D&D 5E (2014) Blees Still Broken/OP?

[Galendril]

The tempest cleric in the group I run very rarely casts Bless. He prefers using his domain spells. He tends to go toe to toe with bad guys and he probably sees a concentration spell as a hindrance to maintain while in melee.

 

[Celtavian]

I quoted exactly the part I was referring to. You claimed three (or more) PCs would have all their attacks and saves increased by an average of +2. That's not at all likely. All? Really? Bless has a duration of up to 1 minute and requires concentration. Both of those things have a huge impact on how likely a claric will be able to have it up for all of his allies' rolls. Not only because clerics in play also uses some of their spell slots for other necessary spells, but sometimes lose concentration as well.

I did not "claim". I know that is how bless works. It is also my actual play experience. Keeping up concentration is not as difficult as you think it is for any player that understands how to optimize. I standardly take the Resilient: Con feat and often take the War Caster feat as a cleric. So this is a matter of style of play differing and thus your viewpoint influenced by your style of play and mine influenced by mine. We definitely keep bless active doing exactly as I stated it does.

It is extremely likely unless the cleric is played recklessly, which we don't tend to do. Your statement is true in games where the cleric places himself in position to have his concentration disrupted. But in games with strong party tactical play, keeping bless is up not difficult at all save in very few fights where the opponent has a strong ability to do damage at a distance. As I'm a Banana states, my group plays in a highly optimized manner including utilizing tactics aimed at limiting contact with classes providing powerful buffs.

There are very few other necessary spells that require concentration at low level better than bless. I've had my cleric use other spells for fun. When it comes it tactical impact, I use bless and I position to keep it active. I don't have a hard time keeping it active unless I get blindsided by a dragon or spell.

 

[Celtavian]

Well of course they are. But if you have a specific spell you're 'supposed' to cast that "makes the class," the others are just pointlessly baroque dross. Break out the critical spell and make it a unique feature, by itself, and you avoid that. Functionally, there's little difference, it's just less inelegant. Less of an artificial reward for system mastery. (Again, not to argue whether Bless is such a spell or not.)

There are no "supposed to cast" spells. There are only spells that strongly flavor a class and are optimal for that class. We have paladin smites turned into spells. We have ranger spells like hunter's mark. There are plenty of spells that are optimal for class, but aren't required to achieve victory in 5E. 5E is very forgiving of suboptimal choices. You can choose a spell other than bless or eldritch blast and still be an effective character.

Making something a class feature would remove the modularity of the 5E system. 5E with multiclassing and feats is a very modular system that allows a lot of sharing of class abilities. You can build almost anything and be effective. It doesn't mean you'll be optimal, but you can be effective enough that no one will much care.

I don't believe bless is OP. I believe Sharpshooter and Great Weapon Master are outliers in the power scale. That has more to do with Bounded Accuracy at higher levels. I think bless is merely a great spell for a cleric to cast, an optimal spell. It's not particularly fun. I don't even cast it all the time as a cleric given 5E isn't very hard. Sometimes I'd rather have up a spiritual guardians and wail away with a weapon or blast with sacred flame. 5E doesn't require super optimal play. In fact, I think playing the min-max style in 5E is counterproductive to enjoying the game. 5E isn't built for a min-max play-style. You can make encounters tough and challenging, while still allowing players that don't min-max to be effective meaning they don't have to cast "supposed to use" spells.

 

[PnPgamer]

At our table bless has been never cast since we got out of the beta, in which concentration mechanic was "only one of these can be up at a time", without any "drop this spell if you take damage". 50% players at our table shuns away every spell that has concentration in it (the other guy, not me. Yes our group is small.)

There is a logical reason behind this though. as we have my druid, a warlockfighter, and a DMPC bard, only my druid uses attack rolls. casting up a bless just for my wild shape seems unnecessary.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I did not "claim". I know that is how bless works. It is also my actual play experience. Keeping up concentration is not as difficult as you think it is for any player that understands how to optimize. I standardly take the Resilient: Con feat and often take the War Caster feat as a cleric. So this is a matter of style of play differing and thus your viewpoint influenced by your style of play and mine influenced by mine. We definitely keep bless active doing exactly as I stated it does.

It is extremely likely unless the cleric is played recklessly, which we don't tend to do. Your statement is true in games where the cleric places himself in position to have his concentration disrupted. But in games with strong party tactical play, keeping bless is up not difficult at all save in very few fights where the opponent has a strong ability to do damage at a distance. As I'm a Banana states, my group plays in a highly optimized manner including utilizing tactics aimed at limiting contact with classes providing powerful buffs.

There are very few other necessary spells that require concentration at low level better than bless. I've had my cleric use other spells for fun. When it comes it tactical impact, I use bless and I position to keep it active. I don't have a hard time keeping it active unless I get blindsided by a dragon or spell.

Hey, that's great for you. And maybe that's exactly how your table does it. But I'm pretty sure most people who play clerics don't want to play an optimized one where they must take resilient and war caster feat as soon as it's available, so maybe you might want to stop saying, "This is guaranteed" when in fact that's only how you do it, and not everyone else. Because for probably most people, bless isn't an automatic average +2 bonus for up to 3 people for a minute, for reasons Chris mentioned.

