Sorry, but why is there a 0.7% chance for the 1d10 force damage but a 0.65% chance for the +CHA modifier? That doesn't make a lick of sense. You should have either 0.7 or 0.65 * (5.5+MOD).
Because the modifier damage is not affected by critical hits but the die rolled damage is, so ( 1d10 + MOD ) * 0.65 + 1d10 * 0.05 = 1d10 * 0.7 + MOD * 0.65
PS if you're casting spells you're already breaking your stealth, Thunderstep is absolutely awesome since it deals damage, and teleports both you and a friend a distance large enough that you will be guaranteed to be out of melee for at least 1 round, often 2 rounds or more with its 90ft range. I've used it so many times to run up to an ally who is getting swarmed and teleport both of us to safety while damaging all of the 3-5 enemies that were swarming them.
It can work but Warlocks aren't naturally stealthy to begin with, and if you were in stealth, say around a castle or a bandit camp, you just woke up/alerted the entire place which isn't generally the type of way to break stealth. Also if you're sneaking around a cave or building, you can still only teleport to somewhere in line of sight, which isn't always guaranteed to be the case, so it's kind of a very situational usage.
That's without us even considering the out-of-combat applications to get not just yourself but a friend across e.g. a river of lava completely safely. I always take it with my warlocks and it always comes in useful.
Yes, but you're limited to one party member until level 11 when you can teleport back and forth. It's a very limited way of going about it, the fly spell, also 3rd level could be used to similar effect and the person flying could fly back and forth, carrying across all the party members and not alerting everything on the other side of the river of lava to your presence. This said, I think we will just agree to different preferences here, and that is no real issue.
Shadowspawn likewise gives not just straight damage but other benefits as well, sure it can be killed but it's also giving you tanking for the party in doing so. 70 extra hit points for a 5th level party is nothing to sneeze at.
So it seems, It definitely seems powerful and one that I missed! I still would keep Hex tho, since to me they are still fulfilling slightly different things. Hex later on for me is a fallback spell, to maintain a better average DPR when the situation is less known and a short rest isn't a guarantee.
but it's also giving you tanking for the party in doing so. 70 extra hit points for a 5th level party is nothing to sneeze at.
Unless you are in a confined space, "tanking" does not really exist in DnD. That MMO fallacy does not transfer to an environment with even below average intelligent enemies (even animals will pick visually weak targets over beefy ones). Additionally, one of the main features of the Spawn is to cause the frighten condition which means melee opponents cannot move closer - in other words, opponents would potentially be forced to pick another target.
That depends on what class/subclass combo is doing the tanking. An Ancestors Barbarian, a Battlemaster Fighter, and Crown or Redemption Paladins all have some ability to push attacks towards themselves and shield party members from damage against what they are facing (not counting spells). Of course, those are subclasses that all fall into what your article calls "Defender" classes.
The Spawn causing fear isn't the best at making things stick, but put it between the squishy party members and what wants to squish them, and then they would have to move closer to the Spawn in order to hit them. Provided they aren't one of the multitude of opponents that are either immune to, or highly resistant to fear effects.
The way people are playing the game now, everybody has too many spell slots. These resources are designed to be influential enough that it's okay that you only have X of them during a long adventuring day -- but people aren't doing long adventuring days. They're taking those X resources which were meant to last, say, 6 encounters, and using them all in just one or two encounters on a regular basis. The way people are playing the game now, casters are overpowered as hell. It's not enough to have the biggest toolbox, access to unique effects that can't be accomplished without spells, enormous freedom of expression through your choices, and the ability to convince your DM that this should actually entitle you to MORE mechanical wiggle room (say, casting Acid Splash on an object to destroy it, because hey, it's acid! Nevermind the targeting restrictions!) rather than LESS... Casters also need to be able to pop their highest level stuff in just about every encounter without limits.
I wanted to address this but there weren't many responses and the ones that were were too averse to a small nerf to the maximum amount of spell slots at each level :( : Reduced maximum number of spell slots per spell level?
