D&D 5E Why does 5E SUCK?

[EzekielRaiden]

@Imaro, I'm not really interested in continuing the discussion any further--if you're going to continually ascribe bad-faith arguments to me, question whether I've even read the text, and strawman my argument as a quest for Fighters being the best at everything, I have nothing more to say to you on the subject.

Well, I'll say it. The 3e fighter may have been easily overshadowed by Tier 1 classes, but that was a problem with the broken classes, not the fighter. It was capable in combat and highly customizeable, really interesting builds were possible, as were very high DPR ones.

In 5e, the fighter is a lot less customizeable, some of that only with an optional rule in place, and the high DPR is a given.

More or less I was focusing on what Saelorn mentioned--Fighters are no longer shafted compared to everyone else for skills. 3e feats were laughably small bonuses, though, so I don't really think much of how "customizable" they were. 5e feats are certainly better, I just don't think they're better enough--by a substantial margin. Spells are massively more powerful than feats, and always have been (barring 4e, where "spells"-as-such, in the strictest 1/2/3/5e sense, didn't exist.)

I do agree that 5e Fighters don't have a choice about whether they can put out high damage. I just also wish they didn't have to opt into non-combat stuff, when *nobody* else has to opt into it to nearly the same degree (while still, as I've said numerous times, achieving equal, or only slightly less, damage in combat).

I think part of the idea is that backgrounds are there to provide a little depth or variation to any class, however specialized that class may be. That backgrounds are there for everyone, even the most versatile classes renders that idea moot, if you look at it in terms of class balance. If, OTOH, you just look at it in terms of participation, having something from your background is still haveing something, even if other characters have it, too, in addition to getting a great deal more from their classes.

Maybe I'm giving Backgrounds too little respect. I think they're..."garbage" is too strong a word, but I really think people make them out to be something AMAAAAAZING when I think they're almost inconsequential. Tiny benefits that are so heavily DM dependent you're basically begging the DM to design things in such a way that they'll matter--that's how they've always read to me. Less a matter of "DM discretion" and more a matter of "We have no idea how helpful these should be...eh, whatever, offload that to the DM, it's their job, right?"

A different way of looking at it: I think it's cool that everyone gets stuff from Backgrounds and other "universal" features. I do notthink it is cool to have one class, and ONLY one class, fundamentally depend on that (or aping spells when the fundamental archetype doesn't include spells*) for its non-combat mechanics. I believe that, no matter what options the table turns on or off, and within a broad range of individual-table preferences, EVERY class should bring its own flavorful, unique, and helpful-in-multiple-circumstances non-combat features. No one should have to "opt into" being able to participate in explicitly-recognized, intentionally-designed, fundamentally important arenas of play, based on the archetype (hybrid or otherwise) that they've chosen to play. Perhaps--and I say this with GREAT reluctance because I know how abusable it can be--they might be able to opt outof such things, but they should never *have* to explicitly choose to get into them. That way leads to traps, and to players being understandably and legitimately upset because they didn't know they had to pay admission to join their friends when hits the fan.

*Since the "archetype" thing was questioned earlier: No, I don't think the Eldritch Knight is a capital-F Fighter (Whose Archetype Is Martial Skill). I think it's a hybrid archetype character. It samples the Fighter archetype, but it also samples a fundamentally distinct archetype (Wizard). 5e allows for a spectrum between the pure Fighter archetype (Champion, Battlemaster) and the pure caster archetype (any Wizard subclass); some of these are full classes (Sorcerer, kinda-sorta Monk), most are subclasses (Blade Pact, Eldritch Knight, Arcane Trickster, College of Valor). Being a spectrum rather than a pair of binary states, these options sample the two archetypes to varying degrees; since some of them are (by analogy) mods to an engine, rather than a replacement engine, there's necessarily heavier sampling of one archetype over another.

In 5E, a Fighter with the appropriate background can - by virtue of mere proficiency and high base stats - succeed on most skill checks (within the scope of that background) most of the time. And if the Fighter doesn't have higher stats, because you're using the optional rule for feats, then the Fighter can pick up two or three utility feats without needing to sacrifice the combat power associated with maxing out a secondary ability score.

Is that (the bolded bit) actually true? I find that incredibly difficult to believe. I mean, I can cognitively understand how it would be possible, but it seems crazy to me that "have the background and decent stat" is enough to effectively guarantee success.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Fighters in 5E are much better at mundane skills than they were in earlier editions

They really aren't better at them as a class, no. Everyone's a little 'better,' (or worse, depending on how you look at it) because proficiency means less, and you get some abilities from Background as well as class. Which is fine as far as it goes, but it doesn't speak to how classes stack up, at all.

