"Wings of a dragonfly" and "frozen frog eyelids" ate a historic nod to D&D's previous editions, where magic was primarily sympathetic in nature. Some players much prefer using component pouches and playing up the use of sympathetic spell components in their casting. It's not a nothingburger, though I would honestly prefer myself if a spellcaster was required to have a focus/tool for their casting. Different classes could use different tools, War Caster could treat weapons as tools, artificers could substitute gadgets for tools provided they had a hand to activate the gadget with, but no more rodeo games where spellcasters don't even need gestures. Martial characters need weapons to deal weapon damage, make spellcasters require tools to spell with. Only innate magic to your species should be hands free.
As a DM I'd be good with all casters needing a focus to cast spells it is a corollary to me not enjoying graphic interrogation scenes from the PCs. Don't give the DM a reason to motivate the enemy maim your character when captured. I just go bound and gagged, but it does not make much sense when being jailed and I don't want to have some world where every jail cell is a anti magic field or something.
As a DM I'd be good with all casters needing a focus to cast spells it is a corollary to me not enjoying graphic interrogation scenes from the PCs. Don't give the DM a reason to motivate the enemy maim your character when captured. I just go bound and gagged, but it does not make much sense when being jailed and I don't want to have some world where every jail cell is a anti magic field or something.
Mandating foci would certainly help to prevent casters from being able to just leave with misty step or dimension door even when their hands are tied.
"Wings of a dragonfly" and "frozen frog eyelids" ate a historic nod to D&D's previous editions, where magic was primarily sympathetic in nature. Some players much prefer using component pouches and playing up the use of sympathetic spell components in their casting. It's not a nothingburger, though I would honestly prefer myself if a spellcaster was required to have a focus/tool for their casting. Different classes could use different tools, War Caster could treat weapons as tools, artificers could substitute gadgets for tools provided they had a hand to activate the gadget with, but no more rodeo games where spellcasters don't even need gestures. Martial characters need weapons to deal weapon damage, make spellcasters require tools to spell with. Only innate magic to your species should be hands free.
I know it's got roots and some players like the flavor, but like you said - there's a component pouch for that, which is essentially just another name for the arcane focus. Players could imagine pulling whatever they want from the pouch when they cast a spell. Also, war caster... right now, it allows you to use somatic component with a weapon or shield, which is better - I'm currently playing a wizard/artificer in ToA, so I can use a shield in one hand and an arcane focus in another, makes perfect sense for a combat mage. Using a weapon as focus would be pointless for that build.
In general, I dunno how to feel about focus being mandatory. It's definitely streamlining. And it's got lore implications - now you can't cast spells without certain "conductor", so these items become a very important resource to begin with. I'm not entirely opposed to it, but it's a big change.
As a DM I'd be good with all casters needing a focus to cast spells it is a corollary to me not enjoying graphic interrogation scenes from the PCs. Don't give the DM a reason to motivate the enemy maim your character when captured. I just go bound and gagged, but it does not make much sense when being jailed and I don't want to have some world where every jail cell is a anti magic field or something.
Mandating foci would certainly help to prevent casters from being able to just leave with misty step or dimension door even when their hands are tied.
Yup as a DM my options usually are some kind of magic suppression method but in a way it wont break the game by letting the players carry it with them, bound and gagged which is kind of carry the idiot ball plot method or get gruesome. I go with the idiot ball and just have a couple guards making sure the wizard does not break free of the bindings. But its a sort of unnecessary risk they are taking as the enemies are usually not the nicest people.
Its not a big thing as getting captured is not incredibly common in my games and the players capturing people is not common as well, though they did and he escaped with misty step in the last campaign I ran. But since its not common its why monks always having access to their weapons is never a big deal especially since their weapons are not that impressive, but hey if you are running a spy/intrigue campaign where you are frequently disarmed as you go to events, party's, see the king etc it becomes more important. Its also part of world building as well. How do they keep spell casters prisoners in the world, do even small towns have prison cells with anti magic fields built in, what security is in place when you go to meet important people.
