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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7437092" data-attributes="member: 42582">What is THE game? What is a player going to talk about and drawn upon, except his/her experiences?What is wrong with building a PC aimed at dealing damage? Or, to move from question to assertion: telling a player who says that (i) I'm interested in the damage-dealing aspect of the game, and (ii) the system produces some wonky results when I focus on that, that (i) was a mistake, seems unhelpful to me. The 5e system is one in which one of the widest range of choices allowed concerns damage (damage dice, damage adds, to hit adds, etc). It doesn't seem that strange for a player, in building a PC, to focus on those elements of the system.Maybe it's just true that 5e - as published, at least - can't support a wide range of damage-dealing archeytpes once players apply a reasonable degree of mechanical expertise to that aspect of the game.I take it as more-or-less self-evident that posting on these boards will have no effect on WotC's plans. But generating some sort of community discussion which focuses on actual analysis rather than irrelevant side-points hopefully isn't a complete fool's errand!The OP boils down to three claims: a feats-included game, played with some mechanical deftness, will overshadow the MM monsters, putting more work on the GM; that same game will also see greatweapon and hand-crossbows as dominant damage-oriented strategies, crowding out other in-principal sensible archetypes; and dropping feats shifts the overshaowing problem elsewhere, to a couple of categories of cantrip-user.I just don't see how anyone thinks it's a response to those points to talk about winning encounters by casting Charm Person, and telling players that damage-oriented builds are bad play.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 7437092, member: 42582"] What is THE game? What is a player going to talk about and drawn upon, except his/her experiences? What is wrong with building a PC aimed at dealing damage? Or, to move from question to assertion: telling a player who says that (i) I'm interested in the damage-dealing aspect of the game, and (ii) the system produces some wonky results when I focus on that, that (i) was a mistake, seems unhelpful to me. The 5e system is one in which one of the widest range of choices allowed concerns damage (damage dice, damage adds, to hit adds, etc). It doesn't seem that strange for a player, in building a PC, to focus on those elements of the system. Maybe it's just true that 5e - as published, at least - can't support a wide range of damage-dealing archeytpes once players apply a reasonable degree of mechanical expertise to that aspect of the game. I take it as more-or-less self-evident that posting on these boards will have no effect on WotC's plans. But generating some sort of community discussion which focuses on actual analysis rather than irrelevant side-points hopefully isn't a complete fool's errand! The OP boils down to three claims: a feats-included game, played with some mechanical deftness, will overshadow the MM monsters, putting more work on the GM; that same game will also see greatweapon and hand-crossbows as dominant damage-oriented strategies, crowding out other in-principal sensible archetypes; and dropping feats shifts the overshaowing problem elsewhere, to a couple of categories of cantrip-user. I just don't see how anyone thinks it's a response to those points to talk about winning encounters by casting Charm Person, and telling players that damage-oriented builds are bad play. [/QUOTE]

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