CapnZapp
Legend
Finished (actually DMd) my first 5E campaign (up to level 8) just now.
A few observations:
1) While I haven't ruled it out entirely, it seems awfully harsh to play a melee character that does not optimize either hit points or AC. My group has two melee characters; one Bear Barbarian and one Vengeance Paladin. The first one soaks damage like crazy, and is one of the few viable candidates for in-combat healing (since every hp healed counts as 2 hp). The other survives due to a base AC of 19 (which is often upped to 21 and sometimes even to 23), which critters can't hit unless they roll a very healthy 17 or more.
We all agree any "regular" melee character, with standard hp and perhaps AC 16-17, simply plays in a junior league.
2) Both characters converge on the Great Weapon Master and Polearm Master combo. The Paladin fought with a Polearm, the Barbarian with a Greatsword. At level 8 the Paladin would probably have taken GWM.
The Barbarian on several occasions did brutal amounts of damage combining Reckless Attack with the power attack from GWM. Against low-AC fodder this repeatedly let him clean out the field almost like an area attack, negating the attack penalty through Advantage gained without having to involve any other character. A few times he didn't even get counter-attacked simply because all his nearby foes were dead by the time he was supposed to feel the drawback of Reckless!
3) Both spellcasters in the group (one Light Cleric, one Lore Bard; both sporting the Fireball spell) clearly think control spells are too heavily nerfed in this edition. (We don't do trivial fights, so our fights clearly take more than three rounds to play out; blocking a foe one or two rounds is subsequently not as valuable). Except a few spells (such as Sleep) they struggled to justify casting control spells when they got much better results simply causing damage and thus directly helping the melees. (This might change in high-level play. But since our group can easily output 100+ hp worth of damage per round, we haven't seen it yet).
Direct damage spells are thus fine, even though the occassional Fireball still has a hard time to keep up with the staying power and continued damage output of the two melee PCs. I mean: they too can nova (esp. the Paladin) for 80+ damage...
Neither spellcaster focused on changing the battle terrain; it's possible a spellcaster will do fine casting walls, fogs and the like. We reserve judgement until we have had time to check one out.
Overarching question is: why include squishy spellcasters in the team at all? Sure, they can provide Fly or Haste (etc) but then they're restricted to doing ONLY that. Honestly, a potion is a much better solution here. Especially the Bard was so weak (lowest hp, lowest AC) to be a real concern.
I do think the spellcaster situation would be greatly improved in a no feat game, however.
It does look like most of the imbalance is caused by how GWM/PM allows the melees to make three attacks at level 5+ (routinely doing 30+ damage a round; thus leaving spellcaster cantrips and even low-level spells in the dust) and that with the weapons that make the most damage (unlike TWF, which seems much less problematic in this regard).
In general, this should not come as a surprise.
If we agree the game is superbly balanced with all options turned off, then when we add options that greatly benefit some character types more than others, this throws that precious balance off track.
Problem is, I'm not sure the solution is to add more feats to other kinds of characters (vanilla sword-and-board melees; spellcasters). Ideally, I would like a take two on three specific feats:
Great Weapon Mastery and Sharpshooter: perhaps power attack needs to attack at disadvantage with no way to negate?
Great Weapon Mastery and Polearm Master: granting a bonus attack so easily is unbalancing the game vs the have-nots (the "light" fighters and most spellcasters). I would much rather see this mechanism reserved for otherwise-unused-light-weapons, and have great weapons be hard but slow (few attacks) and polearms vulnerable to swarming (why not an AC penalty to attacks from adjacent foes as well as disadvantage on attacking adjacent foes?).
Roughly speaking: at level 5, three attacks should be reserved for light blades, two attacks for medium ones, and when you power attack with a great weapon, why not limit that to a single attack per round?
Throttling back the best feat-enabled melee builds should mean being able to leave spellcasting alone. Their cantrips are fine compared to a vanilla fighter (or valor bard, or TWF ranger etc) doing 15+ damage a round. Not so much compared to optimized builds doing double that.
