The final word on DPR, feats and class balance
The OP is not about "DPR is king". (It neither affirms it, nor denies it.) It does take for granted that the main mechanical function of a fighter is to deal damage in combat. I don't think that's hugely controversial as a generalisation (a frequent criticism of 4e, after all, was that it had "fighters" whose main mechanical function was not to deal damage in combat).
I've sblocked sections of the OP, then comment on them.
[sblock]
[/sblock]This is all about balance across combat archetypes. As a starting pont damage should be comparable. A small concession to weapon "realism" is OK, but mostly it's fashion. (So the contrast between d4 daggers and d12 axes is implicity criticised.) Frail combatants get various forms of spike damage to compensate (wizards, rogues, etc).
There is no mention that wizards and rogues might get Charm Person instead of damage, but that can easily be factored into the point being made. The focus, in any event, is on "the fighting man", who does not get those sorts of options.
[sblock]
[/sblock]Mechanically optimised PCs do much more than that "fighting man" baseline, which makes life hard for the GM wanting to use monsters out of the books.
[sblock]
[/sblock]Without feats, "martials" get overshadowed in the damage dealing department. Which is, ostensibly, their main schtick. To point out that they're also overshadowed in the versatility department (most fighters don't get regular access to Charm Person) is only to add insult to injury!
And even with feats, some archetypes (eg knife throwers, it is asserted) can't get out of those shadows, because there are no feats (it is asserted) to buff their damage.
The upshot (it is asserted) is that you can either use feats, causing (i) GM headaches in relation to monsters not keeping up and (ii) crowding out a whole lot of archetypes that should, in principle, be viable in a FRPG; or you can not use feats, leaving martial PCs overshadowed by casters even on their home turf of dealing damage.
Nowhere in that post is there an assertion that "DPR is king". There is a premise that DPR is the main thing a martial PC brings to the table. Now maybe that's not true; but you can't show it's not true by talking about how great a Charm Person spell can be!
Tony, your slightly contrarian posting style has left me a bit confused on this occasion. I can't tell if you're agreeing with me or disagreeing.
Whereas you seem to be arguing that a designer focus on DPR leads to weak/ineffective classes (I am guessing you see the Champion and perhaps the Battlemaster as suffering from this). That may be true, but seems not to really bear on what I was saying.
But part of my point was that 5e has build elements - Ideals, Bonds, Flaws - that could be in those stat blocks (alignment is there, after all) but are not. Why not? And given that they're not, I again ask how a play group can be faulted for similarly prioritising DPR in their engagment with the game.
I was talking about a play group focusing on DPR in their play of the game. Given how many tools the game gives them to play with in that particular arena; and given the long tradition of playing D&D as a wargame; I don't see how theycan be faulted for that.
Whereas you seem to be arguing that a designer focus on DPR leads to weak/ineffective classes (I am guessing you see the Champion and perhaps the Battlemaster as suffering from this). That may be true, but seems not to really bear on what I was saying.
To an extent this seems to be agreeing with me.
But part of my point was that 5e has build elements - Ideals, Bonds, Flaws - that could be in those stat blocks (alignment is there, after all) but are not. Why not? And given that they're not, I again ask how a play group can be faulted for similarly prioritising DPR in their engagment with the game.
Of course. But I'm taking it as a given that we're talking about 5e, which has already made some design choices that deliberately echo AD&D (no level scaling damage for weapon attacks; no minions; etc).
It's being designed neither for experienced players nor for new players? Than who? Edition warriors and PF players? But aren't many of them in the "experienced" camp. (Presumably the OP was a 3E/PF player before 5e. I know he doesn't like 4e.)
Oofta
Legend
Umm ... so martial characters suck because their DPR isn't high enough, but "DPR is king" is a false statement. The exact phrase may not have been stated, but the DPR gain from GWM and SS is the focal point of this entire thread.
Whether I agree with the basic premise (I don't) this whole thread is affirming that to some people, DPR is king and having some variants average even a few points higher is a major issue.
Sacrosanct
Legend
I also disagree with the statement that without feats, martials get out damaged in the damage dept. I suspect a lot of that comes down to play style. If you let the players rest often (where resources are regenerated), I can see where that would be a problem. But a key benefit of martials is that they can attack infinitely. When the caster runs out of spells, it’s the fighter who keeps dealing out damage.
