D&D General Hot Take: D&D Has Not Recovered From 2E to 3.0 Transition

[tetrasodium]

I've seen a Banishment TPK as well, you target the Barbarian and the Fighter with their +0 to Charisma save, then the rest of the group is screwed.

Fighters and Barbarians get Con and Str, former is great, latter is mostly useless. They're basically required to get Resilient Wisdom to not get easily mind controlled or paralyzed all the time, but it still leaves Charisma and Intelligence, both likely very low saves for them. Those aren't as prevalent, but it's pretty easy to load up on them, especially Int got some great choices lately.

I have a Wizard at high level as well, started with Wis and Int, two good to have, but he had to take Resilient Con for concentration and all the nasty con saves. Still leaves Dex, that he can deal with most of the time, and Charisma at -1, which will easily annihilate him if any enemy ever bothers to target that.

are you suggesting that it's unreasonable for a character class to have any in combat weaknesses? Superman & the like are not really a good model for a d&d PC.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

That's 10% (or 25%) each round. I assume that at least one of these encounters went a minimum of 10 rounds since the character was perma-banished. Meaning that, with a save every round the 10% guy has a 65% chance of making a successful save before the effect becomes permanent. And that's not counting the possibility of their allies disrupting concentration.

For the guy with a 25% chance, it's actually a 94% chance of eventually making the save.

So, yeah, it's a pretty big difference compared to a single 10 or 25% pass/fail save.

Oh I'm not saying it wont make ANY difference, and I (so far but I have not tried it in play) like the new change... but it is still a big screw you to banish a character even for a few rounds (most fights don't last 5 turns let alone 10)

 

[Zubatcarteira]

are you suggesting that it's unreasonable for a character class to have any in combat weaknesses? Superman & the like are not really a good model for a d&d PC.

A weakness that makes you instantly useless if any enemy bothers to target it, yeah, not great.

It's like Superman's Kryptonite, sometimes it instantly depowers him to human level and makes him useless, other times it just weakens him enough that weaker supervillains can face him, but he still has his powers, and he can resist it without enough willpower. The former isn't great for game balance.

Edit: Goes both ways as well, lots of powerful monsters can get annihilated by one spell due to bad saves, and they don't all get LR.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Oh I'm not saying it wont make ANY difference, and I (so far but I have not tried it in play) like the new change... but it is still a big screw you to banish a character even for a few rounds (most fights don't last 5 turns let alone 10)

I'd say if it happens regularly it could be seen that way. If it's only an occasional thing, then not that big a deal. Sometimes characters get taken out of a fight. You get knocked off a high ledge in round 1 and have to spend the rest of the fight climbing back. Or you take a high damage crit in round 1, and no one can heal you. Or you get banished and can't make the save.

It's not much different from a scene that my character isn't around for, or I'm not interested in participating in. I wouldn't call that a "big screw you" either. Sometimes, whether by choice or bad luck, you can't participate for a while. It happens.

 

[Garthanos]

You're overlooking all of the other ways that 3.x had to boost those numbers beyond the bounds of class, such as feats, magic items, etc. For the most part, those don't exist in 5e.

As I expected really. And you might have a total divergence between all the 3 NADs of 2pts in 4e, if you
invest in properly balanced defense.

For most of its run, 4e was making stupendous amounts of money from DDi even if it did not sell a single book.

They made plenty that way from me , but I am also one of those with a near full book collection.

This is (of course) not remotely true. But ironically it is pretty close to true that it is the eleventh edition (it is actually ninth or tenth, depending on whether you consider RC to be a separate edition - I don't FWIW, I consider it repackaging/revised core of BECM).
You appear to be assuming "stat" is a constant across the whole table, and it really really isn't.

Indeed not accounting for that stat is deceptive ( in 3e its just 3 stats that need TLC in 4e it is even easier because keeping 1 member of 3 pair of stats higher is much easier than all 6, as 3 is much more amenable to improvement by feat or magic item etc)

 

[Redwizard007]

in that case you have never seen a creature use Banishment on someone that dumped or even just passibled there Cha score.

twice in 1 campagain we had a cha 15 (far from dump) get banished round 1 for an entire fight... by the way it was our Barbarian (and main damage dealer). 1 of those two we were not on prime and as such it derailed the entire campaign as we had to go back home find him get him just to keep going with the adventure.

There are some major problems with that scenario.

First, How many monsters actually cast Banishment? Death Knight, Arcanaloth, Undying Councilor, Archmage, and maybe a handful I missed. Probably less than a dozen evil creatures total across every source book. If we aren't fighting celestials than that's really about it.

Edit: just saw your campaign premise. 13 Death Knights is a bad, bad day, but they only get a +5 to CON saves. End Edit.

