D&D 5E Why the claim of combat and class balance between the classes is mainly a forum issue. (In my opinion)

[GMforPowergamers]

A perfect example of what the Op talked about.

1. You always compare the effectiveness of characters to something you found on the CharOp boards which will never actually happen in regular play (and are as far away from role playing as possible)

please tell me why charm person is a 'char op board thing' maybe you don't allow PHB spells in your game...

2. You always assume that the wizard has all spells ready to do your job and no better things to spend his slots on. Works theoretically on a board, but in actually play almost never happens

. so the wizards in your games NEVER have the the spell for the situation? NEVER? no wizard ever picked charm person right before you needed to charm someone, or prying eyes when they knew you needed to scout a large area, or Invisability when they knew stealth was needed? what better to prep your spells then what is needed???

3. Not related with the OP but also a mistake you make again and again, you assume that the rogue is a combat class which, at least before 4E, he was only in a limited way, yes even though he had a "combat ability" with backstab/sneak attack.

Yes and when you play over the years you learn that it is a very basic class with only 1 or 2 things it does well and other classes do them better... that's my problem I want the rogue to be a fun class not a trap one...

How about using a fighter for your charismatic swashbuckler? And before you start again, fighters are actually good at combat when you stop to compare them to some optimized Fighter/Ranger/Cleric/Rouge/Druid/Warblade/SomePRC from the CharOp board.

I guess if I don't compare it to a PHB druid with no multi classing and who only needs 1 feat... yea...



I AM NOT CAREING ABOUT CHAROP PLEASE STOP THAT... CHAR OP CAN MAKE ANY CLASS GOOD, BUT MORE THEN HALF THE CLASSES ARE TRAPS WITHOUT IT AND THE FEW LEFT CAN BE AS GOOD WITH NO OPTIMAZATION....

 

[Savage Wombat]

Exactly this.

If you play 3rd ed as the writers designed it (i.e. suboptimally) you begin to notice how, say, 3 orcs can actually be a threat to a 1st level party.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Make him. And accept that the stats you've posited make you a lot better at talking people than fighting them. If you want to make a swashbuckler who is actually good at combat, put that 18 in Dex.

wait... the only way to be good at combat is to put an 18 in a combat stat? 14 and 15 are not good enough?

In ways that result in something better than the standard array. I don't see a lot of 15 Str fighters in actual play. Do you?

Well we don't see many fighters... but characters with 15 high stat yea.

I had a character (Based on the DC comic book character FATE) who was a magic item thief until in a botched robbery a magic staff blew up and imbued him with magic. He was a Rogue/sorcerer/Arcane trickster... his starting stats were 11 Str 15 Dex 8 Con 13 Int 14 Wis 15 Cha... I was awesome,

They probably want a fighter because they want someone with the best attack bonus and armor profs that the rest of the party is built around. That's the archetypical D&D group anyway. Fighter up in front trading blows, rogue sneaking around to flank with him. Spellcasters buffing/healing said fighter and maybe attempting to supplement his attacks. Replace the fighter with the second cleric and you of course have a viable party, but a tad less optimal

do you belice that is really optimal?

Improved Initiative? Seriously, any remotely useful feat is better. Trying to protect an NPC who is not as powerful as you is a net loss. If you don't protect them, you lose them and followers start avoiding you. It's not a great feat.

And of course, there's the obvious option to go out and get the same follower without taking the feat, just by being you. Of course, that presumes the DM is on board with that, but then again, the Leadership feat also requires special permission, so it's really a pointless feat.

So I can get +4 initiative or a second character and a group of lesser characters... yea totally weaker

lets take the swashbuckler... if he picks up a 4th level cleric cohort (little john) and that cohort has a +1 con he has 4d8+4 hp... compare to 6d6+6 not seeing a big down side...

All of which kind of goes back to the OP. You've basically admitted that the characters in question are balanced.

only if you think it is balanced to get to twenty by 7+7+3+3 and that the 3's are balanced with the 7's

The druid and his pet are great on occasion, suboptimal in some cases, and decent overall. The fighter is usually pretty good, and becomes really good when supported by teammates,

the druid is better off with another druid then a fighter 7 out of 10 times...

creating a unit that is better than any of them alone. The game is dynamic and diverse, rendering every option meaningful and creating interesting dynamics between them.

ha ha ha you are so funny, yea it is totally fair that my PC needs yours to buff me, and without you I can't keep up or you could buff yourself and not need me...

And yet you're complaining about the end of the bell curve, the non-average druid animal companion that becomes really good. Not much to complain about.

The problem is the bell curve isn't what you say... it is WAY more biased toward overpowered then weak...

10, 13, 14 are bad stats for a melee fighting character. Remember that an NPC warrior with the non-heroic array (say 13, 11, 12, 9, 10, 8) is almost as good. And this character is supposed to be heroic. And those animal companions I'm referring to weren't "sucky" they were just typical animal companions.

first even giving the fighter god like stats of 18 str 16 dex 16 con 14 Int 14 wis 13 cha is still not going to keep up with a druid...

They have high base stats, but don't get a lot of the useful add-ons that PCs typically do.

or they do and dominate... you still get feats every 3 HD and can still get magic items and buffs... but when you put a buff int he fighter it goes to only 1 target, when you put it on the druid the animal gets it too...more bang for your buck...