But regardless of how you built a fighter in 3E, and how much combat power you sacrificed for utility, you were never going to be good at picking locks or disabling traps (until late 3.5, when there were enough feats that you could sacrifice a huge chunk of your combat power into gaining new class skills and gaining enough skill points to keep those maxed out).

Any build could take a bit of effort, so, no, it wasn't easy to get a fighter-based build to be good at a non-combat thing or two, but you could force the issue, and even make him /very/ good. The Rogue would still be as good or better, and better at a half-dozen other things, as well, and both could still have all that obviated if a caster had the right spell prepped at the right time. But you could do it. 3.x was just that customizeable. OTOH, in 4e, a Background or Feat for Training and you're caught up with an 'out of class' skill - you'd rarely see a 4e character stymied for lack of an in-concept skill, it was just too easy to get training.

There's also a difference when it comes to what you can accomplish with a skill. In 3.x, what DC lets you accomplish what task with a given skill was often spelled out, you could be confident you had the skill to pull off a given stunt you wanted your character to be able to do. Of course, that could be abused for things like 'diplomancer' builds, too. In 4e and 5e, your DC for a given task is less likely to be fixed (in 4e, it was generally a moving target with the level of the challenge, in 5e it's entirely up to the DM), so you can't be so sure you've invested enough in a skill to do what your concept calls for.

In 5E, a Fighter with the appropriate background can - by virtue of mere proficiency and high base stats - succeed on most skill checks (within the scope of that background) most of the time.

As could anyone with the same Background, while other classes still deliver more over and above the background, the Fighter class is just focused on DPR.

More or less I was focusing on what Saelorn mentioned--Fighters are no longer shafted compared to everyone else for skills. 3e feats were laughably small bonuses, though, so I don't really think much of how "customizable" they were. 5e feats are certainly better, I just don't think they're better enough--by a substantial margin.

5e feats let you do some of what 3.5 or 4e feats did, they're just 'bigger.' Each 5e feat is meant to be like a 3.x feat tree. That makes them less customizeable, because there's just less granularity. That they're an optional sub-system is also a strike against feats as any sort of class-balancing/salvaging mechanism.

Spells are massively more powerful than feats, and always have been (barring 4e, where "spells"-as-such, in the strictest 1/2/3/5e sense, didn't exist.)

Even in 4e, utility powers and rituals could blow ordinary skill use out of the water.

I do agree that 5e Fighters don't have a choice about whether they can put out high damage.

Well, technically you always have a choice, your fighter could choose feather-duster and shield.

But the fighter's absolute single-target-DPR specialization wouldn't be so bad if there were other other martial or non-caster classes out there that did something /else/. Then you could at least pick an alternative or combine them to do build to concept (if MCing is permitted, it's also optional). But, the handful of 'mundane' sub-classes: The Champion, Battlemaster, Berserker, Thief and Assassin all are committed to single-target DPR as their in-combat contribution. The non-fighter sub-classes get more to do out of combat, as well, but there's still very little variation there, even compared to what any one caster class could potentially do.

Maybe I'm giving Backgrounds too little respect. I think they're..."garbage" is too strong a word, but I really think people make them out to be something AMAAAAAZING when I think they're almost inconsequential. Tiny benefits that are so heavily DM dependent you're basically begging the DM to design things in such a way that they'll matter--that's how they've always read to me. Less a matter of "DM discretion" and more a matter of "We have no idea how helpful these should be...eh, whatever, offload that to the DM, it's their job, right?"

Backgrounds give you actual proficiencies, which opens up some non-combat doors for any character that takes them. So they're certainly not garbage. The context they give for those proficiencies can also help encourage the DM to let the character have related competence that the rules might not spell out. So, yeah, you're underestimating what Backgrounds contribute to the game.

They have no bearing on how classes compare, though.

Is that (the bolded bit) actually true? I find that incredibly difficult to believe. I mean, I can cognitively understand how it would be possible, but it seems crazy to me that "have the background and decent stat" is enough to effectively guarantee success.

Whether you need to make a check at all is up to the DM. Some DMs might very well feel that if you have the right Background, proficiency, and talent (stat) you should just be able to do a lot of stuff without a roll.

Or not.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Is that (the bolded bit) actually true? I find that incredibly difficult to believe. I mean, I can cognitively understand how it would be possible, but it seems crazy to me that "have the background and decent stat" is enough to effectively guarantee success.

It's true unless the DM finds it necessary to constantly challenge the party with Hard and Very Hard checks. The example in the PHB, for both the lock and manacles, is a DC 15 check - which is something a level 1 fighter can do on a roll of 10 or more, given Dexterity 16 and the +2 proficiency bonus. For a Hard (DC 20) check, the fighter can't reliably succeed on the first try until level 13 or so.

They really aren't better at them as a class, no. Everyone's a little 'better,' (or worse, depending on how you look at it) because proficiency means less, and you get some abilities from Background as well as class. Which is fine as far as it goes, but it doesn't speak to how classes stack up, at all.

