5e questions regarding Rate of Fire

[Oofta]

As always you try spinning a weakness into a strength.

The fact remains that 5E just like any edition has a few good weapon choices, with the rest just being worse.

The "design decision" to not let characters use whatever weaponry they feel is cool and still get about the same damage output is not a good thing.

For example, you will never be able to spin the fact Crossbow Expert makes the hand crossbow a much better choice than the Light or Heavy into something else than an incomprehensible disaster.

Really? The hand crossbow is always better? Lower range, need a free hand to load, lower damage, requires a bonus action, requires one (or two, I'm guessing you're assuming sharp shooter as well) of a limited number of feats is game breaking?

You have a different threshold than I do. Nobody has ever said the game is perfect. It can't be; their attempt at "balance" in 4E wasn't particularly successful.

The phrase "incomprehensible disaster" is just a bit hyperbolic. Some builds are slightly better. If the moon and stars align correctly they can be quite a bit better.

But what do I know. I'm just a corporate shill who has never seen many of the issues people complain about in a real game. Where do I collect my WOTC paycheck again?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Has anyone mentioned kensai yet?

 

[Azzy]

Has anyone mentioned kensai yet?

Yeah, the Way of the Kensei could allow a sling to do some great damage.

 

[Hriston]

I have played AD&D 2e for years and recently "upgraded" to 5e. One of my go to characters has always been a Halfling fighter. Sure when imagine it at first it seems silly, but then when you consider a sling carrying little guy who specializes in that weapon you start to see huge benefits. Fast forward to 5e and a sling seems ultimately pointless. In 2e slings and darts lacked damage but made up for it in volume. I cant seem to find any information regarding ROF (aside from reloading for crossbows, etc) which leads me to think that darts and slings are only handy for players who cant use a bow/crossbow.

I've yet to play 2e. I'm more familiar with 1e. In that edition, slings have a RoF of only 1 per round. Darts on the other hand (since you asked about them as well), have a RoF of 3 per round. Because of this, I have a homebrew variant rule I sometimes use in 5e that lets you throw a second dart as a bonus action when you've attacked with a dart using your action. It requires that you only move half your speed. Additionally, if you then draw a third dart using your object interaction, you can throw it as a reaction you can take at your initiative minus 10, as long as you use no movement and there are no hostile creatures within 5 feet of you. Maybe you could do something similar in your games to emulate how slings work in 2e.

 

[Mistwell]

Treantmonk just posted a Warlock build involving a sling that does huge damage. It's not really a rate of fire build however.

 

[aco175]

My halfling uses slings all the time. I find they save weight and can be concealed which is sometimes handy walking the streets in certain areas or visiting the duke or in prison. A minor bonus is that they do double damage vs. skeletons where arrows do not.

 

[CrimsonCarcharodon]

Because AD&D (1E) was an upgrade from OD&D. It was "Advanced" and offered more in depth material, etc. 2E was a revamp or reboot of 1E, with much of it identical to 1E. It wasn't a paradigm shift from 1E, but expanded, revised, etc., for better or worse.

3E, however, vastly changed things, and IMO could have been called a new game as well. There were no longer separate XP charts, feats were added, and a whole lot of other changes I don't even recall (I only played it for about a year because it was so different from the 1E/2E games I was familiar with). I never played 4E, so I don't know how much of a shift it was from 3E.



5E as others have claimed (see above, a post for which you awarded XP), is supposed to be a whole new experience, so forget what you knew, yadda yadda yadda. That being the case, it would have been fine to call it something else. I've tried to transfer my knowledge of 1E/2E to 5E, and there are SO MANY differences it should be considered a completely different game. Sure, they are both "fantasy" games so there will be similarities, but that's about in IMO.

I'm not going to debate or argue it further, just MPOV since you asked.

Yeah, every edition is a different game from 3E on. The only 'upgrade' was from 3E to 3.5, where certain parts of the game were revised and changed. 3E was completely different from 2E. 4E was completely different from 3E. 5E, likewise, is completely different from 4E. That's just part of the nature of D&D edition changes now.

Just because it's not the same game from 20+ years ago doesn't mean it's not still D&D.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Yeah, every edition is a different game from 3E on. The only 'upgrade' was from 3E to 3.5, where certain parts of the game were revised and changed. 3E was completely different from 2E. 4E was completely different from 3E. 5E, likewise, is completely different from 4E. That's just part of the nature of D&D edition changes now.

Just because it's not the same game from 20+ years ago doesn't mean it's not still D&D.

The game was completely different from OD&D and 1e. Only 1e to 2e was a mikd iteration similar to the shift between 3.0 and 3.5. This myth that things didn't change except after 2000 is just that.

Further, there are far more current players who've never played a version before the current one than who played in 1e/2e combined. Maybe we should therefore rename the earlier editions? Who has naming privileges, here? Who keeps the gates? (Answers: no; WotC; and, stop gatekeeping.)

 

[CrimsonCarcharodon]

The game was completely different from OD&D and 1e. Only 1e to 2e was a mikd iteration similar to the shift between 3.0 and 3.5. This myth that things didn't change except after 2000 is just that.

Further, there are far more current players who've never played a version before the current one than who played in 1e/2e combined. Maybe we should therefore rename the earlier editions? Who has naming privileges, here? Who keeps the gates? (Answers: no; WotC; and, stop gatekeeping.)

Having started with 3E and not having a whole lot of experience with TSR-era editions, I figured I wasn't qualified to judge how much change there was between those editions. Makes sense, though. The game had 25 years to change from OD&D up until 3E was published, after all.

 

[WhosDaDungeonMaster]

Did you miss this in my post: I'm not going to debate or argue it further, just MPOV since you asked.

Have a nice day.