D&D 5E Game design allow sub optimal class build. Confirmed by M Mearls

[Plaguescarred]

This reminds me of 4E DM forcing all roles coverage unecessarily!!

To me a good DM doesn't punish his PCs or the players for not having a cleric in play but instead provides access to healing in some ways (potions, scrolls, magic items, NPC healer erc) or adjust encounters accordingly. The goal of the game is to have fun , which should be independant of any party balance or role assumptions. Forcing someone to play something it doesn't want is anything but fun.

 

[Yunru]

If the party needs a healer that badly, stick them with an NPC cleric. It also gives them a squishy to protect.

 

[Zardnaar]

What's wrong with a cleric that doesn't heal? The cleric domains are pretty good at not needing to be healers. Not they best, but I wouldn't shame a player for doing so. The 12 STR fighter isn't all that far behind either. If you talk to them, see if they'll be reasonable enough to bump it to 13, so they can use chain effectively. Or, they can wear the chain anyway. The penalty's only 10 feet of movement, or they might be a dwarf, so it's fairly reasonable to wear chain with low STR if you plan on being the one who's blocking tight corridors, rather than the one doing the damage.



I think this one needs a bit more story. Did you at least talk to the player in question before building around them doing this, or did you merely assume they'd be the healer? Did you talk to them afterwards to see why they decided they didn't want to be the healer?



I don't agree entirely. D&D is a team based game, but a player shouldn't feel like they need to be a certain concept they don't want to play, simply because of peer pressure. Instead everyone should look at what they want to do, then see what holes aren't filled, then adjust as necessary. Sometimes a hole isn't nearly as big as initially suspected.

I know my own group has been able to accomplish the "healer" role with just potions of healing. Was it efficient? Not really, but that's more because initiative screwed everyone over, which wouldn't have been solved by a dedicated healer.

Yes no one else took the healer thing because that player was expected to and was initially happy to do so but changed her mind later. That party got TPKed in HotDQ anyway due to a lack of healing.

You do not have to be superman but if you are sucking to the extent you are by default undermining the party there is something wrong.

We generally do pre published adventures which are often on the east side anyway. You do not need to be a DPS machine and we use feat but you could just take stat buffs and do OK.

 

[Zardnaar]

This reminds me of 4E DM forcing all roles coverage unecessarily!!

To me a good DM doesn't punish his PCs or the players for not having a cleric in play but instead provides access to healing in some ways (potions, scrolls, magic items, NPC healer erc) or adjust encounters accordingly. The goal of the game is to have fun , which should be independant of any party balance or role assumptions. Forcing someone to play something it doesn't want is anything but fun.

I do not go out of my way to punish them but as I said I use prepublished adventures.

We tried PotA in a party with 3 arcanists no healer did not work out so well and the start of HotDQ is kind of brutal in act 1.

I am also kind of old school, I won't go out of my way to kill PCs but if you do stupid crap I will kill you if that stupidity results in your death.

 

[OB1]

It's relevant to encounter building, and it partially explains why the encounter building guidelines fail at higher levels. As I said in the UA thread, I have to throw Deadly x4 encounters at my high-level group to even remotely challenge them. Now we know why. The math doesn't assume that characters take optimal ASIs or feats. This isn't important at levels 1-3, when there are so few opportunities for optimization, but as you gain levels, the difference only grows. So the math works for all play-styles to begin with, but it slowly falls apart as different play-styles lead to wildly divergent power-levels.

If you take feats and ASIs to make you more effective at combat, how is the game failing by combats then becoming easier? And if you focus on that your entire career, why wouldn't you expect to be much better at combat than someone who didn't?

Similarly, if you arrange your stats to be under the assumed math (i.e. +2 in prime and secondary stats as defined in the quick builds) you will be less effective in using your primary set of abilities, which would also be true if you rolled for stats and ended up with a complete set of low numbers. But I don't see how that is necessarily disruptive any more than someone who optimizes for combat is disruptive. Both are building towards a character concept, and as long as they are committed to engaging with the narrative and not harming other PCs, it can be a fun and rewarding challenge.

A Half Orc Fiend Bladlock Hermit with 8 charisma but 16 Str and Con kicked out of his home at a young age who turned to an agent of Grumsh to survive could be incredibly effective. As could the High Elf Wizard Noble from a prominent family of wizards who has a 9 INT but 15 Str and 14 Con and struggles with spells but is committed to becoming a great wizard to please her mother even as she secretly studies to become a better with longsword and shield in her off time.

To [MENTION=93444]shidaku[/MENTION] earlier post, Optimizing can mean so much more than optimizing for combat. It can (and should IMO) be about optimizing your vision for the character in a way that is interesting and fun for all at the table to help create tales of bold adventurers facing deadly perils.

 

[Plaguescarred]

I do not go out of my way to punish them but as I said I use prepublished adventures.

We tried PotA in a party with 3 arcanists no healer did not work out so well and the start of HotDQ is kind of brutal in act 1.

I am also kind of old school, I won't go out of my way to kill PCs but if you do stupid crap I will kill you if that stupidity results in your death.

You can use published adventures and still put in your campaign anything you want you know it's not like a WoTC task force is gonna come kick you door down and take it away if you do! Shifting the blame on the adventure is futile you're the DM in charge of your campaign afterall so it's up to you to make it work!

 

[flametitan]

misread, my bad.

When in HotDQ did you TPK?

 

[Dausuul]

I don't have a problem with un-optimized PCs, per se. I do have a problem when there's a big gap between PCs in the same party. Fights that are fun and challenging for the optimized PC tend to leave the un-optimized PC struggling to stay relevant or even conscious.

Fortunately, because 5E has no explicit wealth-by-level guidelines, a DM who notices this issue can address it with a few carefully planted magic items to bring the un-optimized PCs closer to par. (It is, however, wise to pull the players of the optimized PCs aside and explain what you're doing and why.)

 

[Maxperson]

Aye. 3e wasn't designed around optimization, either. We ruined it by thinking it was.

Yep. Suboptimal worked great in 3e.

 

[OB1]

I do not go out of my way to punish them but as I said I use prepublished adventures.

We tried PotA in a party with 3 arcanists no healer did not work out so well and the start of HotDQ is kind of brutal in act 1.

I am also kind of old school, I won't go out of my way to kill PCs but if you do stupid crap I will kill you if that stupidity results in your death.

Yeah, I think the APs are definitely built with Fighter, Thief, Wizard, Cleric in mind, and with new players, not having those bases covered in some way could get deadly, but failure is a great teacher!

I'd love to see HotDQ taken on with a party of 5 monks from the 5 different schools exactly as written. Would make for a fun challenge I think.