Quote from Marc_Ducorsky >>

Quote from Sparky_92 >>

So from what I've noticed looking at this comment section, the people who are mad at Divine Smite being treated like the other Smite spells, fun to them is just doing a bunch of damage in combat. The more damage, the more fun. You all realize this is a ROLEPLAYING GAME where combat is not the only thing you do. I can only imagine how boring your characters are personality wise outside of combat since it seems like you break out the calculator to make the most optimal build so you can do the most amount of damage each round while foregoing everything else about your character. If combat, strategy, and doing damage is what you're looking for and that's fun for you, maybe Warhammer is more your speed.

 

Do you believe a Wizard's fireball should be changed to D4s.  Or remove the Upcast ability of spells.  Why the high damage.  This is a role-playing game.

Why would doing high damage in combat make give the character less personality?  

Maybe talk to the player and help them with the non-combat features of their character during creation or leveling up.  During combat they can strategize and maximize what to do while waiting for their turn.  In non-combat situations they need to be able to jump into the situation and interact with the NPC at that instant.  Maybe the player is not comfortable and 'spontaneous' enough to comfortably interact during 'social', or 'exploration' part of the adventure.

Just my opinion.

 nice reference, but the problem at least imho isn't realy that it is a spell, but it needs your bonus action to cast it ....
which makes it even worse then just making it a spell.

how would the ones in support of this think of the following ....
 - Blade flourish of a college of swords bard also counts as a spell and uses the bards bonus action  ( i know that we don't know about them yet ) but would amount to the same what is beeing done to the paladin smite

 - keeping up concentration on a spell needs you to use your bonus action to do it ( same crippling ruling as what is beeing done to the paladin smite )

Quote from AlleneOfLeHigh >>

nice reference, but the problem at least imho isn't realy that it is a spell, but it needs your bonus action to cast it ....
which makes it even worse then just making it a spell.

how would the ones in support of this think of the following ....
 - Blade flourish of a college of swords bard also counts as a spell and uses the bards bonus action  ( i know that we don't know about them yet ) but would amount to the same what is beeing done to the paladin smite

 - keeping up concentration on a spell needs you to use your bonus action to do it ( same thing that is beeing done to the paladin with that )

Here's some other examples of this kind of thinking:

Fighter: Action Surge creates moments of too much burst, and fighters were only using it to Attack, rather than explore the many other actions they could take with their extra action. Action Surge now costs a bonus action, and if you take the Attack action with it, you get only one attack at most. This will tone down fighter burst and encourage fighters to think about their other options in combat!

Barbarian: Reckless Attack is almost always used by barbarians who can easily ignore its downside because of the defensive benefits of rage. To make it more of a decision, and to make it so that a barbarian can't activate the defense of rage with the offense of Reckless Attack in the same turn, Reckless Attack now requires you use it as a bonus action at the start of your turn.

Rogue: Cunning Action is a powerful tool for defense, mobility, and offense, and often makes it difficult for the DM to even interact with a rogue in a fight. We're making Sneak Attack take a bonus action used immediately after making a qualifying attack. This will give rogues more to think about in terms of managing their offense and tactical options!

Cleric: Clerics could often use both a spell and the spell-like Channel Divinity in the same turn, which goes against our intended magic action economy and making their turns take too long for both decision-making and execution. Channel Divinity is now a spell, that activates your domain's special effect.

---

The thing is, we DID see things like this for other classes. Druids didn't want to change from using actual beast stablocks for wildshape because it was what they were used to and was perceived to be an important part of the druid experience; that change was rolled back. Rogues felt that off-turn sneak attack was important to their damage and the tactical experience of playing a rogue; that change was rolled back. Warlocks felt that short rest-based pact casting was a unique and vital part of the warlock experience; the half-caster warlock model was rolled back. Sorcerers didn't like the new twinned spell metamagic because it just felt wrong and didn't match the promise of the ability. In all these cases, people got upset and expressed their frustration and disappointment, and the developers backed off or found another way to address the underlying issues. So yeah, it feels bad to be the target of the only core class nerf that actively disrupts, discourages, or prevents how we've been playing paladins for a decade now, especially since this particular implementation is so clunky and needless. And again, this isn't just about balance or burst; it's about how the action cost changes what is well supported, effective, and possible, and therefore what we want to do and build and play. It's about what it feels like to play a 5E paladin: the exact thing the devs said they were trying to preserve and enhance for all classes.

