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Passive or Active Fighting Styles?
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<blockquote data-quote="Don Durito" data-source="post: 7904466" data-attributes="member: 6687260"><p>The problems with Great Weapon Master and Sharpshooter are the biggest example. If something is at will it's hard to balance. They try to balance it with a drawback (-5), but this only works so long as you can't mitigate the drawback. But the issue of whether they are OP or not is too my mind only part of the issue.</p><p></p><p>The problem is when you can create a clear and optimal strategy to follow. I think Shield Master is almost as bad in some ways. Being able to push people around or knock them prone is cool. As long as you aren't succeeding all the time it's ok, attempting every round is fine. If you're playing a barbarian who's managed to pick up Expertise in Athletics from somewhere and is raging than they're going down every single round. This gets boring. It's boring for the GM, and in my experience it often becomes boring for the player after a while as well because it's a solved problem.</p><p></p><p>4E had similar problems with some optimised builds using feats. An optimised 4E character was more boring to play than a normal 4E character. And of course 3E has its' trip builds and the like - and power attack was an issue then also.</p><p></p><p>13th Age clearly recognises this. There is almost no way to reliably do a maneuver every round in 13th Age. Flexible attacks are divisive but they do solve this problem.</p><p></p><p>5E seems to recognise this everywhere other than with feats.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Don Durito, post: 7904466, member: 6687260"] The problems with Great Weapon Master and Sharpshooter are the biggest example. If something is at will it's hard to balance. They try to balance it with a drawback (-5), but this only works so long as you can't mitigate the drawback. But the issue of whether they are OP or not is too my mind only part of the issue. The problem is when you can create a clear and optimal strategy to follow. I think Shield Master is almost as bad in some ways. Being able to push people around or knock them prone is cool. As long as you aren't succeeding all the time it's ok, attempting every round is fine. If you're playing a barbarian who's managed to pick up Expertise in Athletics from somewhere and is raging than they're going down every single round. This gets boring. It's boring for the GM, and in my experience it often becomes boring for the player after a while as well because it's a solved problem. 4E had similar problems with some optimised builds using feats. An optimised 4E character was more boring to play than a normal 4E character. And of course 3E has its' trip builds and the like - and power attack was an issue then also. 13th Age clearly recognises this. There is almost no way to reliably do a maneuver every round in 13th Age. Flexible attacks are divisive but they do solve this problem. 5E seems to recognise this everywhere other than with feats. [/QUOTE]
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