on recharge), and even legendaries that are supposed to be a big complex battle probably have under ten. A vanilla mage has 15 spells in five pools, which is a lot more complexity to understand, decision making to make, and numbers to track -- and since he's a glass cannon that will probably get off two spells before he's dead, most of that complexity is wasted.
PCs will not change. They will still have spell slots. 5.5e is entirely compatible with 5e, we already know that, so there will not be a vast game change in terms of PCs. That is because there is no issue with PCs having spell slots. Remember that you can just keep on playing 5e exactly as it is right now with no changes regardless of whatever else will be released!
This clearly upsets you a lot so I've gone into a lot of detail. Hope it helps.
The move towards removing spell slots from some monsters and giving them abilities instead gives the following benefits:
Simplify game control for the DM
Remove needless stuff from stat blocks
Make designing homebrew monsters easier when being consistent
Counterspell and low-caster groups
Simplify Game Control
Controlling a PC is easy. You know your character well. You've watched them grow up since level 1, and by the time you're level 15 you really do know their abilities inside and out. When you go into combat, you have all the other players' turns, plus all the monsters' turns, to choose what spell you will cast next. Choosing the right spell for the right time is not a challenge, when looking at a wizard's prepared spells. Assume that there are 4 players, plus 5 monsters on the table and that each creature's turn takes just 1 minute to resolve including dice rolls (unlikely!). You have 8 minutes between turns to decide what the optimal spell to cast is on any one turn.
Now, as the DM, I am narrating the combat. I am controlling four umber hulks, and a mind flayer arcanist. When it comes to Rachel, the Mind Flayer Arcanist's turn, it has the following options:
I do not have 8 minutes to decide which of these spells I'm going to cast as the Rachel, the Mind Flayer Arcanist. I know that Rachel will likely go down in 1-3 turns, depending on how defensively I play. I want combat to be fast and exciting! I want the players to be having a great time. Slow combat is the worst kind of combat, so I need to decide what Rachel is going to do in about 10 seconds of thinking time, maximum. Including its abilities Tentacles, Extract Brain and Mind Blast, the Arcanist has 21 different options to choose from, and unlike you the player, taking 8 minutes between turns (and 16 minutes is much more realistic than 8) where you can consider, I get 10-20 seconds max.
But wait! I don't actually remember what Telekinesis really does. I need to go and read the full spell details, lots of which are irrelevant to the situation. Will Wall of Force actually help it here? There are 5 PCs, if I up-level sleep do I think that my average dice roll will Sleep a character? Can I up-level Ray of Enfeeblement at all? To make an optimum choice, I need to go and read through all of my spells. So now I have to choose: do I just rely on the abilities that I know really well ("screw it, lightning bolt it is") or do I try to play Rachel as her best brain eating self? Even understanding all of the spells to the best of my ability, I need then to look at the battlefield and assess whether Lighting Bolt or Mind Blast is actually going to be more effective depending on positioning. Moreover, I may have multiple Reaction spells (Shield and Counterspell being the most important).
It is way, way too much to expect of a DM to be able to play monsters as optimally as a player can control their PC, when they have the same resources.
When you DM do you control full-stat NPCs? I always love putting my PCs up against a rival adventuring party at some point. But you cannot run four level 10 PCs as effectively as the players. You cannot run all the Reactions, Bonus Actions, remembering the bonuses, how random Bard abilities work, who has inspiration etc optimally. Things must be simplified for the DM, or else running the game becomes a nightmare.
Removing Needless Stuff
Spell slots make sense when you are running a creature as a BBEG. Our Mind Flayer Arcanist, posing as the boss in a dungeon, may well cast things like Sending or Clairvoyance as part of the story. But by the time the PCs are level 14 and the MFA is no longer much of a threat, I might throw 3 or 4 of them at the PCs at once, alongside a BBEG. Many of its spells are no longer relevant, needless fluff on the stat block. Let's be honest: when a creature has fireball on its stat block, you're probably casting it. The rest of it is just stuff I have to read through and check isn't better. Sometimes, you just want a combat monster and not have to worry about upcasting.
Homebrew
Homebrew is the lifeblood of D&D. These days I see people more and more wanting RAW and modules and all that stuff, but the game started as homebrew and in my opinion needs to be homebrewed to keep it working at higher levels. Designing a spellcaster using spell slots - one that is going to be a throwaway monster for a combat encounter in a dungeon - is deeply annoying, time consuming and pointless. I want my creatures to be consistent, but I don't want to have to fill up 11 spell slots with random stuff when I know that I'll just work my way from the top of the list down.
