With two or more offensive full casters in a party, does control have a primary role?

[Breashios]

My experience as DM has indicated that when a side has two or more offensive casters, control that does not actually disable those casters (blind, take control or incapacitate) is pretty weak. With two or more offensive full casters the best play appears to be: throw all the damage you can as quickly as possible (from either and both sides).

Ready to discuss (to argue in the academic sense)

[rigolgm]

My experience as DM has indicated that when a side has two or more offensive casters, control that does not actually disable those casters (blind, take control or incapacitate) is pretty weak. With two or more offensive full casters the best play appears to be: throw all the damage you can as quickly as possible (from either and both sides).

Ready to discuss (to argue in the academic sense)

Focussing on player casters:

Well, the general rule is that casters need a lot of friendly 'beef' to hide behind. So if you're suggesting that teams are more effective if you further increase the proportion of casters, that seems a bit counter-intuitive. If we're talking about 'full' casters, two in a party of six would be generous.

Naturally, primary casters are vulnerable to damage and also able to dish it out for a short while (either by area-effect or beefy other attack spells). But they will run out of spells slots.

Personally I'd DM it according to personalities. Hordes of bugbears might generally be too stupid/excited to intelligently counter wizards, and so fall prey to their area-effect spells etc. More intelligent/prepared enemies can potentially quickly incapacitate wizards through grapples, Silence spells or whatever. And it's important to make those rolls to break casters' concentration.

In the medium or long term, fighters etc quickly catch up with primary casters in terms of total damage output. So I'm not convinced that a DM should seek to punish casters. Casters should usually be toolboxes and an adventure should force players to rely enough on casters' versatility (especially wizards' and bards') to make those casters a bit depleted in combat.

[Breashios]

In practice (and every theory I can account for) the mages (my word for wizards, sorcerers, bards and any other casters that have access to damaging area attack spells in this example) are better off throwing damage than attempting to "control" the battlefield, when there are two or more of them on a side.

My experience is that when one of three mages casts a control spell, it ends up being largely wasted. The enemy either overcome it or die from the other two mages' damaging spells, (plus the damage done by the other two characters) before the advantage provided by the control spell can kick in.

[Breashios]

I am not advocating any changes to the game, encounters, or player choices. I am simply making an observation and inviting discussion.

[rigolgm]

In practice (and every theory I can account for) the mages (my word for wizards, sorcerers, bards and any other casters that have access to damaging area attack spells in this example) are better off throwing damage than attempting to "control" the battlefield, when there are two or more of them on a side.

My experience is that when one of three mages casts a control spell, it ends up being largely wasted. The enemy either overcome it or die from the other two mages' damaging spells, (plus the damage done by the other two characters) before the advantage provided by the control spell can kick in.

Maybe. It might be balanced-out by the lack of a friendly 'meatshield' (Fighters etc). So any enemy that get through might hit the casters hard.

But yeah, piling damage upon damage is often strong because, for example, enemies often get to roll again to shake off a spell if they take damage.

There are clearly powerful combos of spells that go beyond just attacking with area-effect spells. I don't especially want to melee enemy animated undead who are shrouded in an enemy Stinking Cloud. Cloudkill will work well on people who are also having movement penalties magically imposed on them.

[Kane0]

Well if you have a party of 5 and two of them are mages then one can safely worry about blasting while the other focuses on control, everything works smoothly.
If you have more mages you have to be more judicious about slot expenditure per encounter for both blasting and control, seeing as more mages means less weapon-damage classes to take advantage of that control.

[Breashios]

Well if you have a party of 5 and two of them are mages then one can safely worry about blasting while the other focuses on control, everything works smoothly.
If you have more mages you have to be more judicious about slot expenditure per encounter for both blasting and control, seeing as more mages means less weapon-damage classes to take advantage of that control.

