D&D 5E What would you like to see in a "revised edition" of 5E?

Mistwell · Dec 18, 2014

DaveDash said:
That question had already been answered at the bottom of page 1.

Having a particular class/feat combination that can render most encounters built with the guidelines in the book ineffective does seriously imbalance the game. Especially given the fact that it is quite nicely balanced in many areas.

Right, I understand in theory how that could happen. I was asking you what actually did you seen in the games you played, where this feat was present, that resulted in a serious unbalanced game, and how did you address it (if at all)?

Furthermore anything that limits tactical choice by being the clearly superior option, instead of promoting more choice, unbalances the game, because choice is minimized, hence, less balanced.

I have no idea how minimizing choices is the same as a seriously unbalanced game. If you have only three moves you can make instead of 50, that is neither inherently balanced or unbalanced. Checkers is not a seriously unbalanced game just because it has a lot fewer choices you can make than chess. How did this seriously unbalance your game?

I'm not going to go into exactly specific detailed examples because I get the feeling you're hovering around like a vulture ready to pick apart any minute detail or mistake that may have been made, whilst completely ignoring the in game context of each given scenario.

Christ this is like pulling teeth. I asked four times, four times you said you were going to offer an actual explanation and then didn't, and now you're saying you're not going to answer and had no intention of ever answering because you might not like my response? Well I guess I was right, the answer is you'd prefer to not talk about it. OK - that's fine, I just wish you would have said that to begin with rather than wasting so much time dancing around it.

Just the fact that a 10th level character can output 100 damage per round per short rest should be enough for you to realise that this may lead to in AND out of game issues.

Is that something that actually happened in one of your games?

Or, as another example, picture this scenario. You're Bob the melee fighter and you've put hundreds if not thousands of hours into your character. You are finally reaching the higher levels. Jim the archer however in your group has decided to pick up Sharpshooter and Crossbow Expert. As you start leveling up, you start to note a lot of encounters you're pretty ineffective compared to Jim. Jim can basically do everything you can do up close and personal in combat, but he can also do the same things at range, and unfortunately for you, most of the higher level encounters you're facing happen to use a lot of highly mobile flying, or legendary moving creatures.
Poor old you is huffing and puffing back and forth, throwing a Javelin here or a hand axe there, trying to keep up. Meanwhile Jim is shooting crossbow bolts like lazers, completely ignoring cover, and doing a ridiculous amount of damage from hundreds of feet away. Soon the party basically stops buffing you completely, and they start saving their buffs for Jim, realising how much more effective he is over you.
Unless the DM start banning feats and housing ruling things, which is probably going to be very annoying for Jim, OR engineer encounters to give Bob something to do (and subsequently nerf Jim, also pretty annoying for him), you're going to end up with a serious imbalance at your table.

Is that something that actually happened in one of your games?

DaveDash · Dec 18, 2014

Mistwell said:
I have no idea how minimizing choices is the same as a seriously unbalanced game. If you have only three moves you can make instead of 50, that is neither inherently balanced or unbalanced. Checkers is not a seriously unbalanced game just because it has a lot fewer choices you can make than chess. How did this seriously unbalance your game?

You're missing the point. When presented with four options, if option 1 is better than 2,3,4 the majority of the time, and makes 2,3,4 redundant, then that creates an imbalance within that set of options. A better analogy is you can pick a number of different kinds of chess pieces for your board before you start the game, one set allows you to double move, whereas the rest don't.

Obviously if you do things for role play and story only, this will kind of imbalance won't bother you.

ren1999 · Dec 18, 2014

I am reading all the game mechanics and overall I find them to be very fun with a lot of variety. But with variety, we need alphabetizing, organization, and a lot of summary tables. In the next print of the Core 3 books; PHB, MM and DMG, I would like to see more structure. Having to find all the little hidden benefits of a certain race, class, feat or spell is getting annoying.

