D&D 5E What official material is considered problematic to the point where it is not balanced and presents a problem?

[Corpsetaker]

This part, it drips with irony. For example, while some people have said "official D&D material has problems", what people have said more often is that there is a lot of good non-official material. Why you would focus on the minority reason and ignore the most often used one is beyond me. Wait, no it's not. You have a clear agenda. Secondly, if people did say that, it's no more a knee jerk reaction than someone automatically saying that 3PP is bad, which is what you just did in the next sentence. Hence the irony.

And while I don't have a lot of issues with official stuff, apparently a lot of people have issues with things like GWM or Sharpshooter feats, since we have threads about them once a month of people complaining about them.

I also find it odd that you'd say you "...don't really see anything that's game breaking or is a cause for concern." since since 5e has been released, you've done nothing but complain about how bad it is. If someone constantly complains about how bad something is, that tells me that they probably see a cause for concern. That, or they just want to complain for the sake of complaining and/or trolling.

You know what?

The conversation was actually going good but once again you have to be the one who throws in some kind of dig at me. I want to engage in actual conversation on the topic and it would be beneficial to the topic if you either didn't post here or watch the tone of your posts.

 

[Ed Laprade]

Like, last game, our party diviner picked up Arcane Eye and used it to scout out the dungeon. My initial reaction was "Jeebus criminey, this is a broke-ass spell. It just NUKES the exploration element of the game from orbit. An hour later, you have a perfect map of the dungeon, congratulations, guess all my surprises are over!" But taking a deep breath, I was able to talk with the player and arrive at a consensus: "Hey, this seems kind of huge...mind if we nerf it? Maybe say it takes you 5 minutes per room? That still seems like a LOT of scouting. Is it enough?" Player seemed cool with that nerf. I'm still mulling over whether that was strictly necessary or not, but that's how every conversation goes about anything that happens at my tables if it seems too much: let's talk and get at something we're both comfortable with.

Um, maybe you could put in a couple of doors?

 

[Corpsetaker]

I'm just as cautious with Wizard's products as I would be with any other product I'd add to my game: generally permissive, but I'll keep an eye out for anything that seems wonky and it's always provisional. With that standard, it's never been the case that anything from WotC or otherwise has broken my games - if I'm not able to get out ahead of it, I'm able to evaluate it after the fact and protect for it.

Like, last game, our party diviner picked up Arcane Eye and used it to scout out the dungeon. My initial reaction was "Jeebus criminey, this is a broke-ass spell. It just NUKES the exploration element of the game from orbit. An hour later, you have a perfect map of the dungeon, congratulations, guess all my surprises are over!" But taking a deep breath, I was able to talk with the player and arrive at a consensus: "Hey, this seems kind of huge...mind if we nerf it? Maybe say it takes you 5 minutes per room? That still seems like a LOT of scouting. Is it enough?" Player seemed cool with that nerf. I'm still mulling over whether that was strictly necessary or not, but that's how every conversation goes about anything that happens at my tables if it seems too much: let's talk and get at something we're both comfortable with.

That is the case regardless of the publisher of the material.

Why would you need to nerf that spell though? It doesn't say anything about allowing skill checks through the eye so you couldn't use it to detect traps. It requires a gap of 1 inch or more travel through and unless your monsters stand in one place I don't really see it as "getting rid of the surprise".

 

[I'm A Banana]

Um, maybe you could put in a couple of doors?

Most doors (especially in a dilapidated old dungeon) have a one-inch gap that can be Arcane Eye'd under.

Why would you need to nerf that spell though? It doesn't say anything about allowing skill checks through the eye so you couldn't use it to detect traps. It requires a gap of 1 inch or more travel through and unless your monsters stand in one place I don't really see it as "getting rid of the surprise".

I mean, one character exploring an entire dungeon by themselves is, at the very least, like 15-20 minutes of real-world yawn-time for the rest of the party to go grab a beer. It's also a useful "I have an entire map of this place now" spell, combined with an "I know the surface-level contents of every room" spell with a dash of "I know how many creatures and of what type are living here" spell. That's not every avenue for surprise shut down, but it's a lot of 'em. It should be a useful spell (a 5th level Divination spell ain't nothin'!), but that seemed like an outsized effect that also had a negative effect on the other players of the game.

But this shows that in addition to having diminishing returns, balance is also subjective - what is massive in one game might not be a big deal in another game. That's why you get massive threads about how broken/not broken certain mechanics are. Every game is empowered to decide for itself what it can allow unaltered and what it wants to change. Last game, Arcane Eye was one of those things we wanted to change. Next game, maybe it'll be the homebrew rogue class we're running with. As long as everyone at my table's happy, doesn't really matter what someone at some other table thinks is appropriately balanced or not.

