As I’ve been DMing 5e for the past 18 months, I’ve come across some significant issues that are obvious in their disruption of the game. I know that as a DM I can lay down the law and adjust rules as needed, but it does leave the players saying “but Jeremy Crawford said” and I often wonder why not just FIX them. Will some power gamers be unhappy, well yes, but the overall game will be BETTER. I’m listing some below, it’s not all inclusive.
Totem Barbarian is broken
Circle of moon Shapeshifter shenanigans
Paladin Aura of protection
Monk Stunning Strike Stunlock
Some spell things like polymorph mixing CR and character level so that a character can turn into a party level threat.
Leomunds Hut being near invincible and a ritual cast
The Lucky Feat
Multiclassing warlocks with other cha based characters
uncommon weapons of warning
i have implemented house rules on all of this, but clearly handling it at the source would be better. I get the feeling no one at WOTC is ever willing to say we didn’t get that one quite right and are fixing it, vs defending at all cost. Evolution IS A GOOD THING. And don’t get me wrong, I REALLY ENJOY D&D and 5e, I just feel over the years I’ve seen no effort or desire to make the game better. When I played 3e and 3.5 came out i thought it was a great step forward, let’s get us moving towards 5.5.
My take on it is nothing is perfect. The biggest thing that I like, both as a player and a DM, is insisting on role playing reasons to multi class. That simple requirement fixes almost every multi class combination that is built for roll playing instead of role playing. How does any PC multi class into being a sorcerer for example?
Another thing, the DM controls the game. If a player builds a “perfect” PC it’s easy for that character to get a reputation and be targeted by opponents who know his weakness. Plus, of course, intelligent opponents will focus on the opponent who is hurting them the worst before they go after less lethal PCs and any highly optimized PC will always do more damage than a normal PC will do, making that PC the primary target after the first round of combat against intelligent opponents.
I think most of the things in your list are non-issues.
Totem barbarian is strong defensively, but not offensively. Smart enemies should quickly learn to run past.
Moon druid has definite power spikes, but levels off very quickly.
Aura of protection is only within 10 feet and most paladins don't have room in their build to really pump up charisma.
Stunning strike is a constitution save. That's one of the strongest saves for monsters.
Polymorph is a concentration spell. In a magical world, intelligent enemies who see the casting should know to target the caster.
Tiny hut is quite strong, but it leaves the party open for ambush. Also you don't have to award a long rest of something is disturbing the party's rest all night. At higher level, dispel magic works wonders.
I haven't seen the lucky feat in the wild and so I don't know how problematic it really is.
I don't think all warlock multiclassing is a problem, but certainly hexblade is. I really dislike hexblade and think most of those features should have been made into blade invocations.
If you are DM, just don't award a weapon of warning. If you are a player maybe it's a problem.
I also want to point out that multiclassing, feats, and magic items are optional rules. The game is designed to (and mostly does) work just fine without them.
I agree with pwhimp that all of these things can be dealt with on the DM's end without too much headache. It does depend on your playing style and party though, so I can understand when people decide to ban X from their games.
Things like Stunning Strike and Lucky rely on resource attrition to be balanced. If you have 1-2 encounters a day, Lucky will be very strong. If you have 6-8 it's much less so. Stunning Strike requires ki points. Fewer rests means fewer ki points to spend per encounter.
Have smart enemies. The tales of the party's exploits and powers will naturally spread. If that doesn't work, have enemies flee battles and live to tell what they fought. Then it makes sense that they throw psychic damage at the barbarian or pile on the polymorph guy.
To me, a spell like Leomund's Hut is the player telling me they just don't want to get ambushed during long rests. I'm ok with that - for a lot of players that kind of thing is tedious and frustrating and spending a spell slot to avoid it is a decent tradeoff. If they're doing it to try to long rest after every battle, that just needs consequences. Add limiters to an adventure like a hard time limit before something bad happens. Also, rests give enemies time to prepare and fortify. My players know that if they're going to retreat for a rest in the middle of clearing out a monster lair, they're going to come back to traps, defenses, reinforcements, or find the monsters have relocated to a new more advantageous position.
All of these are so low on my list of things I'd love to see changed it's not even funny. Which gives you a big clue as to why they probably won't be fixed: my preferences, your preferences, and the shared preferences of 70% of D&D players are probably all very different.
@ OP How many encounters are you having per long rest? a lot of these only recharge after a long rest, so players should be judicious about using them. If they are overusing them, bump up the number of fights per day.
