Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dualazi" data-source="post: 7210624" data-attributes="member: 6855537">Short answer: potentially. While there are certainly some options that are probably too powerful and well known at this point, party synergy is what really ‘breaks’ the game and still will in the absence of those things. Even without GWM, a greatsword fighter with bless and consistent advantage is still going to wreck a lot of monsters, and a team utilizing their basic class features in optimized fashion will still punch way above their (assumed) weight class.One of my more annoying soapboxes, I know, but CR is pretty much a joke either way. Almost all posters here, old or new, seem to agree that you just have to learn the system and eyeball encounters when designing them. It’s used as a benchmark for discussion because it makes it easier to converse about, but the real question is how often are players surpassing the GM’s expectations.Not…really. Multiclassing can be abused, but can also be a major detriment. It’s probably better to simply have a gentlemen’s agreement about questionable level dipping for goodies than banning outright.Feats are a similar can of worms, yeah, there are OP feats, but removing them entirely cuts out a lot of good options, both RP and mechanically. The only way to create a pseudo-4E fighter, for example, is with the Sentinel feat, and I’ve only seen it called OP on niche builds built to exploit it, and rarely at that. Rolled stats can go in either direction, assuming it’s actually enforced and not just an excuse to be above the curve. Players that roll below that will certainly not be adding to the imbalance problem.The prevailing theme with the listed options is that they can be a factor, but are not always such. If the DM notices that his players are using all of these to their fullest extent, then yeah, he/she should increase the difficulty. Stripping them away outright hurts the optimized and non-optimized alike though, and the powergamers will still be better than average. I think I can safely say the majority of optimizers don’t intend to make the game more boring with their decisions. If I’m designing a character I want to be a master archer, why wouldn’t I take the sharpshooter feat? Am I supposed to avoid a thematically appropriate choice just because it’s a good one? Likewise, some teams enjoy finding successful strategies and coordinating themselves, which likewise shouldn’t be discouraged because the MM can’t keep up.Reducing options in one way, but probably the worse of the two. It feels punitive to players, like you’re punished for doing well, and leads to less build diversity. The problems go deeper than that, as I said earlier, as a properly coordinated team is still going to rip through at-level challenges with ease. Ultimately the DM is going to have up the ante with monster synergy or simple numeric increases if they want a challenge, particularly at high levels.</blockquote>

Verification