Second, forcing concentration saves. Every. Single. Time. A caster takes damage they must make a DC10, or higher saving throw to maintain concentration. That may only be a 25%ish chance to lose the spell, but it happens multiple times every round.

Third, the range is only 60', so we don't need to worry about him targeting the Wizard, Rogue, or Ranger.

Fourth, Charisma is a common save proficiency. Clerics, Warlocks, Sorcerers, Bards, Monks (level dependant,) and Paladins are making this saving throw more often than not (+8 here vs a DC16 is 65% unbuffed, and those are conservative bonuses and targets for a lvl 10 PC.) The rest will have issues, but if a paladin is fighting alongside the vulnerable frontliners, the save chance increases to somewhere between 30 and 35%. Not great, but certainly good enough to risk for a couple rounds.

On top of all that, we have spells like Bless to buff saves, things like Bane to debuff them. Each throwing another 5-20% on the table.

 

[tetrasodium]

A weakness that makes you instantly useless if any enemy bothers to target it, yeah, not great.

It's like Superman's Kryptonite, sometimes it instantly depowers him to human level and makes him useless, other times it just weakens him enough that weaker supervillains can face him, but he still has his powers, and he can resist it without enough willpower. The former isn't great for game balance.

Edit: Goes both ways as well, lots of powerful monsters can get annihilated by one spell due to bad saves, and they don't all get LR.

I think you have unreasonably high expectations of risk mitigation & I would extend that to squishier classes that are made too durable with 5e's reliance on things like death saves+helpless monsters shackled under bounded accuracy.

 

[Zubatcarteira]

I think you have unreasonably high expectations of risk mitigation & I would extend that to squishier classes that are made too durable with 5e's reliance on things like death saves+helpless monsters shackled under bounded accuracy.

They are usually very durable, especially a tier 4, but they end up pretty much like Superman, extremely mighty head on, but with the clear weaknesses that can easily beat them, like Magic, Kryptonite or Red Sun Radiation, it's just locked away on the kinds of monsters that can target those weaknesses, which aren't many due to a lot just being a brick with a multiattack, but the ones that can will mess you up disporprotionally.

Doesn't help that 5e is full of hard CC that can take away multiple turns on failed saves, you throw a Banishment against a CR 20 Nightwalker, and the thing is gone with no hope unless it has friends left to attack the caster. With monsters you can at least cheat by giving homebrew save proficiencies and LRs, but players are in a really bad spot.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

First, How many monsters actually cast Banishment? Death Knight, Arcanaloth, Undying Councilor, Archmage, and maybe a handful I missed. Probably less than a dozen evil creatures total across every source book. If we aren't fighting celestials than that's really about it.

yeah plus any monster with spell slots... I mean it is one of the most common cross over spells in the game.

Edit: just saw your campaign premise. 13 Death Knights is a bad, bad day, but they only get a +5 to CON saves. End Edit.

yeah, 13 death knights that rode out of the dark tower every 13 years and game started "it has been just shy of 12 years since the last assault" wasn't a bad bad day as much as a bad bad year and ahlf campaign

Third, the range is only 60', so we don't need to worry about him targeting the Wizard, Rogue, or Ranger.

wait in what world do most of your encounters start more then 60ft away?

Fourth, Charisma is a common save proficiency. Clerics, Warlocks, Sorcerers, Bards, Monks (level dependant,) and Paladins are making this saving throw more often than not (+8 here vs a DC16 is 65% unbuffed, and those are conservative bonuses and targets for a lvl 10 PC.) The rest will have issues, but if a paladin is fighting alongside the vulnerable frontliners, the save chance increases to somewhere between 30 and 35%. Not great, but certainly good enough to risk for a couple rounds.

Cleric warlock sorcerer and bard are all full casters (and some of them can counterspell too) so again target melee characters without prof is the best.

On top of all that, we have spells like Bless to buff saves, things like Bane to debuff them. Each throwing another 5-20% on the table.

I don't know how bane helps with saves, but in general I don't count on bless for every encounter.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

Yeah can depend on cheese as well.

DCs are 10+spell level+ ability score though in 3E.

Plus School Specialization. Plus Spell Focus. Plus competency bonus you scrounged from a sourcebook. Plus some sacred bonus you scrounged from another splat. Plus a bunch of random untyped bonuses that stack. Plus a balanced breakfast bonus from the halfling's Pancake Flipper feat. Is it nighttime? Another +2 from my Starlight Starmight feat. Plus... /barf

The spreadsheet edition was truly terrible IMO because of all the stacking crap. The caster only has to pump their DC's. The defender has to pump three saves, AC, and still have build resources for actually doing their role.