In other cases, can you explain what the problem is with the various things you list? You seem to assume a universally accepted understanding about what is wrong with each of them, but in most cases, I can’t think of what you could be talking about. I’m not necessarily arguing there aren’t problems, I just want to understand what they are.
I don’t think there’s a single thing about Barbarian that’s broken. Especially when you factor in their limited uses at all in non-combat.
its not just multiclassing warlock. Wait til you realize it’s any Cha based class multiclassing another cha based class. Easy fix. Don’t allow multiclassing for power game reasons. Only allow multiclassing for role play reasons.
lucky feat. All feats are optional. Optional, don’t like it, don’t allow feats. ABIs exist for a reason.
Tiny hut. Funny thing about that. Why would enemies just ignore a tiny hut? And especially if no one in the hut keeps watch. Good ways to TPK and give them insight to not just rely on tiny hut:
bury them alive. Collapsing/carrying and placing heavy stuff all on top of the tiny hut.
lay booby traps
lay ambushes
cast control weather (the freezing cold one) centered on the hut while they sleep. Now all of a sudden they wake up, the hut disappears, they are in arctic cold, and it’s 5 miles to get out of its radius. If they know it’s a spell and not just weather normally.
—- point being. Things are only a problem if you as the DM allow them to become a problem.
Leomond's Tiny Hut creates a protective hemisphere. It does nothing to protect the party from attacks from below. It's also a 3rd level spell, which means that it's automatically dispelled by Dispel Magic. It's a good protective spell for when the party bunkers down for the night, but it's far from a perfect defense.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Yeah, umm. None of the things you listed are broken, and some the more "problem" ones are on the DM to just not give them the Weapon of Warning, or use Monsters in intelligent ways.
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Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
I’ve played a couple of characters with the Lucky feat. It IS awesome, but it’s not as overpowered as everyone thinks it is. Nothing sucks more than using one of your three re-rolls a day and rolling a 1 on the re-roll.....
Leomond's Tiny Hut creates a protective hemisphere. It does nothing to protect the party from attacks from below.
That depends on the definition of hemisphere you're using. The geometric definition has a bottom since it involves passing a plane through the center of a sphere.
The reason I consider Tiny Hut a non-issue is that:
It's just never come up. My players have never attempted to use it maliciously.
If I did have players acting in bad faith, no amount of rules changes would salvage the situation.
The historical counter to "I can't take over this building" has always been to mount a siege. Hiding inside the hut just gives your enemies a ton of time to call reinforcements and box you in.
Based on Unearthed Arcana, they're planning to release a book that gives goodies out across classes in an attempt to balance them out without taking anything away from anybody. Because the problem with implementing your house rules across the board is that they take things away - and nobody likes to have things taken away.
There have definitely been admissions at WotC that things are not perfect. Mearls has gone on record as saying bonus actions are not in hindsight the way he would've preferred to handle action economy, especially with two-weapon fighting. Hit Dice are definitely in there as the leftovers of a bigger idea for having daily resources to manage for different things than regaining HP, which occasionally comes up in UA classes; but modern testing shows most groups barely use short rests and typically long rest after 1-3 fights. Heck, every UA is built around the concept that the dev teams need feedback when adding features.
There probably won't be a 3.5e equivalent for 5e, for a few reasons. First, 5e is not fundamentally broken, and is in fact the most popular version of any RPG ever. Second, 5e directly encourages DM fiat and is not as rules-chewy as other editions. Third, a basic tenet of 5e is that you should never need anything other than the three core books to play the game. Fourth, most of the problems people have are with treating optional rules as mandatory rules. Fifth, the books are still absolute bestsellers, so why should they bother?
In my opinion and in my play experience over the past three years, none of the items on your list could be considered broken.
"and I often wonder why not just FIX them. Will some power gamers be unhappy, well yes, but the overall game will be BETTER."
Why not fix them? They aren't broken.
It has nothing to do with power gamers.
I disagree that removing options makes the game better but others might agree with you.
----
Totem Barbarian is broken
- not in the least - why is resistance to all damage except psychic broken? Every barbarian already gets resistance to slashing/bludgeoning/piercing (normal and magical) - adding resistance to other damage isn't that big a deal - the physical resistances probably cover more than 70% of the damage in most cases.
Circle of moon Shapeshifter shenanigans
- huh? This is a bit OP at levels 2-4 and again at level 20. Other than that it is pretty reasonable.
Paladin Aura of protection
- Aura of protection is nice but isn't OP and helps team mates as much as the paladin. It just makes characters a bit more likely to make their saves which is neither bad nor OP.
