D&D 5E 5E imbalance: Don't want to play it

[Cybit]

Fishing for confirmation of news about private playtest: Achieved.

Seriously, though, that's great news. Can't wait to see the end result.

Lol, well done.

 

[Raith5]

The thing that folks overlook when making the "complexity disparity" argument is that hitting things with pointy bits of metal is an inherently simpler task than utilizing esoteric knowledge to affect the basic laws of physics in a localized fashion. Unless you want martial characters that are essentially fantasy superheroes; in that case we are playing different games.

This is not inherently true. Try telling those who practice fencing, Laijustsu, Kendo etc that fighting is just simply chucking metal around.

Gamer designers *can* make martial combat more than a simple activity (and still keep the physics bending nature of wizards intact) but I am not totally sure DDN has got the balance right.

 

[Jester David]

I think it is too limiting to require all complaints to have an accompanying solution or even work toward one.

Complaints have a place but an entire thread devoted to "what do you hate" is iffy. Hate should never be encouraged.
This thread could easily have been "5e: What do you like & what do you hate". Instead it's on,y negative. bad that's just an invitation to edition bash.

 

[Melhaic]

This is not inherently true. Try telling those who practice fencing, Laijustsu, Kendo etc that fighting is just simply chucking metal around.

I'm in the military and very aware that fighting is incredibly complex; much more complex than the D&D can accurately model, in fact. I'm also not saying I don't want some crunchy options for combat focused PCs. The problem I have is when you start chasing the nebulous concept of balance. I don't want to end up with homogeony(sp?) in the name of equality.

 

[Jester David]

I got into a “boring fighter” debate elsewhere recently and began to wonder how many options the wizard really has, and what happens at higher levels.


At first level a wizard will know four spells, can prepare 2, and cast 2. For space this is written 42 (a 21 ratio).
At fifth level this becomes 6x 1st-level, 4x 2nd-level, and 2x 3rd-level spells known. They can prepare 6 spells cast 4/3/2. Or 129, reducible to 43 highlighting that the ratio of spells known to castable hasn’t changed much.
At tenth level this becomes 6x 1st-level, 4x 2nd-level, 3rd-level, 4th-level, and 5th-level spells known. They can prepare 11 spells casting 4/3/3/3/2. Or 22:11:15, which isn’t reducible to whole numbers but becomes 2.2:1.1:1.5 so, again, the ratio of spells known to prepared to castable hasn’t really changed.
At fifteenth level this becomes 6x 1st-level, 4x 2nd-level, 3rd-level, 4th-level, 5th-level, 6th-level, 7th-level, and 2x 8th-level spells known. They can prepare 16 spells casting 4/3/3/3/2/1/1/1. Or reducible to 21.125.
And lastly at twentieth level this becomes 6x 1st-level, 4x 2nd-level, 3rd-level, 4th-level, 5th-level, 6th-level, 7th-level, 4x 8th-level, and 6x 9th-level spells known. They can prepare 21 spells casting 4/3/3/3/2/1/1/1/1. Or 40:21:19, or reducible to 2:1.05:0.95.


So while wizards get new spells every level the number of spells they know compared to the number of spells they can prepare & cast is always *really* close to two-to-one. So wizards really only have two completely different sets of options.
This is a nice set of options but somewhat limited as you can only ever prepare half the powers you know, compared to having fewer options but always having them available.


Really though, having played a couple spellcasters, you have fewer options than the above implies. While you know twice as many spells as you can cast, you typically have a couple fallbacks that are always prepared. Signature spells or the baseline combat spells. Fireball for example. So you have more spells competing for fewer slots. This is balanced by having situational spells: options that are handy to have but don’t regularly come up.
Again, this can be balanced with fewer powers that are more consistently useful.


And one of the nice things about 5e casters is low level spells do not increase in potency as the caster levels, so they have a limited number of spells that function at maximum efficiency. If the level 15 mage casts a fireball as an 8th-level spell they’ve used up all their 8th-level spells for the day and future fireballs will only be as potent as a 7th-level or 6th-level spell. A level 20 mage can has four rounds of high level spell combat before they’re barely as effective as a level 10 mage.

 

[Mark CMG]

Complaints have a place but an entire thread devoted to "what do you hate" is iffy. Hate should never be encouraged.
This thread could easily have been "5e: What do you like & what do you hate". Instead it's on,y negative. bad that's just an invitation to edition bash.

I see your point, though it doesn't strike me as being as hate-filled as you seem to think. Plus, it might be interesting to get all the complaints in a single thread and see if someone who hates one thing likes another, and vice versa. Further, nice to have a single place where all of the misconceptions might be debunked. Then when they come up in other threads, everyone can just link to this one thread.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

This is not inherently true. Try telling those who practice fencing, Laijustsu, Kendo etc that fighting is just simply chucking metal around.

Gamer designers *can* make martial combat more than a simple activity (and still keep the physics bending nature of wizards intact) but I am not totally sure DDN has got the balance right.

The issue isn't how realistically complex fighting with a sword is, but how many interesting decisions the player gets to make each round. 4e gave fighter players many decisions. There were a lot of decisions even before you chose your at-wills or decided on which encounter or daily power you're using turn.

