I am NEW to dungeons and dragons, I don't have a complaint exactly, I just don't understand why everything is designed to not work together. Multiclassing immediately caught me as cool and amazing for flavor and lore, for example, a person who initially takes a warlock pact but refuses to keep making those deals for power and instead becomes a cleric hoping to redeem their soul or something. The more research I do into the classes it really seems to me that if you want to do melee damage, a fighter is the best period and everyone else who does melee damage is subpar. If you want to be a spell caster you want to be a wizard period, no one else has the power or versatility, even a fraction of it. And clerics, while not as powerful as either, are really solid at both and get divine intervention, healing, resurrection, and high level spells. The other classes feel straight up inferior, like they only exist for flavor.
Warlock is my favorite class flavor wise in the game, but I feel like warlock has it the worst of all. I feel like there is no point in even leveling a warlock past 9-12 just to get the eldritch invocation/ability score. I get they get some minor stuff after that but it feels REALLY inferior to what higher level wizards and clerics get. So my natural inclination it to multiclass the warlock but everything in the game seems to be designed to punish multiclassing, from the way spell slots work, to the way all abilities that specify they improve with level is always class level and not total level, the way attempting to stack any spells effects is almost impossible (almost nothing at all has passive continuous effects, it's either instant, concentration, or nothing), and the game even having convoluted rules to prevent any cool combos from existing like vampiric touch and thirsting blade (because you are making a spell melee attack whatever the hell that is, not a melee attack).
At the end of the day, I feel really frustrated because I kind of went into this assuming D&D was all about having way more possibilities than any kind of video game could ever have. And maybe that exists, I haven't actually played yet, we start this weekend, but from the character creation side of it I feel like the game is just punishing me for every creative idea I have. I spend all this time researching trying to find clever ways to combine abilities and at the end of the day like none of them work. You either simply can't do it because of limitations of concentration or they don't interact the way you'd think they would even if it's common sense. I have scrapped 2 dozen character ideas in the last 2 weeks because every idea I come up with just doesn't work in 5e rules. At the end of the day it's play a super bland fighter, wizard (I just don't like wizard mechanics), or cleric if you want to be optimally useful in a group. If you want to be less useful but have more fun play anything else, and if you want to be useless but have actual cool lore and character development then multiclass.
I could be entirely wrong about this, I am still super new. I am not trying to say I know all and D&D sucks. But I am at a real loss, I am very frustrated, and I feel like any creative character ideas I come up with are a waste of time. Just to be clear, I am not complaining because I can't break the game or come up with overpowered combos, I can see how it would sound that way. You know that feeling you get when you figure out a cool strategy or combo in a game? You feel rewarded for figuring out a mechanical interaction the game didn't explicitly tell you, maybe that becomes a playstyle. Thats what I feel like I don't have, the abilities can be used as written and no other way, no clever interactions. At least, thats how it feels anyway.
You definitely seem to be missing details leading to your conclusions.
Like different spellcasters get different spells, the wizard has very good utility and decent power, but lacks buffs and is very reliant on spells with only a few non-spellcasting features.
Sorcerers by contrast get fewer spells, but are better with them, they also have features that feel magical, but don't use spells.
Warlocks can be built in hundreds of different ways and have several unique spells. They are held back a bit by limited number of spells per encounter and constantly needing a short rest, but more than make up for it with invocations. At higher levels you finally get a 3rd and 4th spell slot, not to mention 6th-9th level spells.
Fighters are fine, but they don't out perform rogues, paladins, or barbarians by much if any in combat.
I also don't think you have considered subclasses at all. Some classes are more dependant on them than others.
D&D 5E really tried to cut back on the synergy because 3E had a very open anything-goes synergy approach and it absolutely broke the game. I think the pendulum might have swung too far in the other direction, but honestly I prefer this to how it was in that edition.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
D&D 5E really tried to cut back on the synergy because 3E had a very open anything-goes synergy approach and it absolutely broke the game. I think the pendulum might have swung too far in the other direction, but honestly I prefer this to how it was in that edition.
Worse than this, making things highly synergistic makes for a massive divergence between powergamers and non-powergamers. 3E and Pathfinder 1E were examples of games where there were lots of ways to overpower your character, which intrinsically means there are lots of ways to fail to adequately power your character. In 5E it's hard to build a character that can't contribute.
I do not agree with the original argument saying fighter is the best at melee, wizard is the best at spells, that's it (not exactly what was said, but that's how I resume it).
You don't have to be the most powerful to enjoy the game, and plenty of class offer cool feature the abovementioned class don't get. Can you super duper fighter smite enemies with divine power and almost one-shot a BBEG like a paladin? can your wizard turn into a bear without casting any spell like a druid? can your fighter be customized nearly as much as a warlock? Every class, or even subclass for this matter offer cool and unique option, that really set you apart from the other player, the feature help you bring life to the story you imagined for your char, and the story you'll play. Even if they are not perfectly equal on a power scale, they are all unique enough to be interesting.
I could be entirely wrong about this, I am still super new.
To put it bluntly, you are. 5e has a surprising amount of complexity under its simplistic design, and the power of some classes only emerge when you factor in all of their bits working together (warlock is definitely one of those). It's going to take you a while before you get there - seeing the classes actually in play should help a lot.
Class balance is actually pretty good in 5e, to the point that there's no consensus on which is exactly the strongest. The ones you see as dominant are just the ones that are the most straightforward in their mechanics.
