I think that something that should be addressed in 5e is the disparity in the capstone abilities. Yeah, yeah...I know...most games never reach lvl 20 anyway. If that's true, then what's the big deal about giving ALL the classes a really boss capstone?
Here's a Barbarian at lvl 20. He gets +4 Str and +4 Con and these can boost him past 20 to a limit of 24
Then we have the Wizard who gets...2 more 3rd level spells that they can cast once each per Rest. Weeeee.....
Rangers get Foe Slayer: Once on each of your turns, you can add your Wisdom modifier to the attack roll or the damage roll of an attack you make against one of your favored enemies. You can choose to use this feature before or after the roll, but before any effects of the roll are applied. So, max of +5 to hit OR damage of a SINGLE Attack and ONLY against your 'favored enemies'. Wow...
On the other hand, Bards ALWAYS have an Inspiration die every time Initiative is rolled, even if they have a dozen encounters a day. Not too shabby.
Clerics get Divine Intervention as an auto-success, no roll required. Let me repeat that: As a 20th level Cleric you have a 100% chance of requesting assistance from your deity!
Druids get Wild Shape as often as they want AS WELL AS being able to ignore the verbal and somatic components of druid spells, as well as any material components that lack a cost and aren’t consumed by a spell. Holy crap!
Fighters get another Attack (an increase of 33%). That doesn't suck.
Lvl 20 Monks will always have 4 Ki points on each Initiative but considering how quickly they can burn through these that's not terribly impressive.
Paladins all get a Sacred Oath Feature at lvl 20 so there are several different kinds. Some are really good while some are a bit lackluster.
Rogues get Stroke of Luck, an uncanny knack for succeeding when you need to. If your attack misses a target within range, you can turn the miss into a hit. Alternatively, if you fail an ability check, you can treat the d20 roll as a 20.
Once you use this feature, you can’t use it again until you finish a short or long rest. So...one miss converted to a hit. One per Rest. Or an ability check as an auto-20. Whoopee...
Sorcerers regain 4 Sorcery points per short rest. Not as impressive as it sounds considering that you normally start the day with 20.
Warlocks can spend 1 minute entreating their patron for aid to regain ALL their expended spell slots from their Pact Magic feature. Once they regain spell slots with this feature, they must finish a long rest before they can do so again.
To me, this says several things: Barbarians, Clerics, Druids, Paladins (sometimes) and Warlocks are the best classes to ride all the way to 20 because of their capstone abilities. You REALLY don't want to give them up. Bards are pretty good too and below them are Monks on the list. As for the rest, there is very little reason NOT to Multiclass them if the DM allows it.
I think this is wrong. I think that EVERY class needs to have an ability that the player will look at and really lament over not having if they Multiclass.
I agree entirely (except the warlock capstone sucks too, once per day you can do in 1 minute what you can do in a short rest. 1 minute is too long to use mid combat anyway).
Barbarians capstone can be achieved with magic items. [Edit barbarians also get unlimited rages and their lower level abilities synergize well with their level 19 and 20 abilities, so they might as well go to 20]
So only druids, clerics, and some paladins [and barbarians] have anything worthwhile.
90% of the time, I take a 2 or 3 level dip into a second class. Smite, actions surge, cunning action, and eldritch invocations (all level 2 abilities) are better than most capstones, so why not go for them?
As long as a spell caster gets to level 17, they get 9th level spells.
I disagree a little with your rankings (the Rogue Stroke of Luck is pretty good), but your point is absolutely correct. An apologist might argue that the different classes are balanced across all levels, not necessarily at each individual level.... but A) Level 20 capstones should all be awesome, no exceptions, and B) look at the poor ranger, he's got the worst capstone and sucks at each and every level up until that point too.
What are you gonna do though? Short of homebrewing, swapping out class abilities for new (better) ones lies outside the realm of possibilities that errata or new subclasses can accomplish, and 5e so far has shown itself unwilling to release "revised" or "unchained" alternate class versions. As is, just try to content yourself with the fact that the relative crappiness of most of those capstones means that multiclassing is an easier sell, resulting in more unique class builds?
Clerics can only use divine intervention once a week. Appropriate intervention is any cleric spell or cleric domain spell. An extra spell once a week? That’s good but you will always be thinking “should I use it now or save it in case things get worse?” So in reality you will use it less than once a week.
I agree that Barbarians and Druids get the strongest feature and Rangers the weakest, but I disagree with your judgment on some of these.
4 ki points buys a Monk 4 uses of Patient Defense or Stunning Strike. Considering combat usually doesn't last past 5 rounds, it's baffling you'd consider the bard's capstone "not too shabby" but the Monk's "not terribly impressive".
