D&D 5E Thread: Your thoughts on the 5th. Edition Player's Handbook classes?

[SilverfireSage]

Don't forget Druids. Wildshape twice between every short rest. That's how many bonus hit points, plus the fighting form and spells, for Moon Path druids. Absolutely hysterically broken. DruidZilla is here and all your base are belong to him.

As a DM, I don't really see allowing my PC's very many options to do short rests during the day. Maybe twice during really big dungeons, and only at specific times. After all, the short rest is a freaking HOUR and how often can you just sit in a monster-ridden dungeon for an hour without anything attacking you?

 

[gyor]

You do realize that Rangers and Paladins who don't want to be spellcasters, each can funnel thier spell slots through a class feature instead of using them for spells. Heck if you want you can even not bother with oreparing a spell list.

The Paladin can redirect all his slots into divine smite feature (which is not a spell) and Rangers can redirect they're slots into Primeal Awareness. In fact if you play it that way, if you funnel all your slots to Primial Awareness a Ranger barely has any magic at all.

A Ranger is still a better Ranger then a fighter with the outlander background, a fighter with the outlander background will neveer have the out door skills the Ranger has. And the fighter hits more often, but a ranger isn't that far off and hits harder or in the case of a Beastmaster, between the beast and the Ranger they can hit more times then the fighter.

 

[Thaumaturge]

You missed monk.

Doh! I knew I was missing something.

It's ok. The monk took Way of Shadow, so you couldn't find it.

Thaumaturge.

 

[Henry]

In one way, i do miss some of the cooler things like favored enemy (really dont like the 5e expression of this), but where we lost cool damaging effects due to bounded accuracy, we gained some SUPER cool abilites like the new slow fall for monks: You don't need to be adjacent to a wall, AND a 10th level monk can easily drop a 100 feet from a flying creature and not even muss his hair!
EDIT: plus I just noticed that falling is called out as bludgeoning damage, meaning a raging barbarian takes half damage from a fall. Awesome!

 

[MoonSong]

I think they may be able to abuse their top spell slots with font of magic & a bit of metamagic. That would make them even more limited in rounds of good contribution than wizards (& would reverse the 3.5 style) but those rounds would be very significant. Otherwise they look worse than wizards even without the wizard's school specialisation. I plan to play one next to see how it goes - may be disappointed. (If they can abuse polymorph (self) they look even more busted than Moon Druids at least at level 7-12 or so)

Sorcerer: The poor sorcerer. He gets far fewer spells known than the freaking bard, and about the same number as the eldritch knight and arcane trickster, which are 1/3 casters. While I am glad that they gave them their own spell list, it's basically just like a third of the wizard's list, plus a couple token additions like earthquake. Overall, it's very disappointing. It's not absolutely terrible, and I'd probably still recommend it to new players for its relative simplicity, but I just can't see myself ever playing one when I could be a warlock or wizard instead.

I love sorcerers, but i can't shake the feeling they got severely nerfed

At 20th level
max spells known (3e) 34 (5e) 15 -> a 52% decrease, fine because wizards...
Wizard spells known (3e)42 (5e) 44 -> a 5% increase!

And for total spell levels (not counting bonus spells)
sorcerer: (3e) 270 (5e) 87 = 78% decrease
wizards: (3e) 180 (5e) 77= 57% decrease (not counting rituals)

What was the broken one again? why did the weakest of the two classes got the biggest loss in power? why did the strongest of the two became even more versatile? why? the designers even removed the option for not blasting by reducing weapon proficiencies and severely restricting the spell list, not to mention that the few niche filling spells sorcerer have are fine for niche dippers, but awful for niche fillers, adn by virtue of their extremely reduced spells known sorcerers are niche fillers, 34 spells were tad too few to fill a niche and do some blasting on the side, 15 are too little so you'll be struggling to fill a niche and will still be bad at it.

