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

[Minigiant]

The college professor with a little fencing feels like a bard with no magic or songs - but even better rolls on knowledge checks. Or maybe the college professor with a little fencing is a rogue with no back stab - but better than bard roles on knowledge checks. Giving up all of the magic and songs for bonus knowledge checks feels like a nerf to me.

The college professor would have advanced usages of those skills much like the rogue's thief and assassin. With Nature, they can find and extract magic elements out of magic creatures. With Medicine, they can buff the cleric's healing. With History, they can identify situations that happened once before.

Do you want "Super-Scientist" instead of "Scholar"?

If so, I retract my complaint about everything but the name.

At high level, the scholar would become like most classes and hit the epic. For scholars, yes that is super-science. Here comes your monstrosities, fantasy steroids, and an arcane LMG at level 16.

A year of downtime with the level 20 scholar and the party fighter is a Space Marine.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Speaking of beastmaster, I love the concept but the issue is that it is kinda hard to bake 'has a sidekick' into the class' rules. Now some subclasses have done it better but they still are a bit weird, but others tending to be some sort of magical summons makes their odd behaviour a bit more tolerable. But like can't my druid just awaken a bear and befriend them and have them adventure with them? Can't my paladin have a squire or can't any class just hire a sidekick or buy a trained animal? And obviously they can and those sidekicks tend to be better than the beastmaster's companion, so why shouldn't the ranger just play some other subclass and get a sidekick by other means?

There are two reasons.

The first is that many such companions are limited. A 1-2 HD guard dog might be great at level 1, but by the time you're level 3 it's more of a liability in combat, and by level 5 it's walking rations.

The other, distinct, reason is that companions that can gain experience take a share of the experience. Some parties are fine with this, but others aren't (especially if the squire or whatnot is low level and therefore can't carry their weight).

An innate companion scales with you and doesn't "steal" XP from the party.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

The college professor would have advanced usages of those skills much like the rogue's thief and assassin. With Nature, they can find and extract magic elements out of magic creatures. With Medicine, they can buff the cleric's healing. With History, they can identify situations that happened once before.

Right. And this is exactly why I don't want this sort of class to exist. Now you have raised the bar to what it is to be an expert in a skill, so no one else can be that.

 

[Cadence]

The college professor would have advanced usages of those skills much like the rogue's thief and assassin. With Nature, they can find and extract magic elements out of magic creatures. With Medicine, they can buff the cleric's healing. With History, they can identify situations that happened once before.

Unfortunately they would only have advanced skills in three or fewer pretty related skills, need a regular source of funding (that comes with the paperwork disadvantage), and a lot of their feats are team-work (aka "co-author" or "research assistant") feats.

At high level, the scholar would become like most classes and hit the epic. For scholars, yes that is super-science. Here comes your monstrosities, fantasy steroids, and an arcane LMG at level 16.

A year of downtime with the level 20 scholar and the party fighter is a Space Marine.

I am all over a "super-scientist" class. I will take future "scholar" descriptions in that light.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

There are two reasons.

The first is that many such companions are limited. A 1-2 HD guard dog might be great at level 1, but by the time you're level 3 it's more of a liability in combat, and by level 5 it's walking rations.

A time to start buying trained dinosaurs!

The other, distinct, reason is that companions that can gain experience take a share of the experience. Some parties are fine with this, but others aren't (especially if the squire or whatnot is low level and therefore can't carry their weight).

An innate companion scales with you and doesn't "steal" XP from the party.

But that's just so bizarrely gamey. "Sorry Bob, you can't bring your dog with us because then we would get less XP." And who even uses XP? Such a pointless hassle.

 

[Minigiant]

I mean - I don't disagree. But when the concept is leader who grants extra attacks, temp hp, movement, etc. We've proven the subclass has enough mechanical power to fulfill that concept. Seems people want much stronger leader powers than they got.


I think the issue lies elsewhere with the Beastmaser. It's that people wanted a much stronger beast than they got. It's not that the beastmaster doesn't fulfill the cocncept.

But It's that the whole point of the discussion?

That the spellcasters have to be nerfed in combat because the martials are limited in their combat ability in things outside the 2 roles theyget but WOTC (and TSR before them) keeps vomiting out spells that further expands what the casters can do.

 

[Cadence]

Right. And this is exactly why I don't want this sort of class to exist. Now you have raised the bar to what it is to be an expert in a skill, so no one else can be that.

Is anyone else an expert in fighting like the fighter or magic like the wizard? Why should a part timer like a bard know as much as a dedicated sage?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Is anyone else an expert in fighting like the fighter or magic like the wizard? Why should a part timer like a bard know as much as a dedicated sage?

I mean a lore bard, probably should! And it's not like this is a design that couldn't be done, in some sort of magicless or low magic, less combat-heavy game this would make perfect sense. I don't really think it makes sense in D&D though.

 

[Minigiant]

Right. And this is exactly why I don't want this sort of class to exist. Now you have raised the bar to what it is to be an expert in a skill, so no one else can be that.

No one were experts at these skills already.

No one does medicine in D&D because cleric.
The druid binds nature with magic.
And what do you thing an expert in Arcana is?

Spoiler: Starts with a W

Wizard

 

[Vaalingrade]

Not liking how 5e does things is fine IMO. But that's a discussion that doesn't need shoehorned into a discussion about what other classes should be in it as it is. There's certain constraints on design in 5e as it as, and the solution for new 5e classes isn't to throw those constraints out the window.

I know no one cares because they're busy edition warring, but the discussion is actually about spellcaster vs fighter combat balance.