Do caster out of combat options matter?

[Mastikator]

It doesn't. No matter what path they take, they will always face the same 4 encounters.



No, it doesn't. You're still facing ten orcs in a square room. The situation is exactly the same, your approach does not change that. The advice you're giving is simply wrong.

I think this is a prime example of why out of combat options not mattering is sure sign of bad campaign. If you got passwall and clairvoyance and can't ever possibly use it to skip an encounter, then the campaign is trash. Honestly. It's a railroad and the train carts are full of trash.

[Rafaelfras]

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?

To see if the soul of their avenged father went to haven after they defeated their nemesis death knight...

Make mont Celestia NOW!
True Story

[JackPhoenix]

I think this is a prime example of why out of combat options not mattering is sure sign of bad campaign. If you got passwall and clairvoyance and can't ever possibly use it to skip an encounter, then the campaign is trash. Honestly. It's a railroad and the train carts are full of trash.

But it's not railroad if you can go through the encounters in a different order! Or decide whether or not you use Fireball in one of them! That makes it a completely different encounter!

[Dr.Samurai]

Teleport and plane shift are not the only high impact out of combat spells.

Speak with animals is available to druids from level 1 and is extremely powerful for information gathering. Animals can serve as witnesses and can be bribed into short recon missions. Feather fall is available from level 1 and lets you defeat fall damage. Invisibility is available at level 3. Revivify is available at level 5. Speak with dead is available at level 5.

I think the OP's point when they say "do they matter" is about whether you can get by without them. Judging from the context in the comment.

If the adventure is a murder mystery then a party of barbarians will have to work real hard, they may as well be commoners. A single 5th cleric can cast one spell and solve it as an action.

But it can hardly be called a "murder mystery adventure" if the murder is solved within 6 seconds of discovering the body. In this sense, these out of combat spells are really much more about the destination than the journey.

Also, and this is a tangent, I find that people often assume the game world knows exactly as much about magic as needed to make it as effective as possible. In this case, the murderer doesn't think about foiling Speak with Dead, so the spell is just assumed to solve an entire adventure in a single casting.

I'm willing to bet revivify, speak with dead, feather fall, invisibility, speak with animals are extremely useful in Curse of Strahd.

Probably not a bad bet to take.

But I don't think the OP is saying these spells can't be useful.

^ What Samurai said but I'll add - nobody said alternate routes to spellcasting have to be "convenient." Just attainable. Finding a portal or scroll or a magical creature willing to serve as a mount or a capable NPC could in fact be a huge pain in the donkey relative to having someone who can plane shift on staff. Or they might be equally difficult in entirely different ways. Neither approach locks you into a specific permutation of worldbuilding, especially not one you don't want to be.

This is a good point to make, and goes back to journey vs destination.

And if "convenient" is meant to be a bad thing, get a load of these spells that can whisk you away in the blink of an eye, and solve an entire murder mystery plot before you can say "whodunnit".

I think this is a prime example of why out of combat options not mattering is sure sign of bad campaign. If you got passwall and clairvoyance and can't ever possibly use it to skip an encounter, then the campaign is trash. Honestly. It's a railroad and the train carts are full of trash.

Ok so let me keep track here:

Level 1 Spells
Charm Person
Comprehend Languages
Detect Magic
Disguise Self
Feather Fall
Find Familiar
Unseen Servant
Identify

Level 2 Spells
Augury
Knock
Misty Step
Suggestion

Level 3 Spells
Clairvoyance
Fly
Speak with Dead
Water Breathing

Level 4 Spells
Dimension Door
Divination
Fabricate
Locate Creature?? Arcane Eye??

Level 5 Spells
Contact Other Plane
Passwall
Teleportation Circle
Scrying??


Where is the combat stuff? And if you remove some of these spells to get the combat stuff, does the campaign now suck because you can't deal with out of combat stuff with one of the spells you didn't grab? Many of these spells have been mentioned in this thread, so just trying to understand what these wizards look like. And remember, we're not co-DMing here and we don't want DM fiat, so don't assume you're scribing extra spells into your spellbook from scrolls and other books!