My 5E Game Tracker, now with a working mobile hack! Works on your phones.
Worth its weight in gold just for the game tool links.
http://dnd5.weebly.com

Mistwell · Dec 18, 2014

DaveDash said:
You're missing the point. When presented with four options, if option 1 is better than 2,3,4 the majority of the time, and makes 2,3,4 redundant, then that creates an imbalance within that set of options.

Yes, but an imbalance within a set of options is not the same as a seriously unbalanced game because of that imbalanced set of options. It's just as balanced as if they had only ever offered the optimal choice.

It's really a simple question. You say you played the game a lot. You say the feat seriously unbalances games. Did you see this serious unbalance in the many games you played, or are you saying this serious imbalance is theoretically what will happen? If you saw it in the games you played, what did you see happen specifically that made the game unbalanced?

DaveDash · Dec 18, 2014

Mistwell said:
Yes, but an imbalance within a set of options is not the same as a seriously unbalanced game because of that imbalanced set of options. It's just as balanced as if they had only ever offered the optimal choice.

It's really a simple question. You say you played the game a lot. You say the feat seriously unbalances games. Did you see this serious unbalance in the many games you played, or are you saying this serious imbalance is theoretically what will happen? If you saw it in the games you played, what did you see happen specifically that made the game unbalanced?

The fact that you are drilling down into my post and focusing on one phrase - where I said "seriously imbalances" - indicates to me that your intentions are not as genuine as you are trying to make them out to be. You're basically fishing for information to try and disprove one small section of what I have said, while ignoring the greater context of of my overall point.

You can read the little example I gave earlier about Bob and Jim and come to your own conclusions about it. I also suggest you and your group get together and try some of these feat and spell combinations out yourselves (against encounters built using the guidelines), so you can draw your own conclusions.

DaveDash · Dec 18, 2014

Just for the sake of argument, here's the data from the last Jim and Bob scenario. In the second set of data, Bob decided he'd had enough and switched to be more like Jim (Sharpshooter + Longbow).

This is damage per attack. In the first scenario Bob is wielding a great sword and doesn't have a -5/+10 feat. Notice the low numbers in there? That's when he's throwing hand axes because he's out of range, something Jim never has to worry about.

These numbers are from our last few sessions (with this group) in roll20.

Mistwell · Dec 18, 2014

DaveDash said:
The fact that you are drilling down into my post and focusing on one phrase - where I said "seriously imbalances" - indicates to me that your intentions are not as genuine as you are trying to make them out to be. You're basically fishing for information to try and disprove one small section of what I have said, while ignoring the greater context of of my overall point.

It was the reason your post was meaningful. If you say "X seriously unbalances games" and it turns out you meant "I didn't like X but it didn't really hurt anything" that's pretty damn relevant.

You can read the little example I gave earlier about Bob and Jim and come to your own conclusions about it.

I have. The conclusion I've drawn is that this is all theorycrafting for you. You suspect it might be unbalancing, but you have not tried it out, or when you tried it out it didn't really have much harm. I weigh that against my own games where it hasn't had a negative impact, and the reports from many others here and on the WOTC boards where numerous people report it hasn't resulted in any harmful impact, and I conclude the actual game play with success outweighs the theorycrafting that suspects failure on paper.

DaveDash · Dec 18, 2014

Mistwell said:
I have. The conclusion I've drawn is that this is all theorycrafting for you. You suspect it might be unbalancing, but you have not tried it out, or when you tried it out it didn't really have much harm. I weigh that against my own games where it hasn't had a negative impact, and the reports from many others here and on the WOTC boards where numerous people report it hasn't resulted in any harmful impact, and I conclude the actual game play with success outweighs the theorycrafting that suspects failure on paper.

Ok.

Nawara · Dec 18, 2014

I'd just like to point out that the 3e version of this thread would have involved a lot of complaining about how broken the Monk class was.

airwalkrr · Dec 18, 2014

I can't believe the final of the three core rulebooks literally came out this month and this thread is already here.

Oh, what am I talking about? It's the internet. I'm surprised this thread wasn't here 5 months ago.

D&D 5E What would you like to see in a "revised edition" of 5E?

Mistwell

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DaveDash

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ren1999

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DaveDash

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