Honestly, what I'd be tempted by is just bringing back a bunch of ways of provoking opportunity attacks from 3e; 5e needs more incentives to get up and close with the enemy.
The second point was after a magical spell or effect is going should a martial have ways to deal with it. Some of this might be handled by spell changes like if wall of force gets hit points. But if they encounter an illusion, crowd control effects on themselves or others etc should they have a viable method of tacking the magic. Telling a fighter to make a DC15+ investigate check is generally not viable. Sure if there is a visible caster they can attempt to break concentration but magical effects without casters exist as traps, obstacles etc and the answer always seems to be magic. When its a physical problem sure there is a physical solution but there is also a magical solution. I just think there should be more physical solutions to magical problems.
Walls should all have hit points, Illusions should all break as soon as they are interacted with - i.e. the martial swings a sword at the illusiony enemy or pokes a finger through and illusory wall, the sword passes through it, and now the martial can see through the illusion (which is RAW how almost all illusions work - there are just a couple that do not fall into this category). Lots of charms can be broken by dealing damage to the charmed creature - i.e. a martial can slap a charmed ally to break them free (again, arguably this should be expanded to all charms). Most other of control effects are concentration-based so have the physical solution of simply attacking the caster.
Paralysis like teleportation should probably be shifted to higher levels, perhaps just eliminate Hold Person entirely as I do not understand why it is 2nd level, whereas Hold Monster is 5th! IME it is Hold Person that is the single greatest problem for martial characters, as not only do they lose turns they can be dead-dead before they get a second chance at the save.
Paralysis like teleportation should probably be shifted to higher levels, perhaps just eliminate Hold Person entirely as I do not understand why it is 2nd level, whereas Hold Monster is 5th! IME it is Hold Person that is the single greatest problem for martial characters, as not only do they lose turns they can be dead-dead before they get a second chance at the save.
Hold person is level 2 because Tradition, though it would still match its name if all it did was apply restrained.
The first question that comes to mind for me is: if martials are given a way to interrupt casting- in whatever way- would casters then have a way to interrupt a martial's attack sequence?
In older editions, there used to be a mechanic for the concept of how quick a character's action was. A dagger could attack faster than a maul, for example. And a cantrip with only a verbal component might cast faster than a 1st level spell with a verbal, somatic, & material cost. If I'm remembering correctly, these quickness scales affected turn order (quicker actions went first). But I don't recall whether a spell could be interrupted in its casting.
I think I might have played a video game at some point where spells could be interrupted. I have no idea what that game might've been, but I do remember trying to cast spells and getting frustrated when they were interrupted all the time.
There are some spells in 5th edition that require you to concentrate on them over time before their effects come to fruition. For example: Wall of Stone can become permanent if you concentrate on it for the ful 10 minute duration. And that could be interrupted. But that's only an option- the impermanent version of the wall goes up and can't be interrupted. Only subsequently could the caster's concentration be broken to dispell the wall.
It's an interesting idea. But I'd be wary about instituting mechanics that allow characters to negate the actions of other characters before they can even happen. Counterspell holds a unique place in 5e, and even it was recognized as needing to be reigned in for the 2024 revision.
so its kind of weird when people pose this as if players are supposed to be fighting players. (they actually arent)
that said
casters already have ways to preempt martials, spells/abilities with reactions.
silvery barbs, shield.
that said they just needed counterspell, not sure if they want to give out more ways for players to counter spells
The second point was after a magical spell or effect is going should a martial have ways to deal with it. Some of this might be handled by spell changes like if wall of force gets hit points. But if they encounter an illusion, crowd control effects on themselves or others etc should they have a viable method of tacking the magic. Telling a fighter to make a DC15+ investigate check is generally not viable. Sure if there is a visible caster they can attempt to break concentration but magical effects without casters exist as traps, obstacles etc and the answer always seems to be magic. When its a physical problem sure there is a physical solution but there is also a magical solution. I just think there should be more physical solutions to magical problems.
Walls should all have hit points, Illusions should all break as soon as they are interacted with - i.e. the martial swings a sword at the illusiony enemy or pokes a finger through and illusory wall, the sword passes through it, and now the martial can see through the illusion (which is RAW how almost all illusions work - there are just a couple that do not fall into this category). Lots of charms can be broken by dealing damage to the charmed creature - i.e. a martial can slap a charmed ally to break them free (again, arguably this should be expanded to all charms). Most other of control effects are concentration-based so have the physical solution of simply attacking the caster.