The way people are playing the game now, everybody has too many spell slots. These resources are designed to be influential enough that it's okay that you only have X of them during a long adventuring day -- but people aren't doing long adventuring days. They're taking those X resources which were meant to last, say, 6 encounters, and using them all in just one or two encounters on a regular basis. The way people are playing the game now, casters are overpowered as hell.
Wizards has been trying to push the "multiple small fights over the course of a day consuming your resources" model since at least 3e (AD&D didn't really have encounter guidelines), and people have been failing to play that way for just as long (and while they're at it... adventures aren't written that way either). At a certain point, they should really just give up and balance for how people actually play, not for some model of how people are supposed to play.
The way people are playing the game now, everybody has too many spell slots. These resources are designed to be influential enough that it's okay that you only have X of them during a long adventuring day -- but people aren't doing long adventuring days. They're taking those X resources which were meant to last, say, 6 encounters, and using them all in just one or two encounters on a regular basis. The way people are playing the game now, casters are overpowered as hell.
Wizards has been trying to push the "multiple small fights over the course of a day consuming your resources" model since at least 3e (AD&D didn't really have encounter guidelines), and people have been failing to play that way for just as long (and while they're at it... adventures aren't written that way either). At a certain point, they should really just give up and balance for how people actually play, not for some model of how people are supposed to play.
It's more a limit that WotC can't overcome, small encounters still take time. If a single small encounter takes 45 minutes and a big encounter takes 90 minutes, then it becomes a point where people aren't going to track where they were between each session when the previous session had a small encounter and you're entering another small encounter. DM relents to people forgetting where they were exactly last session and allows party to full rest. It can be handled with VTTs, using apps or what not but most DMs trust players to track their own stuff as the DM already has a lot of stuff to keep on top of in battle. Most (not all) players can obviously be trusted, so that generally works.
Personally my opinion is that short rest should be your 8 hours of sleep and a long rest should be the sleep and downtime taken in a settlement, be that a village, town, city or whatever. Then their needs to be a better way to track things in all forms that are being used and finally most small encounters should be merged into larger ones with waves, which in most scenarios you'd expect, the Kobolds that hold the west wing of the castle notice when the party attacks the goblins that hold the east wing and join in two rounds later, three rounds after that the kobold and goblin leaders that were negotiating a pact come in with a couple of elites. It's much better going room by room, attacking a few goblins, going on a few more rooms and attacking a few kobold to then potentially reach the castle's war room, where the tribe leaders are.
The way people are playing the game now, everybody has too many spell slots. These resources are designed to be influential enough that it's okay that you only have X of them during a long adventuring day -- but people aren't doing long adventuring days. They're taking those X resources which were meant to last, say, 6 encounters, and using them all in just one or two encounters on a regular basis. The way people are playing the game now, casters are overpowered as hell.
Wizards has been trying to push the "multiple small fights over the course of a day consuming your resources" model since at least 3e (AD&D didn't really have encounter guidelines), and people have been failing to play that way for just as long (and while they're at it... adventures aren't written that way either). At a certain point, they should really just give up and balance for how people actually play, not for some model of how people are supposed to play.
They need to design classes around a per encounter model.
The way people are playing the game now, everybody has too many spell slots.
I wanted to address this but there weren't many responses and the ones that were were too averse to a small nerf to the maximum amount of spell slots at each level :( : Reduced maximum number of spell slots per spell level?
Yeah, people will always get upset when you threaten to take away their toys.
Wizards has been trying to push the "multiple small fights over the course of a day consuming your resources" model since at least 3e (AD&D didn't really have encounter guidelines), and people have been failing to play that way for just as long (and while they're at it... adventures aren't written that way either). At a certain point, they should really just give up and balance for how people actually play, not for some model of how people are supposed to play.
Yes, exactly. There are 4 paths, as I see it. 1: Remove a bunch of spell slots from a bunch of classes. 2: Nerf almost every single spell in a major way. 3: Buff spell-less classes into the stratosphere. 4: Concede that apparently players WANT casters to be singularly broken, and leave it alone.
