D&D General Weapons should break left and right

[loverdrive]

Unrelated to above. I like FPS games. There are mindless arcade shooters and there are sims. UT is fast paced arcade shooter. Arma is simulation with balistics, breathing, stance, etc. D&D for last 25 years is more like arcade shooter.

You triggered a sleeper agent activation phrase.

So.......

Big part of UT (against an opponent of equal skill, at least) is controlling space, reading your opponent and, yes, managing resources (ammo and health). It's not mindless by any stretch, at least in competitive play, despite all the fast pace (and a player with better reflexes will almost always lose to a player with better game sense)

If anything, in ArmA the whole fun is larping as a soldier, with player skill not contributing to much -- you can be the greatest FPS player to walk the earth, you will die to redfor rocket artillery on the other side of the map.

 

[CreamCloud0]

In design (including game design), subtracting something often leads to net increase in options and decision-making. There's a reason Akuma is banned in Hyper Fighting, and all that.

you'll be forcing the martials into situations with more options, but ultimately most/all of those options are going to be less fun and probably also less effective than if they had just been able to use their chosen weapon.

i get that you want more decision making and i can agree with that goal, but i really feel the route to the solution ought to be on making other weapons more viable rather than removing their primary choice.

 

[Hussar]

That's a really cool magic item and I'm going to steal it. That said, unless all magic weapons are through such items, it really doesn't solve what @Hussar was talking about.

To be fair, a better magic item would be you could add 2d6 fire to your damage with any weapon as a bonus action for, say, a minute. Give it 7 charges, recharging per day and you're pretty good to go.

OTOH, I find straight damage bonus items to be the most boring things in the game - and I find them largely pointless. If the non-casters in the group are all doing extra damage per attack, then the DM just gives the baddies more HP and it winds up a pointless number.

I'd MUCH rather an item that actually does stuff in a fight. Your amulet causes the target to teleport 15 feet in a random direction (including straight up) is a MUCH more interesting item.

 

[Hussar]

The main problem I see isn't breakage itself. It's that the OP thinks it should happen a couple of time per encounter. That's way too often in my opinion.

That was the problem in 2e. People talk about interupting casters, but, that was incredibly difficult to do in 2e. Your initiative was modified by the casting time of the spell, typically 1-3. A medium creature started at a +3 mod for initiative. The wizard beat the monster almost every time. A large monster was +6. Let's each roll d10's. I roll a d10+1- my Dex bonus, you roll a d10 +6 . Guess who wins pretty much every time?

The whole, "Oh, well casters lost their spells all the time" thing is such an overblown myth of early edition play. Never minding any reasonably tactically minded group had the casters in the back line where they simply couldn't be attacked at all most of the time. That was the point. You lined up your three fighters and the cleric on the front line, the rogue and whatever sixth character you had was in the next line and the wizard was in the back safe as banks. Virtually no monsters had ranged attacks and, as soon as the fighters engaged in melee, even those that did have ranged attacks could no long use them.

I've never understood this myth of wizards always losing spells. Sure, it happened once in a blue moon, but, otherwise? It almost never happened.

 

[Hussar]

You are building a fighter. You take a look at weapon table, crunch some numbers, come to the obvious conclusion: greatsword is the best weapon (I don't know how accurate it is to modern state of 5.5e, but if it isn't: replace greatsword with whatever other best weapon there is).

You've built your fighter. Grabbed a greatsword and GWM feat. You are in an encounter. You have next no reason to ever do anything other than swing your sword, regardless of the enemy composition and whatnot. "I HIT HIM WITH MY SWORD!", over and over and over again.

Now, imagine your great sword has a limited use. Each high-damage swing is more valuable, and you better consider your options carefully: should you ignore mooks to not waste limited "ammo" on them and spend high damage on a tanky target? Should you switch to a sidearm to deal with them? Should you shove and grapple to get them out of the way? Should you try to form a gameplan around clearing out the mooks, each in one-two hits, wrench another big weapon from enemy's hands to "reload"? I don't know. Depends on the situation.

Does it make fighters weaker? Yeah, sure. Does it increase amount of thought playing a fighter requires? Also yes.

Or, as an alternative, give the fighter more options in combat. Instead of Attack, Attack, Attack, why not give the fighter... special maneuvers, maybe some sort of martial.... power? that they can use in combat to make combat more interesting.

Just a thought.

 

[Horwath]

Is it, really? I know multiple games that don't have any sort of resource management tied to magic.

and I can make you cantrip based class that has also no resources to track in it's spellcasting.
wait, that is 3,5e warlock.

 

[Horwath]

Or, as an alternative, give the fighter more options in combat. Instead of Attack, Attack, Attack, why not give the fighter... special maneuvers, maybe some sort of martial.... power? that they can use in combat to make combat more interesting.

Just a thought.

we asked for BM to be core part of the class, and in playtest they said that they even tried that option, but decided against it.
I guess WotC thinks that all D&D players are idiots.

 

[Eubani]

we asked for BM to be core part of the class, and in playtest they said that they even tried that option, but decided against it.
I guess WotC thinks that all D&D players are idiots.

No, just the Fighter players.

 

[Horwath]

No, just the Fighter players.

shouldn't that be barbarian players?

 

[Eubani]

shouldn't that be barbarian players?

Apparently they are a smarter breed???