No i agree my wizards have almost no direct damage spells. But as described above that may be misleading I would argue the strengh of spellcaster are spells but not when you play him like archer. But we could build them into DPS. Id argue 5e is extremly caster friendly even including concentration. But what makes spell cssters the strongest are horrible worded descirptions and details (RAW) of most spells are broken and most of thr times even RAI is hard to argue against a clever trick. But dont get me wrong. I dont think you can create a spell that is not 10 pages long withouth giving people ideas how to abuse it, but sometimes its like wow. That wording was no thought through. Like magic mouth and contingency practicly giving you intellectus (being selective omiscient know all as long as you ask) which is very funny as magic mouth is a ritual.😅 the fluff answer is probabyl that the weave knows all, but i must admit my lore knowledge is pretty bare, cause most DND books i listened to in audible aged pretty badly or were never good to begin with. I read the Drizzt stories with 15 or so and liked it at the time, but tried the follow up book and did not like it.
I hope i answered all with the correct post. I am unable to see who i answered. :)
I disagree. I am always astonished, that people for example paly monk eventhough he is like in most regards below average or even worse. Then other classes can fill multiple roles and are good at them. As described in my longest post I argue any full caster can do what all other classes can and mostly better and the gap only widens the longer it goes. And even Tier 1 (level 1-4) the moon druid is just broken. A far better fighter then a fighter, more HP than a barbarian and can heal about as well as a cleric while being a full caster. And wild shape lets you solve a lot of problem athletics or such could be used. Meaning a party with a Bard and a Moon druid could probably solve every problem that could arise in a 1-4 encounter as well as any other class in that game?
Take like most out of combat things: Who is best at scouting a rogue? I would argue find familiar, Diviniation spells and the invisibility and pace withuth trace combo beat he best rogue in 99.9% of the cases.
Social encounters? You can cast so many buffs or use even friends. Cast disguise self and look like the evil fraction, find out the useful infomration and frame the enemies.
And the bard espeically has the spells and the charisma and expertise to beat a rogue in all this scenarios? Then you may argue the rogue is great DPS, what based on the optimicers opinion he is not even considerd good damage unless you trick it into using sneak attack twice a round (Sentinel, riposte...).
So the rogue and monk are extremly nische classes if you look at it that way. What i am always confused in fantasy, when you see how overpowered magic is, why not make everybody as well magical. Why is a fighter not just a body mage or a rogue type a shadow mage... I understand tolkiens approach that everybody can be the hero and you don't need to be special to change the world. But that is almost never the moral of other fantasy stories. And in a game where you play only one character shouldn't all classes be about the same range and level of usefulness?
I think you may be over-estimating the powers of mages in D&D; while spell-casting gives them a lot of flexibility, and some spells can be very powerful, a lot of those spells are tied to a finite resource, and many control spells succeed or fail on a single roll. Control spells are at their best with multiple targets where affecting only some of them is still a good result, when facing only a single target if you fail you usually get nothing, and that often means you've wasted an entire turn.
But it's also worth pointing out that while it's possible for martials to overwhelm mages (Monk can brute force Stunning Strike, Fighters can deal raw damage, etc.), D&D isn't particularly optimal for player vs. player combat as a fight will either be one sided from the start (and not necessarily in a mage's favour), or can be determined by one or two bad rolls.
What matters is how a character fits into the group; a group made up entirely of mages is going to be royally screwed inside an anti-magic field or fighting a Tarrasque. It's about balance of abilities, and even with a wide range of spells a mage can't be everything you need in every single turn; the amount that they can do all at once is actually very tightly restricted.
Also, I think the very idea of trying to decide what class is "best" is ultimately pointless; it serves no purpose whatsoever unless your goal is to make other people feel bad for choosing to play that they want to play, which is 100% against the spirit of roleplaying games. There's also a risk of theory crafting fights that would never actually happen; in real play there is time pressure, as no-one wants to be the one holding up combat by flicking through your spell list every turn to find the perfect optimal choice for each situation.
And lastly, it has nothing to with vicious mockery, and whether it's a bad choice for a Bard.
Take like most out of combat things: Who is best at scouting a rogue? I would argue find familiar, Diviniation spells and the invisibility and pace withuth trace combo beat he best rogue in 99.9% of the cases.