Monk Stunning Strike Stunlock
- useful but not OP - certain opponents can be held in stun and if you only have one bad guy it can work really well but that is bad encounter design not bad monk design
Some spell things like polymorph mixing CR and character level so that a character can turn into a party level threat.
- never found this to be much of an issue even in parties that like to turn front liners into a T-rex - the party is usually fighting something challenging anyway
Leomunds Hut being near invincible and a ritual cast
- it can make a long rest feel a bit more secure than it should in dangerous surroundings but the party can be trapped inside it by intelligent opponents.
The Lucky Feat
- sorry, this one makes me laugh - probably one of the worst feats in the game unless the DM likes to always run just one big fight/day so you can blow long rest resources as if they were short rest ... otherwise it is just a second chance that usually fails when you need it most (i.e. It is needed most on difficult saves which you are likely to fail in the first place ... but that also means that you are still likely to fail it on the Lucky re-roll. One of the least common feats in any game I have played or run. I have one character out of about 20 that took Lucky and I am still not sure why.
Multiclassing warlocks with other cha based characters
- warlock multiclassing is only a possible issue for hexblades due to a lot of front loading or in cases where the DM doesn't like agonizing blast spam for some reason. Quickened eldritch blast sounds better than it is at least until tier 3 but at that point, other characters can do better damage for resource expenditures.
uncommon weapons of warning
- huh - if you don't want your players to have a weapon of warning I don't see why you would give them one. Rarity is a guideline for DMs to hand things out and has nothing to do with the item. Also, advantage on initiative is nice but not game breaking.
- sorry, this one makes me laugh - probably one of the worst feats in the game unless the DM likes to always run just one big fight/day so you can blow long rest resources as if they were short rest ... otherwise it is just a second chance that usually fails when you need it most (i.e. It is needed most on difficult saves which you are likely to fail in the first place ... but that also means that you are still likely to fail it on the Lucky re-roll. One of the least common feats in any game I have played or run. I have one character out of about 20 that took Lucky and I am still not sure why.
One of the most powerful ways to use Lucky is when you have Disadvantage, because it turns Disadvantage into basically Super Advantage, where you can choose the best out of three rolls to use.
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Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
Crawford said different a long time ago. Move along ...
He also unsaid it. And either way, nothing Crawford tweets changes what's actually written in the book. Both definitions of "hemisphere" are equally viable RAW.
One of the most powerful ways to use Lucky is when you have Disadvantage, because it turns Disadvantage into basically Super Advantage, where you can choose the best out of three rolls to use.
Even when the DM allows this, it doesn't really break the game in any way, unlike, say, Sharpshooter. Lucky doesn't let you do anything you couldn't otherwise and while succeeding where you would've failed is nice, 3 times a day isn't a whole lot.
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As I’ve been DMing 5e for the past 18 months, I’ve come across some significant issues that are obvious in their disruption of the game. I know that as a DM I can lay down the law and adjust rules as needed, but it does leave the players saying “but Jeremy Crawford said” and I often wonder why not just FIX them. Will some power gamers be unhappy, well yes, but the overall game will be BETTER. I’m listing some below, it’s not all inclusive.
Totem Barbarian is broken
Circle of moon Shapeshifter shenanigans
Paladin Aura of protection
Monk Stunning Strike Stunlock
Some spell things like polymorph mixing CR and character level so that a character can turn into a party level threat.
Leomunds Hut being near invincible and a ritual cast
The Lucky Feat
Multiclassing warlocks with other cha based characters
uncommon weapons of warning
i have implemented house rules on all of this, but clearly handling it at the source would be better. I get the feeling no one at WOTC is ever willing to say we didn’t get that one quite right and are fixing it, vs defending at all cost. Evolution IS A GOOD THING. And don’t get me wrong, I REALLY ENJOY D&D and 5e, I just feel over the years I’ve seen no effort or desire to make the game better. When I played 3e and 3.5 came out i thought it was a great step forward, let’s get us moving towards 5.5.
My take on it is nothing is perfect. The biggest thing that I like, both as a player and a DM, is insisting on role playing reasons to multi class. That simple requirement fixes almost every multi class combination that is built for roll playing instead of role playing. How does any PC multi class into being a sorcerer for example?
Another thing, the DM controls the game. If a player builds a “perfect” PC it’s easy for that character to get a reputation and be targeted by opponents who know his weakness. Plus, of course, intelligent opponents will focus on the opponent who is hurting them the worst before they go after less lethal PCs and any highly optimized PC will always do more damage than a normal PC will do, making that PC the primary target after the first round of combat against intelligent opponents.
