Do you have some specific examples you'd can lay out? I've yet to find one that's unclear in application, and you can't tell me it's more disruptive to the flow of the game than a) remembering to roll for and b) actually rolling the Wild Magic table and playing out the effects.
Like I said: I've only looked at them. But I've seen discussions - here, on the forum - about how nick and vex and so on work in practical terms. And ... I have to say, if the debate exists at all, at this point, then the rules are not clear enough.
I mean .... ok. Are you happy with the weapon-juggling aspects of these rules?
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Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
Do you have some specific examples you'd can lay out? I've yet to find one that's unclear in application, and you can't tell me it's more disruptive to the flow of the game than a) remembering to roll for and b) actually rolling the Wild Magic table and playing out the effects.
Like I said: I've only looked at them. But I've seen discussions - here, on the forum - about how nick and vex and so on work in practical terms. And ... I have to say, if the debate exists at all, at this point, then the rules are not clear enough.
I mean .... ok. Are you happy with the weapon-juggling aspects of these rules?
My experience has been that they work fine and are more than sufficiently clear, but people forget that they have them, similar to what happens with weapon properties.
I do agree that it's one extra thing to track, for example, with things like SAP you have to remember which creature was Sapped and whether they had already acted or not if not, if they act they have a disadvantage on the attack.
That kind of stuff is a bit cumbersome but it's not the result of a lack of clarity and more or less it works like a combat maneuver of the Battle Master like Goading Attack for example... It has a similar thing where you have to remember who was goaded and that on the monster's next attack if they don't attack the character that goaded them they get a disadvantage. Is that cumbersome? Are spells that do similar things?
I mean.. Yeah its a thing, but is it more or less cumbersome than any other class ability? I think its neither here nor there, it's just more rules certainly and makes the game busier and I guess arguably slower.
It would have been better if the weapon masteries and really all class abilities had instant effects, tracking stuff and effects is always a pain. I guess the complaint with weapon masteries is that its "more stuff".
But arguing that it's badly designed? Are combat maneuvers also badly designed? I don't agree with that. I think the design is accordance with how the rest of the game works, this is just some additional/extra stuff and I suppose you could argue that its too much stuff.
I mean .... ok. Are you happy with the weapon-juggling aspects of these rules?
1) that isn't from weapon masteries, but from the new weapon interaction rules.
2) people always find some new rules lawyer theory to argue about.
3) I don't think it's nearly as bad as argued on the internet. I think people are misreading the Dual Wielder feat, for example. (But still not a problem with weapon masteries.)
1) that isn't from weapon masteries, but from the new weapon interaction rules.
2) people always find some new rules lawyer theory to argue about.
3) I don't think it's nearly as bad as argued on the internet. I think people are misreading the Dual Wielder feat, for example. (But still not a problem with weapon masteries.)
1) Is it though? If you want to combo Vex and Sap or Nick or whatever, is that totally unrelated?
2) That sounds defeatist. I think if the rules were better written, there wouldn't be so many poorly written rules to argue over.
3) So the fact that you *think* people are misreading the rules are a sign that they're clear and concise? The fact that people argue over it is a sign that everything is fine?
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Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
1) that isn't from weapon masteries, but from the new weapon interaction rules.
2) people always find some new rules lawyer theory to argue about.
3) I don't think it's nearly as bad as argued on the internet. I think people are misreading the Dual Wielder feat, for example. (But still not a problem with weapon masteries.)
1) Is it though? If you want to combo Vex and Sap or Nick or whatever, is that totally unrelated?
2) That sounds defeatist. I think if the rules were better written, there wouldn't be so many poorly written rules to argue over.
3) So the fact that you *think* people are misreading the rules are a sign that they're clear and concise? The fact that people argue over it is a sign that everything is fine?
I'm saying that none of your point actually works as a criticism of weapon masteries. It's a critism, sure, but of D&D's ruleswriting philosophy as a whole. And I think it is fair to lay much of that criticism on people being malicious in their rules-lawyering, trying to "dunk" on the writers or whatever (even if there is also fair criticism of the writing).
The problems with juggling have long existed, for example --- people wanting to swap weapons and shields and magic foci and material components... And the new rules are way friendlier to weapon juggling, and making people better at weapon tricks (the masteries) will exacerbate that. But the actual weapon tricks are fine, and probably a good thing, comparitively.
There aren’t clearly superior options. There are situationally superior options, which is what makes it interesting.
Sap is easily the worst Mastery. Imposing disadvantage can be done more easily and effectively by knocking enemies prone, and it's useless against anything that doesn't rely primarily on one or two attack rolls per turn.
Slow is never a better option than Push, since the latter can apply multiple times and has far more tactical utility.
Knocking enemies prone is a strong tactic, so you think that would make Topple strong. In fact, Topple is nearly worthless because pushing an enemy into another enemy's space knocks them both prone with no saving throw.
Any character who gets every-attack damage buffs wants to use a shortsword and a scimitar for the Vex/Nick combo. For any melee Rogue, there is literally no reason whatsoever to use any other weapon except that combo. Even without the Dual Wielder feat, there's no reason to use anything except that combo.
Every Fighter and Barbarian wants to juggle between a Cleave heavy weapon and either a Graze weapon or a Push weapon. And if you have Mage Slayer, you want to make every attack with a Graze weapon, to force concentration saves at disadvantage on every attack even when you miss.
