Yeah I agree with this as well.....prepared casters have it the best overall. Its why Clerics are so damn good IMO.
Honestly, the game would be a lot more playable at high level if prepared casters were eliminated or vastly reduced. As a DM, it wouldn't be that hard to figure out the capabilities of a 17th level sorcerer (with 15 spells), but a 17th level cleric has access to around 120 spells, and a 17th level wizard could in principle have more than 300 in his spellbook.
Fixing 5e does require some core changes if the classes are to be used as they are, but if you address class balance a bit more holistically perhaps the changes to the core game can be limited.
I would at least start with the following.
1. Remove spell casting ability from all Martial classes & Sub-Classes that includes Bard, Fighter (Eldritch Knight), Paladin, Ranger, Rogue (Arcane Trickster). This would require some adjustments to these martial classes to compensate, and in some cases new sub-classes entirely, for example swap the Eldritch Knight for Warlord.
2. Remove bonus spells for Ability scores for all spell casting classes that remain.
3. Change the XP tables to reflect of the strength of the class and race. Aka stronger classes level up slower, weaker classes level up faster.
4. Create class based bonuses for specific skills based on the classes, example Wizard - Arcana.
5. Remove multiclassing entirely.
6. Remove ability score progression and only allow it through the selection of select feats that can only be taken once.
That would be a start.
Ugh. Going through those in order
A gish is a legitimate concept. You can solve this with multiclassing instead of subclasses, but see your point 5...
Eh, fewer known spells might be a good plan, but not really a big deal for me.
Bad idea. Much better to just change the level-up tables so the classes are equal. Sure, this might mean a class hits their current level 20 abilities at level 12 or something and you have to invent new high level abilities, but there's a reason different xp tables for different classes got abandoned when 3rd edition came out.
Just limit Expertise to skills actually listed in your class.
See point 1.
It should be possible to improve ability checks, attacks, saves, and skills as you gain experience, though that need not be by changes in the numeric attribute value.
I could live with either 1 or 5. I don't care one way or another about 2, 3 is an actively bad idea (just change the classes so they're no longer unequal. This might mean some classes hit their current max by level 12 or so and you have to invent new high level abilities, but I see nothing wrong with that)
The problem will all classes having a clearly defined purpose is that one of the classes will become the "healer". And it gets very boring playing a healer while everybody else is going around blasting the enemy to pieces.
The problem will all classes having a clearly defined purpose is that one of the classes will become the "healer". And it gets very boring playing a healer while everybody else is going around blasting the enemy to pieces.
This is true...I'm not sure how healing was structured in earlier editions, but without a drastic change in combat balancing, healing will never be an "interesting" combat class without something else to do the 90% of the time healing isn't required. Video games where permanent full-healers are a thing balance combat to where healing needs to keep up with damage, but D&D 5e isn't built that way, its more of battlefield triage to keep someone at the minimum to be up and running, at least until it's safe to rest/use more powerful healing spells OoC.
The problem will all classes having a clearly defined purpose is that one of the classes will become the "healer". And it gets very boring playing a healer while everybody else is going around blasting the enemy to pieces.
The defined purpose doesn't need to be as narrow as 'healer'. Usually, it gets expanded to 'support', with a variety of abilities that boost the other PCs. The 4th edition warlord was support, and plenty popular, judging by the number of people who try to emulate it in 5e.
Yeah I agree with this as well.....prepared casters have it the best overall. Its why Clerics are so damn good IMO.
Honestly, the game would be a lot more playable at high level if prepared casters were eliminated or vastly reduced. As a DM, it wouldn't be that hard to figure out the capabilities of a 17th level sorcerer (with 15 spells), but a 17th level cleric has access to around 120 spells, and a 17th level wizard could in principle have more than 300 in his spellbook.
Fixing 5e does require some core changes if the classes are to be used as they are, but if you address class balance a bit more holistically perhaps the changes to the core game can be limited.
I would at least start with the following.
1. Remove spell casting ability from all Martial classes & Sub-Classes that includes Bard, Fighter (Eldritch Knight), Paladin, Ranger, Rogue (Arcane Trickster). This would require some adjustments to these martial classes to compensate, and in some cases new sub-classes entirely, for example swap the Eldritch Knight for Warlord.
2. Remove bonus spells for Ability scores for all spell casting classes that remain.
3. Change the XP tables to reflect of the strength of the class and race. Aka stronger classes level up slower, weaker classes level up faster.
