just started a new campaign, Ancient Greek themed, bought all new minis, spent hours painting them, prepping the game making maps, scenarios to start the game, chose the Pythian Games where Heracles came to compete in the wrestling as the players placed bets on contestants and they all loved the RP, it was going great :)
....then they traveled to fight the Caledonian Boar, terrorizing a small island (home brew world). Off the went into a tunnel they found I tot he liar of the beast. The bladesinger went at the front in the narrow tunnels and after a few attempts of the beast (and 7 smaller boats) all failed in their attempts to strike the lithe wizard I asked his AC, to which he replied (at level 2?!?!) that his AC was 23, 28 if he casts shield D:
This broke the encounter and yes, I need to find out how he got two 20’s in his stats so early (they rolled but I know he only had one 18 and 17 and the rest standard rolls, and yes I shouldn’t perhaps off had them fight in tunnels if I knew about the (broken) AC that bladesingers get, .....but....
A class should not restrict the environments that I should be able to choose to tell a story, it shouldn’t OP the AC of a PC to the point where he is literally harder to hit than anything else in the entire game and it shouldn’t be able to be misused so easily by the spells they’re able to access.
And yes I’ve read the defences of the class, “you only get 1d6 hit die”, “crits hurt” and “you don’t get the cool powers from the Schools” and yes that is all true but it all amounts to a player in the team (of a co-op based game) that :
1. Will outshine any melee based class member of the party in battle, standing in the front to soak up all the blows with a super high AC, while being scrawny and skinny. Cool for a single player game, not one where 5 or more other players want to feel like heroes too.
2. Has full access to the Wizard spell list, while having no healing spells, still has the widest range and most powerful spells.
3. Get all the spell slots of a wizard. Which go up to 9th level!
4. Optimizers loooooovvvveeeee to abuse this class and if you have one in the group (like I do) say hey to some AC 30 for 10 rounds, twice, per short rest?!?!
And after all this bad ass-ery something, sooner or later, is gonna crit you, or they’ll get hit by some AoE spell being on the front line and the player is gonna die outright and have to roll another character, nice knowing you, thanks for breaking me game.
It just seems a subclass that needs some serious considerations in the wording of its abilities, by making it a straight bonus to AC that can be amplified even further with many of the spells in the class and magical items on top makes it totally unbelievable that a scrawny elf could be avoiding so many attacks, it’s hard to describe (repeatedly) as I relay the players actions to the group and it disheartens other players with them being forever outshined by one player in soo many aspects of the game.
Anyway, I’ll be asking my player to change in all likelihood, but what are all your thoughts on bladesinger and do you think it needs retuning?
The problem isn't Bladesinger, it's that you let a character start with two ability scores at 20, then threw them into an encounter with a choke point and never tried any non-attack options like shoving prone or overrunning them.
Again, I’ve heard all these answers of “you didn’t put in work to decide best how to fight this ONE character and you should NEVER run an encounter with any sort of choke point because these well balanced subclass has total legit RP reasons that this wizard aka a scholar who spends his life reading to gain arcane knowledge is harder to hit than the monks and fighters who spend their whole lives training to, ya know, fight and clerics and paladins glad in the heaviest of armours, not to mention everything else in the game”? BS IMO
@User-1009.. I think you're judging the class too much based on one session of your campaign. That and, as InquisitiveCoder said, you goofed by letting this person have an 18 and a 17 stat score from the start.
Some things that could mess up this type of character are:
* Spells or abilities that restrain. See Entangle or Web spells. Or use monsters that do this automatically on a hit.
* Target this player's Wisdom or Charisma. Assuming that both high die rolls went into DEX and INT, putting the hocus-pocus on the character's mind or banishing.
* Traps that target Strength or Wisdom ability checks.
* NPCs or monsters that have nova abilities and the ability to get advantage. Faerie fire+Sneak attack, for example. Or reward this over-confident player with an encounter that includes a bunch of kobolds with poisoned arrows accompanied by worgs.
Also, remember teamwork. If one monster can't hit him, have two gang up, one using the Help action so the other gets advantage.
