D&D 5E Party optimisation vs Character optimisation

[Tony Vargas]

I agree with your first paragraph and am totally baffled by the second. It doesn't seem to follow. In 5E, High stats + Lucky feat + Alert + smart player = Conan as described above.

What's missing?

First of all 'smart player' is a meaningless canard. Conan, the character, has some remarkable, even inexplicable or superhuman abilities - you can't expect a player to somehow 'skillfully play' those things into existence. Even if he could, he could do it with any character - Merlin or Bob the Baker - and it ceases to be modeling Conan, at all.

In spite of that, the PC you describe /could/ end up playing like Conan - if the DM consistently ignored, over-ruled, and tweaked rules to make it happen. But, again, that's not the system modeling the character, or the player playing the character he wants, that's the DM making something happen by fiat. He could just as easily make your would-be Conan a wuss.
At bottom, though, really REH is missing from that. The kind of plot power that authors exercise to keep their heroes heroic - or alive in spite of their heroism - that D&D only partially captures with hps & saves (and 5e isn't exactly the best at either of those). Abilities that deliver player agency also go a ways towards capturing that aspect of the genre.


Contrast that with a caster character. You may want to play a Gandalf. In some versions of D&D, you could even be some sort of celestial creature to get the Maiar aspect of it, but, mechanically, you could do everything Gandalf actually did as a magic-user with a staff of the magic, ring of fire elemental command, and the ability to cast spells as high as 3rd level. More likely, your D&D Gandalf stand-in is going to be a high-level wizard. If he doesn't start out as such, D&D's zero-to-hero progression will get him there. Before long, he'll be casting more spells per day than Gandalf did in the whole trilogy - and a more varied and powerful selection of spells, at that. And, he won't be doing it because his player is oh-so-'smart' or the DM is bending over backwards to let him go beyond what the rules give him - he'll be doing it because it's there on the character sheet: so many known spells, so many prepared, so many slots/day. Each spell does something specific, powerful, and pretty dependable exactly when the player decides he wants it to happen.

Did Tolkien write Gandalf that way? No. Gandalf hesitated to light a fire with magic. When he killed a Balrog he used a sword and 'grappled' with it in a mythic contest. He didn't blast it with a spell combo.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Responding to your edit:

You don't even need to /replicate/ effects you just need to present a comparable breadth of meaningful options. It's one thing to give an archer a 1/day 'black arrow technique' that happens to work exactly like magic missle, and set it down as 'cast magic missle 1/day, using your bow as a focus, but it's not magic.' It's better to give him a unique ability that's both explicitly (not merely arbitrarily) not magical, /and/ comparable in usefulness and power - an auto-hit that bypasses resistance, to build on the same example.

Mechanically and conceptually D&D has room for that kind of thing - as you pointed out, 4e went further than other eds in that direction. 5e could have gone further - or at least not backed up as dramatically.

5E barbarian rage doesn't meet your criterion? How about Action Surge? I would strongly, strongly object to 1/day Black Arrow Technique, because why should fighting techniques only work 1/day? If you're going to give the fighter Black Arrow, then give him Black Arrow! (I would also look askance as the arrow doing force damage instead of piercing, but okay, whatever. Could live with it.)
Thieves get something close to auto-success in the form of Reliable Talent.

The problem with complaints about "martials have no options outside of combat" is that it's never even clear what form the preferred solution would take. Proposed changes invariably take the form of new combat powers, and frankly 5E already gives them plenty of combat powers, like the ability to attack at 600% of normal speed. (Fighter 20 with Polearm Master.) So the real complaint is about non-combat, but instead of accepting a real solution in the form of a new subsystem (Reputation, etc.) we get plaintive requests for... I'm not sure what, except apparently the people asking think 4E had the right idea and want to see more AEDU powers.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

First of all 'smart player' is a meaningless canard. Conan, the character, has some remarkable, even inexplicable or superhuman abilities - you can't expect a player to somehow 'skillfully play' those things into existence. Even if he could, he could do it with any character - Merlin or Bob the Baker - and it ceases to be modeling Conan, at all.

In spite of that, the PC you describe /could/ end up playing like Conan - if the DM consistently ignored, over-ruled, and tweaked rules to make it happen. But, again, that's not the system modeling the character, or the player playing the character he wants, that's the DM making something happen by fiat. He could just as easily make your would-be Conan a wuss.
At bottom, though, really REH is missing from that. The kind of plot power that authors exercise to keep their heroes heroic - or alive in spite of their heroism - that D&D only partially captures with hps & saves (and 5e isn't exactly the best at either of those). Abilities that deliver player agency also go a ways towards capturing that aspect of the genre.


