Barbarians do their thing very well. But their thing is being Wolverine. He's not exactly the most flexible guy on the X-Men. And any random spellcaster can be, uh, every other member of the X-Men at the same time, basically.
It makes perfect sense to me that the leading options in this poll would be martial characters. That's why it's strange to see Artificer.
The Bard is #3, and the Fighter is the least least-liked.
I think the Monk and the Artificer are the top 2 because they're perceived to be the weakest.
The Artificer probably also attracted some hate from people who don't like having the magic item or techno themes it has.
IME the problem with Barbarians isn't that they're bad. They're very solid at what they do! Really. It's that they have one thing they're really good at and then they spend 20 levels doing that one thing and your subclass doesn't really change it all that much.
From my own tables, Barbarians are one of the classes that I see newer players get very excited about, because it's cool, but also the class I see people burn out of the most over long campaigns.
Goal number 1 is fulfilling a fantasy with freaking cool lore that just resonates with players. The game mechanics should flow down from that. From this perspective, the warlock and artificer seem the most thematically "broken." The sorcerer has sorcery points, but really they should be short rest or per-encounter things, not long rest things. The cleric to a lesser degree--I honestly like cleric--and for sure the druid (with the lack of a meaning animal pet). Like I can see one druid subclass as being able to wild shape. That's it's thing. But the rest of the druids in the world, like Radagast, have awesome pets, dangit!!! It is pretty clear why the most maligned classes are such, with the exception of the monk which didn't scale well so they just kept stapling on optional abilities to make you feel better.
The warlock is what the sorcerer should have been--hard hitting blaster specialist with quick-recharging abilities. As a sorcerer, you are using magic from your own body. That recharges quickly, i.e. as soon as you are rested. Your patron doesn't need to recharge on a short rest. That's ridiculous. The limit to what you draw from you patron, is how much you are willing to bind your soul. It's an RP thing, and it could be RICH.
Aside from the Hexblade warlock (which, along with the polearm master feat, seems to function to fulfill dreams of ultimate murder hobo'ing via multiclassing) the other warlocks are hard for my players to play. It just feels like they are a little bit worse than everybody at everything. Like the sorcerer (except the new ones like Aberrant Sorcerer that get extra spells), the variety of spells is just so small, people, especially newer players and at lower levels, never quite feel like they are getting their money's worth. I frequently get these pained half-smiles like a third wheel on a date. "That was fun, thanks for having me along...wish I'd done anything else."
But more than game mechanics, classes work when they connect with a player's FANTASIES. That's where the artificer falls short in some cases. If you want to be an alchemist, does making a random potion seem cool to you? No. It makes you feel incompetent. If you can't solve a problem, on demand, with an elixir, like a wizard does with a spell, that's not fulfilling a fantasy.
With the Warlock, we need to connect to the theme even more strongly. Great DM's are able to wedge this in, but it would be even better if it were baked-in and captured players' imaginations immediately, and made it easy for DM's to get the lore engine going.
Thematically, pact of the chain could be a lot cooler if the familiar was like an emissary or minion of the patron, there to watch from day 1 and make sure the warlock did the master's bidding. Like, the warlock would have to distract the familiar when they wanted to do something subversive. Or, occasionally, it would speak with the voice of the patron or whisper in their ear what they should do, like a little devil on your shoulder. (EXACTLY!)
With pact of the tome, the tome is actually the medium for communicating with the patron (yes, like Harry Potter Chamber of Secrets). Orders show up on it. Or new spells as a boon to help in a situation. The "bad" book is your connection to otherwordly power. It becomes a point of conflict when people see the markings on it. But sometimes, really awesome spells show up there. So you can't justify getting rid of it.
Pact of the blade could be flavored as the sword being the medium for communicating with the patron or the patron itself, rather than the patron being some kind of far-off extraplanar sword, which honestly seemed rather odd.
For my part, choosing the pact "medium" for communicating with the patron is a level 1 warlock thing, like the Genie vessel. Then the warlock is tied to this "thing," for better or worse, and that builds so much flavor and identity around the class. Players typically have to create a warlock identity before they get a pact at 3rd level and so the pact is just stapled on after the fact. Playing in such a way as to earn boons from the patron, such as temporary access to a higher level spell for a mission, or something like that could be interesting, and make a warlock a "big gun" member of the team.
Invocations, linguistically, should be invocations. You "invoke" the power of your patron. That kind of implies a one-off thing, not a "always on" thing. Things you have "always-on" are more like an "investiture" or endowment (perpetual gift). Like, "I invoke the "Hunger/Wrath of (Patron name)!" and cast a powerful spell that deals AoE necrotic damage. Invocations you have to earn, or have a limited number a day, or physically (like a blood witch), campaign-wise (duties to fulfill) or financially (GP) cost you. A warlock, could be this thing that, occasionally and dramatically, can go off like a bomb, or can get the team out of a pickle...for a cost. Also, the making of the pact should be a major roleplay activity, not ignored and assumed done at 1st level prior to the campaign. What fun is that? For instance, the pact could be made at 3rd level and could be a blood pact, soul pact, or gold pact, depending on what sort of bargain is being struck. At 1st level, the player gets a trinket or something like a familiar that appears innocuous but grants them power, but eventually they will have to decide to make the pact to gain access to true invocations like being able to cast any spell from the warlock list up to one level above their spell level, once per day. For instance, the cost for invoking the patron could be a random table. Could bring a small boon, or it could cost you HP, or GP, or spell slots, or exhaustion. But it could save your whole party. That's the kind of risk-taking fun with choices and consequences that makes roleplaying amazing.
