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

[DaveDash]

Why would you need magical stuff? It does great damage without it. A simulacrum of your party archer would work just fine. He would do quite a bit of damage. Gate in an Goristro, bind him with Planar Binding for six months. Let your Simulacrum and your Goristro tee off on whatever you're fighting.

You think 1500 gold is a lot of cash? You must not allow your players to sell extra magic or hand out much coin treasure. That amount of cash is not real hard to come by save at low levels.

If you're using custom monsters, that's you. If you're going to spend attacks on the ranged simulacrum, so be it. It's your DM way of screwing the wizard out of power. If he gets the combo going and keeps him out of danger, he'll be hammering for a lot of damage.

If you're archer is doing that much damage, you must be making your monster's AC quite low and handing out magic weapons like candy. An archer's hit roll shouldn't be that much different than the wizard's. That -5 penalty for custom made creatures should be making them take a step back from using Sharpshooter. That's the main feat that separates damage.

Yeah. Martials do more damage. It shouldn't be 500 to 160ish. That's just poor wizarding or a DM that focuses way too much on screwing the wizard. His AoE damage alone against weaker encounters should put him way up there on damage. The only time he should be too far behind is against a low AC Legendary Creature that allows the archer to use Sharpshooter. If your custom made creatures allow that, they're not very tough are they?

Tell me have you ever used or seen a high level 17+ Fighter (with Sharpshooter etc) in play along side a Wizard?

I'm getting the feeling you haven't.

No magic items, against monster manual monsters. They out damage every single character in the party, the Wizard really can't keep up.
A sorcerer has a better chance of keeping up, but I haven't seen a high level Sorcerer yet. A SorcLock can out damage the Fighter, but that's actually a character that is truly overpowered.

 

[keterys]

I've found that 5E PCs feel more powerful than OD&D-2nd edition AD&D PCs at low levels, though I'm not convinced that will hold true at higher levels. High level spell slots in those games could be quite powerful and I haven't done enough high level 5E for comparison.

3E/PF PCs feel the strongest to me. That is the most optimizable edition of the game in my experience, and the one that you most have to plan around / take into account the rocket tag concept. You also get nearly free nearly infinite out of combat healing, which is quite a game changer too.

4E PCs are in between those two points, and I'd say they're more powerful than 5E at low levels, and probably less powerful at higher levels, but it depends on your level of optimization.

In my general experience, anyways.

That said "powerful" and "overpowered" are so darn relative. I want to say 1st edition Lolth had fewer hit points than many CR 4 5E creatures. Certainly less than a Troll, whatever CR it is. 1st edition magic missiles and fireballs could really wreck folks at higher levels, when their damage didn't cap, and hp were fairly low.

I can definitely say that sitting at tables with people mostly used to 3E or 4E, I have far more often gotten the impression that 5E characters are on the weak side, rather than the strong side. For every perfect storm action surge bless advantage great weapon user who can move and attack everywhere he needs, there are 99 guys who end up having to eat opportunity attacks to be effective, or dash to get to the combat, can only catch 2 guys in their AE attack, or fail the save to be able to take a relevant action, or fail a Concentration save, or do what feels like a solid amount of damage but isn't enough to "bloody" the troll.

I'm not sure that's good or bad. I personally feel like the first 4 levels of the game are intended to be played once, then never played again. There are other people who never play outside of 1st-4th level. Clearly we're looking for very different dnd games.

 

[Nebulous]

ll.

I'm not sure that's good or bad. I personally feel like the first 4 levels of the game are intended to be played once, then never played again. There are other people who never play outside of 1st-4th level. Clearly we're looking for very different dnd games.

I for one will probably never run a 5th edition game over 12th/13th level. So we'll never know anything close to the heights of character powers or spells at the upper limits.

 

[keterys]

Every edition has its "sweet spot", which varies from edition to edition and group to group but has a median value for most groups and most editions of something like 4th through 10th level.

Get too high up in the gonzo factor and things start to break down, and at very low levels things tend to have some odd math factors. Like 1st level PCs are _far_ more likely to die in 5E than any other level of PC, even though you'd expect the stakes/danger to increase or stay level as you face more dangerous monsters, not decrease. Once you hit 3rd-4th+ level, the "one shot" factor largely disappears though. 2nd level moon druids are terribly tough / hp efficient when wild shape comes online, sometimes briefly breaking games until the group realizes what's going on. Little mathematical bumps in the road that may please groups, or drive them nuts.

 

[Nebulous]

I've not seen the moon druid but i do see it mentioned around here quite a lot. But yes, getting one-shotted largely disappears by 5th level. I don't think my players would ever want to start at 1st again. Probably not me either, the earliest would be 3rd.

 

[DaveDash]

Every edition has its "sweet spot", which varies from edition to edition and group to group but has a median value for most groups and most editions of something like 4th through 10th level.

Get too high up in the gonzo factor and things start to break down, and at very low levels things tend to have some odd math factors. Like 1st level PCs are _far_ more likely to die in 5E than any other level of PC, even though you'd expect the stakes/danger to increase or stay level as you face more dangerous monsters, not decrease. Once you hit 3rd-4th+ level, the "one shot" factor largely disappears though. 2nd level moon druids are terribly tough / hp efficient when wild shape comes online, sometimes briefly breaking games until the group realizes what's going on. Little mathematical bumps in the road that may please groups, or drive them nuts.

Actually 5th edition works very well at higher levels, much better than any other edition I've ever played. Combat is still fast and fluid, and minus a handful of combinations, class balance is very good.

Not only that if you use the standard leveling system (not story/milestone leveling) you actually race through levels 11-17, so you actually have a chance of playing high level D&D, unlike older editions.

If you use the rules in the DMG to create monsters (or upgrade existing ones), then higher levels feel just as lethal as lower levels. For whatever reason damage wise a lot of stuff in the Monsters Manual is way behind. However at CR15 you're looking at a monster doing ~90 DPR which is 70-100% of a 15th level characters hitpoints (if it hits, of course).
A higher level party is better equipped to deal with this though so the reality is it's less lethal, but it still gives you a consistent feeling of legality throughout the game. I have one shotted a 14th level character though using DMG rules for monster creation (117 damage in one turn, included a crit).

 

[Eric V]

I for one will probably never run a 5th edition game over 12th/13th level. So we'll never know anything close to the heights of character powers or spells at the upper limits.

Why not?

 

[Nebulous]

I'm basing it on every other edition of D&D, it gets a little too high powered for my liking by then. Maybe 5th is different, i dunno.

 

[keterys]

Actually 5th edition works very well at higher levels ... If you use the rules in the DMG to create monsters (or upgrade existing ones)

For clarity, if you aren't making your own monsters, and are using the ones actually provided by the system... how's it doing then?

 

[Zardnaar]

Tell me have you ever used or seen a high level 17+ Fighter (with Sharpshooter etc) in play along side a Wizard?

I'm getting the feeling you haven't.

No magic items, against monster manual monsters. They out damage every single character in the party, the Wizard really can't keep up.
A sorcerer has a better chance of keeping up, but I haven't seen a high level Sorcerer yet. A SorcLock can out damage the Fighter, but that's actually a character that is truly overpowered.

I assume you ae using foresight? I have used that spell as a DM against the players. I used a CR12 archmage with a different spell selection and he buffed King Snurre. Greater Invisibility duplicates the effects of foresight at lower levels and I have seen that spell on PCs using GWF/SS/CE feats.