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

[Fanaelialae]

This always boils down to - if 5e was different then an Expert class or Warlord class could fit nicely in - and IMO that's a weak point to make.

No, I think it demonstrates that a warlord fits in just fine. Do we NEED a warlord? No. But we technically only need about 2 classes, the rest is "fluff". I think people like having more variety than that in D&D, and I think plenty of folks would enjoy having a warlord option (and for those that don't, just don't have that class in your games).

The expert is maybe a little trickier. We already have expert classes in the bard and rogue. However, the scholar can (and IMO should) be more than just an expert. All of the classes in 5e have a special thing about them that thematically and mechanically distinguishes them. I don't think that's hard to do with a warlord (in fact, more than one design has been shown in this thread). I think that the scholar also has ample room for this (in fact, I think they did give the AiME version something, though I don't recollect the specifics ATM).

 

[Aldarc]

Maybe I should!

I don't know these specific games, but I've found that a lot of games that do this sort of simplified class design also come with a lot of OSR-baggage that I really don't like.

Okay. I suppose I should clarify how classes and levels work in SotDL. The game has 10 levels. You get benefits at different levels from your choice of Ancestry (lvls 0, 4), Novice Path (lvls 1, 2, 5, 8), Expert Path (lvls 3, 6, 9), and Master Path (7, 10). This exact structure may change in Weird Wizard, but the basic design approach remains the same.

Your Novice path are the four basics: Priest, Magician, Rogue, Warrior. Expert paths are more specialized archetypes like Paladin, Druid, Warlock, Wizard, Ranger, etc. Your master paths are far more specialized paths: e.g., Cryomancer, Dragonslayer, Nightstalker, etc.

You can combine these in anyway you like. If you want to be a Magician / Barbarian / Infiltrator or a Warrior / Shaman / Necromancer, you can. So the class design is more modular. This game came from Rob Schwalb, one of the designers who worked on 5e.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Okay. I suppose I should clarify how classes and levels work in SotDL. The game has 10 levels. You get benefits at different levels from your choice of Ancestry (lvls 0, 4), Novice Path (lvls 1, 2, 5, 8), Expert Path (lvls 3, 6, 9), and Master Path (7, 10). This exact structure may change in Weird Wizard, but the basic design approach remains the same.

Your Novice path are the four basics: Priest, Magician, Rogue, Warrior. Expert paths are more specialized archetypes like Paladin, Druid, Warlock, Wizard, Ranger, etc. Your master paths are far more specialized paths: e.g., Cryomancer, Dragonslayer, Nightstalker, etc.

You can combine these in anyway you like. If you want to be a Magician / Barbarian / Infiltrator or a Warrior / Shaman / Necromancer, you can. So the class design is more modular. This game came from Rob Schwalb, one of the designers who worked on 5e.

That actually sounds pretty interesting, I need to check this out. Thank you for informing me of this.

 

[Minigiant]

But it is a fantasy world. You can't just take a character from another context and plug it in without taking in account how the environment would affect the character. In D&D magic is a learnable skill. There is no bloody way that in world where this is the case Leonardo da Vinci wouldn't master magic. And in fantasy world technology and magic are intertwined, in a world where magic is real scientist will study magic as that is part of 'physics of that world.' Also I feel Holmes is pretty decently represented by rogue. Disguises, can sneak, can fight, can do sleight of hand, obviously knows all sort of criminal stuff. Yes, if he wanted, he obviously would be a master thief. Yeah, rogue seems right.

My point is there is a difference between mastery and learning. The wizard and the fighter are masters at their craft. Somuch so that they don't have base ablity of much else outside of the classes.

A scholar might want to learn History, Medicine, Nature, Religion, Survival, and Investigation and as well as a few tools and be experts at them like a "renaissance man". Neither the Wizard nor Fighter can do this until high levels when they take several feats.

Oh an contrary to popular believe, many fantasy writers include non-wizard experts in their settings as "Wizards don't understand Muggle science" is a common trope.

