1) Tasha's summoning spells to have their damage per attack scale rather than their number of attacks and require a BA to command them.
2) Conjure X & animate objects to be restricted to the option where you summon 1-2 creatures and require a BA to command them.
3) All control spells to get either repeat saves or other ways to break them : - Banishment : repeat save at end of each turn, - Wall of Force : use an action to make a STR check to break it, - Forcecage : use an action to make a check to break it. - Hypnotic Pattern : save at the end of each turn - Fear : remove the fleeing and instead reduce their speed to 0, also save at the end of each turn. - Domination : taking damage breaks it not just allow a save.
4) Nerfing the must-takes : - Misty Step requires an Action - Shield cannot be cast if wearing any armour or using a shield and only lasts until the end of the current creature's turn. - Counterspell : target makes a save with their spellcasting ability against your spell DC. - Polymorph : limited to creatures of CR <=1/2 the creature's level or CR that you have seen before.
5) Fixing spells that don't work: - Find Traps actually finds traps. - Daylight produces sunlight - Flame Blade is an actual weapon that uses the Attack action. - Phantasmal Killer, Weird, Mort's Sword, Vampiric Touch : need to not suck.
I agree with 1.
2 I say what you summon gets your attack, and you get to keep your bonus action (though, remember I want the spell earlier and the summons to scale better)
3. Some more stupid s*** to ban... again, not a fan of the cheats where the spell caster says "I win because I say so". I'll let you skip combat through role playing sneaking around it, I'll let you flee, I'll let you wipe the lower level goons out in a single spell if I can do it, but I don't encourage cheat spells
4. Shield you can use light armor and it's a cantrip, but it's only +2 not +5 and casting time is a bonus action not reaction. Cantrips should make it easier for casters to use and not feel like they have to always use a slot for it, the plus 2 is more reasonable, but as a bonus action, they'll either have to sacrifice their bonus actions or just risk it for something else.
I don't have the spell list in a separate screen and there's too many damned spells that do just SLIGHTLY different things.
Which is another point I'd want: spell list reduction. Combine spells by giving options or by removing redundancy. There's 500 damned spells and remembering the nuance of each one is a bit much.
If you take out maze from the list (which is more like a different variant of banishment), all of the spells listed are very distinct from each other.
dimension door teleports you (and up to one buddy that's at most the same size as you) to somewhere 500 feet away from you. It doesn't do much else.
plane shift can transport you to another dimension altogether (with all the craziness that comes with that) as well as up to eight buddies. But you can also use offensively to force an enemy to that dimension, and in a setting like the Forgotten Realms, that person is gone for good if you actually land it. However, the caveat is you need a tuning fork attuned to the specific plane that either you're traveling to or that you're trying to yeet the enemy to. And I imagine tuning forks for Carceri or the Negative Energy Plane are not the easiest to come by.
banishment puts someone in a harmless demiplane for as long as you're concentrating on it, but if they're from a different plane entirely, it sends them there instead and they stay there if you manage to keep the spell going for the whole 1-minute duration.
gate opens up a whole portal to another plane. That means a whole army of demons or angels can just pour right through if that's your speed, and you can keep that going for 10 whole rounds. In the Forgotten Realms setting, there are even loopy things you can do with this, like opening up a portal to the Plane of Water to just flood the area around it. And it gives you the option to summon literally anything you know the name of that's in another plane, and you can't control that thing. But if there is a ruler there, they have to allow it. So you could summon Demogorgon with this if the Prince of Demons allows you to.
Fair enough, but all of these (save for dimension door) have the same sort of broken-ness of battlefield removal with either permanent removal or enough time to GTFO without any chance of being found, and the few that do have caveats aren't terribly much.
To be able to open a door and summon another creature is in another spell (an entire SET of spells depending on what you summon and that's in addition to the summon set that's labeled conjure).
Dimension door has similarities to misty step, though IIRC it's more utility (and of course a longer range).
What I mean in my Spell Reduction Act of 2023, is that a lot of these can be combined to give similar things in upcast or dismantled so they can be combined into fewer tighter spells lol sts, that might even utilize more upcasting which tends to fall by the wayside on a lot of spells.
Also, I wouldn't say gate, but summon should definitely be warlock, especially pact of the chain as an upcast. Just maybe not your actual patron.
So, something to keep in mind when talking about spells is that D&D uses a “Vancian system” — that is, they use a system based on rules that were originally described in the Jack Vance Dying Earth series.
Those rules are
Each Spell does a distinct thing. Even if that thing is only slightly different from another spell, it matters. Some spells break this rule (everything with more than one specific effect).
Spells must be prepared in advance
Mages can only have a certain number of spells, and when they use them, they are gone.
Damage done by spells is supposed to increase by spell level — the higher the level, the more damage it does.
So, when asking for changes, keep that in mind, lol.
personally, I would like to see them unify damage across all the spells — so that a first level person using a cantrip does way less damage than a 20th level using the same spell, and that a cantrip does less damage than a 6th level spell.
I would like to see an expansion of the elemental spells available.
I would like to see spell point options incorporated into all the spells.
I would like to see more 7th through 9th level spells — if the tier they belong to is supposed to be changing entire regions, then those spells should reflect that.
Dump concentration, put more emphasis on casting time — some spells should take more than one turn to cast. THe higher the spell level, the longer it should take.
(yeah, I know, three things above gonna make all of you come at me; well, deal with it.)
with the 1000 or so special abilities and feats in the game, spells are looking sorta anemic — give us more spells.
