D&D (2024) Rogue's Been in an Awkward Place, And This Survey Might Be Our Last Chance to Let WotC Know.

[James Gasik]

Look, I'm the first one to say I wish 5e handled magic items better than "here's some items, you can use them, I guess, we won't tell you how, so any mistake is on you". But at the same time, if a DM says "sure Mr. Eldritch Knight with PAM, have +2 armor, +2 shield, a cloak of displacement and a Staff of Power", and that causes issues, I mean, surely they could have seen the AC rising with each new piece of gear and noticed that, hey, my CR 15 dragon only has +11 to hit!

OTOH, without magic boosts to AC, some classes quickly realize they have no business whatsoever in melee combat, as AC quickly levels off. By level 5, a Fighter who wants it is rocking full plate for his AC 18. A few levels down the road, he might be looking at a CR 9 Fire Giant who hits that on a 7. Sure, he can tank his damage by switching to a shield, but that poor melee Rogue with his AC 17? Not good! So if he can stack a ring of protection with some other defensive item, it's not a problem unless his AC rises to a number the DM can't handle.

Also. If I reply to a comment that says: "Rings of Protection have never stacked with magical armour bonuses so why would I ever think they were intended to start now in 5e", saying "well, ring of protection didn't stack with shield of faith lesser deflect or a cloak of protection" doesn't make what I said untrue.

 

[Pauln6]

Look, I'm the first one to say I wish 5e handled magic items better than "here's some items, you can use them, I guess, we won't tell you how, so any mistake is on you". But at the same time, if a DM says "sure Mr. Eldritch Knight with PAM, have +2 armor, +2 shield, a cloak of displacement and a Staff of Power", and that causes issues, I mean, surely they could have seen the AC rising with each new piece of gear and noticed that, hey, my CR 15 dragon only has +11 to hit!

OTOH, without magic boosts to AC, some classes quickly realize they have no business whatsoever in melee combat, as AC quickly levels off. By level 5, a Fighter who wants it is rocking full plate for his AC 18. A few levels down the road, he might be looking at a CR 9 Fire Giant who hits that on a 7. Sure, he can tank his damage by switching to a shield, but that poor melee Rogue with his AC 17? Not good! So if he can stack a ring of protection with some other defensive item, it's not a problem unless his AC rises to a number the DM can't handle.

Also. If I reply to a comment that says: "Rings of Protection have never stacked with magical armour bonuses so why would I ever think they were intended to start now in 5e", saying "well, ring of protection didn't stack with shield of faith lesser deflect or a cloak of protection" doesn't make what I said untrue.

Yeah I suppose because we converted our characters from previous editions, we just never changed the rules and only applied the bonus to saves. I mean in 1e cloaks of protection only worked with no armour or leather. It was a bit more random but I could see the logic.

Personally, I think melee characters should be terrified of fighting huge creatures in melee. That's entirely thematic. That doesn't mean they shouldn't do it, it just means they should work harder to mitigate that damage and there should be class features thst let them do that.

 

[tetrasodium]

Look, I'm the first one to say I wish 5e handled magic items better than "here's some items, you can use them, I guess, we won't tell you how, so any mistake is on you". But at the same time, if a DM says "sure Mr. Eldritch Knight with PAM, have +2 armor, +2 shield, a cloak of displacement and a Staff of Power", and that causes issues, I mean, surely they could have seen the AC rising with each new piece of gear and noticed that, hey, my CR 15 dragon only has +11 to hit!

You write this as if you personally assign each magic item discovered to specific PCs who immediately find the item to be soulbound when you GM rather than allowing the players to have their own say in who gets a particular magic item and who doesn't. Also you don't need to jump to +2 gear for 5e to start tearing itself apart at the seams because the math is designed for no feats no magic items & a bizarre self defeating level of negative charop like Player:"hmm,,, 15/14/13/12/10/8 I think my barbarian should put the 15 in charisma to be intimidating and maybe the 12 in strength so I don't overdo it".