Just also want to add that if any class comes off as "bland" at the table, that is the fault of the player, not the game. It's not just about the mechanics available to you, but how you hook into them and present them, and how you present your character as a whole of which the mechanics are just one piece of who they are. Every class and subclass has roleplay hooks. Warlock is no richer in roleplay possibility than wizard is, although it may seem so at a glance since warlock comes with a whole prepackaged backstory that - when you think about it - actually has very little to do with the class mechanics and could be applied to any other class just as easily.
And finally, the game has plenty of power combos for those who enjoy that stuff. Polearm Master + Sentinel. Devil's Sight + Darkness. Samurai + Sharpshooter + Elven Accuracy. Hexblade + Paladin. Totem Barbarian + Moon Druid. The pieces are there, but you're not going to see all the connections immediately.
At the end of the day it's play a super bland fighter, wizard (I just don't like wizard mechanics), or cleric if you want to be optimally useful in a group.
What's your definition of useful? I'd rather have a level 6 paladin in my party than a level 6 fighter any day of any week. I'm not following what your rubric is.
This is the rules and game mechanics forum, and I don't see a rules and game mechanics question here, so I'm not sure how to help you. If you want to head over to Tips & Tactics or one of the class forums, like the Warlock forum, you can ask for build advice in terms of making yourself useful. It is the case that different classes are good at different things and many people agree that not all classes are well balanced against each other, but you're making even broader statements than that.
That depends on the nature of the agreement made for the power. First, if your contract is with an ancient elder thing, you may never understood the terms in the first place, and if you do they may not always be ones that require something negative. For example, in the initial warlock concept I created, it simply wants to experience the material plane, so a lot of the spells actually summon parts of it's body to trigger the effect. An example of this would be eldritch blast summoning an incredibly fast moving screaming/gibbering glowing eyeball that takes bizarre circuitous paths through the battlefield observing everything it can before striking it's target. But maybe for more power it wants something personal, like memories, or experiences, or the ability to piggyback on his senses and feel what he feels as he feels tendrils writhing under his skin or eyes blinking and twitching within his eyes.
I think it says in the book that you may just be the descendant of an archfey or fiend, I forget which, and the ancestor just decides to give you power as a family thing. There are not always heavy strings attached to playing a warlock, thats a storytelling choice. I think it's a good one but my DM doesn't want to micromanage character background stuff, like the wants of my patron, or the expectations of of a player characters noble families (it's her first time dming in years), so I am using a more passive agreement that becomes more unpleasant at higher levels if I run that concept.
I understand why you have the impression that I want "all the things" and I explicitly said that I understand a lot of combos would be overpowered and that isn't my goal. Let me give you an example of my complaint. A 20th level fighter gets 4 attacks per attack action, and has action surges and other crazy stuff. If you decided to get to like, 5th level in 4 different classes that each get an extra attack at 5th level, theoretically, you could get 5 attacks per action. You would be disgustingly weaker than the 20th level fighter even with that extra because you have no high level abilities or stat scaling or anything, so it would be a bad trade off but you could create some fun flavor around it. But the thing is, this doesn't work, you can't stack extra attacks from different classes... So you would be much weaker than a 20th level fighter as a 20th level character split among multiple classes even if this worked (but you would have cool lore and versatility), but it still doesn't work. Like why nerf it so hard that the idea of multiclassing is kind of repulsive?
I guess a large part of it is I find characters who never change their life path to be inherently boring. In my mind IRL very few people in medieval times wanted to be monks or nuns, it was a life path either forced on them for being rambunctious (or as a way to get rid of unwanted nobility claims, swearing off earthly power for power in the church etc), not a first life choice. And for those people who grow up deeply religious and decide they want nothing more than to be a Priest, usually have some crisis of faith in life, maybe the stay true to their faith but most often it seems people's beliefs change as they mature and have life experiences. I understand in this fictional universe there is more real world power associated with religion, but from my understanding a god won't bless a person with power if they follow that god for power.
It's just that, for me, most people's lives seem to be full of regrets and bad decisions. The character who picks one path and sticks to that one path and never varies from it has a boring life at least internally. I don't care if the person slew dragons in their life and had many great deeds sung about them, they never grew as a character. They started off hitting people with a weapon, got better at hitting things with a weapon, then retired, a great hitter of things, with the only story to tell being fights they have been in, not how they grew as a person or lost things that changed them as a person or how they maybe regretted only learning how to harm after watching a druid grow food for a village. I don't want to feel significantly weaker for wanting to play a character with more depth.
First off do not assume you will get to level 20....heck do not assume you will get to level 10 as 90% of games end by that level.
For levels 1-10 the classes are mostly balanced and you will be hard pressed to find one significantly outdoing the others in everything.
Some may be very good at one thing (Fighters and damage) or just decent at a LOT of things (monks) but overall it tends to balance out in the wash.
Honestly play what you find interesting and fun....I have a Great Old One warlock I have been playing for 2 years and I still find interesting ways to interact with the world.
He is far from optimized but he is fun to play...which ultimately is all that matters.
At the end of the day it's play a super bland fighter, wizard (I just don't like wizard mechanics), or cleric if you want to be optimally useful in a group.
What's your definition of useful? I'd rather have a level 6 paladin in my party than a level 6 fighter any day of any week. I'm not following what your rubric is.
This is the rules and game mechanics forum, and I don't see a rules and game mechanics question here, so I'm not sure how to help you. If you want to head over to Tips & Tactics or one of the class forums, like the Warlock forum, you can ask for build advice in terms of making yourself useful. It is the case that different classes are good at different things and many people agree that not all classes are well balanced against each other, but you're making even broader statements than that.
