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It's not the game, it's not the vacian system, and it's not the wizard. 

It's the DM. The DM job is to design an encounter, dungeon, adventure, etc. If the encounter, dungeon, adventure is design where a wizard can nuke, leave, and come back to finish it and the DM butthurt about it, guess who fault it is?

If the DM doesn't like how 5MW works, then there a few solution to it. Here a few scenarios.

1. DM designs an ancient dungeon fill with undead. The group nuked and left half way through the dungeon. Since the undead are only order to guard, there isn't much they can do against this.

Solution? Another group of adventures heard rumors of a group trying to loot the ancient dungeon. They check it out, killed what was left, looted the place, and left before the other group got back. Would players get mad? Yes(trollface). Would they do it if were the other group? In a heart beat. So it's only fair. :P

2. DM made a story.  Princess get kidnapped, blah blah blah, and now guarded inside a bandit stronghold. PCs come in, killed most of them, found their loot, left the BBEG and his best bodyguards alive. Decide to come back later to finish them off. 

Solution? They are gone and the princess body appears a few days later. King is not very happy and rumors spreading around that your group had enough power to save the princess on that day.

3. The PC raid an alive dungeon filled with goblins, got halfway through, and return to town.

Solution? They better not return to that dungeon. They kicked a hornet nest and now it's active. The goblins know they coming back and called in support. A big ambush is waiting for them.  


The DM need to add a time frame on their encounters. The players wait on the adventure, the adventure doesn't wait for the players. 

Here the solution to the 5MW. Rate how hard or easy the adventure and reward them for it. 

Easy: No time frame, can complete it anytime. Story may suffer from this.
Normal: Can complete it with the resources they have within reasonable amount of time. No ill effects to the story.
Hard: May not have enough resources to complete it, so must think outside the box. Spend all their resources and then some in good amount of time. Story will have a better outcome or extra bonus. 

Well that's my 2 cents, had to do it after seeing so much 5MW threads popped up recently. 

 

Aug 4, 2012 -- 9:54PM, TheOneWhoCallCrow wrote:

Well that's my 2 cents, had to do it after seeing so much 5MW threads popped up recently. 

 

I'm not sure if you read those threads. Let me quote myself from there:

I still think it all realy boils down to Nova and not 5mw.
Nova, that always precedes Rest in 5mwd scenario, has following problems:
- wizard's balance is not build on the assumption they will nova an encounter. It is build under assumption that wizard will use their spells more conservatively. It assumes that a wizard will face X encounters, and her daily allotment of spells is not enough to Nova each one of them. If she Novas an encounter - then in that particular encounter she is imbalnced both in comparison to the challenge level and her companions.

Solution A) One frequently offered solution to this problem is to force/encourage a party to fight X number of encounters per day. This solution, depedning on campaign nature, is easier or harder to do (for example it is harder to do in campaigns were "beating the clock" is not a primary concern) and in some is just impossible (if DM does a combat-light campaign, forcing/encouraging a party to fight on does not work, because there are no more fights this day anyway)

Solution B) manually construct most of the encounters in such a way that wizard is screwed anyway even if she Novas. Umm... can work a few times but in the long run I find this solution cumbersome and limiting. And kinda... underhanded.

Solution C) disable Novas, either by 

C1) making wizard spells less powerful (if easier to cast) effectively changing them into encounter powers, at-wills or equivalent.
C2) Integrating Anti-Nova safety switch (or "pacing mechanism") that stops wizards from Novaing, or gives them penalties for doing so.

I fail to see any other way than A, B or C, and neither A or B would work for me in the long run (I tend towards combat-light campaigns). C2 is my preferred method because it lets wizards still be vancian* and keep their general power level, instead of rewriting the whole spell system ground up.

(*I actually do like vancian casting)

Your post above? Solution type A, all of it. Doesn't solve the problem for me.

Aug 4, 2012 -- 10:10PM, Backspace wrote:

The DM can solve any problem, therefore every edition is perfect. 

So you deny that it's the DMs JOB to provide a game that's fun, challenging, even taylored to accomodate the PCs involved?
Despite 35+ years worth of D&D books telling you that this is exactly what the DM is suppossed to do?

Now granted, some DMs are better at doing this than others.

And no, every edition is certainly not perfect.  If it was, "D&D night" wouldn't be spent playing Pathfinder.... 

The game of dungeons and dragons starts out this way. low level characters are rather squishy, or at least used to be. Because of this they have to stop frequently to heal and replenish supplies and spells. It's normal. It also isn't really a problem.

As the spell casters and the rest of the group slowly come to rely on the wizard's high damage or insta kill spells they stop trying to optimize other methods of dealing with problems. They start to make short explosive forrays into dungeons and what have you, because they don't have any other tactics that work as well it continues to get worse. 

If the DM plays each encounter as a seperate fight that is unrelated to the rest of the encounters they plan on running, this becomes the defacto method of dealing with issues. 3e is especially vulnerable to this because the developers took out nearly all of the bad associated with spell casters while giving them more toys to use, making them more powerful, thus causing a great deal of resentment in those of us who prefer that the power be spread amongst everyone in the party. (This only one minor quibble I have with 3e.)

Dungeon masters who use dynamic encounters and the living world style of game play don't have 5 minute  adventure days as a rule since the very act of leaving a dungeon before they have completed the mission gives the opposition time to make changes. Sometimes merely adding patrols, other times they will remove treasure, recruit allies or dig in better. Either way the party has new problems to contend with. 

I see the 5mwd as the reality of D&D and I have nothing against this kind of play. It gives me the chance to make decisions about troop concentrations or tribal movements or a thousand other plot devices that evolve as the adventure plays out. I even write specific contingencies for when the party does decide to take an unscheduled or ill advised rest.

Other times it really doesn't matter how the group decides to allocate resources. Just remember that always facing the enemy at full strength isn't really a learning experience. If the group takes the easy way out they should expect fewer rewards for their uninspired and cowardly appropach to the adventure.

If the problem is amongst the players, they need to decide how to fix the problem. I would personally just kill off the offending character after having addressed the issue and failed to come to a satisfactory solution. If someone is sitting with you and refuses to play nice why play with them at all?

As DM I don't really care how the group plays, but disruptions because of selfishness and poor playmanship are reasons to address the issue. I have only ejected two players in thirty years of D&D.