Just make Smite a once per turn thing, Yes it means we lose some nova damage but I think if they kept it so it doesn't hurt your action economy by just doing it once each turn gives the same versatility that this "Improvement" seems it thinks it's giving paladin and I think less of a visceral reaction to It that's what me and my players are homebrewing in my game.

Guys, what does "health of the game" even mean?

Because I am seeing it a lot and have no idea what do you all mean by that.

Smite damage was comporable to what spellcasters could do, but paladin burned through the resources much quicker.

Quote from Silverblade1234 >>

Quote from AlleneOfLeHigh >>

nice reference, but the problem at least imho isn't realy that it is a spell, but it needs your bonus action to cast it ....
which makes it even worse then just making it a spell.

how would the ones in support of this think of the following ....
 - Blade flourish of a college of swords bard also counts as a spell and uses the bards bonus action  ( i know that we don't know about them yet ) but would amount to the same what is beeing done to the paladin smite

 - keeping up concentration on a spell needs you to use your bonus action to do it ( same thing that is beeing done to the paladin with that )

 

Here's some other examples of this kind of thinking:

Fighter: Action Surge creates moments of too much burst, and fighters were only using it to Attack, rather than explore the many other actions they could take with their extra action. Action Surge now costs a bonus action, and if you take the Attack action with it, you get only one attack at most. This will tone down fighter burst and encourage fighters to think about their other options in combat!

Barbarian: Reckless Attack is almost always used by barbarians who can easily ignore its downside because of the defensive benefits of rage. To make it more of a decision, and to make it so that a barbarian can't activate the defense of rage with the offense of Reckless Attack in the same turn, Reckless Attack now requires you use it as a bonus action at the start of your turn.

Rogue: Cunning Action is a powerful tool for defense, mobility, and offense, and often makes it difficult for the DM to even interact with a rogue in a fight. We're making Sneak Attack take a bonus action used immediately after making a qualifying attack. This will give rogues more to think about in terms of managing their offense and tactical options!

Cleric: Clerics could often use both a spell and the spell-like Channel Divinity in the same turn, which goes against our intended magic action economy and making their turns take too long for both decision-making and execution. Channel Divinity is now a spell, that activates your domain's special effect.

---

The thing is, we DID see things like this for other classes. Druids didn't want to change from using actual beast stablocks for wildshape because it was what they were used to and was perceived to be an important part of the druid experience; that change was rolled back. Rogues felt that off-turn sneak attack was important to their damage and the tactical experience of playing a rogue; that change was rolled back. Warlocks felt that short rest-based pact casting was a unique and vital part of the warlock experience; the half-caster warlock model was rolled back. Sorcerers didn't like the new twinned spell metamagic because it just felt wrong and didn't match the promise of the ability. In all these cases, people got upset and expressed their frustration and disappointment, and the developers backed off or found another way to address the underlying issues. So yeah, it feels bad to be the target of the only core class nerf that actively disrupts, discourages, or prevents how we've been playing paladins for a decade now, especially since this particular implementation is so clunky and needless. And again, this isn't just about balance or burst; it's about how the action cost changes what is well supported, effective, and possible, and therefore what we want to do and build and play. It's about what it feels like to play a 5E paladin: the exact thing the devs said they were trying to preserve and enhance for all classes.

 Exactly

Yep, and this is exactly why I won't be buying any of the 2024 books. TBH, these books are barely more than MMORPG balance patches where the most used and fun features were nerf. From Paladin Smites to Druid Class as a whole. I''ll be sticking with the 2014 version of DnD back when this asinine focus on balance didn't ruin the fun of the game. Like I'm really going to spend money on books containing inferior versions of classes I play lol.

