D&D 5E Options past 3rd level

[TwoSix]

Yeah, 13th Age is alright. It doesn’t quite capture the D&D feel for me, but it is a pretty good game. Haven’t tried Shadow of the Demon Lord, but I’ve heard good things about it.

I will say more 5E classes (especially martial classes) with Invocation-like flexibility sounds like lots of fun. Reminds me of Kibblestasty's classes, especially Artificer and Psion.

 

[Oofta]

I’m aware, and I share those critiques. But I don’t make the mistake of conflating poor execution with a poor concept.

My high school science teacher used to be fond of the saying that anything is possible, it's just not probable. I suspect the level of flexibility you want across the board falls into the "not probable" side of the equation.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

I... Customize things... And have fun doing so? This is a very strange conversation.

I also have fun by customizing my D&D character. This puts us at a scientifically derived "66% of all D&D players have fun customizing their character."

One aspect of customization from the 3e era missing from 5e was the wider array of weapon types, and the small oceans worth of magical abilities that could be applied to those weapons. Kitting a character out was a good part of "enhancing" your character as you leveled up. In 5e I am playing a 9th level cleric with ZERO magic items and its not really jarringly different than the other characters that do have some items.

 

[cbwjm]

I do enjoy customization of characters, it's why I always allow feats in my games so that there is some customisation available to my players as they level. One class that has great customization is the warlock: subclass, pact, and invocations provide more ways to run a warlock than any other class and I think more classes could benefit with another layer of options.

 

[shadowoflameth]

You know what I don't see? 'Gee, I wish 5e was more like 4th.'

 

[Charlaquin]

My high school science teacher used to be fond of the saying that anything is possible, it's just not probable. I suspect the level of flexibility you want across the board falls into the "not probable" side of the equation.

Given that there is an example of a class that nails it in 5e, I think you’re being too pessimistic about the probability.

 

[Charlaquin]

You know what I don't see? 'Gee, I wish 5e was more like 4th.'

Well, yes. 4th did a lot of things right, and 5e sacrificed a lot of great design ideas at the altar of appeasement.

 

[Shiroiken]

I think the concept of alternate class abilities at certain levels (as proposed by the UA) might be the best method of providing this, but honestly I haven't run across this problem. I've been quite happy with my characters into early tier 3, and my players were very happy with their level benefits when I ran up to tier 4.

 

[Charlaquin]

I do enjoy customization of characters, it's why I always allow feats in my games so that there is some customisation available to my players as they level. One class that has great customization is the warlock: subclass, pact, and invocations provide more ways to run a warlock than any other class and I think more classes could benefit with another layer of options.

Yep. I think the 5e warlock is about perfect in terms of customizability and user-friendliness. Of course, I understand that it is too many decision points for some players, so I think it’s good to have simpler options you can just pick once and forget about. But just like it wouldn’t be very satisfying for those players to only have one option for a simple class, it is not very satisfying for me and many others to have the warlock as the only class with what feels like a meaningful degree of customizability.

 

[Charlaquin]

I think the concept of alternate class abilities at certain levels (as proposed by the UA) might be the best method of providing this, but honestly I haven't run across this problem. I've been quite happy with my characters into early tier 3, and my players were very happy with their level benefits when I ran up to tier 4.

I liked the idea of the alternate class abilities UA, but in practice most of the options were “add on a free ability or don’t,” which is really a non-choice on the player’s side. There were a few cases, like the Barbarian, where the options felt like they actually offered some player choice, but most of them felt like fixes for design issues disguised as DM options.