D&D 5E Spellcasters and Balance in 5e: A Poll

[pemerton]

I agree completely. But the 1E ranger was extremely overpower imho.

It depends on how stats are being generated, I think. If you retro-fit on some sort of points-buy system, then rangers have to spread their stats quite a bit, which powers down their STR and requires them to invest in mental stats from which they get little mechanical benefit.

 

[Sithlord]

It depends on how stats are being generated, I think. If you retro-fit on some sort of points-buy system, then rangers have to spread their stats quite a bit, which powers down their STR and requires them to invest in mental stats from which they get little mechanical benefit.

No matter their stats they got a big bonus to damage to many many creatures that were quite common in the game at that time and still are.

 

[FrogReaver]

It's the result of the implementation -- not fulfilling the concept of a Warlord/leaderly character whose impact is much more on the Warlord/martial leaderly side than on the swinging sword side.


#1 Current 5e Battlemaster by picking the leaderly maneuvers and feats (1-5 scale, 5 is great):
Weapon beating prowess = 4; Martial leaderly prowess = 3

People are asking for a character that is #2:
Weapon beating prowess = 2 or 3; Martial leaderly prowess = 5

Same impact but in different ways.

This seems like a pretty reasonable ask -- "I want to play a character than leans a lot more heavily on the martial leaderly and less on martial fighting than the current Battlemaster". Maybe for many #1 is just fine for leaderly stuff, but surely you can envision a character with better/more martial leaderly options than exist today?

There's actually very little design space from level 1-4. You give a character a d8 or d10 hp, martial weapons and medium/heavy armor and shields and there's not a ton of room left in tier 1. Battlemaster's are the pinacle of what level 1-4 martial characters get in those levels and all they get are:

1. Fighting Style
2. Second Wind
3. Action Surge
4. Battlemaster Manuevers

For those levels (1-4), I don't know how you are going to shove anything that feels signficantly more like a warlord than the battlemaster into a mechanical box that's no bigger than the Battlemaster's (and probably a bit smaller as Battlemasters are notoriously front loaded in the early levels). Also, don't forget a good portion of that box is going to have to be filled by Warlord subclass abilities.

 

[FrogReaver]

I'll give them half enablers, since they are optional and cannot be relied upon. You can take them to help fulfill a concept, but not to fulfill a class or subclass.

How do you determine what concepts require classes and which ones can be handled via feats?

 

[pemerton]

Improvised actions by nature cannot be as good or better than normal actions or they become the new norm.

I don't think this is self-evident. Maybe it's good to encourage improvised actions, to the extent that that means an increased engagement with the fiction.

I think the bigger issue with improvised action is consistency of adjudication, and also with how the adjudication of improvised actions relates to verisimilitude. Eg the game becomes a bit weird if it's routinely easier to defeat foes by pushing them over the furniture than hitting them with clubs.

 

[FrogReaver]

Because it lets me be a warrior that has both a Combat Role and a Out of Combat Role and does them well.

The Fighter is very Dependent on their Physical stats. 5e is very weak on letting your physical stats push out of combat unless you use DEXTERITY KING OF THE ABILITY SCORES. And even then Dexterity is limited and Fighter only get Acrobatics as a DEX class skill. Only only STR skill. No Con skills. And Fighters get no tools by default.

It;'s a huge ask to get a DM to make your noble knight fighter work before level 8 by asking for 7and a half houserules.

This to me is the whole problem.

How the Gehenna is making a noble, knight, miltilia captain, chieftian or gladiator with High Str, High Cha, and Decent Con a bad choice in Dungeons and Dragons?
Many fighters based on the fluff of the fighter as an elite warrior would come out of the military or nobility and many would have decent or high mental stats.

But there are very few core ways to bring their mental stats to the battlefield unlike real life.
What the Hades Mearls and Crawford?
I mean the noble and knight NPCs in the MM have 15 CHA.

I sympathize to some degree, but what you seem to be suggesting sounds to be more that you don't like how 5e handles fighters and want to shoehorn the warlord concept in to fix the things you don't like about 5e fighters. I just don't think we should create new classes to fix 'problems' with 5e design.

 

[pemerton]

I usually play a Rogue and one of them uses Charisma to either intimidate or persuade in the middle of combat regularly. He has expertise in Intimidate and a 14 Charisma and usually it is something like "We have killed half your friends, surrender now or you will die too". Occasionally he appeals to logic using persuasion/bribery and he does it in the middle of combat when it makes sense (i.e. usually after we have actually killed half of their friends).

That can take out 4 or so enemies in 1 turn and is generally a lot more than any martial can do in an equivalent action.

In the example I used above, using intimidate can knock out 4 or more foes in a single turn. If I used the attack action I would eliminate 1 at most. This is an example where the improvised action can be FAR MORE effective than a normal action and this is an example which is explicitly mentioned in the improvised action tone box.

I don't quite get how this is an improvised action. It looks like a standard use of Intimidation.

 

[Maxperson]

This isn't true of AD&D. Certain classes are expressly called out as subclasses. They are indented under their main classes in various of the tables. Being a sub-class determines attack and save charts, and creates a starting point for certain other mechanical interactions. It's a very rough precursor to ideas like "power source" in 4e or arcane vs divine magic in 3E and 5e.

Yeah. I know they were called out as subclasses, but that's like me calling out my car as a truck. Just because it was called something, didn't make it so. As you noted above, there was so little in common between them that they were nothing like, well, subclasses. They were classes in their own right. They just weren't called that.

 

[FrogReaver]

No
It's a strong case that it should have been in the base game.

I don't think so. Not everything can be placed into the base game.

 

[Minigiant]

I sympathize to some degree, but what you seem to be suggesting sounds to be more that you don't like how 5e handles fighters and want to shoehorn the warlord concept in to fix the things you don't like about 5e fighters. I just don't think we should create new classes to fix 'problems' with 5e design.

You got it backwards.

Many fans say:

Knights are fighters. Nobles are fighters. Duelists are fighters. Gladiators are fighters. Captains are fighters. Chieftains are Fighters. Generals are fighters.

But when other fans say.

Then the fighter should display the tactics, inspiration, insight, resourcefulness, daring, intelligence, wisdom, and charisma those characters show in combat or at least display those archetypes' out of combat ability at a low cost.

the reply is

No. No new warrior classes. No mechanics to display this in the base system.

That's what I don't get.