D&D General Requesting permission to have something cool

[Scribe]

These arguments.

That's why.

These arguments are less than a raindrop in the face of a forest fire.

We are not a voice, a representation of the wider community.

 

[Micah Sweet]

These arguments.

That's why.

These arguments are woefully insufficient to stop anyone capable of making halfway decent money from RPG design from doing so.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Whether or not a class is annoying to play is a preference issue. Playing a wizard is annoying for you.

It is not just a perception thing. Actively creating tedium in order to push people away from particular options is a game design choice. It's a poor game design choice, but it is a choice. When game designers talk about "optimizing the fun out of a game," they're referring to people willingly choosing to do tedious, un-fun things because those strategies are dominant. Other game design spaces cottoned onto this pretty quickly, and learned that making the barrier to power be tedium is simply encouraging players to do tedious things.

Meanwhile fighters can do things wizards can't.

Name them. Getting to attack four times per Attack isn't special. Name one thing a Fighter can do that isn't "something literally everyone else can do, but faster." I'll wait. The 5e Fighter's features are Second Wind (occasional self-healing, something everyone does with Hit Dice), Action Surge (same actions as everyone else, just faster), Extra Attack (same attacks everyone else makes, just faster...and most other Fighter-like classes get equally good equivalents anyway!), and Indomitable (same saving throws as everyone else, just faster).

It's literally, from top to bottom, "the same as everyone else, but faster." That's it. Fighters don't do anything Wizards can't. They just do things a little bit faster.

WotC has their own perception and will act accordingly.

Which is no reason for me to stop advocacy. Quite the contrary. Advocacy is the only way that it's even potentially possible that things might, someday, change.

Then do it yourself, get it published, and point to it after its picked up and beloved by all the "I want a mythic martial just dont call it magic" players, and boom, the DM will have to acknowledge that its amazing.

I think thats how it works.

I certainly hope you're being facetious. Small-time publication doesn't get you diddly-squat in the TTRPG space. Never has. D&D is the behemoth it is because it was early. Same with a wide variety of other things. Paizo only became what it did because WotC divested so much of itself and specifically equipped Paizo to pick up the pieces.

I think the power imbalance does exist...but it doesn't matter to a lot of players in a practical way, and to those who do care about it there is not and IMO will never be agreement on what and how sufficient for any kind of large scale action.

If it doesn't matter to them whether there's an imbalance, why not at least reduce it, even if we can't truly remove it? You're already saying they don't notice, so reducing it shouldn't be noticed either.

It isn't that the GM is ignoring the rules, it is that the GM is (supposed to be) reading the table and making sure that everyone gets spotlight time in whatever modes of play/pillars that player enjoys. This is done in conjunction with players making the effort to create a character that makes sense for style of play they find interesting. If a player wants to reform the battlefield and control groups of enemies and cause massive casualties with limited use abilities, it isn't the GMs fault if that player builds a Champion fighter character and can't do any of those things. Players share in the "make the game fun for everyone, myself included" responsibility -- and that responsibility starts with making their character and (hopefully) RTFM.

So, what you're saying is, it's the player's fault for choosing a garbage class? Sounds like victim-blaming to me. "How dare you be interested in an archetype that is extremely popular. You should have changed all your preferences to match what the game actually rewards!"

 

[Oofta]

3PPs ain't doing it either.

That's why we hare here.

Players have to ask the DM "hey can you allow this homebrew subclass I made" and getting No's

If 3PPs aren't doing it either, perhaps it's because there's not wide spread demand for it.

 

[Remathilis]

I would love to see that game, but you have to admit it would be a fundamental change to the game's character, if not its mechanics overly. Would be a great 3pp alternative though.

It's not as large a jump as it might have once been. Most subs for those classes are inherently magical. What is holding them back is that the base class has to be 100% nonmagical to accommodate the one or two subclasses that are likewise nonmagical. If we removed that limit, we could offload some of that magical ability to the base class rather than jam it into four subclass features.

The game itself is awash in magic. Even dwarves, elves and halflings have explicit supernatural abilities like tremorsense and luck. I see very little advantage to neutering "martial" classes to support a half-dozen nonmagical subclasses so someone can still play Boromir.

 

[Reynard]

3PPs ain't doing it either.

That's why we hare here.

Players have to ask the DM "hey can you allow this homebrew subclass I made" and getting No's

I get the feeling you are just making that assertion without really testing it. It isn't even difficult to do. Filter DTRPG for 5E compaitble books, then put the keyword "fighter" in the search bar. TONS of people are putting for new martial archtypes and subclasses. You just aren't looking and then making the claim that ENWorld is somehow keeping folks from doing so.

It is a very strange take.

 

[mamba]

The issue to me is that people think the fighter should have access to the same kinds of plot cards as wizards do, but it should be nonmagical. A wizard can teleport? I can teleport too except I'm so kewl that I just run over there in less than 6 seconds while avoiding all attacks of opportunity.

there is a big difference between teleport and crossing 60 feet or whatever, while avoiding AoO, both in distance and number of chars you can take with you…

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I get the feeling you are just making that assertion without really testing it. It isn't even difficult to do. Filter DTRPG for 5E compaitble books, then put the keyword "fighter" in the search bar. TONS of people are putting for new martial archtypes and subclasses. You just aren't looking and then making the claim that ENWorld is somehow keeping folks from doing so.

It is a very strange take.

As someone who has sought such a thing, I can at least give my personal experience:

Every single 5e DM I have ever asked for homebrew content has said no, unless they were already a close personal friend.

Literally 100% of 5e DMs I've asked, with one friend of mine as the only exception. Most of them complimented me on my design; most of them said that they thought it would probably work out alright, or didn't comment at all. All of them were quite polite about it.

Over a year of applying for 5e games, and none of them accepted.

 

[mamba]

So, you are advocating a nerf to wizards, since a wizard certainly could destroy the ship with their high level abilities, so the fighter would also need ship-destroying high level abilities for parity.

yes, absolutely, I would also buff the martials somewhat

 

[Oofta]

...
Name them. Getting to attack four times per Attack isn't special. Name one thing a Fighter can do that isn't "something literally everyone else can do, but faster." I'll wait. The 5e Fighter's features are Second Wind (occasional self-healing, something everyone does with Hit Dice), Action Surge (same actions as everyone else, just faster), Extra Attack (same attacks everyone else makes, just faster...and most other Fighter-like classes get equally good equivalents anyway!), and Indomitable (same saving throws as everyone else, just faster).
...

So a motorcycle is exactly the same as a moped because they both have two wheels, a motor and you can use them to get around?