Plenty of other games have compelling non-combat features available to characters; Exalted, for example, has an entire "class" based on manipulating the weave of fate for better social/story outcomes. They have just as many cool powers as any other "class", they're just not very good in a stand-up fight. (One of my favorite features from that game is Fortuitous Wandering; if you want to be in a scene, you can just show up. You do not have to explain how you got there.) There's plenty of examples of games that handle non-combat skills better than D&D. In fact, I'd struggle to name a game that does them worse. (GURPS, I guess.)
Even if you don't like its skill system, GURPS cares way more about non-combat skills and what they mean and do than D&D does.
But it's not actually that D&D 5 doesn't care about non-combat skills. It's got the kind of broad skill categories that you find in games these days that don't aspire to realism. It's mostly weird in that the loose, simple, skill system is attached to much more complex combat mechanics. It's also aware of the sort of game that D&D is, and doesn't try to provide skills that aren't generally useful in D&D games. Is the system great? It is not. But it's adequate for its purpose. Could it have been done better without making things more complex? Almost certainly. (Tool proficiencies in particular create a weird grey area of skills that aren't skills, and should've been worked into the system better.)
People say D&D is a wargame because that's what it has rules for. There's exceptions, of course, but by and large the game has developed to be more combat focused over time. the reason nobody complains about INT-optimized builds in an investigation-focused campaign is simple: there's only so much you can optimize investigation in a game that barely has any rules for it. If you play a campaign that never uses the Investigation skill, you're just not playing an Investigation-focused campaign. If you post a campaign without using combat features, you are, in a meaningful sense, not playing 5e. That's why people care more about the combat optimization. That's what the game is.
D&D 5 is certainly a combat-focused RPG, but that's a way different beast than a wargame.
Even if you don't like its skill system, GURPS cares way more about non-combat skills and what they mean and do than D&D does.
But it's not actually that D&D 5 doesn't care about non-combat skills. It's got the kind of broad skill categories that you find in games these days that don't aspire to realism. It's mostly weird in that the loose, simple, skill system is attached to much more complex combat mechanics. It's also aware of the sort of game that D&D is, and doesn't try to provide skills that aren't generally useful in D&D games. Is the system great? It is not. But it's adequate for its purpose. Could it have been done better without making things more complex? Almost certainly. (Tool proficiencies in particular create a weird grey area of skills that aren't skills, and should've been worked into the system better.)
D&D 5 is certainly a combat-focused RPG, but that's a way different beast than a wargame.
In my defense I didn't say GURPS's skill system was less considered than D&D's. I just said it was worse. (Mostly because it's an easy target; I honestly have very little experience with GURPS)
I do broadly agree with your assessment of D&D's skill system, provided we agree that D&D is primarily a game about getting in fights. The skill system is a device to add color to non-combat interludes of an otherwise combat-focused system. (Or perform non-standard combat actions, but you'll notice the rules about that get much more precise than out-of-combat skill use.) That's why nobody generally cares if you optimize for skills; they're not what the game is about. That's really all I was trying to say.
I agree that D&D isn't a wargame in the sense of, say, a Warhammer 40k. But I don't think most people are using that kind of precise definition when they call D&D a wargame; it's a game about getting in fights, which generally values simulating those fights in detail over other priorities an RPG might have. Whatever someone wants to call that, that's D&D.
Really the issue with tools and skills is just a common misconception of the basic mechanics of ability checks, partly due to the books being unclear on the matter. Strictly speaking, for any ability check the relevant ability is first determined, and then it’s determined if any of the character’s proficiencies apply. However, since skill proficiencies have a designated primary ability, it causes people to think of the checks in terms of selecting the skill first and then deciding if the primary ability is appropriate or should be changed for a given roll, which makes tools an oddity given they have no designated ability. But the point of tool profs is either to cover gaps in instances not covered by a skill or to provide an alternative source of proficiency that can be applied to ability checks. The lack of a designated primary ability is meant to emphasize their open-endedness.
Plenty of other games have compelling non-combat features available to characters; Exalted, for example, has an entire "class" based on manipulating the weave of fate for better social/story outcomes. They have just as many cool powers as any other "class", they're just not very good in a stand-up fight. (One of my favorite features from that game is Fortuitous Wandering; if you want to be in a scene, you can just show up. You do not have to explain how you got there.) There's plenty of examples of games that handle non-combat skills better than D&D. In fact, I'd struggle to name a game that does them worse. (GURPS, I guess.)
