Making healing something not everyone can do is a mistake IMO.
It means you have to go back to the idea that every party needs a heal-bot and that someone has to fill that role. For me that is one great thing 5e did (and I wish PF2e followed) was that you can heal given time.
You can remove hit-dice pretty easily if you want to make the game more challenging...or limit how many you get back on a long rest if you don't want to nuke it completely.
As for magic for everyone....man the caster/martial divide is huge and the little amount of magic that martials get is pretty much needed to justify the crazy high level stuff casters get.
The sweet spot is levels 5-11 IMO as thats when the groups are about equal....T3 is where casters start to get nutty but at least at level 11 most martials can keep up for a level or two.
As BigLizard noted, the universal healing abilities are easier to houserule/adjust. I was actually speaking more of how many damn subclasses are essentially heal-bots/clerics by another name. There's a real dilution of what makes each class and subclass unique there.
Magic for everyone: well, in earlier editions, this what magic items helped address. And the "crazy stuff" casters get at high levels is offset at being really squishy in terms of hit points (and having to maintain concentration when taking damage). Any monster or monsters who deal a lot of damage can seriously jeopardize even a high level non-healing caster pretty quickly.
Once you max your casting stat (usally by 8th level) the rest of your ASI can be used on stuff that can make concentration a non-issue. War Caster, Resilient (CON), etc....not to mention the class features:
Star Druid: Dragon Form (When you make an Intelligence or a Wisdom check or a Constitution saving throw to maintain concentration on a spell, you can treat a roll of 9 or lower on the d20 as a 10.)
Warlock: Eldtrich Mind (ADV on CON Saves to maintain concentration)
Sorcerer: CON save proficency
Wizard: Bladesinger: You gain a bonus to any Constitution saving throw you make to maintain your concentration on a spell. The bonus equals your Intelligence modifier (minimum of +1).
Pair this with just straight amazing damage mitigation (Shield spell +5 AC, Absorb elements: Half damage, Counterspell: Just nope to spell being cast) You have some really potent options.
Toughness is another feat that will basically even you out with the d8 HP martials. Its just really easy to close that divide.
Martials have no way of getting Wish to get a free copy of themselves that is basically another PC you get to play that has all of your abilities. Double concentration? Not an issue anymore as your Simulacrum can just cast that second concentration spell for you.
Enemy caster counterspelling? You now have one more person to counterspell that counterspell.
The divide is real and obvious at higher levels and I think its why high level 5e is just not tenable for more than a few sessions.
I was actually speaking more of how many damn subclasses are essentially heal-bots/clerics by another name. There's a real dilution of what makes each class and subclass unique there.
Clerics aren't unique enough vs bards, druids, paladins or even Divine Soul sorcerers? They're all too similar to each other because they can heal? Is that the essential argument here?
Divine Soul Sorcerer. Celestial Patron Warlock. Way of Mercy Monk. It begins to feel uninspired, unnecessary, and repetitious.
Does anyone really want to play a healing warlock instead of an actual full cleric?
I think in 5E you can still fulfill roles within a party. It's just that they aren't filled by one class exclusively.
Sturdy front line warriors still play a role. But they can be fighters, paladins, barbarians etc.
There's still value in being able to crowd control with spells or deal big aoe damage, there are just multiple casters to choose from.
You can still be the sneaky character who scouts around for danger, disarms traps and picks locks. You just don't have to be a rogue to do it. (Though that level 1 expertise can make you more effective at it than other classes, you can have a ranger, shadow monk, dex based fighter etc fill the role with the right background to get thieves tool proficiency.)
You can still be a healer, but there are more options to fill that roll, including subclasses of warlock and sorcerer.
You can be an archer as a dex fighter, rogue, or ranger.
There are still 'roles' to play within the party, there are just more options for different roles, and classes (especially with subclasses taken into account) are more flexible now.
There are balance issues, and the benefits of having this more varied approach doesn't mean those balance issues shouldn't be called out, but ultimately I like that there are multiple ways you could go about making a character for the same roll. And honestly, even if the balance could use some work, I prefer that approach over having one class for each role.
- I think it is impossible to get rid of the fuzziness of CR and baseline balance, but having it be less fuzzy would be nice for GMs who prefer something more tight and snug. I do not think it is super important since you can always adjust difficulty mid combat with reinforcements, fudging rolls, deus ex machina, and various other tools at the GM's disposal, but in terms of homebrew, it is a good idea to know how far you are diverging from the baseline.