4. Create class based bonuses for specific skills based on the classes, example Wizard - Arcana.
5. Remove multiclassing entirely.
6. Remove ability score progression and only allow it through the selection of select feats that can only be taken once.
That would be a start.
Ugh. Going through those in order
A gish is a legitimate concept. You can solve this with multiclassing instead of subclasses, but see your point 5...
Eh, fewer known spells might be a good plan, but not really a big deal for me.
Bad idea. Much better to just change the level-up tables so the classes are equal. Sure, this might mean a class hits their current level 20 abilities at level 12 or something and you have to invent new high level abilities, but there's a reason different xp tables for different classes got abandoned when 3rd edition came out.
Just limit Expertise to skills actually listed in your class.
See point 1.
It should be possible to improve ability checks, attacks, saves, and skills as you gain experience, though that need not be by changes in the numeric attribute value.
I could live with either 1 or 5. I don't care one way or another about 2, 3 is an actively bad idea (just change the classes so they're no longer unequal. This might mean some classes hit their current max by level 12 or so and you have to invent new high level abilities, but I see nothing wrong with that)
A gish isn't a new or modern concept either. The bladesinger dates all the way back to ad&d!
I think a big part of what makes me unhappy about the warrior-type classes is simply that combat is highly codified and kept very simple. Simple is usually good, but in 5E in particular fighter look at their options in combat and there is a ton they can't do because it's locked behind a feat or class ability, or the rules don't have a formal mechanic for it so it's presumably impossible (whereas in non-combat situations, the presumption is that you can try anything and everything and the DM will make something up on the spot). Opening up these options via bonus actions and reactions could make those classes a lot more interesting in combat for me, and they could get bonuses (proficiency comes to mind) or maybe extra reactions as (sub)class abilities. Anybody would be able to try and interfere with an attack made on someone next to them as a reaction, for instance (either increasing AC or reducing physical damage) - fighters or paladins would just be better at it than clerics or rogues, and much better than wizards or sorcerers - provided they'd have a shield or melee weapon equipped. Things like what Pathfinder's teamwork feats allow would be available through bonus action use. Feinting would be a bonus action, with martial classes both better at feinting and at seeing through feints. Charging would be a possible action, and so on.
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The first issue is that when you codify combat to an action economy and create a wide variety of "actions", you are also defining what you can't do. For example if you have an ability called Parry that the Battlemaster can get at 3rd level, it is no longer "fair" for the DM to allow a player running the Barbarian who gets attack to say "I'm going to try to parry that attack" (in the narrative sense) and get a mechanical benefit. Does that make sense. Like if you define something as a power for a class, that action is now exclusive to that class and only when they get that ability at the appropriate level, you have effectively eliminated trying to parry as a narrative or mechanical construct for anyone else to use.
People can parry in 5th edition without having a special ability: it's just a reflavored dodge, and a lot of other weird things someone might do in combat just boil down to a reflavored help. The class abilities are just better versions of the ability everyone has.
In the end, if you're going to let someone do something and it has mechanical benefits, someone has to make a ruling about how it works. If it's useful enough and generic enough that someone might want to do it more than once, it's better to have something written down so it actually behaves the same way the next time someone tries the same thing. If you want a player from one table to be able to play at a different table without learning a whole encyclopedia of house rules, it's good to have it set down in the core rules.
The other change in D&D that happened is the way the books are written. They are no longer written to inspire, educate, instruct or offer advice, they are reference manuals for a rules system.
Um... I've read every edition of D&D. Every one of them was written like a reference manual for a rules system (unsurprising, as TSR was a bunch of tactical minis guys before they did RPGs). I think your memories are being distorted by the rosy glow of nostalgia.
The issue with your stance there, BL, is that if a class has a Design Goal and a Distinct Purpose in the party, that No Other Class Can Fulfill? You've just made that class mandatory for your D&D game. In your game where undead are super awful and they're almost impossible to deal with if you have no cleric, and where the cleric is the ONLY class with supportive magic? Any party without a cleric is a party doomed to failure. Which is where the old saw of "whoever's last to the table plays the cleric" comes from - nobody wants to be the party heal*****.
5e's approach, at least insofar as it can be called an 'approach', is quite superior in many cases. Yes, multiple classes all have similar, overlapping abilities. This is a benefit, not a drawback, as it means parties can attain their necessary tools in many different ways. You don't need a cleric as the party heal***** - if you have one then the cleric comes with a lot of perks, but so does the druid. So does the bard. So does the paladin. Rather than Clear And Distinct Purposes for a small handful of classes resulting in every single adventuring party having the exact same composition, a 5e wolfpack party can have any number of different character types in it while still hitting the bare necessities (the simple bear necessities) of adventuring life. That allows a degree of freedom and creativity utterly denied to player groups for which "You NEED a fighter to be the frontline or everybody dies for free, you NEED a rogue if you don't want to die to traps, you NEED a cleric if you want damage to not be immediately fatal, and you NEED a wizard if you want to get anything done at all past level 7" is the norm.
