D&D 5E Classes with resources feel like usage is too restrained

[CapnZapp]

To be fair, I think that 5e is closest to 1e/2e

Fair enough

 

[CapnZapp]

balance was not necessarily the overriding goal

Oh well. Since this edition is still amazingly balanced (when it comes to old bugbears as linear fighter vs quadratic wizard; useless bards, god clerics, broken multiclassing etc etc) I'm willing to forgive them

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Inchoroi]

Well, your problem is that you have much too high expectations. You seem to labor under the impression a character that doesn't use a resource in a given combat round is somehow below par.

That is not true. Or at least, the game expects you to consider it not true, as in (repeat after me) "a character can be quite awesome just by doing the things he can do all day".

This is especially true for martial characters, since they actually can do what they do all day: swing swords, punch faces.

Full casters can only cast cantrips all day, and while that is a huge improvement over previous editions, it's still not what they are, not what they're defined as (arguably with Warlock as the exception).

I think your first course of action, before going ahead and changing things around (that honestly run the risk of making points-charged classes too good), should be to try to recalibrate your expectations.

Don't view the Monk using a Ki point as "business as usual", but make a point of just how awesome that makes your character. Spending a Ki point needs to be the exception, even though it is not exactly uncommon.

This is the proper way of thinking, IMO.

Well, the "just add more encounters" advice has been thoroughly debunked by now. As in, no, it's way harder than people make it out to be. As in, yes, it can be done, but something is wrong with the game if it forces the DM to do all that hard work.

Besides, I'd look at it from the other direction. If adventure days are short enough that spellcasters can cast big spells, why can't the martial classes just spend points?

I mean, a Monk gets more Ki points than a Wizard gets "big spells".

Remember, for a high-level Wizard, a first level spell (slot) is no longer "big". Indeed, they could even be overshadowed by four-dice cantrips at that point.

So I'd wager the issue isn't so much "not enough encounters" as "not enough short rests".

It's easy for a DM doing things she's always done it to get stuck in a rut where adventure days simply don't have short rests. My advice to shake things up is to experiment with the 5 minute short rest duration from 4E.

It should help massively with the shorters vs longers balance.

(Of course, I believe it tilts the balance way too much toward shorters, but that's another story)

If nothing else, it's a quick and easy fix. Which "add more encounters" assuredly is not.

However, I don't think the "just add more encounter" advice has been debunked. Given that this is solely an anecdote, my groups over the last two years have shown that if you get the adventuring day right as a DM, things work as intended. Getting that is hard--I've found it's actually easiest if I don't plan for rests, but instead plan situations, and let the party decide when they want to rest.

 

[CapnZapp]

I mean the "just add encounters" advice as if it was "just add sugar".

I have no issue with the advice, provided it isn't presented as the be-all end-all of solutions.

 

[Tony Vargas]

But... but they're all 4E solutions.

Outside of scorched-earth edition warring, that's no reason not to adapt something like them, if you're experience the same problems.

Point being: somebody can't say "well we tried" if all those attempts were in the 4E era. As I said, I want to see the 5E designers take a stab at this.

The point isn't to defend the designers in that sense, it's pointing out that it's not a new problem, and not one that hasn't been addressed in the past. As to the point of wanting the 5e designers to take a stab at it, well, Mike Mearls worked on 4e from the beginning, and he's been the top designer since Essentials, so, yeah, he's taken a stab at it.

Look, I know you're subtly pushing your agenda that 5E is oh-so-different and balance is a nonissue, but I don't buy it.

There's nothing subtle about it, and it's not a difference from most of D&D's history, just from the other two 'modern' eds, 3e & 4e, which were both much more player-focused. 5e is heavily DM focused, and 'balancing' player choices like classes is something the DM can worry about, or not, as fits his style and his group's tolerance of (or preference for) imbalance.

