Still not seeing how Protection can keep with damage output vs two-handed weapon. If that's what you're arguing. They must use a one-handed weapon, their style gives them no bonus on damage and they can't give a bonus to themselves for defense.
Dueling I can see as the bonus starts to override at the 3 attacks level. But that's a pretty long haul.
Again, why does it have to? The subclasses themselves don't come out even in the damage department either. I don't feel it's necessary for them to do so. Otherwise every class would produce the same damage, have the same AC, have the same HP...
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"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
Still not seeing how Protection can keep with damage output vs two-handed weapon. If that's what you're arguing. They must use a one-handed weapon, their style gives them no bonus on damage and they can't give a bonus to themselves for defense.
The whole point of Protection fighting style is that it negates damage, and its capacity to do so doesn't drop at all at higher levels. The fact that it doesn't increase your damage output is irrelevant because what it's trying to do is completely different.
Dueling I can see as the bonus starts to override at the 3 attacks level. But that's a pretty long haul.
If you're using Dueling fighting style you're getting the benefits of a shield; and again, the benefits scale consistently with the number of attacks you make.
Again, why does it have to?
Again, why should one fighting style be so inferior to its immediate alternatives in so many ways? Why should a player be penalized so much for something that's largely a stylistic choice?
The subclasses themselves don't come out even in the damage department either.
For one thing I don't think this is a fair comparison since the complexity of a subclass is much larger than the simple effects of the fighting styles. Fighting Styles can be compared quantitatively very easily; the benefits of a subclass are much harder to quantify, especially when they include social or exploration benefits. However, I still think most subclasses are well balanced against each other except the Champion. Suffice to say there are enough viable alternatives to the Champion that I don't consider it a major issue. On the other hand there is no good RAW way to make TWF competitive for a fighter in the long run. There's no second TWF style option or feat that sucks less.
The Warlock Rising above my general antipathy for the class and a particular Patron (Hexblade), I think that they need to be an INT based caster. DnD currently has two superstats -DEX and CHA. Making Warlocks an INT based caster changes the dynamic I feel for the better. Make HEX a class ability similar to Channel Divinity that refreshes on a LONG rest. Next, DELETE Hexblade Patron martial abilities that come onboard before level 3. As it stands the Patron is too tempting a dip for level one with the majority of powers being granted at level one. The best option would be to place the martial aspects of the Patron within the Blade Subclass and move the other abilities to level 6, 11 and 19 as per standard subclass rules.
I'm sure as hell happy and relieved that you're not a part of the dev team...
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"Normality is but an Illusion, Whats normal to the Spider, is only madness for the Fly"
The best option would be to place the martial aspects of the Patron within the Blade Subclass and move the other abilities to level 6, 11 and 19 as per standard subclass rules.
What do you mean by standard subclass rules? There isnt a single class that gets subclass features at level 19. The warlock gets subclass features at levels 1, 6, 10, and 14.
Whatever, not the point. The issue is that the Hexblade Patron Warlock is gets far too many benefits at first level. Moreover, because it is a Patron they are still choose to be Chain, Tome, or Blade at third level. The disparity of what a Hexblade Warlock can do versus a Fey, GOO, Fiend, Celestial, Undying, or any other Patron makes choosing anything other than Hexblade a TRAP choice. Ideally Hexblade Patron should really be what Blade Subclass Warlock is and dump the other obsolete option.
I suppose you could see it a certain way, but for the majority of available content TWF is competitive. Meaning lvl 1-10.
I wish. It's barely competitive 1-4 (the shortest part of the game) for fighters and not competitive at all for barbarians or rangers.
Like I said, for fighters it has small (1.66 damage) lead pre-Extra Attack as long as you ignore opportunity attacks, Action Surge and other bonus actions like Second Wind. It falls behind starting at 5th level so now you're stuck with all of the disadvantages of having your damage split over two weapons and a bonus action with almost no upsides. You fall even more behind if you pick a feat instead of an ASI (and Dual Wielder is worse than +2 DEX anyways.)
Tier 2 is also when players will start to notice the problems I mentioned earlier with magic items, Haste, and Magic Weapon. It's also the longest tier on the EXP curve and has the largest amount magic item distribution if you use the treasure tables. So the fact that TWF stops working well at this particular point in the game - which is supposed to be a big milestone for any character - really sucks.
Barbarians get 0 extra damage when not raging and actually fall behind during a rage since they can't TWF on the same turn they rage. That puts them behind by 1d6 (~3.5 damage) compared to a greatsword. They only get a 2 damage edge per turn after that, so they don't break even for another 2 turns. And again that assumes 0 opportunity attacks. If feats are in play it's over at 4th level; Reckless Attack with Great Weapon Master blows TWF out of the water, not that it wasn't going to be obsolete at 5th level anyways.
Rangers can't TWF on the same turn they cast Hunter's Mark so they're also starting from a deficit turn 1. Any long-run damage advantage from TWF is offset by that Archery fighting style and needing to move Hunter's Mark on future turns. They're also at much higher risk of taking unncessary damage and losing concentration (and therefore spending another bonus action and precious spell slot.) Most ranger-specific spells are ranged-weapon specific or provide no extra benefits when used with a melee weapon. The Hunter's Volley is clearly better than Whirlwind attack. Beast Masters can't TWF if their pet attacks either. TWF competes with the Horizon Walker's 3rd level feature.
So that pretty much leaves the rogue, which would've been perfectly fine if Crossbow Expert weren't also a thing and severely reduced the advantages that melee rogues have in exchange for being closer to danger.
