D&D 5E Analyzing 5E: Overpowered by design

[Sunseeker]

My opinion counts as much as anyone else's.

I never said it didn't. I only said I didn't care to hear it because I'm not interested in such a discussion. I didn't say your opinion was invalid.

That is how I have received your reply. It is all about personal opinion.

Sure, not gonna argue that. But it's pretty facetious to argue the edition is flawed because people can power build. Short of having no options at all and everything being stock with no choices or adjustable parts, there will ALWAYS be power builders.

 

[Celtavian]

Yeah, I covered this in post 11 (though I don't think even 4e is 'overpowered,' so there's that). I got a big fat "you missed the point, so I'm ignoring everything you said" response. Kinda reduced my desire to participate much further.

You shouldn't participating if you don't understand the intent of the original post because your response will be flawed.

You assumed I said overpowered was a bad thing and the edition was flawed. I said nothing of the kind. If you start off with that kind of response, there's no way to answer it because you missed the point.

 

[Celtavian]

Pretty much you stated the answer to your own implied question right there, although I haven't looked through 12 pages to see if anyone else has pointed this out yet (I'm sure they have). 4.0 was a whole lot more "powerful" than previous editions. If you never played 4.0, then 5.0 is understandably a shock, although to hear someone call 5.0 overpowered is a bit odd-sounding if you do have experience with 4.0. (And of course, all of this is relative, semantics, and whatnot.)

There are several options to make the game grittier in the DMG; others have probably posited a few of their own. The most important thing to take away is: the game is intended to be modded, and it is only as good as you make it. If something doesn't sit well with you, feel free to change it up, but you shouldn't have to change much to get the feel you want. Messing with healing may be enough to get the feel you want; good luck.

You do get the point. I did state the answer to my own question. I don't have much interest making the game grittier.

I think 5E is meant to be played fast including fast kill times by players and monsters. I think all the characters are meant to be powerful. If the DM wants a more challenging fight now and again, he will have to carefully design it to be so including making ACs high enough to slow down some of the more powerful combinations. All of that can be done on the backend. If you're throwing in a bunch of standard MM creatures into a campaign with magic items and feats, expect them to die quickly with little risk to organized and optimized parties.

New DMs and players should both understand that in this edition feats and magic items are optional. The monsters were not designed with them in mind. Thus if you allow them, you should adjust the monsters appropriately. The design seems to be that out of the box these things are balanced. Add something, you need to rebalance on your own. Lucky for you we made it easy.

I'm ok with that. I came to 5E for a faster, easier to run game. That is what 5E is.

I wanted D&D to return to the power pyramid that existed prior with the wizard on top in a descending order while still accomplishing the task of making every other class fun, powerful, and interesting. When I say the wizard on top, I don't mean pure damage. To my knowledge the wizard has never been the best damage dealer, it has always been the martials. I played 3E/Pathfinder for over a decade. The wizard was always far behind the martials in damage dealing, farther than they are in 5E. Haste with crits and the magic item Christmas tree with high stats made martials capable of easily doing 200 to 500 a round. Archers were far worse in 3E/Pathfinder than they are in 5E with their second attacks per round and x3 crits with tons of stackable extra damage options from magic items. I'm going to cry about that? No, I'm not.

The game is back to the way it should be while still incorporating many of the elements others complained about like the martial vs. caster disparity. It's still there, just not nearly as wide. That is as it should be. I'm not real worried about casters being weak in feat options to start out with. I know at some point they are going to release books with magic feats and more spells as they always do. That will make casters more interesting and provide some options. Why put too many in the PHB when you know you'll be making an Ultimate Magic or Caster's Handbook at some point. Casters will get some love at some point for direct combat effectiveness. Maybe they'll never be the Crossbow Master for damage, but that's ok. Because the Crossbow Master is a one trick pony. It's a great trick, but it's also limited.

Suffice it to say that I like nearly every class having very powerful options. Makes the game more fun for everyone.

 

[Celtavian]

My opinion counts as much as anyone else's.

I believe only the opinion of the decision makers at WotC matters. Usually that opinion is based on data, but not always. Once they make the decision, no one else's opinion matters save to themselves and whoever they can convince at their table to go along with it.

I learned this lesson quite well during 4E. I learn it with every edition of the game. The game designers decide what they feel will make the best game. The players take what they made and tailor it to their own tastes. Complaining on boards or making sweeping generalizations based on personal tastes matters not at all. It changes absolutely nothing.

