Also after catching up with what everyone is saying we have gone off the rails. This topic is about class groups. I think we lost it when someone was speaking on new classes and how they would fit. I said there wouldn’t be any new classes, but spellsword is still needed and the train left the tracks. I’m guilty of leaving the tracks with it. The truth is since the groups are loose if a new class was added it could easily be thrown into one of the four groups. If an Arcane half caster was created it could go in warrior or mage group and just have features that allow it to gain magic feats or fighting styles from the other group. The group system doesn’t break down because as of now it’s not a tight system. Anyway I’ll look into starting or finding an Arcane Gish topic. Let’s get this one back on the rails.
Sorcerers have innate powers that they use to manipulate the world around them. Wizards study their spells heavily despite having no innate powers, instead learning magic through sheer arcane knowledge. Seems like a big enough distinction to me. How would your spellsword get its power?
Half caster features don't promote cooperation of the magical and martial? That is such a weird thing to say. Especially considering...
You named spells, not features. These spells are on full caster list. Hahaha
Yes, these are all spells that Paladins and Rangers get access to. Not technically features. You know what is a feature? Spellcasting. The feature that gives them access to these spells. "Classes that are half caster and half martial don't and shouldn't get any features that promote using both spells and weapons" is such an insane hill to die on.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Look at what you've done. You spoiled it. You have nobody to blame but yourself. Go sit and think about your actions.
Don't be mean. Rudeness is a vicious cycle, and it has to stop somewhere. Exceptions for things that are funny. Go to the current Competition of the Finest 'Brews! It's a cool place where cool people make cool things.
How I'm posting based on text formatting: Mod Hat Off - Mod Hat Also Off (I'm not a mod)
I find it ironic that you consider paladins or potential arcane gish to be ridiculously overpowered in a game where CoDzilla exists. As well as other casters.
I mean, I, personally, don't, because I don't really care about combat balance. If my players build characters that can absolutely wreck any level appropriate encounter I throw at them, it's because they want to absolutely wreck any level appropriate encounter I throw at them and I'm not going to deny them that feeling of empowerment.
But given how utterly anything that resembles a gish that isn't a legacy class gets 'balanced' to the point of near uselessness, the design team at WotC seems to and they're the ones who would be designing any new official classes.
I mean, I, personally, don't, because I don't really care about combat balance. If my players build characters that can absolutely wreck any level appropriate encounter I throw at them, it's because they want to absolutely wreck any level appropriate encounter I throw at them and I'm not going to deny them that feeling of empowerment.
But given how utterly anything that resembles a gish that isn't a legacy class gets 'balanced' to the point of near uselessness, the design team at WotC seems to and they're the ones who would be designing any new official classes.
But then again, they fixed ranger, obviously making the class more powerful and versatile. Free cantrips and rituals, expertise, no-concentration hunter's mark, Tasha's features...
Sorcerers have innate powers that they use to manipulate the world around them. Wizards study their spells heavily despite having no innate powers, instead learning magic through sheer arcane knowledge. Seems like a big enough distinction to me. How would your spellsword get its power?
Half caster features don't promote cooperation of the magical and martial? That is such a weird thing to say. Especially considering...
You named spells, not features. These spells are on full caster list. Hahaha
Yes, these are all spells that Paladins and Rangers get access to. Not technically features. You know what is a feature? Spellcasting. The feature that gives them access to these spells. "Classes that are half caster and half martial don't and shouldn't get any features that promote using both spells and weapons" is such an insane hill to die on.
This is a stupid argument. Clearly you don’t understand the point of my statement. Here is a refresher: I was told my suggestion for an arcane Gish “Spellsword” was bad because the features didn’t promote a melding of magic and swordplay. If it’s just spells then clearly an arcane Gish could have those spells on its list. My point was proven since only spells were used to combine magic and martial abilities. In 5e Divine smite is the only feature that does that. The statement was features obviously any arcane Gish would have Spellcasting as a feature. So my original suggestions for Spellsword feature while not perfect are fine.