By decoupling skills and classes, they raised the bar for the low end of skill competence, and since fighters have always been on the low end, they get the largest relative gain.

But the low end of competence, in 5E, is often good enough.

 

[Tony Vargas]

By decoupling skills and classes,

Backgrounds looked like they might do that, but in the end, 5e classes do include proficiencies, including skills, as well as class abilities giving superior performance in specific skills (expertise) or obviating skills in certain tasks (ranger tracking).

they raised the bar for the low end of skill competence, and since fighters have always been on the low end, they get the largest relative gain.

Bounded Accuracy keeps a poor skill, even the unmodified d20 roll of a peasant, kobold, or high-level fighter, relevant longer.

So bottom of the barrel ability with any given skill has gone from 'utterly worthless out of the lowest levels' (in 3.x, due to small numbers of ranks chasing large numbers of skills and bumping against cross-class limits) to 'can handle the easy jobs at any level, barely' in 4e (due to the 1/2 level bonus), to 'just about adequate' in 5e (due to bounded accuracy). And fighters 'benefited' from that the most because they're the worst at the most skills. That still leaves them the worst...

... at skills, which don't hold a candle to more potent class abilities, let alone spells.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

And fighters 'benefited' from that the most because they're the worst at the most skills. That still leaves them the worst...

Not quite. As mentioned, fighters have higher stats than the other classes. A fighter might feasibly end up with a tertiary ability score of 18, after maxing out two the primary and secondary stats.

At skills, which don't hold a candle to more potent class abilities, let alone spells.

YMMV, of course, but mundane skills are phenomenally superior to spells in any edition where spells have a real cost associated with them.

In older editions, the wizard faced a severe limitation on spells per day. Using magic for anything that could be replicated with a skill meant that you were more likely to die later on, and you had to prepare that spell slot ahead of time, so you had to make that choice at the beginning of the day. Taking knock meant that you couldn't cast glitterdust or web. But what's the point in even learning the spell, if you never prepare it?

In 4E, there was a monetary cost associated with the rituals that replaced mundane skills, and it could still fail.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

YMMV, of course, but mundane skills are phenomenally superior to spells in any edition where spells have a real cost associated with them.

In 5E that cost is concentration. Want to fly and sneak at the same time? Better have a good Stealth score.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Not quite. As mentioned, fighters have higher stats than the other classes.

Well, they might. If the campaign doesn't use feats or the player of the fighter doesn't take any - but feats are also supposed to be a big deal for the fighter. Then again, if you're using random stats, any character might have higher or lower stats than typical.

A fighter might feasibly end up with a tertiary ability score of 18, after maxing out two the primary and secondary stats.

Instead of a 14, at high level? That +2 isn't exactly a game-changer.

YMMV, of course, but mundane skills are phenomenally superior to spells in any edition where spells have a real cost associated with them.

No, they're not. Quite the opposite, the limited-use or other 'cost' associated with the spell justifies it being vastly superior to the skill. Skills are already the fall-back. If a task is important and immediate, and you can do it much better via a limited resource like a spell or item, you expend the resource. Skills are used when no other, better resource is applicable, or when the task is less critical and you can try the skill first or try it repeatedly.

In older editions, the wizard faced a severe limitation on spells per day. Using magic for anything that could be replicated with a skill meant that you were more likely to die later on, and you had to prepare that spell slot ahead of time, so you had to make that choice at the beginning of the day. Taking knock meant that you couldn't cast glitterdust or web. But what's the point in even learning the spell, if you never prepare it?

In 4E, there was a monetary cost associated with the rituals that replaced mundane skills, and it could still fail.

Heck, Knock in 4e also cost a surge, to keep it from obviating a skill - knock having been the favorite whipping-boy example in 3.x debates over caster supremacy. It takes a lot of limitations on a resource that works automatically works better than a skill to keep the skill-expert relevant. Let alone keeping the skill-incompetent relevant.

5e bounded accuracy does mean that anyone might succeed on any given not-too-hard check, so, if time and dignity and consequences of failure aren't issues, everyone can go ahead and make a check (or few), and who succeeds doesn't really matter. Apart from that, being proficient or having expertise means something - and having an even more effective, if managed, resource that obviates even expertise, means even more.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

No, they're not. Quite the opposite, the limited-use or other 'cost' associated with the spell justifies it being vastly superior to the skill. Skills are already the fall-back. If a task is important and immediate, and you can do it much better via a limited resource like a spell or item, you expend the resource. Skills are used when no other, better resource is applicable, or when the task is less critical and you can try the skill first or try it repeatedly.

Skills are only obviated if you're willing to pay the cost for the spell. Given that D&D is a resource management battle of attrition, and failure to properly manage your resources means that everyone dies and the campaign is over, you should never pay that cost unless you would lose more from trying the mundane solution.