Counterspell
This is a bit of an odd one, but when spellcasters have access to Counterspell, the game breaks for certain parties. My current players are a Cleric, Rogue/fighter, Barbarian and Blood Hunter. The moment an enemy wizard enters the fray with Counterspell, my cleric is absolutely screwed. If I play my wizard right, he'll CS every spell the cleric casts. Now if I have 2 spellcasters on the field and they each have CS it's even worse. And when you have wizard type characters with long lists of spells, there is no reason whatsoever for them not to have CS prepared if they are going by the same rules as PCs.
The second thing and I think this is not really important to know but still worth pointing out is that most of the changes being implemented are the result of stuff other people are doing in their games (home or officially published) and Wizards of the Coast observes people doing it and copies them. Like, I know people think Wizards of the Coast is making design decisions and there is this assumption that they are sitting in meetings thinking stuff up but that is not how this works. 90% of what Wizards of the Coast does in D&D when it comes to the design of the game is to watch how other gamers and independent designers are doing it then steal that idea and put it into the game if they think it's a good idea. Wizards of the Coast is not a leader in the industry, they are the Thomas Edison of the RPG world, they watch what other much smarter people do that works and they use their influence and wealth to leverage it better than anyone else.
This is a really weird perspective, and incorrect.
D&D has been around longer than any other current TTRPG. Practically every other RPG out there has taken D&D as a basis, and then changed things around so that they have a different style of game. Like any fluctuating market product, everyone is borrowing the best from everyone else unless there is a very specific design philosophy at work.
What they are suggesting is removing spell slots from caster monsters, and giving them abilities instead. In other words, making caster monsters more like... non-caster monsters. Non-caster monsters have existed in D&D since TTRPGs were invented. So all this change is doing is saying "These monsters are easy to run, those other monsters are really difficult to run, let's make all the monsters easy to run."
It's not really that clever an idea, it's just creating abilities that mirror spell effects and then writing "this is a spell" on the ability.
I would agree that the potential intent is to simplify management at the table for the DM. At least that's what the effect of the change seems to be. I haven't seen anything that suggests the same principles being moved over to PCs as of yet, but more to follow I'm sure. Lastly, as has already been suggested, the published rules include the caveat that you can run what you like. If you prefer to go back to the previous statblock format, have a blast. You wanna shift to the new statblock, have a blast. It sounds like the way forward for you is to homebrew your monsters to fit your DM style. Far be it for me to say that you are wrong to want to do that. It's part of the DMG to change statblocks and monsters as you see fit. The design team was kind enough to give us enough of the tools to build as we see fit.
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“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
OP here. Thank you to everybody who's posted so far for your thoughtful and kind answers. I'd also like to give particular thanks to Sanvael for taking the time to go through such a detailed example and for recognizing that this has really upset me. I'm on my way to work, so I can't write anything long, but I do really appreciate your feedback. I'll have to re-read everything when I have the time, and think about what has been said. I'll definitely check on the thread again when I get home from work.
The enemy casters using Counterspell is still using up a 3rd spell slot each time it is cast.
But for PCs, counterspell becomes a lot less relevant if the enemy are going to have abilities instead of spell-casting. Do these new abilities describe themselves as spell-casting so that counter-spell is still useful?
On the surface, it appears that the change to the statblock from spells to abilities does mean that CS no longer applies to them. I've not been keeping lazer-focused on the topic recently, but it does allow that a change may be in the works for that type of interaction.
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“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
The enemy casters using Counterspell is still using up a 3rd spell slot each time it is cast.
But for PCs, counterspell becomes a lot less relevant if the enemy are going to have abilities instead of spell-casting. Do these new abilities describe themselves as spell-casting so that counter-spell is still useful?
Honestly, counterspell is terrible gameplay and should be removed. The only reason for keeping it is "casters need to be hosed occasionally because they're overpowered", which is better fixed by making them not overpowered.
It's OP again. I'm at work so I'll keep it short. Here's a few takeaways for me from what's been said so far. Please correct me if I'm getting something wrong.
-Spell casters do not always need to be the "stars" of combat. This, I think, is an important reminder for me as a DM because it's my natural inclination to always make spell casters the most important piece of any encounter.
