Those people will act the way they act regardless of what their class features do. They will deliberately make bad choices no matter what the game rules say they can or cannot do because they're Bohemian failure monkeys actively chasing disaster, and someone doing that will get it no matter what's written on their character sheet. If someone actively diswants to use the tools they're given, it doesn't matter which tools they've been given.
The rest of us? The people who want to engage with the game, to make use of the tools we're given to craft splendid stories and solve interesting challenges? The people who take the game seriously? What's written on our sheets matters. We use what's written on our sheets, alongside our wit, our wiles, and our style to make memorable moments, tell tales, and emerge victorious or die trying.
You can't cater to the Whacky Lolrandom Chaos Yaybos who ignore the rules of the game because they'll ignore anything you write for them anyways. They'll have their fun the same way no matter what you write or produce or sell. But you can try and do better by the people who play the game more akin to the way it was intended to be played. The people who use what you sell to tackle challenges and try to create more even-toned stories. Those folks deserve better than Bard's whole "all complexity of any sort should be stripped from every class, every species, every book, and every rule of D&D forever because complexity is bad and anyone who thinks otherwise is a terrible person who should just quit D&D" bit. They deserve better than Linear Warrior Quadratic Wizard. But they're never going to get it because the Whacky Lolrandom Chaos Yaybos keep insisting that Wizards should stop printing new rules so they have less to ignore.
It is, to put it mildly, a little frustrating.
Players who like simplicity typically make some choices, they just don't necessarily like making as many or as complicated ones. They should not suffer mechanically for this, because they use what is on their sheets of course, but just don't want to use something that feels too confusing or complicated for them. The fact that a very significant portion of the player base gravitates towards simpler classes is a good indicator that less complex but still effective options can have a lot of appeal. New or simplicity loving players should not be given a complex class they don't want to play and be told not to use their abilities and die. They should be given a class that works without making way more decisions than they want to.
Secondly, there are very few players who want to never make a decision. These people would not play D&D, and they are clearly not the type of people that those of us who support simplicity in the game are advocating for. Likewise, calling players who gravitate towards simplicity "Bohemian failure monkeys" and "yaybos" is a rude and incorrect sumarization of their play style. It is mocking and attacking them merely because they don't like the exact same elements of D&D that you do.
Finally, my goal is not to remove all complexity from the game. My goal is not to take options from more advanced or experienced players. My goal, on the contrary, is to ensure the both new and advanced players have plenty of options for them, and that neither of those groups have any of their most enjoyed options taken away.
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Players who like simplicity typically make some choices, they just don't necessarily like making as many or as complicated ones. They should not suffer mechanically for this, because they use what is on their sheets of course, but just don't want to use something that feels too confusing or complicated for them. The fact that a very significant portion of the player base gravitates towards simpler classes is a good indicator that less complex but still effective options can have a lot of appeal. New or simplicity loving players should not be given a complex class they don't want to play and be told not to use their abilities and die. They should be given a class that works without making way more decisions than they want to.
Isn't it amazing that you know the opinions and desires of every last single New Player who's ever come to Fifth Edition? Man, I wish I had that kind of inside scoop. I sure know that when I was new and playing in my first campaign I was absolutely craving the absolute and utter simplicity of never having to engage with the story of my game or bother with any sort of mechanical gameplay. That's why I built an entire traveling circus troupe for backstory purposes, why I ended up playing a whole subplot of trying and eventually failing to join the Harpers due to deep misfortune and youthful missteps, and why I participated in ultimately disastrous intercharacter tension within the rest of the party. It's also why my first ever D&D 5e character was a rogue/ranger multiclass - I just couldn't be assed to deal with mechanical interactions so I decided to play the simplest thing I possibly could, which was a dual Expert multiclass stack.
Secondly, there are very few players who want to never make a decision. These people would not play D&D, and they are clearly not the type of people that those of us who support simplicity in the game are advocating for. Likewise, calling players who gravitate towards simplicity "Bohemian failure monkeys" and "yaybos" is a rude and incorrect sumarization of their play style. It is mocking and attacking them merely because they don't like the exact same elements of D&D that you do.
"Bohemian Failure Monkeys" are not newbies and simpletons. The Bohemian Failure Monkey is a player of any alleged competence level who deliberately opts to make extremely poor decisions as often as possible, because they believe wholeheartedly in the toxic, godawful Pithy Internet Addage that "failure is more interesting than success". So they seek to fail, as often and as disastrously as they can, without ever seeking to recover from and overcome these failures. Because doing so would involve succeeding at something, and the Bohemian Failure Monkey hates nothing more than they hate succeeding at any given task or objective within their D&D game. This makes them yaybos because they're awful toxic people to play D&D with and anyone who actually wants to play an even remotely serious game of D&D needs to have nothing to do with Bohemian Failure Monkeys.
Finally, my goal is not to remove all complexity from the game. My goal is not to take options from more advanced or experienced players. My goal, on the contrary, is to ensure the both new and advanced players have plenty of options for them, and that neither of those groups have any of their most enjoyed options taken away.
You have been arguing for over half a year that "complexity" should be relegated solely to supplement books outside the core three rulebooks; "just make a new class" and shove it in Whoever-Gives-A-Shit's Book of All Kinds of Bunk where it can be safely ignored, discarded, and banned from the tables of all those DMs who've decided their players just can't handle any sort of depth or engagement. That ALL core classes, subclasses, species, feats, items, and everything else MUST be made as absolutely simple as humanly possible no matter the cost to engagement, retention, depth, or in fact anything else because simplicity is all that matters and anyone who wishes for anything more engaging is actively seeking to Ruin The Experience(TM) for new people and Simpletons. That anyone who wants anything more should be hounded out of D&D entirely and forced to go play some other game with all the mechanical depth they're looking for because D&D is for Simpletons, and Simpletons ONLY.