Tl;dr tying 100% of TWF's benefits to a fixed amount of extra damage locked behind a bonus action was a mistake. No other fighting style messes up your action economy or fails to scale with more attacks and TWF doesn't have any compelling advantages to make up for that on most characters.
Whatever, not the point. The issue is that the Hexblade Patron Warlock is gets far too many benefits at first level. Moreover, because it is a Patron they are still choose to be Chain, Tome, or Blade at third level. The disparity of what a Hexblade Warlock can do versus a Fey, GOO, Fiend, Celestial, Undying, or any other Patron makes choosing anything other than Hexblade a TRAP choice. Ideally Hexblade Patron should really be what Blade Subclass Warlock is and dump the other obsolete option.
Agonizing Blast and Repelling Blast are so good that Hex Warrior is literally the only way to build a competing blade Warlock. So no, the other patrons are fine. Yes, Hexblade is super front-loaded, but so is any Eldritch Blast-based Warlock starting at 2nd level, which is all the non-Hexblade ones since Pact of the Blade sucks otherwise.
1.) Ranger Redux: The Revised Ranger UA was utter moose piss, but that doesn't solve the fact that regular rangers are at a spot where several of their key class features are basically wasted fluff for the way the game is written. Favored Enemy/Terrain do not work in their current guise, especially when one considers all the modules written recently and realizes that neither ability is even functional in half of them. Ranger would be reworked some, but not to the point of being four or five times stronger as a level 1 dip than a warlock level 2 dip. No thank you. My ideal rebuild would involve the ranger gaining one Expertise skill every time they acquire a new favored terrain/enemy, making those levels less dead, and for the Favored Terrain/Enemy to be stronger within their narrow niche while the ranger gains lower-level bonuses applicable in any terrain. Expanded spellcasting would be retrofitted back into the base class, and the Beastmaster would be excised altogether in favor of a 'Find Companion' spell available to all rangers. If a 'Beastmaster' remained, it would be a class that gained Find Companion and enhanced it, as well as gaining abilities useful for dealing with beasts beyond the ranger's bound companion.
2.) Weapon Rework: The martial combat rules in 5e are slim and streamlined to the point of being boring as hell for a lot of players. Archery is even worse - "I shoot him. I shoot him again. I will shoot him a third time." They introduced the Battlemaster to appeal to players who want to actually engage in combat when they engage in combat, but the game's weapon rules are bland and disappointing and the combat abilities attached to them are even worse. Weapon traits and properties would be revised to add a significant number of additional options, and guidelines would be added into the (significantly less shitty) 5.5e DMG offering new DMs guidance on how to design new weapons for their own games. Fighting styles would be enormously expanded (10+, not maybe four), they'd lean towards active rather than passive benefits (giving you a cool new action a'la Protection rather than flat boosts), and every character with martial weapons proficiency (or who acquires it via the otherwise garbage Weapon Master feat) gets at least one fighting style. Martial specialists like fighters, rangers, and palladalladingdongs get more than one.
3.) Character Generation Tweaks (A.k.a. "&%#! Variant Human"): ALL characters get one free feat at level 1, not just variant frogmortoning human. I am sick unto death of that species and never want to see it again. Combat feats such as Polearm Muenster, Great Weapon Gouda, Cheddarbow Expert, or other things that would be problematic or munchkin-y to take at level 1 gain a minimum level requirement (probably 4, but I honestly favor 8 in my own games), or require the character to have an appropriate fighting style before they can be taken. Racial stat bonuses are lessened - elves get +1 to dexterity, not +2 - with the points instead being moved into class selection. I loved the article from James Haek a while back on allowing race, class, and background to all contribute to your starting stat spread and would codify it. Elves, dwarves, and other legacy races would also lose their bullshit racial tool proficiencies - "Elf Weapon Training" and the rest can be backgrounds or racial feats, nobody else gets scads of free life-training proficiencies for being a genasi or tiefling or shit.
3a.) More Half-ASI Feats: Many feats that are currently lackluster would be significantly less so with a stat point bolted on. Players like half-ASI feats that let them round off a pointy stat while still giving them a cool new ability. A healthy spread of choices for half-ASIs for every stat allows players greater freedom to do exactly that. Every stat would have a minimum of three non-racial, available-to-everybody feats that can give it a half-ASI boost (these are not necessarily distinct feats, stuff like Athlete would county as both a STR and DEX half-feat), with a target of five. If a feat doesn't compete in its default state with the tired old weapon focus cheese feats? Give it half an ASI. See what happens.
4.) Round-Based Initiative: Fixed initiative is boring, and massively devalues bonuses to/caring about initiative. If I were designing 5.5e, initiative would be rolled every round, with the current initiative system relabeled "Simplified Initiative" and presented as the optional variant rule. Class abilities like the Gloom Stalker's Dread Ambusher, Assassinate, or other such once-per-blue-moon things that basically never work could be keyed to work off of this as well, with natural 20s for round initiative 'recharging' the ability, or allowing them to work on initiative rolls of 25+ as well as on first turn, encouraging the player to invest in their initiative bonus for certain builds. The more chaotic round-by-round turn order encourages better combat behavior from players as well, with a focus on "good enough, quick" rather than hemming and hawing over making the perfect move for twenty minutes every time your turn lands.
5.) Robust Item Creation: The rules in Xanathar's Guide for crafting/creating items are utterly horrible and Wizards should be ashamed of them. Ashamed. Rules for creating items would be greatly expanded in my 5.5e, both in terms of in-character crafting and out-of-character DM development of custom items for their campaigns, both magical and mundane. Part of this would be heavily expanding the use and value of tool proficiencies for PCs; if the game is going to give PCs tool proficiencies instead of skills or languages, then tools are going to be useful the way skills or languages are. No DM wants to watch their adventuring party turn into a bunch of merchants (unless they're playing a D&D version of Spice and Wolf, which could be awesome), but knowing how to use tools and equipment should be rewarded SOMEHOW. Regardless. There would be greatly expanded guidelines for how to create cool new stuff in the 5.5e DMG; if they can have a big huge detailed guide to creating monsters, they can have sections for creating other stuff, too.
