100% disagree: Taking a short rest (or the parts of it that are most important) in 1 minute instead of 1 hour is probably one of the best capstones, not the worst. My biggest complaint about Warlocks is that they look cool on paper but my DM never gives us room to take short rests while dashing from objective to objective; being able to whip one out in 60 seconds can be a game changer!
Most of the capstones fall into the group of letting you use abilities or spells more times per day, which is nice not only from a strict numbers perspective, but also because of how it incentivizes players to more aggressively burn resources instead of hoarding them. The ones that provide "always on" benefits like extra stat points or extra attacks per round have a real weight to them at the table as well, since more/bigger numbers on your sheet always feels good. Rogue's capstone will almost always be trotted out during stressful moments to make an attack or a check that needed to succeed work out, which will feel great as well. And a couple, like Druid's, let you do things that you've wanted to do for 20 levels but which were never possible before, so that feels nice too.
I was going to reiterate that Ranger sucks, but its really not that bad. +5 damage once per round at level 20 is pretty much entirely irrelevant by that point... but the +5 to hit option isn't bad, +25% to hit is always nice! "Once per round" feels crappy... but if you thought about that instead as being an ability that said "Apply +5 to hit or +5 damage on one attack. Useable once per round during an attack action." that had 15-20 uses per day... I mean, that's literally the exact same thing, but suddenly sounds like something I would want, lol. Am I crazy?!
The other contender for worst in class is Cleric: that capstone is either amazing (a free cast of Wish once per week, essentially, with no material cost), or entirely useless and awful if your DM is a dick about it and decides that your god twists your requests and is unhelpful.
In my experience, if you have one minute, you have time to take a short rest. The warlock capstone is a bit underwhelming for me. Their real capstone, as far as I'm concerned, is the subclass features they get at 14th level.
The Sorcerer one is weak. When the Sorcerer class was created in 3.5, their draw was that they knew less spells than the wizard, but didn't need to prepare each individual spell slot and had more spell slots in general. With 5th edition, everyone has that first benefit, and even if Sorcerers blow all their sorcery points on regaining slots, that's still equal to the Wizard's Arcane Recovery. What I'm saying is, Sorcerers should have the ability to regain some sorcery points on a short rest much earlier.
Ranger is a bit iffy. They're kinda MAD, so you might only be looking at a +2 or +3.
Monks can already get back all of their ki points on a short rest, so this will allow them to be slightly more reckless with them. Not terrible.
Paladin capstones are awesome. Hands down.
Fighter capstone lets you do better what you took the class to do. Same for Barbarian.
I'm not sure about the Sorcerer vs Wizard math... at 10th level, both have the same number (4-3-3-3-2 ) of spell slots. On a short rest, the Wizard can get back 5 "levels" of spell slots (a 4th and a 1st, or two 2nds and a 1st, etc...) once per day. As a bonus action , the Sorcerer can get back around 6 "levels" of spell slots (two 3rds, a 4th and two 1sts, etc.) depending on how they shuffle points around... and can cannibalize other spell slots to generate points to recover others (converting three 1st level slots into points to buy back a 2nd, for example). I picked level 10 at random, but I'm fairly certain that no matter what level you chose to look at, a Sorcerer's Font of Magic feature is more flexible and recovers more spell slots than a Wizard's Arcane Recovery no matter how you slice the cake. And then at 20, you basically get either four sorcery points or a fourth level spell (worth 6 sorcery points) at each short rest, which represents recovering about 20-30% of your full pool. The Wizard 20 is also good (two more 3rd level spell slots per day, which recover on short rests like a Warlock, but can only be used for specific spells), but overall I don't think there's any real argument that the Wizard and Sorcerer get an equivalent number of spells (unless the Sorcerer goes out of their way to only spend sorcery points on Metamagic, which is possible, but then provides a different clear leg up over a similarly-focused wizard).
I think I must be missing something here. Since when did a short rest recover 5th LVL spell slots? I am pretty sure even if it is just the 4 5th lvls it not had since they can help give a nice boost later but I never remembered short rest outside of high LVL abilities giving spells slots like that.
I think I must be missing something here. Since when did a short rest recover 5th LVL spell slots? I am pretty sure even if it is just the 4 5th lvls it not had since they can help give a nice boost later but I never remembered short rest outside of high LVL abilities giving spells slots like that.
This thread is a year old. Please refrain from reviving dead threads without adding meaningful content to the discussion. I would suggest creating a new thread to discuss further questions or gameplay mechanics
Thank you much.
