D&D 3E/3.5 Thoughts of a 3E/4E powergamer on starting to play 5E

[Galendril]

I just spent the past 5 days pouring over books and forums learning how to min/max every 5e class and building 9 maximized level 1 death machines with levels 2-10 mapped out for Curse of Strahd. I made 9 because I didn't know what other people would run, except for one person I know is playing a Rogue. I can also say that while powergaming and tactical play aren't as effective as I'd like, they still make for a much more powerful character than a casual picking things with little thought to mechanical effect. The casuals at the table of the Rogue I built for someone else were in awe of a 4th level character hitting for 20 damage a turn. It was something they never saw before and didn't know was possible.

Good for you.

 

[Blue]

Advantage/disadvantage being in the hands of the DM means it may as well not exist to somebody like me. If I don't have control over it, it isn't useful to me. The 5E games I've played and watched haven't seen much adv/dis, and I've never seen inspiration used.

There are plenty of ways to fairly reliably generate advantage or disadvantage. Proning, restrained, lots of spells. In one game I played a abjurer wizard who dealt with battlefield control and handing out adv/dis and could do it combat after combat. If you aren't seeing a lot, it's because the players haven't made characters to generate it - that's the players fault, not the system's. However, there are fewer ways to reliably generate them and take full advantage of them yourself because it uses an attack or your action to set it up. A lot is set up for your party.

So, much like 4e, party optimization is important. And much like charop for any edition, rules knowledge is important.

 

[ExploderWizard]

5E was certainly designed so that victory or defeat would be decided at the table during play instead of during character generation.

I have seen a cleric function as a successful defender in heavy armor with a shield occupying a doorway and taking the dodge action forcing every attacker to attack with disadvantage. It was a moment of pure awesome. The player got to choose the dodge action and thus got to choose to impose disadvantage on attackers. It was far from useless.

The game encourages you to think about the situation at hand and use what you have to make a difference instead of relying on carefully chosen abilities that just work optimally all the time. This keeps play from getting repetitive or boring and is more welcoming to newer players.

 

[thecasualoblivion]

5E was certainly designed so that victory or defeat would be decided at the table during play instead of during character generation.

I have seen a cleric function as a successful defender in heavy armor with a shield occupying a doorway and taking the dodge action forcing every attacker to attack with disadvantage. It was a moment of pure awesome. The player got to choose the dodge action and thus got to choose to impose disadvantage on attackers. It was far from useless.

The game encourages you to think about the situation at hand and use what you have to make a difference instead of relying on carefully chosen abilities that just work optimally all the time. This keeps play from getting repetitive or boring and is more welcoming to newer players.

Standing around not attacking every turn isn't exactly my idea of awesome, effective or not.

 

[GX.Sigma]

As a non-optimizer who can't stand playing with optimizers, I want to understand your point of view better.

My main dislike of the game comes from that I find it by far the most random of any edition of D&D, and being that random I never feel in control of my own destiny. It feels like the dice matter more than my decisions in play

I'm curious what you mean by this. I've felt like this in a 4e campaign, and it was mostly a DM/player expectation mismatch. Are you just talking about the minutiae of each round of combat RAW?

or my decisions in character building.

Are you saying you'd prefer greater specialization among PCs (like the 4e "roles"), a greater gap in effectiveness between players of different skill levels (like the 3e feat puzzles), or neither or both?

1E/2E could be randomly dangerous, but that element of danger is mostly missing from 5E. 1E/2E was random but lethal, and there was a level of calculated risk involved in everything you did and your decisions thus mattered. 5E is random, but things don't seem to matter much. If you fail you fall on your face, not lose/die.

I assume you're talking about the dying rules. I agree that this is a problem for certain styles of play. House Rule: If you fail a death save, you die. It still takes 3 successes to stabilize. Also you have to roll a death save immediately when you hit 0 hp.

even high defense 5E characters seem fragile. High defense in 5E only seems to make you less fragile(while still being fragile)...I was a Defender roughly half the time throughout the 4E era. I never felt fragile

All things are relative. Everything in 5e is very fragile compared to everything in 4e. I've seen """"tanks"""" be very durable in 5e (relative to other creatures in 5e), especially the Barbarian with healer support.

teamwork in 5E feels like taking one for the team, and that isn't my style...I was a Defender...throughout the 4E era...I never felt...like I was taking one for the team...Playing support seems to feel like taking one for the team as well.

I'm not sure what you mean here. Defenders in 4e were definitely supposed to take hits so the rest of the team didn't have to; that was their core mechanic.