I've been thinking about this and I'm not convinced that there is much that can be done. Low levels are highly dependent on rolls, and high levels are highly dependent on optimisation. A few recent examples of my experience:
Yeah, I am not sure how you would even begin to balance things without making it too complicated for casual GMs to use. Factoring damage and bulk is a nice start from the CR rules, but it feels woefully inadequate when you account for stuff like mobility, engagement range, stealth, various ways of neutralizing targets before they die, etc. that kind of make damage and bulk irrelevant to gauge difficulty. For example, if you can engage at a distance that the enemy cannot counter attack and you are fast enough to maintain that distance, the damage of the enemy is irrelevant and their bulk is as meaningful as a punching bag, and your own bulk is completely irrelevant and your damage output only matters if you need to kill something quickly.
In the past people were taught how to analyze and test, use the scientific model, and understand complex interrelationships without freaking out. Nowadays people just throw up their hands and scream "omg its too complicated". I understand that reaction, I just don't agree that its so terribly difficult. I personally have fixed much more problematic issues in games in the past than a simple CR rating system. They just either weren't trained enough to handle the job or didn't spend enough time on it, or didn't have someone good check their work. Or some combination thereof.
But hey, its all about money. If your audience doesn't really care about balance, or understand it as a concept, or thinks there isn't anything you can do to make a game balanced, then why bother spending the time and money to do so?
It is true I do not care about having a tight CR too much as I can always adjust things on the fly. However, I do not think there is a good way to make the CR system accurate and user friendly at the same time. The more complicated you make the CR system to improve accuracy, the less user friendly it will be for homebrewers to calculate it. CR for most monstrosities pretty much goes straight out the window over something as simple having a party that can engage from a distance and fly, so unless they give most monstrosities ranged attacks, difficulty becomes pretty irrelevant. Or a simple mistake like lacking Devil's Sight or the spellslot to cast Daylight at high enough level to couteract Darkness from a monster can easily result in a total party kill.
As for balance between classes and subclasses, I do not really think that is necessary depending on context. I think it is fine to have some classes and subclasses excel more in combat than others, and have classes and subclasses that do not excel in combat excel in other things. For classes and subclasses that are geared towards combat, I think there should be balance between them, but outside of combat, I do not think balance is a huge deal. My main issue with the current classes and subclasses is that they are all geared towards combat, and if every tool in your toolbox is some type of hammer, you are more likely than not to trying to solve most problems by hammering.
I'm simply going to note that your idea of 'objective balance', BigLizard, sounds absolutely abhorent.
You're essentially advocating that a player's choices concerning their character shouldn't matter in the least. You propose that all choices should lead to exactly the same place and no deviation whatsoever should be tolerated - that character class [X] at level [Y] should have performance curve [Z] and that's it. No decision you make for or with your character has any importance in the least. Combined with your preference for extremely narrow, hyper-restrictive roles such as "the thief takes care of traps, so it doesn't need to be good at anything else", and I would probably quit D&D before sitting at that sort of game.
I love rogues. I think they're tons of fun. If someone told me my rogue would spend ninety-eight percent of every last single adventure sitting on his thumb in a corner trying to avoid getting dead because he's absolutely mule turds useless in combat, or in exploration, or in anything and everything that isn't specifically "hey, we found a trap! Come disarm it?", I'd never play a rogue again. That's horrible game design and I'm deeply glad the game has moved away from so narrowly hemming in a player's options and choices out in the wild.
For example if you want to be a kick-ass duel wielding or bow-based Ranger, you are far better off as a Rogue.
Actually, you'd be far better off being a multiclass Ranger/Rogue. Do a quick calc of how much damage a 5/5 Ra/Ro can do in the first round alone when the bow shots qualify for sneak attack damage.
I was actually speaking more of how many damn subclasses are essentially heal-bots/clerics by another name. There's a real dilution of what makes each class and subclass unique there.
Clerics aren't unique enough vs bards, druids, paladins or even Divine Soul sorcerers? They're all too similar to each other because they can heal? Is that the essential argument here?
Divine Soul Sorcerer. Celestial Patron Warlock. Way of Mercy Monk. It begins to feel uninspired, unnecessary, and repetitious.
Does anyone really want to play a healing warlock instead of an actual full cleric?
I was actually speaking more of how many damn subclasses are essentially heal-bots/clerics by another name. There's a real dilution of what makes each class and subclass unique there.
Clerics aren't unique enough vs bards, druids, paladins or even Divine Soul sorcerers? They're all too similar to each other because they can heal? Is that the essential argument here?
Divine Soul Sorcerer. Celestial Patron Warlock. Way of Mercy Monk. It begins to feel uninspired, unnecessary, and repetitious.
