Quote Originally Posted by Dr.Samurai View Post
Old school D&D had a lot of out of combat stuff, without nearly as many out-of-combat-buttons to press (as I understand it, casters were much more restricted back then).
Casters were on a tighter leash. Harder to cast, fewer spells, more risk, etc. But its interesting to note that practically all of the out of combat utility spells are the exact same spells of 40 years ago. In fact, we've lost some of the (admittedly more specialized and corner case) noncombat spells. Most of the spell bloat in 5e seems to be just variations on combat damage spells. All the "issues" in this thread were solved long ago by various other people or games.

I like world building that doesn't turn out totally incoherent and need constant fig leaf excuses. I also like fantastic stuff like flying castles, portals to demon realms, worlds inside magic bottles, and other stuff. If my players choose characters that can't deal with some aspect of the world then that's fine. I let them know they've chosen to play hardcore mode and keep going. I'm not breaking my setting rules about stuff like teleportation, interfering godlings, or economics to accommodate a party that can't deal.

If they want to go plane hopping, there's no convenient planar portals, and they don't have the magic to go... well they find some way that's already in the setting or they don't get to go. I put effort into a setting that has the level of internal consistency I want. I'm not intervening to give them extra freebie abilities just because they picked a noncaster class. That sounds harsh, but if the classes are balanced well enough then it isn't an issue. 5e classes probably aren't balanced enough, but that's not my problem since I don't run D&D and don't play noncasters in 5e.