I'm not going to be as harsh as deadman but I agree with the sentiment; expecting fighters and wizards to be on totally equal footing is ludicrous.
The core expectation of an RPG is that all the PCs are equally important to the story, which means they all have equal power to influence its progress. They don't have to do it in the same way, but they need similar capability for world-altering actions.
So are superhero RPGs not RPGs then? And if they are, is your expectation that Green Arrow and Daredevil have the same "capability for world-altering actions" as Superman and Storm?
You choose a power level at the start of the campaign in almost all super hero games and everyone is in the power level.
So lets say you were playing hero system(champions it is a fantastic system and I use it for super heoprs, fantasy game,s sci-fi etc) and pick standard super hero level. You put storm in the game she would be(assuming 6e) a 400 points character and after pikcing disadvantages have that much to spend, you put hawkeye in and he is a 400 point character as well. They will both have the same active point limits, limits on ocv/dcv/defense etc. Hawkeye actually would likely end up more powerful than storm because a chunk of his power will have a sizable limit, the bow so he can lose his abilities at the drop of a hat if someone disarms him. But that limit would save him points. For example they both have a 80 point multipower, hers is a weather control multi power his is his bow. Hers costs 80 points, his costs 40 points as its a obvious accessible focus, and each of his slots will cost 4 vs her 8/ So he will be able to put more points into getting his to hit maxed, more skills etc. But if he loses the bow hes kind of screwed. And you generally let the player know in advance I will be disarming you because if i don't your disadvantage isn't a disadvantage and therefore wont be worth any points.
Marvel FASERIP was a completely random char gen system and yeah on a balance level it did not work so you likely came up with ways for people to fix bad rolls. As if someone rolled lets say monstorus armor, and attack that character would even feel would just ko other party members, and it snot like they are guaranteed super dodging, In my experience while a lot of fun it worked best for one shots as the balance was off and in a campaign it is felt too much.
I'm still waiting for one of you to tell me why the Avengers are invalid for mixing power levels. Or why, if "balance" is truly everyone's top priority, 4e was the shortest-lasting mainline edition in D&D's history despite being built from the ground up to focus on it.
I'm still waiting for one of you to tell me why the Avengers are invalid for mixing power levels.
The Avengers aren't an RPG group, and would not work as one. Comic books have a single author, which means far more control over what the characters do than a DM can ever have.
Or why, if "balance" is truly everyone's top priority, 4e was the shortest-lasting mainline edition in D&D's history despite being built from the ground up to focus on it.
Balance isn't everyone's top priority, but also isn't the reason 4e had problems.
The Avengers aren't an RPG group, and would not work as one.
How about the Heroes of the Lance? Are they also too far removed from D&D? Raistlin and Goldmoon being in the same party as Caramon and Tasslehoff didn't implode the narrative. D&D has been mixing power levels since its inception, and it doesn't seem to stop most players from wanting that, no matter how many message boards complain about it.
Comic books have a single author, which means far more control over what the characters do than a DM can ever have.
Control is irrelevant, you can still tell the same types of stories in D&D as you can in those other media. If you can't engineer a narrative where a fighter, rogue, wizard and cleric can all contribute to the group's success, the books aren't the problem.
Balance isn't everyone's top priority, but also isn't the reason 4e had problems.
It certainly didn't make up for its problems either. It's just not that important a consideration at the end of the day, once the most egregious gulfs (like 3.0) are eliminated. If 4e is undesirable but balance is, I suggest PF2 then.
How about the Heroes of the Lance? Are they also too far removed from D&D? Raistlin and Goldmoon being in the same party as Caramon and Tasslehoff didn't implode the narrative.
Again, it's a novel, not an actual RPG. And of the characters you mention, Caramon was a second-tier character and Tasslehoff was a chaos monkey.
Comic books have a single author, which means far more control over what the characters do than a DM can ever have.
Control is irrelevant, you can still tell the same types of stories in D&D as you can in those other media. If you can't engineer a narrative where a fighter, rogue, wizard and cleric can all contribute to the group's success, the books aren't the problem.
It's an RPG, not a novel. In an RPG, the story is being built by all the players, not just the DM, and if the DM needs to jump through hoops to make sure certain characters remain relevant... it's not well designed.
It's an RPG, not a novel. In an RPG, the story is being built by all the players, not just the DM, and if the DM needs to jump through hoops to make sure certain characters remain relevant... it's not well designed.