Every class has a "default" option for Weapon Mastery that's more effective than anything else they can do. Trying to build a character to make use of more than one or two properties either means messing up your damage on interior magic weapons or using all of your attunement slots.
You can stand up from prone, you can’t do anything about being sapped.
If someone is trying to run away, I’d much rather slow them down than push them further away.
Why do you assume there’s always going to be another adjacent enemy to push someone into?
Please define an “every attack damage buff” or give an example, I’m not sure what you mean there.
The fact that you note multiple masteries a fighter and barbarian would want to switch between proves the point that there is not one superior options. Also, dex fighters are a thing; they won’t be messing with those.
I feel like I’ve asked this before, but have used them? Because in my groups we’ve been using them since early September. It’s let the martial characters have an interesting choice to make. Not sure why you’re so opposed to that.
And saying there’s only one way people will make characters after they introduce new feature X, always reminds me of when Tasha’s came out, and now every wizard was going to be a mountain dwarf for a pair of +2’s in ability scores and free medium armor. And yet, our dwarf wizard overlords never appeared.
There's a difference between sensible weapon switching, and the weapon juggling 2024 5e encourages.
Weapon switching is having different weapons for different circumstances on different turns. Weapon juggling is going through four weapons in one turn because doing so gets you two extra attacks over anyone who doesn't do the same.
It doesn't so much "encourage" it as "allow" it.
And yes, if you swap weapons to the maximum allowed after investing in feats and fighting styles, you can reliably do a little more damage. It's just not as big a deal as the optimizers or the opponents make it out to be.
There's a difference between sensible weapon switching, and the weapon juggling 2024 5e encourages.
Weapon switching is having different weapons for different circumstances on different turns. Weapon juggling is going through four weapons in one turn because doing so gets you two extra attacks over anyone who doesn't do the same.
It doesn't so much "encourage" it as "allow" it.
And yes, if you swap weapons to the maximum allowed after investing in feats and fighting styles, you can reliably do a little more damage. It's just not as big a deal as the optimizers or the opponents make it out to be.
Not only is it not that big of a deal, given the relatively small size of the effects, it is a problem that tends to sort itself out. The DM controls what loot gets dropped and attunement further limits what folks can effectively use at any given time. Players learn real quick that switching to a basic +1 weapon for a minor boon is generally worse than just sticking with one’s primary weapon.
One of several reason I believe a lot of the negative reception comes almost exclusively from theory-crafters, not folks who have actually DMed with the Mastery system.
Bluntly, theorycrafters are victims of their own success.
Most of the complaints I see here and on a certain other site are based in the idea of not being able to do certain things that were, ultimately, predicated on the combination of optimization (making the best character possible) and exploitation (loopholes, exploits, and such, like the one level dip -- often "legal" in a rules sense).
They put those everywhere. They built those into the homebrew system here. People played with those. it is (as it has always been) a sort of cottage industry unto itself.
The folks who create this game are all DMs. Did people really think that they weren't going to look at those, or weren't ever going to have to deal with those, and that they wouldn't have an impact on doing so?
In six months, the same theory crafters will be promoting the most shocking builds once again (probably 3 -- they work fast) that exploit the weapons mastery rules and all the rest. IF it was a job, I would call it "security", because now they have a whole new system to theorycraft for.
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Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
Bluntly, theorycrafters are victims of their own success.
Most of the complaints I see here and on a certain other site are based in the idea of not being able to do certain things that were, ultimately, predicated on the combination of optimization (making the best character possible) and exploitation (loopholes, exploits, and such, like the one level dip -- often "legal" in a rules sense).
They put those everywhere. They built those into the homebrew system here. People played with those. it is (as it has always been) a sort of cottage industry unto itself.
The folks who create this game are all DMs. Did people really think that they weren't going to look at those, or weren't ever going to have to deal with those, and that they wouldn't have an impact on doing so?
In six months, the same theory crafters will be promoting the most shocking builds once again (probably 3 -- they work fast) that exploit the weapons mastery rules and all the rest. IF it was a job, I would call it "security", because now they have a whole new system to theorycraft for.
I took a game design course in the early 00's at the Art Institute in California which was then taught by Alan Emrich. The board gamers on the forum might know him for being a founder of Victory Point Games and the designer of Master of Orion 3... but in any case, to the point. He once said something that has always stuck with me.
"Gamers will stop playing your game when they run out of things to complain about".
The point he was making is that complaining is a form of discussion and you're only going to bother to have it about something you enjoy. In short, the only people who come to this forum are people who love D&D and want to talk about it. It takes effort, time and energy to sit down, think about and write about a game.
So to me, people trying to figure out how to break the game, people complaining about its balance, people fighting about what it should or could be...all of that theorycrafting is just fans engaging with your game. When people stop talking about it, that's when you know Wizards of the Coast screwed up.
Any character who gets every-attack damage buffs wants to use a shortsword and a scimitar for the Vex/Nick combo. For any melee Rogue, there is literally no reason whatsoever to use any other weapon except that combo. Even without the Dual Wielder feat, there's no reason to use anything except that combo.
