-The ENTIRE fighter base class and the Champion, Samurai, and Cavalier subclasses.
While I would not say those subclasses use a lot of brain juice, I have made character concepts for those subclasses, and while I have not taken them out for a test drive yet since I am a forever GM, at least in theory on paper, they seem like fun subclasses to play.
For champion, while it is simple, part of its appeal to me is the thrill of getting crits and rolling extra damage dice more frequently. If champion is buffed up a bit more, I think it will make rolling for crits more rewarding. Similarly, samurai revolves around giving yourself advantage and rolling lots of attack dice. For those two subclasses, I think a simple way to improve them is to combine their core mechanics so the player can roll more attack dice, damage dice, or just more dice in general. Rolling physical dice is fun, and rolling lots of it even more so.
For cavalier, its main appeal to me is the ability to protect my allies by being a literal wall that enemies cannot move past. I think it is pretty satisfying to see your own action protecting an ally by stopping an enemy in the middle of its tracks, even more so if you plan out a battle formation with your team before hand and seeing the plan succeed. That being said, the real fun does come pretty late though, as you need to reach level 18 before you can get unlimited reactions for opportunity attacks.
Ok, we are comparing a decades old franchise that is more popular now than ever with a completely untested new system and posts like yours seem more like commercials for the new system than anything constructive or objective regarding what we already have or what may or may not be wrong with it.
A couple posts up (#428) we see a prime example of that lack of objectivity, completely ignoring the limitations on casters.
Looking at their website, they claim to be '5E compatible' but have their own set of Core books. If I was WotC, I would be wondering about copyright issues.
I admit yeah it's hard to seem not like a commercial considering the topic and I'm defending the book. Besides my argument wasn't related to the book itself and more about homebrew in general.
Also I think Kotath is starting to blend the different posts together, which understandable there's three of us posting long messages in a row.
Because this is completely ignoring my entire post other than when I said that people like homebrew. My argument was that using the caster-martial disparity (or lack of) to argue the 5.5E is unnecessary is completely missing the point of homebrew. Yes some people might be happy playing battlemaster, but they might be happier playing something more complicated and it's not your job to dictate that.
(Edit: Homebrew exists to accommodate those who don't like D&D, not because it's bad (usually) but because it doesn't fit their tastes. I never argued about the caster-martial disparity, just stated that some people wanted classes more complicated than both 5E martial and casters hence why they made Level Up. Also complexity does not increase power, nor does it prevent power.)
"Looking at their website, they claim to be '5E compatible' but have their own set of Core books. If I was WotC, I would be wondering about copyright issues. "
tell me a single 5E homebrew that isn't 5E compatible- Okay actually knowing D&D homebrew you might actually be able to find several examples.
this spoiler is a bit more personal but
Kotath stop talking about objectivity. 2/3 sentences of your post is about making fun of EN World and insulting my post rather than actually addressing it (the difference being one of them you actually try to disprove it or at least explain why it's not factual). The other sentence is a apples to oranges comparison for the second time. EN World is not comparable to some random who put rage on a fighter with no downsides, nor can a post arguing about the right to homebrew be compared to someone not understanding the balance of D&D.
Sorry for the double post but this doesn't really relate to my other post nor the argument but I thought I'd mention it.
According to the search function, in this thread of 428 posts, only ~30 (rounded up because I don't trust search function) mention EN (as in EN Worlds) which is what the thread is supposed to be about. That's ~7%. Doesn't mean the other ~93% was off-topic, or even that all ~7% posts mentioning EN was on topic, but just a cool statistic.
the above statistics is excluding this post which is also off-topic. If you did include this post it'd be 6.99% because I'd still round up to 30.
mods have my full permission to delete this if it's too off-topic
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if I edit a message, most of the time it's because of grammar. The rest of the time I'll put "Edit:" at the bottom.
Tell me what option there is for someone who wants to play a martial character that gets to make relevant tactical decisions in eight out of ten combat rounds. I won't say "every combat round" despite badly wanting to, but point me at an option in the game, as it currently stands, for a player who wants to be able to make interesting/engaging decisions in a majority of combat rounds. You're going to say "Battle Master", and while I actually disagree, I'll swallow that for now. Point me at another one.
One more.
One single option for someone who wants to do more with the majority of their combat turns in this game than "I hit it with my hittin' stick again." that isn't Battle Master.
I'll wait.
And in the interim, the list of possibilities for someone who hates their brain, hates D&D, hates their table, hates thinking, and wants to do absolutely nothing but say "I hit it with my hittin' stick!" in every round of combat:
-The ENTIRE fighter base class and the Champion, Samurai, and Cavalier subclasses. -The ENTIRE barbarian base class and all subclasses save Beast, Storm Herald, and Wild Magic -The Hunter and Monster Slayer subclasses of the Ranger, and arguably the entire Ranger base class. -The Devotion and Ancients Paladin subclasses (which are almost all passive buffs) and arguably the entire Paladin base class save for its spellcasting. -The Thief, Scout, Swashbuckler, and Inquisitive(!!!) subclasses for the rogue, and most of the rogue base class.
Are we, perhaps, sensing a bit of an imbalance in the Force, here?
Just because you can’t imagine fun things to do, doesn’t mean other people can’t. It sounds as though you are unhappy with a huge section of D&D, so I would humbly suggest you might find a different game suits you better. Instead of trying to over ride and insult the people who do enjoy playing D&D as is, you could leave us to our fun and go try something like Role Master or the Warhammer rpg.
"You're unsatisfied with some piece of D&D? Well then you should burn all your books, delete your DDB account, and go play some other game with none of the support of this one because how dare you insinuate that 5e is less than True, Eternal Utter Perfection?!"
5e is good at some things and bad at others. Martial combat is one of the things it's bad at, one of the places where the devs cut too deeply. Martial characters do not feel like masters of combat and force of arms. There is an entire class dedicated to people who want to be The Magic Dude but don't want to have to exert the brainpower required to deal with it (the sorcerer), but there is no reciprocal "this is for people who like to think after initiative is rolled as well as before" martial class. There is one subclass of one class, and even that subclass is more about husbanding resources and picking your moment than making meaningful decisions round over round.
Side note: no spellcaster I have ever played with has just "used their biggest damage spells until they run out and then fired cantrips". Any spellcaster I have played, and any spellcaster I have played with, is always looking for a way to use the right spell at the right moment to turn the tide of battle. Hell, just yesterday our level 4 party was attacked by a horde of kobolds. A single upcast Sleep spell put a third of them on the ground, and when a pair of Urds dive-bombed an important NPC to death (-_-.....), another Sleep spell caught the one that got away and made sure it didn't get away. Gravity, as they say, is a harsh mistress - but at least it died in its sleep.
