D&D 5E Suggestions on modifying 5e to give characters more bonuses

The party consists of the following

Elf Fey warlock with chain pact.
Elf Rogue arcane trickster
Half-Elf Paladin of the Ancients.
The Arcane Trickster and Chain Pact might be the issue. The Eldritch Knight and Arcane Trickster get spells -really- slowly, and thinking they might be half (or better) casters part of subconscious draw to those classes. Chain pact is a lot like the Beastmaster Ranger, riddled with some flaws in the execution of a 4e "binder" type class. Warlock also has issues with few spells a day, falling back onto eldritch blast a lot.


The player who plays the warlock has an issue with the proficiency bonus only goes from +2 to +6. Given 20 stat, he does not see a significant difference from 1st level having a +6 proficiency bonus, to a 20th level character having +11. He wants a bigger difference between apprentice and master as far as bonus rolled.
Give him the Rod of the Pact Bearer, in the DMG. Its literally made for warlocks to be bigger and badder. Ring of Spell Storing is awesome, since it effectively gives more spells a short rest. After? Don't mess with the bonuses - bounded accuracy is kinda critical to the game. If he wants more accuracy, then he needs to start talking about ways to find Advantage.

The one playing an arcane trickster feels that characters that the feel of the character gaining power is to slow. In pathfinder just about anything you take, even if it is marginal makes you more powerful, and he can see it. He does not at this point see it in 5e, yes you get more hp and such but.
The Arcane Trickster is primarily a rogue. Does he like primarily physical characters? I think the real complaint here may be hidden. 5e is a very simple game, deliberately stepping away from the complexity of 3e/pathfinder. Some people hate that.




I don't think adding more power is the answer to your problems. There are easily ways to do that with magic items in the DMG. The question I have to ask is what are they looking for in the game? Are they min-maxers? Is tweaking out the biggest and baddest character, where every level you have to make significant choices to add to the character sheet? If so, then I suspect the real problem is "number of choices made at each level," not the bonuses.
 
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ad_hoc

(she/her)
Knowing what options they are taking might help too.

Did the Warlock take a weasel for a familiar and mage armour for an invocation? Warlock gives a lot of options and it is easy to screw it up.

Arcane Trickster as well.
 

jodyjohnson

Adventurer
If they want the treadmill, give them the treadmill.

Everyone gets their Level as a bonus and all their opponents get their CR as a bonus to attacks and AC. But that might be too transparent for them.

It will give that Pathfinder feel.
 

DEFCON 1

Legend
Supporter
Two things you could add to your game to give more power at each level but not necessarily over-balance things too much:

1) Use the Proficiency die (as was mentioned above) rather than the flat proficiency bonus.
2) Give an ability score bonus or feat every other level (or every level if you really want to go crazy.)

#1 is pretty self-explanatory. Even at 1st level, you might get a +4 bonus over someone without proficiency, which now becomes a larger jump between the trained and untrained. If people balk at the possibility of rolling low on the proficiency die, then you could make it number-rolled or the static bonus, whichever ends up being higher. So at 1st level, you roll the proficiency die, treating any 1s and 2s as 2s, and 3s and 4s as themselves.

#2 will most likely introduce more feats into your game. In a normal campaign, my experience has been thus far that the first time ASB/feats are available (at 4th level) everyone has been taking the score bonuses to get their primary up to at least 18, and then maybe they decide to take a feat at 8th (but not always). But by instead giving ASB/feats to them every other level at 2nd, 4th, 6th etc... yes the players will probably max out at 20 faster perhaps, but you'll also see more feats get taken. Which will give players something new and special more often as they level, and won't greatly overpower things, because the feats themselves are usually only situationally useful.
 

I wouldn't change much. Perhaps use the variant Proficiency Dice option first, before switching to another method, if they want more a more bonus-y flavor.
 

1st to 3rd is one session, every other session is a level afterwords.

Yep they see that it is intentional, the previous campaign ended about level 12. I think it is pathfinder mentality, they are used to getting something every level or so and that something increases power.

Right now at 4th level at least 2 players are feeling that their characters are not much powerful then at level 1 or 2.

Maybe when they hit the teen levels again and go around 15 or so they will feel differently.

I don't think they're paying a whole lot of attention to their characters then. Taking just the warlock, he just got his Chain pact at level 3, which is very powerful and can provide excellent scouting and potential damage (the imps tail attack is especially potent at low levels). From 2nd to 3rd he also got another spell, his spell slot level went up to 2 (remember that all warlock spells are cast at the highest spell level and regenerate at a short rest, making him grossly more powerful damage wise) and from 3rd to 4th he got an ability score improvement, another cantrip, another spell known. He can do 4d6 nova damage twice between short rests, and depending on the invocation he chose, he may be doing the most damage in the party with Eldritch Blast.

With the Arcane Trickster, from 2nd to 4th they got an extra die to their sneak attack, they gained three cantrips, four spells, three spell slots, and an ability score improvement. That's absolutely absurd for just a two level difference, and may be the greatest power leap of any archetype in the game. Maybe remind them of this: Power in 5E isn't necessarily a bonus in damage or a bonus to hit. It's in the amount of resources you gain and the options you have to make a fight go in your favor. Fighters will always do more damage than a Wizard, but I would never take a fighter over a wizard in a fight, simply because of the resources at the wizard's disposal.
 



pming

Legend
Hiya

1st to 3rd is one session, every other session is a level afterwords.