If you take path 1, caster players won't buy the new books. But that's only a portion of current 5e players, and it might invite more new players into a better balanced game, so it might be worth it. Idk. I'd have to run a lot of numbers that I don't have. Path 2, same problem, but I would think the game would feel worse to play if the spells were just weaker. 3 could work, but multiclass options will need to be extremely tightly designed, and personally, I don't trust WotC to get that right. They're not ever going to remove multiclass, either, and even if they did, players would homebrew it back in en masse and then act like it's WotC's fault that it's broken. So that leaves us with 4. Maintain the martial-caster divide, maybe even expand it. The safest option probably, but capitalism necessitates infinite exponential growth, not sustainable numbers, so if path 1 is viable, even if it's risky, I'd expect path 1.
If a single small encounter takes 45 minutes and a big encounter takes 90 minutes, then it becomes a point where people aren't going to track where they were between each session when the previous session had a small encounter and you're entering another small encounter.
What? Why? Do people not mark off their spell slots as they use them? Why would smaller encounters cause players to cheat more?
It's more a limit that WotC can't overcome, small encounters still take time. If a single small encounter takes 45 minutes and a big encounter takes 90 minutes, then it becomes a point where people aren't going to track where they were between each session when the previous session had a small encounter and you're entering another small encounter. DM relents to people forgetting where they were exactly last session and allows party to full rest. It can be handled with VTTs, using apps or what not but most DMs trust players to track their own stuff as the DM already has a lot of stuff to keep on top of in battle. Most (not all) players can obviously be trusted, so that generally works.
VTTs can do some things, but there's still plenty that they can't (at least, not yet). My game session tonight ended mid-combat, and I had to leave a note for myself in the chat that I still had concentration going on heat metal, because Roll20 certainly wasn't going to do it for me
You're right, though. If WotC wants to insist on a whole bunch of encounters between long rests, they need to find a way to make small encounters actually small, and not chew up an inordinate amount of real time
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Unfortunately, making small fights faster doesn't actually solve the problem, because in terms of combat balance what matters is rounds of combat per day, not fights per day, and having more rounds of combat makes for slower fights.
The easiest solution is actually just "double monster hit points, halve fights per day" (I actually recommend a nonlinear progression, so the increase in hit points is proportionately larger at higher levels). This will roughly double rounds of combat per fight, thus keeping the total constant, but because there's not as much setup and teardown time, the real time spent resolving encounters is less.
An interesting concept is to make attunement slots variable by class and level; rather than everyone getting three, everyone starts at one, and by level 20 full casters have three, while half casters have five, and pure martials might have seven.
The way people are playing the game now, everybody has too many spell slots.
I wanted to address this but there weren't many responses and the ones that were were too averse to a small nerf to the maximum amount of spell slots at each level :( : Reduced maximum number of spell slots per spell level?
Yeah, people will always get upset when you threaten to take away their toys.
Wizards has been trying to push the "multiple small fights over the course of a day consuming your resources" model since at least 3e (AD&D didn't really have encounter guidelines), and people have been failing to play that way for just as long (and while they're at it... adventures aren't written that way either). At a certain point, they should really just give up and balance for how people actually play, not for some model of how people are supposed to play.
Yes, exactly. There are 4 paths, as I see it. 1: Remove a bunch of spell slots from a bunch of classes. 2: Nerf almost every single spell in a major way. 3: Buff spell-less classes into the stratosphere. 4: Concede that apparently players WANT casters to be singularly broken, and leave it alone.
If you take path 1, caster players won't buy the new books. But that's only a portion of current 5e players, and it might invite more new players into a better balanced game, so it might be worth it. Idk. I'd have to run a lot of numbers that I don't have. Path 2, same problem, but I would think the game would feel worse to play if the spells were just weaker. 3 could work, but multiclass options will need to be extremely tightly designed, and personally, I don't trust WotC to get that right. They're not ever going to remove multiclass, either, and even if they did, players would homebrew it back in en masse and then act like it's WotC's fault that it's broken. So that leaves us with 4. Maintain the martial-caster divide, maybe even expand it. The safest option probably, but capitalism necessitates infinite exponential growth, not sustainable numbers, so if path 1 is viable, even if it's risky, I'd expect path 1.