You don't get to say "I want to give everybody their game" to me, Bard. You simply do not get to say that.
I'm confused... Do you play in an empty world with no NPCs with any competence in them? Death is never permanent in 5e b/c you can just take the body to a temple and have a cleric resurrect them. Or the DM can choose to have a God / Otherworldly being offer to resurrect them in exchange for some favour or service which in all honesty is infinitely more interesting and fun than a cleric just revivifying a dead character. Letting players either craft or buy potions is not really a significant hardship, TBH even in games where we had huge amounts of healing spells our DMs generally had healing potions available in every major settlement. Just look at the Dungeon Dudes first campaign, they had a party of 3 with 0 healing spells or character abilities and yet they played from level 2-12 with 0 player deaths.
I mean, if you play in a world where every temple in every town has a cleric of 13th level or higher that spends their time casting Resurrection on every single person who dies, good for you! If your DM is one that has the gods intervene for your presumably non-clerical party frequently, even better! However both of those things are very DM- and setting-contingent, not to mention potentially cause huge narrative sidetracks if you have to hike back to a town to see the cleric every time ol' Jimbo takes one too many arrows to the face, or run some deity's errands for them. Both are definitely options, and with some groups, probably good options that the players will enjoy.
However, what I was getting at was that the all martial group is not a generally applicable party; it requires work and a specific alignment of setting, DM style and player preference to work, whereas the DM has to actively work to make the all martial party be unviable (low magic setting, highly magic-resistant monsters, every fight employs anti-magic zones, etc)
I don't see what you think you're alluding to w.r.t. entire caster party being the most powerful party. It seems obvious to me that experienced players that love strategic complex play would prefer an all caster party. That's why all the gish subclasses have been added - so that people who like to swing a sword & have complex strategic play can choose those subclasses to fulfill their "complex martial" needs.
I'm alluding to the fact the entire reason this thread exists is because people don't always want to have to play the Gish wizard to play a strategic martial character. The fact that the wizards are better martials than the martials means the martials have no reason to exist, other than to be a stepping stone to eventually playing a wizard, which feels so wrong to me.
That's why I built an entire traveling circus troupe for backstory purposes, why I ended up playing a whole subplot of trying and eventually failing to join the Harpers due to deep misfortune and youthful missteps, and why I participated in ultimately disastrous intercharacter tension within the rest of the party. It's also why my first ever D&D 5e character was a rogue/ranger multiclass.
Good for you. My first D&D 5e character had a 3 sentence cliche backstory, and became an Open Hand Monk x Wild Magic Sorcerer multiclass b/c narratively she was captured and nearly sacrificed by an evil necromancer trying to use her to raise an ancient shadow dragon after uniting her people as their long lost queen. My choice to play a character that doesn't even use a weapon and just makes varying numbers of unarmed strikes with a handful of mostly useless spells that could backfire and blowup my own party, is not less valid than yours. And honestly, I and many DMs I know HATE players that write 20 pages of backstory with 50 NPCs we have to somehow incorporate into our narrative.
My second was human totem barbarian x fighter MC who ran head first into combat and hit things real good with another 3 sentence backstory. My third was a swashbuckler rogue that doesn't even need to worry about fancy Sneak Attack conditions just run up & stab the bad guys, I managed a whole paragraph backstory for that one. Yet, somehow I'm one of the most respected DMs on the West Marches server I DM for, and regularly play in person with two different groups where we all have a great time. So stop pretending that your experience and your preferences are the objective truth and that anyone who disagrees with you is unworthy to play D&D.
Your Open Hand monk/Wild sorcerer with the three sentence background is *absolutely* as valid as Red was. As I've become better at the game my character backgrounds have generally become leaner, not heavier. You'll be pleased to know the DM for that game never once touched on anything I'd written, which was fine by me. After all, I wasn't the DM, it wasn't my place to force those story beats.
My problem is with the constant assertions from Bard and other players in Bard's camp that NOBODY should EVER play anything more engaging than a stripped-down and simplified Champion fighter, and that anyone who claims that they actually enjoy meatier, deeper, more engrossing options is either actively lying about it or isn't a real D&D player and should just leave this game to go play some niche rules-heavy simmy game written in 1973 nobody's ever heard of before because we don't *deserve* to play this game, instead. That has pissed me off since August and I don't see a pressing need to stop calling out that horse manure as the horse manure it is.
Despite what Bard continues to claim, it is entirely possible for players to bounce off of "too simple" as much as "too complicated". Ask anyone who's ever passed on the one-page "Rules Lite" where you have two numbers and only one single mechanical piece for picking which one to roll with a d6, then a paragraph of condescending text saying Use Your Imagination!(C) The Honey Heists of the world are fine for low-effort one-shots but you're never going to make a years-long campaign out of them, ne?
Why should we then strive to make D&D just as 'simple', low-resolution, and unsatisfying as a two-number Rules-Lite?
So "interact with the game world" means "all summons must spell out every circumstance in which they may refuse the summoner's orders, as well as being capable of griefing the party if the summoner loses control?"
Because, bluntly, screw that. There's a place in the game for those kinds of summons, sure. There's also a place for the Tasha' Summons that are easy for players to control, easy for DMs to adjudicate, and Just Work. And if that sounds like a "video game" to you - well, video games are fun. Remember, fun? That thing we're all here for? What a concept!
