D&D 5E What does 5E NEED

[Tony Vargas]

Yeah, there's no need to put all that in a fighter class because it's already there in other places. Backgrounds, skills, ability checks, etc. It's also in the name: "fighter". Seems odd to me that someone would choose a "fighter" class and want it to add more to the other two pillars more than the....er...."fighting" pillar.

The point's already been raised that most non-casting, capable warriors in genre are usually very capable in quite a few other areas - not just athletics & intimidate, but being downright acrobatic, being educated (for the setting), stealthy, able to make and repair things, track, survive in the wilderness, etc, etc, etc - often all I one character.

In 3.x, you could do a fighter/ranger/rogue and come up with a fair approximation, though your BAB suffered slightly, your skill lagged real rangers & rogues, and, that 4th level of ranger could mess you up...

In 5e Backgrounds are clearly a step in the right direction, just not a large enough step.

The balancing of classes within and across pillars is also questionable. A prepped caster like a wizard, cleric or druid, can change out his spells to be able to handle each pillar exhaustively, or choose a balance among them and make the determination of where to focus dynamically by choosing how to expend slots. In stark contrast, less flexible casters can only make the latter sort of adjustment, and non-casters are hard-coded to whatever balance of combat, interaction, & exploration abilities their class & background give them.


Hypothetically, imagine a class that has the Champion's combat ability and the Thief's non-combat ability? Would it really be at all 'broken? If you didn't have the poor fighter & rogue to compare it to, I mean. Compared, say, to the bard, cleric or druid? Would it dominate play?

I think the only possible answer is: No. It might offend any number of philosophies of class design, and enrage fans of traditional fighters and thieves by being strictly superior to their favorite classes, but it wouldn't exactly break the game. Heck, it'd barely climb to Tier 3.

 

[Gnarl45]

Ah, you mean the part that I said didn't make sense at all because...well..."one of these doesn't look like the others." I.e., it didn't make sense in the context of everything else you had been saying. It seemed to me like a random bit thrown against the wall that I couldn't make heads or tails of in how it related to everything else. Unless you're talking Basic, the hobbit, or halfling, isn't a class. What does that have to do with classes and subclasses? And even it if was, what does that look like mechanically? What in 5e prevents you from playing one?

I suppose I should at least give you the benefit of the doubt when you say you didn't understand what I said. Anyways, I'll try to explain again what I meant and hopefully this will allow us to leave this misunderstanding behind us. I'm sure you also have better things to do than arguing with a perfect stranger on the Internet.


In 5e, the class that is the best at skills is the rogue. 5e is a game where being the best at a skill means having Expertise in that skill (and Reliable Talent at higher levels). When I say I want to make a ranger without spells, I really mean I want to make a fighterish character that is the best at outdoors skills. My options for this are: multiclass bard or rogue. Getting proficiency in those skills is not going to make me the best at those skills so that's not satisfying. The bard has spells so that doesn't work either. The rogue has sneak attack and the whole dirty fighter/teamwork fighter is not what I have in mind when I think ranger.

5e is also a game where all classes aren't equal in combat. The rogue for exemple gave up a lot of his combat skills compared to a fighter to get those skills. Having a character less efficient in combat but more efficient outside of combat is something I actually enjoy. That's the Lord of the Rings hobbit I was talking about. It's a character that really sucks at combat but is loads of fun to play outside of combat. My only options in 5e to give up on combat abilities is to play or multiclass as a rogue, ranger, or bard. That means the dirty fighter fluff or spells. Bilbo has neither of these.

There are many fantasy characters that are really good at something else than fighting. You have scouts, hunters, detectives, diplomates, charlatans, etc... In 5e, really good at something else means Expertise. I would love a fighter subclass with Expertise in a couple of skills and extra outdoors stuff like being able to track faster than normal. If it would be too much bloat, I could settle for a generic fighter subclass that gives you Expertise in any two skills of your choice and other generic skill-based goodies. I could also settle for a rogue without sneak attack and a subclass that grants you generic skill-based stuff. That would be enough to make all those characters that are really good at skills but aren't sneak attackers or spellcasting bards.

