I'm honestly shocked so many people dislike artificer. I don't particularly enjoy it, but I also have nothing against it.
I've always viewed artificer as a good utility/skill monkey class.
I think it's a lot better than a monk at a minimum. Monks are way to weak mechanically and have too little HP, especially at low level's to play the role they're supposed to play. And since they're so MAD they can't prioritize their con score or get more HP.
The Battle Smith is the exception to being MAD. Without having played them, they overall seem mechanically weak to me, but there are some redeeming things they have. But I’m willing to play test one to be open-minded.
No Artificer is MAD. All any of them need is INT, with CON being a good backup to bolster HP and concentration checks. 3 of the 4 subs get "INT for attack" features, and Alchemist isn't at all attack-focused. Both Armorer's built-in weapons attack using INT, Artillerist uses your spell attack modifier and save DC, and Battle Smith uses INT for attacks with any magical weapon (which is something you can create very nearly at will), and the Steel Defender uses your INT stats for all its attacks as well.
Given that all their damage and spellcasting keys off of INT and you get prof in both INT and CON saves, Artificers are maybe the single SADdest class in the game, rivaled only by the Sorcerer.
I'm honestly shocked so many people dislike artificer. I don't particularly enjoy it, but I also have nothing against it.
I've always viewed artificer as a good utility/skill monkey class.
I think it's a lot better than a monk at a minimum. Monks are way to weak mechanically and have too little HP, especially at low level's to play the role they're supposed to play. And since they're so MAD they can't prioritize their con score or get more HP.
The Battle Smith is the exception to being MAD. Without having played them, they overall seem mechanically weak to me, but there are some redeeming things they have. But I’m willing to play test one to be open-minded.
Actually, all Artificers are SAD (at least in comparison to the Paladin or Ranger). They all want to max-out Intelligence, have good Constitution, and probably a +2 for Dexterity to have good medium armor (unless you're an Armorer, in which case you probably only need Intelligence and Constitution). And, if you don't want to invest in those ability scores, you can just wait until you get high enough level to get the infusions that increase them, and then rely on them for the rest of your adventuring career.
The least SAD artificer is the Armorer, who doesn't have to invest into Dexterity at all because they use Intelligence to wear their Heavy Armor. And all of the other subclasses are less SAD, but still less MAD than the Paladin/Ranger are.
And, as I said before, Artificers are the only class that can fairly easily get away with dumping their main ability scores, because they get access to some infusions later on that can make them good at the ability scores they're bad at. Not that I recommend that style of play, I'm just saying that it's possible.
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Small question on the side, but what does MAD mean? I've seen it a few times on the forum, but I've never seen an explanation for what it means in D&D.
Also, why is Way of the Four Elements considered a bad subclass? It's sadly(?) the only one that interests me thematically for the Monk I'd like to play in the future :( (I want to play a Sea Elf Monk with the fisher bg, so I thought a subclass about Elements would fit him.)
Small question on the side, but what does MAD mean? I've seen it a few times on the forum, but I've never seen an explanation for what it means in D&D.
Also, why is Way of the Four Elements considered a bad subclass? It's sadly(?) the only one that interests me thematically for the Monk I'd like to play in the future :( (I want to play a Sea Elf Monk with the fisher bg, so I thought a subclass about Elements would fit him.)
MAD stands for "Multiple Ability (Score) Dependent".
SAD stands for "Singe Ability (Score) Dependent".
Monks, Barbarians, Paladins, and Rangers are some of the most MAD classes in the game. (Monks for DEX, CON, and WIS, Barbarians for STR, DEX, and CON, Paladins for STR/DEX, CON, and CHA, Rangers for DEX, CON, and WIS.)
Fighters, Warlocks (especially Hexblade), Bards, Wizards, Artificers, and Sorcerers are more SAD than most other classes. Although they typically do want to focus at least a little on other ability scores other than their main ones (typically DEX and CON), they typically have less abilities/features that depend on ability scores other than the main one they focus on.
