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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Willie the Duck" data-source="post: 8611060" data-attributes="member: 6799660">I'm going to ignore the discussion around popularity, as I don't find it germane to the part of the discussion in which I took part already, and it is a lot of posts to go through.Fundamentally there aren't going to be hard and fast rules. General trends are going to be things along the lines of:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Anything that takes an expendable resource (including actions, with a regular actions trending more of an opportunity cost than bonus more than reactions) is more permissible.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Anything that is a spell is slightly more permissible than other things (if only because AMFs and that you can't cast a bonus action spell and a regular action spell in the same round, so standard action bless and healing word don't play ball, while standard action something else and healing word do).</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Anything that takes up concentration is more permissible.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Spell permissibility is going to be influenced by who the (native) casters of the spell are (whether said class has lots of other uses of their concentration, whether they have non-spellcasting actions this competes with, whether they are going to be in the front line a lot). </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Anything that requires a feat is likely more permissible (feats are optional and rare, important resources. Also, if you are spending a feat on <boost> you aren't spending it on maxing your stats, so breaking any accuracy bounds is going to be slower if it is a self-resource).</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Anything that requires you to choose a specific build, setup, weapon choice, or similar is going to be be more permissible (and this will cause issues based on table-culture. If your DM regularly hands out magic weapons that match the preferred weapon choice of the PCs, it is going to change the opportunity cost of, say, a dedicated archery build or the like). </li> </ul>Okay, I was a tween when New Coke came out, I remember it. It was a perfectly fine cola ('Coke trying to be Pepsi' is how I remember us terming it). It was simply 'we changed this thing you know and love and in which we've spent the better part of a century trying to get you to feel some personal stakes,' along with an early cultural meme of 'they ruined it' that people latched onto whether they would have liked the taste or not if it had been a different brand. Probably not a bad comparator to Silvery Barbs, though, as it too had some aspects of memetic outrage ('it's Shield, but even better, why is this a thing?'). I think, in the end, that it can be used against saves as well and that it gives a benefit to an ally as well as hinder an enemy makes it vaguely better than what came before, but they both have pros and cons.I feel that archery fighting style is an outlier. It is a little 'too good' (it certainly makes Sharpshooter more popular than GWM, although 5e's making Dex usually-better than Str has part of the blame for that as well). That the +2 is the same as the penalty for cover makes me wonder if it was originally going to be '+2(only to mitigate penalties),' but got last-minute changed. Regardless, I think the idea was that people weren't going to be dedicated archers -- feats are optional (and taking XBE for a bow-archer is 'wasting' part of an ASI), so being able to shoot reliably while an enemy is in your face is not a guarantee. Playstyles haven't seemed to conform to that logic -- archers just find ways to get back out of melee and keep shooting (admittedly, the effort to do so is still an opportunity costs).</blockquote>

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