Think that's enough for now. I could go on for days, really. There's a ton of potential in 5e, but holy hell did Wizards slapdash this edition. The bonez, they iz gud, but there's a veritable flood of holes a DM constantly has to plug up or the ship starts a'sinkin'...
They need to look into options to not make Dexterity the powerhouse stat that it currently is. Some options include:
Rework Initiative: perhaps make initiative tied to INT or allow it to be based on your primary stat, or move away from a stat and apply a scaling modifier based on your level. As you get more experienced you react to situations faster.
Armor and Armor Class, perhaps leave the bonuses to armor as they currently are, just rework armor in general. Light armors are critically hit on 18,19,20, they offer less bodily protection. Medium armors are critically hit on 19 and 20, and Heavy armor critically hit on 20. Armor Class doesn't change, just the level of protection provided by the armor.
Rework character creation mainly concerning races. Offer all races a racial feat at creation, humans being the only race that can choose from the full feat list.
Change perception from wisdom based skill to either proficient or non-proficient with a +1 to +4 modifier tied to their tier of play (four tiers), so level 17- 20 proficient characters would have a +10 (prof+6, mod+4) to perception, level 1-4 characters would have a +3(prof +2, mod +1). A non-proficient character at those same levels would be +4 at 20, +1 at 1.
I would like to see a rework to dual wielding, not making the off-hand attack a bonus action, just add into the main attack.
There are more. I like the game as it currently is however and would not mind waiting a decade for a 6th edition.
4.) Round-Based Initiative: Fixed initiative is boring, and massively devalues bonuses to/caring about initiative. If I were designing 5.5e, initiative would be rolled every round, with the current initiative system relabeled "Simplified Initiative" and presented as the optional variant rule. Class abilities like the Gloom Stalker's Dread Ambusher, Assassinate, or other such once-per-blue-moon things that basically never work could be keyed to work off of this as well, with natural 20s for round initiative 'recharging' the ability, or allowing them to work on initiative rolls of 25+ as well as on first turn, encouraging the player to invest in their initiative bonus for certain builds. The more chaotic round-by-round turn order encourages better combat behavior from players as well, with a focus on "good enough, quick" rather than hemming and hawing over making the perfect move for twenty minutes every time your turn lands.
I can pretty much agree with everything you're saying except this. You had some really insightful thoughts but this one I think is not the best. While it could add some benefit, the negative far outweighs it. This would slow down combat by a lot. Every round does not need a minute or two of the DM asking everyone what their new initiative is then rolling the monsters then organizing it all. Not only that, but it could ruin encounters. If you were fighting a dragon that went last one round but first in the next, it would have two consecutive turns and could possibly cause a TPK just based on the initiative.
It doesn't actually slow down combat much, if done properly. Everybody rolls, figures out their roll, then the DM simply counts. "25, 24, 23, 22, 21..." When the DM calls your number, you jump in. If there's a ton of different critters a DM can use their passive Initiative instead, and simplified initiative is still there for people who just don't like a fluid order.
But oh my GOD I hate how absolutely worthless your initiative bonus is. You roll it two or three times an average session, and one bad roll at the start of a combat encounter can wreck your shit for an entire fight. If your nimble skirmishy ranger or rogue is dependent on moving before other targets in the initiative order, rolling that 3 for initiative can turn off half your bloody class for the entire combat no matter how high your initiative modifier is.
When I DM, I'm constantly having to fight my players trying to over-orchestrate the battle - "you don't have time to make these kinds of elaborate plans mid-fight, guys. it's your turn, you have six seconds, what are you doing?" Getting folks to jump in spontaneously with their turn, having to listen to me instead of jabber at each other outside their Free Yelp, keeps them moving and getting into the swing of a faster-paced, more frantic and chaotic game - which is exactly what most combats should be.
Now yes, it can absolutely slow things down if players don't understand it, and some players won't respond well to this more pressure-cooker style of combat. Simplified initiative is still valid, but if people are going to stick with it I'd strongly advise using initiative for more than just combat, and for characters/classes/subclasses that very heavily dependent on getting that initial Han-Shot-First drop on the enemy, find a way for them to add their proficiency bonus to their initiative rolls eventually. As it stands there's almost no reason to have an initiative modifier at all - just have everybody roll a bare d20 and go off that, it works just as well (i.e. poorly) as the default fixed system.
It doesn't actually slow down combat much, if done properly. ... simplified initiative is still there for people who just don't like a fluid order.
The feedback for 5e during playtesting was consistently in favor of simpler, faster rules. It's very unlikely a rule that requires more discipline from the players, finesse from the DM and dice rolls each round would ever become the default choice. 5e already has this option in the DMG and while I definitely see the appeal I think the devs were smart to use the simpler initiative system as the default.
2.) Weapon Rework: The martial combat rules in 5e are slim and streamlined to the point of being boring as hell for a lot of players. Archery is even worse - "I shoot him. I shoot him again. I will shoot him a third time." They introduced the Battlemaster to appeal to players who want to actually engage in combat when they engage in combat, but the game's weapon rules are bland and disappointing and the combat abilities attached to them are even worse.
This comes back to the same point; most players actually want that simplicity. The champion is still the most popular fighter subclass last time I checked.