My issue with the Tasha's summons (and a lot of summoning) is they are designed as just attackers, which makes them uninteresting IMO. If a Tasha's Summons kills the BBEG, it just feels less exciting than if one of the players themselves killed the BBEG, and if the Tasha's Summons gets killed by the baddies it feels less exciting than if a player gets killed by the baddies. And b/c of the design of Tasha's Summons, they are unlikely to do anything else of note other than one of those two things (sure occasionally one of the riders might prove useful but IME the only one that commonly comes up is Mirthful Fey).
For players who like to cosmetically customize their characters the Tasha's spells work great as they can make the summons look however they like, and this isn't an insignificant number of players so there should probably be at least one Tasha-like Summoning spell - though personally I think it should be Find Familiar & Find Steed that are like that since they are more permanent companions so super customizability has a greater pay off there.
Beyond that I don't really see the point, if you enjoy rolling attacks to do damage to enemies why do you want a summon to be doing it rather than your own PC? Surely it would be MORE fun if your PC was the one shooting psychic eye rays, or whacking with a divinely empowered mace, than having a summoned creature doing that. And if you find rolling attacks to do damage to enemies boring, and prefer the strategy of spells why would you use a spell to just roll attacks to do damage to enemies?
I dunno, Summon Greater Demon spells out every circumstance in just four paragraphs. And it's fun. It has a condition - someone must die for the summoning to happen. Also, it has an option to risk it or to play it safe by staying within the circle of sacrifical blood. And it even offers a way to upgrade the spell by finding the demon's true name. Not to mention that you can summon quite a range of monsters. It can be simplified. I would even like it to be simplified a bit. Like, you could summon it without the blood and struggle for control, or murder someone and make the spell safe for you with their blood. That alone is quite enough to bake in a moral choice and a feeling of wrongness and evilness in summoning a demon.
Summon Fiend is fun too. There is a place in the game for summon spells that Just Work. You're free to ban it at your table if summoners that rely on murder or struggle are the only way you can conceive of the concept working, and the rest of us are free to ignore said table's existence.
My issue with the Tasha's summons (and a lot of summoning) is they are designed as just attackers, which makes them uninteresting IMO. If a Tasha's Summons kills the BBEG, it just feels less exciting than if one of the players themselves killed the BBEG, and if the Tasha's Summons gets killed by the baddies it feels less exciting than if a player gets killed by the baddies. And b/c of the design of Tasha's Summons, they are unlikely to do anything else of note other than one of those two things (sure occasionally one of the riders might prove useful but IME the only one that commonly comes up is Mirthful Fey).
For players who like to cosmetically customize their characters the Tasha's spells work great as they can make the summons look however they like, and this isn't an insignificant number of players so there should probably be at least one Tasha-like Summoning spell - though personally I think it should be Find Familiar & Find Steed that are like that since they are more permanent companions so super customizability has a greater pay off there.
Beyond that I don't really see the point, if you enjoy rolling attacks to do damage to enemies why do you want a summon to be doing it rather than your own PC? Surely it would be MORE fun if your PC was the one shooting psychic eye rays, or whacking with a divinely empowered mace, than having a summoned creature doing that. And if you find rolling attacks to do damage to enemies boring, and prefer the strategy of spells why would you use a spell to just roll attacks to do damage to enemies?
They can do tons of things besides be "attackers." You know you're never just limited to the actions in a creature's statblock right? They last for an hour and have ability scores for a reason. If you want your Summoned Celestial to grab a fallen ally and fly them to safety, or help your barbarian rip a chain out of a wall, or fly up to a tower window and then tell you what it sees, or brandish their glowy mace and go all "BE NOT AFRAID" to cow a village (who probably won't understand what it's saying, but still) - the DM has all the information they need to adjudicate the results of those actions. As I told kamchatmonk above - be creative.
And even if the majority of what you do with them are use them to deliver damage, the "why are summons good" question boggles my mind. Was that a serious question?
Edit: I have been looking for data since it is a topic that interests me. A 2019 survey by "The Orr Group" found that the average age of roleplayers was 30, with the majority of gamers (close to 65%) being over 25. In another study of "Quantic Foundry" the average age is established at 31,
I found another article saying for D&D 40% of players are 25 or younger, 49% are 25-40, 11% are 40+. An average age of 31 means a lot of young people since the handful of 60+ players will skew the average to the right of the median. In the US there are a lot of D&D clubs run in highschools and universities. I'm not at all surprised children of the helicopter parents aren't going to game stores and playing with strangers, but that doesn't mean they aren't playing. IME it is quite common for people to drop out of D&D groups when they start their own families and all their recreational time is spent with their baby which these days is usually in people's 30s thus the highest concentration of players is 20-30 yro.
Edit to add: Found another press release by WotC with a more stratified breakdown: 15-19yro = 12% 20-24yro = 24% 25-29yro = 18% 30-34yro = 18% 35-39yro = 14% 40+ = 13%
men = 60%, women = 40%
Indeed, in that survey 63% of the players are over 25 years old. It is very close to the 65% that the other source said, then I understand that this demographic is quite accurate.
There aren't many kids playing D&D. Which is curious if we think that 20 or 30 years ago that graph was totally inverted. But anyway, that is an analysis for another debate.