Rogues are intended (for better or worse) to be better solo and throughout the day. Not only will invisibility and pass without trace consume spell slots, they're both Concentration, so having them combined on a target is impossible without a team (and if you have a team, the best target for those two spells is the rogue). Most of a rogue's abilities are always on, all the time - spell slots are, by and large, per long rest abilities. Sure, Arcane Eye is an excellent Divination spell for scouting - but that's an expensive spell slot, and consuming it consumes the caster's ability to sling other spells. The rogue keeps functioning all day.
I'm not saying Rogues are designed particularly well or particularly poorly, just that you're glossing over an awful lot in your analysis.
i would argue its not my overestimation the statement is pretty general in people who talk about dnd for a living. So either know what they say or fake it convincinly enough. :) Sure Spells are finite and if a dm makes ridicoulous amounts of fights between long rests that of course reduces the usefulness, but if you take a normal dnd module as an example you can use your spells pretty freely and even you run dry cantrips make spellcasters not much worse then a fighter in 5e. I mean toll the dead is a 1-4 times d12 while in the turns they use spell slots and care for a dmaage spell they compley outdamage martials. So in average that is far more. My argument is more they could, but i agree their time is better spend doing crowd control and divide and conquer. Thats mere economic principle (ricardo) all should do what they do best even if one individual would be better in all tasks.
Monks can do stunning strike which is using their finite resource and targeting con (success rate is proven to be very low) and is a worse version of hold monster no spell guid outthere says you should take. And they are bad tanks, bad dps and worse controler then every spell caster so yes they are outclassed.
fighters i would still argue unless you make a sharpshooter build/greatweapom build will do less dmaage than a warlcok? or which basic fighter combo beats eldrich blast and hex which they can do 24/7 no long rest required. And they are a face, have utility with their eldrich evocations or pact boons. So at default they arent even the best class at fighting which sounds weird?
as you have probably guessed this is not my mother tomgue. ;) thus if the following sounds bad it was not my intention. I start with this cause i never receieved an answer from anybody to this question and i guess its cause its sounds mean, but i hesrd that so many times that i think it is a pretty common statement which baffles me.
Regarding the swear word optimatisation vs roleplay an honest made question. Do you consider calculating average damage or chance to hit a complicated math exercise? To be honest i expected that people that do manual calculus for fun at least dont hate math? So i am always confused that not everybody does this kind of „calculations“ while they play. I mean as a reference I help my 15 year old brother with math a month ago. He had trouble cause they were learning algebraic formulas with more then two unknowns. Now if you compare that to working with dice and most of the time you dont even need to caluclate. Two D6 are highly likely more than a a D10? And especially when you add ability score you dont even have probability anymore? Thats math for young teens and should not be a problem for any adult unless math was his bane but then i am impressed that you choose that hobby? I am very lazy i would not do it if it would take effort. I game for over 20 years now but i have never calcualted a build in a video game cause that would be to much work for me, cause thats time consuming but here you have like 4 dice and and ability score to add or is that different in your country? Would that be considered a difficult math question for a normal adult?
and last point it is why spam vicious mockery when you could do something „better“ and then i tried to show what could be better, then somebdy argued bards are great as support but canot hold hand to a martial which then triggered my next post. But i agree we strayed a little bit from the topic. :)
Regarding the swear word optimatisation vs roleplay an honest made question. Do you consider calculating average damage chance to hit a complicated math exercise? To be honest i expected that people that do manual calculus for fun at least dont hate math? So i am always confused that not everybody does this kind of „calculations“ while they play.
Different people play games like D&D for different reasons. Some people enjoy the gameplay aspect. Those are usually the folks who do math in their heads and look to make optimal choices based off of probabilities and numerical superiority. Some folks prefer the narrative aspect. Those folks are the ones likely to take a feat like Grappler or a spell like True Strike, because it sounds cool and fits their character and likely have absolutely no idea how statistically inferior those choices are compared to anything else. Some folks just want to have fun doing a collaborative activity with friends. As long as everyone is hanging out together and having fun it could be almost any activity, like needlepoint or macrame.
