This is my second attempt at this thread, I posted the first in the wrong forum. I deleted the previous thread and am re-posting here. I hope this is OK.
Card on the table, I'm a very novice DM, but I've been around D&D for well over twenty years. My thing is wizards, I love wizards. I love huge varieties of spells. I love memorizing spell descriptions. Some time ago, I posted a thread on the new changes to how spell casting is handled for monsters and NPCs. I really appreciate the time people took to deal with some of my concerns in that thread. It's been a few weeks and, unfortunately, I'm still struggling with this change.
Framing my Problems with this Change
1)The new spell casters "feel" like fakes to me.
I feel that, by merging "inherent" spell casting with spell casting, spell casting NPCs have been erased. The evil wizard who built that dungeon you want to run, well... he doesn't exist. He's a pair of kobolds standing on each other's shoulders in a bath robe with a hat of disguise and a wand of fireballs with three charges.
In other words:
At will: disguise self
3/day: fireball
That's it, that's all you get. But you need to present them to your PCs as the Mighty Mage Mungo the Magnificent.
That NPC spell caster your party traveled through half a kingdom to consult? He's a normal guy from Kansas hiding behind a curtain, creating an optical illusion with a machine. He may or may not have one casting of wish (possibly from a ring of 3 wishes). Peek behind the curtain and it all falls apart. Spell casters who are not PCs are gone. They no longer exist.
I understand that this was done because people felt that spell casting, as it was done for NPCs, imposed too much of burden on DMs at the table. I strongly disagree with this assessment. However, Wizards of the Coast has spoken and now so it shall be. I have two choices here: walk away from the game again, or learn to live with it. I do not want to do the former and have not been able to do the later.
2) This change has further fractured the reality of the game world for me and made it much harder to present a coherent world to my PCs
In my opinion, the fundamental issue here is due to one of 5e's biggest weakness. That weakness is that there are two sets of rules: one set for the players, one set for the NPCs run by the DM. I think this was done to make being DM easier, but, for me, it fractures the (simulated) reality of the game. The change to spell casting for NPCs further exacerbates this problem and highlights it in neon because it affects my favourite part of the game.
Games are fun because they have rules. Rules give a game structure and provide the impetuous for creative problem solving. Without rules, there is no game and no fun. Having this schizophrenic set up shifts the burden on the DM from learning a large number of rules to papering over the cracks of a broken reality. Effectively the DM's burden is to maintain the illusion that the PCs live in a word with coherent rules when, in fact, the DM can do anything they want.
Frankly, I think maintaining this illusion is hard and I love memorizing rules. I'd prefer a consistent set of rules for everybody. The popularity of 5e over 3.5 (which was structured with coherent rules and lots of them) elegantly demonstrates that most people are not like me. It is therefore unlikely that this fundamental flaw will ever be addressed, or even considered a flaw by the majority.
With that out of they way, here is what I'd like some help with.
I need help playing a (New Model) spell caster NPC at the table and making them feel real
Giving spell casting NPCs spell slots meant the that there was only a limited number of things that they could do in a day. A large spell list also meant that there was a large, but still limited, number of things that they potentially could do. This was good, because it meant that DMs needed to think creatively to overcome the limitation in resources while maximally leveraging the options available to them.
For example: what was better, having a Drow priestess "cast" protection from poison off screen and reducing the number of spell slots she has access to, or using that same spell slot to cast web during an encounter with the PCs? You only have so many spell slots, and might not be able to do both, you need to choose.
Now, if the Drow priestess has good reason to know the PCs use a lot of poisson effects, the first choice could be better. Of course, how does the Priestess know this? Maybe she used divination to find this out! Maybe a Drow scout who escaped from a previous fight with the PCs gave her the information. As DM this is something I'd spend time considering and would have fun doing.
I'm willing to bet that, under the new way doing things, this will not be an option. The "new" stats for the Drow Priestess of Lolth (when it comes out), won't even have divination or protection from poison as options. These are "irrelevant information" to paraphrase something that was said in my previous tread.
Now, let's continue with my above example, assuming a "new" Drow Priestess that has the following spell casting ability:
At will: poison spray, resistance
4/day : cure wounds, ray of sickness
3/day (each): conjure animals (2 giant spiders), web
2/day: insect plague, mass cure wounds
Everything that is not of immediate use in combat has been removed. You, as DM, know that the Drow Priestess is a caster that should have access to protection from poison. Do you then reflect that she's "cast" this spell off screen by reducing one of her castings of web?
Is this now reflected instead by having all Drow Priestesses have resistance to poison all the time? Note that this is meaningfully different from choosing between one casting of web and poison resistance and makes this NPC less interesting for the DM because a choice has been removed.
Now, what if she wants to cast Aid on herself? Can she? Did she have it prepared that day? Does it mean she can't cast protection from poison? Any way you slice it meaningful choice have either been removed or left up to DM fiat. You have to just make it up, and that's less fun than if there were clear rules that you as DM need to creatively work your way around.
So, going forwards, we now have to deal with stat blocks where, in my opinion, a lot of useful and flavourful information has been removed. How do you recover the versatility of options which is the defining characteristic of spell casters or, at least, fake it convincingly?
Coming back to the example above, how do you maintain the illusion that the above stat block belongs to a cleric of Lolth that is "just like" the cleric of Corellon sitting at the table (apart for worshipping a different god) when her stat block has been so severely truncated?
More generally, how do you generate meaningful interactions with your players that leverage all of the possibilities that they know a spell caster "should" be able to have access to without simply resorting to DM fiat? How do you preserve the illusion of a coherent world (anything the PCs can do the NPCs of the same "class" can do) without continuously granting yourself (as DM) infinite resources and removing your fun?