The optimization guides on forums for 5E don't really seem as helpful for 5E as they were for 3E/4E.

Okay, I think that answers #2 above. So you'd prefer a system whereby players with superior rules knowledge are able to create significantly more effective characters than players without such knowledge, correct? May I ask why that appeals to you?

 

[S'mon]

All things are relative. Everything in 5e is very fragile compared to everything in 4e. I've seen """"tanks"""" be very durable in 5e (relative to other creatures in 5e), especially the Barbarian with healer support.

Hakeem the CON 20 Barbarian-14 in my Wilderlands campaign is insanely durable, with 173 hp it would take over 346 damage to get him to 0 - when he'd still be up and fighting due to the level 11 Relentless Rage ability.

My own Polearm Master Barbarian PC is just insane, I can Reckless Attack (twice) for advantage from 10' away each turn, then back off 5' and get a free attack if the enemy comes after me - so they never do. The main problem is that I don't get attacked so my massive durability doesn't even come into play - thinking of taking Sentinel to help take the heat off the squishy Rogue.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Standing around not attacking every turn isn't exactly my idea of awesome, effective or not.

Another nuance here: 5e encourages you to make hard choices between damaging and other things at certain times.

Like, a glass cannon surrounded by 5 enemies can still only take out 2 of 'em. Do you do that and then pray? Or do you Dodge and eat up their actions for a round while your allies whittle them down?

Circumstances matter quite a bit in this e. Whiteboxing is rarely a comfortable measure of power.

 

[thecasualoblivion]

As a non-optimizer who can't stand playing with optimizers, I want to understand your point of view better.

I'll try answering all your questions in turn.

I'm curious what you mean by this. I've felt like this in a 4e campaign, and it was mostly a DM/player expectation mismatch. Are you just talking about the minutiae of each round of combat RAW?

What I'm talking about is the balance between the importance of dice rolls compared to the importance of tactics(choices in play) or building an effective character. Compared to all previous editions, 5E places more importance on the randomness of dice rolls and less on other considerations.

Are you saying you'd prefer greater specialization among PCs (like the 4e "roles"), a greater gap in effectiveness between players of different skill levels (like the 3e feat puzzles), or neither or both?

Not exactly that. More along the lines of I'd like my choices in character creation to have greater agency/impact on the game. I'll give two examples: 4E tactical play and 3E Rocket Tag

4E tactical play for me had a lot to do with picking powers, feats and abilities that gave you good options that had a big impact in play. There were very few "I win" buttons in 4E, so it was a mix of picking strong powers that accomplished more, teamwork, and timing. In addition, 4E tactics was generally about the big picture, not one action. It was more like building a house, where you and you allies combined actions over multiple rounds to accomplish things, while the environment changed around you. It really didn't matter if you miss or fail on a single action if you play smart long term, as monsters and PCs were both durable enough that a run of bad luck rarely was decisive. Another important aspect of 4E was that you didn't have to sacrifice your attack or offense in general to do interesting things. The Fighter could tank and hit like a truck at the same time. The Cleric could heal and buff and attack all at the same time.

3E Rocket Tag on the other hand was all about "I win" buttons. Things may have been out of balance, but you could certainly build your character so he had a dramatic impact on play. In 3E, you set up the "I win" button(both in character building and in play), and then you pressed it. If it failed, you repeat the process. A lot of the time, you could set yourself up so the dice had little impact on the outcome.

In 5E the dice are king. Combat goes faster than 4E, so a random swing of bad luck has a bigger impact, and it lacks 3E's "I win" buttons that bypass or minimize the impact of dice.

I assume you're talking about the dying rules. I agree that this is a problem for certain styles of play. House Rule: If you fail a death save, you die. It still takes 3 successes to stabilize. Also you have to roll a death save immediately when you hit 0 hp.

Not really, that isn't the point. My point is whether or not your choices matter. In 5E, the lack of lethality tends to mean that your choices or whether you succeed or not rarely matters in the long run. At worst, you're probably only going to eat dirt for a couple of rounds. 1E/2E was often(though not always) as random as 5E or more, but your choices mattered more because the consequences for failure were more dire.

All things are relative. Everything in 5e is very fragile compared to everything in 4e. I've seen """"tanks"""" be very durable in 5e (relative to other creatures in 5e), especially the Barbarian with healer support.

In 5E you're fragile, even in the best of circumstances. A short string of bad rolls will screw you over, multiple enemies focusing on you exclusively is going to take anyone down in short order. Above that, having significant defenses is a big investment and you have to sacrifice a lot to get them. Compare this to 1E/2E where a Fighter with a few levels and some decent magical gear was dramatically more survivable than the other PCs as well as 90% of the monsters you'd encounter, or the 4E Fighter whose base Defender chassis was enough to tank on its own, and you could customize yourself for damage, control, mobility or whatever because your defenses were already enough.