So folks who most enjoy the gameplay aspect do those calculations and wonder why not every else does. Folks who most enjoy the narrative aspect have been doing things like this for years, are baffled that not everyone does, and wonder why so many non-creative people play D&D. Folks who mostly enjoy just spending time doing stuff with their friends can’t figure out why the first two groups spend so much time arguing with each other.
Most players enjoy some combination of those three things, but most players tend to lean at least slightly in one of those three directions.
But isnt that a failed design if the rogue which is thematically the sneaky class not the best at rogue stuff even if it costs you spells slots. Yes spell slots are finite but in this cases you just „beat“ the game and you hopfully dont do that more than once a day or else your dm may start to hate you? The dm build a labirinth and you just checked the layout and show now the easiest wy out. If that is not worth a spell slot i dont know what is. :) and find familar is free and outdoor an extremly efficient scout. So much that a lot people take magic iniate or ritual caster for that spell alone. Especially rogues. :)
and the best one i think i have not even specificully mentioned. Magic mouth which is a ritual. Make a doh sound when the target is alone in his room or when a invsible cresture is 30 feet away. Is that RAI highly likely not. But its RAW and hilarious. The weave knows all :)
thus shouldnt a rogue be a master of ilusion and enchantment magic? Like an arcane trickster but not inly 3quarter and as a base feature? Like half caster?
Yes of course but again that would imply that this things are not obvious. That when a enemy has a 16AC and i have a plus 5 that my chances of hitting are 50%? Cause a 20 side die has 10 outocmes that that does not hit and 10 that hit. The related math is deducting 5 from 16 which i strongly suspect is a basic required skill to learn to work in any industrial nation? Also you dont really need to calculate that our minds become pretty good at guessing such things when we have seen it some times. So this should be possible even while you search for the funniest vicious mockery line yet? :)
You definitely got a burr under your saddle. Why don't you create a thread with a proper title so we can discuss it? You say a lot, but I'm not sure what your point is.
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Sure? Lets do that but i dont know what the topic would be? I agree i discussed pretty broadly but most of the time (at least i thought) i tried to answer points from other people who queoted me? I should probably have used quotes myself...
1) one point was probably that magic can do all that non mages can do but better which weirdly i think nobody ever disagreed with me before?
2) how can there a be a conflict of views in something that is pretty easy to calculate or guess? Either something is good or bad. If that is important is of course up to each one but if it is good or bad is most of thr time deductable and very easy id argue?
3) why would you cast healing word on a person that is not down or is down and will woth 99% likelyhood go down again before his turn will come? Thats why i came here my most hated combo vicious mockery and healing word. :)
that would probably be a summary of my rhoughts? :)
But isnt that a failed design if the rogue which is thematically the sneaky class not the best at rogue stuff even if it costs you spells slots. Yes spell slots are finite but in this cases you just „beat“ the game and you hopfully dont do that more than once a day or else your dm may start to hate you? 😅 and find familar is free and outdoor an extremly efficient scout. So much that a lot people take magic iniate or ritual caster for that spell alone. Especially rogues. :)
and the best one i think i have not even specificully mentioned. Magic mouth. Make a doh sound when the king is alone in his room or when a invsible cresture is 30 feet away. Is that RAI highly likely not. But its RAW and hilarious.
The Truth is. The spell casters need those spells just to be as good as the Rogue at Sneaking and scouting. Without them they tend to be fairly dismal at it. And your ignoring all kinds of ways those spells can be spoiled or spotted out that the rogue doesn't have to worry about. Most people actually don't consider many of those ways because they don't actually pvp much at all despite that they use pvp reasoning to try and say their builds are better and their DM's don't often use them against them or may not know such themselves.
Also the people that make their living don't always have the right of things. Many of them have pretty blatant biases and Some of them just fake things well and hope that the math holds up just enough to support whatever opinion they make even if it doesn't work like they say in practicality. And there are even a few that are just selling you whatever opinion they think will get your views and hope to confirmation bias as many people as possible all for the clicks and the money.
