D&D 5E Is Tasha's Broken?

[Blue]

But .... it does. Because it's not a problem.

But ... it doesn't. Because you are trying to say "X, Y, Z, when taken together are acceptable" when that isn't the point under discussion.

The point being addressed was "Is X lesser/inefficient/'anemic'". That is pretty trivially shown to be true. You can say "it doesn't need to be efficent because of Y and Z" - that can ALSO be true. But that doesn't make the first part untrue.

Nothing you are saying is wrong. It's just not addressing the question.

 

[Willie the Duck]

Again, though, no one really says "healing" as a whole is anemic in 5e. So it becomes healing in combat is anemic ...

People make a statement, someone (needlessly hostilely) confronts them on it, and they clarify their point. This is not new or unusual or in any way wrong.

I don't know how else to put it. If it was a problem ... as in an actual, real-world problem that many people had, then people would be clamoring and demanding solutions.

But they aren't! There is a reason that almost no one knows about the optional healing surge rule.

Well, one reason is because (all together now) no one reads the DMG.

It is a very common complaint. If you are right that the healing surge rule would make people happy if they knew about it, perhaps that means that there already exists a solution to the problem, but it does not mean that there is no problem.

Mind you, I don't think there is a problem with in-combat healing in general, but I do think that there is an issue with standard action healing rarely being optimal compared to anything else (including helping end the encounter sooner). Healing Word, Aura of Vitality, glamour bard inspiration, Thief Rogue with Healer feat -- all of these are well-regarded, as are spike-healing like Paladin Lay on Hands (only dismissed if a round of attacks is considered too grand to pass up) or Life Cleric Channel Divinity.

 

[CleverNickName]

"Broken" might be an overstatement, but it's definitely fragile. Some of the materials and features in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything are more powerful than the materials in other books, but that's not really a problem unless you intend to highly-optimize them, combine them with specific parts of other materials, and compound everything to deliberately inflate the power curve. A certain style of gameplay, or a certain type of player, can certainly break it nine times 'till Tuesday.

It's like a delicate blown-glass Christmas tree ornament: it's a lovely thing, and nice to have---unless you have a house full of cats.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

But ... it doesn't. Because you are trying to say "X, Y, Z, when taken together are acceptable" when that isn't the point under discussion.

The point being addressed was "Is X lesser/inefficient/'anemic'". That is pretty trivially shown to be true. You can say "it doesn't need to be efficent because of Y and Z" - that can ALSO be true. But that doesn't make the first part untrue.

Nothing you are saying is wrong. It's just not addressing the question.

I think we are simply talking past each other.

For example, I could say, "Sheesh, the armor classes in 5e are anemic. They do a really poor job of allowing people to get really high armor classes in order to not be hit."

For certain values of conversation, that is a trivially true comment.

For other values of conversation, that is a trivially false comment.

Why? Because of course armor classes in 5e aren't particularly important, because that's not how 5e really works.

And of course healing in combat in 5e isn't that important .... because that's not how 5e works. So if someone says, "healing in 5e is anemic" I think that's a weird comment no one would make.

If they were to clarify that to talking about "Oh, I just mean in combat," I still think it's a strange comment ... because of the way that 5e works. shrug

YMMV.

 

[MGibster]

No this assumes that the PR problems around essentialism holds a huge amount of water, and they actually really do.

Whether you personally have a problem with them or not they make a lot of folks uncomfortable. Dealing with the remnants of 19th century racial theories in the game is not worth the headaches it causes, so Wizards is getting rid of them. Moving them to cultural bonuses would have not helped the PR problem around them and in fact probably would make it worse.

I think if anyone has a problem with an eight foot fantasy species being stronger than a three foot fantasy species they're being a bit silly.

 

[RoughCoronet0]

Sure it is.

If you actually got healed for a meaningful chunk of HP, you wouldn't see the "pop up" healing technique. Instead, because in-combat healing is smaller than most incoming attacks, there's never a reason to try to hold onto your HP if you're already super low. If in-combat healing were actually stronger than a single hit, meaning you might actually go a full round without being on the floor again, then there would be a reason to try to hold onto that HP, rather than just gleefully leaping into the fray like so many people dislike.

Making healing be only small amounts actually encourages such behavior. And, of course, people then try to solve it by eliminating in-combat healing entirely, turning it into rocket-tag combat, repeating exactly the same mistakes 3e made.

Yeah, this makes me miss 4e’s healing surges and the mechanics around them. You could do more substantial healing but your ability to heal was limited to how many surges you had access to, which could also be depleted through other means such as environmental hazards and other exhaustion-like effects.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I think if anyone has a problem with an eight foot fantasy species being stronger than a three foot fantasy species they're being a bit silly.

My only two problems are as follows:

1. High Elves don't exclusively listen to Cypress Hill.

2. Elves.

 

[Willie the Duck]

They don't have a subtraction to strength. So a "pocket Hercules" is just as possible with a Halfling as it is for any other race under the old rules that doesn't have a bonus for strength.
If you are using point-buy or rolling, just put your highest attribute into strength (since you can put a lower one into dex anyway and get a +2), and then ASI it. The thing is, with BA, it:
(1) Doesn't make a whole lot of difference; and
(2) It's mostly one of those extreme optimization issues (IMO).
That said, I do have more sympathy to the "stereotyping" objection.

Oh, of course you can. But being able to put the +2 wherever you want makes it easier. Like I said, I'm not a fan of floating ASIs, but for a variety of reasons, it seems that most people online are fans of them for one reason or another including avoiding biological essentialism, allowing player freedom, etc., etc. I don't really care about the biological essentialism argument, but I do find the argument about making the character you want to be compelling. Even if I still don't like floating ASIs. Oddly enough, I was a big fan of them dropping racial penalties.

Perhaps it is a perspective from someone who started with the systems where races didn't give stat boosts (and, let's be honest, the halfling dwarf and human fighters all had gauntlets of ogre power by level 5-6 anyways so it didn't matter as much), but I find that:
1) attribute bonuses are the least interesting thing to give a race to make them distinct anyways,
2) trouble wielding polearms and the like for small races and powerful build for pseudo-big ones are much better ways of making characters feel their size
3) the stats aren't good as demographic indicators anyways
4) halflings and pocket Hercules are used frequently because 'the small guy shouldn't be as strong as the mountain of muscle' is less controversial than, say, Int or Cha; but the game system is built with them all in mind.
5) from AD&D to 3e to 5e-- having a +X to stat, thereby letting said character start the game with a higher level of said attribute (and with higher bonuses to activity) absolutely does tell people what types of characters the game thinks you ought play with a given race. That's not just an optimization issue, it is a communicated norm, and one new players will pick up upon.
For that reason, my preference would be to remove attribute bumps across the board and rebalance around that premise. That probably happens next edition, and this is a quick and dirty substitute that of course doesn't always hit the right notes.

 

[Minigiant]

On the ASI issue, I think the whole issue is the 16 primary score that the PHB and Starter set pushed on players. This limited what PCs were considered good and the tightness of the to hit roll of 5e really made it show.

And due to the lack of fiddly bits, the game before Tasha's pushed stereotypes that the majority of newcomers didn't like.

Basically Suffering from Success.

5e attracted a BUNCH of new fans who don't like stereotypical D&D characters.

 

[Minigiant]

High Elves don't exclusively listen to Cypress Hill.

Yeah.

They throw Method Man, Redman, Snoop and Afroman in the playlist too.