D&D General The Crab Bucket Fallacy

[FrozenNorth]

If the group is trying to get out of a burning building because the wizard cast fireball in the living room and the door is stuck, that fighter with their +10 athletics is going to look pretty good compared to that bard with a +3 athletics.

A fighter with +10 Athletics? +5 from Strength, +5 from prof, so Tier 3. Seems like the fighter is going to look pretty bad compared with the Rogue with Athletics Expertise (+12).

The Rogue also gets 3 other expertise skills.

 

[Oofta]

A quick search found this

The designers didn't think Warlord warranted its own class. To quote Mike Mearls' explanation of Battlemaster during the playtest:​

​

Best of all, maneuvers allow the game to model a variety of classic fighter archetypes without cluttering the system with too many new paths. You can build a swashbuckling fighter with a high Dexterity, finesse weapons, and the Parry, Riposte, and Spring Away maneuvers. A warlord-style fighter can take Commander's Strike, Maneuvering Attack, and Rally to serve as an effective combat leader.​

They felt like the battle master already covers the archetype. That's all I'm saying - they made an exception for artificer because it's such an iconic class for Eberron.

 

[Oofta]

A fighter with +10 Athletics? +5 from Strength, +5 from prof, so Tier 3. Seems like the fighter is going to look pretty bad compared with the Rogue with Athletics Expertise (+12).

The Rogue also gets 3 other expertise skills.

And? I didn't say they were min-maxed. I said they were decent. You don't have to have the best numbers theoretically possible in order to contribute.

 

[Umbran]

Okay. What happens the next time, then? Or the time after that?

Let me answer a question with a question - do you require every attempt at a task to always require maximum bonuses? If not, then the next time probably don't use the spell.

Part of resource management is choosing when to use limited resources for support, and when not to do so.. Only when resources are going spare, or the stakes are high, do you stack on everything imaginable.

Treating it as a rare isolated event doesn't really reflect actual play, as far as I can tell. The Fighter gets to be good at social rolls because the Wizard let them be good at social rolls.

I still reject the posit that this one spell is equivalent to being good at social interactions overall.

 

[Micah Sweet]

A fighter with +10 Athletics? +5 from Strength, +5 from prof, so Tier 3. Seems like the fighter is going to look pretty bad compared with the Rogue with Athletics Expertise (+12).

The Rogue also gets 3 other expertise skills.

Skills are IMO too closely connected with stats, and stats are in general to powerful. I prefer a flatter curve where 18 is +3 and is the highest you can get (if you're lucky) outside setting-based magical enhancement, and attack bonus is primarily tied to class and level (and varies from class to class) rather than attribute bonus. Skills in this system would mostly be determined by roll with a small stat bonus if appropriate, and get better if you devoted more skill slots/points to them specifically as you level, rather than all at once for everything you know. This would also allow skill slots to be used for cool magical and non-magical abilities, making them a combination of skills and feats conceptually. Call them proficiencies.

 

[Minigiant]

A quick search found this

The designers didn't think Warlord warranted its own class. To quote Mike Mearls' explanation of Battlemaster during the playtest:​

​

Best of all, maneuvers allow the game to model a variety of classic fighter archetypes without cluttering the system with too many new paths. You can build a swashbuckling fighter with a high Dexterity, finesse weapons, and the Parry, Riposte, and Spring Away maneuvers. A warlord-style fighter can take Commander's Strike, Maneuvering Attack, and Rally to serve as an effective combat leader.​

They felt like the battle master already covers the archetype. That's all I'm saying - they made an exception for artificer because it's such an iconic class for Eberron.

Again

That's what I said.

Mike Mearls and some other designers were anti warlord. But it was popular. VERY POPULAR.. So they injected a reject version of the warlord into the battlemaster to placate 4e fans. And they used the "no setting for it" as an excuse to never make the full class.

 

[Oofta]

Again

That's what I said.

Mike Mearls and some other designers were anti warlord. But it was popular. VERY POPULAR.. So they injected a reject version of the warlord into the battlemaster to placate 4e fans. And they used the "no setting for it" as an excuse to never make the full class.

Do you have any evidence they were "very popular"? I don't think it matters much, they weren't carried over because the developers felt their archetype was already covered. You disagreeing with them (personally I agree with Mearls on this) doesn't change anything.

But I ran or helped run a couple game days in a major metro area and I only remember seeing a warlord once or twice out of literally dozens of players. As far as I could tell they weren't particularly popular.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Again

That's what I said.

Mike Mearls and some other designers were anti warlord. But it was popular. VERY POPULAR.. So they injected a reject version of the warlord into the battlemaster to placate 4e fans. And they used the "no setting for it" as an excuse to never make the full class.

No. That's not what you said.

This is what we see over and over again. People make extraordinary claims (like you did in the last paragraph). When asked for proof for these extraordinary claims, they point to evidence that, when examined, doesn't support them, and, instead, is just relatively anodyne or banal comments.

Which you have interpreted to support you by making it into something it isn't. Rinse, repeat.

 

[Neonchameleon]

A quick search found this

The designers didn't think Warlord warranted its own class. To quote Mike Mearls' explanation of Battlemaster during the playtest:​

​

Best of all, maneuvers allow the game to model a variety of classic fighter archetypes without cluttering the system with too many new paths. You can build a swashbuckling fighter with a high Dexterity, finesse weapons, and the Parry, Riposte, and Spring Away maneuvers. A warlord-style fighter can take Commander's Strike, Maneuvering Attack, and Rally to serve as an effective combat leader.​

They felt like the battle master already covers the archetype. That's all I'm saying - they made an exception for artificer because it's such an iconic class for Eberron.

And were explicitly the sort of edition warring jackasses who thought that "shouting hands back on" was a fair characterisation of the warlord.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Do you have any evidence they were "very popular"? I don't think it matters much, they weren't carried over because the developers felt their archetype was already covered. You disagreeing with them (personally I agree with Mearls on this) doesn't change anything.

But I ran or helped run a couple game days in a major metro area and I only remember seeing a warlord once or twice out of literally dozens of players. As far as I could tell they weren't particularly popular.

Do you agree with Mearls because you also think the archetype was covered fairly, or because you also don't like warlords?