Oh, but compare it with Great Weapon Master or Polearm Master... One gives you +PB damage if you score at least one hit on your turn and an extra attack if you crit or kill a creature, another gives you stable ways to use both your bonus action and reaction,. And those are also half-feats. And Dual Wielder... basically lets you have one weapon deal +1 average damage. 0,66 per attack. For the price of a feat. It does give one access to masteries other than Vex, but that's just supposed to be a given.
I totally agree that Dual Wielder is undertuned relative to PAM and GWM - especially now that, again, half of it does nothing.
Dual Wielder definitely has issues, but two-weapon fighting is actually viable now because of Vex & Nick. GWM is totally fine now, the problem is PAM. While they got rid of some exploits (Sentinel + PAM reaction), people are finding new ones (Topple + PAM reaction), and it just gives too much good stuff. It's pretty hard to justify using any two-handed weapon other than a polearm which is a bad thing for the game.
Yeah, it will be like when Tasha’s came out and the only PC ever made since then has been mountain dwarf. And how every caster is absolutely required to take silvery barbs.
It’s really not hard to justify it at all, it will be fun for many to do something else. Sure, optimizers are gonna optimize. But lots of people (ime, most people, but I acknowledge that’s anecdotal evidence) just think, this character uses a honkin’ big axe, without considering if there’s some kind of combo they’re ignoring in the process. They don’t go looking to squeeze every +1 out of every situation. The game will be just fine.
*Correction: every PC became a Custom Lineage* after Tasha's, which IME was indeed a problem such that half of my tables banned Custom Lineage, and all of them banned Silvery Barbs.
Oh, but compare it with Great Weapon Master or Polearm Master... One gives you +PB damage if you score at least one hit on your turn and an extra attack if you crit or kill a creature, another gives you stable ways to use both your bonus action and reaction,. And those are also half-feats. And Dual Wielder... basically lets you have one weapon deal +1 average damage. 0,66 per attack. For the price of a feat. It does give one access to masteries other than Vex, but that's just supposed to be a given.
I totally agree that Dual Wielder is undertuned relative to PAM and GWM - especially now that, again, half of it does nothing.
Dual Wielder definitely has issues, but two-weapon fighting is actually viable now because of Vex & Nick. GWM is totally fine now, the problem is PAM. While they got rid of some exploits (Sentinel + PAM reaction), people are finding new ones (Topple + PAM reaction), and it just gives too much good stuff. It's pretty hard to justify using any two-handed weapon other than a polearm which is a bad thing for the game.
Fortunately, there's still time for them to tune PAM before the release. I'm generally not a fan of topple either, though I don't expect that it's going to be detuned.
It might, I can't be the only person who complained how it became tedious quick since it was on every attack.
Except it's only situationally useful, so it's unlikely to be a main Mastery.
Except if someone wants to use a maul, trident, lance, quarterstaff or battelaxe. I don't think people will pick maul for topple, they will pick maui because they wanted a big ass sledge to crush their enemies. Or they wanted to go traditional dwarf battleaxe and shield. And now every damn attack a save is popping off. Whether across the game as a whole its a big % does not matter for that table, who now has to deal with it.
We’ll see; imo the concerns around Topple seem very overstated, and few of the classes with Masteries jump on those items in my experience. Worst case it’s about one extra roll per round on average, and the DM will likely quickly start getting ready for it as the player makes their attack. Frankly, if you find a single extra roll to be that onerous, that seems like a personal problem, not a design flaw.
Oh, but compare it with Great Weapon Master or Polearm Master... One gives you +PB damage if you score at least one hit on your turn and an extra attack if you crit or kill a creature, another gives you stable ways to use both your bonus action and reaction,. And those are also half-feats. And Dual Wielder... basically lets you have one weapon deal +1 average damage. 0,66 per attack. For the price of a feat. It does give one access to masteries other than Vex, but that's just supposed to be a given.
I totally agree that Dual Wielder is undertuned relative to PAM and GWM - especially now that, again, half of it does nothing.
Dual Wielder definitely has issues, but two-weapon fighting is actually viable now because of Vex & Nick. GWM is totally fine now, the problem is PAM. While they got rid of some exploits (Sentinel + PAM reaction), people are finding new ones (Topple + PAM reaction), and it just gives too much good stuff. It's pretty hard to justify using any two-handed weapon other than a polearm which is a bad thing for the game.