It's better overall to have a simple baseline and let players opt into more complexity than vice-versa.
Heh. I suppose my issue is simply that nobody ever uses optional rules until and unless a DM fed up with the insufficient base rules flings them in the player's faces and says "WE'RE TRYING THIS FOR A SESSION, WORK WITH ME!" The players hem and haw, but a good half the time they find they're enjoying the alternate methodology. The DMG and the PHB both go so far out of their way to say "this is optional, this isn't required, this is a weird one-off, don't use this, we don't even know why this is in the book, please dear god never use this optional rule we're completely ashamed of having even included in the book oh my god make it stop" that the default player assumption is that they're never supposed to use anything but the bare-ass basic rules. Most of which are distressingly oversimplified.
That and when you say "players can opt into more advanced rules" with things like the Battlemaster, you end up with situations where players who like those more intricate, interesting rules have one UND PRECISELY VUN option available to them. A player that wants to be a skilled martial combatant with lots of cool tricks gets to be a Battlemaster, only a Battlemaster, just a Battlemaster, and never anything but a Battlemaster. If they want to try a different fighter subclass, no more actually-being-good-at-fighting. if they want to try a ranger? No more being-good-at-fighting. Anything else other than a Battlemaster? They're no longer good at fighting.
People make a lot of hoo-haw over that 'the Champion is the most popular fighter' thing, but they forget that the Champion is in the basic rules. You get the Champion for free; everything else costs thirty bucks. I'd be curious to see how those numbers fall out when you eliminate "Accounts with no subscription and no purchases" or "accounts with no subscription", and see what the folks who're engaging deeply with the tool are doing. I'm betting Champion would no longer be 'the most popular fighter'.
Heh. Besides. The thread is 'what changes would you want?' The changes I'd want would be Wizards growing a pair, deciding their players are smarter than the average picnic basket, using the interesting rules first while presenting the simplified rules as an alternative system for the I-don't-care playerbase, as opposed to the inverse.
I just want to see some variety in spellcasting like the Warlock. Even if they all used mostly the same spells, just something different than spell slots. They don’t all have to go so far as the 30+ page Mystic, but maybe give 1 class something different. Like maybe give Sorcerers just a pool of sorcery points and no spell slots. Or maybe give Artificers a growing number of “Devices” they can maintain that each mimic spells and a pool of charges, same spells everyone else uses, just a different feel.
My biggest dream, take all the rules for Vancian magic, all the rules about spells slots etc and just throw it in the Bin, never to look at it, and never to even mention it EVER AGAIN TILL THE END OF TIMES...
4th had it right with the Powers, each class had unique powers, Fighters/Barbarians/Rogues had some cool tricks other then "do a melee weapon attack".
The issues i can see with this was that unlike now where you can be lazy and just give the "Wizard spell list" or the "Cleric spell list" to a subclass and be done with it, they actually had to work and find new powers and spells for each class, increasing the workload, i'm aware of it.
But then again the issue back then with this was that you had a new material book coming out every 2 months with at least a new variant of the core classes, that while fun wasn't really neccesary, to this day i still don't understand why they added classes like the Binder...( wich in 4th had nothing to do with the 3.5 version...)
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"Normality is but an Illusion, Whats normal to the Spider, is only madness for the Fly"
Armor and Armor Class, perhaps leave the bonuses to armor as they currently are, just rework armor in general. Light armors are critically hit on 18,19,20, they offer less bodily protection. Medium armors are critically hit on 19 and 20, and Heavy armor critically hit on 20. Armor Class doesn't change, just the level of protection provided by the armor.
Rework character creation mainly concerning races. Offer all races a racial feat at creation, humans being the only race that can choose from the full feat list.
So what about Monks and Barbarians? They get crit on a 17+ because they can't wear armor to take advantage of a primary class feature?
There are many GMs that don't allow Feats. Attaching them to race forces them use something they don't want in their game.
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"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
4th had it right with the Powers, each class had unique powers, Fighters/Barbarians/Rogues had some cool tricks other then "do a melee weapon attack".
Mike Mearls actually said this was one of the problems with 4e. It sounds good on paper but in practice it means the minimum complexity for every single character is high. There's no way to put a character together without making a bunch of choices.
Building your character piece by piece from a huge menu of options is very pleasing for a very specific kind of player, but there's at least 7 other kinds of players that don't care for that. In my opinion this is one of the important things to understand when talking about the merits of any game. At the risk of sounding preachy, a lot of people have a hard time putting themselves in the mindset of players with different priorities, and also tend to assume their own priorities are more common than they really are (because the people they play with are similar.)
I think a big part of 5e's success has been due to the devs making an effort to keep the baseline complexity low so you can give a Champion Fighter to a brand new player and they can get started right away with very little explanation. In fact the devs took special care to streamline the four free/classic classes (Fighter, Rogue, Cleric, Wizard) and ensure the free subclass packaged in the basic rules is the most straightforward one. There's a very clear divide between those four and the complexity budget they allowed themselves in other classes like the Monk or Warlock.
My wife plays a paladin and picking out her spells is a chore, not a fun exercise in self-expression or optimization. If her whole character had to be pieced together a la carte, I'm not sure she would've made it past character creation on her own.
To me D&D has some basic principles that are core to the game. AC, HP, Attack Roll, Damage, Saving Throws, Magic System, Ability Scores. These are the foundations of the system, how they interact is its core. The advantage/disadvantage system for example however is a module. By making this a core part of the game, those players who like a more in depth system of tracking modifiers and degree's of advantage/disadvantages have absolutely nothing to go on (except switch systems to something like Pathfinder).
