5e is designed around a single adventuring day lasting 6-8 encounters. To me, the game engine should be designed to fit these encounters into a 3-4 hour playing window. Unfortunately, given the duration for combat encounters, it generally takes 2 to 3 sessions to achieve that number of encounters based on all of the groups I’ve played with.
The system would be better served by streamlining the mechanics, reducing the hit points and simplifying player options to better align the 6-8 encounter adventuring day with the average amount of time an average quality group gets together to play.
So correct me if I'm wrong, but you're wanting both more lethal combat and more limited resources, as well as streamlined to be able to fit more encounters into a single adventuring day? Surely those two things are pretty at odds, no? I get wanting more lethal combat, but I would personal accompany it with just an expectation of fewer combats per day? Making fights more lethal, players have less resources, and spend more time fighting strikes me as a surefire recipe for far, far more player deaths. Which I guess if that's your goal is fine, but I think most people don't want that.
Honestly, if you feel a group isn’t being sufficiently challenged, you can just start running more challenging encounters. CR is not set to the baseline of giving a party a fight that pushes at their limits every time, it’s set to a baseline of the highest difficulty a level appropriate party should be able to consistently win against.
It's an option if you want to go hardcore, but you definitely want to make sure your table knows and is onboard with it. And at low levels that does carry a decent risk that one critical at the wrong time will kill someone's character early in a fight.
I've run a game using the house rule that after 1st level following each additional level up your hit dice for the purpose of increasing hp shrinks by 1 size once it gets down bellow 1d4 further levels only grant 1 additional hp (no additional con bonuses to hp once this happens). Multiclassing took the number of dice size reductions from level and applied it to the hd of the current level up. This had some interesting effects both lowering the total hp bloat and differentiating the martials and casters in terms of hp more. In the same game I didn't do away with death saves but I added a rule that if healed from a death save state you came back with 1 level of exhaustion and finally removed the full heal from the long rest. It made the players feel much less superhero and worked for the gritty setting I was running at the time.
Total expected Hp at level 1 2 3 4 5 10
1d6hd 10 con 6 10 13 14 15 20
1d6hd 16 con 9 16 22 23 24 29
1d8hd 10 con 8 13 17 20 21 26
1d8hd 16 con 11 19 26 32 33 38
1d10hd 10con 10 16 21 25 28 33
1d10hd 16con 13 22 30 37 43 48
1d12hd 10con 12 19 25 30 34 46
1d12hd 16con 15 25 34 42 49 61
As you can see the effect this has is firstly to significantly reduce everyone's hp, skew the initial gain to the early levels and provide a greater differential between martial and caster classes than you would see in the standard rules. A con 16 wizard in the standard system at level 10 can expect 72 hp compared to a con 16 barbarians expected 105hp, so only approximately 30% less while in this modified system a the wizard has only around half as many. This combined with the overall reduction in hp made my players feel very tense and much more cautious at taking on large groups of trivial foes even at high level. Casters became more willing to employ defensive measures pre-emptively like spending a spell slot on invisibility when traveling so to minimize their chances of taking damage on the initial round of the combat. It was a blast and felt very much like the old 3.5 variant E6 if anyone ever played that. Healing magic also felt more impactful and the exhaustion on recovery encouraged players to use it pre-emptively as a buffer was much more important when going down had long term consequences. Casters felt both terrifying to the party with their ability to cause direct mitigatable but unavoidable damage and incredibly fragile so they had to be extremely cautious in how they engaged. I wouldn't use it all the time but it was great for the gritty dark fantasy setting I was running. Oh and it made casters more MAD as they now really wanted those few extra hp from Con for more buffer.
I long ago switched things around on Long Rests to where you only regain half your total HP on a long rest but regain all of your Hit Dice instead. This simultaneously encourages people to take short rests and makes dropping to 0 HP riskier over the course of a day. It works quite well.
I also restructured the adventuring day around 3-4 Deadly+ encounters per day. It also works quite well.
