Do caster out of combat options matter?

[Rafaelfras]

The fork is a very relevant point. When you start to think about it, plane shift seems to be thought out as a check point instead of an enabler.

If the fork cannot be acquired by normal means the only way to get it would be traveling to the desired plane first and then once there attuning the fork there.
So caster or non caster will have to find a portal first, but if you have the caster you get the ability to leave and go back without needing the portal, so like a check point.

A DM that isn't interested on the journey to the desired plane can skip it for both caster or non caster. For caster here is a shop with your fork, for non casters here is a mage that will port you in and out whenever you need.

You know, all PCs' non-combat abilities are entirely superfluous. After all, if the DM wants them to be able to do something the PCs can't, he will just give them an NPC, magic item, or other plot coupon to do it for them!

I think more than anything non-combat abilities have a greater weight on the DM when creating an adventure. Instead of giving certain clues he will wait on the players to use divination. Instead of preparing planar portals he will let players use plane shift or portal. He will make a fortress very hard ( or impossible) to enter, so the assassin can use his level 9 ability. He will have to remember of spells like private sanctum and forbearance exist so teleport cant be an easy solution. While when these abilities aren't there, there will be specific solutions so the adventure can happen

[Unoriginal]

In Descent into Avernus, the PCs have to travel to Hell despite being ~level 5.

The way the module proposes to descend into Avernus? The NPC who helped the PCs realize they needed to go to hell knows an Archmage who has Plane Shift, the right tuning fork, and (IIRC) a favor they need to repay.

[Telok]

For me its just easier world building to have stuff like the baseline default spells function normally. If that means treating planar tuning forks like Boots of Flying then that's fine. But I wouldn't consider barring a sorcerer who picked Plane Shift for casting the spell to be reasonable. It'd be like saying there's no teleport circles anywhere ever if they chose the teleport spell. I may as well stiff the fighter by saying there's no magic weapons in the setting or changing all the strength saves to dexterity saves.

Having stuff like portals, just to make it so noncasters can go plane hopping, is either going to involve considering the effects of the portals on the setting or getting called out for bull **** when the crap world building fails fridge logic. Its flat out more work as a GM. If you're running a railroad plot then making sure the PCs can always get to the next plot point is required so things don't collapse if nobody rolls a wizard or something. But if you build sandboxes or hex crawls with stuff like flying cloud castles or underwater civilizations then you're either doing more work to enable noncasters to participate or locking out parties without the right spells.

Yeah, adding extra stuff to enable noncaster parties to play parts of the game is extra work for the GM. At that level the caster noncombat stuff matters. It also matters that if everything done by noncombat spells is available by other means, in order to let noncasters play at the same game as casters, then the casters can ditch those spell picks and load up on all the best combat spells all the time. Personally, I'm happy when a player of a caster agonizes over choosing combat vs noncombat spells because both are equally useful and they don't have enough picks to get both.

[Mastikator]

You're confusing me, sorry to say.

The OP is saying that there is much made about how casters have these utility spells that let them overcome stuff that others can't. And the OP is saying "yeah but... you would just overcome it some other way without the spells, so does it really matter?"

And that would be like saying that teleport is meaningless because you can just walk. If teleport doesn't matter because you can just walk then it's a poorly written campaign. In this matter I 100% agree with Rynjin.

I generally agree with this, as before.

The OP reads to my as if coming from the place where people assume that if the party doesn't have Plane Shift, they can't get to other planes, and this therefore adds a level of superiority and utility to those spellcasters that can access Plane Shift. But we, and the OP, are saying that Plane Shift is not the only way to the other planes, and the party will figure it out. And if the DM designed an adventure with no way to resolve unless a member of the party was:

1. a specific class
2. a specific level
3. and knew a specific spell

Then the DM set everyone up to fail when the party shows up and that specific character isn't in it.

That is putting the cart before the horse.
If the DM wants to run an adventure where the players go to another plane, then the DM should make that possible for any given party.
If the party wants to visit a plane, but doesn't have access to planeshift, then the DM is not *obliged to give them other means.
If the party wants to visit a plane, has access to planeshift but not the right tuning fork, they may **ask to craft or buy one, it's a much smaller ask from the DM than to put a whole archmage or portal.

The DM has many responsibilities, more than any of the players. More than all of the players. The DM can't possibly be asked to make the PCs for the players. The players need to pick up their end of the couch.

Because it's common to view the game through "what can spellcasters do" lenses and think that everything revolves around casters. So this idea that the DM will have to react to the party not having a spell to do something as "burdensome" or "more work" and "co-DMing", but the DM reacting to an impromptu jaunt to another plane of existence, or casting Divination spells all the time, or reading people's thoughts, or speaking with every corpse, etc. is NOT more work for the DM is just a bias.

There is no difference between "We'd like to find a portal to the Plane of Fire" and "We'd like to find a tuning fork attuned to the Plane of Fire" as far as DM burden. The difference will be that the portal will take the players wherever the DM decides, whereas Plane Shift will take the players generally to the location they want to go to. This is the "agency" others are speaking of, but not, what I think, the OP was referring to.