What did my ranger accomplish in this fracas? Dick-all. She put the end of her staff in the ribcage of one kobold that had already been wounded by one of the spellcasters, her companion bit up the back of another kobold's head, and that was it. The casters solved the combat and the martials simply cleaned up after them.
Some folks like that. Others are less satisfied. I like my ranger, in that game. She's fun to play, and she's useful to the team as a dedicated guide and trailmaster. I simply have to accept that she's absolutely useless once initiative starts, and I kinda wish she wasn't. That doesn't say "STOP PLAYING D&D FOREVER YOU FILTHY BRAIN HEATHEN", it says that I wish my cool ranger gal wasn't dead weight in battle.
"You're unsatisfied with some piece of D&D? Well then you should burn all your books, delete your DDB account, and go play some other game with none of the support of this one because how dare you insinuate that 5e is less than True, Eternal Utter Perfection?!"
5e is good at some things and bad at others. Martial combat is one of the things it's bad at, one of the places where the devs cut too deeply. Martial characters do not feel like masters of combat and force of arms. There is an entire class dedicated to people who want to be The Magic Dude but don't want to have to exert the brainpower required to deal with it (the sorcerer), but there is no reciprocal "this is for people who like to think after initiative is rolled as well as before" martial class. There is one subclass of one class, and even that subclass is more about husbanding resources and picking your moment than making meaningful decisions round over round.
Side note: no spellcaster I have ever played with has just "used their biggest damage spells until they run out and then fired cantrips". Any spellcaster I have played, and any spellcaster I have played with, is always looking for a way to use the right spell at the right moment to turn the tide of battle. Hell, just yesterday our level 4 party was attacked by a horde of kobolds. A single upcast Sleep spell put a third of them on the ground, and when a pair of Urds dive-bombed an important NPC to death (-_-.....), another Sleep spell caught the one that got away and made sure it didn't get away. Gravity, as they say, is a harsh mistress - but at least it died in its sleep.
What did my ranger accomplish in this fracas? Dick-all. She put the end of her staff in the ribcage of one kobold that had already been wounded by one of the spellcasters, her companion bit up the back of another kobold's head, and that was it. The casters solved the combat and the martials simply cleaned up after them.
Some folks like that. Others are less satisfied. I like my ranger, in that game. She's fun to play, and she's useful to the team as a dedicated guide and trailmaster. I simply have to accept that she's absolutely useless once initiative starts, and I kinda wish she wasn't. That doesn't say "STOP PLAYING D&D FOREVER YOU FILTHY BRAIN HEATHEN", it says that I wish my cool ranger gal wasn't dead weight in battle.
Again, part of me agrees with your stance, but literally no one has said either of the things quoted in bold the way you quoted them. Since your last comment in #437, the closest I have seen is Kotath suggesting D&D 5e might not be the best system if your games are of the hack-and-slash variety in their edit to their comment in #443.
Taking points of view which go against your own (or criticize your own) and immediately jumping to hyperbole is not how you should engage in a discussion.
(Disclaimer, up until recently I have only been vaguely following this thread, so it is possible I missed earlier, more extreme comments. All the same, the two quotes in bold still feel like hyperbole to me)
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It's an argument people try and beat me over the head with a great deal, since I'm rather outspoken in my criticism of 5e in this and a few other areas and people feel like criticizing 5e is equivalent to spurning the very heart and soul of tabletop roleplaying. "If you hate D&D so much/like these other systems so much, why not just play those instead, huh?!"
The answer is simple, and I already said it - 5e does some things well and some things poorly, just like those other systems do some things well and some things poorly. GURPS is absolutely phenomenal for building out exactly the character your mind envisions, it's delightful fun to spend hours and hours whiling away the day fiddling with a sheet. Moment-to-moment gameplay for GURPS is equally enjoyable and engaging, but the moment combat begins the whole thing bogs down and grinds because GURPS' default to one-second turns and extremely limited actions-per-turn make it an incredible hassle and unfortunately easy to game. Savage Worlds does combat much better than GURPS does and has one of the cleanest progression systems I've ever seen in a TTRPG with a good percent of GURPS' flexibility, but it doesn't handle powerful characters well at all, either as PCs or as BBEGs, and it's also oddly intolerant of oddball, off-the-wall PC origins for a setting-agnostic point builder game. Genesys sucks at everything, but does an excellent job of soaking up all the boutiquey Bohemian Failure Monkeys that hate playing games and want to Live an Artistic Journey instead so we don't have to put up with them.
D&D, meanwhile, has a magic system no other game can touch and does better than most other modern games do at dealing with very powerful entities, and when it works its vaunted combat engine does make for very neat fights. The issue is that for a game that prides itself on "Thrilling Fantastical Combat!", its treatment of martial characters just falls short. GURPS and its myriad of stunts and special maneuvers handles cool displays of martial training and expertise better than D&D does, which is sad because the Superiority system D&D decided to confine strictly and solely to one single subclass of one single class is a very clean, 5e-approved way of doing much the same thing that Techniques accomplish in GURPS...buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut the 5e team decided Superiority was too komplukayted to trust the braindead masses with, and so they locked it away somewhere people wouldn't have to look at it. Keep it secret, keep it safe, keep it away from all the stupids that can't be trusted with it...and in the doing deny all the other martial classes in the whole-ass game access to a wonderful baseline tool for "Thrilling Fantastical Combat!".
I truly think Superiority could've been the martial answer to spellcasters' spellcasting. Different classes could've gotten different maneuvers unique to them - rangers could've gotten a few primal woods-master maneuvers only they could take, paladins could've gotten some holy-warrior maneuvers only the Oathbound can learn. Individual weapons could each be given their own maneuver - every martial weapon could have its own distinct maneuver that's added to the pool of available maneuvers for any character with Superiority, and thus weapons could be distinct and meaningful again without having to deal with the whole weapon vs. armor vs. nonsense table everyone is so traumatized by in 3.5e. Being able to perform battle maneuvers could've been the hallmark of martial prowess, the thing that sets trained warriors and masters of steel apart.
But nah. Why bother with that when you could just hit somebody with your hittin' stick, instead?
What a god damned waste of a perfectly excellent opportunity...
"You're unsatisfied with some piece of D&D? Well then you should burn all your books, delete your DDB account, and go play some other game with none of the support of this one because how dare you insinuate that 5e is less than True, Eternal Utter Perfection?!"
Again, turn what you say there around. You are unsatisfied with some piece of D&D. So then it should be changed, to the detriment of those who are satisfied with those parts?
You are the one placing a criteria on the game that it should be perfect for you. No one is insisting on changing parts you do like. You are insisting that the parts you do not like should change and acting like their current state is completely unacceptable to you.
How much that is the case, only you know.