I'm not sure what you mean here. Defenders in 4e were definitely supposed to take hits so the rest of the team didn't have to; that was their core mechanic.

In 4E doing the Defender role wasn't a sacrifice. You could hit as hard as the Rogue or control the enemies as much as the Wizard. In 4E Defender was something you did in addition to kicking ass. In 5E, being a defender pretty much requires you sacrifice kicking ass.

Okay, I think that answers #2 above. So you'd prefer a system whereby players with superior rules knowledge are able to create significantly more effective characters than players without such knowledge, correct? May I ask why that appeals to you?

That tends to be the end result, but it isn't what's important. What's important is being awarded for smart and effective play, and having my choices have an impact on the game. The randomness of 5E detracts from that, and the game as a whole lacks options and choices that have significant impacts on the game compared to all of the earlier editions.

 

[thecasualoblivion]

Hakeem the CON 20 Barbarian-14 in my Wilderlands campaign is insanely durable, with 173 hp it would take over 346 damage to get him to 0 - when he'd still be up and fighting due to the level 11 Relentless Rage ability.

My own Polearm Master Barbarian PC is just insane, I can Reckless Attack (twice) for advantage from 10' away each turn, then back off 5' and get a free attack if the enemy comes after me - so they never do. The main problem is that I don't get attacked so my massive durability doesn't even come into play - thinking of taking Sentinel to help take the heat off the squishy Rogue.

The 4E defender role is a mix of defense and control. In 5E, both of those are things you need to spend resources on. A 4E defender got both of those for free at level 1.

 

[Ancalagon]

2: What I've tended to find is that there's a "deadzone" of AC between 16 and 20-21 where there's no point in having an AC within that range. If your AC is greater than 16, but less than 20, you are either best served by "going tank" and getting to the 20+ range, or "going glass cannon" and going for 16 or less AC in exchange for higher output. It seems like monsters can reliably hit between 15 and 18 AC on a regular basis which is a minimum 10 on your average monster with a +3-4 modifier and a +1-2 bonus, which once again, is a 50/50 chance to hit, might as well flip a coin (after writing this, I may try it in my next session). Defenders ARE fragile, unless as noted above, you can reach into that 20+ AC range (which is difficult at low levels, but I guess that's the point). Once you hit 22AC (Plate+Shield+two defense boosts) and if you're able to bump that up to 24, you are almost unhittable except by monstrously powerful creatures (things with like, a +17 to hit).

It always has worked out that the higher your AC was, the more impact an extra +1 AC would have on your survivability. If, at your AC (whatever it is) vs a particular enemy you have 10% chance of being hit, adding 1 AC lowers this chance to 5% - meaning you effectively cut incoming damage by half! However, if at your AC you have 75% chance of being hit... changes to this chance to 70% (or 80%) is not really significant, the impact on your survivability is negligible.

Because of how the numbers in 5e work out, it's not vs "a particular enemy" anymore but rather vs "enemies in general", since as you point out the average monster has a pretty narrow range of +to hit numbers. You are very correct that it's now possible to make judgement calls about AC values in general.

I'm not sure however if I agree that there is a deadzone. Rather as above, it's "the lower the AC, the more worthless each AC point is". Maybe what you are alluding at is a "zone of effort"? It's usually somewhat trivial to increase your AC from 10 to 14-16 with a bit of dex, a bit of armor/shield, a defensive spell etc. So it's worth it to increase your AC for such little effort. But reaching the upper levels of AC is hard.

So if McAverage McMonsterface has +5 to hit, going from AC 11 to AC 16 lowers your chance of being hit from 75% to 50% - that 1/3 less damage coming in, that's definitely worth it. But is there a "deadzone"? It might be more difficult to go from 16 to 18 than from 14 to 16. But doing so will still decrease your chances of being hit from 50% to 40% - a 20% reduction in effective damage taken. I think that's still worth it.

3: I think the biggest downside to defenders now is that they lack the ability to defend. Sure, they can take a hit. But in order to actually defend they need to put in significant feat investment (typically, at least two, Shield Master and the Heavy Armor DR/3 feat), in a game without feats (as a I feel many older gamers are attempting to play) this makes defenders an even WORSE investment. I loved 4E's defenders. Simple and effective. 5E does not have a simple and effective defender.

I'm still learning the rules but the loss of tank "stickiness" is a problem IMO.