Yet, what I have seen is when one mage casts a Stinking Cloud for instance, the other two will drop all the enemy mooks and heavily damage the toughs before the Stinking Cloud has any effect on the battle. As DM I could see from my side, one more fireball, instead of that Stinking Cloud would have dropped all the toughs as well (think ogres) - even if they made 2 of 3 saves each. My point is generally - the same amount of resources (3 third level spells) would have ended the battle right there. Because the mage thinking control is king does the Stinking Cloud, however, one of the other mages burns another spell slot (2nd or 3rd) before the battle ends (and in this example the Stinking Cloud prevents the druid and arcane trickster from engaging in melee or even making effective ranged attacks).

[Breashios]

In addition three third level slot fireballs would end the battle with no damage taken by the player character's team, vs some damage taken by the heroes before the enemy are overcome, further reducing overall resources.

[Kane0]

So what about two or three encounters down the track? Can those casters still afford one or two of their better spell slots each time? That's when one stinking cloud or web and a couple rounds to clean up the mess with single target damage looks like a better option than dumping three nukes at once.

Like any good WWI general, throw more men at them!

Edit: And that's not counting when the enemies survive the blasts with a handful of HP remaining or have evasion or somesuch. There will be times when just blasting isn't the best solution, much like when control isn't the most effective choice.

[Breashios]

Just by experience it never worked out that way (or at least to my memory). Every time a good control spell was cast, I as a DM could see an immediate damage spell would have ended it, or left one opponent standing.

Example: Black Tentacles seems really good, but it waits until the action of the enemy (so can be dispelled before working), blocks your allies and in one play example any third level area damage spell would have killed everything except the demon in the area and due to abilities the demon just ignored the effect anyway. It was cool seeing the trapped mooks going down, but the couple that escaped had to be killed with other resources later in the battle.

[Contrast]

In addition three third level slot fireballs would end the battle with no damage taken by the player character's team, vs some damage taken by the heroes before the enemy are overcome, further reducing overall resources.

I mean what you're really saying here is that Fireball is really good for a third level spell.

Pretty sure we all agree on that but sometimes Fireball doesn't do what you want to do. Reasonably often if your current objectives are more nuanced than 'see enemies, kill enemies'.

You're also assuming the casters are happy to just burn through their spell slots. One of the main upsides of control spells is that a single spell typically has a lasting impact meaning you don't necessarily need to burn another spell next turn. As you say more casters means more spell slots to burn but if everyone follows that logic soon no-one has any spells.

In summary - yes in a caster heavy party you will more often need to burn spell slots for damage (as someone needs to do damage after all) but I wouldn't say its a hard and fast rule to follow. You need to stay flexible and decide in the moment what the best option is.

[Kane0]

Question, how does an average adventuring day look like in your experience? That might be coloring your experiences.

As a thought experiment, take a party of 5 level 5s, three of which are mages.
Four ogres is an average fight for this party, so we can safely throw two of these encounters at them, allow a short rest, throw another two, one more short rest, another two encounters and finally a long rest ready for the next day. This is what the DMG reckons is standard. I think thats a whole lot to pack into one day of adventuring (out of game time at least) but supposedly it's a classic dungeon crawl sort of experience. Whatever.

Anyway, with an average of 59 HP and a fireball's average 28 damage, you'd need 3 or so for each pack of ogres, more if they save or are out of the radius or have resistance. Your three level 5 mages typically won't have 18 or more fireballs between them throughout a day, unless they are all short-rest warlocks or SP-converting sorcerers using nothing else but fireballs. BUT if one spell like stinking cloud could leave the ogres busy or debilitated enough to finish individually via cantrips and weapon damage you could stretch your third level slots a lot longer before you start scraping the bottom of the barrel.

A nova of all your best nukes is and should be very effective at clearing an encounter, but the point is that it's an alpha strike, meant for poewr over endurance. Paladins have the exact same problem with their smites.

[JackPhoenix]

Looks like the problem isn't in the casters, but not following the recommended number of encounters between long rests and/or throwing numerous, but too weak foes at the party.