If a single small encounter takes 45 minutes and a big encounter takes 90 minutes, then it becomes a point where people aren't going to track where they were between each session when the previous session had a small encounter and you're entering another small encounter.
What? Why? Do people not mark off their spell slots as they use them? Why would smaller encounters cause players to cheat more?
To #2, I don’t think they need to “nerf almost every spell”, but there are some spells that are more powerful by a significant margin than others that need looked at. Just like GWF/SS we’re feats that martials felt like they needed to take. There are spells that are pretty much must take spells. Just look at all the spell rankings videos on YouTube. A and S tier spells are probably the ones that need some adjustments.
If a single small encounter takes 45 minutes and a big encounter takes 90 minutes, then it becomes a point where people aren't going to track where they were between each session when the previous session had a small encounter and you're entering another small encounter.
What? Why? Do people not mark off their spell slots as they use them? Why would smaller encounters cause players to cheat more?
I wish I had the answer too that, I just know some people are really bad at tracking things between sessions. I guess the answer is life.
For example, I remember when two of the people I play D&D with (I'll call them A and B here), were helping a new player (C) create their new character.
We get introduced to the new character and all goes well, we get to our first combat vs. a few giant crabs and I notice something odd, the new player is only using Guiding Bolt and is a Circle of the Stars Druid, ok, they definitely should have Guiding Bolt but why ONLY guiding bolt. I ask if it's okay for me to have a look at the character sheet and they say yes.
As I look over it, I direct towards A & B and ask, "So where are the prepared spells?". After that session, they helped C with those missing prepared spells.
P.S. A was the DM, and B DMs another campaign. So even people that run D&D campaigns just can't remember everything and when you have life going on too, between sessions, sometimes I think, people just don't always have the mental capacity to remember everything and it's easier to refresh everything back.
Unfortunately, making small fights faster doesn't actually solve the problem, because in terms of combat balance what matters is rounds of combat per day, not fights per day, and having more rounds of combat makes for slower fights.
Well, what really matters for class balance etc. is resources expended, not rounds. There are ways you could move smaller encounters away from turn-based combat and into something else that still causes resources to be used -- maybe even something where how quickly the encounter gets resolved is affected by how many resources you choose to use -- but I'm not sure such a system would meet a lot of people's internal definition of D&D
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Its technically both rounds and resources. Though rounds have a slightly higher importance. There is a reason we calculate damage per round rather than damage per fight or per day or the like. It is all a question of action economy. What can you do with your action?
Spell slots alone aren't the issue. Lets pretend for a second that the only spells a sorcerer could cast were the ones listed in the playtest for sorcerer. Chaos bolt, sorcerer vitality, arcane eruption and sorcery incarnate. I dont think anyone here would be arguing they have too many spell slots.
To #2, I don’t think they need to “nerf almost every spell”, but there are some spells that are more powerful by a significant margin than others that need looked at. Just like GWF/SS we’re feats that martials felt like they needed to take. There are spells that are pretty much must take spells. Just look at all the spell rankings videos on YouTube. A and S tier spells are probably the ones that need some adjustments.
They would. Spells just scale in power in a way that martial abilities don't. Even the non broken spells of 8th level are significantly more powerful than the 3rd level spells. Whereas a martials abilities at level 15 just aren't that much more massively powerful than they were at 5th. More powerful yes but its a slight constant incline, and spells just ramp up at a steep incline. Even less spells per day likely wont solve it, as far too many tables run 1-2 encounters per day and I don't see them reducing it to the level where that impacts them at that level.
Ideally imo they would ramp up martial abilities at a much steeper incline. But a large swath of people seem dead set on making sure martials stay so mundane a 40 year old fat man can match their capabilities. They will then complain that a wizard can solve any problem at all with a spell. Oh my god I have to make a skill roll and the wizard just cast spider climb.