 

[SirAntoine]

I believe only the opinion of the decision makers at WotC matters. Usually that opinion is based on data, but not always. Once they make the decision, no one else's opinion matters save to themselves and whoever they can convince at their table to go along with it.

I learned this lesson quite well during 4E. I learn it with every edition of the game. The game designers decide what they feel will make the best game. The players take what they made and tailor it to their own tastes. Complaining on boards or making sweeping generalizations based on personal tastes matters not at all. It changes absolutely nothing.

It shouldn't be so hard to influence others. These subjects seem very hard for people to deal with. I am not sure why. The more we fight foolish assumptions, and edition-bashing the better.

 

[Celtavian]

To be fair, when you use a word like "overpowered" to mean something precisely the opposite of what it actually means, you should expect some confusion. I'm far from the only person who thought you were complaining that 5e made everything "broken," even if you never used that actual word. Since you never clarified that you like these things, approve of them, think it twas a step in the right direction etc., I'm fairly sure the problem lies in not clearly communicating your message. "Overpowered" has an inherently negative connotation; if you want to use it in a positive way, you have to be more clear.

Agreed.

I don't assume feats are available because certain 5e advocates (elsewhere) have drilled it into my head that FEATS ARE OPTIONAL, and that expecting them would make me an "entitled" player. That said, even with Warcaster and Resilient: Con, I've seen the numbers for what "half of damage taken" looks like, on average, as you gain levels. Without at least one of of those feats, you'll be facing probabilities of 35% or less by CR5, and even with both of them and a good Con score (+4) at (say) level 10 (so best of 2d20+8 vs. the DC), you'll be at 36% or less by CR8ish (definitely CR9). Even at the highest bonuses (max Con and Prof with Adv) a CR9 creature, in the generic, does enough average damage to give you a 43.75% chance to save. Monsters beyond (say) CR12 become borderline impossible to save against, and I'd expect the highest-CR enemies with even a modicum of intelligence to smack the lady/gent in the bathrobe if they foolishly get close enough to be hit (and, note, ranged attacks work just fine--they even make an example out of "an arrow and a dragon's breath"). Should you get critically hit, vs. CR5 or higher (very roughly) you can basically say goodbye to whatever you're Concentrating on.

True. That reality does screw casters quite a bit over martials. I hope they take a look at concentration if it becomes an issue where it is easy to eliminate the casters from the game by smacking them with big attacks. Though most casters position themselves as far as possible from battle.

Out of curiosity: does the slot remain spent while the Simulacrum is up? I would expect it to, as a balancing mechanic (what with it generating an entire additional party member, albeit at half HP) but it isn't mentioned. Planar Binding is something to watch out for, I agree. That said though, summoning additional allies has always been a way for spellcasters to break the game over their knees and cackle maniacally as they do so. It's not quite the Aggressively Hegemonizing Ursine Swarm of 3e, but sure, these sound big. Maybe even actually overpowered--I'd need to test my intuitions before asserting so, however. It definitely seems like the kind of spell that leans (IMO excessively) on DMs being dicks to players who try for too much, which is a DMing tactic I despise, but again I'd need to investigate.

Yes. The slot remains after you rest 8 hours per usual after casting a spell.

I wouldn't spend too much time worrying about Simulacrum or Planar Binding. It's how the wizards keep up in this edition. They made martials and other casters more powerful in other ways, so the Simulacrum is fairly minor. The way they made simulacrum pushes you toward a martial simulacrum because spell slots cannot be recovered. The simulacrum is your extra martial damage while wandering about. The wizard isn't the big damage dealer with his hand crossbow or greatsword. He's the damage dealer that does a bunch of damage from having two or three different sources of damage active in a round.

A wizard may have a simulacrum, a bound elemental, a Bigby's Hand, and firing scorching ray and fire bolt during the course of the battle. So you're bringing all those damage sources to bear against a creature/s usually spread out in such a way to make whatever you're fighting choose between targets including your party members. As is usual in any D&D edition, the wizard is a slow burn character that starts off a little weaker than everyone else and then gets going once you get to higher levels. He's the best character for converting gold to power given the lack of ability to buy magic items. I absolutely love the change to Planar Binding. Seems so much more like a wizard to have to use multiple spells to bind a creature than just one.