[Meta]

Against legendary creatures, I think your observation holds up, mostly. You either want to layer on the status effects to burn through their legendary resistances, or don't bother with any and just focus on dealing damage. Doing either half way would be subpar.

[Breashios]

Looks like the problem isn't in the casters, but not following the recommended number of encounters between long rests and/or throwing numerous, but too weak foes at the party.

False. I have not indicated anything about encounters or difficulty. I set up the recommended encounters of appropriate difficulty per adventure day. With a group of 6 players (5 regular +1 sometimes), after determining difficulty of the encounter, I actually double the number of opponents in a typical encounter. While this does increase the number of weaker foes the party has to deal with it also increases all but the single toughest enemy in the encounter. This actually makes the encounters more difficult by some degree, not too easy.

Further context. The core four players are very good, but not min-max oriented. Just solid. The party has only been forced to retreat from battles three times in three years playing almost every other week for three to five hours each session. An adventuring day could take as many as three sessions to complete when it is combat intensive. Typically one character will run out of resources before the adventuring day is done, but one or two others will have half or more of their spell slots left (including the druid).

[Breashios]

Ok, two things about control spells.

They have great applications. The party I DM for has used them very effectively as a single spell, while the rest of the party uses cantrips to defeat the medium encounter. And they often think they work well in other cases (but where I, behind the screen know an equal expenditure of resources would have ended the encounter - or left dregs to pick off).

Ogres and similar opponents (by experience) largely ignore Stinking Cloud and similar control spells. Even the few that are nauseated still get out of the area in one round (with exceptions of course). The net effect is some of the enemy lose one round of actions.

Yes, if there were more melee types in the party a few would have been able to take advantage of the ogres' condition for that round, but the premise is when there are "two or more" mages on a side.

[Tanarii]

Typically one character will run out of resources before the adventuring day is done, but one or two others will have half or more of their spell slots left (including the druid).
Full casters average approximate 1 of their top two levels of spells cast per Medium Encounter in a full adventuring day, through character level 10. For this to be the case, they'd have to be casting one every other encounter, and resorting to lower level spells and Cantrips.

So given this, that means 3 combats a n adventuring day they other combat they can either each:
- make one really big boom for one round, then fall back to lower level stuff.
- apply a multi-round powerful control spell for the (typically) 3-4 rounds a Medium encounter it take, then fall back to lower level stuff.

And the other three they:
- not use any of their top two levels of spells for the encounter, only lower level stuff.

(If half the spell slots left over means all the lower level ones, then they can choose one of the first two in each encounter. Obviously they can also go nova, but then they're back to less slots in later encounters)

BTw when you double the number of creatures in an encounter, that means it typically pushes it up one multiplier step in the difficulty, you're adding around 25-33% difficulty to the typical encounter (33% from 2 to 4, or 33% from 3-6 to 7-12).

Also are you remembering to reduce the difficulty modifier by one step for a party of 6? That means doubling the number creatures (ups modifier by one step) is a wash in terms of difficulty, relative to a party of 3-5.

[Meta]

A status effect is pretty much the one-target version of a control spell, if you think about it.

But, judging from how my games have gone, you need to add minions to legendary creature battles, or (the Critical Role solution) triple or quadruple the monster's hit points.

Yeah I meant status inducing spells. Either throw 3+ or don't bother, it'll resist the nasty effects and you'd rather be getting half damage off of damage spells at least.

I threw a 1,000 HP boss with 40 skeletons (each failed concentration check on big bad killed a skeleton as well) at level 5-6 characters. It was a tense fight, most characters were running on fumes, but nobody died.

[Breashios]

So given this, that means 3 combats an adventuring day they other combat they can either each:
- make one really big boom for one round, then fall back to lower level stuff.
- apply a multi-round powerful control spell for the (typically) 3-4 rounds a Medium encounter it take, then fall back to lower level stuff.

And the other three they:
- not use any of their top two levels of spells for the encounter, only lower level stuff.