As for why people consider the Way of the Four Elements to be a bad subclass, it partially does have to do with the fact that the Monk is a very MAD class, but that's not the whole reason because every other monk is just as MAD. People typically consider the Way of the Four Elements to be bad because they are effectively 1/3rd casters (like Arcane Tricksters and Eldritch Knights), but instead of having an additional pool of spell slots in order to cast their spells, they have to use their main class's resource, Ki, to use their subclass abilities.
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I'm honestly shocked so many people dislike artificer. I don't particularly enjoy it, but I also have nothing against it.
I've always viewed artificer as a good utility/skill monkey class.
I think it's a lot better than a monk at a minimum. Monks are way to weak mechanically and have too little HP, especially at low level's to play the role they're supposed to play. And since they're so MAD they can't prioritize their con score or get more HP.
The Battle Smith is the exception to being MAD. Without having played them, they overall seem mechanically weak to me, but there are some redeeming things they have. But I’m willing to play test one to be open-minded.
I think I miscommunicated, I was comparing monks to artificers and trying to say that monks are a lot worse.
Anyways, I was talking about monks being MAD, not artificers.
Also, why is Way of the Four Elements considered a bad subclass? It's sadly(?) the only one that interests me thematically for the Monk I'd like to play in the future :( (I want to play a Sea Elf Monk with the fisher bg, so I thought a subclass about Elements would fit him.)
The worst classes and subclasses in the game aren't that much worse than the best ones. They bug people like me who are overly concerned with making things as efficient as they can be, but they're still basically fine.
Small question on the side, but what does MAD mean? I've seen it a few times on the forum, but I've never seen an explanation for what it means in D&D.
Also, why is Way of the Four Elements considered a bad subclass? It's sadly(?) the only one that interests me thematically for the Monk I'd like to play in the future :( (I want to play a Sea Elf Monk with the fisher bg, so I thought a subclass about Elements would fit him.)
The base monk class is already often considered to not have enough ki to make effective use of their numerous ki-dependent abilities. As Third said, the Way of the Four Elements adds a slew of new abilities on top of that, many of which are big ki hogs, without increasing the number of ki points you get at all. Wot4E basically runs out of ammo so fast you never really get a chance to do any of your cool things more than once, and you don't ever get to do ALL of your cool things, just one or two of your cool things before you're out of juice and can't do cool things anymore. Combined with the monk's status as Memetically Terrible, and you have a recipe for Wot4E being sort of a poster child for Poor 5e Design Decisions.
Small question on the side, but what does MAD mean? I've seen it a few times on the forum, but I've never seen an explanation for what it means in D&D.
Also, why is Way of the Four Elements considered a bad subclass? It's sadly(?) the only one that interests me thematically for the Monk I'd like to play in the future :( (I want to play a Sea Elf Monk with the fisher bg, so I thought a subclass about Elements would fit him.)
MAD stands for "Multiple Ability (Score) Dependent".
SAD stands for "Singe Ability (Score) Dependent".
Monks, Barbarians, Paladins, and Rangers are some of the most MAD classes in the game. (Monks for DEX, CON, and WIS, Barbarians for STR, DEX, and CON, Paladins for STR/DEX, CON, and CHA, Rangers for DEX, CON, and WIS.)
Fighters, Warlocks (especially Hexblade), Bards, Wizards, Artificers, and Sorcerers are more SAD than most other classes. Although they typically do want to focus at least a little on other ability scores other than their main ones (typically DEX and CON), they typically have less abilities/features that depend on ability scores other than the main one they focus on.
As for why people consider the Way of the Four Elements to be a bad subclass, it partially does have to do with the fact that the Monk is a very MAD class, but that's not the whole reason because every other monk is just as MAD. People typically consider the Way of the Four Elements to be bad because they are effectively 1/3rd casters (like Arcane Tricksters and Eldritch Knights), but instead of having an additional pool of spell slots in order to cast their spells, they have to use their main class's resource, Ki, to use their subclass abilities.
Aaah, thanks.
Yeah, I can understand why that's considered not cool. I looove spellcasters (I have a Lvl 7 Wood Elf Land Druid with Wood Elf Magic feat and he's so fun to play ♥) so that also partially played in why I wanted to try Way of the Four Elements.