Edit: I have been looking for data since it is a topic that interests me. A 2019 survey by "The Orr Group" found that the average age of roleplayers was 30, with the majority of gamers (close to 65%) being over 25. In another study of "Quantic Foundry" the average age is established at 31,
I found another article saying for D&D 40% of players are 25 or younger, 49% are 25-40, 11% are 40+. An average age of 31 means a lot of young people since the handful of 60+ players will skew the average to the right of the median. In the US there are a lot of D&D clubs run in highschools and universities. I'm not at all surprised children of the helicopter parents aren't going to game stores and playing with strangers, but that doesn't mean they aren't playing. IME it is quite common for people to drop out of D&D groups when they start their own families and all their recreational time is spent with their baby which these days is usually in people's 30s thus the highest concentration of players is 20-30 yro.
Edit to add: Found another press release by WotC with a more stratified breakdown: 15-19yro = 12% 20-24yro = 24% 25-29yro = 18% 30-34yro = 18% 35-39yro = 14% 40+ = 13%
men = 60%, women = 40%
Indeed, in that survey 63% of the players are over 25 years old. It is very close to the 65% that the other source said, then I understand that this demographic is quite accurate.
There aren't many kids playing D&D. Which is curious if we think that 20 or 30 years ago that graph was totally inverted. But anyway, that is an analysis for another debate.
That breakdown eliminates anyone under 15 (which hold the largest age groups in the US currently), and adults don't pick up new hobbies like TTRPGs as often as kids and teens. What the above tells me is that the percent of each group that plays TTRPGs in their younger years has stayed fairly constant over time and once someone picks up the hobby they tend to stick with it.
I'd also add that I don't envision a ton of teenagers and below taking TTRPG surveys even if they play the game. I'll be interested to see how demographic data from DDB and the various VTTs stacks up to these kinds of opt-in collection methods too.
I don't think it's quite as egregious a gap as, say, polling the electorate using landline surveys, but it'll grow over time if those avenues aren't considered.
Martials should have more options. That said, I sort of agree with BoringBard on this one. The default Fighter should stay simple. It's clearly what a lot of current players want. On the other hand, having the choice to do more stuff both in combat and out of combat makes things more interesting for players who want to play a martial but want to do so while making choices without resorting to managment of spell slots (or who just like the flavor of non-magic users).
I think the UA proposal that would allow martials to specialize in particular weapons is a partial solution to this. Having different effects with different weapons (like reducing effective AC of the target or chance to knock target prone) is both thematic and tactically useful. Swinging with a flail should feel different than using a warhammer for something more than just damage type, for example. A weapons-based increase to complexity is also totally optional based on what the player is ready for. Don't want to deal with complexity of a rider on top of weapon damage? Just don't specialize in using a particular weapon.
As for non-combat utility, I believe this is partially addressed by the fact that Fighters and Rogues get more Feats than other classes. If players want to use said Feats to branch out, that's a valid option. Be a Fighter who is also an Actor, or Skilled at some kind of crafting. Be a Rogue who is better team support with Healer, or combine a Lineage feat with the Lineage a la Bountiful Luck for a Halfling Rogue. So I think the free Feat presented in Dragonlance setting at level 1 should be something that offers players more choice. One non-combat feat at level 1 or level 2 for everybody.
After all that, I do agree with Pantagruel that increasing non-combat utility in Tier 3 or 4 is going to be tough without magic. Or at least having access to something anime-ish in terms of power level. It makes me think that Monk really should be of optional rules to add onto Fighter or Rogue rather than a distinct separate class, since Ki-based powers are the most obvious way to increase power level of Martials once play advances to Tier 3 and 4.
Summon Fiend is fun too. There is a place in the game for summon spells that Just Work. You're free to ban it at your table if summoners that rely on murder or struggle are the only way you can conceive of the concept working, and the rest of us are free to ignore said table's existence.
I don't think that summoning a celestial would require a sacrifice or struggle for control. And anyway, you're free to ignore the RP and additional clauses of the spell and make it Just Work. I mean, who in the world even remembers that Hold Person requires an iron bar to work?
Martials should have more options. That said, I sort of agree with BoringBard on this one. The default Fighter should stay simple.
I think playing the fighter simply should be an option -- but if someone decides "I want a bit more complexity to my fighter" they should be able to do so without being forced to create a new character.
Martials should have more options. That said, I sort of agree with BoringBard on this one. The default Fighter should stay simple.
I think playing the fighter simply should be an option -- but if someone decides "I want a bit more complexity to my fighter" they should be able to do so without being forced to create a new character.
Which is why increasing complexity via Feats and via weapon specialization are good ways to do so. They don't require junking anything from the current Fighter and also don't require re-rolling a bunch of stats.
I don't think that summoning a celestial would require a sacrifice or struggle for control. And anyway, you're free to ignore the RP and additional clauses of the spell and make it Just Work. I mean, who in the world even remembers that Hold Person requires an iron bar to work?
1) A sacrifice, maybe not, but if you command your celestial spirit to attack an orphanage then again, I'd expect there to be consequences from the summon itself on that, or the power that granted it to you.
2) Of course I can, but I've been playing D&D for decades. Expecting inexperienced players to simply set aside aspects of design that may be a headache for them is not realistic, they're going to default to "this is here for a reason."
3) A small straight piece of iron has no listed cost, so nobody needs to remember it, that's the whole point of component pouches and foci in this game.
Martials should have more options. That said, I sort of agree with BoringBard on this one. The default Fighter should stay simple. It's clearly what a lot of current players want. On the other hand, having the choice to do more stuff both in combat and out of combat makes things more interesting for players who want to play a martial but want to do so while making choices without resorting to managment of spell slots (or who just like the flavor of non-magic users).