I'll give an example. Last session, 4e (conversion of Way of the Wicked, a Pathfinder adventure) the PCs went up against a good elite wizard and his three town guards. (The PCs are evil in this one.) Naturally the wizard, an evoker-type, stood behind the guards. The relevant PCs were a cleric, eladrin rogue, and a fighter. The party had fought this evoker before ... and lost! Both were familiar with the other side's abilities.

Right at the start, the cleric hit the wizard with Bane, which inflicted -4 to hit and defenses for 1 turn. The wizard decided not to use his action point, nor his recharge when bloodied power in the first round because he'd be wasting them. That gave the fighter enough time to get in the wizard's face and attacked. He took an opportunity attack from two guards (getting hit once) to get there and was marked by the guards. Therefore simply attacking the wizard would provoke Interceding Strike (a slightly weaker version of Combat Challenge) along with -2 to hit. The fighter decided it was worth it, hitting and marking the wizard, and taking an incoming Interceding Strike.

Doing all that required the fighter to make three decisions: who to target (dangerous evoker or guards), to risk getting opportunity attacks, and to risk attacking the wizard despite being marked, with a bonus counterattack on top of it. In exchange, he hit the wizard, marked him, and was right beside the wizard which made casting difficult. (They knew the wizard had no close burst/blast spells.)

The next round the rest of the PCs were nuking the guards, and the cleric's turn ended without much effect (I think he missed with Sacred Flame). Two guards were bloodied, and the other advanced on an engaged a squishy PC in combat (and was also bloodied). The guards had to decide whether they should defend the wizard or advance. Two decided one way, one decided the other. The guards near the wizard knocked the fighter prone.

The wizard's turn came up. He was marked, next to a (prone) fighter who could probably smack him if he shifted. The fighter had lots of armor but also a shield. He could drop a Fireball on the fighter, but the cluster of PCs across the way was such a juicy target. One guard was in the potential Fireball pattern.

The wizard (meaning me, the DM) decided. The wizard shifted, and came this close to getting hit for daring to shift away from the fighter. Fortunately had he been hit he could still finish the shift. (Or so he thought. It turned out the fighter could have dazed him, ending his turn!) Then the wizard nuked. It was a thing of glory. Three of five PCs were hit by the Fireball, and the guard was missed (but took half damage and died anyway). Maybe the wizard should change his alignment to neutral

And then the wizard used his minor action (he's an elite) to hit the evil cleric. The evil cleric and another PC were bloodied, but the eladrin rogue in the middle wasn't. The wizard spend an AP to use Scorching Burst, and he had to decide whether to "burninate" the evil cleric or another bloodied PC, both patterns would include the rogue. The wizard scorched the cleric and rogue, dropping the cleric.

The cleric is an uber-healer, but the players decided they were too reliant on him. Many PCs had since the last battle multiclassed with a leader class, and someone revived him. All that work gone to naught.

The fighter got in the wizard's face again, and pondered using a special power that would simultaneously grab and damage the wizard, and then the eladrin rogue teleported into the perfect flanking position and did nasty things to the wizard's guts. Dead wizard.

Look at the number of tactical decisions the PCs and wizard (and guards) had to make. Many (such as blast patterns) are identical across edition (not in terms of details such as blast size, but you know what I mean).

On the other hand, the fighter had numerous tactical options that his 5e equivalent wouldn't have had. He had to risk ignoring the guards (and paid for it), not only getting incoming OAs that marked him, but getting set up for a punishment strike (which in fact hit him).

He got in the wizard's face and marked him. At minimum, the wizard was taking -2 to hit everyone but the fighter, a big deal for an AoE using wizard. (The 5e fighter can only apply disadvantage to one attack.) The fighter could punish a shift, and only a really bad die roll prevented him from doing so. How do you punish that kind of movement in 5e? (Don't say readied action, that's an option in 4e too, and the 4e fighter could ready an action and punish a shift.)

A 4e fighter isn't just hitting things for high damage, with maybe an OA or high-damage strike for seasoning.

Also note that the fighter's actual weapon (a flail) wasn't really that relevant. I have little interest in "realistic" combat because D&D is not realistic, even the non-magical part, and I find realistic rules to be a negative.

 

[MerricB]

I see your point, though it doesn't strike me as being as hate-filled as you seem to think. Plus, it might be interesting to get all the complaints in a single thread and see if someone who hates one thing likes another, and vice versa. Further, nice to have a single place where all of the misconceptions might be debunked. Then when they come up in other threads, everyone can just link to this one thread.

So much of posting relies on tone. Entitling a thread "Don't want to play it" doesn't promote discussion. Entitling a thread "What are your dealbreakers with 5E?" does.

 

[GX.Sigma]

Imbalances that make me not want to play it? Can't think of any.

Imbalances that make me want to houserule:

1. Some magic items are way more powerful than advertised (Flame Tongue IMC)
2. Some character options are overpowered because the game isn't polished enough (sculpt spells, multiclass barbarians)
3. Monsters are too weak (or player characters are too strong)

 

[Mark CMG]

So much of posting relies on tone. Entitling a thread "Don't want to play it" doesn't promote discussion. Entitling a thread "What are your dealbreakers with 5E?" does.

Maybe but I didn't have your reaction. The following post was pretty clearly of a particular tone and unlike the poster I have come to know and enjoy -

Your title is appropriate: "5E imbalance: Don't want to play it".

Now you've said that, you can go away. You don't want to play 5E. Please stop flooding the board with posts about it.