Edit: Eldritch Smite from the pact of blade combines magic and martial as well. In case your next move is to try real hard to find actual features that do it.
More importantly this debate needs to move off this topic, so people can discuss the actual topic.
I mean, I, personally, don't, because I don't really care about combat balance. If my players build characters that can absolutely wreck any level appropriate encounter I throw at them, it's because they want to absolutely wreck any level appropriate encounter I throw at them and I'm not going to deny them that feeling of empowerment.
But given how utterly anything that resembles a gish that isn't a legacy class gets 'balanced' to the point of near uselessness, the design team at WotC seems to and they're the ones who would be designing any new official classes.
But then again, they fixed ranger, obviously making the class more powerful and versatile. Free cantrips and rituals, expertise, no-concentration hunter's mark, Tasha's features...
Alot of polls disagree on some of these topics. (Although the flood of one dnd feedback might have recently skewed things based on YouTube opinions rather than actual play. )
the with a divide between using tasha's and phb being in the 50-70 percent usage range.
Many have indicated a reliance on hunter's mark is not good for rangers. Some power was to alleviate part of the conflict but not all of it. Especially with limited resources.
The list goes on but the point is ranger design is just as polarizing as other gish builds.( Or polarizing like the Ardlings) when forced into one side a large enough group will be dissatisfied.
Often the best offered solution wotc can do is not restrict prefrence but instead give two choices. With both phb and tasha's available the complaints were less and for the first time satisfaction was close to wotc's desired range.
With groups the best solution seems to be keeping it less restricted basically only relying on it for the basic feat and single mechanism structure. In theory it could even allow a class that the base class had none of the group features early and instead gave it out based on which subclass you took.
I dunno, JC said in the video that most stuff they rolled out had over 80% satisfaction. While there are still some roughnesses and nuances to the new ranger (obviously, because it was the first draft), it's undeniably more powerful than PHB version. The intent behind redesign is pretty clear if you ask me.
First of all, I appreciate the apology Mephista, thank you. I'm really not trying to fight with anyone here.
It was my fault, was getting a bit heated and probably a lot of what I was saying is coming out badly. I'm not trying to fight either. I'm posting here mostly to just kill time, so I don't put a lot of thought into posts, so sometimes I spew things that I probably should have spent more time thinking about.
Since its probably best to drop the rest of the subject, I'll leave the rest alone.
As far as I can tell, the only meaningful purpose of class groups is to make certain abilities class-group limited -- they suggested that it might help with party building but given what we've seen so far it really won't.
Its future proofing for any time someone decides to design new class to make things easier. We actually won't see any benefit with the release of the core book. Only future ones.
Also after catching up with what everyone is saying we have gone off the rails. This topic is about class groups.
To be fair, I'm not sure there's anything left to say about class groups. Other than the OP, I think we're all in favor of them? Or at least neutral on the subject.
At this point, I think that discussing theoretical class, feat or item design under the new groups and (since its tangentially related) spell sources is the only realistic way to evolve this thread.
I dunno, JC said in the video that most stuff they rolled out had over 80% satisfaction. While there are still some roughnesses and nuances to the new ranger (obviously, because it was the first draft), it's undeniably more powerful than PHB version. The intent behind redesign is pretty clear if you ask me.
If you go on some other forums or reddit, some people will NOT shut up about how they are nerfing everything under the sun, and everything is weaker.
I dunno, JC said in the video that most stuff they rolled out had over 80% satisfaction. While there are still some roughnesses and nuances to the new ranger (obviously, because it was the first draft), it's undeniably more powerful than PHB version. The intent behind redesign is pretty clear if you ask me.
We as a community don't have the second playtesting survey results yet only the first.(ranger was in the second).There may be another jc survey video in the upcoming days though.
