Regarding the "Clone means rich people can live forever" argument, it's ignoring a key world-building element: resource scarcity. A diamond worth 1000 gp alone ain't exactly gonna be the sort of thing one can readily find in any given market, and the components of the cask are left ambiguous enough that the DM can easily explain that making one requires another highly scarce resource. Really, this is a factor for any spell that consumes high value components; if the items are manufactured then the cost is such that they'll most likely only be made on order, creating a production bottleneck, and if they're naturally occurring then as I said the value is pretty indicative of their scarcity, and in a D&D setting that typically carries the unspoken implication that attempting to go gather the material is quite hazardous to one's health. The issue only arises if you assume the straight "gold to spell effect" handwave is what actually happens in the setting.
If that is the case then the spell is useless to PCs so why should it be on their spell lists? If Clone existed IRL, then there would be an entire industry around sourcing / creating the components for it.
Regarding the "Clone means rich people can live forever" argument, it's ignoring a key world-building element: resource scarcity. A diamond worth 1000 gp alone ain't exactly gonna be the sort of thing one can readily find in any given market, and the components of the cask are left ambiguous enough that the DM can easily explain that making one requires another highly scarce resource. Really, this is a factor for any spell that consumes high value components; if the items are manufactured then the cost is such that they'll most likely only be made on order, creating a production bottleneck, and if they're naturally occurring then as I said the value is pretty indicative of their scarcity, and in a D&D setting that typically carries the unspoken implication that attempting to go gather the material is quite hazardous to one's health. The issue only arises if you assume the straight "gold to spell effect" handwave is what actually happens in the setting.
If that is the case then the spell is useless to PCs so why should it be on their spell lists? If Clone existed IRL, then there would be an entire industry around sourcing / creating the components for it.
No, it's not useless to PC's because of this; at the micro level it's an accepted narrative convention that the protagonists can access the tools they need, eg why Tony was able to build a mini reactor and suit of power armor with whatever salvage he was given to work with in that cave. It's just on the macro level of worldbuilding that the resources involved are sufficiently scare to make it somewhere between impossible and unfeasible to create an entire Cloning industry; eg why every advanced engineer on the planet can't make power armor from scrap. Just because something can be done on a small scale in individual cases, it doesn't necessarily follow that resources will be sufficient and evenly distributed so the process will remain equally viable on a large scale.
This also ignores the fact that Wizards who can cast 8th level spells are quite rare within a setting and typically already independently wealthy with their own agendas, begging the question of why they'd be inclined to make their time and effort available for this service. I'm not saying there's no possible way the industry could exist at all, but its viability is entirely based on the larger world state accommodating it, which the DM regulates, meaning this "problem" mostly exists because people fallaciously extrapolate the table convenience of directly expending gold when you cast a spell with a consumed component into the actual in-world mechanism. Which is also why unless I was doing a one-shot or similar brief scenario that wouldn't allow the players an opportunity to stop by a major market, I'd require players to specifically buy components ahead of time rather than allowing for on-the-spot conversions. Could even roll a few die to further implement scarcity of resources, if I thought I needed to.
No, it's not useless to PC's because of this; at the micro level it's an accepted narrative convention that the protagonists can access the tools they need, eg why Tony was able to build a mini reactor and suit of power armor with whatever salvage he was given to work with in that cave.
Except the rest of that movie is about other people trying to commercialize/replicate his work and later movies he has started mass producing those reactors to provide clean energy for the world.
If the technology/magic exists to create a second life for someone, how much would people be willing to pay to get that for themselves? Many would be willing to spend their entire life's savings, so someone is going to find a way to provide it.
If the party can find materials for 4-6 clones (for the whole party) without spending months searching for them (so that it isn't useless to players) then how come nobody else in the whole world can do the same if they spend 5 years searching for the same?
[PS in terms of players, Clone is actually counter-productive in many cases because a player with a clone can't wait to see if they can be Revivified/Raise Deaded and if they aren't then choose to wake up as a clone, and Revivifying and Raise Dead is much more useful since both allow the adventure to continue where they are rather than potentially having to backtrack across the continent to go pick up the clone of the player.]
No, it's not useless to PC's because of this; at the micro level it's an accepted narrative convention that the protagonists can access the tools they need, eg why Tony was able to build a mini reactor and suit of power armor with whatever salvage he was given to work with in that cave.
Except the rest of that movie is about other people trying to commercialize/replicate his work and later movies he has started mass producing those reactors to provide clean energy for the world.
If the technology/magic exists to create a second life for someone, how much would people be willing to pay to get that for themselves? Many would be willing to spend their entire life's savings, so someone is going to find a way to provide it.
If the party can find materials for 4-6 clones (for the whole party) without spending months searching for them (so that it isn't useless to players) then how come nobody else in the whole world can do the same if they spend 5 years searching for the same?
[PS in terms of players, Clone is actually counter-productive in many cases because a player with a clone can't wait to see if they can be Revivified/Raise Deaded and if they aren't then choose to wake up as a clone, and Revivifying and Raise Dead is much more useful since both allow the adventure to continue where they are rather than potentially having to backtrack across the continent to go pick up the clone of the player.]
More for the Reduction Act! errr...
Well, I mean that's a fair point.
I have no issues with revivify or resurrection.
They're far more purpose driven with less tomfoolery that can be done with them. Clone begs for abuse.
OK, so the 10000gp diamond is kind of a foolish thing and just goes to show how economics can ruin it The cost of a diamond is only about how much someone is to spend on it, and if everyone bought up the 100000gp and up diamonds, then the ones worth less than that would soon inflate to that new top dollar. Think the fluctuation of the price of petroleum.
But we can argue that you just need a diamond of a particular size....
Second, if you as a DM are restricting access to the components, then you're pretty much pointing t how potent this and other high level spells like it are, which means they should be just fine stricken from the players list to be moved to a DM list, WHICH, is expressly to restrict the magic to only instances of DM approval.
Third, Rich people cloning themselves....Well, while revivify/resurrection aren't the secret to eternal youth, it is a monk and druid feature to slow aging and pretty much arrest natural senescence. There's also vampires, curses, and contructs oh my! - meaning there's still quite a few other more mundane ways to garner the benefits of constantly getting a new body with the old mind.
Plus, the assumption the clones are of the age and mind of the time of death and transferrence of the soul, right? That wouldn't cheat age....The time of creation of the clone? Now you run into a bit of a rip van winkle situation. Even if it worked out perfectly, you'd still have this slow accumulation of days and time it would take from reviving as a clone to creating the new clone.
Personally of all the options, I prefer druidism the most but mages be mages...
There's also vampires, curses, and contructs oh my! - meaning there's still quite a few other more mundane ways to garner the benefits of constantly getting a new body with the old mind.
I wouldn't call any of those "mundane". Those are all magical phenomena.