5E is much closer to 3E (than 4E) in almost every aspect

It's much closer to 2e than either 3e or 4e, in how it approaches player vs DM. 3e & 4e were both very player-focused editions, they each presented many player options that were carefully calibrated (4e to be balanced, 3e to reward system mastery) and players seemed to have an expectation of that, as well. 5e is intentionally DM-Empowering, presenting fewer and less clear player options that require more DM mediation to function (among other things) to foster that. 1e AD&D may well have been designed to be balanced, but it was designed with the expectations of the wargaming hobby as a foundation, and that included the expectation that it'd be endlessly tinkered with, scenario by scenario, which with the much greater importance of the DM relative to the often downright optional wargaming 'judge,' ended up being very 'DM Empowering,' more or less by accident. 5e is very similar in that sense, it's just intentional.

You might have much more experience with 4E, and you might read lots of 4E influence into 5E.

Nope. I've played D&D since 1980, with a break from 96-99, so I have the most experience with 1e, followed by 3e, then 4e - even when I played 2e, I mostly ran it, and with variants that still resembled 1e in some ways, so it's a distant fourth place, Basic I only played for a matter of months, 0D&D only a game or two at conventions to see what it was like, the 'X' in B/X and the later BECMI/Rules Cyclopedia, not at all. I think that about covers it.

[/quote] Myself, I consider 5E to chiefly be a descendant of 3E. An edition that finally fixes for good a large portion of the d20 niggles, in a way that 3.5 or PF never comes even close to.[/quote]IMHO, you're way off base. While 5e has plenty of mechanical details adapted from 3e, and some (with the serial numbers filed off) from 4e, it's very much a successor to the 'Classic Game,' AD&D (and probably B/X/ECMI/RC, that I just don't see for want of a reference - fans of that 'second prong' of the classic game can chime in). It's between 2e & 3e in the 'evolutionary scale,' a it were. It does fix a couple of 3e foibles, like the problems with MCing caster classes, but only incidentally - in that specific case, as part of an optional sub-system.

You're saying class balance isn't a thing in 5E, but since I consider class balance being better now than ever before (excluding 4E Sure, compared to 4E, class balance has taken a step backwards. )

You say that like the two opinions are somehow contradictory. 4e achieved class balance far and away beyond anything D&D had even tried before, by radically re-designing classes from the ground up, so, excluding it from consideration, you're looking for really fairly minor differences among the more traditional takes.

Of those:

3e was intentionally designed to be imbalanced (to reward system mastery) above and beyond the inevitable imbalances in any complex system, so can't help but be the least-class-balanced D&D of all time. Even if 5e were designed with no regard to balance, it couldn't help but be better-balanced than 3e.

The original game, was, of course, 'primitive' in the non-prejorative sense, and 1e AD&D was still pretty experimental and done in the wargaming style (expecting many variants) so could hardly be expected to have robust balance, and 2e was little-changed in the base mechanics from 1e. I don't know exactly what BECMI/RC was like, but it was largely compatible with the other classic eds, while exploring, towards the end, gods as PCs, so one can only expect balance got a little crazy.

So, for the 5e 'Standard game' to be 'better balanced' than the classic editions is not exactly a high bar. It may well be. Then again, in some ways, it clearly lacks or mutes some of the tougher (and, yeah, more heavy-handed) old-school balancing factors, particularly restrictions on magic and resource limitations.

In any case, it targets any attempted class balance around the 6-8 encounter/2-3 short rest 'day.'

I mean the "just add encounters" advice as if it was "just add sugar".

That's not a terrible analogy. Sugar can be really bad for you if you eat too much of it....

I really can't muster up any objection - as I see it, class balance was a definite priority. I mean, I can't believe it was just a "happy accident" now can I?

