D&D 5E What is Over-Powered?

[SirAntoine]

You assume that "gritty realism and desperation" should be forced upon the players artificially through the system, rather than the situations they are in during play. There is no need to "balance" a critical hit with a fumble.. that is not balance. Can players crit enemies? yes. Can enemies crit players? yes. *That* is balance(kind of).

In 5th, everyone gets to choose a different set of powers and abilities. Why should those abilities come at the cost of anything, other than "not getting the powers other classes get"?

Want to play hard mode? sure, go for it.. but there is no need to force it on everyone through punishing game mechanics.

5th edition, more than any prior edition has at least attempted to balance the game so that *all* classes are powerful in a different way, and all have appeal. Some abilities are out of scale, but it's reasonably close, for the most part.

You mention later "the original rules were made with the expectation that a random ability score generation would provide your options of what character to play. This limited the overall number of rangers, paladins, and even magic-users, but when you take that away everyone would be free to be one of the strongest classes."

This is terrible design. TERRIBLE. It's more punishment for bad rolls. Oh, you rolled poor enough not to be able to play a good class? Well, enjoy your low scores and substandard class, peasant!

Of course, I disagree entirely. People seemed to enjoy that design you call terrible well enough. If you want to make your campaign different, you were always welcome and encouraged to do so to your heart's content, but the original is the foundation forever. Everything else should be in the form and presentation of options, with a nod to the original design as "where all this comes from".

 

[Diamabel]

Of course, I disagree entirely. People seemed to enjoy that design you call terrible well enough. If you want to make your campaign different, you were always welcome and encouraged to do so to your heart's content, but the original is the foundation forever. Everything else should be in the form and presentation of options, with a nod to the original design as "where all this comes from".

It seems to me you would rather just play the older editions. The originals inspired 5th, but 5th is a new system. There are options in the DMG to play more "oldschool", and you are welcome and encouraged to do so. Did I enjoy the "terrible" older editions? yep. Would I play them with a better (for me) system out now? Hell no.

 

[SirAntoine]

I once had a player in my AD&D campaign, who, having perused the 4th Edition PHB, asked me why in the 2nd Edition PHB fighters didn't have power entries equal in number to the spell entries for wizards. I wasn't sure what to say. I had never heard AD&D criticized that way. I answered him that the abilities of the fighter were all based on what people could really do, so they needed no special rules describing them. Magic, on the other hand, needed to be described like that, into broken down bits and pieces.

Realism and fantasy.

 

[Gadget]

SirAntoine, by your definition of balance, we would all be playing 1e AD&D, with a few add ons, since you seem to regard that as the pinnacle of balance and gritty realism. There should have been no new editions since then. That is all well and good for you, but suffice it to say that others disagree. The balancing of classes by having different XP progressions, only allowing the strongest classes to be played by those who rolled really well (thereby getting the double bonus of getting better stats and a more powerful class), is so antithetical to the concept of balance as discussed on these boards I can't really even relate. Once again, if that is what one likes, great! Enjoy your game! But holding that as some sort of baseline standard of objective balance does not really seem productive.

I would assume that saying D&D on the cover would lead one to believe that one could role play a bold warrior, cunning thief, magical wizard, or devoted cleric delving into dungeons with companions, having adventures, finding treasure and exploring lost ruins. D&D 5e delivers on that in spades. It may not everyone's edition of choice, and there are surely rough patches in the rules that need to be ironed out, even some balance issues, but I submit that none of these will be that fundamental in nature. There are even many optional rules to tweak the game to ones liking (like more gritty), though they are not as extensive as many expected and wished them to be and will not meet everyone's needs.

 

[Nergal Pendragon]

SirAntoine, by your definition of balance, we would all be playing 1e AD&D, with a few add ons

You mean that's not what we're doing? Okay, I admit the add-ons are more than a few...

 

[SirAntoine]

It seems to me you would rather just play the older editions. The originals inspired 5th, but 5th is a new system. There are options in the DMG to play more "oldschool", and you are welcome and encouraged to do so. Did I enjoy the "terrible" older editions? yep. Would I play them with a better (for me) system out now? Hell no.