I'm going to assume those 20s are in DEX and INT. That accounts for an AC of up to 20. Where are the other 3 points coming from?
He can only Bladesing twice between rests, so having more than two battles between rests is also an option (and considered the D&D SOP, really).
But yeah, I strongly suspect that pair of 20s is the culprit more than the class itself. Personally, I would have everybody redo their characters with Standard Array or Standard Point Buy.
Firstly I’ve run many game where players have rolled 18’s and never had any problems before, it’s easily rolled. And should I do all that all I’m gonna do is kill the character, that has a lot of work done by the player for backstory, making them fit the world, npc’s they know, etc.
no one has yet to offer me an RP reason for the ac too
Yeh but you’re ignoring the whole RP point here? You can all y’all mechanics all you want but the AC is just too OP for a bookworm?
Why are you assuming he's a bookworm? Classes don't come with attached personalities. With a DEX of 20, he's a freakin' Olympic-plus level athlete. Willing to bet his STR and CON aren't subpar either. His AC is a result of agility, magic, and intelligent analysis of his opponents. So what if he's not physically tough? He's quick and smart.
Indiana Jones was a 'bookworm'. Batgirl is a 'bookworm'. Mr. Terrific is a bookworm. Batman is a bookworm.
Indiana Jones was a 'bookworm'. Batgirl is a 'bookworm'. Mr. Terrific is a bookworm. Batman is a bookworm.
In short, your argument is irrelevant.
Indiana Jones used to get the shit beat of of him, he wasn’t immune from being hit, batgirl same, Batman constantly gets the shit beat out of him. All your examples are of people who get hit, a lot?
Whats more NONE OF THEM ARE MAGIC USERS??
And none of them make extra work for my games? Which is the crux here and what I want other dms opinions on whether they allow it in their games and if they think it’s OP for their games. Not advise on what to do in my game. So if you find this argument “irrelevant” (odd use of the word considering this is a dnd dm forum) then don’t comment on it and waste both our time? Maybe xD
“ Nerf it or ban it, whatever. But if you weren't going to listen to anybody's advice, why did you waste your time and ours asking questions?”
Perfect example of attacking the person instead of the argument lol go back and reread my first post, I said I was disallowing it in my game and that I want people opinions on the class, that’s it, not advise on how to reallow it lol xD
but what are all your thoughts on bladesinger and do you think it needs retuning?
This is what you asked. You've received responses that say it isn't the class overall it's how it worked in that encounter and what the encounter balance was like.
I would allow it, and wouldn't find it OP. I also don't allow multiclassing though. When designing a set of encounters, I (a) like having a reason for them (b) use them to let the party make decisions on when to use their resources. If this was the first encounter, and your party, particularly the bladesinger had all his resources then yeah, it would seem overpowered. I would posit a barbarian filling the hallway with some support behind him would also break that encounter if it were the first one. On the flip side, maybe you designed the encounter to get the bladesinger to use his abilities, so that in the next encounter he won't have as many...
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"An' things ha' come to a pretty pass, ye ken, if people are going to leave stuff like that aroound where innocent people could accidentally smash the door doon and lever the bars aside and take the big chain off'f the cupboard and pick the lock and drink it!"
Which is fair enough, if you allow it great. But I would argue that this subclass could be abused using the wizard spells (intended to balance the low ac and hp of a wizard) by having it stack with them.
If for example the bladesong made it an AC with Dex & Int as monk does with Dex & Wis that’d make sense, that way you couldn’t stack it with mage armour but could still use it with shield for still really good AC, but that good AC would be like 24 with shield, not 30?
i really don’t think they took this under consideration as why else would you give light armour prof. When they still have mage armour in the spell list?
It sounds to me like you are justifiably attached to the way you designed your encounter and all the details that went with it, but then became bothered when one character used their optimized skills to blow threw most of your hard preparation, turning it into a cakewalk instead of a challenge. Is that right?