 

[SirAntoine]

You do get the point. I did state the answer to my own question. I don't have much interest making the game grittier.

I think 5E is meant to be played fast including fast kill times by players and monsters. I think all the characters are meant to be powerful. If the DM wants a more challenging fight now and again, he will have to carefully design it to be so including making ACs high enough to slow down some of the more powerful combinations. All of that can be done on the backend. If you're throwing in a bunch of standard MM creatures into a campaign with magic items and feats, expect them to die quickly with little risk to organized and optimized parties.

New DMs and players should both understand that in this edition feats and magic items are optional. The monsters were not designed with them in mind. Thus if you allow them, you should adjust the monsters appropriately. The design seems to be that out of the box these things are balanced. Add something, you need to rebalance on your own. Lucky for you we made it easy.

I'm ok with that. I came to 5E for a faster, easier to run game. That is what 5E is.

I wanted D&D to return to the power pyramid that existed prior with the wizard on top in a descending order while still accomplishing the task of making every other class fun, powerful, and interesting. When I say the wizard on top, I don't mean pure damage. To my knowledge the wizard has never been the best damage dealer, it has always been the martials. I played 3E/Pathfinder for over a decade. The wizard was always far behind the martials in damage dealing, farther than they are in 5E. Haste with crits and the magic item Christmas tree with high stats made martials capable of easily doing 200 to 500 a round. Archers were far worse in 3E/Pathfinder than they are in 5E with their second attacks per round and x3 crits with tons of stackable extra damage options from magic items. I'm going to cry about that? No, I'm not.

The game is back to the way it should be while still incorporating many of the elements others complained about like the martial vs. caster disparity. It's still there, just not nearly as wide. That is as it should be. I'm not real worried about casters being weak in feat options to start out with. I know at some point they are going to release books with magic feats and more spells as they always do. That will make casters more interesting and provide some options. Why put too many in the PHB when you know you'll be making an Ultimate Magic or Caster's Handbook at some point. Casters will get some love at some point for direct combat effectiveness. Maybe they'll never be the Crossbow Master for damage, but that's ok. Because the Crossbow Master is a one trick pony. It's a great trick, but it's also limited.

Suffice it to say that I like nearly every class having very powerful options. Makes the game more fun for everyone.

The speed of play was very much a priority to the designers. Mike Mearls has said he wanted to make D&D playable in a short length of time, to compete better with a much wider array of alternative games people have access to.

This doesn't mean he thought faster was better. I would think the new edition still has all the mechanics for playing for longer sessions, including longer combats if desired.

 

[Celtavian]

The best a bard could do was give you a +1 to hit. I'd like to see that return.

Love the new bards.

I hate when you have to have classes in a party. Now the bard and wizard or bard and cleric are interchangeable depending on how you build. You can play one and still bring highly effective options to your group. No more pigeon-holing someone into playing a cleric. There are three viable options for party healer in the bard, druid, and cleric. There are three viable options for party caster, wizard, sorcerer, and bard. The warlock I feel is more the caster equivalent of a rogue than the party caster. More of a damage dealer with some other capabilities that can be used for scouting.

 

[SirAntoine]

Love the new bards.

I hate when you have to have classes in a party. Now the bard and wizard or bard and cleric are interchangeable depending on how you build. You can play one and still bring highly effective options to your group. No more pigeon-holing someone into playing a cleric. There are three viable options for party healer in the bard, druid, and cleric. There are three viable options for party caster, wizard, sorcerer, and bard. The warlock I feel is more the caster equivalent of a rogue than the party caster. More of a damage dealer with some other capabilities that can be used for scouting.

This is a very popular view. I never encountered the problem, so I don't know what it feels like. They might have achieved the same versatility with 6th level maximum spells.

 

[Celtavian]

I'm glad you've finally worked it out, solo Dragon encounters don't work so well (unless you're running against a run of the mill party, of course). Or unless you give the Dragon a huge terrain advantage, such as in my example with my regular campaign.

Solo monster encounters rarely work well against parties. In fact, monsters don't work very well against parties. They don't have as much variance in capability. They work a little better in this edition than other editions I've played, but still fall behind party capabilities fairly quickly. Just not by as wide a margin in 5E.

The best way to fight any party is carefully built encounters, usually with NPCs using the same class capabilities as the party. I'm accustomed to build in this fashion. It is much easier to do in 5E.

Then again, reading your posts I believe you already know this.