Secondly I was talking about polls directly not survey related. As I premised my post that presenting an option and asking if it's good is vastly different than comparisons. And we do know there was a huge infux of new survey responders that may not have the concept of phb features beyond the memes.
I mean, I, personally, don't, because I don't really care about combat balance. If my players build characters that can absolutely wreck any level appropriate encounter I throw at them, it's because they want to absolutely wreck any level appropriate encounter I throw at them and I'm not going to deny them that feeling of empowerment.
But given how utterly anything that resembles a gish that isn't a legacy class gets 'balanced' to the point of near uselessness, the design team at WotC seems to and they're the ones who would be designing any new official classes.
But then again, they fixed ranger, obviously making the class more powerful and versatile. Free cantrips and rituals, expertise, no-concentration hunter's mark, Tasha's features...
Alot of polls disagree on some of these topics. (Although the flood of one dnd feedback might have recently skewed things based on YouTube opinions rather than actual play. )
the with a divide between using tasha's and phb being in the 50-70 percent usage range.
Many have indicated a reliance on hunter's mark is not good for rangers. Some power was to alleviate part of the conflict but not all of it. Especially with limited resources.
The list goes on but the point is ranger design is just as polarizing as other gish builds.( Or polarizing like the Ardlings) when forced into one side a large enough group will be dissatisfied.
Often the best offered solution wotc can do is not restrict prefrence but instead give two choices. With both phb and tasha's available the complaints were less and for the first time satisfaction was close to wotc's desired range.
With groups the best solution seems to be keeping it less restricted basically only relying on it for the basic feat and single mechanism structure. In theory it could even allow a class that the base class had none of the group features early and instead gave it out based on which subclass you took.
Can you link the poll you are getting this information from?
Here's one example from the forums. Its specifically About favored foe vs enemy. I will find others for favored terrain and more if I can basically I was creating a amalgamation of my observed experiences.
Note the highest percentage currently is the 40 use rate. From this data set (which has limited reach and its own bias) it shows mixed opinions. 40% "always" is not great for the claims of definitively better. So saying 50 to 70 prefer tasha's was generous (at least for this piece, but other parts of ranger fixes still seem to play out similarly not quite up to satisfaction standards laid out for the official survey)
I am not sure that really says anything about OneDnD Ranger though since that is a poll about Tasha's vs PHB and doesn't cover anything presented in the UA.
Still pretty interesting over all. Thanks for sharing.
First of all, I appreciate the apology Mephista, thank you. I'm really not trying to fight with anyone here.
It was my fault, was getting a bit heated and probably a lot of what I was saying is coming out badly. I'm not trying to fight either. I'm posting here mostly to just kill time, so I don't put a lot of thought into posts, so sometimes I spew things that I probably should have spent more time thinking about.
I was getting frustrated too. I've been extra irritable this week, and I have such a hard time communicating my thoughts so often. No hard feelings at all. I enjoy reading your insights. Even when we don't agree, or maybe we do more than it looks like, but I'm bad at typing it. :) <3
Sorry everyone.
Those are intersting poll results. The reddit one is quite large. I know it's not necessarily indicative of the whole playerbase demographic, being just one kind of website. But that's true of any poll, and it is a big sample size. That's about 78% of people that thinks it's better than the current ranger to some degree, about 15% that feel it's roughly equivalent, and only 7% dissatisfied. If the 1DnD results come back close to that, the Ranger will pass this round of testing easily.
I hear lots of people note that Ranger is probably a better Rogue at this point, given that the Expert group kind of ate the key skill of Rogue (expertise). Granted, we've been opening Expertise up for a while now, but it really put things in light that Rogues really are kind of lacking in some respects.
I'm sure, with the way groups work, we're going to have comparisons between all classes within a group with every new class. Probably going to be comparing Rogue, Ranger and Artificer when it hits. Or would Artificer vs Bard be a better comparison at that point. Sure, bard is full caster, but artificer comes off as more magical than Ranger, despite both being half-casters.