Sorry, as you can see from my post count, I am new to this forum, didn't know where to post this. It felt like it fell under mechanics because my rant is about mechanical interactions of abilities more than anything. As for my criteria, why ever take a paladin? If you want healing, resurrection, support, and undead/evil smiting, clerics do it all better. If you want melee damage fighters may do less against very specific enemies but overall significantly more and more consistently. If you want everything else, it's the wizard, information gathering, transportation, spell damage, coercion, etc. The other classes have cool lore and flavor niches but all of your vital roles are there and done best in those 3. Again, I am new, I could be wrong about that, I have researched and scrapped a lot of character concepts and that's just been my observation.
A 20th level fighter gets 4 attacks per attack action, and has action surges and other crazy stuff. If you decided to get to like, 5th level in 4 different classes that each get an extra attack at 5th level, theoretically, you could get 5 attacks per action. You would be disgustingly weaker than the 20th level fighter even with that extra because you have no high level abilities or stat scaling or anything, so it would be a bad trade off but you could create some fun flavor around it. But the thing is, this doesn't work, you can't stack extra attacks from different classes... So you would be much weaker than a 20th level fighter as a 20th level character split among multiple classes even if this worked (but you would have cool lore and versatility), but it still doesn't work. Like why nerf it so hard that the idea of multiclassing is kind of repulsive?
5E is front-loaded, so you're inverting the usual complaint about multiclassing, which is that it's too powerful. As a general rule, multiclass fighter builds focused on damage per round stop taking fighter levels after 11 or 12 fighter levels, depending on how much they want that ASI at fighter 12. One well-known ambush build at level 20 is fighter 11/rogue 3/ranger 3, and the remaining three levels are allocated based on what you need, like ranger 5 for pass without trace. One of the concerns is that, as you correctly point out, ranger extra attack and fighter extra attack don't stack.
Generally speaking, 3 classes is the usual limit - you want one main class and up to two side-classes. Even discussing quadruple classing probably means mixing classes that share at least one multiclassing stat, but it can be done. Since you like Warlocks, here's a quad-classed Warlock:
You have 3 ASIs here to play with, which is enough for +2 CHA, a +1 CHA half-feat, and a full feat, or 3 +1 CHA half-feats, either of which gets you to CHA 20 from starting at 17. It does very different things from a level 20 fighter, but I wouldn't, like, kick this person out of my party. They have a lot to offer.
Yes it does depend on the power you made the pact with. However you have conveniently and seemingly unilaterally chosen a completely no strings attached patron. If your DM is that generous, you can likely talk them into allowing all sorts of things.
Yes, power might just be a family thing. And yes your family might stay hands off an never call in favours. Again, if you have a generous DM who ignores such things then you can likely talk them into allowing all sorts of things.
Why should multiclassing be superior? Or even equal? It is MUCH harder to balance.
Never change their life path? You pick boring patron options that give no plot or adventure hooks and complain about your character leading a boring life. Instead of eschewing such ties, why not lean into them instead?
If what you actually accomplish with your skills is less important to you than simply learning new skills, why are you worried about relative power at all? You do not need power at all if you never care about what you do with it. You simultaneously complain that single classes end up too good by 20 and that it is too boring to constantly improve like that.
My advice? Find a good campaign and actually try playing first rather than complain out the gate. And stop worrying about needing the rules to make your character interesting. Simply make them interesting in play.
Why are you criticizing the patron choice when I told you explicitly that the DM made me select one with no strings attached because she didn't want to be worried about our characters history and interactions in this first campaign. The same rule applies to everyone. It's not a choice I made or want, so you are kind of aiming shots at the wrong person here. And the reason is because why would you be significantly weaker for multiclassing? You ask the first question, why should they be balanced or equal and I ask why in the hell wouldn't they be? Do you release an RPG where some characters are blatantly weaker than others and tell people to just not play that character if you don't want to be weaker? That is bad class balance.
In response to qundraco, unfortunately we are only running content from phb, dungeon masters guide, and monster manual. Everything else is off limits, no homebrew.
That depends on the nature of the agreement made for the power. First, if your contract is with an ancient elder thing, you may never understood the terms in the first place, and if you do they may not always be ones that require something negative. For example, in the initial warlock concept I created, it simply wants to experience the material plane, so a lot of the spells actually summon parts of it's body to trigger the effect. An example of this would be eldritch blast summoning an incredibly fast moving screaming/gibbering glowing eyeball that takes bizarre circuitous paths through the battlefield observing everything it can before striking it's target. But maybe for more power it wants something personal, like memories, or experiences, or the ability to piggyback on his senses and feel what he feels as he feels tendrils writhing under his skin or eyes blinking and twitching within his eyes.
I think it says in the book that you may just be the descendant of an archfey or fiend, I forget which, and the ancestor just decides to give you power as a family thing. There are not always heavy strings attached to playing a warlock, thats a storytelling choice. I think it's a good one but my DM doesn't want to micromanage character background stuff, like the wants of my patron, or the expectations of of a player characters noble families (it's her first time dming in years), so I am using a more passive agreement that becomes more unpleasant at higher levels if I run that concept.
I understand why you have the impression that I want "all the things" and I explicitly said that I understand a lot of combos would be overpowered and that isn't my goal. Let me give you an example of my complaint. A 20th level fighter gets 4 attacks per attack action, and has action surges and other crazy stuff. If you decided to get to like, 5th level in 4 different classes that each get an extra attack at 5th level, theoretically, you could get 5 attacks per action. You would be disgustingly weaker than the 20th level fighter even with that extra because you have no high level abilities or stat scaling or anything, so it would be a bad trade off but you could create some fun flavor around it. But the thing is, this doesn't work, you can't stack extra attacks from different classes... So you would be much weaker than a 20th level fighter as a 20th level character split among multiple classes even if this worked (but you would have cool lore and versatility), but it still doesn't work. Like why nerf it so hard that the idea of multiclassing is kind of repulsive?