There are no "hoops," just the usual messageboard handwringing that hasn't stopped actual tables from running martials alongside casters for the last 50 years without the game imploding. Shout into the void if you wish, but magic being more potent than not-magic makes sense and is here to stay.
It's an RPG, not a novel. In an RPG, the story is being built by all the players, not just the DM, and if the DM needs to jump through hoops to make sure certain characters remain relevant... it's not well designed.
There are no "hoops," just the usual messageboard handwringing that hasn't stopped actual tables from running martials alongside casters for the last 50 years without the game imploding. Shout into the void if you wish, but magic being more potent than not-magic makes sense and is here to stay.
It doesn't "make sense", magic is by its very nature 100% arbitrary; there is no "logical" reason it should be stronger when it is utterly determined by game mechanics, exactly the same as martial combat is.
Because it makes every bit as much sense that a martial character should be allowed to punch a wizard in the throat to silence them, yet that is something that they are simply not permitted to do in rules as written, while casters have a million and one different ways to choose from to completely shut down a martial character with a high degree of reliability (because most martial characters have extremely poor defence against magical saving throws, which is again entirely arbitrary).
Magic being strong only "makes sense" when it comes with clear limitations that are likely to occur, which is supposed to be the limited spell slots, but they're not actually that limited, especially with the speed you get more in lower tiers, and also when you account for the sheer number of magic items with bonus castings of spells, spell slot recovery, and the fact that most groups don't run the adventuring day as described in the DMG. Properly balanced it makes sense for spells to have strong effects, especially since they can be all-or-nothing (a failed hold person is a lost turn) but with the number of ways to stack the odds, counteract your own weaknesses etc. it just isn't properly balanced as it is in 5e, especially if you don't run adventuring days exactly as described in the DMG (which many groups don't).
That doesn't mean people can't have fun anyway, there are tonnes of broken things in the game that are still fun, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be better balanced moving forward, because there are also tonnes of things in the game that feel weak, and make them less fun to play as without help. It's pretty strange to argue "why even bother fixing it" when we're on the 5th edition heading into yet another – if nothing should ever be fixed or improved, then why aren't we all playing the 1st and only edition?
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Taking away player turns is not fun, and when used on enemies makes it incredibly difficult to balance encounters. 5e is designed to have short combats 3-4 rounds, that means removing 1 of the boss's turns reduces their effectiveness by 25%, and can easily turn a Hard combat into an Easy combat.
5e needs fewer things that take away creature turns, not more of them.
Likewise casters need a lot fewer resources, and spells need to be re-levelled / rebalanced so that at character level 10, 1st and 2nd level spells don't still feel "good" in combat. Casters should need to save their highest level spell slots for combat and need to ratio them to avoid running out. They also need to return to being squishy, martials should shine at single-target DPR & tanking.
I think the core mistake of 4e, other than "too much change too fast", was that it solved the problem of "spellcasters can do cool world-altering things, martials cannot" by changing it to "no-one can do cool world-altering things" -- at least, not through game mechanics (you could do whatever the DM allowed with a skill challenge, the same as in other editions).
It doesn't "make sense", magic is by its very nature 100% arbitrary; there is no "logical" reason it should be stronger when it is utterly determined by game mechanics, exactly the same as martial combat is.
Well sure, you can contrive a magic system that is more onerous or impractical to use than doing things non-magically, but then you're creating a setting and game that has vastly different assumptions than printed D&D. And that's totally fine if you enjoy that, I'm not here to yuck your yum - but printed D&D's objective is to turn a profit by delivering the game experience the most people actually want to pay for.
That doesn't mean people can't have fun anyway, there are tonnes of broken things in the game that are still fun, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be better balanced moving forward, because there are also tonnes of things in the game that feel weak, and make them less fun to play as without help. It's pretty strange to argue "why even bother fixing it" when we're on the 5th edition heading into yet another – if nothing should ever be fixed or improved, then why aren't we all playing the 1st and only edition?
I'm all for continuous improvement, but at what point does the cure become worse than the disease? When you throw out supremely vague objectives like "should be better balanced," what exactly are you proposing?
I'm all for continuous improvement, but at what point does the cure become worse than the disease? When you throw out supremely vague objectives like "should be better balanced," what exactly are you proposing?
Better balance.
It's about setting out clear niches for different types of class to excel at or at least be stronger in (for more versatile ones), for both martials and casters.