I think four elements is more maligned than it deserves to be, but in general I feel like subclasses that compete against core class features tend to be worse off than subclasses that give you new things, because it's so hard to tune the power budget correctly when you're cannibalizing your own resources, the opportunity cost of losing your default actions rarely ever seems fully accounted for. Four Elements suffers from this in spades, but I'd also point to something like the Alchemist Artificer as another subclass with a bad reputation that needs to burn innate resources to put more fuel in their unique subclass feature.
Also, why is Way of the Four Elements considered a bad subclass? It's sadly(?) the only one that interests me thematically for the Monk I'd like to play in the future :( (I want to play a Sea Elf Monk with the fisher bg, so I thought a subclass about Elements would fit him.)
The worst classes and subclasses in the game aren't that much worse than the best ones. They bug people like me who are overly concerned with making things as efficient as they can be, but they're still basically fine.
I really think there is a lot of mechanical difference between the worst subclasses in the game and the top tier ones. What happens is that many times these differences can be hidden by various factors such as the type of campaign, the player's skill, knowledge of the rules, etc... On the other hand, in a game without really difficult challenges, that your character is mechanically crap is not going to show much. But if you face complicated challenges, and you see that your character does not contribute to the solution, you will get frustrated. If on top of that, in your group, there is an ultra-optimized character who is usually key to solving those challenges, you will notice it even more.
And I'm going to use the example of the berserker, for me one of the worst designed subclasses in the game. If not the worst. What is it that makes someone want to play a berserker? Frenzy. But then you realize that if you use it too often, you die. Then you don't use it or, at most, you do it once a day. Mechanically it is terribly bad. You can't play it the way you're supposed to play it, and the cool things about it hurt you. Anything else you choose is going to be much better than that subclass.
With the 4 elements something similar happens. He's not as bad as the berserker, but you can hardly ever use his cool stuff because you run out of ki.
And the third example is the Beast Master of the PHB. That subclass was so poorly designed in terms of economy of action, that they had to redo it. That meant that you could practically not use your beast companion, which is the feature for which you are going to choose the beast master.
Rogue - It's a classic archetype, but stealth and sneak attacks aren't as satisfying in a TTRPG as they are in a video game or Spy-Fi movie. Unless all the players are trying to be sneaky, it's at dissonance with the party aspect of the game.
Monk - The Eastern flavor is a far greater contrast with classic high fantasy than the Artificer, and of all the martial classes, they're the ones most reliant on always taking the attack action every turn, ad infinitum et ad nauseum
Cleric - Having a healer is essential, but who would ever want to *be* the healer. And as far as them being a holy warrior, the Paladin better fulfills that fantasy. If they were stripped of spellcasting and martial prowess, and given a unique ability to preform miracles (mechanically distinct from magic), I think that could fix the class
Wizard - Merely having a lot of spells and spell slots is less mechanically interesting than Sorcerers' metamagic or Warlocks' Invocations. Wizards need their own mechanical hook
The BEST classes:
Artificer - Each of their subclasses offers a truly distinct flavor and appropriate accompanying mechanics. Plus, Gandalf could've smoked Sauron had he been packing heat. Artificer fulfills the same fantasy as when you play Civilization and research nuclear weapons while an AI opponent is still sporting spears
Ranger/Druid - Specifically Beast Master, Drakewarden, and the Circles of the Moon, Primeval, and Shepherd. I just really like being a Pokémon trainer, and sans a proper Summoner class, these are the best stand-ins
Warlock - The different patrons all work well thematically and mechanically, with the subclass-specific mechanics completing those specific flavors, while base-class mechanics like the packs and the invocations work well with the general idea of patronage
Rogue - It's a classic archetype, but stealth and sneak attacks aren't as satisfying in a TTRPG as they are in a video game or Spy-Fi movie. Unless all the players are trying to be sneaky, it's at dissonance with the party aspect of the game.
Rogues aren't bad. Sneak attack is quite powerful, even if you find it unsatisfying, and rogues do more than just sneak around. They pick locks, they fight, some do magic, etc.