Um... I've read every edition of D&D. Every one of them was written like a reference manual for a rules system (unsurprising, as TSR was a bunch of tactical minis guys before they did RPGs). I think your memories are being distorted by the rosy glow of nostalgia.
Um no you are wrong. Writing rules as a reference manual started with Wizards of the Coast.. The AD&D rules if written as a reference would be about 120 pages long. 70% of that book is Gygax speaking directly to the GM and I don't need nostalgia to remind me, I own and read the book on a weekly basis. I have never read the 5e book because its impossible to read. Its not written to be read, its written to be referenced.
Gonna drop this discussion, as I doubt it would go anywhere, but I've read AD&D books recently enough to say you were apparently reading a different book from me...
I think a big part of what makes me unhappy about the warrior-type classes is simply that combat is highly codified and kept very simple. Simple is usually good, but in 5E in particular fighter look at their options in combat and there is a ton they can't do because it's locked behind a feat or class ability, or the rules don't have a formal mechanic for it so it's presumably impossible (whereas in non-combat situations, the presumption is that you can try anything and everything and the DM will make something up on the spot). Opening up these options via bonus actions and reactions could make those classes a lot more interesting in combat for me, and they could get bonuses (proficiency comes to mind) or maybe extra reactions as (sub)class abilities. Anybody would be able to try and interfere with an attack made on someone next to them as a reaction, for instance (either increasing AC or reducing physical damage) - fighters or paladins would just be better at it than clerics or rogues, and much better than wizards or sorcerers - provided they'd have a shield or melee weapon equipped. Things like what Pathfinder's teamwork feats allow would be available through bonus action use. Feinting would be a bonus action, with martial classes both better at feinting and at seeing through feints. Charging would be a possible action, and so on.
This is the results of two key changes in how D&D is designed and written.
The first issue is that when you codify combat to an action economy and create a wide variety of "actions", you are also defining what you can't do. For example if you have an ability called Parry that the Battlemaster can get at 3rd level, it is no longer "fair" for the DM to allow a player running the Barbarian who gets attack to say "I'm going to try to parry that attack" (in the narrative sense) and get a mechanical benefit. Does that make sense. Like if you define something as a power for a class, that action is now exclusive to that class and only when they get that ability at the appropriate level, you have effectively eliminated trying to parry as a narrative or mechanical construct for anyone else to use.
The other change in D&D that happened is the way the books are written. They are no longer written to inspire, educate, instruct or offer advice, they are reference manuals for a rules system. Their is no authorial voice in the books, the author is an AI that is explaining the rules in the most direct terms possible that they can be easily referenced. Its written in the same style they use to explain how to use Microsoft Word features in a reference manual.
These things two things combined create a void in the game and when you very often hear people say that contemporary D&D is missing that "spark" or "magic" of the old editions, this is predominantly why. The books have no sense of themselves and the instruction are created in such a way that they become rules references about what you can't do.
The final cop out of the lazy manner in which these rules are written is the classic "Golden Rule" or "Rule 0" as its commonly known which effectively says that despite trying to codify role-playing and giving you a boring reference manual of rules, we acknowledge that we have done a shit job so whenever we forgot to create a rule for something, it becomes your job to make it up.
Let's not unduly glorify the days of yore either. TSR's education and instruction far too often came down to turning the DM into a human coin toss. The pendulum swings both ways, and neither extreme is particularly appetizing.
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Honestly, the game would be a lot more playable at high level if prepared casters were eliminated or vastly reduced. As a DM, it wouldn't be that hard to figure out the capabilities of a 17th level sorcerer (with 15 spells), but a 17th level cleric has access to around 120 spells, and a 17th level wizard could in principle have more than 300 in his spellbook.
Ugh. Going through those in order
I could live with either 1 or 5. I don't care one way or another about 2, 3 is an actively bad idea (just change the classes so they're no longer unequal. This might mean some classes hit their current max by level 12 or so and you have to invent new high level abilities, but I see nothing wrong with that)
The problem will all classes having a clearly defined purpose is that one of the classes will become the "healer". And it gets very boring playing a healer while everybody else is going around blasting the enemy to pieces.
