Do caster out of combat options matter?

[Dr.Samurai]

Viability and agency are two completely different things.

I know this part was aimed at Mastikator, but yeah... yeah we are.

Seems clear to me that the OP is asking about viability, not agency.

And insofar as there is wealth to spend and NPC spellcasters, we're talking about an added step between the agency you allege to have, and the agency nonspellcasters have.

I was trying to stay on topic. "Casters can do a lot out of combat. They can teleport past obstacles, plane shift, open locked doors, fly etc.

But do these options actually matter? If you need to get to the plane of fire as part of the campaign there will be a way to get to the plane of fire that didn't rely on class abilities or make assumptions."
- clash

Whether they have the capacity to do out of combat stuff was to my understanding the subject of this thread. Whether they choose to use those options is off topic.

You're confusing me, sorry to say.

The OP is saying that there is much made about how casters have these utility spells that let them overcome stuff that others can't. And the OP is saying "yeah but... you would just overcome it some other way without the spells, so does it really matter?"

When you design an adventure that takes place in the City of Brass, do you look at the player character sheets to see if they have plane shift, and do you add a portal/NPC/item to plane shift them if they can't. Or do you just add the portal/NPC/item anyway, regardless of their ability. If you add it anyway, is the option to cast the spell actually matter. Or do you look at their ability to do out of combat options, and make an adventure based on those.

These are all decisions that happen before the adventure starts.

I think option 3 is too fragile, players can miss a session and leave the other players unable to go.
I think option 1 is too arbitrary and too much work.
So I always go for option 2. Make an adventure that any party can finish (and add multiple paths and outcomes that depend on out of combat options. But don't go crazy, just add enough details that the players can get creative, and they'll always surprise you, but again, off topic)

I generally agree with this, as before.

The OP reads to my as if coming from the place where people assume that if the party doesn't have Plane Shift, they can't get to other planes, and this therefore adds a level of superiority and utility to those spellcasters that can access Plane Shift. But we, and the OP, are saying that Plane Shift is not the only way to the other planes, and the party will figure it out. And if the DM designed an adventure with no way to resolve unless a member of the party was:

1. a specific class
2. a specific level
3. and knew a specific spell

Then the DM set everyone up to fail when the party shows up and that specific character isn't in it.

Then speaking as a DM it would be the same amount of work either way but would likely provide me more time to prepare for the planar adventure in the case where they are looking for a portal first. If the players want to get to the plane of fire in but going to say yes you can plane shift there but no one else in the world can help you get there if you don't know the spell.

I fail to see how getting there without the spell is requiring me to be more permissive

Because it's common to view the game through "what can spellcasters do" lenses and think that everything revolves around casters. So this idea that the DM will have to react to the party not having a spell to do something as "burdensome" or "more work" and "co-DMing", but the DM reacting to an impromptu jaunt to another plane of existence, or casting Divination spells all the time, or reading people's thoughts, or speaking with every corpse, etc. is NOT more work for the DM is just a bias.

There is no difference between "We'd like to find a portal to the Plane of Fire" and "We'd like to find a tuning fork attuned to the Plane of Fire" as far as DM burden. The difference will be that the portal will take the players wherever the DM decides, whereas Plane Shift will take the players generally to the location they want to go to. This is the "agency" others are speaking of, but not, what I think, the OP was referring to.

Generally, I would agree with the other side that it matters insofar as timing and precision. But that's not how people talk about it online, and so it's not what the OP is referring to. We all have read countless posts about this and how martials can't do things because they don't have spells, and that's where this is coming from.