[Mastikator]

Level 1 Spells
Charm Person
Comprehend Languages
Detect Magic
Disguise Self
Feather Fall
Find Familiar
Unseen Servant
Identify

Level 2 Spells
Augury
Knock
Misty Step
Suggestion

Level 3 Spells
Clairvoyance
Fly
Speak with Dead
Water Breathing

Level 4 Spells
Dimension Door
Divination
Fabricate
Locate Creature?? Arcane Eye??

Level 5 Spells
Contact Other Plane
Passwall
Teleportation Circle
Scrying??


Where is the combat stuff? And if you remove some of these spells to get the combat stuff, does the campaign now suck because you can't deal with out of combat stuff with one of the spells you didn't grab? Many of these spells have been mentioned in this thread, so just trying to understand what these wizards look like. And remember, we're not co-DMing here and we don't want DM fiat, so don't assume you're scribing extra spells into your spellbook from scrolls and other books!

If that is a wizard's spellbook and they never get to meaningfully use those spells then yes, the campaign sucks. I'd put the bar at around 25%, if you don't meaningfully contribute at least 6 times with those spells then it's a bad campaign.

Where's the combat stuff? In the other PCs character sheet. Combat is only 1 of 3 pillars. And you are only 1 of 3-6 players. A wizard with that spellbook is a godsend to a party in a well written campaign.

Edit- I feel I need to stress this. It's not all or nothing, sort of. It's something or nothing. A DM who wants the players to go to another plane but doesn't make that possible will have to get comfortable with failure. But if it doesn't even matter that the cleric just so happens to have the right tuning fork, then we have a problem.

[clash]

I think this is a prime example of why out of combat options not mattering is sure sign of bad campaign. If you got passwall and clairvoyance and can't ever possibly use it to skip an encounter, then the campaign is trash. Honestly. It's a railroad and the train carts are full of trash.

The question is more posed at the outcome. I'm not suggesting that you force the players on one exact route and that their choices don't change how they get there. Moreso that all of these spells don't actually give casters this huge advantage that it appears to be. Whether you fight the ogres, charm then or skip them entirely you're still able to get past that encounter. This is true of linear or sandbox worlds. If there's a flying city, someone at one point made it there so in my world building having the flight spell isn't going to be a prerequisite to each it(in fact it probably wouldn't work anyways). It's specifically because I'm not tailoring the world to match the parties capabilities that having the spells or not having them can both achieve the same result.

[Rynjin]

Yeah, it's the same argument, just veiled.

No, it isn't. It is just about the exact opposite.

I get it's convenient to pretend someone holds an opinion so you can get on your soapbox arguing against it, but I'm not your strawman bud.

If you want to put some actual effort into addressing what I actually said instead of regurgitating the pre-canned response you thought up a while back but only works if you pretend I hold a different, contradictory opinion, be my guest. Otherwise I'm finding it pretty much impossible to take you seriously.

Edit- I feel I need to stress this. It's not all or nothing, sort of. It's something or nothing. A DM who wants the players to go to another plane but doesn't make that possible will have to get comfortable with failure. But if it doesn't even matter that the cleric just so happens to have the right tuning fork, then we have a problem.

Samurai's here to argue (poorly), not discuss. That's why his posts lack any hint of nuance or understanding of what the topic is even about. Don't bother.

[Psyren]

To see if the soul of their avenged father went to haven after they defeated their nemesis death knight...

Make mont Celestia NOW!
True Story

You don't have to, like, demand your DM make an entire portal/map to Celestia to learn that though Just have your avenged father visit your dream set on a bright sunny cloud or something. (Oh look, something else you don't need a spell for!)

Also, and this is a tangent, I find that people often assume the game world knows exactly as much about magic as needed to make it as effective as possible. In this case, the murderer doesn't think about foiling Speak with Dead, so the spell is just assumed to solve an entire adventure in a single casting.

Yeah, and I think both can be fun. Some murders should be solveable instantly by "lol we have a cleric" and others should involve a murderer who actually grew up in that world with more than two brain cells and thus knows these things exist. The problem arises when you take a group that is expecting one and put them up against the other, or when you don't put enough thought into either to make them satisfying.