Does anyone really want to play a healing warlock instead of an actual full cleric?
LOL yes there are definitely people that do.
They get to do stuff that clerics can't.... Like having good attack cantrips or for most clerics having an attack cantrip at all....
But also the fun things warlocks get like a super familiar, cool invocations, and the subclass specific stuff.
Overall they play different in a big way and it gives you an option that isn't "super evil patron who wants to rule the world and use you to do it" which is pretty played out ngl
I was actually speaking more of how many damn subclasses are essentially heal-bots/clerics by another name. There's a real dilution of what makes each class and subclass unique there.
Clerics aren't unique enough vs bards, druids, paladins or even Divine Soul sorcerers? They're all too similar to each other because they can heal? Is that the essential argument here?
Divine Soul Sorcerer. Celestial Patron Warlock. Way of Mercy Monk. It begins to feel uninspired, unnecessary, and repetitious.
Does anyone really want to play a healing warlock instead of an actual full cleric?
LOL yes there are definitely people that do.
They get to do stuff that clerics can't.... Like having good attack cantrips or for most clerics having an attack cantrip at all....
But also the fun things warlocks get like a super familiar, cool invocations, and the subclass specific stuff.
Overall they play different in a big way and it gives you an option that isn't "super evil patron who wants to rule the world and use you to do it" which is pretty played out ngl
^^^This is why.
Also, I have had more people play non-cleric healers than cleric healers in the games that I have run in recent years.
I think in 5E you can still fulfill roles within a party. It's just that they aren't filled by one class exclusively.
Sturdy front line warriors still play a role. But they can be fighters, paladins, barbarians etc.
There's still value in being able to crowd control with spells or deal big aoe damage, there are just multiple casters to choose from.
You can still be the sneaky character who scouts around for danger, disarms traps and picks locks. You just don't have to be a rogue to do it. (Though that level 1 expertise can make you more effective at it than other classes, you can have a ranger, shadow monk, dex based fighter etc fill the role with the right background to get thieves tool proficiency.)
You can still be a healer, but there are more options to fill that roll, including subclasses of warlock and sorcerer.
You can be an archer as a dex fighter, rogue, or ranger.
There are still 'roles' to play within the party, there are just more options for different roles, and classes (especially with subclasses taken into account) are more flexible now.
There are balance issues, and the benefits of having this more varied approach doesn't mean those balance issues shouldn't be called out, but ultimately I like that there are multiple ways you could go about making a character for the same roll. And honestly, even if the balance could use some work, I prefer that approach over having one class for each role.
You know I can live with the concept of cross-over classes or even duplicate classes if there was a clear balance and met design intention, but I don't think that is the case. For example if you want to be a kick-ass duel wielding or bow-based Ranger, you are far better off as a Rogue. If you pick the Paladin, you aren't a half-cleric half-fighter, you are a half-cleric and a far better fighter than the actual fighter. If you want to be an awesome Wizard, you go sorcerer not Wizard. There is so many such examples and I think that really spoils the fun and is actually kind of a pointless exercise in my opinion defeating of having multiple options in the first place.
Not going to defend old ranger, and there are some cases of not all classes being equal.
Sorcerers can pull off some really cool stuff with metamagic, but they're also lacking in spells. Wizards get to pick more spells, from a larger spell list, learn new spells from scrolls, and swap out what they have prepared each day. Making them much more versatile, where as a sorcerer has to be much more specialized in its spell choice to get the most out of their limited metamagic selections.
Fighters get more fighting style options, eventually more attacks, action surge, more ASI/feat selections, on top of being less MAD due to not needing charisma. Plus battlemaster is IMO just one of the best subclasses in the entire game. I wouldn't say there's no reason to play a fighter over a paladin.
If you want to be an archer specialist, you could be a rogue. Taking your time to aim a single sniper shot each round, making up for less attacks by making each hit punishing. Tasha's ranger is much improved, giving you unique archery based spells fighter and rogue don't have access to, along with hunter's mark and some interesting subclass choices. You could also go battlemaster or arcane archer fighter, controlling the battleifeld from afar or unleashing magic arrows on your enemies.
Yes, the downside of choices with variety means there's generally going to be a 'better' choice for a given approach of situation, but outside of a few outliers everything can contribute, be fun and be useful to the party. Balance isn't perfect, I agree to that. But I don't think it's so bad either that you have to pick the 'best' option for a role or else you cant' perform that role and have fun.
I'm simply going to note that your idea of 'objective balance', BigLizard, sounds absolutely abhorent.