It's about better balancing resource dependence so we no longer have the core game problem of some characters suffering worse in groups that have more or fewer short rests, for example, the number of spell slots on casters could be reduced, but they should all get some back on a short rest (with Wizards/Circle of Land getting extra) so everyone benefits more from short rests, with martials similarly adjusted (once per short rest abilities become X per long rest with short rest recovery).
It's about then rebalancing from there so that martials and casters all can contribute a similar amount (albeit in different ways), it's about making some martials more tactical with more abilities, while simpler martials (e.g- Barbarian, or specific sub-classes like Champion) double down on what they're already good at while still being (relatively) simpler to play for people that want that. One of the biggest problems with martials in 5e is that many have pretty rubbish features, especially in later tiers; Wizards of the Coast never seems to have realised that spellcasting isn't one good feature, it's 9 excellent ones (new spell levels and two new slots) plus 9+ good ones (new slots and/or spells known only), yet many martial features feel like they're balanced against casters having "blank" levels (no new features) with things that don't really make any impact to the game.
There are no end of improvements that can be made to 5th edition, but the OneD&D playtests showed very little going in the right direction; in fact in several of the tests they went in the absolute wrong direction (showered even more super-powers on the casters that didn't need them), meanwhile Weapon Mastery is IMO just tedious. It took them several goes just to get Monk to "mostly okay", yet many of the core problems remain with both that class and the game proper.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
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It's about setting out clear niches for different types of class to excel at or at least be stronger in (for more versatile ones), for both martials and casters.
It's about better balancing resource dependence so we no longer have the core game problem of some characters suffering worse in groups that have more or fewer short rests, for example, the number of spell slots on casters could be reduced, but they should all get some back on a short rest (with Wizards/Circle of Land getting extra) so everyone benefits more from short rests, with martials similarly adjusted.
It's about then rebalancing so that martials and casters all can contribute a similar amount (albeit in different ways), it's about making some martials more tactical with more abilities, while simpler martials (e.g- Barbarian, or specific sub-classes like Champion) double down on what they're already good at while still being (relatively) simpler to play for people that want that.
There are no end of improvements that can be made to 5th edition, but the OneD&D playtests showed very little in the right direction; in fact in several of the tests they went in the absolute wrong direction (showered even more super-powers on the casters that didn't need them). It took them several goes just to get Monk to "mostly okay", but all the core problems remain.
1) Those clear niches exist. If you need to pick a dozen or even unknown number of locks, the rogue is going to be a better choice for that than a Wizard burning all their slots on Knock and being left with cantrips to face whatever's inside.
2) They are improving the short rest thing, so this is moot. Everybody gets something from one now save Rogue, who is resourceless anyway.
3) More vague terms - what exactly do you mean by "similar amount?" Should martials be able to raise the dead like Clerics? If so, which ones, and how? Should they be able to dominate monsters? If so, which ones, and how? Etc.
4) What you define as "core problems" are valid for you, but you are one player among very many and your goals may not (and I would argue, clearly do not) align with the majority of the feedback they've received.
1) Those clear niches exist. If you need to pick a dozen or even unknown number of locks, the rogue is going to be a better choice for that than a Wizard burning all their slots on Knock and being left with cantrips to face whatever's inside.
Knock is far from the only way that a Wizard can bypass a lock, simply having a small familiar can bypass the need to, among other things. But you'll note that I didn't say "no crossover at all under any circumstances".
Also, conversely, if the party only encounters a single lock (or no locks) in an adventuring day then knock is a perfectly fine way to deal with it, rendering a Rogue redundant; the only cost to the Wizard is having the spell prepared, but they don't even need to do that if they can get it in the form of a spell scroll (saving both spell choices and slots to cover a case that may or may not come up).
2) They are improving the short rest thing
They really aren't.
3) More vague terms - what exactly do you mean by "similar amount?" Should martials be able to raise the dead like Clerics? If so, which ones, and how? Should they be able to dominate monsters? If so, which ones, and how? Etc.
Why would I talk about clearly defined niches only to want fighters raising the ******* dead? This is 100% straw-manning.
But there are absolutely areas we need more of in martials; the game doesn't even have the ability to properly force enemies to fight you FFS, all we have is grappling (costing attacks to maybe hold one or two enemies, and they've massively nerfed these in the playtests so we can see the direction of travel there) or your one opportunity attack per round (if you don't use your reaction for something else). Even Barbarians can't really force enemies to stay and fight them when all it takes is for one to trigger that one opportunity attack and the rest to just ignore them completely if they want to.