I guess a large part of it is I find characters who never change their life path to be inherently boring. In my mind IRL very few people in medieval times wanted to be monks or nuns, it was a life path either forced on them for being rambunctious (or as a way to get rid of unwanted nobility claims, swearing off earthly power for power in the church etc), not a first life choice. And for those people who grow up deeply religious and decide they want nothing more than to be a Priest, usually have some crisis of faith in life, maybe the stay true to their faith but most often it seems people's beliefs change as they mature and have life experiences. I understand in this fictional universe there is more real world power associated with religion, but from my understanding a god won't bless a person with power if they follow that god for power.
It's just that, for me, most people's lives seem to be full of regrets and bad decisions. The character who picks one path and sticks to that one path and never varies from it has a boring life at least internally. I don't care if the person slew dragons in their life and had many great deeds sung about them, they never grew as a character. They started off hitting people with a weapon, got better at hitting things with a weapon, then retired, a great hitter of things, with the only story to tell being fights they have been in, not how they grew as a person or lost things that changed them as a person or how they maybe regretted only learning how to harm after watching a druid grow food for a village. I don't want to feel significantly weaker for wanting to play a character with more depth.
Okay BTW extra attack doesn't stack look at the multi classing rules again. You can't have extra attack and then get it again from a different class for another attack.
Okay BTW extra attack doesn't stack look at the multi classing rules again. You can't have extra attack and then get it again from a different class for another attack.
I straight up said that in the post. My point was, even if that did work you would still be significantly weaker than a 20th level fighter. There is no reason to make it not work besides like double nerfing something that is already weaker. Multiclassing has the inherent drawback of not getting the high level single class abilities, why add even more restrictions when no matter what you do you will be weaker anyway?
Well the problem with your first example is that, as a DM, I would really wonder why the character's original patron lets them keep their power. A warlock's power is typically considered more a rental than a gift and there would be consequences for defaulting. If they get to keep the power, their patron would likely consider them doing so falsely and be after their head, soul, or at least wanting to take the stolen power back.
At least that is how I would see it and thus how the patron would see it.
Warlocks are actually the opposite of clerics in that regard. Their Patron teaches them magic, kind of like a wizard, and that power is theirs forever. The patron doesn’t lose power by teaching anything, and if you traded your soul or really almost anything but eternal service/future promises to the Patron, the deal is done and the Patron is arguably better off for not having to teach you the next 18 or so levels, because they already got what they wanted.
Because it relates to the topic. If it is not your choice, then it is the DM's choice to run that much more boring a campaign.
You would be weaker for multiclassing because you are dividing your efforts. Someone who is a full time surgeon is almost certainly going to be better at it than someone who is an accountant half their time, although if they have a job managing a hospital they may have some advantages. The question is whether those special side cases where there is synergy come up often enough to make it worth the while. Not a given.
And if you want to write an RPG where there is multiclassing and every combination is equally good, well, good luck with that. If you accomplish it, it will be a first. And if it was true, there would still be no point to multiclassing, since you would be just as effective no matter what you choose, no matter what you do.
You are presuming some things that aren't correct. You would be weaker for dividing your efforts if your efforts were non complimentary. If you went from being a surgeon to being a geologist, learning one skill will not improve another. If you are a surgeon who decides to learn anesthesiology or biochemistry you can improve your primary skill set with knowledge from a secondary. If you are a barbarian who decides to learn more disciplined combat styles and multiclass as a fighter you did not split your attention, you are only dedicated to melee combat you have just learned complimentary combat styles and should not be weaker for it. Same with being a caster, learning different ways to use magic. Maybe in these 2 cases you would lose the raw power attained from the singular mastery of your craft but you should be able to come very close to it using creativity and combining multiple skills. That simply isn't the case, things are designed to not combine, anti synergistic.
My opinion on this is that you aren't really liking the mechanical side of your character. You want more synergy with your multi class abilities. However you forget that a good amount of a character is it's role-play aspects and not at all even game mechanic rules. A character's growth by an arc isn't changing class abilities. As a warlock you don't suddenly need to go cleric and renounce your patron for that to be an arc. Heck let's look at some pop culture examples to show what I mean. Did Iron Man ever stop being a dude in a mech suit and suddenly started being someone not in a mech suit which shoots lasers? No. His character growth was from the story. Did Frodo ever stop being a physically weaker Halfling that most and instead become super overpowered? No. Again, his growth came from the story. Changing classes isn't a character arc. Overall you seem to be thinking of changing mechanically rather than having the character change roleplay wise.
You also seem to be not happy about D&D 5e's customization and synergy. In truth, not everything should synergize the best. The classes are supposed to be diverse for a reason. Personally if you want to really synergize though though it isn't too hard. For example, if you play a warlock but renounce your patron and instead want to atone and serve the divine, there are paladins which use charisma the main warlock stat, you could ask your DM to switch to celestial warlock, multiclass into a divine soul sorcerer, take divine themed feats, etc which can all be decent options do synergies. There is tons of stuff you can do to synergize well. Does 5e still not have synergy?
At the end of the day it's play a super bland fighter, wizard (I just don't like wizard mechanics), or cleric if you want to be optimally useful in a group.
What's your definition of useful? I'd rather have a level 6 paladin in my party than a level 6 fighter any day of any week. I'm not following what your rubric is.