Ah yes rogues, a class notorious for not wanting to attack from range, ever, and always wanting to be in the middle of melee. Certainly they don't have primary class features that encourage attacking from range...
Rogues start with two weapon masteries, and by level 20, they have... two weapon masteries. If you go shortsword/scimitar, you are locking yourself out of mastery bonuses on any ranged attack. Shortsword/dagger would at least give you some flexibility to throw the daggers once in a while
On the rogue I just started playing though, I went rapier/light crossbow, because locking myself into TWF all the time frankly seemed like a trap
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Any character who gets every-attack damage buffs wants to use a shortsword and a scimitar for the Vex/Nick combo. For any melee Rogue, there is literally no reason whatsoever to use any other weapon except that combo. Even without the Dual Wielder feat, there's no reason to use anything except that combo.
Ah yes rogues, a class notorious for not wanting to attack from range, ever, and always wanting to be in the middle of melee. Certainly they don't have primary class features that encourage attacking from range...
Rogues start with two weapon masteries, and by level 20, they have... two weapon masteries. If you go shortsword/scimitar, you are locking yourself out of mastery bonuses on any ranged attack. Shortsword/dagger would at least give you some flexibility to throw the daggers once in a while
On the rogue I just started playing though, I went rapier/light crossbow, because locking myself into TWF all the time frankly seemed like a trap
in my dungeon crawl, right now, I have an Arcane Trickster who uses Daggers and Hand Axes.
To annoyingly useful effect. Annoyingly.
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Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
I took a game design course in the early 00's at the Art Institute in California which was then taught by Alan Emrich. The board gamers on the forum might know him for being a founder of Victory Point Games and the designer of Master of Orion 3... but in any case, to the point. He once said something that has always stuck with me.
"Gamers will stop playing your game when they run out of things to complain about".
Finally, someone has explained the ranger in a way that makes sense. It’s the sacrificial lamb to keep us annoyed. Jeremy Crawford is a man of deep cunning, indeed.
Weapon masteries are bad in virtually all ways. Not only were there better systems used before like in 4e, but it convolutes the game and also trivializes other things. Its a worse version of a bad system. For example, in 4e there were almost no carbon copies of weapons that do same thing, but in this system there are. A flail is a d8 damage sap weapon. A longsword is a d8 damage sap weapon. A Morningstar is a d8 damage sap weapon. A war pick is a d8 damage sap weapon. That is four weapons that are carbon copies of one another. This new system lacks any creativity or flavor.
The weapon masteries themselves are not balanced and some just dont need to be there. Nick totally convolutes dual wielding and its something that they easily just add to the dual wielding mechanic in general. Also, why would a sickle be able to attack more times than a small hammer or something lol. If you wanna just throw dice at players to appease them, just let all light weapons attack more or something. They also didnt plan for any type of overbalancing with this, rogues dont get their primary damage from weapon damage, it comes from weapon procs like booming blade, poisons, sneak attack, and crits. A dagger with weapon poison is just adding a glaive attack to every rogue/fighters turn lol, which is wild because theres absolutely nothing wrong with rogues or fighters currently. With the exception that non-battle master fighters are kind of boring.
Another misbalance example for weapon masteries are weapons that give advantage or prone knockdowns. If you have advantage on an attack, youre more likely to hit and get advantage again. So youre pretty much just giving perma advantage to rogues lol. Again, something that they dont need. It also trivializes the idea of advantage. Advantage is so incredibly game changing and its normally supposed to be challenging to setup advantage. Arcane tricksters take familiars specifically to get advantage, but this comes at a cost and its a fragile technique. True Strike is COMPLETELY useless now lol. It was already bad, now its totally useless because advantage/disadvantage is super trivialized now. Knockdown and slowing mechanics are super busted and nobody wants to roll that many extra dice every turn. And players a not going to be having a good time when a handful of low level guards perma-prone a player. You always have to remember that these mechanics are so universal now, you have to assume that ALL ENEMIES have access to these mechanics.
Just think of your already boring Dwarf fighter. Youre already 25 movement, but then one archer slows you down to 15 in just one shot, and another has a heavy crossbow and pushes you back another 10 feet. You are now only able to make a 5 foot progression every turn lol. Looks like its time to reroll. Ope, and the enemy that just closed in on you topples you meaning youll waste half your movement getting up. Unless every fight has a totally diverse set of enemies and each player is 1v1ing an enemy, then the game becomes a quagmire. If you have three guys with push or topple, at least 2 of your players are having a horrible time. AND on top of that, this doesnt make the player have more options anyway, it just makes every decision more convoluted or risky. "If I move that way, I get toppled. If I move that other way, I get slowed, if I move that way, I get opportunity attacked, if I move towards the last option, I cant help my team as much." This ALSO doesn't solve that balance problems between casters and martial classes. If you want to balance casters and martial classes, just make casters do way less damage. Casters should be way more utility based than they are now. Or you could give martial characters more natural options to tank and live longer.
