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

[Minigiant]

Gonna be honest here: the adventuring day is another piece of design that needs to go away for good.

I have never seen a 'full' adventuring day that wasn't full of trash fights just to fill time and get the party's XP up to the right level. With the widespread acceptance of milestone leveling, it's pretty much just there to waste valuable gaming time that could be spent on social or exploration stuff.

Ideally there would be 3 different spell tables for a 1 battle, 3-5 battle, and 6-8 battle workday for each class.

A 5th level wizard would get 2/1/1, 3/2/1, or 4/3/2 based on how many fights a DM runs in their days.

But that's a lot of page space.

 

[ECMO3]

Yeah but the Purple Dragon Knight is the least liked fighter subclass for a reason.

The point is if the Fighter is 95% Combat and 5% other then and one of the pushed Subclasses is the ultrasimplistic Champion then:

1. There is little space for fighters to grow. They can only take features that are either:
   1. Outdated by the time the fighter gets it COUGH 3rd Casters COUGH Psi Knight flies for 1 turn at level 7 COUGH
   2. Hard to fully utilize because of how fighters work. High Intelligence on a Fighter?
   3. Are not easy to leverage in the Game. Artisan's tools aren't easy to bring up in a campaign.
2. This narrowness means casters much be held back in an aspect of combat to make the extremely focused Fighter relevant.

Yes PDK sucks because it is not "more damage" and "more hp". This is what you are implying is needed, options less focused on these two things. Well the Purple Dragon is that.

Also if you find it limiting it is because of how you are building your character. I have a Arcane Archer in a game right now with a 15 intelligence and a 10 constitution. When I make 4th level I am taking a half-feat and bumping intelligence to 16.

Is that character optimized for combat? Absolutely not, there are many builds even using the "weak" Arcane Archer subclass that would be more powerful in combat.

Some artisans tools can be limited, others like alchemists tools or jewelers tools are easy to make relevant.

If you are limited by the fighter options presented it is because your thinking is narrow.

 

[ECMO3]

The point is that the battlmaster only gets 4-5 sup dice during most campaigns.This limits them to using their flavorful theme 4-5times between rests. This in turn reverts them into constant use on the basic attack action. This means Every Single Fighter is reduced to a damage tank and this caps every other class by comparison.

RAW Battlemasters get 4 SP dice per short rest, that is on average 2 per battle if you are using the D&D guidlines. The average fight lasts 3-4 rounds meaning a battlemaster on average should use a superiority dice on over half his turns. Further they can get more dice through a feat or fighting style if they want

There are also ton of different actions you can take in combat and even more than one type of attack action.

You could try to get your enemy to realize the futility of fighting and lay down their arms after a couple were knocked off. That is a combat action that is not swinging your sword and if you took Purple Dragon Knight you could try it with expertise on the persuasion check. You could try this in every battle on one turn instead of swinging your sword. Not saying you should do that, and it too could get old but it is completely viable in a straight fighter build and is an action which costs nothing in addition to having a ton of out of combat uses.

While I am at it you can get commanding presence superiority dice through battlemaster which has out of combat uses, multiple times per day.

Racial abilities and feats also bring a ton of variety to your fighter, both in and out of combat. Now if you insist on building a stereotype half-Orc or human fighter well you might miss out on some of those and your character might be a little more one dimensional, but that is a choice you made.

 

[tetrasodium]

The point is that the battlmaster only gets 4-5 sup dice during most campaigns.This limits them to using their flavorful theme 4-5times between rests. This in turn reverts them into constant use on the basic attack action. This means Every Single Fighter is reduced to a damage tank and this caps every other class by comparison.

Short rests are 2 per long rest. Multiply that 4-5 by 3 for the long rest and both shirt rests.

 

[Undrave]

One thing I feel 4e did better, was articulating the tiers of play. There was a clear transition to another power level.

I particularly LOVE the write ups of Epic Destiny myself. I also like how Paragon Paths and Epic Destiny could straddle multiple class and work fine for either. I think it would be interesting to have a game where you have thematically narrower options to choose from at each tier of play, some of which are very setting dependant, instead of just doing 20 level of class A. You'd get your Heroic Class, your Paragon Class and your Epic Class.

and most of all Bannerets

LOL. Purple Dragon Knights are the worst fighters. They get NO NEW RESSOURCES to fuel their abilities, they only can spend their base class abilities in ways that are suboptimal. It's a terrible trap subclass that is best be completely forgotten. I think it's the only subclass from SCAG that wasn't reprinted somewhere?

The battlemaster maneuvers already get more powerful at 10th and 18th levels and aside from more powerful maneuvers he also gets student of war, know your enemy and relentless at 3rd, 7th and 15th levels respectfully.