People say D&D is a wargame because that's what it has rules for. There's exceptions, of course, but by and large the game has developed to be more combat focused over time. the reason nobody complains about INT-optimized builds in an investigation-focused campaign is simple: there's only so much you can optimize investigation in a game that barely has any rules for it. If you play a campaign that never uses the Investigation skill, you're just not playing an Investigation-focused campaign. If you post a campaign without using combat features, you are, in a meaningful sense, not playing 5e. That's why people care more about the combat optimization. That's what the game is.
D&D focusing its crunch more around the combat pillar doesn't make it a "wargame" though. It's just a bad take; wargames barely have exploration and interaction pillars at all. In fact, Chainmail, the wargame D&D is most based on, had so little that Arneson and Gygax were forced to tell people to go out and buy the overland exploration rules from an entirely different game (Outdoor Survival by Avalon Hill, circa 1972) in order to make the exploration parts of OD&D at all functional.
I'm not going to say that D&D 5e's investigation piece is particularly (or at all) detailed. But at every stage of D&D's design, WotC has to make a tradeoffs regarding what the most players and DMs are most willing to pay money for. For me, rolling a few ability checks with various bonuses, as well as using magical abilities like spells, class features and racials, to augment or bypass those rolls, is perfectly serviceable as connective tissue linking the things D&D does best. And for those who want more than that, that's fine too - it's fertile ground for third-party publishers to make a name for themselves.
Plenty of other games have compelling non-combat features available to characters; Exalted, for example, has an entire "class" based on manipulating the weave of fate for better social/story outcomes. They have just as many cool powers as any other "class", they're just not very good in a stand-up fight. (One of my favorite features from that game is Fortuitous Wandering; if you want to be in a scene, you can just show up. You do not have to explain how you got there.) There's plenty of examples of games that handle non-combat skills better than D&D. In fact, I'd struggle to name a game that does them worse. (GURPS, I guess.)
Even if you don't like its skill system, GURPS cares way more about non-combat skills and what they mean and do than D&D does.
But it's not actually that D&D 5 doesn't care about non-combat skills. It's got the kind of broad skill categories that you find in games these days that don't aspire to realism. It's mostly weird in that the loose, simple, skill system is attached to much more complex combat mechanics. It's also aware of the sort of game that D&D is, and doesn't try to provide skills that aren't generally useful in D&D games. Is the system great? It is not. But it's adequate for its purpose. Could it have been done better without making things more complex? Almost certainly. (Tool proficiencies in particular create a weird grey area of skills that aren't skills, and should've been worked into the system better.)
People say D&D is a wargame because that's what it has rules for. There's exceptions, of course, but by and large the game has developed to be more combat focused over time. the reason nobody complains about INT-optimized builds in an investigation-focused campaign is simple: there's only so much you can optimize investigation in a game that barely has any rules for it. If you play a campaign that never uses the Investigation skill, you're just not playing an Investigation-focused campaign. If you post a campaign without using combat features, you are, in a meaningful sense, not playing 5e. That's why people care more about the combat optimization. That's what the game is.
D&D 5 is certainly a combat-focused RPG, but that's a way different beast than a wargame.
While it's fair to say that D&D 5e is Not a wargame, it certainly has wargame roots. This means that many people who enjoy wargames also enjoy D&D, which sometimes creates a mismatch with players who might occasionally enjoy the tactical aspect, but who care more about the narratives with interesting characters (both PCs and NPCs) aspect of 5e. And because the wargamers who like D&D are more likely to min/max or optimize than the ones who enjoy the narrative aspect, this creates the impression that optimizing and min/maxing are antithetical to narrative-focus. This impression is false, but you can see why the impression exists. The problem is, rather, that many people who approach D&D like a wargame don't care for consistent characterization of their PCs, which is what rubs the narrative-focused players the wrong way.
it's difficult to convince not-new players in general that d&d characters can afford to be less than combat-optimized when many players were raised up on something like the lost mines of phandelver where -spoiler!- the very first encounter -spoiler!- is a deadly ambush. there's no chance to sneak without metagaming, arcane riddle to decipher, no reason for baddies to listen while you shout "parley!" into the wind. for a first scene it really sets a combative tone. your mileage might have varied, but this is a much discussed experience common to many that explains players overpreparing for combat (without going into gygax hiding behind his filing cabinet or an old wargame). even without this singular encounter, many dm questions revolve around how to balance combat by CR in their home game because of so many factors. it's tough enough that many a dm (myself included, too often!) will forego random encounters ostensibly to get to the story but at least partially because no one wants to die to what was supposed to be a speedbump. and then they wonder why their players have so many spell slots left when they get to the meat of things, not having blunted the party's swords on the way in.
i guess what i'm saying is that min/maxing complaints are indicative of other issues. is there a way 2024 revised 5e can put things on the right track, perhaps with advice or emphasis?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
unhappy at the way in which we lost individual purchases for one-off subclasses, magic items, and monsters?
tell them you don't like features disappeared quietly in the night: providefeedback!
