D&D 5E Party optimisation vs Character optimisation

[Zardnaar]

The vengeance paladin is what I have experience with. Their ability to gain advantage for tough opponents is pretty nice. The reality is that you can't go wrong with a paladin. The only way to make them weak is to play them badly. Every single paladin archetype is pretty strong in the right situation. Greenknight against casters. First archetype against stuff magic circle protects against. Vengeance paladin for straight up killing a single strong creature. Paladin is one of the strongest overcall classes in the game.

I like the wizard period. It's a very good class. So much to do with it. It's why I've always been attracted to the class. You have your core useful abilities you need to support your party. Then you get to have fun figuring out ways to use odd spells effectively. Diviner and Abjurer are probably the most potent defensive combinations. I like Transmuter and Evoker as well. That little stone can come in handy. The evoker abilities allow some nice bursts of damage and allow you to straight up nuke on top of you party. I like when you can nuke without having to worry about damaging your mates.

I like the barbarian/fighter multiclass for tanking. You have rage for the big fights. Reckless means you almost always hit for high damage. Danger Sense allows you to make Dex saves against dangerous effect allowing you to spend a feat on resilient con giving you pretty well rounded saves. Battlemaster or Eldritch Knight offer some nice combat boosting ability or defensive flexibility.

There's lots of fun, effective combinations in 5E. Figuring out how best to use them in a party environment is huge fun.

Damn you must be reading my mind. Evoker is fine if a little boring but the Transmuter, Diviner and Abjurer seem to be the best 3 wizard classes, Evoker if you want to try and keep up with the Sorcerer/Warlock in a DPR race. We normally struggle getting a wizard player or an effective wizard player at any rate in any D&D edition. In 3E for example we saw sod all wizards and 1 Druid in the 3.0 and 3.5 versions. People knew they were the most powerful classes and did not take them.

As I said we also rolled stats I think our Half Elf Paladin is rocking it up with a 20 char, 18 strength 14 con and a 6 dex. The bladelock has 18 con, 18 str, 16 cha. Rolling dice the PCs are trying out the MAD options a bit more.

 

[PnPgamer]

Your experience mirrors my own. We have a vengeance paladin and lore bard, they are a huge help. I'm playing an evocation wizard. I do have to be more careful than a Abjurer. The ward ability starts off slow, but becomes immensely powerful at higher level. It is sickeningly powerful once the Abjurer can cast a 1st or 2nd level abjuration spell at will to constantly recharge it.

Constantly? Really?

Ive found that you can recharge the shield by spamming alarm during short rest. You do not get any rest yourself though.

 

[Celtavian]

Constantly? Really?

Ive found that you can recharge the shield by spamming alarm during short rest. You do not get any rest yourself though.

That works well for low level during a short rest. At high level better to take an abjuration spell like shield as an at will spell.

 

[Celtavian]

Damn you must be reading my mind. Evoker is fine if a little boring but the Transmuter, Diviner and Abjurer seem to be the best 3 wizard classes, Evoker if you want to try and keep up with the Sorcerer/Warlock in a DPR race. We normally struggle getting a wizard player or an effective wizard player at any rate in any D&D edition. In 3E for example we saw sod all wizards and 1 Druid in the 3.0 and 3.5 versions. People knew they were the most powerful classes and did not take them.

As I said we also rolled stats I think our Half Elf Paladin is rocking it up with a 20 char, 18 strength 14 con and a 6 dex. The bladelock has 18 con, 18 str, 16 cha. Rolling dice the PCs are trying out the MAD options a bit more.

I wasn't thinking in terms of keeping up with Sorcerer/Warlock in DPR. My thinking was the one area the wizard is weak in is damage. We have a Lore Bard, Paladin, and Life Cleric in our group, so I figured our bases were covered for defensive options. If we had a different group, I might have taken a more defensive caster.

I like having cantrips that do slightly more damage. My intent at higher level is to become a mobile blaster. I want to take misty step at will. I can bonus action misty step and move while firing a fire bolt or ranged cantrip.

I also like the ability to unleash a big bolt of damage for a single 60 point hit to disrupt concentration or take out a group of creatures. Or if I need some big damage for a short period of time, maximize a Bigby's Hand higher level flaming sphere while firing off another spell for some bursts of pain.