This is the rules and game mechanics forum, and I don't see a rules and game mechanics question here, so I'm not sure how to help you. If you want to head over to Tips & Tactics or one of the class forums, like the Warlock forum, you can ask for build advice in terms of making yourself useful. It is the case that different classes are good at different things and many people agree that not all classes are well balanced against each other, but you're making even broader statements than that.
Sorry, as you can see from my post count, I am new to this forum, didn't know where to post this. It felt like it fell under mechanics because my rant is about mechanical interactions of abilities more than anything. As for my criteria, why ever take a paladin? If you want healing, resurrection, support, and undead/evil smiting, clerics do it all better. If you want melee damage fighters may do less against very specific enemies but overall significantly more and more consistently. If you want everything else, it's the wizard, information gathering, transportation, spell damage, coercion, etc. The other classes have cool lore and flavor niches but all of your vital roles are there and done best in those 3. Again, I am new, I could be wrong about that, I have researched and scrapped a lot of character concepts and that's just been my observation.
Paladins have an excellent role-play potential with their oath, and are the best nova-damage dealers in the game (and I will tell you that paladins handily defeat clerics in the undead/evil smiting game, it's not even a contest). Again, you have to dive into the class and subclass to truly understand how these abilities function. Furthermore the game is designed so that multiple classes have overlapping "core" abilities since it is practically impossible for all classes to be represented in a single game (barring ridiculous multiclass combos). Each class has its area to shine, and weaknesses for the DM to exploit:
Cleric abilities are pretty rote throughout the subclass list, they can't tank as well as Paladins (no default heavy armor proficiency, d8 hit dice) and their damage potential is somewhat limited due to the lack of martial weapon proficiency and limited offensive spell list. They do have the widest variety of healing and resurrection spells in the game, as well as a decent support casting selection, and they "know" all their spells (as a prepared caster)
Paladins get more varied subclass abilities, are better tanks/fighters (meaning they can fill in for a missing fighter/barbarian in the party), and, via smite spells and divine smite (which can be combined) can nova damage into insane territory, especially on a crit where all dice are doubled (some subclasses make crits more likely as well). While they get fewer spell levels and slots, they get a decent variety of healing and support spells, a lot of offensive spells, and have a class ability that is the most efficient healing tool in the game (since you control how many hitpoints you restore with it). Finally, their extra attack and extra damage on their strikes keeps their damage potential on regular hits close to fighter caliber
Fighters shine in combat, but less so in non-combat situations (not all of the game is combat, btw). They deal reliable damage (that's kind of their niche), but rely on proper feat selection to have a lot of usefulness outside of combat or a lot of variety in combat. Overall they are simple to play, but don't have much inherent role-play potential and will likely take a backseat anytime the party isn't fighting.
Wizards have the greatest potential spell list, but unlike most prepared casters they don't know all their spells, meaning you will be left up to the DM if you learn more than the standard given by the class. Their spellcasting is also dependent on a physical object (their spell book), which can be exploited by the DM. Finally, barring a few new subclasses, if a wizard is out of spell slots, their usefulness drops precipitously, so resource management is a necessity for extended combat/exploration scenarios. Finally, they have very little in the way of defenses and highly squishy hit dice, so they tend to drop often if not protected by other party members.
Other classes do a lot of these abilities better (rogues, druids, and rangers are the best scouts and stealth fighters, warlocks can easily outdamage wizards with spells, due to invocation modifications to eldritch blast and the fact that all their spells cast at max level, and I've never heard anyone say that a wizard was good at persuasion/coercion until now, especially when Bards, Warlocks, and Sorcerers all exist (being Charisma Casters means they will have maxed CHA stats early, while CHA is a dump stat for Wizards a lot of the time)
I straight up said that in the post. My point was, even if that did work you would still be significantly weaker than a 20th level fighter. There is no reason to make it not work besides like double nerfing something that is already weaker. Multiclassing has the inherent drawback of not getting the high level single class abilities, why add even more restrictions when no matter what you do you will be weaker anyway?
I don't understand what abilities you're thinking of. The most powerful Fighter ability happens at level two. What high-level Fighter abilities are you concerned about missing out on? I suspect you are doing at least one of undervaluing quadruple-class (for more attacks than an L20 Fighter) or triple-class (for the same number) EA builds or over-valuing Fighter 20.
For example, have you compared a level 20 fighter to a Paladin 7/Warlock 5/Fighter 8?
I do not agree with the original argument saying fighter is the best at melee, wizard is the best at spells, that's it (not exactly what was said, but that's how I resume it).
You don't have to be the most powerful to enjoy the game, and plenty of class offer cool feature the abovementioned class don't get. Can you super duper fighter smite enemies with divine power and almost one-shot a BBEG like a paladin? can your wizard turn into a bear without casting any spell like a druid? can your fighter be customized nearly as much as a warlock? Every class, or even subclass for this matter offer cool and unique option, that really set you apart from the other player, the feature help you bring life to the story you imagined for your char, and the story you'll play. Even if they are not perfectly equal on a power scale, they are all unique enough to be interesting.
Speaking as someone who's been playing since the red box days, 5E is the first version of D&D I've played that feels like the emphasis is actually on the role playing part of RPG, rather than it being a tactical combat game with role-playing elements slapped on top of it
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
I am NEW to dungeons and dragons, I don't have a complaint exactly, I just don't understand why everything is designed to not work together. Multiclassing immediately caught me as cool and amazing for flavor and lore, for example, a person who initially takes a warlock pact but refuses to keep making those deals for power and instead becomes a cleric hoping to redeem their soul or something. The more research I do into the classes it really seems to me that if you want to do melee damage, a fighter is the best period and everyone else who does melee damage is subpar. If you want to be a spell caster you want to be a wizard period, no one else has the power or versatility, even a fraction of it. And clerics, while not as powerful as either, are really solid at both and get divine intervention, healing, resurrection, and high level spells. The other classes feel straight up inferior, like they only exist for flavor.
