False truisms in 5th edition

[Stalker0]

*shrug* My group at work is going trough Storm King's Thunder... and our party of four characters of 6th level keep coming upon CR 9 Fire Giants.

Yep, sounds like a cakewalk. My party of 6 level 7 characters just beat down a CR 20 in a fight, another fight with a CR 12 (and some zombie minions), a fight after that with another CR 12 (more zombie minions), and then assassinated a CR 11 before it even knew they were there.


As you said earlier, everyone's mileage varies. I just find that the mileage seems to very A LOT with different groups.

 

[Parmandur]

Where did they state that goal? I could buy that they wanted Fighters to fight better than Rangers, since Rangers have the whole exploration schtick, but Barbarians don't have much going on for them aside from fighting.

I really wouldn't call "spending one use of rage, of which you have several per day" any sort of nova ability, any more than I would say a Wizard is going nova when they cast a spell in a fight. In this edition, going nova is the purview of the Paladin and Sorcerer, who manage their resources over a long rest and nevertheless have the ability to spend multiple resources per round.

As [MENTION=82779]MechaPilot[/MENTION] points out, this was discussed by Mearls in an article during the playtest (which I also recall), and he has detailed what they did several times since.

Once the Ragenisnused up, and exhaustion kicks in, the difference in performance is marked. The Barbarian has limited use, long rest abilities and consequences for using those abilities up, and yes, same as the Wizard.

 

[Ovarwa]

Hi,

Is a false truism a falsism?

"When you play a martial, choosing a slow build is just as viable as choosing a fast one."​

Sometimes. In many classic dungeon crawls, in many classic tavern brawls, in cramped quarters rather than long halls... it is rare for long range to even exist, so speed doesn't matter.

Overall, of course, for the same money, it is better to be fast than to be slow.

And in games where kiting is often possible, that is clearly a winning tactic.

But it's often not possible.

"Choosing a melee build is just as viable as choosing a ranged one."​

Sometimes it's *more* viable.

If there are no feats, and close combat abounds, a ranged character will often literally be at disadvantage. A melee character is happy.

A rogue in melee particularly benefits because he gets sneak attack on his off-turn opportunity attack! Ranged characters don't really get those opportunities.

A melee character can block a chokepoint. When it comes to difficult terrain, he is the most difficult. Ranged character? Usually damage only.

Grabs and grappling can be nice too, I'm told.

Obviously, combats that allow a ranged character to operate freely at range will show him at his best, especially if he is also fast. But this is often not an option.

For Rogues this is doubly true. The game does not provide a single compelling reason why you should risk your frail ass in close combat when all your abilities work just as well from 30 feet away. Better in fact, since hiding is much easier at range.

Opportunity attacks.

Two rogues attacking a target in melee grant each other advantage and sneak attack, which I'm told rogues particularly like. At range? Not so much.

(Reasons why this is so? Too numerous to enumerate, but it does begin somewhere with the decision to elevate Dexterity to god stat, and with the simple truth that the overwhelming majority of Monster Manual critters are very simplistic, with few ways to attack characters that outrun them).

Dexterity has been a great stat for a long time. No argument there.

Fortunately for MM critters, they have a GM who builds encounters around them. Sometimes there's room to shoot and run and shoot... and sometimes not.

"Choosing a melee build is just as viable without feats as with them."​

False! Martial builds, especially fighters, really want Feats. 7 ASIs without Feats? Ugh.

But ranged martial builds also really want feats.

"Choosing to play a Rogue is just as viable with feats as without them."​

False: 6 ASIs without Feats? Ugh.

"Choosing the wizard class is the best choice for an arcane caster."​

Strawman: WotC seems to have put a lot of effort into *not* coasting with previous collective wisdom. Wizards are better in some ways and not as good in others, especially if MC is allowed.

In the beginning, of course, the Wizard was the only class with access to arcane spells.

In the beginning, of course, there *were* no arcane spells or wizards. There were magic-users who cast magic-user spells.

The era of Monte Cook is over: no longer do scenarios come to a screeching halt when the party is unable to cast a particular high-level spell.

They still can. When a scenario calls for, say, traveling to another plane, it comes to a screeching halt if the party cannot do that. Or for resurrecting the long-dead princess. Or....

