doctorbadwolf
Heretic of The Seventh Circle
The moon Druid isn’t overpowered at any level.
Yeah, sure, the moon druid loses steam at high-late mid levels, and goes back to god tier at very high levels, when they get the ability to cast in beast form and unlimited beast form uses. I would still call a subclass that is a total monster at level 2-6 a failure in design. After all, that's the most played level range, by far.
I'm not sure about that. I mean, we have subclasses like the EK, that turns non-casters into casters. The subclass gets its own little spell slot table, and all. Why can't a half caster class get a full caster subclass? Just give the subclass its own spell slots table. Sure, it hasn't been done before, but if we can live with the 5e multiclassing rules, and how hideously they interact with spell casting classes, why not this?
The 2E parallel is interesting to me, mostly because I know very little about 2e, my only exposure to it being Baldur's Gate 2. Cool stuff to know.
Heh, let's not get crazy here. Yeah, we could cut down classes like that, and it'd probably be a more efficient and clean system, but I'm not sure people would appreciate that kind of radical change. What I'm advocating for is more subtle, I'm not trying to slay any sacred cows.
The moon Druid isn’t overpowered at any level.
Anyone who believes Moon Druids are seriously "overpowered" past about level 8-10 needs to go into remedial math, ASAP. At level 2 they're outright broken but that fixes down to "grossly OP" at level 3 and then it just degrades from there until they're not significantly OP. But 2-6 or so they are total monsters.
However, re: your general point, which is that because classes are powerful, subclasses don't have a lot of design space, well, that's true, though it didn't have to be true.
... you also have to create new classes, like if you want a half-caster baselines, you need a half-caster class.
You might even get to the dangerous realm where we're asking why do we even have Clerics, Druids, Wizards, Bards, and Sorcerers, when we could really just have "full caster". At a dead minimum we could cut it down to Divine Caster, Wizard, Spontaneous Arcane Caster.
Yea, the sameyness of spells is definitely a factor, there are only so many really good spells in 5e, and a lot of them are shared between classes. I've started to gravitate towards 3PP that creates custom spells for their creations, or at least remixes existing spells into something different.Finally, the OP (or someone) mentioned the "sameness" that they are feeling with characters, having played 5e for, what, going on six years now? I would submit that part of the problem with this is that, as others have mentioned in the past, it that a large number of sub-classes in the game are spellcasters in one way or another, and there are only so many spells to go around, particularly as levels rise. A high level Bard, despite class features, begins to look and feel quite a bit like a high level Wizard or Sorcerer. Sure, they have a slightly different spell list, but not, imo, a unique enough one. Patial casters like the EK and the AT suffer the most from this, as they must pilliage from the wizard spell list with no spells unique to them (arguably some of the newer cantrips like GFB are for them). The Paladin and Ranger have it somewhat better, as they have their own spell list with unique spells, not just raiding the cleric and durid spell lists. This is where the 4e classes like the Swordmage had it better, as everything was designed for them in particular, with better synergy and flavor.
Yea, the sameyness of spells is definitely a factor, there are only so many really good spells in 5e, and a lot of them are shared between classes. I've started to gravitate towards 3PP that creates custom spells for their creations, or at least remixes existing spells into something different.
The moon Druid isn’t overpowered at any level.
I think you hit the nail on the head here even more than you may realize. The problem with moon druid is not that nearly everyone picks it, which they do, or even that it is OP, which is debatable, but that the moon druid's strong design exposes the lackluster base-class druid chassis for what it is. I'm glad we have the moon druid because it shows people are interested in the druid concept when well-designed, but it would be better to get the base class right rather than relying on a single subclass to make a class interesting enough to play.My only gripe with the Moon druid is that the whole druid class seems to revolve around this single archetype. The capstone is only really cool if you are a moon druid, for the rest of them is mostly ''yeah, I can throw some spell while being a CR 1 deer!''.
Though I suppose improving EVERY subclass would go a long way toward doing the same thing, and I love your ideas for how to do that.