Which is also why the core game gets no special gold star for balance. They're good rules, but they cannot be perfect at every table, and making rulings and ad hoc decisions on balance is part and parcel of playing the game.

 

[Corpsetaker]

Most doors (especially in a dilapidated old dungeon) have a one-inch gap that can be Arcane Eye'd under.


I mean, one character exploring an entire dungeon by themselves is, at the very least, like 15-20 minutes of real-world yawn-time for the rest of the party to go grab a beer. It's also a useful "I have an entire map of this place now" spell, combined with an "I know the surface-level contents of every room" spell with a dash of "I know how many creatures and of what type are living here" spell. That's not every avenue for surprise shut down, but it's a lot of 'em. It should be a useful spell (a 5th level Divination spell ain't nothin'!), but that seemed like an outsized effect that also had a negative effect on the other players of the game.

But this shows that in addition to having diminishing returns, balance is also subjective - what is massive in one game might not be a big deal in another game. That's why you get massive threads about how broken/not broken certain mechanics are. Every game is empowered to decide for itself what it can allow unaltered and what it wants to change. Last game, Arcane Eye was one of those things we wanted to change. Next game, maybe it'll be the homebrew rogue class we're running with. As long as everyone at my table's happy, doesn't really matter what someone at some other table thinks is appropriately balanced or not.

Which is also why the core game gets no special gold star for balance. They're good rules, but they cannot be perfect at every table, and making rulings and ad hoc decisions on balance is part and parcel of playing the game.

But isn't that why the game talks about making rulings? Could you not have just said the eye reaches a point where it cannot pass because of a solid wall or a big wooden door? Now the people in my game would applaud the Wizard and have no problem with waiting while he tries to explore as much as he can. Not much difference in sending ahead the rogue to scout.

 

[I'm A Banana]

But isn't that why the game talks about making rulings? Could you not have just said the eye reaches a point where it cannot pass because of a solid wall or a big wooden door? Now the people in my game would applaud the Wizard and have no problem with waiting while he tries to explore as much as he can. Not much difference in sending ahead the rogue to scout.

Again, balance is subjective. What rules work and what rules need revision are open to interpretation by any individual gaming group. Whatever publisher you use, this is the case. You might be cool with Arcane Eye! I was not in that moment. The same might apply to any rule from any book by anybody.

 

[CapnZapp]

A short list of RAWs That Are Kind Of Borked IMO:

• Stealth
• Perception vs. Investigation
• Surprise/Ambushes
• Mounts (especially as they relate to beastmaster rangers)
• The rules for what occupies each of your "hand slots" during a fight and what it takes to swap out those slots

I agree to everything on this list. But in fairness, none of them impact balance. They're borked alright, but not primarily "overpowered" or "underpowered".

That said...

Stealth: yes, these rules simply don't work. About the only reason we don't complain so much is because most of us find resolving sneaking and hiding to be rather common sense.

Perception vs. Investigation: yep, it's super unclear when to use Investigation

Surprise/Ambushes: not sure what you mean other than what falls under Stealth. I can't say I'm having trouble with running ambushes once you've moved past the stealth issues. I know some people are having trouble understanding how surprise works and how related class features (assassination) interacts, but not me.

Mounts: let's just chalk this up to a pet peeve of Banana's... (That you can't have a horse as an animal companion isn't a bug to me)

Hand slots: oh sweet bejesus yes. This is SOO unnecessary. In their efforts not to make any rules for this, they've managed to carry over the super-complicated 3rd ed rules. Nothing about this feels at home in an otherwise clean and simple edition such as 5th ed!

Let me add two more (to the "borked" list, not any balance lists):

• Passive Perception - every party will have a high Wisdom character proficient in Perception. The result is that this character (and thus the party) notices everything and everybody. Supposedly stealthy monsters can't sneak for shıt against 5e adventurers. The fundamental flaw is how your skill check is contested by the best of the opposing group, and how this high DC is not reduced by anything (such as distance, ambient noise, your attention being diverted etc).
• Tool proficiency - I get the basic idea, that you can claim the proficiency bonus from either a skill or a tool, but in practice, the rules are super-confusing and utterly inconsistent

 

[CapnZapp]

Encounter design guidelines. They are presented as a single set of calculated guidelines however there are a number of factors that seem to unbalance them.

Timing - an encounter early in the day or after a short rest can be a very different affair than the same encounter after a series of others, when the party is low on resources and on less than half hit points.