How exactly did Tasha's "encourage cheating"? Last I checked there's still no way to get a score above 17 with point buy, for one. I'm certainly not going to claim the power scale has been perfectly consistent because everyone knows it hasn't, but taking a subclass with strong features is hardly cheating either.
How exactly did Tasha's "encourage cheating"? Last I checked there's still no way to get a score above 17 with point buy, for one.
Custom lineage, take a level 1 half-feat. Which you'll note isn't possible in UA because all of the half-feats require level 4+.
That's... not cheating if it's literally an option. With the operative word there being "option", and one that's at the DM's discretion. Plus, if you look at the Custom Lineage rules you only get a single +2 ASI, so it's not like you're actually squeezing more starting stats out of the build this way. It might be very slightly mechanically advantageous to get an 18 in your main stat, but it's really not that gamebreaking or commonly considered as an option from what I've seen.
A very slightly unbalanced starting character option isn't "cheating." Especially since you need to clear multiple "DM-may-I" gates to even use it, so it's not like a table that would prefer you not do that can be held hostage.
And before you bring up AL, Custom Lineage isn't legal there.
I have said it before. Min/max'ing within a set of constructs like playing with just the PHB and XGTE, and 27 point buy, is perfectly reasonable, and a common sense way to play the game. A PC starting with a pair pf 16's in stats is what most DM expect, and how the 5e GAME WAS DESIGNED.
Then along came Tasha's which not only encouraged cheating, it codified it. Toss out the window all the rules that kept PC's within the lanes. There is a VAST difference between someone who is playing a Paladin with a 16 CHA and 16 Con to start, and a some ridiculous build that has an 18 or even 20 to start at 1st level, as well as all the OP spells/subclasses, and all the rest of the nonsense post XGTE that was introduced to sell more product with increasingly powerful builds. Tasha and everything beyond that, actually, an argument can be made for anything post PHB, is designed to give DM's fits of frustrations.
I don't think it's fair to characterize power creep as cheating, but it does shift encounter balancing to become significantly more difficult. And I wouldn't say that Tasha's alone is responsible for this. We also have the Theros and Strixhaven books. It's part of a larger trend that pushes the envelope, making it harder for DMs to decide how to create meaningfully challenging encounters without a few crits steamrolling the party or the party just steamrolling the monsters. So it's a fair criticism of 5E's meta-balance, but that's somewhat separate from the optimization discussion.
How exactly did Tasha's "encourage cheating"? Last I checked there's still no way to get a score above 17 with point buy, for one.
Custom lineage, take a level 1 half-feat. Which you'll note isn't possible in UA because all of the half-feats require level 4+.
That’s not even Tasha’s really, that’s just since half-feats came out. Just go Vhuman with a 1/2 feat. I don’t think you were arguing, as much as informing, I’m just saying it’s even easier than that.
Im with Ace of Rogues. It’s no big deal. An extra +1 doesn’t really make any difference in play, there’s lots of people out there with rolled stats and wildly different stat lines sitting next to each other and still having plenty of fun. Also, I giggled at the term codifed cheating. Once something has been codified, it by definition, can’t be cheating anymore. You are literally obeying the rules.
That’s not even Tasha’s really, that’s just since half-feats came out. Just go Vhuman with a 1/2 feat.
Vhuman don't get a +2 to a score, so the highest they can get is 17: base 15, +1 vhuman, +1 half-feat
That said, I don't think custom lineage in Tasha's was intended as power gaming. Most of the exploits in 5e seem to come from the devs not having anyone whose job is "figure out how this mechanic can be exploited".
That’s not even Tasha’s really, that’s just since half-feats came out. Just go Vhuman with a 1/2 feat.