When the solution is "have a caster do the thing you should be able to do, for you" it points to major issues with the game.
4) What you define as "core problems" are valid for you, but you are one player among very many and your goals may not (and I would argue, clearly do not) align with the majority of the feedback they've received.
What feedback? They've structured all of their surveys in the format of "praise us or we'll burn the feature". The OneD&D playtests did not show a great progression, only a rolling back of some major early blunders, and a doubling down on things that shouldn't have been kept, like their broken new definition for hiding, or the incredibly boring Weapon Mastery system which they seem to think (incorrectly) will solve all of martial classes' problems.
We know they expect us to pay all-new edition prices for the new books, but if they're not actually giving us an all-new edition, they need to justify why it's worth paying so much money for a "stuff we could have put out in errata for free years ago" update.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
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Why would I talk about clearly defined niches only to want fighters raising the ******* dead? This is 100% straw-manning.
But there are absolutely areas we need more of in martials; the game doesn't even have the ability to properly force enemies to fight you FFS, all we have is grappling (costing attacks to maybe hold one or two enemies, and they've massively nerfed these in the playtests so we can see the direction of travel there) or your one opportunity attack per round (if you don't use your reaction for something else). Even Barbarians can't really force enemies to stay and fight them when all it takes is for one to trigger that one opportunity attack and the rest to just ignore them completely if they want to.
Most maps have a thing called "terrain" - chokepoints, elevation, obstacles, hazards etc, that your frontliner can and should make use of. If all of your combats take place in featureless white rooms, that is not an issue class design can or should solve.
What feedback? They've structured all of their surveys in the format of "praise us or we'll burn the feature". The OneD&D playtests did not show a great progression, only a rolling back of some major early blunders, and a doubling down on things that shouldn't have been kept, like their broken new definition for hiding, or the incredibly boring Weapon Mastery system which they seem to think (incorrectly) will solve all of martial classes' problems.
It's addressing the problem most people actually care about, i.e. making weapon choice matter beyond the type of dice you get to roll. I'm sorry if you think the issues you see with the current system are more widespread than they are, but there will likely be some third parties who can earn your dollars delivering whatever it is you think is missing.
Honestly, I think UA did improve a fair number of features; with a bit more guidance on "what can you actually do with an ability check of 20, 25, or 30" the additional skill-monkey features on barbarian (primal knowledge), fighter (tactical mind), and rogue (stroke of luck) are helpful for enabling impressive stunts outside of combat, and fighters at least do have a decent magic counter in the form of Indomitable. I'd probably put some level scaling in there, ridiculous skill checks are a means to give nominally mundane characters world-altering potential on an appropriate scale but you don't want it on level 5s.
I think the core mistake of 4e, other than "too much change too fast", was that it solved the problem of "spellcasters can do cool world-altering things, martials cannot" by changing it to "no-one can do cool world-altering things" -- at least, not through game mechanics (you could do whatever the DM allowed with a skill challenge, the same as in other editions).
World-altering things are a PITA for DMs. It's why hardly anyone plays into tier 4. Having less of them is a good thing in my books. At best they make combat super swingy, at worse they break something the DM has spent 3 hours planning.
Oh, absolutely, but they're also part of the appeal.
as much as i want martials to succeed, i have to agree about big spells being part of the appeal of high levels. i don't play tier 4 but i can't imagine it's spellcasting acting as the great filter there.
@Agilemind, would you predict poor sales for the upcoming lv 10-20 vecna adventure? or significant DM frustration at it being difficult to play due to spells?
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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!
Oh, absolutely, but they're also part of the appeal.
as much as i want martials to succeed, i have to agree about big spells being part of the appeal of high levels. i don't play tier 4 but i can't imagine it's spellcasting acting as the great filter there.
@Agilemind, would you predict poor sales for the upcoming lv 10-20 vecna adventure? or significant DM frustration at it being difficult to play due to spells?
I'm not even a 4e fan, but I like how a lot of the world altering ones were outside the realm of spells but were in the realm of rituals. I did not like some of their choices like almost all needing a team to cast, the costs were kind of hinky but everyone with the investment could have access to them. Some classes maybe needed a feat I don't remember, and martials likely would not be the best at it due to their stats but they could slap down a teleport ritual if they needed to. Casters if you wan to cement them as the best would maybe need expertise in the ritual skills baked into their classes so they don't take a level of rogue to be a ritual caster, but hey there are expertise feats so maybe not. It is outside the realm of one D&D, but I would not mind if spells were relegated to things that needed to be cast now(combat spells for example) and problem solving, world altering style spells became rituals.