Honestly no, a dm is always prepared for things to go south in his plans and a good dm knows the aim is for the monsters to lose. But it’s honestly just the AC and how often they can bring it into play, perhaps I tried to make the original post funny and failed :P having someone being harder to hurt than an ancient dragon or a tarrasque because they hum is insane and immersion breaking, again for me personally
If it is just his dex and int, work around. If his statsum is far from what you would get with pointbuy (72 +race bonus) just ask him if he would reduce it to a lower number, leave him with the decision which stats he wants to nerf.
I did this with one of my players, reducing him from 86+ to 80+, still great, but now i can use strength or wisdom to challenge him without steamrolling everyone else.
I’ve asked him to change and he has, no drama, it’s only a game and everyone needs to have fun or the game falls apart.
But I just want to say this again to be clear at what my gripe is with this subclass, it’s the AC and how often they get to use it while stacking wizard spells that were made to compensate squishy magic users.
It’s the AC, stacked with AC spells making combat boring and immersion breaking
I'm honestly confused. You realize there are dozens of ways to work around a high AC, right? Hit him with status effects, or swarm him with lots of tiny creatures that can attack him multiple times for piddly damage each. And in his case, his high AC is itself only a temporary effect; it lasts for a few rounds, twice per short rest. What you do in that scenario is have the creatures withdraw, then come back a little while later.
I actually want to reiterate this: 5E is paced for multiple encounters per day. If you are letting characters recharge all their abilities between each major encounter, you are actually going to run into game balance issues. There are some classes (the Warlock springs to mind) that are specifically designed against the assumption of around five to six small encounters per long rest, and around two per short rest.
Also, yeah, letting your PCs have two 20s at low levels is a terrible mistake, as you've now learned. Point Buy is really the way to go for 5E, IMO. In general, I won't let players have first-level characters with stats higher than 16 in my games.
Boars should always have the charge option. Either the PC is strong enough to stop them or not and gets gored, or steps out of the way. Always have AoE, ability checks or swarm options to complement combat encounters. :)
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Grotesquely disfigured and underappreciated assistant of the Overlord at:
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just started a new campaign, Ancient Greek themed, bought all new minis, spent hours painting them, prepping the game making maps, scenarios to start the game, chose the Pythian Games where Heracles came to compete in the wrestling as the players placed bets on contestants and they all loved the RP, it was going great :)
....then they traveled to fight the Caledonian Boar, terrorizing a small island (home brew world). Off the went into a tunnel they found I tot he liar of the beast. The bladesinger went at the front in the narrow tunnels and after a few attempts of the beast (and 7 smaller boats) all failed in their attempts to strike the lithe wizard I asked his AC, to which he replied (at level 2?!?!) that his AC was 23, 28 if he casts shield D:
This broke the encounter and yes, I need to find out how he got two 20’s in his stats so early (they rolled but I know he only had one 18 and 17 and the rest standard rolls, and yes I shouldn’t perhaps off had them fight in tunnels if I knew about the (broken) AC that bladesingers get, .....but....
A class should not restrict the environments that I should be able to choose to tell a story, it shouldn’t OP the AC of a PC to the point where he is literally harder to hit than anything else in the entire game and it shouldn’t be able to be misused so easily by the spells they’re able to access.
And yes I’ve read the defences of the class, “you only get 1d6 hit die”, “crits hurt” and “you don’t get the cool powers from the Schools” and yes that is all true but it all amounts to a player in the team (of a co-op based game) that :
1. Will outshine any melee based class member of the party in battle, standing in the front to soak up all the blows with a super high AC, while being scrawny and skinny. Cool for a single player game, not one where 5 or more other players want to feel like heroes too.
2. Has full access to the Wizard spell list, while having no healing spells, still has the widest range and most powerful spells.
3. Get all the spell slots of a wizard. Which go up to 9th level!
4. Optimizers loooooovvvveeeee to abuse this class and if you have one in the group (like I do) say hey to some AC 30 for 10 rounds, twice, per short rest?!?!
And after all this bad ass-ery something, sooner or later, is gonna crit you, or they’ll get hit by some AoE spell being on the front line and the player is gonna die outright and have to roll another character, nice knowing you, thanks for breaking me game.