Vhuman don't get a +2 to a score, so the highest they can get is 17: base 15, +1 vhuman, +1 half-feat
That said, I don't think custom lineage in Tasha's was intended as power gaming. Most of the exploits in 5e seem to come from the devs not having anyone whose job is "figure out how this mechanic can be exploited".
Thank you for the correction. I was misremembering.
How exactly did Tasha's "encourage cheating"? Last I checked there's still no way to get a score above 17 with point buy, for one.
Custom lineage, take a level 1 half-feat. Which you'll note isn't possible in UA because all of the half-feats require level 4+.
That’s not even Tasha’s really, that’s just since half-feats came out. Just go Vhuman with a 1/2 feat. I don’t think you were arguing, as much as informing, I’m just saying it’s even easier than that.
Im with Ace of Rogues. It’s no big deal. An extra +1 doesn’t really make any difference in play, there’s lots of people out there with rolled stats and wildly different stat lines sitting next to each other and still having plenty of fun. Also, I giggled at the term codifed cheating. Once something has been codified, it by definition, can’t be cheating anymore. You are literally obeying the rules.
Right, I am sure the players that managed to roll the super high stats, optiimized PC"s that pull in features and spells from 4 different books, are having a grand old time. The other players, and DM...not so much.
And just how often have you actually encountered such heinous individuals? Obviously some do exist, but they're generally the personality type that will tend to rub others wrong some way or other in the game regardless of what exact kit they patch together, and I've been in quite a few groups over something like 10 years and don't recall ever having to deal with someone "lording it over the table" with their hyper-optimized build.
Like I said before, experienced/strong DM's recognize tashas and all the other nonsense for what it is, and can shut it down. But inexperienced/weak DM's can and will be bullied into allowing builds that should never be allowed.
Per Crawford, inexperienced DMs are statistically unlikely to allow feats at all - never mind a custom character option from a sidebar of a non-core supplement that allows you to start your career with one. You might have had a point with Variant Human as that is core, but they can't hit 18 out of the gate either.
Everything post XGTE, actually, including much of XGTE, is created and promoted as creating ever more powerful PC's. So, yes, the other books you mention are just as guilty of it. It is good marketing by wotc. How many video games are pay to win, with ever more NEW and powerful items you can buy to make your experience "more fun"? But this is precisely on point for the optimization discussion. Without all this additional material, optimizers would be a tiny problem. You don't hear many DM's complaining about players making single classed PC's that are using strictly PHB material.
XGtE and TCoE are more powerful because prior to them, the game was overly cautious and conservative. You're talking about a version of the game where a subclass getting a bonus attack with any weapon type was considered so unbelievably powerful that you needed to take exhaustion levels every time you used it to compensate. The game is allowed to evolve as the designers realize that things they originally thought were a big deal 10 years ago actually aren't - and shockingly, designers are professionals who deserve to be paid for their time.
Per Crawford, inexperienced DMs are statistically unlikely to allow feats at all - never mind a custom character option from a sidebar of a non-core supplement that allows you to start your career with one. You might have had a point with Variant Human as that is core, but they can't hit 18 out of the gate either.
As a DM, it's generally a good rule to disallow any books you aren't personally familiar with. This isn't purely an issue of power gaming, it also generally cuts down on being surprised by a mechanic you weren't aware of.
I have said it before. Min/max'ing within a set of constructs like playing with just the PHB and XGTE, and 27 point buy, is perfectly reasonable, and a common sense way to play the game. A PC starting with a pair pf 16's in stats is what most DM expect, and how the 5e GAME WAS DESIGNED.
Then along came Tasha's which not only encouraged cheating, it codified it. Toss out the window all the rules that kept PC's within the lanes. There is a VAST difference between someone who is playing a Paladin with a 16 CHA and 16 Con to start, and a some ridiculous build that has an 18 or even 20 to start at 1st level, as well as all the OP spells/subclasses, and all the rest of the nonsense post XGTE that was introduced to sell more product with increasingly powerful builds. Tasha and everything beyond that, actually, an argument can be made for anything post PHB, is designed to give DM's fits of frustrations.
I don't think it's fair to characterize power creep as cheating, but it does shift encounter balancing to become significantly more difficult. And I wouldn't say that Tasha's alone is responsible for this. We also have the Theros and Strixhaven books. It's part of a larger trend that pushes the envelope, making it harder for DMs to decide how to create meaningfully challenging encounters without a few crits steamrolling the party or the party just steamrolling the monsters. So it's a fair criticism of 5E's meta-balance, but that's somewhat separate from the optimization discussion.
