D&D 5E It is OK for a class to be the worst

[BookBarbarian]

Huh. Maybe that's what I've been doing wrong all along. Rational decisions? Radical!

If wanting to fight Dragons rather than every town guard and local magistrate is radical I'll take it!

 

[Marandahir]

Not quite. It is one UA Ranger feature option, Tireless, that removes a level of exhaustion with every short rest. It can be taken at Lv. 1, thus making Ranger a way-too-attractive dip for a Berserker Barbarian.

(Tireless itself is OK if taken after 6 Ranger levels, so that's what the change should be when it goes to print, IMO.)

I believe a lot of people were saying lock in when the Ranger gets these features (give Tireless a bit later). I also heard at the time a lot of feedback suggesting that those features should be a bit more varied or have more choices, or be locked to certain levels but have options at each - like at 1st you get Canny OR Roving, and then at 6th, you can choose Tireless or the one you didn't choose at 1st, and then at 10th you get the remaining one.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

If wanting to fight Dragons rather than every town guard and local magistrate radical I'll take it!

Yeah like #blessed etc. because my main group don't and never have liked to start fights with random NPCs or get into brawls with the town guard or just murder people or anything. I mean, most of them play N characters, but they've better behaved than most G parties I've seen (just harder to motivate).

 

[Maxperson]

I'm not up on my acronyms. What does THP stand for?

 

[Lanefan]

Absolutely. It does depend. Dungeon is full of short adventures with pretty obvious climaxes. A number of 1E adventures I have in collections are similar. But my AP-type ones, whether they're Dragon Mountain in 2E, or the scary worm one (forget name) in 3E/PF, or stuff like the Dragonlords in 5E? Those don't have that, not as obviously and not as reliably daily in shape. And homebrew stuff, which apparently is 60% of people who are playing? That's even less fitted to that model.

So maybe you guess wrong sometimes and rage at a non-optimal moment.

So what? Them's the breaks.

No sympathy here, sorry.

 

[NotAYakk]

Yeah, intimidating presence, is like Frenzy, a theoretically awesome ability that falls short in execution. The ability to frighten a target at range - awesome. The fact that it's keyed off charisma (which, at best, is likely 4th on the list and as often as not actually imposes a minus) makes it near useless. Compare to zealous presence, which is awesome, and amazingly useful.

edit: as a quick and easy fix for intimidating presence - I allow it to be based on strength, which works much better.

Make intimidating presence be a bonus action.

For Frenzy:

If you do so, for the duration of your rage you can make a single melee weapon attack as a bonus action on each of your turns after this one, and you can make a single melee weapon attack as part of the action to enter rage.

(Ie, give them an attack when they enter rage).

This causes bonus action contention, which I'm ok with. Intimidating Presence is something you can spam while not Frenzied every round.

---

Although, I'd rather rework the path. It is too much "this is how you fight" not "this is your story" or "this is where your power comes from".

I find subclasses that are "this is how you fight" are overly one-dimensional.

Not all "story" subclasses have the meat they could have, but every "fighting style" subclass seems to lack that meat.

 

[Aldarc]

I'm not up on my acronyms. What does THP stand for?

Temporary HP.

 

[Maxperson]

Temporary HP.

Thanks!

 

[Undrave]

I'm not up on my acronyms. What does THP stand for?

Temporary Hit Points.

 

[Lanefan]

Tossed Hot Potato?

No? How about...

Toronto Has Potential?

[Ollivander] Nope, no, definitely not. Alright, let's try...

Tangerine Hotel Platypus.

Doesn't make sense, does it? Right, then...erm...aha! Got it!

Totally Happy Person!