Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Neonchameleon" data-source="post: 8677940" data-attributes="member: 87792">It's cherry picked because the Hexblade is probably the most broken subclass in the game at level 1 and second most broken (behind the moon druid) at level 2. It's the multiclasser's favourite for a single level dip because of this.The two melee bard subclasses are IMO fine. The Swords bard doesn't get shields and doesn't have two handed weapons while the valor bard lacks a fighting style. (And neither gets heavy armour or to attack with charisma). Essentially they are both fighting one handed and normally on their secondary stat. Likewise the bladesinger with its low HP and no self-healing; they're a one handed skirmisher. Bladesingers actually get good when you have slots to burn on Shield and when you have a cantrip plus an attack as your melee damage to compete with two attacks with a fighting style.Are these three better at many things than the fighter? Definitely. Is straight up fighting one of them? Generally not. Do they scale beyond the fighter? Yes of course - they are full casters and the fighter scales slowly at tier 2 and basically stops scaling after you get the third attack.It's essentially a self-targeted slightly higher healing healing word. Which works well when you're expected to be the one tanking and have a high DPR. The second reason Second Wind is actually pretty useful is that it means that with enough short rests you can fully restore your HP.I too miss 4e <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />As I have said repeatedly the impact of an ASI/feat is multiplicative so each one you pick that's in the first wave makes all the other ones more valuable. A stat boost is basically +1 to hit and +1 to damage. Your second ASI has its to hit boost increase the value of the damage boost because you're more likely to actually land that damage - and its damage boost increases the value of the to hit boost provided by the first ASI because you now land more damage if you hit. Also, simplifying slightly, Polearm Master gives you 50% more attacks - which increases the value of your to hit and damage boosts from your ASIs by 50% because you're making attack and damage rolls 50% more often.Of course not all feats synergise; there is for example no synergy between Polearm Master and Sharpshooter than I can think of. And sometimes feats that look as if they might synergise interfere; both Polearm Master and Great Weapon Fighter give you bonus action attacks and you can only use one. And then there are cases like Great Weapon Fighter and Sentinel that are fine; pretty much no synergy but no interference and both synergise with stat boosts and you can use both together.The first three ASIs/feats from a fighter (first four if you're going with Sharpshooter/Crossbow Expert and a hand crossbow or a couple of other choices) therefore should all make each other more valuable. The problem is that once you've filled these first three (or four) slots you've hit the Str or Dex cap and don't have anything that increases the value of your other feats/ASIs this way.So the fighter's 4/6/8 feat triad is excellent at Tier 2. Each in most fighter builds makes the others more valuable. It's your fourth choice that's a whole lot less valuable than the first three because you're out of feats that multiply with all your other ASI/Feat choices. And by level 12 the paladin can have +4 Str and Polearm Master, having their own complete triad. (And it's more valuable on a paladin because Improved Divine Smite works really well with extra attacks while the third attack has no synergy with PAM).Yup. There's a reason I really like the post-Tasha's battlemaster design; it's a simple fighter with options that don't need to be magic. Not something WotC is good at (and again it doesn't scale much past tier 2).</blockquote>

Verification