D&D 5E D&D Next Q&A: 01/24/2014

[Bluenose]

I swear I'm still totally clueless about this line of reasoning, and I'd really like it if someone could explain it to me.

In D&D, leveling is a mechanic to track the evolution of a PC's ability to survive and overall power.

So presumably you're a strong proponent of classes being balanced, otherwise levels aren't fulfilling their purpose. Sadly 5e is likely to fail to deliver on this, having made a serious effort to make magic either essential or very much more desirable.

 

[Lokiare]

I don't want to be snarky, but maybe the problem isn't in the rules but in the players that are apparently competing with each other as to who gets "first blood" or "most kills" despite the fact that not one aspect of the game or its mechanics cares about that.

You're a party. You're supposed to act together as a unit. Maybe the fighter and (implied) wizard players should have communicated, so the wizard would drop the enemy further away while the fighter would engage the closer one? Maybe you're supposed to work together, and not rage quit over the fact that one of your party members defeated an enemy.

And yes I know it sucks when you're playing an ineffective character and you don't get to do anything. It's boring. Nobody wants to do that. But maybe you need to re-evaluate your priorities and group dynamics if stuff like that makes you rage quit instead of talk it over or maybe change your system.

My experience with one of my players was over the course of a year of it happening. It wasn't just a one off. It was a whole string of recurring inabilities to contribute that triggered the rage quit. What made it worse is that the gap became greater at each level so we could tell it was just going to get worse.

Why would you play a side kick, when they could fix the problem and allow everyone to play heroes like in 4E? I'm not asking for a 4E clone, but come on, there has got to be a way to make all characters equally effective and viable most of the time...

 

[Lokiare]

I swear I'm still totally clueless about this line of reasoning, and I'd really like it if someone could explain it to me.

In D&D, leveling is a mechanic to track the evolution of a PC's ability to survive and overall power. You didn't lose levels 1-2, they correspond to an stage in the life of an adventurer you're not interested to role-play. You don't lose levels 21-30 either, simply because a PC of 20th level in 5E will probably be more powerful than epic 4E anyway (at least they'll have rings of invisibility that they can actually use to, you know, become invisible...).

If one edition of D&D has fewer levels than the others, that is 4E, where the math and power of characters is developed in order to emulate the so called "sweet spot". Basically, your 30 levels of 4E adventuring are 10 levels of 3E stretched over 20 more "level-ups". If power level in 5E ends up similar to 3E, all you have to do is start at 4th level, make every character level up three times before gaining a level and there you have it: 30 levels of "sweet spot", your game will end before Wish has the chance to appear.

Obviously, you could still say: I don't care about all that stuff you're talking about, I'm focused in numbers, I want my character leveling often and I want to see that 27 in the sheet under "character level". If that's your case, you should be playing RC, where you have 6 more levels for your enjoyment. Even better, you could be playing 3E with the Epic Level Handbook, and suddenly you don't even have level caps anymore. What about a level 84 barbarian smashing puny 30 level 4E characters? Sounds like a lot of fun to me.

Cheers,

Since you don't get it, let me explain: For many players leveling up is a huge part of the game, getting to choose new abilities and features, picking feats, optimizing and/or visualizing your character is a huge draw.

I have a player that literally sits around and makes level 16 4E characters for fun. I personally don't understand the idea of playing a super deadly game where a single good roll on the monsters part can take your character out of the game, but I wouldn't for one minute suggest not having it as an option, because others like it. I simply want the opposite option, to play a hero from level 1...

 

[Lokiare]

Uh...in my experience, even the most basic 5E Fighter outdamages the spellcasters in every instance. Spellcasters may have damage peaks that are on par with the Fighter's damage output but it requires burning significant daily resources of them.

And that's without including the fact that the 5E is not a dedicated Striker but also a basically immortal meatshield, decent defender (with a few feat and path choices) and overall more competent member of the party than in 3E in every way.

Really? Because in all my play tests and the play test of many others the Wizard after a few levels was able to out damage the fighter significantly during every encounter. What level did you play at because the casters start getting enough daily spells to drop 1-2 per encounter around level 5 or so...

 

[Lokiare]

5e.



12d6 is 42 damage on average. That's only enough to take very low level creatures.



Then keep playing 4e. There's nothing wrong with that if you like it better.

42 damage is enough to take out about half the bestiary and its one of the area spells, so its damage is not meant to insta kill high level monsters, its meant to clear out other things like high level monsters armies of minions.

