D&D 5E Discussion, Level 20 abilities, does it matter if they are overpowered?

[Evenglare]

Pretty much topic. I'd like to hear discussion about it. We have heard arguments from both sides on various threads so I figured this would be a good have to focus the discussion. There's a couple of reasons this has been brought up, right off the top of my head is the Druid being able to shapeshift and effectively gain infinite hit points. Whether or not we are interpreting the rules right isn't necessarily what I want to focus on. I'd like to talk more about the fact that... well... should it matter if it's overpowered? It is after all level 20.

Furthermore, there actually is a reason I wanted to discuss this topic in particular is a homebrew I created a few weeks ago for the barbarian. So pathfinder released their advanced class guide and I completely and utterly fell in love with the Bloodrager. It's by far my favorite class in ANYTHING I have ever seen. I just love the whole idea of raging then taking on the form of your bloodline. So naturally I ported it over to 5e and refined it as a barbarian subclass. Now, the point of talking about level 20 abilities being overpowered stems from this. Level 20 barbarians get to continually rage. Normally this ability seems just about perfect for a level 20 barbarian... however my subclass throws a bit of a wrench in my development.

So my bloodrager has 3 blood lines (celestial, demonic and fey), they gain various abilities like resistance, an aura, extra bonuses to your attack dealing some specific type of damage based on your bloodline, and they gain wings (feather for celestial, fairylike for fey, and bat type for demonic.) So you may see the point of the discussion. At level 20 the barbarian basically gains all of this stuff permanently which would be fine except for one thing. The celestial barbarian basically does what the level 20 vengeance paladin can do, except the paladin's ability only allows this for an hour, while the barbarian ability is indefinite.

So there's a couple of thoughts behind how I can deal with this. One thought is that I just leave it how it is, the justification is that even though the barbarian at level 20 is better than the level 20 paladin's ability, the paladin has access to spells and various other things thus making up for the fact that the 20 ability only lasts an hour. The other option is the one I'm more wary about. I can nerf the barbs level 20 ability if they take the subclass. I'm not too comfortable having the subclass altering the base class abilities. If I did this I would allow the barbarian rage maybe 8 or 10 times a day.

So those are my two options, I really like what I have done with my subclass, and I believe it's relatively balanced in every way except for the infinite rage aspect at 20. Now, all that being said, the circumstance may never show itself considering getting all the way to 20 is a very rare feat in and of itself. Thanks for your time reading all of this.

tldr; too complicated for a tldr.

 

[Zardnaar]

I don't think it matters to much if they are over powered compared with different classes but the Moon Druid in particular seems to be a massive poke in the eye for the land Druid. When one subclass is that much better with a capstone ability....

 

[Jester David]

Pretty much topic. I'd like to hear discussion about it. We have heard arguments from both sides on various threads so I figured this would be a good have to focus the discussion. There's a couple of reasons this has been brought up, right off the top of my head is the Druid being able to shapeshift and effectively gain infinite hit points. Whether or not we are interpreting the rules right isn't necessarily what I want to focus on. I'd like to talk more about the fact that... well... should it matter if it's overpowered? It is after all level 20.

It kinda sorta matters, but not much.

They matter if you get to level 20, but getting there is a pretty HUGE if: after two-decades of heavy gaming the highest I've gotten any table is 17. That's when the story ended. (Rise of the Runelords) Prior to that was 14.
Even if you make it to 20 there's likely not a lot of adventuring left. In my level 14 and level 17 games, both times I levelled up everyone for the final session. So it was 1-3 encounters.

This matters. While the moon druid ability seems awesome on paper, in practice it's very likely only a couple extra uses of wildshape. The difference between "unlimited" and "four/rest" are blurred unless you're fighting something like the tarrasque.

Furthermore, there actually is a reason I wanted to discuss this topic in particular is a homebrew I created a few weeks ago for the barbarian. So pathfinder released their advanced class guide and I completely and utterly fell in love with the Bloodrager. It's by far my favorite class in ANYTHING I have ever seen. I just love the whole idea of raging then taking on the form of your bloodline. So naturally I ported it over to 5e and refined it as a barbarian subclass. Now, the point of talking about level 20 abilities being overpowered stems from this. Level 20 barbarians get to continually rage. Normally this ability seems just about perfect for a level 20 barbarian... however my subclass throws a bit of a wrench in my development.