And finally, this all just adds rolls to the table. As dnd progresses and becomes more convoluted, every turn has more and more rolls or things to keep track of. Now everyone on the field will either be toppled, rolling for some type of con save, or slowed. This was already kind of annoying to keep track of with spellcasters, but now all melee characters will universally be applying these effects lol. My notepad is gonna look like absolute trash by the middle of a fight. Weapon masteries arent a bad idea, but there are way better ways to do this stuff. You could just do something were all piercing weapons crit on 19-20, all slashing weapons are more accurate because youre swinging in a broad area, and all blunt weapons deal a small amount of damage upon missing. This is way more simple, it still opens up new build options, and its not any less boring than the current 5e system. Dnd is a tabletop game guys, its supposed to be super simple and there has to be some standard on time management. Getting groups together for long sessions is already a huge task and Im really not trying to roll an extra constitution dice every round just because someone is using a maul and not a sword. Like has anyone considered how bad this is gonna work with concentration? This whole system stinks and smells like poor game design
Any mechanic that incentivizes item juggling is bad and is always bad. The clear evidence of this is that any game thats playable on screen, like a non-tabletop game, will always have severe restrictions on weapon juggling. Such as in Baldurs Gate how it pretty much wastes your turn doing so. And Knights of the Old Republic. This is also why these games have inventory systems that only allow you to carry X things at a time, such as a left/right hand slots and maybe a switch slot that allows you to use a ranged weapon, or two ranged weapon in the case that a ranged weapon is one handed. The only reason why item juggling exists, frankly in my opinion, is because the dnd community has a ton of theater kids that end up reading the rules in such a way to where it allows them to make an anime character that has no logical sense to it.
A good example of this whole idea relating to the new Masteries, is slow. From what Ive seen so far, it doesnt seem like this effect has a limit. So any combat encounter with 3 enemies that slow, and any player will permanently have their movement reduced to 0. This means any melee character thats caught alone against 2 or more rangers, will always die. These people never think of balance or logic or anything and they just throw bones to the audience because most of dnds fanbase wants to play anime characters that can do everything. If WotC just made it so every PC could tank, heal, deal damage, fly, and slow the enemy, I genuinely think most DnD fans would be ok with that.
Lol sorry bro my table isnt trying to roll a new Con save every round and keep track of how much movement every character has after a few slows take effect on top of any spells that already exist. Its not a rules lawyer theory to argue about, its a waste of time. A vast majority of the new rules are convoluted and they literally take longer to achieve. These mechanics were explicitly deleted after 4e specifically for this reason. Dnd is a board game lol and it doesnt have to be nearly this convoluted, time management is trash and this stuff exacerbates that. These mechanics work in Baldurs Gate because its an electronic game that immediately calculates your effects, and many consider the game to already be slow paced. Dnd would arguably be better if you actually REMOVED prone and flying mechanics lol. Literally.
And yes, the new masteries absolutely have to do with the Dual Wielder feat explicitly and the weapon masteries are what makes this feat potentially broken. It literally just doubles everything lol. This is not theory lawyering, this is just best-option in almost any video game that could exist. Dual Wielder feat allows a rapiers to get double the chance for advantage, warhammer users can push someone 20 feet per round, your chance to topple someone with a battleaxe is double, you can use dual wielder feat to get two topples a round with quarterstaffs and its even more ridiculous if you use Polearm master which allows for a potential 3 topples a round with a quarterstaff as long as theres an enemy that enters your attack range. If you have DW and Polearm Master, you can dual wield a quarterstaff and a warhammer allowing you to topple an enemy, if that fails you push them with bonus action warhammer, and then you topple attempt again when the enemy re-enters your attack range. Its not "theory lawyering," its an obvious quagmire that arises in the game if anyone strategizes at all. And again, this goes back to the first point. Great, a quarterstaff user is toppling people at least twice if not 3 times a round which is 3 more dice rolls than we need.
Erm, prone does not apply disadvantage to the prone creature unless the prone creature is attacking which doesnt ever happen and Im not even sure if it CAN happen. The way prone works is that the attacker gets advantage but ONLY if the attacker is within melee range of the prone enemy. Prone enemies actually apply disadvantage to all long-distance attackers because its GOOD to be prone lol. Laying down in DnD makes attackers miss you more because youre prone and harder to hit. Being knocked prone and purposefully choosing to be prone are the same thing in dnd. The rules explicitly state this.
So no, sap is still good and knocking enemies prone is counter-intuitive in this situation. If you dual wield a Longsword and rapier you can impose disadvantage to the enemies attacks against you and you get advantage when attacking the enemy. Meaning youll expectedly win every fight 1v1 melee. If you knock the enemy prone, theyll just get up on their turn and attack you but they wont have disadvantage because you didnt sap them, and if you topple them for advantage it still doesnt matter because the rapier gets advantage with hex anyway. Long story short, Sap gives enemies disadvantage, making the enemy prone does not give them disadvantage.
Whats even worse is when you realize no description of Slow has a cap on it lol. So three rangers can bring any characters movement to 0, and 2 rangers can bring a lot of races movement down to 5... Im pretty sure rules as written says "when dealing damage to the enemy with your weapon," so technically a lvl 5 ranger can put a lot of races down to 5 movement speed in just one turn because of Extra Attack. Pretty nutty lol. Almost every fight will involve at least one character/player being in a quagmire and possibly even being kept from the fight entirely. And not because of a spell or something that requires spell slots and saving throws, nope, but just because someone shot you with a bow. This new system is objectively bad in almost every single possible sense
I really recommend that you actually read the books before commenting. True Strike doesn't do what you think it does anymore, no species has 25' speed anymore, Slow doesn't stack, so 3 rangers would still only reduce the speed of a character by 10'. I could keep going, but that's enough to prove my point.
