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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 6797107" data-attributes="member: 2067">I'm a little over-cautions about applying the Warlock model to every friggin' thing, but I think that if you want a martial system that mirrors spellcasting closely, that would not be a bad starting point. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> I think it's even fine to do a party limited to only the Barbarian (Berserker), Fighter (Champion), Fighter (Battle Master), Rogue (Thief), and Rogue (Assassin). It's a narrow suite of options, but a party made of those five characters would, I believe, handle the challenges 5e throws at it just fine. A combination of fast combat, an emphasis on managing the context for an encounter (ambushes, scouts, etc.), the common availability of Healing Potions, and the suite of combat options available to all characters make this a very viable party. I think you under-estimate the "builds" of 5e.I also think you put too much emphasis on combat roles. There is no critical need in 5e for a class or a character to be a "leader" or a "controller" or a "defender" (or a "striker!"). Party balance doesn't rely on having individual characters dedicated to these positions. While each class or subclass might have a role it fires "best" on, there's no need to particularly orient your character to that role, and there's no requirement to ignore the other roles in favor of just one. Indeed, over-specialized characters don't often fare particularly well in 5e's more dynamic/swingy atmosphere. From round-to-round, you might play your Assassin Rogue as a leader (drops a healing potion, use a healer's kit, uses the Help action), a striker (ambush with sneak attacks!), a defender (get in the doorway and Dodge), or a controller (use an attack to shove prone, drop a vial of alchemist's fire, etc). Given that combat is brief in 5e, any given round might be best addressed by doing any of the above, and with Bounded Accuracy, your ability to do these things is solid, even if you aren't specialized.The fact that a Champion Fighter's class features help her deal buttloads of damage in no way stops that Champion Fighter from doing other things.Which isn't to say that more diversity wouldn't be appreciated, just that it's not necessary. There's nothing 5e is missing when it comes to a non-magical party, nothing that prevents it from realizing that reality. That adequacy is just that - adequacy. There's plenty of room to dive more deeply. But there's nothing missing.The fact that 5e manages to allow for any character to adequately cover any combat role in a typical 5e combat (short as they are) is part of why I think 5e does this better. Rather than specifying that it's Class X's job to heal and Class Y's job to deal damage, they leave the decision as a tactical one for the individual player on each of the PC's turns - does your party need healing? Do you need to take out an enemy quick? Do you need to protect a vulnerable party member? How do you do that in the moment? Did you come prepared? Can you risk doing something you're maybe not the best at for a round or two? More than once in a 5e game, I've uttered the term "Tankmage," when a character with d6 HD who hasn't been hit as much as the main melee machines takes over for a round or two on one of the fronts. 5e is set up well to allow moments like that to happen. If that happened in a 4e game, it would've been bad news, a sign of the defenders or controllers not "doing their job," not something that a Striker would have cause to worry about or think about doing themselves (and not something that, in a 10-round 4e combat, the striker would really be able to keep up for long enough to matter much anyway). I like that 5e makes elements like that systemic, so that emergent gameplay is that players ask themselves "I know I'm a thief, but maybe I need to be protecting our Paladin's back more than stabbing this round? Maybe? Can I?" That immediately trumps 4e's "roles" system, and gives me gameplay I value much more. While five character class options (each with probably 2-3 build options apiece, depending), there's not a lot of diversity out of the gate. And that's something that I think should be remedied (and given the battlerager and the banneret and the mastermind and the swashbuckler, it's something that it seems like WotC is paying attention to). But I think it would be missing some of 5e's most remarkable design elements to characterize the out-of-the-box capability of 5e doing a non-magical party as inadequate. It's rather amazing what putting healing potions on the equipment list can do in a world of 3-round combats.</blockquote>

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