D&D 5E Starting to Hate Hexblades

[teitan]

Brilliant fix: multiclassing is OPTIONAL. It's not a standard rule.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Brilliant fix: multiclassing is OPTIONAL. It's not a standard rule.

Heck, I've never banned or disallowed Multiclassing in my games, but my players have never used it. I make sure that the party knows the awesome things that their class can do (and some of the not-so-awesome things, as well), and they've always stuck to the base class instead of multiclassing, even when I told the Paladin about what they could get through multiclassing to Hexblade.

 

[teitan]

The multiclass system this edition is... just awful. It's stupidly unbalanced, doesn't respect tiers of play, and generally feels like the entire thing was wrote on a friday afternoon right as an afterthought right before publishing.

And that is why it is an optional rule. The game is optimized to single class play by default. With sub-class choices there to provide the options that would normally have been handled by Prestige Classes or multiclassing in 3.x era. Hexblades are the 3.0 Ranger, people took the level for two weapon fighting and dumped the class after (which was actually against the multiclassing rules), except Hexblades are more interesting at higher level.

 

[teitan]

Heck, I've never banned or disallowed Multiclassing in my games, but my players have never used it. I make sure that the party knows the awesome things that their class can do (and some of the not-so-awesome things, as well), and they've always stuck to the base class instead of multiclassing, even when I told the Paladin about what they could get through multiclassing to Hexblade.

Yeah I don't disallow it myself, more I just discourage it and ask for a strong story reason WHY the character would multiclass and to really look at the long term effectiveness of the character as well. If it's just a mechanical tick then they really can't find a good reason and the long term effectiveness usually is hit hard so they don't do it. I also don't disallow feats but I think maybe 2 of the 5 players have taken feats.

 

[teitan]

It's actually kind of funny, I've mentioned it before, but I talk about these rules being optional, what's optional, what's not and how to use them in a campaign to fit the flavor you want as a DM... some people started going off on me as a "bad DM" because it was the DM's job to let the players play what they want and never say no, not knowing my game is a pretty over the top Theros campaign where I allow pretty much anything in the books except they have to play Theros races (unless they give me enough notice, I was going to allow a Half Orc Barbarian from a different world in but they opted to play a centaur spore druid instead). Like ANYTHING and a free Feat in lieu of a Divine Gift per the Theros book. I do have eyes on an old school D&D game though with the optional rules turned off and the healing rules tweaked out.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Dips are a symptom of the problem with niche protection. The players want an option (Cha to attack) that they can't get anywhere but the dip to service options the parent class doesn't provide.

 

[Scott Christian]

I wouldn't punish a player for picking a Warlock in 5E via withholding spellsor whatever. I'll either ban the class, ask the playerto retire the character of it's that big a problem or end game and next game removes the offending whatever from the game.

I am, just as I was above, honestly curious how having a hexblade, even one from a power gamer, can be that big of a problem? The game has a lot of swing and leverage for the DM to begin with.

 

[Scott Christian]

It's actually kind of funny, I've mentioned it before, but I talk about these rules being optional, what's optional, what's not and how to use them in a campaign to fit the flavor you want as a DM... some people started going off on me as a "bad DM" because it was the DM's job to let the players play what they want and never say no, not knowing my game is a pretty over the top Theros campaign where I allow pretty much anything in the books except they have to play Theros races (unless they give me enough notice, I was going to allow a Half Orc Barbarian from a different world in but they opted to play a centaur spore druid instead). Like ANYTHING and a free Feat in lieu of a Divine Gift per the Theros book. I do have eyes on an old school D&D game though with the optional rules turned off and the healing rules tweaked out.

In my experience, this is very true. Once it is published, it is fair game in many players' eyes.