Also, enemies don't get weapon masteries. Read the Monster Manual. If the DM wants to give NPCs weapon masteries and PC stats in general, they're free to do so, but that's not how the game was designed.
Lol Im sorry bro none of that makes it any better and the rules youve stated are both super new and it just creates more problems. You didnt solve anything. If slow doesnt stack, then its suboptimal for two people to use bows. Thats BAD. That means the system is bad. And slow does stack with other speed debuffs anyway, like frost spells. Furthermore, the speed change to races is bad anyway and that doesnt even make sense and thats historically anti-DnD. Youd totally expect some races to have different speeds. Regardless, reducing someones speed by 10 means you can permakite them anyway so it still doesnt matter. Your point wasnt really made and you didnt keep going because you cant and you only said "I could keep going" to sound sensational. Another problem is this essentially prohibits item creativity, DMs and franchise developers are way less incentivized to make weapons that slow an enemy due to this. Any poison that slows, frost arrow, or other cool things are almost explicitly useless to create now or else itl be way too OP.
Why would masteries only be PCs? Thats not explicitly stated anywhere and a lot of people make NPCs out of regular character sheets. Why would a Monk NPC with a quarterstaff NOT have quarterstaff mastery. Doesnt make sense. And if you run campaigns with no enemy masteries, then Im sorry but your game is dead. Thats a highly overtuned group of PC's for no reason other than to appease players who want their character to be an anime character. Most people in the forums already said that they will be incorporating Weapon Masteries onto at least some NPCs and characters.
Although youre right about my speed reduction being wrong, thats all you responded about. You didnt mention anything I said about any other mastery doubling or stacking. Like how Push can be used twice, or how vex gives your advantage change double if youre dual wielding, or how daggers can attack 3 times which is problematic because daggers tend to stack on-hit effects. Adding a dagger attack isnt just adding a d4, its usually adding multiple other effects. And yes, because of Con saves, you will still be rolling more often at table which bogs the game down for no reason. Like what happens if you concentrating? Getting hit by a Topple weapon causes two Con saves lol... One for the concentration and one for the Topple. Then youd have to create some weird rule where topple has to calculate first otherwise you can win a concentration save and still lose concentration because you got hit prone from the topple con save LOL like bro thats a reaallllyyy bad design. Its objectively a bad game design. Out of the three campaigns Ive played, and over like 12 people, we tried to use them and fully gave up after like six disasters. The system is so convoluted, its only a matter of time before someone forgets a con save or a slow calculation and then a player realizes four turns later and everyones scrambling around to ret-con the situation. Its also incredibly unattractive to new players and especially new DMs. Even if you dont have NPCs do masteries, its still an absolute nightmare for DMs lol, I never want to be in charge of keeping track of this ever again. I shouldnt have to be an accountant to play a board game.
Like I said: I've only looked at them. But I've seen discussions - here, on the forum - about how nick and vex and so on work in practical terms. And ... I have to say, if the debate exists at all, at this point, then the rules are not clear enough.
I mean .... ok. Are you happy with the weapon-juggling aspects of these rules?
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
My experience has been that they work fine and are more than sufficiently clear, but people forget that they have them, similar to what happens with weapon properties.
I do agree that it's one extra thing to track, for example, with things like SAP you have to remember which creature was Sapped and whether they had already acted or not if not, if they act they have a disadvantage on the attack.
That kind of stuff is a bit cumbersome but it's not the result of a lack of clarity and more or less it works like a combat maneuver of the Battle Master like Goading Attack for example... It has a similar thing where you have to remember who was goaded and that on the monster's next attack if they don't attack the character that goaded them they get a disadvantage. Is that cumbersome? Are spells that do similar things?
I mean.. Yeah its a thing, but is it more or less cumbersome than any other class ability? I think its neither here nor there, it's just more rules certainly and makes the game busier and I guess arguably slower.
It would have been better if the weapon masteries and really all class abilities had instant effects, tracking stuff and effects is always a pain. I guess the complaint with weapon masteries is that its "more stuff".
But arguing that it's badly designed? Are combat maneuvers also badly designed? I don't agree with that. I think the design is accordance with how the rest of the game works, this is just some additional/extra stuff and I suppose you could argue that its too much stuff.
1) that isn't from weapon masteries, but from the new weapon interaction rules.
2) people always find some new rules lawyer theory to argue about.
3) I don't think it's nearly as bad as argued on the internet. I think people are misreading the Dual Wielder feat, for example. (But still not a problem with weapon masteries.)
1) Is it though? If you want to combo Vex and Sap or Nick or whatever, is that totally unrelated?
2) That sounds defeatist. I think if the rules were better written, there wouldn't be so many poorly written rules to argue over.
3) So the fact that you *think* people are misreading the rules are a sign that they're clear and concise? The fact that people argue over it is a sign that everything is fine?
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
I'm saying that none of your point actually works as a criticism of weapon masteries. It's a critism, sure, but of D&D's ruleswriting philosophy as a whole. And I think it is fair to lay much of that criticism on people being malicious in their rules-lawyering, trying to "dunk" on the writers or whatever (even if there is also fair criticism of the writing).