I want my evil wizard to be able to do more than cast fireball, over and over and over again. I also want them to be able to do things out of combat without just granting myself infinite resources. I want my PC wizard to feel that the NPCs they are talking with is like them, not some artificial construct stitched together to look like a wizard for one combat encounter and one combat encounter alone. How do I do this now?
Homebrew is a solution but homebrew is difficult and time consuming
One of the suggestions that was made to me in my previous tread was: don't like something homebrew it! My problem with that is twofold. First, I'm fundamentally a very lazy man. I'd really like other people to do this work for me. I'd like that so much that I'd even give them money to do it. I also would like to have confidence that the content is official and has been well built and play tested by people who understand the game better then I do.
Second, as a novice DM, I'm also very unsure of how to correctly compute CR, particularly for spell casters with their large number of options. Springing a monster I've never play tested on my players is something I'd rather not do. That being said, I've been experimenting with homebrew during the last few weeks, and testing my creations against a party of test PCs I "play" myself, but that takes quite a lot of time. Time I'd like to use instead on working out plot points or figuring out dungeon layouts.
So, in summary, I'd much rather learn how to deal with the new official way of doing things and would appreciate further advice.
Concerning the change to NPCs no longer having spellcasting, I mostly just need to know how the rules will change so that the NPC's abilities can still be affected by Counterspell; and whether NPCs will be able to cast Counterspell vs the PCs.
If you really want an NPC spellcaster as the BBEG that the party will face on several occasions, or face indirectly, then you can create your BBEG using the PC rules - ignore CR it isn't relevant.
If the NPC spellcaster is only for one adventure, being the BBEG when they reach the end, then non-combat spells aren't really relevant to running the NPC, and having all details about their "spells" directly in their stat block means you don't have to look up the effects of each individual spell, referencing lots of web links, or different pages in a book, before deciding the best option in any particular round.
Concerning the change to NPCs no longer having spellcasting, I mostly just need to know how the rules will change so that the NPC's abilities can still be affected by Counterspell; and whether NPCs will be able to cast Counterspell vs the PCs.
If you really want an NPC spellcaster as the BBEG that the party will face on several occasions, or face indirectly, then you can create your BBEG using the PC rules - ignore CR it isn't relevant.
If the NPC spellcaster is only for one adventure, being the BBEG when they reach the end, then non-combat spells aren't really relevant to running the NPC, and having all details about their "spells" directly in their stat block means you don't have to look up the effects of each individual spell, referencing lots of web links, or different pages in a book, before deciding the best option in any particular round.
I'd argue that non-combat spells can be extremely important. The build-up to the final fight is just important as the fight itself. If a villain has scrying, it would completely change how they interact with the PCs. If a villain has detect thoughts, they might try to stall the PCs so they can probe their minds. Neither of those spells have combat explanations, but they affect how the villain interacts with the PCs.
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All stars fade. Some stars forever fall. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Homebrew (Mostly Outdated):Magic Items,Monsters,Spells,Subclasses ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If there was no light, people wouldn't fear the dark.
Concerning the change to NPCs no longer having spellcasting, I mostly just need to know how the rules will change so that the NPC's abilities can still be affected by Counterspell; and whether NPCs will be able to cast Counterspell vs the PCs.
If you really want an NPC spellcaster as the BBEG that the party will face on several occasions, or face indirectly, then you can create your BBEG using the PC rules - ignore CR it isn't relevant.
If the NPC spellcaster is only for one adventure, being the BBEG when they reach the end, then non-combat spells aren't really relevant to running the NPC, and having all details about their "spells" directly in their stat block means you don't have to look up the effects of each individual spell, referencing lots of web links, or different pages in a book, before deciding the best option in any particular round.
I'd argue that non-combat spells can be extremely important. The build-up to the final fight is just important as the fight itself. If a villain has scrying, it would completely change how they interact with the PCs. If a villain has detect thoughts, they might try to stall the PCs so they can probe their minds. Neither of those spells have combat explanations, but they affect how the villain interacts with the PCs.
It's true that non-combat magic belonging to the big bad evil guy is important to an overall adveture as is whatever the NPC brings to the final encounter shoot out on their magical gunbelt. Something like detect thoughts is something I'd probably put into the encounter gunbelt. Background magic like scrying I don't think I'd list on the encounter gunbelt but would grant the NPC it as a background capability, and maybe pre-encounter. I remember in BG:DiA there's a cool line about whenever characters are using "telepathic" sort of magic they should always feel like something listening in on them. For an Archmage, I'd almost have scrying as something like an envrionmental effect similar to what you have with Dragon lairs regional affects.
The point of the change is to free the DM up from spell slot management, and just treat the statblock as an encounter challenge, I don't think it's advised, but I think it shoud be, additional magics (that may come from the NPC) become environmental challenges. This may to some DMs feel NPC become "depersonalized" but that's not really the case. I'd actually argue it becomes better game integration. PCs shouldn't feel like they're trying to decode another player's character sheet when contending with a spellcaster. They should rather contend with the challenge presented by the DM. I dunno, if that makes sense, but I'm trying to articulate my gut liking and appreciation of the new spellcaster adversary mode. Adversaries in D&D were never supposed to have a "reproducible on character sheet if a humanoid or other player race" clause. This approach implicitly liberates the DM to think of the mechanics of the NPC purely in face to face terms, and I'm taking a license there to grant magic in other game phenomenon as part of their impact that doesn't affect the gun belt load out.
I was just reading Stealer of Souls though, and I think there's also something to be said for "draining" a spellcaster finale before that final encounter, so I imagine if I "defeat the evil Wizard" was the adventure plot, I could see a potential tactic where the PCs can draw out some of the NPCs more remote projected capacity, and have a series of tiers for the NPCs gun belt that reduce if the party opts for that harass and drain tactic.