Paralysis like teleportation should probably be shifted to higher levels, perhaps just eliminate Hold Person entirely as I do not understand why it is 2nd level, whereas Hold Monster is 5th! IME it is Hold Person that is the single greatest problem for martial characters, as not only do they lose turns they can be dead-dead before they get a second chance at the save.
monsters aren't designed like players. People making human monsters are supposed to be careful what spells they give them. And what enemies they use. Hold person is a level 2 spell because humanoid only is a huge limiter for players. Some modules rarely even fight humanoids. For monsters however players are almost always humanoid.
DMs should be really careful about designing enemies like players, they are not the same thing, and are not really intended to be.
DMs should be really careful about designing enemies like players, they are not the same thing, and are not really intended to be.
The main reasons for designing monsters differently from players have to do with (a) mechanical complexity, no-one wants to go to all the hassle of a PC writeup for a throwaway monster, and (b) there are certain abilities that would be broken if available to PCs, because the PCs cannot be expected to use restraint. It should never be invalid to make monsters that superficially resemble PCs, and that includes using spells available to PCs. It is, frankly, a problem with 5e that monsters need to be balanced so differently from PCs.
DMs should be really careful about designing enemies like players, they are not the same thing, and are not really intended to be.
The main reasons for designing monsters differently from players have to do with (a) mechanical complexity, no-one wants to go to all the hassle of a PC writeup for a throwaway monster, and (b) there are certain abilities that would be broken if available to PCs, because the PCs cannot be expected to use restraint. It should never be invalid to make monsters that superficially resemble PCs, and that includes using spells available to PCs. It is, frankly, a problem with 5e that monsters need to be balanced so differently from PCs.
there are a lot of other considerations in monster design. APM, deadliness, slowdown. A monster is designed to exist for a short period of time, players are designed to last for as long as a campaign.
the two creations serve vastly different purposes. Are organized differently, and interact differently. A PC is an avatar for a player, a npc is tool for creating an interesting experience for a player. An elevator, and a chute both can move things to a lower level. The design considerations are however vastly different.
Its not really a problem that they need different balance. Its just a design choice. One could make a game where PCs and npcs are extremely similar, but thats not this game. And it isnt inherently better to do so. Is Castlevania inferior to playing league of legends with AI? not at all.
You can make monsters superficially similar to pcs, but there are certain things that you should be extremely careful in giving to npcs.
to be clear, there are reasons you might give an npc hold person. But you should be very aware of what the implications are, how that would interact with players, and how commonly you do that.
I saw a can anything beat a 20th level wizard thread on reddit, and people are bringing up simulacrum,(hopefully nerfed) contingency etc so the answer was no for martials. And it got me thinking, really the only thing that deals with magic is magic. Want to defeat a spell use magic, want to stop a spell from being cast use magic. You used to be able to at least interrupt a spell. Maybe you can do enough damage to break concentration but that is pretty much it. While I think some of this should be core to the classes, I wonder why the heck don't they at least have sub classes with abilities for this. Where is the battle masters dispelling strike for example.
Basically my question is
1. Do you think martial classes should have built into their classes ways to defeat magic and I don't mean shrugging off a spell on them but ways to deal with like walls of fire, breaking illusions(tactical mind can help here) that pesky contingency. Bring back core ways to stop a spell form being cast, maybe not at will or 100% so it happens every cast(that would make liches boring encounters) but a limited resource method, or middling chance of success etc.
2. If not the core class should at least one subclass per class have counter magic capabilities?
3. Should feats be what fills in this blank?
And if the answer is yes to at least one of these what do you think it should look like.
While I am fine bringing back spellcasting creates an attack of opportunity which can stop it from being cast, I'd also want a way for a martial to dispel magic. Some kind of spell breaking feature. It would probably manifest differently on each class and should be limited to some degree, but I am not sure how it would work. Like another feature of second wind is making that one ability carry a lot of water, and reduces the desire to use it for tactical mind etc.