Contrast that with a caster character. You may want to play a Gandalf. In some versions of D&D, you could even be some sort of celestial creature to get the Maiar aspect of it, but, mechanically, you could do everything Gandalf actually did as a magic-user with a staff of the magic, ring of fire elemental command, and the ability to cast spells as high as 3rd level. More likely, your D&D Gandalf stand-in is going to be a high-level wizard. If he doesn't start out as such, D&D's zero-to-hero progression will get him there. Before long, he'll be casting more spells per day than Gandalf did in the whole trilogy - and a more varied and powerful selection of spells, at that. And, he won't be doing it because his player is oh-so-'smart' or the DM is bending over backwards to let him go beyond what the rules give him - he'll be doing it because it's there on the character sheet: so many known spells, so many prepared, so many slots/day. Each spell does something specific, powerful, and pretty dependable exactly when the player decides he wants it to happen.

Did Tolkien write Gandalf that way? No. Gandalf hesitated to light a fire with magic. When he killed a Balrog he used a sword and 'grappled' with it in a mythic contest. He didn't blast it with a spell combo.

I strongly disagree with the idea that Gandalf works with a dumb player. We've all played with dumb Gandalfs, or at least I have and I expect you have too. The kewl powers and additional spells make little difference unless the player is canny enough to do Gandalf-like things such as recon. Gandalf didn't use any spells to save the day at Helm's Deep, he used his brain, his horse, and his tongue. The same applies to Conan. It's not a canard that you need smart players to replicate canny characters--or would you prefer to just give wizards a "Summon Rohirim Army" power? Then you could give the same power to Conan, and you wouldn't need smart players any more for that scenario. I don't mean to snark, but it honestly sounds like that's the kind of thing you're asking for, and it repulses me. Mechanical benefits should never displace smart play. (This is also why I hate playing PCs with Intelligence under 12 at the very lowest, even if there's no mechanical benefit to it.)

P.S. You could swap Gandalf out for a high-stats high-level Lucky Conan and he would save the day at Helm's Deep EXACTLY as well as Gandalf. Plenty of agency in that direction.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I strongly disagree with the idea that Gandalf works with a dumb player.

Just as well that I didn't make that assertion then. Indeed, a 'dumb player' spraying around more spells and more powerful spells in a day than Gandalf cast in the entire trilogy might do so very ineffectively.

We've all played with dumb Gandalfs, or at least I have and I expect you have too. The kewl powers and additional spells make little difference unless the player is canny enough to do Gandalf-like things such as recon.

It doesn't take the same kind of 'smart player' prodigy to get a much-better-than-Gandalf level of performance out of a magic-user/wizard in D&D, like it does to eke out even a Conan-like performance from a fighter/barbarian.

Gandalf didn't use any spells to save the day at Helm's Deep, he used his brain, his horse, and his tongue.

Sure. And, a D&D wizard would, in his place use some spells, because he has 'em. A lot of 'em, and they work really well.

Then you could give the same power to Conan, and you wouldn't need smart players any more for that scenario. I don't mean to snark, but it honestly sounds like that's the kinds of thing you're asking for, and it repulses me.

So, you're saying that, somehow, giving a player of a Conan type character some PC resources to manage that allow him to pull the kind of against-the-odds things that Conan and other heroes routinely pull, some of the time, would somehow make the player stupid. But, giving the player of the Gandalf type a larger set of resources to manage, that allow him to pull a much wider and more overt range of things than Gandalf ever did, somehow make him a 'smart player?'

Mechanical benefits should never displace smart play.

So, we could, for instance, do away with Vancian magic, and let the DM judge what PC casters can do based on the respective players' knowledge of the occult, perhaps?

5E barbarian rage doesn't meet your criterion? How about Action Surge? I would strongly, strongly object to 1/day Black Arrow Technique, because why should fighting techniques only work 1/day?

The kind that are /really/ dramatic, require superhuman focus and determination - 'heroic' ones that not just anyone could do.

The problem with complaints about "martials have no options outside of combat" is that it's never even clear what form the preferred solution would take.

It's not like they've often gotten a lot of options in combat, either. Classic D&D had very few combat options, and they were across the board. 3.5 did better with feats, but it took a whole feat tree to really open up a combat option, and it was graven in stone almost from 1st level - that's pretty sad compared to choosing dozens of different spells each day. Even 4e, though it offered many such 'exploits,' didn't offer that great a variety.

I'm not sure what, except apparently the people asking think 4E had the right idea and want to see more AEDU powers.

It was a larger step in the right direction than 3e bonus feats or 5e battlemaster maneuvers. And, it only worked to the extent it did, because, at the same time, they vastly contracted the number of spells each individual caster had access to. In that sense, it was a fair solution in that it addressed both sides of both problems: that martial characters fell far short of what they were in genre, while caster classes far exceeded their sources of inspiration and that players of martial characters were denied agency, while players of caster classes had a lot of it, whether they wanted it or not.