In prison do they just maim everyone so they can't cast magic, do people with magic just escape, and generally since the only way to counter magic is magic exactly how much magic is in the world in order to stop rogue mages and we are just talking about the ones who come in the front door to talk with you and not getting into things that removing a focus wont handle like scrying, teleporting in and casting spells left and right.
Which brings us to the main topic of changing spells. I wish more care was put in creating mundane or cheap counters to some of these world building problems. How does fabricate effect the market, heck maybe make fabricate a standard ritual that most craftsmen learn, what is stopping a mage from teleporting into your bedroom and killing you in your sleep, sure hey no problem when its a CR2 enemy you are going after but if its a CR 14 enemy what counters can they have. Build those into the spells, like the old 1cm of lead lining stops scrying, maybe it should also stop teleporting.
1) Truestrike. I've never seen this cantrip used (and I've been playing since 5e was released), and I'm still not clear under what circumstances it should be. It you could cast it on others, and maybe if it added a 1d4 to attack (like guidance or resistance) that would be more useful.
It is very situational for sure, but has a couple niche uses. Like for example helping land an offensive plane shift or another über attack.
4) Goodberry. It's not the healing that bothers me, it's the way it gets around survival scenarios so easily. Creating so many little berries is also kinda fiddly at the table.
There are three kinds of scenarios to keep in mind here.
A campaign where survival is de-emphasised. Then goodberry trades a spell slot for bag space that would otherwise go to 'rations'.
Survival and preparedness are core. Even in this scenario you can keep the spell the way it is. First of all, goodberries only provide nourishment, not hydration. Players will still need to source some water. Second of all, they are emergency food. A creature can adequately sustain itself on berries for one day, after which malnutrition starts setting in and it becomes more and more difficult to stave off hunger without consuming actual meals. Think of goodberries as subsisting on candybars (an actual survival technique). Unreal World, a wilderness survival game, uses a nutrition system like that. You can subsist on crops and wildberries, but they provide poor nutrition and you need to eat a lot more of them and a lot more often.
Survival isn't emphasised, but isn't neglected either. Then you can simply give players incentive to use real food. XGtE offers such a mechanic, having tasty meals restore an extra 1 hp per hit die used during short rests. Which is perfect because goodberries are starchy, mealy, and taste like sawdust. Moreover: nobody in their right mind would willingly survive on soylent green when options are, in fact, available. You could remind players of that. If they persist anyway, you could start asking for Wisdom saving throws after the third or so day of berry munching and have PCs who fail be overwhelmed with disgust and stubbornly spit them out.
1) Truestrike. I've never seen this cantrip used (and I've been playing since 5e was released), and I'm still not clear under what circumstances it should be. It you could cast it on others, and maybe if it added a 1d4 to attack (like guidance or resistance) that would be more useful.
It is very situational for sure, but has a couple niche uses. Like for example helping land an offensive plane shift or another über attack.
Except:
a.) It's concentration, so it can break before you even get to make use of it.
b.) It takes your whole action.
c.) It only gives you advantage on your next attack roll, and no-one else in your party.
d.) Not even Sorcerers can capitalize on it with Quickened Spell, because it only affects your attack on your next turn.
Also plane shift itself has to get past both the target's AC and have the target fail the Charisma save. On its own, that's fine, but it's horribly inefficient to spend two turns trying to land it.
Don't get me wrong, I'm 100% sure true strike will be getting a rework, I'm just saying that the intention behind the design is to help land big attacks that expend resources, not to augment every attack.
Also, saving throws. The spells lack a clear principle of which effect affects what saving throws. Currently, there's 14 spells with charisma saving throws, 8 spells with intelligence saving throws, and 48 spells with wisdom saving throws. And right now it seems that they're distributed arbitrarily. There needs to be a clear principle. For example, charisma is your willpower and resolve, it protects against fear, wisdom is your awareness and intuition, it protects against charm, and intelligence is your analytic ability, it helps you discern illusions, both internal and external.
