I’m out. Y’all have fun. I’m just not comfortable jumping into a game where I’m going to have to assume the spells don’t work as intended, or with the threat that they can be changed or taken simply because I won an encounter.
An understandable attitude. I'm sad, because your character sounded cool; maybe when I'm a more experienced GM I'll be down for having optimizers at your level in my games. I will continue to respond to the rest of your message, and the previous one, just in case you're still following, and for the benefit of other players. Feel free to read along, or not, as you prefer.
You shouldn’t have to approve ANY Wild Shape form or spell that’s in the Players Handbook.
The Player's Handbook is an incredibly flawed document. Wild Shape is OP as all hell and it always has been; that said, I don't want to just ban druids, because many of those who play Druids (or Wizards or any other "problem" class) are just looking to live up to a cool archetype from fantasy literature, not specifically to try and wring every possible iota of efficiency out of a build, so that they can "beat the game", as though D&D was a game that you "win" by being able to defeat any combat encounter as quickly as possible and at the lowest possible resource cost. D&D is NOT that game, and every single person who treats it as being that kind of a game, whether they're a DM trying to TPK their players or a PC trying to solo the Tarrasque, is Doing It Wrong. D&D is a game about drama and fun; losing can be a better source of drama than winning, and fun is decreased when one player dominates the game constantly because their character is more effective than all the others combined.
That’s my point in all this. Why do I get nerfed because I use my resources? If CR is being easily beaten, then up the CR.
I'm running a published adventure. If the text calls for you to be attacked by five CR 2 Merrows, I don't particularly want to have to replace them all with CR 10 Aboleths just because that's the only way to defeat some incredibly-broken character. (Particularly given that this battle is taking place in FR equivalent of the Arctic Ocean, and Aboleths are only supposed to dwell in underground seas and maybe the deepest darkest depths of the oceans, probably closer to the tropics.)
This is an annoying case of the term meaning different things in different editions. I'll have to struggle to remember this 5E definition of "tier", which loosely lines up with the concept of "hero/paragon/epic" that we saw in 4E; they called it "tier" there too, but this was a poor choice on their part, since "epic" had already existed in 3E and nobody called it a "tier" then. Instead, the 3E community referred to the "tier" of specific character classes (wizards being higher tier than fighters, as the most obvious example), rather than all classes but only for certain levels thereof. The latter definition is more familiar to me, and I'll need to work really hard to keep this one in mind as I continue here.
Tier 1 is for relatively new adventurers, sometimes even apprentices, as shown by the fact that many don’t even have their subclass yet. Dangers are usually simple. Goblins, kobalds, an occasional Orc or something bigger. But the threat of a Critical Hit killing a player is real, as is being ambushed while resting. Watches have to be kept, etc.
Just because those threats are present at Tier 1 doesn't mean they should never been seen thereafter. This game is starting at level 6, which is only a little past that. Also, having nothing but "goblins, kobolds, an occasional orc or something" as enemies is boring. Mythology is full of tales where a weak but clever individual defeats a dragon or giant or something; this can be handled to a degree by fiat, since the rules aren't well constructed to handle such situations, but you can also play by the rules up to a point, while still keeping the spirit of these stories in mind. Instead of just fiatting that the giant definitely squashes Jack if he fails his Bluff check, you can actually roll the damage to see whether Jack luckily survives the blow, at which point perhaps the giant assumes he's dead and wanders off, and the barely-alive Jack has another great story to tell back at the in, despite the fact that he had no chance to actually win that encounter, and the CR system says he shouldn't even have tried. Really, CR is an idea which was so poorly-executed that it's basically worthless as-written; the idea is a good one, but the numbers Wotco has assigned have NEVER lined up with what the community settles on for a significant number of both monsters and PCs.
Lvls 5-10 are Tier 2, and they are much stronger. Lvl 5 is a big power boost for all involved. Combat classes get their second attack per turn, while castors get access to 3rd lvl spells, which are potent, much more so than lvl 2 spells, which are mostly utility. Those problems that Tier 1 characters have aren’t problems.
All of this is a view which neither I nor the game's designers share. This is solely based on your reading of those spells, which strikes me as an overly-strict "letter of the law" interpretation which completely ignores the "spirit of the law". When you play a cleric, you don't cast Hold Person because you want your party's Rogue to Sneak Attack the victim while he's paralyzed; the fact that D&D players immediately jump to that solution is a function of their "murderhobo" mindset, and completely overlooks the fact that the cleric was given such an incredibly powerful
nonlethal spell, specifically so he could "wage peace" in the fashion that a holy man would want to. If the spell didn't paralyze its target, it would be useless, but instead it winds up utterly OP, because the designers didn't specifically put a bunch of exceptions in to indicate that the party rogue
can't sneak attack the victim. Normally, a player who's really into roleplaying a cleric (assuming they're devoted to the traditional "light and life" style of god, rather than someone like Bane or Erythnul) wouldn't even think of this happening, and would be horrified by the rogue taking such an action, to the point that the next Hold Person would probably be aimed at the rogue, who would emerge from the Hold in a prison cell under the local temple. But that would prevent the party from going on their adventure, so some DMs let the players get away with this kind of thing, even when it severely contradicts the genre.