Generally, I would agree with the other side that it matters insofar as timing and precision. But that's not how people talk about it online, and so it's not what the OP is referring to. We all have read countless posts about this and how martials can't do things because they don't have spells, and that's where this is coming from.

TBH if the players have the means to impromptu planeshift then I'd probably end the session early, or take a 1-2 hour break to prepare stuff. It behooves the players to tell the DM what their plan is, so the DM can prep. If the players go off-rails then they should not be upset that the DM needs time to prepare, even if that interrupts the session.

There's four heavy burdens a DM must bear, two are affected by stuff like teleport and planar travel: Adventure prep and world building. Adventure prep takes time, if the players want to craft a tuning fork then that gives the DM time to prep. Then there is world building. The DM may decide that this is a world without friendly living archmages and a world without portals, the players have no right to change the theme of the world. It's a whole lot easier to justify a tuning fork than a portal or an archmage. A world with portals and archmages looks very different than a world without.
There is a huge difference between asking for a portal- ***a world defining element, and asking for a tuning fork.
The same is true for teleport, it's a lot easier to teleport to the other side of the planet, if the players do it without warning then they best get comfortable waiting for the DM to prep.


*the DM may still choose to, but they are not wrong for saying no.
**when they ask to craft a tuning fork they are giving the DM a chance to prep, this lowers the burden to the DM.
***what if the players don't care about that? Why can't we just have fun? You might wonder. Maybe this is what gets the DM excited, gets them motivated to DM. Why are players endlessly catered to and the DM (the one who does all the work) ignored? This deal seems completely lopsided to me.

[Vahnavoi]

This thread is a sad example of how focusing on "story" kills all sense of strategy and choice in a game.

It isn't just about casters, or non-combat solutions. It's about predestination of success that should have no place in a game.

All it takes for a choice to matter is that not all choices are equal. The basic paradigm is simple: a dungeon masters sets up a situation. The players choose their characters and actions based on what goals they're trying to accomplish in that situation. Either they choose well, in which case the game progresses towards those goals, or they choose poorly, in which case the game doesn't progress towards them. That's it.

You ruin it by adding in a presumption that the dungeon master will, or worse, should contrive events so that they always progress along the same line. As a player, starting with this presumption is a good way to waste your own agency.

As a dungeon master, it's just a silly way to run games. Stop making fragile, linear plots. Start making robust, non-linear ones. Somebody up thread, claimed it takes 10 times more prep than what sees play, as if that's a hard barrier to clear. Anybody who thinks that, cannot count. Look: if I design four encounters and then demand that players go trough them in exact sequence, I've prepared one possibility. If I design four encounters and then let players go through them in any order, I've now prepared 4! = 24 possibilities. Of those, the players will experience one - 1/24 of the overall game space. Some of those may end up in players losing. That is fine. It is completely normal for a game.

This is also the difference, to paraphrase NichG, between preparing content versus preparing processes to generate content. The latter is hardly foreign to 5e D&D, it has its share of random tables and what not. It just seems the player base is over a decade late to realizing why they are even present.

[Unoriginal]

This thread is a sad example of how focusing on "story" kills all sense of strategy and choice in a game.

It isn't just about casters, or non-combat solutions. It's about predestination of success that should have no place in a game.

All it takes for a choice to matter is that not all choices are equal. The basic paradigm is simple: a dungeon masters sets up a situation. The players choose their characters and actions based on what goals they're trying to accomplish in that situation. Either they choose well, in which case the game progresses towards those goals, or they choose poorly, in which case the game doesn't progress towards them. That's it.

You ruin it by adding in a presumption that the dungeon master will, or worse, should contrive events so that they always progress along the same line. As a player, starting with this presumption is a good way to waste your own agency.

A player who rolls a Wizard and decide to take Plane Shift as they level up is demonstrating agency.

If the campaign has nothing to do with the planes or planar travel, then the player wasted one of their Wizard's learn-a-spell-when-leveling options.

Same as the Wizard who took Water Breathing when the campaign happens entirely in a desert.

But the thing is, it doesn't make sense if "one of your teammates needs to have the right spell" is the ONLY way to progress toward a goal.

If the campaign involves the bad guys using an underwater temple, and none of the group's casters is able to cast Water Breathing, is the DM supposed to just go "well dang, guess you can't go deal with that temple."?

Despite the fact that the DMG shows *multiple* magic items that could help with it, and the fact that the casters in the group are not likely to be the only beings with relevant magic in the world?

What if the bad guy are using a temple which floats in the sky? Are the PCs dependent on one of their members taking the Fly spell for them to progress toward the "beat the bad guys who are using a sky temple" goal? Or is there multiple options in the world for sky travel, including magic items, creatures who can fly and transport humanoids at the same time, and practitioners of magic who aren't in the group?

