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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Burnside" data-source="post: 9818810" data-attributes="member: 6910340">I think my issues largely crop up not on the updates for the 2014 subclasses, but with some of the entirely new 2024 subclasses. There are issues of design sloppiness, and also issues of mechanics not being grounded in the fiction. The first I think is an issue for anyone, the second maybe for me more acutely.Couple of examples that jump out at me from Heroes of Faerun:Design Sloppiness: Winter Walker Ranger - the intention here is to be a subclass ideally suited for an adventure such as Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frost Maiden, set in that region.At level 3, here are two abilities it gets:Biting Cold. Damage from your weapon attacks, Ranger spells, and Ranger features ignores Resistance to Cold damage.Polar Strikes. When you hit a creature with an attack roll using a weapon, you can deal an extra 1d4 cold damage to the target, which can take this extra damage only once per turn. When you reach Ranger level 11, this extra damage increases to 1d6.In addition, 3 of its 5 special bonus Ranger spells involve doing Cold damage: ice knife, ice storm, and cone of cold.The most dangerous creatures endemic to Icewind Dale are not Resistant to Cold damage; they're Immune to it. So: white dragons, yetis, remorhaz, ice mephit, winter wolf, frost giant etc. - these guys don't care about the Biting Cold ability, are all totally immune to Polar Strikes, and also immune to the 3 "heavy-hitting" damage spells this subclass gets.This has the effect of making Winter Walkers probably the worst ranger subclass to use in Icewind Dale, rather than, as implied, the best. The creatures that live in Icewind Dale aren't shrugging off Psychic damage from Gloomstalkers or Fey Wanderers, or anything the Hunter can do.Why does a ranger adapted to life in the frozen north have a suite of abilities useless against the monsters that live there?Now, you know what the Winter Walker Ranger is actually pretty decent at fighting? Fiends. Many Fiends are Resistant, not Immune, to Cold damage. However, if you read the description of the subclass, the purpose of the Winter Walker ranger isn't meant to be "ranger that fights fiends using cold." This is a case of the subclass designers not taking a few minutes to check the Monster Manual to make sure the existing mechanics support their design intentions. I really think this is a pretty inexcusable case of design sloppiness.Mechanics Not Grounded in the Fiction:Banneret FighterHere's the description of this subclass:"Bannerets are paragons of valor and leadership who protect the innocent and rally fellow adventurers to the causes of justice and freedom. Many are knights serving in Cormyr, the Silver Marches, Damara, Chessenta, or other lands across Faerûn. They wander the realms as knights errant, taking the fight against evil beyond their kingdom’s borders.A Banneret relies on judgment, bravery, and fidelity to the code of chivalry to guide them in defeating evildoers. A lone Banneret is a skilled warrior, but when leading a band of allies one of these warriors can transform even a poorly equipped militia into a ferocious war band."Here are a couple of their abilities:"Comprehension. You can cast the Comprehend Languages spell but only as a Ritual. Charisma is your spellcasting ability for it.Polyglot. You learn one language from the language tables in the Player’s Handbook or chapter 2 of Forgotten Realms: Heroes of Faerûn. When you finish a Long Rest, you can replace a language learned from this benefit with another language you have heard, seen signed, or read in the past 24 hours."I feel like this is the sort of stuff for which the 2014 edition would have made some attempt to provide a narrative basis. The banneret is...magical? How so? Where's that Comprehend Languages spell coming from?The banneret speaks Dwarvish, and then goes to bed, and then in the morning they've forgotten how to speak Dwarvish, and now they can speak Elvish? How? Why? Is that also magic? Why are they learning a language in 8 hours and also forgetting a language they could previously speak? What, in terms of the narrative fiction, exactly is happening there? Not the slightest attempt is made by the designers to suggest what, in in-game narrative terms, these abilities represent.If the banneret is a trained diplomat, maybe they should just get 3 extra languages, and not this weird alien brain power to slot one language in and out of their mind each morning. If you want them to have something like Comprehend Languages, can't that be an ability of some kind, not a spell? Is this because everything now has to fit DNDBeyond's limited functionality?The Anthropologist background from Tomb of Annihilation got this ability:"Feature: Adept Linguist. You can communicate with humanoids who don’t speak any language you know. You must observe the humanoids interacting with one another for at least 1 day, after which you learn a handful of important words, expressions, and gestures—enough to communicate on a rudimentary level."Wouldn't that have been better here than a magic spell? Or if it has to be a spell, can there be an in-game reason this Fighter knows magic?To me this is an example of the mechanics-first, story-second approach of 2024 that can irk me. Not enough to where I want to throw out the baby with the bathwater, but often enough to bug me.</blockquote>

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