Also if you really want a younger body without too much trouble, find a druid that can cast 5th level spells, have someone take your life, and then have the druid cast reincarnate on you. That spell can change your species, but it does put you in a younger body.
It's also worth noting that unlike other revival spells, reincarnate doesn't care if you died of old age, and (if you died of old age) it puts you in a younger body every time as opposed to reviving you at that old age where you'll probably just die again.
Thank you.
I was thinking of that and the thread about Bigby, and then I went on to talk about vampires and got sidetracked and completely forgot. )
Reincarnate is also not broken like clone is, so yet another one that is a great alternative to what everyone says clone is "supposed" to be for. (and lower level, so yays!)
So most of this thread seems to be people wanting to savagely nerf spells and spellcasters, as well as eliminate most of the spells in favor of a "more upcasting!' model that would drastically reduce the total magical effects available to spellcasters. Upcasting cannot change the shape, functionality, or effects of a spell, it can only ever intensify one single aspect of that spell - upcasting fundamentally cannot turn Ray of Frost into Cone of Cold.
But hey. Okay. Presume we did this, and we savagely nerfed almost all available spellcasting and drastically reduced the number of available spells and spell effects without any upcasting stuff.
Question.
Do spellcasters get to have actual class features now?
After all, you're essentially removing the entire reason to be a spellcaster - you can no longer use magic to affect the world or solve your problems, basically the only thing "magic" does is different flavors of ranged pew-pew. Such arcane brilliance. Nevertheless, classes like the wizard and sorcerer effectively get no class features at all outside of Spellcasting because their entire schtick is using Spellcasting to Adventure - to slay their foes, to explore the world, to aid their friends, so on and so forth. If you eliminate any spell that's "game-breaking" - i.e. literally any spell that has any effect that isn't nothing at all save a little bit of raw damage - spellcasters have lost all their class features to gain a "Spellcasting" ability they cannot use to Adventure with anymore.
So that means they get to regain an entire 1-20 suite of fully loaded class features, as dense as rogues or monks. Right? I mean, it's only fair if you're going to turn spellcasting into nothing more than different bad crappy flavors of anime ki blast.
So most of this thread seems to be people wanting to savagely nerf spells and spellcasters, as well as eliminate most of the spells in favor of a "more upcasting!' model that would drastically reduce the total magical effects available to spellcasters. Upcasting cannot change the shape, functionality, or effects of a spell, it can only ever intensify one single aspect of that spell - upcasting fundamentally cannot turn Ray of Frost into Cone of Cold.
But hey. Okay. Presume we did this, and we savagely nerfed almost all available spellcasting and drastically reduced the number of available spells and spell effects without any upcasting stuff.
Question.
Do spellcasters get to have actual class features now?
After all, you're essentially removing the entire reason to be a spellcaster - you can no longer use magic to affect the world or solve your problems, basically the only thing "magic" does is different flavors of ranged pew-pew. Such arcane brilliance. Nevertheless, classes like the wizard and sorcerer effectively get no class features at all outside of Spellcasting because their entire schtick is using Spellcasting to Adventure - to slay their foes, to explore the world, to aid their friends, so on and so forth. If you eliminate any spell that's "game-breaking" - i.e. literally any spell that has any effect that isn't nothing at all save a little bit of raw damage - spellcasters have lost all their class features to gain a "Spellcasting" ability they cannot use to Adventure with anymore.
So that means they get to regain an entire 1-20 suite of fully loaded class features, as dense as rogues or monks. Right? I mean, it's only fair if you're going to turn spellcasting into nothing more than different bad crappy flavors of anime ki blast.
What's different than what they are now?
Most spells DON'T upcast, and combat spells are basically "pick an element, pick a geometric shape for the damage, and pick some pretty dice shapes to roll"?
And you missed where I said combining the spells that DON"T upcast and GIVING them upcast means instead of 3 spells to memorize you only need 1. WHICH FREES YOU UP TO TAKE 2 MORE SPELLS.
I mean I thought that was a pretty damned nice benefit in and of itself.
If your spells give you MORE FLEXIBILITY and are a little less defined (but not broken), isn't that a good thing?
That hardly sounds like a "nerf".
Instead what is being discussed as being removed are spells that
1. your DM will never in their right mind let you have
2. you're never going to see anyhow because rarely does anyone get to 17th level.
And knowing you Yurei, you're going reply with how YOUR table and YOUR DM do this that and the other thing and how we all suck and we should play your way because it's the only right way and so on. Let yur DM give your wizards use of platemail and sneak attack damage then...
There's also vampires, curses, and contructs oh my! - meaning there's still quite a few other more mundane ways to garner the benefits of constantly getting a new body with the old mind.
I wouldn't call any of those "mundane". Those are all magical phenomena.
Also if you really want a younger body without too much trouble, find a druid that can cast 5th level spells, have someone take your life, and then have the druid cast reincarnate on you. That spell can change your species, but it does put you in a younger body.
It's also worth noting that unlike other revival spells, reincarnate doesn't care if you died of old age, and (if you died of old age) it puts you in a younger body every time as opposed to reviving you at that old age where you'll probably just die again.
Besides potentially becoming a new race isn’t Reincarnate a way cheaper version of Clone?
Third, Rich people cloning themselves....Well, while revivify/resurrection aren't the secret to eternal youth, it is a monk and druid feature to slow aging and pretty much arrest natural senescence. There's also vampires, curses, and contructs oh my! - meaning there's still quite a few other more mundane ways to garner the benefits of constantly getting a new body with the old mind.
Monk and Druid features require YOU to achieve some sort of magical / spiritual enlightenment-ish thing to get them, you can't just pay X gold to have it. Whereas Clone anyone can hire a powerful wizard to have them make a clone of themselves. Reincarnate has a time limit so it a bit harder to implement than Clone, and is riskier with changing race on the table and don't guarantee what age you will start at unlike Clone. Vampires and curses and lichdom all come with serious side effects which makes it an interesting moral trade-off so not a universal solution (they also aren't available for just any PC to choose to have when they reach a certain level). Constructs create the whole "is it really you?" moral dilemma and again aren't just automatically available as a PC option. Clone is fantastic as a plot hook, but it just doesn't work as a PC option.
PS there is no point arguing with Yurei, they simply strawman everyone and will never change their mind.
Third, Rich people cloning themselves....Well, while revivify/resurrection aren't the secret to eternal youth, it is a monk and druid feature to slow aging and pretty much arrest natural senescence. There's also vampires, curses, and contructs oh my! - meaning there's still quite a few other more mundane ways to garner the benefits of constantly getting a new body with the old mind.
Monk and Druid features require YOU to achieve some sort of magical / spiritual enlightenment-ish thing to get them, you can't just pay X gold to have it. Whereas Clone anyone can hire a powerful wizard to have them make a clone of themselves. Reincarnate has a time limit so it a bit harder to implement than Clone, and is riskier with changing race on the table and don't guarantee what age you will start at unlike Clone. Vampires and curses and lichdom all come with serious side effects which makes it an interesting moral trade-off so not a universal solution (they also aren't available for just any PC to choose to have when they reach a certain level). Constructs create the whole "is it really you?" moral dilemma and again aren't just automatically available as a PC option. Clone is fantastic as a plot hook, but it just doesn't work as a PC option.