If that is a wizard's spellbook and they never get to meaningfully use those spells then yes, the campaign sucks. I'd put the bar at around 25%, if you don't meaningfully contribute at least 6 times with those spells then it's a bad campaign.

Where's the combat stuff? In the other PCs character sheet. Combat is only 1 of 3 pillars. And you are only 1 of 3-6 players. A wizard with that spellbook is a godsend to a party in a well written campaign.

Edit- I feel I need to stress this. It's not all or nothing, sort of. It's something or nothing. A DM who wants the players to go to another plane but doesn't make that possible will have to get comfortable with failure. But if it doesn't even matter that the cleric just so happens to have the right tuning fork, then we have a problem.

So a party that lacks a full caster but still wants to participate if the adventure involves mystery-solving and planehopping = tough cookies, they made their choice;

But a party whose wizard (or worse, anything with fixed spells known) that loaded up on utility spells and therefore is practically down a member when it comes to combat = the DM who doesn't accommodate that choice runs bad campaigns and should feel bad.

Isn't there a bit of a double standard there?

[Rynjin]

So a party that lacks a full caster but still wants to participate if the adventure involves mystery-solving and planehopping = tough cookies, they made their choice;

But a party whose wizard (or worse, anything with fixed spells known) that loaded up on utility spells and therefore is practically down a member when it comes to combat = the DM who doesn't accommodate that choice runs bad campaigns and should feel bad.

Isn't there a bit of a double standard there?

I'm not entirely sure why you and Samurai feel this is a zero-sum game where a Wizard can be either 100% utility or 100% combat with no in-between.

Your average Wizard would have a mix of both. They might prepare Fireball, Haste, and Summon Monster for their combat spells, and Knock, Spider Climb, and Speak With Dead as their utility spells.

If the circumstances where the three utility spells would come up make them completely useless, again, your campaign sucks. There is nothing more frustrating than being in an ancient ruin or whatever, casting Speak With Dead, and watching the GM fumble simple questions like "Who are you?" and "What happened here?" because they didn't actually plan any explanations for those two things AT ALL and have zero improv skills to bull**** an answer. You've gotta at least have one of the two as a GM, and preferably both.

If you're too lazy to accommodate utility spells, at least have the courtesy of being upfront and banning them so I don't spend a 3rd level spell slot for you to say "This guy knows nothing" about literally any question.

[Mastikator]

So a party that lacks a full caster but still wants to participate if the adventure involves mystery-solving and planehopping = tough cookies, they made their choice;

But a party whose wizard (or worse, anything with fixed spells known) that loaded up on utility spells and therefore is practically down a member when it comes to combat = the DM who doesn't accommodate that choice runs bad campaigns and should feel bad.

Isn't there a bit of a double standard there?

The only double standard on display in this thread is that the DM should bend over backwards to allow PCs to thrive out of combat when they picked absolutely zero out of combat features. But a PC that has out of combat features? Not only should they contend with being worse in combat, but irrelevant out of combat too.

[Rafaelfras]

You don't have to, like, demand your DM make an entire portal/map to Celestia to learn that though Just have your avenged father visit your dream set on a bright sunny cloud or something. (Oh look, something else you don't need a spell for!)

I was the DM.
Our cleric took an opportunity, to craft and attune the rods to several planes on a place of many doors that we visited, way before tragedy befall on his father.
I have good enough knowledge of the planes, but the "I cast plane shift to Celestia really came suddenly,so to say haha.
But yeah, I have used some of those solutions (dreams, visions etc) when needed.

The only double standard on display in this thread is that the DM should bend over backwards to allow PCs to thrive out of combat when they picked absolutely zero out of combat features. But a PC that has out of combat features? Not only should they contend with being worse in combat, but irrelevant out of combat too.

The DM needs to make sure his players are able to participate in the story he wants to tell, the adventure he wants to run and the game he wants to play. Nothing more nothing less

[Psyren]

I'm not entirely sure why you and Samurai feel this is a zero-sum game where a Wizard can be either 100% utility or 100% combat with no in-between.
...
If the circumstances where the three utility spells would come up make them completely useless, again, your campaign sucks.

