D&D 5E Spellcasters and Balance in 5e: A Poll

[Maxperson]

The Slayer focuses 90% of its class features on slaying and thus uses greataxes and greatswords: the highest damage weapons.

Other warriors would go down to lower percentages by using one handers, polearms, daggers, thrown weapons, or bows.

1) If it's true that one type of fighter is objectively better than all others like that, it's bad design.

2) It's hard to kill with your greatswords and greataxes when they're on the ground and such after being disarmed by the Battlemaster, etc.

Things are not as one sided as they may appear at first glance.

 

[pming]

Hiya!

The dumb limit on the number of maneuvers just makes you the new version of the old school caster who gets to have fun for two rounds, then suck the rest of the time. This subclass was basically created to mock people who liked Other Good Martial Class, the Warlord.

This isn't a problem with the "class"...it's a problem with the mindset of the player.

With this statement, it's making the assumption that the person designing the Battlemaster class thought "Ok, now first, he has to SUCK at fighting. Totally useless, or at least as far as fighting goes. Then I can make something so limited that the player would only be able to have actual fun for a couple of rounds, then go back to sucking".

I'm pretty sure that's not how it went down.

In stead, look at it this way: "The Battlemaster is a TON of fun! The tactician, the military historian, the 'thinking mans soldier'. What's even better, is that for a few rounds every day, he can draw forth this knowledge, skill and training to pull off some AMAZING wins in battle! Only a Battlemaster has the ability to take a group of untrained peasants and lead them to victory against a rampaging ogre!"

Long story short: Negative outlook = "25% effective, but 100% effective for only a couple rounds; he sucks!" // Positive outlook = "100% effective, with a 125% effectiveness for a few rounds; he's cool!".

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[Maxperson]

God I hate the very existence of the Champion...

How can it be so awful when it's named after the best complex RPG ever?

It wasn't made for you. It was made for those people who don't like to "work" when playing a PC and just want a very simple character to play. I've had several players over the years choose basic fighters and refuse to play any sort of spellcaster, because options were too much work and they played to relax.

 

[ECMO3]

But many people DO NOT agree on what the fighter is - especially at higher levels. And thus, the massive disconnects on fighter implementation - especially at higher levels.

I think this is the problem, not just with the fighter, but really with all classes.

I think a lot of players, especially converts from older versions have preconcieved notions of what each class's role is. A fighter is a tank, a wizard is a rear echelon blaster. These players only build that kind of character.

As a result if they have a fighter all the feats they take will be related to martial prowess (or they will take ASIs) instead of taking their fighter an building the character they want to play using subclass and feat options available to achieve that.

This is a problem with all classes but manifests itself most with the fighter because the amount of space within the bounds of this trope is smaller.

 

[Neonchameleon]

But it doesn't feel like that, at least not to me. I am really not fighting the same monster, I am fighting some nerfed carboard facsimile. 'We know you couldn't kill a real ogre, so here's this ogre shaped balloon you can kill and pretend to be a big damn hero.' I feel it is failure of the system if it requires such a kludge instead of things scaling so that the characters can actually easily kill the same creature super easy at higher levels. Furthermore, whilst I don't expect particularly high level simulationism from D&D, the same creature having different rules depending on who it fights is a bridge too far for me. Imagine if that same ogre would face a combined group of high and low level characters; what rules it would have then?

I definitely prefer 5e's bounded accuracy resulting low level monsters being usable even at high levels without such awkward kludges.

The thing is that there's been an 8 level gap between when something was effective as a standard monster and them getting minionised. I have no problem with how characters see given monsters changing in that timescale. And characters that far apart are seldom effectively in the same party; the only major fictional one I recall is the Fellowship of the Ring - which both wasn't that far apart and the hobbits mostly hid in Moria.

The thing is, especially with the hit point bloat of both 4e and 5e facing 59 or 80 odd hit points you hit automatically is just boring when you out-level your target quite that much.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I think this is the problem, not just with the fighter, but really with all classes.

I think a lot of players, especially converts from older versions have preconcieved notions of what each class's role is. A fighter is a tank, a wizard is a rear echelon blaster. These players only build that kind of character.

As a result if they have a fighter all the feats they take will be related to martial prowess (or they will take ASIs) instead of taking their fighter an building the character they want to play using subclass and feat options available to achieve that.

This is a problem with all classes but manifests itself most with the fighter because the amount of space within the bounds of this trope is smaller.

I mean fighter get more feats than anyone. Why not use those to get skills and expertises to turn yourself into a skillmonkey rivalling the rogue? Or get inspiring leader or perhaps that new cooking feat? If an option exist to use some choice to make yourself better at combat, a certain large section of players will automatically use it for that... and then perhaps later complain that their character is useless outside of combat...

 

[ECMO3]

THIS! This is what made support characters much better in 4e than in 5e. It's way easier to synergies with the party when you don't have to contort yourself to a bunch of different mechanics for what amounts to the same damn thing. It also allowed Martial types to sometimes get to target the NADs instead of AC. Sometimes you could trade your damage to target a lower defence (i.e. more accuracy) and that was really interesting against certain foes.

This is complete bunk. You can take any core class in 5E and build any role for that character using race, subclass and feat options.

You can have a party with 4 fighters (or 4 of any single class) and still have all bases covered (healer, tank, striker, controller, utility, social) by level 4. Doing this is trivial.

The reason people can't find ways to synergize is they don't want to synergize with the party, they want to build a specific character that they want according to either their preferences or their stereotypes that they feel should not be broken .

 

[Neonchameleon]

It wasn't made for you. It was made for those people who don't like to "work" when playing a PC and just want a very simple character to play. I've had several players over the years choose basic fighters and refuse to play any sort of spellcaster, because options were too much work and they played to relax.

This. My objection to the champion is that there's no caster equivalent. I've seen the same player frustrated both with simple fighters and complex wizards - and be extremely happy with the 4e Elementalist because what he actually wanted to do was burn things down rather than stab them or juggle spells. Complexity isn't necessary for a caster, it's simply the way D&D does things. And simplicity isn't necessary for a fighter (I really like 4e tactical fighters) - again it's the way D&D does it outside 4e (and 3.X where the fighters needed the most system mastery).

 

[ECMO3]

Create a new warrior class with expertise in a skill and adds a secondary Ability Score to their attack or damage rolls.

Already exisits.

Eldritch knight gets to add intelligence to damage with Green Flame blade cantrip and can get expertise through either the prodigy or the skill expert feats.

If you don't want to play an EK any other fighter can do both of these things by level 4 with V. human or custom lineage.

 

[Maxperson]

This is complete bunk. You can take any core class in 5E and build any role for that character using race, subclass and feat options.

You can have a party with 4 fighters (or 4 of any single class) and still have all bases covered (healer, tank, striker, controller, utility, social) by level 4. Doing this is trivial.

The reason people can't find ways to synergize is they don't want to synergize with the party, they want to build a specific character that they want according to either their preferences or their stereotypes that they feel should not be broken .

Thankfully 5e is so easy that you don't need to synergize to do exceptionally well.