For great balance they should make classes on a per encounter design. As Pantagruel666 pointed out though people would scream about that due to the sacred cows of D&D. Failing that if they are going with a resource model for spell casters, non casters should be at 90% in all spheres of play of a spell caster in a single encounter so while in 1-2 encounter per day tables they are out shown its not by much, and at 3-4 they are balanced and 5-6 encounter per day tables they start to take the lead. This would mean if they don't massively nerf spells martials would need skill checks that go into the super human, they would need a superior way to keep their resource(HP) up throughout the day as well. Like the champions regen should be baked into all martials at level 10 or something. And bump it to 75% HP at 15th level. And while yes wizards might still provide things that a martial can't like teleport, not every class should get everything.
I think the big scream in making things a per encounter design would be “they’re going back to 4e mechanics!!!! The world is ending, switch to pathfinder!!!!”
And there is a bit of per encounter baked in. Pretty much everything with a 1-minute duration is essentially meant to last for a single encounter. The odd stuff is the 1-hour duration, which seems meant to last 2 or 3 encounters, but not enough for you to take a short rest. But since no one plays like that, 1 hour usually ends up being 1 encounter, which ends up as a kind of back door nerf to things.
If they stick with the previous UA which reduces the number of spells prepared, that can help rein in casters. I’d argue the other ways to do it could be going back to pure vancian casting, which reduces Swiss Army knife casters, since you’re not as likely to have the right spell ready (For those who might not know, this would mean, if you have, for example, invisibility prepared, you can cast it, but only once. If you want to cast it twice, you need to memorize it twice, using two of your prepared slots.) But I don’t see that happening. Or, go back to 1e with longer casting times for combat spells, but there’s no way that happens.
Well, what really matters for class balance etc. is resources expended, not rounds.
The problem is that martial classes don't significantly expend resources to do basic combat actions.
The basic balance is that casters have a lower baseline power (cantrips, etc) than martials, but have a greater ability to burn resources to increase their fighting power, and as long as they have resources to burn, they have more power. Thus, to achieve balance (without changing rules), you need enough combat for them to run out of higher level slots and be stuck spamming cantrips and very low level spells. This doesn't take all that long, ten rounds of combat between long rests would probably do the job, but a monster (or monsters) that can survive for ten rounds vs PCs, and also won't just totally annihilate them before the ten rounds is up, does not exist in 5e. Also, a ten round combat is a giant slog.
One option would be to reduce base spell slots, and then make abilities like arcane recovery stronger and/or usable more times. That keeps per-day power more or less the same, but reduces the ability to blow through everything in a single battle.
Well, what really matters for class balance etc. is resources expended, not rounds.
The problem is that martial classes don't significantly expend resources to do basic combat actions.
The basic balance is that casters have a lower baseline power (cantrips, etc) than martials, but have a greater ability to burn resources to increase their fighting power, and as long as they have resources to burn, they have more power. Thus, to achieve balance (without changing rules), you need enough combat for them to run out of higher level slots and be stuck spamming cantrips and very low level spells. This doesn't take all that long, ten rounds of combat between long rests would probably do the job, but a monster (or monsters) that can survive for ten rounds vs PCs, and also won't just totally annihilate them before the ten rounds is up, does not exist in 5e. Also, a ten round combat is a giant slog.
One option would be to reduce base spell slots, and then make abilities like arcane recovery stronger and/or usable more times. That keeps per-day power more or less the same, but reduces the ability to blow through everything in a single battle.
This is assuming resources are only expended in combat. If the caster uses charm person to get past the guard, or invisibility, or fly or any number of other utility spells, they’re still spending resources. Then when the fight happens the caster has fewer spell slots. I believe AntonSirius’s point is that not every encounter is a combat encounter. A DM can still find ways to drain resources over a day that aren’t in a fight.
This is assuming resources are only expended in combat. If the caster uses charm person to get past the guard, or invisibility, or fly or any number of other utility spells, they’re still spending resources.
Yes, but this runs into the other problem: in non-combat challenges, casters do not have a lower baseline power than martials, and thus no length of day will solve the balance issue.
