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.
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 were 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.
2e and before had limits on multiclassing, yes. They were dumb, silly, inconsistent, limits, but they were limits. It had plenty of other limits as well, many of which hinged on gating the good stuff by your random stat rolls. And classes also had less interesting stuff to try to synergize with.
And people still min-maxed. If you give people options, they're going to try to figure out the best ones. I'm sure there were people out there saying that everyone should take one or two levels of fighter before you dual-class into wizard, because 1st-level wizards are useless and have no hp.
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.
That's not new with 5e. You're ignoring everything in between, as well as the games in your golden age of balance. 3/3.5 were full of it; multiclassing into special classes improve your build was something the vast majority of players did. I'm sure 4e had plenty going on, though the relatively constrained build paths may have been one of the things that sent some players off to Pathfinder, where I'm sure they had more flexible options to try to get the most plusses.
Do these builds exist? Sure, probably.
But they're stunts. They're the D&D equivalent of the people who play Super Mario Brothers in five minutes. Some people just enjoy pushing systems to their limits. They require a lot of specific conditions, including a lot of levels.
Do people try to play them in normal games? I dunno. Maybe. Do they work before you get all the pieces in place? Again: I dunno. I also don't care.
D&D is a social game. There are extra-mechanical correctives available if somebody's actually ruining everyone else's fun. (As opposed to just being somewhat better at killing things, which happens all the time in the perfectly normal groups where nobody's trying hard to optimize. (Which is most of them.))
Does JustaFarmer's hyperbolic situation of inexperienced/weak DMs (read: everyone who disagrees with him) being browbeaten by evil munchkins into letting them break the game exist? Probably, but that dynamic's going to go sour even if they're playing Idealized Magic Super-Balanced D&D. (Which sounds like some weird RPG-based magical girl anime.) It's certainly not the norm, and the problem there is not the character creation mechanics.
The developers need to come up with a no-stacking rule. That would cut the Optimizer/min-maxers off at the kneecaps.
I don't even know what you mean by that, but I can assure you that it will not. If you change the rules, you change the optimizations. Meanwhile, you're probably making a bunch of other things that were just fine bad. D&D is not Magic the Gathering. There's no Pro tour requiring careful balancing of the metagame.
Also, since people are bringing up Strixhaven as an example of the severe power creep: those backgrounds are balanced. For a Strixhaven game, where everybody presumably has one of the bloody things. Are they balanced with respect to the rest of D&D? Who cares? They exist within their can, and anybody who wants to open the box and let them out into a different world where there's no Strixhaven can be assumed to know what they're doing. And if you're going to bring up Silvery Barbs, don't. It's one spell, and even if they screwed up there, it is not indicative of the rest of the book. The horse has also been beaten into a paste so fine that Raise Dead can no longer be used.
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.
Yup....and I know many DM's that have banned/neutered that Feat. Same for Lucky, Elven Advantage (XGTE), and others. At the same time, we all know that many of the Feats in the PHB are awful. Imagine, if you will, some exec at wotc, say in 2022, who actually played and loved the game, called in the senior designers and said" "Look, we know that there are some really broken Feats and spells, and on the flip side, a whole bunch that are useless. In the next edition, we are going to roll out rebalancing for ALL this. We are going to make Keen Mind as viable an option as Polearm Master, and that is going to mean not only improving Keen Mind, but NERFING Polearm Master. And if we can't fix either, we will remove both from the game."
Imagine a game where Tiny Hut loses the Ritual Tag, Guidance is now a 1st level spell, and Lucky is gone from the game, officially. Imagine a game where if you want to MC, not only do all subclasses not kick in until 3rd level, but you need a minimum score of 16 in the main attribute for the next class you take. And this one (oh boy, I can hear the screams now): Only certain races can MC into certain classes, and many of them are severely limited in caps on levels. And yes, Variant Human is bye bye. No more "I get a Feat at 1st level", for any PC.
no offense (and maybe this should be a direct message to better ensure that), but why does your group play 5e? what do you like about it that keeps you coming back?
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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!
LOL...I sit beside a guy, every week, that has such a build. I sit across the table in the same game from another. The DM shut down one of these guy's builds after one session.
...So because one guy at one of your tables doesn't know how to optimize in line with his group's power level, the rest of us don't get new character options? Respectfully, hell no.
I don't even know what you mean by that, but I can assure you that it will not. If you change the rules, you change the optimizations.
While this is true, the concept of 'bounded accuracy' would work better if you had bonus stacking rules like 3e and 4e, though likely with fewer bonus types.