Except that they haven't – they've done nothing to fix the core issues with the balance of short vs. long resting.
Classes previously reliant on short rests still are, and while there have been some tiny tweaks to extra use granting features most of these changes make little actual difference or still come in too late to be considered a fix in any way, and really these are things that could have been fixed in errata years ago, not worth paying new-edition prices for.
Most maps have a thing called "terrain" - chokepoints, elevation, obstacles, hazards etc, that your frontliner can and should make use of. If all of your combats take place in featureless white rooms, that is not an issue class design can or should solve.
Terrain only enables you to block if the gaps are 5 feet wide.
But of course now all my combats are featureless rooms? It's straw-man after straw-man argument with you, why ask what I want if you're just going to decide I meant something completely different from what I said and throw out wild accusations about how I'm surely just playing the game wrong?
Because clearly nobody that wants balance improvements could possibly know how to actually play the game? I must just be some kind of stupid dumb-**** who's never even played D&D, right?
And all I was doing was giving an example of something martials ought to be better at, yet it's yet another area where casters are superior because their control options actually control, where a martial's are massively underpowered and easily ignored.
It's addressing the problem most people actually care about, i.e. making weapon choice matter beyond the type of dice you get to roll.
Except that their "fix" is to make most weapons worthless thanks to the easily abused masteries they've refused to change. It's actively making the game worse. It's a terrible "solution" to a minor part of a larger problem.
Again, we already know they're going to demand all-new-edition prices for the new books, so they need to be justifying that cost, but the OneD&D playtest has not given me any reason to expect it will be worth the money.
I'm sorry if you think the issues you see with the current system are more widespread than they are
I'm sorry you asked for what I wanted and don't like the fact that I actually answered and can justify my position. I'm glad you think the game is perfect as it is and Wizards of the Coast are a company of flawless demi-gods who never make mistakes, but I do not share that view of the game.
At no point have I said that I've never had fun playing the game, I love playing D&D, but just because a game can be fun in spite of its problems, doesn't mean those problems shouldn't still be fixed, especially when there's a new edition on the horizon that's going to cost $100+ for the new core books. Just because it's possible to run the game anyway with DMs doing a load of extra work to solve problems, doesn't mean those problems need to exist or are in any way fundamental to what makes the game good.
5th edition was unbalanced from the moment it was released, and newer releases only made it worse. This is not a subjective statement. Fixing balance issues makes it easier to have fun, and reduces work that the DM has to do when problems are encountered, none of this should be controversial.
I'm sorry if the statement "I'd prefer if the game were a bit better balanced" is something you are not capable of accepting or agreeing with for some weird reason, but I am not in the least bit interested in going in circles on this so I'm unsubscribing from this thread (though with the way WotC's mismanagement of D&D Beyond is going I'll probably be unsubscribing from the site entirely as well).
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
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You choose a power level at the start of the campaign in almost all super hero games and everyone is in the power level.
So lets say you were playing hero system(champions it is a fantastic system and I use it for super heoprs, fantasy game,s sci-fi etc) and pick standard super hero level. You put storm in the game she would be(assuming 6e) a 400 points character and after pikcing disadvantages have that much to spend, you put hawkeye in and he is a 400 point character as well. They will both have the same active point limits, limits on ocv/dcv/defense etc. Hawkeye actually would likely end up more powerful than storm because a chunk of his power will have a sizable limit, the bow so he can lose his abilities at the drop of a hat if someone disarms him. But that limit would save him points. For example they both have a 80 point multipower, hers is a weather control multi power his is his bow. Hers costs 80 points, his costs 40 points as its a obvious accessible focus, and each of his slots will cost 4 vs her 8/ So he will be able to put more points into getting his to hit maxed, more skills etc. But if he loses the bow hes kind of screwed. And you generally let the player know in advance I will be disarming you because if i don't your disadvantage isn't a disadvantage and therefore wont be worth any points.
Marvel FASERIP was a completely random char gen system and yeah on a balance level it did not work so you likely came up with ways for people to fix bad rolls. As if someone rolled lets say monstorus armor, and attack that character would even feel would just ko other party members, and it snot like they are guaranteed super dodging, In my experience while a lot of fun it worked best for one shots as the balance was off and in a campaign it is felt too much.
