Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ferrous" data-source="post: 6039480" data-attributes="member: 61796">Consider the human Fighters Bill and Bob.Bill is a 10th level heavy  fighter with Plate armour, longsword and shield. Bill has a 20 Strength  and an 8 Dex to take advantage of heavy armour.Bill’s AC is 19 and  does d8+5 damage. Bill is -1 to Initiative, and usually -1 to Balance,  Disable Device, Drive, Ride, Sleight of Hand, Sneak, Tumble, Use Rope.  Bill is at +5 to Climb and Swim checks. Bill is at -5 movement and  disadvantage to Stealth. Bill’s armour is very visible and takes minutes  to put on. Bill is disadvantaged with the Ambusher and Stealth  specialties. Bill has a limited selection of missile weapons that have  poor range. Bob is a 10th level swashbuckling Fighter with  Mithril armour, rapier and a shield (buckler). Bob has a 20 Dexterity  and a Str of 8. Bob AC19 and does d6+5 damage. Bob is +5 to  Initiative and Balance, Disable Device, Drive, Ride, Sleight of Hand,  Sneak, Tumble, Use Rope. Bob is at -1 to Climb and swim checks. Bob has  no disadvantages and can conceal his armour to attend the Grand ball.  Bob has no speciality he can’t take. Bob can use the best missile  weapons with the best range. So in effect Bill has traded +1 damage per blow that hits for: -6 Initiative -6 to 8 different skills -5 movement Disadvantage on Stealth Donning armour rules Armour not concealed Worse missile fire Can’t use 2 specialities very well. In  fact the two skill that Bill is good at don’t really make a lot of  sense, “OK let’s get the guy in Plate armour to climb the sheer cliff  wall and swim across the river…”To be frank this is simply not  balanced and moreover nonesensical. It seems like the equipment rules  have been created without actually considering the likely impact on play  and skills.  So we get a guy dressed like a knight who can't ride but  can swim and swashbuckler who can't climb into a ladies window?There was a bit of  a problem with Mithral breastplates etc. in 3rd  edition but instead of learning from this they have made it a lot worse.  In 3rd edition for example you had to pay a feat for Finesse and still  your damage did not get a bonus for high Dex. However in the new edition  Finesse is free and affects damage as well. As well as this you get no  advantage for a high Dex whilst wearing heavy armour which you did in  3rd edition (and indeed every other edition apart from 4th). Also  missile fire weapons did not get a bonus to damage for dexterity. This  is a quadruple whammy and enough to make the traditional heavily armed,  strong Fighter a distinctly suboptimal build.To be frank this  does not make sense from either a game balance point of view or even a  real world point of view. Real armour is not as encumbering as the  designer seem to believe. There are reports from the field of the cloth  of gold of acrobats entertaining the two kings with backflips and  handstands etc in full plate armour. In fact the one thing that I woud  really not want to do in Plate is swim, which in the rules as they stand  I suffer no penalty for, and if we take likely build for ability scores  into account I would actually be good at!When the best build for a Fighter looks a lot like a Rogue you also have a problem with niche protection. At present the Rogue is down +1 to hit and 4 hit points then 2 hit points per level for 4 extra skills and a skill focus dice that blows away most DC's (at least when not in combat). As some of these skills are at best very situational (woot I am trained in Rope Use) this is contributing to the Rogues as second class Fighter feel.</blockquote>

Verification