The problem with this new way of doing this is that they're emulating 4th edition -- badly. Giving monsters powers instead of spells lets you give the monsters specific flavor without just inventing a bajillion new spells, which is useful, and keeping the number of abilities low deals with the option paralysis that is the problem with regular spellcasting monsters.
However, you do still need the non-combat spells. You just don't need them to come out of the same resource pool as combat spells. They could easily have solved this by giving a lot more spells the Ritual tag, and then putting a limit beyond time on actually casting rituals. Then you just give spellcasting monsters (and maybe some others) the trait "Ritualist: has a book of rituals, which it uses as an X level caster". That does away with the complexity in combat because no-one casts rituals in combat, but still lets you use the background spells.
On the issue of Counterspell, I've pretty much decided to assign monster spellcasters an effective spell level for their spell-like powers. Typically half CR, rounded up.
Op here. Thank you all for your comments. Just in case it wasn't clear, I skipped 4e completely. I really didn't like it, so I walked away. I came back for 5e because a lot of the stuff I liked in 3.5 was back too. I don't know anything about how things were done in 4e and I really hoped never to have to learn. But, as the song says, you don't always get what you want.
Having tried a few things with more advance spell casters (my party is presently level 2) in a test game I'm running by myself, I can kind of understand why the redesign was done... Even if I really don't like it. You really only ever get the chance to get a small number of spells out before the encounter ends, one way or another. So, as such, I don't object to how the stat block has changed when it comes to one combat encounter.
As several people have said, It's the out of combat stuff and the resource management around it that I find is missing with the new way of doing things. As others point out, spells like scrying, detect thoughts, even something like detect magic, can all change an encounter by allowing you BBEG (even if they are not the spell caster but have spell caster minions) to known things they wouldn't otherwise know.
Buff spells like mage armour, stoneskin, fire shield, if cast pre-encounter, can also dramatically shift things during the encounter as well... And they should, because it's interesting. Also, if the players never see these spells that they have access to reflected in what others do in the world, it's an immersions problem.
Having some or all of this out of combat stuff be "environmental effects" for an Archmage or a Lich is fine (not good but fine), they have "spell slots" to spare. Though I would argue that it's still kind of bad, in that you are just conjuring resources out of thin air by fiat. As I player (yes I'm a rules lawyer) I'd object to this, but I'm not everybody.
However, I hope we can all agree that its a very different story for mid-ranged casters where spending a spell slot to cast scrying dramatically changes things. When your creature is supposed to be emulating a 9th or a 10th level caster, burning the equivalent of one 5th level spell slot is a big deal.
Also, fun, flavourful, spells like Private Sanctum become useless for players if the NPCs lose access to scrying magic completely. On the flip side, if NPCs can't cast Private Sanctum themselves, even when it makes sense that they could and should, then spells like scrying and so on become much stronger as well and I feel immersion will suffer.
Another frustration is encounter variety. If spell casters have a really limited block of spells to pull form, then they will quickly grow stale. Players are not stupid, and they remember that random mage #3 did exactly the same thing as random mage #2 and #1 did. This was already a problem before, but it'll be worst now.
I really don't want to have to homebrew and test a new creature every time I want to use a caster in combat. I love casters, for me they're the things that really make a fantasy world come alive as a fantasy world. Your millage may vary, but the DND world I like to run or play in is not the low magic world of Game of Thrones.
So... Given that they're going back to doing NPCs this way, like it or lump it... 4e DMs, how do you deal with these issues? I'm pretty sure that, when 5.5 comes out, all spell casters NPCs will be done this way, so we need to figure this out now.
Please note, I'm perfectly happy not dealing with spell slot management, but resource management is the entire point of having a game with rules at all. Having my mid level mage BBEG turn into the equivalent of a lich "because I say so" and "I'm the boss" wasn't even fun when I was 6 and playing make-believe with my sister. In my opinion, it's figuring out how to allocate limited resources that makes a game fun and the DM should be having fun too.
Additionally, having spell casters just obviously be another form of limited use ability monster also doesn't really reflect the PC's own experience of the game world. They're wizards, clerics, druids and so on and so forth and they expect to see others like them in the game world. Those NPCs don't need to be exactly like the PCs but they need to give the illusion that they are. If they all just cast fireball, over and over, that's really not going to cut it.
Thank you all again!
P.S. I also would also prefer a bajillion new spells be added instead of abilities or in addition to abilities... but this is probably my selfish wizard playing side coming out because anything that gets added for an NPC also gets added for PCs and I love new spells. I also don't really like the idea of DM's NPC being allowed to do things that players can't even when it makes sense for them to be allowed to do so. It goes back to my point about the world having two different sets of rules and how that's bad for immersion if it becomes too evident.
So... Given that they're going back to doing NPCs this way, like it or lump it... 4e DMs, how do you deal with these issues?
Pretty much all the major non-combat spells in 4e were rituals (which cost money and time to cast, and a skill check that could be pretty hard, but not spell slots of any type), so it wasn't really the same type of situation.
4e had a number of problems, but there were reasons behind the decisions it made, so it's worth trying to understand why it made its decisions -- and also why things didn't work.
Thank you for the reply. Initially, I was quite excited by 4e because, as you say, they were putting a lot of thought and attention into the redesign. As the roll out progressed, it also looked like the design people sat down and decided to deliberately yank out all the things I really enjoyed about 3.5. Of course, I know I wasn't being deliberately targeted, but it felt that way.
