D&D 5E Are you happy with the Battlemaster and Fighter Maneuvers? Other discussions as well.

[Nagol]

Well I can tell you this, we had a rogue in 3.5 who maxed out his UMD and took the feats Magic Device Attunement and Dual Wand Wielder. After that, we no longer needed a wizard because he could do what ever we needed done.

Wands are much easier to UMD and more affordable than scrolls in bulk besides. They are limited to 4th and lower spells, however. So you can get away without a arcane caster up to about 10th level before the limitations start mounting up. There are a lot of 5th and higher spells that make life much more tolerable for high-level groups.

That design is especially handy at blasting magic but there are costs.

*edit* The design is also somewhat illegal -- double wand wielder requires the feat Craft Wand as one of its pre-requisites. No Rogue gets the necessary Caster Level 5 to purchase that.

 

[keterys]

How do you push a Giant?

This one is easy, and I'm sure you've seen plenty of examples in various stories and media. The actual physics on it isn't even hard. "The bigger they are, the harder the fall" as it is.

A Dragon?

Trickier, but still possible, especially if you enter in things like it rearing back or simply its center of mass moving some, rather than its entire body.

A Water Elemental? An Ooze?

These two get more complicated, since you'd probably need to justify why they don't just fall apart as part of the premise. They might actually both be _easier_ to move due to friction coefficient. A water elemental might even continually surge side to side in its place, like the motion of the waves.

A Displacer Beast who probably isn't even where you're aiming?

If it's not where you aimed, then you missed.

A incorporeal like a Ghost?

If you can't touch it, then you missed.

A Golem?

See Giant.

Froghemoth?

See Giant. Note that it looks _extraordinarily_ clumsy.

Air Elemental? Fire Elemental?

Neither of these has much mass, so would be quite responsive to attempts to move it within a localized area of the effect. From there you have a question of how they stay together (does the rest of them go with the part moved? then that's easier) or back to the "center of mass" question as they spray apart and possibly reform.

There's so many cases where this flat out doesn't make sense.

It's a game. Most failures to make sense are failures of imagination and description. It doesn't take much to make the last leap.

 

[ForeverSlayer]

Wands are much easier to UMD and more affordable than scrolls in bulk besides. They are limited to 4th and lower spells, however. So you can get away without a arcane caster up to about 10th level before the limitations start mounting up. There are a lot of 5th and higher spells that make life much more tolerable for high-level groups.

That design is especially handy at blasting magic but there are costs.

*edit* The design is also somewhat illegal -- double wand wielder requires the feat Craft Wand as one of its pre-requisites. No Rogue gets the necessary Caster Level 5 to purchase that.

Even at high levels, you do not "need" a wizard or any other arcane spellcaster. Scrolls go all the way up to 9th level so if there is a spell that you need, there is a way to have it. You may end some encounters quicker with a wizard but you don't need one to the encounter.

 

[Nagol]

Even at high levels, you do not "need" a wizard or any other arcane spellcaster. Scrolls go all the way up to 9th level so if there is a spell that you need, there is a way to have it. You may end some encounters quicker with a wizard but you don't need one to the encounter.

You don't need any class or type of character in a party. Things go smoother if the party composition covers the bases and if you are missing too much magic there are adventures the group should pass on since getting to/surviving the environments will be problematic at best without a lot of item salting by the DM.

 

[Hussar]

Exactly. Nor is it likely that a spellcaster would step on a fighter's toes simply by having the same retinue of combat actions. Separate, exclusive subsystems to enforce these niches are unnecessary.

But if the difficulty is that high to perform those actions, why bother at all? No player is going to choose something with such a low success rate. If the odds are that bad why not just tie it to class anyway?

 

[Hussar]

And, as far as our wand wielding rogue goes, do it with a monk or a barbarian. Because that's what's being argued here. That ANY class can do maneuvers. So any class should be able to replace the wizard.

 

[Nagol]

But if the difficulty is that high to perform those actions, why bother at all? No player is going to choose something with such a low success rate. If the odds are that bad why not just tie it to class anyway?

It makes for a good tertiary ability for some characters -- you won't stay current with the primary casters, but you have a bag of tricks you can reach into when the moment is ripe.

A high-Charisma character with an interest in UMD, you can get +20 or more by 10th level. That makes low caster-level scrolls, all wands, and miscellaneous devices pretty usable.

 

[Ahnehnois]

But if the difficulty is that high to perform those actions, why bother at all? No player is going to choose something with such a low success rate. If the odds are that bad why not just tie it to class anyway?

Consistency. Fairness. Simplicity. It's a lot easier to create one centralized mechanical system and balance it than it is to reinvent the wheel with a new set of maneuvers/spells/powers for every type of character.

It's also very important on the occasion that someone does want to try one of those low-probability actions.

And, as far as our wand wielding rogue goes, do it with a monk or a barbarian. Because that's what's being argued here. That ANY class can do maneuvers. So any class should be able to replace the wizard.

In 3.5, that's simply a matter of taking it as a cross-class skill. I've seen it argued that UMD is a crazy powerful skill, but I've yet to see the ability to take it create problems in a game.

 

[Obryn]

Speed of character creation, accessibility for people who aren't rules experts, and tradition. Those are pretty much the reasons for classes these days; think of them what you will.

As far as I'm concerned, classes are a lot more central to D&D than simply convenient packages. That's what they devolved (decayed?) into during 3e, and it's why that edition feels the least like D&D to me of all of them.

If all you want is a collection for convenience, look to other games like d20 Modern or Star Wars Saga, where classes were filed down into flavorless packages. That's just a step removed from point-buy, though, and at that point classes might as well not even be present.

Now, those are fine for what they're worth, but they're pretty clearly not D&D - witness the persistence of independent classes like Paladin and Druid in any list of D&D classes despite the former being "cleric/fighter" and the latter being "nature cleric."

Classes in D&D are best, IMO, when they are a combination of what a character does and who they are. Some built-in flavor helps a great deal. If used properly, they allow for powerful & flavorful characters, with weak abilities at some levels balancing out strong ones later. Neutering classes (or allowing for free multiclassing) eliminates this awesome game design and play perk.

Yes, they are convenient. And yes they are accessible. But if you use them right, they can be way more than that.

 

[keterys]

As far as I'm concerned, classes are a lot more central to D&D than simply convenient packages. That's what they devolved (decayed?) into during 3e, and it's why that edition feels the least like D&D to me of all of them.

Yeah, I was very sad to hear 5e would use the 3e leveling mechanic (where a level is your point-buy method of arranging things, and presumably we'll soon see "prestige classes" and similar nonsense).

3e had tons of great things, it streamlined a ton of mechanics, but its level system and means of making class little more than a convenient bundle of (often front-loaded) abilities to slap onto your character (creating a drastic ease of making extraordinarily ineffective or overpowerful characters in the bargain) was the thing I least wanted them to take from it. Oops.

If I recall correctly from previous discussions, [MENTION=17106]Ahnehnois[/MENTION] wants a version of D&D that is much closer to GURPS in terms of character creation. Hence the greater pushback against those of us who want class to really mean something.