I am of the opinion that magic should actually break the balance, lol.
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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
So, something to keep in mind when talking about spells is that D&D uses a “Vancian system” — that is, they use a system based on rules that were originally described in the Jack Vance Dying Earth series.
Those rules are
Each Spell does a distinct thing. Even if that thing is only slightly different from another spell, it matters. Some spells break this rule (everything with more than one specific effect).
Spells must be prepared in advance
Mages can only have a certain number of spells, and when they use them, they are gone.
Damage done by spells is supposed to increase by spell level — the higher the level, the more damage it does.
So, when asking for changes, keep that in mind, lol.
I have come across comments that think the Vancian system might not have been the best implementation of a magic system for D&D.
So, something to keep in mind when talking about spells is that D&D uses a “Vancian system” — that is, they use a system based on rules that were originally described in the Jack Vance Dying Earth series.
Those rules are
Each Spell does a distinct thing. Even if that thing is only slightly different from another spell, it matters. Some spells break this rule (everything with more than one specific effect).
Spells must be prepared in advance
Mages can only have a certain number of spells, and when they use them, they are gone.
Damage done by spells is supposed to increase by spell level — the higher the level, the more damage it does.
So, when asking for changes, keep that in mind, lol.
I have come across comments that think the Vancian system might not have been the best implementation of a magic system for D&D.
That’s an understatement, lol, but to change it would require completely rewriting the entire magic system.
Which I know because I just did that since we had to move away from Vancian. Which would render all the asks here moot because none of them would apply any longer.
However…
it is what D&D uses, and continues to use, and so what we are working with here.
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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 have come across comments that think the Vancian system might not have been the best implementation of a magic system for D&D.
5e magic isn't Vancian -- Vancian magic is "once you cast the spell, it's gone; if you want to cast the spell more than once, prepare it more than once".
I have come across comments that think the Vancian system might not have been the best implementation of a magic system for D&D.
5e magic isn't Vancian -- Vancian magic is "once you cast the spell, it's gone; if you want to cast the spell more than once, prepare it more than once".
Yeah: “fire and forget”. In this case, they use the Spell Slot system to do that. Use a spell slot, its gone, and that’s still Vancian.
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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
So, something to keep in mind when talking about spells is that D&D uses a “Vancian system” — that is, they use a system based on rules that were originally described in the Jack Vance Dying Earth series.
Those rules are
Each Spell does a distinct thing. Even if that thing is only slightly different from another spell, it matters. Some spells break this rule (everything with more than one specific effect).
Spells must be prepared in advance
Mages can only have a certain number of spells, and when they use them, they are gone.
Damage done by spells is supposed to increase by spell level — the higher the level, the more damage it does.
So, when asking for changes, keep that in mind, lol.
personally, I would like to see them unify damage across all the spells — so that a first level person using a cantrip does way less damage than a 20th level using the same spell, and that a cantrip does less damage than a 6th level spell.
I would like to see an expansion of the elemental spells available.
I would like to see spell point options incorporated into all the spells.
I would like to see more 7th through 9th level spells — if the tier they belong to is supposed to be changing entire regions, then those spells should reflect that.
Dump concentration, put more emphasis on casting time — some spells should take more than one turn to cast. THe higher the spell level, the longer it should take.
(yeah, I know, three things above gonna make all of you come at me; well, deal with it.)
with the 1000 or so special abilities and feats in the game, spells are looking sorta anemic — give us more spells.
I am of the opinion that magic should actually break the balance, lol.
That's too "video game" for me.
And I don't want spells to be world breaking. Because then you just break the world...on repeat. And then... no real story or narrative. No struggle or challenge. No...point.. unless you like playing a game I know called "I win", but I can assure you it gets old really fast for everyone playing.
And feats aren't all that they are cracked up to be, with very limited usage and the fact that you eat the ASI boost which is ALWAYS better just to get them.
I want more varied casting systems. I sorcerer to have a gambling mechanic that has consequence for when they run out of "nice" magic. I want them to actually manipulate the ether and create or modify spells based on a menu with options so they can literally build their own spells.
I want warlocks to have their rituals, invocations and pacts and little else. I want those pacts and rituals to be the thing that defines them and gives them chains/restrictions to rub against as they grow in power (you can get more adept at how you use the magic you were given and the power of the pact may grow stronger, but you're always bound to that pact).
I want geomancers that manipulate the very earth and plants themselves, altering terrain and using it to attack and defend, conjuring walls of stone or turning the ground into quicksand beneath the feet of others. (The spellcasting side to druid)
I want shamans that take on the shape of beasts, and although that may be all they do, it's not a skill to be trifled with.(the wildshape side of druid, but only ritual magic is allowed in addition to wildshape)
And a long side them the beastmasters who form contracts with the monsters and other creatures they find or fight along the way (summon or conjure at a reduced cost, but you need to get said thing to agree to form a contract with you, and it would have its own mechanics)
A Bard's magic would be limited to only what he or she picked up along the way. A bunch of cantrips some more songs and stories which upon retelling seem to come to life and influence the battlefield, (which would lean into status effects, have a stacking mechanic so you can have 3-5 different status boosts on the field by 12th level, and concentration which is really just them continuing to tell or sing the stories that their spells are. It would be interesting too to have the effects come or go and stack as you might different themes or notes on a page. Maybe a continuous regeneration with a concentration based haste on your side, meanwhile the "song" is also doing "fear" to your opponents).