Thank you for listening to my ramblings
A few observations:
1) While I haven't ruled it out entirely, it seems awfully harsh to play a melee character that does not optimize either hit points or AC. My group has two melee characters; one Bear Barbarian and one Vengeance Paladin. The first one soaks damage like crazy, and is one of the few viable candidates for in-combat healing (since every hp healed counts as 2 hp). The other survives due to a base AC of 19 (which is often upped to 21 and sometimes even to 23), which critters can't hit unless they roll a very healthy 17 or more.
We all agree any "regular" melee character, with standard hp and perhaps AC 16-17, simply plays in a junior league.
2) Both characters converge on the Great Weapon Master and Polearm Master combo. The Paladin fought with a Polearm, the Barbarian with a Greatsword. At level 8 the Paladin would probably have taken GWM.
The Barbarian on several occasions did brutal amounts of damage combining Reckless Attack with the power attack from GWM. Against low-AC fodder this repeatedly let him clean out the field almost like an area attack, negating the attack penalty through Advantage gained without having to involve any other character. A few times he didn't even get counter-attacked simply because all his nearby foes were dead by the time he was supposed to feel the drawback of Reckless!
3) Both spellcasters in the group (one Light Cleric, one Lore Bard; both sporting the Fireball spell) clearly think control spells are too heavily nerfed in this edition. (We don't do trivial fights, so our fights clearly take more than three rounds to play out; blocking a foe one or two rounds is subsequently not as valuable). Except a few spells (such as Sleep) they struggled to justify casting control spells when they got much better results simply causing damage and thus directly helping the melees. (This might change in high-level play. But since our group can easily output 100+ hp worth of damage per round, we haven't seen it yet).
Direct damage spells are thus fine, even though the occassional Fireball still has a hard time to keep up with the staying power and continued damage output of the two melee PCs. I mean: they too can nova (esp. the Paladin) for 80+ damage...
Neither spellcaster focused on changing the battle terrain; it's possible a spellcaster will do fine casting walls, fogs and the like. We reserve judgement until we have had time to check one out.
Overarching question is: why include squishy spellcasters in the team at all? Sure, they can provide Fly or Haste (etc) but then they're restricted to doing ONLY that. Honestly, a potion is a much better solution here. Especially the Bard was so weak (lowest hp, lowest AC) to be a real concern.
I do think the spellcaster situation would be greatly improved in a no feat game, however.
It does look like most of the imbalance is caused by how GWM/PM allows the melees to make three attacks at level 5+ (routinely doing 30+ damage a round; thus leaving spellcaster cantrips and even low-level spells in the dust) and that with the weapons that make the most damage (unlike TWF, which seems much less problematic in this regard).
In general, this should not come as a surprise.
If we agree the game is superbly balanced with all options turned off, then when we add options that greatly benefit some character types more than others, this throws that precious balance off track.
Problem is, I'm not sure the solution is to add more feats to other kinds of characters (vanilla sword-and-board melees; spellcasters). Ideally, I would like a take two on three specific feats:
Great Weapon Mastery and Sharpshooter: perhaps power attack needs to attack at disadvantage with no way to negate?
Great Weapon Mastery and Polearm Master: granting a bonus attack so easily is unbalancing the game vs the have-nots (the "light" fighters and most spellcasters). I would much rather see this mechanism reserved for otherwise-unused-light-weapons, and have great weapons be hard but slow (few attacks) and polearms vulnerable to swarming (why not an AC penalty to attacks from adjacent foes as well as disadvantage on attacking adjacent foes?).
Roughly speaking: at level 5, three attacks should be reserved for light blades, two attacks for medium ones, and when you power attack with a great weapon, why not limit that to a single attack per round?
Throttling back the best feat-enabled melee builds should mean being able to leave spellcasting alone. Their cantrips are fine compared to a vanilla fighter (or valor bard, or TWF ranger etc) doing 15+ damage a round. Not so much compared to optimized builds doing double that.
Thank you for listening to my ramblings
Frankly i dont know how the -5/+10 survived playtesting.
