D&D 5E Sage Advice is back!

[Maxperson]

That's fair, but I do wish the classes had a bit more niche protection in terms of their spell list access.

Like what? I can't think of any spell on any list that couldn't or shouldn't be shared if an investment of resources(like a feat) is spent on acquiring it.

 

[Shardstone]

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You can grab invocations as a feat too. And half the mechanic of warlock subclasses is expamsion of the spell list.


The PHB ranger was all about its spells and subclasses. The ranger class features were niche and few DMs/players knew how to use them right. Having profiecincy in Stealth and Nature and hunter's mark was half of being a ranger untilthe new subclasses and class features came out. Luckily it wasn't easy to get that combination so rangers still felt unique.

Crawford said they see feats a "class features not tied to class" and "classless class features". However they just added featsthat given class features as feats: invocations, metamagic, manuevers, fighting styles. Again it isn't a problem when you only got a feat at level 4 and 8. By level 12, most campaigns have ended. And you still have to contended with ASI.

But now its combined with a feat at level one and stronger feats in a feat chain.

• An "extra" feat
• Earlier feats
• Stronger feats in a chain
• Feats that give you spells from other classes
• Feats that give you class features of other classes
• An overgenerous multiclassing system
• WOTC's "feats and mulitclassing are totally optional wink wink" attitude
• WOTC's "5e is a toolkit even though we opted not to design nor present it as one" attitude
• WOTC's promotion of MTG setting where PCs are even stronger and get more stuff as normal and not the exception to the rule like Dark Sun

It's natural to see all of this and worry just a bit.


I didn't say this. I said the classes are bleeding and blobbing together now. And without care, it could be worse. However no one is openly convoying any calls for caution. "Don't worry. It's fun. It'll be fine"

I'm glad you can grab invocations as a feat. Feats replacing multiclassing is one of ym favorite things about how the game is changing.

 

[Shardstone]

Based on those comments and my and others experiences, many players have drawn a conclusion (that everything in officially published rules, or at least the core, should be available to the players regardless of campaign) that WotC doesn't want them to have. Is that not a problem? If they consider the game to be a toolkit, shouldn't they say that in the books, rather than in an interview only a fraction of a fraction of their player base will ever know about?

You are entirely correct. Why is this not in the DMG? Who can say.

 

[Weiley31]

Your last sentence is exactly what every player who insists on playing a tabaxi regardless of the campaign says.

In our defense, we cat people really do like our cats!

 

[Shardstone]

Look, if someone doesn't want to take personal responsibility for their own happiness and instead wants to rely on some game company in Seattle to do it for them... okay... best of luck to them. If (general) you want to just sit here miserable because you either have to be a "bad DM" by telling your players "No, Theros is an Ancient Greek style game and thus I'm not allowing Tabaxi in the setting" or else miserable because you LET the player play a Tabaxi in this Ancient Greek setting... then so be it. Be miserable.

But hey... maybe you will luck out and eventually WotC WILL print something in a book someday that says "As a DM you can make this game your own and can pick and choose what to include" and you can use that as your "proof" as to why you aren't allowing Tabaxi. It's not YOU telling them they can't play it, it's Wizards of the Coast! It's THEIR fault! You're just the messenger! You're not the bad guy, it's all WotC! If you really want to wait for that to happen, go right ahead. But just expect to be miserable in the meantime.

Personally though? I'm always perfectly happy being "unreasonable". And I tell the players all the time and straight away without malice or dishonesty "When you run your own game, you can allow or disallow whatever you want. But this is MY game I'm running and I'm going to do the same. If you don't want to go along with it, then you can choose not to play." And I don't feel any personal problem or issue with that whatsoever. And you know what? Neither do my players, because they are actually reasonable people themselves and are able to accept whatever rules or restrictions I put in. And they choose to play or not play as the case may be.

You act coy about it, but on Facebook and Reddit, these kinds of questions happen all the time man. It really would only be beneficial to a strong number of people to clearly state the toolkit nature of the game.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Okay, then I'm not sure what contradiction you're referencing.

