D&D 5E Why Is The Assassin Rpgue?

[pawsplay]

I've played an assassin and I never felt the 3rd level ability was particularly weak. Some people seem to want it to end an encounter, which is not on par with other 5e class features. You can take out a guard. If you get the drop on a group, you can often make sure there is one less of them than there would otherwise be, by the time they attack. A boss fight? If you can get everything to line up, you can potentially maul them, making the fight significantly easier. It does require you to coordinate with the other players about how and when to engage; that's just as true for a sorcerer who likes to use a strong opener.

 

[Horwath]

You need both a good stat (16, aka +3) and proficiency (+2) to even start to have a good chance at tasks of even moderate difficulty, let alone anything serious. A DC 15 check is nigh impossible for someone with neither (failure 75% of the time), but in my experience that is near the floor of skill DCs most DMs use. It sure as hell doesn't help that 10 is listed as "easy" when, for most characters, they'll have barely more than a 50% chance of passing a so-called "easy" check.

I was genuinely shocked by the number of single-digit save and skill DCs in Baldur's Gate 3. It was so refreshing! You actually have a bloody chance now, instead of failure after failure at anything other than your core schtick.

And that's on top of the thing I noted in the other thread, where for some reason I still can't fathom, 5e DMs (IME) consistently take the most restrictive, "anything not explicitly defined is forbidden" attitude with skills. The text doesn't even support that reading, and yet that is how it gets used. It baffles me.

lots of problems with this ends if you use 3d6 instead of d20 for skills.
heck, even d12+4 is better for skills in all ways than d20, average roll still stay the same.
you just remove or reduce high and low outliers.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

A common pool for powers would have been a blessing in 4e.

Instead we got nearly the same ability printed 8 times, with very fiddly differenences that don't really matter and were just hard to remember.
And on top of that we got the same power with 2 more damage dice and sometimes even a downgrade of the rider effect 7 levels later.

Thank god essentials was way more clever in some parts.

It really would not have been the silver bullet so many people think. Because the problem with a common pool of powers is you can't have any build-specific riders, and that's precisely what makes 4e powers good and interesting--and helps to differentiate one build ("subclass" as 5e would put it) from another.

Common pools of powers muddy everything. They're literally ONLY useful if the actual powers themselves are truly, completely interchangeable. But actually well-made 4e powers aren't interchangeable, even if you ignore the riders.

The real problem was that 4e published a lot of, let's face it, lame-as-heck powers. Most of them, strictly speaking, were not bad. But an awful lot of them are on the low end of mediocre, and a small few really are just awful. What 4e actually needed was a culling. Nix out somewhere around half of all powers derived from classes. Some classes needed more trimming than others (looking at you, Wizard), but all of them just had...like I said, not-very-good powers.

A common pool from which everyone draws would just make everything ACTUALLY bland-and-samey the way so many critics wrongly derided it.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

lots of problems with this ends if you use 3d6 instead of d20 for skills.
heck, even d12+4 is better for skills in all ways than d20, average roll still stay the same.
you just remove or reduce high and low outliers.

I mean, if what you want is "nearly all results are near the center," then yes.

I think the more effective (but not easier, I admit) solution is to embrace what D&D has chosen to be, and work to find a numbers point where the d20 isn't the end-all, be-all for whether you succeed, but isn't totally irrelevant either.

Because, ultimately, I think it really is a big deal that crits happen about 5% of the time. It adds spice to rolls. Knowing that 3, 4, 5, or 6 collectively have a lower chance than getting a crit? I mean, yes, it's beneficial in that, if the rest of the system's numbers are well-tailored, you're protected from failure, certainly. But it takes a certain amount of the excitement away in the process. Finding a way to keep the system as it is, while mitigating its flaws, may be more productive in terms of user-experience than replacing it, even if replacing it is rationally the optimal choice.

 

[Horwath]

I mean, if what you want is "nearly all results are near the center," then yes.

I think the more effective (but not easier, I admit) solution is to embrace what D&D has chosen to be, and work to find a numbers point where the d20 isn't the end-all, be-all for whether you succeed, but isn't totally irrelevant either.

