D&D 5E My Quick and Dirty Tasha Read

[Paul Farquhar]

I appreciate you taking the time to reply, and that is a great one to compare to. On a surface level, sure, it's about the same ish right? So I decided to look into it further... and twilight is massively better. Let us compare shall we?

Opportunity cost:
First, both take an action to "deploy" - there is an opportunity cost - the PC could have used that action to do something else.

We have an artillerist in the party. Since the thing lasts an hour, the eldritch cannon is usually deployed before the start of the fight, so in-combat deployment time is usually zero.

And this is the big difference. The twilight cleric's aura lasts at best for one fight. And most fights last 3 round or less, so you are probably only going to get three uses per Channel Divinity consumed. The eldritch cannon effectively lasts until the party takes a rest. That's usually at least three fights in our game. It's de-facto always on.

However, the artificer needs a bonus action to make it "fire" each round.

Our artificer doesn't have anything else to do with their bonus action.

The twilight cleric has no such need and can use their bonus action to do something else (spiritual weapon?). Furthermore, the artificer, by using the protector, is not using the offensive version of their cannon, and is therefore reducing their damage output, something that the twilight cleric doesn't have to worry about.

The Eldritch cannon's damage is meh.

Winner: Twilight cleric, strongly.

Actually, the "winner" is our Glamour bard, but that's yet another source of temp hp for the whole party.

Amount of "healing" done:
The artificer has a bit of an edge because the healing effect doesn't have to be centered on them, flexibility wise. However, that edge is more than equalized by the twilight cleric's area - 30 foot radius, vs the much more modest 10 feet radius of the protector.

This is irreverent. If everyone in the party is taking damage every round the tank isn't doing their job. Usually just one or two party members need to be in position to have their temp hp refreshed. You can send the EK to the front line (it also serves as a meat shield in itself).

The artificer's protector does 1d8+int bonus temp HP. The cleric does 1d6+cleric level. So sure at low levels the artificer does a bit more, but the twilight cleric will massively outpace the artificer at mid and high levels (the double cannon at level 15 allows the artificer to catch up a bit). Lastly, the twilight aura also removes fear or charm.
Winner: Twilight cleric

At those high levels, monsters are hitting for 60+ hp per round. A few more temp hp makes very little difference.

Aaaaand that's just for the twilight aura! There are other powers too.

You are massively over-rating it, I don't think anyone else thinks it's that good.

Temporary hp are cheep because they don't stack and there are lots and lots of potential sources in the game, and if you don't get hit they are wasted.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I don't understand why the multiclass spellcasting feats all say, "You can also cast these spells using spell slots you have of the appropriate level," when none of the original multiclass spellcasting feats have errata to say that. Just a bit odd.

This has been a houserule at my tables for a long time. Never made a lot of sense to have spells that you knew, but you couldn't use your spell slots to cast them.

Non-arcane casters have been shafted most of this edition, IMO. I think druids and clerics have generally poor spell lists regardless of the books your DM lets you use. In general I've been dissatisfied with clerics and druids in this edition. There are some exceptions, but my experience with them was having a lot of options that don't feel good. I don't see that changing because while they're also bad fighters they're good enough at both.

I'd disagree with clerics, they feel very solid, but Druids.... yeah. They were hit far too hard with concentration.

I've been playing a play-by-post druid for a year or so now, and we don't get into a lot of fights, to be fair, but I just went HAM recently in a dungeon, losing my mind and just hitting everything with the most powerful spells for each situation...

And I still have a 4th level slot, two 3rd level slots and all of my other slots. Because three fights were three spells. I couldn't cast more and still be maximally effective.

I love puzzles. But I hate them in TTRPGs. First, they almost always feel super contrived. Second, most of the people I've played with don't like them, so you'll essentially never have a puzzle where everyone at the table is invested. Not like combat, not like social encounters, not even like exploration. So I avoid them as a DM and dislike them as a player.

Agreed. Also, a lot of puzzles can work like Riddles rely on knowledge from our world. Doing a riddle based in the mythology of the game world really devolves to either needing players super invested in the setting or "roll Intelligence and I'll tell you the answer."

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I finished the player options and all I want now is to play a crusty dwarven Fathomless Warlock with the Chef feat.

I'm really digging the new magic items. The magic tattoos are everything I could've hoped for. One thing I caught that was interesting was the part about Madame Luba, a halfling Vistani. That seems new, unless I've missed that bit of lore.

 

[Dausuul]

It's exactly the same as crit-fail tables where Fighters randomly hit an ally instead, and everyone agrees those suck.

