D&D 5E Nov 8 Next Q&A: TWF, Manuevers, and Atwill spells

[mlund]

Frankly, I hate the two-weapon fighting mechanics now, and the "improvements" proposed. I'd be happier seeing a 4E style treatment where two weapons let you open feats for small bonuses. Simpley saying, "I've got another weapon in my hand so I get twice as many attacks as you! SLASHSLASHSLASHSLASHSLASH" is a bunch of nonsense from both the simulationist and gamist approaches to D&D.

I very much like the thief maneuvers: fighter maneuvers as cleric spells: wizard spells. Keeping the metrics for power simple is a nice counter-weight compensating for the diversity of choices of what maneuvers or spells to take.

Casters get spell slots and spell lists.
Fighting Men get expertise dice and maneuvers lists.

That works. It's brilliantly simple and clean for a CORE BASE for a modular game that can be expanded and refined by bolting on modules.

- Marty Lund

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

Fighter, yes. He is proficient with all weapon types; he should be proficient with two-weapon style, just like sword-and-shield style or duelist style.

Rogue, no. Why would the Rogue automatically have training with two-weapon fighting? He has hardly any weapon proficiencies. TWF is some pretty specialized combat training, and I don't think that's what the Rogue is about.

Fair. But if a Rogue scheme makes sense to have it? Then sure.

...part of me is beginning to wonder if most proficiencies, most fighting styles, and most skills can't be made into "feats" somehow. If a specialty isn't necessarily about combat, why not add Anatomy and Stealth and Acting and Deceit and Feinting as proficiencies. And define "proficiency" as "A feat you get at 1st level that, even if you're not playing with feats, your character gets anyway."

Then, specialties can grant them for people who don't get them automagically with their class. or people who love to use feats or whatever.

I don't think we need to change how proficiencies work for specialties to grant them. I have absolutely no problem with specialties doing a little more than providing feats.

At this point, I'd prefer if proficiencies weren't used as a balancing mechanism and were instead purely a mechanic for reflecting character design. Make it so someone can learn a proficiency through play without having to spend a feat or class feature on it.

 

[MatthewJHanson]

I hate the new, "sometimes it is at-will and sometimes it isn't" status of 0-level spells. Just go with what Pathfinder did and make them weak and castable at-will regardless of specialty. I don't think elementary spells that every caster masters as part of their training, faith, bloodline, etc. are the place to be introducing distinctions between specialists. A grand master of French cuisine can boil spaghetti just as well as a grand master of of Italian cuisine. It is when you get to the more difficult and specialized dishes that you start to see differences in abilities.

I agree. If spells are sometimes one and sometimes the others it means that any spell will either be:

A) Balanced when daily and overpowered when at-will.
B) Balanced when at-will and sub-optimal when daily.

I thin B is probably more likely. It means we'll have a bunch of options out there that you could take, but nobody will.

 

[ZombieRoboNinja]

I'm getting grumpy with the "it's like wizard/cleric spells!" excuse.

Look, guys, I would rather them not have identical mechanics, too. I don't want it as a necessity for my rogue any more than I want it as a necessity for my cleric.

Agreed a lot. I find this a pretty ironic defense, since clerics preparing Vancian spells has never made any real sense to me. It seems pretty obvious that the only reason clerics cast Vancian spells is because way back when, Gygax was enamored of Jack Vance's wizards and they didn't want to create a whole other system for clerics to cast Cure Light Wounds with.

I also agree with ppaladin's assessment of at-will spells and disagree with the reasoning in the Q&A. I don't think it's simplifying anything to go from "cantrips are at-will" to "cantrips are like spells, except some of them are at-will, depending on your tradition/domain, unless you get one of the traditions where they're not." I also don't really buy the explanation that not every specialization should get every spell at-will; in the previous iteration you only got 2-3 cantrips/orisons to begin with, so how is it helping anything to use traditions/domains to restrict what at-will abilities those classes can get? Is it really game-breaking to allow a battlemage to pick Minor Illusion as a cantrip (especially when the illusionist is better at it anyway)?

 

[I'm A Banana]

"I've got another weapon in my hand so I get twice as many attacks as you! SLASHSLASHSLASHSLASHSLASH" is a bunch of nonsense from both the simulationist and gamist approaches to D&D.

Well, if your approach is to have fun rather than to subscribe to an -ism, it's a bunch of awesome.

At this point, I'd prefer if proficiencies weren't used as a balancing mechanism and were instead purely a mechanic for reflecting character design. Make it so someone can learn a proficiency through play without having to spend a feat or class feature on it.

Sort of. I think mostly it should be an aesthetic issue, but I think it should still have something to do with your class. A fighter should have better weapons and armor out the gate than a wizard, and stabbing someone with a bastard sword should be better than stabbing them with a dagger or bonking them with a mace. But you can do that with "weapon style proficiencies" pretty well. Wizards get the "staves and knives" weapon style proficiency, clerics get the "hammers and clubs" weapon style proficiency, rogues get "light blades" weapon style proficiency, fighters get..."universal" weapon style proficiency. Or whatever.