Your caster used a sleep spell effectively once. And then... a second time. The same spell. Exciting. And when the DM tosses something at you other than individually low hp creatures that are sleep spell fodder? If the sleep spell failed, would you be complaining about casters being boring or useless?
This is also what I meant earlier in this thread by a superhero approach to writing. A good DM will pay attention to who and what are in the party and play to them, setting up situations where the spotlight shines on different individuals at different times. Yes the players have agency and may go the proverbial different direction, but the DM is still head writer and editor in chief and can write on the fly as needed. It is not so adversarial a game.
Spells are a vastly different beast than martial attacks and comparing the two is pretty silly IMO.
Spells give you a wide variety of versatility in movement, damage, buffs, debuffs, transportation of goods, summons, etc...
attacks are always attacks and do no vary for the vast majority of classes. You may get a rider or two from it but its not itself changed at all from 1st level to 20th.....you roll and apply a modifier and you are done.
Spells have layers and combinations that just don't exist for attacks.
It's an argument people try and beat me over the head with a great deal, since I'm rather outspoken in my criticism of 5e in this and a few other areas and people feel like criticizing 5e is equivalent to spurning the very heart and soul of tabletop roleplaying. "If you hate D&D so much/like these other systems so much, why not just play those instead, huh?!"
But again "just play something else" is not an argument that has come up to any large degree in the most recent parts of this thread, so I do not see why you are circling back around to argue against it. No one in recent comments have mentioned GURPS or Bohemian Failure Monkeys or any of the other things you mentioned in the rest of the above comment. You seem to by going back to other arguments that you have had in this thread (and others) and trying to mesh it all into one comment to try and address everything at once, even if several of those things are not arguments/discussions that are currently happening.
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I can't speak for Barbarian, never played one. Though they do have some choices to make. When to use their limited number of rages, unless you have so few encounters in a day they can just always use it. And when to reckless attack for advantage and when not to.
Battlemaster also isn't the only fighter subclass with options. Arcane Archer has less uses but bigger impact on its arcane shots. Rune knight has its runes. Monks have ki related abilities to think about. Paladins have smites and spells, including smite spells that do less damage than divine smite but can have interesing effects if an enemy fails a DC. Both guaranteed damage for a smite and on a failed saving throw, a spell effect. Rangers have some similar 'strike' spells like zephyr strike and ensnaring strike, though this also competes with wanting concentration on hunter's mark.
I wouldn't say martials are perfect and that no improvements could be made. But there's more going on there than 'hit things with stick' for more than just the battlemaster.
Again, turn what you say there around. You are unsatisfied with some piece of D&D. So then it should be changed, to the detriment of those who are satisfied with those parts?
How does the existence of non-spellcasters with significant choices change the game to the detriment of others? There's no reason you can't still have 'I hit it' classes.
Again, turn what you say there around. You are unsatisfied with some piece of D&D. So then it should be changed, to the detriment of those who are satisfied with those parts?
How does the existence of non-spellcasters with significant choices change the game to the detriment of others? There's no reason you can't still have 'I hit it' classes.
Based on what has been said so far it seems that some people would like something added to the game. Other people don't want them to have the thing they want and fill up page after page with responses that boils down to "You can't have it because I don't want it too". They forget that no one has to justify anything to them about what they may want to see added 5e, just WotC.
My own concern is that eventually, Wizards is going to find out that 5e cannot retain players. The game needs - and I heavily emphasize that word. Here, let me emphasize it more: needs needs needs needs needs needs NEEDS - a greater degree of depth for those players who're slowly starving to death on the core 5e rules.
I can say that the only reason I'm still running 5e instead of switching to a system that does not assume everyone using it is as dumb as a sack of sand and cannot handle ANY cognitive load whatsoever is because of the DDB tool. I would've jumped ship and taken my money with me long since if not for what the DDB team built here. Even then, my playgroup is constantly looking for ways to introduce choice, depth, and diversity back into the 5e ruleset somehow, and unfortunately we're butting up against the strict limitations of the DDB tool doing it.
The rest of the 5e fanbase (or at least the DDB forum userbase here) would have me believe that me and mine are the only people in existence who're starving to death on this system's lack of depth. I'm mostly pointing to this ENWorld initiative as an argument against that mindset, and a sign that maybe - just MAYBE - Wizards should get off its f#$%ing space ass and GIVE US AN OFFICIAL 5.5E SUPPLEMENT ALREADY!!!!!! They don't need to replace the core rulebooks, which everybody knows they'll never do because it'll upset their precious money cart and piss off the newbies who only just barely got conned into spending a hundred and fifty dollars on the three big books in the first place. Nobody's asking them to do that. We know better. But they do need to give the more experienced gamers, the people absolutely desperate for something to bite into when they play the game and design characters for it, a freaking bone.
Or we. Will. Leave.
I detest Pathfinder's approach to actually running games. Numbers so high you need a telescope to see them, an extremely narrow band of content the players can do effectively due to absurd scaling of the numbers, and a set of floating static modifiers long enough to make every fight a nightmare. Not required. But man - the new PF2e character creation system has been universally and effusively lauded, from what I've seen. The three-action system is ever so much cleaner and better than 5e's kludgy mess. I could see where people might want to apply some of that to 5e's leaner battle engine and the idea of bounded accuracy. If that's what ENWorld does? Maybe there'll be something to it, if they do it well.
And yeah. Additional character creation options would be excellent. Virtually all of my table's rules homebrew is groping for ways to make character creation more fun and meaningful at all levels of play. The whole "pick your species, pick your class, pick your background, wait until level 3 and pick your subclass, and now voila - you're done making significant decisions for your character for the rest of that character's life" thing can suck every last duck in existence. Including Quackthulhu.
As someone who has been roleplaying for 20+ years has run systems as diverse as Whitewolf's Apocalypse series (for me the absolute definition of a system that got far to bloated and confused and so literally needed the apocalypse to happen so it could be burnt to the ground), to Legend of the 5 rings (one of the most brutal systems in terms of combat for players, and do not get me started on a shadowlands campaign for shortening characters lives). Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, a system that forced "class" decisions based on the starts you rolled, and while being quite crunchy managed to get all the rules into just a single rulebook, to Cyberpunk, Gurps, Paranoia and I could go on and on I think you really do not understand the appeal of DnD 5e.