Professional computer geek
I think most of the things in your list are non-issues.
I also want to point out that multiclassing, feats, and magic items are optional rules. The game is designed to (and mostly does) work just fine without them.
I think you need to find another RPG to play.
DICE FALL, EVERYONE ROCKS!
I agree with pwhimp that all of these things can be dealt with on the DM's end without too much headache. It does depend on your playing style and party though, so I can understand when people decide to ban X from their games.
Things like Stunning Strike and Lucky rely on resource attrition to be balanced. If you have 1-2 encounters a day, Lucky will be very strong. If you have 6-8 it's much less so. Stunning Strike requires ki points. Fewer rests means fewer ki points to spend per encounter.
Have smart enemies. The tales of the party's exploits and powers will naturally spread. If that doesn't work, have enemies flee battles and live to tell what they fought. Then it makes sense that they throw psychic damage at the barbarian or pile on the polymorph guy.
To me, a spell like Leomund's Hut is the player telling me they just don't want to get ambushed during long rests. I'm ok with that - for a lot of players that kind of thing is tedious and frustrating and spending a spell slot to avoid it is a decent tradeoff. If they're doing it to try to long rest after every battle, that just needs consequences. Add limiters to an adventure like a hard time limit before something bad happens. Also, rests give enemies time to prepare and fortify. My players know that if they're going to retreat for a rest in the middle of clearing out a monster lair, they're going to come back to traps, defenses, reinforcements, or find the monsters have relocated to a new more advantageous position.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
All of these are so low on my list of things I'd love to see changed it's not even funny. Which gives you a big clue as to why they probably won't be fixed: my preferences, your preferences, and the shared preferences of 70% of D&D players are probably all very different.
The Forum Infestation (TM)
@ OP How many encounters are you having per long rest?
a lot of these only recharge after a long rest, so players should be judicious about using them. If they are overusing them, bump up the number of fights per day.
In other cases, can you explain what the problem is with the various things you list? You seem to assume a universally accepted understanding about what is wrong with each of them, but in most cases, I can’t think of what you could be talking about.
I’m not necessarily arguing there aren’t problems, I just want to understand what they are.
I don’t think there’s a single thing about Barbarian that’s broken. Especially when you factor in their limited uses at all in non-combat.
its not just multiclassing warlock. Wait til you realize it’s any Cha based class multiclassing another cha based class. Easy fix. Don’t allow multiclassing for power game reasons. Only allow multiclassing for role play reasons.
lucky feat. All feats are optional. Optional, don’t like it, don’t allow feats. ABIs exist for a reason.
Tiny hut. Funny thing about that. Why would enemies just ignore a tiny hut? And especially if no one in the hut keeps watch. Good ways to TPK and give them insight to not just rely on tiny hut:
bury them alive. Collapsing/carrying and placing heavy stuff all on top of the tiny hut.
lay booby traps
lay ambushes
cast control weather (the freezing cold one) centered on the hut while they sleep. Now all of a sudden they wake up, the hut disappears, they are in arctic cold, and it’s 5 miles to get out of its radius. If they know it’s a spell and not just weather normally.
—- point being. Things are only a problem if you as the DM allow them to become a problem.
Watch me on twitch
Leomond's Tiny Hut creates a protective hemisphere. It does nothing to protect the party from attacks from below. It's also a 3rd level spell, which means that it's automatically dispelled by Dispel Magic. It's a good protective spell for when the party bunkers down for the night, but it's far from a perfect defense.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Yeah, umm. None of the things you listed are broken, and some the more "problem" ones are on the DM to just not give them the Weapon of Warning, or use Monsters in intelligent ways.
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
I get it. Some things bug me too. I suppose the reason they remain unfixed is simple: nothing's perfect.
Personally I hate the way hp are refreshed ever long rest. Like, "hey mom, I fell off a cliff, but a quick nap and I'll be good as new."
You're doing the right thing, changing the rules to fit your game. Keep it up and ignore anyone telling you to find a new rpg to play.
I’ve played a couple of characters with the Lucky feat. It IS awesome, but it’s not as overpowered as everyone thinks it is. Nothing sucks more than using one of your three re-rolls a day and rolling a 1 on the re-roll.....
Professional computer geek
That depends on the definition of hemisphere you're using. The geometric definition has a bottom since it involves passing a plane through the center of a sphere.