The generic wizard problem is kind of like the non-sneak attacking rogue. Even if I want to play a generic wizard, picking the evoker subclass gives my wizard a very strong evoker feel, the illusionist a very strong illusionist feel, etc... These subclasses just have a very heavy impact on your character's fluff. A generic wizard would be nice. I could use it to make pretty much any wizard that doesn't heavily focus on one school of magic. I could also use a wizard subclass that gives you Expertise in a couple of feats. I would probably like to play a wizard that has Expertise in the History skill (like Gandalf).

 

[Mouseferatu]

I think one could very easily argue that, in D&D class terms, Gandalf isn't a wizard at all. He's a bard, with the aesthetics of a wizard.

Yes, seriously. All his spells are subtle. He's more about inspiring his allies than anything else. He's knowledgeable about everything. He doesn't get his spells through study. He occasionally wades in with sword swinging. I cannot think of one thing he does--on a purely mechanical basis--that works better as a wizard than a bard.

 

[Gnarl45]

The point's already been raised that most non-casting, capable warriors in genre are usually very capable in quite a few other areas - not just athletics & intimidate, but being downright acrobatic, being educated (for the setting), stealthy, able to make and repair things, track, survive in the wilderness, etc, etc, etc - often all I one character.

In 3.x, you could do a fighter/ranger/rogue and come up with a fair approximation, though your BAB suffered slightly, your skill lagged real rangers & rogues, and, that 4th level of ranger could mess you up...

In 5e Backgrounds are clearly a step in the right direction, just not a large enough step.

In my opinion, the real offender is Expertise. It redefines what being best at skill means and it creates expectations. The rogue would be just as roguish with proficiency in a couple more skills instead of Expertise (or with a second background).

I think backgrounds are great though. It allows you to combine a skill-based concept and any other character concept. The only sad thing is that any rogue character that becomes expert in your background skill makes you feel like usless crap.

The balancing of classes within and across pillars is also questionable. A prepped caster like a wizard, cleric or druid, can change out his spells to be able to handle each pillar exhaustively, or choose a balance among them and make the determination of where to focus dynamically by choosing how to expend slots. In stark contrast, less flexible casters can only make the latter sort of adjustment, and non-casters are hard-coded to whatever balance of combat, interaction, & exploration abilities their class & background give them.

Hypothetically, imagine a class that has the Champion's combat ability and the Thief's non-combat ability? Would it really be at all 'broken? If you didn't have the poor fighter & rogue to compare it to, I mean. Compared, say, to the bard, cleric or druid? Would it dominate play?

I think the only possible answer is: No. It might offend any number of philosophies of class design, and enrage fans of traditional fighters and thieves by being strictly superior to their favorite classes, but it wouldn't exactly break the game. Heck, it'd barely climb to Tier 3.

The problem with across pillar balance is that you can't objectively say what is balanced. I'm sure if you search hard enough, you'll find people that think the AD&D thief is perfectly balanced... I'm sure you would find some players that feel a fighter that combines both the fighter and thief goodies would be balance. It's more of a feel right thing than an exact science.

I think you're right that tradition would weight very heavily in what most people think "feels right".

 

[Mouseferatu]

It occurs to me, there's another very easy tweak that would allow a spell-less ranger.

Start with rogue. There's actually a great deal of skill overlap with rangers. Yes, you're lacking Animal Handling, Nature, and Survival, but you can easily pick up two of those from a background.

Swap out Thieves Cant for the secret language of the druids (or some other nature-appropriate language, if you prefer).

Use the ranger "hunter" subclass in place of either of the rogue's subclasses.

Boom. Done. Seriously, look at it. It's everything you want. You lose out on the ranger's favored terrain, but you easily make up for that by choosing Nature and Survival for your Expertise skills. Lose favored enemy, but again, the Expertise cancels a lot of that out (and at higher levels, is better).

Ranger's combat potential? You're sacrificing multiple attacks, but you're gaining a precision attack (the rogue's sneak attack), which makes perfect sense for a hunter to have. Every other non-archetype-specific rogue ability fits very well with a ranger, and some of them have a good amount of conceptual overlap. (Rogue's blindsight vs. ranger's feral senses. Hide in plain sight vs. hide via cunning action.)