-It is unreasonable to expect that all DMs will have (most) of the spell descriptions memorized and be familiar enough with optimal spell caster tactics to make quick decisions in combat. As I exclusively play spell casters as a player this is where I have the most fun. The point that a DM can't afford to take as much time as a player in combat is well made, but this is one of the key reasons I'm so upset about the change. It's taking away, from the DM, one of the aspects of the game that I most enjoy. Shouldn't I be having fun too?
-If I don't like something, I can "fix" it with homebrew. In particular, if I want my spell caster villain to be a BBEG or key NPC, I can fill in the spell list, spell slots and add out of combat spells as well. My issue here is that I find 5e's rules for "monster" building unintuitive compared to those in 3.5. I find calculating a monster's CR frustrating, stressful, uncertain and inaccurate. I also find unclear what does and does not change someone's CR.
I liked ECL, it was an intuitive mechanic, even if it was also, often, inaccurate. You picked your base creature and could then efficiently built your "monster" using the same rules as for a PC. Of course, this did not work well either, so perhaps this is more nostalgia than anything.
-Counterspell can cause issues if used improperly by the DM. I can understand this as well, but I'm on the fence about it. I think a lot of this is down to player preference and DM presentation, but I will defer to the experience of others on this as I have none of my own.
You've all been so helpful, thank you! If you don't mind, I'll impose on you further and ask some additional questions. Be warned, there will be spoilers for Wild Beyond the Witchlight so I'll try to put this in a spoiler tab. Please do not read further if you don't want spoilers.
For me, the straw that broke the camel's back was Tasha in the Wild Beyond the Witchlight. I bought this book because I wanted to send my PC into the Feywild in another campaign and I wanted to mine it for ideas. I was really disappointed by Tasha's stat block. I feel that it is really unclear and incomplete. I'd like the benefit of others' experience here as well. My questions:
-Is Tasha supposed to still be a wizard? She's an Archfey now. Is she an Archfey with just use per day abilities, or is she an Archfey who's just a spell caster, or is she now both? There's a tab called spell casting in her stat block but it has use per day abilities...What's the "official" stance here? (I'm aware I can decide this for myself, but I spent money on this books so I wouldn't have to make these kinds of calls.)
-If she is still a wizard and I want to use her as an important NPC in another campaign, I'll want to flesh out her spell list. How will that change her CR, will it change her CR? My guess is no, because it doesn't change her hit points or how much damage she deals, but I'm not sure.
-When I flesh out her spell list, do I keep her use per day abilities or fold them into the spell list? If I keep some, or all, of them, how does that change her CR?
-If she's still a wizard, how many spell slots does she have at which levels? Is she like Halaster (same spell slots as a 20th level spell caster) or she like Acererak who has more spell slots at 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th levels? Both are ancient and powerful Archmages. My guess is Halaster, but that's based on her high level use per day abilities being 1/day rather than more often. Would this be how people read it as well?
One structural problem with monster spellcasting or lack thereof is that there are a lot of non-combat spells that are sort of key to giving the opposition a fair chance but aren't relevant to a combat encounter -- for example, the mind flayer arcanist above is not likely to cast Detect Magic, Disguise Self, Clairvoyance, Sending, or Hallucinatory Terrain in the middle of a fight, but the fact it has those abilities is absolutely relevant to its role in the larger adventure, even if it's a minion of the actual BBEG.
I understand your frustration. Spellcasting is a very cool part of DND. A lot of the published modules still do have these types of monsters. If you don’t like the spellcaster stats in a particular campaign, you can swap out the monster for another one that has organized spell lists the way you like it.
If you’re looking for a module with lots of spell lists, I would suggest the sequels of DoIP. They can be played without playing DoIP first, and they begin with characters at 7th level. They are Storm Lord’s Wrath, Sleeping Dragons Wake, and Divine Contention. There is one character in particular- a dragon who plays a very big part in the second and third modules, who has a complete spell list as well as other legendary abilities.
Personally, I like the change. I just finished playing those three, and it felt really hard to keep track of so much and reference spells in the middle of the combat. Since it was a duet campaign with a new player, I was also running sidekicks- one of whom was a spellcaster too. At higher levels especially it gets overwhelming!