I think the UA proposal that would allow martials to specialize in particular weapons is a partial solution to this. Having different effects with different weapons (like reducing effective AC of the target or chance to knock target prone) is both thematic and tactically useful. Swinging with a flail should feel different than using a warhammer for something more than just damage type, for example. A weapons-based increase to complexity is also totally optional based on what the player is ready for. Don't want to deal with complexity of a rider on top of weapon damage? Just don't specialize in using a particular weapon.
As for non-combat utility, I believe this is partially addressed by the fact that Fighters and Rogues get more Feats than other classes. If players want to use said Feats to branch out, that's a valid option. Be a Fighter who is also an Actor, or Skilled at some kind of crafting. Be a Rogue who is better team support with Healer, or combine a Lineage feat with the Lineage a la Bountiful Luck for a Halfling Rogue. So I think the free Feat presented in Dragonlance setting at level 1 should be something that offers players more choice. One non-combat feat at level 1 or level 2 for everybody.
After all that, I do agree with Pantagruel that increasing non-combat utility in Tier 3 or 4 is going to be tough without magic. Or at least having access to something anime-ish in terms of power level. It makes me think that Monk really should be of optional rules to add onto Fighter or Rogue rather than a distinct separate class, since Ki-based powers are the most obvious way to increase power level of Martials once play advances to Tier 3 and 4.
This is the thing. There is absolutely right now ways to build a fighter to have lots of out of combat utility. People don't do it because being great at out of combat utility requires sacrificing in-combat strength (which is the same for casters), and people who play fighters aren't willing to make that sacrifice. This is doubly so because even a fighter built for out of combat utility isn't going to be as good at it as classes designed for out of combat utility, (just as building a class designed for out of combat utility to be good in combat always leaves them less good than classes designed for combat). Since a party structure rewards specialization it is generally most optimal to divide roles amongst the party so that some specialize in combat and other specialize in utility and others specialize in social...
This is the thing. There is absolutely right now ways to build a fighter to have lots of out of combat utility. People don't do it because being great at out of combat utility requires sacrificing in-combat strength (which is the same for casters), and people who play fighters aren't willing to make that sacrifice. This is doubly so because even a fighter built for out of combat utility isn't going to be as good at it as classes designed for out of combat utility, (just as building a class designed for out of combat utility to be good in combat always leaves them less good than classes designed for combat). Since a party structure rewards specialization it is generally most optimal to divide roles amongst the party so that some specialize in combat and other specialize in utility and others specialize in social...
If the player of the Fighter PC had the option to choose Feats that granted them better Out of Combat (OoC for short) utility and then intentionally chose not to do that, it's not a problem with the game system since Fighters have better ASI progression that all other classes. Keep in mind that default Fighters are SAD, not MAD, unlike Monks and Barbarians. And getting a free Feat at level 1 or 2 that is designated by the DM as "non-combat only" incentivizes players to think a bit outside their designated "kill stuff with stick" role if they want to.
Rogues are also a martial class. Unlike Fighters, they have features like Expertise and Reliable Talent. If you want to be fantasy world MacGuyver, be a Rogue, not a Fighter. Rogues have one less ASI than Fighters, but still have more ASIs than non-Fighter classes.
I do, however, agree that in Tier 3 and 4, more should be done to make "Swiss Army Knife non-magic user" more viable for OoC purposes.
"Since a party structure rewards specialization it is generally most optimal to divide roles amongst the party so that some specialize in combat and other specialize in utility and others specialize in social..."
You know what this is?
******** boring*.
This stupid Trinity-esque notion that every character in a D&D party needs to hyperspecialize in a single narrow aspect of the game to the active and severe detriment of everything else makes for bad characters, bad parties, and bad games. When you do that, you're setting yourself up to spend most of your D&D sessions sitting on your thumbs not playing D&D.
Made the Hyperspecialized Combat Monster? Awesome - you don't get to play D&D unless you're in initiative order.
Made the Hyperspecialized Social Goblin? Cool - the moment the party leaves town you get to stop playing D&D.
People need to STOP doing this and start making well-rounded characters that can participate and contribute in a wide range of situations and scenarios, and if that means you don't get quite as many Sacred Pluses in your primary area of specialty? Guess what - that's made up for by your allies being able to effectively aid you and bolster your attempts instead of starting at their phones ignoring the entire thing because it's not their phase of the game. Not their turn.
Don't be a Hyperspecialist that doesn't get to play D&D for eighty percent of every session. You can do better. I mean, unless the Simpleton crowd gets their way and strips all the tools for doing better out of the game because being able to contribute in more than one situation or scenario the party might face is *just too complicated*.
"Since a party structure rewards specialization it is generally most optimal to divide roles amongst the party so that some specialize in combat and other specialize in utility and others specialize in social..."
You know what this is?
******** boring*.
This stupid Trinity-esque notion that every character in a D&D party needs to hyperspecialize in a single narrow aspect of the game to the active and severe detriment of everything else makes for bad characters, bad parties, and bad games. When you do that, you're setting yourself up to spend most of your D&D sessions sitting on your thumbs not playing D&D.
Made the Hyperspecialized Combat Monster? Awesome - you don't get to play D&D unless you're in initiative order.
Made the Hyperspecialized Social Goblin? Cool - the moment the party leaves town you get to stop playing D&D.
People need to STOP doing this and start making well-rounded characters that can participate and contribute in a wide range of situations and scenarios, and if that means you don't get quite as many Sacred Pluses in your primary area of specialty? Guess what - that's made up for by your allies being able to effectively aid you and bolster your attempts instead of starting at their phones ignoring the entire thing because it's not their phase of the game. Not their turn.
