D&D 5E So Was That Z Fellow right?

[FrogReaver]

"Better" is a nebulous term: better at DPR, mostly, but so what? Doesn't mean it is"over"-powered if an option is powerful.

Better is a term that can be used. OP is the best term. It conveys the most information. I could have a max wisdom rogue with expertise in animal handling but no one would be saying he's OP even though he's better at animal handling. Like it or not, D&D is a game where damage matters. It is not everything but it matters in almost any kind of playstyle. If something does way more damage than other "damage dealing classes" in a game where killing enemies makes up 25% or more of the game then that something will get called OP.

Lore bards are OP as well (because the are soo good at social interaction). Probably more OP than the battlemaster SS CE fighter but in a different way. That said, in most campaigns social interaction scenarios don't equate to death like being bad at combat can and that's why you see OP usually related to combat and not other things.

 

[FrogReaver]

Fair enough. The feats are definitely quite a bit better than the alternatives in DPR. I wonder if there would be as much debate if the OP feats were not about dealing damage but about buff/debuff/control. From my own experience, people don't care nearly as much if the support character is broken because they just make everyone else in the group better. Let's say this support character increased the groups DPR by 25%: do you think that would still be as big of a deal?

No. But that's because regardless of group he is going to be increasing group DPR by the same 25%. So high DPR parties get the same % boost as low ones.

The fighter in question increases a fairly high DPR party by 25%. Imagine what DPR % increase he would increase a low DPR party. Say if 3 of those party members were casters with bad DPR instead of whatever they were. It'd be closer to 40 or 50% i'd imagine.

If there was a support character that functioned as I described above then it would get the same reaction IMO.

(Think kill switch from 4e if you are familiar with him).

 

[pemerton]

Of course it isn't, but then no GWM feat analysis includes the times they do not use the feat, as it isn't used all the time.

But all the GWM analysis does include the chance of missing.

 

[Parmandur]

Better is a term that can be used. OP is the best term. It conveys the most information. I could have a max wisdom rogue with expertise in animal handling but no one would be saying he's OP even though he's better at animal handling. Like it or not, D&D is a game where damage matters. It is not everything but it matters in almost any kind of playstyle. If something does way more damage than other "damage dealing classes" in a game where killing enemies makes up 25% or more of the game then that something will get called OP.

Lore bards are OP as well (because the are soo good at social interaction). Probably more OP than the battlemaster SS CE fighter but in a different way. That said, in most campaigns social interaction scenarios don't equate to death like being bad at combat can and that's why you see OP usually related to combat and not other things.

Overpowered means, very specifically, that something is so good that it overwhelms all other options. These feats do not overwhelm other options. Ergo, they are not overpowered.

We disagree on the minor premise, possibly the major premise. Being better in some narrow sense is not overpowered: some option will be the best at something, inevitably. It's when an option simply eats the game that it is OP.

 

[Sadras]

We disagree on the minor premise, possibly the major premise. Being better in some narrow sense is not overpowered: some option will be the best at something, inevitably. It's when an option simply eats the game that it is OP.

I feel we should put your definition of OP to the test.
I'm curious, as to what you would classify as overpowered in 2e, 3e or 4e? What option 'ate the game'?

 

[Nevvur]

As has been implied before, I think there's some overvaluing of combat feats by people who prefer or play in games where DPR races are the only approach (or constitute a large majority) of resolutions to encounters. From a pragmatic point of view, being able to bypass an encounter is equivalent to doing 100% of the damage it would've taken to emerge victorious in combat.

Let's say you've got a group with 2 fighters, one who took GWM and one who took Magic Initiate with Charm for his spell. Five encounters in the adventuring day resolve in combat where the GWM does 30% (almost twice as much as any individual in the group) of the damage. The sixth encounter resolves in the MI charming the leader of the group and securing safe passage. So the GWM has done 25% of the damage for that day, whereas the MI has done:

[sblock]
Party damage is 100% per encounter for the first 5 encounters - 30% GWM = 70% damage done by the remaining 4 members.
70% / 4 members = 17.5%
17.5% * 5 encounters = 87.5% by the MI fighter for the first 5 encounters + 100% virtual damage for the 6th encounter =
187.5 / 6 encounters =
[/sblock]

31.25% damage including his "virtual damage."

In combats where damage does not resolve the encounter (e.g. an infinite horde where the objective is to hold the line), the GWM's feat is virtually meaningless.