PS there is no point arguing with Yurei, they simply strawman everyone and will never change their mind.
Yeah, I know. I responded more as a way of cutting them off from taking over the thread with a long unconstructive rant with a lot of swearing but no substance...
Plus the way I am proposing to reduce spells in upcasting or changing effects is VERY close to getting metamagic as I propose for Sorcerers, and (and dorsay's proposal for all casters, which I think is a bit TOO free for everyone outside of sorcerers. It seems a lot of people get anxiety when you say you want to get rid of something.
Like asking them to toss out an old analog alarm clock for a newer digital one that also plays bluetooth and the radio...
As for clone versus the other options, you're right, but I'm trying to explain that there's other ways... Story wise clone can still have some mad mage hijinx to it. )
EDIT: I have a feeling that I'm going to have to homebrew up some pen and paper versions of spellcasters at some point. Hopefully in the winter when everything's dead and slow.
Changes always make me giggle as I break out my notes on the Rate of Adoption of Innovation, which is an incredible bit of science that helps folks to understand why it is that their particular idea for a change gets so much resistance, lol.
Converting it to a sociocultural model on a small scale specific to a fairly closed population like this one, what we end up seeing is a way to identifying a "failed" innovation and a successful innovation via the means of the speed of adoption to reach a midpoint before the backlash. Note that in cases like this, a midpoint is 41%. Reach that, and you have a fixed innovation that *could* grow, provided there is no competing innovation that is within +/-1 10% of the other.
An example of a failed in this case would be something like 4e, which was not adopted by enough within the usual stage one two year span of measure (and compared to its following innovation).
When looking at these kinds of changes, the question is not "would the participants in this thread reach 41%" but "would 41% of those folks who play the game as a whole adopt this".
Overall, I am inclined to think that folks *would* adopt a "DM Spell List". one of the primary drivers of that would be the persistent desire for additional tools to assist DMs, particularly newer to the role individuals who often struggle to develop and devise tactical and strategic approaches to creating engaging encounters.
I am not nearly as convinced, based on a broader and more generalized sweep of players, that shifting Clone or Simulacrum or Goodberry would meet the necessary thresholds. I do think that Wish would -- aside form the complicate internal game history of that spell, most recognize the potential for abuse and especially the historic precedents that influence the presence of such a concept. To the benefit there is an expectation ((particularly among newer players) that a wish is a dangerous and gamified spell, where in there should be a "matching of wits" sort of effort.
On the other hand, if you were to do a poll of individuals by primary role, I am willing to bet that Players would favor increasing damage for Cantrips through 4th Level spells and that DMs would favor evening out damage of 2nd through 7th level spells and expanding the higher level spells to encourage higher level gameplay.
That would mean that spells need to be looked at more closely in terms of how they compare in power and capabilities among themselves and sorted, but I am also of the firm opinion that right now the current dev team is going to favor the Player side argument as a whole, based in part on extant exemplars.
*deep breath*
Ok, I apologize for subjecting you all to that. it is a working weekend and my brain is in a very strange space.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
I am not nearly as convinced, based on a broader and more generalized sweep of players, that shifting Clone or Simulacrum or Goodberry would meet the necessary thresholds. I do think that Wish would -- aside form the complicate internal game history of that spell, most recognize the potential for abuse and especially the historic precedents that influence the presence of such a concept. To the benefit there is an expectation ((particularly among newer players) that a wish is a dangerous and gamified spell, where in there should be a "matching of wits" sort of effort.
On the other hand, if you were to do a poll of individuals by primary role, I am willing to bet that Players would favor increasing damage for Cantrips through 4th Level spells and that DMs would favor evening out damage of 2nd through 7th level spells and expanding the higher level spells to encourage higher level gameplay.
That would mean that spells need to be looked at more closely in terms of how they compare in power and capabilities among themselves and sorted, but I am also of the firm opinion that right now the current dev team is going to favor the Player side argument as a whole, based in part on extant exemplars.
I don't disagree.
Except on the clone and simulacrum. I think if they were to simply "disappear" the majority of players wouldn't notice and just accept it, provided there were more new spells overall.
I don't think the current dev team is even looking at altering or changing spells. They seem far more concerned with changing subclass features and adding complexity (though not good complexity. They prefer additive complexity over subtraction, and when combined with 5e's super interwoven system, the additive "complexity" creates a house of cards situation.)
Most spells DON'T upcast, and combat spells are basically "pick an element, pick a geometric shape for the damage, and pick some pretty dice shapes to roll"?
And you missed where I said combining the spells that DON"T upcast and GIVING them upcast means instead of 3 spells to memorize you only need 1. WHICH FREES YOU UP TO TAKE 2 MORE SPELLS.
I mean I thought that was a pretty damned nice benefit in and of itself.
Again, the issue is that "upcasting" doesn't work the way you're pushing for it to work. Upcasting cannot change the behavior of the spell, it cannot change the shape of the spell, it cannot change the nature of the spell. Upcasting, as it exists in D&D 5e, allows a spellcaster to intensify one and only one numerical trait of the spell, such as damage dice, target count, range, and so on.
For upcasting to do what you want it to do, i.e. transform Ice Spell A into Stronger Ice Spell B with completely different reach, range, shape, and effects from Ice Spell A, you would have to embed the entire spell text of Stronger Ice Spell B into the text for Ice Spell A. You would not be "eliminating" anymuch text at all, each spell would still need all the same text to describe its effects as it does now. You'd simply be taking, as you said, Package Deal spells that can be cast as any of a wide number of variations, which would in turn necessitate significantly reducing both spells known and spells prepared for most spellcasting classes.
Would that be a better paradigm? Possibly. I could see an argument for treating spells more as learning the fundamental framework of a given arcane discipline, and any given spellcaster only learns a few such frameworks. Knowing a dozen spell frameworks would be a sign of a truly superb high-level archmagus, while a basic hedge wizard would only know a single spell framework. It could legitimately be an improvement. The problem is, as ever, that such a spell system "would not be D&D." D&D has a very large profusion of discrete spells that have a single effect. That large pool of spells is both one of D&D's biggest sore points and one of its greatest strengths compared to other systems. I've played a few different systems now with "framework"-style Magic/Powers, where you pick a basic template, modify it in one of a few proscribed ways, slap whatever janky skin pleases your thinkmeats on it, and call it a "spell". Those systems feel shallow and deeply unsatisfying next to the enormous range of magical potential D&D has.