Don't be a Hyperspecialist that doesn't get to play D&D for eighty percent of every session. You can do better. I mean, unless the Simpleton crowd gets their way and strips all the tools for doing better out of the game because being able to contribute in more than one situation or scenario the party might face is *just too complicated*.
To add onto this, as long as D&D is going to talk about its three pillars of play, every class needs to have interesting and constructive options in each of those pillars. Not every class has to be equally good in each, but every class needs features that allow it to contribute something.
Which is why increasing complexity via Feats and via weapon specialization are good ways to do so. They don't require junking anything from the current Fighter and also don't require re-rolling a bunch of stats.
Incidentally, this thread was originally about balance, not complexity. It's impossible to avoid having some benefit to complexity (if a system has real choices, it's going to be possible to tune it for specific use cases), but it doesn't have to be as extreme as it currently is in D&D.
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Players who like simplicity typically make some choices, they just don't necessarily like making as many or as complicated ones. They should not suffer mechanically for this, because they use what is on their sheets of course, but just don't want to use something that feels too confusing or complicated for them. The fact that a very significant portion of the player base gravitates towards simpler classes is a good indicator that less complex but still effective options can have a lot of appeal. New or simplicity loving players should not be given a complex class they don't want to play and be told not to use their abilities and die. They should be given a class that works without making way more decisions than they want to.
Secondly, there are very few players who want to never make a decision. These people would not play D&D, and they are clearly not the type of people that those of us who support simplicity in the game are advocating for. Likewise, calling players who gravitate towards simplicity "Bohemian failure monkeys" and "yaybos" is a rude and incorrect sumarization of their play style. It is mocking and attacking them merely because they don't like the exact same elements of D&D that you do.
Finally, my goal is not to remove all complexity from the game. My goal is not to take options from more advanced or experienced players. My goal, on the contrary, is to ensure the both new and advanced players have plenty of options for them, and that neither of those groups have any of their most enjoyed options taken away.
BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
He/him pronouns. Call me Bard. PROUD NERD!
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HERE.Isn't it amazing that you know the opinions and desires of every last single New Player who's ever come to Fifth Edition? Man, I wish I had that kind of inside scoop. I sure know that when I was new and playing in my first campaign I was absolutely craving the absolute and utter simplicity of never having to engage with the story of my game or bother with any sort of mechanical gameplay. That's why I built an entire traveling circus troupe for backstory purposes, why I ended up playing a whole subplot of trying and eventually failing to join the Harpers due to deep misfortune and youthful missteps, and why I participated in ultimately disastrous intercharacter tension within the rest of the party. It's also why my first ever D&D 5e character was a rogue/ranger multiclass - I just couldn't be assed to deal with mechanical interactions so I decided to play the simplest thing I possibly could, which was a dual Expert multiclass stack.
"Bohemian Failure Monkeys" are not newbies and simpletons. The Bohemian Failure Monkey is a player of any alleged competence level who deliberately opts to make extremely poor decisions as often as possible, because they believe wholeheartedly in the toxic, godawful Pithy Internet Addage that "failure is more interesting than success". So they seek to fail, as often and as disastrously as they can, without ever seeking to recover from and overcome these failures. Because doing so would involve succeeding at something, and the Bohemian Failure Monkey hates nothing more than they hate succeeding at any given task or objective within their D&D game. This makes them yaybos because they're awful toxic people to play D&D with and anyone who actually wants to play an even remotely serious game of D&D needs to have nothing to do with Bohemian Failure Monkeys.
You have been arguing for over half a year that "complexity" should be relegated solely to supplement books outside the core three rulebooks; "just make a new class" and shove it in Whoever-Gives-A-Shit's Book of All Kinds of Bunk where it can be safely ignored, discarded, and banned from the tables of all those DMs who've decided their players just can't handle any sort of depth or engagement. That ALL core classes, subclasses, species, feats, items, and everything else MUST be made as absolutely simple as humanly possible no matter the cost to engagement, retention, depth, or in fact anything else because simplicity is all that matters and anyone who wishes for anything more engaging is actively seeking to Ruin The Experience(TM) for new people and Simpletons. That anyone who wants anything more should be hounded out of D&D entirely and forced to go play some other game with all the mechanical depth they're looking for because D&D is for Simpletons, and Simpletons ONLY.
You don't get to say "I want to give everybody their game" to me, Bard. You simply do not get to say that.
Please do not contact or message me.
I mean, if you play in a world where every temple in every town has a cleric of 13th level or higher that spends their time casting Resurrection on every single person who dies, good for you! If your DM is one that has the gods intervene for your presumably non-clerical party frequently, even better! However both of those things are very DM- and setting-contingent, not to mention potentially cause huge narrative sidetracks if you have to hike back to a town to see the cleric every time ol' Jimbo takes one too many arrows to the face, or run some deity's errands for them. Both are definitely options, and with some groups, probably good options that the players will enjoy.
However, what I was getting at was that the all martial group is not a generally applicable party; it requires work and a specific alignment of setting, DM style and player preference to work, whereas the DM has to actively work to make the all martial party be unviable (low magic setting, highly magic-resistant monsters, every fight employs anti-magic zones, etc)
I'm alluding to the fact the entire reason this thread exists is because people don't always want to have to play the Gish wizard to play a strategic martial character. The fact that the wizards are better martials than the martials means the martials have no reason to exist, other than to be a stepping stone to eventually playing a wizard, which feels so wrong to me.
