D&D 5E Basic already surprising us.

[Mort]

Then surely the Wizard should be less Merlin, and more Miracle Max? Because right now the situation is:

20th level Fighter = Someone who is really good at fighting but a looooooooong way short of people like Lu Bu, Hercules, and so on.

20th level Wizard = Better at magic than Merlin, Sparrowhawk and Gandalf put together (and the first and third pretty much literally demi-gods).

So yes to Fighter = Inigo Montoya but only if the Wizard is Miracle Max.



Fighters don't get it, only Champions.

THIS! Nice examples.

It's the inequality that rankles. I like low fantasy, I like high fantasy. But I want the players at the table to be playing the same game.

 

[Emerikol]

The problem is that some of us want magic to be like it has been in many editions of D&D. We want a mundane fighter and rogue. We want a wizard with a lot of utility. You see we never had a problem with those games. I play fighters and rogues. I play rogues the most probably but I hope you can agree that anything said about the fighter applies to the rogue as well when it comes to magic.

So any solution can't result in the elimination of the simple fighter and the complex wizard. Those two together make it D&D for me. Note FOR ME just so we don't start any wars here. I don't care though if there are 24 classes/subclasses and I only pick some of them. As long as the core 4 are covered I'd be okay. I do want a fighter, rogue, wizard, and cleric.

We've had this argument though a million times. The problem is that some people can't conceive that tables totally enjoy a game like 3e and that some of the people at those tables are playing fighters or rogues. Same for 1e or 2e. Fun is all I care about. It's a game. Games fascilitate fun or they get tossed in my book. That is their only purpose.

 

[Andor]

20th level Wizard = Better at magic than Merlin, Sparrowhawk and Gandalf put together (and the first and third pretty much literally demi-gods).

I thought you were talking about the Wizards non-combat power? Because as I look at the spell list of the Wizard in the basic set he has pretty much nothing at 20th level he didn't have at 5th, outside of combat. Teleport is better than flight to be sure, but Domination is basically an amped up charm person. Besides those? Pretty much everything he has is a combat ability. No wish, no Mordenkainens mansion, hell, he doesn't even have Rope Trick. There's probably more to come in the full game, but also recall that feats now let people dabble.

I don't want to get into 'badwrongfun' nonsense but, outside of 4e, superhuman feats in D&D are pretty much always explicitly supernatural. (Bo9S stuff is usually an 'extraordinary ability', but so was a Trolls regen in 3e.) If the Fighter wants to dip into Cú Chulainn's bag of tricks he needs spells or magic items. That's not a design flaw.

So if you want your fighter to leap across a chasm, get some magic boots. Or take the "Enchanter" feat and make some. Or dip a level into Wizard. Or talk your GM into letting you take "Demigod" as an archtype.

Don't however tell people who want to play Fafhred or Conan that they are having badwrongfun and ruining the game just becuase you'ld rather play Hercules or Achillies.

 

[Savage Wombat]

You know, most of the things warrior-demigods do in combat can be accomplished in D&D (if you squint anyway). The things they can't do are the non-combat feats of superhuman strength or skill. Maybe we just need a "Strength of Hercules" feat, so that you can divert rivers and clean stables?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

[MENTION=1879]Andor[/MENTION]

The utter intense hypocrisy of "What u like is badwrongfun, what I like isnt" is staggering. I don't even know what to say.

Also, you're really ignoring most of the good non-combat stuff if you think Wizards gain nothing post-5th, and ignoring how they can use it a huge amount (even in 5E), especially due to rituals. Whatever your preferences, the issue is that Fighters are VERY weak here, and there isn't an option to correct it.

 

[SkidAce]

You know, most of the things warrior-demigods do in combat can be accomplished in D&D (if you squint anyway). The things they can't do are the non-combat feats of superhuman strength or skill. Maybe we just need a "Strength of Hercules" feat, so that you can divert rivers and clean stables?

That would be neat.

 

[Mort]

You know, most of the things warrior-demigods do in combat can be accomplished in D&D (if you squint anyway). The things they can't do are the non-combat feats of superhuman strength or skill. Maybe we just need a "Strength of Hercules" feat, so that you can divert rivers and clean stables?

Yeah this would be a great idea. It would be awesome if the DMG (or even a new supplement) had an "optional mythic feats" section, and it would certainly fit with the modular approach WoTC had been espousing (so DMs who don't want it, don't have to use it).

 

[jgsugden]

I get a kick out of seeing how much people wish to change when they don't have real experience with the real 5E, yet.