The fact that D&D is willing to let you break the game is one of the reasons people love D&D spellcasters. Ideally they don't "break the game" in ways the DM can't handle, but the idea that your spellcaster can one day aspire to reshape the world around them and take control of reality itself is a big reason why people play D&D spellcasters. Instead of, say, Savage Worlds "spellcasters", which don't ever break the game...but are also so incredibly limited they don't really feel like 'mages' at all.
If your spells give you MORE FLEXIBILITY and are a little less defined (but not broken), isn't that a good thing?
That hardly sounds like a "nerf".
Your posts over the last however-long-I've-been-reading, say the last month or so, have shown that you don't trust players for spit. You are all in on hard-locking players away from any option they even simply might use in a way you didn't predict to do something you don't want them to do. How you think loosening definitions and leaving more room for interpretation and shenanigans will result in the game being less 'broken', I do not know. Anyone who shares the mindset of not trusting players at all and wishing player options to be hard-limited, hard-defined, and strongly enclosed within thick walls of Acceptable Behavior is going to struggle with 5e's magic system.
They made 4e for players and DMs that don't trust each other, and players and DMs who wanted a more balanced game. Everybody hated it, apparently. Balance being fuzzy, wobbly, prone to weird spikes both up and down, and up to the DM to ride herd on with the willing and freely given cooperation of the players is where people want D&D. They want to be able to say "hey, this cave we're fighting in has a bunch of stalactites on the ceiling, and I have telekinesis active. Can I pull a stalactite off the ceiling and impale this boss we're fighting?" even though Telekinesis doesn't technically allow for any such thing. They want DMs to be able to roll with the unexpected and creative, and they want players to avoid running away with that creativity and becoming the sort of people half a dozen YouTube channels tell Reddit horror stories about.
Instead what is being discussed as being removed are spells that
1. your DM will never in their right mind let you have
2. you're never going to see anyhow because rarely does anyone get to 17th level.
Playing an 18th-level wizard right now. Well, not right now, but we've got a session planned tomorrow if the wheels don't come off. High-level play may be rare, but that just means that when you do get there you're incredibly excited to play with all the cool awesome toys you never get to play with. Taking them all away would suck, and remove much of the reason to want high-level play.
As for "no DM in their right mind...", the DM can do that right now. Any DM can give their players a list of spells and say "these aren't available to learn on level-up; either they don't exist in this world or they require more training than you can get just by adventuring." Would it be cool if the DMG had a list of classless spells that were DM-specific and could be used by villains, or given as rewards/treasures to players who earn them? Yes. It's one of the reasons I loved the Dunamancy spells from Wildemount so much - they were exactly that, on top of being an interesting new spin on a magical tradition. I'm all for such a list, and Wish should absolutely be on it. But you also need to let the handful of players who reach the higher levels of the game reap the benefits of doing so.
And knowing you Yurei, you're going reply with how YOUR table and YOUR DM do this that and the other thing and how we all suck and we should play your way because it's the only right way and so on. Let yur DM give your wizards use of platemail and sneak attack damage then...
Regardless. My question was very real. If you want to make spellcasting into an anemic shadow of its former self - which you do - does that mean spellcasters get actual class features? Obviously you jump straight to heavy armor and Sneak Attack because of course you assume I just want combat power, but nobody who wants combat power plays a spellcaster in 5e. If all you care about is combat power you play a paladin. You play spellcasters when you want to be a versatile, flexible character with a wide diversity of answers for a wide range of problems. If you want to remove spellcasting's ability to do anything but deal damage, then it strikes me as only fair that we get class features that returns some of the versatility and flexibility you're stripping from the base spell system back to us, ne?
Which spells are we talking about that most of this thread wants to "savagely" nerf?
From what I recall, it's mainly some of the higher-level spells (such as clone, wish, and simulacrum) as well as the ones that create instant survival resources (like goodberry) that get most of the attention here.
There have even been calls to buff certain spells that are terrible like find traps, mordenkainen's sword, and the like.
From my buzz-through, I noticed the obvious calls to eliminate stuff like Shield, Misty Step, Absorb Elements, Fly, Counterspell, and other common/popular spells for being "too good/must-picks".
There were multiple calls to give every single control-type spell an automatic recurring save, essentially rendering control spells meaningless/"Never Takes" as anything with a recurring save is by definition horrible. The spell is already a coin flip on whether it's a complete waste of a turn or not when you cast it; allowing the target to freely break out of the spell without expending any effort or actions essentially means the spell is a complete waste of your turn even if the enemy "fails" their save.
There were calls to eliminate the multiattack from Tasha's-style summon spells without replacing it with any other spell level-based combat scaling, and to require the spellcaster to use their action to command the summon. On top of at least a few calls to add "going-rogue" mechanics to those spells so the summon can freely turn on the caster and their party whenever the DM wishes while still, presumably, consuming the caster's concentration.
Balance being fuzzy, wobbly, prone to weird spikes both up and down, and up to the DM to ride herd on with the willing and freely given cooperation of the players is where people want D&D. They want to be able to say "hey, this cave we're fighting in has a bunch of stalactites on the ceiling, and I have telekinesis active. Can I pull a stalactite off the ceiling and impale this boss we're fighting?" even though Telekinesis doesn't technically allow for any such thing. They want DMs to be able to roll with the unexpected and creative, and they want players to avoid running away with that creativity and becoming the sort of people half a dozen YouTube channels tell Reddit horror stories about.
So, not that WotC pays all that much attention to such things (because a fundamental flaw, imo, twixt the distinct needs of scientists and corporate game designers) but...
This. Precisely this. Every major study done on D&D players over the last 30 years has shown this is what drives the game at its core. I'm talking likely around a thousand studies. This is the "vast majority".
It is important to note a couple things:
The Vast Majority has no clue that DDB exists.
The Vast Majority is not represented on DDB or even the old main D&D website.
The concept of sampling bias is mitigated against the huge swath of studies (which all had to control for it anyway because people laugh at you when you say you are going to study D&D players), but it is in full swing when it comes to the playtesting feedback.
One thing to factor into all of the requests is "how much more expensive are the books going to be?". Because the more pages, the pricier the book gets, not only in terms of publishing costs, but in terms of art costs, time involved, and more. Yes, they could just move it all online and stop doing physical books. I have no doubt that some "smart head" at Hasbro has asked that question, and the reality is: that would increase the cost of the services to make up for a sudden revenue drop, it would infuriate pretty much the bulk of the player base, it would reduce new players dramatically (more so than an price increase on the books, which is already going to be high), and it would be a nightmare.
The straight up removal of spells? No matter what the spell, I guarantee you there is going to be a huge chunk of players (at least 15% -- pick your spell) who will be furious if such is done. Minmaxers (who are the majority of the influencers) will go to war because they sorta have a job of finding ways to exploit everything. It is part of how they have fun playing the game.
Simplification isn't just about stripping out rules it is also about making those rules easier to use and less interpretive while still allowing for the flexibility in interpretation that Yurei speaks to. It is also about making sure that the core books don't become unpublishable like a certain homebrewing woman's 1200 page plus monstrosity that has to be sectioned not just for readability but for purposes of printing.