Except we're not the ones making them "completely useless" - you guys are.

If your Wizard (or even Sorcerer, since I like my players to have options) picked Knock, Spider Climb and Speak With Dead as their utility set, and the utility challenge was something like "locate an object", I wouldn't grind the adventure to a halt in punishment because you either didn't think to or didn't have room to pick up Locate Object. I'd have another way in my campaign for you to find that object. I'd have 3 in fact. One of those would reward you for having the foresight to pick the most expedient spell for the job as part of your build, sure, but the other two would still be viable.

There is nothing more frustrating than being in an ancient ruin or whatever, casting Speak With Dead, and watching the GM fumble simple questions like "Who are you?" and "What happened here?" because they didn't actually plan any explanations for those two things AT ALL and have zero improv skills to bull**** an answer. You've gotta at least have one of the two as a GM, and preferably both.

This seems to be some kind of personal historical trauma whose bearing on the current topic I can't fathom.

I was the DM.
Our cleric took an opportunity, to craft and attune the rods to several planes on a place of many doors that we visited, way before tragedy befall on his father.
I have good enough knowledge of the planes, but the "I cast plane shift to Celestia really came suddenly,so to say haha.
But yeah, I have used some of those solutions (dreams, visions etc) when needed.

Well that's different, if I saw the player was making a point of "attuning rods" (which ones do you mean?) for planar travel I'd certainly be ready to pay that off. Even if there are 3 ways to get to Celestia, clearly he has his heart set on that one specifically.

[Rynjin]

Except we're not the ones making them "completely useless" - you guys are.

If your Wizard (or even Sorcerer, since I like my players to have options) picked Knock, Spider Climb and Speak With Dead as their utility set, and the utility challenge was something like "locate an object", I wouldn't grind the adventure to a halt in punishment because you either didn't think to or didn't have room to pick up Locate Object. I'd have another way in my campaign for you to find that object. I'd have 3 in fact. One of those would reward you for having the foresight to pick the most expedient spell for the job as part of your build, sure, but the other two would still be viable.

And, again, I am trying top fathom why you are conflating the two very different ideas of "utility options need to matter" and "utility options must be required" despite the fact that the difference has been explained to you ad nauseam.

[Psyren]

And, again, I am trying top fathom why you are conflating the two very different ideas of "utility options need to matter" and "utility options must be required" despite the fact that the difference has been explained to you ad nauseam.

You can make those choices matter without punishing the parties that didn't take them. That's all I'm saying; I won't speak for Samurai but I don't think he's far off that either.

[Rynjin]

You can make those choices matter without punishing the parties that didn't take them.

Natural consequences aren't punishments. If a group doesn't have Teleport, the consequence is they gotta walk places or take other transport. Maybe they can pay a Wizard or something to do it, in which case the consequence is they gotta pay money.

If the party Wizard teleports the group somewhere and the response is "well whatever you would have gotten here anyway" it shows a general contempt from the GM in my opinion.

[Skrum]

Sure, and if someone said 'I run modules and I don't find out of combat abilities to matter' I wouldn't blink. But somehow this became something like 'of course everyone only runs modules, so how can out of combat abilities matter?'

Like people stopped believing in games that aren't modules being a thing. That's weird to me.

I mean heck, out of the three campaigns I described I'd only call the first an actual sandbox. The other two are just 'campaigns'. There's stuff that's going to matter no matter what, but there's lots more stuff that comes about because of what characters do rather than because of planning in advance. I guess you could call that a sandbox but it doesn't seem very far on the sandbox spectrum to me - like, 'it's not a railroad therefore it's a sandbox'?

Like, the infinite stair campaign was very much 'serial TV series' for the first half in structure, with almost no agency about where the next week's episode was going to take place. But if the characters wanted to do their act and get out, investigate the strange reluctance of people to look at the night sky, or steal everything and flee, or recruit talented people into their troupe, it's up to them. Even when it's something like walking into a Harmonium military occupation, do you perform for the troops or do you spread the ideals of the resistance or do you spy on the Harmonium commander or do you say 'skip this one, we stay on the stair'?