Class balance was always a goal in the classic game, even back in 1e, EGG would go on about it at length. But the game didn't come through with it, the DM had to ride heard like a wargamer 'judge' to make it happen. The same remained true of 2e. 5e wasn't designed like an old-school wargame, though, it was designed to be DM Empowering and 'modular' (sorta), and that inevitably put balance (class & encounter) solidly in the DM's court. You simply can't use mechanics to enforce balance when you have no idea which mechanics the DM might choose to use, ban, or mod.
dom hailed as a successful design

Also, good enforcement makes it clear what you do wrong. Merely having a thing break down gives no such explanations.

5e does provide the promised "crystal clear guidance" in the 6-8 encounter guideline. That's exactly what you're complaining about, isn't it?

(Unless you want to argue the designers COULD have made 5E work even for single-encounter days, but CHOSE to have the game break down when used in such a way. But that would be preposterous in so many ways.)

Clearly there have been many games to which encounters/day is a matter of mechanical indifference, so, yes, they COULD have done so, and it's possible (I think, likely) that they chose not to (rather than tried and failed).

Thanks for the advice, but what I would have wanted is for this to be built right into the rules.

It is kinda a 'proud nail' that way. Most of 5e is pretty consistent about calling for DM judgement, from the most basic action resolution, on. I have no idea why they reverted to the more hard-and-fast style in that instance. Could just be a stylistic oversight. Could be that they think it's a more important parameter than others...

Then the DMG follows up on this with some general advice regarding when to allow it and when not to allow it. Things about adventure pacing and managing encounter difficulty and the like.

Nod. Fine as far as it goes.

Anyone complaining would have much less of a case, since the PHB didn't give you such an all-encompassing right to expect rest in the first place.

There's very little in the presentation of 5e to give players that kind of expectation, in general.

 

[flametitan]

50 gp (the better part of a years' wages for a common laborer; $2500-$5000 buying-power-equivalent, e.g. 2500 chickens) for six seconds' of cargo transport really isn't that cheap. For luxury goods, sure, maybe. For bulk transport? Doesn't even begin to compete with blue-water transport, unless that blue-water transport is incredibly hazardous (filled with sea monsters) in which case your economy probably just breaks.

For comparison: modern freight cost for blue-water transport is IIRC $0.01 per ton-mile. Here's a chart: https://people.hofstra.edu/geotrans/eng/ch3en/conc3en/modaltransportcosttonmile.html Teleportation circle winds up being a couple orders of magnitude more expensive than modern-day air transport. Imagine an economy where everything has to travel not even by air freight but by spaceship--probably very little trade occurs at all. That's Teleportation Circle.

Sending is probably more economically significant than Teleportation Circle. Cheaper and easier to access.

It seems the spell wouldn't work for trade anyway because for some illogical reason it's limited to only creatures (another rule I'll probably waive in the future).

If it weren't, then we could theoretically break versmilitude but make trade work with a "Peasant Amazon". Everybody readies their action for when the circle opens to get their wagonload across. Or for a bit more versmilitude (but a harder time for the caster, probably) you arrange your wagons in loads of 2*2 (assuming a wagon is 10 feet across) and put the in the 10 foot space between the wagons. (yes, the caster's going to have a hard time in those hard to reach areas.) Or have the sigils out on (EDIT: has to technically be on the ground) ramps in harbours, though pushing a ship through would still be difficult to do in 6 seconds.

Now, I agree that it won't be the dominant form of trade, but it could be useful in connecting markets that are otherwise difficult to reach. Sending is also useful. In general I'd argue there's a *lot* of spells that if they were employed on a larger scale would have heavy trade implications. Mending is going to extend the lifespan of objects immensely, as cantrips can be learned by just about anyone and makes ripping something in two take a minute to fix.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

It seems the spell wouldn't work for trade anyway because for some illogical reason it's limited to only creatures (another rule I'll probably waive in the future).