Because, ultimately, I think it really is a big deal that crits happen about 5% of the time. It adds spice to rolls. Knowing that 3, 4, 5, or 6 collectively have a lower chance than getting a crit? I mean, yes, it's beneficial in that, if the rest of the system's numbers are well-tailored, you're protected from failure, certainly. But it takes a certain amount of the excitement away in the process. Finding a way to keep the system as it is, while mitigating its flaws, may be more productive in terms of user-experience than replacing it, even if replacing it is rationally the optimal choice.

problem is always the low roll on skills,
skills are not rolled as much as attacks or saves, so every roll is really important and some social encounters can make or break on a single bad roll.

in average combat at mid levels you might roll 40-50 attacks/saves combined so low and high rolls MOSTLY even out, there can always be a series of good/bad rolls.

Other solution is to steal from rogues reliable talent.

proficiency: min d20 roll is 5
expertise: min d20 roll is 8

and to keep something for rogue:
reliable talent+proficiency: min d20 roll is 10
reliable talent+expertise: min roll is 13

 

[UngeheuerLich]

It really would not have been the silver bullet so many people think. Because the problem with a common pool of powers is you can't have any build-specific riders, and that's precisely what makes 4e powers good and interesting--and helps to differentiate one build ("subclass" as 5e would put it) from another.

This is where you misinterpreted what I said. Of course you can still have build specific riders. Either in built specific powers or on top of that. You can also have auto scaling powers. It is just the principle of having nearly copies of with unneccessary differentiation just to have a justification for reprinting the same stuff over and over again.

Common pools of powers muddy everything. They're literally ONLY useful if the actual powers themselves are truly, completely interchangeable. But actually well-made 4e powers aren't interchangeable, even if you ignore the riders.

Sadly many of them are not well made.

The real problem was that 4e published a lot of, let's face it, lame-as-heck powers. Most of them, strictly speaking, were not bad. But an awful lot of them are on the low end of mediocre, and a small few really are just awful.

It is not the mediocreness. It is the neatly repetition that forced you to look everything up for the exact number of squares or direction you can push pull or slide and if it targets ref or fort or will in that exact case.

What 4e actually needed was a culling. Nix out somewhere around half of all powers derived from classes.

Yes. And make the scaling so you don't have to search for the nearly exact the same but differently named power you could just include in the old one by adding: +3d6 damage at level 7. You can now push or pull.
And make those that are the same (twin strike, dual strike, whirlwind strike, zwphyr strike etc. just one common TWF power).

Some classes needed more trimming than others (looking at you, Wizard), but all of them just had...like I said, not-very-good powers.

I remember the wizard actually have varied powers that are useful in different situations and tge option to memorize them.

A common pool from which everyone draws would just make everything ACTUALLY bland-and-samey the way so many critics wrongly derided it.

I have played 4e for its entire life span. No. It would have cleaned up the whole gane so you would just not have to look everything up mid combat all the time.

It just bogged the game down. Actually I am worried a bit about 5e, when spells for monsters are rewritten into custom powers. Everyone knows how a fireball works. Not everyone knows how fiery blast from the random monster mage works.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

This is where you misinterpreted what I said. Of course you can still have build specific riders. Either in built specific powers or on top of that. You can also have auto scaling powers. It is just the principle of having nearly copies of with unneccessary differentiation just to have a justification for reprinting the same stuff over and over again.

Sadly many of them are not well made.

It is not the mediocreness. It is the neatly repetition that forced you to look everything up for the exact number of squares or direction you can push pull or slide and if it targets ref or fort or will in that exact case.

Yes. And make the scaling so you don't have to search for the nearly exact the same but differently named power you could just include in the old one by adding: +3d6 damage at level 7. You can now push or pull.
And make those that are the same (twin strike, dual strike, whirlwind strike, zwphyr strike etc. just one common TWF power).

I remember the wizard actually have varied powers that are useful in different situations and tge option to memorize them.

I have played 4e for its entire life span. No. It would have cleaned up the whole gane so you would just not have to look everything up mid combat all the time.

It just bogged the game down. Actually I am worried a bit about 5e, when spells for monsters are rewritten into custom powers. Everyone knows how a fireball works. Not everyone knows how fiery blast from the random monster mage works.

4e powers are not nearly as repetitious as you claim. A few--marks, Leader heals--all have the same form because it's actually good, useful, productive for them to have the same form. Beyond that, it really isn't this field of seventeen perfectly identical powers at every level, the way you make it sound. At-wills do tend to be simpler...beacuse they have to be, that's literally their function, to be basic fallbacks. You aren't going to trim out more than a tiny percentage of powers by going after at-wills.