I am personally NOT a fan of the new changes. WHY nerf DIVINE smite? Secondly, why the name change? Our powers SHOULD come from the Gods (who deserve way more respect anyway) Thirdly, why on earth did you ruin Aura of Warding? I'll stick to the 2014 version thank you.

To be honest I’ll probably just use 5e rules (with some homebrew changes) instead of using 5.5e because the books are so expensive and it makes me wonder what’s the point?

We turned the druid's Wild Shape into a spell because we thought it should be consistent with other spells that do similar things, like Polymorph, Shapechange, True Polymorph, Alter Self, etc.
This should fix the problem of druids casting spells on the same turn that they use Wild Shape.
We also did this because druid can multiclass with barbarian and we don't like that. Rage should never work with features from other classes.
Counterspell was reworked so we don't think it should have any effect on this, besides if anyone counters your Wild Shape you should be happy they wasted a spell slot.

We found out some players used to abuse Wild Shape by casting a concentration spell and then turning into an animal. This kind of feature stacking was never intended but now the new Wild Shape spell requires concentration like all the other transformation spells, so that should fix it.

We want to take what's special about a class, protect it, amplify it, so we gave the druid a free casting of this spell once a day at it's lowest level, it's ok don't thank us.

Next edition we will explore turning the barbarian's unarmored defense into a fighting style that barbarians get for free at level one.

"Hmmm paladin seems to have too many actions ... I know lets make everything a bonus action instead!"

The 2024 Paladin comment section is already twice as long as any of the other 2024 comment sections, primarily due to the complaints surrounding Paladin's Smite feature (which is going to print as is), and I can't help but be surprised how badly handled this was.

In the first Paladin playtest, users gave the class this 90% satisfaction rate, right? Then, with the later introduction of Paladin's Smite (which was MUCH stronger than it is here) we had this consistent argument (mostly complaints) about it, and when the team went over the response to feedback / playtest, all we heard about was how people loved Lay on Hands being a bonus action, but they were going to focus on "balancing" the class regardless of the feedback, without any additional feedback.

Then we saw the Eldrich Knight Fighter and the new Warlock (equipped with own free action Smite) and assumed that Paladin's Smite was dead.

Oh boy, we were wrong, and while there was an effort to reduce the number subclass Bonus Actions (effectively turning the 3rd level and 20th level subclass features into free-actions) to accommodate the Paladin's Smite spells (effectively to make them playable to be honest, and not clunky as all hell to even use) it seems the change itself hasn't satisfied anyone.

And what makes this entire drama funny is almost everyone would have been satisfied if Divine Smite stayed a class feature, if it had a once per turn sticker on it.

You have playtest to see how to best make your playerbase happy, you have content creators that give you options to satisfy the concerns of the community to boot, and that's collectively ignored for a specific vision of the game that has players and DMs at eachother's throats on Internet comment sections, or just loudly cursing at the YouTube announcement of these changes to Paladin, and it was all avoidable, lol.

Dungeon Masters and their players are going to run the Paladin they want to at their tables: some of them may be playing the 2014 Paladin with 2024 Fighters and Barbarians, some might just run Divine Smite (as Lathander intended) as its written in 2014 on the 2024 Paladin, some might not care and use (or ignore) 2024 feature (probably most tbh). Eitherway, the anger and arguments were avoidable, totally avoidable (and predictable). Oh well.

Why would you even Smite now? It's completely useless now as you can only do it once a turn and now that it's a spell it can be countered :(

Divine smite is actually terrible now... Why?

While I do get the balance of the smite, I don't see any reason to be a paladin past lvl 3 offensively. The steed is awesome, but I can't believe it's a lvl 5 class feature. Abjure is cool but it's late in the game to have such an unreliable talent. 

Pallys got the short end of the mace here. 

Quote from Marc_Ducorsky >>

Quote from Sparky_92 >>

So from what I've noticed looking at this comment section, the people who are mad at Divine Smite being treated like the other Smite spells, fun to them is just doing a bunch of damage in combat. The more damage, the more fun. You all realize this is a ROLEPLAYING GAME where combat is not the only thing you do. I can only imagine how boring your characters are personality wise outside of combat since it seems like you break out the calculator to make the most optimal build so you can do the most amount of damage each round while foregoing everything else about your character. If combat, strategy, and doing damage is what you're looking for and that's fun for you, maybe Warhammer is more your speed.