Sorry. I was not trying to derail the thread towards Ranger. I was just curious about the polling that was mentioned and I stumbled upon the one I shared.
I hear lots of people note that Ranger is probably a better Rogue at this point, given that the Expert group kind of ate the key skill of Rogue (expertise). Granted, we've been opening Expertise up for a while now, but it really put things in light that Rogues really are kind of lacking in some respects.
I'm sure, with the way groups work, we're going to have comparisons between all classes within a group with every new class. Probably going to be comparing Rogue, Ranger and Artificer when it hits. Or would Artificer vs Bard be a better comparison at that point. Sure, bard is full caster, but artificer comes off as more magical than Ranger, despite both being half-casters.
This is a really good point. In our playtest that was the case at least. The Ranger did all of the scouting and trap stuff we normally associate with rogues. That's okay I guess because Rangers should be good scouts too. It was in combat that they were very different. I liked the ranger feel the most out of all the classes.
But then we had a single class rogue, and a multiclass ranger/rogue too. The single class rogue was miserable. The ranger/rogue was just better at being a rogue for a long time. Mostly because she got to double up on expertise. They all started at level 1, and finished the test at level 5 (just before leveling up to 6.) So the ranger/rogue was a Ranger1/Rogue4 at the end. I definitely agree that the rogue is lacking something special.
The weird thing about the expert group is that they all get Expertise pretty early. It's not that hard to do in 5e either, so it's not the group fault entirely. And I do think rangers needed expertise. But having it now makes it obvious that you can double or even triple the skills you have expertise in by taking from the same group. It's very easy to make the 'skill monkey' kind of build by combining this with the (repeatable) skill feat at level 1 and the right background. Not that skill expertise is the most powerful thing in the game. But it's pretty nice.
Ranger and Rogues don't necessarily synergize great with Bards. But they do with each other. I did note in the survey that it felt like the best Rogue was one that had a little Ranger too. Even the hunters mark more than makes up for the delay on sneak attack damage. Rogues need something more that's their own. Not just a lot of evasion features and damage. I'm not sure what that should be.
I'm really just thinking aloud at this point. It's a topic that's been in the back of my mind since testing. I wonder if the other class groups will share features that stack as well as expertise. Will it be worth it to take a level of Druid to get more uses of your 'Channel Divinity,' or will they be different enough that they don't work that way? If Warriors all get fighting styles for example, would anyone care as much to double up on them? It's something to watch for I guess.
Also after catching up with what everyone is saying we have gone off the rails. This topic is about class groups. I think we lost it when someone was speaking on new classes and how they would fit. I said there wouldn’t be any new classes, but spellsword is still needed and the train left the tracks. I’m guilty of leaving the tracks with it. The truth is since the groups are loose if a new class was added it could easily be thrown into one of the four groups. If an Arcane half caster was created it could go in warrior or mage group and just have features that allow it to gain magic feats or fighting styles from the other group. The group system doesn’t break down because as of now it’s not a tight system. Anyway I’ll look into starting or finding an Arcane Gish topic. Let’s get this one back on the rails.
Yes, these are all spells that Paladins and Rangers get access to. Not technically features. You know what is a feature? Spellcasting. The feature that gives them access to these spells. "Classes that are half caster and half martial don't and shouldn't get any features that promote using both spells and weapons" is such an insane hill to die on.
Look at what you've done. You spoiled it. You have nobody to blame but yourself. Go sit and think about your actions.
Don't be mean. Rudeness is a vicious cycle, and it has to stop somewhere. Exceptions for things that are funny.
Go to the current Competition of the Finest 'Brews! It's a cool place where cool people make cool things.