Not that bounded accuracy was ever really a good idea, it's based on a false premise, but flattening the DC curve does have merits. To make it work, though, you have to actually flatten it.
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.
Yup....and I know many DM's that have banned/neutered that Feat. Same for Lucky, Elven Advantage (XGTE), and others. At the same time, we all know that many of the Feats in the PHB are awful. Imagine, if you will, some exec at wotc, say in 2022, who actually played and loved the game, called in the senior designers and said" "Look, we know that there are some really broken Feats and spells, and on the flip side, a whole bunch that are useless. In the next edition, we are going to roll out rebalancing for ALL this. We are going to make Keen Mind as viable an option as Polearm Master, and that is going to mean not only improving Keen Mind, but NERFING Polearm Master. And if we can't fix either, we will remove both from the game."
Imagine a game where Tiny Hut loses the Ritual Tag, Guidance is now a 1st level spell, and Lucky is gone from the game, officially. Imagine a game where if you want to MC, not only do all subclasses not kick in until 3rd level, but you need a minimum score of 16 in the main attribute for the next class you take. And this one (oh boy, I can hear the screams now): Only certain races can MC into certain classes, and many of them are severely limited in caps on levels. And yes, Variant Human is bye bye. No more "I get a Feat at 1st level", for any PC.
no offense (and maybe this should be a direct message to better ensure that), but why does your group play 5e? what do you like about it that keeps you coming back?
I know this question is not directed at me, but I would agree with Justafarmer that 5e is easily the game that is easiest to find players for because of its popularity and because consequently there are so many YT videos that teach you not only the base rules, but also make recommendations of all kinds. It's very hard to find that easy "buy-in" with most other RPGs unless your friend group already consists of people who have played RPGs for many years. Do I like the direction that WotC is going with 5E? Not really. But scheduling in-person games is already difficult enough with a system as popular as 5E. Try going with something obscure and it's very hard to find large enough group of people to game with. The fact that a lot of people on this forum take familiarity with more than one RPG rules system for granted...well, that just is not reflective of the larger population as whole, even among people who consider themselves "geeky" or "nerdy".
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.
I’m not sure why you think cutting me off at the kneecaps would help. I could still sit at a table.
Gating multiclassing behind races is a terrible idea and just creates a cookie cutter problem.
A hundred points of damage is also.. not that good. For a normal table yeah.. but if you built around damage (and it was allowed at your table obviously) that’s level 8-9 nova damage. Also, 20+ attacks is really not realistic. At all. Those kind of numbers REQUIRE - there’s not another way to get 20+ attacks - high level upcast scorching ray and action surge. That is the only way to get higher than 12 (which also is just three eldritch blasts at seventeenth level). It sounds like you just picked a number to scaremonger, to be honest.
And there is a no-stacking rule. Effects with the same name don’t stack.
no offense (and maybe this should be a direct message to better ensure that), but why does your group play 5e? what do you like about it that keeps you coming back?
I know this question is not directed at me, but I would agree with Justafarmer that 5e is easily the game that is easiest to find players for because of its popularity and because consequently there are so many YT videos that teach you not only the base rules, but also make recommendations of all kinds. It's very hard to find that easy "buy-in" with most other RPGs unless your friend group already consists of people who have played RPGs for many years. Do I like the direction that WotC is going with 5E? Not really. But scheduling in-person games is already difficult enough with a system as popular as 5E. Try going with something obscure and it's very hard to find large enough group of people to game with. The fact that a lot of people on this forum take familiarity with more than one RPG rules system for granted...well, that just is not reflective of the larger population as whole, even among people who consider themselves "geeky" or "nerdy".
If you already have a regular group, it's much easier to get them to try something new. Especially in the situation where they already agree vigorously with you about the fundamental flaws of 5e, which we are told JustaFarmer's circles do.
If you don't have a regular group, yes, it's much harder, especially if you're not a GM. But it's still possible, especially now, in the age of online play; it just requires way more work.
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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.
2e and before had limits on multiclassing, yes. They were dumb, silly, inconsistent, limits, but they were limits. It had plenty of other limits as well, many of which hinged on gating the good stuff by your random stat rolls. And classes also had less interesting stuff to try to synergize with.
And people still min-maxed. If you give people options, they're going to try to figure out the best ones. I'm sure there were people out there saying that everyone should take one or two levels of fighter before you dual-class into wizard, because 1st-level wizards are useless and have no hp.