Or heck, is capturing one of the bad guys and making them use the method the bad guys use to travel to the sky temple out of the realm of possibility, too?

Handing every solution for every problem on a silver platter isn't a good thing for a campaign or for GMing in general. But refusing the idea that there are solutions beyond "what's written on the character sheet" isn't a good thing for a campaign or GMing in general either.

[Vahnavoi]

But the thing is, it doesn't make sense if "one of your teammates needs to have the right spell" is the ONLY way to progress toward a goal.

Whether it makes sense is entirely situational. The actual important part is that whether players have just one or multiple good choices to pursue a goal, they can also blow those choices.

If the campaign involves the bad guys using an underwater temple, and none of the group's casters is able to cast Water Breathing, is the DM supposed to just go "well dang, guess you can't go deal with that temple."?

Despite the fact that the DMG shows *multiple* magic items that could help with it, and the fact that the casters in the group are not likely to be the only beings with relevant magic in the world?

You are loading the question. The fact that a dungeon master can place multiple ways to approach the temple, does not mean they have to - and regardless, as noted above, even if there are multiple, the players can just blow them all. It is, in fact, perfectly fair to note to players "you did not make any of the choices that'd allow you to pursue that goal, so either call it quits or pick another goal". Though if players are even mildly self-aware, they'll make the same observation on their own once their error becomes clear. As a player, being able to evaluate when a strategy has failed, and coming up with a new strategy, are what you are supposed to do.

Handing every solution for every problem on a silver platter isn't a good thing for a campaign or for GMing in general. But refusing the idea that there are solutions beyond "what's written on the character sheet" isn't a good thing for a campaign or GMing in general either.

You are arguing against a point that wasn't being made. What I said doesn't care about whether the options players are picking from are on their character sheet or somewhere else.

[Dr.Samurai]

No, it is different. If the DM says no to the wizard, she's negating one of the character's class features.

The wizard does not have a class feature that says "You will have a tuning fork for every plane of existence you may ever want to travel to."

This is a presumption that if your wizard decides they want to plane hop, having the means to do so is going to be easy peasy because they have a spell at level 15 that says they can travel to another dimension.

But when we're having a conversation about DM buy-in and players doing stuff without DM intervention, ignoring the tuning fork is having your cake and eating it too, pure and simple.

I think more than anything non-combat abilities have a greater weight on the DM when creating an adventure. Instead of giving certain clues he will wait on the players to use divination. Instead of preparing planar portals he will let players use plane shift or portal. He will make a fortress very hard ( or impossible) to enter, so the assassin can use his level 9 ability. He will have to remember of spells like private sanctum and forbearance exist so teleport cant be an easy solution. While when these abilities aren't there, there will be specific solutions so the adventure can happen

This sounds about right to me.

For me its just easier world building to have stuff like the baseline default spells function normally. If that means treating planar tuning forks like Boots of Flying then that's fine. But I wouldn't consider barring a sorcerer who picked Plane Shift for casting the spell to be reasonable. It'd be like saying there's no teleport circles anywhere ever if they chose the teleport spell. I may as well stiff the fighter by saying there's no magic weapons in the setting or changing all the strength saves to dexterity saves.

Two points; firstly there's a spectrum here. Like you can go from no magic items to magic item marts every town and hamlet. Secondly, your point is basically just saying that casters should be able to meet the requirements for their spells automatically because it's easier. But I don't understand how it isn't as easy to assume NPC spellcasters or portals or flying mounts, etc. I mean... where does the tuning fork come from? Can't the same person that has the tuning fork to sell or barter also cast Plane Shift?

I mean... the answer can be no, but if the answer is yes was that so difficult?

Having stuff like portals, just to make it so noncasters can go plane hopping, is either going to involve considering the effects of the portals on the setting or getting called out for bull **** when the crap world building fails fridge logic. Its flat out more work as a GM. If you're running a railroad plot then making sure the PCs can always get to the next plot point is required so things don't collapse if nobody rolls a wizard or something. But if you build sandboxes or hex crawls with stuff like flying cloud castles or underwater civilizations then you're either doing more work to enable noncasters to participate or locking out parties without the right spells.

Getting called out for BS sounds like a table issue.

And something that hasn't been said yet is that this is a huge level of entitlement to and pressure on the party spellcaster to use their spells known and spells prepared on specific utility spells. Sounds like a nightmare to play with people with such a strong sense of "how to play".

Personally, I'm happy when a player of a caster agonizes over choosing combat vs noncombat spells because both are equally useful and they don't have enough picks to get both.

Excellent point, because you'll find that the party overcoming an obstacle without spells is more common than this thread would suggest. Because wizards aren't just selecting every utility spell every level.

And FYI, finding scrolls or spellbooks to learn other spells is DM fiat .

And that would be like saying that teleport is meaningless because you can just walk. If teleport doesn't matter because you can just walk then it's a poorly written campaign. In this matter I 100% agree with Rynjin.

My my, how the tables have turned, Judge Mastikator.