In addition to this, I gotta say that con saving throws are overloaded too, while str saving throws are barely used. I think it would make sense if str is used against effects that damage you from the outside, like crushing coils of a giant snake, shockwave from an explosion, strong wind or current pushing you, etc. While con saving throws should be about internal damage - poisons, diseases, gas, necrosis, aging, max hp reduction and other withering effects.
Just to go back to the spells in the original post.
1. Truestrike should allow the ability to make a weapon attack as part of the spell, it might seem powerful at first but as it's cast as an action it would still be weaker than just making two attacks for any class with extra attack. In fact in this regard, I'd see truestrike as still being weaker than green-flame blade and booming blade. As it's an optional attack, the fringe/edge cases where truestrike was useful would remain so.
2. Melf's Acid Arrow, yup, could be a mini AoE or damage jumping to secondary target in range of first. It is definitely falling behind other spells.
3. Counterspell is kinda stupid, it basically invalidates another character's move, the biggest issue with counterspell is that it's an auto success, like dispel magic and heat metal. Counterspell would be better as a contested skill check or save on part of the caster. Alternatively it could be ditched and replaced with a status effect spell that forces skill checks on spell-casting or fail and disables concentration. As it stands counterspell is too perfect a counter.
4. Goodberry for any non-survival table is fine, for survival, DM can fix it with homebrew. I mean there is literally a 3rd level spell to create food and water, as it stands the base ruleset is not suitable for survival settings, it needs home brew.
5) Shillelagh is slightly limited but we need to watch it, you can still get it with magic initiate and that makes it much more available than just the primal casters (druid and ranger)
In regards to save effects, some effects are so powerful they are still essentially save or die, paralyze for example. Most status effects are vastly overpowered in 5E and that is a big part of why casters are so insanely powerful, Faerie Fire and Bless for example are huge bonuses, Faerie Fire basically makes enemy far easier to hit and critical, as well as disabling some forms of invisibility while Bless gives a huge boost to attack as well, get both of those and you and your allies aren't missing, given you only need 2 casters for that, it is not hard to see why casters actually tend to have more control over the battle than the guy going toe-to-toe with the Orc Warchief
DEX, CON and WIS saves used to be Reflex, Fortitude and Will saves, and they were the only saves in the game. The other saves are a 5E innovation and are intentionally used less often.
We still have Reflex, Fortitude and Will saves, we just don't call them that. We now also have STR saves for things that move you against your will, where strength represents clinging and resisting the force; INT saves for things that overwhelm your nervous system, where intelligence represents mental capacity; and we have CHA saves for effects that target your personality or presence, where charisma represents how difficult it is to overcome.
They are really not that complicated. Attempting to distribute the "willpower" save away from WIS might seem like a good compromise in the name of balance, but it will make DM's decision of what save to call for more difficult, and not everything in the game needs to be perfectly balanced.
Also, saving throws. The spells lack a clear principle of which effect affects what saving throws. Currently, there's 14 spells with charisma saving throws, 8 spells with intelligence saving throws, and 48 spells with wisdom saving throws. And right now it seems that they're distributed arbitrarily. There needs to be a clear principle. For example, charisma is your willpower and resolve, it protects against fear, wisdom is your awareness and intuition, it protects against charm, and intelligence is your analytic ability, it helps you discern illusions, both internal and external.
In addition to this, I gotta say that con saving throws are overloaded too, while str saving throws are barely used. I think it would make sense if str is used against effects that damage you from the outside, like crushing coils of a giant snake, shockwave from an explosion, strong wind or current pushing you, etc. While con saving throws should be about internal damage - poisons, diseases, gas, necrosis, aging, max hp reduction and other withering effects.
Personally I think they should be returning to 3 saves, and then allow the better of two stats to go into it. Like make reflex saves either dex or int. The more save targets available to the caster the easier it becomes to target a weak save.
