Level Up (A5E) #1 Origins Playtest Document - (Heritage) Nitty Gritty Feedback

[tetrasodium]

My claim is that a character who is not a cleric is very often more benefited by choosing guidance over other clerical cantrips. You make a good point about spare the dying, but it is an unimportant point. If you mean it to undermine my argument, then you misunderstand my argument.

what cantrips? They start with three, get a fourth at level 4 and the good cantrips available to them consists of ... three options. Getting one of those three from another source is going to imbalance clerics even less than high elves imbalance wizards with that extra cantrip because wizards actually have a larger selection of good cantrips. We got started on this because you tried to claim that more characters having access to guidance would be a problem while missing that they usually do have "access" to it through their nearest cleric

 

[JiffyPopTart]

Do you have this problem with tieflings & aasimar giving themselves resistance to all damage types rather than just the one they get resistance to as well? What about rogues & gnomes adding expertise to all skills rather than just the ones & subset they have expertise with? This is a player problem & a bit of a stretch to say it's a difficult thing you should expect to keep happening after the first couple levels at worst because there are already plenty of things they need to sometimes apply & sometimes not without getting into class/spell/equipment based things they already handle without issue

Our character sheets have a section for Resistances, in which my dwarf has filled in "Poison". Similarly it has a section for Skills in which a rogue would have Stealth: +12 (which is calculated as STAT +PROF +PROF again if Expertise is in play). Neither of those things is situational, they are always on. A better comparison would be changing dwarves resistance to poison to instead be resistance to poison from creatures except elementals.

If that were the case, I would easily forget that my resistance didn't apply the rare time I am fighting an elemental.

As I said, I played and GMed 3e just fine. Its not that tracking things like this is hard, its just that 5e design has made worrying about tracking things like this to be mostly nonexistant because mini-situational-modifiers was explicitly avoided in the creation of the basic 5e rules. I think that you can add complexity without dipping into this well.

 

[clearstream]

what cantrips? They start with three, get a fourth at level 4 and the good cantrips available to them consists of ... three options. Getting one of those three from another source is going to imbalance clerics even less than high elves imbalance wizards with that extra cantrip because wizards actually have a larger selection of good cantrips. We got started on this because you tried to claim that more characters having access to guidance would be a problem while missing that they usually do have "access" to it through their nearest cleric

We're talking about the playtest packet, in which characters who may not be clerics get access to guidance. Right?

As for clerics, I keep records of my party compositions and over more than a hundred sessions and two or three dozen characters, we've had one cleric. They've more often gotten access to guidance through warlocks!

 

[tetrasodium]

We're talking about the playtest packet, in which characters who may not be clerics get access to guidance. Right?

As for clerics, I keep records of my party compositions and over more than a hundred sessions and two or three dozen characters, we've had one cleric. They've more often gotten access to guidance through warlocks!

Perhaps your inexperience with it is causing the disconnect over guidance. You are vastly overestimating the "power" of guidance in order to raise these concerns over guidance. It's not nearly as good as you are trying to suggest. Druids & divine soul sorcerers can take it too, they just don't because it's... not. that. good.

 

[Stalker0]

Perhaps your inexperience with it is causing the disconnect over guidance. You are vastly overestimating the "power" of guidance in order to raise these concerns over guidance. It's not nearly as good as you are trying to suggest. Druids & divine soul sorcerers can take it too, they just don't because it's... not. that. good.
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Guidance is one of the strongest spells in the game if your players like skills. Consider the bounded accuracy of 5e, its one of the very very few ways to get skill bonuses, and its a solid bonus.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

Guidance is one of the strongest spells in the game if your players like skills. Consider the bounded accuracy of 5e, its one of the very very few ways to get skill bonuses, and its a solid bonus.

At 1st level it can almost be described as "Touch, 1 action, give a character Expertise (25% chance for Double Expertise) in any skill check for 1 minute. Stacks with Expertise." Party rogue with a potential +12 skill check at 1st level give them better than even odds at hitting a Hard check, and even lets them hit the Nearly Impossible range with good luck.

 

[CubicsRube]

It also has a verbal component, so difficult if not impossible to use for social checks, sneaking, and any time where you don't want to be noticed or known for casting a spell.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

It also has a verbal component, so difficult if not impossible to use for social checks, sneaking, and any time where you don't want to be noticed or known for casting a spell.

Sure, if that's how your GM runs it.

Who is to say the verbal component isn't telling the Bard "You got this, Ezekial!" right before they break into a solo. Or perhaps the verbal component is "This guy here knows his magical items, you should listen to him" when the wizard is making a Persuasion check to talk down the price of a gem. Or even just whispering an incantation to stealth up the rogue who then uses the next minute to move up towards the bad guys and take up a hidden position.

It's going to be as useful as your GM allows it to be. My ruling on it as a GM is that unless the skill check is something that takes a lot longer than a minute to do (say an athletics roll to avoid getting fatigued after a long swim), everyone can just add a d4 to their skill checks unless the cleric isn't around OR if they are in combat rounds.

 

[tetrasodium]

Guidance is one of the strongest spells in the game if your players like skills. Consider the bounded accuracy of 5e, its one of the very very few ways to get skill bonuses, and its a solid bonus.

Spoiler: not quite

better get on those rogues & bards

Rangers too, everyone knows those are super awesome...

don't forget every dragonmarked race too

However your post makes a few assumptions, namely:

• Bounded accuracy is a good thing & only a good thing
• Bounded accuracy allows enough design spacefor characters to grow over the course of a campaign with only roll2d20 keep the higher/lower & double proficiency bonus
• Bounded accuracy as implimented is something that could not possibly be improved with a redesign that adds more designspace for character growth.

Everything you cite as a problem with guidance it's evidence that one or more of those assumptions must be false because in the very first 5e rulebook titled the Player's Handbook that wotc couldn't even manage to get past cantrips & first level spells like bane before they ran out of alloted designspace & were forced to start circumventing bounded accuracy. You could argue that the dragonmarked races in Rising are more akin to 3.5 trying to stretch the eventually exhausted system's designspace years in when they released tome of battle book of 9 swords, but that doesn't apply when they have to crash through the ceiling on things gained by first level characters in PHB

People frequently point at the 9th level spell wish available at level 17 as evidence that casters are overpowered & other nonsense even though 90% of campaigns don't make it past level 10 & less than 5% even reach levels where wish can be cast... oddly though, guidance rarely ever comes up .

 

[CubicsRube]

Sure, if that's how your GM runs it.

Who is to say the verbal component isn't telling the Bard "You got this, Ezekial!" right before they break into a solo. Or perhaps the verbal component is "This guy here knows his magical items, you should listen to him" when the wizard is making a Persuasion check to talk down the price of a gem. Or even just whispering an incantation to stealth up the rogue who then uses the next minute to move up towards the bad guys and take up a hidden position.

Well the PHB/SRD says what a verbal component contains:


Verbal (V)
Most Spells require the chanting of mystic words. The words themselves aren’t the source of the spell’s power; rather, the particular combination of sounds, with specific pitch and resonance, sets the threads of magic in motion.


It indicates to me something that is quite noticeable and distinctive as a spell, and that is how I run it at my tables.