I dabbled in earlier DnD editions, I played a bit with pathfinder and it has it's benefits, but the joy of 5E as a system is that as a story teller it allows me so so much scope to tell mutual stories with my table knowing that I don't have to worry about a character decision leading to them having to commit Sepukku (happens a lot in L5R if you are roleplaying properly), I don't have to worry about a rules argument at the table as 4 different players pull out 4 different sourcebooks and point legitimatley to 4 rules conflicts across those books (a problem with Apocalypse)
If you want a different system than honestly go and play a different game, there are so many options out there. The things you dislike myself and millions of players and DM's love because I have the scope to define the rules as I go, players tell me what they want to do and I can make the call as to what they need to roll, how the world reacts, what happens when they try it. I don;t need to refer to hundreds of tables, I don't need to refer to lots of different rules, my players don't need to spend an hour on a combat because they are figuring out what of the many options that will take. The describe what they want to do and the game gives me the absolute freedom to let them try. I have my issues with the D20 system, it is far to binary pass fail for me, so I tweak things and I have a DC range from heavy failure to strong success and everything in between, but if I wanted to change the system to how I want it then I would play 7th Sea or a similar roll and keep game.
So no WOTC do NOT need to make DnD more complicated or rules heavy, maybe you need to find a different system or reconsider how you challenge your players and make them think through problems. I am playing with equally experienced players who have played many many systems and they love the fact they can focus on story telling and actually roleplaying while having a system that has just enough in combat it is not one dimensional.
There are some minor tweaks they can make to the base subclasses, there are some minor balance issues that I can see some have (I have not suffered those issues but that is probably the kind of game we play), but feel free to leave. I am a great great believer in the idea that people should play as many systems as they possibly can over a lifetime, different is good.
As for inputting choice depth and diversity, I am a little confused exactly what you are struggling with, as a DM my party have no issues with choice, or depth and diversity in what regard are you talking?
Again, turn what you say there around. You are unsatisfied with some piece of D&D. So then it should be changed, to the detriment of those who are satisfied with those parts?
How does the existence of non-spellcasters with significant choices change the game to the detriment of others? There's no reason you can't still have 'I hit it' classes.
Based on what has been said so far it seems that some people would like something added to the game. Other people don't want them to have the thing they want and fill up page after page with responses that boils down to "You can't have it because I don't want it too". They forget that no one has to justify anything to them about what they may want to see added 5e, just WotC.
Well it felt more like people wanted every option to be in the 'significant choices' category (and specifically significant choices in combat, since non-combat capabilities apparently do not count for anything at all).
Furthermore, they seemed to want those 'significant choices' to be power boosts, so that the classes they deem boring would be even less competitive and these hypothetical new 'significant choice' characters would be effectively straight power boosts. And when challenged on that, a couple of the proponents of this replied with (paraphrased) 'balance does not matter.'
But why do they need to justify their desires to you at all?
Well it felt more like people wanted every option to be in the 'significant choices' category (and specifically significant choices in combat, since non-combat capabilities apparently do not count for anything at all).
I totally want better non-combat capabilities for non-spellcasters, but that's a separate ball of wax.
Furthermore, they seemed to want those 'significant choices' to be power boosts, so that the classes they deem boring would be even less competitive and these hypothetical new 'significant choice' characters would be effectively straight power boosts. And when challenged on that, a couple of the proponents of this replied with (paraphrased) 'balance does not matter.'
There should be a general power boost for martial classes in tier 3-4, whether or not they are made more complex (power boosts should probably not be in single target dpr, where they're already plenty awesome, but in areas such as mobility, dealing with environmental issues, and dealing with multiple foes).
Well it felt more like people wanted every option to be in the 'significant choices' category (and specifically significant choices in combat, since non-combat capabilities apparently do not count for anything at all).
I totally want better non-combat capabilities for non-spellcasters, but that's a separate ball of wax.
Furthermore, they seemed to want those 'significant choices' to be power boosts, so that the classes they deem boring would be even less competitive and these hypothetical new 'significant choice' characters would be effectively straight power boosts. And when challenged on that, a couple of the proponents of this replied with (paraphrased) 'balance does not matter.'
There should be a general power boost for martial classes in tier 3-4, whether or not they are made more complex (power boosts should probably not be in single target dpr, where they're already plenty awesome, but in areas such as mobility, dealing with environmental issues, and dealing with multiple foes).
Exactly....
I'm looking for options in T3 and T4 for martial classes.
My own concern is that eventually, Wizards is going to find out that 5e cannot retain players. The game needs - and I heavily emphasize that word. Here, let me emphasize it more: needs needs needs needs needs needs NEEDS - a greater degree of depth for those players who're slowly starving to death on the core 5e rules.
I can say that the only reason I'm still running 5e instead of switching to a system that does not assume everyone using it is as dumb as a sack of sand and cannot handle ANY cognitive load whatsoever is because of the DDB tool. I would've jumped ship and taken my money with me long since if not for what the DDB team built here. Even then, my playgroup is constantly looking for ways to introduce choice, depth, and diversity back into the 5e ruleset somehow, and unfortunately we're butting up against the strict limitations of the DDB tool doing it.
The rest of the 5e fanbase (or at least the DDB forum userbase here) would have me believe that me and mine are the only people in existence who're starving to death on this system's lack of depth. I'm mostly pointing to this ENWorld initiative as an argument against that mindset, and a sign that maybe - just MAYBE - Wizards should get off its f#$%ing space ass and GIVE US AN OFFICIAL 5.5E SUPPLEMENT ALREADY!!!!!! They don't need to replace the core rulebooks, which everybody knows they'll never do because it'll upset their precious money cart and piss off the newbies who only just barely got conned into spending a hundred and fifty dollars on the three big books in the first place. Nobody's asking them to do that. We know better. But they do need to give the more experienced gamers, the people absolutely desperate for something to bite into when they play the game and design characters for it, a freaking bone.
Or we. Will. Leave.
I detest Pathfinder's approach to actually running games. Numbers so high you need a telescope to see them, an extremely narrow band of content the players can do effectively due to absurd scaling of the numbers, and a set of floating static modifiers long enough to make every fight a nightmare. Not required. But man - the new PF2e character creation system has been universally and effusively lauded, from what I've seen. The three-action system is ever so much cleaner and better than 5e's kludgy mess. I could see where people might want to apply some of that to 5e's leaner battle engine and the idea of bounded accuracy. If that's what ENWorld does? Maybe there'll be something to it, if they do it well.
And yeah. Additional character creation options would be excellent. Virtually all of my table's rules homebrew is groping for ways to make character creation more fun and meaningful at all levels of play. The whole "pick your species, pick your class, pick your background, wait until level 3 and pick your subclass, and now voila - you're done making significant decisions for your character for the rest of that character's life" thing can suck every last duck in existence. Including Quackthulhu.
As someone who has been roleplaying for 20+ years has run systems as diverse as Whitewolf's Apocalypse series (for me the absolute definition of a system that got far to bloated and confused and so literally needed the apocalypse to happen so it could be burnt to the ground), to Legend of the 5 rings (one of the most brutal systems in terms of combat for players, and do not get me started on a shadowlands campaign for shortening characters lives). Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, a system that forced "class" decisions based on the starts you rolled, and while being quite crunchy managed to get all the rules into just a single rulebook, to Cyberpunk, Gurps, Paranoia and I could go on and on I think you really do not understand the appeal of DnD 5e.