Your paladins no longer are mini-priests but warriors of conviction and ideals that stir up the masses in battle. Gone are their cleric spells but they keep smites and gain the ability to have auras about them that grant small buffs to a limited radius of about 10 feet around them. Gone as spell levels and instead both skills are a limited number of instances per day...
And finally, gone are the spellcaster subclasses. Either melee or caster or multiclass. Stop blurring the lines into soup
I have come across comments that think the Vancian system might not have been the best implementation of a magic system for D&D.
5e magic isn't Vancian -- Vancian magic is "once you cast the spell, it's gone; if you want to cast the spell more than once, prepare it more than once".
Yeah: “fire and forget”. In this case, they use the Spell Slot system to do that. Use a spell slot, its gone, and that’s still Vancian.
They also don't use vancian.
1e did.
Cantrips aren't vancian. Preparing spells isn't even like vancian anymore. Prepping spells is more like laying out the components and reviewing your spell books and "writing notes on cards so you remember the important bits before a speech" preparing of your spells.
Vancian is LITERALLY fire and forget. Meaning 4 instance of fire ball means you literally have to memorize fireball 4 times and each time you cast it you forgot an instance of it.
Edit: Also the lore IIRC back then or at least in fire and forget magic fiction was that a spell took up space I. Your brain and a misfire or fizzled spell could turn your mind into literal swiss cheese.
The game as a whole is sorta overdue for one for us older players, but the newer folks aren’t there yet. The benefit to the system is that it allows people a quick way to understand spells. Gygax just liked it because he liked making people have to burn through their components.
The spell slot system took the place of the individual spells — you still burn through them and while it isn’t book accurate (thankfully) it is still a Vancian based system. It is, imo, an improvement on the original, in that specific sense.
It’s funny you say too video game for you, lol. Because all of that came out of books.I don't generally play video games (I have only played one for the last several years, and only maybe six total in the last decade — and none before that) so couldn’t say what is or isn’t video game.
One thing is true, though: Mess with spells and you mess with D&D as a whole. I don’t mean rules — you can change all the rules around magic or other things, but messing with spells is messing with what really has a defining impact on the game as a whole.
Spells and Monsters. Not the metrics — D&D without a Beholder and D&D without a fireball is almost unthinkable, lol.
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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
It’s funny you say too video game for you, lol. Because all of that came out of books.I don't generally play video games (I have only played one for the last several years, and only maybe six total in the last decade — and none before that) so couldn’t say what is or isn’t video game.
One thing is true, though: Mess with spells and you mess with D&D as a whole. I don’t mean rules — you can change all the rules around magic or other things, but messing with spells is messing with what really has a defining impact on the game as a whole.
Spells and Monsters. Not the metrics — D&D without a Beholder and D&D without a fireball is almost unthinkable, lol.
What I meant is first edition was vancian, but subsequent changes make it so that that reference is laughably wrong now. If anyone these days even gets it.
The video game thing... unfortunately, video games have done a LOT to influence fiction anymore. A lot of emphasis goes into describing mechanics of magic when before the games....magicay have had rules or resources but never were they "points"
And I'm not against points. What you describe is what I would like for sorcerers. It's just the idea of every class having this master list and it being so mathematically pure and clean...
You know the only thing that the game really never has had suggested (and I'm afraid to bring up) is magic items to refill magic points or spell slots.
It’s funny you say too video game for you, lol. Because all of that came out of books.I don't generally play video games (I have only played one for the last several years, and only maybe six total in the last decade — and none before that) so couldn’t say what is or isn’t video game.
One thing is true, though: Mess with spells and you mess with D&D as a whole. I don’t mean rules — you can change all the rules around magic or other things, but messing with spells is messing with what really has a defining impact on the game as a whole.
Spells and Monsters. Not the metrics — D&D without a Beholder and D&D without a fireball is almost unthinkable, lol.
What I meant is first edition was vancian, but subsequent changes make it so that that reference is laughably wrong now. If anyone these days even gets it.
The video game thing... unfortunately, video games have done a LOT to influence fiction anymore. A lot of emphasis goes into describing mechanics of magic when before the games....magicay have had rules or resources but never were they "points"
And I'm not against points. What you describe is what I would like for sorcerers. It's just the idea of every class having this master list and it being so mathematically pure and clean...
You know the only thing that the game really never has had suggested (and I'm afraid to bring up) is magic items to refill magic points or spell slots.
Not so much the fiction I read, lol. easiest way to see if I have read anything published after 1990: is the main character a man? THen I haven’t read it. I’ve had enough stories about guys, lol.
The “power up” on points is indeed a mechanic that is invariably raised when you go to a point style system, and the problem there is that you have to place a control on such things in an RPG unless you intentionally give everyone a very low amount of points. Because otherwise, you get spamfests of mid level destruction that harken towards that “regional destruction” idea, lol.
Anime has shown me that, lol. “Let me pop a potion of magic energy” and good to go.
I am not wed to the ideas of Sorcerers, so that doesn’t impact me much — but I note that in the system we use when we use it with 5e, the hard core source players love it because they still have the meta magic and that makes it easier and more flexible for them — it is sorcery points on steroids, and makes them really challenging to play because you can do so much more.
But it also helps out everyone else, ad balances magic use much more effectively.