Haven't played in a campaign yet that has required Teleport, a 7th level spell. I'll let my DM and the WotC devs know how poorly written their mods are...

That is putting the cart before the horse.

No, it's rebutting the claims in this thread.

The DM has many responsibilities, more than any of the players. More than all of the players. The DM can't possibly be asked to make the PCs for the players.

Who suggested this?

**when they ask to craft a tuning fork they are giving the DM a chance to prep, this lowers the burden to the DM.

Asking to search for an NPC or research a portal is also giving the DM time to prep.

[Aimeryan]

A consideration that is not being discussed is the ability for the players to go off the rails and craft solutions that the DM did not think up. If you are restricted to non-caster options then the solution space is smaller, so the player's ability to do this is smaller. Agency is not an on-off switch - its a scale. Many players want to come up with solutions, not just discover the ones the DM left.

Yet another consideration is that while the DM is indeed likely to provide ever-alternative routes to progressing the campaign (likely with mechanical or lore penalties - "As you decided to take the long way around the chasm the blight was able to reach Innocentchildrensville before you arrived."), no such viability-retention is likely to be given to side quests or rewards. So, even if you only consider viability important and agency not to matter, viability can still be lost in the optional content.

[Mastikator]

The wizard does not have a class feature that says "You will have a tuning fork for every plane of existence you may ever want to travel to."

So you may as well ban it? Is that what you're saying?

[QUOTE=Dr.Samurai;25996082]I'll let my DM and the WotC devs know how poorly written their mods are...[QUOTE=Dr.Samurai;25996082]If you can't imagine a single time where having access to Teleport wouldn't have been massively impactful then I think that is due to a lack of trying.

No, it's rebutting the claims in this thread.

Then you may be getting your posts mixed up. The one you posted where you quoted me is putting the cart before the horse.

Asking to search for an NPC or research a portal is also giving the DM time to prep.

And?

[stoutstien]

Choice only matters if you have something to base it on otherwise it's just a blind gamble. Picking the right class, spell, or whatever isn't really a choice if it's just luck based if you pick the right option. Picking a number between 1 and 100 isn't a real choice but picking the likely number in a sequence is.

[Psyren]

There is a huge difference between asking for a portal- ***a world defining element, and asking for a tuning fork.

I would argue that the tuning fork is actually more work than the portal. Portals are completely in the DM's control - when they don't want to or aren't ready to do the planar adventure, they can just close it (temporarily or permanently), or tie its opening to a future cosmic event that the players can go gear up for, or they can have the entrance or exit move into the dungeon content they had previously prepared and so on. The tuning fork meanwhile puts the players squarely in the driver's seat - great if you have stuff ready to go for that plane at a moment's notice, not so much if life got in the way and the DM needs more than a long rest's worth of notice to get the planar session ready.

[NichG]

It was awhile back, but I remember making a thread to investigate this sort of thing more empirically. Here it is: https://forums.giantitp.com/showthre...omparison-game

If you want to see how out of combat options can matter, go through these scenarios with say a D&D wizard and a D&D fighter, run skills and ability checks however you think is reasonable, and see if it feels different to think through the scenarios with the different characters. How often does it feel frustrating, how often does it feel like there's stuff you're eager to try, how often do the character abilities shape how you'd approach it versus things any character can do, etc.

[Segev]

One of the most powerful characters I ever played was a shadow monk. Through relatively little use of class features, he wound up favor-trading with the fair folk and getting enmeshed in enough of their politics that he had fey vassals, fed one archfey to another by accepting an invitation to a banquet, and using the spoils of that to send an ancient dragon-queen and two of the three archfey of war-as-slaughter to the depths of space where they froze to death. That last was done to help enthrone the dragon-queen's sister, who paid our mercenary company expecting military aid, not a decapitation strike.

By the end of the campaign, he was quite likely on the way to becoming an archfey in his own right, given the holdings and narratives he was developing.


And that was just my character. We all had all sorts of soft power and political pull, and all gained through our deeds and roleplay. We never could have been so potent if we had just built the PCs at level 9, which is, I think, where we ended that campaign. (We started at third level.)

[Vahnavoi]

Choice only matters if you have something to base it on otherwise it's just a blind gamble. Picking the right class, spell, or whatever isn't really a choice if it's just luck based if you pick the right option. Picking a number between 1 and 100 isn't a real choice but picking the likely number in a sequence is.

And is picking your character and actions usually just a blind gamble to you? All of the classes, from the basic rules, inform you what they can and cannot do. As a character advances in a game, the player has opportunity to observe what is in the game world and choose their actions accordingly. They will see a mountain before they have to climb it, they can hear stories of sunken treasure or distant islands before they have the funds to buy a ship or learn Water Breathing, they will see creatures flying overhead way before learning how to fly themselves, and they will hear rumours of the Dark Lord's army long before facing them in combat. So on and so forth.