I would LOVE to see some changes to seperate the Casters. Right now it's just four or five variation on how many spells you can cast, and how you get powers. One is gameplay affecting, one is roleplay. I just want the Sorceror, the Druid, the Wizard, and the warlock, to have different possible spells. Like, Wizards should get spells to reflect their school, and that should require work. Like, you have to cast Firebolt 20 times before you unlock Fireball, or sleep 20 times before you unlock Charm person, etc. Warlocks just get granted innate knowledge by their patron, but each spell cast causes them health, or something. There needs to be a tradeoff, I just don't know what. Druids already have restrictions enough, they need to interact with an animal for a period of time before they can wild shape into that. Keep that. Sorcs just need to literally BUY spells. Every spell a Sorc casts should come from a scroll, that needs to be either purchased or written before hand. They cannot "retain" their spell knowledge that way. It should need to be "invoked" once per day, at the cost of "astral ink" or something, the amount depends on the spell. Astral Ink should start at 1 gold per bottle, which is 1-2 ounces.
Clerics obviously have restrictions, and paladins do as well I guess?
IME the problem with Barbarians isn't that they're bad. They're very solid at what they do! Really. It's that they have one thing they're really good at and then they spend 20 levels doing that one thing and your subclass doesn't really change it all that much.
From my own tables, Barbarians are one of the classes that I see newer players get very excited about, because it's cool, but also the class I see people burn out of the most over long campaigns.
Exactly.. My issue isn't their effectiveness, my issue is that they are very one-note... It's not a particularly interesting class, nor do they have many interesting subclasses. Fighters are obviously quite vanilla, but they have a lot of great subclasses by now and they are can be many kinds of characters.
Barbarians do their thing very well. But their thing is being Wolverine. He's not exactly the most flexible guy on the X-Men. And any random spellcaster can be, uh, every other member of the X-Men at the same time, basically.
It makes perfect sense to me that the leading options in this poll would be martial characters. That's why it's strange to see Artificer.
The Bard is #3, and the Fighter is the least least-liked.
I think the Monk and the Artificer are the top 2 because they're perceived to be the weakest.
The Artificer probably also attracted some hate from people who don't like having the magic item or techno themes it has.
I'm in a game now with a level 8 Artificer and the class just isn't done yet. Like the Ranger, it's like the Devs have finally realized that Power Creep is real and now they're trying to rein it in a bit. Too late for that! The main issue with the Artificer is that the player is going to want to make things because that's what Artificers DO. However, 5e doesn't have a crafting system so the DM has to homebrew everything and that's not fun for many people.
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The Artificer probably also attracted some hate from people who don't like having the magic item or techno themes it has.
IME the problem with Barbarians isn't that they're bad. They're very solid at what they do! Really. It's that they have one thing they're really good at and then they spend 20 levels doing that one thing and your subclass doesn't really change it all that much.
From my own tables, Barbarians are one of the classes that I see newer players get very excited about, because it's cool, but also the class I see people burn out of the most over long campaigns.
Goal number 1 is fulfilling a fantasy with freaking cool lore that just resonates with players. The game mechanics should flow down from that. From this perspective, the warlock and artificer seem the most thematically "broken." The sorcerer has sorcery points, but really they should be short rest or per-encounter things, not long rest things. The cleric to a lesser degree--I honestly like cleric--and for sure the druid (with the lack of a meaning animal pet). Like I can see one druid subclass as being able to wild shape. That's it's thing. But the rest of the druids in the world, like Radagast, have awesome pets, dangit!!! It is pretty clear why the most maligned classes are such, with the exception of the monk which didn't scale well so they just kept stapling on optional abilities to make you feel better.
The warlock is what the sorcerer should have been--hard hitting blaster specialist with quick-recharging abilities. As a sorcerer, you are using magic from your own body. That recharges quickly, i.e. as soon as you are rested. Your patron doesn't need to recharge on a short rest. That's ridiculous. The limit to what you draw from you patron, is how much you are willing to bind your soul. It's an RP thing, and it could be RICH.
Aside from the Hexblade warlock (which, along with the polearm master feat, seems to function to fulfill dreams of ultimate murder hobo'ing via multiclassing) the other warlocks are hard for my players to play. It just feels like they are a little bit worse than everybody at everything. Like the sorcerer (except the new ones like Aberrant Sorcerer that get extra spells), the variety of spells is just so small, people, especially newer players and at lower levels, never quite feel like they are getting their money's worth. I frequently get these pained half-smiles like a third wheel on a date. "That was fun, thanks for having me along...wish I'd done anything else."
