D&D 5E Tasha's and optimization

[ECMO3]

Yoi can't dump str if you want to wear medium armor and not ignore encumbrance.

You can't ignore encumbrance, but it is rarely an issue unless you are carrying a ton of rations AND you can't afford a pack animal.

Sure there is less you can carry, but for a melee martial an 8 strength and half plate works just fine that vast majority of time.

Even if you use the variant encumbrance rules it is rarely a bigger deal for a dex melee martial build. Heavy armor is "heavier" and your high strength character in plate is going to be hitting the "encumbered" limit pretty easy too until he is near the top of tier 2.

Plate weighs 25 pounds more than half plate. That alone takes 5 points of strength to even out. On top of this, weapons that are going to take advantage of your higher strength will be heavier as well. So if the high strength character wants to take advantage of the +1 in AC for heavy armor and the extra damage for heavy weapons he is not very far ahead in encumbrance at early levels anyway.

If you use heavier medium armor, stealth does not work well.

So what? Stealth does not work well in heavy armor either. At least with a dex build and medium you can "make it work" with a feat if you want to do that. The claim was that a dex build needs to pump dex to keep up, that is just not true. They are 1 point behind at level 1 and without feats will stay there. If we limit ourselves to armor that does not cause disadvantage, then a breastplate is the best you can get regardless of strength and dex builds are actually ahead of strength builds in AC if that is how we are looking at it.

I will also point out that regardless of the armor you wear and the feats you have, a higher Dex will always mean a better stealth than the same character with a lower dex. If you are building a stealthy character a dex build is WAY, WAY better than a strength build in any armor.

Switching between bow and melee is hard if you use a shield.

If you are using a shield there is no advantage to a strength-based melee character. The small advantage in damage you get from using a non-finesse melee weapon is nullified if you go sword and board.

If you take medium armor mastery, you can get your stelth bonus back, but it basically locks you into vhuman or you fall behind.

No you are not behind. Don't take the feat, wear half plate and your stealth is still BETTER than the strength guy in heavy armor.

When you say this you are not comparing apples to apples, you are suggesting that the dex build needs to be stealthy but the strength build does not.

I have seen too many situations in our "dex is godly str stinks" group, where the wizard had to do all athletics/str stuff, because she had rolled a 12 in str and was the strongest of all.

More power to her. To be honest that is what Rogues are for in our games ... and Barbarians if you have one.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Snip.

I'll just say, that 16-8 is 8 > 5, that I think I did not argue that str does more damage and that the str char should actually be good in stealth. They have their str in athletics and str feats.
If in your games there is always a rogue for athletics check, then of course, you take away pressure, but that is not always the case in our games.

Otherwise I'll drop the issue, because it is moot to discuss further.
We probably play the game differently.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

What's interested me re: Tashas is seeing the theoretical effects, as discussed in this thread, vs. the at-table effects on "optimization".

Several posts here have made good suggestions for what the most truly min-maxed approaches are post-Tasha.

Yet what I've actually see at the table, bizarrely, is less min-maxing. We haven't created a vast number of characters post-Tashas, but thanks to a couple of aborted campaigns, we have created a significant number. And what seems to be happening, with two of the groups I play with at least (and the rest haven't made new PCs yet) is that they're picking the race they want to play, then just changing the stats to fit the class.

Previously what I usually saw was:

Step 1: Narrow down races to ones with a bonus to primary stat of desired class.

Step 2: Find best or most-acceptable of those races, play that.

What I see now is:

Step 1: Pick race you actually want to play, change stats to what you want them to be for desired class.

I'd hoped this would happen, and I'm glad that I'm seeing it happen.

This is my experience as well. I have seen more "I want to roleplay a []" and less "I would like to play a [] but can't because I need to choose something that gives me the right ASI".

 

[Fenris-77]

You are begging the question.

Lacking a racial bonus to your class's prime stat does not preclude them from taking that class with that race.

And we're talking about optimization, where that exact idea carries a lot of weight. Im really not sure what your point is here.

 

[Lyxen]

I disagree with this.

And I disagree with your example, seeing that it's what I wrote "except in very special cases". sigh

A very specific build is a very special case. And honestly, anyone coming to my table with a grappling build at our table will quickly learn that in a fantasy world, all fights are not on-on-one tavern brawls, and that monsters will eat you quickly for pulling ridiculous single-minded builds like this. So yes, even more exceptional, because they would need to survive a real fantasy world (assuming they even survive their first encounter with an ooze).

