D&D General The Crab Bucket Fallacy

[tetrasodium]

It's telling that the 3.x developers were somehow terrified of a class that got multiple attacks per round and could actually hit with them on a regular basis, then they turned right around and gave monsters multiple attacks at their highest base attack, lol.

I never had a chance to hear a developer explain it, but my personal theory had to do with the Medium BAB classes, most of whom were intended to use weapons from time to time. If you make enemies purely with the attack bonuses of say, Fighters in mind, then pretty quickly Clerics, Bards, Rogues, and Monks aren't going to hit anything without massive buffs.

OTOH, if everything's AC is set to where they think a Rogue should be, you got Fighters just using Power Attack and Combat Expertise on every attack for "free"...or just pretty much always hitting.

Descending attack bonuses in theory prevent that sort of thing, I suppose. It's still clunky and inelegant and turning the game into "everyone stands still and full attacks, and monsters do more damage with their full attack than most players" is something I can never forgive them, as much as I liked the "build a character out of LEGOS" aspect of 3.x.

Then Paizo decided not only to not fix it, but give Fighters more built-in bonuses to hit so that you had level 5 characters with +12 to hit running around, lol.

3.x definitely gave us a proof of problem with differing classes having wildly different attack bonus scaling. I think that it also demonstrated the value of something like base/base-5/base-10 allowing monster AC to be high without having a narrow line between the boring extremes of basically always gets hit/basically never gets hit since the AC could be tuned to make the second & third hit hard or impossible without having much impact on that first hit.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

It's close.
The main 3 things from 4e missing in 5e is Weapon based At-wills, Marking, and In Combat non-magical healing.

Quite frankly the fact that it took 10 years to have Attack Options be core or even be expanded is just weird.

I am still trying to find the most elegant way to make something that performs the same function as marking (aggro magnet trap) without extra reactions.

Auras that impede movement away from you and cause enemies to save vs damage when they first move on thier turn could work for me, but I feel like a lot of “no magic!” Martial fans would throw fruit at me about it…

 

[Neonchameleon]

No. You just don't have one that works exactly the way you want.

One that can do the basic common job of one in 4e?

The literal only thing other than weapon and armour proficiency all warlords had in common in 4e was hp recovery that worked from zero. If you have this you have something in common with all 4e warlords and if you don't you don't.

If you want to do it another way than superiority dice be my guest. I'm not dictating the way. But when there is only one point of commonality between all warlords if you can't do that stop pretending what you are offering bears any resemblance.

The other way of interpreting doing the job of a warlord is doing their job in the party. And the explicit job of a warlord was to fill the leader role - the same role a cleric did. If you want to do that through thp alone you're going to need to go way beyond the Twilight Cleric.

So stop telling me that because I refuse to accept a cardboard cut out as the real thing it's because I have a one true way approach. Either offer a warlord that can fill the commonality or that can do their job in the party.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Except there is extra damage on attacks. Poster child is rogue but the -5/+10 feats also exist.

Yes, and they don’t break anything. PHB 2024 is shaping up to allow commanders strike with no bonus action cost and rogues can SA on reactions. The designers aren’t worried about it.

So your options are to ban or rewrite stuff that outside these boards no one cares about that much.

I think you could make a new class with a more generous amount of Superiority dice with say two attacks, more dice some new effects but you couldn't duplicate the 4E warlord as such. Which is what people insist on in previous threads.

You can get as close as anyone could expect from a new edition.

The people who yell that it has to be a direct port can be ignored. It’s an irrational position based in stubborn refusal to let go of the edition war.

But as long as people keep insisting on that you're basically gonna get ignored by WotC OneD&D isn't doing that either.

It's the equivalent of me insisting AD&D multiclassing is the one true way. Well I'm not gonna get what I want am I?

Wonder how many people have actually played an attack granting class in 5E? I've done it twice wonder if that's a record?

The Battlemaster is a commonly played subclass.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

One that can do the basic common job of one in 4e?

Forget 4e! We can have warlord, the character concept, without referring to warlord, the 4e class. The two editions are so drastically different, that they don't need to be mechanically similar at all. 5e ranger doesn't have the 4e ranger's striker damage bonus, 5e fighter doesn't have 4e fighters marking ability etc. We can think about how to represent inspiring, guiding and leading others without referring to 4e at all. And to do that in 5e way, we need to look how already existing mechanics in 5e represent those things as a guidance, not the mechanics of some completely different game.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Forget 4e! We can have warlord, the character concept, without referring to warlord, the 4e class.