Good for you. My first D&D 5e character had a 3 sentence cliche backstory, and became an Open Hand Monk x Wild Magic Sorcerer multiclass b/c narratively she was captured and nearly sacrificed by an evil necromancer trying to use her to raise an ancient shadow dragon after uniting her people as their long lost queen. My choice to play a character that doesn't even use a weapon and just makes varying numbers of unarmed strikes with a handful of mostly useless spells that could backfire and blowup my own party, is not less valid than yours. And honestly, I and many DMs I know HATE players that write 20 pages of backstory with 50 NPCs we have to somehow incorporate into our narrative.
My second was human totem barbarian x fighter MC who ran head first into combat and hit things real good with another 3 sentence backstory. My third was a swashbuckler rogue that doesn't even need to worry about fancy Sneak Attack conditions just run up & stab the bad guys, I managed a whole paragraph backstory for that one. Yet, somehow I'm one of the most respected DMs on the West Marches server I DM for, and regularly play in person with two different groups where we all have a great time. So stop pretending that your experience and your preferences are the objective truth and that anyone who disagrees with you is unworthy to play D&D.
Your Open Hand monk/Wild sorcerer with the three sentence background is *absolutely* as valid as Red was. As I've become better at the game my character backgrounds have generally become leaner, not heavier. You'll be pleased to know the DM for that game never once touched on anything I'd written, which was fine by me. After all, I wasn't the DM, it wasn't my place to force those story beats.
My problem is with the constant assertions from Bard and other players in Bard's camp that NOBODY should EVER play anything more engaging than a stripped-down and simplified Champion fighter, and that anyone who claims that they actually enjoy meatier, deeper, more engrossing options is either actively lying about it or isn't a real D&D player and should just leave this game to go play some niche rules-heavy simmy game written in 1973 nobody's ever heard of before because we don't *deserve* to play this game, instead. That has pissed me off since August and I don't see a pressing need to stop calling out that horse manure as the horse manure it is.
Despite what Bard continues to claim, it is entirely possible for players to bounce off of "too simple" as much as "too complicated". Ask anyone who's ever passed on the one-page "Rules Lite" where you have two numbers and only one single mechanical piece for picking which one to roll with a d6, then a paragraph of condescending text saying Use Your Imagination!(C) The Honey Heists of the world are fine for low-effort one-shots but you're never going to make a years-long campaign out of them, ne?
Why should we then strive to make D&D just as 'simple', low-resolution, and unsatisfying as a two-number Rules-Lite?
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My issue with the Tasha's summons (and a lot of summoning) is they are designed as just attackers, which makes them uninteresting IMO. If a Tasha's Summons kills the BBEG, it just feels less exciting than if one of the players themselves killed the BBEG, and if the Tasha's Summons gets killed by the baddies it feels less exciting than if a player gets killed by the baddies. And b/c of the design of Tasha's Summons, they are unlikely to do anything else of note other than one of those two things (sure occasionally one of the riders might prove useful but IME the only one that commonly comes up is Mirthful Fey).
For players who like to cosmetically customize their characters the Tasha's spells work great as they can make the summons look however they like, and this isn't an insignificant number of players so there should probably be at least one Tasha-like Summoning spell - though personally I think it should be Find Familiar & Find Steed that are like that since they are more permanent companions so super customizability has a greater pay off there.
Beyond that I don't really see the point, if you enjoy rolling attacks to do damage to enemies why do you want a summon to be doing it rather than your own PC? Surely it would be MORE fun if your PC was the one shooting psychic eye rays, or whacking with a divinely empowered mace, than having a summoned creature doing that. And if you find rolling attacks to do damage to enemies boring, and prefer the strategy of spells why would you use a spell to just roll attacks to do damage to enemies?
Summon Fiend is fun too. There is a place in the game for summon spells that Just Work. You're free to ban it at your table if summoners that rely on murder or struggle are the only way you can conceive of the concept working, and the rest of us are free to ignore said table's existence.
They can do tons of things besides be "attackers." You know you're never just limited to the actions in a creature's statblock right? They last for an hour and have ability scores for a reason. If you want your Summoned Celestial to grab a fallen ally and fly them to safety, or help your barbarian rip a chain out of a wall, or fly up to a tower window and then tell you what it sees, or brandish their glowy mace and go all "BE NOT AFRAID" to cow a village (who probably won't understand what it's saying, but still) - the DM has all the information they need to adjudicate the results of those actions. As I told kamchatmonk above - be creative.
And even if the majority of what you do with them are use them to deliver damage, the "why are summons good" question boggles my mind. Was that a serious question?
Indeed, in that survey 63% of the players are over 25 years old. It is very close to the 65% that the other source said, then I understand that this demographic is quite accurate.
There aren't many kids playing D&D. Which is curious if we think that 20 or 30 years ago that graph was totally inverted. But anyway, that is an analysis for another debate.
That breakdown eliminates anyone under 15 (which hold the largest age groups in the US currently), and adults don't pick up new hobbies like TTRPGs as often as kids and teens. What the above tells me is that the percent of each group that plays TTRPGs in their younger years has stayed fairly constant over time and once someone picks up the hobby they tend to stick with it.
I'd also add that I don't envision a ton of teenagers and below taking TTRPG surveys even if they play the game. I'll be interested to see how demographic data from DDB and the various VTTs stacks up to these kinds of opt-in collection methods too.
I don't think it's quite as egregious a gap as, say, polling the electorate using landline surveys, but it'll grow over time if those avenues aren't considered.
Martials should have more options. That said, I sort of agree with BoringBard on this one. The default Fighter should stay simple. It's clearly what a lot of current players want. On the other hand, having the choice to do more stuff both in combat and out of combat makes things more interesting for players who want to play a martial but want to do so while making choices without resorting to managment of spell slots (or who just like the flavor of non-magic users).