Everything post XGTE, actually, including much of XGTE, is created and promoted as creating ever more powerful PC's. So, yes, the other books you mention are just as guilty of it. It is good marketing by wotc. How many video games are pay to win, with ever more NEW and powerful items you can buy to make your experience "more fun"? But this is precisely on point for the optimization discussion. Without all this additional material, optimizers would be a tiny problem. You don't hear many DM's complaining about players making single classed PC's that are using strictly PHB material.
I agree with you that Tasha's and onwards (let's call this "Tasha+") a lot of published material has skewed towards being too powerful for newer DMs to balance well. I also agree that this is likely because WotC saw this as an easy way to encourage players to buy more books, since so much published material is historically exclusively purchased by DMs. However...
1.) I disagree in that multi-classing has been an option since the PHB got published in 2014. Min/maxing and optimization have existed since the start of multi-classing and V.Human feat-heavy builds (unless you want to count D&D 3E, in which case even older). Many of the most powerful feats are in the PHB already.
2.) Much of what is overpowered in Tasha+ material doesn't even require multi-classing to be powerful. Silvery Barbs is 1st level spell and severely weakens a lot of what DMs can throw at the party. No multi-classing required whatsoever. (And arguably it's better not to multiclass in order to get Arcane Recovery or Magical Secrets as early as possible.) Twilight Cleric + Peace Cleric, without any multi-classing or feats, together easily create situations where the PCs are nigh near unkillable with conventional damage without resorting to high level magic like Power Word Kill or frequent application of abilities/traps to split up the party. This absolutely is power creep and a flawed approach to game design, but it it's not really optimization or min/maxing. It's certainly not cheating.
IMO I think that min/max has always been a problem as far back as 1e. Back then there were restrictions on how high non-humans can level up, so they could never optimize fully. Humans were worse off because they could only dual class. Which means if a 7th level Cleric decided to become a fighter. He would leave his spell casting behind and start adventuring as a 1st level fighter and only gain xp as a Fighter. If he were to use any Clerical ability or spells, he would not get any XP (and probably no treasure from the DM) for doing so.
5e just threw all of that out the window and said "let what will be, be" and now you have these optimized class doing 100 points of damage in one round. Granted they may not be much after that round after. Heck I have heard some "builds" that allow you to get 20+ attacks.
The developers need to come up with a no-stacking rule. That would cut the Optimizer/min-maxers off at the kneecaps.
Given there are now some 100+ subclasses, and what, at least 50 races, (in fact, an infinite amount), the combinations and permutations are staggering.
Most of the broken stuff in 5e is not subtle. You don't need any extra mechanics to make something like polearm mastery overpowered.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Even if you don't like its skill system, GURPS cares way more about non-combat skills and what they mean and do than D&D does.
But it's not actually that D&D 5 doesn't care about non-combat skills. It's got the kind of broad skill categories that you find in games these days that don't aspire to realism. It's mostly weird in that the loose, simple, skill system is attached to much more complex combat mechanics. It's also aware of the sort of game that D&D is, and doesn't try to provide skills that aren't generally useful in D&D games. Is the system great? It is not. But it's adequate for its purpose. Could it have been done better without making things more complex? Almost certainly. (Tool proficiencies in particular create a weird grey area of skills that aren't skills, and should've been worked into the system better.)
D&D 5 is certainly a combat-focused RPG, but that's a way different beast than a wargame.
In my defense I didn't say GURPS's skill system was less considered than D&D's. I just said it was worse. (Mostly because it's an easy target; I honestly have very little experience with GURPS)
I do broadly agree with your assessment of D&D's skill system, provided we agree that D&D is primarily a game about getting in fights. The skill system is a device to add color to non-combat interludes of an otherwise combat-focused system. (Or perform non-standard combat actions, but you'll notice the rules about that get much more precise than out-of-combat skill use.) That's why nobody generally cares if you optimize for skills; they're not what the game is about. That's really all I was trying to say.
I agree that D&D isn't a wargame in the sense of, say, a Warhammer 40k. But I don't think most people are using that kind of precise definition when they call D&D a wargame; it's a game about getting in fights, which generally values simulating those fights in detail over other priorities an RPG might have. Whatever someone wants to call that, that's D&D.