I'm still waiting for one of you to tell me why the Avengers are invalid for mixing power levels. Or why, if "balance" is truly everyone's top priority, 4e was the shortest-lasting mainline edition in D&D's history despite being built from the ground up to focus on it.
The Avengers aren't an RPG group, and would not work as one. Comic books have a single author, which means far more control over what the characters do than a DM can ever have.
Balance isn't everyone's top priority, but also isn't the reason 4e had problems.
How about the Heroes of the Lance? Are they also too far removed from D&D? Raistlin and Goldmoon being in the same party as Caramon and Tasslehoff didn't implode the narrative.
D&D has been mixing power levels since its inception, and it doesn't seem to stop most players from wanting that, no matter how many message boards complain about it.
Control is irrelevant, you can still tell the same types of stories in D&D as you can in those other media. If you can't engineer a narrative where a fighter, rogue, wizard and cleric can all contribute to the group's success, the books aren't the problem.
It certainly didn't make up for its problems either. It's just not that important a consideration at the end of the day, once the most egregious gulfs (like 3.0) are eliminated.
If 4e is undesirable but balance is, I suggest PF2 then.
Again, it's a novel, not an actual RPG. And of the characters you mention, Caramon was a second-tier character and Tasslehoff was a chaos monkey.
It's an RPG, not a novel. In an RPG, the story is being built by all the players, not just the DM, and if the DM needs to jump through hoops to make sure certain characters remain relevant... it's not well designed.
So what? There are still lessons you can learn about how martials and casters can work together/contribute to accomplish an objective.
There are no "hoops," just the usual messageboard handwringing that hasn't stopped actual tables from running martials alongside casters for the last 50 years without the game imploding. Shout into the void if you wish, but magic being more potent than not-magic makes sense and is here to stay.
It doesn't "make sense", magic is by its very nature 100% arbitrary; there is no "logical" reason it should be stronger when it is utterly determined by game mechanics, exactly the same as martial combat is.
Because it makes every bit as much sense that a martial character should be allowed to punch a wizard in the throat to silence them, yet that is something that they are simply not permitted to do in rules as written, while casters have a million and one different ways to choose from to completely shut down a martial character with a high degree of reliability (because most martial characters have extremely poor defence against magical saving throws, which is again entirely arbitrary).
Magic being strong only "makes sense" when it comes with clear limitations that are likely to occur, which is supposed to be the limited spell slots, but they're not actually that limited, especially with the speed you get more in lower tiers, and also when you account for the sheer number of magic items with bonus castings of spells, spell slot recovery, and the fact that most groups don't run the adventuring day as described in the DMG. Properly balanced it makes sense for spells to have strong effects, especially since they can be all-or-nothing (a failed hold person is a lost turn) but with the number of ways to stack the odds, counteract your own weaknesses etc. it just isn't properly balanced as it is in 5e, especially if you don't run adventuring days exactly as described in the DMG (which many groups don't).
That doesn't mean people can't have fun anyway, there are tonnes of broken things in the game that are still fun, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be better balanced moving forward, because there are also tonnes of things in the game that feel weak, and make them less fun to play as without help. It's pretty strange to argue "why even bother fixing it" when we're on the 5th edition heading into yet another – if nothing should ever be fixed or improved, then why aren't we all playing the 1st and only edition?
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
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Taking away player turns is not fun, and when used on enemies makes it incredibly difficult to balance encounters. 5e is designed to have short combats 3-4 rounds, that means removing 1 of the boss's turns reduces their effectiveness by 25%, and can easily turn a Hard combat into an Easy combat.
5e needs fewer things that take away creature turns, not more of them.
Likewise casters need a lot fewer resources, and spells need to be re-levelled / rebalanced so that at character level 10, 1st and 2nd level spells don't still feel "good" in combat. Casters should need to save their highest level spell slots for combat and need to ratio them to avoid running out. They also need to return to being squishy, martials should shine at single-target DPR & tanking.
I think the core mistake of 4e, other than "too much change too fast", was that it solved the problem of "spellcasters can do cool world-altering things, martials cannot" by changing it to "no-one can do cool world-altering things" -- at least, not through game mechanics (you could do whatever the DM allowed with a skill challenge, the same as in other editions).
Well sure, you can contrive a magic system that is more onerous or impractical to use than doing things non-magically, but then you're creating a setting and game that has vastly different assumptions than printed D&D. And that's totally fine if you enjoy that, I'm not here to yuck your yum - but printed D&D's objective is to turn a profit by delivering the game experience the most people actually want to pay for.