Also, saving throws. The spells lack a clear principle of which effect affects what saving throws. Currently, there's 14 spells with charisma saving throws, 8 spells with intelligence saving throws, and 48 spells with wisdom saving throws. And right now it seems that they're distributed arbitrarily. There needs to be a clear principle. For example, charisma is your willpower and resolve, it protects against fear, wisdom is your awareness and intuition, it protects against charm, and intelligence is your analytic ability, it helps you discern illusions, both internal and external.
In addition to this, I gotta say that con saving throws are overloaded too, while str saving throws are barely used. I think it would make sense if str is used against effects that damage you from the outside, like crushing coils of a giant snake, shockwave from an explosion, strong wind or current pushing you, etc. While con saving throws should be about internal damage - poisons, diseases, gas, necrosis, aging, max hp reduction and other withering effects.
Personally I think they should be returning to 3 saves, and then allow the better of two stats to go into it. Like make reflex saves either dex or int. The more save targets available to the caster the easier it becomes to target a weak save.
If they do that, in order to maintain "backward compatibility" with 5e, they'll have to state what saves to replace with the new saves when it comes to NPCs.
"Wings of a dragonfly" and "frozen frog eyelids" ate a historic nod to D&D's previous editions, where magic was primarily sympathetic in nature. Some players much prefer using component pouches and playing up the use of sympathetic spell components in their casting. It's not a nothingburger, though I would honestly prefer myself if a spellcaster was required to have a focus/tool for their casting. Different classes could use different tools, War Caster could treat weapons as tools, artificers could substitute gadgets for tools provided they had a hand to activate the gadget with, but no more rodeo games where spellcasters don't even need gestures. Martial characters need weapons to deal weapon damage, make spellcasters require tools to spell with. Only innate magic to your species should be hands free.
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As a DM I'd be good with all casters needing a focus to cast spells it is a corollary to me not enjoying graphic interrogation scenes from the PCs. Don't give the DM a reason to motivate the enemy maim your character when captured. I just go bound and gagged, but it does not make much sense when being jailed and I don't want to have some world where every jail cell is a anti magic field or something.
Mandating foci would certainly help to prevent casters from being able to just leave with misty step or dimension door even when their hands are tied.
I know it's got roots and some players like the flavor, but like you said - there's a component pouch for that, which is essentially just another name for the arcane focus. Players could imagine pulling whatever they want from the pouch when they cast a spell. Also, war caster... right now, it allows you to use somatic component with a weapon or shield, which is better - I'm currently playing a wizard/artificer in ToA, so I can use a shield in one hand and an arcane focus in another, makes perfect sense for a combat mage. Using a weapon as focus would be pointless for that build.
In general, I dunno how to feel about focus being mandatory. It's definitely streamlining. And it's got lore implications - now you can't cast spells without certain "conductor", so these items become a very important resource to begin with. I'm not entirely opposed to it, but it's a big change.
Yup as a DM my options usually are some kind of magic suppression method but in a way it wont break the game by letting the players carry it with them, bound and gagged which is kind of carry the idiot ball plot method or get gruesome. I go with the idiot ball and just have a couple guards making sure the wizard does not break free of the bindings. But its a sort of unnecessary risk they are taking as the enemies are usually not the nicest people.
Its not a big thing as getting captured is not incredibly common in my games and the players capturing people is not common as well, though they did and he escaped with misty step in the last campaign I ran. But since its not common its why monks always having access to their weapons is never a big deal especially since their weapons are not that impressive, but hey if you are running a spy/intrigue campaign where you are frequently disarmed as you go to events, party's, see the king etc it becomes more important. Its also part of world building as well. How do they keep spell casters prisoners in the world, do even small towns have prison cells with anti magic fields built in, what security is in place when you go to meet important people.
In prison do they just maim everyone so they can't cast magic, do people with magic just escape, and generally since the only way to counter magic is magic exactly how much magic is in the world in order to stop rogue mages and we are just talking about the ones who come in the front door to talk with you and not getting into things that removing a focus wont handle like scrying, teleporting in and casting spells left and right.