This is true...I'm not sure how healing was structured in earlier editions, but without a drastic change in combat balancing, healing will never be an "interesting" combat class without something else to do the 90% of the time healing isn't required. Video games where permanent full-healers are a thing balance combat to where healing needs to keep up with damage, but D&D 5e isn't built that way, its more of battlefield triage to keep someone at the minimum to be up and running, at least until it's safe to rest/use more powerful healing spells OoC.
The defined purpose doesn't need to be as narrow as 'healer'. Usually, it gets expanded to 'support', with a variety of abilities that boost the other PCs. The 4th edition warlord was support, and plenty popular, judging by the number of people who try to emulate it in 5e.
A gish isn't a new or modern concept either. The bladesinger dates all the way back to ad&d!
It dates back way further than that. The elf class in basic D&D (1974) was a gish.
I think a big part of what makes me unhappy about the warrior-type classes is simply that combat is highly codified and kept very simple. Simple is usually good, but in 5E in particular fighter look at their options in combat and there is a ton they can't do because it's locked behind a feat or class ability, or the rules don't have a formal mechanic for it so it's presumably impossible (whereas in non-combat situations, the presumption is that you can try anything and everything and the DM will make something up on the spot). Opening up these options via bonus actions and reactions could make those classes a lot more interesting in combat for me, and they could get bonuses (proficiency comes to mind) or maybe extra reactions as (sub)class abilities. Anybody would be able to try and interfere with an attack made on someone next to them as a reaction, for instance (either increasing AC or reducing physical damage) - fighters or paladins would just be better at it than clerics or rogues, and much better than wizards or sorcerers - provided they'd have a shield or melee weapon equipped. Things like what Pathfinder's teamwork feats allow would be available through bonus action use. Feinting would be a bonus action, with martial classes both better at feinting and at seeing through feints. Charging would be a possible action, and so on.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
People can parry in 5th edition without having a special ability: it's just a reflavored dodge, and a lot of other weird things someone might do in combat just boil down to a reflavored help. The class abilities are just better versions of the ability everyone has.
In the end, if you're going to let someone do something and it has mechanical benefits, someone has to make a ruling about how it works. If it's useful enough and generic enough that someone might want to do it more than once, it's better to have something written down so it actually behaves the same way the next time someone tries the same thing. If you want a player from one table to be able to play at a different table without learning a whole encyclopedia of house rules, it's good to have it set down in the core rules.
Um... I've read every edition of D&D. Every one of them was written like a reference manual for a rules system (unsurprising, as TSR was a bunch of tactical minis guys before they did RPGs). I think your memories are being distorted by the rosy glow of nostalgia.
The issue with your stance there, BL, is that if a class has a Design Goal and a Distinct Purpose in the party, that No Other Class Can Fulfill? You've just made that class mandatory for your D&D game. In your game where undead are super awful and they're almost impossible to deal with if you have no cleric, and where the cleric is the ONLY class with supportive magic? Any party without a cleric is a party doomed to failure. Which is where the old saw of "whoever's last to the table plays the cleric" comes from - nobody wants to be the party heal*****.
5e's approach, at least insofar as it can be called an 'approach', is quite superior in many cases. Yes, multiple classes all have similar, overlapping abilities. This is a benefit, not a drawback, as it means parties can attain their necessary tools in many different ways. You don't need a cleric as the party heal***** - if you have one then the cleric comes with a lot of perks, but so does the druid. So does the bard. So does the paladin. Rather than Clear And Distinct Purposes for a small handful of classes resulting in every single adventuring party having the exact same composition, a 5e wolfpack party can have any number of different character types in it while still hitting the bare necessities (the simple bear necessities) of adventuring life. That allows a degree of freedom and creativity utterly denied to player groups for which "You NEED a fighter to be the frontline or everybody dies for free, you NEED a rogue if you don't want to die to traps, you NEED a cleric if you want damage to not be immediately fatal, and you NEED a wizard if you want to get anything done at all past level 7" is the norm.
Please do not contact or message me.
Gonna drop this discussion, as I doubt it would go anywhere, but I've read AD&D books recently enough to say you were apparently reading a different book from me...
Can't ever argue with The Sacred Prophet, Pantagruel. When Gygax speaks, even God stops what he's doing and listens.
Please do not contact or message me.
Let's not unduly glorify the days of yore either. TSR's education and instruction far too often came down to turning the DM into a human coin toss. The pendulum swings both ways, and neither extreme is particularly appetizing.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].