I'm all for continuous improvement, but at what point does the cure become worse than the disease? When you throw out supremely vague objectives like "should be better balanced," what exactly are you proposing?
Better balance.
It's about setting out clear niches for different types of class to excel at or at least be stronger in (for more versatile ones), for both martials and casters.
It's about better balancing resource dependence so we no longer have the core game problem of some characters suffering worse in groups that have more or fewer short rests, for example, the number of spell slots on casters could be reduced, but they should all get some back on a short rest (with Wizards/Circle of Land getting extra) so everyone benefits more from short rests, with martials similarly adjusted (once per short rest abilities become X per long rest with short rest recovery).
It's about then rebalancing from there so that martials and casters all can contribute a similar amount (albeit in different ways), it's about making some martials more tactical with more abilities, while simpler martials (e.g- Barbarian, or specific sub-classes like Champion) double down on what they're already good at while still being (relatively) simpler to play for people that want that. One of the biggest problems with martials in 5e is that many have pretty rubbish features, especially in later tiers; Wizards of the Coast never seems to have realised that spellcasting isn't one good feature, it's 9 excellent ones (new spell levels and two new slots) plus 9+ good ones (new slots and/or spells known only), yet many martial features feel like they're balanced against casters having "blank" levels (no new features) with things that don't really make any impact to the game.
There are no end of improvements that can be made to 5th edition, but the OneD&D playtests showed very little going in the right direction; in fact in several of the tests they went in the absolute wrong direction (showered even more super-powers on the casters that didn't need them), meanwhile Weapon Mastery is IMO just tedious. It took them several goes just to get Monk to "mostly okay", yet many of the core problems remain with both that class and the game proper.
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1) Those clear niches exist. If you need to pick a dozen or even unknown number of locks, the rogue is going to be a better choice for that than a Wizard burning all their slots on Knock and being left with cantrips to face whatever's inside.
2) They are improving the short rest thing, so this is moot. Everybody gets something from one now save Rogue, who is resourceless anyway.
3) More vague terms - what exactly do you mean by "similar amount?" Should martials be able to raise the dead like Clerics? If so, which ones, and how? Should they be able to dominate monsters? If so, which ones, and how? Etc.
4) What you define as "core problems" are valid for you, but you are one player among very many and your goals may not (and I would argue, clearly do not) align with the majority of the feedback they've received.
Knock is far from the only way that a Wizard can bypass a lock, simply having a small familiar can bypass the need to, among other things. But you'll note that I didn't say "no crossover at all under any circumstances".
Also, conversely, if the party only encounters a single lock (or no locks) in an adventuring day then knock is a perfectly fine way to deal with it, rendering a Rogue redundant; the only cost to the Wizard is having the spell prepared, but they don't even need to do that if they can get it in the form of a spell scroll (saving both spell choices and slots to cover a case that may or may not come up).
They really aren't.
Why would I talk about clearly defined niches only to want fighters raising the ******* dead? This is 100% straw-manning.
But there are absolutely areas we need more of in martials; the game doesn't even have the ability to properly force enemies to fight you FFS, all we have is grappling (costing attacks to maybe hold one or two enemies, and they've massively nerfed these in the playtests so we can see the direction of travel there) or your one opportunity attack per round (if you don't use your reaction for something else). Even Barbarians can't really force enemies to stay and fight them when all it takes is for one to trigger that one opportunity attack and the rest to just ignore them completely if they want to.
When the solution is "have a caster do the thing you should be able to do, for you" it points to major issues with the game.
What feedback? They've structured all of their surveys in the format of "praise us or we'll burn the feature". The OneD&D playtests did not show a great progression, only a rolling back of some major early blunders, and a doubling down on things that shouldn't have been kept, like their broken new definition for hiding, or the incredibly boring Weapon Mastery system which they seem to think (incorrectly) will solve all of martial classes' problems.
We know they expect us to pay all-new edition prices for the new books, but if they're not actually giving us an all-new edition, they need to justify why it's worth paying so much money for a "stuff we could have put out in errata for free years ago" update.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
They really are. ("Nuh-uh!" "Yeah-huh!")
Most maps have a thing called "terrain" - chokepoints, elevation, obstacles, hazards etc, that your frontliner can and should make use of. If all of your combats take place in featureless white rooms, that is not an issue class design can or should solve.