"The caster cannot cast the magic if you disable their hand".
to be clear, there are reasons you might give an npc hold person. But you should be very aware of what the implications are, how that would interact with players, and how commonly you do that.
IMO, that is poor game design. If Hold Person is only not-OP because 90% of the time it should be useless because the players aren't fighting humanoids that means if you have a game where humanoids are the main enemy type - e.g. Horde of the Dragon Queen - then Hold Person is suddenly extremely OP. Likewise, if you have a DM who builds enemies like PCs or just feels like switching it up and swaps around the spell list of an enemy to other spells of the same level assuming same level == equally powerful and suddenly a medium encounter becomes a TPK situation, then that's a problem. Not every DM has the experience to realize the implication of giving enemies Hold Person, so the game-designers should communicate how dangerous Hold Person is by making it a higher level spell or just get rid of the distinctions between "X Person" and "X Monster" spells entirely as they are based on an assumption that can very often not hold true - especially now that there are many playable species that aren't humanoid.
to be clear, there are reasons you might give an npc hold person. But you should be very aware of what the implications are, how that would interact with players, and how commonly you do that.
IMO, that is poor game design. If Hold Person is only not-OP because 90% of the time it should be useless because the players aren't fighting humanoids that means if you have a game where humanoids are the main enemy type - e.g. Horde of the Dragon Queen - then Hold Person is suddenly extremely OP. Likewise, if you have a DM who builds enemies like PCs or just feels like switching it up and swaps around the spell list of an enemy to other spells of the same level assuming same level == equally powerful and suddenly a medium encounter becomes a TPK situation, then that's a problem. Not every DM has the experience to realize the implication of giving enemies Hold Person, so the game-designers should communicate how dangerous Hold Person is by making it a higher level spell or just get rid of the distinctions between "X Person" and "X Monster" spells entirely as they are based on an assumption that can very often not hold true - especially now that there are many playable species that aren't humanoid.
5e is that type of game though. The game likes to have these rock paper scissors moments, and things that are sometimes really powerful in a specific situation. Like clerics in an undead campaign.
Also, at a baseline, PCs are not npcs, and are not designed to be. Its not a pvp designed game. Thats a totally different type of balancing. Games that are balanced that way, usually must be done that way at inception.
And making new monsters, as a DM is, and always will be a bit of an art, as with building your own campaigns. The DM may mess up when doing this. Also note, as a dm, you have the ability to counterpick/create npcs. You can create npcs that directly target your player's weaknesses. Thats a DM issue, not really a game design problem. Many spells can be OP given the right situation. High stealth/initiative, 4 guys with sleep. Will probably kill/incapacitate the whole party t1. DM needs to be aware of these powerful combos/situations and generally avoid them. (unless its appropriate to the table/story)
Some things are fine if it pops up once in awhile, but obnoxious if many of the enemies you meet have it. Its important for the DM to understand generally, the goal is not to beat the players. The goal is to create or guide a fun and interesting adventure. Luckily the DM can adjust on the fly, change stat blocks add npcs, or whatever they need if they mess up.
If a DM isn't ready to create new monsters/design campaigns, and adjust things live, thats fine, thats what the Monster manual and prebuilt modules are for.
5e is very specifically meant to have spells and abilities that stand out from others in specific situations, in response to the feeling that things were too uniform/overbalanced in 4e. This puts more burden on the DM, but it also creates highs and lows that people apparently felt was important for the game.
to be clear, there are reasons you might give an npc hold person. But you should be very aware of what the implications are, how that would interact with players, and how commonly you do that.
IMO, that is poor game design. If Hold Person is only not-OP because 90% of the time it should be useless because the players aren't fighting humanoids that means if you have a game where humanoids are the main enemy type - e.g. Horde of the Dragon Queen - then Hold Person is suddenly extremely OP. Likewise, if you have a DM who builds enemies like PCs or just feels like switching it up and swaps around the spell list of an enemy to other spells of the same level assuming same level == equally powerful and suddenly a medium encounter becomes a TPK situation, then that's a problem. Not every DM has the experience to realize the implication of giving enemies Hold Person, so the game-designers should communicate how dangerous Hold Person is by making it a higher level spell or just get rid of the distinctions between "X Person" and "X Monster" spells entirely as they are based on an assumption that can very often not hold true - especially now that there are many playable species that aren't humanoid.
