The solution to such situations is the same that is actually used in comic books, namely, write stories in which the power of Thor or Iron Man saves the day in some situations, but would cause too much collateral damage in others.
Having run superhero games: there are many plot devices that work in fiction that do not work in RPGs.
I can see some parallels. Super hero teamup movies, and I'd assume comics too, often have some tasks pop up suited for all of the heroes.
The rogue may not be able to throw out lightning, but they are good at sneaking, hit and run, and disabling traps/locks etc. Just as Black Widow isn't going toe to toe with Thor or Hulk but has skillsets they lack.
Having some additional options for martials won't break anything and is honestly needed. T3 and T4 casters are just straight insane at times.
Fighters: I can attack one more time.
Wizards: I can create a copy of myself, for free, that has most of my spell slots, can hold concentration on a second spell for me...oh and this can be re-upped every single day for absolutely no cost if I want it to. Also I can just straight turn myself into an Ancient Brass Dragon permanently
And there are options for such people. Even for fighters, there are battle masters. There arcane archers and rune knights. And of course multiclassing, which people do to grab that action surge. Seen a lot of new players go for fighters because the complexity of other classes scares them. They move on to more complex characters later. Simple does have a role. And insisting that it isn't for you does not mean it shouldn't exist any more than those who prefer simple characters should insist that complex ones should not. But it is ok to have a single, easy to play class. Fair game if it isn't for you. If it isn't for you, don't play it.
Multiclassing sort of defeats the purpose of simplicity. For one because you then have to deal with the intricacies of multiclassing in the first place, for another because it likely means picking up a more complex class than the simple fighter.
That said though, I think the notion of simplicity is a bit deceptive, certainly in 5E. There certainly are classes that I wouldn't recommend new players start out with (well, just one actually - sorcerer), but there are several that are simple enough, several others that are simple enough if the player just keeps it simple and a couple that could be a lot simpler without giving up on interesting features if WotC had kept their design a bit tighter (the ranger class would be pretty straightforward for a player who wanted that if the developers had paid a bit more attention and eliminated some or all of the needless competition for Concentration, for instance). From my experiences with newer players, anecdotal as those are, a lot of the time "complex" seems to translate to "I'm not sure my choices are the right (read: mechanically optimal) choices" and for me that's a poor argument. The proliferation of expert advice ("this is how you build the best X") has been les than helpful in that regard too. I think more suggestions for "standard" character choices beyond the Quick Builds might help though.
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2) and (3) I was asking 'What are you giving up, if you get these extra abilities?' [cut]
I feel like D&D Beyond forums tend to go off-topic very often. This is mostly a reply to the above post, the "defeating the purpose of simplicity" argument I feel is the same but even more loosely connected to the topic.
The martials aren't boring compared to wizards argument doesn't holds up. EN World is making all the classes more complex, including the caster classes.
In addition "boring" is a very vague and opinion-based word. Just for a recent example, Yurei's latest post stated they find the battlemaster to be the "barely half-exception of the Battle Master fighter - and even the Battle Master, as cool as it is, isn't that complex or nuanced - that has any degree of depth or versatility to it whatsoever" to which the response from Kotath was "there are battle masters" and somehow both responses don't have anything to back themselves up with because it's a opinion, not a fact.
Essentially,
The audience for EN World is people who think the battlemaster/casters aren't complex enough, as such the argument that the audience in fact, does think battlemaster is complex is by definition wrong for that audience. The issue with the argument being the audience isn't everyone playing 5E, but rather a niche subset of people. The audience does exist too, proven the existence of EN World's 5.5E.
In other words, could the audience just play a battlemaster and be happy? Probably. Could they play a even more complex class and be happier? Apparently so, and isn't that the whole point of Homebrew? (to be happier part, not the play complex classes part, the two can coexist though).
The argument that people want added complexity without sacrificing anything has very little standing here. Kotath made a example of someone who wanted to add rage to a fighter, EN World has not been proven be anything like that. EN World I believe has stated that they're completely revamping all the classes from mostly ground-up, so it's highly unlikely that it'll just be a normal 5E PHB Fighter with maneuvers slapped on (if so then yes I agree that would likely be unbalanced).
In other words, Of course they'll change other stuff around and nerf/buff other classes as needed
(although tbf I can't say that with certainty cause I don't work at EN World, but it's assumed they will and I've seen other homebrews who have been able to manage giving all fighters maneuvers while nerfing other things to keep it balanced).
edit: shortened post also replaced "you" with "Kotath", sometimes you forget that other people read these posts.