A class feature that granted +1 proficiency bonus at certain levels would be... interesting, but probably breaks bounded accuracy even more than it's already broken.
Because the modifier damage is not affected by critical hits but the die rolled damage is, so ( 1d10 + MOD ) * 0.65 + 1d10 * 0.05 = 1d10 * 0.7 + MOD * 0.65
It can work but Warlocks aren't naturally stealthy to begin with, and if you were in stealth, say around a castle or a bandit camp, you just woke up/alerted the entire place which isn't generally the type of way to break stealth. Also if you're sneaking around a cave or building, you can still only teleport to somewhere in line of sight, which isn't always guaranteed to be the case, so it's kind of a very situational usage.
Yes, but you're limited to one party member until level 11 when you can teleport back and forth. It's a very limited way of going about it, the fly spell, also 3rd level could be used to similar effect and the person flying could fly back and forth, carrying across all the party members and not alerting everything on the other side of the river of lava to your presence. This said, I think we will just agree to different preferences here, and that is no real issue.
So it seems, It definitely seems powerful and one that I missed! I still would keep Hex tho, since to me they are still fulfilling slightly different things. Hex later on for me is a fallback spell, to maintain a better average DPR when the situation is less known and a short rest isn't a guarantee.
Unless you are in a confined space, "tanking" does not really exist in DnD. That MMO fallacy does not transfer to an environment with even below average intelligent enemies (even animals will pick visually weak targets over beefy ones). Additionally, one of the main features of the Spawn is to cause the frighten condition which means melee opponents cannot move closer - in other words, opponents would potentially be forced to pick another target.
https://rpgbot.net/the-tank-fallacy/
That depends on what class/subclass combo is doing the tanking. An Ancestors Barbarian, a Battlemaster Fighter, and Crown or Redemption Paladins all have some ability to push attacks towards themselves and shield party members from damage against what they are facing (not counting spells). Of course, those are subclasses that all fall into what your article calls "Defender" classes.
The Spawn causing fear isn't the best at making things stick, but put it between the squishy party members and what wants to squish them, and then they would have to move closer to the Spawn in order to hit them. Provided they aren't one of the multitude of opponents that are either immune to, or highly resistant to fear effects.
I wanted to address this but there weren't many responses and the ones that were were too averse to a small nerf to the maximum amount of spell slots at each level :( : Reduced maximum number of spell slots per spell level?
Wizards has been trying to push the "multiple small fights over the course of a day consuming your resources" model since at least 3e (AD&D didn't really have encounter guidelines), and people have been failing to play that way for just as long (and while they're at it... adventures aren't written that way either). At a certain point, they should really just give up and balance for how people actually play, not for some model of how people are supposed to play.
It's more a limit that WotC can't overcome, small encounters still take time. If a single small encounter takes 45 minutes and a big encounter takes 90 minutes, then it becomes a point where people aren't going to track where they were between each session when the previous session had a small encounter and you're entering another small encounter. DM relents to people forgetting where they were exactly last session and allows party to full rest. It can be handled with VTTs, using apps or what not but most DMs trust players to track their own stuff as the DM already has a lot of stuff to keep on top of in battle. Most (not all) players can obviously be trusted, so that generally works.
Personally my opinion is that short rest should be your 8 hours of sleep and a long rest should be the sleep and downtime taken in a settlement, be that a village, town, city or whatever. Then their needs to be a better way to track things in all forms that are being used and finally most small encounters should be merged into larger ones with waves, which in most scenarios you'd expect, the Kobolds that hold the west wing of the castle notice when the party attacks the goblins that hold the east wing and join in two rounds later, three rounds after that the kobold and goblin leaders that were negotiating a pact come in with a couple of elites. It's much better going room by room, attacking a few goblins, going on a few more rooms and attacking a few kobold to then potentially reach the castle's war room, where the tribe leaders are.
They need to design classes around a per encounter model.
At which point people will wail and scream because tradition. D&D has a ton of problematic sacred cows.
Yeah, people will always get upset when you threaten to take away their toys.