Warlock is my favorite class flavor wise in the game, but I feel like warlock has it the worst of all. I feel like there is no point in even leveling a warlock past 9-12 just to get the eldritch invocation/ability score. I get they get some minor stuff after that but it feels REALLY inferior to what higher level wizards and clerics get. So my natural inclination it to multiclass the warlock but everything in the game seems to be designed to punish multiclassing, from the way spell slots work, to the way all abilities that specify they improve with level is always class level and not total level, the way attempting to stack any spells effects is almost impossible (almost nothing at all has passive continuous effects, it's either instant, concentration, or nothing), and the game even having convoluted rules to prevent any cool combos from existing like vampiric touch and thirsting blade (because you are making a spell melee attack whatever the hell that is, not a melee attack).
At the end of the day, I feel really frustrated because I kind of went into this assuming D&D was all about having way more possibilities than any kind of video game could ever have. And maybe that exists, I haven't actually played yet, we start this weekend, but from the character creation side of it I feel like the game is just punishing me for every creative idea I have. I spend all this time researching trying to find clever ways to combine abilities and at the end of the day like none of them work. You either simply can't do it because of limitations of concentration or they don't interact the way you'd think they would even if it's common sense. I have scrapped 2 dozen character ideas in the last 2 weeks because every idea I come up with just doesn't work in 5e rules. At the end of the day it's play a super bland fighter, wizard (I just don't like wizard mechanics), or cleric if you want to be optimally useful in a group. If you want to be less useful but have more fun play anything else, and if you want to be useless but have actual cool lore and character development then multiclass.
I could be entirely wrong about this, I am still super new. I am not trying to say I know all and D&D sucks. But I am at a real loss, I am very frustrated, and I feel like any creative character ideas I come up with are a waste of time. Just to be clear, I am not complaining because I can't break the game or come up with overpowered combos, I can see how it would sound that way. You know that feeling you get when you figure out a cool strategy or combo in a game? You feel rewarded for figuring out a mechanical interaction the game didn't explicitly tell you, maybe that becomes a playstyle. Thats what I feel like I don't have, the abilities can be used as written and no other way, no clever interactions. At least, thats how it feels anyway.
You definitely seem to be missing details leading to your conclusions.
Like different spellcasters get different spells, the wizard has very good utility and decent power, but lacks buffs and is very reliant on spells with only a few non-spellcasting features.
Sorcerers by contrast get fewer spells, but are better with them, they also have features that feel magical, but don't use spells.
Warlocks can be built in hundreds of different ways and have several unique spells. They are held back a bit by limited number of spells per encounter and constantly needing a short rest, but more than make up for it with invocations. At higher levels you finally get a 3rd and 4th spell slot, not to mention 6th-9th level spells.
Fighters are fine, but they don't out perform rogues, paladins, or barbarians by much if any in combat.
I also don't think you have considered subclasses at all. Some classes are more dependant on them than others.
D&D 5E really tried to cut back on the synergy because 3E had a very open anything-goes synergy approach and it absolutely broke the game. I think the pendulum might have swung too far in the other direction, but honestly I prefer this to how it was in that edition.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Worse than this, making things highly synergistic makes for a massive divergence between powergamers and non-powergamers. 3E and Pathfinder 1E were examples of games where there were lots of ways to overpower your character, which intrinsically means there are lots of ways to fail to adequately power your character. In 5E it's hard to build a character that can't contribute.
Even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in awhile.
I do not agree with the original argument saying fighter is the best at melee, wizard is the best at spells, that's it (not exactly what was said, but that's how I resume it).
You don't have to be the most powerful to enjoy the game, and plenty of class offer cool feature the abovementioned class don't get. Can you super duper fighter smite enemies with divine power and almost one-shot a BBEG like a paladin? can your wizard turn into a bear without casting any spell like a druid? can your fighter be customized nearly as much as a warlock? Every class, or even subclass for this matter offer cool and unique option, that really set you apart from the other player, the feature help you bring life to the story you imagined for your char, and the story you'll play. Even if they are not perfectly equal on a power scale, they are all unique enough to be interesting.
Feel free to check out my hombrew: Magic Items, Spells, Monsters, Species, Feats, Subclassses, and Backgrounds. More detail in my Homebrew Compendium.
If you have any comments, suggestions, or ways to improve my homebrew, tell me, I'm always looking to improve!
Map commission Here.
To put it bluntly, you are. 5e has a surprising amount of complexity under its simplistic design, and the power of some classes only emerge when you factor in all of their bits working together (warlock is definitely one of those). It's going to take you a while before you get there - seeing the classes actually in play should help a lot.
Class balance is actually pretty good in 5e, to the point that there's no consensus on which is exactly the strongest. The ones you see as dominant are just the ones that are the most straightforward in their mechanics.
Just also want to add that if any class comes off as "bland" at the table, that is the fault of the player, not the game. It's not just about the mechanics available to you, but how you hook into them and present them, and how you present your character as a whole of which the mechanics are just one piece of who they are. Every class and subclass has roleplay hooks. Warlock is no richer in roleplay possibility than wizard is, although it may seem so at a glance since warlock comes with a whole prepackaged backstory that - when you think about it - actually has very little to do with the class mechanics and could be applied to any other class just as easily.