Advantage/disadvantage is every bit a part of the core system as the 6 abilities and 3 d20 rolls. How do you expect races, feats, spells, class features, monster traits and actions, magic items, traps, and adventures to be written if the writer doesn't know what rule the game is using for modifiers? It's such a foundational part of the system there really is no good way to modularize it.
If you're going to put in modifiers like Advantage/Disadvantage or positive/negative numbers it has to be part of the core rules. Otherwise skills, spells, whatever will need two listings for every description saying whether it grants Advantage or + XX modifier. That's just senseless bulk.
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"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
The issue with this idea that 5e's simplicity being its best feature, and the frequent corresponding idea that 5e is not simple enough (see the Double Simplified Basic Rules in the Essentials Kit), is that you're effectively telling the people who do want that depth that their fun is wrong and that they shouldn't play your game. Putting the depth in tells the folks looking for simplicity that their fun is wrong; taking the depth out tells the folks looking for engagement that their fun is wrong.
You can't have it both ways, and currently 5e is working its everloving ass off to tell the folks looking for engagement that their fun is not only wrong but actively bad for the game. See the entire existence of Adventurer's League, wherein all the "Optional Rules" from the DMG/PHB are eliminated and the DM is expressly forbidden from injecting any modifications into their game. You play the base core rules, no optional variants, period. And Wizards is busily, shamelessly telling everyone it can that Adventurer's League is the absolute best thing since the invention of the d20, that everybody should play Adventurer's League, and that AL should be the only D&D anyone ever plays. Despite the fact that the original 5e books said "if you want more complex rules, make 'em! Try stuff, experiment, it's your game!"
Not anymore it's not.
It's one thing to say "the game is better when the default rules are simple but players are free to add extra complexity and depth if they want it." It's entirely another to say "the game is better when the default rules are simple and players who want extra complexity and depth can go #^@! themselves - play Adventurer's League more." The folks who're pining for a game that actually holds their attention are miiiiiighty liable to start switching to other systems if Wizards keeps telling us that we're bad human beings for wanting some meat on our gaming bones.
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Still not seeing how Protection can keep with damage output vs two-handed weapon. If that's what you're arguing. They must use a one-handed weapon, their style gives them no bonus on damage and they can't give a bonus to themselves for defense.
Dueling I can see as the bonus starts to override at the 3 attacks level. But that's a pretty long haul.
Again, why does it have to? The subclasses themselves don't come out even in the damage department either. I don't feel it's necessary for them to do so. Otherwise every class would produce the same damage, have the same AC, have the same HP...
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
The whole point of Protection fighting style is that it negates damage, and its capacity to do so doesn't drop at all at higher levels. The fact that it doesn't increase your damage output is irrelevant because what it's trying to do is completely different.
If you're using Dueling fighting style you're getting the benefits of a shield; and again, the benefits scale consistently with the number of attacks you make.
Again, why should one fighting style be so inferior to its immediate alternatives in so many ways? Why should a player be penalized so much for something that's largely a stylistic choice?
For one thing I don't think this is a fair comparison since the complexity of a subclass is much larger than the simple effects of the fighting styles. Fighting Styles can be compared quantitatively very easily; the benefits of a subclass are much harder to quantify, especially when they include social or exploration benefits. However, I still think most subclasses are well balanced against each other except the Champion. Suffice to say there are enough viable alternatives to the Champion that I don't consider it a major issue. On the other hand there is no good RAW way to make TWF competitive for a fighter in the long run. There's no second TWF style option or feat that sucks less.
The Forum Infestation (TM)
I suppose you could see it a certain way, but for the majority of available content TWF is competitive. Meaning lvl 1-10.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
I'm sure as hell happy and relieved that you're not a part of the dev team...
"Normality is but an Illusion, Whats normal to the Spider, is only madness for the Fly"
Kain de Frostberg- Dark Knight - (Vengeance Pal3/ Hexblade 9), Port Mourn
Kain de Draakberg-Dark Knight lvl8-Avergreen(DitA)
Wait, I just noticed something.
What do you mean by standard subclass rules? There isnt a single class that gets subclass features at level 19. The warlock gets subclass features at levels 1, 6, 10, and 14.
Whatever, not the point. The issue is that the Hexblade Patron Warlock is gets far too many benefits at first level. Moreover, because it is a Patron they are still choose to be Chain, Tome, or Blade at third level. The disparity of what a Hexblade Warlock can do versus a Fey, GOO, Fiend, Celestial, Undying, or any other Patron makes choosing anything other than Hexblade a TRAP choice. Ideally Hexblade Patron should really be what Blade Subclass Warlock is and dump the other obsolete option.
I wish. It's barely competitive 1-4 (the shortest part of the game) for fighters and not competitive at all for barbarians or rangers.
Like I said, for fighters it has small (1.66 damage) lead pre-Extra Attack as long as you ignore opportunity attacks, Action Surge and other bonus actions like Second Wind. It falls behind starting at 5th level so now you're stuck with all of the disadvantages of having your damage split over two weapons and a bonus action with almost no upsides. You fall even more behind if you pick a feat instead of an ASI (and Dual Wielder is worse than +2 DEX anyways.)
Tier 2 is also when players will start to notice the problems I mentioned earlier with magic items, Haste, and Magic Weapon. It's also the longest tier on the EXP curve and has the largest amount magic item distribution if you use the treasure tables. So the fact that TWF stops working well at this particular point in the game - which is supposed to be a big milestone for any character - really sucks.