Yeah, it will be like when Tasha’s came out and the only PC ever made since then has been mountain dwarf. And how every caster is absolutely required to take silvery barbs.
It’s really not hard to justify it at all, it will be fun for many to do something else. Sure, optimizers are gonna optimize. But lots of people (ime, most people, but I acknowledge that’s anecdotal evidence) just think, this character uses a honkin’ big axe, without considering if there’s some kind of combo they’re ignoring in the process. They don’t go looking to squeeze every +1 out of every situation. The game will be just fine.
*Correction: every PC became a Custom Lineage* after Tasha's, which IME was indeed a problem such that half of my tables banned Custom Lineage, and all of them banned Silvery Barbs.
I’ve seen no one even want to play a custom lineage and free use of silvery barbs at my tables. So I guess my anecdotal evidence cancels yours out. It’s almost like there’s no one correct way to play, which means, again, the game will be just fine.
We’ll see; imo the concerns around Topple seem very overstated, and few of the classes with Masteries jump on those items in my experience. Worst case it’s about one extra roll per round on average, and the DM will likely quickly start getting ready for it as the player makes their attack. Frankly, if you find a single extra roll to be that onerous, that seems like a personal problem, not a design flaw.
If I remember correctly from the UA videos, the only Mastery property that tested poorly was Flex, hence its removal.
We’ll see; imo the concerns around Topple seem very overstated, and few of the classes with Masteries jump on those items in my experience. Worst case it’s about one extra roll per round on average, and the DM will likely quickly start getting ready for it as the player makes their attack. Frankly, if you find a single extra roll to be that onerous, that seems like a personal problem, not a design flaw.
If I remember correctly from the UA videos, the only Mastery property that tested poorly was Flex, hence its removal.
I know, but there’s a small bloc of people here who insist that it will somehow dominate and bog down play due to the combination of Prone and a saving throw. As you may have noticed, I disagree with the idea that it raises any systemic issues.
for pedantic clarity's sake: is that a 'console command' emoting strong disbelief or is that a 'close tag' to indicate an end to the function like '</pedantry>' ?
i'm having trouble reading whether you're sarcastic here. yes, sometimes you want to hit the enemy as hard as you can without knocking them over.
And you can choose to not prone them if you don't want to. That's a console command emoting strong disbelieve. I was too lazy to type out "I disbelieve" as I would say it at a gaming table, though upon reflection given the audience, it would have been a better choice.
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Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
We’ll see; imo the concerns around Topple seem very overstated, and few of the classes with Masteries jump on those items in my experience. Worst case it’s about one extra roll per round on average, and the DM will likely quickly start getting ready for it as the player makes their attack. Frankly, if you find a single extra roll to be that onerous, that seems like a personal problem, not a design flaw.
If I remember correctly from the UA videos, the only Mastery property that tested poorly was Flex, hence its removal.
I know, but there’s a small bloc of people here who insist that it will somehow dominate and bog down play due to the combination of Prone and a saving throw. As you may have noticed, I disagree with the idea that it raises any systemic issues.
It won't raise systemic issues imo, it will raise performance issues.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
We’ll see; imo the concerns around Topple seem very overstated, and few of the classes with Masteries jump on those items in my experience. Worst case it’s about one extra roll per round on average, and the DM will likely quickly start getting ready for it as the player makes their attack. Frankly, if you find a single extra roll to be that onerous, that seems like a personal problem, not a design flaw.
If I remember correctly from the UA videos, the only Mastery property that tested poorly was Flex, hence its removal.
I know, but there’s a small bloc of people here who insist that it will somehow dominate and bog down play due to the combination of Prone and a saving throw. As you may have noticed, I disagree with the idea that it raises any systemic issues.
It won't raise systemic issues imo, it will raise performance issues.
I’d be surprised; it’s superficially attractive but as I’ve pointed out many times there’s actually enough variables to make it quite situational, whereas Vex and Sap simply proc on hit while Graze guarantees damage on every attack. If you can line things up so the party can exploit it and have a bit of luck it’s useful, otherwise Vex gives better returns on personal advantage and Sap is a more consistent debuff.