Really the issue with tools and skills is just a common misconception of the basic mechanics of ability checks, partly due to the books being unclear on the matter. Strictly speaking, for any ability check the relevant ability is first determined, and then it’s determined if any of the character’s proficiencies apply. However, since skill proficiencies have a designated primary ability, it causes people to think of the checks in terms of selecting the skill first and then deciding if the primary ability is appropriate or should be changed for a given roll, which makes tools an oddity given they have no designated ability. But the point of tool profs is either to cover gaps in instances not covered by a skill or to provide an alternative source of proficiency that can be applied to ability checks. The lack of a designated primary ability is meant to emphasize their open-endedness.
D&D focusing its crunch more around the combat pillar doesn't make it a "wargame" though. It's just a bad take; wargames barely have exploration and interaction pillars at all. In fact, Chainmail, the wargame D&D is most based on, had so little that Arneson and Gygax were forced to tell people to go out and buy the overland exploration rules from an entirely different game (Outdoor Survival by Avalon Hill, circa 1972) in order to make the exploration parts of OD&D at all functional.
I'm not going to say that D&D 5e's investigation piece is particularly (or at all) detailed. But at every stage of D&D's design, WotC has to make a tradeoffs regarding what the most players and DMs are most willing to pay money for. For me, rolling a few ability checks with various bonuses, as well as using magical abilities like spells, class features and racials, to augment or bypass those rolls, is perfectly serviceable as connective tissue linking the things D&D does best. And for those who want more than that, that's fine too - it's fertile ground for third-party publishers to make a name for themselves.
While it's fair to say that D&D 5e is Not a wargame, it certainly has wargame roots. This means that many people who enjoy wargames also enjoy D&D, which sometimes creates a mismatch with players who might occasionally enjoy the tactical aspect, but who care more about the narratives with interesting characters (both PCs and NPCs) aspect of 5e. And because the wargamers who like D&D are more likely to min/max or optimize than the ones who enjoy the narrative aspect, this creates the impression that optimizing and min/maxing are antithetical to narrative-focus. This impression is false, but you can see why the impression exists. The problem is, rather, that many people who approach D&D like a wargame don't care for consistent characterization of their PCs, which is what rubs the narrative-focused players the wrong way.
it's difficult to convince not-new players in general that d&d characters can afford to be less than combat-optimized when many players were raised up on something like the lost mines of phandelver where -spoiler!- the very first encounter -spoiler!- is a deadly ambush. there's no chance to sneak without metagaming, arcane riddle to decipher, no reason for baddies to listen while you shout "parley!" into the wind. for a first scene it really sets a combative tone. your mileage might have varied, but this is a much discussed experience common to many that explains players overpreparing for combat (without going into gygax hiding behind his filing cabinet or an old wargame). even without this singular encounter, many dm questions revolve around how to balance combat by CR in their home game because of so many factors. it's tough enough that many a dm (myself included, too often!) will forego random encounters ostensibly to get to the story but at least partially because no one wants to die to what was supposed to be a speedbump. and then they wonder why their players have so many spell slots left when they get to the meat of things, not having blunted the party's swords on the way in.
i guess what i'm saying is that min/maxing complaints are indicative of other issues. is there a way 2024 revised 5e can put things on the right track, perhaps with advice or emphasis?
unhappy at the way in which we lost individual purchases for one-off subclasses, magic items, and monsters?
tell them you don't like features disappeared quietly in the night: provide feedback!
How exactly did Tasha's "encourage cheating"? Last I checked there's still no way to get a score above 17 with point buy, for one. I'm certainly not going to claim the power scale has been perfectly consistent because everyone knows it hasn't, but taking a subclass with strong features is hardly cheating either.
Custom lineage, take a level 1 half-feat. Which you'll note isn't possible in UA because all of the half-feats require level 4+.
That's... not cheating if it's literally an option. With the operative word there being "option", and one that's at the DM's discretion. Plus, if you look at the Custom Lineage rules you only get a single +2 ASI, so it's not like you're actually squeezing more starting stats out of the build this way. It might be very slightly mechanically advantageous to get an 18 in your main stat, but it's really not that gamebreaking or commonly considered as an option from what I've seen.
A very slightly unbalanced starting character option isn't "cheating." Especially since you need to clear multiple "DM-may-I" gates to even use it, so it's not like a table that would prefer you not do that can be held hostage.
And before you bring up AL, Custom Lineage isn't legal there.
