D&D 5E Not Much Ado About Bless

[Oofta]

Yeah I ran into this yesterday, because people keep throwing the "5e is the greatest game ever because so many people play it".

Argumentum ad populum - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

But every time I come up with an example of something that was popular but not very good, I get told "it's not the same thing" so I decided to just accept that people like what they like and move on before they start saying "maybe if you don't like it, you don't belong here".

We've had close to a decade of every year seeing double digit growth, even though there are plenty of alternatives. That growth is what tells me that it's a quality product.

 

[FrogReaver]

I never said otherwise. However, bounded accuracy is such a core concept of 5E that if it was bad enough to rip out I don't think the game would be as popular as it is.

There's a big difference between "this is some rule I don't care for" and "if I get into a car accident the air bags will fail and I will die". The former is an opinion, if it weren't for the forums I wouldn't know anyone had an issue with bounded accuracy. For that matter there's a big difference between "I don't care for bounded accuracy, I think it could be tweaked" and "bounded accuracy needs to be expunged from the system and never be spoken of again".

Bounded accuracy is not advantage/disadvantage.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Coca-Cola has been the biggest soda company for decades --almost a century. Clearly this is the inherent quality of Coke and marketing and name recognition count for nothing.

Someone, please cast Bless to help out this weak argument.

 

[James Gasik]

Argumentum ad populum doesn't apply if you like the popular thing.

Same as, apparently 'you do you'.

Oh is that how that works? The more you know!

 

[Oofta]

Bounded accuracy is not advantage/disadvantage.

The conversation started with my reply about bounded accuracy. I have mixed feelings about advantage/disadvantage but it's probably better than many of the alternatives we've seen in previous editions.

 

[Oofta]

Coca-Cola has been the biggest soda company for decades --almost a century. Clearly this is the inherent quality of Coke and marketing and name recognition count for nothing.

Someone, please cast Bless to help out this weak argument.

It's obviously good enough quality for a lot of people.

It's also not particularly relevant to what I'm pointing out. When 5E was released, D&D was not the top selling TTRPG. But on It's release it exceeded expectations and has continued to see double digit growth every single year in spite of a healthy competitive environment.

D&D is not coasting on previous success, it's gaining ground at a pace we've never seen because it works for millions of people. That doesn't happen without a quality product.

 

[Willie the Duck]

Here's a simple one, based on a point I made in another thread. Why don't more people complain about Bless?

You really should, when you consider it can affect the three heaviest hitters in a party and can last a whole combat. The effect it has on bounded accuracy is absurd once you get to the point a Cleric can consider using it in every combat.

Reasons people might not complain:

Clerics aren't casting Bless (that's my Healing Word spell slot!).
There's too much other stuff going on to really notice Bless.
It requires concentration (either as a reason not to cast, or it can fall off if the Cleric is hit).
It's hard to notice it's effect in small sample sizes (was that fight easier because of Bless? How much easier?

Well first and foremost, although it's not quite the same as complaining about [being powerful], no one seems to think that bless is not-powerful, so it really could be an issue about attention span. Or people just looked at it and thought, 'yeah, that's a perfectly reasonable tier 1 go-to spell for a class (let me do a thread on how Hunter's Mark sucks as a go-to ranger spell, or Cleric's tier 2 go-to spell...).'

However, I think there are other points of nuance. One being that, at least for clerics*, you rather quickly run into other spells which require concentration. Spirit Guardians** in tiers 2-3 for sure, but also the Shield of Faith you cast on your non-shield-using front-liner instead, or Enhance Ability or Hold Person. The timeframe where Bless isn't actively competing with lots of other situationally good spells (which in combination can crowd it out) is small. It's also the level range where 1) enemies are casting fewer save-or-suck effects (certainly the ones which can really wreck your day), and 2) most of your comrades don't have feats. The later one means that the +1d4 to-hit is just DPR through misses avoided, not setting up a PAM-GWM or archeryFS-ElvenACC-SS-XBE combo-wombo (or whatever extreme example I could come up with). Mind you, misses avoided is super-helpful (and likely more effectiveness in the long run), but hardly sexy. And sexy is what inspires people to call out something as too-good.
*and paladins and others who natively get bless, there are action economy concerns as others have mentioned
**And this spell clearly takes up a lot of proverbial oxygen in discussion of Cleric spells

Sample size/benefit-over-group might also be an issue. I doubt it is because it competes with healing word for slots (at least for people who use regular rest frequency), as those are apparently rarely in jeopardy.

 

[FrogReaver]

The conversation started with my reply about bounded accuracy. I have mixed feelings about advantage/disadvantage but it's probably better than many of the alternatives we've seen in previous editions.

Don’t know why I was thinking it was primarily about advanatage.

 

[Charlaquin]

Most players aren't power gamers, and thus it isn't an "always-on" spell for most tables. Some Cleric players enjoy using their entire suite of spells and thus don't want to use their Concentration slot on the same number-upper every single day in every single encounter. When you cast and use the exact same pattern of spells and features completely separate from a character's narrative and for no other reason than to maximize numeric efficiency... you pretty much are just playing the so-called "strategic board game" and lose all the aspects of playing character. And I think most who play D&D see that as forsaking an entire half of the game.

Its benefits also aren’t super visible. Unless your DM announces your targets’ ACs, you don’t necessarily know whether that hit would have been a miss if not for Bless. It’s more obvious with saves, but still. On paper, Bless is a huge benefit, but because it isn’t flashy, it doesn’t end up feeling nearly as powerful as it actually is in play. And don’t get me started on players forgetting to add their extra bless die!

 

[DEFCON 1]

Argumentum ad populum doesn't apply if you like the popular thing.

Same as, apparently 'you do you'.

Okay... then what is the reason BA needs to "die" other than you don't like it?

Remember... BA is already in the game. So it's not upon those that like it to do or say anything... it's on you and others that don't to prove why it should be removed.