We’ll see; imo the concerns around Topple seem very overstated, and few of the classes with Masteries jump on those items in my experience. Worst case it’s about one extra roll per round on average, and the DM will likely quickly start getting ready for it as the player makes their attack. Frankly, if you find a single extra roll to be that onerous, that seems like a personal problem, not a design flaw.
If I remember correctly from the UA videos, the only Mastery property that tested poorly was Flex, hence its removal.
The problem with short play tests periods before feedback without going back. When I first tested topple it was pretty good. As we continued to use it, it just became annoying AF. Use something 10 times and it may be entertaining, after 100 times, its just shit. Which is why in every subsequent play test feedback in "other" sections I added in feedback from previous play tests now that we played with it more.
Vex is only found on finesse weapons. Sap is nice, but provides a defensive benefit which will generally be trumped by offensive abilities. There's nothing wrong with either of these abilities.
Topple on the other hand can provide the same benefit as vex only better (advantage on the next attack and subsequent attacks, including to your melee teammates) while ALSO providing the same advantage as sap (disadvantage on the enemy's attacks) AND requiring the use of a full movement to stand up (thus is better than slow). All in one, simple package. Why pick anything else when you can just take topple and get them all? It's flat out mechanically superior to every other option, thus making topple the go-to choice outside niche selections. It needs to be tuned down.
The only downside at all, is that it causes disadvantage to your ranged teammates, but as the guy who mainly plays melees in my group pointed out to me "that's your problem, guess you better use a save spell".
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Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Topple will at best produce disadvantage on AoO’s in most cases; the movement cost on Prone is generally not significant once melee starts. Plus it’s dependent on enemies failing a strong save, while Vex simply requires a hit and can theoretically be chained with successive hits. Sap isn’t chainable on a single target, but it’s going to actually produce disadvantage far more often and technically can debuff multiple enemies. Why should I prefer having to rely on a second roll to have a chance to get any mileage from my Mastery when I have two options that I’ll be able to use far more consistently, unless initiative falls out in such a way that other players can dog pile the target?
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Just to add my 2 cent, I see Topple as being the worst mastery, prone is not a great condition, yes you get advantage in melee but now all your ranged characters have disadvantage unless they get into melee range, additionally as a polearm user, you might still need to move to benefit from prone, which basically weakens the whole point of using a reach weapon. Additionally, If you hit a target with topple and make them prone, they do not lose their turn, they lose half their movement and you now have no way to stop them walking past you if they have enough movement left. If you're using polearms then Push is significantly a better mastery, since pushing enemies 10 foot back means they need to walk back towards you, which results in triggering the reactionary attack of PAM much more often and when you trigger the reaction, you get to push the creature again. Graze is also good, since you still have a ~35% chance to miss, Cleave is a little situational but good if you can get it off, slow is mostly inferior to Push the only advantage to slow is it doesn't have a size limitation.
So my recommendation for polearms would be Push, for all other 2 handed weapons, it would be Graze or Cleave, for Versatile weapons it would be Sap or Push, for Finesse weapons or ammunition weapons, it would be vex and for light weapons, it'd be vex with a nick weapon in the off-hand. So out of all the masteries, there are two I do not recommend at all, those are slow and topple. There are situational uses for slow and topple sure, they are not useless, but I do not see them as being as beneficial as other masteries.
If you're using polearms then Push is significantly a better mastery, since pushing enemies 10 foot back means they need to walk back towards you, which results in triggering the reactionary attack of PAM much more often and when you trigger the reaction, you get to push the creature again.
As a DM, why would my monster continue to try to attack you if you keep pushing it away? If you push my monster out of your reach, it will just go attack someone else, especially if it gets pushed or proned on the PAM reaction.
Main thing I'm not okay with is Beastmaster pet statblocks being locked to Ranger's Spell Attack bonus for their attack 🙂
Makes me feel kinda forced to make a Wis-focused build while I'd rather have Dex.
why do you feel forced to be better at tracking, spells, and pet tricks? just be better at weapons if that's what your character finds most called to. or pick a different subclass and make an animal friend on the side (hireling / sidekick) for you and the dm to share control of (perhaps without having to micromanage via bonus action every combat)?
Yup! Don't get me wrong, those are cool, specially if you throw in something like Ritual Caster (Wizard) or a 1-level dip into the mix and turn into a semi-full-spellcaster. (I have a Beast Master 19/Sorcerer 1 that did just that, with familiar and all) The thing is, if the Primal Companion's attack was detached from any ability score modifier (like the Drakewarden's Drake Companion is), this would be a cool option, not something I have to go with.