You're essentially advocating that a player's choices concerning their character shouldn't matter in the least. You propose that all choices should lead to exactly the same place and no deviation whatsoever should be tolerated - that character class [X] at level [Y] should have performance curve [Z] and that's it. No decision you make for or with your character has any importance in the least. Combined with your preference for extremely narrow, hyper-restrictive roles such as "the thief takes care of traps, so it doesn't need to be good at anything else", and I would probably quit D&D before sitting at that sort of game.
I love rogues. I think they're tons of fun. If someone told me my rogue would spend ninety-eight percent of every last single adventure sitting on his thumb in a corner trying to avoid getting dead because he's absolutely mule turds useless in combat, or in exploration, or in anything and everything that isn't specifically "hey, we found a trap! Come disarm it?", I'd never play a rogue again. That's horrible game design and I'm deeply glad the game has moved away from so narrowly hemming in a player's options and choices out in the wild.
I'm not "essentially advocating" anything of the sort Yuri, it would be wise to stop putting words in people's mouths and then vilifying them based on what you assume they mean, it's actually a forum violation and a rather unescessary given that you can use the quote function whenever you want to address someone's comments.
For the benefit of catching you up on the discussion so far to avoid any further misunderstandings.
What I'm advocating is that if you are going to offer a multitude of sub-classes that cross-over and offer players varied options as they level up, they should be balanced for that level. As it stands 5e does not have that sort of balance today. Lower level characters can be optimized to fight like higher lever characters, roles that should be filled by a specific archetype or theme are pulled off better by other classes, multiclassing straight up breaks the game (thank god its optional) and there are core mechanics that make certain archetypes meaningless like healers, thief's and magic-users.
I advocate that if a class is created it should be balanced and the discussion has been around the idea that "balance is relative", to which I point out that this is not the case for past editions of D&D and I have explained how they achieved balance without it being relative. I'm not suggesting we turn back the clock, but I am suggesting that if you make a new edition of the game and you create new problems that were solved in past editions, you haven't done a good job as a designer.
Yeah.. I think that is about the jist of it barring a few side discussions.
All right, if you want a gargantuan quote chain, we can do that
One of your specific examples of Splendid Objective Balance was "the thief class in previous editions was absolutely terrible in combat, but it had its purpose - disarming traps - and leveled up super fast compared to other classes".
Okay. Let's look at that example.
The thief, or rogue in this case, would have to be deliberately designed to be of absolutely no help whatsoever in combat. When a fight breaks out your job becomes "find a rock, hide behind it, and hope you don't die." You essentially do not get to participate in the Combat pillar of D&D, your class choice excludes you from it. In exchange, the game allows your thief to level up much faster than other classes. Setting aside the issue of milestone progression that ignores experience in favor or "level up when it's best for the game" and the many inherent problems with PCs all being of wildly different levels from each other...leveling up, in a class-based RPG, is supposed to grant you new tools and powers that make you a better adventurer. Better at doing your job, better at broadening out your job to help cover deficits or downs, and just overall better at doing the Adventure thing. In this case however, the thief has one job, and one job ONLY - to disarm traps.
That's it. That's the full extent of the thief's job, according to your own stated example of the ideal endpoint for 'balance' in a D&D ruleset. they suck donkey rocks at fighting, but they're the only class that can disarm traps. Leveling them up makes them better at disarming traps, but it does not make them better at fighting since that's not their job, and it does not make them better at overall adventuring since that is also not their job. The thief's job is to disarm traps. That's it. That's all. That is the sum totality of the reason for that character's existence - if there's a trap, he comes up and disarms it. If there's no traps? The thief's player sits down, shuts up, turns his character sheet over, and reads a book on his Kindle because it's not his class role or job to contribute to the game at any point or in any way that do not directly pertain to the disarming of traps.
But man - he gets those extra levels of Trap Disarmer super fast. He can be a twentieth-level trap disarmer before everybody else reaches eighth level Actual Adventurer. He can't do anything with those levels except disarm traps, but he can console himself with the fact that he's a very good trap disarmer. Exactly as good a trap disarmer as every other trap disarmer of his highly accelerated level, in fact, since he is completely incapable of making a decision for or with his character that affects his character's abilities in any sort of meaningful way.
Is that about right? because if so, that is absolutely horrible game design and I would abandon this game without shame if that's what the designers decided to do with absolutely every single class in the game, the way you're proposing.
Yeah I'm not really accounting for multi-classing mainly because that is an entirely separate can of worms, mechanically speaking there are so many ways to break the game with multi-classing that if we judged 5e with the assumption its in use, 5e in its entirety could not be described as anything but completely and utterly broken.