On that same note, considering sorcery points recover with a long rest, getting 4 back per short rest is a pretty good deal. Most metamagic only require 1 point, Quickened requires 2. That can also buy you two 1st level spell slots for casting Shield, which is the same you'd get with 1 level of Warlock.
Stroke of Luck is like the Lucky feat on steroids. Sure, it doesn't apply to saving throws, but it also can't backfire - you use it after you know your roll failed and it practically guarantees success; you can hit DC 25s on pure checks and DC 30s if you can apply a skill or tool proficiency.
The Ranger's would be decent if it weren't dependent on favored enemies; adding +5 to an attack roll every turn is a good deal and lets you use Sharpshooter more liberally.
Wildshape doesn't heal you, so not really. But being able to live in the woods as an owl for hundreds of years between adventures is pretty cool, no matter what kind of Druid you are :)
Wildshape doesn't heal you, but at 20th level every Druid can wild shape and cast a lot of heir spells and then renew their wild shape every time they get low on HP to have the full HP available to the wild shaped beast form. That’s incredibly powerful for any Druid. It’s more powerful for a Moon Druid, but it’s powerful for all Druids.
For moon druids, the capstone is great but for the other archetypes? I think they would be saying “should’ve taken a level of life cleric”.
Archdruid is bananas. Not only can you stay disguised as an inconspicuous creature as long as you want, you cast any druid spell that doesn't have costly or consumed material components in either form and no one can tell you're casting spells, let alone counterspell you.
Wildshape doesn't heal you, but at 20th level every Druid can wild shape and cast a lot of heir spells and then renew their wild shape every time they get low on HP to have the full HP available to the wild shaped beast form. That’s incredibly powerful for any Druid. It’s more powerful for a Moon Druid, but it’s powerful for all Druids.
Maybe I’m missing something here. Non-Moon Druids are limited to CR 1 beasts. I haven’t checked all the possible creatures but that seem to limit you to a max of about 40 hp. It takes your action to change. Trying to use this in combat would go something like this; splat, use action to change, splat, use action to change, splat...
It seems great for exploration though. e.g, fly to the window as bird, change into a mouse and scurry through the small hole, change into a bat in the dark hallway, etc
I see it now. In the printed book, Archdruid is continued on the next page and there is a pic right under the first paragraph. It makes it look like Archduid is only the first sentence.
Arguably, neither Beast Spells nor Arch Druid apply to Elemental Form, since both mention "while in a beast shape." There's a "Beast Shapes Table" under Wild Shape and the term "a beast shape" is mentioned a couple times therein... the term "beast shape" seems to be more than imprecise language, it's actually closely tied with a "normal" use of Wild Shape.
Meanwhile, Elemental Shape is an entirely separate ability from Wild Shape that Moon Druid's have, which just happens to burn the same resources. It doesn't involve a CR table, doesn't scale off of character level, Moon Druid's Primal Strike arguably doesn't apply to it either...
I get that there's a common sense argument that both Wild Shape and Elemental Shape are all the same ability... but to my eye, RAW that doesn't appear to be the case, and only Wild Shape transformations would benefit from Beast Spells and Arch Druid.
Huh. Didn't think of it that way. Looking back through the books, I think you might be right. Still think this is either best or second best (after the cleric's) capstone out there, though.
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Which class do you think has the worst capstone? I'm thinking wizards, but there are other bad ones...
Hmm. The sorcerer capstone can effectively be gotten early with a 3 level dip into warlock. Bard's and monk's capstone gives them a small amount of a resource at the beginning of each battle what they could regain completely with a short rest. But warlock have the worst version of this having to spend a minute to regain a resource they could get back with a short rest and only once per day.
I say warlock.
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I agree entirely (except the warlock capstone sucks too, once per day you can do in 1 minute what you can do in a short rest. 1 minute is too long to use mid combat anyway).
Barbarians capstone can be achieved with magic items. [Edit barbarians also get unlimited rages and their lower level abilities synergize well with their level 19 and 20 abilities, so they might as well go to 20]
So only druids, clerics, and some paladins [and barbarians] have anything worthwhile.
90% of the time, I take a 2 or 3 level dip into a second class. Smite, actions surge, cunning action, and eldritch invocations (all level 2 abilities) are better than most capstones, so why not go for them?
As long as a spell caster gets to level 17, they get 9th level spells.
I disagree a little with your rankings (the Rogue Stroke of Luck is pretty good), but your point is absolutely correct. An apologist might argue that the different classes are balanced across all levels, not necessarily at each individual level.... but A) Level 20 capstones should all be awesome, no exceptions, and B) look at the poor ranger, he's got the worst capstone and sucks at each and every level up until that point too.
