D&D 5E Finally switching my campaign from 4th to 5th Edition.

[Flamestrike]

2. Second question, for other 4E players who have switched over: Which rôles do the new classes approximate? (I notice for example that the PHB ranger is not nearly the Striker of 4E, but perhaps no class is?)

Monks (from 5th level onwards) and Rogues are your main strikers. Paladins too (via divine smite). Rangers are OK (but are built more around the exploration pillar, with some decent combat powers and utility baked in). Warlocks are decent ranged strikers with eldritch blast too.

Barbarians and Moon Druids (and Fighters) are your main 'tanks'.

Spellcasters (wizard, sorcerer, druid, warlock) are controllers.

Bard and Cleric are your leader types (lots of buffs)

 

[Azurewraith]

2. Second question, for other 4E players who have switched over: Which rôles do the new classes approximate? (I notice for example that the PHB ranger is not nearly the Striker of 4E, but perhaps no class is?)

The roles I wouldn't say clearly defined as with lack of marking the best way to make an enemy take note of you is to bring the pain. The barbarian can soak huge ammounts of damage with his rage but at the same time he's dishing out huge anmounts with his great sword having advantage on his attacks via reckless attack and having the +10 from great weapon fighting. Warlocks are another good example of blurred lines they cab deal huge ammounts of damage with eldritch blast and having great utility with there spell slots same with paladins smiting for disgust damage and spamming bless and shield of faith

 

[Uchawi]

5E combat and action economy is really basic so you have to choose a class to do what you want for special combat actions. 5E does not have the depth of 4E with class types and builds where a group of classes have common move or minor actions at hand to supplement your standard actions. This impacts martial classes more than casters. 5E is predominately magic based for the majority of classes (including monks and barbarians) so the fighter suffers the most. You will be hard pressed to find the flexibility of choice for non-casting classes, because there is no equivalent of powers. The exception is the Battlemaster with maneuvers, but that is only a shadow when comparing a warlord or other 4e martial class choices.

Where 5E excels in comparison to 4E is casters are more interesting with flexible systems to change what they can do each day. It is not as powerful when comparing spells casters from 3E or previous editions with limiters like concentration. But it still can be abused since casters will have the majority of the abilities to save the day unless you are generous with magic items. And that is my final point in reference to 5E. It does not assume magic items will be used in the game so there was little effort to balance adding them to the game. So in the end, the DM will have to master the game like 3E or previous editions to make sure all the classes can share the spot light and avoid the caster versus golf caddy syndrome.

 

[Azurewraith]

I disagree partly here - throwing waves of deadly encounters is not the way to go about it, unless your group are happy with TPKs.

Players are supposed to defeat a medium or hard encounter. Theyre expected to win, expending a few resources. In fact theyre expected to win 6-8 of these medium to hard encounters in a row (with only a few short rests) before being drained of resources to the point that they need to long rest.

If your PCs are smashing your encounters, just throw more at them; dont ramp up the difficulty.

Also, CR is a guideline only. 5 x 5th level PCs have an encounter budget for a 'hard' encounter of 3750-5499xp. A single CR 5 monster is worth 1800xp - making it an easy encounter for a party of 5 PCs'. A 'solo' CR 9 encounter is 5000xp meaning (on XP alone) it is roughly an appropriate encounter for 5 x 5th level PCs.

You only use the CR as a guide to assess that the monster may have attacks or abilities that could prove lethal to lower level PCs. Taking the CR 9 example, it includes things like a Young Blue Dragon (10d10 damage breath weapon would wipe out a party of 5th level PCs) or a Fire Giants +11 to hit, 6D6+7 damage (multiattack) greatsword is equally deadly. Such an encounter would likely result in a TPK.

Its tempting to increase the difficulty and lower the number of encounters, but dont do it. Taking 5E's swingy nature into account, you'll only kick off an arms race and wind up with TPKs.

Just use more encounters, not harder ones.

Never had an issue with TPKS and i personally sometimes its difficult to cram in 6-8 encounters let alone more and the deadly encounters form my experience are really easy-medium encounters 5e put the kid gloves on.

 

[Flamestrike]

Never had an issue with TPKS and i personally sometimes its difficult to cram in 6-8 encounters let alone more and the deadly encounters form my experience are really easy-medium encounters 5e put the kid gloves on.

Whats your party composition?

And can you give me some standard encounters?

 

[TheCosmicKid]

2. Second question, for other 4E players who have switched over: Which rôles do the new classes approximate? (I notice for example that the PHB ranger is not nearly the Striker of 4E, but perhaps no class is?)

The only class that really clearly approximates a 4E role as a part of its core design is the rogue. (Possibly because the 4E striker role was most clearly designed around 1E-3E rogue design.) Clerics and bards can be "leaders", but they don't have to be. (A bard can be literally anything.) "Defender" and "controller" are much more 4E-specific concepts than "striker" and "leader"; you'll find that there are tough guys who stand at the front and squishy guys who cast spells, of course, but they don't do the same things mechanically that they did in 4E because 5E places so much less emphasis on tactical positioning. There's nothing like a mark, for instance.