But more than game mechanics, classes work when they connect with a player's FANTASIES. That's where the artificer falls short in some cases. If you want to be an alchemist, does making a random potion seem cool to you? No. It makes you feel incompetent. If you can't solve a problem, on demand, with an elixir, like a wizard does with a spell, that's not fulfilling a fantasy.
With the Warlock, we need to connect to the theme even more strongly. Great DM's are able to wedge this in, but it would be even better if it were baked-in and captured players' imaginations immediately, and made it easy for DM's to get the lore engine going.
Thematically, pact of the chain could be a lot cooler if the familiar was like an emissary or minion of the patron, there to watch from day 1 and make sure the warlock did the master's bidding. Like, the warlock would have to distract the familiar when they wanted to do something subversive. Or, occasionally, it would speak with the voice of the patron or whisper in their ear what they should do, like a little devil on your shoulder. (EXACTLY!)
With pact of the tome, the tome is actually the medium for communicating with the patron (yes, like Harry Potter Chamber of Secrets). Orders show up on it. Or new spells as a boon to help in a situation. The "bad" book is your connection to otherwordly power. It becomes a point of conflict when people see the markings on it. But sometimes, really awesome spells show up there. So you can't justify getting rid of it.
Pact of the blade could be flavored as the sword being the medium for communicating with the patron or the patron itself, rather than the patron being some kind of far-off extraplanar sword, which honestly seemed rather odd.
For my part, choosing the pact "medium" for communicating with the patron is a level 1 warlock thing, like the Genie vessel. Then the warlock is tied to this "thing," for better or worse, and that builds so much flavor and identity around the class. Players typically have to create a warlock identity before they get a pact at 3rd level and so the pact is just stapled on after the fact. Playing in such a way as to earn boons from the patron, such as temporary access to a higher level spell for a mission, or something like that could be interesting, and make a warlock a "big gun" member of the team.
Invocations, linguistically, should be invocations. You "invoke" the power of your patron. That kind of implies a one-off thing, not a "always on" thing. Things you have "always-on" are more like an "investiture" or endowment (perpetual gift). Like, "I invoke the "Hunger/Wrath of (Patron name)!" and cast a powerful spell that deals AoE necrotic damage. Invocations you have to earn, or have a limited number a day, or physically (like a blood witch), campaign-wise (duties to fulfill) or financially (GP) cost you. A warlock, could be this thing that, occasionally and dramatically, can go off like a bomb, or can get the team out of a pickle...for a cost.
Also, the making of the pact should be a major roleplay activity, not ignored and assumed done at 1st level prior to the campaign. What fun is that? For instance, the pact could be made at 3rd level and could be a blood pact, soul pact, or gold pact, depending on what sort of bargain is being struck. At 1st level, the player gets a trinket or something like a familiar that appears innocuous but grants them power, but eventually they will have to decide to make the pact to gain access to true invocations like being able to cast any spell from the warlock list up to one level above their spell level, once per day. For instance, the cost for invoking the patron could be a random table. Could bring a small boon, or it could cost you HP, or GP, or spell slots, or exhaustion. But it could save your whole party. That's the kind of risk-taking fun with choices and consequences that makes roleplaying amazing.
I would LOVE to see some changes to seperate the Casters. Right now it's just four or five variation on how many spells you can cast, and how you get powers. One is gameplay affecting, one is roleplay. I just want the Sorceror, the Druid, the Wizard, and the warlock, to have different possible spells. Like, Wizards should get spells to reflect their school, and that should require work. Like, you have to cast Firebolt 20 times before you unlock Fireball, or sleep 20 times before you unlock Charm person, etc. Warlocks just get granted innate knowledge by their patron, but each spell cast causes them health, or something. There needs to be a tradeoff, I just don't know what. Druids already have restrictions enough, they need to interact with an animal for a period of time before they can wild shape into that. Keep that. Sorcs just need to literally BUY spells. Every spell a Sorc casts should come from a scroll, that needs to be either purchased or written before hand. They cannot "retain" their spell knowledge that way. It should need to be "invoked" once per day, at the cost of "astral ink" or something, the amount depends on the spell. Astral Ink should start at 1 gold per bottle, which is 1-2 ounces.
Clerics obviously have restrictions, and paladins do as well I guess?
Exactly.. My issue isn't their effectiveness, my issue is that they are very one-note... It's not a particularly interesting class, nor do they have many interesting subclasses. Fighters are obviously quite vanilla, but they have a lot of great subclasses by now and they are can be many kinds of characters.
I'm in a game now with a level 8 Artificer and the class just isn't done yet. Like the Ranger, it's like the Devs have finally realized that Power Creep is real and now they're trying to rein it in a bit. Too late for that! The main issue with the Artificer is that the player is going to want to make things because that's what Artificers DO. However, 5e doesn't have a crafting system so the DM has to homebrew everything and that's not fun for many people.