Barbarians get 0 extra damage when not raging and actually fall behind during a rage since they can't TWF on the same turn they rage. That puts them behind by 1d6 (~3.5 damage) compared to a greatsword. They only get a 2 damage edge per turn after that, so they don't break even for another 2 turns. And again that assumes 0 opportunity attacks. If feats are in play it's over at 4th level; Reckless Attack with Great Weapon Master blows TWF out of the water, not that it wasn't going to be obsolete at 5th level anyways.
Rangers can't TWF on the same turn they cast Hunter's Mark so they're also starting from a deficit turn 1. Any long-run damage advantage from TWF is offset by that Archery fighting style and needing to move Hunter's Mark on future turns. They're also at much higher risk of taking unncessary damage and losing concentration (and therefore spending another bonus action and precious spell slot.) Most ranger-specific spells are ranged-weapon specific or provide no extra benefits when used with a melee weapon. The Hunter's Volley is clearly better than Whirlwind attack. Beast Masters can't TWF if their pet attacks either. TWF competes with the Horizon Walker's 3rd level feature.
So that pretty much leaves the rogue, which would've been perfectly fine if Crossbow Expert weren't also a thing and severely reduced the advantages that melee rogues have in exchange for being closer to danger.
Tl;dr tying 100% of TWF's benefits to a fixed amount of extra damage locked behind a bonus action was a mistake. No other fighting style messes up your action economy or fails to scale with more attacks and TWF doesn't have any compelling advantages to make up for that on most characters.
Agonizing Blast and Repelling Blast are so good that Hex Warrior is literally the only way to build a competing blade Warlock. So no, the other patrons are fine. Yes, Hexblade is super front-loaded, but so is any Eldritch Blast-based Warlock starting at 2nd level, which is all the non-Hexblade ones since Pact of the Blade sucks otherwise.
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If I were in charge of a potential 5.5e...
1.) Ranger Redux: The Revised Ranger UA was utter moose piss, but that doesn't solve the fact that regular rangers are at a spot where several of their key class features are basically wasted fluff for the way the game is written. Favored Enemy/Terrain do not work in their current guise, especially when one considers all the modules written recently and realizes that neither ability is even functional in half of them. Ranger would be reworked some, but not to the point of being four or five times stronger as a level 1 dip than a warlock level 2 dip. No thank you. My ideal rebuild would involve the ranger gaining one Expertise skill every time they acquire a new favored terrain/enemy, making those levels less dead, and for the Favored Terrain/Enemy to be stronger within their narrow niche while the ranger gains lower-level bonuses applicable in any terrain. Expanded spellcasting would be retrofitted back into the base class, and the Beastmaster would be excised altogether in favor of a 'Find Companion' spell available to all rangers. If a 'Beastmaster' remained, it would be a class that gained Find Companion and enhanced it, as well as gaining abilities useful for dealing with beasts beyond the ranger's bound companion.
2.) Weapon Rework: The martial combat rules in 5e are slim and streamlined to the point of being boring as hell for a lot of players. Archery is even worse - "I shoot him. I shoot him again. I will shoot him a third time." They introduced the Battlemaster to appeal to players who want to actually engage in combat when they engage in combat, but the game's weapon rules are bland and disappointing and the combat abilities attached to them are even worse. Weapon traits and properties would be revised to add a significant number of additional options, and guidelines would be added into the (significantly less shitty) 5.5e DMG offering new DMs guidance on how to design new weapons for their own games. Fighting styles would be enormously expanded (10+, not maybe four), they'd lean towards active rather than passive benefits (giving you a cool new action a'la Protection rather than flat boosts), and every character with martial weapons proficiency (or who acquires it via the otherwise garbage Weapon Master feat) gets at least one fighting style. Martial specialists like fighters, rangers, and palladalladingdongs get more than one.
3.) Character Generation Tweaks (A.k.a. "&%#! Variant Human"): ALL characters get one free feat at level 1, not just variant frogmortoning human. I am sick unto death of that species and never want to see it again. Combat feats such as Polearm Muenster, Great Weapon Gouda, Cheddarbow Expert, or other things that would be problematic or munchkin-y to take at level 1 gain a minimum level requirement (probably 4, but I honestly favor 8 in my own games), or require the character to have an appropriate fighting style before they can be taken. Racial stat bonuses are lessened - elves get +1 to dexterity, not +2 - with the points instead being moved into class selection. I loved the article from James Haek a while back on allowing race, class, and background to all contribute to your starting stat spread and would codify it. Elves, dwarves, and other legacy races would also lose their bullshit racial tool proficiencies - "Elf Weapon Training" and the rest can be backgrounds or racial feats, nobody else gets scads of free life-training proficiencies for being a genasi or tiefling or shit.
3a.) More Half-ASI Feats: Many feats that are currently lackluster would be significantly less so with a stat point bolted on. Players like half-ASI feats that let them round off a pointy stat while still giving them a cool new ability. A healthy spread of choices for half-ASIs for every stat allows players greater freedom to do exactly that. Every stat would have a minimum of three non-racial, available-to-everybody feats that can give it a half-ASI boost (these are not necessarily distinct feats, stuff like Athlete would county as both a STR and DEX half-feat), with a target of five. If a feat doesn't compete in its default state with the tired old weapon focus cheese feats? Give it half an ASI. See what happens.
4.) Round-Based Initiative: Fixed initiative is boring, and massively devalues bonuses to/caring about initiative. If I were designing 5.5e, initiative would be rolled every round, with the current initiative system relabeled "Simplified Initiative" and presented as the optional variant rule. Class abilities like the Gloom Stalker's Dread Ambusher, Assassinate, or other such once-per-blue-moon things that basically never work could be keyed to work off of this as well, with natural 20s for round initiative 'recharging' the ability, or allowing them to work on initiative rolls of 25+ as well as on first turn, encouraging the player to invest in their initiative bonus for certain builds. The more chaotic round-by-round turn order encourages better combat behavior from players as well, with a focus on "good enough, quick" rather than hemming and hawing over making the perfect move for twenty minutes every time your turn lands.