If you want to insta kill a single monster you'd instead choose Hold Person if its humanoid (which allows the party to wail on it unimpeded with advantage), Hold Monster. If you got a Cleric you can cast Harm for 14d6 damage without a save if the damage is higher than its hp. Flesh to Stone is pretty nice since the save DCs allow for less than a 50% chance of not being permanently turned to stone. Flaming Sphere in a higher level slot is deadly. At 4th level it deals 4d6 damage per round to multiple targets. A few rounds of that and most creatures are toast, and while that is going on the caster is still slinging cantrips around and other daily instant damage spells.

Flame Blade is one of the best spells in the game. It is low level so you can have many of them and you can cast it in a higher level slot and in addition to dealing nice damage you also get a bonus to hit so you are more accurate than Fighters. A 9th level Flame Blade can deal 10d6 fire damage per hit each round for up to 10 rounds and that's not including when you get extra actions to attack with it.

Just face it they made the same mistakes as they did with 3.5E and previous. They even made it worse with the flexibility of spell casting so you can prepare spells like Flame Blade and then cast them using any slot from 2nd level and up and you decide at cast time, not memorization time. All they've done is made the problem worse. Utility spells no longer cut into combat, you prepare both and then only use the utility spell if you need it leaving all slots for combat.

I'd rather play a 4.5E where they fix some of the problems and streamline the game, but instead they are trying to get me to buy into a 2.5E game. No thanks...

 

[pemerton]

Flame Blade is one of the best spells in the game.

<snip>

you also get a bonus to hit so you are more accurate than Fighters. A 9th level Flame Blade can deal 10d6 fire damage per hit each round for up to 10 rounds and that's not including when you get extra actions to attack with it.

A fighter with 20 STR and a +1 greatsword does 2d6+6 damage, which is just shy of 4d6 worth. 4 attacks for a fighter is 8d6+24, or 52. 2 attacks for d10 is 70. The fighter is not that much short, and crits and/or superiority dice will add in a bit more.

I'm also not seeing the bonus to hit. A fighter gets STR + prof + magic. A druid using Flame Blade gets WIS + prof with (as far as I know) no option for a magic weapon/implement bonus. The fighter's magic bonus is another modest boost to the fighter's output.

 

[Giltonio_Santos]

So presumably you're a strong proponent of classes being balanced, otherwise levels aren't fulfilling their purpose. Sadly 5e is likely to fail to deliver on this, having made a serious effort to make magic either essential or very much more desirable.

My favorite edition is 2E; to me, level measures your power not compared to the other characters of your group, but inside the expected progression of a class. I miss different XP charts, for example, because I believe different classes can (and should) have different power curves and development. When I play a fighter, I don't want to know how my character is evolving compared to the mage or druid of the group, but compared to other fighter of the world, and the fact that some classes manage to pull things that are more impressive than swinging a sword in no way disturbs my enjoyment of the game.

In other words: as long as a level 9 fighter is objectively more powerful and has more resources than a level 6 fighter, the levels are fulfilling their purpose to me.

Cheers,

 

[Mistwell]

42 damage is enough to take out about half the bestiary

I was curious if this claim was true. So I counted.

There are a total of 143 creatures in the bestiary, not counting various customizations you can make to creatures.

Of those, 80 could be killed by 42 points of damage.

So your claim is correct, and actually a bit conservative. More than half can be taken out by 42 damage (it's about 56%).

 

[Giltonio_Santos]

I was curious if this claim was true. So I counted.

There are a total of 143 creatures in the bestiary, not counting various customizations you can make to creatures.

Of those, 80 could be killed by 42 points of damage.

So your claim is correct, and actually a bit conservative. More than half can be taken out by 42 damage (it's about 56%).

I find it a bit frustrating that a 9th level spell can only kill about 56% of the monsters in the bestiary. I'd expect more from such a mighty display of arcane power. I hope they fix that math by the time of release.

Cheers,

 

[Li Shenron]

When I play a fighter, I don't want to know how my character is evolving compared to the mage or druid of the group, but compared to other fighter of the world, and the fact that some classes manage to pull things that are more impressive than swinging a sword in no way disturbs my enjoyment of the game.

In other words: as long as a level 9 fighter is objectively more powerful and has more resources than a level 6 fighter, the levels are fulfilling their purpose to me.

You don't want to know, but maybe your DM does. You care only about comparison with other fighters? Fine, so you won't look over the Wizard's character sheet anyway, thus let it be same level as yours. If each class has own level progression, then the DM is forced to look at XP instead of level, to estimate the average party strength. If everyone is on par with XP, then they can also be on par with levels. Absolutely no benefit whatsoever in having different progressions.