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

[Maxperson]

I remember an outpouring of love over bounded accuracy, advantage and proficiency and no brooking of argument that these were all genius.

It was a mixed bag. People loved bounded accuracy, but many(myself included) felt that they bounded it too far and +10 would have been a better cap. People loved advantage, but many argued(accurately) that it was too easy to get advantage AND that the lack of stacking was an issue. 10 things grant advantage, not only was there not a super advantage, but one disadvantage negated everything. I don't recall any problems with proficiency itself, but I do recall expertise complaints. Arguments ensued.

It wasn't a kumbaya a period as you are remembering. There WAS a lot of love of the system as a whole, though, so in that regard it was kumbaya.

 

[FrogReaver]

yeah but that has no bearing on what game I get to play, you can say a good thing exists but I have no access to it so it is irrelevant to me plus Like be able to lever the things on my sheet to my advantage it feels right some how.

Now matter how good the game is you never will because it’s the players and dm that make it good or bad.

my playstyle allows the things on your sheet to matter. So I don’t get that criticism at all.

look it is like pizza it is not the best but few truly hate it that is 5e plus if you want a game it is by far the easiest to get into both material and an active game and in some areas, it is the only game, so play it or have nothing.

Sure. But if we fundamentally change it as you wish would it still be the most popular? Would it still be a game very few truly hate.

 

[FrogReaver]

It was a mixed bag. People loved bounded accuracy, but many(myself included) felt that they bounded it too far and +10 would have been a better cap. People loved advantage, but many argued(accurately) that it was too easy to get advantage AND that the lack of stacking was an issue. 10 things grant advantage, not only was there not a super advantage, but one disadvantage negated everything. I don't recall any problems with proficiency itself, but I do recall expertise complaints. Arguments ensued.

It wasn't a kumbaya a period as you are remembering. There WAS a lot of love of the system as a whole, though, so in that regard it was kumbaya.

The concepts were loved - the specific implementations them was hotly debated. Yea.

 

[Mind of tempest]

Now matter how good the game is you never will because it’s the players and dm that make it good or bad.

my playstyle allows the things on your sheet to matter. So I don’t get that criticism at all.


Sure. But if we fundamentally change it as you wish would it still be the most popular? Would it still be a game very few truly hate.

then we might as well never have ever had more than the prototype version of dnd by that logic, people are uncontrolled able plus a good game does not require you to fight the system to do something real people do every day.

who can say, none of us can see the future so why not try anyway it can't be worse than what is behind us?

 

[FrogReaver]

then we might as well never have ever had more than the prototype version of dnd by that logic, people are uncontrolled able plus a good game does not require you to fight the system to do something real people do every day.

who can say, none of us can see the future so why not try anyway it can't be worse than what is behind us?

IMO. Your recommended fixes are worse for a whole lot of people.

 

[Mind of tempest]

IMO. Your recommended fixes are worse for a whole lot of people.

in what way?

 

[FrogReaver]

in what way?

One of your fixes was to overhaul the entire stat and skill system because wisdom and perception don’t make sense because you could have someone wise and not perceptive.

There is no skill and stat system where things that don’t make sense like that won’t be possible. Skills and stats are crude approximations of the real world and will never support all the nuance and diversity we find in the real world. It’s a solution that changes tuff that works reasonably well that doesn’t actually solve anything.

or take the position about breaking athletics up into more skills for ‘realism’. That makes it impossible to be an athletic fighter and anything else - when many real world fighter concepts are athletic and something else. Such a change would prevent those concepts. Makes it a very bad change.

All your recent change arguments boil down to what I call simulationism. But when that notion is unchecked you get the awful 3e skill system - or something even worse than it.

 

[Maxperson]

All your recent change arguments boil down to what I call simulationism. But when that notion is unchecked you get the awful 3e skill system - or something even worse than it.

The main issue with 3e was that the number of skill points a lot of classes received was low. If you just gave Fighters(and other classes that only got 2) a base of 4 skill points, instead of 2 and got rid of the whole cross-class skill idea, the system was pretty good.

 

[Mind of tempest]

One of your fixes was to overhaul the entire stat and skill system because wisdom and perception don’t make sense because you could have someone wise and not perceptive.

There is no skill and stat system where things that don’t make sense like that won’t be possible. Skills and stats are crude approximations of the real world and will never support all the nuance and diversity we find in the real world. It’s a solution that changes tuff that works reasonably well that doesn’t actually solve anything.

or take the position about breaking athletics up into more skills for ‘realism’. That makes it impossible to be an athletic fighter and anything else - when many real world fighter concepts are athletic and something else. Such a change would prevent those concepts. Makes it a very bad change.

All your recent change arguments boil down to what I call simulationism. But when that notion is unchecked you get the awful 3e skill system - or something even worse than it.

I want to move 8 stats personally but the problem is stat always beats skill, where I would rather base stat and being skilled in it, are equal but if you have both you crazy good at it.

I want more social abilities at low level and more general customisation of classes as not everyone gets new spells to take and I like some more dynamism to characters.
I want more strength skill I myself never spoke of breaking up athletics, you must be thinking of someone else.
I do what it checked I just want a better one than we have, plus a guide on what most of them are for overlap being allowed.

 

[Maxperson]

I want to move 8 stats personally but the problem is stat always beats skill, where I would rather base stat and being skilled in it, are equal but if you have both you crazy good at it.

Proficiency starts at +2, which means you need a 14 in the stat to even equal skill. 16 to surpass it. It only takes a few levels for it to take a 16 to equal skill. Given that most characters will only have 1 or 2 stats at 16 or higher, skill is going to outdo stats the vast majority of the time. Once the PCs hit 13th level, virtually no stat will beat skill.

Skill is king with skills in 5e, not stats.

I want more strength skill I myself never spoke of breaking up athletics, you must be thinking of someone else.

There aren't many skills that are strength based that Athletics doesn't already cover. One thing I do, though, which does end up helping Fighters, is to allow Intimidate(strength). I've been doing that since 3e. If a not very personable body builder pretzels a steel bar while staring at you, you're probably going to be intimidated.