Yeah I really don't think we're on the same page - I don't feel that anything you've said about what I'm saying accurately reflects what I actually said (or meant).

In case this was missed, what I think is the most true about DND is that out of combat abilities matter a lot. Even in more restrictive, less player-driven games, what characters can do out of combat will flavor the game and change how the game feels (in a similar way to how the personalities of the characters will change the way the game feels). And that's at the absolute minimum; in most games, out of combat abilities will have a greater impact than that as they will change how and where the players interact with the world and thus shape how the story unfolds.

I don't think getting to destinations or crossing canyons or whatever is the correct way to think about out of combat abilities "mattering." One way or another, the game moves on. Dr. Samurai's example of "losing during character creation," like no DM would do that. If the characters can't do a particular thing, the game will just natural go in a different direction, under the influence of what the characters can do and choose to do.

[Psyren]

Natural consequences aren't punishments.

Sure, but unnatural alternatives get to exist too. D&D worlds are full of things that wouldn't be "natural" by our standards. Like... portals.

If the party Wizard teleports the group somewhere and the response is "well whatever you would have gotten here anyway" it shows a general contempt from the GM in my opinion.

Yet again - I think you're projecting some kind of bad GMing experience onto this conversation that has no alignment with my viewpoint

[Rynjin]

Yet again - I think you're projecting some kind of bad GMing experience onto this conversation that has no alignment with my viewpoint

Your viewpoint, presumably, aligns with the OP. Who expressed the idea that utility options don't matter because the GM will just provide a solution anyway, so the only thing that matters is combat efficacy.

If that's not the case, not sure why you're expressing disagreement with my assertion that this would be poor GMing.

[Psyren]

Your viewpoint, presumably, aligns with the OP. Who expressed the idea that utility options don't matter because the GM will just provide a solution anyway, so the only thing that matters is combat efficacy.

If that's not the case, not sure why you're expressing disagreement with my assertion that this would be poor GMing.

Yeesh, now who's being zero-sum...

No, I neither hold the OP's view nor yours. The GM providing an alternative solution doesn't mean that said alternative is equivalent to the standard solution. There can be tradeoffs.

[NichG]

Yeah I really don't think we're on the same page - I don't feel that anything you've said about what I'm saying accurately reflects what I actually said (or meant).

In case this was missed, what I think is the most true about DND is that out of combat abilities matter a lot. Even in more restrictive, less player-driven games, what characters can do out of combat will flavor the game and change how the game feels (in a similar way to how the personalities of the characters will change the way the game feels). And that's at the absolute minimum; in most games, out of combat abilities will have a greater impact than that as they will change how and where the players interact with the world and thus shape how the story unfolds.

I don't think getting to destinations or crossing canyons or whatever is the correct way to think about out of combat abilities "mattering." One way or another, the game moves on. Dr. Samurai's example of "losing during character creation," like no DM would do that. If the characters can't do a particular thing, the game will just natural go in a different direction, under the influence of what the characters can do and choose to do.

Yeah I think we agree here. The idea that 'the game can go a different direction' is the important bit. That's what seemed to be being rejected from the start in this thread as a whole...

[clash]

Your viewpoint, presumably, aligns with the OP. Who expressed the idea that utility options don't matter because the GM will just provide a solution anyway, so the only thing that matters is combat efficacy.

If that's not the case, not sure why you're expressing disagreement with my assertion that this would be poor GMing.

I never asserted that I only think combat efficacy matters. In fact I would argue there same premise that combat efficacy doesn't really matter all that much either so long as you win in the fact that it doesn't really matter if you fireball your way through the bar guys health or chop them down with a sword or stun them long enough for someone else to. Where it has an impact is in your personal fantasy for your character. As long as the options both in and out of combat represent that I don't see them being a great help or hindrance to the game one way or the other.

[Rafaelfras]

Well that's different, if I saw the player was making a point of "attuning rods" (which ones do you mean?) for planar travel I'd certainly be ready to pay that off. Even if there are 3 ways to get to Celestia, clearly he has his heart set on that one specifically.