5.) Robust Item Creation: The rules in Xanathar's Guide for crafting/creating items are utterly horrible and Wizards should be ashamed of them. Ashamed. Rules for creating items would be greatly expanded in my 5.5e, both in terms of in-character crafting and out-of-character DM development of custom items for their campaigns, both magical and mundane. Part of this would be heavily expanding the use and value of tool proficiencies for PCs; if the game is going to give PCs tool proficiencies instead of skills or languages, then tools are going to be useful the way skills or languages are. No DM wants to watch their adventuring party turn into a bunch of merchants (unless they're playing a D&D version of Spice and Wolf, which could be awesome), but knowing how to use tools and equipment should be rewarded SOMEHOW. Regardless. There would be greatly expanded guidelines for how to create cool new stuff in the 5.5e DMG; if they can have a big huge detailed guide to creating monsters, they can have sections for creating other stuff, too.
Think that's enough for now. I could go on for days, really. There's a ton of potential in 5e, but holy hell did Wizards slapdash this edition. The bonez, they iz gud, but there's a veritable flood of holes a DM constantly has to plug up or the ship starts a'sinkin'...
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They need to look into options to not make Dexterity the powerhouse stat that it currently is. Some options include:
Rework character creation mainly concerning races. Offer all races a racial feat at creation, humans being the only race that can choose from the full feat list.
Change perception from wisdom based skill to either proficient or non-proficient with a +1 to +4 modifier tied to their tier of play (four tiers), so level 17- 20 proficient characters would have a +10 (prof+6, mod+4) to perception, level 1-4 characters would have a +3(prof +2, mod +1). A non-proficient character at those same levels would be +4 at 20, +1 at 1.
I would like to see a rework to dual wielding, not making the off-hand attack a bonus action, just add into the main attack.
There are more. I like the game as it currently is however and would not mind waiting a decade for a 6th edition.
I can pretty much agree with everything you're saying except this. You had some really insightful thoughts but this one I think is not the best. While it could add some benefit, the negative far outweighs it. This would slow down combat by a lot. Every round does not need a minute or two of the DM asking everyone what their new initiative is then rolling the monsters then organizing it all. Not only that, but it could ruin encounters. If you were fighting a dragon that went last one round but first in the next, it would have two consecutive turns and could possibly cause a TPK just based on the initiative.
It doesn't actually slow down combat much, if done properly. Everybody rolls, figures out their roll, then the DM simply counts. "25, 24, 23, 22, 21..." When the DM calls your number, you jump in. If there's a ton of different critters a DM can use their passive Initiative instead, and simplified initiative is still there for people who just don't like a fluid order.
But oh my GOD I hate how absolutely worthless your initiative bonus is. You roll it two or three times an average session, and one bad roll at the start of a combat encounter can wreck your shit for an entire fight. If your nimble skirmishy ranger or rogue is dependent on moving before other targets in the initiative order, rolling that 3 for initiative can turn off half your bloody class for the entire combat no matter how high your initiative modifier is.
When I DM, I'm constantly having to fight my players trying to over-orchestrate the battle - "you don't have time to make these kinds of elaborate plans mid-fight, guys. it's your turn, you have six seconds, what are you doing?" Getting folks to jump in spontaneously with their turn, having to listen to me instead of jabber at each other outside their Free Yelp, keeps them moving and getting into the swing of a faster-paced, more frantic and chaotic game - which is exactly what most combats should be.
Now yes, it can absolutely slow things down if players don't understand it, and some players won't respond well to this more pressure-cooker style of combat. Simplified initiative is still valid, but if people are going to stick with it I'd strongly advise using initiative for more than just combat, and for characters/classes/subclasses that very heavily dependent on getting that initial Han-Shot-First drop on the enemy, find a way for them to add their proficiency bonus to their initiative rolls eventually. As it stands there's almost no reason to have an initiative modifier at all - just have everybody roll a bare d20 and go off that, it works just as well (i.e. poorly) as the default fixed system.
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The feedback for 5e during playtesting was consistently in favor of simpler, faster rules. It's very unlikely a rule that requires more discipline from the players, finesse from the DM and dice rolls each round would ever become the default choice. 5e already has this option in the DMG and while I definitely see the appeal I think the devs were smart to use the simpler initiative system as the default.
This comes back to the same point; most players actually want that simplicity. The champion is still the most popular fighter subclass last time I checked.
It's better overall to have a simple baseline and let players opt into more complexity than vice-versa.
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Heh. I suppose my issue is simply that nobody ever uses optional rules until and unless a DM fed up with the insufficient base rules flings them in the player's faces and says "WE'RE TRYING THIS FOR A SESSION, WORK WITH ME!" The players hem and haw, but a good half the time they find they're enjoying the alternate methodology. The DMG and the PHB both go so far out of their way to say "this is optional, this isn't required, this is a weird one-off, don't use this, we don't even know why this is in the book, please dear god never use this optional rule we're completely ashamed of having even included in the book oh my god make it stop" that the default player assumption is that they're never supposed to use anything but the bare-ass basic rules. Most of which are distressingly oversimplified.