And that's all balanced with the other concerns.
"Balance" is not something that genuinely exists in the game. There is "balancing the mechanics", and that exists to some degree, but the idea that one can balance classes against each other while you have folks who can maybe take on six people in a turn and others capable of leveling a city in a turn is sorta, well, ludicrous.
IF you want to balance Wizards against fighters, you have to make magic less powerful. Way less powerful. Do that, you take away the charm and joy and fun for people who play wizards. Take away the ability to ask a deity to drop a rock on someone's head and you lose the joy and fun of playing a cleric. And so forth and so on.
Spell changes affect every single player. This site is not a representative sampling of players -- never has been, never claimed to be, and even wotc knows it. The goal is to make it that way (especially with the VTT), but it ain't such now.
If you want changes to the game, for the most part, you have to make them. That isn't a "right thing" or a "wrong thing", it isn't good design or bad design. It is simply that the very basic foundations (which is what D&D has always provided, in every edition, merely with differing ideas of what constitutes a foundational element) don't meet the needs.
We (my group) wanted spell points and crafting an vehicle rules and something that wasn't so deeply committed to ideas stolen from Tolkien, Vance, Moorcock, and others. So we've been buildings up to that, while still keeping those core bits, that central foundation, because we want to keep playing D&D and we want to use 5e for it.
Remember that is the goal of the designers, no matter what else: to make sure that people can play the game in a way that is utterly and completely unlike your own. Imagine how your game works and then imagine a game that is completely the opposite of how your game works. Everything you hate, they love. Everything that is broken for you is perfect for them and everything they think is broken is perfect to you.
When you make a suggestion, you have to find a way to make sure that it works for all of that. I am well aware no one will, lol, I just know that it needs to be pointed out. Even to me, because, yeah, of course I like my ideas more.
I pay attention to these UA threads and the UA because I want to see where they are going with it, and since I started my efforts before they did, I am slightly ahead of them, but I am also aware that I still need to color on the same page, at least, so changes they make are being reflected in my work. I will be finished before they are. There are going to be changes they do after all the playtesting, as well.
Ah, screw it. Nobody reads these damn things anyway.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
From my buzz-through, I noticed the obvious calls to eliminate stuff like Shield, Misty Step, Absorb Elements, Fly, Counterspell, and other common/popular spells for being "too good/must-picks".
Shield and Absorb Elements have the problem that they're kind of bad at the level where you learn them, and amazing when you're high level, which is backwards: spells should be great at the level where you learn them, and gradually decline in relevance.
Misty Step and Fly break certain types of puzzles, which I really think is on the DM: either don't use puzzles of those types, or accept that they're a resource drain rather than a big puzzle that will stop people.
From my buzz-through, I noticed the obvious calls to eliminate stuff like Shield, Misty Step, Absorb Elements, Fly, Counterspell, and other common/popular spells for being "too good/must-picks".
Shield and Absorb Elements have the problem that they're kind of bad at the level where you learn them, and amazing when you're high level, which is backwards: spells should be great at the level where you learn them, and gradually decline in relevance.
Misty Step and Fly break certain types of puzzles, which I really think is on the DM: either don't use puzzles of those types, or accept that they're a resource drain rather than a big puzzle that will stop people.
I kind of disagree with the bolded part.
I think spells should be useful at the level they are gained, and become more useful over time. For me, it is ok if they just do that one thing that is super useful well and that's all they do (it is in the nature of the underlying spell rules) and don't get better, but other spells should start out weaker and then get more and more potent as one moves on (since the characters are supposed to be that way anyway).
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
The fact that D&D is willing to let you break the game is one of the reasons people love D&D spellcasters. Ideally they don't "break the game" in ways the DM can't handle, but the idea that your spellcaster can one day aspire to reshape the world around them and take control of reality itself is a big reason why people play D&D spellcasters. Instead of, say, Savage Worlds "spellcasters", which don't ever break the game...but are also so incredibly limited they don't really feel like 'mages' at all.
Isn't Savage Worlds a system that has the player characters still be more or less human, rather than budding demigods? If so, that might be why the magic in that system doesn't involve reality bending so powerful that it should really make said characters the center of their own cults.
To illustrate what I mean, even Level 1 spells in D&D are potent enough that PCs in any setting where magic is actually rare in a "show, don't tell" kind of way would make them either the source of awe by others or a source of fear (or both).
Aside from the exploding dice mechanic, you mean? lol.
yeah, skill based system that employs a core foundation of "normal people" who become less normal over time is still there (it is meant to operate across genres), but the upper capabilities are not as mythical in nature.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
I think spells should be useful at the level they are gained, and become more useful over time.
When you get a new level of spells, this should be an ooh, I got new toys event. Once you've known the spell for ten levels, it's part of your background.
For example, here's how I'd redesign those spells:
Absorb Elements changes from "resistance" to "prevent up to 10 damage, +5 per level above 1". That's much better than the existing spell against most tier 1 threats -- you aren't generally going to see a situation where resistance is better until the DM is dropping fireball on you, which is generally a tier 2 problem -- but it's now actually appropriate for a level 1 spell.
Shield changes from "+5 AC" to "If AC is less than 20, it becomes 20, +1 per level above 1". For a low level wizard, that's probably better than current, since low level wizards do not generally walk around with a base AC of 15+. It's still competitive at mid levels, but it doesn't become a component of achieving AC 30.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
If that is the case then the spell is useless to PCs so why should it be on their spell lists? If Clone existed IRL, then there would be an entire industry around sourcing / creating the components for it.
No, it's not useless to PC's because of this; at the micro level it's an accepted narrative convention that the protagonists can access the tools they need, eg why Tony was able to build a mini reactor and suit of power armor with whatever salvage he was given to work with in that cave. It's just on the macro level of worldbuilding that the resources involved are sufficiently scare to make it somewhere between impossible and unfeasible to create an entire Cloning industry; eg why every advanced engineer on the planet can't make power armor from scrap. Just because something can be done on a small scale in individual cases, it doesn't necessarily follow that resources will be sufficient and evenly distributed so the process will remain equally viable on a large scale.
This also ignores the fact that Wizards who can cast 8th level spells are quite rare within a setting and typically already independently wealthy with their own agendas, begging the question of why they'd be inclined to make their time and effort available for this service. I'm not saying there's no possible way the industry could exist at all, but its viability is entirely based on the larger world state accommodating it, which the DM regulates, meaning this "problem" mostly exists because people fallaciously extrapolate the table convenience of directly expending gold when you cast a spell with a consumed component into the actual in-world mechanism. Which is also why unless I was doing a one-shot or similar brief scenario that wouldn't allow the players an opportunity to stop by a major market, I'd require players to specifically buy components ahead of time rather than allowing for on-the-spot conversions. Could even roll a few die to further implement scarcity of resources, if I thought I needed to.