Rogues stealth may not seem cool to you since stealth checks are usually not done by one individual, but by the group overall, however, rogues typically having high stealth is actually quite useful for the following reasons/situations.
(A) Rogues usually provide a guaranteed success in group stealth checks.
(B) They can scout out things on their own, and then they're the only one making the check.
(C) Stealth also factors into things like hiding which works in combat and helps rogue's avoid taking damage.
Cleric - Having a healer is essential, but who would ever want to *be* the healer.
Where do I even begin? 1) Clerics are objectively great and subjectively awesome, 2) Having a healer is certainly not essential, 3) Almost every game I've played has had someone who wanted to play the healer, 4) Cleric is arguably not even the best healer class.
I can agree that it's weird to have them basically be Wizards in armor though.
Cleric - Having a healer is essential, but who would ever want to *be* the healer. And as far as them being a holy warrior, the Paladin better fulfills that fantasy. If they were stripped of spellcasting and martial prowess, and given a unique ability to preform miracles (mechanically distinct from magic), I think that could fix the class.
How to say you've never played cleric without saying you've never played cleric.
Yeah clerics can heal, but they are amazing offensively too. Switching on spirit guardians and roleplaying as a blender is great fun.
Rogue - It's a classic archetype, but stealth and sneak attacks aren't as satisfying in a TTRPG as they are in a video game or Spy-Fi movie. Unless all the players are trying to be sneaky, it's at dissonance with the party aspect of the game.
Monk - The Eastern flavor is a far greater contrast with classic high fantasy than the Artificer, and of all the martial classes, they're the ones most reliant on always taking the attack action every turn, ad infinitum et ad nauseum
Cleric - Having a healer is essential, but who would ever want to *be* the healer. And as far as them being a holy warrior, the Paladin better fulfills that fantasy. If they were stripped of spellcasting and martial prowess, and given a unique ability to preform miracles (mechanically distinct from magic), I think that could fix the class
Wizard - Merely having a lot of spells and spell slots is less mechanically interesting than Sorcerers' metamagic or Warlocks' Invocations. Wizards need their own mechanical hook
The BEST classes:
Artificer - Each of their subclasses offers a truly distinct flavor and appropriate accompanying mechanics. Plus, Gandalf could've smoked Sauron had he been packing heat. Artificer fulfills the same fantasy as when you play Civilization and research nuclear weapons while an AI opponent is still sporting spears
Ranger/Druid - Specifically Beast Master, Drakewarden, and the Circles of the Moon, Primeval, and Shepherd. I just really like being a Pokémon trainer, and sans a proper Summoner class, these are the best stand-ins
Warlock - The different patrons all work well thematically and mechanically, with the subclass-specific mechanics completing those specific flavors, while base-class mechanics like the packs and the invocations work well with the general idea of patronage
Bard - Jacks of all trades, master of all also
The Rogue's sneak ability can be very useful to the party as a scout, to break into a place and steal a critical item, and a variety of things. But also, being able to hide as a bonus action in combat to gain advantage on attacks and avoid being attacked. Also, you lauded Bard for Jack of all Trades. They only get +1 to non-proficient skills all the way up to level 9. It's cool and can be useful, but I think it's overrated. The best skill monkey in the game in my opinion is specifically a Soul Knife Rogue.
Monk, I agree.
I actually think there are better healers in the game than Clerics, and you have an outdated perception of them. They get to be a full caster with armor and shield proficiency, and they are excellent damage dealers. Lots of buffs and debuffs as well.
Wizards are arguably the most powerful class in the game once you reach level 5, and especially at higher levels. I know your main complaint is flavor, but I also don't think they're so vanilla. There's no limit to how many spells they can put in their book, and ritual spells can be cast as rituals without having to prepare them. But most of the flavor comes from their subclass. For example, the Evocation Wizard being able to nuke an entire room and exempt their allies from the effect at will with no resource cost is very unique. Divination Wizards being able to literally control outcomes. Enchantment being able to hypnotize, etc.
