D&D 5E 5th Edition has broken Bounded Accuracy

[DEFCON 1]

Rather than casting Fly all the time, the party mage could always make Boots of Flying for everyone.

Yeah, this was my thought as well. If the party thought having the Fighter fly was that important, what was the reason for not trying to find or acquire a magic item to let him fly on his own so the wizard wasn't expected to always cast the spell?

Obviously, the DM doesn't have to make an item like that available to the party... but if the DM knows the spellcaster is unhappy with the game because this is an expected part of his job, then you'd hope he/she would acquiesce a little.

 

[spinozajack]

Give me a time frame for win/lose, and change the bet to cookies (winner chooses type, I like plain Chip's Ahoy) and I'll likely take your bet.

To be honest, I'm not sure what's worse. Feat power bloat for all builds + variants, or not fixing the gross imbalances between the fighting styles as is.

There are some interesting feats out there, that aren't overpowered, but rarely see any use.

Sharpshooter is probably overpowered too, but I haven't bothered too much with it yet. I might make a dual hand axe throwing fighter / assassin one day using it, because it's better to give up magic weapons to get one extra attack, especially when the +10 to damage makes a mockery of magic weapons' puny bonuses.

Feats ridicule even legendary magic weapons in terms of damage enhancement. Pretty clear sign they are overpowered.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Feats ridicule even legendary magic weapons in terms of damage enhancement. Pretty clear sign they are overpowered.

If by "ridicule" you mean "complement."



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[Sacrosanct]

I guess I must be a huge outlier, because I've not seen GWF or sniper or sharpshooter be overpowered in any of our games. Around 10ish level, we're fighting mostly creatures with ACs between 16-20. Most everyone has about a +8 to hit on average between prof, ability, and any weapons (if any, which most don't even at 10th level). So we hit just about more than half. Taking that -5 penalty means hitting on only 13-17 or higher. That's a pretty significant penalty in actual game play when every hit counts.

But in terms of full disclosure, none of my players ever race to max out ability scores (they chose feats that sound interesting and support their theme). We also almost never play above the teens, and if something doesn't really become a problem until level 20, I don't really care about it because it wont' ever impact my table. We also don't sit and compare our damage output with each other. I have enough to worry about in the game with my character; last thing I'm doing is paying attention to their numbers and worrying if we're the same or not. Whether Bill is doing 2DPS more per round than me or 3DPS less doesn't impact how I play my character or my fun at all. In fact, if Tricia calls out a ton of damage on a nova attack, my first reactions is going to be, "Nice!". Not, "Why can't I do that too? Game must be broken."


Looking at these threads, it seems I am by far the outlier.

 

[keterys]

Most everyone has about a +8 to hit on average between prof, ability, and any weapons (if any, which most don't even at 10th level).
...
Looking at these threads, it seems I am by far the outlier.

Not having even a +1 weapon by 10th level is extremely unlikely at all the tables I've seen. Some archer fighters have +8 to hit at 2nd level, so yeah that's a bit of an outlier.

That said, many of the folks highlighting the more broken aspects of the feat are _also_ outliers.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Not having even a +1 weapon by 10th level is extremely unlikely at all the tables I've seen. Some archer fighters have +8 to hit at 2nd level, so yeah that's a bit of an outlier.

That said, many of the folks highlighting the more broken aspects of the feat are _also_ outliers.

We're playing the published adventures, so I don't think it's that much of an outlier as to only a couple of the PCs having magical weapons by 10th level. There just aren't that many there.

 

[aramis erak]

Concur. Melee is lame. [snip] Missile >> melee.

Historically, that's usually been the case. Then again, archers took a lot more training, so were not as common.

 

[KarinsDad]

The caster decides his spells. If you dont want to buff.... dont. Every martial should have a ranged attack after all. Relying on the wizard to make you fly is a big mistake.

While what you say might be true in some cases, I do think that there is "group expectations" or "peer pressure" for casters to take certain spells and cast them in situations at many or most tables. For example, some classes take heal spells, arcane casters take Fly spells so that melee types can get into combat, etc.

I was discussing this with my friend who plays the Cleric and I said to her, you have so few spells (Wis 14), if you don't want to take Aid, don't. Let the Paladin do any Aiding. But even with that in mind, she is the only PC that can cast Revival (although it has never been needed except the one time the Cleric almost died, go figure), so there might be some expectation that she have it ready. The player is a people pleaser, so ... she always takes Revival, just in case. It's sometimes hard for some people to not be in this type of expectation mindset.

I agree however that only being able to concentrate on one spell is probably too restrictive. I would be inclined to make a feat to solve that issue. Concentrate on as many spells as you have stat bonus or something, but you still have to make checks if you take damage, athough maybe at a small bonus. Done.

I originally had a penalty to it in my house rules (or alternatively, an increase to the save DC), but I didn't want a single hard hit to nearly always take out multiple (or all) spells and it was a bit more bookkeeping.

 

[KarinsDad]

Druids get some really nice battlefield control spells, and their spell list seems more tailored to it. For example, Moonbeam is a great little spell to use in Dungeons, very effective at controlling the battlefield, and the damage scales really well. Higher levels casting it as a 3rd-4th level spell is extremely efficient use of resources, because you're doing 4d10 damage per round (half on a save), and forcing things to move around, blocking doorways, or frying up unintelligent creatures like oozes who just move on through it.
It's better than wall of fire because you can move it around once you cast it and it does radiant damage.

There's heaps of examples like that in the Druid spell list.

Not to say Wizards can't do battlefield control - they can - but Druids get some really nice picks.

Ah yes. Moonbeam is fun.

 

[keterys]

We're playing the published adventures, so I don't think it's that much of an outlier as to only a couple of the PCs having magical weapons by 10th level. There just aren't that many there.

Played Mines of Phandelver and everyone in the group had a magic weapon by the end of the adventure.

_Everyone_. Including the monk, wizard, and warlock.