How I'm posting based on text formatting: Mod Hat Off - Mod Hat Also Off (I'm not a mod)
I mean, I, personally, don't, because I don't really care about combat balance. If my players build characters that can absolutely wreck any level appropriate encounter I throw at them, it's because they want to absolutely wreck any level appropriate encounter I throw at them and I'm not going to deny them that feeling of empowerment.
But given how utterly anything that resembles a gish that isn't a legacy class gets 'balanced' to the point of near uselessness, the design team at WotC seems to and they're the ones who would be designing any new official classes.
But then again, they fixed ranger, obviously making the class more powerful and versatile. Free cantrips and rituals, expertise, no-concentration hunter's mark, Tasha's features...
This is a stupid argument. Clearly you don’t understand the point of my statement. Here is a refresher: I was told my suggestion for an arcane Gish “Spellsword” was bad because the features didn’t promote a melding of magic and swordplay. If it’s just spells then clearly an arcane Gish could have those spells on its list. My point was proven since only spells were used to combine magic and martial abilities. In 5e Divine smite is the only feature that does that. The statement was features obviously any arcane Gish would have Spellcasting as a feature. So my original suggestions for Spellsword feature while not perfect are fine.
Edit: Eldritch Smite from the pact of blade combines magic and martial as well. In case your next move is to try real hard to find actual features that do it.
More importantly this debate needs to move off this topic, so people can discuss the actual topic.
Alot of polls disagree on some of these topics. (Although the flood of one dnd feedback might have recently skewed things based on YouTube opinions rather than actual play. )
the with a divide between using tasha's and phb being in the 50-70 percent usage range.
Many have indicated a reliance on hunter's mark is not good for rangers. Some power was to alleviate part of the conflict but not all of it. Especially with limited resources.
The list goes on but the point is ranger design is just as polarizing as other gish builds.( Or polarizing like the Ardlings) when forced into one side a large enough group will be dissatisfied.
Often the best offered solution wotc can do is not restrict prefrence but instead give two choices. With both phb and tasha's available the complaints were less and for the first time satisfaction was close to wotc's desired range.
With groups the best solution seems to be keeping it less restricted basically only relying on it for the basic feat and single mechanism structure. In theory it could even allow a class that the base class had none of the group features early and instead gave it out based on which subclass you took.
I dunno, JC said in the video that most stuff they rolled out had over 80% satisfaction. While there are still some roughnesses and nuances to the new ranger (obviously, because it was the first draft), it's undeniably more powerful than PHB version. The intent behind redesign is pretty clear if you ask me.
It was my fault, was getting a bit heated and probably a lot of what I was saying is coming out badly. I'm not trying to fight either. I'm posting here mostly to just kill time, so I don't put a lot of thought into posts, so sometimes I spew things that I probably should have spent more time thinking about.
Since its probably best to drop the rest of the subject, I'll leave the rest alone.
Its future proofing for any time someone decides to design new class to make things easier. We actually won't see any benefit with the release of the core book. Only future ones.
To be fair, I'm not sure there's anything left to say about class groups. Other than the OP, I think we're all in favor of them? Or at least neutral on the subject.
At this point, I think that discussing theoretical class, feat or item design under the new groups and (since its tangentially related) spell sources is the only realistic way to evolve this thread.
If you go on some other forums or reddit, some people will NOT shut up about how they are nerfing everything under the sun, and everything is weaker.
EDIT - So.... YMMV.
We as a community don't have the second playtesting survey results yet only the first.(ranger was in the second).There may be another jc survey video in the upcoming days though.
Secondly I was talking about polls directly not survey related. As I premised my post that presenting an option and asking if it's good is vastly different than comparisons. And we do know there was a huge infux of new survey responders that may not have the concept of phb features beyond the memes.
Can you link the poll you are getting this information from?
