“I hate your friends and they hate me too”
Counter spell
One day I want to play an all-arcane-full-casters party just to see if encounters can be nuked fast enough to make up for the lack of healing. Counterspell? Tough luck, we have four people who can counterspell your counterspell
Meeting anything with a natural anti-magic field would basically be a death sentence though
Friendly reminder to DMs that Counter Spell is a reaction, so after your fireball gets counter-counter-counter-counter-counter-counter-counterspelled you can just have some other mook cast another.
I mean, you shouldn’t counter-counter-counter-counterspell if you can help it. But having multiple casters in an encounter adds some more strategizing, especially if you have a scenario where a player might want to hold their reaction for something else.
strate-gazing? what the hell is that
Also, players have to be able to see the caster casting the spell, and several powerful damaging spells do not require sight. Fire storm, sunbeam, circle of death, and cone of cold all work just as well inside heavy obscurement like a fog cloud, but counterspell doesn’t
I think your average murder hobos would get themselves killed pretty quickly in this game. However if you had a group that was willing to meta-game a little to spread out the caster types you could make it work. You’d likely need to plan each encounter to make sure people knew their role in the fight. Making it to level 5 would probably be the hardest part of the game
Definitely. Shield is already an incredibly useful spell, but with no dedicated frontliners (and I do think that someone running a bladesinger would be rather against the spirit of this idea) you’re gonna need to preserve every hit point you’ve got, so everyone better be grabbing that. If you’re all already agreeing to stick to just two classes, or maybe three if you include warlocks, then the meta-strategising is already in the room. Plus you’ve likely got at least a couple of high-int wizards who can very justifiably be obsessive planners in-character.
All that said, I have run 5E games with some very unbalanced parties and it has geeeeenerally worked out fine anyway. It was funny when six players showed up and the highest charisma score between them was 12. They just had to get creative in social challenges.
It also depends on strict you are about the rule. A divine soul sorcerer/celestial warlock comes with minor healing. I’d also want the team to have familiars and summons to try to eat some damage until you get the really good crowd control effects
If the other two replies to this take what they mentioned we’re most of the way to a coherent party by now
Simply bring a necromancer if you’re that worried about meat shields - or I guess bone shields.
and I do think that someone running a bladesinger would be rather against the spirit of this idea
Fine, I’ll pick War Mage
Making it to level 5 would probably be the hardest part of the game
Implying the game won’t get impossible after everyone learns Fireball
That’s evil.