Yes, exactly. There are 4 paths, as I see it. 1: Remove a bunch of spell slots from a bunch of classes. 2: Nerf almost every single spell in a major way. 3: Buff spell-less classes into the stratosphere. 4: Concede that apparently players WANT casters to be singularly broken, and leave it alone.
If you take path 1, caster players won't buy the new books. But that's only a portion of current 5e players, and it might invite more new players into a better balanced game, so it might be worth it. Idk. I'd have to run a lot of numbers that I don't have. Path 2, same problem, but I would think the game would feel worse to play if the spells were just weaker. 3 could work, but multiclass options will need to be extremely tightly designed, and personally, I don't trust WotC to get that right. They're not ever going to remove multiclass, either, and even if they did, players would homebrew it back in en masse and then act like it's WotC's fault that it's broken. So that leaves us with 4. Maintain the martial-caster divide, maybe even expand it. The safest option probably, but capitalism necessitates infinite exponential growth, not sustainable numbers, so if path 1 is viable, even if it's risky, I'd expect path 1.
What? Why? Do people not mark off their spell slots as they use them? Why would smaller encounters cause players to cheat more?
VTTs can do some things, but there's still plenty that they can't (at least, not yet). My game session tonight ended mid-combat, and I had to leave a note for myself in the chat that I still had concentration going on heat metal, because Roll20 certainly wasn't going to do it for me
You're right, though. If WotC wants to insist on a whole bunch of encounters between long rests, they need to find a way to make small encounters actually small, and not chew up an inordinate amount of real time
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Unfortunately, making small fights faster doesn't actually solve the problem, because in terms of combat balance what matters is rounds of combat per day, not fights per day, and having more rounds of combat makes for slower fights.
The easiest solution is actually just "double monster hit points, halve fights per day" (I actually recommend a nonlinear progression, so the increase in hit points is proportionately larger at higher levels). This will roughly double rounds of combat per fight, thus keeping the total constant, but because there's not as much setup and teardown time, the real time spent resolving encounters is less.
An interesting concept is to make attunement slots variable by class and level; rather than everyone getting three, everyone starts at one, and by level 20 full casters have three, while half casters have five, and pure martials might have seven.
To #2, I don’t think they need to “nerf almost every spell”, but there are some spells that are more powerful by a significant margin than others that need looked at. Just like GWF/SS we’re feats that martials felt like they needed to take. There are spells that are pretty much must take spells. Just look at all the spell rankings videos on YouTube. A and S tier spells are probably the ones that need some adjustments.
EZD6 by DM Scotty
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/397599/EZD6-Core-Rulebook?
I wish I had the answer too that, I just know some people are really bad at tracking things between sessions. I guess the answer is life.
For example, I remember when two of the people I play D&D with (I'll call them A and B here), were helping a new player (C) create their new character.
We get introduced to the new character and all goes well, we get to our first combat vs. a few giant crabs and I notice something odd, the new player is only using Guiding Bolt and is a Circle of the Stars Druid, ok, they definitely should have Guiding Bolt but why ONLY guiding bolt. I ask if it's okay for me to have a look at the character sheet and they say yes.
As I look over it, I direct towards A & B and ask, "So where are the prepared spells?". After that session, they helped C with those missing prepared spells.
P.S. A was the DM, and B DMs another campaign. So even people that run D&D campaigns just can't remember everything and when you have life going on too, between sessions, sometimes I think, people just don't always have the mental capacity to remember everything and it's easier to refresh everything back.
This is my hypothesis anyway.
Well, what really matters for class balance etc. is resources expended, not rounds. There are ways you could move smaller encounters away from turn-based combat and into something else that still causes resources to be used -- maybe even something where how quickly the encounter gets resolved is affected by how many resources you choose to use -- but I'm not sure such a system would meet a lot of people's internal definition of D&D
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Its technically both rounds and resources. Though rounds have a slightly higher importance. There is a reason we calculate damage per round rather than damage per fight or per day or the like. It is all a question of action economy. What can you do with your action?