If it weren't, then we could theoretically break versmilitude but make trade work with a "Peasant Amazon". Everybody readies their action for when the circle opens to get their wagonload across. Or for a bit more versmilitude (but a harder time for the caster, probably) you arrange your wagons in loads of 2*2 (assuming a wagon is 10 feet across) and put the in the 10 foot space between the wagons. (yes, the caster's going to have a hard time in those hard to reach areas.) Or have the sigils out on (EDIT: has to technically be on the ground) ramps in harbours, though pushing a ship through would still be difficult to do in 6 seconds.

Now I'm imagining a "trade nexus" which is really just a 60' radius area in which animated skeletons wait, clutching packages, until a wizard casts Teleportation Circle. At that point, they all begin a perfectly-choreographed movement which is designed to let every skeleton in the area Dash through the portal before it closes. I suppose you could even extend the radius even further by having some skeletons grapple and drag other skeletons closer, and some skeletons riding mounts for the extra movement speed. (If your mount Dashes for 120', you can spend 15' of movement getting off and then Dash yourself for another 45' for a total of 165'. BTW, in theory you could move a total of 800' in a round this way by leveraging three separate Phantom Steeds plus a bonus action Dash via Expeditious Retreat. But, like the skeleton markets, it's rules-lawyery and more than a bit ridiculous.)

 

[Willie the Duck]

[Tony Quoting CaptainZap]:
Myself, I consider 5E to chiefly be a descendant of 3E. An edition that finally fixes for good a large portion of the d20 niggles, in a way that 3.5 or PF never comes even close to.
IMHO, you're way off base. While 5e has plenty of mechanical details adapted from 3e, and some (with the serial numbers filed off) from 4e, it's very much a successor to the 'Classic Game,' AD&D (and probably B/X/ECMI/RC, that I just don't see for want of a reference - fans of that 'second prong' of the classic game can chime in). It's between 2e & 3e in the 'evolutionary scale,' a it were. It does fix a couple of 3e foibles, like the problems with MCing caster classes, but only incidentally - in that specific case, as part of an optional sub-system.

I can understand Captain Zap feeling that 5e is a second attempt at making 3e. As a die-hard BECMI fan (played BECMI 83-89, never touching 1e, and then again when we got sick of 2e and later 3e), I can say that 5e feels to me like an alternate RC, or another attempt at B/X/ECMI (never distinguished between B/X and BECMI much until people on the internet did). I feel it takes all the things that the designers who made 3e had on their list of "things people really want fixed about AD&D 2e" (Racial level limits that don't do their intended function, nonsensical racial class restrictions, rewarding high dice roll with strictly better optional classes, multiple incompatible skill systems, name-level distinction after which you are supposed to settle down and become rulers but almost no one ever does) and applies them to BECM. Sure it includes some legacy stuff from AD&D and 3e like sorcerers and tieflings, and feats, and from 4e like dragonborn and short rest recoveries and infinite cantrips, but y'know, that's just fiddling around the edges (you wouldn't call adding gnomes or rangers to a BECMI game to make it clearly AD&D, so none of this does either).

That's deliberately biased because Tony asked for that viewpoint. As a 3e player, I can also look at 5e and say "boy, the character creation mini-game is toned down a lot, but it's clearly still there. This is definitely 3e's baby" and it really only depends on what you define as 'iconic' to 3e whether that works for you.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

name-level distinction after which you are supposed to settle down and become rulers but almost no one ever does

Really, no one? How many campaigns do you see, in 5E or otherwise, that routinely last into the late teens? Can't we just say that those guys retired offscreen?

Empirically, it seems to me that the name-level distinction is alive and well in 5E, even if the breakpoints are slightly different. I don't have a good explanation for why this should be so, other than some conjecture about how high-level magic gives players so much agency that many DMs find their methods of adventure-construction ceasing to work. But that's just conjecture, and the real point is this: even though 5E is apparently designed and intended to take most players all the way from 1st level to 15th+ level with a single character, in practice this happens infrequently. Just like in AD&D. (I presume that BECMI had a different breakpoint because of its 1-36 structure.)