There's something to be said for ritual-only spellcasters of some sort -- it doesn't have the same high complexity in play, but still lets you have your bad guys with their magical defenses, illusions, zombies, summoned demons, and so on.
The reason why monsters (including NPC spellcasters) have spellcasting actions instead of spell slots wasn't fully spelled out in the Sage Advice column discussing the feature, but in the promotional day where spells as actions was first introduced it was specifically said the change was being made to 1.) make running the monster/npc easier for the DM and 2.) notice that some DMs were sort of "mismanaging" spell selection and thereby running monsters below their CR, or at least that's what the studio heads say.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
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Hey all,
This is my first post on this forum, please forgive me if I'm bringing up a dead horse or anything of the kind. It's also going be long, so please be patient with me. Before I bring up the topics I want to discuss, I'd like to tell you a little bit about myself.
I've very recently started to DM for a 5e campaign. While it's my first experience as a DM, I have been around D&D since the AD&D days. Before 5e, the last time I was involved with D&D was 3.5. I completely skipped 4th edition as I determined early on that it wouldn't be for me and walked away. When I did, I didn't think I'd ever come back to D&D. Fortunately, to my great joy, 5e fixed most of the issues I had with 4e and so I rediscovered my love of the game.
Prior to becoming a DM, I almost exclusively played wizards. The wizard is, by far, my favourite class, but I also love other spell casters and have the most fun while playing them. Of course, as DM, I need to present a wide variety of NPCs, but spell casters remain where my heart truly lies.
Regrettably, I have noticed something that really deeply distresses me in the most recent published adventures. Spell caster NPCs have been stripped of what, for me, is their defining characteristic: spell slots and spells known/ spells prepared. I first noticed this in Candlekeep Mysteries and again in the Wild Beyond the Witchlight. I find this change really puzzling. What is even more baffling to me is that people actually like the fact that spell casters have been turned into creatures with a small number of limited use per day abilities.
I can see that this might make things easier and quicker at the table, but then...Why have spell casters at all? There are plenty of non spell caster creatures with use per day abilities and now these new spell casters are indistinguishable from them. They're just another monster with cool limited use abilities. All the really fun stuff is gone, isn't it? What am I missing?
I just don't get it, and it's killing my fun! My group is on hiatus at the moment, but I'm dreading having to go back to the table. I can't get this out of my head, it's killing my motivation and I haven't be able to prep for the next session at all. Instead, I spend hours of my time on D&D Beyond, typing long, overly emotional, posts (like this one) that I ultimately delete instead of posting. Perhaps that's what I should have done with this one as well...but I have to stop and find a way to move on.
Maybe just posting my thoughts for other people to see will help, so here goes. Maybe, if I find out I'm not alone is disliking the change, that will also help.
If this doesn't help, then I don't know what else to do. I don't want to kill the campaign because of something like this! It should be minor... but it's not. I would be much obliged if a more experienced DM gave me the benefit of their experience here. Maybe if I could understand the benefits of this change, and how they outweigh the costs, I'd find a way to reconcile myself to it.
You might gather that, for me, this a huge deal and, while I feel I have good reasons for my reaction, I'm self aware enough to realize that the amount of stress this is causing me is completely out of proportions with its actual impact on my life. Perhaps one of the reasons I'm (over) reacting this way, is that this is very similar to some of the early warning signs that caused me to walk away from D&D when 4e was rolled out. I'm afraid I'm seeing history repeating itself.
That bings me to my next topic: what (if anything) does this mean for the recently announced 5.5? Will we see this kind of change migrate from NPCs to PCs? One of the weakest parts of 5e is, in my opinion, that that monsters and PC follow different rules. That's something I really hope to see addressed in 5.5e...However, I'm now terrified that if the reconcile the two rulesets, PCs will also loose access to their rich lists of spells known/ spells prepared in favour of a small number of use per day abilities.
If that kind of change happened, would people also like that? Am I scaring myself silly with an imaginary problem? Perhaps it's a silly question, but I'd have thought that getting rid of spell lists and spell slots for spell caster monsters would be equally unlikely. Now I ask.
Even if the (unlikely?) event that this change to spell casting does not migrate to PCs, it will almost certainly do so to the 5.5 version of all of the great spell casters in 5e. That brings me to my last topic, what happens to D&D Beyond when the transition to 5.5 takes place? Will we still have access to the old 5e content? I'm not really concerned for the content that I've payed for, but creatures in the free base rules might be changed regardless of preference. So, for example, will the 5.5 lich and the 5.0 lich both be available? Or will we lose access to the 5.0 version?