Back to the matter at hand. It looks like there's no slick solution we can simply cut and paste from 4e. Could we do something similar to an optional rule I remember seeing --I want to say in Volo's but I could be wrong-- for hags where they get a small number of "spells" of a level appropriate to their CR that they can use?
These are intended to be "one offs" but the idea could be expanded to a small number of additional spells per day for all spell casters with use per day abilities only. This way, spell casters with use per day abilities only could get additional, but still limited resources, based on their CR, that the DM could use both in an out of combat to increase versatility. This would be intended to replace their lost "spell slots" and prepared spells. Would that make sense? The idea would need some serious balancing, but could it be a way to go? Does anybody have suggestions for how this could be made to work, if at all?
The other issue I'd like advice on is that some of the "spell" actions that are being introduced are not something I'd want my PCs to be able to do every round. That's bad because I also want PCs to be able to replicate anything they see an NPC do, if conditions warrant.
To me, it makes sense that you can't breath fire like a red dragon unless you turn into a red dragon. However, if I was a bard player in a campaign and I see the DM's NPC "bard" casting Supreme Mockery, doing 12d10 psychic damage, and giving people disadvantage on attacks, and doing it over and over as an action, I'd want to do that too. I'd ask the DM at what level I get access to supreme mockery and keep hounding them about it. For context, the closest bard spell I can find to this is Vicious Mockery, a cantrip, which, at 17th level and above, does 4d4 damage.
I get that the developers feel this is a situation where gameplay > realism holds but I want to present my players with realism. This is TTRPG, not a computer game. So...No Supreme Mockery at my table, let's rebuild that NPCs bard. After a while, if you're rebuilding everything, then what's the point? Any advice here?
To play Devil’s Advocate here, you could argue that the NPC bard has access to one or two spell-like abilities that are really good, while your PC bard has access to a lot of different spells, but none of them are quite as good as Supreme Mockery. But overall I agree with you. If I have an NPC spell caster, I just do a character sheet for them and tack on a stat block as well to reflect their CR and any extraordinary abilities that can’t be reflected in a character sheet (this works for dragons as well as PC race spellcasters).
Honestly, I'm not very fond of the 'new' way of building spellcasting monsters --I wouldn't mind simplifying all spellcasters by dramatically reducing their prepared spells (and let people switch prepared spells over a short rest or something), but doing it only to NPCs is weird. I don't think NPCs should be built identically to PCs, but I think that for most NPCs they should at least look conceptually related.
Homebrew is a solution but homebrew is difficult and time consuming
One of the suggestions that was made to me in my previous tread was: don't like something homebrew it! My problem with that is twofold. First, I'm fundamentally a very lazy man. I'd really like other people to do this work for me. I'd like that so much that I'd even give them money to do it. I also would like to have confidence that the content is official and has been well built and play tested by people who understand the game better then I do.
While I get this sentiment, people are making arguments with the example being the BBEG of the campaign. This is one creature. If you're literally thinking, "man it would be cool if this guy had scrying," just frickin give it scrying. It's so weird to me that people are committed to a deep, compelling BBEG within a rich story but show such resistance to spending 10 minutes on its stat block. If you know this baddie so well, you should already have a pretty good idea what kind of spells they might favor.
In most campaigns, wizards are fairly rare and special set pieces and adding a couple spells is about the easiest homebrew you can do. I know "just homebrew it" feels like a really low-energy and unsatisfying reply, but when it's an infrequent enemy and the homebrew is as simple as adding a couple spells to the list, is it really worth getting so worked up about it?
Scatterbraind, I get what you're saying, absolutely. Only, please consider that people get worked up over the strangest things sometimes, this is one of mine. Intellectually, you're right and this shouldn't be a big deal. Emotionally, I'm having a meltdown like a four year old after a sugar crash. I really appreciate people helping me work this out.
A couple of things to consider to see if from my perspective:
-If I just frickin give it scrying, what the duck do I take away? Giving creatures extra things changes how they play. Scrying is a 5th level spell, it should have the same impact on the game as animate object or cone of cold. Should I sit down in combat and say...Mmm Let's just add a few more casting of cone of cold on this creature, the first one was kind of lame! One PC survived. You do you, but this appear to me to be unfair to my players.If I wanted, I could also sit down at the table and say: "a meteor falls from the sky, you all die," get up and walk out.
-Variety is the spice of life. I cast fireball over and over get pretty old pretty quick. I'd like to be able to tweak things without having to tweak a stat block with a much smaller number of spells on it. Having good rules to do so on the fly would help me.
-If the PCs are in a world where everything obviously behaves according to different rules then they are bound to, that's not fun (at least, not for me).
It's really great that this isn't a problem for you. I have never claimed it should be. This is my problem, and I'm asking help from my more experienced peers to try to solve it.
-If I just frickin give it scrying, what the duck do I take away? Giving creatures extra things changes how they play. Scrying is a 5th level spell, it should have the same impact on the game as animate object or cone of cold….
Don’t take anything away. CR is only calculated by how much damage a monster can deal over the first three rounds of combat and how much it can take over those same three rounds. Since scrying won’t directly affect either it’s offensive or defensive CRs, it won’t affect their average CR, so it doesn’t need to be accounted for. (https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/dmg/dungeon-masters-workshop#MonsterStatisticsbyChallengeRating) In short, according to WotC it absolutely does not have the same impact on the game as either of those other two spells.
-Variety is the spice of life. I cast fireball over and over get pretty old pretty quick. I'd like to be able to tweak things without having to tweak a stat block with a much smaller number of spells on it. Having good rules to do so on the fly would help me.