Party size - it seems to me that parties of 5 or more seem to have very little trouble with typical encounters. Our group consists of 4 PCs and although we are experienced players we do find hard and deadly encounters pretty difficult (although not always.. see above). A party of 4 usually has a weakness within it like only 1 dedicated melee type, or no ranged, or no healer etc.

DM influence - I'm a fairly soft DM combat wise, but two of our group play hard as DMs. Their monsters use terrain, flee and regroup, target spellcasters (if tactical/intelligent), focus fire, sometimes have magic items etc. Fair fights are generally hard.

How you balance for this variance I don't know, but a couple of pages in the DMG doesn't seem enough.

Encounter guidelines - yes, these are a waste of paper

Timing - to me and others, this is a feature, not a bug

Party Size - again, is this something we need a formal solution for. Other than "with more heroes, add more monsters" I mean? For legendary monsters, the universal solution would be to do away with keeping track of legendary actions, instead simply allowing the monster to act after every adventurer (so it gets 3 legendary actions in a party of three; 5 legendary actions in a party of five, etc...)

DM influence - I'm sure we all agree this is a feature, right. Right?

 

[shoak1]

A short list of RAWs That Are Kind Of Borked IMO:

• Stealth
• Perception vs. Investigation
• Surprise/Ambushes
• Mounts (especially as they relate to beastmaster rangers)
• The rules for what occupies each of your "hand slots" during a fight and what it takes to swap out those slots

Depending on who you ask, you might add certain feats (GWM, Sharpshooter, Crossbow Expert, Polearm Master), certain classes/subclasses (Champions, Beast Masters, Sorcerers, Moon Druids), and the encounter guidelines ("I need to go 8x Deadly to even have my party feel a SLIGHT challenge!" / "These don't work well for draining all of a party's resources in 1 encounter") to the list, though I personally think those are A-OK.

"Balance" is a moving target. If balance falls in a forest and nobody is around, does it make a sound? Or, rather, if a DM makes rulings about the wonky rules and everyone is on the same page and happy, does it matter if it's balanced? If it favors WIS characters over INT characters or makes spellcasting a little easier or discourages ambushes, but nobody at the table cares, do we actually have a problem? If someone were to suddenly care, would there be a problem then?

I think I agree with all of those. I will add to the list.

Armor and how it functions -may as well have 2 armor types in the game- studded leather and plate.

Saving throws- at higher levels and intelligence saves being all but useless.

A few feats- sharpshooter is the big one IMHO, Great Weapon and Polearm Master to a lesser extent maybe the healer feat. They are just better than the other feats PAM for example lets you use your bonus action and reaction, healer feat makes pacing hard for the DM, the -5/+10 feats are abuse able.

Some of the classes are underpowered relative to other subclasses let alone other classes (Champion, Land Druid, Valor Bard, Wild mage, Elemental Monk, Beastmaster Ranger).

Encounter rules. They are not that good an d the books do not make the short rest thing clear.

Monster design/CRs. Partly related to encounter rules but its rough. Some monsters are stupidly nasty for their CRs while others are pitiful.

Dexterity vs strength. Without feats one is a lot better(dex), with feats dex based melee sucks.

yup +1

 

[CapnZapp]

I think I agree with all of those. I will add to the list.

Armor and how it functions -may as well have 2 armor types in the game- studded leather and plate.

Saving throws- at higher levels and intelligence saves being all but useless.

A few feats- sharpshooter is the big one IMHO, Great Weapon and Polearm Master to a lesser extent maybe the healer feat. They are just better than the other feats PAM for example lets you use your bonus action and reaction, healer feat makes pacing hard for the DM, the -5/+10 feats are abuse able.

Some of the classes are underpowered relative to other subclasses let alone other classes (Champion, Land Druid, Valor Bard, Wild mage, Elemental Monk, Beastmaster Ranger).

Encounter rules. They are not that good an d the books do not make the short rest thing clear.

Monster design/CRs. Partly related to encounter rules but its rough. Some monsters are stupidly nasty for their CRs while others are pitiful.

Dexterity vs strength. Without feats one is a lot better(dex), with feats dex based melee sucks.

Armor - not sure I agree. Having multiple kinds of armor that all act much the same is after all a big plus for verisimilitude. The fact only a few are optimal is no reason to exclude the rest from the rules. I dont buy the argument "but the other ones are just trap options". The rules present lots of options that aren't best or even good, no reason for armor to be any different than, say, spells.

Saves - agreed. The way saves don't keep up makes the rules feel very inelegant.

Feats - I know the OP started the thread thinking of unbalanced options, but so far most of what we discuss is wonky or borked, rather than outright imbalanced. So I'll keep feats out of my reply.