That's not new with 5e. You're ignoring everything in between, as well as the games in your golden age of balance. 3/3.5 were full of it; multiclassing into special classes improve your build was something the vast majority of players did. I'm sure 4e had plenty going on, though the relatively constrained build paths may have been one of the things that sent some players off to Pathfinder, where I'm sure they had more flexible options to try to get the most plusses.
Do these builds exist? Sure, probably.
But they're stunts. They're the D&D equivalent of the people who play Super Mario Brothers in five minutes. Some people just enjoy pushing systems to their limits. They require a lot of specific conditions, including a lot of levels.
Do people try to play them in normal games? I dunno. Maybe. Do they work before you get all the pieces in place? Again: I dunno. I also don't care.
D&D is a social game. There are extra-mechanical correctives available if somebody's actually ruining everyone else's fun. (As opposed to just being somewhat better at killing things, which happens all the time in the perfectly normal groups where nobody's trying hard to optimize. (Which is most of them.))
Does JustaFarmer's hyperbolic situation of inexperienced/weak DMs (read: everyone who disagrees with him) being browbeaten by evil munchkins into letting them break the game exist? Probably, but that dynamic's going to go sour even if they're playing Idealized Magic Super-Balanced D&D. (Which sounds like some weird RPG-based magical girl anime.) It's certainly not the norm, and the problem there is not the character creation mechanics.
I don't even know what you mean by that, but I can assure you that it will not. If you change the rules, you change the optimizations. Meanwhile, you're probably making a bunch of other things that were just fine bad. D&D is not Magic the Gathering. There's no Pro tour requiring careful balancing of the metagame.
Also, since people are bringing up Strixhaven as an example of the severe power creep: those backgrounds are balanced. For a Strixhaven game, where everybody presumably has one of the bloody things. Are they balanced with respect to the rest of D&D? Who cares? They exist within their can, and anybody who wants to open the box and let them out into a different world where there's no Strixhaven can be assumed to know what they're doing. And if you're going to bring up Silvery Barbs, don't. It's one spell, and even if they screwed up there, it is not indicative of the rest of the book. The horse has also been beaten into a paste so fine that Raise Dead can no longer be used.
no offense (and maybe this should be a direct message to better ensure that), but why does your group play 5e? what do you like about it that keeps you coming back?
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!
...So because one guy at one of your tables doesn't know how to optimize in line with his group's power level, the rest of us don't get new character options? Respectfully, hell no.
While this is true, the concept of 'bounded accuracy' would work better if you had bonus stacking rules like 3e and 4e, though likely with fewer bonus types.
Not that bounded accuracy was ever really a good idea, it's based on a false premise, but flattening the DC curve does have merits. To make it work, though, you have to actually flatten it.
I know this question is not directed at me, but I would agree with Justafarmer that 5e is easily the game that is easiest to find players for because of its popularity and because consequently there are so many YT videos that teach you not only the base rules, but also make recommendations of all kinds. It's very hard to find that easy "buy-in" with most other RPGs unless your friend group already consists of people who have played RPGs for many years. Do I like the direction that WotC is going with 5E? Not really. But scheduling in-person games is already difficult enough with a system as popular as 5E. Try going with something obscure and it's very hard to find large enough group of people to game with. The fact that a lot of people on this forum take familiarity with more than one RPG rules system for granted...well, that just is not reflective of the larger population as whole, even among people who consider themselves "geeky" or "nerdy".
I’m not sure why you think cutting me off at the kneecaps would help. I could still sit at a table.
Gating multiclassing behind races is a terrible idea and just creates a cookie cutter problem.
A hundred points of damage is also.. not that good. For a normal table yeah.. but if you built around damage (and it was allowed at your table obviously) that’s level 8-9 nova damage. Also, 20+ attacks is really not realistic. At all. Those kind of numbers REQUIRE - there’s not another way to get 20+ attacks - high level upcast scorching ray and action surge. That is the only way to get higher than 12 (which also is just three eldritch blasts at seventeenth level). It sounds like you just picked a number to scaremonger, to be honest.
And there is a no-stacking rule. Effects with the same name don’t stack.
I can’t remember what’s supposed to go here.
If you already have a regular group, it's much easier to get them to try something new. Especially in the situation where they already agree vigorously with you about the fundamental flaws of 5e, which we are told JustaFarmer's circles do.
If you don't have a regular group, yes, it's much harder, especially if you're not a GM. But it's still possible, especially now, in the age of online play; it just requires way more work.