I don't like that these strikes cost me damage dice. Flat out, those are too precious, and damage dice are not the same as spell slots or discipline points. That's straight up DAMAGE I'm sacrificing, not points or slots. Would you tell the fighter to give up an extra attack round to do some of these things
That is how things are designed in 5e, to apply a cool condition you give up damage, or have to expend a precious limited resource (or both). Sorcerous Burst deals less damage than Fireball and costs a higher level slot because it can also apply a condition to the enemies, cantrips that have more powerful riders like Vicious Mockery, Sapping Sting, or Frostbite have smaller damage dice than those that have less powerful riders like Firebolt, Toll the Dead, or Ray of Frost.
Spell slots are not the same. Spell slots are not damage. Spell slots are a resource to spend for damage. Those are two different things.
1. Nobody does non-lethal damage unless the quest specifically states nonlethal damage.
Therefore, the goal is to get the highest damage on the other player the fastest while not dying. Even life can be a resource. Only the last HP matters. (as a DM, bearing that in mind will help you get over a lot of hang-ups about hitting your players, and as long as you remember to leave them on the verge of death, BUT NOT ACTUALLY DEAD, you'll be better able to control tension. Just don't drag things out. Your villains can almost kill them then leave them for dead, or whatever. Or knock them out and steal their stuff. "Oopsies, I went a little too far", is a lot more forgivable than "LET ME ENJOY YOUR MISERY!!!!MWAHAHAHAAHA" and equally more enoyable than "you will never face a serious threat ever in game...").
2. There's stuff for combat and stuff for role play. The two rarely/never cross. Who the hell casts a sleep spell in Final Fantasy, for example? People go for the biggest damage hits their resources can allow. The only exception is haste or slow.... Because...
3.Whichever has the most turns/actions wins. Actions trump turns which trump single output damage. More turns/actions means more versatility to heal or to buff in addition to more attacks. More attacks means that you can hit more than one target.
3a. More attacks are better than bigger damage with less attacks because less wasted damage. if 8d6 are focused on 1 attack, you can (over)kill 1 goblin, but 4 attacks with 2d6 means if you kill goblin 1 with 2 attacks, there's a chance of those other two attacks being useful to take out gobbo 2. If D&D did decent crowd control, along those lines, a spell that did a LITTLE less damage but hit a lot of opponents is better along the same lines. (this is also why 10 goblins are a bigger threat than a young white dragon)
3b More attacks are better than bigger damage attacks because it evens results out. If you get 4 attacks at 2d6 versus 1 attach at 8d6, it becomes a greater probability of doing SOME damage, because you have more chances to hit. This is also why more smaller dice is always better than less bigger dice....the more certainty of results the better.
5. The referee is your friend in role playing and will be generous, but in combat, they're your opponent and are going to be more conservative and rule against you. There's a reason inspiration is given during role play as a reward for creativity and not as an assist during combat when your dice misbehave. (see what I said about cover an the new ways to have advantage for the rogue). As a side, even though I complain and make use of the rogue's "advantage" as an example, the worst classes for DM interference is the artificer and the mystic, which get very limited/restricted play to the point where most people don't even remember the mystic class.
6. Seriously. Nobody uses status spells in combat unless it's a guarantee for more turns or its what the class is specifically built around. (bard, red wizards, blue mages, whatever...) The one thing people will spam that's adjacent are cheat spells. Things like wish, dimension door, polymorph, etc. which "cheat" by just getting rid of an enemy or teleporting them well out of sight. Things that clone, etc. have some serious restrictions but because there's no real in game time constraints, people turn into optimization dweebs that say they're going to spend a year making 100 clones with true polymorph and command a legion of metallic dragons and.... Once you get rid of these options, and replace them with something more reasonable-ish in regards to damage and defense, the spellcaster/martial divide tends to shrink dramatically.
None of that is to say it's the ONLY way to play, but it's the most common and pervasive way to play.
The game as a whole needs a rehaul. There needs to be some system of penalties and bonuses to the ability checks specific to class to help give them more roleplay specialities.
The combat system needs to be revised with some of the above factors considered. Poison could be reworked to do less damage cumulatively, but also require a series of saves (say, 6 chances) or an antidote or you just die. Alternate "damage"/deaths (that still have enough of a chance to them that they aren't "cheats") of that sort would give complexity and possibly alternate ways to win a battle. Fighting more smaller monsters should be encouraged to DMs and crowd control spells and martial abilities are an avenue that might be worth exploring, even if it's just a few more spells or ranged effects like magic missile (and I BELIEVE one of the older versions of the longbow allowed up to 3 arrows to be fired, though the damage output was crap... like a d2.. but don't take my word on that).
Classes need to be codified again based around what makes them unique, with subclasses (or I heard feats? I don't mind a mix and match of your subclass traits within a class based on your level within said class,) and a long hard look at the multiclass system to better handle the balance between sticking with a single class or dipping in another one or two.
