I think an under-appreciated dimension of the problem is the very small default scope & scale of action in contemporary D&D and frankly in most roleplaying games.
There is an overwhelming preponderance of rules govTherning what individual characters or very small groups can accomplish in a few seconds or minutes, compared to rules governing projects that might take a long time or a large number of people.
Furthermore, there's a default assumption that any arbitrary spell should take only a few seconds to cast unless there's an extraordinary reason to limit access to the effect.
The focus on 6- to 60-second increments contributes to CMD because there are hard upper bounds to what you can readily imagine accomplishing in 6 seconds by non-magic means, while a 6-second spell could theoretically do anything.
There are plenty of things martial characters could be doing to contribute on logistical and information challenges, like building boats and bridges, commanding scout parties, conducting large-scale archival research projects, engaging in significant diplomatic summits and treaty negotiations, etc. -- which are almost completely absent from the rules.
We end up in a self-reinforcing trap:
- There are no rules for building bridges.
- Therefore if the party needs to cross a river, they'll likely want to use a spells like water walking or creation/fabricate to make a bridge, summon phantom steeds, etc.
- These solutions only take a few seconds.
- Adventures are written on the assumption that they will be resolved in a day or a few days; the only significant cost of magic problem solving is the spell slot.
- because magic can get you across a river immediately, and adventures are on short timelines, bridge-building rules wouldn't get much use even if they existed.
- No one bothers to write bridge-building rules.
Or in the social sphere,
- It feels implausible to really deeply change an NPCs perspectives or values with a brief conversation
- We only write rules for brief conversations
- Thus there's a hard cap to what Diplomacy can do
- But we can definitely imagine a spell immediately changing someone's mind, so we write that spell
- We could write rules for sustained influence/persuasion campaigns aimed at ingratiating yourself with someone important over days or weeks, but we don't.
In my experience alot of TTRPG's has different power curves for casters vs. martial classes. Often casters will have an exponential power curve being very weak at lower levels and extremely powerful at higher levels, whereas martial classes often have a more linear power progression.
Another method of mitigating CMD is to make casting magic unreliabable or potentially dangerous like in WFRP, forcing the player to consider the risk of casting a spell in a given situation opposed to handling the situation with more mundane means using skills or martial abilities.
I'd be interested in a post summarizing other TTRPG systems, lesser known ones, to see how they attempted (or succeeded) solving the CMD problem.
In particular, I'd like to know more about systems that find root-level solutions for general magic and for magic being exclusive. I imagine many of those solutions are systems where casters must be more specialized - e.g. only knowing illusion spells or only knowing fire spells. Some probably solve it another way by giving martials extreme supernatural abilities (like charming people at will, climbing mountains in minutes, digging through walls with brute force).
Excellent post!
I think an under-appreciated dimension of the problem is the very small default scope & scale of action in contemporary D&D and frankly in most roleplaying games.
There is an overwhelming preponderance of rules govTherning what individual characters or very small groups can accomplish in a few seconds or minutes, compared to rules governing projects that might take a long time or a large number of people.
Furthermore, there's a default assumption that any arbitrary spell should take only a few seconds to cast unless there's an extraordinary reason to limit access to the effect.
The focus on 6- to 60-second increments contributes to CMD because there are hard upper bounds to what you can readily imagine accomplishing in 6 seconds by non-magic means, while a 6-second spell could theoretically do anything.
There are plenty of things martial characters could be doing to contribute on logistical and information challenges, like building boats and bridges, commanding scout parties, conducting large-scale archival research projects, engaging in significant diplomatic summits and treaty negotiations, etc. -- which are almost completely absent from the rules.
We end up in a self-reinforcing trap:
- There are no rules for building bridges.
- Therefore if the party needs to cross a river, they'll likely want to use a spells like water walking or creation/fabricate to make a bridge, summon phantom steeds, etc.
- These solutions only take a few seconds.
- Adventures are written on the assumption that they will be resolved in a day or a few days; the only significant cost of magic problem solving is the spell slot.
- because magic can get you across a river immediately, and adventures are on short timelines, bridge-building rules wouldn't get much use even if they existed.
- No one bothers to write bridge-building rules.
Or in the social sphere,
- It feels implausible to really deeply change an NPCs perspectives or values with a brief conversation
- We only write rules for brief conversations
- Thus there's a hard cap to what Diplomacy can do
- But we can definitely imagine a spell immediately changing someone's mind, so we write that spell
- We could write rules for sustained influence/persuasion campaigns aimed at ingratiating yourself with someone important over days or weeks, but we don't.
Yeah, that definitely contributes.
Interesting post!
In my experience alot of TTRPG's has different power curves for casters vs. martial classes. Often casters will have an exponential power curve being very weak at lower levels and extremely powerful at higher levels, whereas martial classes often have a more linear power progression.
Another method of mitigating CMD is to make casting magic unreliabable or potentially dangerous like in WFRP, forcing the player to consider the risk of casting a spell in a given situation opposed to handling the situation with more mundane means using skills or martial abilities.
Good post!
I'd be interested in a post summarizing other TTRPG systems, lesser known ones, to see how they attempted (or succeeded) solving the CMD problem.
In particular, I'd like to know more about systems that find root-level solutions for general magic and for magic being exclusive. I imagine many of those solutions are systems where casters must be more specialized - e.g. only knowing illusion spells or only knowing fire spells. Some probably solve it another way by giving martials extreme supernatural abilities (like charming people at will, climbing mountains in minutes, digging through walls with brute force).
Good analysis! This was an enjoyable read.