Sort of like summoned creatures. To wit, a druid with all 18's still has the same animal companion as one with all 10's, but a fighter with all 18's is much better than one with all 10's. Since the typical PC is closer to the former than the latter (at least with regards to relevant ability scores, CHA notwithstanding), advantage fighter.

I want to know what you think an average stat roll is... because I am floored that you think it is anywhere close to 6 18's


I will roll 4d6 drop the lowest 7 times and drop the lowest (Way better then average) and see what I get:

1) 4,3,3,3 so 10
2) 5,4,5,1 so 14
3) 1,2,4,6 so 12
4) 5,5,2,3 so 13
5) 6,4,4,1 so 14
6) 6,5,5,5 so 16
7) 2,2,4,5 so 11

you know what I'm gonna do that again...

1) 5,5,4,3 so 14
2) 1,1,2,4 so 7
3) 3,4,4,3 so 11
4) 5,5,5,5 so 15
5) 4,4,2,6 so 14
6) 4,4,2,3 so 11
7) 1,6,5,3 so 14

so 2 character... one has 16,14,14,13,12,11 the other has 15,14,14,14,11,11 both appear above average to me

now the rolling meathod I am most used too

4d6 drop lowest 6 times

1) 5,5,1,1 so 11
2) 2,2,4,1 so 8
3) 6,3,3,3 so 12
4) 6,5,1,1 so 12
5) 5,5,3,2 so 13
6) 6,6,4,3 so 16

I end up with 16,13,12,12,11,8

I'm having fun here so I'm gonna make a 3d6 cohort..

1) 5,3,3 so 11
2) 4,2,6 so 12
3) 6,5,4 so 15
4) 1,2,4 so 7
5) 3,3,5 so 11
6) 6,6,6 OMG an 18 on a nat 3d6....

that would be an awesome sorcerer cohort... 11 str 12 dex 15 con 7 Int 11 Wis and 18 CHa... a blond ditz with spells... I would kill to have that cohort...

 

[Greg K]

I do not agree with Monte Cook's doctrine of filling the game with traps and penalties for not scouring the internet for cookie cutter builds.

You do know that the person leading the design for 3.0 was not Monte Cook? The original lead was Peter Adkison. When Adkison left the design team, he appointed Jonathan Tweet as lead designer (Skip Williams, "A Talk with Skip Williams" at montecook.com). This is further supported at the 13th Age page at Pelgrane Press in which Tweet states that he was the 3e lead designer.

 

[Bluenose]

If you want a character who can fight well, make a character for fighting. You don't even need to optimize. But don't make a skill character and then complain that he isn't very good at fighting.

Actually, any high level D&D character is going to fight well. Every single one. And yes, I'm including Wizards and Bards and Rogues in that. You don't have to have a character meant for fighting, you just need a few levels. A Wizard is going to start winning bar brawls with 1st/2nd level Warriors routinely by somewhere around 6th level, and those are theoretically competent fighting men.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

You do know that the person leading the design for 3.0 was not Monte Cook? The original lead was Peter Adkison. When Adkison left the design team, he appointed Jonathan Tweet as lead designer (Skip Williams, "A Talk with Skip Williams" at montecook.com). This is further supported at the 13th Age page at Pelgrane Press in which Tweet states that he was the 3e lead designer.

you do know Cook was A designer on the game and he claimed in later interviews he PURPOSLY built in trap options for system mastery to be rewarded...

he also later backpeddled on that... so take it with a grain of salt. there are many people (Like me) who belive that the traps were not put there entirely on purpose but the system had them by mistake and he later tried to spin it... then when it back fired he spun again

 

[Derren]

there are many people (Like me) who belive that the traps were not put there entirely on purpose but the system had them by mistake and he later tried to spin it

Too bad that there were no trap options in 3E. Only for hack & slash powergamers who only want combat.
Everyone else played a role he wanted and was happy with it.

 

[Remathilis]

I would just like to take this moment to interlude that I love the fact my players aren't char-oppers.

Even with 25 point buy (Pathfinder), They aren't uber-optimized. To whit.

A dwarven paladin with a 15 str and cha (post penalty).

A fetchling rogue/gunslinger

A human fighter with a 16 str/dex going two-weapon longsword/shortsword

A copper-draconic half-elf sorcerer with a 15 str, 10 dex, and 11 con.

A undine summoner with a lot of aquatic adaptions (like water breathing)

A human cleric with the glory and healing domains.

Each one of them made a thematic choice over a mechanical optimization and they are all better for it.

 

[Halivar]

Too bad that there were no trap options in 3E. Only for hack & slash powergamers who only want combat.
Everyone else played a role he wanted and was happy with it.

Half-elf bard. There is absolutely nothing you can do that someone else in a balanced party cannot do better. Whatever schtick you were going for, you picked the wrong race/class combo.

Well, except for maybe Diplomacy, for those roll-playing encounters.

A dwarven paladin with a 15 str and cha (post penalty).

A human fighter with a 16 str/dex going two-weapon longsword/shortsword

My sense of what is optimal or not may be off kilter but:

The paladin is definitely optimized for Pathfinder, considering multiple attribute disorder.
The fighter is actively kind of cheese. The good kind, but definitely NOT sub-optimal.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Too bad that there were no trap options in 3E. Only for hack & slash powergamers who only want combat.
Everyone else played a role he wanted and was happy with it.

wow you totally should have said something years ago then... I mean wow, the creators, the editors, ten years of experience and years of talks all said the reverse, but since you know better... oh wait, who are you again?