I wish that were true.

 

[caddo2000]

I finished the player options and all I want now is to play a crusty dwarven Fathomless Warlock with the Chef feat.

I'm really digging the new magic items. The magic tattoos are everything I could've hoped for. One thing I caught that was interesting was the part about Madame Luba, a halfling Vistani. That seems new, unless I've missed that bit of lore.

MAin dish Octopus Salad!!!

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

"What do ye want? I've got Octopus Salad, Fried Octopus, Grilled Octopus, Octopus Sashimi, Hamburgers, and Octopus Stew."

"I'll take the hamburger!"

"Just so's ye ken, it's also made with octopus."

MAin dish Octopus Salad!!!

 

[Lord Twig]

I think in part because of the Wild sorcerer. Most people avoid the subclass like the plague because of that potential to fireball and kill your team. So people would see the Wild Magic Barbarian as just a detriment to their team and not pick it.

Sure, and I'm saying that there are people that like that gamble. I'll agree that killing your team with a fireball might not be fun, but the one time our sorcerer was turned into a potted plant was hilarious. Afterwards his character claimed he had seen the error of his ways after having seen "how the potted half live" and would go out of his way to be kind to plants, particularly if they were in pots.

More important, take a step back and ask what value it brings to the game to give PC abilities a random chance to backfire negatively? It doesn't feel cool when it happens, it doesn't add anything to the story, it just negates your action while inflicting a penalty on you or the group. It's exactly the same as crit-fail tables where Fighters randomly hit an ally instead, and everyone agrees those suck.

Abilities with a cost are fine. You weigh the cost, you decide when it's worth it, and you control when it happens. Abilities that randomly fail are bad, and abilities that randomly backfire are worse. It doesn't matter if they're crit-fail tables or wild surge charts.

While I agree that the fumble tables (or crit-fail tables) are not good, that is mostly because they happen far too often and aren't that interesting. And there are ways of making effects that are interesting without being so bad or so good that they ruin the fun. The ground-zero fireball is probably too negative (at least until higher levels when it isn't an instant TPK), but they could have the wild growth difficult terrain effect everybody. That is neither a bonus or a negative by itself as it effects everyone equally, but the party could make it a bonus by being prepared for something like that to happen.

There is also all of the random stuff that doesn't effect the game directly. Like you grow a beard of feathers, or change color, or become immune to alcohol. They could even combine things like this with the useful things so maybe when the ground sprouts vines and flowers for 15' around you, you also turn green and don't need to eat for the next day if you get enough sunlight. Maybe for the bonus teleport effect you don't get to choose whether you teleport or not. You have to teleport at least 10' every round, even if you would rather not. Still incredibly useful, but adds a little catch that you might need to work around to make things interesting.

And epic fails really are some of the best stories. The time the party had everything go right and beat down a beholder isn't that memorable, but if the barbarian leapt off a cliff to jump on the beholder, rolled a 1 on his athletics and face-planted 20' below, that is hilarious and will be talked about for years.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

The time the party had everything go right and beat down a beholder isn't that memorable,

Um....que?

Strongly disagree.

 

[AkaKageWarrior]

My Q&D-read of Tasha's:
Feels like I already have most of that in other books, or at least read it in UA.
Artificer, Bladesinger, spells, feats, meh...

And then these ridiculous pseudo-Psionics classes.
Why not play an eldritch knight / arcane trickster / whatever-class-with-arcane-spells and claim it's psionics?

More and more draws me back to Pathfinder (1e).

 

[DEFCON 1]

And then these ridiculous pseudo-Psionics classes.
Why not play an eldritch knight / arcane trickster / whatever-class-with-arcane-spells and claim it's psionics?

If people had been willing to do that, the subclasses would never have been made. But people aren't. They want new and different and specific stuff and WotC is usually willing to give a certain amount of it.

Your question is no different than the person who asks why WotC bothered to keep the paladin class when people could just play a cleric/fighter multiclass. And the answer of course is that if people actually did that and were happy with it, WotC wouldn't have. But no one ever actually does it.

Because the irony of that request is that if we were to ask the person who complains there is the paladin or ranger class (when one could easily just make them using cleric/fighters or a rogue specialized in wilderness stuff) if they just use the Basic Rules... they 99% of the time would say 'no'. So they themselves could play D&D 5E with cleric/fighter multiclasses and wilderness-built rogues like they supposedly want, but they never actually do. Which makes their whole set of complaints so easy to just ignore because they don't walk the walk while they talk the talk.