I have no problems at all getting 6-8 encounters per day, and often even more. That’s because when I run the NPCs and monsters, they don’t go on pause between encounters. A party entering a dungeon or castle or fort that gets detected will have the monsters react accordingly. Rests are harder to come by when you can’t get a breather because the entire dungeon is looking for you.
Tony Vargas
Legend
thank you?
I'm not sure, either.
The OP is just one example of an experienced player.
Logically, I think, the edition was designed /last & least/ for players who would have no viable alternative to switching to it - the camp of give-every-ed-a-chance fans & committed apologists on the wrong side of the edition war, and the supposed majority of fans who liked D&D, in general irrespective of edition (do they even have preferences to cater to?). Potential new players were the next-least-catered to, there's really no knowing what they 'want,' anyway, and they have no awareness of any alternatives. 3.x/PF fans, already catered to lavishly by Paizo, were next-most-ignored, the effort to steal them back would have been monumental, and that's Zapp & co. Then there's the OSR crowd, also already lavishly catered to by many offerings, but possibly more open to the siren call of the D&D name for it's own sake, if it's acceptably familiar - the game was, sorta, starting to be designed for them. And, yes, there's the vocal minority on the winning side of the edition war, they had to be appeased, the game was designed very much /around/ them and their objections, to avoid triggering them, that's for them, sorta. But, more so it's for the fans of 2e, who had yet to get a re-print, clone, or even much recognition or buzz around their first D&D. When I heard the most glowing reviews of 5e at release, they very often likened it to 2e, "the best D&D since AD&D 2e!" They were a prime, but not /the/ prime target. The Holy Grail of any D&D ed was to bring back the returning player of the fad years, the millions who hadn't touched the game in decades, that's what Essentials & the Red Box tried so unsuccessfully to do, and had to have been a major design thrust of 5e. But, IM(ns)HO, first & foremost, 5e was designed for the experienced, long-time DM who honed skills with the classic game, because, ultimately, that's your ambassador for the new edition, if there are great DMs running great games, the ed'll look better to everyone who gets to play with them.
And, to wrap it around, creating buzz that "D&D was back" - back to it's old tricks, really, that the latest ed was faithful to the original, super-popular version - also had to be a selling point for the potential new player to /try/ it. A seal of approval. That appeal didn't require the game be in any way designed /for/ them, though, just that it create an image that was appealing. It's been up to the DMs who run for those new players to retain them.
Last edited:
The OP clearly starts from the premise that combat capability is the main thing that "martial" PCs bring to the table. That is not an assertion that DPR is king. (If someone said that buffing is the main thing a bard brings to the table, and then argued that bards are overshadowed by cleric buffing, would anyone suppose that that poster is saying that "buffing is king"?)
To repost myself:
I don't agree with this.
Mearls wrote a lot during the 5e design period about 4e's inability to retain new players: that lots of new players tried it, and had some fun with it, but didn't stick with it. He attributed this to various things, but the two I remember are (i) marketing complexity (the "wall of books" thing), and (ii) PC build complexituy (the number of choices needed to build a starting fighter character).
Between the data that Mearls' ruminations were based on, and informed common sense grounded in a deep experience of game design and game marketing, I think it is possible to identify things that new players look for in a game. And in the absence of either data or deep experience, I speculate that one of those things is a chance to make "good" play decisions. In MtG this means building a good deck, or playing a clever combo. A designer (I am assuming) wants to build these possibilities into the game. And I think it's hard to build a common framework that both provides those sorts of possibilities to a new player, while at the same time immunises the system against exploitation of those possibilities by an experienced player.
Of course some, even many, experienced players self-immunise in some fashion or other (rewrite the MM; make up new feats; ban feats and just don't build too many optimised warlocks or sorcerers; play only casters; etc). But I'm not surprised that there are some experienced players, like the OP, who are having the sorts of problems the OP reports.
Oofta
Legend
The main premise is that many archetypes aren't effective because they don't do enough damage. Most of this thread (and it's "sister" thread "What makes Great Weapon Master and Sharpshooter so good?" ) is arguing that some builds aren't "viable" because they don't keep up on damage. Why else would there be arguments about whether or not a PC specializing in daggers can be viable?*
The fact that one out of 200+ posts says something about charm person doesn't change the other 99.5% of the comments.
*for the record I think a rogue that uses throwing daggers could be a pretty cool build myself.
hawkeyefan
Legend
According to the OP, a whole bunch of things.