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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
It’s funny you say too video game for you, lol. Because all of that came out of books.I don't generally play video games (I have only played one for the last several years, and only maybe six total in the last decade — and none before that) so couldn’t say what is or isn’t video game.
One thing is true, though: Mess with spells and you mess with D&D as a whole. I don’t mean rules — you can change all the rules around magic or other things, but messing with spells is messing with what really has a defining impact on the game as a whole.
Spells and Monsters. Not the metrics — D&D without a Beholder and D&D without a fireball is almost unthinkable, lol.
What I meant is first edition was vancian, but subsequent changes make it so that that reference is laughably wrong now. If anyone these days even gets it.
The video game thing... unfortunately, video games have done a LOT to influence fiction anymore. A lot of emphasis goes into describing mechanics of magic when before the games....magicay have had rules or resources but never were they "points"
And I'm not against points. What you describe is what I would like for sorcerers. It's just the idea of every class having this master list and it being so mathematically pure and clean...
You know the only thing that the game really never has had suggested (and I'm afraid to bring up) is magic items to refill magic points or spell slots.
Not so much the fiction I read, lol. easiest way to see if I have read anything published after 1990: is the main character a man? THen I haven’t read it. I’ve had enough stories about guys, lol.
The “power up” on points is indeed a mechanic that is invariably raised when you go to a point style system, and the problem there is that you have to place a control on such things in an RPG unless you intentionally give everyone a very low amount of points. Because otherwise, you get spamfests of mid level destruction that harken towards that “regional destruction” idea, lol.
Anime has shown me that, lol. “Let me pop a potion of magic energy” and good to go.
I am not wed to the ideas of Sorcerers, so that doesn’t impact me much — but I note that in the system we use when we use it with 5e, the hard core source players love it because they still have the meta magic and that makes it easier and more flexible for them — it is sorcery points on steroids, and makes them really challenging to play because you can do so much more.
But it also helps out everyone else, ad balances magic use much more effectively.
I cringe at most of the anime/video game tropes.
Orson Scott card is absolutely insufferable for wanting to spend literally hundreds of pages describing his magic systems in both pathfinder (unrelated to the game, but equally as insufferable and now that I think about how mechanics forward both are, insufferable for the same reasons) and the lost gate.
Also, don't hold a grudge against male protagonists. Especially when 90% of the authors these days are women. In many ways, women write men as more gender neutral. They also write women more gender neutral, which is....nice.
It’s funny you say too video game for you, lol. Because all of that came out of books.I don't generally play video games (I have only played one for the last several years, and only maybe six total in the last decade — and none before that) so couldn’t say what is or isn’t video game.
One thing is true, though: Mess with spells and you mess with D&D as a whole. I don’t mean rules — you can change all the rules around magic or other things, but messing with spells is messing with what really has a defining impact on the game as a whole.
Spells and Monsters. Not the metrics — D&D without a Beholder and D&D without a fireball is almost unthinkable, lol.
What I meant is first edition was vancian, but subsequent changes make it so that that reference is laughably wrong now. If anyone these days even gets it.
The video game thing... unfortunately, video games have done a LOT to influence fiction anymore. A lot of emphasis goes into describing mechanics of magic when before the games....magicay have had rules or resources but never were they "points"
And I'm not against points. What you describe is what I would like for sorcerers. It's just the idea of every class having this master list and it being so mathematically pure and clean...
You know the only thing that the game really never has had suggested (and I'm afraid to bring up) is magic items to refill magic points or spell slots.
Not so much the fiction I read, lol. easiest way to see if I have read anything published after 1990: is the main character a man? THen I haven’t read it. I’ve had enough stories about guys, lol.
The “power up” on points is indeed a mechanic that is invariably raised when you go to a point style system, and the problem there is that you have to place a control on such things in an RPG unless you intentionally give everyone a very low amount of points. Because otherwise, you get spamfests of mid level destruction that harken towards that “regional destruction” idea, lol.
Anime has shown me that, lol. “Let me pop a potion of magic energy” and good to go.
I am not wed to the ideas of Sorcerers, so that doesn’t impact me much — but I note that in the system we use when we use it with 5e, the hard core source players love it because they still have the meta magic and that makes it easier and more flexible for them — it is sorcery points on steroids, and makes them really challenging to play because you can do so much more.
But it also helps out everyone else, ad balances magic use much more effectively.
I cringe at most of the anime/video game tropes.
Orson Scott card is absolutely insufferable for wanting to spend literally hundreds of pages describing his magic systems in both pathfinder (unrelated to the game, but equally as insufferable and now that I think about how mechanics forward both are, insufferable for the same reasons) and the lost gate.
Also, don't hold a grudge against male protagonists. Especially when 90% of the authors these days are women. In many ways, women write men as more gender neutral. They also write women more gender neutral, which is....nice.
easily 70% of my recommendations are men authors, but I haven't looked at the reality in the larger marketplace among genre fiction authors. SF is still male dominant, I know, but i haven't looked into Fantasy from that perspective. It isn't a grudge -- I'm just, well, bored of them. I love my action movies, but even then I have trended towards women led ones. Seriously, with as much as I've read, everything starts to get really samey, and shifting that perspective has helped a lot.
I am politically aligned in opposition to just about everything OSC thinks, and given he's said I should be shot in the head in the past, he's not among the folks I like.
magic systems don't have to be rules based, but in a game, yeah, rules are kinda needed. Funny thing: D&D hasn't ever published the formal rules behind magic in the game, to my knowledge. But once you have the rough idea of the rules of magic, the rest starts to fall into place shockingly fast.