People aren't always right about what is good, or what is bad or what is above or below average. They just go off the word of the general outcries of the mob or a small group of people that portray themselves as useful but aren't always such. Or off of information sources like Guides that are written by people that don't necessarily understand the classes the way they want you to believe they do. many Monk Guides are this way for example. Most Monk Guides don't tell you why things work or various ways to make a monk. They just give you some pseudo ranking to the powers based upon just a little bit of play and usually only at one tier of play and they link those things to a particular style that they've mostly borrowed from the people that come before but they don't actually tell you how or why the things work they way they do and sometimes are only built off of some predecessors narrow view of things ultimately making a guide that just sort of makes the monk Functional but doesn't actually give you the tools or knowledge to fully make use of the monk. On top of that most attempts to claim the power of something are based almost entirely on white room and single person perfect scenerio's. They aren't based in practical game play. Magic Users are considered powerful primarily because of optimal use of catching several enemies within aoe spells or on an often over sold amount of versatility for example and almost completely ignoring something like single target ability unless they are trying to sell you on some supposedly over powered build combination that often won't work for you as advertised in actual play.
There are a lot of various threads that discuss these things that when they really get into the details of some of it you can find things are a bit different or the math isn't as far apart as often proclaimed even if they might seem so purely in very protracted perfect examples picked to make them look that way.
Vicious Mockery is a fine example of an ability that if you paint it only in one light, that of damage, it's a very poor ability in comparison to other damage cantrips and many guides and experts teach people to only look at things in such a light as maximising damage. For the Damage it does it is not that great. And the way it's written at a glance it sounds like a damage cantrip with a rider of causing disadvantage. But if you switch it around and think of it as primarily a debuff Cantrip with a damage rider. And you consider weakening the enemy as a good thing. You suddenly have a very good cantrip. Vicious mockery is something the bard can use every turn and at a range of 60' that single ability can basically limit or even shut down sneak attacks from most monsters and players that have it depending on the layout of the battlefield and the rogues allies. Or if they can get in range can do things like shut down elven accuracy on at least one attack. Or shut down advantage on a creature with pack tactics or a reckless attack feature. All of which are powerful abilities either to hit or to do damage that some npc's and even players will rely on at times for their builds. And that's ignoring the fact that disadvantage can make sharp shooter or GWM too unreliable to use which can take damage away from at least one hit from things that might be using those, Though that leans likely a lot more towards PC's than anything because Stat-block NPC's don't usually have feats unlike the rest of the abilities which can be found on class mockup creatures or is primarily found upon various creatures to begin with.
Yes of course but again that would imply that this things are not obvious. That when a enemy has a 16AC and i have a plus 5 that my chances of hitting are 50%? Cause a 20 side die has 10 outocmes that that does not hit and 10 that hit. The related math is deducting 5 from 16 which i strongly suspect is a basic required skill to learn to work in any industrial nation? Also you dont really need to calculate that our minds become pretty good at guessing such things when we have seen it some times. So this should be possible even while you search for the funniest vicious mockery line yet? :)
For a 16 AC and a +5 to hit there is actually only 9 results that result in a hit and 11 that result in not hitting. But that's a minor nitpick in some ways.
I don't think there's anything else to discuss on VM really. It's one of the most overrated cantrips in the game. It's terrible past level 5.
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Isn't it meet or beat? 11-20 gives 16 or higher and 1-10 gives 15 or lower? than it would be 50%? Yes when i wrote it was like midnight and i thought that would be embarasing if the example is wrong. :)
Isn't it meet or beat? 11-20 gives 16 or higher and 1-10 gives 15 or lower? than it would be 50%? Yes when i wrote it was like midnight and i thought that would be embarasing if the example is wrong. :)
Your Right. It's my mistake. I'm going to blame the cold meds and allergies kicking my ass. It's making some things add up weird in my head.
I feel you. Its always end of februrary for me. stupid Hassel trees or however they are called in english. for good or worse winter came back this week and now stopped the trees, but now there is again snow everywhere. This year so far tops the last which was indeed a challange.
Vicious mockery is good, but it is a cantrip. Cantrips are for spellcasters the equivalent of a handgun for a soldier in a warzone... Handguns are ok, handy, and a reliable fallback option, but definitely not your first choice most of the time and wouldn't let you take down anything really threatening.