The ones used to cast Plane Shift.
Yes, once he asked me to do that, I knew it was a possibility going forward (and had a strong feeling that he would go to Celestia sooner or later)
Lucky for me I even had the perfect soundtrack of "If someday they end up on the upper planes I will use this" in my head. My player think to this day that I had planned it all along.

[Rukelnikov]

The idea being put forth is that the DM has created this world and the world is unaffected by character creation. Meaning, the DM doesn't make any changes to the world based on what the players decide to play.

Well, then it turns out that in order to save the world or beat the bad guy or whatever, the players will have needed a specific high level spell that they do not have access to and cannot gain access to because the DM has already decided on their world building in advance and has a principle that they will not make changes on account of the players.

So the party has lost since session 0 of the campaign, but still went through the motions to get there.

Will there be things the party can't do because of their build choices? Of course, that's why they are choices in the first place.

Can this lead to an automatic lost scenario? I don't think its possible to lose in TTRPGs, same as you can't win. You can succeed or fail at a particular goal, but as a game it's impossible to win or lose.

[Ignimortis]

This may sound controversial but hear me out.

Casters can do a lot out of combat. They can teleport past obstacles, plane shift, open locked doors, fly etc.

But do these options actually matter? If you need to get to the plane of fire as part of the campaign there will be a way to get to the plane of fire that didn't rely on class abilities or make assumptions. Anytime you need to fly to overcome an obstacle there's either a way to fly or another way to overcome it or the only reason flight is required is because you have it. The same can be said of any of those spells. So are those spells as game altering as they seem or are they just good for making you feel useful when in reality they were not required.

Oh damn, I'm late to such a tasty thread question.

Yes, yes they do a whole lot. It's not about what's required, it's about what your players can do to affect the situation around them. Yes, if your party of Fighter, Rogue, Barbarian and Paladin cannot Plane Shift and that is also somehow absolutely required by the plot you have in mind, you'll have to provide it - or cut the subplot of planar travel. However, if your party has Plane Shift by default, the dynamic changes. The players feel like they're in charge of how to proceed, and also can be sure that they can return at almost any time, or go to any plane they need, rather than hope the GM provides the means for them. Also, any costs of such solutions now boil down to "1 spell slot now and 1 spell slot later" rather than "do this sidequest to procure a couple charges of Plane Shift".

The same applies to the rest of out-of-combat options, because if they don't matter, that means the players either don't use them, or the players using them don't get any positive feedback from that, which in turn means the GM is shutting them down every single time. Which would mean the issue is with the GM, not with spell access.

Consider that Plane Shift can be useful not only to go to a planar dungeon, but also to visit multiplanar metropolises to make contacts and procure magic gear, or seek solutions to a problem that could be solved without planar travel (but the other plane can have methods for it that are much faster or easier!). Consider that Wall of Stone is okay in combat, but it also lets players build basic fortifications with unmatched speed. Consider that Mordenkainen's Magnificent Mansion can feed several hundred people per day if the food inside is rationed properly. Consider that Speak with Dead sometimes might outright circumvent a murder mystery or a "oh no, X died and didn't tell us crucial info" subplot. Consider that Teleport reduces travel times between civilized cities to exactly zero or at worst 24 hours, when the trek might take a month or two normally. The list goes on.

If the players can't find a way to use their spells to their non-combat advantage where there would be none without a spell, either their spell selection is very combat-focused, or the spell usage is being stifled by the GM. And the second part of this equation is that if you don't have spells, you don't get anything in return, non-combat-wise.

[Dr.Samurai]

If that is a wizard's spellbook and they never get to meaningfully use those spells then yes, the campaign sucks. I'd put the bar at around 25%, if you don't meaningfully contribute at least 6 times with those spells then it's a bad campaign.

Where's the combat stuff? In the other PCs character sheet. Combat is only 1 of 3 pillars. And you are only 1 of 3-6 players. A wizard with that spellbook is a godsend to a party in a well written campaign.