Except the rest of that movie is about other people trying to commercialize/replicate his work and later movies he has started mass producing those reactors to provide clean energy for the world.
If the technology/magic exists to create a second life for someone, how much would people be willing to pay to get that for themselves? Many would be willing to spend their entire life's savings, so someone is going to find a way to provide it.
If the party can find materials for 4-6 clones (for the whole party) without spending months searching for them (so that it isn't useless to players) then how come nobody else in the whole world can do the same if they spend 5 years searching for the same?
[PS in terms of players, Clone is actually counter-productive in many cases because a player with a clone can't wait to see if they can be Revivified/Raise Deaded and if they aren't then choose to wake up as a clone, and Revivifying and Raise Dead is much more useful since both allow the adventure to continue where they are rather than potentially having to backtrack across the continent to go pick up the clone of the player.]
More for the Reduction Act! errr...
Well, I mean that's a fair point.
I have no issues with revivify or resurrection.
They're far more purpose driven with less tomfoolery that can be done with them. Clone begs for abuse.
OK, so the 10000gp diamond is kind of a foolish thing and just goes to show how economics can ruin it The cost of a diamond is only about how much someone is to spend on it, and if everyone bought up the 100000gp and up diamonds, then the ones worth less than that would soon inflate to that new top dollar. Think the fluctuation of the price of petroleum.
But we can argue that you just need a diamond of a particular size....
Second, if you as a DM are restricting access to the components, then you're pretty much pointing t how potent this and other high level spells like it are, which means they should be just fine stricken from the players list to be moved to a DM list, WHICH, is expressly to restrict the magic to only instances of DM approval.
Third, Rich people cloning themselves....Well, while revivify/resurrection aren't the secret to eternal youth, it is a monk and druid feature to slow aging and pretty much arrest natural senescence. There's also vampires, curses, and contructs oh my! - meaning there's still quite a few other more mundane ways to garner the benefits of constantly getting a new body with the old mind.
Plus, the assumption the clones are of the age and mind of the time of death and transferrence of the soul, right? That wouldn't cheat age....The time of creation of the clone? Now you run into a bit of a rip van winkle situation. Even if it worked out perfectly, you'd still have this slow accumulation of days and time it would take from reviving as a clone to creating the new clone.
Personally of all the options, I prefer druidism the most but mages be mages...
Thank you.
I was thinking of that and the thread about Bigby, and then I went on to talk about vampires and got sidetracked and completely forgot. )
Reincarnate is also not broken like clone is, so yet another one that is a great alternative to what everyone says clone is "supposed" to be for. (and lower level, so yays!)
So most of this thread seems to be people wanting to savagely nerf spells and spellcasters, as well as eliminate most of the spells in favor of a "more upcasting!' model that would drastically reduce the total magical effects available to spellcasters. Upcasting cannot change the shape, functionality, or effects of a spell, it can only ever intensify one single aspect of that spell - upcasting fundamentally cannot turn Ray of Frost into Cone of Cold.
But hey. Okay. Presume we did this, and we savagely nerfed almost all available spellcasting and drastically reduced the number of available spells and spell effects without any upcasting stuff.
Question.
Do spellcasters get to have actual class features now?
After all, you're essentially removing the entire reason to be a spellcaster - you can no longer use magic to affect the world or solve your problems, basically the only thing "magic" does is different flavors of ranged pew-pew. Such arcane brilliance. Nevertheless, classes like the wizard and sorcerer effectively get no class features at all outside of Spellcasting because their entire schtick is using Spellcasting to Adventure - to slay their foes, to explore the world, to aid their friends, so on and so forth. If you eliminate any spell that's "game-breaking" - i.e. literally any spell that has any effect that isn't nothing at all save a little bit of raw damage - spellcasters have lost all their class features to gain a "Spellcasting" ability they cannot use to Adventure with anymore.
So that means they get to regain an entire 1-20 suite of fully loaded class features, as dense as rogues or monks. Right? I mean, it's only fair if you're going to turn spellcasting into nothing more than different bad crappy flavors of anime ki blast.
Please do not contact or message me.
What's different than what they are now?
Most spells DON'T upcast, and combat spells are basically "pick an element, pick a geometric shape for the damage, and pick some pretty dice shapes to roll"?
And you missed where I said combining the spells that DON"T upcast and GIVING them upcast means instead of 3 spells to memorize you only need 1. WHICH FREES YOU UP TO TAKE 2 MORE SPELLS.
I mean I thought that was a pretty damned nice benefit in and of itself.
If your spells give you MORE FLEXIBILITY and are a little less defined (but not broken), isn't that a good thing?
That hardly sounds like a "nerf".
Instead what is being discussed as being removed are spells that
1. your DM will never in their right mind let you have
2. you're never going to see anyhow because rarely does anyone get to 17th level.
And knowing you Yurei, you're going reply with how YOUR table and YOUR DM do this that and the other thing and how we all suck and we should play your way because it's the only right way and so on. Let yur DM give your wizards use of platemail and sneak attack damage then...
Besides potentially becoming a new race isn’t Reincarnate a way cheaper version of Clone?
Monk and Druid features require YOU to achieve some sort of magical / spiritual enlightenment-ish thing to get them, you can't just pay X gold to have it. Whereas Clone anyone can hire a powerful wizard to have them make a clone of themselves. Reincarnate has a time limit so it a bit harder to implement than Clone, and is riskier with changing race on the table and don't guarantee what age you will start at unlike Clone. Vampires and curses and lichdom all come with serious side effects which makes it an interesting moral trade-off so not a universal solution (they also aren't available for just any PC to choose to have when they reach a certain level). Constructs create the whole "is it really you?" moral dilemma and again aren't just automatically available as a PC option. Clone is fantastic as a plot hook, but it just doesn't work as a PC option.
PS there is no point arguing with Yurei, they simply strawman everyone and will never change their mind.
Yeah, I know. I responded more as a way of cutting them off from taking over the thread with a long unconstructive rant with a lot of swearing but no substance...
Plus the way I am proposing to reduce spells in upcasting or changing effects is VERY close to getting metamagic as I propose for Sorcerers, and (and dorsay's proposal for all casters, which I think is a bit TOO free for everyone outside of sorcerers. It seems a lot of people get anxiety when you say you want to get rid of something.
Like asking them to toss out an old analog alarm clock for a newer digital one that also plays bluetooth and the radio...
As for clone versus the other options, you're right, but I'm trying to explain that there's other ways... Story wise clone can still have some mad mage hijinx to it. )
EDIT: I have a feeling that I'm going to have to homebrew up some pen and paper versions of spellcasters at some point. Hopefully in the winter when everything's dead and slow.
Changes always make me giggle as I break out my notes on the Rate of Adoption of Innovation, which is an incredible bit of science that helps folks to understand why it is that their particular idea for a change gets so much resistance, lol.