OTOH, without magic boosts to AC, some classes quickly realize they have no business whatsoever in melee combat, as AC quickly levels off. By level 5, a Fighter who wants it is rocking full plate for his AC 18. A few levels down the road, he might be looking at a CR 9 Fire Giant who hits that on a 7. Sure, he can tank his damage by switching to a shield, but that poor melee Rogue with his AC 17? Not good! So if he can stack a ring of protection with some other defensive item, it's not a problem unless his AC rises to a number the DM can't handle.

Healing word.
Any class can be in melee with no particularly plausible risk thanks to phb197. One of the playtest packets even tried to address that before immediately walking it back in the next packet

Also. If I reply to a comment that says: "Rings of Protection have never stacked with magical armour bonuses so why would I ever think they were intended to start now in 5e", saying "well, ring of protection didn't stack with shield of faith lesser deflect or a cloak of protection" doesn't make what I said untrue.

I think from what was written in the rest of 776 where that statement was made that we can agree @Pauln6 mispoke & may have meant shield of faith since it was actually being discussed across multiple posts going back to where it was raised in 767 with one even pointing out how it was noted for being in the dmg sidebar as deliberately conflicting shield of faith with a ring of protection to avoid being unbalanced. I don't know if shield of faith was added to 2e in a splatbook, but I don't see it in my 2e phb & unlike 5e it very much did not stack with a ring of protection in 3.5.

 

[James Gasik]

You write this as if you personally assign each magic item discovered to specific PCs who immediately find the item to be soulbound when you GM rather than allowing the players to have their own say in who gets a particular magic item and who doesn't. Also you don't need to jump to +2 gear for 5e to start tearing itself apart at the seams because the math is designed for no feats no magic items & a bizarre self defeating level of negative charop like Player:"hmm,,, 15/14/13/12/10/8 I think my barbarian should put the 15 in charisma to be intimidating and maybe the 12 in strength so I don't overdo it".

Healing word.
Any class can be in melee with no particularly plausible risk thanks to phb197. One of the playtest packets even tried to address that before immediately walking it back in the next packet

I think from what was written in the rest of 776 where that statement was made that we can agree @Pauln6 mispoke & may have meant shield of faith since it was actually being discussed across multiple posts going back to where it was raised in 767 with one even pointing out how it was noted for being in the dmg sidebar as deliberately conflicting shield of faith with a ring of protection to avoid being unbalanced. I don't know if shield of faith was added to 2e in a splatbook, but I don't see it in my 2e phb & unlike 5e it very much did not stack with a ring of protection in 3.5.

First, Healing Word doesn't cut it. I'm sorry, I know, a lot of people seem to think it does, and maybe in their games that's true, but my experience is as follows:

1- you rarely fight just one enemy.
2- multiattack is common.
3- spell slots are limited, and the bonus action cast rule means that anyone using healing word is not allowed to cast good spells.

So when I'm fighting Mr. Fire Giant or Mr. Green Dragon, or whatever, and it knocks me flat, here's what Healing Word does. It prevents my healer from using a real spell to deal with the problems, then next turn, the enemy knocks me down again and turns their attention on someone else. Or maybe I take multiple hits and just die outright before the healer gets a turn! Not ideal!

Second, sure. My players could be silly and dump all the AC boosts onto characters who don't need them. Guess what happens if one guy is unhittable and everyone else is very hittable? Yeah that's right, we lose the lower AC characters and Mr. Invincible either ends up whittled down by attrition, fails a vital save, or wins D&D. Wow.

In my game, when a new magic item drops, we have a discussion about who needs it's benefit most. If that's not standard, maybe, instead, the DM and the players could talk about how to divvy up magic items responsibly? I know, crazy concept. If they're bound and determined to have one guy with an AC 7 points higher than the rest of the party, I hope that strategy works out for them.

And no, when Pauln6 said magic armor, he meant magic armor (as his last post admits). But I'm not offended that you made an assumption- happens all the time.

 

[Maxperson]

Yeah it's so obviously wrong in the bounded system that you assume it must have been an oversight. I'd be interested to see the designers' reasoning for not either closing down stacking or just putting a hard cap of AC25.