Cleric - Having a healer is essential, but who would ever want to *be* the healer. And as far as them being a holy warrior, the Paladin better fulfills that fantasy. If they were stripped of spellcasting and martial prowess, and given a unique ability to preform miracles (mechanically distinct from magic), I think that could fix the class
Wizard - Merely having a lot of spells and spell slots is less mechanically interesting than Sorcerers' metamagic or Warlocks' Invocations. Wizards need their own mechanical hook
LOL @ putting the two most powerful classes in the game on a list of the worst classes in the game.
Cleric - Having a healer is essential, but who would ever want to *be* the healer. And as far as them being a holy warrior, the Paladin better fulfills that fantasy. If they were stripped of spellcasting and martial prowess, and given a unique ability to preform miracles (mechanically distinct from magic), I think that could fix the class
Wizard - Merely having a lot of spells and spell slots is less mechanically interesting than Sorcerers' metamagic or Warlocks' Invocations. Wizards need their own mechanical hook
LOL @ putting the two most powerful classes in the game on a list of the worst classes in the game.
It's not a list of most powerful, it's a list of least liked. Maybe those are the same for you but that's not going to be true for everyone.
That may be so, but the person I responded to didn't say "My least favorite," they said "The WORST," then proceeded to discuss mostly mechanical "flaws," many of which don't really exist.
Eh. I kinda get it - the complaint more seemed to center on "why does my man of the cloth feel indistinguishable from an armored wizard with bad spells?" It's the same argument Sposta and I keep making about proper psychic classes - if you use the basic spellcasting rules then your abilities will feel like basic spellcasting, and there is nothing you can really do to make basic spellcasting not feel like basic spellcasting. And any class that uses basic spellcasting is going to feel largely the same in play to anything else using basic spellcasting. Yeah, a really good player can sell different trappings on Basic Spellcasting, but that's one of the big complaints I've seen leveled at games like Genesys which provide an extremely small number of mechanical options and encourage players to simply put their preferred skin/flavor/wrapper/trappings on it - two things that work the exact same way feel like they're the same thing no matter what trappings you put on it.
Once Flavor has been established and players aren't trying to wow each other with unnecessarily soliloquent descriptions anymore, all the game's spellcasters announce the same action: "I cast Solve Problem." They're all more or less interchangeable, and that just doesn't feel right to some folks. They want their druids to feel meaningfully different than their clerics than their wizards than their bards, and as it stands they just, simply...don't. And without more diversified 'Magic' rules, they never, ever will.
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The Battle Smith is the exception to being MAD. Without having played them, they overall seem mechanically weak to me, but there are some redeeming things they have. But I’m willing to play test one to be open-minded.
No Artificer is MAD. All any of them need is INT, with CON being a good backup to bolster HP and concentration checks. 3 of the 4 subs get "INT for attack" features, and Alchemist isn't at all attack-focused. Both Armorer's built-in weapons attack using INT, Artillerist uses your spell attack modifier and save DC, and Battle Smith uses INT for attacks with any magical weapon (which is something you can create very nearly at will), and the Steel Defender uses your INT stats for all its attacks as well.
Given that all their damage and spellcasting keys off of INT and you get prof in both INT and CON saves, Artificers are maybe the single SADdest class in the game, rivaled only by the Sorcerer.
Actually, all Artificers are SAD (at least in comparison to the Paladin or Ranger). They all want to max-out Intelligence, have good Constitution, and probably a +2 for Dexterity to have good medium armor (unless you're an Armorer, in which case you probably only need Intelligence and Constitution). And, if you don't want to invest in those ability scores, you can just wait until you get high enough level to get the infusions that increase them, and then rely on them for the rest of your adventuring career.
The least SAD artificer is the Armorer, who doesn't have to invest into Dexterity at all because they use Intelligence to wear their Heavy Armor. And all of the other subclasses are less SAD, but still less MAD than the Paladin/Ranger are.
And, as I said before, Artificers are the only class that can fairly easily get away with dumping their main ability scores, because they get access to some infusions later on that can make them good at the ability scores they're bad at. Not that I recommend that style of play, I'm just saying that it's possible.