I also agree with ppaladin's assessment of at-will spells and disagree with the reasoning in the Q&A. I don't think it's simplifying anything to go from "cantrips are at-will" to "cantrips are like spells, except some of them are at-will, depending on your tradition/domain, unless you get one of the traditions where they're not." I also don't really buy the explanation that not every specialization should get every spell at-will; in the previous iteration you only got 2-3 cantrips/orisons to begin with, so how is it helping anything to use traditions/domains to restrict what at-will abilities those classes can get? Is it really game-breaking to allow a battlemage to pick Minor Illusion as a cantrip (especially when the illusionist is better at it anyway)?

Personally, I say, burn the idea of 'more frequent' spell use for specialists to the ground. In its ash-pile, make a building out of 'exclusive' spell use for specialists.

Okay, any wizard can generally learn illusion spells and be tricky with them. But illusionsits get the most powerful and versatile illusion spells as part of their class. Ghost sounds, dancing lights, invisibility, whatever, any mage can learn those. Minor Illusion is rather exclusive however, and not just anyone can learn it.

That said, anyone might be able to take the Illusionist specialty which includes all the illusion spells as things you can do once per day. And if an illusionist (class) also takes that specialty, guess they can do it more often, too!

 

[Salamandyr]

I think I'd like it if, by default, an off-hand weapon let you add d4 to your main hand attack-kind of like a mini expertise die.

Specialization could open up secondary attacks, flurries and so forth, but, absent that, your fighter lost his shield and only has a longswrod? Whip out a dagger for the off-hand and go to town.

 

[ZombieRoboNinja]

I think I'd like it if, by default, an off-hand weapon let you add d4 to your main hand attack-kind of like a mini expertise die.

Specialization could open up secondary attacks, flurries and so forth, but, absent that, your fighter lost his shield and only has a longswrod? Whip out a dagger for the off-hand and go to town.

That really is the easiest and least mechanically broken solution, but I think a lot of people prefer rolling two attacks with their two weapons. (Especially since in this system, it wouldn't matter at all whether your offhand weapon was a broken bottle or a +7 vorpal shortsword.)

 

[mlund]

Well, if your approach is to have fun rather than to subscribe to an -ism, it's a bunch of awesome.

No. I brought up Gamist for a reason. Just x2 attack without drawbacks breaks the damage curve and the action economy when it comes at the price of using your off-hand and maybe 1 or 2 feat slots.

The player who embraces "a bunch of awesome" that's grotesquely out of balance with what everyone else is working with is a selfish munchkin, and D&D should never be built according to the whims of selfish munchkins - whether they want unbalanced double-attackers, pokemon summoners whose pets eat up all the table time, or Quadratic Casters who use the other PC classes as wand-caddies.

Only team-player munchkins need apply.

Aesthetic choices are one thing. Mechanical advantages are an entirely different kettle of fish.

- Marty Lund

 

[I'm A Banana]

. Just x2 attack without drawbacks breaks the damage curve and the action economy when it comes at the price of using your off-hand and maybe 1 or 2 feat slots.

Guess it's time to bump everyone else's damage, too. Or to not consider damage to be a constantly relevant metric of balance.

The player who embraces "a bunch of awesome" that's grotesquely out of balance with what everyone else is working with is a selfish munchkin, and D&D should never be built according to the whims of selfish munchkins - whether they want unbalanced double-attackers, pokemon summoners whose pets eat up all the table time, or Quadratic Casters who use the other PC classes as wand-caddies.

If you're not playing D&D to have fun, you're missing the point.

It's fun to get two attacks when most other characters only get one.

The game can be and should be balanced with the assumption that some folks are going to get two attacks, and other folks just one, because TWF is an iconic D&Dism that shouldn't be shoved into some awkward shape for the purposes of strict balance metrics.

It is not inherently unbalanced to want two attacks, or to want to summon as your shtick, or to want to feel like a master of time and space when no one else is. None of these things are impossible to balance while retaining their central element of fun (namely, two attacks, a summon who does all your work, and access to tremendously powerful magical effects).

 

[MoonSong]

No. I brought up Gamist for a reason. Just x2 attack without drawbacks breaks the damage curve and the action economy when it comes at the price of using your off-hand and maybe 1 or 2 feat slots.

The player who embraces "a bunch of awesome" that's grotesquely out of balance with what everyone else is working with is a selfish munchkin, and D&D should never be built according to the whims of selfish munchkins - whether they want unbalanced double-attackers, pokemon summoners whose pets eat up all the table time, or Quadratic Casters who use the other PC classes as wand-caddies.

Only team-player munchkins need apply.

Aesthetic choices are one thing. Mechanical advantages are an entirely different kettle of fish.

- Marty Lund

It's not nice to label people munchkins just because they want different things from a game than you. Yes, a meager +1, or even a dice of damage may be enough for some to represent using two weapons, but for the rest of us it is only empty number crunching, it is very easy to refluff said bonus to damage as coming from a lucky charm that is used instead of a weapon or from extra momentum or whatever. Making two attacks with two weapons, not only feels like you are using two weapons, it feels exciting and cool, and if it helps to finish fights faster, well that is a plus.

The reason because rangers in 4e were broken wasn't because they could make double attacks at-will, but rather because nobody else could. And like [MENTION=2067]Kamikaze Midget[/MENTION] said above DPS is a poor way to measure balance, some of my favorite character concepts relied more on other tricks, like grappling, tripping, healing, doing things to surprise my opponents or walking through the battlefield while playing a lute.