Of course, I also think they screwed up the stat boosting magic items, which should have been +2 or +4, capped at X, plus something extra, such treated as large or huge for carrying, shoving etc or maybe advantage or +1d4 on linked skill rolls. Giving a strength 10 character Str14 plus greater carrying capacity is not as much bang as giving a St18 fighter Str22 and the ability to shove huge creatures.

Bounded accuracy does not take PC defenses into account. The quote below is from Rodney Thompson on bounded accuracy.

"The basic premise behind the bounded accuracy system is simple: we make no assumptions on the DM’s side of the game that the player’s attack and spell accuracy, or their defenses, increase as a result of gaining levels. Instead, we represent the difference in characters of various levels primarily through their hit points, the amount of damage they deal, and the various new abilities they have gained. Characters can fight tougher monsters not because they can finally hit them, but because their damage is sufficient to take a significant chunk out of the monster’s hit points; likewise, the character can now stand up to a few hits from that monster without being killed easily, thanks to the character’s increased hit points. Furthermore, gaining levels grants the characters new capabilities, which go much farther toward making your character feel different than simple numerical increases.

Now, note that I said that we make no assumptions on the DM’s side of the game about increased accuracy and defenses. This does not mean that the players do not gain bonuses to accuracy and defenses. It does mean, however, that we do not need to make sure that characters advance on a set schedule, and we can let each class advance at its own appropriate pace. Thus, wizards don’t have to gain a +10 bonus to weapon attack rolls just for reaching a higher level in order to keep participating; if wizards never gain an accuracy bonus, they can still contribute just fine to the ongoing play experience.

This extends beyond simple attacks and damage. We also make the same assumptions about character ability modifiers and skill bonuses. Thus, our expected DCs do not scale automatically with level, and instead a DC is left to represent the fixed value of the difficulty of some task, not the difficulty of the task relative to level.

 

[tetrasodium]

First, Healing Word doesn't cut it. I'm sorry, I know, a lot of people seem to think it does, and maybe in their games that's true, but my experience is as follows:

1- you rarely fight just one enemy.
2- multiattack is common.
3- spell slots are limited, and the bonus action cast rule means that anyone using healing word is not allowed to cast good spells.

So when I'm fighting Mr. Fire Giant or Mr. Green Dragon, or whatever, and it knocks me flat, here's what Healing Word does. It prevents my healer from using a real spell to deal with the problems, then next turn, the enemy knocks me down again and turns their attention on someone else. Or maybe I take multiple hits and just die outright before the healer gets a turn! Not ideal!

Second, sure. My players could be silly and dump all the AC boosts onto characters who don't need them. Guess what happens if one guy is unhittable and everyone else is very hittable? Yeah that's right, we lose the lower AC characters and Mr. Invincible either ends up whittled down by attrition, fails a vital save, or wins D&D. Wow.

In my game, when a new magic item drops, we have a discussion about who needs it's benefit most. If that's not standard, maybe, instead, the DM and the players could talk about how to divvy up magic items responsibly? I know, crazy concept. If they're bound and determined to have one guy with an AC 7 points higher than the rest of the party, I hope that strategy works out for them.

And no, when Pauln6 said magic armor, he meant magic armor (as his last post admits). But I'm not offended that you made an assumption- happens all the time.

Multiattack doesn't cut it because attacks are tuned for lower level PCs thanks to bounded accuracy. Even if a multiattack monster does down a PC on the first hit it or something else still needs to hit two more times before any other PC in the initiative can heal the downed PC of even a single point. So it's not just multi attack... It's multiattack plus positioning on the battlefield in order for the GM to effectively execute a PC before any other player in the initiative can healing word healing breeze cure wounds health potion 1hp lay on hands or whatever in order to completely nullify all of the damage done beyond zero. A maralinth is really the only monster with enough attacks that deal enough damage for death to be a plausible risk.

Bounded accuracy does not take PC defenses into account. The quote below is from Rodney Thompson on bounded accuracy.