Main thing I'm not okay with is Beastmaster pet statblocks being locked to Ranger's Spell Attack bonus for their attack 🙂
Makes me feel kinda forced to make a Wis-focused build while I'd rather have Dex.
why do you feel forced to be better at tracking, spells, and pet tricks? just be better at weapons if that's what your character finds most called to. or pick a different subclass and make an animal friend on the side (hireling / sidekick) for you and the dm to share control of (perhaps without having to micromanage via bonus action every combat)?
Yup! Don't get me wrong, those are cool, specially if you throw in something like Ritual Caster (Wizard) or a 1-level dip into the mix and turn into a semi-full-spellcaster. (I have a Beast Master 19/Sorcerer 1 that did just that, with familiar and all) The thing is, if the Primal Companion's attack was detached from any ability score modifier (like the Drakewarden's Drake Companion is), this would be a cool option, not something I have to go with.
so, you value pet main attack to-hit (ranger's spell attack modifier, WIS) over character to-hit and weapon damage and AC and stealth bonus and etc (DEX)?
maybe if your argument was that the missing +1/+2 difference was inconsequential enough to just provide it without using spell attack math or if there was something about melee rangers feeling spread thin, then maybe i could see my way to agreeing. but asking for high dex and also high pet to-hit is just asking for more power for the sake of power. isn't it?
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unhappy at the way in which we lost individual purchases for one-off subclasses, magic items, and monsters?
tell them you don't like features disappeared quietly in the night: providefeedback!
Could always pick up Shillelagh and re-gain that wis bonus.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
☝️ Yup, exactly (but I'm mainly using Primal Savagery).
My main thing is that detaching the pet's attack from any of the Ranger's stats (like I said, just like the Drakewarden) provides you the option to focus on either Sealth+Light Armor+Bow (Dex) or Spellcasting+Tracking+Perception (Wis) by your choice, instead of being locked into one.
*Correction: every PC became a Custom Lineage* after Tasha's, which IME was indeed a problem such that half of my tables banned Custom Lineage, and all of them banned Silvery Barbs.
Except if someone wants to use a maul, trident, lance, quarterstaff or battelaxe. I don't think people will pick maul for topple, they will pick maui because they wanted a big ass sledge to crush their enemies. Or they wanted to go traditional dwarf battleaxe and shield. And now every damn attack a save is popping off. Whether across the game as a whole its a big % does not matter for that table, who now has to deal with it.
We’ll see; imo the concerns around Topple seem very overstated, and few of the classes with Masteries jump on those items in my experience. Worst case it’s about one extra roll per round on average, and the DM will likely quickly start getting ready for it as the player makes their attack. Frankly, if you find a single extra roll to be that onerous, that seems like a personal problem, not a design flaw.
I’ve seen no one even want to play a custom lineage and free use of silvery barbs at my tables. So I guess my anecdotal evidence cancels yours out. It’s almost like there’s no one correct way to play, which means, again, the game will be just fine.
If I remember correctly from the UA videos, the only Mastery property that tested poorly was Flex, hence its removal.
I know, but there’s a small bloc of people here who insist that it will somehow dominate and bog down play due to the combination of Prone and a saving throw. As you may have noticed, I disagree with the idea that it raises any systemic issues.
And you can choose to not prone them if you don't want to. That's a console command emoting strong disbelieve. I was too lazy to type out "I disbelieve" as I would say it at a gaming table, though upon reflection given the audience, it would have been a better choice.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
It won't raise systemic issues imo, it will raise performance issues.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
I’d be surprised; it’s superficially attractive but as I’ve pointed out many times there’s actually enough variables to make it quite situational, whereas Vex and Sap simply proc on hit while Graze guarantees damage on every attack. If you can line things up so the party can exploit it and have a bit of luck it’s useful, otherwise Vex gives better returns on personal advantage and Sap is a more consistent debuff.
The problem with short play tests periods before feedback without going back. When I first tested topple it was pretty good. As we continued to use it, it just became annoying AF. Use something 10 times and it may be entertaining, after 100 times, its just shit. Which is why in every subsequent play test feedback in "other" sections I added in feedback from previous play tests now that we played with it more.