I don't think it's fair to characterize power creep as cheating, but it does shift encounter balancing to become significantly more difficult. And I wouldn't say that Tasha's alone is responsible for this. We also have the Theros and Strixhaven books. It's part of a larger trend that pushes the envelope, making it harder for DMs to decide how to create meaningfully challenging encounters without a few crits steamrolling the party or the party just steamrolling the monsters. So it's a fair criticism of 5E's meta-balance, but that's somewhat separate from the optimization discussion.
That’s not even Tasha’s really, that’s just since half-feats came out. Just go Vhuman with a 1/2 feat. I don’t think you were arguing, as much as informing, I’m just saying it’s even easier than that.
Im with Ace of Rogues. It’s no big deal. An extra +1 doesn’t really make any difference in play, there’s lots of people out there with rolled stats and wildly different stat lines sitting next to each other and still having plenty of fun.
Also, I giggled at the term codifed cheating. Once something has been codified, it by definition, can’t be cheating anymore. You are literally obeying the rules.
Vhuman don't get a +2 to a score, so the highest they can get is 17: base 15, +1 vhuman, +1 half-feat
That said, I don't think custom lineage in Tasha's was intended as power gaming. Most of the exploits in 5e seem to come from the devs not having anyone whose job is "figure out how this mechanic can be exploited".
Thank you for the correction. I was misremembering.
And just how often have you actually encountered such heinous individuals? Obviously some do exist, but they're generally the personality type that will tend to rub others wrong some way or other in the game regardless of what exact kit they patch together, and I've been in quite a few groups over something like 10 years and don't recall ever having to deal with someone "lording it over the table" with their hyper-optimized build.
Per Crawford, inexperienced DMs are statistically unlikely to allow feats at all - never mind a custom character option from a sidebar of a non-core supplement that allows you to start your career with one. You might have had a point with Variant Human as that is core, but they can't hit 18 out of the gate either.
XGtE and TCoE are more powerful because prior to them, the game was overly cautious and conservative. You're talking about a version of the game where a subclass getting a bonus attack with any weapon type was considered so unbelievably powerful that you needed to take exhaustion levels every time you used it to compensate. The game is allowed to evolve as the designers realize that things they originally thought were a big deal 10 years ago actually aren't - and shockingly, designers are professionals who deserve to be paid for their time.
As a DM, it's generally a good rule to disallow any books you aren't personally familiar with. This isn't purely an issue of power gaming, it also generally cuts down on being surprised by a mechanic you weren't aware of.
I agree with you that Tasha's and onwards (let's call this "Tasha+") a lot of published material has skewed towards being too powerful for newer DMs to balance well. I also agree that this is likely because WotC saw this as an easy way to encourage players to buy more books, since so much published material is historically exclusively purchased by DMs. However...
1.) I disagree in that multi-classing has been an option since the PHB got published in 2014. Min/maxing and optimization have existed since the start of multi-classing and V.Human feat-heavy builds (unless you want to count D&D 3E, in which case even older). Many of the most powerful feats are in the PHB already.
2.) Much of what is overpowered in Tasha+ material doesn't even require multi-classing to be powerful. Silvery Barbs is 1st level spell and severely weakens a lot of what DMs can throw at the party. No multi-classing required whatsoever. (And arguably it's better not to multiclass in order to get Arcane Recovery or Magical Secrets as early as possible.) Twilight Cleric + Peace Cleric, without any multi-classing or feats, together easily create situations where the PCs are nigh near unkillable with conventional damage without resorting to high level magic like Power Word Kill or frequent application of abilities/traps to split up the party. This absolutely is power creep and a flawed approach to game design, but it it's not really optimization or min/maxing. It's certainly not cheating.
IMO I think that min/max has always been a problem as far back as 1e. Back then there were restrictions on how high non-humans can level up, so they could never optimize fully. Humans were worse off because they could only dual class. Which means if a 7th level Cleric decided to become a fighter. He would leave his spell casting behind and start adventuring as a 1st level fighter and only gain xp as a Fighter. If he were to use any Clerical ability or spells, he would not get any XP (and probably no treasure from the DM) for doing so.
5e just threw all of that out the window and said "let what will be, be" and now you have these optimized class doing 100 points of damage in one round. Granted they may not be much after that round after. Heck I have heard some "builds" that allow you to get 20+ attacks.
The developers need to come up with a no-stacking rule. That would cut the Optimizer/min-maxers off at the kneecaps.
Most of the broken stuff in 5e is not subtle. You don't need any extra mechanics to make something like polearm mastery overpowered.