Balance isn't as important as people make it out to be. Mostly because people make it out to be overwhelmingly, earth-shatteringly, all-consumingly SuperMegaUltraHyperImportant, more important than all other factors and facets of game design by a thousandfold or more. People hear "give all fighters battle maneuvers" and they lose their freaking brains over the BALANCE of it, without ever pausing in their absolute hysterical schitte-flipping to consider whether or not it would be fun, and would serve the game experience and class fantasy of being a fighter i.e. a master of martial combat who uses skill, discipline, and training to accomplish what other grognaks all need magical superpowers to do. The current Fighter class does not really serve that class fantasy save with the half-exception of the Battle Master, which is why Battle Masters are easily the second most popular fighter subclass after the DM telling someone "you're too stupid to understand this game; here, play this Champion hittin' guy with a hittin' stick and roll what I tell you to roll when I tell you to roll it" and being extremely terrible at introducing new players to D&D.
Pro tip: never, ******* ever, introduce a new player to D&D with a Champion fighter pregen. You're cutting them out of almost all of what the game can do and be and telling them to sit in a corner and spin while all the cool kids with the cool kid classes get to do Adventurer Things because the Champion is sweaty-ballsack useless at absolutely everything except melee combat, and frankly it's not great even at that. You're not showing this brand new person how cool it is to play a hero in this fantasy game where anything's possible, you're telling them you don't trust them to exercise any judgment and to stick to being a low-level video game character instead. And you're surprised when they don't catch on and end up leaving your game?
Instead, if you're not up to the unbelievably daunting task of helping them play what they want to play, give them a ranger or paladin instead. Something with actual class abilities, as well as enough spells to introduce them to the game's spellcasting system i.e. its greatest feature, but which is also perfectly fine without spells and can default to "can I just, like...hit the thing?" without losing too much steam. They'll be just as effective in Turn-Brain-Off Idiot Mode as a Champion fighter, but if the player ends up not being a lump of cabbage and able to grasp basic gaming concepts after all and decides they like this stuff and want to get more engaged? They have options for doing so.
You're welcome.
Balance can be tuned much more easily than the play experience can be, especially because there's a DM at every table who can emergency slap-patch balance if it's needed. They're not nearly as good, however, at emergency slap-patching the overall game experience if needed, which is why it's important for the paid, trained, professional game design people to get that bit right, even over and above balance.
Also? Much as folks like Kotath like to tell folks like me that wanting to be engaged and have versatile options during my D&D makes me Literally The Spawn of Evil...well, there's a lot of Spawn of Evil out there. We like playing, too. The game should be able to give us options, and saying "you HAVE options, just play a Battle Master" is not okay. One option for people with their heads on straight and three hundred options for people who hate thinking and/or learning how to play D&D is not equitable at all. Y'all can go halvsies with us at the very least, eh?
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?
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?
I somewhat agree with your take in the first half, where it would be nice if there were more tactical things to do, BUT...
in the second half, saying that people who can enjoy a simple/repetitive character "...hates their brain, hates D&D, hates their table, and hates thinking..." is a strong opinion in the wrong direction. Even if you dont like those subclasses/classes, we should refrain from dumping on someone's fun time.
I will also add that all martial characters have the somewhat tactical option of Grappling, Shoving, or Disarming (if the optional rule is being used) and they will arguably be better at those attack variants than non-martials since they all rely on either an Athletics skill check or a weapon attack.
2) and (3) I was asking 'What are you giving up, if you get these extra abilities?' [cut]
I feel like D&D Beyond forums tend to go off-topic very often. This is mostly a reply to the above post, the "defeating the purpose of simplicity" argument I feel is the same but even more loosely connected to the topic.
The martials aren't boring compared to wizards argument doesn't holds up. EN World is making all the classes more complex, including the caster classes.
In addition "boring" is a very vague and opinion-based word. Just for a recent example, Yurei's latest post stated they find the battlemaster to be the "barely half-exception of the Battle Master fighter - and even the Battle Master, as cool as it is, isn't that complex or nuanced - that has any degree of depth or versatility to it whatsoever" to which the response from Kotath was "there are battle masters" and somehow both responses don't have anything to back themselves up with because it's a opinion, not a fact.