It just seems a subclass that needs some serious considerations in the wording of its abilities, by making it a straight bonus to AC that can be amplified even further with many of the spells in the class and magical items on top makes it totally unbelievable that a scrawny elf could be avoiding so many attacks, it’s hard to describe (repeatedly) as I relay the players actions to the group and it disheartens other players with them being forever outshined by one player in soo many aspects of the game.
Anyway, I’ll be asking my player to change in all likelihood, but what are all your thoughts on bladesinger and do you think it needs retuning?
The problem isn't Bladesinger, it's that you let a character start with two ability scores at 20, then threw them into an encounter with a choke point and never tried any non-attack options like shoving prone or overrunning them.
The Forum Infestation (TM)
Again, I’ve heard all these answers of “you didn’t put in work to decide best how to fight this ONE character and you should NEVER run an encounter with any sort of choke point because these well balanced subclass has total legit RP reasons that this wizard aka a scholar who spends his life reading to gain arcane knowledge is harder to hit than the monks and fighters who spend their whole lives training to, ya know, fight and clerics and paladins glad in the heaviest of armours, not to mention everything else in the game”? BS IMO
@User-1009.. I think you're judging the class too much based on one session of your campaign. That and, as InquisitiveCoder said, you goofed by letting this person have an 18 and a 17 stat score from the start.
Some things that could mess up this type of character are:
* Spells or abilities that restrain. See Entangle or Web spells. Or use monsters that do this automatically on a hit.
* Target this player's Wisdom or Charisma. Assuming that both high die rolls went into DEX and INT, putting the hocus-pocus on the character's mind or banishing.
* Traps that target Strength or Wisdom ability checks.
* NPCs or monsters that have nova abilities and the ability to get advantage. Faerie fire+Sneak attack, for example. Or reward this over-confident player with an encounter that includes a bunch of kobolds with poisoned arrows accompanied by worgs.
Also, remember teamwork. If one monster can't hit him, have two gang up, one using the Help action so the other gets advantage.
I'm going to assume those 20s are in DEX and INT. That accounts for an AC of up to 20. Where are the other 3 points coming from?
He can only Bladesing twice between rests, so having more than two battles between rests is also an option (and considered the D&D SOP, really).
But yeah, I strongly suspect that pair of 20s is the culprit more than the class itself. Personally, I would have everybody redo their characters with Standard Array or Standard Point Buy.
Yeh but you’re ignoring the whole RP point here? You can all y’all mechanics all you want but the AC is just too OP for a bookworm?
Firstly I’ve run many game where players have rolled 18’s and never had any problems before, it’s easily rolled. And should I do all that all I’m gonna do is kill the character, that has a lot of work done by the player for backstory, making them fit the world, npc’s they know, etc.
no one has yet to offer me an RP reason for the ac too
And yes I could do all this extra work when making my plans and stop people from rolling stats and ruin the story aspect of my game etc etc
....or I could just disallow bladesinger, guess which one is easiest for me lol
Why are you assuming he's a bookworm? Classes don't come with attached personalities. With a DEX of 20, he's a freakin' Olympic-plus level athlete. Willing to bet his STR and CON aren't subpar either. His AC is a result of agility, magic, and intelligent analysis of his opponents. So what if he's not physically tough? He's quick and smart.
Indiana Jones was a 'bookworm'. Batgirl is a 'bookworm'. Mr. Terrific is a bookworm. Batman is a bookworm.
In short, your argument is irrelevant.
Nerf it or ban it, whatever. But if you weren't going to listen to anybody's advice, why did you waste your time and ours asking questions?
Indiana Jones used to get the shit beat of of him, he wasn’t immune from being hit, batgirl same, Batman constantly gets the shit beat out of him. All your examples are of people who get hit, a lot?
Whats more NONE OF THEM ARE MAGIC USERS??
And none of them make extra work for my games? Which is the crux here and what I want other dms opinions on whether they allow it in their games and if they think it’s OP for their games. Not advise on what to do in my game. So if you find this argument “irrelevant” (odd use of the word considering this is a dnd dm forum) then don’t comment on it and waste both our time? Maybe xD
Perfect example of attacking the person instead of the argument lol go back and reread my first post, I said I was disallowing it in my game and that I want people opinions on the class, that’s it, not advise on how to reallow it lol xD
This is what you asked. You've received responses that say it isn't the class overall it's how it worked in that encounter and what the encounter balance was like.
