Ruin Explorer
Legend
Or make them able to fail. That's what Odyssey, Mearls' 5E variant is doing. This has the advantage of making non-combat spells less broken, when currently they're mostly the most OP spells in real terms.
D&D General Simple, Gritty,Modern. Unpopular Opinions
- Thread starter Zardnaar
- Start date
DarkCrisis
#1 couple in anime
5(.5)E is incredibly scared of the players not feeling useful and powerful 110% of the time. And yeah the HP bloat is ridicules and not fun at all. Combat should be fast (and kind of deadly).
Anywho, see: Shadowdark.
Anywho, see: Shadowdark.
Quickleaf
Legend
Reducing hit points across the board, bounded accuracy, changing saves, curating spells, making monsters scary – there are worthy reasons to explore these changes.
However...
...I think Magic Resistance is not the best way to go... especially when you're asserting that "Most spells aren't broken"!
When you have multiple weapon attacks, entirely missing with one isn't a terrible loss... compared to when you only have one spell and it entirely fails that loss is more keenly felt.
Additionally, Magic Resistance is a second point of failure beyond the spell attack / saving throw. Most weapon attacks only have one point of failure: the attack roll.
Not to get too into the weeds, but research was done suggesting that a success rate around 70-75% gives strong motivation to keep striving without falling into giving up. I can't remember if this was from Mihaly Csikszentmihályi's work on "flow", but I've seen game designers reference it in their blogs.
Anything like Magic Resistance ("no your spell does nothing") should be used verrrrry cautiously due to the impact it has on players. If your game system plays super fast (B/X or AD&D) so losing your turn doesn't mean waiting as long as you would in a 3e, 4e, or 5e game...that might be ok. In a 5e styled game? I wouldn't do it.
However...
...I think Magic Resistance is not the best way to go... especially when you're asserting that "Most spells aren't broken"!
When you have multiple weapon attacks, entirely missing with one isn't a terrible loss... compared to when you only have one spell and it entirely fails that loss is more keenly felt.
Additionally, Magic Resistance is a second point of failure beyond the spell attack / saving throw. Most weapon attacks only have one point of failure: the attack roll.
Not to get too into the weeds, but research was done suggesting that a success rate around 70-75% gives strong motivation to keep striving without falling into giving up. I can't remember if this was from Mihaly Csikszentmihályi's work on "flow", but I've seen game designers reference it in their blogs.
Anything like Magic Resistance ("no your spell does nothing") should be used verrrrry cautiously due to the impact it has on players. If your game system plays super fast (B/X or AD&D) so losing your turn doesn't mean waiting as long as you would in a 3e, 4e, or 5e game...that might be ok. In a 5e styled game? I wouldn't do it.
Zardnaar
Legend
It's something I've noticed playing OSR and 5E side by side. 3E and 5E you're way better off using control spells vs damage. Hp and save ratio is off.
Hold spells and others become the best things to use later on because of this. Your CR14 with mediocre wisdom save? Say hello to command/tashas hideous laughter and hold monster.
Working on a Bronze Age fork of 5E now. Playtest it for me when it's playtestable.
Quickleaf
Legend
Totally, yeah, action denial has a wide swing of impact in 5E. I have experienced that too.
Against lots of mooks or in certain situations (eg. slipping past held ogre door guard), it can work great, but against single or a few enemies, it can utterly cripple them for fairly low cost to the spellcaster. It becomes an anti-climactic and repeated strategy.
It depends how much design work you want to tackle, but strategies like… using the sleep or color spray hit point caps on action denial… or allowing a monster to burn hit points to remove certain crippling conditions… or monsters becoming more dangerous when suffering, paralyzed thunder, or whatever… those are ways to on the GM backend (mostly) deal with 5e conditions.
To be fair, I play in an OSE game, where these leeches kept paralyzing us for 1d4 rounds, and there were nine of these leeches… there were large periods of the fight where 1 to 3 party members could do nothing… the fight dragged… it sucked. Had we the party been able to do that to the monsters? It would’ve sucked just as much.
So a similar issue can occur in OSR games too, if design is done wrong.
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MGibster
Legend
I have a player who is new to D&D though he's played Pathfinder for a while. To my mind, he's overly concerned about the amount of damage his character can do, not from an egotistical place where he has to do a lot of damage, but from a fear that his character isn't useful enough to the group. I've tried assuring him he's fine, you really have to try hard to make an incompetent character in D&D these days, and nobody else has complained about his character during the campaign so I think he's growing a bit more comfortable.
Quickleaf
Legend
@Zardnaar I forgot to share this with you. I'm also (slowly, with interruptions) working on a homebrew that sounds a bit like the "B/X advanced with three saves, lower hp" sort of game you're wanting. It's meant to be mostly compatible with OSE and B/X-adjacent games. Here's one of the class spreads (sort of modeled after Robin Hood) for my setting/homebrew rules to give you a feel...
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