D&D 5E Non choices: must have and wants why someone that hates something must take it

[pemerton]

Just to prove a counterpoint, [MENTION=2303]Starfox[/MENTION] has been running our Saturday group through some really, really early Dungeon scenarios, who were all about social intrigue and quirky situations, and not at all about winning at combat... real fun!

Sure. I wasn't asserting that all modules are like ToH, WPM or the G/D modules. Dungeon begins in 1996, which is post-"Hickman revolution".

That doesn't change the fact that there is a pretty well established way of playing D&D which is 100% about winning.

EDIT: That date is a typo - should be 1986!

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I've seen this from the other side.

I once had two players, one played a halfling rogue and the other played a half-orc barbarian in 3.5E. At first everything was fine, but encounter after encounter the half-orc would charge up and slaughter everything before the rogue could even get in position to attack. After about a year of this the halfling player got fed up and threw a fit about it. That campaign ended there because the effectiveness of the halfling rogue in comparison to the half-orc barbarian didn't allow them to participate. It turned into a hero and side kick show. Which many experienced players find unplayable.

I too would like to back Lokiare up here, I've seen both sides. I watched as two players (the same two for both examples) rolled almost identical stats, and decided to make there characters brothers. One a Warlock, the other a Paliden. the concepts were (paliden player) a great swordman who travels the land doing good deeds and protecting his younger brother, and (Warlock player) a con man/grifter who made a deal with faries for power. Because the warlock had taken a power that let him put his eldritch blast into a melee weapon, and some cool feats, he had a higher attack but vs touch and did more damage with his rapier then the paliden with the greatsword... he used to call him self a bombdigity swordsman... it ruined (well was a part of what ruined) that campaign. In another campaign the paliden player was our spell caster, he was a warlock/sorcerer going for a prestige class that would give him both (like mystic theurge but from a later book) the orginal warlock player was playing a rogue/ranger but died, and brought in a specialist wizard with master specialist who traded out his familiar for a special ability matching his specility and some reserve feats... it took 1 game for him to do everything the other player could do...but better.

Now imagine your character is supposed to be the tank/defender of the party. Now you take the worst possible options in order to fit a character concept. Your character is a fine swashbuckler that can sail a ship around the world with one hand tied behind their back, but the first time you get into combat you can't deal enough damage to kill a kobold, you can't distract enemies into attacking you, and even if you could you wouldn't survive their attacks.

let me break part of this out because it gets lost in these moments

Now you take the worst possible options in order to fit a character concept.

sometimes things that look awesome fall into this category, in the above example of the paliden and the warlock taking a great sword seems on the surface better then a rapier for damage, and weapon focus seems better then weapon finesse... but the +1 to hit and 2d6 damage did less then the dex instead of str and 1d6 every time...

Now as a team game, D&D has certain expectations. I would certainly point out that your character probably is not a good fit for this group as we expect to see combat at least 1/3 of the time. It doesn't really matter though because even if it was 1/10th of the time, that one time you hit combat means TPK because your character is ineffective.

now is where I disagree... it is a valid choice to make yourself less effective at combat if you choose to focus on something else... it just should not be the default and only happen by choice.

Now wouldn't it be 100 times better if you could make your awesome swashbuckling character while not sacrificing your role in combat? I personally think it would.

I agree you should have that option... just like the option of playing a wise sage with little to no combat magic should be too...

 

[TwoSix]

Sure. I wasn't asserting that all modules are like ToH, WPM or the G/D modules. Dungeon begins in 1996, which is post-"Hickman revolution".

That doesn't change the fact that there is a pretty well established way of playing D&D which is 100% about winning.

Given the 40 years of history and the ubiquity of D&D within the RPG community, people saying that "D&D has never been about X" or "D&D has always been about X" are pretty much always wrong. D&D has been used for pretty much every play style under the sun.

 

[N'raac]

No. Not if you're comitted to playing your PC's concept. IMHO, the abilities a PC gets would be dependent on what the PC would choose not the player playing the game.