Yes of course but again that would imply that this things are not obvious. That when a enemy has a 16AC and i have a plus 5 that my chances of hitting are 50%? Cause a 20 side die has 10 outocmes that that does not hit and 10 that hit. The related math is deducting 5 from 16 which i strongly suspect is a basic required skill to learn to work in any industrial nation? Also you dont really need to calculate that our minds become pretty good at guessing such things when we have seen it some times. So this should be possible even while you search for the funniest vicious mockery line yet? :)
For a 16 AC and a +5 to hit there is actually only 9 results that result in a hit and 11 that result in not hitting. But that's a minor nitpick in some ways.
An 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 or 20 would hit an AC of 16 if there is a +5 attack bonus, giving 10 chances to hit and 10 chances to miss. If we are being nitpicky.
Yes of course but again that would imply that this things are not obvious. That when a enemy has a 16AC and i have a plus 5 that my chances of hitting are 50%? Cause a 20 side die has 10 outocmes that that does not hit and 10 that hit. The related math is deducting 5 from 16 which i strongly suspect is a basic required skill to learn to work in any industrial nation? Also you dont really need to calculate that our minds become pretty good at guessing such things when we have seen it some times. So this should be possible even while you search for the funniest vicious mockery line yet? :)
For a 16 AC and a +5 to hit there is actually only 9 results that result in a hit and 11 that result in not hitting. But that's a minor nitpick in some ways.
An 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 or 20 would hit an AC of 16 if there is a +5 attack bonus, giving 10 chances to hit and 10 chances to miss. If we are being nitpicky.
or perhaps read the rest of the posts where we addressed this and I admitted I may have cuonted wrong....
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No i agree my wizards have almost no direct damage spells. But as described above that may be misleading I would argue the strengh of spellcaster are spells but not when you play him like archer. But we could build them into DPS. Id argue 5e is extremly caster friendly even including concentration. But what makes spell cssters the strongest are horrible worded descirptions and details (RAW) of most spells are broken and most of thr times even RAI is hard to argue against a clever trick. But dont get me wrong. I dont think you can create a spell that is not 10 pages long withouth giving people ideas how to abuse it, but sometimes its like wow. That wording was no thought through. Like magic mouth and contingency practicly giving you intellectus (being selective omiscient know all as long as you ask) which is very funny as magic mouth is a ritual.😅 the fluff answer is probabyl that the weave knows all, but i must admit my lore knowledge is pretty bare, cause most DND books i listened to in audible aged pretty badly or were never good to begin with. I read the Drizzt stories with 15 or so and liked it at the time, but tried the follow up book and did not like it.
I hope i answered all with the correct post. I am unable to see who i answered. :)
I disagree. I am always astonished, that people for example paly monk eventhough he is like in most regards below average or even worse. Then other classes can fill multiple roles and are good at them. As described in my longest post I argue any full caster can do what all other classes can and mostly better and the gap only widens the longer it goes. And even Tier 1 (level 1-4) the moon druid is just broken. A far better fighter then a fighter, more HP than a barbarian and can heal about as well as a cleric while being a full caster. And wild shape lets you solve a lot of problem athletics or such could be used. Meaning a party with a Bard and a Moon druid could probably solve every problem that could arise in a 1-4 encounter as well as any other class in that game?
Take like most out of combat things: Who is best at scouting a rogue? I would argue find familiar, Diviniation spells and the invisibility and pace withuth trace combo beat he best rogue in 99.9% of the cases.
Social encounters? You can cast so many buffs or use even friends. Cast disguise self and look like the evil fraction, find out the useful infomration and frame the enemies.
And the bard espeically has the spells and the charisma and expertise to beat a rogue in all this scenarios? Then you may argue the rogue is great DPS, what based on the optimicers opinion he is not even considerd good damage unless you trick it into using sneak attack twice a round (Sentinel, riposte...).
So the rogue and monk are extremly nische classes if you look at it that way. What i am always confused in fantasy, when you see how overpowered magic is, why not make everybody as well magical. Why is a fighter not just a body mage or a rogue type a shadow mage... I understand tolkiens approach that everybody can be the hero and you don't need to be special to change the world. But that is almost never the moral of other fantasy stories. And in a game where you play only one character shouldn't all classes be about the same range and level of usefulness?
I think you may be over-estimating the powers of mages in D&D; while spell-casting gives them a lot of flexibility, and some spells can be very powerful, a lot of those spells are tied to a finite resource, and many control spells succeed or fail on a single roll. Control spells are at their best with multiple targets where affecting only some of them is still a good result, when facing only a single target if you fail you usually get nothing, and that often means you've wasted an entire turn.