What are you gonna do though? Short of homebrewing, swapping out class abilities for new (better) ones lies outside the realm of possibilities that errata or new subclasses can accomplish, and 5e so far has shown itself unwilling to release "revised" or "unchained" alternate class versions. As is, just try to content yourself with the fact that the relative crappiness of most of those capstones means that multiclassing is an easier sell, resulting in more unique class builds?
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Clerics can only use divine intervention once a week. Appropriate intervention is any cleric spell or cleric domain spell. An extra spell once a week? That’s good but you will always be thinking “should I use it now or save it in case things get worse?” So in reality you will use it less than once a week.
I agree that Barbarians and Druids get the strongest feature and Rangers the weakest, but I disagree with your judgment on some of these.
4 ki points buys a Monk 4 uses of Patient Defense or Stunning Strike. Considering combat usually doesn't last past 5 rounds, it's baffling you'd consider the bard's capstone "not too shabby" but the Monk's "not terribly impressive".
On that same note, considering sorcery points recover with a long rest, getting 4 back per short rest is a pretty good deal. Most metamagic only require 1 point, Quickened requires 2. That can also buy you two 1st level spell slots for casting Shield, which is the same you'd get with 1 level of Warlock.
Stroke of Luck is like the Lucky feat on steroids. Sure, it doesn't apply to saving throws, but it also can't backfire - you use it after you know your roll failed and it practically guarantees success; you can hit DC 25s on pure checks and DC 30s if you can apply a skill or tool proficiency.
The Ranger's would be decent if it weren't dependent on favored enemies; adding +5 to an attack roll every turn is a good deal and lets you use Sharpshooter more liberally.
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For moon druids, the capstone is great but for the other archetypes? I think they would be saying “should’ve taken a level of life cleric”.
Even for non-moon druids the capstone ability is basically unlimited healing. That’s huge!
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Wildshape doesn't heal you, so not really. But being able to live in the woods as an owl for hundreds of years between adventures is pretty cool, no matter what kind of Druid you are :)
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Wildshape doesn't heal you, but at 20th level every Druid can wild shape and cast a lot of heir spells and then renew their wild shape every time they get low on HP to have the full HP available to the wild shaped beast form. That’s incredibly powerful for any Druid. It’s more powerful for a Moon Druid, but it’s powerful for all Druids.
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Archdruid is bananas. Not only can you stay disguised as an inconspicuous creature as long as you want, you cast any druid spell that doesn't have costly or consumed material components in either form and no one can tell you're casting spells, let alone counterspell you.
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Is there a Sage Advice ruling on the material components thing because I’m not seeing that in PHB or errata?
It also says you can perform the verbal and somatic components in wildshape. I’m not reading that as you don’t have to do them.
Here it is. Archdruid. It’s only material components that don’t have a GP cost, but that’s a huge number of them.
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Maybe I’m missing something here. Non-Moon Druids are limited to CR 1 beasts. I haven’t checked all the possible creatures but that seem to limit you to a max of about 40 hp. It takes your action to change. Trying to use this in combat would go something like this; splat, use action to change, splat, use action to change, splat...
It seems great for exploration though. e.g, fly to the window as bird, change into a mouse and scurry through the small hole, change into a bat in the dark hallway, etc
elemental wild shape counts for this use. To me, that is the kicker.
I see it now. In the printed book, Archdruid is continued on the next page and there is a pic right under the first paragraph. It makes it look like Archduid is only the first sentence.
Elemental Wild Shape for the moon druids out there makes Archdruid the best capstone, no question.
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Arguably, neither Beast Spells nor Arch Druid apply to Elemental Form, since both mention "while in a beast shape." There's a "Beast Shapes Table" under Wild Shape and the term "a beast shape" is mentioned a couple times therein... the term "beast shape" seems to be more than imprecise language, it's actually closely tied with a "normal" use of Wild Shape.
Meanwhile, Elemental Shape is an entirely separate ability from Wild Shape that Moon Druid's have, which just happens to burn the same resources. It doesn't involve a CR table, doesn't scale off of character level, Moon Druid's Primal Strike arguably doesn't apply to it either...
I get that there's a common sense argument that both Wild Shape and Elemental Shape are all the same ability... but to my eye, RAW that doesn't appear to be the case, and only Wild Shape transformations would benefit from Beast Spells and Arch Druid.
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Huh. Didn't think of it that way. Looking back through the books, I think you might be right. Still think this is either best or second best (after the cleric's) capstone out there, though.
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Which class do you think has the worst capstone? I'm thinking wizards, but there are other bad ones...
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Hmm. The sorcerer capstone can effectively be gotten early with a 3 level dip into warlock. Bard's and monk's capstone gives them a small amount of a resource at the beginning of each battle what they could regain completely with a short rest. But warlock have the worst version of this having to spend a minute to regain a resource they could get back with a short rest and only once per day.
I say warlock.