Playing a Wizard is fun, don't get me wrong. Compared to the drawbacks of the class design of the Sorcerer, for instance: to spamming the same spells over and over again, choosing the same old red draconic Sorcerer again and again. But is it actually good? The jury is out on that one.

Better than a classic D&D lvl1 MU, with his *one* Sleep or Magic Missile and 3hp.


Anyway,

Ken

 

[Umbran]

Yep, sounds like a cakewalk.

Define what "cakewalk" means to you, please. In my mind, it generally isn't a cakewalk if any character has to make a death save, for instance. By the usual way of calculating these things, it was a "Hard" verging on "Deadly".

And that plays out, in that, for example, a thrown rock from the Fire Giant does 4d10+7 damage. This averages to 29 damage on a hit.

A wizard without a con bonus by standard progression (max at 1st, and 4 points each level after) has 26 hit points. An *average* hit will down the party wizard in one shot. And did.

My party of 6 level 7 characters just beat down a CR 20 in a fight

Interesting. Somehow I'm thinking something went rather sub-optimal for that CR 20, whatever it was.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Once the Rage is used up, and exhaustion kicks in, the difference in performance is marked. The Barbarian has limited use, long rest abilities and consequences for using those abilities up, and yes, same as the Wizard.

Who's talking about exhaustion? Are you assuming the Barbarian is a Berserker? Because I usually assume Totem, and that one never causes exhaustion.

The Barbarian's "limited" rage is similar to the Wizard's "limited" spell slots, in that it practically never comes into effect - in practice, it never comes into effect - because neither class has the ability to nova. Barbarians have as many uses of rage as there are likely to be difficult encounters in a day, and Wizards have sufficient spell slots with no way to accelerate their rate of expenditure. In the off chance that either manages to burn through their entire allotment, and they can't manage a long rest before the next difficult encounter, only then will the Champion get a chance to shine. But that's assuming the players make preventable mistakes, and even then, it's only once in a blue moon.

 

[Parmandur]

Who's talking about exhaustion? Are you assuming the Barbarian is a Berserker? Because I usually assume Totem, and that one never causes exhaustion.

The Barbarian's "limited" rage is similar to the Wizard's "limited" spell slots, in that it practically never comes into effect - in practice, it never comes into effect - because neither class has the ability to nova. Barbarians have as many uses of rage as there are likely to be difficult encounters in a day, and Wizards have sufficient spell slots with no way to accelerate their rate of expenditure. In the off chance that either manages to burn through their entire allotment, and they can't manage a long rest before the next difficult encounter, only then will the Champion get a chance to shine. But that's assuming the players make preventable mistakes, and even then, it's only once in a blue moon.

...at your table. Not at every table, apparently, or even the average table per WotC. And there's nothing wrong with that, but the system is built around being an endurance resource game.

 

[Umbran]

But that's assuming the players make preventable mistakes, and even then, it's only once in a blue moon.

How often it is depends on the adventure design.

When you say, "neither class has the ability to nova"... in a single round, maybe. But, it is very, very easy for, say, a 6th level wizard to go through their 3rd level spells. One fly or haste at the start of the encounter, two fireballs, and their big guns are gone. And all you need to do to get a barbarian to run out of rage is to *delay*. Make it so they don't have a hostile target they can get to for one single round, and their rage dies. That should not hard to manage. Just a couple combats where that happens, and you've gone through 4 rages....

Every time you think, "Well, this has always been better, because the character *never* goes through their resources" that should alert you to the base fact that the GM is challenging their short-term tactics, but not their longer term resource strategy. And that's totally a choice the GM gets to make. But, it is a choice that has repercussions. A GM who has characters with such resources should really push them a bit from time to time.

 

[Ash Mantle]

How often it is depends on the adventure design.

When you say, "neither class has the ability to nova"... in a single round, maybe. But, it is very, very easy for, say, a 6th level wizard to go through their 3rd level spells. One fly or haste at the start of the encounter, two fireballs, and their big guns are gone. And all you need to do to get a barbarian to run out of rage is to *delay*. Make it so they don't have a hostile target they can get to for one single round, and their rage dies. That should not hard to manage. Just a couple combats where that happens, and you've gone through 4 rages....

Every time you think, "Well, this has always been better, because the character *never* goes through their resources" that should alert you to the base fact that the GM is challenging their short-term tactics, but not their longer term resource strategy. And that's totally a choice the GM gets to make. But, it is a choice that has repercussions. A GM who has characters with such resources should really push them a bit from time to time.