And making new monsters, as a DM is, and always will be a bit of an art, as with building your own campaigns. The DM may mess up when doing this. Also note, as a dm, you have the ability to counterpick/create npcs. You can create npcs that directly target your player's weaknesses. Thats a DM issue, not really a game design problem. Many spells can be OP given the right situation. High stealth/initiative, 4 guys with sleep. Will probably kill/incapacitate the whole party t1. DM needs to be aware of these powerful combos/situations and generally avoid them. (unless its appropriate to the table/story).
You don't even need to HB monsters to do this though. There are 53 published monsters with one of the "Hold X" spells on their spell list, 18 of which are CR 4 or lower (with the lowest CR being just CR 1), and the generic "Cult Fanatic" (CR 2) a very likely choice for a lot of DMs. All the evidence says that Hold Person is a perfectly acceptable spell to put against a party of level 3+ player characters - and yet it only takes a little bad luck in initiative order for the spell to be a death sentence for just such a character.
And it's not just inexperienced DMs, Critical Role Campaign 2 nearly had a character death to Hold Person when they were level 3, and Campaign 1 nearly had the Kill-Box trivialized by it (however Scanlan only cast it a level 3, rather than upcasting it to 7th to take out a larger portion of the horde).
to be clear, there are reasons you might give an npc hold person. But you should be very aware of what the implications are, how that would interact with players, and how commonly you do that.
IMO, that is poor game design. If Hold Person is only not-OP because 90% of the time it should be useless because the players aren't fighting humanoids that means if you have a game where humanoids are the main enemy type - e.g. Horde of the Dragon Queen - then Hold Person is suddenly extremely OP. Likewise, if you have a DM who builds enemies like PCs or just feels like switching it up and swaps around the spell list of an enemy to other spells of the same level assuming same level == equally powerful and suddenly a medium encounter becomes a TPK situation, then that's a problem. Not every DM has the experience to realize the implication of giving enemies Hold Person, so the game-designers should communicate how dangerous Hold Person is by making it a higher level spell or just get rid of the distinctions between "X Person" and "X Monster" spells entirely as they are based on an assumption that can very often not hold true - especially now that there are many playable species that aren't humanoid.
And making new monsters, as a DM is, and always will be a bit of an art, as with building your own campaigns. The DM may mess up when doing this. Also note, as a dm, you have the ability to counterpick/create npcs. You can create npcs that directly target your player's weaknesses. Thats a DM issue, not really a game design problem. Many spells can be OP given the right situation. High stealth/initiative, 4 guys with sleep. Will probably kill/incapacitate the whole party t1. DM needs to be aware of these powerful combos/situations and generally avoid them. (unless its appropriate to the table/story).
You don't even need to HB monsters to do this though. There are 53 published monsters with one of the "Hold X" spells on their spell list, 18 of which are CR 4 or lower (with the lowest CR being just CR 1), and the generic "Cult Fanatic" (CR 2) a very likely choice for a lot of DMs. All the evidence says that Hold Person is a perfectly acceptable spell to put against a party of level 3+ player characters - and yet it only takes a little bad luck in initiative order for the spell to be a death sentence for just such a character.
And it's not just inexperienced DMs, Critical Role Campaign 2 nearly had a character death to Hold Person when they were level 3, and Campaign 1 nearly had the Kill-Box trivialized by it (however Scanlan only cast it a level 3, rather than upcasting it to 7th to take out a larger portion of the horde).
You have a point, but having experienced a module using fantatic at level 2-3 recently, I think it created a more engaging dungeon/encounter, when used properly. They would sometimes have groups of 1 fantatic and a bunch of cultists, (with advice for advanced parties having all fantatics)and it worked well. Point is, I wouldn't say the game would be better off if no lowbie monster had the spell. Its more about how its used, and adapting to your group's skill.
Essentially the monsters need a bit of spice, but not too much spice. Getting that balance right is making good encounters. I wouldn't want to design a system that takes it out of the list of options completely.
Can't just use CR, because CR is mostly about power level, like dps/evasion/acc. If the monsters with abilities that require more thought to deal with are only high CR, you cant drop them into lower Lvl games.