Essentially,
The audience for EN World is people who think the battlemaster/casters aren't complex enough, as such the argument that the audience in fact, does think battlemaster is complex is by definition wrong for that audience. The issue with the argument being the audience isn't everyone playing 5E, but rather a niche subset of people. The audience does exist too, proven the existence of EN World's 5.5E.
In other words, could the audience just play a battlemaster and be happy? Probably. Could they play a even more complex class and be happier? Apparently so, and isn't that the whole point of Homebrew? (to be happier part, not the play complex classes part, the two can coexist though).
The argument that people want added complexity without sacrificing anything has very little standing here. Kotath made a example of someone who wanted to add rage to a fighter, EN World has not been proven be anything like that. EN World I believe has stated that they're completely revamping all the classes from mostly ground-up, so it's highly unlikely that it'll just be a normal 5E PHB Fighter with maneuvers slapped on (if so then yes I agree that would likely be unbalanced).
In other words, Of course they'll change other stuff around and nerf/buff other classes as needed
(although tbf I can't say that with certainty cause I don't work at EN World, but it's assumed they will and I've seen other homebrews who have been able to manage giving all fighters maneuvers while nerfing other things to keep it balanced).
edit: shortened post also replaced "you" with "Kotath", sometimes you forget that other people read these posts.
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.
After checking the title of the thread again I can confirm that, yes, this thread is about comparing En World's project to 5e.
-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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Thank you, Erriku. It's always heartening to hear kind words. This place can be an argumentative dunghill sometimes, but I try my best.
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Having run superhero games: there are many plot devices that work in fiction that do not work in RPGs.
I can see some parallels. Super hero teamup movies, and I'd assume comics too, often have some tasks pop up suited for all of the heroes.
The rogue may not be able to throw out lightning, but they are good at sneaking, hit and run, and disabling traps/locks etc. Just as Black Widow isn't going toe to toe with Thor or Hulk but has skillsets they lack.
Having some additional options for martials won't break anything and is honestly needed. T3 and T4 casters are just straight insane at times.
Fighters: I can attack one more time.
Wizards: I can create a copy of myself, for free, that has most of my spell slots, can hold concentration on a second spell for me...oh and this can be re-upped every single day for absolutely no cost if I want it to. Also I can just straight turn myself into an Ancient Brass Dragon permanently
Fighter: Cool...I uh....can attack one more time.
Multiclassing sort of defeats the purpose of simplicity. For one because you then have to deal with the intricacies of multiclassing in the first place, for another because it likely means picking up a more complex class than the simple fighter.
That said though, I think the notion of simplicity is a bit deceptive, certainly in 5E. There certainly are classes that I wouldn't recommend new players start out with (well, just one actually - sorcerer), but there are several that are simple enough, several others that are simple enough if the player just keeps it simple and a couple that could be a lot simpler without giving up on interesting features if WotC had kept their design a bit tighter (the ranger class would be pretty straightforward for a player who wanted that if the developers had paid a bit more attention and eliminated some or all of the needless competition for Concentration, for instance). From my experiences with newer players, anecdotal as those are, a lot of the time "complex" seems to translate to "I'm not sure my choices are the right (read: mechanically optimal) choices" and for me that's a poor argument. The proliferation of expert advice ("this is how you build the best X") has been les than helpful in that regard too. I think more suggestions for "standard" character choices beyond the Quick Builds might help though.
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So we can fix the problem by advising players "Just don't bother playing a fighter in a tier 3 or 4 campaign"?
I feel like D&D Beyond forums tend to go off-topic very often. This is mostly a reply to the above post, the "defeating the purpose of simplicity" argument I feel is the same but even more loosely connected to the topic.
The martials aren't boring compared to wizards argument doesn't holds up. EN World is making all the classes more complex, including the caster classes.
In addition "boring" is a very vague and opinion-based word. Just for a recent example, Yurei's latest post stated they find the battlemaster to be the "barely half-exception of the Battle Master fighter - and even the Battle Master, as cool as it is, isn't that complex or nuanced - that has any degree of depth or versatility to it whatsoever" to which the response from Kotath was "there are battle masters" and somehow both responses don't have anything to back themselves up with because it's a opinion, not a fact.
Essentially,
The audience for EN World is people who think the battlemaster/casters aren't complex enough, as such the argument that the audience in fact, does think battlemaster is complex is by definition wrong for that audience. The issue with the argument being the audience isn't everyone playing 5E, but rather a niche subset of people. The audience does exist too, proven the existence of EN World's 5.5E.