So what are we really saying here? That a good player, who builds a PC to concept, should get a result which means his character is largely ineffectual when compared to a character optimized for pure mechanical effectiveness? To me, the system should reward concept building, not min/maxing. If flavourful, interesting concepts are sidekicks at best, then I think the designers have failed.

Re: Having to optimizing for combat.

Warning, anecdotal:

In one of @Starfox campaigns we've been playing "Skull and Shackles" on three - Bard, Barbarian and Sorcerer (just recruited a Ranger as a fourth PC). We're currently at 9th level (Pathfinder), and if I've understood our DM right we've played the monsters "as written", i.e. they have been neither reinforced nor reduced.

Anyway, our barbarian has been complaining about:
(A) the combat encounters beeing too easy.
(B) his character lacking competence in non-combat encounters.

When he entered the campaign and rolled up the Barbarian, he said (C) that he was going to concentrate on damage over everything else.

Said player just cannot see the connection between (A) , (B) and (C), even when it is pointed out to him...

This is a completely different question, and several posters have noted the question of whether "optimized for combat" will, in fact, be "optimized". The game could divide character resources between combat, exploration and interaction, rather than letting players dump two in favour of the third. Perhaps that should be the default, with an explicit statement that a character focusing all his resources in one area is likely to find challenges in his area of expertise too easy, and find himself useless in challenges in the other areas, so maybe that's a bad idea.

Of course, we can always have a party with an expert in each of the three areas, who shines in his own niche and sucks in the rest. To the example of the Barbarian and the Rogue, perhaps the Rogue would have felt better if the game had mixed combat challenges (where the Barbarian shines and the Rogue is a bit player) with social and/or exploration challenges where the Rogue shines and the Barbarian largely stands off to one side. Then they would both have opportunities to shine.

That's often how it works in the source material - the expert shines in his area of expertise, and leaves the spotlight when someone else's specialty is the focus. Some players are fine with this approach. Others want to meaningfully contribute to every challenge. The latter should then not be building towards a one trick pony. I think D&D Next should default to one of the two (perhaps characters who range from equal across all three pillars to characters 50% devoted to one pillar and 25% devoted to each of the other two) and include shifting the balance of characters beyond those ranges to an optional module with clear guidance that this may mean everyone optimizing to the same pillar, and a game that focuses on that aspect, or one trick ponies who excel in one area and stand around being bored in the others.

 

[Lokiare]

now is where I disagree... it is a valid choice to make yourself less effective at combat if you choose to focus on something else... it just should not be the default and only happen by choice.

I agree you should have that option... just like the option of playing a wise sage with little to no combat magic should be too...

I agree. You should be able to choose to make a character that is ineffective at one or more pillars within the game, but it should not be a default assumption to trade out your effectiveness for your character concept. That's what I'm getting at.

If you want an ineffective character, sure you should be able to build one. If you want to build a character concept, you should be able to do that without impacting your effectiveness.

So if you want to make a swashbuckling sailor that can't hit the broad side of a barn, you should be able to do that, but you should also be able to make a swashbuckling sailor that can hit as well as any other character of the same class and level.

It should never come down to an automatic choice of swashbuckling sailor or be able to hit something.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Of course, we can always have a party with an expert in each of the three areas, who shines in his own niche and sucks in the rest. To the example of the Barbarian and the Rogue, perhaps the Rogue would have felt better if the game had mixed combat challenges (where the Barbarian shines and the Rogue is a bit player) with social and/or exploration challenges where the Rogue shines and the Barbarian largely stands off to one side. Then they would both have opportunities to shine.