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
Here's one example from the forums. Its specifically About favored foe vs enemy. I will find others for favored terrain and more if I can basically I was creating a amalgamation of my observed experiences.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/class-forums/ranger/109227-favored-enemy-and-favored-foe
Note the highest percentage currently is the 40 use rate. From this data set (which has limited reach and its own bias) it shows mixed opinions. 40% "always" is not great for the claims of definitively better. So saying 50 to 70 prefer tasha's was generous (at least for this piece, but other parts of ranger fixes still seem to play out similarly not quite up to satisfaction standards laid out for the official survey)
I am not sure that really says anything about OneDnD Ranger though since that is a poll about Tasha's vs PHB and doesn't cover anything presented in the UA.
Still pretty interesting over all. Thanks for sharing.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
One DnD Ranger Poll (Reddit)
I did find this one if that helps the discussion at all.
Your Opinion on The UA One DnD (Ranger)
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
I was getting frustrated too. I've been extra irritable this week, and I have such a hard time communicating my thoughts so often. No hard feelings at all. I enjoy reading your insights. Even when we don't agree, or maybe we do more than it looks like, but I'm bad at typing it. :) <3
Sorry everyone.
Those are intersting poll results. The reddit one is quite large. I know it's not necessarily indicative of the whole playerbase demographic, being just one kind of website. But that's true of any poll, and it is a big sample size. That's about 78% of people that thinks it's better than the current ranger to some degree, about 15% that feel it's roughly equivalent, and only 7% dissatisfied. If the 1DnD results come back close to that, the Ranger will pass this round of testing easily.
I hear lots of people note that Ranger is probably a better Rogue at this point, given that the Expert group kind of ate the key skill of Rogue (expertise). Granted, we've been opening Expertise up for a while now, but it really put things in light that Rogues really are kind of lacking in some respects.
I'm sure, with the way groups work, we're going to have comparisons between all classes within a group with every new class. Probably going to be comparing Rogue, Ranger and Artificer when it hits. Or would Artificer vs Bard be a better comparison at that point. Sure, bard is full caster, but artificer comes off as more magical than Ranger, despite both being half-casters.
Sorry. I was not trying to derail the thread towards Ranger. I was just curious about the polling that was mentioned and I stumbled upon the one I shared.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
This is a really good point. In our playtest that was the case at least. The Ranger did all of the scouting and trap stuff we normally associate with rogues. That's okay I guess because Rangers should be good scouts too. It was in combat that they were very different. I liked the ranger feel the most out of all the classes.
But then we had a single class rogue, and a multiclass ranger/rogue too. The single class rogue was miserable. The ranger/rogue was just better at being a rogue for a long time. Mostly because she got to double up on expertise. They all started at level 1, and finished the test at level 5 (just before leveling up to 6.) So the ranger/rogue was a Ranger1/Rogue4 at the end. I definitely agree that the rogue is lacking something special.
The weird thing about the expert group is that they all get Expertise pretty early. It's not that hard to do in 5e either, so it's not the group fault entirely. And I do think rangers needed expertise. But having it now makes it obvious that you can double or even triple the skills you have expertise in by taking from the same group. It's very easy to make the 'skill monkey' kind of build by combining this with the (repeatable) skill feat at level 1 and the right background. Not that skill expertise is the most powerful thing in the game. But it's pretty nice.
Ranger and Rogues don't necessarily synergize great with Bards. But they do with each other. I did note in the survey that it felt like the best Rogue was one that had a little Ranger too. Even the hunters mark more than makes up for the delay on sneak attack damage. Rogues need something more that's their own. Not just a lot of evasion features and damage. I'm not sure what that should be.
I'm really just thinking aloud at this point. It's a topic that's been in the back of my mind since testing. I wonder if the other class groups will share features that stack as well as expertise. Will it be worth it to take a level of Druid to get more uses of your 'Channel Divinity,' or will they be different enough that they don't work that way? If Warriors all get fighting styles for example, would anyone care as much to double up on them? It's something to watch for I guess.
Very interesting discussion
If I haven’t offended you, don’t worry. I’m sure I’ll get to you eventually.