The introduction to the Monster Manual has the answer to this already:
You can change the spells that a monster knows or has prepared, replacing any spell on a monster’s spell list with a different spell of the same level and from the same class list. If you do so, you might cause the monster to be a greater or lesser threat than suggested by its challenge rating. (https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/mm/introduction#Spellcasting)
-If the PCs are in a world where everything obviously behaves according to different rules then they are bound to, that's not fun (at least, not for me).
The DM’s job is to juggle smoke and mirrors and maintain an illusion that everything makes sense for the players. In that regard nothing has changed.
Honestly, I'm not very fond of the 'new' way of building spellcasting monsters --I wouldn't mind simplifying all spellcasters by dramatically reducing their prepared spells (and let people switch prepared spells over a short rest or something), but doing it only to NPCs is weird. I don't think NPCs should be built identically to PCs, but I think that for most NPCs they should at least look conceptually related.
Interesting! It always surprises me how people can view things so dramatically differently than me. You'd think after 45 years of being surprised by other people, I'd start to expect it, but I never do.
For me dramatically reducing prepared spells would not be fun at all. It would not only be a no but, depending on how it was done, probably a hard no. This is one aspect of 5e that I think is better than 3.5. Because you have so many options, you can get away with having a few cool spells on your list of prepared spells that are mostly useless but, once in a while, can be clutch.
Things like rope trick, for example, are only really useful in specific situations. This is a spell I'd never memorize in 3.5, because my 9 2nd level spell slots were better used for other things.
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Hey all,
This is my second attempt at this thread, I posted the first in the wrong forum. I deleted the previous thread and am re-posting here. I hope this is OK.
Card on the table, I'm a very novice DM, but I've been around D&D for well over twenty years. My thing is wizards, I love wizards. I love huge varieties of spells. I love memorizing spell descriptions. Some time ago, I posted a thread on the new changes to how spell casting is handled for monsters and NPCs. I really appreciate the time people took to deal with some of my concerns in that thread. It's been a few weeks and, unfortunately, I'm still struggling with this change.
Framing my Problems with this Change
1)The new spell casters "feel" like fakes to me.
I feel that, by merging "inherent" spell casting with spell casting, spell casting NPCs have been erased. The evil wizard who built that dungeon you want to run, well... he doesn't exist. He's a pair of kobolds standing on each other's shoulders in a bath robe with a hat of disguise and a wand of fireballs with three charges.
In other words:
At will: disguise self
3/day: fireball
That's it, that's all you get. But you need to present them to your PCs as the Mighty Mage Mungo the Magnificent.
That NPC spell caster your party traveled through half a kingdom to consult? He's a normal guy from Kansas hiding behind a curtain, creating an optical illusion with a machine. He may or may not have one casting of wish (possibly from a ring of 3 wishes). Peek behind the curtain and it all falls apart. Spell casters who are not PCs are gone. They no longer exist.
I understand that this was done because people felt that spell casting, as it was done for NPCs, imposed too much of burden on DMs at the table. I strongly disagree with this assessment. However, Wizards of the Coast has spoken and now so it shall be. I have two choices here: walk away from the game again, or learn to live with it. I do not want to do the former and have not been able to do the later.
2) This change has further fractured the reality of the game world for me and made it much harder to present a coherent world to my PCs
In my opinion, the fundamental issue here is due to one of 5e's biggest weakness. That weakness is that there are two sets of rules: one set for the players, one set for the NPCs run by the DM. I think this was done to make being DM easier, but, for me, it fractures the (simulated) reality of the game. The change to spell casting for NPCs further exacerbates this problem and highlights it in neon because it affects my favourite part of the game.
Games are fun because they have rules. Rules give a game structure and provide the impetuous for creative problem solving. Without rules, there is no game and no fun. Having this schizophrenic set up shifts the burden on the DM from learning a large number of rules to papering over the cracks of a broken reality. Effectively the DM's burden is to maintain the illusion that the PCs live in a word with coherent rules when, in fact, the DM can do anything they want.
Frankly, I think maintaining this illusion is hard and I love memorizing rules. I'd prefer a consistent set of rules for everybody. The popularity of 5e over 3.5 (which was structured with coherent rules and lots of them) elegantly demonstrates that most people are not like me. It is therefore unlikely that this fundamental flaw will ever be addressed, or even considered a flaw by the majority.
With that out of they way, here is what I'd like some help with.
I need help playing a (New Model) spell caster NPC at the table and making them feel real
Giving spell casting NPCs spell slots meant the that there was only a limited number of things that they could do in a day. A large spell list also meant that there was a large, but still limited, number of things that they potentially could do. This was good, because it meant that DMs needed to think creatively to overcome the limitation in resources while maximally leveraging the options available to them.
For example: what was better, having a Drow priestess "cast" protection from poison off screen and reducing the number of spell slots she has access to, or using that same spell slot to cast web during an encounter with the PCs? You only have so many spell slots, and might not be able to do both, you need to choose.
Now, if the Drow priestess has good reason to know the PCs use a lot of poisson effects, the first choice could be better. Of course, how does the Priestess know this? Maybe she used divination to find this out! Maybe a Drow scout who escaped from a previous fight with the PCs gave her the information. As DM this is something I'd spend time considering and would have fun doing.
I'm willing to bet that, under the new way doing things, this will not be an option. The "new" stats for the Drow Priestess of Lolth (when it comes out), won't even have divination or protection from poison as options. These are "irrelevant information" to paraphrase something that was said in my previous tread.
Now, let's continue with my above example, assuming a "new" Drow Priestess that has the following spell casting ability:
At will: poison spray, resistance
4/day : cure wounds, ray of sickness
3/day (each): conjure animals (2 giant spiders), web
2/day: insect plague, mass cure wounds
Everything that is not of immediate use in combat has been removed. You, as DM, know that the Drow Priestess is a caster that should have access to protection from poison. Do you then reflect that she's "cast" this spell off screen by reducing one of her castings of web?