A single fireball can take out a whole group of Kobalds.
Yes, and then the entire rest of the warren can swarm you into oblivion with 10,000 attackers, of which you can kill a few hundred a minute before finally being overwhelmed. If you're going to go overboard on this sort of thing, the GM always has a bigger stick; the concept of designing a balanced encounter is there to protect you, so maybe don't try quite so hard to devastate challenges above your intended level.
They have magic that can let them sleep unhindered.
As I've pointed out several times, this particular subset of spells is uniquely poorly-considered.
They have money to buy wagons to carry their supplies, or use magic to literally create food. Their problems are bigger, though, and the monsters they fight are bigger. Saying that “all their problems are gone” just because they can rest without being disturbed is thinking too small.
Maybe I would find it relaxing to be able to think that small once in a while....
Lvls 11-16 are Tier 3, and they are national powerhouses. They can destroy whole clans of Kobalds by themselves. They have access to spells to create whole demi planes of reality that they can rest in. Their problems, therefore, have worldwide significance, and are not “A random baddie woke you up, roll initiative!”
These generalizations are ridiculous. The monk's 11th-level ability duplicates a 1st-level cleric spell. A rogue just gets the ability to "take ten" on proficient skills. Even the 6th-level spells, as powerful as they are, you only get one per day to start....except that if you've worked out how to take infinite rests, that isn't much of a restriction is it? Players at this level are more powerful, but not vastly and incalculably so. It's ridiculous to think that just because your Ranger can Hide in Plain Sight and cast Locate Creature once a day, he is now capable of toppling entire nations.
Lvls 17-20 are Epic Levels, and are on a cosmic level. They get their lvl 9 spells, like Wish and True Polymorph.
They also get True Resurrection, which is basically a staple necessity long before this point, since all the lower-level "raise dead" spells are crap. And look how many restrictions Wish has. While you should be able to
begin to deal with such problems at this level, it's still absurd to think that none of the issues you faced as far back as level 1 are still with you even now.
A wizard is literally immortal by this point. All they have to do is cast Clone on themselves, creating a younger clone of themselves, and hide it in their own Demiplane that only they know, using Drawmji’s Instant Summons on all their most important items (like spell book). If they die, their spirit goes into their clone, and they can summon all their items back to them. Rinse, repeat.
Great, so I just have to make all the villains of my campaigns wizards, and now the heroes literally can't ever win. To quote TVTropes, "Good Job Breaking It, Hero." Again, the game's balance systems are there for the players' benefit.
The books they release are rated for those tiers of play. The main problem I’m seeing is that you seem to plan to throw us into an adventure designed for Tier 2 and 3, but you still want to nerf us down to Tier 1.
Again, at the beginning of tier 2, you're still pretty close to tier 1.
And it’s not min-maxing to look at a spell that says “you can summon X number of animals”, and then look for animals that would work in your situation.
You're assuming that you even get to pick the animals you get; there's a good argument for the idea that it should be the DM's decision what responds to your summons. Nowhere in the spell does it specify that you have the ability to control anything other than number and CR of creatures (I've previously observed that CR X creatures are not always equal in strength to each other, and this has now made me wonder if perhaps this is deliberate because of these kinds of cases).
As I said, the simple solution is to just say yes. Don't try to predict problems. Only deal with them when they present themselves in game.
That's exactly what I wanted to do, but apparently "Brian" here wasn't comfortable with that approach. He seemingly wants to know that he only has the best cards ever printed in his deck, or he doesn't even want to shuffle up. Which isn't necessarily a completely "wrong" perspective, but it isn't one I'm prepared to work with.
Second worst case, the player pulls out of the game. Neither of those situations should happen between reasonable adults.
Except it just did....
You say you don't like to overplan. So don't overthink approving stuff either.
The US wouldn't have needed a nuclear strategy if the USSR hadn't had one too....
The feature or spell in the PHB? Allow it. It's not in the PHB? Disallow it. Simple.
Which is exactly what I said right off the bat, and TGlassy showed up and was like "can I have this one spell that's not in the PHB", and instead of saying a hard "no" I said "probably not", wanting to try and be a little bit accommodating and reasonable, and now here we are.
Later, that simple rule might have exceptions. But there's no reason for those exceptions before the dice roll and the BBEG monologues.
It's pretty clear that with TGlassy at the table, our villain wouldn't live long enough to start monologuing. Which can be funny once in a while, but sometimes you'd like James Bond to actually stay on that laser table for just a
couple of combat rounds....
I wouldn’t have called using a single spell the way it was meant to be used, followed by wildshaping into a similar form, an extremely advanced and thought through approach. I just looked at my spell list, knew sharks and killer whales had blindsight, and picked a course of action.