In my experience, that is almost never the case. YMMV, obviously.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Maybe I gave a bad example. Your class should be obvious to anyone who has read the rule book, not just the DM.

And I agree that the player should be free to make whatever character he or she wants, within the restrictions of the game, but I'm also saying that fluff is immutably linked with crunch. That is one of the major restrictions which exist for any given game. You can decide whatever fluff you want, and take the crunch which is the one true way of representing that fluff, or you could pick the crunch you want and work backward to figure out the fluff that gets you there.

The only thing the player can't do is to decide which fluff corresponds to which crunch. That's the job of the system. That's the reason we even have a system. The best the player can do, if no suitable class is available (on grounds of crunch or fluff), is to petition the DM to change the system. If you really want to use the druid mechanics, but the fluff says that druids are all wild hermits and you wanted to play a city rat, then the DM has the power to say that druidic magic can be taught in schools, even in big cities.

Remember, though, the DM has put a lot of work into building a campaign world that is both interesting and internally consistent. Some DMs might invite their players to help develop the campaign world, deciding how the world actually works, but that's the exception rather than the rule. And in the end, you still need to develop an objective in-game reason for why druids operate differently from nature-clerics, even if it's just the difference between which schools they attended.

Do rangers gain magical powers through devotion? Or do they gain spells because they just understand nature that well? And some of their spells replicate combat tricks, although they do so in an overtly magical way. I would almost consider the ranger to be a variant of sorcerer, in that regard. In any case, they don't gain their powers through devotion to a higher power; they don't have a code which, if willingly violated, may cause them to lose their magic.

There's definite gray area, granted, but they seem distinct enough to me. They're at least as distinct as the wizard and the sorcerer.

Back in the day, the druid was invented because the cleric was the cleric of light and healing. The druid was an example of how you could modify the priest class, to cover a distinctly different concept. That edition (AD&D 2E) spent a lot of effort in showing different ways that the DM could create variations within the priest class, but it wasn't until 3.0 that the druid and the nature cleric appeared together. I consider that to be one of the mistakes of 3E; they should have either expanded the other domains out into full classes, or gotten rid of the druid.

Notably, they (more-or-less) fixed this in 4E, since the cleric went back to the light and healing concept. They could have continued with that distinction, in 5E, but I think they wanted to appeal back to the 3E crowd :-/

This is one of those basic premises things. I agree with a lot of what I've seen you say on other topics, but on this, we're just polar opposites. IMO, it is strictly better if there are at least two ways to mechanically represent the fluff of a given character concept, and those mechanics are distinct, and both well made. I strongly believe in being able to mechanically represent minor flavor distinctions, whenever possible.
I also don't think that there's anything wrong with players deciding (within the campaign framework, as always) to reflavor their mechanics. I don't see any need to DM input on that process, outside of the input the DM has on all fluff decisions. ie, "that backstory doesn't really work with the group you're trying to fit it into, perhaps if we..."

As for the Ranger and Paladin, I have always viewed the Ranger and Druid as getting spells through devotion, albeit not through prayer.

Personally, I see the game as being improved by having the Eldritch Knight and Arcane Trickster and multi-classing rules that allow you to mix wizard with fighter or rogue. Because a rogue(theif)/wizard, a rogue(assassin)/wizard and an Arcane Trickster will all play differently from one another, allowing the player to choose what playstyle they want to use to represent their concept of a magically inclined thief/assassin/whatever. And it accomplishes that while allowing players who want to keep things simple to just pick a class and subclass and play, while other players and tweak and fiddle, and both can play at the same table with no problems.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Skills are only obviated if you're willing to pay the cost for the spell. Given that D&D is a resource management battle of attrition, and failure to properly manage your resources means that everyone dies and the campaign is over, you should never pay that cost unless you would lose more from trying the mundane solution.

Very true, and part of the point, really. If you don't bring some of those limited resources to the table and have a say in managing them, you're not really in the game.

If a task is really critical - if you get one chance and it had better work - then you want the Expert (with expertise and a tricked out skill check), or, to be really sure, expend a resource with a guaranteed result. The less important a task, the more reasonable it is to let some second- or third- string character throw his d20 into the mix, as long as there's nothing preventing multiple attempts and not consequences for failure. At which point, the task is simply trivial, and being able to do it is meaningless.

The 'boost' the fighter (and everyone else) got from Bounded Accuracy dragging down DCs to the point that even a straight d20 had a shot, was to that, last, trivial category of checks. It's nice to not be embarrassed by guaranteed failure even when performing simple, trivial tasks, as might well have happened to any 2 rank/level, INT-dump-stat, class in 3e. But, it's not a great leap forward or enough to really impact the way classes stack up in the interaction and exploration pillars.