Which brings us to the main topic of changing spells. I wish more care was put in creating mundane or cheap counters to some of these world building problems. How does fabricate effect the market, heck maybe make fabricate a standard ritual that most craftsmen learn, what is stopping a mage from teleporting into your bedroom and killing you in your sleep, sure hey no problem when its a CR2 enemy you are going after but if its a CR 14 enemy what counters can they have. Build those into the spells, like the old 1cm of lead lining stops scrying, maybe it should also stop teleporting.
It is very situational for sure, but has a couple niche uses. Like for example helping land an offensive plane shift or another über attack.
There are three kinds of scenarios to keep in mind here.
Second of all, they are emergency food. A creature can adequately sustain itself on berries for one day, after which malnutrition starts setting in and it becomes more and more difficult to stave off hunger without consuming actual meals. Think of goodberries as subsisting on candybars (an actual survival technique). Unreal World, a wilderness survival game, uses a nutrition system like that. You can subsist on crops and wildberries, but they provide poor nutrition and you need to eat a lot more of them and a lot more often.
Moreover: nobody in their right mind would willingly survive on soylent green when options are, in fact, available. You could remind players of that. If they persist anyway, you could start asking for Wisdom saving throws after the third or so day of berry munching and have PCs who fail be overwhelmed with disgust and stubbornly spit them out.
Except:
a.) It's concentration, so it can break before you even get to make use of it.
b.) It takes your whole action.
c.) It only gives you advantage on your next attack roll, and no-one else in your party.
d.) Not even Sorcerers can capitalize on it with Quickened Spell, because it only affects your attack on your next turn.
Also plane shift itself has to get past both the target's AC and have the target fail the Charisma save. On its own, that's fine, but it's horribly inefficient to spend two turns trying to land it.
Don't get me wrong, I'm 100% sure true strike will be getting a rework, I'm just saying that the intention behind the design is to help land big attacks that expend resources, not to augment every attack.
In addition to this, I gotta say that con saving throws are overloaded too, while str saving throws are barely used. I think it would make sense if str is used against effects that damage you from the outside, like crushing coils of a giant snake, shockwave from an explosion, strong wind or current pushing you, etc. While con saving throws should be about internal damage - poisons, diseases, gas, necrosis, aging, max hp reduction and other withering effects.
5) Shillelagh is slightly limited but we need to watch it, you can still get it with magic initiate and that makes it much more available than just the primal casters (druid and ranger)
In regards to save effects, some effects are so powerful they are still essentially save or die, paralyze for example. Most status effects are vastly overpowered in 5E and that is a big part of why casters are so insanely powerful, Faerie Fire and Bless for example are huge bonuses, Faerie Fire basically makes enemy far easier to hit and critical, as well as disabling some forms of invisibility while Bless gives a huge boost to attack as well, get both of those and you and your allies aren't missing, given you only need 2 casters for that, it is not hard to see why casters actually tend to have more control over the battle than the guy going toe-to-toe with the Orc Warchief
DEX, CON and WIS saves used to be Reflex, Fortitude and Will saves, and they were the only saves in the game. The other saves are a 5E innovation and are intentionally used less often.
We still have Reflex, Fortitude and Will saves, we just don't call them that. We now also have STR saves for things that move you against your will, where strength represents clinging and resisting the force; INT saves for things that overwhelm your nervous system, where intelligence represents mental capacity; and we have CHA saves for effects that target your personality or presence, where charisma represents how difficult it is to overcome.
They are really not that complicated. Attempting to distribute the "willpower" save away from WIS might seem like a good compromise in the name of balance, but it will make DM's decision of what save to call for more difficult, and not everything in the game needs to be perfectly balanced.
Personally I think they should be returning to 3 saves, and then allow the better of two stats to go into it. Like make reflex saves either dex or int. The more save targets available to the caster the easier it becomes to target a weak save.
If they do that, in order to maintain "backward compatibility" with 5e, they'll have to state what saves to replace with the new saves when it comes to NPCs.