Aside from a grappler Fighter build, I use grapple with my low-strength Rogues relatively often. I almost always have expertise in athletics for this very reason and even with an 8 strength they are pretty good at it and the cunning action means you can dash with the grappled enemy. Grapple works great with misty step for two uses - dragging people off of cliffs, walls etc and then misty stepping back while they fall and using it to misty step to low flying creatures and grapple them mid air so I can stab at them (and often make them plummet to the ground with you).

The first case is an abuse of the rules, falling is instantaneous, and you are dragging the grappled creature behind you, so you have to fall first and you will be splat as well before you can cast misty step, assuming that they even follow you during the fall, which is dubious because I am not even sure that falling counts as moving for the purpose of grappling. And the second one is risky, since, again, fall is instantaneous, so if you miss the grapple, you are the one falling without even a stab. And being a rogue, your stab is the next round anyway, so if the flyer just flies higher and pushed you off, splat you go.

It can be made fun, but I really dislike combos like this which abuse the rules or even flirt with interpretation. This is not 3e anymore, and if you abuse the game with ridiculous things, any DM can just make slightly different rulings, quoting RAW won't work.

 

[Willie the Duck]

Hi Willie

Can you give me a list of what you consider the winners and losers post Tasha? Thanks.

Any race that was pigeonholed (goblins are rogue-like, there are cleric dwarves but few bards, you will find sorcerer half-elves but few wizards and the reverse for hobgoblins) benefited from being able to branch out, and that seems to be the general 'win for everyone' level of things.

Fundamentally, the Winners would be the ones upon whose attribute distribution was hard to capitalize such as Yuan ti (Int/Cha being hard to leverage optimally) or had additional abilities often made redundant for classes where their attribute bonuses would do the most optimal good (a mountain dwarf or tortle's Str-bonus was hard to leverage in the classes who would most gain from their AC benefits).

Since nothing was taken away, Losers would mostly be those who no longer are go-to choices for something. Custom lineage rather obviously eats into a Variant Human's turf. Half-elf wins by expanding into more non-cha-based builds, but it does cede ground in the charisma ranks. Oh! - I would say that Asimar, Tieflings, Genasi, Gith, and other races that get innate 1/LR spellcasting could be seen as having lost out, relatively, in that the new model (where getting 1/day spell access through all new means also lets you cast said spell with slots gained through your class, etc.).

 

[ECMO3]

And I disagree with your example, seeing that it's what I wrote "except in very special cases". sigh

A very specific build is a very special case. And honestly, anyone coming to my table with a grappling build at our table will quickly learn that in a fantasy world, all fights are not on-on-one tavern brawls, and that monsters will eat you quickly for pulling ridiculous single-minded builds like this. So yes, even more exceptional, because they would need to survive a real fantasy world (assuming they even survive their first encounter with an ooze).

You are not giving up much at all though. If the fight doesn't call for it fine, pull out your maul and smash like any other strength-based fighter. But there are a ton of times it is pretty awesome and it is frequent that grappling is pretty darn efficient. Like grabbing a goblin bowman and keeping him from diisengaging and sniping while hidden every turn.

The first case is an abuse of the rules, falling is instantaneous, and you are dragging the grappled creature behind you, so you have to fall first and you will be splat as well before you can cast misty step, assuming that they even follow you during the fall, which is dubious because I am not even sure that falling counts as moving for the purpose of grappling. And the second one is risky, since, again, fall is instantaneous, so if you miss the grapple, you are the one falling without even a stab. And being a rogue, your stab is the next round anyway, so if the flyer just flies higher and pushed you off, splat you go.

It is not an abuse of the rules it is a creative solution, it is the whole reason you have things like grapple.

The second one is risky, but not nearly as risky as allowing the flying enemy to use flyby and hit you with impunity. I have done this quite a bity with my Rogue-Wizard and I have missed the grapple and fallen, I have made the grapple and then the enemy teleported away and I fell but there are times I brought us down to the ground together too where the party could beat on him too.

Also he can't fly higher because he is grappled and therefore his movement is 0. RAW we both fall to the ground unless he can hover. The only way he can fly higher is if he is more than 2 sizes larger and in that case he is not really grappled and you are using the variant rules for climbing on a creature. Sure the DM could overule this and houserule that a flying grappled creature does not have a movement of 0, by why would he?