Perhaps they need a way to signal stronger or trickier abilities/monsters for their CR. So newer DMs are more aware of what they are doing, or don't simply drop 5 "special" monsters on a group, or maybe can drop clues or whatever about how dangerous certain monsters could be. (like shadows with strength drain)
The problem with adding concentration saving throws to all of this is that it even further incentivizes buffing your concentration saves. It would become impossible to play a spellcaster without Warcaster and Resilient:Con - at which point now the rules might as well not exist because the caster is going to succeed the save. You also need a way to set the DC for that save.
Even with Warcaster and/or Resilient (Constitution) succeeding on a concentration saving throw isn't guaranteed.
And you had to give up two Feats / ASI's in order to get there. That's a significant resource expenditure.
The problem with adding concentration saving throws to all of this is that it even further incentivizes buffing your concentration saves. It would become impossible to play a spellcaster without Warcaster and Resilient:Con - at which point now the rules might as well not exist because the caster is going to succeed the save. You also need a way to set the DC for that save.
Even with Warcaster and/or Resilient (Constitution) succeeding on a concentration saving throw isn't guaranteed.
And you had to give up two Feats / ASI's in order to get there. That's a significant resource expenditure.
It creates a "feat-tax" to play a spell caster, yes. But I thought the community in general was against feat-taxes because it takes away player choice & build diversity? Having every caster taking Resilient Con + Worcester is not better for the game than every STR-based character taking PAM + GWM, or every archer taking XbowXpert.
Casters absolutely should be nerfed and martial buffed, but this should be by nerfing spells themselves, not adding extra mechanics that they will simply build / play around.
Plus, as a DM, my caster-enemies are already pretty weak & easy to kill unless I play them defensively - either having them flying so the melees can't reach them or making them invisible so melees can't find them, or using teleportation & illusions to be out of reach of martials. Making melees more effective against mages will just lead to mages preventing melees from getting near them even more.
PS Lots of casters don't even need to take both Resilient Con + Warcaster as of UA8 since : Warlocks get an invocation for Adv on concentration, Starry druids get auto 10s on concentration in dragon form, Sorcerers get Con proficiency and a meta magic for Adv on concentration, Moondruids add their Wis to concentration in WS, Bladesingers add their Int to concentration in bladesong (which is another reason there are a ton of bladesingers who have never touched a sword).
is it really a feat tax? or is it more of a combat optimization feat tax?
and anyway, considering that a feat "embodies training" and training as a downtime activity "might allow additional training options" (beyond language or tool proficiency), why not just ask to have all the party casters put through boot camp to waive the feat tax? this is time (and gold) spent that they could have used on crafting scrolls and magic items so it balances out. plus, then they can use those now-empty feat slots to explore interesting character-arc feats like actor, fighting initiate, skill expert, musician, chef, etc.
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It creates a "feat-tax" to play a spell caster, yes. But I thought the community in general was against feat-taxes because it takes away player choice & build diversity? Having every caster taking Resilient Con + Worcester is not better for the game than every STR-based character taking PAM + GWM, or every archer taking XbowXpert.
It's only a tax if you can't play a caster without taking those feats, but you clearly can; I've played a Sorcerer without War Caster, and a Wizard without either, and never had a particular problem with losing concentration. In fact I'm much more likely to lose concentration for reasons other than taking damage, probably the most common being that I misjudged what spell I needed, so had to cast another (breaking concentration on the first). 🤦♂️
Most casters have options for avoiding damage from attacks, and anyone at range can use cover to make that even easier, area effects are harder but again if you mostly fight from range it's going to be easier than for characters who need to be close to be effective.
And the real question is how many rounds you really need out of a concentration spell to get value from it; while damage over time spells typically need two or three rounds to justify them, buffs, debuffs, control etc. can be plenty useful with only a single round. So spending feats just to boost concentration is really only helping you get a bit more value out of these spells, or avoid an annoying early concentration loss.
Not that they're terrible things to invest in by any means, but it's a choice not a requirement, but really being better at concentration mostly just means you squeeze a bit more value out of concentration spells, maybe save a spell slot here or there etc., it's not necessarily a stronger option, same as Lucky isn't because the outcome is usually just the same as just rolling better.