The problems with juggling have long existed, for example --- people wanting to swap weapons and shields and magic foci and material components... And the new rules are way friendlier to weapon juggling, and making people better at weapon tricks (the masteries) will exacerbate that. But the actual weapon tricks are fine, and probably a good thing, comparitively.
You can stand up from prone, you can’t do anything about being sapped.
If someone is trying to run away, I’d much rather slow them down than push them further away.
Why do you assume there’s always going to be another adjacent enemy to push someone into?
Please define an “every attack damage buff” or give an example, I’m not sure what you mean there.
The fact that you note multiple masteries a fighter and barbarian would want to switch between proves the point that there is not one superior options. Also, dex fighters are a thing; they won’t be messing with those.
I feel like I’ve asked this before, but have used them? Because in my groups we’ve been using them since early September. It’s let the martial characters have an interesting choice to make. Not sure why you’re so opposed to that.
And saying there’s only one way people will make characters after they introduce new feature X, always reminds me of when Tasha’s came out, and now every wizard was going to be a mountain dwarf for a pair of +2’s in ability scores and free medium armor. And yet, our dwarf wizard overlords never appeared.
It doesn't so much "encourage" it as "allow" it.
And yes, if you swap weapons to the maximum allowed after investing in feats and fighting styles, you can reliably do a little more damage. It's just not as big a deal as the optimizers or the opponents make it out to be.
Not only is it not that big of a deal, given the relatively small size of the effects, it is a problem that tends to sort itself out. The DM controls what loot gets dropped and attunement further limits what folks can effectively use at any given time. Players learn real quick that switching to a basic +1 weapon for a minor boon is generally worse than just sticking with one’s primary weapon.
One of several reason I believe a lot of the negative reception comes almost exclusively from theory-crafters, not folks who have actually DMed with the Mastery system.
Bluntly, theorycrafters are victims of their own success.
Most of the complaints I see here and on a certain other site are based in the idea of not being able to do certain things that were, ultimately, predicated on the combination of optimization (making the best character possible) and exploitation (loopholes, exploits, and such, like the one level dip -- often "legal" in a rules sense).
They put those everywhere. They built those into the homebrew system here. People played with those. it is (as it has always been) a sort of cottage industry unto itself.
The folks who create this game are all DMs. Did people really think that they weren't going to look at those, or weren't ever going to have to deal with those, and that they wouldn't have an impact on doing so?
In six months, the same theory crafters will be promoting the most shocking builds once again (probably 3 -- they work fast) that exploit the weapons mastery rules and all the rest. IF it was a job, I would call it "security", because now they have a whole new system to theorycraft for.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
I took a game design course in the early 00's at the Art Institute in California which was then taught by Alan Emrich. The board gamers on the forum might know him for being a founder of Victory Point Games and the designer of Master of Orion 3... but in any case, to the point. He once said something that has always stuck with me.
"Gamers will stop playing your game when they run out of things to complain about".
The point he was making is that complaining is a form of discussion and you're only going to bother to have it about something you enjoy. In short, the only people who come to this forum are people who love D&D and want to talk about it. It takes effort, time and energy to sit down, think about and write about a game.
So to me, people trying to figure out how to break the game, people complaining about its balance, people fighting about what it should or could be...all of that theorycrafting is just fans engaging with your game. When people stop talking about it, that's when you know Wizards of the Coast screwed up.
Ah yes rogues, a class notorious for not wanting to attack from range, ever, and always wanting to be in the middle of melee. Certainly they don't have primary class features that encourage attacking from range...
Rogues start with two weapon masteries, and by level 20, they have... two weapon masteries. If you go shortsword/scimitar, you are locking yourself out of mastery bonuses on any ranged attack. Shortsword/dagger would at least give you some flexibility to throw the daggers once in a while
On the rogue I just started playing though, I went rapier/light crossbow, because locking myself into TWF all the time frankly seemed like a trap
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
in my dungeon crawl, right now, I have an Arcane Trickster who uses Daggers and Hand Axes.
To annoyingly useful effect. Annoyingly.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
Finally, someone has explained the ranger in a way that makes sense. It’s the sacrificial lamb to keep us annoyed. Jeremy Crawford is a man of deep cunning, indeed.
Weapon masteries are bad in virtually all ways. Not only were there better systems used before like in 4e, but it convolutes the game and also trivializes other things. Its a worse version of a bad system. For example, in 4e there were almost no carbon copies of weapons that do same thing, but in this system there are. A flail is a d8 damage sap weapon. A longsword is a d8 damage sap weapon. A Morningstar is a d8 damage sap weapon. A war pick is a d8 damage sap weapon. That is four weapons that are carbon copies of one another. This new system lacks any creativity or flavor.
The weapon masteries themselves are not balanced and some just dont need to be there. Nick totally convolutes dual wielding and its something that they easily just add to the dual wielding mechanic in general. Also, why would a sickle be able to attack more times than a small hammer or something lol. If you wanna just throw dice at players to appease them, just let all light weapons attack more or something. They also didnt plan for any type of overbalancing with this, rogues dont get their primary damage from weapon damage, it comes from weapon procs like booming blade, poisons, sneak attack, and crits. A dagger with weapon poison is just adding a glaive attack to every rogue/fighters turn lol, which is wild because theres absolutely nothing wrong with rogues or fighters currently. With the exception that non-battle master fighters are kind of boring.