 

[ChrisCarlson]

I did not "claim". I know that is how bless works.

Then I recommend not making misleading claims as to how bless works. What you stated before made it seem like you were not aware of the various limitations bless has to mitigate it's constant benefits. Not to mention any implications that bless might somehow be an alpha choice in either of the other two pillars of play. Because that's just ridiculous. There are three pillars of play, BTW. Not just combat. Just sayin'.

It is also my actual play experience. Keeping up concentration is not as difficult as you think it is for any player that understands how to optimize.

A not-so-subtle jabs at my supposed lack of understanding of optimization? Pedestrian.

I standardly take the Resilient: Con feat and often take the War Caster feat as a cleric. So this is a matter of style of play differing and thus your viewpoint influenced by your style of play and mine influenced by mine. We definitely keep bless active doing exactly as I stated it does.

So bless is broken because you play a mid-to-high level cleric who spent a great deal of their resources (multiple feats and a large chunk of their daily spell slot commitment) making it so? That's rather a self fulfilling prophecy you got there. I think I see the problem with the spell.

It is extremely likely unless the cleric is played recklessly, which we don't tend to do. Your statement is true in games where the cleric places himself in position to have his concentration disrupted.

That's a huge difference in how we play D&D right there. We tend not to inform the DM how threatened we've decided we will allow our characters to be.

But in games with strong party tactical play, keeping bless is up not difficult at all save in very few fights where the opponent has a strong ability to do damage at a distance. As I'm a Banana states, my group plays in a highly optimized manner including utilizing tactics aimed at limiting contact with classes providing powerful buffs.

I would request that you please quit trying to school me on how real players play D&D. I'm quite confident you have no idea the extent of system mastery/charop I am capable of. Heck, here is your open invitation to any of our Strategicon conventions, here in Los Angeles, if you'd like to see for yourself. We run a rather large gaming convention three times a year (in fact, one is coming up this President's Day weekend!). I'll put my system mastery and tactical play accumen up against yours any day (since you seem to want to make this a measuring contest). I welcome the challenge you keep not-so-subtly alluding to.

There are very few other necessary spells that require concentration at low level better than bless.

"Necessary"? That's rather an illusive claim, donchathink? "Better than"? Using what metric? I see several 1st-level clerical concentration spells that are very useful. In various scenarios, far more useful than bless. But then again, I didn't artificially limit spell choice to concentration when I was making my point. Spell slots are a daily resource. They don't care if the spell is concentration or not. Casting cure wounds uses the same slot bless does. Bless cannot do for the ally what [/i]cure wounds[/i] can. Ergo, the former cannot be universally a better choice than the latter. Nor can bless keep you from dying of dehydration in a desert devoid of water sources. But guess what? There's a 1st-level cleric spell, that isn't bless, that can. Rather than list an infinite number of other examples, I'll stop there.

I've had my cleric use other spells for fun. When it comes it tactical impact, I use bless and I position to keep it active. I don't have a hard time keeping it active unless I get blindsided by a dragon or spell.

That's great. I'm glad you enjoy playing in such a game, where the DM plays along and allows you the freedom to experience the kind of play you desire.

But look. All of my considerable play experience, playing 5e with a great number of different people, runs counter to the claims you are making here. So now what? Can we at least stop pretending that your unique experiences and play style should be a basis for determining how the game should be designed and/or played?

 

[TwoSix]

The tempest cleric in the group I run very rarely casts Bless. He prefers using his domain spells. He tends to go toe to toe with bad guys and he probably sees a concentration spell as a hindrance to maintain while in melee.

In general, that's why I like Cleric 1 dips for ranged characters like Wizards and Warlocks, that way a character in the back lines can be the bless monkey.

 

[TwoSix]

Yeah, just let the blees fly back to the hive.

I am the Lorax; I speak for the blees.

 

[ChrisCarlson]

In general, that's why I like Cleric 1 dips for ranged characters like Wizards and Warlocks, that way a character in the back lines can be the bless monkey.

You don't find having bless up regularly steps on the various cool arcane concentration spell options at your disposal?

 

[Sacrosanct]

In general, that's why I like Cleric 1 dips for ranged characters like Wizards and Warlocks, that way a character in the back lines can be the bless monkey.

So you put one of your higher scores (at least a 13) into Wisdom when you make a Wizard and warlock, and you roleplay your devotion to your new god? Or do you just ignore the roleplaying part and just take the level dip?

One thing about level dipping that always threw me off. It seems to be done by folks who only look at classes as bags of stats, and completely ignore the first several paragraphs that tell you what the class actually is. Which is cool, if you choose to ignore those things. But I believe they are there for a reason. And they solve most of the issues people have with multiclassing. I.e., when people complain about multiclassing being too powerful, all you gotta do is make sure they roleplay each of the classes how they are intended. So if someone takes a dip into cleric, they better be roleplaying that PC as someone who is devoted to his or her god. Heck, back in 1e there was a rule that if you didn't do that, you could have spells withheld and nothing happens if you try to cast them. I wouldn't think it is a shocking revelation to assume that role playing is pretty important in a role playing game.