Thank you to those who've read through my wall of text to this point. I would greatly appreciate knowing what more experienced people see coming and any help that people can give me with my other issue.
While I don't think they've specifically said the motivation, my assumption is that it's because spellcasting monsters are a big headache for the DM. A typical non-spellcasting monster has maybe three actions you have to keep track of (and most things aren't even on recharge), and even legendaries that are supposed to be a big complex battle probably have under ten. A vanilla mage has 15 spells in five pools, which is a lot more complexity to understand, decision making to make, and numbers to track -- and since he's a glass cannon that will probably get off two spells before he's dead, most of that complexity is wasted.
PCs will not change. They will still have spell slots. 5.5e is entirely compatible with 5e, we already know that, so there will not be a vast game change in terms of PCs. That is because there is no issue with PCs having spell slots. Remember that you can just keep on playing 5e exactly as it is right now with no changes regardless of whatever else will be released!
This clearly upsets you a lot so I've gone into a lot of detail. Hope it helps.
The move towards removing spell slots from some monsters and giving them abilities instead gives the following benefits:
Simplify Game Control
Controlling a PC is easy. You know your character well. You've watched them grow up since level 1, and by the time you're level 15 you really do know their abilities inside and out. When you go into combat, you have all the other players' turns, plus all the monsters' turns, to choose what spell you will cast next. Choosing the right spell for the right time is not a challenge, when looking at a wizard's prepared spells. Assume that there are 4 players, plus 5 monsters on the table and that each creature's turn takes just 1 minute to resolve including dice rolls (unlikely!). You have 8 minutes between turns to decide what the optimal spell to cast is on any one turn.
Now, as the DM, I am narrating the combat. I am controlling four umber hulks, and a mind flayer arcanist. When it comes to Rachel, the Mind Flayer Arcanist's turn, it has the following options:
I do not have 8 minutes to decide which of these spells I'm going to cast as the Rachel, the Mind Flayer Arcanist. I know that Rachel will likely go down in 1-3 turns, depending on how defensively I play. I want combat to be fast and exciting! I want the players to be having a great time. Slow combat is the worst kind of combat, so I need to decide what Rachel is going to do in about 10 seconds of thinking time, maximum. Including its abilities Tentacles, Extract Brain and Mind Blast, the Arcanist has 21 different options to choose from, and unlike you the player, taking 8 minutes between turns (and 16 minutes is much more realistic than 8) where you can consider, I get 10-20 seconds max.
But wait! I don't actually remember what Telekinesis really does. I need to go and read the full spell details, lots of which are irrelevant to the situation. Will Wall of Force actually help it here? There are 5 PCs, if I up-level sleep do I think that my average dice roll will Sleep a character? Can I up-level Ray of Enfeeblement at all? To make an optimum choice, I need to go and read through all of my spells. So now I have to choose: do I just rely on the abilities that I know really well ("screw it, lightning bolt it is") or do I try to play Rachel as her best brain eating self? Even understanding all of the spells to the best of my ability, I need then to look at the battlefield and assess whether Lighting Bolt or Mind Blast is actually going to be more effective depending on positioning. Moreover, I may have multiple Reaction spells (Shield and Counterspell being the most important).
It is way, way too much to expect of a DM to be able to play monsters as optimally as a player can control their PC, when they have the same resources.
When you DM do you control full-stat NPCs? I always love putting my PCs up against a rival adventuring party at some point. But you cannot run four level 10 PCs as effectively as the players. You cannot run all the Reactions, Bonus Actions, remembering the bonuses, how random Bard abilities work, who has inspiration etc optimally. Things must be simplified for the DM, or else running the game becomes a nightmare.
Removing Needless Stuff
Spell slots make sense when you are running a creature as a BBEG. Our Mind Flayer Arcanist, posing as the boss in a dungeon, may well cast things like Sending or Clairvoyance as part of the story. But by the time the PCs are level 14 and the MFA is no longer much of a threat, I might throw 3 or 4 of them at the PCs at once, alongside a BBEG. Many of its spells are no longer relevant, needless fluff on the stat block. Let's be honest: when a creature has fireball on its stat block, you're probably casting it. The rest of it is just stuff I have to read through and check isn't better. Sometimes, you just want a combat monster and not have to worry about upcasting.