Is this now reflected instead by having all Drow Priestesses have resistance to poison all the time? Note that this is meaningfully different from choosing between one casting of web and poison resistance and makes this NPC less interesting for the DM because a choice has been removed.
Now, what if she wants to cast Aid on herself? Can she? Did she have it prepared that day? Does it mean she can't cast protection from poison? Any way you slice it meaningful choice have either been removed or left up to DM fiat. You have to just make it up, and that's less fun than if there were clear rules that you as DM need to creatively work your way around.
So, going forwards, we now have to deal with stat blocks where, in my opinion, a lot of useful and flavourful information has been removed. How do you recover the versatility of options which is the defining characteristic of spell casters or, at least, fake it convincingly?
Coming back to the example above, how do you maintain the illusion that the above stat block belongs to a cleric of Lolth that is "just like" the cleric of Corellon sitting at the table (apart for worshipping a different god) when her stat block has been so severely truncated?
More generally, how do you generate meaningful interactions with your players that leverage all of the possibilities that they know a spell caster "should" be able to have access to without simply resorting to DM fiat? How do you preserve the illusion of a coherent world (anything the PCs can do the NPCs of the same "class" can do) without continuously granting yourself (as DM) infinite resources and removing your fun?
I want my evil wizard to be able to do more than cast fireball, over and over and over again. I also want them to be able to do things out of combat without just granting myself infinite resources. I want my PC wizard to feel that the NPCs they are talking with is like them, not some artificial construct stitched together to look like a wizard for one combat encounter and one combat encounter alone. How do I do this now?
Homebrew is a solution but homebrew is difficult and time consuming
One of the suggestions that was made to me in my previous tread was: don't like something homebrew it! My problem with that is twofold. First, I'm fundamentally a very lazy man. I'd really like other people to do this work for me. I'd like that so much that I'd even give them money to do it. I also would like to have confidence that the content is official and has been well built and play tested by people who understand the game better then I do.
Second, as a novice DM, I'm also very unsure of how to correctly compute CR, particularly for spell casters with their large number of options. Springing a monster I've never play tested on my players is something I'd rather not do. That being said, I've been experimenting with homebrew during the last few weeks, and testing my creations against a party of test PCs I "play" myself, but that takes quite a lot of time. Time I'd like to use instead on working out plot points or figuring out dungeon layouts.
So, in summary, I'd much rather learn how to deal with the new official way of doing things and would appreciate further advice.
Concerning the change to NPCs no longer having spellcasting, I mostly just need to know how the rules will change so that the NPC's abilities can still be affected by Counterspell; and whether NPCs will be able to cast Counterspell vs the PCs.
If you really want an NPC spellcaster as the BBEG that the party will face on several occasions, or face indirectly, then you can create your BBEG using the PC rules - ignore CR it isn't relevant.
If the NPC spellcaster is only for one adventure, being the BBEG when they reach the end, then non-combat spells aren't really relevant to running the NPC, and having all details about their "spells" directly in their stat block means you don't have to look up the effects of each individual spell, referencing lots of web links, or different pages in a book, before deciding the best option in any particular round.
I'd argue that non-combat spells can be extremely important. The build-up to the final fight is just important as the fight itself. If a villain has scrying, it would completely change how they interact with the PCs. If a villain has detect thoughts, they might try to stall the PCs so they can probe their minds. Neither of those spells have combat explanations, but they affect how the villain interacts with the PCs.
All stars fade. Some stars forever fall.
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If there was no light, people wouldn't fear the dark.
I totally agree with you.
It's true that non-combat magic belonging to the big bad evil guy is important to an overall adveture as is whatever the NPC brings to the final encounter shoot out on their magical gunbelt. Something like detect thoughts is something I'd probably put into the encounter gunbelt. Background magic like scrying I don't think I'd list on the encounter gunbelt but would grant the NPC it as a background capability, and maybe pre-encounter. I remember in BG:DiA there's a cool line about whenever characters are using "telepathic" sort of magic they should always feel like something listening in on them. For an Archmage, I'd almost have scrying as something like an envrionmental effect similar to what you have with Dragon lairs regional affects.
The point of the change is to free the DM up from spell slot management, and just treat the statblock as an encounter challenge, I don't think it's advised, but I think it shoud be, additional magics (that may come from the NPC) become environmental challenges. This may to some DMs feel NPC become "depersonalized" but that's not really the case. I'd actually argue it becomes better game integration. PCs shouldn't feel like they're trying to decode another player's character sheet when contending with a spellcaster. They should rather contend with the challenge presented by the DM. I dunno, if that makes sense, but I'm trying to articulate my gut liking and appreciation of the new spellcaster adversary mode. Adversaries in D&D were never supposed to have a "reproducible on character sheet if a humanoid or other player race" clause. This approach implicitly liberates the DM to think of the mechanics of the NPC purely in face to face terms, and I'm taking a license there to grant magic in other game phenomenon as part of their impact that doesn't affect the gun belt load out.
I was just reading Stealer of Souls though, and I think there's also something to be said for "draining" a spellcaster finale before that final encounter, so I imagine if I "defeat the evil Wizard" was the adventure plot, I could see a potential tactic where the PCs can draw out some of the NPCs more remote projected capacity, and have a series of tiers for the NPCs gun belt that reduce if the party opts for that harass and drain tactic.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
The problem with this new way of doing this is that they're emulating 4th edition -- badly. Giving monsters powers instead of spells lets you give the monsters specific flavor without just inventing a bajillion new spells, which is useful, and keeping the number of abilities low deals with the option paralysis that is the problem with regular spellcasting monsters.