[stoutstien]

And is picking your character and actions usually just a blind gamble to you? All of the classes, from the basic rules, inform you what they can and cannot do. As a character advances in a game, the player has opportunity to observe what is in the game world and choose their actions accordingly. They will see a mountain before they have to climb it, they can hear stories of sunken treasure or distant islands before they have the funds to buy a ship or learn Water Breathing, they will see creatures flying overhead way before learning how to fly themselves, and they will hear rumours of the Dark Lord's army long before facing them in combat. So on and so forth.

Choosing a class that has plane jumping or not without knowing if it's going to be relevant is pretty blind. It just goes unnoticed because spell are free floating so you are rarely if every really in a place where you have to commit to something permanently. But if no one has those options you are now in the place the OP describes where you can't just readjust and start hopping meaning the GM now needs to adjust the world to progress.

However the tickler is if you do explicitly tell them that plane jumping is going to be involved in the campaign then they will just pick up those option anyways.

There isn't a real choice here for either the players or GM. It's wasted design space while also wastes the GMs time which is arguably the most important resource for actually playing the game.

[NichG]

One of the most powerful characters I ever played was a shadow monk. Through relatively little use of class features, he wound up favor-trading with the fair folk and getting enmeshed in enough of their politics that he had fey vassals, fed one archfey to another by accepting an invitation to a banquet, and using the spoils of that to send an ancient dragon-queen and two of the three archfey of war-as-slaughter to the depths of space where they froze to death. That last was done to help enthrone the dragon-queen's sister, who paid our mercenary company expecting military aid, not a decapitation strike.

By the end of the campaign, he was quite likely on the way to becoming an archfey in his own right, given the holdings and narratives he was developing.


And that was just my character. We all had all sorts of soft power and political pull, and all gained through our deeds and roleplay. We never could have been so potent if we had just built the PCs at level 9, which is, I think, where we ended that campaign. (We started at third level.)

(If you're replying to the scenario parameters:) Many of the people who responded did bring in characters with their history, connections, etc rather than building direct to level 9. While some of the scenarios explicitly don't allow for bringing in soft power, for others you can place those scenarios into the character's setting and take the soft power into account if you'd like.

Of course this all depends on what design question you're trying to answer. 'What amount of soft power is needed to match the sorts of options a spell list provides, so I can design my campaigns to make at least that much power available?' would be useful to ask for example, as well as 'Where are the limits of soft power in what sorts of things it lets a character interact with?' or 'How does it feel to wield soft power vs direct power in these different situations?'.

[Vahnavoi]

Choosing a class that has plane jumping or not without knowing if it's going to be relevant is pretty blind.

And is this usual for your games? In D&D, with its default of Great Wheel cosmology? A character, and player, can, at level 1, know there are other planes outside the Prime Material and start planning whether they want to visit them or not.

However the tickler is if you do explicitly tell them that plane jumping is going to be involved in the campaign then they will just pick up those option anyways.

You are falling prey to the presumption of predestination. Placing an element in a game as a place that can be visited, does not mean it will be visited - that choice can be left to the players. With the addition that there can be a window of opportunity for when they can make that choice - miss that window, and that place is off limits.

This starts far earlier than plane-hopping. These kind of strategic decisions begin at level 1, with mundane decisions such as which rooms of a dungeon to explore. It's neither a waste of design space nor a waste of time - a move space bigger than what a single play-through can cover is necessary for there to be choice at all and doesn't take more time to achieve than a fragile linear script. Again, consider the simple example of four encounters, played strictly in order versus played in any order.

[Dr.Samurai]

So you may as well ban it? Is that what you're saying?

Seriously? Not even close.

I'll post a more in-depth response when I have time.

And is this usual for your games? In D&D, with its default of Great Wheel cosmology? A character, and player, can, at level 1, know there are other planes outside the Prime Material and start planning whether they want to visit them or not.



You are falling prey to the presumption of predestination. Placing an element in a game as a place that can be visited, does not mean it will be visited - that choice can be left to the players. With the addition that there can be a window of opportunity for when they can make that choice - miss that window, and that place is off limits.

These two comments seem at odds to me. On the one hand, the mere existence of other planes of existence means that characters should consider going to the other planes when generating their characters. On the other hand, the mere existence of other planes of existence should not lead anyone to assume that they will travel there during the game.

Seems Stoutstein is closer than you're giving him credit for.

It's neither a waste of design space nor a waste of time - a move space bigger than what a single play-through can cover is necessary for there to be choice at all and doesn't take more time to achieve than a fragile linear script. Again, consider the simple example of four encounters, played strictly in order versus played in any order.

If casting Plane Shift is the only way forward, then you are arguing for the exact type of fragile linear script you're arguing against here.

[KorvinStarmast]

If spells were as wishy-washy as 'mother may I' and 'hope I roll well' then this would be different - thankfully, they aren't.

Every spell that requires an attack roll or triggers the target's saving throw is subject to the same limitation.

If the DM wants to run an adventure where the players go to another plane, then the DM should make that possible for any given party.