I dabbled in earlier DnD editions, I played a bit with pathfinder and it has it's benefits, but the joy of 5E as a system is that as a story teller it allows me so so much scope to tell mutual stories with my table knowing that I don't have to worry about a character decision leading to them having to commit Sepukku (happens a lot in L5R if you are roleplaying properly), I don't have to worry about a rules argument at the table as 4 different players pull out 4 different sourcebooks and point legitimatley to 4 rules conflicts across those books (a problem with Apocalypse)
If you want a different system than honestly go and play a different game, there are so many options out there. The things you dislike myself and millions of players and DM's love because I have the scope to define the rules as I go, players tell me what they want to do and I can make the call as to what they need to roll, how the world reacts, what happens when they try it. I don;t need to refer to hundreds of tables, I don't need to refer to lots of different rules, my players don't need to spend an hour on a combat because they are figuring out what of the many options that will take. The describe what they want to do and the game gives me the absolute freedom to let them try. I have my issues with the D20 system, it is far to binary pass fail for me, so I tweak things and I have a DC range from heavy failure to strong success and everything in between, but if I wanted to change the system to how I want it then I would play 7th Sea or a similar roll and keep game.
So no WOTC do NOT need to make DnD more complicated or rules heavy, maybe you need to find a different system or reconsider how you challenge your players and make them think through problems. I am playing with equally experienced players who have played many many systems and they love the fact they can focus on story telling and actually roleplaying while having a system that has just enough in combat it is not one dimensional.
There are some minor tweaks they can make to the base subclasses, there are some minor balance issues that I can see some have (I have not suffered those issues but that is probably the kind of game we play), but feel free to leave. I am a great great believer in the idea that people should play as many systems as they possibly can over a lifetime, different is good.
As for inputting choice depth and diversity, I am a little confused exactly what you are struggling with, as a DM my party have no issues with choice, or depth and diversity in what regard are you talking?
Quoting in full because I feel these posts both raise valid concerns. I'm not sure they're getting at a useful solution though. I don't think 5E needs more rules or more complex rules to satisfy groups who experience a lack of options. I think 5E needs better rules in some cases, and certainly better rules-adjacent advice and suggestions on how to make games interesting or how to reward creativity without just giving everything and anything a free pass. There is some (very sparse) advice in the rulebooks, but by and large suggestions and options to tailor a campaign to a group's preferences are next to non-existent. I find myself lamenting about the sorry state of the DMG rather often, but, well, that's because the DMG is such a poor guide. In a purely mechanical sense 5E creates the inverse of the problem 3E had: 3E had tons of different things characters could do, but nine times out of ten they were locked behind - if you didn't need a (potentially prestige) class ability - a feat requirement or a skill rank requirement; 5E has in comparison very few things characters can do in combat that are mentioned in the rules, but as a result players and DMs don't know how to (or even want to) allow anything not in one of the books. At the same time half the interesting combats described in an official D&D novel seem to be won by some crafty move, quick thinking or special tactic the rules are entirely silent about.
I've so far held off on backing this KS because annoyingly I live in Europe, where apparently the books are being printed, but not in the UK, where the books are going to be shipped from, so VAT is going to be painful. If it in any way turns out to be some kind of smörgåsbord of options rather than just upgrading the existing crunch it'll get my wholehearted endorsement though, just because hopefully that'll lead to opening up mindsets about how to deal with combat scenes in 5E.
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Well it felt more like people wanted every option to be in the 'significant choices' category (and specifically significant choices in combat, since non-combat capabilities apparently do not count for anything at all).
I totally want better non-combat capabilities for non-spellcasters, but that's a separate ball of wax.
Furthermore, they seemed to want those 'significant choices' to be power boosts, so that the classes they deem boring would be even less competitive and these hypothetical new 'significant choice' characters would be effectively straight power boosts. And when challenged on that, a couple of the proponents of this replied with (paraphrased) 'balance does not matter.'
There should be a general power boost for martial classes in tier 3-4, whether or not they are made more complex (power boosts should probably not be in single target dpr, where they're already plenty awesome, but in areas such as mobility, dealing with environmental issues, and dealing with multiple foes).
Fighters could certainly use a boost in non-combat abilities. Out side of skills, the base Fighter class has zero non-combat abilities. Boosting the Exploration pillar of the game would help Ranger immensely, but they at least have spells like Pass without Trace to play with. Rogues, Bards, Clerics, Druids, Warlocks and Wizards are great in and out of combat but I would want them to get a little something just to off set any significant power gain for Martial Classes. Basically a cross the board revision so that what minimal balance we have is maintained while giving martial a more varied tool kit.
Coming late to this thread, and here's my 2c. I played a Grave Domain Cleric from level 8 to level 20 over the course of almost 2 years. Lately I've been playing a Rune Knight fighter.
The Cleric, with their spells, can match the Wizard in their versatility, IMO. There were many encounters (not just combat) where my Cleric 'saved the day' by using the right spell at the right time, and some of that involves anticipating what will be needed, so the right spell is prepared when it's needed. I had a great run with my cleric, and I'll surely remember his story for years to come. I should also point out that I feel like every time I cast a spell that saved the day, there was another time when a clutch spell had no effect (missed the AC or a successful save was made). When the casters were not able to control the situations, it's the martial classes that allowed us to survive.
When I started a new campaign, I was tired of the Cleric. As 'complex' as they were, I don't want to play one again for the time being. I want to approach problems from a different perspective. I chose to make a Fighter for one particular reason: Most classes get 5 ASI's or Feats (4th, 8th, 12th, 16th and 19th levels). The fighter gets 7 (4th, 6th, 8th, 12th, 14th, 16th and 19th) and the extra ones are all in the range of 'most played levels', ie: levels 1 to 15. I don't plan to focus on feats and gimmicks that will make my fighter a DPS or NOVA monster, and I will instead use those extra feats to improve the other two pillars: exploration and social encounters. The fighter can do what the fighter needs to do in combat without having to invest heavily in ASI or Feats, leaving it to be super versatile in all 3 pillars.
I think this whole thread lately has been focusing too much on COMBAT, and I can't sit back and jump on the 'martial classes are boring' bandwagon if the conversation is going to be limited to 1/3rd of the potential content in D&D.