5e could still have improved substantially upon what 4e did if it had made any effort to do so. The biggest opportunity being the 'pillars' that were first articulated (though, like roles, they'd always been around) during the 5e playtest. Bringing the same kind of balance and agency into the other two pillars would have been huge. Incrementally improving the same in the combat pillar wouldn't have been too much to ask either, I don't think.

 

[CapnZapp]

So the elemental monk doesn't float your boat purely because ki is still magical? You want fireballs created from... what, exactly?

I think any game system which satisfies your requirement will break my willing suspension of disbelief in the same way as a really bad science fiction movie.

Since you're more interested in defeating your own straw men than hearing what I like, I'm not going to bother pointing out that I haven't talked anything about monks or fireballs.

So, sure, anything I like even remotely is like one of those really bad science fiction move you don't like.

Yeah, that makes sense.

 

[CapnZapp]

You don't even need to /replicate/ effects you just need to present a comparable breadth of meaningful options. It's one thing to give an archer a 1/day 'black arrow technique' that happens to work exactly like magic missle, and set it down as 'cast magic missle 1/day, using your bow as a focus, but it's not magic.' It's better to give him a unique ability that's both explicitly (not merely arbitrarily) not magical, /and/ comparable in usefulness and power - an auto-hit that bypasses resistance, to build on the same example.

Mechanically and conceptually D&D has room for that kind of thing - as you pointed out, 4e went further than other eds in that direction. 5e could have gone further - or at least not backed up as dramatically.

Yeah.

"exactly like but not" is of course a sloppy lazy solution. But it is still better than no solution at all.

There are things in 5E that amaze me, and not in a good way. Just to pick a single example of what I mean, let's look at "Arcane Charge". It's a short-distance teleport Fighters of the Eldritch Knight gets.

At level 15.

Yes, really. They think that a low-level magic effect needs to be level frikkin' fifteen just because the character is a martial one.

That's exactly what I'm talking about. The effect itself is not overpowered in any way, but since the character isn't a spellcaster, any reality-breaking effect needs to be withheld from the hero until he's on a cosmic power scale.

Never mind that the spellcasters in the group can do that already at low levels. Never mind that in 4th Edition it was frikkin' given away for free to everyone of a certain race! (And never mind that the character does cast spells after all, but that's really beside the point)

My take is: give something like Arcane Charge on a power-appropriate level or don't give it at all. Handing it out on level fifteen, when your party members can travel to other dimensions for frak's sake, is an outright insult to the idea that "martials can too".

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Since you're more interested in defeating your own straw men than hearing what I like, I'm not going to bother pointing out that I haven't talked anything about monks or fireballs.

That wasn't intended as a strawman--that was an honest attempt to elicit a clarification.

1.) Do monks not do it for you because ki is fluffed as as a type of magic?
2.) How would the abilities you're looking for work, from a game-physics standpoint? In 5E, magic is powered by the Weave. That's why it can do weird stuff instead of just normal, real-world stuff. How would your desired powers work?

So, sure, anything I like even remotely is like one of those really bad science fiction move you don't like.

"Anything [CapnZapp] likes"? Probably not. I mean, you apparently like D&D enough to play it, so apparently there's some overlap between things you like and things I like. But the direction you're pushing in does seem to always be a direction I'm not interested in. So, happy gaming to you, and run your magic elf-game just the way you like it, and I will do the same.

 

[Tony Vargas]

1.) Do monks not do it for you because ki is fluffed as as a type of magic?

I can see how monks, as 'martial artists,' might be ambiguous. The shadow and elemental monks very clearly cross the line to using magic. They teleport through shadows and cast burning hands and so forth. The open-hand monks aren't as clear cut, but since ki is clearly doing magic for the other two sub-classes, it doesn't look good.

'Martial,' again, gets used as short-hand for 'character with an heroic archetype that does not include spell-casting or other overtly supernatural abilities.' Doesn't mean you couldn't have a 'martial' class taken by a character who's race is supernatural. Doesn't mean they can't use magic items. Doesn't meant they can't have extraordinary or even superhuman abilities. Just that class abilities don't cross that line to the supernatural - don't become magic in that traditional sense of spellcasting and the overtly supernatural.

Just to be clear, since you're looking for clarification, 'not supernatural' can leave a /lot/ of wiggle room. Jumping for instance, is not supernatural. Jumping over the empire state building might seem to cross that line, but it's still jumping - a very extreme case of super-human jumping, but still not necessarily supernatural, in itself. Conjuring up a ball of fire ex nillo, OTOH, prettymuch supernatural. You might be able to engineer a technological or legerdermain trick that looks like you conjured up a ball of fire, but the thing you're pretending to do would be supernatural if it weren't a trick.