Once a caster has maxxed out their casting score though they don't have much else to do with ability score increases except grab feats, especially since a caster can have that maxxed at 8th-level with point buy/standard array. If casters had more incentive to increase other scores it might help? As martials all have at least two (usually three) scores they need to get reasonably high; more competition with scores might make the feat choice harder.
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It's only a tax if you can't play a caster without taking those feats, but you clearly can;
Under the current rules yes, but this thread is about adding a ton more way that martials could block a caster by forcing them to make a concentration saves even more than now - e.g. to cast a spell while grappled, via AoO when casting a spell while an enemy can reach you with a melee attack.
My argument is that if these types of mechanics were added to the game then Worcester & Resilient:Con would absolutely become a feat tax for casters.
is it really a feat tax? or is it more of a combat optimization feat tax?
and anyway, considering that a feat "embodies training" and training as a downtime activity "might allow additional training options" (beyond language or tool proficiency), why not just ask to have all the party casters put through boot camp to waive the feat tax? this is time (and gold) spent that they could have used on crafting scrolls and magic items so it balances out. plus, then they can use those now-empty feat slots to explore interesting character-arc feats like actor, fighting initiate, skill expert, musician, chef, etc.
All of these arguments apply to GWM, PAM, and XbowXpert equally. Either all of these are feat:taxes or none of them are. I've had only 1 DM let me get a feat using downtime in 1 instance and it was a HB feat they designed for that purpose not a feat of my choice. So pretty safe to say that a vast majority of games are not going to allow you to pick up any feat and as many feats as you want using downtime.
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Honestly, what I'd be tempted by is just bringing back a bunch of ways of provoking opportunity attacks from 3e; 5e needs more incentives to get up and close with the enemy.
Walls should all have hit points, Illusions should all break as soon as they are interacted with - i.e. the martial swings a sword at the illusiony enemy or pokes a finger through and illusory wall, the sword passes through it, and now the martial can see through the illusion (which is RAW how almost all illusions work - there are just a couple that do not fall into this category). Lots of charms can be broken by dealing damage to the charmed creature - i.e. a martial can slap a charmed ally to break them free (again, arguably this should be expanded to all charms). Most other of control effects are concentration-based so have the physical solution of simply attacking the caster.
Paralysis like teleportation should probably be shifted to higher levels, perhaps just eliminate Hold Person entirely as I do not understand why it is 2nd level, whereas Hold Monster is 5th! IME it is Hold Person that is the single greatest problem for martial characters, as not only do they lose turns they can be dead-dead before they get a second chance at the save.
Hold person is level 2 because Tradition, though it would still match its name if all it did was apply restrained.
so its kind of weird when people pose this as if players are supposed to be fighting players. (they actually arent)
that said
casters already have ways to preempt martials, spells/abilities with reactions.
silvery barbs, shield.
that said they just needed counterspell, not sure if they want to give out more ways for players to counter spells
monsters aren't designed like players. People making human monsters are supposed to be careful what spells they give them. And what enemies they use. Hold person is a level 2 spell because humanoid only is a huge limiter for players. Some modules rarely even fight humanoids. For monsters however players are almost always humanoid.
DMs should be really careful about designing enemies like players, they are not the same thing, and are not really intended to be.
The main reasons for designing monsters differently from players have to do with (a) mechanical complexity, no-one wants to go to all the hassle of a PC writeup for a throwaway monster, and (b) there are certain abilities that would be broken if available to PCs, because the PCs cannot be expected to use restraint. It should never be invalid to make monsters that superficially resemble PCs, and that includes using spells available to PCs. It is, frankly, a problem with 5e that monsters need to be balanced so differently from PCs.
there are a lot of other considerations in monster design. APM, deadliness, slowdown. A monster is designed to exist for a short period of time, players are designed to last for as long as a campaign.
the two creations serve vastly different purposes. Are organized differently, and interact differently. A PC is an avatar for a player, a npc is tool for creating an interesting experience for a player. An elevator, and a chute both can move things to a lower level. The design considerations are however vastly different.
Its not really a problem that they need different balance. Its just a design choice. One could make a game where PCs and npcs are extremely similar, but thats not this game. And it isnt inherently better to do so. Is Castlevania inferior to playing league of legends with AI? not at all.
You can make monsters superficially similar to pcs, but there are certain things that you should be extremely careful in giving to npcs.
to be clear, there are reasons you might give an npc hold person. But you should be very aware of what the implications are, how that would interact with players, and how commonly you do that.
