D&D 5E Feats, class balance and fun

[LapBandit]

Wizard is not a damage dealer at any tier unless you throw lots of fireball mooks at the players.

Fireball works for 8d6 on a single target, imagine a 15th level Evoker with Elemental Adept casting Fireball when there are two or more enemies and Firebolt when their aren't. Are you telling me the Fighter will out-damage them? 4 3 3 3 2 1 1 are the Wizard's spell slots. That is 3x8d6, 3x9d6, 2x10d6, 1x11d6, 1x12d6 whenever there are two or more enemies together and that Wizard has a VERY high save (8 + 5 + 5 = 18 DC at least). 24 + 27 + 20 + 11 + 12 = 93d6 x 2 enemies = 186d6 possible damage just from Fireball. Spice with Firebolt for probably another 20x3d10+5 as you like. Also they can be 150 feet from the target.

10 rounds of Fireball, 20 or so rounds of Firebolt for a possible : 186d6 + 60d10 + 100 damage.

Your fighter can do that?

 

[Lucas Yew]

Slightly unrelated, but I'd like it if the SRD released 3 or more feats with no +1 ASI, plus the Resilient feat. This way you can be fine not wasting ASIs as a hypothetical normal human fighter who rolled or was just DM approved to start with all 18s before racial bonuses.......

 

[FrogReaver]

Fireball works for 8d6 on a single target, imagine a 15th level Evoker with Elemental Adept casting Fireball when there are two or more enemies and Firebolt when their aren't. Are you telling me the Fighter will out-damage them? 4 3 3 3 2 1 1 are the Wizard's spell slots. That is 3x8d6, 3x9d6, 2x10d6, 1x11d6, 1x12d6 whenever there are two or more enemies together and that Wizard has a VERY high save (8 + 5 + 5 = 18 DC at least). 24 + 27 + 20 + 11 + 12 = 93d6 x 2 enemies = 186d6 possible damage just from Fireball. Spice with Firebolt for probably another 20x3d10+5 as you like. Also they can be 150 feet from the target.

10 rounds of Fireball, 20 or so rounds of Firebolt for a possible : 186d6 + 60d10 + 100 damage.

Your fighter can do that?

Pretty sure that's 188d6 + 30d10 + 100. (In 20 rounds with 10 fireballs case that leaves 10 rounds for firebolt at 3d10 per round which means 30d10).
That's 923 damage.

Now let's do my fighter shall we?
3 attacks per round at 1d8+5 (assuming i'm using -5+10 and precision attack battlemaster maneuver that becomes 3 attacks at 1d8+15). With 3 action surges that's + 9 total attacks.

3*20*1d8 + 3*20*15 + 9*1d8 + 9*15 = 1345.5 damage.

That's 45.8% more damage. Now we didn't factor in accuracy or half damage on fireball misses but in the fighter's favor we didn't factor in not having to split most of that damage between multiple targets seeing as there is an inherent benefit to focus fire and we also didn't factor any magic items on the fighter and there's a lot more damage increasing items for an archer fighter than for a fireball wizard...

I'd say the fighter handily wins at damage wouldn't you?

 

[Caliban]

10 rounds of Fireball, 20 or so rounds of Firebolt for a possible : 186d6 + 60d10 + 100 damage.

Your fighter can do that?

How long do your combats last!?

 

[Barolo]

Our group has found the -5/+10 abilities on Great Weapon Mastery and Sharpshooter either to be too powerful or always used, neither of which is good. Other than that, feats are great. It does increase the power of martial classes somewhat disproportionately because caster classes have relatively poor feat selections available. Resilience (Wisdom) in particular is extremely powerful in the late game.

We find it rare for players to take more than one feat before they've capped their primary ability score. After that, it's about 50/50.