2.) How would the abilities you're looking for work, from a game-physics standpoint? In 5E, magic is powered by the Weave. That's why it can do weird stuff instead of just normal, real-world stuff. How would your desired powers work?

Same way they do in genre: extraordinary ability, determination, luck, training, talent, more luck, and 'heroism' - including things just breaking your way, however improbably or implausibly and without explanation, because you /are/ playing a hero in a fantasy story, not a normal, real world, mundane person. 'Just normal real world stuff' is a yardstick for historical RPGs bordering on simulations, not Heroic Fantasy RPGs.

Once fantasy, heroic, pulp, science-fiction, cinematic, action or a host of other genre labels come into it, 'just normal real world stuff' goes right out the window.

 

[Celtavian]

There's nothing "real world" about a D&D martial. In the real world even the very best warrior would die within seconds trying to stand against a dragon or demon. For some reason because the martial can't cast a fireball or teleport, their extraordinary ability with weapons, battle resilience, skills, or other capabilities aren't sufficiently extraordinary to satisfy some tastes. For me the ability to survive close combat with extraordinarily powerful creatures is enough for someone like me to enjoy martial characters. That's what I see them do in fantasy entertainment. Conan is a tough SoB with a strong will, fast reflexes, and extraordinary strength. That is the way Robert E. Howard wrote him. The way he defeats wizards is sneaking up on them or killing them or defeating the enemies they send at him and defeating the magic they cast on him through force of will. You could accomplish this type of environment by eliminating spells or limiting maximum wizard levels. I don't see why some feel the need to force this as a standard paradigm for D&D.

There is also the complete avoidance of relative power. Using Gandalf's limited shows of wizardry fails to mention he was still the most powerful character in the story on the side of the protagonists. Saruman was a major villain few of the martial characters could withstand. Even with the Lord of the Rings universe, wizards were still far more powerful than martials. Even The Witchking of Angmar was the most powerful servant of Sauron. It is the same in Conan stories. The relative power of wizards makes them Conan's most formidable and frightening enemies besides gods, demons, and powerful monsters. It is this way in most fantasy literature.

Discussion of the exact nature of wizardry in the fantasy genre is pointless given the vast array of magic created by authors. One point I see avoided at all costs in these arguments, is the fact that 99.9% of the fantasy genre portraying the relative power of casters always has them as the most powerful beings in a fantasy world besides gods and monsters. I fail to understand why it is so hard to accept that designers of a fantasy game wouldn't continue this tradition considering it is so common to the genre. You could say it is a fantasy genre trope that fantasy readers expect. It boggles my mind when someone attempt to claim this isn't the case.

I guess I don't see how PC martials don't have agency in fantasy adventures. Agency implies being able to affect the story in a meaningful way. I don't see how the martials don't do so save for lazy DMing. I have never in all my years of DMing not made players that chose to create martial characters an integral and influential part of any adventure I ran. They never felt like they lacked agency. I cannot imagine what kind of games some of you must play in that make these ludicrous claims. You must be playing in campaigns with players that use casters to provide every solution to every problem and a DM that has created encounters that allow such a method of resolution. Somehow this has become your gaming norm to the point you feel impotent and unnecessary playing a martial character. I'm so glad this has never been my experience playing D&D. What a boring game it would be if I couldn't play a Launcelot or Conan and feel like my contribution was as important as the wizard or cleric's. I would never allow this happen. I would feel I was a failure of a DM if I ever created this type of environment for players that they feel completely overshadowed by casters.

 

[CapnZapp]

That wasn't intended as a strawman--that was an honest attempt to elicit a clarification.

1.) Do monks not do it for you because ki is fluffed as as a type of magic?
2.) How would the abilities you're looking for work, from a game-physics standpoint? In 5E, magic is powered by the Weave. That's why it can do weird stuff instead of just normal, real-world stuff. How would your desired powers work?



"Anything [CapnZapp] likes"? Probably not. I mean, you apparently like D&D enough to play it, so apparently there's some overlap between things you like and things I like. But the direction you're pushing in does seem to always be a direction I'm not interested in. So, happy gaming to you, and run your magic elf-game just the way you like it, and I will do the same.

I'm not talking about monks. Frankly, they're not my favorite class.

Explaining how stuff works is 1) best left up to the campaign or DM, and 2) you shouldn't have to have to explain cool martial arts any more than you have to explain magic, and 3) all that talk of the Weave isn't really an explanation, it's a rationalization: like Trek techno babble.

(On mobile so can't see rest of your post)