However, you do still need the non-combat spells. You just don't need them to come out of the same resource pool as combat spells. They could easily have solved this by giving a lot more spells the Ritual tag, and then putting a limit beyond time on actually casting rituals. Then you just give spellcasting monsters (and maybe some others) the trait "Ritualist: has a book of rituals, which it uses as an X level caster". That does away with the complexity in combat because no-one casts rituals in combat, but still lets you use the background spells.
On the issue of Counterspell, I've pretty much decided to assign monster spellcasters an effective spell level for their spell-like powers. Typically half CR, rounded up.
Ironically, although I do like 5e’s approach in general to streamlining rules, I use the old approach when it comes to NPC spellcasters.
Hey all,
Op here. Thank you all for your comments. Just in case it wasn't clear, I skipped 4e completely. I really didn't like it, so I walked away. I came back for 5e because a lot of the stuff I liked in 3.5 was back too. I don't know anything about how things were done in 4e and I really hoped never to have to learn. But, as the song says, you don't always get what you want.
Having tried a few things with more advance spell casters (my party is presently level 2) in a test game I'm running by myself, I can kind of understand why the redesign was done... Even if I really don't like it. You really only ever get the chance to get a small number of spells out before the encounter ends, one way or another. So, as such, I don't object to how the stat block has changed when it comes to one combat encounter.
As several people have said, It's the out of combat stuff and the resource management around it that I find is missing with the new way of doing things. As others point out, spells like scrying, detect thoughts, even something like detect magic, can all change an encounter by allowing you BBEG (even if they are not the spell caster but have spell caster minions) to known things they wouldn't otherwise know.
Buff spells like mage armour, stoneskin, fire shield, if cast pre-encounter, can also dramatically shift things during the encounter as well... And they should, because it's interesting. Also, if the players never see these spells that they have access to reflected in what others do in the world, it's an immersions problem.
Having some or all of this out of combat stuff be "environmental effects" for an Archmage or a Lich is fine (not good but fine), they have "spell slots" to spare. Though I would argue that it's still kind of bad, in that you are just conjuring resources out of thin air by fiat. As I player (yes I'm a rules lawyer) I'd object to this, but I'm not everybody.
However, I hope we can all agree that its a very different story for mid-ranged casters where spending a spell slot to cast scrying dramatically changes things. When your creature is supposed to be emulating a 9th or a 10th level caster, burning the equivalent of one 5th level spell slot is a big deal.
Also, fun, flavourful, spells like Private Sanctum become useless for players if the NPCs lose access to scrying magic completely. On the flip side, if NPCs can't cast Private Sanctum themselves, even when it makes sense that they could and should, then spells like scrying and so on become much stronger as well and I feel immersion will suffer.
Another frustration is encounter variety. If spell casters have a really limited block of spells to pull form, then they will quickly grow stale. Players are not stupid, and they remember that random mage #3 did exactly the same thing as random mage #2 and #1 did. This was already a problem before, but it'll be worst now.
I really don't want to have to homebrew and test a new creature every time I want to use a caster in combat. I love casters, for me they're the things that really make a fantasy world come alive as a fantasy world. Your millage may vary, but the DND world I like to run or play in is not the low magic world of Game of Thrones.
So... Given that they're going back to doing NPCs this way, like it or lump it... 4e DMs, how do you deal with these issues? I'm pretty sure that, when 5.5 comes out, all spell casters NPCs will be done this way, so we need to figure this out now.
Please note, I'm perfectly happy not dealing with spell slot management, but resource management is the entire point of having a game with rules at all. Having my mid level mage BBEG turn into the equivalent of a lich "because I say so" and "I'm the boss" wasn't even fun when I was 6 and playing make-believe with my sister. In my opinion, it's figuring out how to allocate limited resources that makes a game fun and the DM should be having fun too.
Additionally, having spell casters just obviously be another form of limited use ability monster also doesn't really reflect the PC's own experience of the game world. They're wizards, clerics, druids and so on and so forth and they expect to see others like them in the game world. Those NPCs don't need to be exactly like the PCs but they need to give the illusion that they are. If they all just cast fireball, over and over, that's really not going to cut it.
Thank you all again!
P.S. I also would also prefer a bajillion new spells be added instead of abilities or in addition to abilities... but this is probably my selfish wizard playing side coming out because anything that gets added for an NPC also gets added for PCs and I love new spells. I also don't really like the idea of DM's NPC being allowed to do things that players can't even when it makes sense for them to be allowed to do so. It goes back to my point about the world having two different sets of rules and how that's bad for immersion if it becomes too evident.
Pretty much all the major non-combat spells in 4e were rituals (which cost money and time to cast, and a skill check that could be pretty hard, but not spell slots of any type), so it wasn't really the same type of situation.
4e had a number of problems, but there were reasons behind the decisions it made, so it's worth trying to understand why it made its decisions -- and also why things didn't work.
Thank you for the reply. Initially, I was quite excited by 4e because, as you say, they were putting a lot of thought and attention into the redesign. As the roll out progressed, it also looked like the design people sat down and decided to deliberately yank out all the things I really enjoyed about 3.5. Of course, I know I wasn't being deliberately targeted, but it felt that way.
Back to the matter at hand. It looks like there's no slick solution we can simply cut and paste from 4e. Could we do something similar to an optional rule I remember seeing --I want to say in Volo's but I could be wrong-- for hags where they get a small number of "spells" of a level appropriate to their CR that they can use?
These are intended to be "one offs" but the idea could be expanded to a small number of additional spells per day for all spell casters with use per day abilities only. This way, spell casters with use per day abilities only could get additional, but still limited resources, based on their CR, that the DM could use both in an out of combat to increase versatility. This would be intended to replace their lost "spell slots" and prepared spells. Would that make sense? The idea would need some serious balancing, but could it be a way to go? Does anybody have suggestions for how this could be made to work, if at all?