In this vein, what I've started doing is bringing enemies in "waves". This usually works for adventures where there is and enemy group like a tribe or something, and penalizes options that do not attempt stealth or other creativity. IF the party wants hack and slash, they get it in spades, lol. The Boss knows not to just rush into the fray and will hold back himself and his strongest soldiers. While the party is in combat with the first encounter, he will order traps and barricades set up at key points, then depending on the race's abilities, they either charge in multiple waves (if they are better at melee), or hit and run and harass (if they have ranged weapons). In this way the party cannot take a short rest until let's say about 4 "waves". Then with their resources depleted, the party has to decide to attack the boss or withdraw far enough to rest. If they withdraw to long rest, the boss has enough time to negotiate with an ally neighbor to help out and harrass the party so they cannot get a long rest (unless they withdrew more than 10 miles or so). Just a skirmish attack so they cannot long rest.
Of course this doesn't work for unintelligent monsters, but I did do this with an undead crypt because there was an intelligent Boss (Lich) who I deem could control the other undead intelligently. I think most dungeons have a mix of intelligent groups and unintelligent individual monsters , so most of the time I can do something similar. The main point is that none of them just wait for the party to rest up. Even unintelligent monsters will be drawn to sounds of combat after 30 minutes or so, expecting to get an easy meal.
Of course all this requires knowing the adventure thoroughly and where everything is and being able to track their movements. It's not possible to do this when the DM is reading the room for the first time at the same time s/he is reading it to the players, lol.
That WotC actually tried to take 50 years of tabletop RPG gaming tradition, turn it into a mobile gaming dumpster, and corral as much of the community as they could into that dumpster, so that they could milk us. And they still want to do it because people in charge only know how to monetize mobile gaming.
That 1DnD will stay too conservative and not address enough issues with the game, or that the playtest will go too slow and they'll have to release 1DnD half-done.
When, exactly, was anyone told about its actual existence as a finished product, let alone told they have to play it instead of D&D?
2)
What do you consider these issues of the game? (Note, I consider 5e on the conservative side too regarding a lot of things but other aspects are less so. It is more accessible, which has been a big part of its success, especially compared to 4e).
Most of the information I base my conclusions on is summarized in this video. Whether to believe it or not is anyone's choice, but given what I know about gaming industry, this is normal for today's corporate environment. Basically, WotC has CEOs that came from Microsoft and mobile gaming and have no idea about tabletop gaming; what they do know is that mobile gaming is extremely profitable, and there's a way to turn DnD into a mobile game through VTT. Brand recognition should do one half of the job, another half would be changing the OGL to destroy competition and make sure that WotC's VTT is the only official way to play DnD on mobile. For a steep subscription fee.
As for the second point, there are times to use a scalpel, and there are times to use a chainsaw. There's glaring issues like caster/martial imbalance, that other systems, like Pathfinder 2e, have handled better. Yet I'm afraid WotC will go along the path of least resistance and just not change things that people don't outright riot over, that they'll just tune stuff a little here and there, but in the end fighters will still remain a basic bonk class with nothing to do, druids will still enjoy HP pillows of shapeshifting, monks will still need weapons to compete with other martials, etc.
Ah yes, interpretations of the interpretations 'insiders' have of WotC/Hasbro execs.
And you are still not answering my points, just saying 'Go listen to this.'
The martial/caster imbalance is a lot more narrow in 5e than in earlier editions. 99% of buffs and debuffs being concentration based , many casting classes having a lot fewer spells to work and damage spells not scaling as much as they have in the past would be the biggest three changes.
Monk issues are martials vs martials, not martial vs caster and weapon equivalent monk gloves or even monk boosting magic jewelry is an easy homebrew.
I'm not here to challenge your faith in the benevolence of the corporation. And no, giving monks pseudo-weapons doesn't solve any problems, it's just a crutch that shoves monk into the same mold as other martials. While a warlock can shoot up to four rays of Eldritch Blast for 1d10+5 damage +1d6 from Hex without any items, just saying.
- All the corrupt stuff WOTC is doing in general makes me not want to touch this edition. And the VTT especially I will never touch, and I'm a young online player who's likely the target audience for it, so I don't think that will sell well.
- The fact that WOTC just isn't caring at all about fixing the dang game balance. I have a lot of issues with how 5e is balanced overall, such as the following:
1. 5e's resting system is strange, and is a big reason why most games are stupidly unbalanced. It's balanced around "the adventuring day" which most people don't even know the game is balanced around. The DMG when it describes said mechanics never say how integral it is to 5e's balance between classes, it just says "go run 6-8 encounters per long rest IDK". I like some aspects of "the adventuring day"... in concept. I like the idea of consistently strong martials and casters whom compensate with huge bursts of power and game changing spells, but when it's so easy to long rest unless it's a dungeon crawl game, it just unbalances the classes. My current solution is just to separate regaining resources from physically resting, rather gaining short rests/long rests by resting, you gain them through progress through the story arc, with a long rest at the end. Physically resting in game, would be the prerequisite to getting "story rest benefits".
2. Martials have no gameplay options... this is ridiculous. Even Battlemaster I feel is rather limited in what it can do as a whole. My current solution (because I don't want to entirely revamp martial classes) is to make the Martial Adept feat give an amount of superiority die equal to proficiency bonus + 1 and allow for it to be taken multiple times, however only able to be taken at level 4+. A battle master with this version of martial adept and superior technique fighting style I think could be able to use superiority die more consistently, unless they go NOVA, and they would have a lot more maneuvers. Don't get me wrong, I like that 5e has "simple classes" but when there's not even a single complex martial class it sucks.
A lack of belief in malevolence does not equal faith in benevolence. This is not some sort of high fantasy 'good vs evil' plotline.
And make up your mind. Quit switching between Monks vs Martials and Martials vs Casters. Especially if by 'Casters' you mean 'Warlocks' specifically.
This is capitalism. Investors demand profit. And the source of profit is us. It's that simple. And if you haven't been living under a rock for the last decade, you should know what this does to videogame industry. If a game publisher corporation can put scammy, unethical, predatory and borderline illegal monetization mechanics into a game, they will. To maximize profit. Why wouldn't they?
Also, imagine 5e having more than one issue. Like, both martial/caster imbalance and monk being underwhelming are both problems that exist at the same time. Mind=blown)
Game balance in DND is always going to be a challenge. No two groups play the game the same and each PC will develop its own traits and powers. In other games systems power creep is deliberate (if not actually stated policy) in that the next supplement powers up a faction to support sales. DND groups I’ve been in are self balancing if a single player/character dominates the group it ends in a number of way depending on the quality/ maturity of Players and DM. Since there isn’t any real official „competitive“ aspect to DND unlike say WH40k the rules are interpreted loosely (or not at all) at each table. Any attempt to say „You have to play this way“ is not in the spirit of the game.
You seem to assume that they have some sort of gun to our heads. They offer a product. If we like it, we buy it. If we don't, we are not in any way obligated to buy it.
It is a luxury product, not food or water or medical treatment or housing or any number of actual necessities that there is actual good reason to be deeply concerned about the supply of.
Monopolies exist. Can you completely avoid all services from Microsoft and Google if you find their policies unlikeable? If a company can force you into a situation when you have no choice but to buy their product on their terms, a company will do it, because it is profitable. Every company dreams of becoming a monopoly, it's natural. And so do WotC. The fact that they couldn't yet find a way to exploit our wallets and strip us of alternatives to their content (*cough*OGL*cough*) doesn't mean they won't try. Because business needs to grow, and to quote Cynthia Williams, the CEO of WotC, "DnD is undermonetized".
Moreover, you are ranting about things you believe they will put in that are not even there at the moment.
It's like the cop that says "stop bothering me with your suspicions and allegations and come to me when you're actually murdered, then we'll have a case".
- All the corrupt stuff WOTC is doing in general makes me not want to touch this edition. And the VTT especially I will never touch, and I'm a young online player who's likely the target audience for it, so I don't think that will sell well.
- The fact that WOTC just isn't caring at all about fixing the dang game balance. I have a lot of issues with how 5e is balanced overall, such as the following:
1. 5e's resting system is strange, and is a big reason why most games are stupidly unbalanced. It's balanced around "the adventuring day" which most people don't even know the game is balanced around. The DMG when it describes said mechanics never say how integral it is to 5e's balance between classes, it just says "go run 6-8 encounters per long rest IDK". I like some aspects of "the adventuring day"... in concept. I like the idea of consistently strong martials and casters whom compensate with huge bursts of power and game changing spells, but when it's so easy to long rest unless it's a dungeon crawl game, it just unbalances the classes. My current solution is just to separate regaining resources from physically resting, rather gaining short rests/long rests by resting, you gain them through progress through the story arc, with a long rest at the end. Physically resting in game, would be the prerequisite to getting "story rest benefits".
2. Martials have no gameplay options... this is ridiculous. Even Battlemaster I feel is rather limited in what it can do as a whole. My current solution (because I don't want to entirely revamp martial classes) is to make the Martial Adept feat give an amount of superiority die equal to proficiency bonus + 1 and allow for it to be taken multiple times, however only able to be taken at level 4+. A battle master with this version of martial adept and superior technique fighting style I think could be able to use superiority die more consistently, unless they go NOVA, and they would have a lot more maneuvers. Don't get me wrong, I like that 5e has "simple classes" but when there's not even a single complex martial class it sucks.
Again with all this?
Most people don't need to know the specifics of the adventuring day, but they should be able to pick up on it. Of all the classes in the PH, I think only four classes (barbarian, ranger, rogue, and sorcerer) don't have something by third level which makes use of even a Short Rest. Players should be looking for opportunities to take a Short Rest, and the DM should be thinking of when to let them have one. Because the DMG does have the specifics of the adventuring day, and they're not what you think they are. It's not intended for there to be 6-8 encounters per day, though that can happen. Rather, the intent is for their experience to equate 6-8 medium-to-hard encounters per day. For example, a party of four 5th-level characters has an adjusted experience threshold of roughly 14,000 (seven medium encounters). A lone, young red dragon would be worth 5,900 of that. Now, that's a beyond deadly encounter worth 42% of their daily allotment. Throw some smaller encounters their way. In reality, they have a daily range of anywhere 12,000 to 24,000. But to err on the side of caution, I'd place an upper limit around 16,000 to 18,000. A smart, optimized party can handle more. But too much experience also means leveling quickly, and pacing is something the DM also needs to consider.
Complexity for complexity's sake is more likely to backfire than help. Complexity ultimately boils down to choice, and you can give players so many options it leads to decision paralysis. Some classes see more of those choices in their subclass than their base class, and that's fine. And some look deceptively simple, yet are actually rather complex. Monks, as a base class, are incredibly complex; arguably more than any other martial, and people have derided it for years because they think it's weak. And they only think that because it doesn't do what they want it to do. Personally, I think that's more a player-problem and less a book-problem. They don't want to understand it: it's strengths and limitations. They want it to be something it's not.
- All the corrupt stuff WOTC is doing in general makes me not want to touch this edition. And the VTT especially I will never touch, and I'm a young online player who's likely the target audience for it, so I don't think that will sell well.
- The fact that WOTC just isn't caring at all about fixing the dang game balance. I have a lot of issues with how 5e is balanced overall, such as the following:
1. 5e's resting system is strange, and is a big reason why most games are stupidly unbalanced. It's balanced around "the adventuring day" which most people don't even know the game is balanced around. The DMG when it describes said mechanics never say how integral it is to 5e's balance between classes, it just says "go run 6-8 encounters per long rest IDK". I like some aspects of "the adventuring day"... in concept. I like the idea of consistently strong martials and casters whom compensate with huge bursts of power and game changing spells, but when it's so easy to long rest unless it's a dungeon crawl game, it just unbalances the classes. My current solution is just to separate regaining resources from physically resting, rather gaining short rests/long rests by resting, you gain them through progress through the story arc, with a long rest at the end. Physically resting in game, would be the prerequisite to getting "story rest benefits".
2. Martials have no gameplay options... this is ridiculous. Even Battlemaster I feel is rather limited in what it can do as a whole. My current solution (because I don't want to entirely revamp martial classes) is to make the Martial Adept feat give an amount of superiority die equal to proficiency bonus + 1 and allow for it to be taken multiple times, however only able to be taken at level 4+. A battle master with this version of martial adept and superior technique fighting style I think could be able to use superiority die more consistently, unless they go NOVA, and they would have a lot more maneuvers. Don't get me wrong, I like that 5e has "simple classes" but when there's not even a single complex martial class it sucks.
Again with all this?
Most people don't need to know the specifics of the adventuring day, but they should be able to pick up on it. Of all the classes in the PH, I think only four classes (barbarian, ranger, rogue, and sorcerer) don't have something by third level which makes use of even a Short Rest. Players should be looking for opportunities to take a Short Rest, and the DM should be thinking of when to let them have one. Because the DMG does have the specifics of the adventuring day, and they're not what you think they are. It's not intended for there to be 6-8 encounters per day, though that can happen. Rather, the intent is for their experience to equate 6-8 medium-to-hard encounters per day. For example, a party of four 5th-level characters has an adjusted experience threshold of roughly 14,000 (seven medium encounters). A lone, young red dragon would be worth 5,900 of that. Now, that's a beyond deadly encounter worth 42% of their daily allotment. Throw some smaller encounters their way. In reality, they have a daily range of anywhere 12,000 to 24,000. But to err on the side of caution, I'd place an upper limit around 16,000 to 18,000. A smart, optimized party can handle more. But too much experience also means leveling quickly, and pacing is something the DM also needs to consider.
Complexity for complexity's sake is more likely to backfire than help. Complexity ultimately boils down to choice, and you can give players so many options it leads to decision paralysis. Some classes see more of those choices in their subclass than their base class, and that's fine. And some look deceptively simple, yet are actually rather complex. Monks, as a base class, are incredibly complex; arguably more than any other martial, and people have derided it for years because they think it's weak. And they only think that because it doesn't do what they want it to do. Personally, I think that's more a player-problem and less a book-problem. They don't want to understand it: it's strengths and limitations. They want it to be something it's not.
1. I personally find people using milestone leveling more often than xp leveling nowadays, as to not worry about characters leveling too quickly if they can handle more and/or deadlier encounters. I personally find 5E's CR system to be pretty flawed and it is definitely something they should revisit because encounter design is pretty tricky to get right and you have to eyeball it a decent amount.
2. Overall strength is a combination of versatility and raw power. Monk lacks raw power and its options do not do enough to make up for it. Honestly, Stunning Strike is probably the big thing that monks offer. Their unarmed damage doesn't compare to a fighter using GWM or SS, and options like patient defense or step of the wind do not really make up for it. With 16 Dex and 16 Wisdom, their AC is 16, the same as a fighter with chainmail. They do well in the early levels since their bonus action unarmed attack is useful for keeping up DPR early on, but it quickly falls off as you progress.
However, even then, 5e monks are not really that complex. You just have some extra options for your bonus action, most of which you probably won't use. Most of your ki points probably go into Stunning Strike because it is the main option that has a decent amount of power.
Making martials good involves giving them both power and versatility.
So correct me if I'm wrong, but you're wanting both more lethal combat and more limited resources, as well as streamlined to be able to fit more encounters into a single adventuring day? Surely those two things are pretty at odds, no? I get wanting more lethal combat, but I would personal accompany it with just an expectation of fewer combats per day? Making fights more lethal, players have less resources, and spend more time fighting strikes me as a surefire recipe for far, far more player deaths. Which I guess if that's your goal is fine, but I think most people don't want that.
Wouldn’t it just be simpler to rejigger the adventuring day to anticipate only 3-4 encounters of higher difficulty?
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Honestly, if you feel a group isn’t being sufficiently challenged, you can just start running more challenging encounters. CR is not set to the baseline of giving a party a fight that pushes at their limits every time, it’s set to a baseline of the highest difficulty a level appropriate party should be able to consistently win against.
Not voting. I am extremely curious where it goes now. I expect a GSL type license and less worry about backwards compatibility.
It's an option if you want to go hardcore, but you definitely want to make sure your table knows and is onboard with it. And at low levels that does carry a decent risk that one critical at the wrong time will kill someone's character early in a fight.
I've run a game using the house rule that after 1st level following each additional level up your hit dice for the purpose of increasing hp shrinks by 1 size once it gets down bellow 1d4 further levels only grant 1 additional hp (no additional con bonuses to hp once this happens). Multiclassing took the number of dice size reductions from level and applied it to the hd of the current level up. This had some interesting effects both lowering the total hp bloat and differentiating the martials and casters in terms of hp more. In the same game I didn't do away with death saves but I added a rule that if healed from a death save state you came back with 1 level of exhaustion and finally removed the full heal from the long rest. It made the players feel much less superhero and worked for the gritty setting I was running at the time.
Total expected Hp at level 1 2 3 4 5 10
1d6hd 10 con 6 10 13 14 15 20
1d6hd 16 con 9 16 22 23 24 29
1d8hd 10 con 8 13 17 20 21 26
1d8hd 16 con 11 19 26 32 33 38
1d10hd 10con 10 16 21 25 28 33
1d10hd 16con 13 22 30 37 43 48
1d12hd 10con 12 19 25 30 34 46
1d12hd 16con 15 25 34 42 49 61
As you can see the effect this has is firstly to significantly reduce everyone's hp, skew the initial gain to the early levels and provide a greater differential between martial and caster classes than you would see in the standard rules. A con 16 wizard in the standard system at level 10 can expect 72 hp compared to a con 16 barbarians expected 105hp, so only approximately 30% less while in this modified system a the wizard has only around half as many. This combined with the overall reduction in hp made my players feel very tense and much more cautious at taking on large groups of trivial foes even at high level. Casters became more willing to employ defensive measures pre-emptively like spending a spell slot on invisibility when traveling so to minimize their chances of taking damage on the initial round of the combat. It was a blast and felt very much like the old 3.5 variant E6 if anyone ever played that. Healing magic also felt more impactful and the exhaustion on recovery encouraged players to use it pre-emptively as a buffer was much more important when going down had long term consequences. Casters felt both terrifying to the party with their ability to cause direct mitigatable but unavoidable damage and incredibly fragile so they had to be extremely cautious in how they engaged. I wouldn't use it all the time but it was great for the gritty dark fantasy setting I was running. Oh and it made casters more MAD as they now really wanted those few extra hp from Con for more buffer.
I long ago switched things around on Long Rests to where you only regain half your total HP on a long rest but regain all of your Hit Dice instead. This simultaneously encourages people to take short rests and makes dropping to 0 HP riskier over the course of a day. It works quite well.
I also restructured the adventuring day around 3-4 Deadly+ encounters per day. It also works quite well.
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In this vein, what I've started doing is bringing enemies in "waves". This usually works for adventures where there is and enemy group like a tribe or something, and penalizes options that do not attempt stealth or other creativity. IF the party wants hack and slash, they get it in spades, lol.
The Boss knows not to just rush into the fray and will hold back himself and his strongest soldiers. While the party is in combat with the first encounter, he will order traps and barricades set up at key points, then depending on the race's abilities, they either charge in multiple waves (if they are better at melee), or hit and run and harass (if they have ranged weapons). In this way the party cannot take a short rest until let's say about 4 "waves". Then with their resources depleted, the party has to decide to attack the boss or withdraw far enough to rest. If they withdraw to long rest, the boss has enough time to negotiate with an ally neighbor to help out and harrass the party so they cannot get a long rest (unless they withdrew more than 10 miles or so). Just a skirmish attack so they cannot long rest.
Of course this doesn't work for unintelligent monsters, but I did do this with an undead crypt because there was an intelligent Boss (Lich) who I deem could control the other undead intelligently. I think most dungeons have a mix of intelligent groups and unintelligent individual monsters , so most of the time I can do something similar. The main point is that none of them just wait for the party to rest up. Even unintelligent monsters will be drawn to sounds of combat after 30 minutes or so, expecting to get an easy meal.
Of course all this requires knowing the adventure thoroughly and where everything is and being able to track their movements. It's not possible to do this when the DM is reading the room for the first time at the same time s/he is reading it to the players, lol.
Two things:
VTT. With the hi-rez 3D previews we are getting. Homebrewers will need a way to create and import hi-rez 3D maps, Monsters, NPC and Players
Most of the information I base my conclusions on is summarized in this video. Whether to believe it or not is anyone's choice, but given what I know about gaming industry, this is normal for today's corporate environment. Basically, WotC has CEOs that came from Microsoft and mobile gaming and have no idea about tabletop gaming; what they do know is that mobile gaming is extremely profitable, and there's a way to turn DnD into a mobile game through VTT. Brand recognition should do one half of the job, another half would be changing the OGL to destroy competition and make sure that WotC's VTT is the only official way to play DnD on mobile. For a steep subscription fee.
As for the second point, there are times to use a scalpel, and there are times to use a chainsaw. There's glaring issues like caster/martial imbalance, that other systems, like Pathfinder 2e, have handled better. Yet I'm afraid WotC will go along the path of least resistance and just not change things that people don't outright riot over, that they'll just tune stuff a little here and there, but in the end fighters will still remain a basic bonk class with nothing to do, druids will still enjoy HP pillows of shapeshifting, monks will still need weapons to compete with other martials, etc.
I'm not here to challenge your faith in the benevolence of the corporation. And no, giving monks pseudo-weapons doesn't solve any problems, it's just a crutch that shoves monk into the same mold as other martials. While a warlock can shoot up to four rays of Eldritch Blast for 1d10+5 damage +1d6 from Hex without any items, just saying.
- All the corrupt stuff WOTC is doing in general makes me not want to touch this edition. And the VTT especially I will never touch, and I'm a young online player who's likely the target audience for it, so I don't think that will sell well.
- The fact that WOTC just isn't caring at all about fixing the dang game balance. I have a lot of issues with how 5e is balanced overall, such as the following:
1. 5e's resting system is strange, and is a big reason why most games are stupidly unbalanced. It's balanced around "the adventuring day" which most people don't even know the game is balanced around. The DMG when it describes said mechanics never say how integral it is to 5e's balance between classes, it just says "go run 6-8 encounters per long rest IDK". I like some aspects of "the adventuring day"... in concept. I like the idea of consistently strong martials and casters whom compensate with huge bursts of power and game changing spells, but when it's so easy to long rest unless it's a dungeon crawl game, it just unbalances the classes. My current solution is just to separate regaining resources from physically resting, rather gaining short rests/long rests by resting, you gain them through progress through the story arc, with a long rest at the end. Physically resting in game, would be the prerequisite to getting "story rest benefits".
2. Martials have no gameplay options... this is ridiculous. Even Battlemaster I feel is rather limited in what it can do as a whole. My current solution (because I don't want to entirely revamp martial classes) is to make the Martial Adept feat give an amount of superiority die equal to proficiency bonus + 1 and allow for it to be taken multiple times, however only able to be taken at level 4+. A battle master with this version of martial adept and superior technique fighting style I think could be able to use superiority die more consistently, unless they go NOVA, and they would have a lot more maneuvers. Don't get me wrong, I like that 5e has "simple classes" but when there's not even a single complex martial class it sucks.
This is capitalism. Investors demand profit. And the source of profit is us. It's that simple. And if you haven't been living under a rock for the last decade, you should know what this does to videogame industry. If a game publisher corporation can put scammy, unethical, predatory and borderline illegal monetization mechanics into a game, they will. To maximize profit. Why wouldn't they?
Also, imagine 5e having more than one issue. Like, both martial/caster imbalance and monk being underwhelming are both problems that exist at the same time. Mind=blown)
Game balance in DND is always going to be a challenge. No two groups play the game the same and each PC will develop its own traits and powers. In other games systems power creep is deliberate (if not actually stated policy) in that the next supplement powers up a faction to support sales. DND groups I’ve been in are self balancing if a single player/character dominates the group it ends in a number of way depending on the quality/ maturity of Players and DM. Since there isn’t any real official „competitive“ aspect to DND unlike say WH40k the rules are interpreted loosely (or not at all) at each table. Any attempt to say „You have to play this way“ is not in the spirit of the game.
Monopolies exist. Can you completely avoid all services from Microsoft and Google if you find their policies unlikeable? If a company can force you into a situation when you have no choice but to buy their product on their terms, a company will do it, because it is profitable. Every company dreams of becoming a monopoly, it's natural. And so do WotC. The fact that they couldn't yet find a way to exploit our wallets and strip us of alternatives to their content (*cough*OGL*cough*) doesn't mean they won't try. Because business needs to grow, and to quote Cynthia Williams, the CEO of WotC, "DnD is undermonetized".
It's like the cop that says "stop bothering me with your suspicions and allegations and come to me when you're actually murdered, then we'll have a case".
Again with all this?
1. I personally find people using milestone leveling more often than xp leveling nowadays, as to not worry about characters leveling too quickly if they can handle more and/or deadlier encounters. I personally find 5E's CR system to be pretty flawed and it is definitely something they should revisit because encounter design is pretty tricky to get right and you have to eyeball it a decent amount.
2. Overall strength is a combination of versatility and raw power. Monk lacks raw power and its options do not do enough to make up for it. Honestly, Stunning Strike is probably the big thing that monks offer. Their unarmed damage doesn't compare to a fighter using GWM or SS, and options like patient defense or step of the wind do not really make up for it. With 16 Dex and 16 Wisdom, their AC is 16, the same as a fighter with chainmail. They do well in the early levels since their bonus action unarmed attack is useful for keeping up DPR early on, but it quickly falls off as you progress.
However, even then, 5e monks are not really that complex. You just have some extra options for your bonus action, most of which you probably won't use. Most of your ki points probably go into Stunning Strike because it is the main option that has a decent amount of power.
Making martials good involves giving them both power and versatility.
If it isn't it becomes pretty pointless :)
Paladin has always been better IMO. More raw power, more versatility, more survivability.