Fair enough. I still don't think rangers are the disaster you're portraying them as, though.
If you want to be an awesome Wizard, you go sorcerer not Wizard.
Not to spin off on a tangent here, but are you suggesting sorcerers make better wizards than wizards? With, I assume, a straight face?
I don't think its a tangent. Personally, yeah I think Sorcerers make better Wizards than Wizards do.
Mainly it stems from their flexibility with the Font of Magic combined with Metamagic.
Just goes to show that opinions vary. I think Sorcerer as a whole is the worst of the classes and brings nothing meaningful to the game from a mechanical stand point. Lore wise it is a great concept, but the class just falls flat. I would never want it to be removed just because I don't like the class though.
If you want to be an awesome Wizard, you go sorcerer not Wizard.
Not to spin off on a tangent here, but are you suggesting sorcerers make better wizards than wizards? With, I assume, a straight face?
I don't think its a tangent. Personally, yeah I think Sorcerers make better Wizards than Wizards do.
Mainly it stems from their flexibility with the Font of Magic combined with Metamagic.
Just goes to show that opinions vary. I think Sorcerer as a whole is the worst of the classes and brings nothing meaningful to the game from a mechanical stand point. Lore wise it is a great concept, but the class just falls flat. I would never want it to be removed just because I don't like the class though.
I agree they vastly overestimate how useful metamagic is for how often you can use it in the heart of the game.
Yeah. Metamagic can do some cool stuff, but you're so limited on the number of spells you get to pick, and have a smaller list to pick from. You can font of magic to turn sorc points into more spell slots, sure. But that caniibalizes you're limited use of meta magic and other sorcery point usage to do so, competing with other class features while wizards get arcane recovery to get some slots back during a short rest once per long rest. Along with a bigger spell list, adding spells to their book from scrolls, and getting more spells per level as well. And ritual casting baked in.
I think sorcerers have their use for sure, but I wouldn't say they're flat out 'better wizard' either. Divine soul sorc is competing more against cleric as well given it's stealing their spell list to use too. It's a good subclass, but taking cleric spells and having a healing focus has it competing less with wizard and more cleric or other potential healers IMO. You generally wouldn't make a divine soul sorc to fill the same uses in a party as a wizard. Sorcs already have to choose their spells carefully due to the limited number they get to learn, so if they try to be both a healer/cleric type and a traditional sorc they'll be stretching themselves thin.
If you want to be an awesome Wizard, you go sorcerer not Wizard.
Not to spin off on a tangent here, but are you suggesting sorcerers make better wizards than wizards? With, I assume, a straight face?
I don't think its a tangent. Personally, yeah I think Sorcerers make better Wizards than Wizards do.
Mainly it stems from their flexibility with the Font of Magic combined with Metamagic.
The number of metamagics they get is limited and the majority of them don't offer any flexibility but rather increased effectiveness. Flexible casting rarely makes a difference, and the sorcerer's number of spells known is so limited (especially the older origins that didn't get extra spells from Tasha's) that "flexibility" is a term I just don't even associate with sorcerers. Sorcerers' selling point for me is that Cha is a more fun stat to focus on, but on the other hand the increased knowledge Wizards get from Int based proficiencies is actually, well, wizardly - wizards are studious, sorcerers typically aren't. Add Ritual Casting being free for wizards and I have to be honest, for me sorcerers aren't even in the same ballpark as wizards for flexibility and general wizardry. Sorcerers are much better as specialists, putting all their casting eggs in just one or two baskets and using face skills to complement that.
I like playing sorcerers. Shadow sorcery in particular, with a tricksy approach to magic. But better wizards than actual wizards? Nope, not a chance.
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Divine soul sorc is competing more against cleric as well given it's stealing their spell list to use too. It's a good subclass, but taking cleric spells and having a healing focus has it competing less with wizard and more cleric or other potential healers IMO. You generally wouldn't make a divine soul sorc to fill the same uses in a party as a wizard. Sorcs already have to choose their spells carefully due to the limited number they get to learn, so if they try to be both a healer/cleric type and a traditional sorc they'll be stretching themselves thin.
I like divine souls, but I would rarely consider picking healing spells with them. Their heal buffs work with all healing, not just with their own spells, and there are much better spells for a sorcerer to pick up. For me a divine soul is definitely a sorcerer, not a cleric nor a wizard.
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Ok I am going to say something, all those getting up in arms, this is great.