Another misbalance example for weapon masteries are weapons that give advantage or prone knockdowns. If you have advantage on an attack, youre more likely to hit and get advantage again. So youre pretty much just giving perma advantage to rogues lol. Again, something that they dont need. It also trivializes the idea of advantage. Advantage is so incredibly game changing and its normally supposed to be challenging to setup advantage. Arcane tricksters take familiars specifically to get advantage, but this comes at a cost and its a fragile technique. True Strike is COMPLETELY useless now lol. It was already bad, now its totally useless because advantage/disadvantage is super trivialized now. Knockdown and slowing mechanics are super busted and nobody wants to roll that many extra dice every turn. And players a not going to be having a good time when a handful of low level guards perma-prone a player. You always have to remember that these mechanics are so universal now, you have to assume that ALL ENEMIES have access to these mechanics.
Just think of your already boring Dwarf fighter. Youre already 25 movement, but then one archer slows you down to 15 in just one shot, and another has a heavy crossbow and pushes you back another 10 feet. You are now only able to make a 5 foot progression every turn lol. Looks like its time to reroll. Ope, and the enemy that just closed in on you topples you meaning youll waste half your movement getting up. Unless every fight has a totally diverse set of enemies and each player is 1v1ing an enemy, then the game becomes a quagmire. If you have three guys with push or topple, at least 2 of your players are having a horrible time. AND on top of that, this doesnt make the player have more options anyway, it just makes every decision more convoluted or risky. "If I move that way, I get toppled. If I move that other way, I get slowed, if I move that way, I get opportunity attacked, if I move towards the last option, I cant help my team as much." This ALSO doesn't solve that balance problems between casters and martial classes. If you want to balance casters and martial classes, just make casters do way less damage. Casters should be way more utility based than they are now. Or you could give martial characters more natural options to tank and live longer.
And finally, this all just adds rolls to the table. As dnd progresses and becomes more convoluted, every turn has more and more rolls or things to keep track of. Now everyone on the field will either be toppled, rolling for some type of con save, or slowed. This was already kind of annoying to keep track of with spellcasters, but now all melee characters will universally be applying these effects lol. My notepad is gonna look like absolute trash by the middle of a fight. Weapon masteries arent a bad idea, but there are way better ways to do this stuff. You could just do something were all piercing weapons crit on 19-20, all slashing weapons are more accurate because youre swinging in a broad area, and all blunt weapons deal a small amount of damage upon missing. This is way more simple, it still opens up new build options, and its not any less boring than the current 5e system. Dnd is a tabletop game guys, its supposed to be super simple and there has to be some standard on time management. Getting groups together for long sessions is already a huge task and Im really not trying to roll an extra constitution dice every round just because someone is using a maul and not a sword. Like has anyone considered how bad this is gonna work with concentration? This whole system stinks and smells like poor game design
Any mechanic that incentivizes item juggling is bad and is always bad. The clear evidence of this is that any game thats playable on screen, like a non-tabletop game, will always have severe restrictions on weapon juggling. Such as in Baldurs Gate how it pretty much wastes your turn doing so. And Knights of the Old Republic. This is also why these games have inventory systems that only allow you to carry X things at a time, such as a left/right hand slots and maybe a switch slot that allows you to use a ranged weapon, or two ranged weapon in the case that a ranged weapon is one handed. The only reason why item juggling exists, frankly in my opinion, is because the dnd community has a ton of theater kids that end up reading the rules in such a way to where it allows them to make an anime character that has no logical sense to it.
A good example of this whole idea relating to the new Masteries, is slow. From what Ive seen so far, it doesnt seem like this effect has a limit. So any combat encounter with 3 enemies that slow, and any player will permanently have their movement reduced to 0. This means any melee character thats caught alone against 2 or more rangers, will always die. These people never think of balance or logic or anything and they just throw bones to the audience because most of dnds fanbase wants to play anime characters that can do everything. If WotC just made it so every PC could tank, heal, deal damage, fly, and slow the enemy, I genuinely think most DnD fans would be ok with that.
Lol sorry bro my table isnt trying to roll a new Con save every round and keep track of how much movement every character has after a few slows take effect on top of any spells that already exist. Its not a rules lawyer theory to argue about, its a waste of time. A vast majority of the new rules are convoluted and they literally take longer to achieve. These mechanics were explicitly deleted after 4e specifically for this reason. Dnd is a board game lol and it doesnt have to be nearly this convoluted, time management is trash and this stuff exacerbates that. These mechanics work in Baldurs Gate because its an electronic game that immediately calculates your effects, and many consider the game to already be slow paced. Dnd would arguably be better if you actually REMOVED prone and flying mechanics lol. Literally.