It can be made fun, but I really dislike combos like this which abuse the rules or even flirt with interpretation. This is not 3e anymore, and if you abuse the game with ridiculous things, any DM can just make slightly different rulings, quoting RAW won't work.

Most DMs I play with tend to encourage creativity and "the rule of cool" not penalize it.

 

[Lyxen]

You are not giving up much at all though. If the fight doesn't call for it fine, pull out your maul and smash like any other strength-based fighter.

But still inferior because of all those specialised feats that you have put in the necessary feats. Up to you if you want to be that specialised, obviously, but that specialised is a special case.

It is not an abuse of the rules it is a creative solution, it is the whole reason you have things like grapple.

No, at that level, it's in the cheating zone. And I'm pretty sure that if an NPC did it to a PC, there would be a huge outcry. He has grappled you, you're dead from falling and it just appeared back at the top. Who's next ? Fortunately, it does not work that way.

The second one is risky, but not nearly as risky as allowing the flying enemy to use flyby and hit you with impunity. I have done this quite a bity with my Rogue-Wizard and I have missed the grapple and fallen, I have made the grapple and then the enemy teleported away and I fell but there are times I brought us down to the ground together too where the party could beat on him too.

That one is OK and actually fairly heroic, just pointing out that it's risky and taking expertise in grapple (compared to many more useful skills) on a character just for these rare cases without even having a guarantee of some success seems a bit too much.

Most DMs I play with tend to encourage creativity and "the rule of cool" not penalize it.

It's only cool when it's a heroic thing done once in a while. When it's a build created just for the purpose (ab)using the rules as much as possible, it never even even enters into the real lf "cool".

 

[ECMO3]

But still inferior because of all those specialised feats that you have put in the necessary feats. Up to you if you want to be that specialised, obviously, but that specialised is a special case.

There is only one feat-tavern brawler, and that is a half feat that boosts strength. Whether you are doing a grappler build or not it is high on the list of first level feats for any V.Human or custom fighter using point buy or standard array.

Half feats are particularly good for these races using point buy because they are equivalent to 2 points in a stat at first level since anything above 14 requires 2 points in point buy. There are only a handful of half feats that boost strength, and a case could be made that this is the very best one of them for most non-spell using fighters.

If you are rolling stats or you are not playing a human or custom sure, but if you are then you are not giving up anything and it is on the short list of feats you are going to consider anyway and on an even shorter list that can get you to 18 Strength at 1st level.

Note: When you say "feats" you may be thinking of the grappler feat as well, but I would never get the grappler feat for a grappler build or really any build that I can think of. It is a terrible feat.

No, at that level, it's in the cheating zone. And I'm pretty sure that if an NPC did it to a PC, there would be a huge outcry. He has grappled you, you're dead from falling and it just appeared back at the top. Who's next ? Fortunately, it does not work that way.

There would not be an outcry if an NPC did it to a PC in my games.

That one is OK and actually fairly heroic, just pointing out that it's risky and taking expertise in grapple (compared to many more useful skills) on a character just for these rare cases without even having a guarantee of some success seems a bit too much.

Every Rogue I have ever played had expertise in athletics because it is one of the most useful skills. That is the only skill that my Rogues always take expertise in. With a crap strength you can't climb well without doing that and Rogues generally need to climb well. The second slot can be for perception, investigation or stealth, or even a charisma skill depending on the kind of character I am building, but the first is always athletics.

It's only cool when it's a heroic thing done once in a while. When it's a build created just for the purpose (ab)using the rules as much as possible, it never even even enters into the real lf "cool".

Using grapple and using the rules inside the feat and fighting style to make it more effective is not abusing the rules. That is the whole reason the fighting style and the feat have those effects which are specific to grapple. It is the very reason they were put into the game.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

Yup there are a ton of dodges available, and as the party levels it becomes less of a burden (har har) for various reasons. It's still worth doing at low levels though, if for no other reason than to punish make reasonable STR-dump builds.

Actually I like doing that to the players at low level. It makes transitioning to upper tier more visible. You no longer bother about Lifestyle Expanses as the rounding error when selling treasure is enough to pay for Aristocratic Lifestyle whenever needed, you no longer bother about encumberance because bags of holding are aplenty...