Yep they see that it is intentional, the previous campaign ended about level 12. I think it is pathfinder mentality, they are used to getting something every level or so and that something increases power.

Right now at 4th level at least 2 players are feeling that their characters are not much powerful then at level 1 or 2.

Maybe when they hit the teen levels again and go around 15 or so they will feel differently.

For me, I've found that using the average damage listed in monsters attacks and whatnot is really making a big difference in player perceived character power. At level 1, with 8 to 12hp typical for my group, that kobold doing 4 points of damage a hit is pretty deadly. Now that they just hit level 3 and have between 20 and maybe 40 for the Goliath Barbarian, that 4 points per hit makes them feel a LOT more powerful. Each level they saw their characters 'power toughness' increase with both abilities/spells, but mostly HP increase. Maybe try using average damage for a while for monsters to see if this works for your group.

Also, as a side note, I've been noticing the players are working even more with each other than in previous D&D incarnations over the last decade or two. I'm not sure what it is, but I think it is actually because each class doesn't "get something every level". They see that the Cleric just got level 2 spells, and she cast Protectino from Evil/Good on the Barbarian so he could stand toe-to-toe with a 'swamp god' (think 40' diameter gibbering mouther with a mass of feelers, legs and stalked organs; HD9 with *9* attacks per round at +6th for 3 damage with effect of being Restrained). With this tactic and the Bard backing everyone up and doing what he could, they managed to actually slay the horror. Now, when we were playing PF, each player would have been focused on using their characters vast array of 'special stuff' to enhance their own character. This was proven time and time again as we played PF for a year or two (off and on); if a character gets more stuff every level, they will use said stuff more and more on themselves so as to "not waste it" on someone else who wouldn't get some particular synergistic "build benefit". With 5e, like what we have when we play 1e or Dark Dungeons, the players work together a LOT more.

My suggestion, other than the average hp thing, would also be to go the other way; don't increase the PC's powers and whatnot... decrease the effectiveness/capabilities of the NPC's/Monsters. Once you start down the dark path of giving power-creep to your players, forever will it dominate your game. Trust me. Much easier to give a little bonus/edge every now and then on a case by case basis than to give it carte blanche and try and claw it back from your players...they will not be happy in the later case (quite the opposite in the former).

^_^

Paul L. Ming
 

Tony Vargas

Legend
I am running my groups 2nd 5e campaign. The main issue that my players have is that they do not feel that their characters gain power from one level to the next. They like the system overall, though. They do not see much difference between say a 5th level character and an 8th or 10th character. They would like some more some sort of bonuses or maybe adjust the proficiency bonus a bit higher maybe +8.

Any suggestions?
The idea, of course, is that you are getting better in the sense of making more attacks, having more hps, casting more & higher level spells, etc.

You could re-inject a little 'bigger numbers' feel by adding a +1 to proficiency here or there at levels that seem appropriate to you. When you run monsters of that CR or higher, just boost their ACs and saves by the same amount. The net effect will be that PCs are more effective against lower level creatures, making them appear to have gotten 'better,' but still face the same challenge against same-level monsters - and face a greater challenge from higher-level ones, giving them the sense that they still have 'room to grow.'

Of course, the more such bonuses you add, the more you'll un-do the effects of bounded accuracy, lower level monsters will eventually become pointless, higher level ones untouchable, if you were to, say, net double proficiency at higher levels.

Currently proficiency bonus increments at 5,9,13, & 17. You could change that to 4, 8, 12, 16, & 20. That's up to +7 prof. Make it 4, 7, 10, 13, 16, & 19 and that will take it up to +8, which was an idea you'd considered - it'd barely be perceptible, at 13th, PC's would be a net +1 vs lower-level monsters, and a net -1 vs 16th+ ones, relative to the normal progression. To be really noticeable, you'd have to and proficiency every-other level, +1 at each even numbered level, for instance, would double the maximium proficiency bonus from +6 at 17th to +12 at 20th. If you added that extra +6 over 20 levels to the ACs & saves (and save DCs) of monsters, PCs would start to notice that they 'couldn't miss' fractional CR monsters like goblins starting somewhere in double-digit levels. 1st level PCs would, similarly, be unable to hit very high level monsters. While neither of those conditions would be likely to make a huge difference to the outcome of battles, they might affect the feel.

Note, BTW, that PC AC doesn't generally increase with proficiency, so I didn't recommend boosting monster attack rolls, those low-level monsters will still hit the PCs about like always.

Also note that, since saves sometimes get proficiency & sometimes don't, while save DCs always add proficiency, that this variant would make it increasingly hard for PCs to make their 'bad' saves as they level. Likewise, the gap between proficient and non-proficient would widen, and Expertise would get pretty crazy. So you might want to think twice about using this proficiency bonus with skills.

Another thing you could try is different proficiency bonus progressions for different classes doing different things.
For instance:

'Good' proficiency: +2 at 1st, +1/4 level thereafter. (Most characters, for most things - skills attack bonus, good saves, save DCs etc).
'Poor' proficiency: +0 @ 1st, +1/4 level thereafter. (Bad saves, wizard attack bonus with weapons, EK & CT save DCs)
'Expert' proficiency: +2 at 1st, +1/2 levels thereafter. (Champion, Battlemaster, & Berserker attack rolls; Rogue & Bard 'Expertise' skills)
 
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