There is no new maneuvers are later levels. The ones you get later are just the one you DIDN'T WANT at level 3. How exciting is that? Picking from your own leftovers... Why would I pick those maneuvers at later levels if I didn't want them at level 3?? It's like if a Wizard never got spells of higher level but just got to add level 1 spells forever.

 

[Shadowedeyes]

PDK is disliked because it's bad at what it intends to do. The healing ability is barely noticeable, and it doesn't get anything interesting until 10th level unless you really wanted Expertise in Persuasion. And the 15th level ability is also really bad, and is built off Indomitable, which is also incredibly lackluster. Also, it get's it's last ability at 17th level, which means 18th is a dead level? Unless the errated that.

I think Battleragers, Long Death Monks and Arcana Clerics also have not been reprinted, so it's not just the PDK though.

 

[Undrave]

I think Battleragers, Long Death Monks and Arcana Clerics also have not been reprinted, so it's not just the PDK though.

There's more stuff in SCAG than I thought... bu I could swear they had reprinted Battleragers somewhere? Oh well... it is ALSO a terrible subclass.

The only thing in SCAG that really mattered were the cantrips it seems...

 

[Flamestrike]

Gonna be honest here: the adventuring day is another piece of design that needs to go away for good.

That's a separate argument though.

With the widespread acceptance of milestone leveling, it's pretty much just there to waste valuable gaming time that could be spent on social or exploration stuff.

'Adventuring day XP' isn't there to determine the pacing of PC levelling.

It exists as a class and encounter balancing mechanism within the context of DnDs resource management model.

The '5 minute work day' has been a feature of DnD in all its incarnations (even 4E's AEDU system) by virtue of the fact DnD is (mechanically) a resource management game.

Spell slot, rages, Ki points, action surges, second winds, indomitable, superiority dice, channel divinity, lay on hands, XP, GP, HP, HD, magic item charges, Sorcery points, wild shapes, X per long/ short rest abilities. When you are only getting 1-3 encounters between long rest recharges, you can nova the crap out of encounters, and this favors long rest based classes (i.e. Casters).

Long rest resources are designed to last 6-8 medium to hard encounters before being expended. Short rest resources are designed to last around 2-3 encounters before being expended.

Letting players dump them all in a single encounter does away with that balance, and dramatically favors classes that are Long rest resource heavy (because those abilities are far more potent than ones that recover on a short rest). Casters can dump high level slots like candy, while still having enough petrol in the tank to magic away environmental and social challenges as well, with little to no resource pressure on them.

Now you can critique that design choice all you want (maybe all abilities should be based on a [per encounter] model, with an auto refresh at the end of each encounter - as was the case in SWSE and ToB:BoNS), but it exists.

If you run games outside of that expectation, you're going to get very different results.

 

[Shadowedeyes]

Yeah, nothing too stellar in that list. Cantrips and Bladesinger were the big stars from that one.

Also, Undying Warlock Patron was another one. So bad I forgot about it in my initial list.

 

[ECMO3]

LOL. Purple Dragon Knights are the worst fighters. They get NO NEW RESSOURCES to fuel their abilities, they only can spend their base class abilities in ways that are suboptimal. It's a terrible trap subclass that is best be completely forgotten. I think it's the only subclass from SCAG that wasn't reprinted somewhere?

Exactly. They get abilities that are not related to more hps or more damage. I was replying to a post that claimed this was all fighters could do.

I think it was reprinted as the Banneret. If you don't like it don't play it, and to be honest I have not seen it played in any game I have played but people shouldn't argue both sides of the coin.

There is no new maneuvers are later levels. The ones you get later are just the one you DIDN'T WANT at level 3. How exciting is that? Picking from your own leftovers... Why would I pick those maneuvers at later levels if I didn't want them at level 3?? It's like if a Wizard never got spells of higher level but just got to add level 1 spells forever.

Again this was a reply. The poster asked about "more powerful" maneuvers. The disarming attack you got at level 3 is "more powerful" at level 10. This is in addition to the extra maneuvers you get, and by the way there are no maneuvers I don't want, there are just those that I did not want as much. Also as I noted battlemasters get other abilities at higher levels.

Finally the comparison to the wizard is off the mark. You are talking about a core wizard feature (spells) and comparing it to a fighter subclass feature (maneuvers). This is not an appropriate comparison, wizard spells should be compared to fighter class abilities, those being extra attacks, 2 extra ASIs, 2nd wind, action surge, indomitable, fighting styles ...... that is what should be compared to spells

If you are going to compare something to battlemaster maneuvers, it needs to be a wizard subclass feature and the only wizard subclass that has anything even close to what a battlemaster gets with subclass is the bladesinger.