But it's also worth pointing out that while it's possible for martials to overwhelm mages (Monk can brute force Stunning Strike, Fighters can deal raw damage, etc.), D&D isn't particularly optimal for player vs. player combat as a fight will either be one sided from the start (and not necessarily in a mage's favour), or can be determined by one or two bad rolls.
What matters is how a character fits into the group; a group made up entirely of mages is going to be royally screwed inside an anti-magic field or fighting a Tarrasque. It's about balance of abilities, and even with a wide range of spells a mage can't be everything you need in every single turn; the amount that they can do all at once is actually very tightly restricted.
Also, I think the very idea of trying to decide what class is "best" is ultimately pointless; it serves no purpose whatsoever unless your goal is to make other people feel bad for choosing to play that they want to play, which is 100% against the spirit of roleplaying games. There's also a risk of theory crafting fights that would never actually happen; in real play there is time pressure, as no-one wants to be the one holding up combat by flicking through your spell list every turn to find the perfect optimal choice for each situation.
And lastly, it has nothing to with vicious mockery, and whether it's a bad choice for a Bard.
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Rogues are intended (for better or worse) to be better solo and throughout the day. Not only will invisibility and pass without trace consume spell slots, they're both Concentration, so having them combined on a target is impossible without a team (and if you have a team, the best target for those two spells is the rogue). Most of a rogue's abilities are always on, all the time - spell slots are, by and large, per long rest abilities. Sure, Arcane Eye is an excellent Divination spell for scouting - but that's an expensive spell slot, and consuming it consumes the caster's ability to sling other spells. The rogue keeps functioning all day.
I'm not saying Rogues are designed particularly well or particularly poorly, just that you're glossing over an awful lot in your analysis.
i would argue its not my overestimation the statement is pretty general in people who talk about dnd for a living. So either know what they say or fake it convincinly enough. :) Sure Spells are finite and if a dm makes ridicoulous amounts of fights between long rests that of course reduces the usefulness, but if you take a normal dnd module as an example you can use your spells pretty freely and even you run dry cantrips make spellcasters not much worse then a fighter in 5e. I mean toll the dead is a 1-4 times d12 while in the turns they use spell slots and care for a dmaage spell they compley outdamage martials. So in average that is far more. My argument is more they could, but i agree their time is better spend doing crowd control and divide and conquer. Thats mere economic principle (ricardo) all should do what they do best even if one individual would be better in all tasks.
Monks can do stunning strike which is using their finite resource and targeting con (success rate is proven to be very low) and is a worse version of hold monster no spell guid outthere says you should take. And they are bad tanks, bad dps and worse controler then every spell caster so yes they are outclassed.
fighters i would still argue unless you make a sharpshooter build/greatweapom build will do less dmaage than a warlcok? or which basic fighter combo beats eldrich blast and hex which they can do 24/7 no long rest required. And they are a face, have utility with their eldrich evocations or pact boons. So at default they arent even the best class at fighting which sounds weird?
as you have probably guessed this is not my mother tomgue. ;) thus if the following sounds bad it was not my intention. I start with this cause i never receieved an answer from anybody to this question and i guess its cause its sounds mean, but i hesrd that so many times that i think it is a pretty common statement which baffles me.
Regarding the swear word optimatisation vs roleplay an honest made question. Do you consider calculating average damage or chance to hit a complicated math exercise? To be honest i expected that people that do manual calculus for fun at least dont hate math?
So i am always confused that not everybody does this kind of „calculations“ while they play. I mean as a reference I help my 15 year old brother with math a month ago. He had trouble cause they were learning algebraic formulas with more then two unknowns. Now if you compare that to working with dice and most of the time you dont even need to caluclate. Two D6 are highly likely more than a a D10? And especially when you add ability score you dont even have probability anymore?
