D&D (2024) Are Bishops "Clerics" or "Priests"

[Chaosmancer]

still dubious. e7 was not a niche thing, nobody has found a way to nicely adapt it to 5e because 5e resists such attempts until you make a new system Take this list of things

• a Level 7 full BaB PC (ie fighter/barbarian/etc) would have two attacks at +7/+2, a level 7 rogue with (I think?) 2/3 BaB would have one attack at +5 & would have gotten a second at +6/+1 if allowed to continue onto level 8. A wizard with umm 1/3 BaB would be at +3 but targeting saves & touch AC
  • In both 2014 & 2024 versions of 5e some classes get full attack mod sec ond attack at 5 & 11

I don't see how having this version of "you just get a single second attack" somehow prevents you from stopping progression at level 7.

• All of those PCs would have been gaining skill points to distribute in skills as they advanced based on class & int mod
  • We don't have the 2024 skill system, and & really need to see the 2024 skill system, but in 2014 5e all of those classes have the same bonus & in many cases probably the same must take S tier skills due to a skill system at odds with the system

The 2024 skill system is the same as the 2014 skill system. We've seen parts of it in things like influence, stealth and study actions.

Also, how does your skills being chosen at 1st level prevent you from stopping progression at level 7?

• Back in 3.x feats & PrCs had meaningful prerequisites and the really creative minmaxing abuses was starting to come into reach if allowed to continue past 7
  • in 2014 5e there are effectively zero prereqs on almost anything & in 2024 there are some extremely minimal level restrictions on some feats but still basically anything goes.

Um.... You realize if you stop progression at level 7, you essentially stop at two feats maximum, right? I'm pretty sure any sort of serious minmaxing is stopped by that fact alone. Who cares if nothing has pre-reqs if you only get 1 to 2 feats/ASIs at all?

• magic items were assumed so an e7 PC who kept progressing needed to lean more heavily on equipment & teamwork as monsters got stronger.
  • 5e has no assumption of magic items & even pegs monsters to the capabilities of lower level PCs with bounded accuracy. Instead of meaningful DR/Resist/SR & similar it's just "oh my objectively best weapon is magic so I ignore the resistance". We don't yet have any of those kind of GM focused hooks dials & levers in 2024 5e

So because monsters only had resistance or non-resistance, you can't stop progressing PCs at level 7? I mean, I guess if you are only relying on the monster's ability to take less damage, but there are some pretty basic things here you are ignoring. Like the fact that the range of monster health can essentially double, so if you really wanted to have the party lean more on teamwork and give them more powerful magic items... you easily could.

• casters needed to rely on spell slots wands & scrolls so a level 7 full cater had 4/3/2/1 spell slots plus whatever they get from gear never jumping to 4/3/3/2 - 4/4/3/2/1 - 4/4/3/3/2 & so on
  • So far in both versions of 5e casters & some non-casters from things like race have unlimited automatically scaling cantrips they never need to upgrade equipment with or risk running out of

And? Stopping level progression at level 7 doesn't necessitate that you have wizards carting around wands or crossbows to work.


Like, you are complaining that you can't stop leveling at level 7 in a 5e game, because at level 1 a 5e game has some design decisions that are different from a 3.5 game... but how does that stop you from stopping progression at level 7? 90% of your complaints are things at level 1.

 

[Stalker0]

That just seems like an odd fix, to me.

Why not just…flatten the math so that level 20 PCs are almost always going to win against mooks, but a small army of competent guards with some captains and a noble or two can still force the PCs to retreat?

I mean 20 levels is as arbitrary as 6. E6 was specifically designed for those that liked the feel of 3e but just felt its progression got too nuts. It was a way for those people to have their cake and eat it too.

 

[chongjasmine]

I will think a bishop is a priest rather than a cleric.

 

[MichaelSomething]

Where are all the 3E fans who wanted PCs and NPCs to use the same advancement system??

Oh well.

BRING BACK THE COMMONER CLASS!

 

[ThrorII]

Where are all the 3E fans who wanted PCs and NPCs to use the same advancement system??