The other issue I'd like advice on is that some of the "spell" actions that are being introduced are not something I'd want my PCs to be able to do every round. That's bad because I also want PCs to be able to replicate anything they see an NPC do, if conditions warrant.
To me, it makes sense that you can't breath fire like a red dragon unless you turn into a red dragon. However, if I was a bard player in a campaign and I see the DM's NPC "bard" casting Supreme Mockery, doing 12d10 psychic damage, and giving people disadvantage on attacks, and doing it over and over as an action, I'd want to do that too. I'd ask the DM at what level I get access to supreme mockery and keep hounding them about it. For context, the closest bard spell I can find to this is Vicious Mockery, a cantrip, which, at 17th level and above, does 4d4 damage.
I get that the developers feel this is a situation where gameplay > realism holds but I want to present my players with realism. This is TTRPG, not a computer game. So...No Supreme Mockery at my table, let's rebuild that NPCs bard. After a while, if you're rebuilding everything, then what's the point? Any advice here?
To play Devil’s Advocate here, you could argue that the NPC bard has access to one or two spell-like abilities that are really good, while your PC bard has access to a lot of different spells, but none of them are quite as good as Supreme Mockery. But overall I agree with you. If I have an NPC spell caster, I just do a character sheet for them and tack on a stat block as well to reflect their CR and any extraordinary abilities that can’t be reflected in a character sheet (this works for dragons as well as PC race spellcasters).
Honestly, I'm not very fond of the 'new' way of building spellcasting monsters --I wouldn't mind simplifying all spellcasters by dramatically reducing their prepared spells (and let people switch prepared spells over a short rest or something), but doing it only to NPCs is weird. I don't think NPCs should be built identically to PCs, but I think that for most NPCs they should at least look conceptually related.
Have these changes been published yet? Are they just UA?
It's just that newly published monsters tend to be built using spells-as-powers rather than spells.
Could you maybe hum a few bars for those of us who have access to the newest stuff, but haven’t really looked at much of it yet?
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While I get this sentiment, people are making arguments with the example being the BBEG of the campaign. This is one creature. If you're literally thinking, "man it would be cool if this guy had scrying," just frickin give it scrying. It's so weird to me that people are committed to a deep, compelling BBEG within a rich story but show such resistance to spending 10 minutes on its stat block. If you know this baddie so well, you should already have a pretty good idea what kind of spells they might favor.
In most campaigns, wizards are fairly rare and special set pieces and adding a couple spells is about the easiest homebrew you can do. I know "just homebrew it" feels like a really low-energy and unsatisfying reply, but when it's an infrequent enemy and the homebrew is as simple as adding a couple spells to the list, is it really worth getting so worked up about it?
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
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🥲 🤧 You had me at “frickin.” 😊
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Scatterbraind, I get what you're saying, absolutely. Only, please consider that people get worked up over the strangest things sometimes, this is one of mine. Intellectually, you're right and this shouldn't be a big deal. Emotionally, I'm having a meltdown like a four year old after a sugar crash. I really appreciate people helping me work this out.
A couple of things to consider to see if from my perspective:
-If I just frickin give it scrying, what the duck do I take away? Giving creatures extra things changes how they play. Scrying is a 5th level spell, it should have the same impact on the game as animate object or cone of cold. Should I sit down in combat and say...Mmm Let's just add a few more casting of cone of cold on this creature, the first one was kind of lame! One PC survived. You do you, but this appear to me to be unfair to my players.If I wanted, I could also sit down at the table and say: "a meteor falls from the sky, you all die," get up and walk out.
-Variety is the spice of life. I cast fireball over and over get pretty old pretty quick. I'd like to be able to tweak things without having to tweak a stat block with a much smaller number of spells on it. Having good rules to do so on the fly would help me.
-If the PCs are in a world where everything obviously behaves according to different rules then they are bound to, that's not fun (at least, not for me).
It's really great that this isn't a problem for you. I have never claimed it should be. This is my problem, and I'm asking help from my more experienced peers to try to solve it.
Don’t take anything away. CR is only calculated by how much damage a monster can deal over the first three rounds of combat and how much it can take over those same three rounds. Since scrying won’t directly affect either it’s offensive or defensive CRs, it won’t affect their average CR, so it doesn’t need to be accounted for. (https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/dmg/dungeon-masters-workshop#MonsterStatisticsbyChallengeRating) In short, according to WotC it absolutely does not have the same impact on the game as either of those other two spells.
The introduction to the Monster Manual has the answer to this already:
If you want to swap fireball for lightning bolt, conjure barrage, or Melf’s minute meteors it won’t change anything enough to alter CR, and if you go with something like fly, crusader’s mantle, or haste it will likely not affect anything enough to alter CR either so don’t worry about it.
The DM’s job is to juggle smoke and mirrors and maintain an illusion that everything makes sense for the players. In that regard nothing has changed.
Might I suggest you try to get out more often. It’s just a game after all.
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Interesting! It always surprises me how people can view things so dramatically differently than me. You'd think after 45 years of being surprised by other people, I'd start to expect it, but I never do.
For me dramatically reducing prepared spells would not be fun at all. It would not only be a no but, depending on how it was done, probably a hard no. This is one aspect of 5e that I think is better than 3.5. Because you have so many options, you can get away with having a few cool spells on your list of prepared spells that are mostly useless but, once in a while, can be clutch.
Things like rope trick, for example, are only really useful in specific situations. This is a spell I'd never memorize in 3.5, because my 9 2nd level spell slots were better used for other things.