D&D 5E Tasha's and optimization

[Scribe]

Yeah. I think this is fundamental design flaw in the edition. I already deleted rapier, and I've seriously considered making long bow to use strength instead of dex.

Yep agreed.

 

[ECMO3]

And grappling is totally inefficient as a character except in very special cases.

I disagree with this.

There are numerous uses for grapple. As far as a general use for grapple, tavern brawler, unarmed fighting style make it over the top effective on a high-strength human Rune Knight fighter. It uses a bonus action and does an extra 1d4 damage every turn after you land it in addition to moving the enemy where you want. Combined with a 1-level Rogue dip (for expertise) and it is awesome.

With extra attack you have a killer first turn. Start off with an unarmed strike, if you hit bonus action grapple, if you succeed use your second attack for shove. You now have used one action and you have hit the enemy for 1d8+str, have him grappled and prone. He can't stand up because his movement is 0, if he attacks you he has disadvantage, and you have advantage on future attacks against him because he is prone. You can drag him anywhere you want on the battlefield and because you took that Rogue dip you can stab him on future turns with andvantage and a +1d6 SA. Also he takes an extra 1d4 at the start of your turns and he has to use an entire action to try to break the grapple against your +10. If he breaks it you do it again next turn.

To do that in one turn you need to hit with 3 things in a row (unarmed strike, grapple, shove), but they are all likely. With Action surge and Gian't Might though you can overcome it if one or more miss and still put the enemy in this really bad situation in turn 1 if you want. If you miss with your unarmed strike, use your bonus for giants might then go straight for a grapple with your second attack, then AS to knock prone (both now with a +10 AND advantage) and for your second AS attack pull out your rapier and sneak attack with advantage. If you hit with your unarmed strike but miss with your BA grapple or your action shove then AS to complete the sequence using your 2 other attacks. Finally Giants Might makes you large which means you can grapple things like dragons and giants.

Aside from a grappler Fighter build, I use grapple with my low-strength Rogues relatively often. I almost always have expertise in athletics for this very reason and even with an 8 strength they are pretty good at it and the cunning action means you can dash with the grappled enemy. Grapple works great with misty step for two uses - dragging people off of cliffs, walls etc and then misty stepping back while they fall and using it to misty step to low flying creatures and grapple them mid air so I can stab at them (and often make them plummet to the ground with you).

 

[Vaalingrade]

STR dumping is less attractive when you're actually tracking encumbrance. Someone needs to be able to actually carry all that treasure.

Horses, bags of holding, literally paying the DM with money food or whatever other unsavory thing they want so I never have to track encumberance.

 

[Fenris-77]

Horses, bags of holding, literally paying the DM with money food or whatever other unsavory thing they want so I never have to track encumberance.

Yup there are a ton of dodges available, and as the party levels it becomes less of a burden (har har) for various reasons. It's still worth doing at low levels though, if for no other reason than to punish make reasonable STR-dump builds.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

What's interested me re: Tashas is seeing the theoretical effects, as discussed in this thread, vs. the at-table effects on "optimization".

Several posts here have made good suggestions for what the most truly min-maxed approaches are post-Tasha.

Yet what I've actually see at the table, bizarrely, is less min-maxing. We haven't created a vast number of characters post-Tashas, but thanks to a couple of aborted campaigns, we have created a significant number. And what seems to be happening, with two of the groups I play with at least (and the rest haven't made new PCs yet) is that they're picking the race they want to play, then just changing the stats to fit the class.

Previously what I usually saw was:

Step 1: Narrow down races to ones with a bonus to primary stat of desired class.

Step 2: Find best or most-acceptable of those races, play that.

What I see now is:

Step 1: Pick race you actually want to play, change stats to what you want them to be for desired class.

I'd hoped this would happen, and I'm glad that I'm seeing it happen.

 

[iserith]

I don't use the Tasha's origin customization rules in my games, preferring to lean into the established archetypes instead. Almost always, my games have curated race options (no kitchen sink games) anyway based on what works best for my vision of the theme or setting. Maybe if I had a very limited list of available races for some reason, or even a single-race adventure or campaign, I might use the origin customization rules. But this hasn't been something I've done yet.

 

[Paul Smart]

Regardless, my overall take is that there were winners and losers amongst the player races before Tasha's, winners and losers amongst the player races after Tasha's, but there were changes in which ones hold what status. Despite what WotC says, that some races had attributes which didn't synergize well with each other (ex: Yuan-ti) or with the other racial abilities (Mountain Dwarves) was clearly part of the balancing mechanism.

Hi Willie

Can you give me a list of what you consider the winners and losers post Tasha? Thanks.

 

[Arilyn]

What's interested me re: Tashas is seeing the theoretical effects, as discussed in this thread, vs. the at-table effects on "optimization".

Several posts here have made good suggestions for what the most truly min-maxed approaches are post-Tasha.

Yet what I've actually see at the table, bizarrely, is less min-maxing. We haven't created a vast number of characters post-Tashas, but thanks to a couple of aborted campaigns, we have created a significant number. And what seems to be happening, with two of the groups I play with at least (and the rest haven't made new PCs yet) is that they're picking the race they want to play, then just changing the stats to fit the class.

Previously what I usually saw was:

Step 1: Narrow down races to ones with a bonus to primary stat of desired class.

Step 2: Find best or most-acceptable of those races, play that.

What I see now is:

Step 1: Pick race you actually want to play, change stats to what you want them to be for desired class.

I'd hoped this would happen, and I'm glad that I'm seeing it happen.

This is what I'm seeing too. And strangely enough, I haven't seen my game being overrun by muscle bound halflings!

 

[UngeheuerLich]

This is not true. As a matter of fact Dexterity of 14 puts you 1 point behind a strength build and a dexterity above 14 does nothing for max AC without a feat. There is literally no reason to invest in dexterity for AC on a martial. You invest in dex for your attacks, damage, saves and skills.

Half plate a 14 dex or higher is AC 17
Full plate is AC 18

If you assume you start with 16 dexterity you can match heavy armor with 1 feat (medium armor master) and no further investment in dexterity at all. So if you play a V Human you could do this at first level without using a single ASI for dexterity. Not saying that is a good idea, but it will get you the same AC as a strength character would have right at level 1.

I mentioned Barbarians above, the other use I have had for high strength characters are grappler builds of any class, but that is a corner case. Other than those two though I feel like you would pretty much always be a stronger character with dexterity instead.

Yoi can't dump str if you want to wear medium armor and not ignore encumbrance.
If you use heavier medium armor, stealth does not work well.
Switching between bow and melee is hard if you use a shield.
Enemies often won't get into range of the wizard, or if they do, the wizard will have tricks up their sleeves.
If you take medium armor mastery, you can get your stelth bonus back, but it basically locks you into vhuman or you fall behind.
The discussion however is absurd. We won't convince the other one.
I have seen too many situations in our "dex is godly str stinks" group, where the wizard had to do all athletics/str stuff, because she had rolled a 12 in str and was the strongest of all.

 

[abirdcall]

Not caring about it personally is very different from not knowing what it is or how it works.

That said, I don't get how floating the bonuses doesn't open up a given lineage to more class options given that you can stick 'em where you want or need. It kind of has to work that way at least in terms of ability scores related to class choice. There's a cogent argument that this just more emphasis on the other lineage abilities, and that does have some weight, but that's also not what you said.

I'd also maybe suggest that allowing for builds that work against some of the legacy race-class themes was precisely the point of Tasha's. That doesn't mean that anyone has to like that fact particularly, only that it's the case.

You are begging the question.

Lacking a racial bonus to your class's prime stat does not preclude them from taking that class with that race.