 

Do you believe a Wizard's fireball should be changed to D4s.  Or remove the Upcast ability of spells.  Why the high damage.  This is a role-playing game.

Why would doing high damage in combat make give the character less personality?  

Maybe talk to the player and help them with the non-combat features of their character during creation or leveling up.  During combat they can strategize and maximize what to do while waiting for their turn.  In non-combat situations they need to be able to jump into the situation and interact with the NPC at that instant.  Maybe the player is not comfortable and 'spontaneous' enough to comfortably interact during 'social', or 'exploration' part of the adventure.

Just my opinion.

 Because when you have someone that looks at every class available, every race/species available and spends probably a significant amount of time trying to build the strongest character imaginable in combat, I'm willing to bet money they didn't spend anywhere near close to that time coming up with an interesting backstory that can add more to the campaign. Or think of a character with and interesting moment to moment personality that people at the table can have fun with. People only have so much time and willpower they want to dedicate to something. I've seen this make players/characters that aren't really paying attention to what's going on in the moment and is just focused on getting to the next battle. Because why would they pay attention? The combat aspect is the only good thing about their character. Combat is only ONE aspect of making a character. It really annoys me when people act like it's the most important aspect.

Quote from MaldrekMalkor >>

We turned the druid's Wild Shape into a spell because we thought it should be consistent with other spells that do similar things, like Polymorph, Shapechange, True Polymorph, Alter Self, etc.
This should fix the problem of druids casting spells on the same turn that they use Wild Shape.
We also did this because druid can multiclass with barbarian and we don't like that. Rage should never work with features from other classes.
Counterspell was reworked so we don't think it should have any effect on this, besides if anyone counters your Wild Shape you should be happy they wasted a spell slot.

We found out some players used to abuse Wild Shape by casting a concentration spell and then turning into an animal. This kind of feature stacking was never intended but now the new Wild Shape spell requires concentration like all the other transformation spells, so that should fix it.

We want to take what's special about a class, protect it, amplify it, so we gave the druid a free casting of this spell once a day at it's lowest level, it's ok don't thank us.

Next edition we will explore turning the barbarian's unarmored defense into a fighting style that barbarians get for free at level one.

And you truly think those that are interested in the druid class would want to pay money for an inferior class? Really now? First of all, the wild shape aspect being a spell that requires concentration now removes the possibility of using conjure animals, preventing you from being a wolf within your own wolf pack. This is in combination with the fact that the conjure animals spells have also been nerfed into ridiculousness to where they are a shell of their former self.

Combine that with all of the other nerfs associated with the druid class (such as their tankiness) and I have absolutely no desire of wanting to play the 2024 version. The balance crowd can have that while I'll stick with when druids were actually fun for me.

Quote from Sparky_92 >>

Quote from Marc_Ducorsky >>

Quote from Sparky_92 >>

So from what I've noticed looking at this comment section, the people who are mad at Divine Smite being treated like the other Smite spells, fun to them is just doing a bunch of damage in combat. The more damage, the more fun. You all realize this is a ROLEPLAYING GAME where combat is not the only thing you do. I can only imagine how boring your characters are personality wise outside of combat since it seems like you break out the calculator to make the most optimal build so you can do the most amount of damage each round while foregoing everything else about your character. If combat, strategy, and doing damage is what you're looking for and that's fun for you, maybe Warhammer is more your speed.

 

Do you believe a Wizard's fireball should be changed to D4s.  Or remove the Upcast ability of spells.  Why the high damage.  This is a role-playing game.

Why would doing high damage in combat make give the character less personality?  

Maybe talk to the player and help them with the non-combat features of their character during creation or leveling up.  During combat they can strategize and maximize what to do while waiting for their turn.  In non-combat situations they need to be able to jump into the situation and interact with the NPC at that instant.  Maybe the player is not comfortable and 'spontaneous' enough to comfortably interact during 'social', or 'exploration' part of the adventure.

Just my opinion.