Or, the players need to pursue various In World contacts and options for opening that door.

A consideration that is not being discussed is the ability for the players to go off the rails and craft solutions that the DM did not think up.

Yes. This is the meat of the game. [/quote] "As you decided to take the long way around the chasm the blight was able to reach Innocentchildrensville before you arrived.") [/QUOTE] Time management and ticking clocks, and even doomsday clocks, are tools for the DM to apply, but there needs to be a sense or a feel of time, and time passing, for the players to connect to it.

[JNAProductions]

Every spell that requires an attack roll or triggers the target's saving throw is subject to the same limitation.

That's not the same. At all.

If I cast Firebolt and roll a total of 22 to-hit, I hit anything with AC 22 or less and miss anything with AC 23 or more.
If I get an Arcana check of 22, I... What?

[stoutstien]

And is this usual for your games? In D&D, with its default of Great Wheel cosmology? A character, and player, can, at level 1, know there are other planes outside the Prime Material and start planning whether they want to visit them or not.



You are falling prey to the presumption of predestination. Placing an element in a game as a place that can be visited, does not mean it will be visited - that choice can be left to the players. With the addition that there can be a window of opportunity for when they can make that choice - miss that window, and that place is off limits.

This starts far earlier than plane-hopping. These kind of strategic decisions begin at level 1, with mundane decisions such as which rooms of a dungeon to explore. It's neither a waste of design space nor a waste of time - a move space bigger than what a single play-through can cover is necessary for there to be choice at all and doesn't take more time to achieve than a fragile linear script. Again, consider the simple example of four encounters, played strictly in order versus played in any order.

If that point of failure is PC creation it's a big ol failure in my book. it's shifting all the decisions to non game elements and onto rules. I don't consider anything you do prior to
the point character are making in game choices as actual game play. You shouldn't exclude over half the classes from a core part of the setting just because they don't have spells.

[Dr.Samurai]

If that point of failure is PC creation it's a big ol failure in my book. it's shifting all the decisions to non game elements and onto rules. I don't consider anything you do prior to the point character are making in game choices as actual game play. You shouldn't exclude over half the classes from a core part of the setting just because they don't have spells.

I agree with this.

And I again take issue with the framing that this is some sort of failure on the part of the player. There is no "game" without the DM and players, so there is no default assumption that you're going to have a utility spellcaster in the party.

It's so easy for people to say "you don't need a healer in 5E" and "you don't need a tank in 5E".

But the utility caster... all of a sudden you're changing world lore, you're being a burden on the DM, you have no agency!!!!

[stoutstien]

I agree with this.

And I again take issue with the framing that this is some sort of failure on the part of the player. There is no "game" without the DM and players, so there is no default assumption that you're going to have a utility spellcaster in the party.

It's so easy for people to say "you don't need a healer in 5E" and "you don't need a tank in 5E".

But the utility caster... all of a sudden you're changing world lore, you're being a burden on the DM, you have no agency!!!!

Im taking a different approach for my WIP and I categorized spells and other effects by their potential impact when they become available. Prevents a GM from reading everything 10x and cross referencing it everything else. (What level can a party start bypassing water based challenges with little/no cost? What level does distance become a inconvenience rather than a barrier?)

This allows having prepacked lists that you can match to theme as quick as just flipping a page.

That and the *big* stuff like potential plane hopping is just not on any class as a feature. Some can do it with less resources or with more accuracy but it's just something you can do if you follow the ritual.

[Psyren]

If the DM wants to run an adventure where the players go to another plane, then the DM should make that possible for any given party.

Or, the players need to pursue various In World contacts and options for opening that door.

I'm a little confused, aren't these the same thing? It's not like someone else is putting contacts/options in the world.

If the party wants to visit a plane, but doesn't have access to planeshift, then the DM is not *obliged to give them other means.
If the party wants to visit a plane, has access to planeshift but not the right tuning fork, they may **ask to craft or buy one, it's a much smaller ask from the DM than to put a whole archmage or portal.

I already covered the portal/NPC thing actually being easier on the DM than the tuning fork - but as far as "if the party wants to visit a plane" - why would they want that unless a quest or story beat is pointing/taking them there?

[NichG]

I agree with this.

And I again take issue with the framing that this is some sort of failure on the part of the player. There is no "game" without the DM and players, so there is no default assumption that you're going to have a utility spellcaster in the party.

It's so easy for people to say "you don't need a healer in 5E" and "you don't need a tank in 5E".

But the utility caster... all of a sudden you're changing world lore, you're being a burden on the DM, you have no agency!!!!

I mean, the fix is not to write systems where you can specialize in the combat bits of the game to the exclusion of all else. Every character should have access to a good set of (distinct) utility options, and being competent at out of combat things in at least some fashion should be considered the normal expectation. If a player wants to challenge themselves by refusing all the utility options, that's fine, but IMO it's like going to a D&D game and saying 'I'm going to play a pacifist who refuses to participate in combat in any way' - get explicit buy-in from the group.