Edit- I feel I need to stress this. It's not all or nothing, sort of. It's something or nothing. A DM who wants the players to go to another plane but doesn't make that possible will have to get comfortable with failure. But if it doesn't even matter that the cleric just so happens to have the right tuning fork, then we have a problem.

That wasn't the point of the spell list.

In order for these spells to matter, you are saying the campaign has to be running on some sort of doom clock. That way, being able to teleport, or plane shift, or immediately gain information, is valuable and matters.

If you don't do these things, then your campaign sucks or you're lazy, as you and others have said throughout this thread.

My point with the spell list is that even if you have a wizard in the party, they are not going to know all of these utility spells. So at some point, even with a wizard, you're going to run across a scenario where they can't do the thing quickly. Say instead of grabbing Water Breathing, they grab Haste. Or instead of Fly, they grab Hypnotic Pattern.

So in order to stay consistent with the notion that Water Breathing must be impactful or the campaign sucks, the DM can't provide a way for the characters to breathe water that is outside of their own features and abilities. Similarly, without Fly, the DM can't do anything to provide a way to a castle in the sky. Otherwise they are lazy and the campaign writing sucks. The players are co-DMing and you might as well write a novel, etc etc.

My point with the spell list is that this is going to be true for any number of out of combat things for which the wizard did not choose the correct spell for. If it has to matter, then you're basically saying "run the campaign on a clock" or "the only way to do this is with a spell". And I don't think you can mandate that for everyone's game at their table. And if you do, you're condemning every game where the wizard chose to learn something else instead of Fly, Water Breathing, Speak with Dead, Contact Other Plane, Sending, etc etc etc etc.

Now, if you go further and say what Mastikator has said, which is that if the campaign requires going to another plane, as an example, he ensures during the worldbuilding part that there are multiple ways to get there, and then the players figure it out themselves, then you are agreeing with the premise of the OP. Which is that it doesn't really matter because they are getting there one way or another.

Now, doing it quicker might have an impact, or it might not. Which is why my reply was "it matters if it matters, and it doesn't if it doesn't". We don't know unless we know the specifics of the game.

However, some people in this thread have required that it have an impact, otherwise... they attack you and your game.

No, it isn't. It is just about the exact opposite.

I get it's convenient to pretend someone holds an opinion so you can get on your soapbox arguing against it, but I'm not your strawman bud.

If you want to put some actual effort into addressing what I actually said instead of regurgitating the pre-canned response you thought up a while back but only works if you pretend I hold a different, contradictory opinion, be my guest. Otherwise I'm finding it pretty much impossible to take you seriously.

Hey, you raise a good point Rynjin. Let me improve my discourse.

*puts on Thinking Cap, sets dial to HIGHBROW INTELLECTUAL*

Ok, let's see what arguments I can make now:

"...your campaign writing sucks."
"You may as well write a novel at that point."
"...that GM has an extremely shallow understanding of problem solving and is unable to improvise in even the slightest way."
"So if you write a campaign based around planar travel for the all Fighter party your campaign writing sucks."

Hey it worked, I feel like one of the smart guys now! All I had to do was attack the people I'm arguing with and tell them they suck over and over and over again!

The only double standard on display in this thread is that the DM should bend over backwards to allow PCs to thrive out of combat when they picked absolutely zero out of combat features. But a PC that has out of combat features? Not only should they contend with being worse in combat, but irrelevant out of combat too.

I don't think anyone is pushing this position forward...

[Rynjin]

Hey it worked, I feel like one of the smart guys now! All I had to do was attack the people I'm arguing with and tell them they suck over and over and over again!.

I didn't call anyone out specifically, but yes if you are putting people on a rigid railroad and refuse to allow any deviation or out of the box problem solving, your campaign sucks.

Don't take it personal if the shoe fits. Maybe look to improving your campaigns.

[Telok]

The DM needs to make sure his players are able to participate in the story he wants to tell, the adventure he wants to run and the game he wants to play. Nothing more nothing less

True... if and only if the GM wants to tell a story and wants to run an adventure. I'm an odd one out when I GM. The game I play is to set a world, build a simple intro dungeon, and then let PC actions and NPC reactions drive things. No plot, no prepped adventure, completely emergent story.