In theory I can see the purpose of some sort of 'expert class' but I feel there probably wouldn't be enough meat to it unless you stared to invent super gamey skill powers and such. And once you start to add those, they will seriously limit what other characters can conceptually be. Now all it takes is one expertise to be master of a skill, but if you have a class that has a bunch of 'lore power' that let's them do far more impressive knowledge related and research based tasks than the mere skill would, you've raised the bar to what it means to be an expert in a skill.

That was the bar already. Wizards are masters at Wizardry not Medicine or Nature or History.
The wizard is a Scholar of the Arcane (page 112) not Scholar of the Mundane.
It's not limiting. Like I said "Wizards don't understand Muggle science" is a common fantasy trope.
It's only D&D where "Everything must be a spell and if its not healing Wizard have access to that spell."

In comparison your skill expert fighter will seem like a dum-dum.

Your skill expert fighter is a dum dum. That's the whole point of the thread.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I'm not gonna do a point to point reply, but from this I get the same impression than a lot of warlord wishlistings. Yes, you could do a lot of mechanical things in 4e that you cannot in 5e, but that is because 5e is mechanically a differnt game! 4e was far more tactically involved far more board gamey and had all sort of mechanical widgets related to that. 5e doesn't do things like that so much, and that's intentional. You can't just port those 4e-isms into 5e. It's not even right or wrong, they're games with differnt design goals, but like I said previously: if you like 4e so much, play 4e instead of wishing that they turn 5e into 4e.

But you can't even do the character concepts you're pointing out in 5e. The Avenger isn't a Paladin - it's closer to a hybrid Paladin-Monk. And if I were to convert one into 5e it would be a subclass of Monk.

And I don't seek to turn 5e into 4e. I play both - and what I miss most about 4e is when I'm running 5e the monsters are so much more annoying to both make and run. I do however think the warlord belongs in 5e; it's a concept that's not really covered by anything existing and is a strong and evocative one. This isn't true for the warden or the avenger as full classes. And for all I find 4e characters much more customizable than 5e ones the simplicity of 5e has major advantages for new players so I'm not suggesting 5e switches. I'm simply suggesting that if your favorite metric is total customisation then 5e loses. If your favourite metric is on the other hand efficiency of customisation then 5e is excellent and the subclasses do their job very well while 4e has more overheads because you need to make at least one choice from a long list pretty much every single level. Is this overhead for 4e worth it? It depends on the players.

And if you dislike 4e so much then shut up about it. No one is forcing you to embarrass yourself with your ill-informed rants about how roles work that were explicitly and openly dealt with by the game itself right from the PHB. No one is forcing you to talk about it. And you're barely forced to even think about it. If you want to praise 5e as an excellent game, fine. Just don't do it by shitting all over something people love.

 

[FrogReaver]

The Warlord concept is perfectly fulfilled by the 5e Battlemaster with appropriate maneuvers. He can do everything people want a Warlord to be able to do. That's conceptually. (Grant attacks, provide temp hp, reposition allies, grant an ally advantage, even push enemies away).

The mechanical implementation is where this really falls short for most people. They want to be able to grant more attacks, grant more temp hp, reposition more allies, push more enemies away.

Can such mechanics be made into a class. Almost certainly. Should they be made into a class is the real question though. Can a class focused on those things even more than a battlemaster meet balance requirements, can a class based on them add to the conceptual space of 5e in any way, will adding this class in take away too much from other already existing classes, etc?

IMO. Part of the beauty of the subclass design space is you don't have to worry about any of that.

 

[Aldarc]

That actually sounds pretty interesting, I need to check this out. Thank you for informing me of this.

No problem. It was designed as both Schwalb's love letter to Warhammer Fantasy and as his alt-5e system. For example, boons and banes are his take on Advantage/Disadvantage. But because it's not D&D he also doesn't have to worry as much about sacred cows.

 

[Minigiant]

This came up in a thread about some caster types, but does every type of person in the world need a class that would be something effective as an adventurer? Or are some of them just people that would stay home or hire the professional adventurers to take them where they need to go?