Well, at higher levels they do get to use these feats more often, but surely it is not always on. The enemies sometimes have defensive reactions, or are deliberately fighting defensively while the heavy hitters are protected, or something else, that prevents their use to be optimal. Now, even when the use is optimal, the benefit is not what it seems. No matter what one does to "mitigate" the penalty to hit, unless the accuracy curve is already saturated, they would be hitting more often without using these feats, so it is almost never that +10 damage as a difference. And when they do go so far to use bardic inspiration + bless + faery fire to almost effectively make the benefit +10, then it is not really the feat that is giving them that, but a combination of character development choices and team play, which I only find beneficial.

And apart from that, in my games at least, there is overkill related to doing big chunks of damage less often, magic weapons that add damage making the use of these feats less appealing, the ocasional frustration of missing a very important attack because of the -5, and so many other things that happen at the table, I would not consider the benefit as a given.

In fact, is the other parts of SS we consider troublesome sometimes. But not so much as to spend some time tuning it to our tastes.

 

[Caliban]

Fireball works for 8d6 on a single target, imagine a 15th level Evoker with Elemental Adept casting Fireball when there are two or more enemies and Firebolt when their aren't. Are you telling me the Fighter will out-damage them? 4 3 3 3 2 1 1 are the Wizard's spell slots. That is 3x8d6, 3x9d6, 2x10d6, 1x11d6, 1x12d6 whenever there are two or more enemies together and that Wizard has a VERY high save (8 + 5 + 5 = 18 DC at least). 24 + 27 + 20 + 11 + 12 = 93d6 x 2 enemies = 186d6 possible damage just from Fireball. Spice with Firebolt for probably another 20x3d10+5 as you like. Also they can be 150 feet from the target.

10 rounds of Fireball, 20 or so rounds of Firebolt for a possible : 186d6 + 60d10 + 100 damage.

Your fighter can do that?

So, you are assuming that the enemies fail all saves vs the fireballs, and that you never miss with with the firebolts? Plus you never have a fire immune enemy, and that none of the enemies are capable of casting counterspell?

Assuming average rolls, and assuming you crit on 1 in 20 attacks, that means you critted on one of those firebolts for another 16 points. Total damage: your wizard dealt out 1,096 damage.

OK, same general assumptions for a lvl 15 fighter - they have a feat (since you have elemental adept), they never miss, and none of their opponents have damage resistance, and they have 30 rounds worth of attacks.

level 15, 20 str, Greatsword, great weapon style (not that it matters with average damage), and for the feat, Great Weapon Master. Damage is 2d6+20 per hit with a non magical greats sword. (or 4d6+22 if they have the legendary weapon Haziwran. )

3 attacks per round, x30 rounds, +3 more attacks with actions surge = 93 attacks. Great weapon master gives a bonus action attack on a crit, assume he crits 1 in 20 rolls, so 4.65 crits, meaning another 4 attacks. Total attack rolls: 97

Average damage per attack: 22 x97 = 2,134 damage. Plus 8d6 for the four crits, so another 28 points of damage. Total: 2,162 damage

This gives us:

Wizard: 1,096 total damage to single targets. 651 damage to groups of 2+ from fireball, the rest is single target fire bolt damage.

Fighter: 2,162 damage to single targets. Or 651 damage to three different targets. If you take away the +10 damage from Great Weapon master, they still do 1,192 damage.

The number goes up if you assume the fighter has a magic sword with bonus damage (or some other way of getting bonus damage dice). Haziwran is a +2 greatsword that does +2d6 necrotic damage. If the fighter had that, they'd do an +5.5 damage per hit on average, for another 533 damage.

I haven't even added in potential damage increases from sub-class features (Champion critting on a 19-20, Battlemaster using Superiority dice, Eldritch Knight using Haste and Fireball). You did add in the +5 damage per firebolt for being a level 10 evoker wizard.

So yeah, a fighter can do that.

Wizards are best at battlefield control and doing AoE damage to clear out groups of lower HP creatures. Plus lots of utility spells.
Fighters are better at standing toe-to-toe with large bags of hit points and whittling them down. Plus various other tricks from feats and sub-class abilities.

Neither of them suck.