 Because when you have someone that looks at every class available, every race/species available and spends probably a significant amount of time trying to build the strongest character imaginable in combat, I'm willing to bet money they didn't spend anywhere near close to that time coming up with an interesting backstory that can add more to the campaign. Or think of a character with and interesting moment to moment personality that people at the table can have fun with. People only have so much time and willpower they want to dedicate to something. I've seen this make players/characters that aren't really paying attention to what's going on in the moment and is just focused on getting to the next battle. Because why would they pay attention? The combat aspect is the only good thing about their character. Combat is only ONE aspect of making a character. It really annoys me when people act like it's the most important aspect.

You're correct that combat is only one part of making a character. However, it's important to recognize that 70-90% of the abilities a character gets have to do with combat in some ways. Because one of the ways that a D&D character's story is told is through the combat trials that they have to overcome. Now, to be fair, there are certainly people who don't care about the story of D&D nearly as much as the combat. After all, the power fantasy aspect of D&D is a large part of the game's appeal, and for some people it seems to be the only part of the game that is appealing. It sounds like maybe you've even played alongside such people, and I hope you find a group that matches your vibe better soon if you haven't found one already.

But it's not really fair to assume that people who care about making powerful characters don't also care about story. Sometimes making a really powerful character can play into a story you want to bring to life! For example, two players might have an idea to play a pair of rivals who will stop at nothing to be better than the other. One is driven by a strong desire to make the world a better place, we'll say he's a paladin, and the other is driven by an intense anger towards the rest of the world; we'll make her a barbarian. Now, if players want to really bring this story to life, wouldn't it make sense for them to optimize their characters for combat? I mean, we all know the classic Hexblade Warlock dip, but wouldn't it make sense for this paladin to go that route in order to get a leg up on the barbarian? And that's just one example.

The other thing I want to mention is that at most tables, combat slows the game down a lot. And I mention this for two reasons: A. Sometimes, people build optimized characters because they end combats quickly, and the quicker the combat ends, the quicker the players get back to the roleplay. And B. When you have to wait twenty minutes to take your turn in combat, and then your turn isn't fun, then you'll have to wait another twenty minutes before you have another chance to have fun, and now you've spent 40 minutes without getting to do anything you think is cool. My big issue with Divine Smite is that it makes Paladins less fun to play (specifically because it monopolizes your entire turn, but I've spoken about that in these comments elsewhere so I won't go too deep into it). It's not that it's a spell now (although I am sad that Barbarian-Paladins can't smite while raging now), it's not that it's only once-per-turn (because I think that was probably a good change overall), it's not that it can be counterspelled or silenced; It's that making an option that used to be on demand (mostly - again, if you want to know my full thoughts, they're somewhere in this comments section) now cost a bonus action makes the class less fun, and therefore less appealing.

Even coming from a roleplay perspective, I'm sure you can understand why options that are fun are good for the game, and vice versa. When you see a class or subclass ability that looks really fun to you, it gets the gears turning in your head of how you might make a character who fits into that class or subclass. Maybe you never thought of playing a wizard who has a sword, but now that you've seen how cool Bladesinger is, you're going to put that on the list of characters to try. But when you see something that looks boring, why bother? Maybe you read the flavor text for the Battlerager Barbarian and came up with a really inspired character concept, but after seeing that the features were pretty lame, you ditched that concept so you could play something that felt more fun.

I don't really have a "closing argument," but I guess my final thing I'll say is this: Please don't tell other people how they're supposed to have fun if they don't ask. Hopefully it's clear that I respect your playstyle of focusing on story and roleplay far above combat. But I also respect the playstyle of telling a cliche story through a series of battles that can only be won by players who optimize their characters to limbo and back. And I respect people who do a healthy mix of both combat and roleplay. And any players who have figured out how to have fun with this system doing neither. I mean, I certainly am confused by that last group of people if they exist (what are they doing and why are they using 5e to do it?), and I wouldn't have fun in a game where the only way to win was pure number crunching optimization, but it's not a moral failing to play the game in a way it wasn't intended.