Vex is only found on finesse weapons. Sap is nice, but provides a defensive benefit which will generally be trumped by offensive abilities. There's nothing wrong with either of these abilities.
Topple on the other hand can provide the same benefit as vex only better (advantage on the next attack and subsequent attacks, including to your melee teammates) while ALSO providing the same advantage as sap (disadvantage on the enemy's attacks) AND requiring the use of a full movement to stand up (thus is better than slow). All in one, simple package. Why pick anything else when you can just take topple and get them all? It's flat out mechanically superior to every other option, thus making topple the go-to choice outside niche selections. It needs to be tuned down.
The only downside at all, is that it causes disadvantage to your ranged teammates, but as the guy who mainly plays melees in my group pointed out to me "that's your problem, guess you better use a save spell".
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
Topple will at best produce disadvantage on AoO’s in most cases; the movement cost on Prone is generally not significant once melee starts. Plus it’s dependent on enemies failing a strong save, while Vex simply requires a hit and can theoretically be chained with successive hits. Sap isn’t chainable on a single target, but it’s going to actually produce disadvantage far more often and technically can debuff multiple enemies. Why should I prefer having to rely on a second roll to have a chance to get any mileage from my Mastery when I have two options that I’ll be able to use far more consistently, unless initiative falls out in such a way that other players can dog pile the target?
I disagree with you.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
That is of course your prerogative.
Just to add my 2 cent, I see Topple as being the worst mastery, prone is not a great condition, yes you get advantage in melee but now all your ranged characters have disadvantage unless they get into melee range, additionally as a polearm user, you might still need to move to benefit from prone, which basically weakens the whole point of using a reach weapon. Additionally, If you hit a target with topple and make them prone, they do not lose their turn, they lose half their movement and you now have no way to stop them walking past you if they have enough movement left. If you're using polearms then Push is significantly a better mastery, since pushing enemies 10 foot back means they need to walk back towards you, which results in triggering the reactionary attack of PAM much more often and when you trigger the reaction, you get to push the creature again. Graze is also good, since you still have a ~35% chance to miss, Cleave is a little situational but good if you can get it off, slow is mostly inferior to Push the only advantage to slow is it doesn't have a size limitation.
So my recommendation for polearms would be Push, for all other 2 handed weapons, it would be Graze or Cleave, for Versatile weapons it would be Sap or Push, for Finesse weapons or ammunition weapons, it would be vex and for light weapons, it'd be vex with a nick weapon in the off-hand. So out of all the masteries, there are two I do not recommend at all, those are slow and topple. There are situational uses for slow and topple sure, they are not useless, but I do not see them as being as beneficial as other masteries.
As a DM, why would my monster continue to try to attack you if you keep pushing it away? If you push my monster out of your reach, it will just go attack someone else, especially if it gets pushed or proned on the PAM reaction.
Yup! Don't get me wrong, those are cool, specially if you throw in something like Ritual Caster (Wizard) or a 1-level dip into the mix and turn into a semi-full-spellcaster. (I have a Beast Master 19/Sorcerer 1 that did just that, with familiar and all)
The thing is, if the Primal Companion's attack was detached from any ability score modifier (like the Drakewarden's Drake Companion is), this would be a cool option, not something I have to go with.
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so, you value pet main attack to-hit (ranger's spell attack modifier, WIS) over character to-hit and weapon damage and AC and stealth bonus and etc (DEX)?
maybe if your argument was that the missing +1/+2 difference was inconsequential enough to just provide it without using spell attack math or if there was something about melee rangers feeling spread thin, then maybe i could see my way to agreeing. but asking for high dex and also high pet to-hit is just asking for more power for the sake of power. isn't it?
unhappy at the way in which we lost individual purchases for one-off subclasses, magic items, and monsters?
tell them you don't like features disappeared quietly in the night: provide feedback!
Could always pick up Shillelagh and re-gain that wis bonus.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
☝️ Yup, exactly (but I'm mainly using Primal Savagery).
My main thing is that detaching the pet's attack from any of the Ranger's stats (like I said, just like the Drakewarden) provides you the option to focus on either Sealth+Light Armor+Bow (Dex) or Spellcasting+Tracking+Perception (Wis) by your choice, instead of being locked into one.
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