I doubt many of you where around in the 90’s when white wolf reset the world of darkness and switches to chronicles. It was required and needed because the rules had become so bloated. In reality the DND rules are spread over 4-5 books, PHB, DMG, Xanthers, Tasha’s and the monster manual. The rules mesh and work together and don’t contradict. All the other books are source and setting books, or campaign books.
There are a few things in the PHB that need tweaking, some sub classes and classes that are perceived to be less balanced then others (something I disagree with but I understand the arguments) so this will tweak and update these basic elements, the core rules will remain the same, at the end of the day anything your not happy with you can homebrew anyway.
The only thing I make unhappy about is releasing a book that has the info I already have in 2 books Volos and mordis, I hope that here on dnd beyond it will be treated like the basic rule set and monster manual, if you already own the monsters here you get the updated versions for free. I doubt I will buy the new physical book.
But overall this looks perfect I will be able to keep all my 5th Ed materials and build and add to them picking and choosing the rules I want.
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Once you max your casting stat (usally by 8th level) the rest of your ASI can be used on stuff that can make concentration a non-issue. War Caster, Resilient (CON), etc....not to mention the class features:
Star Druid: Dragon Form (When you make an Intelligence or a Wisdom check or a Constitution saving throw to maintain concentration on a spell, you can treat a roll of 9 or lower on the d20 as a 10.)
Warlock: Eldtrich Mind (ADV on CON Saves to maintain concentration)
Sorcerer: CON save proficency
Wizard: Bladesinger: You gain a bonus to any Constitution saving throw you make to maintain your concentration on a spell. The bonus equals your Intelligence modifier (minimum of +1).
Pair this with just straight amazing damage mitigation (Shield spell +5 AC, Absorb elements: Half damage, Counterspell: Just nope to spell being cast) You have some really potent options.
Toughness is another feat that will basically even you out with the d8 HP martials. Its just really easy to close that divide.
Martials have no way of getting Wish to get a free copy of themselves that is basically another PC you get to play that has all of your abilities. Double concentration? Not an issue anymore as your Simulacrum can just cast that second concentration spell for you.
Enemy caster counterspelling? You now have one more person to counterspell that counterspell.
The divide is real and obvious at higher levels and I think its why high level 5e is just not tenable for more than a few sessions.
Divine Soul Sorcerer. Celestial Patron Warlock. Way of Mercy Monk. It begins to feel uninspired, unnecessary, and repetitious.
Does anyone really want to play a healing warlock instead of an actual full cleric?
I think in 5E you can still fulfill roles within a party. It's just that they aren't filled by one class exclusively.
Sturdy front line warriors still play a role. But they can be fighters, paladins, barbarians etc.
There's still value in being able to crowd control with spells or deal big aoe damage, there are just multiple casters to choose from.
You can still be the sneaky character who scouts around for danger, disarms traps and picks locks. You just don't have to be a rogue to do it. (Though that level 1 expertise can make you more effective at it than other classes, you can have a ranger, shadow monk, dex based fighter etc fill the role with the right background to get thieves tool proficiency.)
You can still be a healer, but there are more options to fill that roll, including subclasses of warlock and sorcerer.
You can be an archer as a dex fighter, rogue, or ranger.
There are still 'roles' to play within the party, there are just more options for different roles, and classes (especially with subclasses taken into account) are more flexible now.
There are balance issues, and the benefits of having this more varied approach doesn't mean those balance issues shouldn't be called out, but ultimately I like that there are multiple ways you could go about making a character for the same roll. And honestly, even if the balance could use some work, I prefer that approach over having one class for each role.
It is true I do not care about having a tight CR too much as I can always adjust things on the fly. However, I do not think there is a good way to make the CR system accurate and user friendly at the same time. The more complicated you make the CR system to improve accuracy, the less user friendly it will be for homebrewers to calculate it. CR for most monstrosities pretty much goes straight out the window over something as simple having a party that can engage from a distance and fly, so unless they give most monstrosities ranged attacks, difficulty becomes pretty irrelevant. Or a simple mistake like lacking Devil's Sight or the spellslot to cast Daylight at high enough level to couteract Darkness from a monster can easily result in a total party kill.
As for balance between classes and subclasses, I do not really think that is necessary depending on context. I think it is fine to have some classes and subclasses excel more in combat than others, and have classes and subclasses that do not excel in combat excel in other things. For classes and subclasses that are geared towards combat, I think there should be balance between them, but outside of combat, I do not think balance is a huge deal. My main issue with the current classes and subclasses is that they are all geared towards combat, and if every tool in your toolbox is some type of hammer, you are more likely than not to trying to solve most problems by hammering.
