D&D 5E Are Wizards really all that?

[Jefe Bergenstein]

I don't know. Why couldn't it be?

Sorry for not being clear, I was just agreeing/expanding on the idea that the fighter even needs to "find" the item if assumed gear was part of their class features (which I'd definitely be in favor of). Make it like the warlock's invocation list, some stuff is gear, some stuff is mythic feats of strength/agility/prowess, let the player pick what matches their concept. The real need for flight comes around level 10 IMX, so have some higher level options be a winged mount, a dragoon leap, a magic item, etc.

Some good rules/guidelines for letting players make stuff from monsters would be great for the new revision/edition.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

I'm not.

The Christmas tree doesn't really fix the issue, as it tends to focus too much on bigger numbers. The magic items that bridge the gap between casters and martials are often more utility based IMO (the aforementioned helm of teleport).

That said, I'd be fine with easing attunement limits for martials a little. However, so long as magic item distribution remains firmly in the hands of the DM, it's fundamentally meaningless. If you have unlimited attunement slots and a copper piece in a campaign where you never get magic items, you have a copper.

I prefer @Reynard 's solution. You get a magic item of your choice that doesn't count against your attunement slots. I suppose that could be modified to simply +1 attunement, so that players don't feel pressured into picking an attunement item. I think it's better because you actually get an item to use in that attunement slot.

I'm a bigger fan of magic items that let you "do stuff" vs "bigger numbers". The wider attunement lets them make up lack of spell utility with gear. This needs to come back with the ability to buy items though.

5E's experiment with "worthless" gold was cute and all, but wealth to power is a massive motivator for many players, who are currently underserved. I'm running a 5E Abomination Vaults using (slightly modified) Pathfinder 2 gear/prices as an experiment, and players are genuinely excited about being able to gear up again.

 

[Maxperson]

How long is a round in 5e? 3-6 seconds? It would take about a minute for a Wizard to turn into a Marilith and like... fetch some short sword the Barbarian is lugging around for him in place of chainmail. Or the mule. Or steal them from the corpses of the enemies they just defeated before the rest of their colleague descend upon them like a horde of wild beasts!

Like, I get the situation has to be very precise for the whole Marilith thing to play out perfectly, but it's not like it's an impossible scenario, just a rare one. It still means a Wizard could attack 8 times if they wanted to.

You only get one free object interaction a round. The next one takes your action.

 

[Gammadoodler]

Which D&D creatures with resistances annoy you most?

It's less the resistance than the equipment.

No meaningful thematic reasoning is provided for what "magical elements" go into making +X magical equipment. Are priests praying over the forge, imbuing the metal with divine sharpness, are artificers carving runic protections, etc.

No discussion exists regarding how those magical elements interact with creatures' defenses.

It's just..well..whatever they did was both more effective than even the greatest mundane crafter in the setting could accomplish..and appropriate to pierce the defenses of a whole host of creatures with wildly varying thematic justifications for physical resistances.

It's a cheat where the word "magic" is used to disengage critical thinking, rather than a response to any specific world or creature building.

 

[Maxperson]

That's not the important part for me -- how much a typical party can handle. The important part is that they seemed to hang a huge amount of class balance on expected encounters per long rest and short rest, don't make this explicit and don't talk about ways to change things up if your typical 24 hr adventuring day does not conform to this expectation. There's an optional rule for longer long rests and short rests but it's never tied to this class balance issue.

Yes. They should have done better with explaining how to change things. My group has stretched out the time between long rests to make the encounter numbers more palatable, but we had to use trial and error to finally arrive at the place that we are at. A flat one week from the DMG didn't really work, either.

I think it's bad design but if you go with it, at least put it out there and stress how important it is to class balance. So much so that if you can't get one of the more "in world" alternatives to work for you, you should just probably go full gamist and have a long rest defined as something that happens after every 6-8 encounters and a short rest happens every 2 encounters.

Yes. I completely agree about it being bad design. It's quite literally the single worst thing about 5e for me. Not that I dislike 5e. Far from it, but it's a big enough issue that I've contemplated going back to 3e more than once.

 

[Maxperson]

Keep in mind it's 6-8 encounters or equivalent. With the 6-8 based on "hard" encounters. If you overclock your CRs and push much harder threats you can do less. But you have watch it. So called "deadly" encounters may easily not be - as in they can be cakewalks with a bit of proper spell use and luck. Right up until you overclock the CRs just a bit too much and then you go from winnable to likely TPK, FAST.

That's one huge difference between martials and casters. You KNOW what martials will be brining to any given encounter. With casters, it depends on what happened earlier in the adventure, what resources (spells) they are willing to expend and how well they time them (as well as a bit of luck re: saves etc.) - the difference (especially as levels increase) can be as dramatic as a cakewalk encounter vs. a TPK/near TPK encounter.

Yep. The biggest issue I have now isn't overclocking the CRs as I've been DMing 5e enough now to get that part pretty close. The biggest issue I have now is that by the time the group is nearing the end of the adventuring day, depending on earlier expended resources, a winnable encounter could easily turn into a TPK.

And I'm not even talking about spending too many resources. It can be as simple as using all the of a certain spell slot and losing a single spell. One of the PC deaths in my game was to a worm from a Spawn of Kyuss. The PC who had been picking off the worms, decided to not go after one for some reason. That PC died because nobody could cure disease in time. They weren't low on resources in general, but just out of that one.

I can't know the order that they will use their resources, which makes it really hard to judge a full adventuring day in advance.

 

[Oofta]

Nope, they're the most created character entry in a character database on a website that requires you to pay to unlock many features, including classes. Can you stop with this already?

Stop what? Expressing my opinions and observations of what I've seen in actual play? Quoting the best evidence we have that available? According to DDB devs they can track characters that are actually played. Wouldn't be hard, look at PCs that are leveled up and have items added over time.

I couldn't care less if you don't care for fighters. But you're making statements as facts that are simply not true.

 

[Oofta]

I know this was a bit of a gotcha response.

But some kind of familiar-hunting critters patrolling secure locations would be a reasonable low-cost measure in fantasy settings.

If I'm being serious, my favorite go-to is spiders or guard dogs depending on situation.

 

[Oofta]

It seems I was unclear.

I utterly loathe the "eVeRyThInG lEvElS uP tO mAtCh tHe PaRtY" argument. I am opposed to it in most forms, and find that it is almost exclusively used as a dismissal and thought-terminator rather than something actually containing serious thought.

I cited it because numerous people have specifically used it as a reason why 5e is better than alternative options, because it (allegedly) doesn't do that, because the world is totally indifferent to what the party composition is. That is was supposed to be a huge selling point of 5e.


Then you have either forgotten or completely ignored an enormous swathe of discussion regarding game design over the past 15 years.

It is--or, well, it was, when it served folks with an agenda--EXTREMELY controversial to even suggest that you "have to design encounters with the PCs in mind." Controversial to the point that it was a major edition war talking point that games should never, EVER do that.

You yourself have very explicitly used some of this language. For example, mocking such stuff as being a "treadmill."

I only bother running encounters that are challenging. Why would you run encounters that don't challenge players?

As far as the treadmill, if I talk about treadmills in previous editions it's referencing expecting a +X items by level Y.

 

[Bill Zebub]

A Marilith uses Large Longswords, so those would be a bit harder to carry around, but still, by level 17 that's basically a non-issue.

All your gear is melded, so somebody else would have to carry them and hand them to you. Since the rules don’t distinguish by number of hands, that would take 8 turns.