 

[Andor]

What was the broken one again? why did the weakest of the two classes got the biggest loss in power? why did the strongest of the two became even more versatile? why? the designers even removed the option for not blasting by reducing weapon proficiencies and severely restricting the spell list, not to mention that the few niche filling spells sorcerer have are fine for niche dippers, but awful for niche fillers, adn by virtue of their extremely reduced spells known sorcerers are niche fillers, 34 spells were tad too few to fill a niche and do some blasting on the side, 15 are too little so you'll be struggling to fill a niche and will still be bad at it.

I think basically the Sorcerer killed the Warmage and took his job. They are the class for people who just want to blow stuff up. As such they are highly streamlined. Although the one in my campaign chose the Sorcerer the second he found out wildsurges could blow up the party, so.... yeah...

I love all the classes myself. And I really don't get the Ranger hate. There has never been a non-spell casting basic Ranger in any edition of D&D ever. Except in 4e where there were casters anyway just like everyone else. Personally when I get a chance to play instead of run I think my first character will be a High Elf Ranger fluffed as an Arcane Archer, a role the Ranger needs exactly nothing more to fulfill.

 

[Sacrosanct]

As a DM, I don't really see allowing my PC's very many options to do short rests during the day. Maybe twice during really big dungeons, and only at specific times. After all, the short rest is a freaking HOUR and how often can you just sit in a monster-ridden dungeon for an hour without anything attacking you?

Pretty much, yep.


As for me, like every edition before, there are some classes I like, and some I don't. But that's all a personal preference thing, and not a mechanical thing. There are four characters I have played/still want to play that hold the most interest for me:

Halfling fighter with shield mastery and heavy armor mastery feats
Way of the Shadow Monk (to replicate my old ninja/bushi PC)
Circle of the moon druid (not because of druidzilla, but because the theme really appeals to me and always has)
Dragonborn paladin

I have no desire to play barbarians, bards, warlocks, rangers, or sorcerers

 

[Sacrosanct]

I love sorcerers, but i can't shake the feeling they got severely nerfed

At 20th level
max spells known (3e) 34 (5e) 15 -> a 52% decrease, fine because wizards...
Wizard spells known (3e)42 (5e) 44 -> a 5% increase!

And for total spell levels (not counting bonus spells)
sorcerer: (3e) 270 (5e) 87 = 78% decrease
wizards: (3e) 180 (5e) 77= 57% decrease (not counting rituals)

What was the broken one again? why did the weakest of the two classes got the biggest loss in power? why did the strongest of the two became even more versatile? why? the designers even removed the option for not blasting by reducing weapon proficiencies and severely restricting the spell list, not to mention that the few niche filling spells sorcerer have are fine for niche dippers, but awful for niche fillers, adn by virtue of their extremely reduced spells known sorcerers are niche fillers, 34 spells were tad too few to fill a niche and do some blasting on the side, 15 are too little so you'll be struggling to fill a niche and will still be bad at it.

You have an odd definition of versatile. Being able to use metamagic to modify spell effects and being able to swap slots for other spells seems to be more versatile, not less. There's a lot more to versatility than max number of spells in your spellbook. Spells don't do any good if you can't cast them in an actual scenario (don't have them prepp'd, etc). In that context, the wizard only "knows" 25 spells (+5 Int modifier assumed + 20th level). Especially since the sorcerer can actually cast more spells than the wizard. They both use the same base table, but the sorcerer can use all of his or her spell points to buy extra slots.

 

[Agamon]

I love sorcerers, but i can't shake the feeling they got severely nerfed

The problem is, this isn't D&D 3.75. So comparing it directly with 3.5 rules is a mistake.

 

[Bluenose]

As a DM, I don't really see allowing my PC's very many options to do short rests during the day. Maybe twice during really big dungeons, and only at specific times. After all, the short rest is a freaking HOUR and how often can you just sit in a monster-ridden dungeon for an hour without anything attacking you?

I'm sure the Battlemaster Fighters and Warlocks will be very pleased to hear that, as well as other classes that recover abilities with short rests.