Homebrew
Homebrew is the lifeblood of D&D. These days I see people more and more wanting RAW and modules and all that stuff, but the game started as homebrew and in my opinion needs to be homebrewed to keep it working at higher levels. Designing a spellcaster using spell slots - one that is going to be a throwaway monster for a combat encounter in a dungeon - is deeply annoying, time consuming and pointless. I want my creatures to be consistent, but I don't want to have to fill up 11 spell slots with random stuff when I know that I'll just work my way from the top of the list down.
Counterspell
This is a bit of an odd one, but when spellcasters have access to Counterspell, the game breaks for certain parties. My current players are a Cleric, Rogue/fighter, Barbarian and Blood Hunter. The moment an enemy wizard enters the fray with Counterspell, my cleric is absolutely screwed. If I play my wizard right, he'll CS every spell the cleric casts. Now if I have 2 spellcasters on the field and they each have CS it's even worse. And when you have wizard type characters with long lists of spells, there is no reason whatsoever for them not to have CS prepared if they are going by the same rules as PCs.
This is a really weird perspective, and incorrect.
D&D has been around longer than any other current TTRPG. Practically every other RPG out there has taken D&D as a basis, and then changed things around so that they have a different style of game. Like any fluctuating market product, everyone is borrowing the best from everyone else unless there is a very specific design philosophy at work.
What they are suggesting is removing spell slots from caster monsters, and giving them abilities instead. In other words, making caster monsters more like... non-caster monsters. Non-caster monsters have existed in D&D since TTRPGs were invented. So all this change is doing is saying "These monsters are easy to run, those other monsters are really difficult to run, let's make all the monsters easy to run."
It's not really that clever an idea, it's just creating abilities that mirror spell effects and then writing "this is a spell" on the ability.
I would agree that the potential intent is to simplify management at the table for the DM. At least that's what the effect of the change seems to be. I haven't seen anything that suggests the same principles being moved over to PCs as of yet, but more to follow I'm sure. Lastly, as has already been suggested, the published rules include the caveat that you can run what you like. If you prefer to go back to the previous statblock format, have a blast. You wanna shift to the new statblock, have a blast. It sounds like the way forward for you is to homebrew your monsters to fit your DM style. Far be it for me to say that you are wrong to want to do that. It's part of the DMG to change statblocks and monsters as you see fit. The design team was kind enough to give us enough of the tools to build as we see fit.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
Hey all,
OP here. Thank you to everybody who's posted so far for your thoughtful and kind answers. I'd also like to give particular thanks to Sanvael for taking the time to go through such a detailed example and for recognizing that this has really upset me. I'm on my way to work, so I can't write anything long, but I do really appreciate your feedback. I'll have to re-read everything when I have the time, and think about what has been said. I'll definitely check on the thread again when I get home from work.
The enemy casters using Counterspell is still using up a 3rd spell slot each time it is cast.
But for PCs, counterspell becomes a lot less relevant if the enemy are going to have abilities instead of spell-casting. Do these new abilities describe themselves as spell-casting so that counter-spell is still useful?
On the surface, it appears that the change to the statblock from spells to abilities does mean that CS no longer applies to them. I've not been keeping lazer-focused on the topic recently, but it does allow that a change may be in the works for that type of interaction.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
Honestly, counterspell is terrible gameplay and should be removed. The only reason for keeping it is "casters need to be hosed occasionally because they're overpowered", which is better fixed by making them not overpowered.
Hey all,
It's OP again. I'm at work so I'll keep it short. Here's a few takeaways for me from what's been said so far. Please correct me if I'm getting something wrong.
-Spell casters do not always need to be the "stars" of combat. This, I think, is an important reminder for me as a DM because it's my natural inclination to always make spell casters the most important piece of any encounter.
-It is unreasonable to expect that all DMs will have (most) of the spell descriptions memorized and be familiar enough with optimal spell caster tactics to make quick decisions in combat. As I exclusively play spell casters as a player this is where I have the most fun. The point that a DM can't afford to take as much time as a player in combat is well made, but this is one of the key reasons I'm so upset about the change. It's taking away, from the DM, one of the aspects of the game that I most enjoy. Shouldn't I be having fun too?