 

[pming]

Hiya!

I'll be brief: We tried Feats and MC. We found they made our games worse. Including them steered character creation and development heavily towards one of the "common builds" you see people who are obsessed with CharOp and DPS. Without Feats? Characters were MUCH more diverse in capabilities and personalities. Roleplaying from the players using their brains and thinking 'outside the box' also increased. Players put more time into trying to think of logical, situational advantages during a fight...rather than spending that time pouring over the books and sheets trying to find some magical synergy between various Feats/Spells/Class-Abilities that would create a "Win" button.

No more Feats or MC for me when I DM 5th. My players outright refuse to play in a game with Feats now...and I don't blame them.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[Li Shenron]

As I don't have experience playing without feats, it makes me wonder. What do you guys think about it? Is getting yet another ABI as a 14th level fighter still exciting when there are no feats to choose from? Does it affect how you feel as a high level fighter alongside your reality-changing wizard friend? Something else?

Unfortunately I haven't played the game to high level enough to see PCs with more than two feats, and that means that I cannot judge the difference between characters with no feats and characters with lots of them...

I can only say that IMHO feats are by design an important part of the Fighter class, which in fact get 2 more than other classes during 20 levels. A Fighter/Battlemaster + as many combat feats as you can get, is supposed to be the highest-complexity option for playing a Fighter in 5e, comparable in complexity with spellcasters.

The ASI vs Feat alternative is a great design idea of 5e, because it allows each player to dial her PC's complexity, without affecting other players. Then it becomes a matter of preference, what level of complexity you want...

Personally, I am always more interested in feats than ASI, but as I said I've never played high level enough to get more than two feats... I do think however, that I might choose to get an ASI at higher levels, either in case I feel I need to get a widespread boost to keep up with the adventures, or if I found out that I already dialed my complexity higher than I can comfortably manage.

 

[Barolo]

Hiya!

I'll be brief: We tried Feats and MC. We found they made our games worse. Including them steered character creation and development heavily towards one of the "common builds" you see people who are obsessed with CharOp and DPS. Without Feats? Characters were MUCH more diverse in capabilities and personalities. Roleplaying from the players using their brains and thinking 'outside the box' also increased. Players put more time into trying to think of logical, situational advantages during a fight...rather than spending that time pouring over the books and sheets trying to find some magical synergy between various Feats/Spells/Class-Abilities that would create a "Win" button.

No more Feats or MC for me when I DM 5th. My players outright refuse to play in a game with Feats now...and I don't blame them.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

I know too many "hard-coded" action options can somewhat inhibit some players and DMs from employing the basic ruleset to improvise actions and keep a more open type of game. I guess I am fortunate enough to play on a table where such inhibition generally does not happen.

Apart from that, a limited option of feats such as actor, athlete, skilled, ritual caster and mobile that I could select as a fighter 6 or 14, or rogue 10, effectively transforming these specific levels ABIs into "featured" levels would already improve significantly my disposition to play as a martial in a otherwise feat-less game.

 

[Kalshane]

Interestingly enough, I've toyed with the idea of running a "Feats Only" game, where you have to take a feat, rather than an ASI. (Though I might allow an ASI to be taken at, say, 12th level.) The only thing really stopping me is that the six attributes aren't equally represented by half feats (I really don't want every Charisma-based caster to end up taking Actor) and I haven't had the time to house-rule up enough feats to even things out.

I also haven't found feats to limit my players' creativity (though I agree that was a huge issue in 3.x where if the rules practically said "If you don't have a feat for it, don't bother."). Last session, while fighting a large group of goblins, they discovered that the nifty magic axe their dwarven paladin had picked up in the previous adventure was an axe of berserking. After the paladin hit her for a good chunk of damage, the barbarian asked if she could pick up the paladin and throw him onto the other side of the goblins so he was forced to attack them instead of the PCs. One opposed Athletics roll later the paladin was picking himself up off the ground and tearing into the goblins' back ranks.