Spell slots alone aren't the issue. Lets pretend for a second that the only spells a sorcerer could cast were the ones listed in the playtest for sorcerer. Chaos bolt, sorcerer vitality, arcane eruption and sorcery incarnate. I dont think anyone here would be arguing they have too many spell slots.
They would. Spells just scale in power in a way that martial abilities don't. Even the non broken spells of 8th level are significantly more powerful than the 3rd level spells. Whereas a martials abilities at level 15 just aren't that much more massively powerful than they were at 5th. More powerful yes but its a slight constant incline, and spells just ramp up at a steep incline. Even less spells per day likely wont solve it, as far too many tables run 1-2 encounters per day and I don't see them reducing it to the level where that impacts them at that level.
Ideally imo they would ramp up martial abilities at a much steeper incline. But a large swath of people seem dead set on making sure martials stay so mundane a 40 year old fat man can match their capabilities. They will then complain that a wizard can solve any problem at all with a spell. Oh my god I have to make a skill roll and the wizard just cast spider climb.
For great balance they should make classes on a per encounter design. As Pantagruel666 pointed out though people would scream about that due to the sacred cows of D&D. Failing that if they are going with a resource model for spell casters, non casters should be at 90% in all spheres of play of a spell caster in a single encounter so while in 1-2 encounter per day tables they are out shown its not by much, and at 3-4 they are balanced and 5-6 encounter per day tables they start to take the lead. This would mean if they don't massively nerf spells martials would need skill checks that go into the super human, they would need a superior way to keep their resource(HP) up throughout the day as well. Like the champions regen should be baked into all martials at level 10 or something. And bump it to 75% HP at 15th level. And while yes wizards might still provide things that a martial can't like teleport, not every class should get everything.
I think the big scream in making things a per encounter design would be “they’re going back to 4e mechanics!!!! The world is ending, switch to pathfinder!!!!”
And there is a bit of per encounter baked in. Pretty much everything with a 1-minute duration is essentially meant to last for a single encounter. The odd stuff is the 1-hour duration, which seems meant to last 2 or 3 encounters, but not enough for you to take a short rest. But since no one plays like that, 1 hour usually ends up being 1 encounter, which ends up as a kind of back door nerf to things.
If they stick with the previous UA which reduces the number of spells prepared, that can help rein in casters. I’d argue the other ways to do it could be going back to pure vancian casting, which reduces Swiss Army knife casters, since you’re not as likely to have the right spell ready (For those who might not know, this would mean, if you have, for example, invisibility prepared, you can cast it, but only once. If you want to cast it twice, you need to memorize it twice, using two of your prepared slots.) But I don’t see that happening. Or, go back to 1e with longer casting times for combat spells, but there’s no way that happens.
The problem is that martial classes don't significantly expend resources to do basic combat actions.
The basic balance is that casters have a lower baseline power (cantrips, etc) than martials, but have a greater ability to burn resources to increase their fighting power, and as long as they have resources to burn, they have more power. Thus, to achieve balance (without changing rules), you need enough combat for them to run out of higher level slots and be stuck spamming cantrips and very low level spells. This doesn't take all that long, ten rounds of combat between long rests would probably do the job, but a monster (or monsters) that can survive for ten rounds vs PCs, and also won't just totally annihilate them before the ten rounds is up, does not exist in 5e. Also, a ten round combat is a giant slog.
One option would be to reduce base spell slots, and then make abilities like arcane recovery stronger and/or usable more times. That keeps per-day power more or less the same, but reduces the ability to blow through everything in a single battle.
This is assuming resources are only expended in combat. If the caster uses charm person to get past the guard, or invisibility, or fly or any number of other utility spells, they’re still spending resources. Then when the fight happens the caster has fewer spell slots. I believe AntonSirius’s point is that not every encounter is a combat encounter. A DM can still find ways to drain resources over a day that aren’t in a fight.
Yes, but this runs into the other problem: in non-combat challenges, casters do not have a lower baseline power than martials, and thus no length of day will solve the balance issue.
A class feature that granted +1 proficiency bonus at certain levels would be... interesting, but probably breaks bounded accuracy even more than it's already broken.