That's often how it works in the source material - the expert shines in his area of expertise, and leaves the spotlight when someone else's specialty is the focus. Some players are fine with this approach. Others want to meaningfully contribute to every challenge. The latter should then not be building towards a one trick pony. I think D&D Next should default to one of the two (perhaps characters who range from equal across all three pillars to characters 50% devoted to one pillar and 25% devoted to each of the other two) and include shifting the balance of characters beyond those ranges to an optional module with clear guidance that this may mean everyone optimizing to the same pillar, and a game that focuses on that aspect, or one trick ponies who excel in one area and stand around being bored in the others.

the problem is that in a game sitting out 33% of the time sucks... and in practice it isn't 1/3 each it is like 70% combat and 10% 20% the other two (swithing from campaign to campaign) in my experience...

 

[Lokiare]

the problem is that in a game sitting out 33% of the time sucks... and in practice it isn't 1/3 each it is like 70% combat and 10% 20% the other two (swithing from campaign to campaign) in my experience...

Yeah, you get different percentages per pillar at different tables. Which is one of the major reasons that no class should suck horribly at any given pillar.

Ideally it should be up to the players which pillars their character is good or bad at, and it shouldn't be tied to grabbing a certain race or class. You should be able to build a Fighter that is good at socializing but bad at combat and a Rogue that is good at combat and bad at exploration.

Except right now, we can't.

 

[Herschel]

I do it all the time. RPGs are not about winning, they're about storytelling.

Yea and no though. The characters you post about aren't cheesed out but also aren't ineffective. Finding the most flavorful choice that also is effective is where I think most people would fall.

Choice A: Mechanically best, but boring as dirt.

Choice B: Mechanically good and flavorful.

Choice C: Extremely flavorful but mechanically useless.

You can refluff A, bufffluff B or try to get a houserule to make C worthwhile but B is the easiest choice to make that serves both desires.

 

[Mistwell]

Well, a Ray of Frost goes up to 2d8 damage at level 5 and even higher at level 10+

True, but at those levels the meaningfulness of that damage diminishes too, and you have enough spell slots to make it not matter.

plus it lets you use your magic ability modifier, which is probably 2 to 4 points better than your Dex.

Probably not. Dex is your second most important stat, and ability scores max at 20. With bounded accuracy, Dex is pretty critical for the wizard.

As a 10th level wizard, I'd much rather have 3d8 with a +8 to hit than 1d8+2 with a +5 to hit.

7 points damage with a shorter range isn't is a big difference versus the things you're likely to be fighting at those levels. By those levels, you have sufficient spell slots to be casting real damaging spells. If you're still casting a cantrip as an attack spell at those levels, somethings gone wrong because you had around 16 spell slots available.

But whether or not the difference is "substantial" or not is somewhat beside the point.

I replied to what was written. That was the point I was replying to.

All I'm saying is that it's reasonable to complain if your preferred style of playing a class is substantially less effective than other styles.

OK, make up your mind. Either this is an example of something "substantially" less effective, or it isn't. If it isn't, and it's the only example from 5e, then why is this labelled as a 5e thread?

 

[Mistwell]

The problem is, with the way rituals work in the last public play test packet, casters and Wizards in particular won't have to prepare spells to use them as rituals. This means they don't even have to bother preparing spells that aren't combat applicable. So they still have full access to their combat list and their non-combat list. So non-combat cantrips won't matter very much in comparison. I mean who needs Read Magic when you can take 10 minutes and Comprehend Languages right?

First, most spells you want to cast in such situations, you don't have 10 minutes to cast them. If you need a diplomacy boost, the guard isn't going to wait ten minutes while you gargle some herbs and dance a little jig around a magic circle (or whatever the ritual looks like). If you need to arcane lock, the monsters might wait for you to do it, but likely they hear you chanting and come running well before the 10 minutes is up. There are a few spells that do better as rituals, like Identify (unless you need to know if a potion is poison RIGHT NOW), but most often those spells have plenty of utility as spells you prepare to actually cast.

Second, it would help if you actually read Comprehend Languages before assuming it overlaps with Read Magic. It specifically does not. When you say things like that which demonstrate you're not familiar with the rules, it makes me question everything else you say that is rules-specific.