"College Professor" might be a thing in the world but almost all of us would be pretty useless on a typical DnD adventure. Are things like that generally modeled by the 3.5 expert class. Indiana Jones might be a college professor, but is he also a Rogue with back stab replaced by feats or by Bardic knowledge? How far off is that for Holmes? Are there people who have just chosen not to be useful in a DnD party sense - Belles's father in Beauty and the Beast, Alfred or Jarvis the butler, Florence Nightingale or Hawkeye Pierce, real world safe crackers, with all due respect to his vital place in the story but gardeners who can cook, etc...?

"College Professor" would hire a fencing coach before adventuring.
They wouldn't be a fighter though. A fighter is an elite warrior.

The alchemist is an example of a person I picture as being a non-adventurer. To get them to be one PF gave them Jekkyl and Hyde formulas and bomb throwing. That's cool, but is it a classic alchemist anymore, or have they evolved one by asking what it takes to be an adventurer. Is whatever you do to evolve Da Vinci to be an adventurer also making it not really Da Vinci anymore?

The alchemist is literally artificer subclass.

You can "fantasy adventurer up" almostany Fantasy jo.

Your Fantasy Adventurer Blacksmith has proficiency with warhammer and light hammers, a special hammer attack or two, can give X weapons and armors +1, and has fire resist from the forge.

Your Fantasy Adventurer Barber has poficieny with daggers, deals bonus damage with them, can cause bleeding wounds, use their scissors as thieves tools, is an expert at disguise and disguising other, and knows all the gossip and sports news.

You Fantasy Adventurer Herbalist knows all the plants, can make drugs with special effects, knows their way around the poisoner's kit, and has a few druid cantrips.

Your fantasy Animal Handler tells their fully armored bear and wolf to maul the orcs.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

That was the bar already. Wizards are masters at Wizardry not Medicine or Nature or History.
The wizard is a Scholar of the Arcane (page 112) not Scholar of the Mundane.
It's not limiting. Like I said "Wizards don't understand Muggle science" is a common fantasy trope.
It's only D&D where "Everything must be a spell and if its not healing Wizard have access to that spell."

Of course it is limiting, you literally just say how it is limiting! Currently a wizard is one feat away from being about as good in any knowledge skill than anyone can in the setting. If you introduce a class whose thing is being even better, that limits that. And "Wizards don't understand Muggle science" is a trope that might make sense in a world where magic and non-magic are clearly separated from each other and rarely interact, it makes far less sense in world where magic is an integral and well known part of the setting.

Your skill expert fighter is a dum dum. That's the whole point of the thread.

They're not. Take a sage background, put 14 in int and get a feat that gives you expertise in history. Grats, your fighter is now a world class scholar of history!

 

[Fanaelialae]

The Warlord concept is perfectly fulfilled by the 5e Battlemaster with appropriate maneuvers. He can do everything people want a Warlord to be able to do. That's conceptually. (Grant attacks, provide temp hp, reposition allies, grant an ally advantage, even push enemies away).

The mechanical implementation is where this really falls short for most people. They want to be able to grant more attacks, grant more temp hp, reposition more allies, push more enemies away.

Can such mechanics be made into a class. Almost certainly. Should they be made into a class is the real question though. Can a class focused on those things even more than a battlemaster meet balance requirements, can a class based on them add to the conceptual space of 5e in any way, will adding this class in take away too much from other already existing classes, etc?

IMO. Part of the beauty of the subclass design space is you don't have to worry about any of that.

Can the magical parts of an Eldritch Knight be made into a class?
Certainly (the wizard).

Should they be made into a class?
Yeah, lots of people seem to enjoy playing wizards.

Can a class focused on those things even more than the Eldritch Knight meet balance requirements, can a class based on them add to the conceptual space of 5e in any way, will adding this class in take away too much from other already existing classes?
Well, people will argue about this question until they're blue in the face, but the wizard exists and the game works, so yeah.

The relationship between warlord and battlemaster is no different. Having one does not obviate the place of the other. There is certainly room for both in a game where an eldritch knight and a wizard can coexist.