Converting it to a sociocultural model on a small scale specific to a fairly closed population like this one, what we end up seeing is a way to identifying a "failed" innovation and a successful innovation via the means of the speed of adoption to reach a midpoint before the backlash. Note that in cases like this, a midpoint is 41%. Reach that, and you have a fixed innovation that *could* grow, provided there is no competing innovation that is within +/-1 10% of the other.
An example of a failed in this case would be something like 4e, which was not adopted by enough within the usual stage one two year span of measure (and compared to its following innovation).
When looking at these kinds of changes, the question is not "would the participants in this thread reach 41%" but "would 41% of those folks who play the game as a whole adopt this".
Overall, I am inclined to think that folks *would* adopt a "DM Spell List". one of the primary drivers of that would be the persistent desire for additional tools to assist DMs, particularly newer to the role individuals who often struggle to develop and devise tactical and strategic approaches to creating engaging encounters.
I am not nearly as convinced, based on a broader and more generalized sweep of players, that shifting Clone or Simulacrum or Goodberry would meet the necessary thresholds. I do think that Wish would -- aside form the complicate internal game history of that spell, most recognize the potential for abuse and especially the historic precedents that influence the presence of such a concept. To the benefit there is an expectation ((particularly among newer players) that a wish is a dangerous and gamified spell, where in there should be a "matching of wits" sort of effort.
On the other hand, if you were to do a poll of individuals by primary role, I am willing to bet that Players would favor increasing damage for Cantrips through 4th Level spells and that DMs would favor evening out damage of 2nd through 7th level spells and expanding the higher level spells to encourage higher level gameplay.
That would mean that spells need to be looked at more closely in terms of how they compare in power and capabilities among themselves and sorted, but I am also of the firm opinion that right now the current dev team is going to favor the Player side argument as a whole, based in part on extant exemplars.
*deep breath*
Ok, I apologize for subjecting you all to that. it is a working weekend and my brain is in a very strange space.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
I don't disagree.
Except on the clone and simulacrum. I think if they were to simply "disappear" the majority of players wouldn't notice and just accept it, provided there were more new spells overall.
I don't think the current dev team is even looking at altering or changing spells. They seem far more concerned with changing subclass features and adding complexity (though not good complexity. They prefer additive complexity over subtraction, and when combined with 5e's super interwoven system, the additive "complexity" creates a house of cards situation.)
Again, the issue is that "upcasting" doesn't work the way you're pushing for it to work. Upcasting cannot change the behavior of the spell, it cannot change the shape of the spell, it cannot change the nature of the spell. Upcasting, as it exists in D&D 5e, allows a spellcaster to intensify one and only one numerical trait of the spell, such as damage dice, target count, range, and so on.
For upcasting to do what you want it to do, i.e. transform Ice Spell A into Stronger Ice Spell B with completely different reach, range, shape, and effects from Ice Spell A, you would have to embed the entire spell text of Stronger Ice Spell B into the text for Ice Spell A. You would not be "eliminating" anymuch text at all, each spell would still need all the same text to describe its effects as it does now. You'd simply be taking, as you said, Package Deal spells that can be cast as any of a wide number of variations, which would in turn necessitate significantly reducing both spells known and spells prepared for most spellcasting classes.
Would that be a better paradigm? Possibly. I could see an argument for treating spells more as learning the fundamental framework of a given arcane discipline, and any given spellcaster only learns a few such frameworks. Knowing a dozen spell frameworks would be a sign of a truly superb high-level archmagus, while a basic hedge wizard would only know a single spell framework. It could legitimately be an improvement. The problem is, as ever, that such a spell system "would not be D&D." D&D has a very large profusion of discrete spells that have a single effect. That large pool of spells is both one of D&D's biggest sore points and one of its greatest strengths compared to other systems. I've played a few different systems now with "framework"-style Magic/Powers, where you pick a basic template, modify it in one of a few proscribed ways, slap whatever janky skin pleases your thinkmeats on it, and call it a "spell". Those systems feel shallow and deeply unsatisfying next to the enormous range of magical potential D&D has.
The fact that D&D is willing to let you break the game is one of the reasons people love D&D spellcasters. Ideally they don't "break the game" in ways the DM can't handle, but the idea that your spellcaster can one day aspire to reshape the world around them and take control of reality itself is a big reason why people play D&D spellcasters. Instead of, say, Savage Worlds "spellcasters", which don't ever break the game...but are also so incredibly limited they don't really feel like 'mages' at all.
Your posts over the last however-long-I've-been-reading, say the last month or so, have shown that you don't trust players for spit. You are all in on hard-locking players away from any option they even simply might use in a way you didn't predict to do something you don't want them to do. How you think loosening definitions and leaving more room for interpretation and shenanigans will result in the game being less 'broken', I do not know. Anyone who shares the mindset of not trusting players at all and wishing player options to be hard-limited, hard-defined, and strongly enclosed within thick walls of Acceptable Behavior is going to struggle with 5e's magic system.
They made 4e for players and DMs that don't trust each other, and players and DMs who wanted a more balanced game. Everybody hated it, apparently. Balance being fuzzy, wobbly, prone to weird spikes both up and down, and up to the DM to ride herd on with the willing and freely given cooperation of the players is where people want D&D. They want to be able to say "hey, this cave we're fighting in has a bunch of stalactites on the ceiling, and I have telekinesis active. Can I pull a stalactite off the ceiling and impale this boss we're fighting?" even though Telekinesis doesn't technically allow for any such thing. They want DMs to be able to roll with the unexpected and creative, and they want players to avoid running away with that creativity and becoming the sort of people half a dozen YouTube channels tell Reddit horror stories about.
Playing an 18th-level wizard right now. Well, not right now, but we've got a session planned tomorrow if the wheels don't come off. High-level play may be rare, but that just means that when you do get there you're incredibly excited to play with all the cool awesome toys you never get to play with. Taking them all away would suck, and remove much of the reason to want high-level play.
As for "no DM in their right mind...", the DM can do that right now. Any DM can give their players a list of spells and say "these aren't available to learn on level-up; either they don't exist in this world or they require more training than you can get just by adventuring." Would it be cool if the DMG had a list of classless spells that were DM-specific and could be used by villains, or given as rewards/treasures to players who earn them? Yes. It's one of the reasons I loved the Dunamancy spells from Wildemount so much - they were exactly that, on top of being an interesting new spin on a magical tradition. I'm all for such a list, and Wish should absolutely be on it. But you also need to let the handful of players who reach the higher levels of the game reap the benefits of doing so.
Regardless. My question was very real. If you want to make spellcasting into an anemic shadow of its former self - which you do - does that mean spellcasters get actual class features? Obviously you jump straight to heavy armor and Sneak Attack because of course you assume I just want combat power, but nobody who wants combat power plays a spellcaster in 5e. If all you care about is combat power you play a paladin. You play spellcasters when you want to be a versatile, flexible character with a wide diversity of answers for a wide range of problems. If you want to remove spellcasting's ability to do anything but deal damage, then it strikes me as only fair that we get class features that returns some of the versatility and flexibility you're stripping from the base spell system back to us, ne?