Making Lay on hands a bonus action: WOOOOOOO YEAH FINALLY!!! Gonna be so good to not need to multiclass with fighter just to hit things and heal.

Making Smite a bonus action spell: EWWWWWWWW. Yes it's a bummer to say goodbye to the additional damage (as a paladin player and a DM) but that's not what irks me most. 1. I really enjoy smite not being a spell from a story telling aspect that sets Paladins apart from other magic based classes, which leads me to 2. It meant their smite COULDN'T BE COUNTER SPELLED!!!! It gave them that edge to be the tank, that front line defense and someone to help out their allies passively. I'm still left doing either smite or lay on hands which doesn't make lay on hands being a bonus action feel like much of an improvement now. BUT SMITE CAN BE COUNTER SPELLED!!! I cannot forgive smite being able to be counter spelled now. If you only want it on one hit a round that I could understand, but making it a spell instead of a magical feature... What's the point of an oath if one of the innate magical abilities you have to draw from is now a spell that can get cancelled. GOODBYE THE SWEET TASTE OF A NAT 20 SMITE... all taken away with a counter spell. (Yes I know I'm being dramatic, but I am trying to make a point :P )

To the DMs cheering on this decision to absolutely nerf this Paladin feature, I just cannot agree. I do however take a personal stance that the areas of this game that felt lackluster or under performed against other classes, feature, abilities, ect. should have been buffed to match what is considered OP. 

I've been DMing 5e for 7 years now and high damage output from players has never been an issue, needing to create items for lackluster builds to keep up was the annoying bit because it took time to do but made things enjoyable for everyone and then to make things more fun and engaging for me I add more HP to monsters, or add more monsters on the field, I buff monster stats or throw in the occasional minmax build against them so they get a taste of their own medicine. 

I've never had fun taking away from someone's enjoyment at the table because they got through my encounter faster than I thought they would. If someone felt left behind I worked with them to create a moment for them to enjoy and find way to make their character feel more capable through encounters, items or story telling.

So I'm left still needing to homebrew and chop and change these features that just don't make sense with house rules. The fixes that make sense (which have been run at tables I've played at for years) can stay and for maximum enjoyment at the table I'll be keeping to the old smite thanks.

Quote from kira858 >>

Quote from MaldrekMalkor >>

We turned the druid's Wild Shape into a spell because we thought it should be consistent with other spells that do similar things, like Polymorph, Shapechange, True Polymorph, Alter Self, etc.
This should fix the problem of druids casting spells on the same turn that they use Wild Shape.
We also did this because druid can multiclass with barbarian and we don't like that. Rage should never work with features from other classes.
Counterspell was reworked so we don't think it should have any effect on this, besides if anyone counters your Wild Shape you should be happy they wasted a spell slot.

We found out some players used to abuse Wild Shape by casting a concentration spell and then turning into an animal. This kind of feature stacking was never intended but now the new Wild Shape spell requires concentration like all the other transformation spells, so that should fix it.

We want to take what's special about a class, protect it, amplify it, so we gave the druid a free casting of this spell once a day at it's lowest level, it's ok don't thank us.

Next edition we will explore turning the barbarian's unarmored defense into a fighting style that barbarians get for free at level one.

 

 

And you truly think those that are interested in the druid class would want to pay money for an inferior class? Really now? First of all, the wild shape aspect being a spell that requires concentration now removes the possibility of using conjure animals, preventing you from being a wolf within your own wolf pack. This is in combination with the fact that the conjure animals spells have also been nerfed into ridiculousness to where they are a shell of their former self.

 

Combine that with all of the other nerfs associated with the druid class (such as their tankiness) and I have absolutely no desire of wanting to play the 2024 version. The balance crowd can have that while I'll stick with when druids were actually fun for me.

 
These aren't real changes to druids, just satire.
Sorry for the confusion, I should have pointed it out better.

Just wanted to show how ridiculous it is if you apply the same logic from the changes to divine smite to another class.
Paladins smite. It's their thing. Let's let them do their thing, not change what's special/unique to them into some arcane formula someone can read from a spell scroll or a bard can steal with magical secrets.

Smite should never be an ordinary spell, because Smite makes right.