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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 6826705" data-attributes="member: 996">First of all, it's not true that the best contribution a wizard could make is AoE damage.  It's classic, but wizards have many very effective spells that do other things and do them very well indeed.  The Fighter does not have any such alternative actions to blow his Action Surge on.  He has a relatively powerful attack action, and the alternatives are just 'everyman' actions.  That's odd.  Why would you expect them to stack?  4e's treadmill progression was pretty tight, doubling enhancement bonuses would have been game-breaking.  That the two didn't stack was precisely why they could be used together:  in a low-magic game that had some magic items, but wanted to keep them rare & special, you'd flip on inherent bonuses so attack & damage with weapon & implement powers and defenses would stay on the treadmill as designed, but you wouldn't have to cycle new weapons, armor, and neck-slot items every 5 levels or so.   One character could have acquired a flamey magic sword at 8th level, named it and kept it his whole career, for instance, whether others gained items or not.   It's clear (above) how inherent bonuses were ideal for a low-magic game where not all characters get items with enhancement bonuses.  You could give out an item that was better than the current inherent bonus, giving a character a boost until the inherent bonuses caught up, and, unless it was one of the exactly 3 boring generic-enhancement-bonus-only items, it's other properties & powers would remain even after that happened.  Ideal.  The character builder had a check box to use inherent bonuses, and used the higher of that bonus or the equipped item, so it was easy and seamless to use that way.  UA is prettymuch betatesting (if not outright spitballing), anyway, so doesn't have that 'official quality' expectation.  And the bar for balance in the 5e paradigm is much more flexible, there's so much left to the DM's judgement that class balance is largely determined by him, anyway, so that ball is left in his court, part of the Empowerment that makes the game such a blast to run.  (No, that's not irony or sarcasm:  I run 5e, and the degrees of freedom it gives me to optimize the experience for my players is awesome in it's own right.) CaGI could attack as many enemies as Fireball, you just had to get in the middle of them.  At range, an Archer-Ranger could blow through minions pretty quickly, too, with the odd AE encounter power.  Minion-sweeping was not the insurmountable problem for a 4e all-martial party that every non-DPR combat contribution a party might need currently is for a 5e all-martial party.How much a low-level Warlord might be able to help a high-level ally would depend on how much the ally figures into the mechanics.  Earlier in these discussions, ideas have been floated, like basing hps recovered by Inspiration on the ally's HD, or the lower of the Warlord's or ally's level.  Not that it would be an unusual trope for a less experienced or much less capable sidekick to inspire a hero in some way.  Or the way a 3rd level caster could Charm a 20th level champion (who never boosted his WIS and gets no proficiency in WIS saves, so has the same save bonus he had at 1st level):  Not quite as well, because of Indomitable, but still pretty practical to try.  Bounded Accuracy intentionally makes it more practical to have wildly-different-level PCs working together.  Not nearly seamlessly or anything, but less impractical. So how very different-level PCs would interact is something to consider when designing the mechanics of a new class.Though that is something that gets argued all too often in the community, typically in some questionable 'white room' scenario.  Which is demonstrable.  The fighter has combat styles that make his attack action more effective, the two styles that don't do not make any alternate action more effective (one gives a static defense bonus, the other a useful reaction), his basic proficiencies make his attack action more effective, his most significant class feature and claim-to-best-at-combat-fame Extra Attack makes his attack action much more effective.  Conversely, the fighter has vanishingly few features that make any other actions he might take more effective.  The Champion's "Remarkable" Athlete gives an almost trivial, non-stacking half-proficiency bonus to some checks.  The Battlemaster's CS dice directly add to the effectiveness of his attacks.  And, of course, not just anyone can cast fly or invisibilty, while literally just anyone can use the help action or stabilize an ally.Yeah, the original point of this thread was that if you have bits and pieces of something lying around, you don't need the whole.  A few shards of glass are as good as a window.  A soapbox racer is as fast as a formula 500.  You don't need a wizard because you have the Sage background, Ritual Caster feat, and EK & AT.  Well, that and the OP seems to have such a low opinion of 5e that he misrepresents it as being /unable/ to do anything more than it has.  I can see how the slow pace of releases might seem to encourage that attitude, but the system itself is for too open and flexible in design philosophy, and it's stated goals to expansive and ambitious to take such negativity seriously.The question isn't so much how useful are his attacks - with those Maneuvers, they're clearly useful whether they do huge damage or not.  The question is how useful are alternate actions?  What does that build have going for him that make his use of help or something better than the next guy's.Unlikely, but possible.  One can always willfully build a sub-optimal character.  You can build a wizard to be the best melee tank he can be, for instance. (Actually, you can do that surprisingly well, maybe not the best example - but, still, clearly sub-optimal.)Positioning is rarely an issue in 5e, certainly very rarely one that calls for a move and two dash actions to pull off.  As well-defended and non-threatening as this character is, dodging is just going to push enemies to further ignore him, making it a wasted action.  Granting advantage to one attack of an ally who's optimized for DPR may not do all that much, either, he likely hits /really/ well, anyway, so you're looking at the equivalent of a +1 or 2 rather than the +4 or 5 giving a mediocre combatant (ironically, like this guy) advantage would give - that is, if his optimization doesn't already give him advantage much of the time anyway.  You can't Ready two actions, either, so maybe ready is good for this guy, but he can ready anyway, so it's the /other/ action he takes that round that is enabled by the Action Surge.</blockquote>

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