-If I don't like something, I can "fix" it with homebrew. In particular, if I want my spell caster villain to be a BBEG or key NPC, I can fill in the spell list, spell slots and add out of combat spells as well. My issue here is that I find 5e's rules for "monster" building unintuitive compared to those in 3.5. I find calculating a monster's CR frustrating, stressful, uncertain and inaccurate. I also find unclear what does and does not change someone's CR.
I liked ECL, it was an intuitive mechanic, even if it was also, often, inaccurate. You picked your base creature and could then efficiently built your "monster" using the same rules as for a PC. Of course, this did not work well either, so perhaps this is more nostalgia than anything.
-Counterspell can cause issues if used improperly by the DM. I can understand this as well, but I'm on the fence about it. I think a lot of this is down to player preference and DM presentation, but I will defer to the experience of others on this as I have none of my own.
You've all been so helpful, thank you! If you don't mind, I'll impose on you further and ask some additional questions. Be warned, there will be spoilers for Wild Beyond the Witchlight so I'll try to put this in a spoiler tab. Please do not read further if you don't want spoilers.
For me, the straw that broke the camel's back was Tasha in the Wild Beyond the Witchlight. I bought this book because I wanted to send my PC into the Feywild in another campaign and I wanted to mine it for ideas. I was really disappointed by Tasha's stat block. I feel that it is really unclear and incomplete. I'd like the benefit of others' experience here as well. My questions:
-Is Tasha supposed to still be a wizard? She's an Archfey now. Is she an Archfey with just use per day abilities, or is she an Archfey who's just a spell caster, or is she now both? There's a tab called spell casting in her stat block but it has use per day abilities...What's the "official" stance here? (I'm aware I can decide this for myself, but I spent money on this books so I wouldn't have to make these kinds of calls.)
-If she is still a wizard and I want to use her as an important NPC in another campaign, I'll want to flesh out her spell list. How will that change her CR, will it change her CR? My guess is no, because it doesn't change her hit points or how much damage she deals, but I'm not sure.
-When I flesh out her spell list, do I keep her use per day abilities or fold them into the spell list? If I keep some, or all, of them, how does that change her CR?
-If she's still a wizard, how many spell slots does she have at which levels? Is she like Halaster (same spell slots as a 20th level spell caster) or she like Acererak who has more spell slots at 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th levels? Both are ancient and powerful Archmages. My guess is Halaster, but that's based on her high level use per day abilities being 1/day rather than more often. Would this be how people read it as well?
Thanks again for your patience with me!
Thank you again!
One structural problem with monster spellcasting or lack thereof is that there are a lot of non-combat spells that are sort of key to giving the opposition a fair chance but aren't relevant to a combat encounter -- for example, the mind flayer arcanist above is not likely to cast Detect Magic, Disguise Self, Clairvoyance, Sending, or Hallucinatory Terrain in the middle of a fight, but the fact it has those abilities is absolutely relevant to its role in the larger adventure, even if it's a minion of the actual BBEG.
I understand your frustration. Spellcasting is a very cool part of DND. A lot of the published modules still do have these types of monsters. If you don’t like the spellcaster stats in a particular campaign, you can swap out the monster for another one that has organized spell lists the way you like it.
If you’re looking for a module with lots of spell lists, I would suggest the sequels of DoIP. They can be played without playing DoIP first, and they begin with characters at 7th level. They are Storm Lord’s Wrath, Sleeping Dragons Wake, and Divine Contention. There is one character in particular- a dragon who plays a very big part in the second and third modules, who has a complete spell list as well as other legendary abilities.
Personally, I like the change. I just finished playing those three, and it felt really hard to keep track of so much and reference spells in the middle of the combat. Since it was a duet campaign with a new player, I was also running sidekicks- one of whom was a spellcaster too. At higher levels especially it gets overwhelming!
Only spilt the party if you see something shiny.
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There's something to be said for ritual-only spellcasters of some sort -- it doesn't have the same high complexity in play, but still lets you have your bad guys with their magical defenses, illusions, zombies, summoned demons, and so on.
The reason why monsters (including NPC spellcasters) have spellcasting actions instead of spell slots wasn't fully spelled out in the Sage Advice column discussing the feature, but in the promotional day where spells as actions was first introduced it was specifically said the change was being made to 1.) make running the monster/npc easier for the DM and 2.) notice that some DMs were sort of "mismanaging" spell selection and thereby running monsters below their CR, or at least that's what the studio heads say.
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