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100% disagree: Taking a short rest (or the parts of it that are most important) in 1 minute instead of 1 hour is probably one of the best capstones, not the worst. My biggest complaint about Warlocks is that they look cool on paper but my DM never gives us room to take short rests while dashing from objective to objective; being able to whip one out in 60 seconds can be a game changer!
Most of the capstones fall into the group of letting you use abilities or spells more times per day, which is nice not only from a strict numbers perspective, but also because of how it incentivizes players to more aggressively burn resources instead of hoarding them. The ones that provide "always on" benefits like extra stat points or extra attacks per round have a real weight to them at the table as well, since more/bigger numbers on your sheet always feels good. Rogue's capstone will almost always be trotted out during stressful moments to make an attack or a check that needed to succeed work out, which will feel great as well. And a couple, like Druid's, let you do things that you've wanted to do for 20 levels but which were never possible before, so that feels nice too.
I was going to reiterate that Ranger sucks, but its really not that bad. +5 damage once per round at level 20 is pretty much entirely irrelevant by that point... but the +5 to hit option isn't bad, +25% to hit is always nice! "Once per round" feels crappy... but if you thought about that instead as being an ability that said "Apply +5 to hit or +5 damage on one attack. Useable once per round during an attack action." that had 15-20 uses per day... I mean, that's literally the exact same thing, but suddenly sounds like something I would want, lol. Am I crazy?!
The other contender for worst in class is Cleric: that capstone is either amazing (a free cast of Wish once per week, essentially, with no material cost), or entirely useless and awful if your DM is a dick about it and decides that your god twists your requests and is unhelpful.
dndbeyond.com forum tags
I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
In my experience, if you have one minute, you have time to take a short rest. The warlock capstone is a bit underwhelming for me. Their real capstone, as far as I'm concerned, is the subclass features they get at 14th level.
The Sorcerer one is weak. When the Sorcerer class was created in 3.5, their draw was that they knew less spells than the wizard, but didn't need to prepare each individual spell slot and had more spell slots in general. With 5th edition, everyone has that first benefit, and even if Sorcerers blow all their sorcery points on regaining slots, that's still equal to the Wizard's Arcane Recovery. What I'm saying is, Sorcerers should have the ability to regain some sorcery points on a short rest much earlier.
Ranger is a bit iffy. They're kinda MAD, so you might only be looking at a +2 or +3.
Monks can already get back all of their ki points on a short rest, so this will allow them to be slightly more reckless with them. Not terrible.
Paladin capstones are awesome. Hands down.
Fighter capstone lets you do better what you took the class to do. Same for Barbarian.
I'm not sure about the Sorcerer vs Wizard math... at 10th level, both have the same number (4-3-3-3-2 ) of spell slots. On a short rest, the Wizard can get back 5 "levels" of spell slots (a 4th and a 1st, or two 2nds and a 1st, etc...) once per day. As a bonus action , the Sorcerer can get back around 6 "levels" of spell slots (two 3rds, a 4th and two 1sts, etc.) depending on how they shuffle points around... and can cannibalize other spell slots to generate points to recover others (converting three 1st level slots into points to buy back a 2nd, for example). I picked level 10 at random, but I'm fairly certain that no matter what level you chose to look at, a Sorcerer's Font of Magic feature is more flexible and recovers more spell slots than a Wizard's Arcane Recovery no matter how you slice the cake. And then at 20, you basically get either four sorcery points or a fourth level spell (worth 6 sorcery points) at each short rest, which represents recovering about 20-30% of your full pool. The Wizard 20 is also good (two more 3rd level spell slots per day, which recover on short rests like a Warlock, but can only be used for specific spells), but overall I don't think there's any real argument that the Wizard and Sorcerer get an equivalent number of spells (unless the Sorcerer goes out of their way to only spend sorcery points on Metamagic, which is possible, but then provides a different clear leg up over a similarly-focused wizard).
dndbeyond.com forum tags
I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
I think I must be missing something here. Since when did a short rest recover 5th LVL spell slots? I am pretty sure even if it is just the 4 5th lvls it not had since they can help give a nice boost later but I never remembered short rest outside of high LVL abilities giving spells slots like that.
This thread is a year old. Please refrain from reviving dead threads without adding meaningful content to the discussion. I would suggest creating a new thread to discuss further questions or gameplay mechanics
Thank you much.
/Lockingthread