And finally, the game has plenty of power combos for those who enjoy that stuff. Polearm Master + Sentinel. Devil's Sight + Darkness. Samurai + Sharpshooter + Elven Accuracy. Hexblade + Paladin. Totem Barbarian + Moon Druid. The pieces are there, but you're not going to see all the connections immediately.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
What's your definition of useful? I'd rather have a level 6 paladin in my party than a level 6 fighter any day of any week. I'm not following what your rubric is.
This is the rules and game mechanics forum, and I don't see a rules and game mechanics question here, so I'm not sure how to help you. If you want to head over to Tips & Tactics or one of the class forums, like the Warlock forum, you can ask for build advice in terms of making yourself useful. It is the case that different classes are good at different things and many people agree that not all classes are well balanced against each other, but you're making even broader statements than that.
That depends on the nature of the agreement made for the power. First, if your contract is with an ancient elder thing, you may never understood the terms in the first place, and if you do they may not always be ones that require something negative. For example, in the initial warlock concept I created, it simply wants to experience the material plane, so a lot of the spells actually summon parts of it's body to trigger the effect. An example of this would be eldritch blast summoning an incredibly fast moving screaming/gibbering glowing eyeball that takes bizarre circuitous paths through the battlefield observing everything it can before striking it's target. But maybe for more power it wants something personal, like memories, or experiences, or the ability to piggyback on his senses and feel what he feels as he feels tendrils writhing under his skin or eyes blinking and twitching within his eyes.
I think it says in the book that you may just be the descendant of an archfey or fiend, I forget which, and the ancestor just decides to give you power as a family thing. There are not always heavy strings attached to playing a warlock, thats a storytelling choice. I think it's a good one but my DM doesn't want to micromanage character background stuff, like the wants of my patron, or the expectations of of a player characters noble families (it's her first time dming in years), so I am using a more passive agreement that becomes more unpleasant at higher levels if I run that concept.
I understand why you have the impression that I want "all the things" and I explicitly said that I understand a lot of combos would be overpowered and that isn't my goal. Let me give you an example of my complaint. A 20th level fighter gets 4 attacks per attack action, and has action surges and other crazy stuff. If you decided to get to like, 5th level in 4 different classes that each get an extra attack at 5th level, theoretically, you could get 5 attacks per action. You would be disgustingly weaker than the 20th level fighter even with that extra because you have no high level abilities or stat scaling or anything, so it would be a bad trade off but you could create some fun flavor around it. But the thing is, this doesn't work, you can't stack extra attacks from different classes... So you would be much weaker than a 20th level fighter as a 20th level character split among multiple classes even if this worked (but you would have cool lore and versatility), but it still doesn't work. Like why nerf it so hard that the idea of multiclassing is kind of repulsive?
I guess a large part of it is I find characters who never change their life path to be inherently boring. In my mind IRL very few people in medieval times wanted to be monks or nuns, it was a life path either forced on them for being rambunctious (or as a way to get rid of unwanted nobility claims, swearing off earthly power for power in the church etc), not a first life choice. And for those people who grow up deeply religious and decide they want nothing more than to be a Priest, usually have some crisis of faith in life, maybe the stay true to their faith but most often it seems people's beliefs change as they mature and have life experiences. I understand in this fictional universe there is more real world power associated with religion, but from my understanding a god won't bless a person with power if they follow that god for power.
It's just that, for me, most people's lives seem to be full of regrets and bad decisions. The character who picks one path and sticks to that one path and never varies from it has a boring life at least internally. I don't care if the person slew dragons in their life and had many great deeds sung about them, they never grew as a character. They started off hitting people with a weapon, got better at hitting things with a weapon, then retired, a great hitter of things, with the only story to tell being fights they have been in, not how they grew as a person or lost things that changed them as a person or how they maybe regretted only learning how to harm after watching a druid grow food for a village. I don't want to feel significantly weaker for wanting to play a character with more depth.
A few things from my perspective....
First off do not assume you will get to level 20....heck do not assume you will get to level 10 as 90% of games end by that level.
For levels 1-10 the classes are mostly balanced and you will be hard pressed to find one significantly outdoing the others in everything.
Some may be very good at one thing (Fighters and damage) or just decent at a LOT of things (monks) but overall it tends to balance out in the wash.
Honestly play what you find interesting and fun....I have a Great Old One warlock I have been playing for 2 years and I still find interesting ways to interact with the world.
He is far from optimized but he is fun to play...which ultimately is all that matters.
Sorry, as you can see from my post count, I am new to this forum, didn't know where to post this. It felt like it fell under mechanics because my rant is about mechanical interactions of abilities more than anything. As for my criteria, why ever take a paladin? If you want healing, resurrection, support, and undead/evil smiting, clerics do it all better. If you want melee damage fighters may do less against very specific enemies but overall significantly more and more consistently. If you want everything else, it's the wizard, information gathering, transportation, spell damage, coercion, etc. The other classes have cool lore and flavor niches but all of your vital roles are there and done best in those 3. Again, I am new, I could be wrong about that, I have researched and scrapped a lot of character concepts and that's just been my observation.
5E is front-loaded, so you're inverting the usual complaint about multiclassing, which is that it's too powerful. As a general rule, multiclass fighter builds focused on damage per round stop taking fighter levels after 11 or 12 fighter levels, depending on how much they want that ASI at fighter 12. One well-known ambush build at level 20 is fighter 11/rogue 3/ranger 3, and the remaining three levels are allocated based on what you need, like ranger 5 for pass without trace. One of the concerns is that, as you correctly point out, ranger extra attack and fighter extra attack don't stack.