Heck, this option's better at recapturing the 4E ranger than the "spells as non-magical abilities" suggestion I gave above. And as far as I can tell--though I admit I haven't studied it for long--there's nothing game-breaking about that combo of rogue class and hunter archetype, since you're still limited to one sneak attack per turn.

 

[Raith5]

So when people say they want a spellless ranger, what they mean is they want a ranger that does all the things his or her spells do, just don't call them spells? That seem....odd.

Because a previous edition of D&D had rangers do things without spells - I cant remotely see how it is odd at all!

On top of that woodsmen and women in the real world use medicinal herbs, demonstrate extreme markmanship, find traps and pass without trace without magical help. I wouldnt mind playing a ranger based on skill rather than magic.

 

[MoonSong]

I think one could very easily argue that, in D&D class terms, Gandalf isn't a wizard at all. He's a bard, with the aesthetics of a wizard.

Yes, seriously. All his spells are subtle. He's more about inspiring his allies than anything else. He's knowledgeable about everything. He doesn't get his spells through study. He occasionally wades in with sword swinging. I cannot think of one thing he does--on a purely mechanical basis--that works better as a wizard than a bard.

And in the fluff Gandalf is a sorcerer, he didn't learn from no dusty tomes and he isn't proficient with musical instruments. He is an angelic being turned humanoid -an innate caster-.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Because a previous edition of D&D had rangers do things without spells - I cant remotely see how it is odd at all!

On top of that woodsmen and women in the real world use medicinal herbs, demonstrate extreme markmanship, find traps and pass without trace without magical help. I wouldnt mind playing a ranger based on skill rather than magic.

That wasn't what I was getting at. Two things. Firstly, the history of the ranger in D&D shows us that the "common" ranger archetype has had spells. A ranger without spells in the context of D&D is very much the exception. Secondly, if you want the ranger to do things that functionally do the same thing as the already existing spells he or she has, but don't want to call them spells but "powers' instead, that seems odd to me as something to complain that is missing. What's the difference? I guess my answer would be to you, "Then refer to them as powers, or abilities, rather than spells then." In addition to that, 5e has backgrounds and skills that give the PC everything else in your list. Or are you suggesting that 5e should be more limiting in which PCs get to have those skills? Fighters shouldn't be able to have a sage background or medicine skill?

I would find that quite bad, myself.

 

[Raith5]

That wasn't what I was getting at. Two things. Firstly, the history of the ranger in D&D shows us that the "common" ranger archetype has had spells. A ranger without spells in the context of D&D is very much the exception. Secondly, if you want the ranger to do things that functionally do the same thing as the already existing spells he or she has, but don't want to call them spells but "powers' instead, that seems odd to me as something to complain that is missing. What's the difference? I guess my answer would be to you, "Then refer to them as powers, or abilities, rather than spells then." In addition to that, 5e has backgrounds and skills that give the PC everything else in your list. Or are you suggesting that 5e should be more limiting in which PCs get to have those skills? Fighters shouldn't be able to have a sage background or medicine skill?

I would find that quite bad, myself.

I agree that 5e has lots of work arounds to the problem of archetypes - via backgrounds, just saying that ranger or paladin spells are powers, etc. I dont agree that players wanting a non-spell casting ranger or paladin are the exceptionally rare case. It was one of the few popular things about 4e. I never found the idea of rangers having spells terribly interesting even when I played 1e decades ago, spell casting seemed tacked on to otherwise interesting concept. But with regards to point of this thread, I think 5e needs to do more to hook in 4e/13th age players and the option of making interesting martial classes not relying on magic strikes me as a good place to start.

 

[Uchawi]

I think one could very easily argue that, in D&D class terms, Gandalf isn't a wizard at all. He's a bard, with the aesthetics of a wizard.

Yes, seriously. All his spells are subtle. He's more about inspiring his allies than anything else. He's knowledgeable about everything. He doesn't get his spells through study. He occasionally wades in with sword swinging. I cannot think of one thing he does--on a purely mechanical basis--that works better as a wizard than a bard.

A paladin is a good fit for Gandalf, minus the armor. But that is easily explained by magic robes.