The adventure books need....ungh. We need more of them and more variety. And they need to be better written. We keep getting rewrites of the same old adventures, and generally, they aren't THAT hard to adapt from adventure to adventure (the role playing stories aren't really affected at all by the game mechanics, and the modules don't contain much in the way of content that isn't or can't be sourced from the DMG,MM, and maybe another source book.... Which means they don't contain game mechanics in and of themselves.
In fact, the Fighter has to give up an extra attack to do some things like Grapple and other special attacks.
Spell slots are not the same. Spell slots are not damage. Spell slots are a resource to spend for damage. Those are two different things.
1. Nobody does non-lethal damage unless the quest specifically states nonlethal damage.
Therefore, the goal is to get the highest damage on the other player the fastest while not dying. Even life can be a resource. Only the last HP matters. (as a DM, bearing that in mind will help you get over a lot of hang-ups about hitting your players, and as long as you remember to leave them on the verge of death, BUT NOT ACTUALLY DEAD, you'll be better able to control tension. Just don't drag things out. Your villains can almost kill them then leave them for dead, or whatever. Or knock them out and steal their stuff. "Oopsies, I went a little too far", is a lot more forgivable than "LET ME ENJOY YOUR MISERY!!!!MWAHAHAHAAHA" and equally more enoyable than "you will never face a serious threat ever in game...").
2. There's stuff for combat and stuff for role play. The two rarely/never cross. Who the hell casts a sleep spell in Final Fantasy, for example? People go for the biggest damage hits their resources can allow. The only exception is haste or slow.... Because...
3.Whichever has the most turns/actions wins. Actions trump turns which trump single output damage. More turns/actions means more versatility to heal or to buff in addition to more attacks. More attacks means that you can hit more than one target.
3a. More attacks are better than bigger damage with less attacks because less wasted damage. if 8d6 are focused on 1 attack, you can (over)kill 1 goblin, but 4 attacks with 2d6 means if you kill goblin 1 with 2 attacks, there's a chance of those other two attacks being useful to take out gobbo 2. If D&D did decent crowd control, along those lines, a spell that did a LITTLE less damage but hit a lot of opponents is better along the same lines. (this is also why 10 goblins are a bigger threat than a young white dragon)
3b More attacks are better than bigger damage attacks because it evens results out. If you get 4 attacks at 2d6 versus 1 attach at 8d6, it becomes a greater probability of doing SOME damage, because you have more chances to hit. This is also why more smaller dice is always better than less bigger dice....the more certainty of results the better.
5. The referee is your friend in role playing and will be generous, but in combat, they're your opponent and are going to be more conservative and rule against you. There's a reason inspiration is given during role play as a reward for creativity and not as an assist during combat when your dice misbehave. (see what I said about cover an the new ways to have advantage for the rogue). As a side, even though I complain and make use of the rogue's "advantage" as an example, the worst classes for DM interference is the artificer and the mystic, which get very limited/restricted play to the point where most people don't even remember the mystic class.
6. Seriously. Nobody uses status spells in combat unless it's a guarantee for more turns or its what the class is specifically built around. (bard, red wizards, blue mages, whatever...) The one thing people will spam that's adjacent are cheat spells. Things like wish, dimension door, polymorph, etc. which "cheat" by just getting rid of an enemy or teleporting them well out of sight. Things that clone, etc. have some serious restrictions but because there's no real in game time constraints, people turn into optimization dweebs that say they're going to spend a year making 100 clones with true polymorph and command a legion of metallic dragons and.... Once you get rid of these options, and replace them with something more reasonable-ish in regards to damage and defense, the spellcaster/martial divide tends to shrink dramatically.
None of that is to say it's the ONLY way to play, but it's the most common and pervasive way to play.
The game as a whole needs a rehaul. There needs to be some system of penalties and bonuses to the ability checks specific to class to help give them more roleplay specialities.
The combat system needs to be revised with some of the above factors considered. Poison could be reworked to do less damage cumulatively, but also require a series of saves (say, 6 chances) or an antidote or you just die. Alternate "damage"/deaths (that still have enough of a chance to them that they aren't "cheats") of that sort would give complexity and possibly alternate ways to win a battle. Fighting more smaller monsters should be encouraged to DMs and crowd control spells and martial abilities are an avenue that might be worth exploring, even if it's just a few more spells or ranged effects like magic missile (and I BELIEVE one of the older versions of the longbow allowed up to 3 arrows to be fired, though the damage output was crap... like a d2.. but don't take my word on that).
Classes need to be codified again based around what makes them unique, with subclasses (or I heard feats? I don't mind a mix and match of your subclass traits within a class based on your level within said class,) and a long hard look at the multiclass system to better handle the balance between sticking with a single class or dipping in another one or two.
The adventure books need....ungh. We need more of them and more variety. And they need to be better written. We keep getting rewrites of the same old adventures, and generally, they aren't THAT hard to adapt from adventure to adventure (the role playing stories aren't really affected at all by the game mechanics, and the modules don't contain much in the way of content that isn't or can't be sourced from the DMG,MM, and maybe another source book.... Which means they don't contain game mechanics in and of themselves.
But now I'm really going off on a tangent.
You're right...I forgot.
Because of how rarely they use it...