Anime tropes are from very much outside our cultural norms, but yeah, major cringe for like half of them, lol. Especially a lot of the isekai stuff, which one would think would be good for this kind of thing, but turn out to really not be, lol.
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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
easily 70% of my recommendations are men authors, but I haven't looked at the reality in the larger marketplace among genre fiction authors. SF is still male dominant, I know, but i haven't looked into Fantasy from that perspective.
The last figures I can find casually are from reddit in 2020 but seem reasonably well researched. It looks like the most severely skewed category is YA (which ... does not surprise me), followed by SF, with adult fantasy being the closest to evenly divided.
easily 70% of my recommendations are men authors, but I haven't looked at the reality in the larger marketplace among genre fiction authors. SF is still male dominant, I know, but i haven't looked into Fantasy from that perspective.
The last figures I can find casually are from reddit in 2020 but seem reasonably well researched. It looks like the most severely skewed category is YA (which ... does not surprise me), followed by SF, with adult fantasy being the closest to evenly divided.
Yeah, YA is deeply woman-centric, Sf is deeply men-centric (author wise) and that fits given I read a lot of "adult fantasy", but shy away from romance.
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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
easily 70% of my recommendations are men authors, but I haven't looked at the reality in the larger marketplace among genre fiction authors. SF is still male dominant, I know, but i haven't looked into Fantasy from that perspective.
The last figures I can find casually are from reddit in 2020 but seem reasonably well researched. It looks like the most severely skewed category is YA (which ... does not surprise me), followed by SF, with adult fantasy being the closest to evenly divided.
Yeah, YA is deeply woman-centric, Sf is deeply men-centric (author wise) and that fits given I read a lot of "adult fantasy", but shy away from romance.
I'll take your word. I sometimes forget I skew towards predominately women authors... to the point where I am scared to actually check back and see and find out the last male author I read was OSC when those books came out...
Claire North/Kate Griffin is good. VE Schwab's darker shade of magic is not to be passed up, the different world interconnected, the idea of blood magic.. solid, though her other stuff is hit or miss. Secret life of Adie Larue fantastic (female protagonist). Enjoyed 10000 doors of January (also female protagonist there, of color but I feel it's botched. Concepts and ideas are good though).
Edit: I believe in separating politics from art except when art is an expression of those politics. I disagree with card's politics, and my opinions of his books were made on the content of the books not his political views.
I read them specifically to gauge his writing as he has been lauded as a great sf author and his ender series as a must read for SF.
I have done this for many authors in SF (it and fantasy are my jam). Heinlein is just as bad, but at least Card has GENERALLY kept his political views out of his fiction. Heinlein is slightly better as a writer but worse at keeping his views to himself.
Returning to the original thread of this, here is my contribution:
Shield: Maintain the current +5, but the maximum armor that could be reached with the spell is 16 to 18, this maximum armor thanks to the spell increases by an additional +1 for each additional level used in casting the spell.
Rope Trick, Leomund's Tiny Hut and other spells that make it easier to rest in dangerous places are modified so that they do not trivialize this too much, it could be by extending the casting time to 1 minute, they consume a cheap material component, they are less efficient in providing a safe and comfortable rest if not cast using a higher level spell slot. (or attract attention, potentially increasing the chance of being ambushed as soon as the spell ends.)
Nerf Wish so that it is not the best overall choice for a level 9 spell; Perhaps you can choose to cast up to a 7th level spell (And if you choose 8th level increase your exhaustion level by 1 or only halve the material cost.), as compensation it could be that if a lower level is chosen cast as if using a 7th-level spell slot, or alternatively make Wish have a consumable material component.
Misty Step may need to have a shorter distance: 20 feet, and this distance can be extended by 10 feet for each level above 2.
Enlarge/Reduce should allow you to resize by 2 sizes if using a 5th level or higher spell slot.
Mending should be able to cast a little faster when your level is higher. (1 or 2 shifts)
Improve True Strike.
Cure Wounds should slightly heal a bit more, maybe replace 1d8 with 2d4 (Also when leveling up).
Goodberry should have limited within the spell description the possibility of abusing the created berries, especially before a long rest due to the recovery of spell slots and accumulation of a large number of these. In compensation, the possibility of improving the spell if it is cast with a higher level spell slot could be added. (Example: A creature can easily consume up to 2 berries in a period of 8 hours. If it consumes a 3rd in less than that time, this and any food or drink it tries to consume in the next hour will require it to make a roll. constitution save DC equal to 16, if failed the character returns what was consumed, without receiving the benefits. At higher levels, if you use a spell slot of level 5 or higher, for every 4 levels above 1 each berry heals 3 additional life points.)
Longstrider should have a cast time of one additional action.
Find Traps is garbage, it should be improved to at least be useful, perhaps with an immediate effect to accurately detect hidden/invisible traps and openings, and an effect that increases passive perception for a while; or that automatically detects the next trap within your range, so if there is none nearby it remains active while you move through the dungeon and find a trap.
Should improve Cordon of Arrows, Melf's Acid Arrow, Flame Arrows.
Alter Self should be able to upgrade if cast with a higher level spell slot.
Stoneskin should improve slightly, perhaps also granting minimal armor to the benefited creature, perhaps at the cost of disadvantage on dexterity checks and saves. (Level 4, concentration and consumes material component valued at 100 gold, not worth its benefit compared to other defensive spells, such as shield.)