I've had a lich with a hidden strongbox type place accessible only by teleportation and known to nobody else in the world. A dragon nursery & day care in what was effectively a magma submarine. A wind-mage's home flying in a permanent hurricane. A demon lord using tarrasques as ammo. An invisible brick wall in front of the landing spot on the other side of the barely jumpable chasm. Anything resembling normal PCs simply can't deal with some stuff without certain abilities that noncaster classes don't have.

Of course then there was the not-mount-Olympus where gods literally hung out partying a lot of the time. No form of magic would get anyone to the top, and no form of anything would save them from the consequences. But hey, a high level fighter could at least try to get noticed. Plane shifting was much safer, you show up at the front door and the flunkies kick you out instead of popping onto the dance floor and getting stepped on. Weirdly, magic also didn't help much if you wanted to join the fire breathing arctic dire bear calvary.

[Vahnavoi]

I think this is a prime example of why out of combat options not mattering is sure sign of bad campaign. If you got passwall and clairvoyance and can't ever possibly use it to skip an encounter, then the campaign is trash. Honestly. It's a railroad and the train carts are full of trash.

You failed to notice that JackPhoenix is simply wrong due to admitted unwillingness to do any real analysis on it.

Again, you have four encounters you can go through in any order. Why can you go through them in any order? An ability such as Passwall might already factor into that - which in turn means not choosing Passwall necessitates a particular ordering.

But why would you not pick Passwall? Maybe because you used Clairvoyance to check which four encounters are present. Of course, using Clairvoyance may be out of your budget for dealing something else. So, the reality where you use Passwall to skip A in favor of doing B, C or D first, may be mutually exclusive with the reality where you use Clairvoyance to determine a better strategy, and both may be mutually exclusive with yet other strategies that would require those spell slots to be used for something else.

That's not a railroad.

And again, a simple mathematical example omits detail, but adding in those details typically adds more variance, not less. If you can, say, use Charm Person to sway the ogres to fight the orcs, or the orcs to fight the ogres, you've added another fork to the game tree. A fight where it's you plus three ogres versus ten orcs, is not the same as the fight with you plus ten orcs versus three ogres. Player choices combine with encounters materials to create new possibilities.

Some combinations may converge on similar outcomes, but the case where all of them converge on the same one is a special solution and the actual advice is about averting that. Focusing on that special solution is hence a strawman.

[Rukelnikov]

True... if and only if the GM wants to tell a story and wants to run an adventure. I'm an odd one out when I GM. The game I play is to set a world, build a simple intro dungeon, and then let PC actions and NPC reactions drive things. No plot, no prepped adventure, completely emergent story.

I've had a lich with a hidden strongbox type place accessible only by teleportation and known to nobody else in the world. A dragon nursery & day care in what was effectively a magma submarine. A wind-mage's home flying in a permanent hurricane. A demon lord using tarrasques as ammo. An invisible brick wall in front of the landing spot on the other side of the barely jumpable chasm. Anything resembling normal PCs simply can't deal with some stuff without certain abilities that noncaster classes don't have.

Of course then there was the not-mount-Olympus where gods literally hung out partying a lot of the time. No form of magic would get anyone to the top, and no form of anything would save them from the consequences. But hey, a high level fighter could at least try to get noticed. Plane shifting was much safer, you show up at the front door and the flunkies kick you out instead of popping onto the dance floor and getting stepped on. Weirdly, magic also didn't help much if you wanted to join the fire breathing arctic dire bear calvary.

These are the kinds of games I run and (largely) play. I don't write a story, I create a setting.

[tokek]

This may sound controversial but hear me out.

Casters can do a lot out of combat. They can teleport past obstacles, plane shift, open locked doors, fly etc.

.

On the whole I think these spells are simply one way in which you remove aspects of the game which it was time to move on from anyway.

Teleport is a nice flashy way to not spend the session dealing with bandits and whether you have enough feed for your mounts. But by tier 3 you shouldn’t be spending your session time on that stuff anyway.

As a DM I’m not going to spend all that time on tier inappropriate stuff anyway.