And yes, the new masteries absolutely have to do with the Dual Wielder feat explicitly and the weapon masteries are what makes this feat potentially broken. It literally just doubles everything lol. This is not theory lawyering, this is just best-option in almost any video game that could exist. Dual Wielder feat allows a rapiers to get double the chance for advantage, warhammer users can push someone 20 feet per round, your chance to topple someone with a battleaxe is double, you can use dual wielder feat to get two topples a round with quarterstaffs and its even more ridiculous if you use Polearm master which allows for a potential 3 topples a round with a quarterstaff as long as theres an enemy that enters your attack range. If you have DW and Polearm Master, you can dual wield a quarterstaff and a warhammer allowing you to topple an enemy, if that fails you push them with bonus action warhammer, and then you topple attempt again when the enemy re-enters your attack range. Its not "theory lawyering," its an obvious quagmire that arises in the game if anyone strategizes at all. And again, this goes back to the first point. Great, a quarterstaff user is toppling people at least twice if not 3 times a round which is 3 more dice rolls than we need.
Erm, prone does not apply disadvantage to the prone creature unless the prone creature is attacking which doesnt ever happen and Im not even sure if it CAN happen. The way prone works is that the attacker gets advantage but ONLY if the attacker is within melee range of the prone enemy. Prone enemies actually apply disadvantage to all long-distance attackers because its GOOD to be prone lol. Laying down in DnD makes attackers miss you more because youre prone and harder to hit. Being knocked prone and purposefully choosing to be prone are the same thing in dnd. The rules explicitly state this.
So no, sap is still good and knocking enemies prone is counter-intuitive in this situation. If you dual wield a Longsword and rapier you can impose disadvantage to the enemies attacks against you and you get advantage when attacking the enemy. Meaning youll expectedly win every fight 1v1 melee. If you knock the enemy prone, theyll just get up on their turn and attack you but they wont have disadvantage because you didnt sap them, and if you topple them for advantage it still doesnt matter because the rapier gets advantage with hex anyway. Long story short, Sap gives enemies disadvantage, making the enemy prone does not give them disadvantage.
Whats even worse is when you realize no description of Slow has a cap on it lol. So three rangers can bring any characters movement to 0, and 2 rangers can bring a lot of races movement down to 5... Im pretty sure rules as written says "when dealing damage to the enemy with your weapon," so technically a lvl 5 ranger can put a lot of races down to 5 movement speed in just one turn because of Extra Attack. Pretty nutty lol. Almost every fight will involve at least one character/player being in a quagmire and possibly even being kept from the fight entirely. And not because of a spell or something that requires spell slots and saving throws, nope, but just because someone shot you with a bow. This new system is objectively bad in almost every single possible sense
I really recommend that you actually read the books before commenting. True Strike doesn't do what you think it does anymore, no species has 25' speed anymore, Slow doesn't stack, so 3 rangers would still only reduce the speed of a character by 10'. I could keep going, but that's enough to prove my point.
Also, enemies don't get weapon masteries. Read the Monster Manual. If the DM wants to give NPCs weapon masteries and PC stats in general, they're free to do so, but that's not how the game was designed.
Lol Im sorry bro none of that makes it any better and the rules youve stated are both super new and it just creates more problems. You didnt solve anything. If slow doesnt stack, then its suboptimal for two people to use bows. Thats BAD. That means the system is bad. And slow does stack with other speed debuffs anyway, like frost spells. Furthermore, the speed change to races is bad anyway and that doesnt even make sense and thats historically anti-DnD. Youd totally expect some races to have different speeds. Regardless, reducing someones speed by 10 means you can permakite them anyway so it still doesnt matter. Your point wasnt really made and you didnt keep going because you cant and you only said "I could keep going" to sound sensational. Another problem is this essentially prohibits item creativity, DMs and franchise developers are way less incentivized to make weapons that slow an enemy due to this. Any poison that slows, frost arrow, or other cool things are almost explicitly useless to create now or else itl be way too OP.
Why would masteries only be PCs? Thats not explicitly stated anywhere and a lot of people make NPCs out of regular character sheets. Why would a Monk NPC with a quarterstaff NOT have quarterstaff mastery. Doesnt make sense. And if you run campaigns with no enemy masteries, then Im sorry but your game is dead. Thats a highly overtuned group of PC's for no reason other than to appease players who want their character to be an anime character. Most people in the forums already said that they will be incorporating Weapon Masteries onto at least some NPCs and characters.
Although youre right about my speed reduction being wrong, thats all you responded about. You didnt mention anything I said about any other mastery doubling or stacking. Like how Push can be used twice, or how vex gives your advantage change double if youre dual wielding, or how daggers can attack 3 times which is problematic because daggers tend to stack on-hit effects. Adding a dagger attack isnt just adding a d4, its usually adding multiple other effects. And yes, because of Con saves, you will still be rolling more often at table which bogs the game down for no reason. Like what happens if you concentrating? Getting hit by a Topple weapon causes two Con saves lol... One for the concentration and one for the Topple. Then youd have to create some weird rule where topple has to calculate first otherwise you can win a concentration save and still lose concentration because you got hit prone from the topple con save LOL like bro thats a reaallllyyy bad design. Its objectively a bad game design. Out of the three campaigns Ive played, and over like 12 people, we tried to use them and fully gave up after like six disasters. The system is so convoluted, its only a matter of time before someone forgets a con save or a slow calculation and then a player realizes four turns later and everyones scrambling around to ret-con the situation. Its also incredibly unattractive to new players and especially new DMs. Even if you dont have NPCs do masteries, its still an absolute nightmare for DMs lol, I never want to be in charge of keeping track of this ever again. I shouldnt have to be an accountant to play a board game.