"The caster cannot cast the magic if you disable their hand".
IMO, that is poor game design. If Hold Person is only not-OP because 90% of the time it should be useless because the players aren't fighting humanoids that means if you have a game where humanoids are the main enemy type - e.g. Horde of the Dragon Queen - then Hold Person is suddenly extremely OP. Likewise, if you have a DM who builds enemies like PCs or just feels like switching it up and swaps around the spell list of an enemy to other spells of the same level assuming same level == equally powerful and suddenly a medium encounter becomes a TPK situation, then that's a problem. Not every DM has the experience to realize the implication of giving enemies Hold Person, so the game-designers should communicate how dangerous Hold Person is by making it a higher level spell or just get rid of the distinctions between "X Person" and "X Monster" spells entirely as they are based on an assumption that can very often not hold true - especially now that there are many playable species that aren't humanoid.
5e is that type of game though. The game likes to have these rock paper scissors moments, and things that are sometimes really powerful in a specific situation. Like clerics in an undead campaign.
Also, at a baseline, PCs are not npcs, and are not designed to be. Its not a pvp designed game. Thats a totally different type of balancing. Games that are balanced that way, usually must be done that way at inception.
And making new monsters, as a DM is, and always will be a bit of an art, as with building your own campaigns. The DM may mess up when doing this. Also note, as a dm, you have the ability to counterpick/create npcs. You can create npcs that directly target your player's weaknesses. Thats a DM issue, not really a game design problem. Many spells can be OP given the right situation. High stealth/initiative, 4 guys with sleep. Will probably kill/incapacitate the whole party t1. DM needs to be aware of these powerful combos/situations and generally avoid them. (unless its appropriate to the table/story)
Some things are fine if it pops up once in awhile, but obnoxious if many of the enemies you meet have it. Its important for the DM to understand generally, the goal is not to beat the players. The goal is to create or guide a fun and interesting adventure. Luckily the DM can adjust on the fly, change stat blocks add npcs, or whatever they need if they mess up.
If a DM isn't ready to create new monsters/design campaigns, and adjust things live, thats fine, thats what the Monster manual and prebuilt modules are for.
5e is very specifically meant to have spells and abilities that stand out from others in specific situations, in response to the feeling that things were too uniform/overbalanced in 4e. This puts more burden on the DM, but it also creates highs and lows that people apparently felt was important for the game.
You don't even need to HB monsters to do this though. There are 53 published monsters with one of the "Hold X" spells on their spell list, 18 of which are CR 4 or lower (with the lowest CR being just CR 1), and the generic "Cult Fanatic" (CR 2) a very likely choice for a lot of DMs. All the evidence says that Hold Person is a perfectly acceptable spell to put against a party of level 3+ player characters - and yet it only takes a little bad luck in initiative order for the spell to be a death sentence for just such a character.
And it's not just inexperienced DMs, Critical Role Campaign 2 nearly had a character death to Hold Person when they were level 3, and Campaign 1 nearly had the Kill-Box trivialized by it (however Scanlan only cast it a level 3, rather than upcasting it to 7th to take out a larger portion of the horde).
You have a point, but having experienced a module using fantatic at level 2-3 recently, I think it created a more engaging dungeon/encounter, when used properly. They would sometimes have groups of 1 fantatic and a bunch of cultists, (with advice for advanced parties having all fantatics)and it worked well. Point is, I wouldn't say the game would be better off if no lowbie monster had the spell. Its more about how its used, and adapting to your group's skill.
Essentially the monsters need a bit of spice, but not too much spice. Getting that balance right is making good encounters. I wouldn't want to design a system that takes it out of the list of options completely.
Can't just use CR, because CR is mostly about power level, like dps/evasion/acc. If the monsters with abilities that require more thought to deal with are only high CR, you cant drop them into lower Lvl games.
Perhaps they need a way to signal stronger or trickier abilities/monsters for their CR. So newer DMs are more aware of what they are doing, or don't simply drop 5 "special" monsters on a group, or maybe can drop clues or whatever about how dangerous certain monsters could be. (like shadows with strength drain)
there is no way to defeat a wizard if he's ready for you. So I don't know why so many pcs run through liches.🤔
because bad guys have a nasty tendency to fight to the 'death' rather than retreat. happens all too often.
unhappy at the way in which we lost individual purchases for one-off subclasses, magic items, and monsters?
tell them you don't like features disappeared quietly in the night: provide feedback!