Even then, my personal experience doesn't line up with what some people are saying. I have one friend that plays a Champion fighter and all he does is swing a sword, remaining quiet the rest of the sessions. But in my experience, that character is an outlier. The martial classes (rogue, paladin, monk, fighter) that I played along with my Cleric were not 1 dimensional characters and the players behind them didn't limit themselves to swinging a sword. If they could think of 'cool' things to do, they proposed it and the GM bought into it or did not. And when the GM said yes, some of the things they did were hilarious and/or cool and/or clutch to winning.
Should martial classes get more 'defined options via game mechanics'? I mean, they could but I don't think it will solve the problem. Good players already do well with martial classes without being constrained by them. And 'non-imaginative' players will just look at their new list of things to do and pick one instead of trying to think outside the box. I think people that are unsatisfied with martial classes now would still be unsatisfied with martial classes even if a PHB says, "you can do all these new things now".
I've so far held off on backing this KS because annoyingly I live in Europe, where apparently the books are being printed, but not in the UK, where the books are going to be shipped from, so VAT is going to be painful. If it in any way turns out to be some kind of smörgåsbord of options rather than just upgrading the existing crunch it'll get my wholehearted endorsement though, just because hopefully that'll lead to opening up mindsets about how to deal with combat scenes in 5E.
Have you considered just getting the PDFs?
Also, I think the thing I am most interested in when it comes to this kickstarter project is seeing how well it does and how WotC reacts to it, if at all. I would much prefer "official" content of this type and wonder if I will get it in 2024.
While I would not say those subclasses use a lot of brain juice, I have made character concepts for those subclasses, and while I have not taken them out for a test drive yet since I am a forever GM, at least in theory on paper, they seem like fun subclasses to play.
For champion, while it is simple, part of its appeal to me is the thrill of getting crits and rolling extra damage dice more frequently. If champion is buffed up a bit more, I think it will make rolling for crits more rewarding. Similarly, samurai revolves around giving yourself advantage and rolling lots of attack dice. For those two subclasses, I think a simple way to improve them is to combine their core mechanics so the player can roll more attack dice, damage dice, or just more dice in general. Rolling physical dice is fun, and rolling lots of it even more so.
For cavalier, its main appeal to me is the ability to protect my allies by being a literal wall that enemies cannot move past. I think it is pretty satisfying to see your own action protecting an ally by stopping an enemy in the middle of its tracks, even more so if you plan out a battle formation with your team before hand and seeing the plan succeed. That being said, the real fun does come pretty late though, as you need to reach level 18 before you can get unlimited reactions for opportunity attacks.
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I admit yeah it's hard to seem not like a commercial considering the topic and I'm defending the book. Besides my argument wasn't related to the book itself and more about homebrew in general.
Also I think Kotath is starting to blend the different posts together, which understandable there's three of us posting long messages in a row.
Because this is completely ignoring my entire post other than when I said that people like homebrew. My argument was that using the caster-martial disparity (or lack of) to argue the 5.5E is unnecessary is completely missing the point of homebrew. Yes some people might be happy playing battlemaster, but they might be happier playing something more complicated and it's not your job to dictate that.
(Edit: Homebrew exists to accommodate those who don't like D&D, not because it's bad (usually) but because it doesn't fit their tastes. I never argued about the caster-martial disparity, just stated that some people wanted classes more complicated than both 5E martial and casters hence why they made Level Up. Also complexity does not increase power, nor does it prevent power.)
"Looking at their website, they claim to be '5E compatible' but have their own set of Core books. If I was WotC, I would be wondering about copyright issues. "
tell me a single 5E homebrew that isn't 5E compatible- Okay actually knowing D&D homebrew you might actually be able to find several examples.
this spoiler is a bit more personal but
Kotath stop talking about objectivity. 2/3 sentences of your post is about making fun of EN World and insulting my post rather than actually addressing it (the difference being one of them you actually try to disprove it or at least explain why it's not factual). The other sentence is a apples to oranges comparison for the second time. EN World is not comparable to some random who put rage on a fighter with no downsides, nor can a post arguing about the right to homebrew be compared to someone not understanding the balance of D&D.
if I edit a message, most of the time it's because of grammar. The rest of the time I'll put "Edit:" at the bottom.
Sorry for the double post but this doesn't really relate to my other post nor the argument but I thought I'd mention it.
According to the search function, in this thread of 428 posts, only ~30 (rounded up because I don't trust search function) mention EN (as in EN Worlds) which is what the thread is supposed to be about. That's ~7%. Doesn't mean the other ~93% was off-topic, or even that all ~7% posts mentioning EN was on topic, but just a cool statistic.
the above statistics is excluding this post which is also off-topic. If you did include this post it'd be 6.99% because I'd still round up to 30.
mods have my full permission to delete this if it's too off-topic
if I edit a message, most of the time it's because of grammar. The rest of the time I'll put "Edit:" at the bottom.
Just because you can’t imagine fun things to do, doesn’t mean other people can’t. It sounds as though you are unhappy with a huge section of D&D, so I would humbly suggest you might find a different game suits you better. Instead of trying to over ride and insult the people who do enjoy playing D&D as is, you could leave us to our fun and go try something like Role Master or the Warhammer rpg.
Heh. Always love those posts.
"You're unsatisfied with some piece of D&D? Well then you should burn all your books, delete your DDB account, and go play some other game with none of the support of this one because how dare you insinuate that 5e is less than True, Eternal Utter Perfection?!"
5e is good at some things and bad at others. Martial combat is one of the things it's bad at, one of the places where the devs cut too deeply. Martial characters do not feel like masters of combat and force of arms. There is an entire class dedicated to people who want to be The Magic Dude but don't want to have to exert the brainpower required to deal with it (the sorcerer), but there is no reciprocal "this is for people who like to think after initiative is rolled as well as before" martial class. There is one subclass of one class, and even that subclass is more about husbanding resources and picking your moment than making meaningful decisions round over round.
Side note: no spellcaster I have ever played with has just "used their biggest damage spells until they run out and then fired cantrips". Any spellcaster I have played, and any spellcaster I have played with, is always looking for a way to use the right spell at the right moment to turn the tide of battle. Hell, just yesterday our level 4 party was attacked by a horde of kobolds. A single upcast Sleep spell put a third of them on the ground, and when a pair of Urds dive-bombed an important NPC to death (-_-.....), another Sleep spell caught the one that got away and made sure it didn't get away. Gravity, as they say, is a harsh mistress - but at least it died in its sleep.
What did my ranger accomplish in this fracas? Dick-all. She put the end of her staff in the ribcage of one kobold that had already been wounded by one of the spellcasters, her companion bit up the back of another kobold's head, and that was it. The casters solved the combat and the martials simply cleaned up after them.
Some folks like that. Others are less satisfied. I like my ranger, in that game. She's fun to play, and she's useful to the team as a dedicated guide and trailmaster. I simply have to accept that she's absolutely useless once initiative starts, and I kinda wish she wasn't. That doesn't say "STOP PLAYING D&D FOREVER YOU FILTHY BRAIN HEATHEN", it says that I wish my cool ranger gal wasn't dead weight in battle.