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I'm simply going to note that your idea of 'objective balance', BigLizard, sounds absolutely abhorent.
You're essentially advocating that a player's choices concerning their character shouldn't matter in the least. You propose that all choices should lead to exactly the same place and no deviation whatsoever should be tolerated - that character class [X] at level [Y] should have performance curve [Z] and that's it. No decision you make for or with your character has any importance in the least. Combined with your preference for extremely narrow, hyper-restrictive roles such as "the thief takes care of traps, so it doesn't need to be good at anything else", and I would probably quit D&D before sitting at that sort of game.
I love rogues. I think they're tons of fun. If someone told me my rogue would spend ninety-eight percent of every last single adventure sitting on his thumb in a corner trying to avoid getting dead because he's absolutely mule turds useless in combat, or in exploration, or in anything and everything that isn't specifically "hey, we found a trap! Come disarm it?", I'd never play a rogue again. That's horrible game design and I'm deeply glad the game has moved away from so narrowly hemming in a player's options and choices out in the wild.
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Actually, you'd be far better off being a multiclass Ranger/Rogue. Do a quick calc of how much damage a 5/5 Ra/Ro can do in the first round alone when the bow shots qualify for sneak attack damage.
LOL yes there are definitely people that do.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
...why?! :P
They get to do stuff that clerics can't.... Like having good attack cantrips or for most clerics having an attack cantrip at all....
But also the fun things warlocks get like a super familiar, cool invocations, and the subclass specific stuff.
Overall they play different in a big way and it gives you an option that isn't "super evil patron who wants to rule the world and use you to do it" which is pretty played out ngl
^^^This is why.
Also, I have had more people play non-cleric healers than cleric healers in the games that I have run in recent years.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
Not going to defend old ranger, and there are some cases of not all classes being equal.
Sorcerers can pull off some really cool stuff with metamagic, but they're also lacking in spells. Wizards get to pick more spells, from a larger spell list, learn new spells from scrolls, and swap out what they have prepared each day. Making them much more versatile, where as a sorcerer has to be much more specialized in its spell choice to get the most out of their limited metamagic selections.
Fighters get more fighting style options, eventually more attacks, action surge, more ASI/feat selections, on top of being less MAD due to not needing charisma. Plus battlemaster is IMO just one of the best subclasses in the entire game. I wouldn't say there's no reason to play a fighter over a paladin.
If you want to be an archer specialist, you could be a rogue. Taking your time to aim a single sniper shot each round, making up for less attacks by making each hit punishing. Tasha's ranger is much improved, giving you unique archery based spells fighter and rogue don't have access to, along with hunter's mark and some interesting subclass choices. You could also go battlemaster or arcane archer fighter, controlling the battleifeld from afar or unleashing magic arrows on your enemies.
Yes, the downside of choices with variety means there's generally going to be a 'better' choice for a given approach of situation, but outside of a few outliers everything can contribute, be fun and be useful to the party. Balance isn't perfect, I agree to that. But I don't think it's so bad either that you have to pick the 'best' option for a role or else you cant' perform that role and have fun.
All right, if you want a gargantuan quote chain, we can do that
One of your specific examples of Splendid Objective Balance was "the thief class in previous editions was absolutely terrible in combat, but it had its purpose - disarming traps - and leveled up super fast compared to other classes".
Okay. Let's look at that example.
The thief, or rogue in this case, would have to be deliberately designed to be of absolutely no help whatsoever in combat. When a fight breaks out your job becomes "find a rock, hide behind it, and hope you don't die." You essentially do not get to participate in the Combat pillar of D&D, your class choice excludes you from it. In exchange, the game allows your thief to level up much faster than other classes. Setting aside the issue of milestone progression that ignores experience in favor or "level up when it's best for the game" and the many inherent problems with PCs all being of wildly different levels from each other...leveling up, in a class-based RPG, is supposed to grant you new tools and powers that make you a better adventurer. Better at doing your job, better at broadening out your job to help cover deficits or downs, and just overall better at doing the Adventure thing. In this case however, the thief has one job, and one job ONLY - to disarm traps.
That's it. That's the full extent of the thief's job, according to your own stated example of the ideal endpoint for 'balance' in a D&D ruleset. they suck donkey rocks at fighting, but they're the only class that can disarm traps. Leveling them up makes them better at disarming traps, but it does not make them better at fighting since that's not their job, and it does not make them better at overall adventuring since that is also not their job. The thief's job is to disarm traps. That's it. That's all. That is the sum totality of the reason for that character's existence - if there's a trap, he comes up and disarms it. If there's no traps? The thief's player sits down, shuts up, turns his character sheet over, and reads a book on his Kindle because it's not his class role or job to contribute to the game at any point or in any way that do not directly pertain to the disarming of traps.