I would allow it, and wouldn't find it OP. I also don't allow multiclassing though. When designing a set of encounters, I (a) like having a reason for them (b) use them to let the party make decisions on when to use their resources. If this was the first encounter, and your party, particularly the bladesinger had all his resources then yeah, it would seem overpowered. I would posit a barbarian filling the hallway with some support behind him would also break that encounter if it were the first one. On the flip side, maybe you designed the encounter to get the bladesinger to use his abilities, so that in the next encounter he won't have as many...
"An' things ha' come to a pretty pass, ye ken, if people are going to leave stuff like that aroound where innocent people could accidentally smash the door doon and lever the bars aside and take the big chain off'f the cupboard and pick the lock and drink it!"
Which is fair enough, if you allow it great. But I would argue that this subclass could be abused using the wizard spells (intended to balance the low ac and hp of a wizard) by having it stack with them.
If for example the bladesong made it an AC with Dex & Int as monk does with Dex & Wis that’d make sense, that way you couldn’t stack it with mage armour but could still use it with shield for still really good AC, but that good AC would be like 24 with shield, not 30?
i really don’t think they took this under consideration as why else would you give light armour prof. When they still have mage armour in the spell list?
It sounds to me like you are justifiably attached to the way you designed your encounter and all the details that went with it, but then became bothered when one character used their optimized skills to blow threw most of your hard preparation, turning it into a cakewalk instead of a challenge. Is that right?
Honestly no, a dm is always prepared for things to go south in his plans and a good dm knows the aim is for the monsters to lose. But it’s honestly just the AC and how often they can bring it into play, perhaps I tried to make the original post funny and failed :P having someone being harder to hurt than an ancient dragon or a tarrasque because they hum is insane and immersion breaking, again for me personally
If it is just his dex and int, work around. If his statsum is far from what you would get with pointbuy (72 +race bonus) just ask him if he would reduce it to a lower number, leave him with the decision which stats he wants to nerf.
I did this with one of my players, reducing him from 86+ to 80+, still great, but now i can use strength or wisdom to challenge him without steamrolling everyone else.
Attack: [roll]3d20dl2+6[/roll] Damage: [roll](if([roll:-1:critical], =0, 1d8, 2{1d8}.expand()))+4[/roll] Sneakattack: [roll](if([roll:-2:critical], =0, 2d6, 2{2d6}.expand()))[/roll]I’ve asked him to change and he has, no drama, it’s only a game and everyone needs to have fun or the game falls apart.
But I just want to say this again to be clear at what my gripe is with this subclass, it’s the AC and how often they get to use it while stacking wizard spells that were made to compensate squishy magic users.
It’s the AC, stacked with AC spells making combat boring and immersion breaking
I'm honestly confused. You realize there are dozens of ways to work around a high AC, right? Hit him with status effects, or swarm him with lots of tiny creatures that can attack him multiple times for piddly damage each. And in his case, his high AC is itself only a temporary effect; it lasts for a few rounds, twice per short rest. What you do in that scenario is have the creatures withdraw, then come back a little while later.
I actually want to reiterate this: 5E is paced for multiple encounters per day. If you are letting characters recharge all their abilities between each major encounter, you are actually going to run into game balance issues. There are some classes (the Warlock springs to mind) that are specifically designed against the assumption of around five to six small encounters per long rest, and around two per short rest.
Also, yeah, letting your PCs have two 20s at low levels is a terrible mistake, as you've now learned. Point Buy is really the way to go for 5E, IMO. In general, I won't let players have first-level characters with stats higher than 16 in my games.
Boars should always have the charge option. Either the PC is strong enough to stop them or not and gets gored, or steps out of the way. Always have AoE, ability checks or swarm options to complement combat encounters. :)
Grotesquely disfigured and underappreciated assistant of the Overlord at:
