You missed that Dudeicus was recommending removing most of those things from first level and punting them up to second, third, fourth, or even fifth level. Spellcasting for primary fullcaster classes wouldn't even kick in at all until third - your wizards and sorcerers would spend first and second levels swinging staves or daggers without the ability to use magic at all.
In such a system, yes, classes are not distinct from one another at first level, and the game is mostly nonfunctional at that level.
Ah, understood.
LosGabriel had previously been arguing that merely the loss of possibly using CHA for the attack stat on 1st level Warlocks that plan to take Pact of the Blade (but couldn't if the invocation was given a 2nd level prerequisite) would ruin the play experience.
A ranger who goes pure Dex (ignoring Wisdom) is fine. A barbarian does pretty significantly want 14 Dex on top of Strength, but has no need to go above that.
The main problem with Paladin is that Aura of Protection really does demand good charisma. Make it a flat +1 or +2, with no charisma scaling, and you'd see the same desultory investment (12-14) in charisma that you see for rangers and wisdom.
It does not demand high Cha. This feature is a bonus, not an element of basic functionality. It does need Cha scaling to reward (or compensate) paladins who favored Cha over Str. If anything, paladin needs more Cha scaling on features, so that going Str vs going Cha is a choice.
A ranger who ignores wisdom still suffers from their spellcasting, as does a paladin with their charisma, mostly on spells with Save DCs.
That assumes you're actually casting spells with save DCs, which in my experience is rare for both rangers (I tend to see spells like hunter's mark, longstrider, pass without trace, spike growth, and conjure animals, none of which care about wisdom at all) and paladins (who just smite). UA does make it slightly more significant as some smite spells have important extra effects on a failed save, but even then they all do full damage regardless of save result and a bunch have no save.
All you're doing is talking about the result, the symptom, Rangers and Paladin's don't generally cast spells with save DCs since their Save DCs are terrible, thus they cast them less, it doesn't mean that they do not have them, as of 5E.
Paladin has far more of them because of smites, it is 11 vs 14 respectively. Ranger's Conjurer barrage, which already does quiet low damage (unless you hit A LOT of creatures) for a 3rd level spell, is a save DC. Lightning Arrow is a DC, for Paladin, Compelled Duel is a DC, Searing Smite is a DC, Destructive Wave is a DC, these spells are either Ranger only or Paladin only, so they do exist and clearly meant to be used by these classes but ASI limits the DC so much, they are rarely worth using, if ever. Paladins might use smite spells, but that is even worse when you both have to hit and then it's a DC save which 50%+ of the time, the creature will resist.
Aura of Protection is in many ways the single strongest class feature in D&D. Aura of Protection, *by itself*, is more valuable than the entire warlock class. It breaks bounded accuracy like a rave party glowstick since save DCs are one of the places the game most closely hews to bounded accuracy. Being able to +5 all saves at all times, passively, and share that benefit with nearby allies without having to use a reaction or otherwise limit the use count or impact action economy is absolutely incredible. There's no other single ability in the game that has as much potential to change the course of campaigns.
A paladin that ignores Aura of Protection is a bad paladin, full stop. It is better for the paladin to drop Strength and focus Charisma in almost all cases. Strength can be fixed with magic items, Charisma cannot. Magic weapons offset low Strength; nothing offsets bad Charisma sabotaging Aura of Protection. Hell, you could very well play a paladin that's just not very good at fighting; between Aura of Protection, Lay on Hands, and their native half-casting, you can play a paladin called to act as a leader of men and a guardian of the fallen, trained in the blade but following a higher calling than simple arms mastery. They can fight well enough when called to, augmenting their middling martial performance with radiant light and fervor, and be perfectly effective. The same is significantly less true of muscle dingdongs with 12 or less Charisma that effectively sacrifice both casting AND Aura of Protection.
A ranger who ignores wisdom still suffers from their spellcasting, as does a paladin with their charisma, mostly on spells with Save DCs.
That assumes you're actually casting spells with save DCs, which in my experience is rare for both rangers (I tend to see spells like hunter's mark, longstrider, pass without trace, spike growth, and conjure animals, none of which care about wisdom at all) and paladins (who just smite). UA does make it slightly more significant as some smite spells have important extra effects on a failed save, but even then they all do full damage regardless of save result and a bunch have no save.
All you're doing is talking about the result, the symptom, Rangers and Paladin's don't generally cast spells with save DCs since their Save DCs are terrible, thus they cast them less, it doesn't mean that they do not have them, as of 5E.
Paladin has far more of them because of smites, it is 11 vs 14 respectively. Ranger's Conjurer barrage, which already does quiet low damage (unless you hit A LOT of creatures) for a 3rd level spell, is a save DC. Lightning Arrow is a DC, for Paladin, Compelled Duel is a DC, Searing Smite is a DC, Destructive Wave is a DC, these spells are either Ranger only or Paladin only, so they do exist and clearly meant to be used by these classes but ASI limits the DC so much, they are rarely worth using, if ever. Paladins might use smite spells, but that is even worse when you both have to hit and then it's a DC save which 50%+ of the time, the creature will resist.
So I might be annoying with this, but I believe the higher level spells with save DC's are less of an issue. By the time the Paladin or the Ranger is unlocking 4th and 5th level spells they have had enough ASI's to get their combat stat maxed and still have one to bump their spell stat to 18. In addition, by this point a lot of the spell save power is in Proficiency AND as long as you are targeting the opposing monsters weaker saves you are landing them pretty regularly. I also find this to be true for 3rd level spells having a 16 in their casting stat is still a 15 DC and going 18 and 18 is very doable by level 8. So while you want that, by the time you really want that the half casters can get there for the saves, they get there. (there are definitely a couple exceptions command and compelled duel are there, but at level 1-3 the casting stat and the strength stat are both going to be +3 so there is no difference, lt really is only a thing from level 4 to 12 and maybe only 4 to 7.)
All you're doing is talking about the result, the symptom, Rangers and Paladin's don't generally cast spells with save DCs since their Save DCs are terrible, thus they cast them less, it doesn't mean that they do not have them, as of 5E.
Rangers and Paladins don't generally cast spells with save DCs because they're half casters so casting attack spells is a bad idea, and most spells with save DCs are attack spells.
So I might be annoying with this, but I believe the higher level spells with save DC's are less of an issue. By the time the Paladin or the Ranger is unlocking 4th and 5th level spells they have had enough ASI's to get their combat stat maxed and still have one to bump their spell stat to 18. In addition, by this point a lot of the spell save power is in Proficiency AND as long as you are targeting the opposing monsters weaker saves you are landing them pretty regularly. I also find this to be true for 3rd level spells having a 16 in their casting stat is still a 15 DC and going 18 and 18 is very doable by level 8. So while you want that, by the time you really want that the half casters can get there for the saves, they get there. (there are definitely a couple exceptions command and compelled duel are there, but at level 1-3 the casting stat and the strength stat are both going to be +3 so there is no difference, lt really is only a thing from level 4 to 12 and maybe only 4 to 7.)
Meanwhile every other class, doesn't need ASIs any more so is either bumping CON or getting feats, Paladin and Ranger suffer the most here. Of Paladin's spells that do have DCs, a third of them are 1st level spells, not 4th or 5th, 3 are smites, the other 2 are command and compelled duel. Paladin only has 1 attack spell here, Destruction Wave, it's 5th level and it's save is CON, since CON tends to be high for many creatures, it's really not going to be worth speccing more. It'll be the Aura of Protection that CHA is chosen for.
Of ranger spells, again only 1 spell in the 4th/5th spell slot area is an attack spell, unless you also include wrath of nature for it's rock ability; the other 5th level attack spell is Conjure Volley. There are two other attack spells, Cordon of Arrows (2nd level) and Conjure Barrage (3rd level), however if you get into spells similar to smites, for Ranger, all of those with DCs are 1st-3rd, Ensnaring Strike (1st), Hail of Thorns (1st) & lightning arrows (3rd). So it's not really true that Paladin and Ranger get their attack spells in the 4th/5th levels. They are actually fairly evenly spread with the exception of 4th level, where ranger gets nothing and paladin gets a singular smite.
All you're doing is talking about the result, the symptom, Rangers and Paladin's don't generally cast spells with save DCs since their Save DCs are terrible, thus they cast them less, it doesn't mean that they do not have them, as of 5E.
Rangers and Paladins don't generally cast spells with save DCs because they're half casters so casting attack spells is a bad idea, and most spells with save DCs are attack spells.
Of Paladin spells with DCs, only 1 of Paladin's spells on the list is an attack spell, 5 are smites. The rest are other things, could be argued that Holy Weapon and Gaes are attack spells, since their DC effects are for damage, but these are secondary effects. Paladin has 14 spells on the list, so most of their DC spells are not attack spells. For ranger it might be slightly more true, but then the list is shorter to begin with.
Of Paladin spells with DCs, only 1 of Paladin's spells on the list is an attack spell, 5 are smites. The rest are other things, could be argued that Holy Weapon and Gaes are attack spells, since their DC effects are for damage, but these are secondary effects. Paladin has 14 spells on the list, so most of their DC spells are not attack spells. For ranger it might be slightly more true, but then the list is shorter to begin with.
The non-smite spells are Banishment, Command, Compelled Duel, Destructive Wave, Dispel Evil and Good, Geas, Holy Weapon, Magic Circle, and Zone of Truth. I haven't seen paladins cast any of them, but the reason wasn't low save DC, it's because they're a bad use of a spell slot (or because they're 4th and 5th level spells and I haven't run games with level 13 or17 paladins).
Aura of Protection is in many ways the single strongest class feature in D&D. Aura of Protection, *by itself*, is more valuable than the entire warlock class. It breaks bounded accuracy like a rave party glowstick since save DCs are one of the places the game most closely hews to bounded accuracy. Being able to +5 all saves at all times, passively, and share that benefit with nearby allies without having to use a reaction or otherwise limit the use count or impact action economy is absolutely incredible. There's no other single ability in the game that has as much potential to change the course of campaigns.
A paladin that ignores Aura of Protection is a bad paladin, full stop. It is better for the paladin to drop Strength and focus Charisma in almost all cases. Strength can be fixed with magic items, Charisma cannot. Magic weapons offset low Strength; nothing offsets bad Charisma sabotaging Aura of Protection. Hell, you could very well play a paladin that's just not very good at fighting; between Aura of Protection, Lay on Hands, and their native half-casting, you can play a paladin called to act as a leader of men and a guardian of the fallen, trained in the blade but following a higher calling than simple arms mastery. They can fight well enough when called to, augmenting their middling martial performance with radiant light and fervor, and be perfectly effective. The same is significantly less true of muscle dingdongs with 12 or less Charisma that effectively sacrifice both casting AND Aura of Protection.
A Paladin that dumps Cha is still a good Paladin in 5e. Maybe not so much in 5eR. Divine smite means you don’t need to cast spells. You still get +1 to to saves if your Cha was a 8. Higher Str means better odds of hitting those attacks to smite enemies to death. It’s hard to build a bad Paladin. I guess you could dump con. That’s just a hard character to play.
Aura of Protection is in many ways the single strongest class feature in D&D. Aura of Protection, *by itself*, is more valuable than the entire warlock class. It breaks bounded accuracy like a rave party glowstick since save DCs are one of the places the game most closely hews to bounded accuracy. Being able to +5 all saves at all times, passively, and share that benefit with nearby allies without having to use a reaction or otherwise limit the use count or impact action economy is absolutely incredible. There's no other single ability in the game that has as much potential to change the course of campaigns.
A paladin that ignores Aura of Protection is a bad paladin, full stop. It is better for the paladin to drop Strength and focus Charisma in almost all cases. Strength can be fixed with magic items, Charisma cannot. Magic weapons offset low Strength; nothing offsets bad Charisma sabotaging Aura of Protection. Hell, you could very well play a paladin that's just not very good at fighting; between Aura of Protection, Lay on Hands, and their native half-casting, you can play a paladin called to act as a leader of men and a guardian of the fallen, trained in the blade but following a higher calling than simple arms mastery. They can fight well enough when called to, augmenting their middling martial performance with radiant light and fervor, and be perfectly effective. The same is significantly less true of muscle dingdongs with 12 or less Charisma that effectively sacrifice both casting AND Aura of Protection.
A Paladin that dumps Cha is still a good Paladin in 5e. Maybe not so much in 5eR. Divine smite means you don’t need to cast spells. You still get +1 to to saves if your Cha was a 8. Higher Str means better odds of hitting those attacks to smite enemies to death. It’s hard to build a bad Paladin. I guess you could dump con. That’s just a hard character to play.
A 5e Paladin that dumps Cha is a good character, because the Paladin class is insanely strong no matter what you do with it. It's still a bad Paladin because it's shirking the best feature of the Paladin.
One thing I wonder is, why do classes have to be functional at level 1?
Because people play games at level 1.
And games aren't allowed to have a point where the player is not perfection?
If classes are not supposed to have any distinctive strengths at level 1, then why bother with level 1? Make everyone start as level 1 commoner and everyone picks class only once they reach 2nd level.
Do you really honestly think that a first level Warlock who is not able to make weapon attacks using CHA has no distinctive strengths? Just on the most basic level in this playtest, they have a couple of cantrips (one of which most likely will be Eldritch Blast), an invocation (which could be used to buff Eldritch Blast or a variety of other flavorful abilities), and a spell slot that refreshes on a short rest. Just like every other class, they also get a feat. I'm sure there probably may be some classes in the playtest that start off with slightly more, but I don't see any level 1 characters of any class as having significant distinctive strengths beyond that.
I do think that if someone intends on making a Bladelock, it is unfair to force them to use cantrips or suck at melee at level 1. A martial (yes yes I know that Bladelocks are not strictly speaking martials) should be good (relative to their level) at being a martial from level 1.
You missed that Dudeicus was recommending removing most of those things from first level and punting them up to second, third, fourth, or even fifth level. Spellcasting for primary fullcaster classes wouldn't even kick in at all until third - your wizards and sorcerers would spend first and second levels swinging staves or daggers without the ability to use magic at all.
In such a system, yes, classes are not distinct from one another at first level, and the game is mostly nonfunctional at that level.
Fullcasters still get to add their spellcasting bonus to their cantrip attack rolls.
You missed that Dudeicus was recommending removing most of those things from first level and punting them up to second, third, fourth, or even fifth level. Spellcasting for primary fullcaster classes wouldn't even kick in at all until third - your wizards and sorcerers would spend first and second levels swinging staves or daggers without the ability to use magic at all.
In such a system, yes, classes are not distinct from one another at first level, and the game is mostly nonfunctional at that level.
Ah, understood.
LosGabriel had previously been arguing that merely the loss of possibly using CHA for the attack stat on 1st level Warlocks that plan to take Pact of the Blade (but couldn't if the invocation was given a 2nd level prerequisite) would ruin the play experience.
It doesn't ruin it, but it is, in my opinion, bad design.
Aura of Protection is in many ways the single strongest class feature in D&D. Aura of Protection, *by itself*, is more valuable than the entire warlock class. It breaks bounded accuracy like a rave party glowstick since save DCs are one of the places the game most closely hews to bounded accuracy. Being able to +5 all saves at all times, passively, and share that benefit with nearby allies without having to use a reaction or otherwise limit the use count or impact action economy is absolutely incredible. There's no other single ability in the game that has as much potential to change the course of campaigns.
A paladin that ignores Aura of Protection is a bad paladin, full stop. It is better for the paladin to drop Strength and focus Charisma in almost all cases. Strength can be fixed with magic items, Charisma cannot. Magic weapons offset low Strength; nothing offsets bad Charisma sabotaging Aura of Protection. Hell, you could very well play a paladin that's just not very good at fighting; between Aura of Protection, Lay on Hands, and their native half-casting, you can play a paladin called to act as a leader of men and a guardian of the fallen, trained in the blade but following a higher calling than simple arms mastery. They can fight well enough when called to, augmenting their middling martial performance with radiant light and fervor, and be perfectly effective. The same is significantly less true of muscle dingdongs with 12 or less Charisma that effectively sacrifice both casting AND Aura of Protection.
I believe the issue with Paladins dipping to Warlocks to offset having low Strength should also be addressed in the design of the Paladin class itself.
Thinking about it I started to wonder how would it be possible to give the Paladin class itself Charisma for attack rolls without having to dip into other classes and without making it straight up overpowered... I'd love to see paladins get some sort of self buff that bolsters them for 1 minute or so, during which they can substitute Charisma for Strength for attack rolls and Strength/Athletics checks.
Of Paladin spells with DCs, only 1 of Paladin's spells on the list is an attack spell, 5 are smites. The rest are other things, could be argued that Holy Weapon and Gaes are attack spells, since their DC effects are for damage, but these are secondary effects. Paladin has 14 spells on the list, so most of their DC spells are not attack spells. For ranger it might be slightly more true, but then the list is shorter to begin with.
The non-smite spells are Banishment, Command, Compelled Duel, Destructive Wave, Dispel Evil and Good, Geas, Holy Weapon, Magic Circle, and Zone of Truth. I haven't seen paladins cast any of them, but the reason wasn't low save DC, it's because they're a bad use of a spell slot (or because they're 4th and 5th level spells and I haven't run games with level 13 or17 paladins).
Compelled Duel and Command are not bad uses of spell slots, these can literally save an encounter, but the low saves makes them less desired. Compelled Duel means you can redirect a hostile creature back towards yourself, instead of say, your spell casters. Command can be very broken, make the enemy commander drop their magical greataxe, or the ghoul fall over making it easier to hit. Yes Thunderous Strike also knocks a creature prone, but command makes the creature fall prone itself and end it's turn, where Thunderous Strike, they just get back up the next round.
The problem with Command, is that it's an action, early on that is okay but by the time you get extra attack, it's a bit too much of a cost of an action on top of a spell slot. Compelled Duel is a bonus action, which makes it a bit easier to use, but since as a Paladin, your MAD, it usually means the DC saves of command and compelled duel are often not reliable enough to actually be used in combat.
The warlock might be the easiest example but the core issue will always be the multi class rules are terrible. Part of this is due to how much is given at 1st level making dips always over valued. There are really only 2 ways to fix it unless you want to play whack a mole and chase the latest best dip. Either give less to classes at level 1 spreading out their abilities over lower levels, so to get them a character has to invest more than a dip, or reduce what people gain from multi classing. They do it for heavy armor, they might need to do it for other things.
LosGabriel, you think that making a Warlock, who quite commonly would have a 14 DEX (as opposed to a 16 CHA) at first level, have to use a finesse weapon in melee (slightly lower damage) and their DEX modifier (probably only one less than their CHA modifier) makes them suckat first level? I'm sorry, but I can't imagine that a situation like that would keep me from pursuing a build that I want or reduce my enjoyment of the game to any significant extent. Maybe we are different and you need your characters to be hyper-optimized (either from a mechanical or role-play perspective). There are many features from many classes or subclasses that I might find essential to the concept of a character I might want to play, but I don't think that there are many at all that I think a build absolutely needs right from first level.
Compelled Duel and Command are not bad uses of spell slots, these can literally save an encounter, but the low saves makes them less desired. Compelled Duel means you can redirect a hostile creature back towards yourself, instead of say, your spell casters.
Compelled Duel means the monster is moderately inconvenienced when attacking your allies (it has disadvantage on attack and no penalty whatsoever on forcing saves) while consuming your concentration and making it impossible for your teammates to attack the monster or for you to target any other monster. This is not worth losing a smite.
What if Paladin's Aura of Protection was changed from "add your CHA modifier to all saves" to "add (Paladin Level)/4 (rounded up) to all saves"? The end result of +5 to all saves would still occur at level 20. But it would start as a more modest +2 starting at level 6 and the progression would be comparable to a Paladin that gets CHA ASI at levels 12 and 16. With this change, Paladin's have less incentive to multiclass into Pact of the Blade. And a Paladin/Warlock multiclass still works for story purposes, but does not dominate the metagame.
What if Paladin's Aura of Protection was changed from "add your CHA modifier to all saves" to "add (Paladin Level)/4 (rounded up) to all saves"? The end result of +5 to all saves would still occur at level 20.
It's even more problematic than it is now, because you can get the full bonus without bothering with charisma? The core problem is that it shouldn't be giving +5 in the first place. +1 would be a solidly useful feature, +2 would be an excellent feature.
What if Paladin's Aura of Protection was changed from "add your CHA modifier to all saves" to "add (Paladin Level)/4 (rounded up) to all saves"? The end result of +5 to all saves would still occur at level 20.
It's even more problematic than it is now, because you can get the full bonus without bothering with charisma? The core problem is that it shouldn't be giving +5 in the first place. +1 would be a solidly useful feature, +2 would be an excellent feature.
Yeah I don't know why Paladin was made so unbelievably strong.
I imagine it's a holdover from older editions where the class was much more tied to your alignment in exchange for great power?
I think it's more the game designers being bad at math? 5e was to a significant degree a backlash to 4e, and 4e had very solidly defined math, so the obvious backlash is to just throw random numbers at a wall and see what sticks.
What if Paladin's Aura of Protection was changed from "add your CHA modifier to all saves" to "add (Paladin Level)/4 (rounded up) to all saves"? The end result of +5 to all saves would still occur at level 20.
It's even more problematic than it is now, because you can get the full bonus without bothering with charisma? The core problem is that it shouldn't be giving +5 in the first place. +1 would be a solidly useful feature, +2 would be an excellent feature.
I would never bother getting in the aura for +1 I think you'd generally be worse off as a group as its asking for AoEs. Even at +3 its not a clear cut call. Yeah against certain effects like charm or holds that generally aren't area of effects or maybe like the chasmes drone that is constant and large enough I'l likely getting hit by it anyways I'll take the +1 but for the majority of things we encounter in our games its not worth it.
Edit to add and its not just AoE concerns, but general positioning issues where i'm forcing myself into a small 10 foot sphere for a mere +1 to saves. I'll be getting hit more in general for a +1 to my saves, no thanks.
What if Paladin's Aura of Protection was changed from "add your CHA modifier to all saves" to "add (Paladin Level)/4 (rounded up) to all saves"? The end result of +5 to all saves would still occur at level 20.
It's even more problematic than it is now, because you can get the full bonus without bothering with charisma? The core problem is that it shouldn't be giving +5 in the first place. +1 would be a solidly useful feature, +2 would be an excellent feature.
If the Aura of Protection only gave a +1 or +2 to saving throw’s it really wouldn’t be worth going to 6th level Paladin. Bless would overall be better 9 out of 10 times.
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Ah, understood.
LosGabriel had previously been arguing that merely the loss of possibly using CHA for the attack stat on 1st level Warlocks that plan to take Pact of the Blade (but couldn't if the invocation was given a 2nd level prerequisite) would ruin the play experience.
It does not demand high Cha. This feature is a bonus, not an element of basic functionality. It does need Cha scaling to reward (or compensate) paladins who favored Cha over Str. If anything, paladin needs more Cha scaling on features, so that going Str vs going Cha is a choice.
All you're doing is talking about the result, the symptom, Rangers and Paladin's don't generally cast spells with save DCs since their Save DCs are terrible, thus they cast them less, it doesn't mean that they do not have them, as of 5E.
Ranger DC save spells & Paladin DC save spells
Paladin has far more of them because of smites, it is 11 vs 14 respectively. Ranger's Conjurer barrage, which already does quiet low damage (unless you hit A LOT of creatures) for a 3rd level spell, is a save DC. Lightning Arrow is a DC, for Paladin, Compelled Duel is a DC, Searing Smite is a DC, Destructive Wave is a DC, these spells are either Ranger only or Paladin only, so they do exist and clearly meant to be used by these classes but ASI limits the DC so much, they are rarely worth using, if ever. Paladins might use smite spells, but that is even worse when you both have to hit and then it's a DC save which 50%+ of the time, the creature will resist.
Aura of Protection is in many ways the single strongest class feature in D&D. Aura of Protection, *by itself*, is more valuable than the entire warlock class. It breaks bounded accuracy like a rave party glowstick since save DCs are one of the places the game most closely hews to bounded accuracy. Being able to +5 all saves at all times, passively, and share that benefit with nearby allies without having to use a reaction or otherwise limit the use count or impact action economy is absolutely incredible. There's no other single ability in the game that has as much potential to change the course of campaigns.
A paladin that ignores Aura of Protection is a bad paladin, full stop. It is better for the paladin to drop Strength and focus Charisma in almost all cases. Strength can be fixed with magic items, Charisma cannot. Magic weapons offset low Strength; nothing offsets bad Charisma sabotaging Aura of Protection. Hell, you could very well play a paladin that's just not very good at fighting; between Aura of Protection, Lay on Hands, and their native half-casting, you can play a paladin called to act as a leader of men and a guardian of the fallen, trained in the blade but following a higher calling than simple arms mastery. They can fight well enough when called to, augmenting their middling martial performance with radiant light and fervor, and be perfectly effective. The same is significantly less true of muscle dingdongs with 12 or less Charisma that effectively sacrifice both casting AND Aura of Protection.
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So I might be annoying with this, but I believe the higher level spells with save DC's are less of an issue. By the time the Paladin or the Ranger is unlocking 4th and 5th level spells they have had enough ASI's to get their combat stat maxed and still have one to bump their spell stat to 18. In addition, by this point a lot of the spell save power is in Proficiency AND as long as you are targeting the opposing monsters weaker saves you are landing them pretty regularly. I also find this to be true for 3rd level spells having a 16 in their casting stat is still a 15 DC and going 18 and 18 is very doable by level 8. So while you want that, by the time you really want that the half casters can get there for the saves, they get there. (there are definitely a couple exceptions command and compelled duel are there, but at level 1-3 the casting stat and the strength stat are both going to be +3 so there is no difference, lt really is only a thing from level 4 to 12 and maybe only 4 to 7.)
Rangers and Paladins don't generally cast spells with save DCs because they're half casters so casting attack spells is a bad idea, and most spells with save DCs are attack spells.
Meanwhile every other class, doesn't need ASIs any more so is either bumping CON or getting feats, Paladin and Ranger suffer the most here. Of Paladin's spells that do have DCs, a third of them are 1st level spells, not 4th or 5th, 3 are smites, the other 2 are command and compelled duel. Paladin only has 1 attack spell here, Destruction Wave, it's 5th level and it's save is CON, since CON tends to be high for many creatures, it's really not going to be worth speccing more. It'll be the Aura of Protection that CHA is chosen for.
Of ranger spells, again only 1 spell in the 4th/5th spell slot area is an attack spell, unless you also include wrath of nature for it's rock ability; the other 5th level attack spell is Conjure Volley. There are two other attack spells, Cordon of Arrows (2nd level) and Conjure Barrage (3rd level), however if you get into spells similar to smites, for Ranger, all of those with DCs are 1st-3rd, Ensnaring Strike (1st), Hail of Thorns (1st) & lightning arrows (3rd). So it's not really true that Paladin and Ranger get their attack spells in the 4th/5th levels. They are actually fairly evenly spread with the exception of 4th level, where ranger gets nothing and paladin gets a singular smite.
Of Paladin spells with DCs, only 1 of Paladin's spells on the list is an attack spell, 5 are smites. The rest are other things, could be argued that Holy Weapon and Gaes are attack spells, since their DC effects are for damage, but these are secondary effects. Paladin has 14 spells on the list, so most of their DC spells are not attack spells. For ranger it might be slightly more true, but then the list is shorter to begin with.
The non-smite spells are Banishment, Command, Compelled Duel, Destructive Wave, Dispel Evil and Good, Geas, Holy Weapon, Magic Circle, and Zone of Truth. I haven't seen paladins cast any of them, but the reason wasn't low save DC, it's because they're a bad use of a spell slot (or because they're 4th and 5th level spells and I haven't run games with level 13 or17 paladins).
A Paladin that dumps Cha is still a good Paladin in 5e. Maybe not so much in 5eR. Divine smite means you don’t need to cast spells. You still get +1 to to saves if your Cha was a 8. Higher Str means better odds of hitting those attacks to smite enemies to death. It’s hard to build a bad Paladin. I guess you could dump con. That’s just a hard character to play.
A 5e Paladin that dumps Cha is a good character, because the Paladin class is insanely strong no matter what you do with it. It's still a bad Paladin because it's shirking the best feature of the Paladin.
I do think that if someone intends on making a Bladelock, it is unfair to force them to use cantrips or suck at melee at level 1. A martial (yes yes I know that Bladelocks are not strictly speaking martials) should be good (relative to their level) at being a martial from level 1.
Fullcasters still get to add their spellcasting bonus to their cantrip attack rolls.
It doesn't ruin it, but it is, in my opinion, bad design.
I believe the issue with Paladins dipping to Warlocks to offset having low Strength should also be addressed in the design of the Paladin class itself.
Thinking about it I started to wonder how would it be possible to give the Paladin class itself Charisma for attack rolls without having to dip into other classes and without making it straight up overpowered... I'd love to see paladins get some sort of self buff that bolsters them for 1 minute or so, during which they can substitute Charisma for Strength for attack rolls and Strength/Athletics checks.
Compelled Duel and Command are not bad uses of spell slots, these can literally save an encounter, but the low saves makes them less desired. Compelled Duel means you can redirect a hostile creature back towards yourself, instead of say, your spell casters. Command can be very broken, make the enemy commander drop their magical greataxe, or the ghoul fall over making it easier to hit. Yes Thunderous Strike also knocks a creature prone, but command makes the creature fall prone itself and end it's turn, where Thunderous Strike, they just get back up the next round.
The problem with Command, is that it's an action, early on that is okay but by the time you get extra attack, it's a bit too much of a cost of an action on top of a spell slot. Compelled Duel is a bonus action, which makes it a bit easier to use, but since as a Paladin, your MAD, it usually means the DC saves of command and compelled duel are often not reliable enough to actually be used in combat.
The warlock might be the easiest example but the core issue will always be the multi class rules are terrible. Part of this is due to how much is given at 1st level making dips always over valued. There are really only 2 ways to fix it unless you want to play whack a mole and chase the latest best dip. Either give less to classes at level 1 spreading out their abilities over lower levels, so to get them a character has to invest more than a dip, or reduce what people gain from multi classing. They do it for heavy armor, they might need to do it for other things.
LosGabriel, you think that making a Warlock, who quite commonly would have a 14 DEX (as opposed to a 16 CHA) at first level, have to use a finesse weapon in melee (slightly lower damage) and their DEX modifier (probably only one less than their CHA modifier) makes them suck at first level? I'm sorry, but I can't imagine that a situation like that would keep me from pursuing a build that I want or reduce my enjoyment of the game to any significant extent. Maybe we are different and you need your characters to be hyper-optimized (either from a mechanical or role-play perspective). There are many features from many classes or subclasses that I might find essential to the concept of a character I might want to play, but I don't think that there are many at all that I think a build absolutely needs right from first level.
Compelled Duel means the monster is moderately inconvenienced when attacking your allies (it has disadvantage on attack and no penalty whatsoever on forcing saves) while consuming your concentration and making it impossible for your teammates to attack the monster or for you to target any other monster. This is not worth losing a smite.
What if Paladin's Aura of Protection was changed from "add your CHA modifier to all saves" to "add (Paladin Level)/4 (rounded up) to all saves"? The end result of +5 to all saves would still occur at level 20. But it would start as a more modest +2 starting at level 6 and the progression would be comparable to a Paladin that gets CHA ASI at levels 12 and 16. With this change, Paladin's have less incentive to multiclass into Pact of the Blade. And a Paladin/Warlock multiclass still works for story purposes, but does not dominate the metagame.
It's even more problematic than it is now, because you can get the full bonus without bothering with charisma? The core problem is that it shouldn't be giving +5 in the first place. +1 would be a solidly useful feature, +2 would be an excellent feature.
I think it's more the game designers being bad at math? 5e was to a significant degree a backlash to 4e, and 4e had very solidly defined math, so the obvious backlash is to just throw random numbers at a wall and see what sticks.
I would never bother getting in the aura for +1 I think you'd generally be worse off as a group as its asking for AoEs. Even at +3 its not a clear cut call. Yeah against certain effects like charm or holds that generally aren't area of effects or maybe like the chasmes drone that is constant and large enough I'l likely getting hit by it anyways I'll take the +1 but for the majority of things we encounter in our games its not worth it.
Edit to add and its not just AoE concerns, but general positioning issues where i'm forcing myself into a small 10 foot sphere for a mere +1 to saves. I'll be getting hit more in general for a +1 to my saves, no thanks.
If the Aura of Protection only gave a +1 or +2 to saving throw’s it really wouldn’t be worth going to 6th level Paladin. Bless would overall be better 9 out of 10 times.