How dispiriting. Given a choice between AD&D and 5th Edition D&D, I would of course play AD&D, 1st or 2nd Edition. Would I go so far as to call 5th Edition "terrible design", maybe, but not during the new edition's introduction like now. Now is the time to embrace the new game, try it out, and encourage the designers to take it more in a different direction if we wish.

 

[SirAntoine]

SirAntoine, by your definition of balance, we would all be playing 1e AD&D, with a few add ons, since you seem to regard that as the pinnacle of balance and gritty realism. There should have been no new editions since then. That is all well and good for you, but suffice it to say that others disagree. The balancing of classes by having different XP progressions, only allowing the strongest classes to be played by those who rolled really well (thereby getting the double bonus of getting better stats and a more powerful class), is so antithetical to the concept of balance as discussed on these boards I can't really even relate. Once again, if that is what one likes, great! Enjoy your game! But holding that as some sort of baseline standard of objective balance does not really seem productive.

I would assume that saying D&D on the cover would lead one to believe that one could role play a bold warrior, cunning thief, magical wizard, or devoted cleric delving into dungeons with companions, having adventures, finding treasure and exploring lost ruins. D&D 5e delivers on that in spades. It may not everyone's edition of choice, and there are surely rough patches in the rules that need to be ironed out, even some balance issues, but I submit that none of these will be that fundamental in nature. There are even many optional rules to tweak the game to ones liking (like more gritty), though they are not as extensive as many expected and wished them to be and will not meet everyone's needs.

The over-powered quality to everything really hurts the game in my opinion. I haven't heard anyone else trying to ground it, either.

 

[Hussar]

But overpowered is a relative term. In ad&d by name level a party could take on multiple dragons in a straight up fight and win.

You can't just say editition x is more powerful than edition y. Power is always relative within the system.

 

[SirAntoine]

But overpowered is a relative term. In ad&d by name level a party could take on multiple dragons in a straight up fight and win.

You can't just say editition x is more powerful than edition y. Power is always relative within the system.

But the solution would be to weaken dragons so multiple dragons could, once again, be beaten in a straight up fight. You say it like it's a fault, but I DMed plenty of those encounters and they were terrific. The infamous module, I6: Ravenloft has one room in Strahd Von Zarovich's castle where there are four red dragons perched like gargoyles, gargoyles!

If you want to make an encounter with dragons harder in AD&D, it's also easy. All you need to do is control the hit points. Now, controlling hit points for everything is standard. That is probably the #1 biggest change, that you don't roll monsters' hit points. And it's like everything has a constitution bonus. Whatever happened to letting even giants and dragons roll 15 or fewer hit points?

The wizard didn't have at-will spells, yes, and they didn't have attack skill comparable with the fighter, but when they attacked with their staff or dagger those extra few points of damage could kill monsters. Everything is off the mark now, defying expectations. Sometimes that itself is good, too, to challenge players with high system mastery, but "less is more" is basic, down to earth game design.

 

[Dausuul]

According to the entree in the ‘D&D Bible of Gospel Truth and Assorted Eggnog Recipes’, the definition of ‘Overpowered’ is ‘A Half-Elf’, apparently.

After the screwing they got in 3E and 4E both, I feel like half-elves deserve a little glory. It's not like they're brokenly powerful, just a bit on the strong side.

So far, it appears that the only major balance issues are the -5 to hit/+10 damage feats, in combination with the feats that give you a bonus attack with a two-handed weapon: Sharpshooter/Crossbow Expert and Great Weapon Mastery/Polearm Mastery. So, how about changing the -5/+10 feats to read like this:

At any time, you can take a -5 penalty to all your attack rolls until the start of your next turn. Whenever you take the Attack action while this penalty is in effect, each attack that hits deals +10 damage.

Then reduce the Sharpshooter damage bonus from +10 to +8 (since ranged weapons deal less damage and Archery style mitigates the penalty), and I think it's good.