It's addressing the problem most people actually care about, i.e. making weapon choice matter beyond the type of dice you get to roll. I'm sorry if you think the issues you see with the current system are more widespread than they are, but there will likely be some third parties who can earn your dollars delivering whatever it is you think is missing.
Honestly, I think UA did improve a fair number of features; with a bit more guidance on "what can you actually do with an ability check of 20, 25, or 30" the additional skill-monkey features on barbarian (primal knowledge), fighter (tactical mind), and rogue (stroke of luck) are helpful for enabling impressive stunts outside of combat, and fighters at least do have a decent magic counter in the form of Indomitable. I'd probably put some level scaling in there, ridiculous skill checks are a means to give nominally mundane characters world-altering potential on an appropriate scale but you don't want it on level 5s.
World-altering things are a PITA for DMs. It's why hardly anyone plays into tier 4. Having less of them is a good thing in my books. At best they make combat super swingy, at worse they break something the DM has spent 3 hours planning.
Oh, absolutely, but they're also part of the appeal.
as much as i want martials to succeed, i have to agree about big spells being part of the appeal of high levels. i don't play tier 4 but i can't imagine it's spellcasting acting as the great filter there.
@Agilemind, would you predict poor sales for the upcoming lv 10-20 vecna adventure? or significant DM frustration at it being difficult to play due to spells?
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!
I'm not even a 4e fan, but I like how a lot of the world altering ones were outside the realm of spells but were in the realm of rituals. I did not like some of their choices like almost all needing a team to cast, the costs were kind of hinky but everyone with the investment could have access to them. Some classes maybe needed a feat I don't remember, and martials likely would not be the best at it due to their stats but they could slap down a teleport ritual if they needed to. Casters if you wan to cement them as the best would maybe need expertise in the ritual skills baked into their classes so they don't take a level of rogue to be a ritual caster, but hey there are expertise feats so maybe not. It is outside the realm of one D&D, but I would not mind if spells were relegated to things that needed to be cast now(combat spells for example) and problem solving, world altering style spells became rituals.
Except that they haven't – they've done nothing to fix the core issues with the balance of short vs. long resting.
Classes previously reliant on short rests still are, and while there have been some tiny tweaks to extra use granting features most of these changes make little actual difference or still come in too late to be considered a fix in any way, and really these are things that could have been fixed in errata years ago, not worth paying new-edition prices for.
Terrain only enables you to block if the gaps are 5 feet wide.
But of course now all my combats are featureless rooms? It's straw-man after straw-man argument with you, why ask what I want if you're just going to decide I meant something completely different from what I said and throw out wild accusations about how I'm surely just playing the game wrong?
Because clearly nobody that wants balance improvements could possibly know how to actually play the game? I must just be some kind of stupid dumb-**** who's never even played D&D, right?
And all I was doing was giving an example of something martials ought to be better at, yet it's yet another area where casters are superior because their control options actually control, where a martial's are massively underpowered and easily ignored.
Except that their "fix" is to make most weapons worthless thanks to the easily abused masteries they've refused to change. It's actively making the game worse. It's a terrible "solution" to a minor part of a larger problem.
Again, we already know they're going to demand all-new-edition prices for the new books, so they need to be justifying that cost, but the OneD&D playtest has not given me any reason to expect it will be worth the money.
I'm sorry you asked for what I wanted and don't like the fact that I actually answered and can justify my position. I'm glad you think the game is perfect as it is and Wizards of the Coast are a company of flawless demi-gods who never make mistakes, but I do not share that view of the game.
At no point have I said that I've never had fun playing the game, I love playing D&D, but just because a game can be fun in spite of its problems, doesn't mean those problems shouldn't still be fixed, especially when there's a new edition on the horizon that's going to cost $100+ for the new core books. Just because it's possible to run the game anyway with DMs doing a load of extra work to solve problems, doesn't mean those problems need to exist or are in any way fundamental to what makes the game good.
5th edition was unbalanced from the moment it was released, and newer releases only made it worse. This is not a subjective statement. Fixing balance issues makes it easier to have fun, and reduces work that the DM has to do when problems are encountered, none of this should be controversial.
I'm sorry if the statement "I'd prefer if the game were a bit better balanced" is something you are not capable of accepting or agreeing with for some weird reason, but I am not in the least bit interested in going in circles on this so I'm unsubscribing from this thread (though with the way WotC's mismanagement of D&D Beyond is going I'll probably be unsubscribing from the site entirely as well).
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.