I think the UA proposal that would allow martials to specialize in particular weapons is a partial solution to this. Having different effects with different weapons (like reducing effective AC of the target or chance to knock target prone) is both thematic and tactically useful. Swinging with a flail should feel different than using a warhammer for something more than just damage type, for example. A weapons-based increase to complexity is also totally optional based on what the player is ready for. Don't want to deal with complexity of a rider on top of weapon damage? Just don't specialize in using a particular weapon.
As for non-combat utility, I believe this is partially addressed by the fact that Fighters and Rogues get more Feats than other classes. If players want to use said Feats to branch out, that's a valid option. Be a Fighter who is also an Actor, or Skilled at some kind of crafting. Be a Rogue who is better team support with Healer, or combine a Lineage feat with the Lineage a la Bountiful Luck for a Halfling Rogue. So I think the free Feat presented in Dragonlance setting at level 1 should be something that offers players more choice. One non-combat feat at level 1 or level 2 for everybody.
After all that, I do agree with Pantagruel that increasing non-combat utility in Tier 3 or 4 is going to be tough without magic. Or at least having access to something anime-ish in terms of power level. It makes me think that Monk really should be of optional rules to add onto Fighter or Rogue rather than a distinct separate class, since Ki-based powers are the most obvious way to increase power level of Martials once play advances to Tier 3 and 4.
I don't think that summoning a celestial would require a sacrifice or struggle for control. And anyway, you're free to ignore the RP and additional clauses of the spell and make it Just Work. I mean, who in the world even remembers that Hold Person requires an iron bar to work?
I think playing the fighter simply should be an option -- but if someone decides "I want a bit more complexity to my fighter" they should be able to do so without being forced to create a new character.
Which is why increasing complexity via Feats and via weapon specialization are good ways to do so. They don't require junking anything from the current Fighter and also don't require re-rolling a bunch of stats.
1) A sacrifice, maybe not, but if you command your celestial spirit to attack an orphanage then again, I'd expect there to be consequences from the summon itself on that, or the power that granted it to you.
2) Of course I can, but I've been playing D&D for decades. Expecting inexperienced players to simply set aside aspects of design that may be a headache for them is not realistic, they're going to default to "this is here for a reason."
3) A small straight piece of iron has no listed cost, so nobody needs to remember it, that's the whole point of component pouches and foci in this game.
This is the thing. There is absolutely right now ways to build a fighter to have lots of out of combat utility. People don't do it because being great at out of combat utility requires sacrificing in-combat strength (which is the same for casters), and people who play fighters aren't willing to make that sacrifice. This is doubly so because even a fighter built for out of combat utility isn't going to be as good at it as classes designed for out of combat utility, (just as building a class designed for out of combat utility to be good in combat always leaves them less good than classes designed for combat). Since a party structure rewards specialization it is generally most optimal to divide roles amongst the party so that some specialize in combat and other specialize in utility and others specialize in social...
If the player of the Fighter PC had the option to choose Feats that granted them better Out of Combat (OoC for short) utility and then intentionally chose not to do that, it's not a problem with the game system since Fighters have better ASI progression that all other classes. Keep in mind that default Fighters are SAD, not MAD, unlike Monks and Barbarians. And getting a free Feat at level 1 or 2 that is designated by the DM as "non-combat only" incentivizes players to think a bit outside their designated "kill stuff with stick" role if they want to.
Rogues are also a martial class. Unlike Fighters, they have features like Expertise and Reliable Talent. If you want to be fantasy world MacGuyver, be a Rogue, not a Fighter. Rogues have one less ASI than Fighters, but still have more ASIs than non-Fighter classes.
I do, however, agree that in Tier 3 and 4, more should be done to make "Swiss Army Knife non-magic user" more viable for OoC purposes.
"Since a party structure rewards specialization it is generally most optimal to divide roles amongst the party so that some specialize in combat and other specialize in utility and others specialize in social..."
You know what this is?
******** boring*.
This stupid Trinity-esque notion that every character in a D&D party needs to hyperspecialize in a single narrow aspect of the game to the active and severe detriment of everything else makes for bad characters, bad parties, and bad games. When you do that, you're setting yourself up to spend most of your D&D sessions sitting on your thumbs not playing D&D.
Made the Hyperspecialized Combat Monster? Awesome - you don't get to play D&D unless you're in initiative order.
Made the Hyperspecialized Social Goblin? Cool - the moment the party leaves town you get to stop playing D&D.
People need to STOP doing this and start making well-rounded characters that can participate and contribute in a wide range of situations and scenarios, and if that means you don't get quite as many Sacred Pluses in your primary area of specialty? Guess what - that's made up for by your allies being able to effectively aid you and bolster your attempts instead of starting at their phones ignoring the entire thing because it's not their phase of the game. Not their turn.
Don't be a Hyperspecialist that doesn't get to play D&D for eighty percent of every session. You can do better. I mean, unless the Simpleton crowd gets their way and strips all the tools for doing better out of the game because being able to contribute in more than one situation or scenario the party might face is *just too complicated*.
Please do not contact or message me.
To add onto this, as long as D&D is going to talk about its three pillars of play, every class needs to have interesting and constructive options in each of those pillars. Not every class has to be equally good in each, but every class needs features that allow it to contribute something.
Incidentally, this thread was originally about balance, not complexity. It's impossible to avoid having some benefit to complexity (if a system has real choices, it's going to be possible to tune it for specific use cases), but it doesn't have to be as extreme as it currently is in D&D.