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Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
Small question on the side, but what does MAD mean? I've seen it a few times on the forum, but I've never seen an explanation for what it means in D&D.
Also, why is Way of the Four Elements considered a bad subclass? It's sadly(?) the only one that interests me thematically for the Monk I'd like to play in the future :( (I want to play a Sea Elf Monk with the fisher bg, so I thought a subclass about Elements would fit him.)
MAD stands for "Multiple Ability (Score) Dependent".
SAD stands for "Singe Ability (Score) Dependent".
Monks, Barbarians, Paladins, and Rangers are some of the most MAD classes in the game. (Monks for DEX, CON, and WIS, Barbarians for STR, DEX, and CON, Paladins for STR/DEX, CON, and CHA, Rangers for DEX, CON, and WIS.)
Fighters, Warlocks (especially Hexblade), Bards, Wizards, Artificers, and Sorcerers are more SAD than most other classes. Although they typically do want to focus at least a little on other ability scores other than their main ones (typically DEX and CON), they typically have less abilities/features that depend on ability scores other than the main one they focus on.
As for why people consider the Way of the Four Elements to be a bad subclass, it partially does have to do with the fact that the Monk is a very MAD class, but that's not the whole reason because every other monk is just as MAD. People typically consider the Way of the Four Elements to be bad because they are effectively 1/3rd casters (like Arcane Tricksters and Eldritch Knights), but instead of having an additional pool of spell slots in order to cast their spells, they have to use their main class's resource, Ki, to use their subclass abilities.
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
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I think I miscommunicated, I was comparing monks to artificers and trying to say that monks are a lot worse.
Anyways, I was talking about monks being MAD, not artificers.
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HERE.The worst classes and subclasses in the game aren't that much worse than the best ones. They bug people like me who are overly concerned with making things as efficient as they can be, but they're still basically fine.
The base monk class is already often considered to not have enough ki to make effective use of their numerous ki-dependent abilities. As Third said, the Way of the Four Elements adds a slew of new abilities on top of that, many of which are big ki hogs, without increasing the number of ki points you get at all. Wot4E basically runs out of ammo so fast you never really get a chance to do any of your cool things more than once, and you don't ever get to do ALL of your cool things, just one or two of your cool things before you're out of juice and can't do cool things anymore. Combined with the monk's status as Memetically Terrible, and you have a recipe for Wot4E being sort of a poster child for Poor 5e Design Decisions.
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Aaah, thanks.
Yeah, I can understand why that's considered not cool. I looove spellcasters (I have a Lvl 7 Wood Elf Land Druid with Wood Elf Magic feat and he's so fun to play ♥) so that also partially played in why I wanted to try Way of the Four Elements.
I think four elements is more maligned than it deserves to be, but in general I feel like subclasses that compete against core class features tend to be worse off than subclasses that give you new things, because it's so hard to tune the power budget correctly when you're cannibalizing your own resources, the opportunity cost of losing your default actions rarely ever seems fully accounted for. Four Elements suffers from this in spades, but I'd also point to something like the Alchemist Artificer as another subclass with a bad reputation that needs to burn innate resources to put more fuel in their unique subclass feature.
I really think there is a lot of mechanical difference between the worst subclasses in the game and the top tier ones. What happens is that many times these differences can be hidden by various factors such as the type of campaign, the player's skill, knowledge of the rules, etc...
On the other hand, in a game without really difficult challenges, that your character is mechanically crap is not going to show much. But if you face complicated challenges, and you see that your character does not contribute to the solution, you will get frustrated. If on top of that, in your group, there is an ultra-optimized character who is usually key to solving those challenges, you will notice it even more.
And I'm going to use the example of the berserker, for me one of the worst designed subclasses in the game. If not the worst. What is it that makes someone want to play a berserker? Frenzy. But then you realize that if you use it too often, you die. Then you don't use it or, at most, you do it once a day. Mechanically it is terribly bad. You can't play it the way you're supposed to play it, and the cool things about it hurt you. Anything else you choose is going to be much better than that subclass.