The reason I consider Tiny Hut a non-issue is that:
The Forum Infestation (TM)
Based on Unearthed Arcana, they're planning to release a book that gives goodies out across classes in an attempt to balance them out without taking anything away from anybody. Because the problem with implementing your house rules across the board is that they take things away - and nobody likes to have things taken away.
There have definitely been admissions at WotC that things are not perfect. Mearls has gone on record as saying bonus actions are not in hindsight the way he would've preferred to handle action economy, especially with two-weapon fighting. Hit Dice are definitely in there as the leftovers of a bigger idea for having daily resources to manage for different things than regaining HP, which occasionally comes up in UA classes; but modern testing shows most groups barely use short rests and typically long rest after 1-3 fights. Heck, every UA is built around the concept that the dev teams need feedback when adding features.
There probably won't be a 3.5e equivalent for 5e, for a few reasons. First, 5e is not fundamentally broken, and is in fact the most popular version of any RPG ever. Second, 5e directly encourages DM fiat and is not as rules-chewy as other editions. Third, a basic tenet of 5e is that you should never need anything other than the three core books to play the game. Fourth, most of the problems people have are with treating optional rules as mandatory rules. Fifth, the books are still absolute bestsellers, so why should they bother?
Even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in awhile.
He only has two nuts to crack, folks. Focus on providing insight on how to deal with them.
Enough of telling him how badly he has been dealing with them, or defending 5e.
In my opinion and in my play experience over the past three years, none of the items on your list could be considered broken.
"and I often wonder why not just FIX them. Will some power gamers be unhappy, well yes, but the overall game will be BETTER."
Why not fix them? They aren't broken.
It has nothing to do with power gamers.
I disagree that removing options makes the game better but others might agree with you.
----
Totem Barbarian is broken
- not in the least - why is resistance to all damage except psychic broken? Every barbarian already gets resistance to slashing/bludgeoning/piercing (normal and magical) - adding resistance to other damage isn't that big a deal - the physical resistances probably cover more than 70% of the damage in most cases.
Circle of moon Shapeshifter shenanigans
- huh? This is a bit OP at levels 2-4 and again at level 20. Other than that it is pretty reasonable.
Paladin Aura of protection
- Aura of protection is nice but isn't OP and helps team mates as much as the paladin. It just makes characters a bit more likely to make their saves which is neither bad nor OP.
Monk Stunning Strike Stunlock
- useful but not OP - certain opponents can be held in stun and if you only have one bad guy it can work really well but that is bad encounter design not bad monk design
Some spell things like polymorph mixing CR and character level so that a character can turn into a party level threat.
- never found this to be much of an issue even in parties that like to turn front liners into a T-rex - the party is usually fighting something challenging anyway
Leomunds Hut being near invincible and a ritual cast
- it can make a long rest feel a bit more secure than it should in dangerous surroundings but the party can be trapped inside it by intelligent opponents.
The Lucky Feat
- sorry, this one makes me laugh - probably one of the worst feats in the game unless the DM likes to always run just one big fight/day so you can blow long rest resources as if they were short rest ... otherwise it is just a second chance that usually fails when you need it most (i.e. It is needed most on difficult saves which you are likely to fail in the first place ... but that also means that you are still likely to fail it on the Lucky re-roll. One of the least common feats in any game I have played or run. I have one character out of about 20 that took Lucky and I am still not sure why.
Multiclassing warlocks with other cha based characters
- warlock multiclassing is only a possible issue for hexblades due to a lot of front loading or in cases where the DM doesn't like agonizing blast spam for some reason. Quickened eldritch blast sounds better than it is at least until tier 3 but at that point, other characters can do better damage for resource expenditures.
uncommon weapons of warning
- huh - if you don't want your players to have a weapon of warning I don't see why you would give them one. Rarity is a guideline for DMs to hand things out and has nothing to do with the item. Also, advantage on initiative is nice but not game breaking.
Crawford said different a long time ago. Move along ...
And is that in the errata somewhere?
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
One of the most powerful ways to use Lucky is when you have Disadvantage, because it turns Disadvantage into basically Super Advantage, where you can choose the best out of three rolls to use.
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
He also unsaid it. And either way, nothing Crawford tweets changes what's actually written in the book. Both definitions of "hemisphere" are equally viable RAW.
Even when the DM allows this, it doesn't really break the game in any way, unlike, say, Sharpshooter. Lucky doesn't let you do anything you couldn't otherwise and while succeeding where you would've failed is nice, 3 times a day isn't a whole lot.
The Forum Infestation (TM)