Blog (A5E) Keeping it Classy: Updated Core Classes in Level Up

[Timespike]

I assume that LU has been very careful to avoid broken combos when it comes to players mixing LU material with O5E stuff. That's gotta be hard to do. I can't imagine playtesting every option available crossed with every other option available (in both games). Were there any points where the design team had to really rethink how something worked based on how things combined when you crossed A5E/O5E streams? Do you think there's a plan in place for if/when something unforseen comes up? (I guess errata, but is that the only way to go?)

Playtesting every possible combination would be impossible, even for a titan of a company like WotC. You would need—no joke, no hyperbole—the kind of resources that a company like Disney can throw at a project to even get close. That said, Level Up was playtested a LOT. Way, WAY more than is even normal for a project like this, I gathered. Just not in every conceivable combination. Because you're probably talking billions or trillions of combos there, at least.

That said, fortunately, it's not really necessary to manually account for everything. Fifth edition in general is a much tighter and more difficult to completely break than (for example) third edition was. Bounded accuracy and the proficiency system make it pretty forgiving to design for as long as you understand some key principles such as "this is not an edition that runs on static bonuses." There's this notion out there that game balance is this incredibly fragile thing and it's very easy to utterly destroy it without realizing it. That's much more true for some systems than others, and once a system is mature (like 5E is) there's usually a pretty good sense of how much of a problem that is. Fortunately, as I indicated above, the answer for 5E is "it's actually pretty solid." Now, is there utterly broken stuff out there on D&Dwiki, etc? Absolutely! But reputable RPG companies and even a lot of small-time individual designers, have done a pretty good job of not making broken nonsense.

Third edition had Pun-Pun. Fifth Edition had the coffeelock, which, while still a headache, is orders of magnitude less severe. Pun-Pun was a 5th-level Kobold that could literally rewrite a setting it was so powerful. The coffeelock just gets way more spell slots than it's supposed to.

If you want to ensure that you don't get broken combos in 5E, you need to basically keep classes from getting way more of some critical resource than they're supposed to (sorcadin, coffeelock, and the infamous Vengeance paladin/Hexblade combo) or breaking the action economy (various Action Surge cheese). Those fixes alone cut off the vast majority of exploits.

From what I gathered, the tricky part wasn't so much in correcting the broken combos, it came from making sure that there wasn't an over-correction in the other direction (for example, the new way Divine Smite works originally required a bonus action in addition to the other changes, which was something that got corrected based on playtest feedback - moderately hard) and that the new versions of the classes still felt right (MUCH harder, and why you want a skilled design team!). I imagine the folks working on the maneuver system had to do some pretty significant work to make sure that didn't break anything, though!

The one thing that you SHOULD NOT allow, though, is multiclassing between an O5E class and the corresponding one from A5E. So fighter/fighter, herald/paladin, etc.

 

[Faolyn]

Hmm.

Then that makes Instinctive Counterattack make even less sense. It costs 2 exertion points, but its effect is: "When your exertion pool is not empty, you can use your reaction to make a melee weapon attack."

Really? I’d have to go and check, but that sounds like they can make the attack as long as they have any exertion left after spending those two points. But I’m not at my computer right now to check.

 

[Garthanos]

Really? I’d have to go and check, but that sounds like they can make the attack as long as they have any exertion left after spending those two points. But I’m not at my computer right now to check.

Is it a stance that costs 2 to enter perhaps?

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Is it a stance that costs 2 to enter perhaps?

That's how I read it, but it's not particularly clear.

Playtesting every possible combination would be impossible, even for a titan of a company like WotC. You would need—no joke, no hyperbole—the kind of resources that a company like Disney can throw at a project to even get close. That said, Level Up was playtested a LOT. Way, WAY more than is even normal for a project like this, I gathered. Just not in every conceivable combination. Because you're probably talking billions or trillions of combos there, at least.

That said, fortunately, it's not really necessary to manually account for everything. Fifth edition in general is a much tighter and more difficult to completely break than (for example) third edition was.

Sure. I'm generally less worried about broken combos than the LU design team clearly was. It just occurred to me that while LU specifically targeted the worst O5E cheese to fix, they may inadvertently make new ones. I guess time will tell.

The one thing that you SHOULD NOT allow, though, is multiclassing between an O5E class and the corresponding one from A5E. So fighter/fighter, herald/paladin, etc.

Yikes! No, I would never do that. Thanks for the response!

 

[Sword of Spirit]

Is it a stance that costs 2 to enter perhaps?

If it is, the (stance) notation others have got left out.

 

[VanguardHero]

Fifth edition in general is a much tighter and more difficult to completely break than (for example) third edition was.

Powergaming is just on entirely different scales between them. The ceiling is lower, true, but it's also a lot easier to stumble into it. F to the Four Elements Monk in a party with a Chronurgist Wizard, or a Bladesinger Wizard, or...any Wizard really, even one who decided just not to take a Subclass. The sheer versatility that making o5e 'Accessible' gave to casters while simultaneously gutting Martials of anything effective or interesting made the balance feel worse, because it was a lot more likely to come up accidentally. "Neo-Vancian" casting removed the preparedness from prepared casters while Ritual Casting lets them save nearly all slots for combat means a smart Wizard preps Fireball and Lightning Bolt, intentionally overpowered spells, is covered for combat, and then useful utility spells. Wizards can cast Fly and negate the usefulness of anyone who specializes in Acrobatics, Druids can cast Pass Without Trace and make anyone specialized in Stealth redundant, higher level slot but same for Telekinesis and Athletics. That's 3 of the 4 Skills Martials get the stats for just replaced by a single spell each. None of those are obscure weird combos, they are just spells a new player can look at and go "Ooh that looks useful". Which is, on the whole, much more problematic than clearly bad faith broken builds in 3.5 where you can shut it down by having Zehir spontaneously appear before Pun-Pun says his second "Pazuzu", or before the Wizard finishes compiling all the components for Locate City Bomb.