Give more spells some buffs when upcasting, especially from the warlock's list.
Summons of 2014 improve them halfway to Tasha's: Not so random, with somewhat faster casting times, so that you cannot summon as many as 8 units (1 or 2, maximum 3) and without losing possible consequences for losing concentration on certain invocations.
easily 70% of my recommendations are men authors, but I haven't looked at the reality in the larger marketplace among genre fiction authors. SF is still male dominant, I know, but i haven't looked into Fantasy from that perspective.
The last figures I can find casually are from reddit in 2020 but seem reasonably well researched. It looks like the most severely skewed category is YA (which ... does not surprise me), followed by SF, with adult fantasy being the closest to evenly divided.
Oh they didn't include all genres. Romance is by far the most gender skewed, like 90% women both authors and readers. While 'hard' SF is most male skewed with male authors & readership above 70%.
Returning to the original thread of this, here is my contribution:
Nerf Wish so that it is not the best overall choice for a level 9 spell; Perhaps you can choose to cast up to a 7th level spell (And if you choose 8th level increase your exhaustion level by 1 or only halve the material cost.), as compensation it could be that if a lower level is chosen cast as if using a 7th-level spell slot, or alternatively make Wish have a consumable material component.
Summons of 2014 improve them halfway to Tasha's: Not so random, with somewhat faster casting times, so that you cannot summon as many as 8 units (1 or 2, maximum 3) and without losing possible consequences for losing concentration on certain invocations.
I agree that wish needs something of a nerf, but I'm not sure what. Maybe limiting its "safe mode" to replicating spells with a casting time of 1 action might be a reasonable shout, since that eliminates all the craziness the spell is capable of normally, such as its combo with simulacrum, or being able to cast planar binding, symbol, and other such normally expensive spells (that are expensive for a reason!) for only the cost of a 9th level slot. You can still do more than that, but doing so dips into its monkey paw mode. Also from a worldbuilding perspective, it just makes it easier to explain why archmages don't just layer every inch of their lairs with free symbols or have an army of extraplanar creatures bound by planar binding at their disposal.
I'd even add that true polymorph should be nerfed, just because it's nutso from a worldbuilding perspective. This spell is one of those spells that is absolutely broken when the caster has any appreciable amount of downtime, especially thanks to the "Creature to Object" and "Object to Creature" options. I'd make the "Creature to Creature" option only work if you've already seen the creature you're turning someone into, and the "Creature to Object" option turns the creature into a nonmagical object that is the same size as it or lower (for some reason, it doesn't specify this). I'd be tempted to axe the "Object to Creature" option because you're literally creating life, but that might be a bit drastic; maybe have the CR tied to the gp value of the object.
And for the summons, if they choose to only exclusively use the Tasha's summons, summon shadowspawn, summon fey, summon elemental, summon aberration, and summon fiend should carry some risk of escaping your control. summon celestial should be able to have free will by default, since if it turns against you, there's probably a good reason (from an in-universe perspective).
I agree with 1.
2 I say what you summon gets your attack, and you get to keep your bonus action (though, remember I want the spell earlier and the summons to scale better)
3. Some more stupid s*** to ban... again, not a fan of the cheats where the spell caster says "I win because I say so". I'll let you skip combat through role playing sneaking around it, I'll let you flee, I'll let you wipe the lower level goons out in a single spell if I can do it, but I don't encourage cheat spells
4. Shield you can use light armor and it's a cantrip, but it's only +2 not +5 and casting time is a bonus action not reaction. Cantrips should make it easier for casters to use and not feel like they have to always use a slot for it, the plus 2 is more reasonable, but as a bonus action, they'll either have to sacrifice their bonus actions or just risk it for something else.
5. Sounds good to.me.
Fair enough, but all of these (save for dimension door) have the same sort of broken-ness of battlefield removal with either permanent removal or enough time to GTFO without any chance of being found, and the few that do have caveats aren't terribly much.
To be able to open a door and summon another creature is in another spell (an entire SET of spells depending on what you summon and that's in addition to the summon set that's labeled conjure).
Dimension door has similarities to misty step, though IIRC it's more utility (and of course a longer range).
What I mean in my Spell Reduction Act of 2023, is that a lot of these can be combined to give similar things in upcast or dismantled so they can be combined into fewer tighter spells lol sts, that might even utilize more upcasting which tends to fall by the wayside on a lot of spells.
Also, I wouldn't say gate, but summon should definitely be warlock, especially pact of the chain as an upcast. Just maybe not your actual patron.
So, something to keep in mind when talking about spells is that D&D uses a “Vancian system” — that is, they use a system based on rules that were originally described in the Jack Vance Dying Earth series.
Those rules are
Each Spell does a distinct thing. Even if that thing is only slightly different from another spell, it matters. Some spells break this rule (everything with more than one specific effect).
Spells must be prepared in advance
Mages can only have a certain number of spells, and when they use them, they are gone.
Damage done by spells is supposed to increase by spell level — the higher the level, the more damage it does.
So, when asking for changes, keep that in mind, lol.
personally, I would like to see them unify damage across all the spells — so that a first level person using a cantrip does way less damage than a 20th level using the same spell, and that a cantrip does less damage than a 6th level spell.
I would like to see an expansion of the elemental spells available.
I would like to see spell point options incorporated into all the spells.
I would like to see more 7th through 9th level spells — if the tier they belong to is supposed to be changing entire regions, then those spells should reflect that.