"The basic premise behind the bounded accuracy system is simple: we make no assumptions on the DM’s side of the game that the player’s attack and spell accuracy, or their defenses, increase as a result of gaining levels. Instead, we represent the difference in characters of various levels primarily through their hit points, the amount of damage they deal, and the various new abilities they have gained. Characters can fight tougher monsters not because they can finally hit them, but because their damage is sufficient to take a significant chunk out of the monster’s hit points; likewise, the character can now stand up to a few hits from that monster without being killed easily, thanks to the character’s increased hit points. Furthermore, gaining levels grants the characters new capabilities, which go much farther toward making your character feel different than simple numerical increases.

Now, note that I said that we make no assumptions on the DM’s side of the game about increased accuracy and defenses. This does not mean that the players do not gain bonuses to accuracy and defenses. It does mean, however, that we do not need to make sure that characters advance on a set schedule, and we can let each class advance at its own appropriate pace. Thus, wizards don’t have to gain a +10 bonus to weapon attack rolls just for reaching a higher level in order to keep participating; if wizards never gain an accuracy bonus, they can still contribute just fine to the ongoing play experience.

This extends beyond simple attacks and damage. We also make the same assumptions about character ability modifiers and skill bonuses. Thus, our expected DCs do not scale automatically with level, and instead a DC is left to represent the fixed value of the difficulty of some task, not the difficulty of the task relative to level.

4e didn't work like 5e, edit:[scaling] was very different then

 

[Pauln6]

Bounded accuracy does not take PC defenses into account. The quote below is from Rodney Thompson on bounded accuracy.

"The basic premise behind the bounded accuracy system is simple: we make no assumptions on the DM’s side of the game that the player’s attack and spell accuracy, or their defenses, increase as a result of gaining levels. Instead, we represent the difference in characters of various levels primarily through their hit points, the amount of damage they deal, and the various new abilities they have gained. Characters can fight tougher monsters not because they can finally hit them, but because their damage is sufficient to take a significant chunk out of the monster’s hit points; likewise, the character can now stand up to a few hits from that monster without being killed easily, thanks to the character’s increased hit points. Furthermore, gaining levels grants the characters new capabilities, which go much farther toward making your character feel different than simple numerical increases.

Now, note that I said that we make no assumptions on the DM’s side of the game about increased accuracy and defenses. This does not mean that the players do not gain bonuses to accuracy and defenses. It does mean, however, that we do not need to make sure that characters advance on a set schedule, and we can let each class advance at its own appropriate pace. Thus, wizards don’t have to gain a +10 bonus to weapon attack rolls just for reaching a higher level in order to keep participating; if wizards never gain an accuracy bonus, they can still contribute just fine to the ongoing play experience.

This extends beyond simple attacks and damage. We also make the same assumptions about character ability modifiers and skill bonuses. Thus, our expected DCs do not scale automatically with level, and instead a DC is left to represent the fixed value of the difficulty of some task, not the difficulty of the task relative to level.

Oh yeah I was mis-remembering 3e bonuses. I have not played 3e since 4e came out.

This is an interesting quote but I would prefer to see a response to a direct query about no limit on PC AC in the bounded system. The highest attack bonus from monsters would be +19 with a +3 weapon. If your AC were capped at 25, the most powerful monster in the game could hit you on a roll of 6 or or more. The most powerful thing without magic would hit on 9 or more. So AC25 would be Plate +3, a Shield, a Fighting Style, and a bonus of +1 or more from a temporary magical source. A Monk or a Barbarian would have to use magic to boost their stats above 20 to hit the cap, while a wizard would have no hope without investment in armour (no wizard is going to blow two attunement slots on items for a small bonus to AC).

It's never been a problem in my campaign because I have never allowed any permanent magical bonuses to stack and for whatever reason, neither of the clerics in our group uses AC boosting spells. Because I have never had to deal with it as an issue, I don't even know how much AC it's possible to wring from spells.