Most of the other effect spells rely on saving throws either easily missed by creatures with no bonuses or against creatures with Legendary Resistance that will make a save regardless of an ability like Portent. I like the abjuration ward. It's nearly impossible replenish during battle. It's good for a round or two of hits against a lot of the stuff we're fighting at the moment or one big breath weapon. I felt killing faster with either AoE spells or single target attacks spells would add to our overall group optimization more than defensive options given our composition.

I think I might try an Abjurer, Diviner, or Transmuter in the next part as I think that group will be less caster heavy and have more ranged attackers with mobility.

I also tend to plan for highest level. I really like an idea I came up for uber damage combos using simulacrum. For general adventuring, I was planning to bring along some ranged attacker type. For a raid on a lair or something, I wanted to be able to simulacrum myself. Then sort of nova on the end game creature using the Maximize feature. Figure a couple of animate objects going with ten darts each for stabbing away followed up maximized 5th level scorching ray for 77 points of damage max twice. Then unleash with maximized fire bolts for 45 points each two times a round. Figure the scorching ray round with the animated darts from two casters would reach DPR in the 120 to 200 range if around half your attacks hit. Your maximum damage potential with the combination a round would be around 300. You could probably sustain a 200 to 250 point DPR for a full minute. Most creatures going to die pretty quickly combined with party damage. It's the wizard version of a nova that works against Legendary Creatures due to using attack rolls. If they have certain resistances, you may have to adjust your strategy. It would still be highly effective damage as a nova burst. And maximized double AoEs can be pretty good if fighting a big fight.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

1. *Legendary Resistance and Laugh*. Or makes its save.
2. Congrats you just wasted a third level spell dispelling a second level spell. Keep it up.
3. Lore Bard, Light Cleric, and Abjurer all have ways of preventing this. In my game you would be down a character if you had the party mentioned instead.
4. I've never had an encounter that started off 1 mile away. Possible but highly unlikely. But yes, if you're out of range, you can't counter-spell. But not being able to EVER counter-spell is worse.
5. Every time I drop a character they have to burn actions and resources trying to get him back up, a simple Lore Bard, Light Cleric, or Abjurer could have easily prevented this. BTW, I kill upon dropping (or at least attempt to). No downed ping pong in my game.

I'm not saying you cannot play with such a party, of course you can! I am arguing that it's not that optimal because it lacks party wide resilience and mitigation.

1.) "Legendary Resistance and Laugh." Bit of a double standard there if you assume that Command always fails while Cutting Words always succeeds (in #3). No counter-strategy is helpful in all cases.

2.) To put it differently, you just "wasted" 25% of your party's action economy to negate (100%?) of the enemy's action economy. 3rd vs. 2nd level is a loss, yes, but not a serious one since everyone else is busy killing things with Eldritch Blasts. It's not like the party is helpless against the threat. I have no idea what my hanging "Congrats..." meant though.

3.) Abjurors can't prevent the attack at all, they can only absorb damage from it. I had forgotten though that 5E brain-eating now takes an attack roll instead of being automatic, so yes, Light clerics can at least make the Mind Flayer attack without advantage, and Lore Bards can make the attack-with-advantage suffer up to a -6 penalty on average. Out of all these strategies though the best one is the one available to warlocks: break the grapple with Repelling Blast before it ever gets this far. It takes two turns to eat a brain after all, and there's no need for you to act off-turn unless you ignored the grapple on your previous turn. (Maybe two of your buddies got grappled and you couldn't break both, or you failed your attack-with-advantage on your buddy. Such things happen. But then, failure can happen with anything.)

4.) I've had plenty of encounters that started a mile away. Always outdoors of course. (Recent example from my DM: "The perytons are flying toward you and you see black specks on their backs. You have two minutes until they arrive [on the combat grid]. What do you do in the meantime?") I've never had an encounter that involved a Meteor Swarm, but if I did run one it would probably involve starting at long range because that's what Meteor Swarm is fantastic at. (For most other purposes, against a party it's just a double-strength Fireball.)

5.) Lore Bards/Light Clerics/Abjurors have to burn (re-)actions too. It's always a tradeoff. By "could have easily prevented" I think you mean "could have tried to prevent". Everyone's got limitations. Lore Bard is totally ineffective in this scenario because it's a crit--Cutting Words doesn't help. Abjuror, well, he can add some extra ablative HP which may or may not be able to at least keep the guy from dying (you said he'd be one-shotted so I'm imagining that the target has maybe 40 of 80 HP left so the 127 would inflict instant death; Arcane Ward would just barely prevent the instant death) but still leaves him down and making death saves. Light Cleric can't use Warding Flare because the crit has already happened--you have to declare it when the attack happens, not after it's resolved.