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Again, part of me agrees with your stance, but literally no one has said either of the things quoted in bold the way you quoted them. Since your last comment in #437, the closest I have seen is Kotath suggesting D&D 5e might not be the best system if your games are of the hack-and-slash variety in their edit to their comment in #443.
Taking points of view which go against your own (or criticize your own) and immediately jumping to hyperbole is not how you should engage in a discussion.
(Disclaimer, up until recently I have only been vaguely following this thread, so it is possible I missed earlier, more extreme comments. All the same, the two quotes in bold still feel like hyperbole to me)
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It's an argument people try and beat me over the head with a great deal, since I'm rather outspoken in my criticism of 5e in this and a few other areas and people feel like criticizing 5e is equivalent to spurning the very heart and soul of tabletop roleplaying. "If you hate D&D so much/like these other systems so much, why not just play those instead, huh?!"
The answer is simple, and I already said it - 5e does some things well and some things poorly, just like those other systems do some things well and some things poorly. GURPS is absolutely phenomenal for building out exactly the character your mind envisions, it's delightful fun to spend hours and hours whiling away the day fiddling with a sheet. Moment-to-moment gameplay for GURPS is equally enjoyable and engaging, but the moment combat begins the whole thing bogs down and grinds because GURPS' default to one-second turns and extremely limited actions-per-turn make it an incredible hassle and unfortunately easy to game. Savage Worlds does combat much better than GURPS does and has one of the cleanest progression systems I've ever seen in a TTRPG with a good percent of GURPS' flexibility, but it doesn't handle powerful characters well at all, either as PCs or as BBEGs, and it's also oddly intolerant of oddball, off-the-wall PC origins for a setting-agnostic point builder game. Genesys sucks at everything, but does an excellent job of soaking up all the boutiquey Bohemian Failure Monkeys that hate playing games and want to Live an Artistic Journey instead so we don't have to put up with them.
D&D, meanwhile, has a magic system no other game can touch and does better than most other modern games do at dealing with very powerful entities, and when it works its vaunted combat engine does make for very neat fights. The issue is that for a game that prides itself on "Thrilling Fantastical Combat!", its treatment of martial characters just falls short. GURPS and its myriad of stunts and special maneuvers handles cool displays of martial training and expertise better than D&D does, which is sad because the Superiority system D&D decided to confine strictly and solely to one single subclass of one single class is a very clean, 5e-approved way of doing much the same thing that Techniques accomplish in GURPS...buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut the 5e team decided Superiority was too komplukayted to trust the braindead masses with, and so they locked it away somewhere people wouldn't have to look at it. Keep it secret, keep it safe, keep it away from all the stupids that can't be trusted with it...and in the doing deny all the other martial classes in the whole-ass game access to a wonderful baseline tool for "Thrilling Fantastical Combat!".
I truly think Superiority could've been the martial answer to spellcasters' spellcasting. Different classes could've gotten different maneuvers unique to them - rangers could've gotten a few primal woods-master maneuvers only they could take, paladins could've gotten some holy-warrior maneuvers only the Oathbound can learn. Individual weapons could each be given their own maneuver - every martial weapon could have its own distinct maneuver that's added to the pool of available maneuvers for any character with Superiority, and thus weapons could be distinct and meaningful again without having to deal with the whole weapon vs. armor vs. nonsense table everyone is so traumatized by in 3.5e. Being able to perform battle maneuvers could've been the hallmark of martial prowess, the thing that sets trained warriors and masters of steel apart.
But nah. Why bother with that when you could just hit somebody with your hittin' stick, instead?
What a god damned waste of a perfectly excellent opportunity...
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Spells are a vastly different beast than martial attacks and comparing the two is pretty silly IMO.
Spells give you a wide variety of versatility in movement, damage, buffs, debuffs, transportation of goods, summons, etc...
attacks are always attacks and do no vary for the vast majority of classes. You may get a rider or two from it but its not itself changed at all from 1st level to 20th.....you roll and apply a modifier and you are done.
Spells have layers and combinations that just don't exist for attacks.
But again "just play something else" is not an argument that has come up to any large degree in the most recent parts of this thread, so I do not see why you are circling back around to argue against it. No one in recent comments have mentioned GURPS or Bohemian Failure Monkeys or any of the other things you mentioned in the rest of the above comment. You seem to by going back to other arguments that you have had in this thread (and others) and trying to mesh it all into one comment to try and address everything at once, even if several of those things are not arguments/discussions that are currently happening.
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I can't speak for Barbarian, never played one. Though they do have some choices to make. When to use their limited number of rages, unless you have so few encounters in a day they can just always use it. And when to reckless attack for advantage and when not to.
Battlemaster also isn't the only fighter subclass with options. Arcane Archer has less uses but bigger impact on its arcane shots. Rune knight has its runes. Monks have ki related abilities to think about. Paladins have smites and spells, including smite spells that do less damage than divine smite but can have interesing effects if an enemy fails a DC. Both guaranteed damage for a smite and on a failed saving throw, a spell effect. Rangers have some similar 'strike' spells like zephyr strike and ensnaring strike, though this also competes with wanting concentration on hunter's mark.
I wouldn't say martials are perfect and that no improvements could be made. But there's more going on there than 'hit things with stick' for more than just the battlemaster.
How does the existence of non-spellcasters with significant choices change the game to the detriment of others? There's no reason you can't still have 'I hit it' classes.
Based on what has been said so far it seems that some people would like something added to the game. Other people don't want them to have the thing they want and fill up page after page with responses that boils down to "You can't have it because I don't want it too". They forget that no one has to justify anything to them about what they may want to see added 5e, just WotC.
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As someone who has been roleplaying for 20+ years has run systems as diverse as Whitewolf's Apocalypse series (for me the absolute definition of a system that got far to bloated and confused and so literally needed the apocalypse to happen so it could be burnt to the ground), to Legend of the 5 rings (one of the most brutal systems in terms of combat for players, and do not get me started on a shadowlands campaign for shortening characters lives). Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, a system that forced "class" decisions based on the starts you rolled, and while being quite crunchy managed to get all the rules into just a single rulebook, to Cyberpunk, Gurps, Paranoia and I could go on and on I think you really do not understand the appeal of DnD 5e.
