D&D 5E New D&D WotC survey! On classes.

[Faolyn]

I will consider this exercise a success if @Blue, @Ruin Explorer, and @Snarf Zagyg can all agree that the Bard I create is one they would enjoy playing, even if only for a one-shot.

I'm pretty sure Snarf would rather swallow a handful of d4s than admit that a bard could be enjoyable for more than dragon fodder.

 

[Neonchameleon]

And this is exactly why my main trope as a poster here on EN World is always talking about why this focus on the miniatures board game that so many people have is inevitably resulting in a detriment to their own enjoyment. And if they could only come at the game much more focused on the narrative (with combat mechanics just being one smaller facet of their PC) they'd be much happier. But it requires them to literally change how they think.

And those of us who actually like emergent narratives find that 4e is the best version of D&D and 5e is vastly inferior at this. You don't spend much less time on combat and tactics in 5e than 4e. You simply have much more of a pre-canned sequence of events and much less of an emergent narrative that reflects the people involved and the choices they make. Deciding that the choices people make (like flanking) shouldn't do anything and you shouldn't interact with the environment is the opposite of narrative. It's simply letting cookie-cutter abilities unfold against cookie-cutter abilities until the inevitable end. And partial success mechanics (like skill challenges) have far more interesting and flexible narratives.

But actually liking unfolding and unpredictable narratives that can be changed by the environment and don't end where expected would require changing how you think.

But the fact is that if people keep coming up with the same "build" for any one class... it's because they have decided that there's only one way the game mechanics should be run to have a "good" or "standard" character. As @Scribe says, the game has been "solved" for a good many characters and classes.

On this we can agree.

Which is why I think everyone would be a heck of a lot happier if they just stopped worrying about the board game and how well they can do "in combat" and instead just created the characters they wanted purely from a narrative perspective and then played into that narrative when combat started.

So everyone would be happier if they didn't play characters who cared that much about survival because they knew it was a given? There's nothing wrong with that but D&D is a hacked tabletop wargame, right from the start.

If you don't care whether you have the skills to survive in the setting it's because you don't care about the narrative.

Because then you could play your cool Monk concept that wasn't just focused on the end-all-and-be-all of white room DPR.

Believe it or not I do this. And I enjoyed my Shadow Monk. But my monk was good enough that he could contribute significantly to the party rather than being something dragging them down that they need to rescue.

There's a huge difference between caring whether you are razer-optimised and caring whether you are a valuable member of the team.

Or you could play a Beastmaster Ranger and enjoy the roleplaying that comes with a favored pet, knowing that the DM wasn't going to intentionally gun straight for the animal because it was the "optimal combat choice" for them to make.

In other words you can play a beastmaster ranger if and only if the DM decides not to roleplay the bad guys ever going for your pet. The pet only has melee attacks and worse survivability than a wizard who uses almost no defensive spells.

At this point the narrative becomes "the animal companion has a mystical aura protecting them even from the regular risks of being a party member".

Or you could play any one of the various subclasses in the game because their stories were really cool, even though they weren't "as good" in combat as another.

Unfortunately, I know quite well I'm barking at the moon when I say all this though.

Indeed. Because you seem to want "narrative" to take out all the uncertainty. I want to play to see what happens and get an emergent narrative that surprises everything. Not have the GM force everything and have long drawn out combats where nothing is surprising and everything is force-balanced to work.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I'm pretty sure Snarf would rather swallow a handful of d4s than admit that a bard could be enjoyable for more than dragon fodder.

If you slather them with enough Horsey Sauce, they slide right on down!

 

[Bolares]

You can take my rapier out of my cold dead hands simply because it's the highest-damage Finesse melee weapon! I'd love it if there were more valid options there but 5E is absolute bloody terrible for valid weapon options for people who don't use STR!

Yeah, and that says more about the 5e weapons table than about the bard IMHO

 

[CleverNickName]

I want in on this. I'll have a submission by tomorrow.

Tomorrow?! By the Light, I'll be lucky to have mine by the end of the month. This is harder than I expected.

 

[Faolyn]

Tomorrow?! By the Light, I'll be lucky to have mine by the end of the month. This is harder than I expected.

What are you finding difficult?

 

[CleverNickName]

What are you finding difficult?

Effectiveness, mostly. The class all but requires a maxed-out Charisma and Dexterity, or patches from other sourcebooks, to be able to keep up with other classes.

But I'm not giving up just yet.

 

[Bolares]

If you slather them with enough Horsey Sauce, they slide right on down!

I'm kind of afraid to ask what's a "horsey sauce"...

 

[R_J_K75]

Tomorrow?! By the Light, I'll be lucky to have mine by the end of the month. This is harder than I expected.

Yeah when I made my last character to play it took me the better part of a day. I have a pretty good idea of what Im going to make so it should go quick but I usually change my mind a few times as the character develops.

 

[Bolares]

Effectiveness, mostly. The class all but requires a maxed-out Charisma and Dexterity to keep up with other classes, all else being equal.

But I'm not giving up just yet.

I don't get the definition of "keep up with other classes". Keep up with what? damage? spell progression? effectiveness? Even with a +2 to dexterity (or less) you are still a full caster. Full caster will always be effective.