D&D General Weapons should break left and right

[Maxperson]

I will repeat, these complaints are applied to ALL martial classes, not just the Fighter. Barbarian, Monk, Rogue and sometimes even Paladin and Ranger are all facing this criticism. Claiming people have 11 other classes is just not true in this context.

Then those people are wrong. Rangers, Rogues, Monks, and Barbarians are not simple classes, though the Barbarian combined with some of the more simple subclasses comes close.

 

[Lanefan]

No. Once you are retreating, you are attacked by anyone who can reach you. There is no move a bit and then start retreating. A retreat is a full movement away from the fight.

Semantics, perhaps, but in my eyes there's a fairly big difference between retreat, where you're still parrying etc. while moving backwards hoping to get away from the melee, and flee, where you just turn tail and run.

IMO only the latter should have a chance of provoking free attacks from your foe(s).

Okay. That's definitely true. 1e initiative was borked. All of the groups I played with just reduced it 1d6 modified by dex bonus.

We've always generally used unmodified d6, though specific situations and very rare-expensive magic items might modify it. Dex doesn't enter into it, just as well as Dex is already overpowered as a stat and doesn't need that going for it as well. Rerolled each round for each individual.

 

[Lanefan]

Then those people are wrong. Rangers, Rogues, Monks, and Barbarians are not simple classes, though the Barbarian combined with some of the more simple subclasses comes close.

They can all be made simple, though, by a player whose thought-box for melee tactics doesn't extend beyond "hit it till it falls down".

 

[Maxperson]

I don't, and the unlimited casting piece is the benefit to counteract all the rather obvious drawbacks this comes with. Further, were it a 5e environment I'd also relax or even eliminate concentration mechanics for this class other than for maintaining complex illusions.

What it means is that one day you might be the most useful caster ever and the next day you're doing next to nothing, simply based on the spells you happened to pull. If your two 2nd-level spells today happen to be Invisibility and Levitate then sure, you can make the whole party invisible and get them all floating in the air but you're not going to do a shred of combat damage to anyone. Tomorrow your spells at 2nd might be Magic Mouth and Stinking Cloud - useful sometimes but not always. And so on.

Not nearly enough benefit for the drawbacks, IMO.

Part of the reason I like this concept so much is that it would force me to think outside the box with spell use. I already do that, but this would stretch that ability and test it.

Odds are good you are going to get something useful, even if it's not combat related. Especially once you factor in cantrips.

Most of the high-cost component spells aren't in-field spells anyway. Identify is IME by far the most common exception.

There are others, but field or not isn't really relevant. You aren't going to carry the non-field spell components around on the off chance you rolled X spell, either.

Which brings up another point: there's some spells that are more intended to be cast during downtime rather than in the field, e.g. Enchant Item, and those probably shouldn't be in the card decks either. Ditto things that (in 1e) take hours to cast anyway e.g. Find Familiar.

Yeah, but I'm approaching this from a 5e perspective. Some of those spells don't exist in 5e, and others in 5e had components that need money.

Someone having unlimited access to Wish for a day could, to say the least, become problematic in a hurry.

5e Wish builds in some nasty side effects, including the potential to lose the ability to cast Wish forever. If we're talking 1e Wish, then yeah, you'd need to limit it big time.

 

[Maxperson]

That also creates its own issue, namely that in 3.5 it was very common to complain that 1. Meele characters are so useless their magic weapons and items do everything for them (which lead to 5e removing ability to buy magic items) and 2. Nothing stops casters from picking up the same magic items and overshadow martials even more. you know, it's like in Marvel when they were creating Wolverine. Originally he was supposed to wear gauntlets that have retractable claws, until an artist or editor pointed out that anyone can just put them on and be Wolverine, which lead to the claws as we know them, being part of his adamantium skeleton.

Most of a 3e/3.5e Fighter's damage didn't come from items. The damage came from feats and prestige classes. Magic weapons for the most part just helped you hit things better and maybe add in a minor side effect like a little fire damage or whatever.

Most of the complaints I saw were about outside of combat, where the fighter often relied on other types of magic items to participate. Fighters were the one pillar wonders.

 

[Maxperson]

Semantics, perhaps, but in my eyes there's a fairly big difference between retreat, where you're still parrying etc. while moving backwards hoping to get away from the melee, and flee, where you just turn tail and run.

IMO only the latter should have a chance of provoking free attacks from your foe(s).

That's the 2e rule. There's Retreat, where you turn tail and run, provoking attacks. And Withdraw, where you move at like half move and the enemy can follow up if they want, but you don't provoke attacks.

We've always generally used unmodified d6, though specific situations and very rare-expensive magic items might modify it. Dex doesn't enter into it, just as well as Dex is already overpowered as a stat and doesn't need that going for it as well. Rerolled each round for each individual.

I can see that.

 

[Maxperson]

They can all be made simple, though, by a player whose thought-box for melee tactics doesn't extend beyond "hit it till it falls down".

Sure. You can do that with any class. Wizard just memorizes 1 spells and casts it over and over. Cleric does the same. You can ignore what the class is and play it dumbed down, but that doesn't make the class itself a simple one. Played properly the classes are going to be varying levels of complex, except for the Fighter.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

Why must we always frame it as ‘simple = good’? There is no good reason in my eyes that the fighter must bear this albatross and white elephant of being ‘player’s first class’, fighter embodies archetypes that are far more than just the big dumb hit it with a stick class and deserves to have the mechanics to play them properly, forcing it to be ‘the simple class’ is a ball and chain on it’s potential that drags the entire class down,

Agreed with it. Especially since, again, Barbarian is very simple and carries the torch of simple class much better - "I would like to rage, then full attack with Reckless attack".

 

[MGibster]

This is about switching up gameplay to create varied situation. Whether it's by weapons breakage or buffed "disarm" move is mostly immaterial — the main thing is to make people play each encounter differently.

I absolutely hate having to deal with breaking weapons in video games. It ruined one of the Zelda games for me and System Shock 2 wasn't made better by its inclusion.

 

[loverdrive]

I absolutely hate having to deal with breaking weapons in video games. It ruined one of the Zelda games for me and System Shock 2 wasn't made better by its inclusion.

Do you hate to deal with ammo as much? Because the two are the same mechanic.