But man - he gets those extra levels of Trap Disarmer super fast. He can be a twentieth-level trap disarmer before everybody else reaches eighth level Actual Adventurer. He can't do anything with those levels except disarm traps, but he can console himself with the fact that he's a very good trap disarmer. Exactly as good a trap disarmer as every other trap disarmer of his highly accelerated level, in fact, since he is completely incapable of making a decision for or with his character that affects his character's abilities in any sort of meaningful way.
Is that about right? because if so, that is absolutely horrible game design and I would abandon this game without shame if that's what the designers decided to do with absolutely every single class in the game, the way you're proposing.
Please do not contact or message me.
Fair enough. I still don't think rangers are the disaster you're portraying them as, though.
Not to spin off on a tangent here, but are you suggesting sorcerers make better wizards than wizards? With, I assume, a straight face?
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Just goes to show that opinions vary. I think Sorcerer as a whole is the worst of the classes and brings nothing meaningful to the game from a mechanical stand point. Lore wise it is a great concept, but the class just falls flat. I would never want it to be removed just because I don't like the class though.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
I agree they vastly overestimate how useful metamagic is for how often you can use it in the heart of the game.
Yeah. Metamagic can do some cool stuff, but you're so limited on the number of spells you get to pick, and have a smaller list to pick from. You can font of magic to turn sorc points into more spell slots, sure. But that caniibalizes you're limited use of meta magic and other sorcery point usage to do so, competing with other class features while wizards get arcane recovery to get some slots back during a short rest once per long rest. Along with a bigger spell list, adding spells to their book from scrolls, and getting more spells per level as well. And ritual casting baked in.
I think sorcerers have their use for sure, but I wouldn't say they're flat out 'better wizard' either. Divine soul sorc is competing more against cleric as well given it's stealing their spell list to use too. It's a good subclass, but taking cleric spells and having a healing focus has it competing less with wizard and more cleric or other potential healers IMO. You generally wouldn't make a divine soul sorc to fill the same uses in a party as a wizard. Sorcs already have to choose their spells carefully due to the limited number they get to learn, so if they try to be both a healer/cleric type and a traditional sorc they'll be stretching themselves thin.
The number of metamagics they get is limited and the majority of them don't offer any flexibility but rather increased effectiveness. Flexible casting rarely makes a difference, and the sorcerer's number of spells known is so limited (especially the older origins that didn't get extra spells from Tasha's) that "flexibility" is a term I just don't even associate with sorcerers. Sorcerers' selling point for me is that Cha is a more fun stat to focus on, but on the other hand the increased knowledge Wizards get from Int based proficiencies is actually, well, wizardly - wizards are studious, sorcerers typically aren't. Add Ritual Casting being free for wizards and I have to be honest, for me sorcerers aren't even in the same ballpark as wizards for flexibility and general wizardry. Sorcerers are much better as specialists, putting all their casting eggs in just one or two baskets and using face skills to complement that.
I like playing sorcerers. Shadow sorcery in particular, with a tricksy approach to magic. But better wizards than actual wizards? Nope, not a chance.
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I like divine souls, but I would rarely consider picking healing spells with them. Their heal buffs work with all healing, not just with their own spells, and there are much better spells for a sorcerer to pick up. For me a divine soul is definitely a sorcerer, not a cleric nor a wizard.
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Ok I am going to say something, all those getting up in arms, this is great.
I doubt many of you where around in the 90’s when white wolf reset the world of darkness and switches to chronicles. It was required and needed because the rules had become so bloated. In reality the DND rules are spread over 4-5 books, PHB, DMG, Xanthers, Tasha’s and the monster manual. The rules mesh and work together and don’t contradict. All the other books are source and setting books, or campaign books.
There are a few things in the PHB that need tweaking, some sub classes and classes that are perceived to be less balanced then others (something I disagree with but I understand the arguments) so this will tweak and update these basic elements, the core rules will remain the same, at the end of the day anything your not happy with you can homebrew anyway.
The only thing I make unhappy about is releasing a book that has the info I already have in 2 books Volos and mordis, I hope that here on dnd beyond it will be treated like the basic rule set and monster manual, if you already own the monsters here you get the updated versions for free. I doubt I will buy the new physical book.
But overall this looks perfect I will be able to keep all my 5th Ed materials and build and add to them picking and choosing the rules I want.