You mean like how they explicitly tell you in the PHB that the DM decides what races are available and how common they are? Or how the DMG talks about creating the world and how it's up to you as the DM what is in the world?

And that's the thing, almost nothing officially published will. The game is robust. (and because some people don't know what that word means beyond one of it's several definitions, that means sturdy and capable of withstanding strain)

A character doing more damage (the equivelent of a divine smite with a +1 bonus to damage from an item or ally buff) with greatly reduced accuracy will not break the game. Having advantage won't mitigate the attack penalty so much that the character isn't hitting less than a similar character without GWM, and that other character will simply have other benefits. It's fine.

People spend too much time staring at DPR spreadsheets and tracking the exact damage numbers of every attack when they actually play, and it distorts their perception.

Even after two attacks, it's about on par with polearm master and some other feat.

Right. And pretty much everyone with vastly more data than you or I that has spoken on the subject agrees that most people don't worry about optimization.

They explicitly tell you alignment is a guideline and that you can change it in the MM, but people still raised so much hell over it that WotC felt they needed to make sweeping changes. Take that as you will.

 

[Minigiant]

Let's say I'm playing Dabram, Priest of Silvanus(Nature Cleric) and I want to be a protector of the life that nature provides. To that end I take some feat that doesn't exist yet and may never exist that gives me a single Favored Enemy, which I decide is undead since they are anti-life. Taking that feat doesn't make me part ranger, nor does it bleed the cleric and ranger classes together.

Favored Enemy is not worth a feat. It's too little. But FE and Natural Explorer is. Or +1 DEX & FE is. Or FE & a 1st level spell is worth a feat. Then a druid, cleric, rogue, or whatever can cannibalize it.

I think it is better for me to express my worry and get many to display all the the concerns than not worry and possibly see a class eat up another's class features with 2 early feats and give DMs and players headaches.

 

[Maxperson]

Favored Enemy is not worth a feat. It's too little. But FE and Natural Explorer is. Or +1 DEX & FE is. Or FE & a 1st level spell is worth a feat. Then a druid, cleric, rogue, or whatever can cannibalize it.

Ok. And? It's still not diluting the classes and moshing them together. You might have an argument if 3 feats later the druid had Natural Explorer, Favored Enemy(from background, see below) and Hunter's Prey. Unless you're an alt human, though, that's going to take you until 8th level and you get no stat improvements. I'm fine with that level of investment to get that many abilities from a single class. Of course, you aren't going to see that many feats duplicating class abilities in a single class like that, so that level of class ability sharing is out of the question, leaving no real class mixing.

I can also see favored enemy being a feat worthy of being a background feat, since those are weaker.

I think it is better for me to express my worry and get many to display all the the concerns than not worry and possibly see a class eat up another's class features with 2 early feats and give DMs and players headaches.

Worrying about it(or not) here isn't going to make a lick of difference. I think it's incredibly unlikely that WotC is scouring this thread looking for opinions about what they are doing.

Edit: And I fail how anything so trivial and not unbalanced as a few minor spells or a class ability is going to give anyone headaches.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

They explicitly tell you alignment is a guideline and that you can change it in the MM, but people still raised so much hell over it that WotC felt they needed to make sweeping changes. Take that as you will.

Okay?

How do you take it? Because I am at a loss as to what point is being made with that.

 

[Mordhau]

You are entirely correct. Why is this not in the DMG? Who can say.

Isn't it in the PHB? Some races are common, some are uncommon and some aren't even in the the PHB, which by implication definitely doesn't make them common.

I think people tend to oversell this issue. Reading too many threads on a place like this can distort your perpsective on where people in general are at. There was a thread on here a while ago where someone made a poll which asked "Would you be ok with a human only game?" and the response was overwhelmingly positive even from posters here, showing that those who think you must allow a player to play a tabaxi are just a small but loud minority.

I've never actually encountered issues with limiting races in the real world. Some people on this site have an ideological bee in their bonnet about GM power. That's all really. (And it's been the same way for 20 years or so now - nothing really changes).