D&D 5E So Was That Z Fellow right?

I'l agree that I never liked the combat feats, and I'll agree that "pretty good" is a low bar for how well this edition has done.

If anything, the great progress 5th has made in ironing out the errors of the prior editions makes the errors that remain so much more glaring.

smbakeresq said:

Bless is very good. But very few players want to sit there concentrating on Bless every combat, they want to do something else. Bless is really good for me in my home game with my 11 and 9 year where I am the DM and the support Healer cleric and the support controller wizard so they can be the focus. I can set it and forget it, they can hit more with their PCs.



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This may be the sweetest thing I've ever read on a gaming messageboard. And as a bonus it exemplifies how different games have different goals and thus require different strategies. As a single childless man it never occurred to me that sometimes spell choice can be about being a better parent!

Ganymede81 said:

If anything, the great progress 5th has made in ironing out the errors of the prior editions makes the errors that remain so much more glaring.

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This is true. The gap between an optimized character and a poorly thought-out one (mechanically speaking) is far less than in 3.X/pathfinder (I am assuming this is also true of 4e but I don't have sufficient experience to know if this is true). The classes are better balanced, no doubt about it. There has been a lot of improvements.

I do agree with Zard on two key points though:

1: The long rest/short rest discrepancy is new to 5e, and unfortunate. It's a cool mechanism (short vs long rest) but it adds a balancing based on playstyle that is problematic.

2: Dex has always been a great stat and 5e made it even more so. Meanwhile, the lost of skill points made Int far less valuable.

I don't think that the game is "broken" because of it. But those seem to be the main problems IMO

I'll lastly note that I haven't played at high level much so I can't really comment on that aspect.

Ancalagon said:

1: The long rest/short rest discrepancy is new to 5e, and unfortunate. It's a cool mechanism (short vs long rest) but it adds a balancing based on playstyle that is problematic.

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Yeah, I'll never get how they took their neatly designed "a moment to catch your breath" short rest from 4e and changed it into 5e's "European lunch break" short rest. Just go back to the old way and limit PCs to two short rests a day.

Ganymede81 said:

If anything, the great progress 5th has made in ironing out the errors of the prior editions makes the errors that remain so much more glaring.

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Well put!

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Ancalagon said:

This is true. The gap between an optimized character and a poorly thought-out one (mechanically speaking) is far less than in 3.X/pathfinder (I am assuming this is also true of 4e but I don't have sufficient experience to know if this is true). The classes are better balanced, no doubt about it. There has been a lot of improvements.

I do agree with Zard on two key points though:

1: The long rest/short rest discrepancy is new to 5e, and unfortunate. It's a cool mechanism (short vs long rest) but it adds a balancing based on playstyle that is problematic.

2: Dex has always been a great stat and 5e made it even more so. Meanwhile, the lost of skill points made Int far less valuable.

I don't think that the game is "broken" because of it. But those seem to be the main problems IMO

I'll lastly note that I haven't played at high level much so I can't really comment on that aspect.

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You could make some amazing characters in 4e if you understood the mechanics. The baseline for every class was more or less equal. But a little system mastery and 2-3 optimized ability/feat/magic item choices and you were on your way to being way stronger than the regular 4e character. Thinking about it 5e may actually be better balanced than 4e. There's a lot less choices in 5e than most any edition of dnd and any time there is a choice usually the biggest opportunity for a power discrepancy.

In 5e you pick a subclass and your asi/feat every 4 levels. For many characters that's only 6 choices in their entire career besides the normal level 1 choices that have been present in every game. Usually it's a combo that becomes way stronger than intended not just 1 ability on it's own. It's hard to find a combo in feats because you get so few of them and they come so far apart and there's a tradeoff of not getting stat increase if you take them. Concentration fixes spell combos that might otherwise be OP. Imagine if hex and haste could be cast on the same turn and concentrated on at the same time. Buff spells would suddenly look maybe too strong.

5e has toned combos down a lot. There's still some that exist, usually coming up in multiclassing. GWM and SS are another combo ability that works with anything that increases accuracy. There's a lot of abilities in 5e that increase accuracy and so you find those combo really well. 5e has done a great job of removing ability combos by giving fewer choices overall and flat out denying most spell combos.

I think some of the things listed in the OP can be problematic 'out of the box' but they're not broken. Broken is things like Simulacrums creating Simulacrums and abusing spells like Leomund's Tiny Hut.

Fortunately though 5e is all about common sense in the hands of the DM. It's the RAI edition and not the RAW edition. Coming from earlier editions it's hard to get your head around this, but I've made peace with that fact long ago and enjoy the game immensely for it.

I’ll have to disagree on Sharpshooter and GWM — if they were that good, every martial character at our table would take them, and at most one person has taken each in two years of play.

The encounter building rules? I agree thoroughly, there. They BADLY need more elaboration unless you are running six or seven combats per game day to grind characters down like a blacksmith making a plowshare. All three campaigns I’ve been in have had the DM have to throw the encounter build rules out the window.

Henry said:

I’ll have to disagree on Sharpshooter and GWM — if they were that good, every martial character at our table would take them, and at most one person has taken each in two years of play.

The encounter building rules? I agree thoroughly, there. They BADLY need more elaboration unless you are running six or seven combats per game day to grind characters down like a blacksmith making a plowshare. All three campaigns I’ve been in have had the DM have to throw the encounter build rules out the window.

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Ummm, they are that good. They don't work as well for every class. Barbarians and Fighters make the most use of those feats (reckless attack and precision attack basically fix your accuracy problems with the feats). A melee warlock can make great use of GWF with the darkness/devils sight combo (as it gives advantage).

Paladins and Rangers get a slight boost with them but I can easily see ignoring those feats on them as they aren't that much better IMO. Monks should never worry about either of those feats -5/+10 properties. Neither should rogues. I think that has about every class in 5e that should be doing weapon combat covered.

If you've never seen a human bear totem barbarian with polearm master and GWM then you have missed out on one of the most impressive things you could ever see. If you haven't seen a Sharpshooter + Crossbow expertise BattleMaster Fighter masterfully use precision attack and do way more damage of anyone else in the party (besides the barbarian I just described) then you are missing out.

Either class is fine. I personally like the SS CE fighter better but you really need to see these classes in action before you can comment on whether those feats are OP or not.

FrogReaver said:

Ummm, they are that good. They don't work as well for every class. Barbarians and Fighters make the most use of those feats (reckless attack and precision attack basically fix your accuracy problems with the feats). A melee warlock can make great use of GWF with the darkness/devils sight combo (as it gives advantage).

Paladins and Rangers get a slight boost with them but I can easily see ignoring those feats on them as they aren't that much better IMO. Monks should never worry about either of those feats -5/+10 properties. Neither should rogues. I think that has about every class in 5e that should be doing weapon combat covered.

If you've never seen a human bear totem barbarian with polearm master and GWM then you have missed out on one of the most impressive things you could ever see. If you haven't seen a Sharpshooter + Crossbow expertise BattleMaster Fighter masterfully use precision attack and do way more damage of anyone else in the party (besides the barbarian I just described) then you are missing out.

Either class is fine. I personally like the SS CE fighter better but you really need to see these classes in action before you can comment on whether those feats are OP or not.

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I have seen it, and in our groups they gave up because they kept missing more than half the time. The damage looks impressive, but when you count the number of extra misses, in practice at the table when a 10th level warrior with an effective attack bonus of +4 or +5 is trying to hit an AC 18 or 20 creature, it doesn’t work out that much better. Maybe it’s just that my players have worse dice luck than usual.