Dump concentration, put more emphasis on casting time — some spells should take more than one turn to cast. THe higher the spell level, the longer it should take.
(yeah, I know, three things above gonna make all of you come at me; well, deal with it.)
with the 1000 or so special abilities and feats in the game, spells are looking sorta anemic — give us more spells.
I am of the opinion that magic should actually break the balance, lol.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
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I have come across comments that think the Vancian system might not have been the best implementation of a magic system for D&D.
That’s an understatement, lol, but to change it would require completely rewriting the entire magic system.
Which I know because I just did that since we had to move away from Vancian. Which would render all the asks here moot because none of them would apply any longer.
However…
it is what D&D uses, and continues to use, and so what we are working with here.
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5e magic isn't Vancian -- Vancian magic is "once you cast the spell, it's gone; if you want to cast the spell more than once, prepare it more than once".
Yeah: “fire and forget”. In this case, they use the Spell Slot system to do that. Use a spell slot, its gone, and that’s still Vancian.
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That's too "video game" for me.
And I don't want spells to be world breaking. Because then you just break the world...on repeat. And then... no real story or narrative. No struggle or challenge. No...point.. unless you like playing a game I know called "I win", but I can assure you it gets old really fast for everyone playing.
And feats aren't all that they are cracked up to be, with very limited usage and the fact that you eat the ASI boost which is ALWAYS better just to get them.
I want more varied casting systems. I sorcerer to have a gambling mechanic that has consequence for when they run out of "nice" magic. I want them to actually manipulate the ether and create or modify spells based on a menu with options so they can literally build their own spells.
I want warlocks to have their rituals, invocations and pacts and little else. I want those pacts and rituals to be the thing that defines them and gives them chains/restrictions to rub against as they grow in power (you can get more adept at how you use the magic you were given and the power of the pact may grow stronger, but you're always bound to that pact).
I want geomancers that manipulate the very earth and plants themselves, altering terrain and using it to attack and defend, conjuring walls of stone or turning the ground into quicksand beneath the feet of others. (The spellcasting side to druid)
I want shamans that take on the shape of beasts, and although that may be all they do, it's not a skill to be trifled with.(the wildshape side of druid, but only ritual magic is allowed in addition to wildshape)
And a long side them the beastmasters who form contracts with the monsters and other creatures they find or fight along the way (summon or conjure at a reduced cost, but you need to get said thing to agree to form a contract with you, and it would have its own mechanics)
A Bard's magic would be limited to only what he or she picked up along the way. A bunch of cantrips some more songs and stories which upon retelling seem to come to life and influence the battlefield, (which would lean into status effects, have a stacking mechanic so you can have 3-5 different status boosts on the field by 12th level, and concentration which is really just them continuing to tell or sing the stories that their spells are. It would be interesting too to have the effects come or go and stack as you might different themes or notes on a page. Maybe a continuous regeneration with a concentration based haste on your side, meanwhile the "song" is also doing "fear" to your opponents).
Your paladins no longer are mini-priests but warriors of conviction and ideals that stir up the masses in battle. Gone are their cleric spells but they keep smites and gain the ability to have auras about them that grant small buffs to a limited radius of about 10 feet around them. Gone as spell levels and instead both skills are a limited number of instances per day...
And finally, gone are the spellcaster subclasses. Either melee or caster or multiclass. Stop blurring the lines into soup
They also don't use vancian.
1e did.
Cantrips aren't vancian. Preparing spells isn't even like vancian anymore. Prepping spells is more like laying out the components and reviewing your spell books and "writing notes on cards so you remember the important bits before a speech" preparing of your spells.
Vancian is LITERALLY fire and forget. Meaning 4 instance of fire ball means you literally have to memorize fireball 4 times and each time you cast it you forgot an instance of it.
Edit: Also the lore IIRC back then or at least in fire and forget magic fiction was that a spell took up space I. Your brain and a misfire or fizzled spell could turn your mind into literal swiss cheese.
Like I said — a rewrite to the magic system.
The game as a whole is sorta overdue for one for us older players, but the newer folks aren’t there yet. The benefit to the system is that it allows people a quick way to understand spells. Gygax just liked it because he liked making people have to burn through their components.
The spell slot system took the place of the individual spells — you still burn through them and while it isn’t book accurate (thankfully) it is still a Vancian based system. It is, imo, an improvement on the original, in that specific sense.
It’s funny you say too video game for you, lol. Because all of that came out of books.I don't generally play video games (I have only played one for the last several years, and only maybe six total in the last decade — and none before that) so couldn’t say what is or isn’t video game.
One thing is true, though: Mess with spells and you mess with D&D as a whole. I don’t mean rules — you can change all the rules around magic or other things, but messing with spells is messing with what really has a defining impact on the game as a whole.
Spells and Monsters. Not the metrics — D&D without a Beholder and D&D without a fireball is almost unthinkable, 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
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What I meant is first edition was vancian, but subsequent changes make it so that that reference is laughably wrong now. If anyone these days even gets it.
The video game thing... unfortunately, video games have done a LOT to influence fiction anymore. A lot of emphasis goes into describing mechanics of magic when before the games....magicay have had rules or resources but never were they "points"
And I'm not against points. What you describe is what I would like for sorcerers. It's just the idea of every class having this master list and it being so mathematically pure and clean...
You know the only thing that the game really never has had suggested (and I'm afraid to bring up) is magic items to refill magic points or spell slots.