And you had to give up two Feats / ASI's in order to get there. That's a significant resource expenditure.
It creates a "feat-tax" to play a spell caster, yes. But I thought the community in general was against feat-taxes because it takes away player choice & build diversity? Having every caster taking Resilient Con + Worcester is not better for the game than every STR-based character taking PAM + GWM, or every archer taking XbowXpert.
Casters absolutely should be nerfed and martial buffed, but this should be by nerfing spells themselves, not adding extra mechanics that they will simply build / play around.
Plus, as a DM, my caster-enemies are already pretty weak & easy to kill unless I play them defensively - either having them flying so the melees can't reach them or making them invisible so melees can't find them, or using teleportation & illusions to be out of reach of martials. Making melees more effective against mages will just lead to mages preventing melees from getting near them even more.
PS Lots of casters don't even need to take both Resilient Con + Warcaster as of UA8 since : Warlocks get an invocation for Adv on concentration, Starry druids get auto 10s on concentration in dragon form, Sorcerers get Con proficiency and a meta magic for Adv on concentration, Moondruids add their Wis to concentration in WS, Bladesingers add their Int to concentration in bladesong (which is another reason there are a ton of bladesingers who have never touched a sword).
is it really a feat tax? or is it more of a combat optimization feat tax?
and anyway, considering that a feat "embodies training" and training as a downtime activity "might allow additional training options" (beyond language or tool proficiency), why not just ask to have all the party casters put through boot camp to waive the feat tax? this is time (and gold) spent that they could have used on crafting scrolls and magic items so it balances out. plus, then they can use those now-empty feat slots to explore interesting character-arc feats like actor, fighting initiate, skill expert, musician, chef, etc.
unhappy at the way in which we lost individual purchases for one-off subclasses, magic items, and monsters?
tell them you don't like features disappeared quietly in the night: provide feedback!
It's only a tax if you can't play a caster without taking those feats, but you clearly can; I've played a Sorcerer without War Caster, and a Wizard without either, and never had a particular problem with losing concentration. In fact I'm much more likely to lose concentration for reasons other than taking damage, probably the most common being that I misjudged what spell I needed, so had to cast another (breaking concentration on the first). 🤦♂️
Most casters have options for avoiding damage from attacks, and anyone at range can use cover to make that even easier, area effects are harder but again if you mostly fight from range it's going to be easier than for characters who need to be close to be effective.
And the real question is how many rounds you really need out of a concentration spell to get value from it; while damage over time spells typically need two or three rounds to justify them, buffs, debuffs, control etc. can be plenty useful with only a single round. So spending feats just to boost concentration is really only helping you get a bit more value out of these spells, or avoid an annoying early concentration loss.
Not that they're terrible things to invest in by any means, but it's a choice not a requirement, but really being better at concentration mostly just means you squeeze a bit more value out of concentration spells, maybe save a spell slot here or there etc., it's not necessarily a stronger option, same as Lucky isn't because the outcome is usually just the same as just rolling better.
Once a caster has maxxed out their casting score though they don't have much else to do with ability score increases except grab feats, especially since a caster can have that maxxed at 8th-level with point buy/standard array. If casters had more incentive to increase other scores it might help? As martials all have at least two (usually three) scores they need to get reasonably high; more competition with scores might make the feat choice harder.
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I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
Under the current rules yes, but this thread is about adding a ton more way that martials could block a caster by forcing them to make a concentration saves even more than now - e.g. to cast a spell while grappled, via AoO when casting a spell while an enemy can reach you with a melee attack.
My argument is that if these types of mechanics were added to the game then Worcester & Resilient:Con would absolutely become a feat tax for casters.
All of these arguments apply to GWM, PAM, and XbowXpert equally. Either all of these are feat:taxes or none of them are. I've had only 1 DM let me get a feat using downtime in 1 instance and it was a HB feat they designed for that purpose not a feat of my choice. So pretty safe to say that a vast majority of games are not going to allow you to pick up any feat and as many feats as you want using downtime.