Oh well.

BRING BACK THE COMMONER CLASS!

I'm a fan of the B/X - BECMI "normal man" monster (AC9, 1-4 hp, SV NM, ML6), where 1 hp is a child or elderly, 2hp is a woman, 3hp is a man, and 4hp is a big man (blacksmith).

 

[Clint_L]

The best stories use real world logic to come up with ways to make this work. However, you are correct, none if it usually looks like DnD is presented.



These are great questions I love exploring. But here we run into a problem.



As Stalker0 mentioned, it ends up mattering. For example, you say charging 50 soldiers isn't smart? But at 7th level, I may have access to Wall of Fire, and if the soldiers are normal guards with 11 hp... I might be able to rip apart that encounter with five PCs if even two of them are casters. So... are normal soldiers 11 hp guards or something else? What makes sense for the world?

You say you don't think about levels as status, just what the PCs can do... but that is exactly the thing that we are saying gives them status. If you are the only person in a religion spanning hundreds of thousands of people who can raise the dead... well, not to put too fine a point on it, but you are literally Jesus whether you are the second coming or not depends on if someone existed in the religion like that before. We have people in the real world who only fool others into thinking they can cure diseases with faith, and they have literal cult followings. Someone who can ACTUALLY raise the dead? The mind boggles.

Or, let us think of this in terms of the warlock or wizard. If you can single-handedly wipe out all of the soldiers in a noble's compound, or worse yet, just destroy the compound without even needing to fight them... then that noble is going to either very quickly be dead, or swear fealty to you, because while they are "the state" their authority in part comes from being strong enough to back up their authority. This comes up a lot in discussions about alternative superhero settings. If you have someone with the strength of superman and the mindset of "do the right thing"... they effectively rule the world. Just de facto, they are in charge. Because there is no force on the planet that can constrain them, and their own morals will have them breaking any laws they disagree with... with no consequences. And things they say they want to happen will happen... because the only way they don't happen is if they don't care.

At some point in the levels 1 to 20, PCs become a superpower. They contain, in themselves, so much hard and soft power that they are effectively nations in and of themselves. This has to happen, because at the end of the scale, they are fighting beings with the power to rule entire planes of existence. If you can dethrone Graz'zt and muzzle Yeenoghu, then Good King John can't do anything to you.

You are making a lot of assumptions about what has to happen at higher levels.

Story logic is this: if you charge 50 guards, unless you have an amazing plan, that is not going to work out for you. I am not interested in a story of pointless combat against masses of weaklings; neither are my players. So if you are level 7 then those guards are going to be tough enough to make them an appropriate threat. In this case, probably a deadly one if you do something stupid. Why would I use guards with 11 HP against high level characters? That's not interesting.

We are not interested in power fantasy stories.

So your latter examples don't happen. And while extra-planar setting are not generally my bag, I would certainly not be interested in a game where the players were able to dethrone Graz'zt or whatever. If I was running some sort of adventure along those lines, the story would be that it was a lesser-powered avatar or something.

This is not to judge those who enjoy such stories - more power to them. But it is not the case that D&D requires them. It is perfectly possible to run campaigns where even at high levels characters are not superheroes.

 

[Emberashh]

It almost never makes sense that any part of the world has 6-8 encounters of things to reasonably challenge any group not engaged in slaughtering a village or similar. The game should never have assumed & mapped PCs to such an expectation simply because that doesn't fit in an average session or a reasonable adventure design, every 5e adventure from wotc demonstrates the unreasonableness there.

If it doesn't make sense for your world then you're playing the wrong game for that world. And yes, that does include WOTCs own content.

And nevermind that its not medium-hards, the game was originally designed around 4 hards per adventuring period as a maximum.

Encounter math never changed from Next to 2014. If Hards aren't your standard encounter you're not challenging 2014 PCs, and when you account for optional variants like feats, magic items, and post 2014 content, you need to actually be pushing your difficulty thresholds upwards of 3x.

 

[tetrasodium]

If it doesn't make sense for your world then you're playing the wrong game for that world. And yes, that does include WOTCs own content.