Not so much the fiction I read, lol. easiest way to see if I have read anything published after 1990: is the main character a man? THen I haven’t read it. I’ve had enough stories about guys, lol.
The “power up” on points is indeed a mechanic that is invariably raised when you go to a point style system, and the problem there is that you have to place a control on such things in an RPG unless you intentionally give everyone a very low amount of points. Because otherwise, you get spamfests of mid level destruction that harken towards that “regional destruction” idea, lol.
Anime has shown me that, lol. “Let me pop a potion of magic energy” and good to go.
I am not wed to the ideas of Sorcerers, so that doesn’t impact me much — but I note that in the system we use when we use it with 5e, the hard core source players love it because they still have the meta magic and that makes it easier and more flexible for them — it is sorcery points on steroids, and makes them really challenging to play because you can do so much more.
But it also helps out everyone else, ad balances magic use much more effectively.
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 [=-.
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Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
I cringe at most of the anime/video game tropes.
Orson Scott card is absolutely insufferable for wanting to spend literally hundreds of pages describing his magic systems in both pathfinder (unrelated to the game, but equally as insufferable and now that I think about how mechanics forward both are, insufferable for the same reasons) and the lost gate.
Also, don't hold a grudge against male protagonists. Especially when 90% of the authors these days are women. In many ways, women write men as more gender neutral. They also write women more gender neutral, which is....nice.
easily 70% of my recommendations are men authors, but I haven't looked at the reality in the larger marketplace among genre fiction authors. SF is still male dominant, I know, but i haven't looked into Fantasy from that perspective. It isn't a grudge -- I'm just, well, bored of them. I love my action movies, but even then I have trended towards women led ones. Seriously, with as much as I've read, everything starts to get really samey, and shifting that perspective has helped a lot.
I am politically aligned in opposition to just about everything OSC thinks, and given he's said I should be shot in the head in the past, he's not among the folks I like.
magic systems don't have to be rules based, but in a game, yeah, rules are kinda needed. Funny thing: D&D hasn't ever published the formal rules behind magic in the game, to my knowledge. But once you have the rough idea of the rules of magic, the rest starts to fall into place shockingly fast.
Anime tropes are from very much outside our cultural norms, but yeah, major cringe for like half of them, lol. Especially a lot of the isekai stuff, which one would think would be good for this kind of thing, but turn out to really not be, 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
The last figures I can find casually are from reddit in 2020 but seem reasonably well researched. It looks like the most severely skewed category is YA (which ... does not surprise me), followed by SF, with adult fantasy being the closest to evenly divided.
Yeah, YA is deeply woman-centric, Sf is deeply men-centric (author wise) and that fits given I read a lot of "adult fantasy", but shy away from romance.
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'll take your word. I sometimes forget I skew towards predominately women authors... to the point where I am scared to actually check back and see and find out the last male author I read was OSC when those books came out...
Claire North/Kate Griffin is good. VE Schwab's darker shade of magic is not to be passed up, the different world interconnected, the idea of blood magic.. solid, though her other stuff is hit or miss. Secret life of Adie Larue fantastic (female protagonist). Enjoyed 10000 doors of January (also female protagonist there, of color but I feel it's botched. Concepts and ideas are good though).
Edit: I believe in separating politics from art except when art is an expression of those politics. I disagree with card's politics, and my opinions of his books were made on the content of the books not his political views.
I read them specifically to gauge his writing as he has been lauded as a great sf author and his ender series as a must read for SF.
I have done this for many authors in SF (it and fantasy are my jam). Heinlein is just as bad, but at least Card has GENERALLY kept his political views out of his fiction. Heinlein is slightly better as a writer but worse at keeping his views to himself.
Returning to the original thread of this, here is my contribution:
Oh they didn't include all genres. Romance is by far the most gender skewed, like 90% women both authors and readers. While 'hard' SF is most male skewed with male authors & readership above 70%.
I agree that wish needs something of a nerf, but I'm not sure what. Maybe limiting its "safe mode" to replicating spells with a casting time of 1 action might be a reasonable shout, since that eliminates all the craziness the spell is capable of normally, such as its combo with simulacrum, or being able to cast planar binding, symbol, and other such normally expensive spells (that are expensive for a reason!) for only the cost of a 9th level slot. You can still do more than that, but doing so dips into its monkey paw mode. Also from a worldbuilding perspective, it just makes it easier to explain why archmages don't just layer every inch of their lairs with free symbols or have an army of extraplanar creatures bound by planar binding at their disposal.
I'd even add that true polymorph should be nerfed, just because it's nutso from a worldbuilding perspective. This spell is one of those spells that is absolutely broken when the caster has any appreciable amount of downtime, especially thanks to the "Creature to Object" and "Object to Creature" options. I'd make the "Creature to Creature" option only work if you've already seen the creature you're turning someone into, and the "Creature to Object" option turns the creature into a nonmagical object that is the same size as it or lower (for some reason, it doesn't specify this). I'd be tempted to axe the "Object to Creature" option because you're literally creating life, but that might be a bit drastic; maybe have the CR tied to the gp value of the object.
And for the summons, if they choose to only exclusively use the Tasha's summons, summon shadowspawn, summon fey, summon elemental, summon aberration, and summon fiend should carry some risk of escaping your control. summon celestial should be able to have free will by default, since if it turns against you, there's probably a good reason (from an in-universe perspective).