Generally speaking, 3 classes is the usual limit - you want one main class and up to two side-classes. Even discussing quadruple classing probably means mixing classes that share at least one multiclassing stat, but it can be done. Since you like Warlocks, here's a quad-classed Warlock:
Warlock (Hexblade) 10 / Bard (Lore) 5 / Sorcerer (Clockwork Soul) 3 / Paladin 2
You have 3 ASIs here to play with, which is enough for +2 CHA, a +1 CHA half-feat, and a full feat, or 3 +1 CHA half-feats, either of which gets you to CHA 20 from starting at 17. It does very different things from a level 20 fighter, but I wouldn't, like, kick this person out of my party. They have a lot to offer.
Why are you criticizing the patron choice when I told you explicitly that the DM made me select one with no strings attached because she didn't want to be worried about our characters history and interactions in this first campaign. The same rule applies to everyone. It's not a choice I made or want, so you are kind of aiming shots at the wrong person here. And the reason is because why would you be significantly weaker for multiclassing? You ask the first question, why should they be balanced or equal and I ask why in the hell wouldn't they be? Do you release an RPG where some characters are blatantly weaker than others and tell people to just not play that character if you don't want to be weaker? That is bad class balance.
In response to qundraco, unfortunately we are only running content from phb, dungeon masters guide, and monster manual. Everything else is off limits, no homebrew.
Okay BTW extra attack doesn't stack look at the multi classing rules again. You can't have extra attack and then get it again from a different class for another attack.
I straight up said that in the post. My point was, even if that did work you would still be significantly weaker than a 20th level fighter. There is no reason to make it not work besides like double nerfing something that is already weaker. Multiclassing has the inherent drawback of not getting the high level single class abilities, why add even more restrictions when no matter what you do you will be weaker anyway?
Warlocks are actually the opposite of clerics in that regard. Their Patron teaches them magic, kind of like a wizard, and that power is theirs forever. The patron doesn’t lose power by teaching anything, and if you traded your soul or really almost anything but eternal service/future promises to the Patron, the deal is done and the Patron is arguably better off for not having to teach you the next 18 or so levels, because they already got what they wanted.
You are presuming some things that aren't correct. You would be weaker for dividing your efforts if your efforts were non complimentary. If you went from being a surgeon to being a geologist, learning one skill will not improve another. If you are a surgeon who decides to learn anesthesiology or biochemistry you can improve your primary skill set with knowledge from a secondary. If you are a barbarian who decides to learn more disciplined combat styles and multiclass as a fighter you did not split your attention, you are only dedicated to melee combat you have just learned complimentary combat styles and should not be weaker for it. Same with being a caster, learning different ways to use magic. Maybe in these 2 cases you would lose the raw power attained from the singular mastery of your craft but you should be able to come very close to it using creativity and combining multiple skills. That simply isn't the case, things are designed to not combine, anti synergistic.
My opinion on this is that you aren't really liking the mechanical side of your character. You want more synergy with your multi class abilities. However you forget that a good amount of a character is it's role-play aspects and not at all even game mechanic rules. A character's growth by an arc isn't changing class abilities. As a warlock you don't suddenly need to go cleric and renounce your patron for that to be an arc. Heck let's look at some pop culture examples to show what I mean. Did Iron Man ever stop being a dude in a mech suit and suddenly started being someone not in a mech suit which shoots lasers? No. His character growth was from the story. Did Frodo ever stop being a physically weaker Halfling that most and instead become super overpowered? No. Again, his growth came from the story. Changing classes isn't a character arc. Overall you seem to be thinking of changing mechanically rather than having the character change roleplay wise.
You also seem to be not happy about D&D 5e's customization and synergy. In truth, not everything should synergize the best. The classes are supposed to be diverse for a reason. Personally if you want to really synergize though though it isn't too hard. For example, if you play a warlock but renounce your patron and instead want to atone and serve the divine, there are paladins which use charisma the main warlock stat, you could ask your DM to switch to celestial warlock, multiclass into a divine soul sorcerer, take divine themed feats, etc which can all be decent options do synergies. There is tons of stuff you can do to synergize well. Does 5e still not have synergy?
Paladins have an excellent role-play potential with their oath, and are the best nova-damage dealers in the game (and I will tell you that paladins handily defeat clerics in the undead/evil smiting game, it's not even a contest). Again, you have to dive into the class and subclass to truly understand how these abilities function. Furthermore the game is designed so that multiple classes have overlapping "core" abilities since it is practically impossible for all classes to be represented in a single game (barring ridiculous multiclass combos). Each class has its area to shine, and weaknesses for the DM to exploit:
Other classes do a lot of these abilities better (rogues, druids, and rangers are the best scouts and stealth fighters, warlocks can easily outdamage wizards with spells, due to invocation modifications to eldritch blast and the fact that all their spells cast at max level, and I've never heard anyone say that a wizard was good at persuasion/coercion until now, especially when Bards, Warlocks, and Sorcerers all exist (being Charisma Casters means they will have maxed CHA stats early, while CHA is a dump stat for Wizards a lot of the time)
I don't understand what abilities you're thinking of. The most powerful Fighter ability happens at level two. What high-level Fighter abilities are you concerned about missing out on? I suspect you are doing at least one of undervaluing quadruple-class (for more attacks than an L20 Fighter) or triple-class (for the same number) EA builds or over-valuing Fighter 20.
For example, have you compared a level 20 fighter to a Paladin 7/Warlock 5/Fighter 8?
Speaking as someone who's been playing since the red box days, 5E is the first version of D&D I've played that feels like the emphasis is actually on the role playing part of RPG, rather than it being a tactical combat game with role-playing elements slapped on top of it
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)