D&D 5E "But Wizards Can Fly, Teleport and Turn People Into Frogs!"

[Ahnehnois]

turning someone into a frog for a few rounds is not functionally different from stunning them for a few rounds

I sincerely hope that this statement is not true in any version of D&D.

Personally, I find it much easier to step on and squish frogs than stunned people.

3e on the other hand is a race

No, it's an rpg. Just like every other edition.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I sincerely hope that this statement is not true in any version of D&D.

Personally, I find it much easier to step on and squish frogs than stunned people.

You might find it easier to step on and squish frogs than stunned people - but a stunned person is easier to kill when you have a sword in your hand. He won't jump out of the way and one good sword thrust to a vital spot will kill him as dead asd the frog. I'd say in most circumstances the frog is more likely to survive.

No, it's an rpg. Just like every other edition.

Metaphor. You did notice that paragraph started "If we picture editions as races , oD&D and AD&D are 70s stock car racing."?

 

[Ahnehnois]

You might find it easier to step on and squish frogs than stunned people - but a stunned person is easier to kill when you have a sword in your hand. He won't jump out of the way and one good sword thrust to a vital spot will kill him as dead asd the frog. I'd say in most circumstances the frog is more likely to survive.

Seriously?

If you just cast a spell on the enemy, you typically don't have a sword in your hand. And someone polymorphed into a frog should hardly be as reactive as a frog is. And frogs aren't that hard to catch. And stunned people are not helpless and still have armor.

Even then, you're still contradicting your original point that the two situations are functionally the same.

Metaphor.

You say metaphor. I say Freudian slip.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Seriously?

If you just cast a spell on the enemy, you typically don't have a sword in your hand.

If you just cast a spell like Baleful Polymorph or Foe to Frog on an enemy you aren't normally in arms reach. Either we're not talking about D&D, you are in a complete edge case where you took serious opportunity attacks, or the person who is going to step on the frog isn't the caster. And in any case stepping on the frog is another action, and a standard action at that.

And someone polymorphed into a frog should hardly be as reactive as a frog is. And frogs aren't that hard to catch. And stunned people are not helpless and still have armor.

Armour has gaps. Especially D&D armour. Either way the person is in deep trouble

Even then, you're still contradicting your original point that the two situations are functionally the same.

The stunned or frogged person is a sitting duck and pretty easily killed. The best way to do this is slightly different. But that it now should be a near-trivial task isn't.

You say metaphor. I say Freudian slip.

And I say you are assuming bad faith given the entire paragraph was a string of metaphors. Which means there's no further purpose to this discussion.

 

[Siberys]

You say metaphor. I say Freudian slip.

I'm curious how that would even be a Freudian slip... Pemerton's not subconciously replacing one word with another there. Ignoring whether you agree with that paragraph, the only way it seems to me you could reach that conclusion is by not reading the whole thing.

 

[MarkB]

There have been timid attempts. In 4e, rogues had a power, Knock Out, that bassically ignonred HP and take someone out of combat. But yes, I agree, that a fighter being able to "hold person" with Pummel (stunning for a duration, just like hold person does), or "casting" Fear with an intimidating war shout, probably should be an option. At higher levels, a Maneuver that works pretty much like Finger of Death or Power Word to Kill could be nice too.

4e tended mostly to go in the other direction - there weren't any easy ways of bypassing hit points for any class. Generally speaking, I think that's a good approach.

 

[TwoSix]

I'm curious how that would even be a Freudian slip... Pemerton's not subconciously replacing one word with another there. Ignoring whether you agree with that paragraph, the only way it seems to me you could reach that conclusion is by not reading the whole thing.

It's actually Neonchameleon, not Pemerton. Freudian slip?

 

[Siberys]

Whoops! Guess I owe [MENTION=87792]Neonchameleon[/MENTION] an apology - and I 'must spread some experience points around', too. Can someone XP him for me?

Neither of you have Avatars, and I agree with practically everything you both say, so you must run together in my mind.

 

[Joshua Randall]

Complaints about LFQW are complaints about how much narrative power each class has over the game.

One class has the narrative power to alter reality at his whim.

The other class has the narrative power to hit things with a sword.

Sometimes people get annoyed by that disperity.

 

[ZombieRoboNinja]

Complaints about LFQW are complaints about how much narrative power each class has over the game.

No, LFQW (linear fighters, quadratic wizards) specifically refers to the fact that in 3e (and maybe earlier editions to a lesser degree), wizards got more spells AND their existing spells got more powerful whenever they leveled up: thus, their power increased at a "quadratic" (geometric, exponential) rate. Fighters, on the other hand, got more powerful too, but at a linear rate. So a level 20 fighter might be 20x as powerful as a level 1 fighter, but a level 20 wizard was 20^2=400 times as powerful as a level 1 wizard. (Or so goes the argument; obviously the math for "class power" isn't that simple.)

In other words, LFQW was a problem even when comparing "blaster" wizards (who only prepared tactical spells like Fireball and Magic Missile) to fighters. Wizards' non-nuking abilities, like teleport and scry and invisibility and so on, were a separate issue.

In 5e they've mostly fixed LFQW by making it so spells don't scale with caster level: a level 20 wizard in 5e has more powerful high-level spells than a level 1 wizard, but his level 1 spells are just as weak as ever. And it certainly doesn't hurt that they've upped the fighter's damage scaling while they were at it.

But that still leaves the disparity between classes in their out-of-combat utility as an issue, which is what this thread is about.

As I've already said, I think rogues in 5e are actually fairly well-balanced in exploration and social challenges; the reason fighters (and possibly other martial classes) aren't is that for some reason WOTC designed an entire system to govern non-magical utility, the skill system, and then declared that rogues had to be "the best" at it. This almost by definition makes other martial classes suck compared to rogues outside of combat. Plus, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense for non-roguish skills- why would a rogue be better than a fighter at climbing or riding or diplomacy or medicine, if both have "trained" in them? But I guess this is a sacred cow or something? Bleh.