Those options don't have to be spells, but they should be sufficiently well-defined that players can plan around them - it should be possible to at least somewhat know what you will and won't be able to do when it comes down to it, the way a Fighter would be able to say with some confidence 'I think I can take a half-dozen goblins' and can conceptualize the specific ways in which that might go wrong 'oh, but not if we're fighting in the dark' or 'oh, but if they have cleric support it could be dicey' or whatever.

Some things are close to this in 5e, others are much further away. Spells are very definite, you can definitely know if you'll be able to fly over a 100ft gap or not. Stuff like lockpicking is probably close enough to count - you might not know the DC in advance, but its pretty unlikely for the DC to be impossible, and given time you can be pretty sure you can get it. Something like scouting planar portals to Fire or digging up blackmail material on a noble to get an invitation to the royal court? There are lots of factors outside of your control or estimation - it wouldn't be reasonable to make a plan around those sorts of things without prior confirmation from the DM.

[Xetheral]

I agree with the posters who've said (and/or implied) that the impact of out-of-combat abilities can depend greatly on the style of campaign in question. I see two major ways that usually plays out.

First, the more freedom the players have to set their characters' long-term goals, short-term objectives, and choice of methods, the more likely it is that the presence or absence of out-of-combat abilities will be a significant factor in how the campaign unfolds. Upthread the example was raised of an underwater city. In a game where the DM sets the party's goals, and decides that the goal is to infiltrate the underwater city as part of some intrigue with the mainland, then it's true that knowing Water Breathing is going to be, at best, a time-saver (although see below for how that can still matter). If instead the underwater city and the intrigue with the mainland are part of the campaign world that the players can choose whether, when, and how to engage with, then knowing Water Breathing opens up a lot more options. A party that doesn't have the ability to breathe underwater (or have easy access to allies that can provide that capability) has more constrained choices in how to engage (if at all) with that intrigue, but that's fine--not all options need to be equally available. Indeed, part of the fun of such campaigns is applying your limited resources to solve or bypass the obstacles to accomplishing the goals you've chosen. Maybe such a party tries negotiating with the underwater city, or recruits other underwater factions to oppose the city, or allies with the underwater city, or concludes that the opportunity cost of obtaining the ability to breathe underwater for an infiltration simply isn't worth the time--instead choosing some other goal that their resources are better suited to tackle.

Secondly, the less static the campaign world is, the more likely it is that out-of-combat abilities will be significant. Primarily, that's because such a game world doesn't wait for the PCs, and opportunities or make a difference are often time-limited. Time-saving abilities thus can make goals and objectives achievable that would otherwise be mutually exclusive. Furthermore, in some cases saving time can dramatically increase the PCs' ability to impact a single, large-scale situation. For example, if an enemy nation is invading on multiple fronts, the PCs might ordinarily be able to pick a single axis of advance and thwart it, but can't be everywhere at once, and so the broader invasion continues. With Teleport, the distance/time factor changes radically, and the PCs can indeed impact multiple threat axes. The enemy may not care much if one advance force gets stymied (they simply reinforce an axis where they did break through), but if all their advance forces get stopped that's going to profoundly affect their strategic options and planning. So time-saving out-of-combat abilities can still matter, even in a game where the DM picks the party's goals. Of course, in a more static campaign world where time isn't as much of a factor, time-saving abilities can indeed be more irrelevant.

One last point I'd like to make though is one that hasn't been raised yet. The more an out-of-combat ability can impact how a campaign unfolds, the more that ability becomes a party-level resource, rather than just a character-level one. The Wizard who uses their high-level spells slots to Teleport the party to multiple battlefields in time to make a difference to the outcomes enables the party to be spectacularly more impactful to the war effort, but once that capability is available the whole party gets to participate in figuring out how best to make use of it. The same can be true with other abilities like Fabricate, various divinations, Fly, and a whole host of other abilities. Importantly, that switch from character-level resource to party-level resource has a profound impact on intraparty balance. The Wizard in a party that makes good use of Teleport (in a campaign run in a style where that matters) is providing essential capability, but arguably isn't stealing the show to the same extent they would be if they routinely cast encounter-ending spells in a series of combat encounters. Indeed, in some cases, intraparty balance in such circumstances can disfavor the casters if they (e.g.) feel relegated to the role of taxi. Balance is so inherently subjective that I'm not trying to make any broad conclusions here. I'm just trying to point out that, counter-intuitively, running a campaign in a style that enables out-of-combat abilities to have more impact doesn't necessarily magnify balance concerns between classes that have more such abilities and classes that have fewer.

[Telok]

It's so easy for people to say "you don't need a healer in 5E" and "you don't need a tank in 5E".

But the utility caster... all of a sudden you're changing world lore, you're being a burden on the DM, you have no agency!!!!