PS: The ranger can be more 4E-striker-y than you might think at first glance. The quarry ability is just called hunter's mark and hidden in the spell list instead of being a class feature.

 

[Redthistle]

http://www.enworld.org/forum/conten...nverting-3-5-and-Pathfinder-to-5e#.Vl85Qnv1Y7

This also has a link to WotC's own conversion document.

 

[Tanarii]

2. Second question, for other 4E players who have switched over: Which rôles do the new classes approximate? (I notice for example that the PHB ranger is not nearly the Striker of 4E, but perhaps no class is?)

They don't approximate. Instead they take on the classic roles:

Basic Melee/Combat - Fighter, Barbarian, Paladin
Arcane Blaster/Utility - Wizard, Warlock, Sorcerer
Scouting/Mobile Combat - Rogue, Ranger, Monk
Healing/Buff/Debuff - Cleric, Druid, Bard

There's plenty of crossover of course. That's the entire point of, for example, a Druid or Bard or Ranger. They have their basic classic role, but pull in plenty stuff from another classic role.

 

[Azurewraith]

Whats your party composition?

And can you give me some standard encounters?

There either 3rd or 4th level don't remember off head tempest cleric, wild sorcerer,champion fighter and a bard valor. Now last session was combat light(1encounter a troll with a swim speed and 4 kuo-tuo for the 3pcs as one got left behind).

They started at 2 and hit level 3mid way through. They encountered

2drow scouts that were joined 3 turns later by a further 2scouts and captain (scout mm349 the cpt was a gnoll) packleader skinned drow mm165) I make this 850xp so just over the mm value no one dropped this combat but the cleric and bard both used a lvl 1slot.

Next they hit a mimic(mm220) and 2piercers(mm252) both piercers missed there rolls and took a decent ammount of damage from the drop and were killed on before they could climb again. The mimic did some decent damage and dropped the fighter the sorcerer dropped a 1st lvl slot here. Then they took a short rest. Spent some hit die(sorry didn't right how many) I make that 900xp they then lvld up to 3 the bard and sorcerer got there lvl 2slots the cleric didn't due to known vs prepared.

Then they fought a single Roper(mm261) he dropped the sorcerer first round followed by the bard in the next all though he did manage to get off a shatter wich caused a minor cave in dealing a further damage to the roper(sorry again no numbers) the fighter got into melee and whent Ham while the cleric picked up the other guys with cure wounds spending all his 1st lvl slots the sorcerer then used blindness/deafness blinding the Roper for 3rounds while they finished it off. They took another short rest the cleric prayed and got his lvl 2slots. That is 1800 XP 200above the 1600 deadly limit. They encountered a roaming gibbering mouther (random encounter table roll its 250 XP so under easy) they then decided to rest for the night in a side cubby.

Pretty standred encounters as far as the night goes I must admit the shatter causing a cave in on the Roper was unexpected but it seemed a fair ruling.

Oh I should mention we used lingering injuries and vitality rules oh And I rolled stats for the array they were 17 17 14 16 10 13. Stats are a lil on the high side I guess but we used rolled stats since 3.5

 

[Sword of Spirit]

This impacts martial classes more than casters. 5E is predominately magic based for the majority of classes (including monks and barbarians) so the fighter suffers the most.

...

But it still can be abused since casters will have the majority of the abilities to save the day unless you are generous with magic items. And that is my final point in reference to 5E. It does not assume magic items will be used in the game so there was little effort to balance adding them to the game. So in the end, the DM will have to master the game like 3E or previous editions to make sure all the classes can share the spot light and avoid the caster versus golf caddy syndrome.

I think this needs some more context, since we don't know exactly what background of playstyle or experience the OP is coming from.

The only way casters are unbalanced compared to non-casters is if we are talking about serious power-gaming optimization, or intentional use of rules exploits. And, as you said, even in that situation it isn't as abusable as 3e was.

For some groups the level of power-gaming required to throw off balance is apparently normal (fine if that's their preferred D&D style), so the fact that its easier to "break" than 4e might stand out. In practice, this doesn't happen for most groups. For instance, 5e fighters were consistently rated as the "best" or most powerful class in WotC polls involving over 100,000 players of all editions and levels of gaming experience.

While the very fact that classes are built differently means you can't have a 4e level of balance, I think 5e did a pretty good job of making sure (almost) nobody is going to be overshadowed during normal play assumptions, and I really don't think it requires any particular DM skills to make that true. Now, sure, if you want to attempt to approach 4e levels of balance the DM is going to have to be careful about encounter pacing and such.

Bottom line is that the game is fairly well balanced out of the box, and casters and caddies only happens if you have skilled power-gamers who intentionally make it happen.