With the 4 elements something similar happens. He's not as bad as the berserker, but you can hardly ever use his cool stuff because you run out of ki.
And the third example is the Beast Master of the PHB. That subclass was so poorly designed in terms of economy of action, that they had to redo it. That meant that you could practically not use your beast companion, which is the feature for which you are going to choose the beast master.
The WORST classes:
The BEST classes:
Rogues aren't bad. Sneak attack is quite powerful, even if you find it unsatisfying, and rogues do more than just sneak around. They pick locks, they fight, some do magic, etc.
Rogues stealth may not seem cool to you since stealth checks are usually not done by one individual, but by the group overall, however, rogues typically having high stealth is actually quite useful for the following reasons/situations.
(A) Rogues usually provide a guaranteed success in group stealth checks.
(B) They can scout out things on their own, and then they're the only one making the check.
(C) Stealth also factors into things like hiding which works in combat and helps rogue's avoid taking damage.
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HERE.Where do I even begin? 1) Clerics are objectively great and subjectively awesome, 2) Having a healer is certainly not essential, 3) Almost every game I've played has had someone who wanted to play the healer, 4) Cleric is arguably not even the best healer class.
I can agree that it's weird to have them basically be Wizards in armor though.
How to say you've never played cleric without saying you've never played cleric.
Yeah clerics can heal, but they are amazing offensively too. Switching on spirit guardians and roleplaying as a blender is great fun.
The Rogue's sneak ability can be very useful to the party as a scout, to break into a place and steal a critical item, and a variety of things. But also, being able to hide as a bonus action in combat to gain advantage on attacks and avoid being attacked. Also, you lauded Bard for Jack of all Trades. They only get +1 to non-proficient skills all the way up to level 9. It's cool and can be useful, but I think it's overrated. The best skill monkey in the game in my opinion is specifically a Soul Knife Rogue.
Monk, I agree.
I actually think there are better healers in the game than Clerics, and you have an outdated perception of them. They get to be a full caster with armor and shield proficiency, and they are excellent damage dealers. Lots of buffs and debuffs as well.
Wizards are arguably the most powerful class in the game once you reach level 5, and especially at higher levels. I know your main complaint is flavor, but I also don't think they're so vanilla. There's no limit to how many spells they can put in their book, and ritual spells can be cast as rituals without having to prepare them. But most of the flavor comes from their subclass. For example, the Evocation Wizard being able to nuke an entire room and exempt their allies from the effect at will with no resource cost is very unique. Divination Wizards being able to literally control outcomes. Enchantment being able to hypnotize, etc.
LOL @ putting the two most powerful classes in the game on a list of the worst classes in the game.
It's not a list of most powerful, it's a list of least liked. Maybe those are the same for you but that's not going to be true for everyone.
That may be so, but the person I responded to didn't say "My least favorite," they said "The WORST," then proceeded to discuss mostly mechanical "flaws," many of which don't really exist.
Eh. I kinda get it - the complaint more seemed to center on "why does my man of the cloth feel indistinguishable from an armored wizard with bad spells?" It's the same argument Sposta and I keep making about proper psychic classes - if you use the basic spellcasting rules then your abilities will feel like basic spellcasting, and there is nothing you can really do to make basic spellcasting not feel like basic spellcasting. And any class that uses basic spellcasting is going to feel largely the same in play to anything else using basic spellcasting. Yeah, a really good player can sell different trappings on Basic Spellcasting, but that's one of the big complaints I've seen leveled at games like Genesys which provide an extremely small number of mechanical options and encourage players to simply put their preferred skin/flavor/wrapper/trappings on it - two things that work the exact same way feel like they're the same thing no matter what trappings you put on it.
Once Flavor has been established and players aren't trying to wow each other with unnecessarily soliloquent descriptions anymore, all the game's spellcasters announce the same action: "I cast Solve Problem." They're all more or less interchangeable, and that just doesn't feel right to some folks. They want their druids to feel meaningfully different than their clerics than their wizards than their bards, and as it stands they just, simply...don't. And without more diversified 'Magic' rules, they never, ever will.
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