D&D 5E Fighting Style Balance: Offense vs. Defense

[Garthanos]

Shepherd druid and glamour bard are from xanathar's guide and artillerist artificer is from eberron: rising from last war. Glamour and artillerist both have a way to hand out a small amount of THP as bonus action repeatedly and shepherd druid can give out LV +5 THP once a short rest as a bonus action to a large area.

Sounds like one went a closer model to Leadership feat. and the others are surgical patches like Rally.

 

[FrogReaver]

The whole thing depends on the solo design so much this is probably bad.
5 4 3 2 1 - offense of multiple attack sources with a ablative offense
3 3 3 3 3 - offense of singular attack source with non-ablative offense.

Both deliver a theoretic 15 points of damage to the party if an attack 3 all at once can deliver the goods because its easier for a single enemy to focus fire can take out an ally then defending that ally will gain an offense bonus for the defensive action.

Which IMO makes defense better than offense in the solo situation. I still think many defensive abilities are competitive with offensive ones in the multiple enemy situation.

The bigger issue is that in most campaigns defense mitigation doesn't matter because whack-a-mole healing. But if you ignore whack-a-mole strategies then I think mitigation abilities are very competitive with offense abilities as is.

 

[Garthanos]

The bigger issue is that in most campaigns defense mitigation doesn't matter because whack-a-mole healing. But if you ignore whack-a-mole strategies then I think mitigation abilities are very competitive with offense abilities as is.

Could you explain this more?

 

[Garthanos]

Which IMO makes defense better than offense in the solo situation. I still think many defensive abilities are competitive with offensive ones in the multiple enemy situation.

Solos have a history of being presented as not working so well since their own defenses are insufficient in some ways or too good in others.

 

[FrogReaver]

Could you explain this more?

I'm assuming you are familiar with whack a mole healing.

If everytime an ally drops you juts pick him back up with a healing word then he may not even be losing an action when he drops. He will stand up and attack again (assuming proper turn order). As such, unless enemies intentionally kill downed PC's or you've changed the rules up to reduce this tactic then there's little value in defensive mitigation beyond healing someone with a healing word who drops to 0.

 

[Garthanos]

If everytime an ally drops you juts pick him back up with a healing word then he may not even be losing an action when he drops.

Your heal use just gained an automatic offensive benefit we were talking about because you only used it when it was most needed and gained party functional power immediately (and cheaper than normal); So its a solved problem issue?

I have been hearing solved problems being an issue recently usually from those with optimizer players, for ex. where you get your defense so high well obviously you get a riposte opportunity virtually every time you are attacked for example (probably a minor example)

I had heard of it and thought it might be a cosmetic problem where it didnt feel good to someone that heroes pulled themselves back from the edge in 4e actually.

 

[clearstream]

Consider an ability that gives you 7.5 extra temp hp. An enemy that does 10 damage and has a 25% chance to hit will take 3 rounds on average to deplete the temp hp.

An extra attack ability probably kills the enemy a round - maybe 2 earlier. Which essentially spares 1-2 attacks from that enemy. In this scenario the temp hp was a more efficient resource than one that gave an extra attack.

In scenarios like that the question often flips to volatility. The likely case is as you say, but the worst case is less bad the fewer attacks they get to make.

 

[clearstream]

Really? Strawman? Just when I think you might actually be taking a discussion seriously...

He does kind of have a point. Like, why am I as DM putting that enemy up against the player? You knock down an argument for offense on the basis of a scenario that some DMs might be unlikely to find compelling. His implication seems to be "Hang on a minute, that scenario doesn't represent what I am arguing for!"

 

[clearstream]

The bigger issue is that in most campaigns defense mitigation doesn't matter because whack-a-mole healing. But if you ignore whack-a-mole strategies then I think mitigation abilities are very competitive with offense abilities as is.

That is so true. The white-room thinking that informs many player's optimisation choices sometimes seems justified when you consider whack-a-mole healing. And then we got moar healz in Xanathar's... I sometimes wonder what the hell they are thinking!?

 

[FrogReaver]

In scenarios like that the question often flips to volatility. The likely case is as you say, but the worst case is less bad the fewer attacks they get to make.

The more attacks they make the LESS volatility there is.