Thats math for young teens and should not be a problem for any adult unless math was his bane but then i am impressed that you choose that hobby? I am very lazy i would not do it if it would take effort. I game for over 20 years now but i have never calcualted a build in a video game cause that would be to much work for me, cause thats time consuming but here you have like 4 dice and and ability score to add or is that different in your country? Would that be considered a difficult math question for a normal adult?
and last point it is why spam vicious mockery when you could do something „better“ and then i tried to show what could be better, then somebdy argued bards are great as support but canot hold hand to a martial which then triggered my next post. But i agree we strayed a little bit from the topic. :)
magic rules! ;)
Different people play games like D&D for different reasons. Some people enjoy the gameplay aspect. Those are usually the folks who do math in their heads and look to make optimal choices based off of probabilities and numerical superiority. Some folks prefer the narrative aspect. Those folks are the ones likely to take a feat like Grappler or a spell like True Strike, because it sounds cool and fits their character and likely have absolutely no idea how statistically inferior those choices are compared to anything else. Some folks just want to have fun doing a collaborative activity with friends. As long as everyone is hanging out together and having fun it could be almost any activity, like needlepoint or macrame.
So folks who most enjoy the gameplay aspect do those calculations and wonder why not every else does. Folks who most enjoy the narrative aspect have been doing things like this for years, are baffled that not everyone does, and wonder why so many non-creative people play D&D. Folks who mostly enjoy just spending time doing stuff with their friends can’t figure out why the first two groups spend so much time arguing with each other.
Most players enjoy some combination of those three things, but most players tend to lean at least slightly in one of those three directions.
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But isnt that a failed design if the rogue which is thematically the sneaky class not the best at rogue stuff even if it costs you spells slots. Yes spell slots are finite but in this cases you just „beat“ the game and you hopfully dont do that more than once a day or else your dm may start to hate you? The dm build a labirinth and you just checked the layout and show now the easiest wy out. If that is not worth a spell slot i dont know what is. :) and find familar is free and outdoor an extremly efficient scout. So much that a lot people take magic iniate or ritual caster for that spell alone. Especially rogues. :)
and the best one i think i have not even specificully mentioned. Magic mouth which is a ritual. Make a doh sound when the target is alone in his room or when a invsible cresture is 30 feet away. Is that RAI highly likely not. But its RAW and hilarious. The weave knows all :)
thus shouldnt a rogue be a master of ilusion and enchantment magic? Like an arcane trickster but not inly 3quarter and as a base feature? Like half caster?
Yes of course but again that would imply that this things are not obvious. That when a enemy has a 16AC and i have a plus 5 that my chances of hitting are 50%? Cause a 20 side die has 10 outocmes that that does not hit and 10 that hit. The related math is deducting 5 from 16 which i strongly suspect is a basic required skill to learn to work in any industrial nation? Also you dont really need to calculate that our minds become pretty good at guessing such things when we have seen it some times. So this should be possible even while you search for the funniest vicious mockery line yet? :)
CaitSith21,
You definitely got a burr under your saddle. Why don't you create a thread with a proper title so we can discuss it? You say a lot, but I'm not sure what your point is.
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
I dont know that idiom? Whats that?
Sure? Lets do that but i dont know what the topic would be? I agree i discussed pretty broadly but most of the time (at least i thought) i tried to answer points from other people who queoted me? I should probably have used quotes myself...
1) one point was probably that magic can do all that non mages can do but better which weirdly i think nobody ever disagreed with me before?
2) how can there a be a conflict of views in something that is pretty easy to calculate or guess? Either something is good or bad. If that is important is of course up to each one but if it is good or bad is most of thr time deductable and very easy id argue?
3) why would you cast healing word on a person that is not down or is down and will woth 99% likelyhood go down again before his turn will come? Thats why i came here my most hated combo vicious mockery and healing word. :)
that would probably be a summary of my rhoughts? :)
The Truth is. The spell casters need those spells just to be as good as the Rogue at Sneaking and scouting. Without them they tend to be fairly dismal at it. And your ignoring all kinds of ways those spells can be spoiled or spotted out that the rogue doesn't have to worry about. Most people actually don't consider many of those ways because they don't actually pvp much at all despite that they use pvp reasoning to try and say their builds are better and their DM's don't often use them against them or may not know such themselves.
Also the people that make their living don't always have the right of things. Many of them have pretty blatant biases and Some of them just fake things well and hope that the math holds up just enough to support whatever opinion they make even if it doesn't work like they say in practicality. And there are even a few that are just selling you whatever opinion they think will get your views and hope to confirmation bias as many people as possible all for the clicks and the money.