So my bloodrager has 3 blood lines (celestial, demonic and fey), they gain various abilities like resistance, an aura, extra bonuses to your attack dealing some specific type of damage based on your bloodline, and they gain wings (feather for celestial, fairylike for fey, and bat type for demonic.) So you may see the point of the discussion. At level 20 the barbarian basically gains all of this stuff permanently which would be fine except for one thing. The celestial barbarian basically does what the level 20 vengeance paladin can do, except the paladin's ability only allows this for an hour, while the barbarian ability is indefinite.

So there's a couple of thoughts behind how I can deal with this. One thought is that I just leave it how it is, the justification is that even though the barbarian at level 20 is better than the level 20 paladin's ability, the paladin has access to spells and various other things thus making up for the fact that the 20 ability only lasts an hour. The other option is the one I'm more wary about. I can nerf the barbs level 20 ability if they take the subclass. I'm not too comfortable having the subclass altering the base class abilities. If I did this I would allow the barbarian rage maybe 8 or 10 times a day.

Okay, let's deal with the actual homebrewing.

The paladin gets two things for hitting level 20: its oath ability and its generic paladin ability. So it gets a lot. Barbarians just get unlimited rages and their barbarian thing, their primal path doesn't affect much normally at 20th level. So if the ability is balanced at 14th or whenever they get the wings, it should still be balanced at level 20.

But, more importantly, look at the eagle totem on page 50. At level 20 it can fly pretty much at-will too. However, it cannot end its turn aloft and is only the barb's walking speed. So a bloodrager option should have some small balancing factor. If the winged flight was slower (say 20 feet) then that might compensate for being able to end turns aloft. Or their could be an elevation requirement.

 

[AmerginLiath]

I think that part of the issue is the power-level issue of 5e vs. 3e/3.5/PF (the consensus seems to be that the 20 levels of 5e is a compression of somewhere in that 3-15 range of 3.x), so that the maximum powers of a 5e character map more to a lower level of a 3.x character like found in PF (which I understand tend toward being more potent, even if more interestingly so, than earlier 3.x classes). So, building a PF class into a 5e subclass like that *would* have some ability dissonance.

Now that I type that, I'm really itching to play some 5e (despite it feeling like the version written for me, I haven't played yet due to lack of any of my usual groups)...

(I understand the 20th level issue, though. I "grew up" campaigning in Dragonlance back through 2e with a mix of 1e material, so we had the "you don't get past 18th level on Krynn" rule and got used to segueing in new secondary characters around level 10-12 – even in 3.x, we kept that technique due to running a 'soap opera' game!)

 

[Wolfskin]

It matters little to me, since I never ran a campaign with level 20 characters. However, it would be nice to have balanced-ish capstone features. The Druid is pretty OP, though it's easy to fix IMO: just subtract the lost hit points from wild shape from his actual hit points.

 

[Nebulous]

I doubt in the grand scheme of things it matters much, as not many groups will ever reach level 20. With gaming since 1st edition (on and off) i don't think we've ever had anything past 18th, and that was a one-shot with new characters.

And it was horribly confusing trying to juggle all the items and spells of a character that high level for the first time.

 

[Dausuul]

It doesn't matter a lot, certainly not in proportion to the attention it gets. It does matter some, since there will occasionally be a campaign that gets to 20, and it would be nice if those campaigns didn't have massive balance problems.

 

[MonkeezOnFire]

I think it matters from the designer's perspective. I don't think the designers should really make any assumptions about how players will play. Some groups may play entire campaigns at 20th level, and because this is a possibility it should be the designer's responsibility to create something usable and balanced to the best of their ability. However, this is the ideal and real life is often far from it. From a practical stand point 20th level material will rarely be used.

So my opinion is that it matters, but it matters less than the other levels.

 

[Boarstorm]

To me, it's a bit like worrying about my performance at the tryouts to play professional sportsball.

 

[Quartz]

High level abilities certainly matter to me. A campaign starting at 1st level will likely never reach 20th level, but a campaign starting at 12th or 15th level may well get that high, and will certainly have NPCs of that level. Also, some adventures or even campaigns may start at 20th level and then revert to a lower level - having the big bad kill off (or worse, corrupt) the hero PCs, and then their apprentices have to fix things.

As for the Barbarian in the OP, maybe the wings are illusory - after all, giving a PC flight is a big event - but become real once per long rest at 20th level?

(The more I read on ENWorld, the more I'm convinced that PC shapechanging / polymorphing is thoroughly broken.)