Will there be one encounter every adventuring day like this? Unlikely, but then there are a gajillion other ways to bypass encounters or aid in combat in more difficult ways to quantify, most of which don't even require feats, and many possible objectives in combat other than HP attrition. This further devalues GWM and other "broken feats" in a way that I have yet to see anyone EVER include in their white rooms.

While 5e is a combat centric game like its forebears, it is first an adventuring game, and there remains many a viable approach that can match or exceed the overall effectiveness of combat feats as it relates to being a successful adventurer. This, I suspect, is why I'm reading a few people say "the DM is broken," a sentiment I think is rather harsh, but closer to the truth than feats being broken.

 

[Hussar]

First of all. Do you realize what kind of amazing character it takes to increase a party of 5's average damage by 25%?

Do you realize how little I actually care?

Again, you've managed to make a character that does lots of DPS at the cost of any out of combat versatility, a complete lack of ability to work with other characters, a complete lack of any ability to control the battlefield. Sounds like a fair trade.

And all it took was some serious cheese (sorry, but, the easiest fix for this is, "No, Mr. Player, you need a free hand to load anything that has the ammunition property, and since the whole two pistol crossbow thing was never actually IN errata, just a rules tweet, it's just as rules kosher as anything else), 10 levels and one and ONLY ONE specific class.

Again, totally not seeing the problem.

I feel we should put your definition of OP to the test.
I'm curious, as to what you would classify as overpowered in 2e, 3e or 4e? What option 'ate the game'?

Well, in 2e, there was two weapon fighting from Complete Fighter. A 1st level fighter, with no strength bonus at all, could still down an ogre in a single round. That was pretty OP. To the point where not taking 2WF was a pointless choice. 2WF was just that much better than any other option you could take.

In 3e, you've got a shopping list of stuff. There's a reason for the Tier description of 3e and casters and caddies was a thing.

4e? I never really delved too much into 4e classes and splats to be honest, so I'm not the one to ask here. I know at release, with just the PHB 1 classes, there was pretty close parity between all the classes and nothing stuck out as a major issue. I mean, even something like the Expertise feat was only a +1-3 over 30 levels. It certainly wasn't necessary and tells me that the math in the game was pretty darn tight.

5e? Yeah, not seeing anything outright broken. I disagree strongly with the notion that there are class tiers in 5e.

 

[Shasarak]

I was told repeatedly that fighters would take out of combat feats in order to be able to contribute meaningfully out of combat.

You do realise that the best way for a Fighter to contribute meaningfully out of combat is by making those out of combat situations into in combat situations.

 

[CapnZapp]

1. He's pointing out that white room DPR doesn't mean anything when the caster ends combat on turn 1.

2. Whatever you want? If you take Actor and Prodigy you are going to be doing 12 less DPR, but maybe you don't care and want to have fun with your character?

If you don't care, then why are you so opposed to admitting the feats are OP? Why are you even in this thread?

Sent from my C6603 using EN World mobile app

 

[Hussar]

If you don't care, then why are you so opposed to admitting the feats are OP? Why are you even in this thread?

Sent from my C6603 using EN World mobile app

Because it isn't OP. The character is laser beam focused on DPS. That's not OP. That's doing exactly what it says on the tin. Why is this even considered a problem? I could see it being OP if the character was out damaging everyone else without feats. Or if a single feat was dealing +25 DPS. But, it's not. It's FOUR FREAKING FEATS added to one very specific character that takes advantage of a two year old rules tweet that isn't even part of the game.

As soon as you say, "Hrm, this rules tweet doesn't seem to make much sense, I think they just wiffed on this one", all the problems go away. Take away that bonus attack and poof, problem solved. He's not doing any more damage than anyone else. Heck, I LOVE the fact that it's actually possible to make a fighter that's better than everyone else at fighting.

He's a fighter. He's SUPPOSED to be better than everyone else. As opposed to a fighter that doesn't laser beam focus and gets screwed because no matter what niche he tries to occupy, there's another class that does it better with far less.

What's the problem with the fighter dealing more damage? 25 points per round? So, the fight lasts for three rounds instead of four? Again, how is this breaking the game. At 10th level, most of the opponents are running triple digit HP's. This is such a minor bonus that it's a rounding error.

Like I said, my group would go from dealing 100 damage (ish, it's actually a bit higher) to 125. This is not going to make the slightest difference in how the game runs. Not even a little. Of all the things that I have to consider when designing an encounter, the fact that the group might deal a bit more damage in a round is at the very bottom of the list.