Funny thing, I'd disagree with all three statements unless you have a pretty good GM who will intervene in the usual & expected game defaults to enable nonstandard parties. You can write adventures to not require any specific spells from PC casters pretty easily (not discussing if its done well or badly in any specific instance). But the combat paradigm of tank + heals + dps is less obvious, more assumed, and kind of baked in to the "adventuring day" stuff.

Like if you're running the usual 3-4 hard fights per "day" on small restricted maps (because indoors or outdoor VTT/battlemat maps or official module maps) with negligible meaningful cover (walk around/ jump over/ flying/ so small) then then as soon as you're past the "6 goblins in a bush" type of stuff healing becomes required and someone to take attacks from 3+ melee monsters a round is quite important. I'd be facinated to hear from anyone who ran a full published campaign past level 5 (out of the abyss, etc.) where the party never had any "tanks" and/or "healers" and the GM ran it as a neutral arbiter rather than changing it to fit the party.

[Vahnavoi]

.
These two comments seem at odds to me. On the one hand, the mere existence of other planes of existence means that characters should consider going to the other planes when generating their characters. On the other hand, the mere existence of other planes of existence should not lead anyone to assume that they will travel there during the game.

Seems Stoutstein is closer than you're giving him credit for.

There is nothing paradoxical about noting that possible actions and actual actions are different: there being a mountain on the horizon means I can consider climbing it as soon as I know it is possible to climb mountains, it does not mean I will climb that mountain or even always be in the condition to climb that mountain regardless of everything else I might choose to do.

If casting Plane Shift is the only way forward, then you are arguing for the exact type of fragile linear script you're arguing against here.

I'm not arguing for any given method to be the only way to do anything - the same points apply even if there are multiple methods to do any given thing. Again: players can blow all their options. It's perfectly fair to go "you didn't take any of the choices that'd allow you to pursue this goal, either call it quits or pick another goal".

---

If that point of failure is PC creation it's a big ol failure in my book. it's shifting all the decisions to non game elements and onto rules. I don't consider anything you do prior to
the point character are making in game choices as actual game play. You shouldn't exclude over half the classes from a core part of the setting just because they don't have spells.

Yes, having all strategic decisions front-loaded before play starts is not great. Is that usually the case for Plane Shift? Last I checked, it isn't, it's a late character option that can reached even by a character that starts as a non-caster via multi-classing. Sticking to a character that can never get Plane Shift isn't a choice you make at level 1, it's one you make continuously during play as you choose other advancement options.

Furthermore, half of classes not gaining a thing is not the same as half of characters being excluded. If a character is part of group, it's sufficient for one member of that group to be able to supply the thing. The example of Plane Shift is a strategic resource that not everyone needs to have in order to benefit from it, and the consideration for some people in a group to NOT have it stems from the incentive towards specialization. Such strategic considerations are very much part of gameplay, regardless of when exactly they happen.

[Unoriginal]

I have to say that a lot of people tend to overestimate the actual power of those out-of-combat options, when they talk about them.

Take the spell Teleport, for example.

Teleport can affect the caster + 8 willing targets at max. It cannot affect unwilling targets, and 9 individuals is a big number for a PC group but that's still fairly limited as far as transportation go.

Teleport has a 100% chances of success if and only if you have the code for a permanent circle or a tiny chunk of the place where you want to go.

Teleport has only 75% chances of success for a place the caster is very familiar with, including somewhere they're currently watching. It means that statistically, 1 out of 4 teleportation attempts to somewhere you're very familiar with will go wrong one way or another.

You have 12% chances the teleport is merely Off Target. How bad is Off Target? Well, it depends on what the dice says and the environment is at the end point, but you're ending up anywhere between 1% and 100% of the distance of your teleportation away from the end point you wanted to go to.

To put things in perspective, Waterdeep is about 500 miles from Baldur's Gate. In other words, attempting that Teleport has a significant chance of ending up with you thrown several dozens if not hundreds of miles in the Sea of Swords.

You have 8% chances the teleport brings you to a Similar Area. You arrive in any place that is "visually or thematically similar to the target area", with the spell description stating that while it's usually the closest area of that type, there is no guarantee to it and you could end up anywhere so long as it's on the same plane.

And you have 5% chances a Mishap happens. A Mishap will hurt everyone, though not a *huge* amount of damage for any character who can cast Teleport on their own, but keep in mind a Mishap means you have to re-roll on the table too and take that result. So, yeah.


Now take the "Seen Casually" chances. 56% chances to be on target, so slightly better than a coin toss. The mishap chances are now 33%, or 1 out of 3 attempts to use Teleport. 9% chances to end up in a similar area, anywhere on the plane. And off target is also 9%.

I dunno about you, but to me that makes clear teleportation via the Teleport spell is a *very* unreliable transportation method, unless you have a token of the place or the number for the right circle.

And yet, that unreliability is almost never talked about when people bring up how Teleport change the group's travel.

To be clear, I've no doubt Teleportation *does* change the group's travel, but let's not act as if getting where you want to go either demands to set things up in advance or is up to luck and DM's arbitration.