In other words, could the audience just play a battlemaster and be happy? Probably. Could they play a even more complex class and be happier? Apparently so, and isn't that the whole point of Homebrew? (to be happier part, not the play complex classes part, the two can coexist though).
The argument that people want added complexity without sacrificing anything has very little standing here. Kotath made a example of someone who wanted to add rage to a fighter, EN World has not been proven be anything like that. EN World I believe has stated that they're completely revamping all the classes from mostly ground-up, so it's highly unlikely that it'll just be a normal 5E PHB Fighter with maneuvers slapped on (if so then yes I agree that would likely be unbalanced).
In other words, Of course they'll change other stuff around and nerf/buff other classes as needed
(although tbf I can't say that with certainty cause I don't work at EN World, but it's assumed they will and I've seen other homebrews who have been able to manage giving all fighters maneuvers while nerfing other things to keep it balanced).
edit: shortened post also replaced "you" with "Kotath", sometimes you forget that other people read these posts.
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.
Balance isn't as important as people make it out to be. Mostly because people make it out to be overwhelmingly, earth-shatteringly, all-consumingly SuperMegaUltraHyperImportant, more important than all other factors and facets of game design by a thousandfold or more. People hear "give all fighters battle maneuvers" and they lose their freaking brains over the BALANCE of it, without ever pausing in their absolute hysterical schitte-flipping to consider whether or not it would be fun, and would serve the game experience and class fantasy of being a fighter i.e. a master of martial combat who uses skill, discipline, and training to accomplish what other grognaks all need magical superpowers to do. The current Fighter class does not really serve that class fantasy save with the half-exception of the Battle Master, which is why Battle Masters are easily the second most popular fighter subclass after the DM telling someone "you're too stupid to understand this game; here, play this
Championhittin' guy with a hittin' stick and roll what I tell you to roll when I tell you to roll it" and being extremely terrible at introducing new players to D&D.Pro tip: never, ******* ever, introduce a new player to D&D with a Champion fighter pregen. You're cutting them out of almost all of what the game can do and be and telling them to sit in a corner and spin while all the cool kids with the cool kid classes get to do Adventurer Things because the Champion is sweaty-ballsack useless at absolutely everything except melee combat, and frankly it's not great even at that. You're not showing this brand new person how cool it is to play a hero in this fantasy game where anything's possible, you're telling them you don't trust them to exercise any judgment and to stick to being a low-level video game character instead. And you're surprised when they don't catch on and end up leaving your game?
Instead, if you're not up to the unbelievably daunting task of helping them play what they want to play, give them a ranger or paladin instead. Something with actual class abilities, as well as enough spells to introduce them to the game's spellcasting system i.e. its greatest feature, but which is also perfectly fine without spells and can default to "can I just, like...hit the thing?" without losing too much steam. They'll be just as effective in Turn-Brain-Off Idiot Mode as a Champion fighter, but if the player ends up not being a lump of cabbage and able to grasp basic gaming concepts after all and decides they like this stuff and want to get more engaged? They have options for doing so.
You're welcome.
Balance can be tuned much more easily than the play experience can be, especially because there's a DM at every table who can emergency slap-patch balance if it's needed. They're not nearly as good, however, at emergency slap-patching the overall game experience if needed, which is why it's important for the paid, trained, professional game design people to get that bit right, even over and above balance.
Also? Much as folks like Kotath like to tell folks like me that wanting to be engaged and have versatile options during my D&D makes me Literally The Spawn of Evil...well, there's a lot of Spawn of Evil out there. We like playing, too. The game should be able to give us options, and saying "you HAVE options, just play a Battle Master" is not okay. One option for people with their heads on straight and three hundred options for people who hate thinking and/or learning how to play D&D is not equitable at all. Y'all can go halvsies with us at the very least, eh?
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Okay.
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?
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I somewhat agree with your take in the first half, where it would be nice if there were more tactical things to do, BUT...
in the second half, saying that people who can enjoy a simple/repetitive character "...hates their brain, hates D&D, hates their table, and hates thinking..." is a strong opinion in the wrong direction. Even if you dont like those subclasses/classes, we should refrain from dumping on someone's fun time.
I will also add that all martial characters have the somewhat tactical option of Grappling, Shoving, or Disarming (if the optional rule is being used) and they will arguably be better at those attack variants than non-martials since they all rely on either an Athletics skill check or a weapon attack.
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After checking the title of the thread again I can confirm that, yes, this thread is about comparing En World's project to 5e.
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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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