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Which rather defeats the whole point of distinct classes and niche protection, right? It also blows up the idea of recognizable archetypes; and while that's the premise of this thread, it's a premise I oppose

Rough math tells me that's between 52 and 78 possible class-subclass combinations, each one needing its own rules and write-up and each one then needing to be vaguely balanced against each other both before and after the corollary variable of PC species is introduced. Have fun with that. :)...

Which is fine: it should be more challenging to play a less-well-rounded party. And if nobody wants to play a Cleric but the party still needs one, go and recruit an NPC.

Way more than that. The arcane-divine divide becomes sacrosanct; even spells that are superficially similar e.g. Detect Magic are cast differently and give different results. Clerics get Flamestrike at 5th but never get Fireball or anything close, Mages get Fireball at 3rd but never get...

1 - you don't need every last detail of background etc. unless the PCs are likely to get to know the NPC beyond combat. 2 - if "multi-page statistics" are required, that tells me character generation has become vastly too complex. 3 - all that matters in the end is that the NPC fall within...

Which tells me loud and clear that the PCs need some serious toning down across the board in order to fit in better with their settings. And that, sadly, won't happen: 5e is designed to let the players wade through the vast majority of their opposition, more like a scaled-back supers game than...

There's a couple of TSR-era modules that set up this situation, where some or all of the party end up fighting their clones. In terms of round count, the longest combat I've ever run was one of these: a defense-first Fighter fighting her own clone where each needed something like a natural 19...

Then he really missed the boat on the psionic-magic items she had in there: various psionic-run scrying devices, Wards Major and Minor, and so forth. I had a party find a set of Wards Major not long ago, took 'em forever to figure out what they did (I've taken psionics out other than for a few...

I vaguely remember some handwaving at mistletoe replacing other Druid/Nature Cleric components way back when, but that's it. Haven't seen that rule used since and, to be honest, had forgotten all about it. And we've had loads of Nature Clerics.

We agree, then, other than I misremembered 14th as 16th.

Discussion of any one rule (or houserule) from one system (or house) is still worthwhile, though, as is comparing it to other rules or houserules around the same issue.

Individual-strike damage reductuion (DR) brings with it a host of corollary problems, the biggest of which is it completely shuts down foes who, while skilled, don't do much damage with any one blow and instead do their killing as death by a thousand cuts. Aggregate DR, e.g. this armour will...

Opposite: take the archetypes and lean into them hard. Ironclad niche protection for each class. No jacks of all trades. No workarounds to sneak one class' benefits into another class. Make it hard to impossible to cover over a class' weaknesses, thus soft-forcing interdependence within a...

If that's truly the case then perhaps the game has designed PCs to be too powerful relative to their surroundings - and also relative to themselves. Interesting exercise next time someone can't make a session: have the other players take their characters and (completely outside whatever...

In 5e, maybe. In 1e-likes I've done party-vs-party numerous times and at different levels; it rarely turns into either side focus-firing as things get too spread out and chaotic too fast. The exception is if-when one group gets surprise on the other; those tend to end real fast, with the...

CR is easy and simple (if still not always accurate) if you just happen to be running a party of the size and capabilities the designers expect. If you're not, e.g. you've got a party of 7 plus a retainer or two instead of the expected 4, you're way better off going by the actual numbers plus...

Casting times spilling over into the following round sometimes serves as a bit of a brake on casters. If they go right from one spell to the next without doing anything else we do let them start the next spell the segment after the first one finished.

Given that a common complaint I hear is that 5e combats tend to go on too long, this all sounds like a solution rather than a problem. That said, I've run PC party vs NPC party battles in the past (though not in 5e) and my experience is that those tend to be the longest combats of all.

By looking at and comparing the actual numbers in the statblock, along with the various extra abilities. If I'm running an NPC as a foe for the party I want and need to know what it can do, what it can't do, and what its numbers are; and the more detail I have on such things, the better...

You blew your own cover, then. Should have come in as a "light-armoured Fighter-Thief". I've pulled that one before. Also brought in a Nature Cleric-Thief once, had the party convinced for his whole career that he was an unusually spindly Ranger.