How, exactly, do you propose this "and make them scaling" stuff, anyway? Because now you're doing exactly what I described. These so-called "generic" powers now have to have riders for every single class--or a laundry list of keywords, which were already borderline excessive in the 4e we actually got and would become horrendously bloated under this system--and pack in different level scaling for every single class meant to make use of them to fit whatever that class's design needs are. It's just not tenable.

And...what powers are you even referring to? We all know Twin Strike is a thing, and yes, Dual Strike is pretty much the same, but beyond that, I'm not seeing it. For example, what is "Zephyr Strike"? My sources don't show any power with "Zephyr" in its name that has anything to do with hitting twice. "Whirling Strike" doesn't exist, but "Whirling Rend" does...and it works quite differently (your off-hand damage targets a different creature, so you need two targets, and it has a Barbarian-only rider, namely +Dex damage if you're raging.) Which describes precisely what I mean: folks dismiss the actually relevant, mechanical distinctions and just write it off as "oh it's a use-both-weapons attack, therefore it should be one common power for everyone." No! That's precisely what would ruin the design, making it an ugly, messy, samey hodgepodge!

As for the Wizard specifically, it was just that it got lots, and LOTS, and LOTS of powers over time. The only class that could even potentially rival the Wizard for how much support it got is Fighter, and I'm pretty sure Wizard still has Fighter beat on nearly every metric--number of builds/subclasses, feats, PPs, etc. Purely because of sheer numbers, Wizard has a lot of cruft in it--something Heinsoo explicitly called out as a thing he'd been fighting against during 4e's design and playtesting, the constant push to make Wizard just a little better than every other class.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

4e powers are not nearly as repetitious as you claim. A few--marks, Leader heals--all have the same form because it's actually good, useful, productive for them to have the same form. Beyond that, it really isn't this field of seventeen perfectly identical powers at every level, the way you make it sound. At-wills do tend to be simpler...beacuse they have to be, that's literally their function, to be basic fallbacks. You aren't going to trim out more than a tiny percentage of powers by going after at-wills.

No. Just look into the phb.

How, exactly, do you propose this "and make them scaling" stuff, anyway? Because now you're doing exactly what I described. These so-called "generic" powers now have to have riders for every single class--or a laundry list of keywords, which were already borderline excessive in the 4e we actually got and would become horrendously bloated under this system--and pack in different level scaling for every single class meant to make use of them to fit whatever that class's design needs are. It's just not tenable.

Nope. You are wrong. It reduces bloat.

And...what powers are you even referring to? We all know Twin Strike is a thing, and yes, Dual Strike is pretty much the same, but beyond that, I'm not seeing it. For example, what is "Zephyr Strike"? My sources don't show any power with "Zephyr" in its name that has anything to do with hitting twice.

I was exaggerating a bit, because I was too lazy to search for my old books in the cellar.

"Whirling Strike" doesn't exist, but "Whirling Rend" does...and it works quite differently (your off-hand damage targets a different creature, so you need two targets, and it has a Barbarian-only rider, namely +Dex damage if you're raging.) Which describes precisely what I mean: folks dismiss the actually relevant, mechanical distinctions and just write it off as "oh it's a use-both-weapons attack, therefore it should be one common power for everyone." No! That's precisely what would ruin the design, making it an ugly, messy, samey hodgepodge!

This is what makes it a messy hodgepodge. Abilities that are the same, exact that one allows you to make a second attack only when the sun is shining. And the other one when it is above 13 degrees.

And then, the abilities were erated again and again and again, so you just could not leanrn them. And them 6000 meaningless feats.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

No. Just look into the phb.

Nope. You are wrong. It reduces bloat.

"Nope, you're wrong" is refusing to actually engage in a discussion here, particularly with the later "I exaggerated, but..." I have nothing further to say on this subject; it is a waste of time for us to discuss it further.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

"Nope, you're wrong" is refusing to actually engage in a discussion here, particularly with the later "I exaggerated, but..." I have nothing further to say on this subject; it is a waste of time for us to discuss it further.

Yes. Because there is nothing to discuss here. I have played it for 7 years and made up my mind. You seem to see it differently. But that is not my problem.