But we don't have it. We have a half-assed knock off of the 4e concept.

If we went back to first principles without referring to the 4e vision the Warlord would clearly be either a non-magical bard or a pet class. The only reason the half-assed 5e alternatives are offered as a warlord is as watered down 4e that removes everything that made the warlord fun and evocative.

The two editions are so drastically different, that they don't need to be mechanically similar at all.

They really aren't that different.

5e ranger doesn't have the 4e ranger's striker damage bonus,

The 4e ranger's striker damage bonus was quite literally Hunter's Mark.

5e fighter doesn't have 4e fighters marking ability

No. Because it turned the Essentials Defender's Aura into a feat - Sentinel. Then gave fighters an extra feat

etc. We can think about how to represent inspiring, guiding and leading others without referring to 4e at all.

And you know what inspiring doesn't create? Force fields! Things that make you shrug off sword blows without actually taking damage! What inspiring does do is enable people to dig deep when the chips are down.

And to do that in 5e way, we need to look how already existing mechanics in 5e represent those things as a guidance, not the mechanics of some completely different game.

Which is why I am saying how it could work in 5e. But force fields have always been a miserable approximation of inspiration's ability to endure.

And you know what else was lost when 5e decided to go with video gamey force fields over dramatically interesting and more psychologically accurate ability to dig deep? The ability to play a low magic game. (Which also takes rituals being open to all). If the warlord can be the panic button and anyone can ritual (or anyone with the feat and they aren't stucck with basic ones) rather than it being class locked then you can have a party of all martial characters. It's much grittier and simpler but doesn't work in 5e without extensive house rules. 5e is magic, magic everywhere largely because grognards and h4ters campaigned against the warlord so hard.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Forget 4e! We can have warlord, the character concept, without referring to warlord, the 4e class. The two editions are so drastically different, that they don't need to be mechanically similar at all.

They can't be mechanically the same, of course, they can't even do just the same things about as well, because other support-capable classes are amped up so much from 4e.

5e ranger doesn't have the 4e ranger's striker damage bonus,

In 4e it was a class feature called Quary that did extra dice when you hit. In 5e, it's a spell, Hunter's Quary, that adds extra dice when you hit.

5e fighter doesn't have 4e fighters marking ability etc.

Which is sad, yes. Instead, so the fighter isn't just going "I attack" every round, it has Action Surge, which lets it attack a second time in one of those rounds.

We can think about how to represent inspiring, guiding and leading others without referring to 4e at all. And to do that in 5e way, we need to look how already existing mechanics in 5e represent those things as a guidance, not the mechanics of some completely different game.

5e was downright enthusiastic about providing mechanics to explicitly represent "Inspiration" Bards got it, an RP-carrot system got it, and there was a temp-hp feat that let anyone say they were an Inspiring Leader. Then there's another temp-hp Rally, and a token healing PDK feature that doesn't work on allies that have been dropped.
No matter how much of that stuff you may take, when Bob drops and the poor sap who took 'em all is your only support PC, Bob II will be rolled next week.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

@Neonchameleon you simply seem to dislike with certain basic design assumptions of 5e and like the 4e way better. Which is fine, but then why not just play 4e?

I don't think it is realistic to expect the basic design of 5e to change, so the class in the way you want will never happen.

 

[Micah Sweet]

No ones forcing you to play OneD&D.

Thanks the Dice Lords for that!

 

[Micah Sweet]

I think if you added a new use if superiority dice. Either they function as cure spells or add to healing when one spends a hit dice.

Spend xyz amount of dice to recover a hit dice.

And have them scale eg one dice of healing, double it, then triple it.

Gets two attacks a round at level 5 or grant grant the dice as a bonus action and the only attack they get scales at say half the rate of a rogue (see artificer).

Probably just Gove them a short rest lay on hands ability that scales independently of Superiority dice.

Magical healing kinda sucks in 5E though so idk what rate you would allow it.

Magical healing is way too powerful in combat to my mind. Very tired of whack-a-mole, and ranged healing in general.