I think I would prefer Bracers to be AC8, no attunement, and rings of protection not to stack with magic AC bonuses but to grant a save re-roll.

 

[Maxperson]

Multiattack doesn't cut it because attacks are tuned for lower level PCs thanks to bounded accuracy. Even if a multiattack monster does down a PC on the first hit it or something else still needs to hit two more times before any other PC in the initiative can heal the downed PC of even a single point. So it's not just multi attack... It's multiattack plus positioning on the battlefield in order for the GM to effectively execute a PC before any other player in the initiative can healing word healing breeze cure wounds health potion 1hp lay on hands or whatever in order to completely nullify all of the damage done beyond zero. A maralinth is really the only monster with enough attacks that deal enough damage for death to be a plausible risk.

4e didn't work like 5e, bounded accuracy was very different then

I wasn't even aware that 4e HAD bounded accuracy.

 

[James Gasik]

I wasn't even aware that 4e HAD bounded accuracy.

I guess it depends on what you mean by bounded accuracy.

I mean, your base attack bonus is 1/2 level and ability scores cap at 30*, which is +20, +26 with a +6 weapon/implement. The +1/+2/+3 feats came later as a rules patch you had to pay for, lol. Enemies increase their attack and defenses as they rise in level as well. Most everything else came from situational bonuses like Warlords or Combat Advantage.

*IME, few characters could afford to drop a 30 in one ability score, as every class has at least one secondary stat and more healing surges is good. Dex or Int classes, or those that can wear heavy armor possibly?

It should be possible to challenge players with lower level foes in 4e, especially Soldiers (who had a higher base accuracy). Your main issues are at tier jumps- I remember when I was just shy of Epic tier, facing Epic enemies, and that was kind of rough, but once we became Epic, things became a lot easier.

If your goal is to make level 1 goblins useful foes against level 7 characters, probably not so much, but it's fairly easy to make higher level versions of those level 1 goblins.

The reverse gets tricky- I had a DM once think that a level 3 Lich would be fun for a low level adventure, forgetting his abilities were still intended for a higher level party to deal with...

 

[Clint_L]

First, Healing Word doesn't cut it. I'm sorry, I know, a lot of people seem to think it does, and maybe in their games that's true, but my experience is as follows:

1- you rarely fight just one enemy.
2- multiattack is common.
3- spell slots are limited, and the bonus action cast rule means that anyone using healing word is not allowed to cast good spells.

So when I'm fighting Mr. Fire Giant or Mr. Green Dragon, or whatever, and it knocks me flat, here's what Healing Word does. It prevents my healer from using a real spell to deal with the problems, then next turn, the enemy knocks me down again and turns their attention on someone else. Or maybe I take multiple hits and just die outright before the healer gets a turn! Not ideal!

I'm very much one of that "lot of people." I think healing word is, by far, the most powerful spell in 5e, so powerful that it actually warps how the game is played. It's thanks to healing word that pop-up healing is the default healing model.

You seldom fight more than one foe: debatable. What does "seldom" mean? We have plenty of fights that ultimately boil down to the BBEG by the end. And what about two foes, or three? And are all those foes always concentrated on one target, including ignoring other targets (who are attacking them) and continuing to attack that target after it is KOed? If your party member is being swarmed and your DM is playing them so that they just keep hacking at a KOed opponent until it is dead, then that character was screwed anyway. But how often does that happen?

Here's what healing word does: it gets you back in the fight. If you get knocked down again after your turn, who cares? Fights in 5e are typically short, and the action economy plus range of healing word make it by far the most effective way to handle healing until very high levels. In most instances, healing spells are so weak that the amount they heal you for doesn't matter; 1 HP is usually as good as 10 HP; you're still probably going back down on the next hit. What matters is getting the character back in the fight for their turn. So I'm giving up my bonus action to get another character their full turn, with all the stuff they can do in it? Yes, please.

And it's widely available, so that it is common for a number of party members to have healing word. This means you can usually cast it when opportune.

I have seen healing word completely alter the outcome of more battles than any other spell in 5e, and it isn't remotely close.