I have a feeling that this will be like 3E, 3.5, 4E, and pretty much every other game ever released: We'll find some errors in the books that have unintended consequences, we'll post on the boards about them for a while, WotC will evaluate them and decide whether they're too powerful or ok, even if unintended, and we'll see an evolution of the game over the first year as they tweak and modify the game. As such, I'm not going to be worried about whether anything is over or underpowered right now - because if it is overpowered, it will likely be short lived.

 

[ExploderWizard]

@Andor

The utter intense hypocrisy of "What u like is badwrongfun, what I like isnt" is staggering. I don't even know what to say.

Also, you're really ignoring most of the good non-combat stuff if you think Wizards gain nothing post-5th, and ignoring how they can use it a huge amount (even in 5E), especially due to rituals. Whatever your preferences, the issue is that Fighters are VERY weak here, and there isn't an option to correct it.

The problem isn't that the fighter is so ineffective outside combat, its that the rogue and wizard ARE so effective on a consistent basis IN combat.

A fighter fights. If he/she can't do this to a degree that makes every other class look like an assistant then the reason for being isn't there.


Once everyone can contribute to combat as effectively as a fighter then EVERYONE is a fighter. Except that they get other cool abilities as well.

All of this because years of videogame conditioning has led to the expectation that all characters have to kick equal amounts of butt in a fight and the game revolves around a series of fights. It isn't rocket science. If the game is about monster fighting then all classes have to do it well which leaves fighters as last picked for the soccer team. Its the bed WOTC made when they decided killing things was the focus of the game.

 

[Andor]

[MENTION=1879]Andor[/MENTION]

The utter intense hypocrisy of "What u like is badwrongfun, what I like isnt" is staggering. I don't even know what to say.

Also, you're really ignoring most of the good non-combat stuff if you think Wizards gain nothing post-5th, and ignoring how they can use it a huge amount (even in 5E), especially due to rituals. Whatever your preferences, the issue is that Fighters are VERY weak here, and there isn't an option to correct it.

That's not what I was trying to say, I don't think your fun is wrong and mine is right. I think you missed my point.

We're looking at the basic set of rules. We don't have but one archetype per class. We don't have two thirds of the classes. We don't have the magic items. We don't have the DMG options. We don't have the feats.

And yet you're demanding that a specific style of play, which does fall outside the 'classic D&D' tropes that were a design goal of this edition, be supported fully and that it's wrong for it not to be.

We've only got one fighter class, and one archtype for it. For a Hercules to be supported they would have to not support Fafherd. I think they made the right call in presenting in the basic rules a non-supernatural type of fighter archtype.

Once we have the PHB and the DMG if you still can't do what you want then you'll have solid grounds for complaints. But right now? Too early to complain, especially since even within the limits of what we've got there is nothing to stop your Fighter from dipping into Wizard for a level and picking up the jump spell. Call it divine blood if you don't want to think of it as spell casting.

As for wizards...
4th Level
Arcane Eye - Non Combat Spell
Dimension Door - Does nothing out of combat that flight doesn't do better, Nothing new.
Greater Invisibility - Replicates lower level invisibility spell, Nothing new
Ice Storm - Combat
Stoneskin - Combat
5th Level
Cone of Cold - Combat
Dominate Person - Better Charm Person, nothing new.
Dream - Excellent Spell, but basically it let's you send a letter to one person once a day.
Passwall - Faster than a shovel, but nothing three hirelings with pickaxes couldn't do in a day.
Wall of Stone - Lets you make a bridge in a hurry. Aside from speed it accomplishes nothing you can't do by hiring a stone mason.
6th Level
Chain Lightning - Combat Spell
Disintegrate - Combat Spell
Globe of Invulnerability - Comabt Spell
Mass Suggestion - Bigger version of a 1st level spell. No new ability.
Otto’s Irresistible Dance - Combat Spell
True Seeing - New abilities, non combat uses.
7th Level
Delayed Blast Fireball - Combat
Finger of Death - Combat
Mordenkainen’s Sword - Combat
Teleport - Better than flight, Non-Combat
8th Level
Dominate Monster - Charm that works on non-humanoids. Still just a bumped up 1st level spell.
Maze - Combat
Power Word Stun - Combat
Sunburst - Combat
9th Level
Foresight - Combat
Imprisonment - Combat/Plot Device
Meteor Swarm - Combat
Power Word Kill - Combat
Time Stop - Combat

I see only Arcane Eye, Dream,Teleport and True Seeing as noncombat abilites that the 5th level Wizard didn't have and that the fighter can't do himself simply by hiring some workers. Did I miss something?