People aren't always right about what is good, or what is bad or what is above or below average. They just go off the word of the general outcries of the mob or a small group of people that portray themselves as useful but aren't always such. Or off of information sources like Guides that are written by people that don't necessarily understand the classes the way they want you to believe they do. many Monk Guides are this way for example. Most Monk Guides don't tell you why things work or various ways to make a monk. They just give you some pseudo ranking to the powers based upon just a little bit of play and usually only at one tier of play and they link those things to a particular style that they've mostly borrowed from the people that come before but they don't actually tell you how or why the things work they way they do and sometimes are only built off of some predecessors narrow view of things ultimately making a guide that just sort of makes the monk Functional but doesn't actually give you the tools or knowledge to fully make use of the monk. On top of that most attempts to claim the power of something are based almost entirely on white room and single person perfect scenerio's. They aren't based in practical game play. Magic Users are considered powerful primarily because of optimal use of catching several enemies within aoe spells or on an often over sold amount of versatility for example and almost completely ignoring something like single target ability unless they are trying to sell you on some supposedly over powered build combination that often won't work for you as advertised in actual play.
There are a lot of various threads that discuss these things that when they really get into the details of some of it you can find things are a bit different or the math isn't as far apart as often proclaimed even if they might seem so purely in very protracted perfect examples picked to make them look that way.
Vicious Mockery is a fine example of an ability that if you paint it only in one light, that of damage, it's a very poor ability in comparison to other damage cantrips and many guides and experts teach people to only look at things in such a light as maximising damage. For the Damage it does it is not that great. And the way it's written at a glance it sounds like a damage cantrip with a rider of causing disadvantage. But if you switch it around and think of it as primarily a debuff Cantrip with a damage rider. And you consider weakening the enemy as a good thing. You suddenly have a very good cantrip. Vicious mockery is something the bard can use every turn and at a range of 60' that single ability can basically limit or even shut down sneak attacks from most monsters and players that have it depending on the layout of the battlefield and the rogues allies. Or if they can get in range can do things like shut down elven accuracy on at least one attack. Or shut down advantage on a creature with pack tactics or a reckless attack feature. All of which are powerful abilities either to hit or to do damage that some npc's and even players will rely on at times for their builds. And that's ignoring the fact that disadvantage can make sharp shooter or GWM too unreliable to use which can take damage away from at least one hit from things that might be using those, Though that leans likely a lot more towards PC's than anything because Stat-block NPC's don't usually have feats unlike the rest of the abilities which can be found on class mockup creatures or is primarily found upon various creatures to begin with.
For a 16 AC and a +5 to hit there is actually only 9 results that result in a hit and 11 that result in not hitting. But that's a minor nitpick in some ways.
If I created a thread for CaitSith21's musings about spellcasting classes, would folks agree to continue this discussion there?
I would just prefer to discuss specific game elements related to Vicious Mockery in this thread, because I like to play a bard.
This conversation, at the moment, is not about V-M or being a bard.
Try this thread ...
https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/class-forums/bard/101989-caithsith21s-various-musings-on-spellcasting
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
I don't think there's anything else to discuss on VM really. It's one of the most overrated cantrips in the game. It's terrible past level 5.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
Isn't it meet or beat? 11-20 gives 16 or higher and 1-10 gives 15 or lower? than it would be 50%? Yes when i wrote it was like midnight and i thought that would be embarasing if the example is wrong. :)
Your Right. It's my mistake. I'm going to blame the cold meds and allergies kicking my ass. It's making some things add up weird in my head.
I feel you. Its always end of februrary for me. stupid Hassel trees or however they are called in english. for good or worse winter came back this week and now stopped the trees, but now there is again snow everywhere. This year so far tops the last which was indeed a challange.
Vicious mockery is good, but it is a cantrip. Cantrips are for spellcasters the equivalent of a handgun for a soldier in a warzone... Handguns are ok, handy, and a reliable fallback option, but definitely not your first choice most of the time and wouldn't let you take down anything really threatening.
An 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 or 20 would hit an AC of 16 if there is a +5 attack bonus, giving 10 chances to hit and 10 chances to miss. If we are being nitpicky.
or perhaps read the rest of the posts where we addressed this and I admitted I may have cuonted wrong....