BTw when you double the number of creatures in an encounter, that means it typically pushes it up one multiplier step in the difficulty, you're adding around 25-33% difficulty to the typical encounter (33% from 2 to 4, or 33% from 3-6 to 7-12).

Also are you remembering to reduce the difficulty modifier by one step for a party of 6? That means doubling the number creatures (ups modifier by one step) is a wash in terms of difficulty, relative to a party of 3-5.

So way back when they were 5th level, they usually ended the day without using their 3rd level slot, went with second level shatters, moonbeam (kind of control), burning hands (wizard liked the front line) and cantrips. After they got fourth level spells the evoker would use his 3rd level spells way before the end of the day (usually), but still have his 4th at the end of about half the days.

Otherwise your analysis of their resource expenditure is about right. They often did use that medium control spell, just like you noted above. My point is that it only worked against some opponents, only lasted a round or two at the most and it always (not really always, but usually) would have been more effective to have thrown a damage dealing attack. Because - taking out all of the enemy at that point meant less healing resources and other character's low level spells would be depleted.

Finally, that is what I am saying - There were usually 5 characters (6 sometimes) and I used the appropriate numbers for 6 or more characters all the way through the campaign for encounter difficulty and frequency (when story appropriate). Sometimes the story would gain nothing by having more than one or two encounters and I run the story first, then apply mechanical balance.

[KorvinStarmast]

One of the best uses of slow that our group used a few years ago included the wizard casting slow on a group of partial-covered goblinoid archers, and my cleric using sacred flame on them. Disad to dex save: that was handy, as the supporting caster, while our melee weapon users closed with them to finish the engagement.

[Sigreid]

This is really nothing more than the observation that if you can kill an opposition with the same resources (spell slots in this case) that you can disable it, you're better off killing it. The thing is, the players often don't know for certain that they are going to kill all of the opposition, so there is some wisdom in devoting some of those resources to disable it.

[Breashios]

This is really nothing more than the observation that if you can kill an opposition with the same resources (spell slots in this case) that you can disable it, you're better off killing it. The thing is, the players often don't know for certain that they are going to kill all of the opposition, so there is some wisdom in devoting some of those resources to disable it.

Fair enough.

I just noticed that as you increase the ratio of full casters with available damage output, the usefulness of control spells drops proportionately or so.

Doesn't mean control can not be effective at times or even critically so, it just means those times are fewer and farther between.

And in that context, a control mage goes from "god" to 'also ran'.

[Tanarii]

Full casters tend to do good damage through AoE damage. Non-casters tend to do high single target damage.

That means fewer casters, doing control on a few targets is effective with non-casters in the group, since the non-casters can burn down the creatures not control.

Whereas more Casters need to use slots to do their damage, because no one else is out there doing high single-target damage.

What you're seeing is with more casters, they need to use slots for damage because they have to.

[Chugger]

Two players with fireball = much easier fights, yes, and much less need to control. Controlling is harder and sometimes backfires (as does fireballing - oops they have fire vulnerability?! yikes).

If you can't spread out the badguys, you're in trouble, especially if the party does well on initiative, stopping you from running up into the party and making either fireball or area control harder. Players often have a feat or an item that helps them win init - and iirc no monsters get dex boosts to init. Players do. Also an evo wiz or a careful sorc = casting over the party and not hitting them - another problem.

In AL I sometimes play with a group that has no casters in it - or no AoE or control casters. That can be difficult. Fights are usually more hairy.

Control is see as the more sophisticated of the two approaches (area blasting and control) - but you can - say - hypnotic pattern a group of monsters but not get the caster. He can "shatter" or do a low lvl area attack on his own team, waking them all up and damaging them plus your guys who have moved in to start taking them down. Control doesn't always work, and there are several ways it can be fought.

A party that is over-reliant on fireballs can meet fire-resistant creatures - creatures with counterspell - creatures that use illusions to fool people and so on. A more powerful party usually just needs a bigger or more creative or specialized challenge - and not to be punished (which is what imho a "lesser DM" is tempted to do - I find that route (punishing) is disastrous).