See, I
didn't know Sharks and Killer Whales have blindsight, and I'm still not certain why they do. I haven't memorized very many monster statblocks, and much of the info that is there is obvious oversimplification which contradicts a lot of the real science I know (for instance, when you mentioned turning into a shark, I started thinking about having some Demogorgon-worshipping Awakened mako come swimming up and signaling at you with electricity; nothing in the MM text mentions the fact that sharks can sense electrical fields, but they totally can, and I love the idea of using this as a sort of quasi-telepathy between sentient ocean dwellers).
Say it with me one more time, dude -
the rules are an abstraction. They're not meant to be read as if they were legal codes, to be strictly interpreted according to their exact text, with all omissions to be treated as carte blanche to twist them into bizarre perversions of their original shape.
But that’s the things I’m talking about. The spells are there to be used and were made for a reason. You seem to have a very low opinion of the creators of the game, who went through years of public playtest before releasing these books, and take years of public playtest to release any new material. Compared to 3.5, which had a new splatbook every month with new races, classes, prestige classes and feats for each one, 5e only released their first new base class last year with the Artificer, and that had been undergoing revisions, publicly, for three years before thy released it.
Well both editions had their balance problems, but overall I like the 3E approach slightly better. 5E's extreme simplicity clearly works well for a lot of players, given it's immense market success, so I can't say that it's objectively worse, but it certainly causes me more grief.
There are a few inconsistencies, and a few things they didn’t think of, but that’s why Jeremy Crawford releases Sage Advice from time to time, answering them and providing corrections when the wording isn’t as clear.
See, and I would never have known this existed if you hadn't mentioned it, so clearly they're not doing a very good job of raising awareness of their process. They put out a book with unclear wordings, and now many players are unaware that clarifications exist...I'd call that a problematic situation.
I like the concept I’ve come up with, so I’ll stick with him for now, but I would like the right to replace spells/class features that I have chosen when they get nixed. Otherwise I made that choice for nothing.
FWIW, in general I'm in favor of what 3E called "retraining" your character to a limited extent, and/or doing "rebuild quests" (both are, I believe, discussed in the PHB2). The character should be required to stick with their choices to some extent, so that continuity can be preserved and they occasionally face meaningful dilemmas, but occasionally the slate can be partially or completely cleared to allow for new visions to arise.
As for being Co-GM, I’m not sure how that would work, but I am used to being the group Rule Lawyer.
I'd never have guessed....
Someone in the group would ask if they can do something, and The DM, usually my brother, would look at me and say “what do the rules say?” And I’d break out the official rules, and he’d decide if he wants to use that or do his own version. DM is in charge. I’m just a Wikipedia.
Don't get me started on the problems with using Wikipedia as a source for anything ever (I do it too, but I know I shouldn't). Once again, the rules are a GUIDELINE. They don't give you the answer, at all, on anything; they give you a springboard to use in beginning to construct your own answer. No rules in the book allow a character to swing from a chandelier; that doesn't mean players can't do so, it just means that the GM has no guidance for deciding what they should have to roll and at what DC. Hence why I'd rather have more detailed rules, because they don't add more restrictions, they just add more guidance and inspiration, all of which I remain free to ignore any time I don't like it.
The only thing I don’t like DM’s doing is arbitrarily removing player voices because they don’t know how to deal with them. Even the Earth Elemental option has weaknesses. Even a moon Druid can be killed. You just have to plan accordingly.
Sure, everything has
a weakness. A wizard can be pretty effectively ruined by an Anti-Magic Field. That doesn't mean I want to have to put AMFs in every single dungeon I ever run, just in case a wizard shows up and tries to run roughshod over the whole place. Unless the player has specifically tailored his build to destroy a certain type of creature (eg you're an undead hunter and the BBEG is a lich), you should never be able to trivialize the final encounter just because you're Superman and I forgot to bring my Kryptonite.
And go look up the fight at the end. I’ve seen the stat Block. That fight is hard as hell, and it should be. Any party will need every advantage they have to win.
If you mean the titular Tiamat, then yes, by the time the characters get there, they should absolutely be incredibly powerful (though still not to the point of sitting perfectly safe in their continual Tiny Hut and summoning an infinite number of Planar Allies to go kill Tiamat for them). But that's the END of the campaign. You seemed to think that you should be that powerful ALREADY, without having had to build up to it. Your character's power level isn't just about your character sheet. If I went exactly as far to one extreme as you're doing to the other, I could have all the players be level 1, and conduct the whole battle through roleplaying, and the final battle wouldn't be the PCs versus Tiamat at all, it'd be the PCs sitting in Waterdeep waiting for Elminster and Bahamut and the Seven Sisters of Mystra and the Purple Dragon Knights of Cormyr and so forth to all finish the battle for them, because they successfully roleplayed their way through a bunch of encounters where they convinced these all-powerful entities to get off their butts and go do something. That's not really "playing D&D" properly-speaking, though, and neither is the level of rules-lawyering and theoretical-optimization that you seem to default to immediately.
I guess it's all for the best that we part company. Nothing against you, Tglassy; I've enjoyed meeting you, but we're clearly on too different a wavelength to game together. Feel free to tag along and watch, if you deem this a good use of your time.