When I ran ToA for my players, my players asked for more challenging encounters both because they felt they were up to it and I had unfairly coddled them a bit by being a bit too soft. So I introduced more deadly and hard encounters and used the terrain and environment to their detriment and advantage. We had some pretty awesome fights, and my friends really enjoyed the more challenging nature of the encounters; sometimes they didn't even fight and used other methods in their repetoire to resolve the encounters.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

When you say, "neither class has the ability to nova"... in a single round, maybe. But, it is very, very easy for, say, a 6th level wizard to go through their 3rd level spells. One fly or haste at the start of the encounter, two fireballs, and their big guns are gone.

True, it's easier for the wizard to run through their spells than it is for the barbarian to run through their rages, but that's still nothing compared to a paladin. If the wizard does run out of spells, though, then I would still classify that as a preventable mistake that nobody should expect to happen; it's the exception, rather than the rule.

And all you need to do to get a barbarian to run out of rage is to *delay*. Make it so they don't have a hostile target they can get to for one single round, and their rage dies. That should not hard to manage. Just a couple combats where that happens, and you've gone through 4 rages....

While true, it's not necessarily a given that the enemies in a fight will know that. It's definitely one of those things that varies between settings. The party also has ways to mitigate those issues, whether it's the barbarian reaching for a javelin (to little probable effect), or the wizard sending a magic missile over to keep the barbarian focused.

Every time you think, "Well, this has always been better, because the character *never* goes through their resources" that should alert you to the base fact that the GM is challenging their short-term tactics, but not their longer term resource strategy. And that's totally a choice the GM gets to make. But, it is a choice that has repercussions. A GM who has characters with such resources should really push them a bit from time to time.

That assumes the GM is intentionally trying to challenge the players, which is a slippery slope, and I'd really rather not make that assumption. If the GM needs to go out of their way in order to target specific resources, then that can feel antagonistic to a player who was expecting impartiality.

 

[Umbran]

True, it's easier for the wizard to run through their spells than it is for the barbarian to run through their rages, but that's still nothing compared to a paladin. If the wizard does run out of spells, though, then I would still classify that as a preventable mistake that nobody should expect to happen; it's the exception, rather than the rule.

It is only a "mistake" if those spells used were not necessary to a previous encounter, or otherwise saved some other resource you'd rather have. Sure, if you overkill one goblin with a fireball, that's a preventable mistake. But if you are hard pressed to succeed without them, then using them isn't an error. I mean, you don't gain extra XP for having them left over at the end, or something like that.

While true, it's not necessarily a given that the enemies in a fight will know that.

It doesn't have to be an absolute given in every fight. I'm saying that if you want to give a fair shot to everyone in your party, you ought to press each type in heir own way from time to time. Yo dont' punish a player for choices, but if you don't push them, they aren't really challenged, now are they?

And really, the creatures live in the world 24/7 (or however many hours in a day, and days in the week-like unit). They have the full knowledge of the types of things there are in the world as you have knowledge of things in our world - they may not know detailed mechanics, but they'll know general behavior. You have to live a pretty sheltered life to not know what a barbarian or a wizard is in most settings. You may not be able to suss out whether the woman in robes waving her hands and muttering is a wizard, sorcerer or warlock, but you know she's going to sling magic at you and be kind of squishy. And the big guy who isn't wearing armor, but roars and comes running at you with melee weapons, if you backpedal a bit, may not be so hot to engage...

That assumes the GM is intentionally trying to challenge the players, which is a slippery slope, and I'd really rather not make that assumption.

Given that the second sentence in the OP notes this is about challenging games, I find this comment rather out of place - yes, being intentionally challenging *IS* a valid assumption in this thread. We are merely discussing how variable that task can be. If the GM is not trying to challenge the players, then how effective one class is compared to another is entirely irrelevant, and you should stop arguing with me about it.

And the slippery slope business is really out of left field. The GM is present to show the players a good time. Sure, in some games, that doesn't mean presenting them with a mechanical challenge. And, as above, in those games, who is better at what is largely irrelevant! But, if the players want a challenge, then ignoring various ways of doing that is not really serving the purpose of their being at the table. And, if the players want a challenge, then failing to give the gamut of ways of challenging them comes up with *exactly* the issue raised here - some characters will seem to shine, because you aren't challenging them!