Please do not contact or message me.
.....
Anyhow, one class that gets ignored a lot in the spells department is the artificer.
I'm not sure what is the best fix. More magical items and crafting tables or a better list of spells that they can infuse...
From my buzz-through, I noticed the obvious calls to eliminate stuff like Shield, Misty Step, Absorb Elements, Fly, Counterspell, and other common/popular spells for being "too good/must-picks".
There were multiple calls to give every single control-type spell an automatic recurring save, essentially rendering control spells meaningless/"Never Takes" as anything with a recurring save is by definition horrible. The spell is already a coin flip on whether it's a complete waste of a turn or not when you cast it; allowing the target to freely break out of the spell without expending any effort or actions essentially means the spell is a complete waste of your turn even if the enemy "fails" their save.
There were calls to eliminate the multiattack from Tasha's-style summon spells without replacing it with any other spell level-based combat scaling, and to require the spellcaster to use their action to command the summon. On top of at least a few calls to add "going-rogue" mechanics to those spells so the summon can freely turn on the caster and their party whenever the DM wishes while still, presumably, consuming the caster's concentration.
To name a few.
Please do not contact or message me.
So, not that WotC pays all that much attention to such things (because a fundamental flaw, imo, twixt the distinct needs of scientists and corporate game designers) but...
This. Precisely this. Every major study done on D&D players over the last 30 years has shown this is what drives the game at its core. I'm talking likely around a thousand studies. This is the "vast majority".
It is important to note a couple things:
The concept of sampling bias is mitigated against the huge swath of studies (which all had to control for it anyway because people laugh at you when you say you are going to study D&D players), but it is in full swing when it comes to the playtesting feedback.
One thing to factor into all of the requests is "how much more expensive are the books going to be?". Because the more pages, the pricier the book gets, not only in terms of publishing costs, but in terms of art costs, time involved, and more. Yes, they could just move it all online and stop doing physical books. I have no doubt that some "smart head" at Hasbro has asked that question, and the reality is: that would increase the cost of the services to make up for a sudden revenue drop, it would infuriate pretty much the bulk of the player base, it would reduce new players dramatically (more so than an price increase on the books, which is already going to be high), and it would be a nightmare.
The straight up removal of spells? No matter what the spell, I guarantee you there is going to be a huge chunk of players (at least 15% -- pick your spell) who will be furious if such is done. Minmaxers (who are the majority of the influencers) will go to war because they sorta have a job of finding ways to exploit everything. It is part of how they have fun playing the game.
Simplification isn't just about stripping out rules it is also about making those rules easier to use and less interpretive while still allowing for the flexibility in interpretation that Yurei speaks to. It is also about making sure that the core books don't become unpublishable like a certain homebrewing woman's 1200 page plus monstrosity that has to be sectioned not just for readability but for purposes of printing.
And that's all balanced with the other concerns.
"Balance" is not something that genuinely exists in the game. There is "balancing the mechanics", and that exists to some degree, but the idea that one can balance classes against each other while you have folks who can maybe take on six people in a turn and others capable of leveling a city in a turn is sorta, well, ludicrous.
IF you want to balance Wizards against fighters, you have to make magic less powerful. Way less powerful. Do that, you take away the charm and joy and fun for people who play wizards. Take away the ability to ask a deity to drop a rock on someone's head and you lose the joy and fun of playing a cleric. And so forth and so on.
Spell changes affect every single player. This site is not a representative sampling of players -- never has been, never claimed to be, and even wotc knows it. The goal is to make it that way (especially with the VTT), but it ain't such now.
If you want changes to the game, for the most part, you have to make them. That isn't a "right thing" or a "wrong thing", it isn't good design or bad design. It is simply that the very basic foundations (which is what D&D has always provided, in every edition, merely with differing ideas of what constitutes a foundational element) don't meet the needs.
We (my group) wanted spell points and crafting an vehicle rules and something that wasn't so deeply committed to ideas stolen from Tolkien, Vance, Moorcock, and others. So we've been buildings up to that, while still keeping those core bits, that central foundation, because we want to keep playing D&D and we want to use 5e for it.
Remember that is the goal of the designers, no matter what else: to make sure that people can play the game in a way that is utterly and completely unlike your own. Imagine how your game works and then imagine a game that is completely the opposite of how your game works. Everything you hate, they love. Everything that is broken for you is perfect for them and everything they think is broken is perfect to you.
When you make a suggestion, you have to find a way to make sure that it works for all of that. I am well aware no one will, lol, I just know that it needs to be pointed out. Even to me, because, yeah, of course I like my ideas more.
I pay attention to these UA threads and the UA because I want to see where they are going with it, and since I started my efforts before they did, I am slightly ahead of them, but I am also aware that I still need to color on the same page, at least, so changes they make are being reflected in my work. I will be finished before they are. There are going to be changes they do after all the playtesting, as well.
Ah, screw it. Nobody reads these damn things anyway.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
Shield and Absorb Elements have the problem that they're kind of bad at the level where you learn them, and amazing when you're high level, which is backwards: spells should be great at the level where you learn them, and gradually decline in relevance.
Counterspell just produces toxic game play.
Misty Step and Fly break certain types of puzzles, which I really think is on the DM: either don't use puzzles of those types, or accept that they're a resource drain rather than a big puzzle that will stop people.
I kind of disagree with the bolded part.
I think spells should be useful at the level they are gained, and become more useful over time. For me, it is ok if they just do that one thing that is super useful well and that's all they do (it is in the nature of the underlying spell rules) and don't get better, but other spells should start out weaker and then get more and more potent as one moves on (since the characters are supposed to be that way anyway).
Edit: I am otherwise in agreement, lol.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
Aside from the exploding dice mechanic, you mean? lol.
yeah, skill based system that employs a core foundation of "normal people" who become less normal over time is still there (it is meant to operate across genres), but the upper capabilities are not as mythical in nature.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
When you get a new level of spells, this should be an ooh, I got new toys event. Once you've known the spell for ten levels, it's part of your background.
For example, here's how I'd redesign those spells:
Absorb Elements changes from "resistance" to "prevent up to 10 damage, +5 per level above 1". That's much better than the existing spell against most tier 1 threats -- you aren't generally going to see a situation where resistance is better until the DM is dropping fireball on you, which is generally a tier 2 problem -- but it's now actually appropriate for a level 1 spell.
Shield changes from "+5 AC" to "If AC is less than 20, it becomes 20, +1 per level above 1". For a low level wizard, that's probably better than current, since low level wizards do not generally walk around with a base AC of 15+. It's still competitive at mid levels, but it doesn't become a component of achieving AC 30.