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5e Character Guides - why rate all features?
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<blockquote data-quote="Dessert Nomad" data-source="post: 7533122" data-attributes="member: 6976536"><p>I think that color coding everything with inconsistent rules is the problem. Color rankings for things you select makes perfect sense - ranking the skills by how good they are for a typical build, or the abilities by which ones you want to pump or dump, or feats by which ones might work for you works well, and sometimes helps you spot something you might not have thought of (like crossbow mastery for a pure caster). The part where it gets confusing is attaching rankings to things that you don't actually pick in multiple different ways, because the ranking ends up not really conveying anything useful. For example no one is going to turn down Divine Health on a paladin, it's nice to have but is mostly flavor and you're not going to base a class or multiclassing decision on it. But a lot of guides like to rank it highly because it doesn't have any drawbacks.</p><p></p><p>Either not putting color rankings on every single line item, or coming up with a consistent rule for them would be much better.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Yeah, heavy armor is a good example of something that never has a sensible rating. It's really good for people who dump dex and want extra protection, but it's mostly worthless for high AGI characters, counterproductive for stealthers, and requires spending singificant points to have the 13-15 STR needed to use it. It should really be ranked 'trap' or 'highly siutational' for multiclassing, and situational for single class (It's a worthless proficiency for dex fighters, for example), but in practice I've never seen a guide that gives it less than a 'great' rating.</p><p></p><p>And same with martial weapon proficiency, which is always ranked high in guides. There is only one class combo I can think of that cares about adding MWP for anything other than flavor, and that's a non-elf rogue sniper who wants to use longbow. Everyone else either doesn't regularly use weapons or already gets proficiencies in the weapons their stats support using. And if someone does want a martial weapon vs a simple weapon, it's actually only an average of 1 point of damage difference, which isn't really enough for a high rating. For multiclassing ranking it high is inaccurate and for single classing the ranking doesn't convey any useful information. On the flip side, simple weapon proficiency is often ranked bad even though there's nothing bad about it - what information does the typical red on a caster's SWP convey?</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Dessert Nomad, post: 7533122, member: 6976536"] I think that color coding everything with inconsistent rules is the problem. Color rankings for things you select makes perfect sense - ranking the skills by how good they are for a typical build, or the abilities by which ones you want to pump or dump, or feats by which ones might work for you works well, and sometimes helps you spot something you might not have thought of (like crossbow mastery for a pure caster). The part where it gets confusing is attaching rankings to things that you don't actually pick in multiple different ways, because the ranking ends up not really conveying anything useful. For example no one is going to turn down Divine Health on a paladin, it's nice to have but is mostly flavor and you're not going to base a class or multiclassing decision on it. But a lot of guides like to rank it highly because it doesn't have any drawbacks. Either not putting color rankings on every single line item, or coming up with a consistent rule for them would be much better. Yeah, heavy armor is a good example of something that never has a sensible rating. It's really good for people who dump dex and want extra protection, but it's mostly worthless for high AGI characters, counterproductive for stealthers, and requires spending singificant points to have the 13-15 STR needed to use it. It should really be ranked 'trap' or 'highly siutational' for multiclassing, and situational for single class (It's a worthless proficiency for dex fighters, for example), but in practice I've never seen a guide that gives it less than a 'great' rating. And same with martial weapon proficiency, which is always ranked high in guides. There is only one class combo I can think of that cares about adding MWP for anything other than flavor, and that's a non-elf rogue sniper who wants to use longbow. Everyone else either doesn't regularly use weapons or already gets proficiencies in the weapons their stats support using. And if someone does want a martial weapon vs a simple weapon, it's actually only an average of 1 point of damage difference, which isn't really enough for a high rating. For multiclassing ranking it high is inaccurate and for single classing the ranking doesn't convey any useful information. On the flip side, simple weapon proficiency is often ranked bad even though there's nothing bad about it - what information does the typical red on a caster's SWP convey? [/QUOTE]
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