I see this being less of a problem in Level Up since all Martials benefit a lot from Short Rests, especially Fighter and Adept, which hopefully means standard play leans more towards the Adventuring Day of 6-8 combats that o5e Casters were actually designed for.

 

[Timespike]

Powergaming is just on entirely different scales between them. The ceiling is lower, true, but it's also a lot easier to stumble into it. F to the Four Elements Monk in a party with a Chronurgist Wizard, or a Bladesinger Wizard, or...any Wizard really, even one who decided just not to take a Subclass. The sheer versatility that making o5e 'Accessible' gave to casters while simultaneously gutting Martials of anything effective or interesting made the balance feel worse, because it was a lot more likely to come up accidentally. "Neo-Vancian" casting removed the preparedness from prepared casters while Ritual Casting lets them save nearly all slots for combat means a smart Wizard preps Fireball and Lightning Bolt, intentionally overpowered spells, is covered for combat, and then useful utility spells. Wizards can cast Fly and negate the usefulness of anyone who specializes in Acrobatics, Druids can cast Pass Without Trace and make anyone specialized in Stealth redundant, higher level slot but same for Telekinesis and Athletics. That's 3 of the 4 Skills Martials get the stats for just replaced by a single spell each. None of those are obscure weird combos, they are just spells a new player can look at and go "Ooh that looks useful". Which is, on the whole, much more problematic than clearly bad faith broken builds in 3.5 where you can shut it down by having Zehir spontaneously appear before Pun-Pun says his second "Pazuzu", or before the Wizard finishes compiling all the components for Locate City Bomb.

I see this being less of a problem in Level Up since all Martials benefit a lot from Short Rests, especially Fighter and Adept, which hopefully means standard play leans more towards the Adventuring Day of 6-8 combats that o5e Casters were actually designed for.

I know I keep beating this drum too, but the maneuver system also helps there. "Stuff to do" often == "mechanical relevance."

 

[tetrasodium]

Powergaming is just on entirely different scales between them. The ceiling is lower, true, but it's also a lot easier to stumble into it. F to the Four Elements Monk in a party with a Chronurgist Wizard, or a Bladesinger Wizard, or...any Wizard really, even one who decided just not to take a Subclass. The sheer versatility that making o5e 'Accessible' gave to casters while simultaneously gutting Martials of anything effective or interesting made the balance feel worse, because it was a lot more likely to come up accidentally. "Neo-Vancian" casting removed the preparedness from prepared casters while Ritual Casting lets them save nearly all slots for combat means a smart Wizard preps Fireball and Lightning Bolt, intentionally overpowered spells, is covered for combat, and then useful utility spells. Wizards can cast Fly and negate the usefulness of anyone who specializes in Acrobatics, Druids can cast Pass Without Trace and make anyone specialized in Stealth redundant, higher level slot but same for Telekinesis and Athletics. That's 3 of the 4 Skills Martials get the stats for just replaced by a single spell each. None of those are obscure weird combos, they are just spells a new player can look at and go "Ooh that looks useful". Which is, on the whole, much more problematic than clearly bad faith broken builds in 3.5 where you can shut it down by having Zehir spontaneously appear before Pun-Pun says his second "Pazuzu", or before the Wizard finishes compiling all the components for Locate City Bomb.

I see this being less of a problem in Level Up since all Martials benefit a lot from Short Rests, especially Fighter and Adept, which hopefully means standard play leans more towards the Adventuring Day of 6-8 combats that o5e Casters were actually designed for.

Indeed. Even the most ardent 3.5 defenders would admit that it was possible to go too far and cross a line into bad faith munchkin with charop, but in o5e the bar to cross that line is so trivial to meet thst players almost need to make an effort in order to cross that line &can usually do it with one completely obvious choice.

Back in 3.5 I saw people try making some of those crazy builds with names or going wild with CoDzilla from time to time but there were almost always easy & often obvious ways to block the attempt or just diffuse the problem. In o5e there is very little if any GM cooperation needed & players dont need magic items a gm can use to subtly pushback with while any boons granted to lift others are almost certain to create a new problem in a system that was already tearing beyond design expectations with just the boon itself

 

[VanguardHero]

I know I keep beating this drum too, but the maneuver system also helps there. "Stuff to do" often == "mechanical relevance."

Oh, absolutely. Everything I've seen about Martials has me super excited. I've got pretty much nothing nice to say about o5e aside from the people it brought into the hobby. I'd be pleased if Level Up was just o5e but slightly to the left that I could play with them with no money going to WotC. But so much effort and love has gone into it that it's a system I'm legitimately excited for, pretty much all of my complaints have been addressed and the ones that are left are ultimately minor and would be difficult to fix without breaking backwards compatibility. It is miraculously impressive

 

[Garthanos]

Well, it should be noted that there are a lot of maneuvers that effectively grant extra attacks.

They seem to cost 2 exertion points (a few with extra seem to cost 3), and the action surge gets one 1 extra attack and by end game 8.