D&D 5E (2014) Do most striker builds weaken a party?

I think a lot of people in 5E forget that movement is a free-for-all thing now. Forgetting that severely weakens strikers. If you're the sort of person who doesn't like to move you either need to be a sniper or a tank. Otherwise being able to move a lot is your biggest defense.
 

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Funny thing: the party I'm running for has zero 'tanks' . Hunter Ranger,assasin rogue,monk,sorcerer,land Druid. They are surprisingly effective (to me anyways). Basically they behave like a special forces unit. Things have gotten rough on them in head to head battles against strong, well armored opponents but they still seem to crank out pretty good damage.

And this how the Ranger is supposed to work. You "Hit and Git", going toe-to-toe only when you have selected the terrain that wears them down maximally until they get close enough for the beaters to get to work. I'm constantly amazed at how little people pay attention to the Ranger abilities out of immediate "Right this freakin' second!" combat utility when they describe them as "Not as strong as..." A Ranger makes your group twice as agile and mobile if you're in a terrain type the ranger is familiar with. The hostile part of the trifecta depends on the stomach the party has for blood and guts. With the ability to go twice as fast over difficult terrain, and believe me when I say any Ranger worth a darn is going to be making sure to run the enemy through difficult terrain as much as possible, the party can set up ambush after ambush.

Imagine being the guy at the front of the pursuing column after the party has just raided your camp. You drag your sorry butt over the lip of the steep rise, flop onto your back gasping for air under the weight of your armor and other kit, and that assassin slits your throat and dumps your carcass on top of the next guy just reaching the edge of the rise after wrestling through a bramble. The column lights fires and blows stuff up, you peek over the rise again as the point of the column and see nothing but scorched trees. Breathing a sigh of relief, you wave the next guy up just in time for three arrows to slam you into his face, starting the rodeo all over again...
 

In D&D, each combat is a problem. And it's better to have lots of tools in the toolbox. Sometimes you need a tank with high AC, sometimes you need a meat shield who can just take the hits, sometimes you need a controller locking down foes, sometimes you need a blaster dealing AoE damage, and sometime you need a striker who can bring the hurt.
No role really becomes problematic until it's absent when you need it.
 

Yes and no.

It depends on what the rest of the party is. If you have enough tanks or control to stop the enemies, adding more defense doesn't help.

If your party is continually overrun by enemies, then adding someone who drops easy won't help.


Also, you need to not just factor in the damage per hit, but also how often the hit. If you do 1d8+3, and they do 1d8+4, but hit twice as often, they do twice as much damage.
 

Yes and no.

It depends on what the rest of the party is. If you have enough tanks or control to stop the enemies, adding more defense doesn't help.

If your party is continually overrun by enemies, then adding someone who drops easy won't help.


Also, you need to not just factor in the damage per hit, but also how often the hit. If you do 1d8+3, and they do 1d8+4, but hit twice as often, they do twice as much damage.

Or if you are constantly outnumbered and overrun, you may also think about which fights to pick and how to engage. Not everything is to be solved by hack and slash.
Maybe clever use of terrain also helps.
 

Yes and no.

It depends on what the rest of the party is. If you have enough tanks or control to stop the enemies, adding more defense doesn't help.

If your party is continually overrun by enemies, then adding someone who drops easy won't help.


Also, you need to not just factor in the damage per hit, but also how often the hit. If you do 1d8+3, and they do 1d8+4, but hit twice as often, they do twice as much damage.

Yeah, but the issue is that PCs vary hugely in durability, while not varying much in damage output. A 5e tank may have the same DPR as a 5e striker. If my Polearm Master, Greatweapon Master Barbarian does not have great DPR, I shall be very disappointed. :D
 

Funny thing: the party I'm running for has zero 'tanks' . Hunter Ranger,assasin rogue,monk,sorcerer,land Druid. They are surprisingly effective (to me anyways). Basically they behave like a special forces unit. Things have gotten rough on them in head to head battles against strong, well armored opponents but they still seem to crank out pretty good damage.

I'm sure they would be effective, but largely because there are no tanks.

In 5E there are few glass cannons really so I feel as though that's not the right term exactly. What I thing is true however, is that in regards to the defensive capabilities of each class, you have blockers and avoiders. Respectively, they are fine, but they are bad in combination because the avoiders, if they aren't bringing something special to the table, are putting undue pressure on the blockers.

If conversely there are no tanks and the PCs are just all kiting the enemies, then that may well work just fine.
 

More worrying to me than "squishy strikers" in 5e is the fact that paladins often do more damage than anyone else, but also come with the best AC, self healing and spells, to boot.

The extreme escalation of damage and hit points is one of the turn off points of 5e for me. Over time I have come to prefer OSR games (tweaked with 5e ideas, and others) over 5e (especially basic 5e, with it's generous healing and almost impossible to die death rules).
 

Strikers such as the rogue and the ranger feel like they avoid taking their fair share of the aggro from enemies, deal out average damage themselves in return, and don't offer a great deal of party support capabilities to make up for this.
The strength of a ranged striker is that they can attack any target, where a defender is mostly limited to melee range. That's the trade-off - free targeting between enemies so you can focus fire, or sufficient defenses that you can withstand some amount of focused fire.

The concept of a "fair share of the aggro" is a problematic one. In an ideal world, no PC should ever get hurt. In the old days, the tank should have been positioned as such to become the biggest target possible, because that's how you reduce the total damage taken by the party.

In 4E, and again in 5E (under default configuration), each character has a huge supply of personal healing, and that's a wasted resource if you take a long rest without having gone through 95% of your HP and half of your Hit Dice. It means that, sometimes, it's better for the wizard to take a couple of arrows in order to prevent the paladin from being overwhelmed. It's a bit counter-intuitive, to say the least. Personally, I consider it to be a strong mark against both editions.
 

The ranger does impressive damage and adds a lot to a group in my experience. A warlock can be built a lot of different ways. They aren't the most group friendly because they have so few spell slots. Rogues are very useful if allowed to be. Impatient groups that don't use the rogue's nearly unbeatable scouting ability are underutilizing the rogue. So far I haven't seen a class that doesn't add to the ability of the group in some meaningful way.
 

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