And nevermind that its not medium-hards, the game was originally designed around 4 hards per adventuring period as a maximum.

Encounter math never changed from Next to 2014. If Hards aren't your standard encounter you're not challenging 2014 PCs, and when you account for optional variants like feats, magic items, and post 2014 content, you need to actually be pushing your difficulty thresholds upwards of 3x.

The system math & assumptions need to be properly set from the getgo rather than expecting the DM & adventure design to patch around it after the fact as 5e does. If wotc themselves can't meet the target & instead keeps making adventures for 5e but are making them for the wrong game it very strongly indicates that the problem is the design of 5e itself rather than a game system mismatch for "that world".

 

[Emberashh]

The system math & assumptions need to be properly set from the getgo rather than expecting the DM & adventure design to patch around it after the fact as 5e does. If wotc themselves can't meet the target & instead keeps making adventures for 5e but are making them for the wrong game it very strongly indicates that the problem is the design of 5e itself rather than a game system mismatch for "that world".

Its both. 5e at this point is a known quantity. If you're choosing to run it theres zero excuse to deliberately run yourself into problems with it. Either adjust accordingly or play something else.

This is not, by the way, at any point, communicating that this situation should be maintained going into 1DND

 

[Chaosmancer]

You are making a lot of assumptions about what has to happen at higher levels.

Story logic is this: if you charge 50 guards, unless you have an amazing plan, that is not going to work out for you. I am not interested in a story of pointless combat against masses of weaklings; neither are my players. So if you are level 7 then those guards are going to be tough enough to make them an appropriate threat. In this case, probably a deadly one if you do something stupid. Why would I use guards with 11 HP against high level characters? That's not interesting.

We are not interested in power fantasy stories.

So your latter examples don't happen. And while extra-planar setting are not generally my bag, I would certainly not be interested in a game where the players were able to dethrone Graz'zt or whatever. If I was running some sort of adventure along those lines, the story would be that it was a lesser-powered avatar or something.

This is not to judge those who enjoy such stories - more power to them. But it is not the case that D&D requires them. It is perfectly possible to run campaigns where even at high levels characters are not superheroes.

This isn't about power fantasies, this is about the expectations of the game.

Your players aren't interested in fights against weaklings? Perfectly fine... how do you KNOW what a weakling is? Sure, you can have Schrodinger's guards who are always as powerful as you need them to be, but that's a consistency problem. If you end up fighting the Baronial Guards at level 3, who do you fight if the story naturally leads you back into conflict with that baron? Does he hire bandits and brigands who are somehow stronger than his personal elite guard from back when he was a wealthy baron?

Sure, you can say "Yes, of course he does" and just gloss over it, but then what if their is an orc invasion, are the orcs somehow EVEN STRONGER than those elite? Again, you can say "Yes, of course they are, we aren't interested in power fantasy stories, only fair fights, so everything will always be the perfect strength to fight the players" but... then how could they ever fight something beyond their strength? You have to have some semblance of an order, a hierarchy of power, or the world simply folds in on itself. And once you have that hierarchy, then the PCs are going to move along it and at SOME POINT the guards who would logically be working in this area.... are too weak to pose a challenge.

As for the "I'd never run an adventure where they beat Graz'zt"... good for you? It really doesn't change the point though. Once you reach levels 18 to 20, you don't exactly have a lot of options for fair fights. Ancient Demons, Powerful Celestials, Archfiends, world-changing dragons. I think looking over the top creatures in the books, the strongest things that aren't fiends or dragons or massive colossi are NPC Liches with specific stories.

Sure, make it ONLY a CR 23 Avatar of Graz'zt, but the official statblocks tell us that Graz'zt himself as a CR 24 Demon Lord is something that your party should be able to fight by level 20. You can disdain that. You can decide that that isn't actually him and he's really more powerful than that, but the truth of the game is that once you reach those final few levels you don't fight the Emperor's Champion, or a rogue Warlord, or a particularly disgruntled troll. The game itself has moved into the realm of superheroes, myth, legend, and fighting the elder evils of the universe.