I dabbled in earlier DnD editions, I played a bit with pathfinder and it has it's benefits, but the joy of 5E as a system is that as a story teller it allows me so so much scope to tell mutual stories with my table knowing that I don't have to worry about a character decision leading to them having to commit Sepukku (happens a lot in L5R if you are roleplaying properly), I don't have to worry about a rules argument at the table as 4 different players pull out 4 different sourcebooks and point legitimatley to 4 rules conflicts across those books (a problem with Apocalypse)
If you want a different system than honestly go and play a different game, there are so many options out there. The things you dislike myself and millions of players and DM's love because I have the scope to define the rules as I go, players tell me what they want to do and I can make the call as to what they need to roll, how the world reacts, what happens when they try it. I don;t need to refer to hundreds of tables, I don't need to refer to lots of different rules, my players don't need to spend an hour on a combat because they are figuring out what of the many options that will take. The describe what they want to do and the game gives me the absolute freedom to let them try. I have my issues with the D20 system, it is far to binary pass fail for me, so I tweak things and I have a DC range from heavy failure to strong success and everything in between, but if I wanted to change the system to how I want it then I would play 7th Sea or a similar roll and keep game.
So no WOTC do NOT need to make DnD more complicated or rules heavy, maybe you need to find a different system or reconsider how you challenge your players and make them think through problems. I am playing with equally experienced players who have played many many systems and they love the fact they can focus on story telling and actually roleplaying while having a system that has just enough in combat it is not one dimensional.
There are some minor tweaks they can make to the base subclasses, there are some minor balance issues that I can see some have (I have not suffered those issues but that is probably the kind of game we play), but feel free to leave. I am a great great believer in the idea that people should play as many systems as they possibly can over a lifetime, different is good.
As for inputting choice depth and diversity, I am a little confused exactly what you are struggling with, as a DM my party have no issues with choice, or depth and diversity in what regard are you talking?
But why do they need to justify their desires to you at all?
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I totally want better non-combat capabilities for non-spellcasters, but that's a separate ball of wax.
There should be a general power boost for martial classes in tier 3-4, whether or not they are made more complex (power boosts should probably not be in single target dpr, where they're already plenty awesome, but in areas such as mobility, dealing with environmental issues, and dealing with multiple foes).
Exactly....
I'm looking for options in T3 and T4 for martial classes.
The game runs fine IMO at T1 and T2
Quoting in full because I feel these posts both raise valid concerns. I'm not sure they're getting at a useful solution though. I don't think 5E needs more rules or more complex rules to satisfy groups who experience a lack of options. I think 5E needs better rules in some cases, and certainly better rules-adjacent advice and suggestions on how to make games interesting or how to reward creativity without just giving everything and anything a free pass. There is some (very sparse) advice in the rulebooks, but by and large suggestions and options to tailor a campaign to a group's preferences are next to non-existent. I find myself lamenting about the sorry state of the DMG rather often, but, well, that's because the DMG is such a poor guide. In a purely mechanical sense 5E creates the inverse of the problem 3E had: 3E had tons of different things characters could do, but nine times out of ten they were locked behind - if you didn't need a (potentially prestige) class ability - a feat requirement or a skill rank requirement; 5E has in comparison very few things characters can do in combat that are mentioned in the rules, but as a result players and DMs don't know how to (or even want to) allow anything not in one of the books. At the same time half the interesting combats described in an official D&D novel seem to be won by some crafty move, quick thinking or special tactic the rules are entirely silent about.
I've so far held off on backing this KS because annoyingly I live in Europe, where apparently the books are being printed, but not in the UK, where the books are going to be shipped from, so VAT is going to be painful. If it in any way turns out to be some kind of smörgåsbord of options rather than just upgrading the existing crunch it'll get my wholehearted endorsement though, just because hopefully that'll lead to opening up mindsets about how to deal with combat scenes in 5E.
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Fighters could certainly use a boost in non-combat abilities. Out side of skills, the base Fighter class has zero non-combat abilities. Boosting the Exploration pillar of the game would help Ranger immensely, but they at least have spells like Pass without Trace to play with. Rogues, Bards, Clerics, Druids, Warlocks and Wizards are great in and out of combat but I would want them to get a little something just to off set any significant power gain for Martial Classes. Basically a cross the board revision so that what minimal balance we have is maintained while giving martial a more varied tool kit.
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Coming late to this thread, and here's my 2c. I played a Grave Domain Cleric from level 8 to level 20 over the course of almost 2 years. Lately I've been playing a Rune Knight fighter.
The Cleric, with their spells, can match the Wizard in their versatility, IMO. There were many encounters (not just combat) where my Cleric 'saved the day' by using the right spell at the right time, and some of that involves anticipating what will be needed, so the right spell is prepared when it's needed. I had a great run with my cleric, and I'll surely remember his story for years to come. I should also point out that I feel like every time I cast a spell that saved the day, there was another time when a clutch spell had no effect (missed the AC or a successful save was made). When the casters were not able to control the situations, it's the martial classes that allowed us to survive.
When I started a new campaign, I was tired of the Cleric. As 'complex' as they were, I don't want to play one again for the time being. I want to approach problems from a different perspective. I chose to make a Fighter for one particular reason: Most classes get 5 ASI's or Feats (4th, 8th, 12th, 16th and 19th levels). The fighter gets 7 (4th, 6th, 8th, 12th, 14th, 16th and 19th) and the extra ones are all in the range of 'most played levels', ie: levels 1 to 15. I don't plan to focus on feats and gimmicks that will make my fighter a DPS or NOVA monster, and I will instead use those extra feats to improve the other two pillars: exploration and social encounters. The fighter can do what the fighter needs to do in combat without having to invest heavily in ASI or Feats, leaving it to be super versatile in all 3 pillars.
I think this whole thread lately has been focusing too much on COMBAT, and I can't sit back and jump on the 'martial classes are boring' bandwagon if the conversation is going to be limited to 1/3rd of the potential content in D&D.
Even then, my personal experience doesn't line up with what some people are saying. I have one friend that plays a Champion fighter and all he does is swing a sword, remaining quiet the rest of the sessions. But in my experience, that character is an outlier. The martial classes (rogue, paladin, monk, fighter) that I played along with my Cleric were not 1 dimensional characters and the players behind them didn't limit themselves to swinging a sword. If they could think of 'cool' things to do, they proposed it and the GM bought into it or did not. And when the GM said yes, some of the things they did were hilarious and/or cool and/or clutch to winning.
Should martial classes get more 'defined options via game mechanics'? I mean, they could but I don't think it will solve the problem. Good players already do well with martial classes without being constrained by them. And 'non-imaginative' players will just look at their new list of things to do and pick one instead of trying to think outside the box. I think people that are unsatisfied with martial classes now would still be unsatisfied with martial classes even if a PHB says, "you can do all these new things now".
Have you considered just getting the PDFs?
Also, I think the thing I am most interested in when it comes to this kickstarter project is seeing how well it does and how WotC reacts to it, if at all. I would much prefer "official" content of this type and wonder if I will get it in 2024.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master