That and when you say "players can opt into more advanced rules" with things like the Battlemaster, you end up with situations where players who like those more intricate, interesting rules have one UND PRECISELY VUN option available to them. A player that wants to be a skilled martial combatant with lots of cool tricks gets to be a Battlemaster, only a Battlemaster, just a Battlemaster, and never anything but a Battlemaster. If they want to try a different fighter subclass, no more actually-being-good-at-fighting. if they want to try a ranger? No more being-good-at-fighting. Anything else other than a Battlemaster? They're no longer good at fighting.
People make a lot of hoo-haw over that 'the Champion is the most popular fighter' thing, but they forget that the Champion is in the basic rules. You get the Champion for free; everything else costs thirty bucks. I'd be curious to see how those numbers fall out when you eliminate "Accounts with no subscription and no purchases" or "accounts with no subscription", and see what the folks who're engaging deeply with the tool are doing. I'm betting Champion would no longer be 'the most popular fighter'.
Heh. Besides. The thread is 'what changes would you want?' The changes I'd want would be Wizards growing a pair, deciding their players are smarter than the average picnic basket, using the interesting rules first while presenting the simplified rules as an alternative system for the I-don't-care playerbase, as opposed to the inverse.
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I just want to see some variety in spellcasting like the Warlock. Even if they all used mostly the same spells, just something different than spell slots. They don’t all have to go so far as the 30+ page Mystic, but maybe give 1 class something different. Like maybe give Sorcerers just a pool of sorcery points and no spell slots. Or maybe give Artificers a growing number of “Devices” they can maintain that each mimic spells and a pool of charges, same spells everyone else uses, just a different feel.
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My biggest dream, take all the rules for Vancian magic, all the rules about spells slots etc and just throw it in the Bin, never to look at it, and never to even mention it EVER AGAIN TILL THE END OF TIMES...
4th had it right with the Powers, each class had unique powers, Fighters/Barbarians/Rogues had some cool tricks other then "do a melee weapon attack".
The issues i can see with this was that unlike now where you can be lazy and just give the "Wizard spell list" or the "Cleric spell list" to a subclass and be done with it, they actually had to work and find new powers and spells for each class, increasing the workload, i'm aware of it.
But then again the issue back then with this was that you had a new material book coming out every 2 months with at least a new variant of the core classes, that while fun wasn't really neccesary, to this day i still don't understand why they added classes like the Binder...( wich in 4th had nothing to do with the 3.5 version...)
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So what about Monks and Barbarians? They get crit on a 17+ because they can't wear armor to take advantage of a primary class feature?
There are many GMs that don't allow Feats. Attaching them to race forces them use something they don't want in their game.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
Mike Mearls actually said this was one of the problems with 4e. It sounds good on paper but in practice it means the minimum complexity for every single character is high. There's no way to put a character together without making a bunch of choices.
Building your character piece by piece from a huge menu of options is very pleasing for a very specific kind of player, but there's at least 7 other kinds of players that don't care for that. In my opinion this is one of the important things to understand when talking about the merits of any game. At the risk of sounding preachy, a lot of people have a hard time putting themselves in the mindset of players with different priorities, and also tend to assume their own priorities are more common than they really are (because the people they play with are similar.)
I think a big part of 5e's success has been due to the devs making an effort to keep the baseline complexity low so you can give a Champion Fighter to a brand new player and they can get started right away with very little explanation. In fact the devs took special care to streamline the four free/classic classes (Fighter, Rogue, Cleric, Wizard) and ensure the free subclass packaged in the basic rules is the most straightforward one. There's a very clear divide between those four and the complexity budget they allowed themselves in other classes like the Monk or Warlock.
My wife plays a paladin and picking out her spells is a chore, not a fun exercise in self-expression or optimization. If her whole character had to be pieced together a la carte, I'm not sure she would've made it past character creation on her own.
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Advantage/disadvantage is every bit a part of the core system as the 6 abilities and 3 d20 rolls. How do you expect races, feats, spells, class features, monster traits and actions, magic items, traps, and adventures to be written if the writer doesn't know what rule the game is using for modifiers? It's such a foundational part of the system there really is no good way to modularize it.
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If you're going to put in modifiers like Advantage/Disadvantage or positive/negative numbers it has to be part of the core rules. Otherwise skills, spells, whatever will need two listings for every description saying whether it grants Advantage or + XX modifier. That's just senseless bulk.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
The issue with this idea that 5e's simplicity being its best feature, and the frequent corresponding idea that 5e is not simple enough (see the Double Simplified Basic Rules in the Essentials Kit), is that you're effectively telling the people who do want that depth that their fun is wrong and that they shouldn't play your game. Putting the depth in tells the folks looking for simplicity that their fun is wrong; taking the depth out tells the folks looking for engagement that their fun is wrong.
You can't have it both ways, and currently 5e is working its everloving ass off to tell the folks looking for engagement that their fun is not only wrong but actively bad for the game. See the entire existence of Adventurer's League, wherein all the "Optional Rules" from the DMG/PHB are eliminated and the DM is expressly forbidden from injecting any modifications into their game. You play the base core rules, no optional variants, period. And Wizards is busily, shamelessly telling everyone it can that Adventurer's League is the absolute best thing since the invention of the d20, that everybody should play Adventurer's League, and that AL should be the only D&D anyone ever plays. Despite the fact that the original 5e books said "if you want more complex rules, make 'em! Try stuff, experiment, it's your game!"
Not anymore it's not.
It's one thing to say "the game is better when the default rules are simple but players are free to add extra complexity and depth if they want it." It's entirely another to say "the game is better when the default rules are simple and players who want extra complexity and depth can go #^@! themselves - play Adventurer's League more." The folks who're pining for a game that actually holds their attention are miiiiiighty liable to start switching to other systems if Wizards keeps telling us that we're bad human beings for wanting some meat on our gaming bones.
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