Arcane Ward isn't really much better here than simply taking the Inspiring Leader feat on one of those warlock/clerics. Cutting Words is, well, sometimes useful, sometimes a waste (roll low), sometimes powerless (doesn't work against undead, etc.). It's nice to have as an option but it's also not an option I always feel compelled to exercise given scarcity constraints. I haven't played with Light Clerics, but the fact that you can only use it on 5 attacks per long rest (and unlike Cutting Words/Shield/etc. you don't even get to wait to use it on attacks that make a difference) is one of the reasons I haven't played with them: the ability is so meh that it doesn't interest me.

The main thing I'm seeing is that you like to focus on reactive scenarios where everybody's in melee and something happens and you need to burn a reaction on preventing a disaster (or at least trying to); if it works for you, great. But from my perspective that is pretty late in the game; I wouldn't have any fun playing that way because it's not proactive enough. "Respond, don't react."

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

My evoker wizard is starting to get more powerful. I like that this edition is focusing on different spells than the previous edition. Tonight I put a damage machine in motion using Fire Shield, Animate Objects, along with other attack spells as needed. I animated 10 darts and had them gangbang creatures for 10 attacks for 1d4+4 per attack. Took some NPCs that weren't powerful creatures down rather quickly. A fire shield on a martial, especially a barbarian, does more damage than the creature's attacks.

Note that Fire Shield is self-only.

Planar Binding is the spell that makes gate more useful than it appears.

Gate is also useful for 1.) kidnapping any entity whose name you know (i.e. travel to Avernus and cast Gate: "Princess Powderpuff!"), 2.) invading other people's Mordenkainen's Magnificent Mansions. I seem to recall DaveDash musing on ways to attack his party that likes to rest only in Mansions, well, Gate​ is that way. Expensive but maybe worth it.

As far as Planar Binding goes: don't forget to Magic Circle before you Gate, and ideally you should Bestow Curse as well with a 5th level spell slot in order to maximize your chances of a successful binding.

 

[neobolts]

The warlock/cleric suggestion wasn't mine, but as a thought experiment here are my thoughts on options for each:
4.) Meteor Swarm. Heal each other once the Meteor Swarm goes off? Counter-spell won't work on Meteor Swarm anyway, it's got a range of 1 mile and Counterspell only goes 60 feet.

4. I've never had an encounter that started off 1 mile away. Possible but highly unlikely. But yes, if you're out of range, you can't counter-spell. But not being able to EVER counter-spell is worse.

If someone casts a meteor swarm at max range, my advice is to backpedal.

 

[KarinsDad]

I think party optimization is also level dependent.

A party that is great at low level can be weaker at high level. For example, a heavily martial party at low level can work great whereas if they have very few spell casters, they'll have more problems at higher levels in situations where they cannot just move up and melee.


Abilities can also be more helpful at certain levels. Heavy Armor Master is huge at level 1, not so huge at level 20.


Multiclass PCs can be really powerful at higher levels, but it often takes time for them to make up the differences that lack of spells or other abilities at certain levels gave them. Our Ranger 2 / Wizard 3 (the player of whom is going to continue to go wizard) is decent in combat and has good AC, but since he cannot cast third level spells yet, his doesn't have the arcane game changers that a level 5 wizard is capable of.


So, any discussion of optimized parties should take into consideration party level (in addition to party size which was mentioned earlier).

 

[Celtavian]

Note that Fire Shield is self-only.

I can't believe I forgot it was self only.

 

[Tony Vargas]

The Lore Bard + Abjurer + Paladin + Light Cleric party has a lot of synergy, but this is mostly caster synergy. This is why I think casters at higher levels are better than non casters. Non caster types tend to be individually very strong.

Sounds like we're close to re-deriving optimization tiers. Casters are more versatile, which pushes them to a higher tier, in spite of a few non-casters having high white-room DPR.

It's definitely not all about damage, not as much as I used to think it was. Yes, damage is still the main way you win an encounter, but you also need to think about recon, mitigation and survivability, because the odds aren't always in your favour.
...
I actually find the encounter guidelines to be pretty good these days.

So you're saying that it's not all about DPR anymore, because the odds aren't always in your favor, but that's not because of the hit-and-miss quality of the encounter guidelines. So why is it the "odds aren't always in your favor" in 5e relative to other editions?