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What happens to the "suboptimal?"
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<blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 7416014" data-attributes="member: 996"><p>That's the point. Better than 3.5 on a balance issue doesn't say enough.</p><p></p><p>Does 5e have fewer trap options than 3.5? Sure! Unavoidably so, since 5e has fewer player-facing options in total than 3.5 had trap options. </p><p></p><p>While true, that doesn't really tell us much about 5e.</p><p></p><p> I don't think that's quite fair to say, either. 5e has a very different emphasis than 3.x/PF, 4e/E, or I suppose, even later 2e w/'Option' books. If you were to judge 5e by the number, depth, & granularity of player-facing options, it would come out far 'behind' all those prior editions, too, for the same reason. </p><p>5e is a DM-centric edition, so it avoids issues that plagued more player-centric eds, it also has different strengths (the DM-facing options in 5e dwarf those of 3.5, for instance, because, well, there are some - rule 0 being a farce in the face of the community's RaW-obsession). </p><p>That's different from being an improvement, technically, but if you're running it that technicality hardly matters...</p><p></p><p>If one of your players finds a combination of options that's mechanically, objectively, starkly inferior to the others being played at the table, it doesn't matter too much - you can still put that PC in the limelight a fair proportion of the time and everyone can have their moments of fun in the campaign. You can tailor challenges, drop magic items, and narrate success/failure in such a way that no one feels like they're useless, even if any numeric analysis would strongly suggest they were. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink ;)" data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Tony Vargas, post: 7416014, member: 996"] That's the point. Better than 3.5 on a balance issue doesn't say enough. Does 5e have fewer trap options than 3.5? Sure! Unavoidably so, since 5e has fewer player-facing options in total than 3.5 had trap options. While true, that doesn't really tell us much about 5e. I don't think that's quite fair to say, either. 5e has a very different emphasis than 3.x/PF, 4e/E, or I suppose, even later 2e w/'Option' books. If you were to judge 5e by the number, depth, & granularity of player-facing options, it would come out far 'behind' all those prior editions, too, for the same reason. 5e is a DM-centric edition, so it avoids issues that plagued more player-centric eds, it also has different strengths (the DM-facing options in 5e dwarf those of 3.5, for instance, because, well, there are some - rule 0 being a farce in the face of the community's RaW-obsession). That's different from being an improvement, technically, but if you're running it that technicality hardly matters... If one of your players finds a combination of options that's mechanically, objectively, starkly inferior to the others being played at the table, it doesn't matter too much - you can still put that PC in the limelight a fair proportion of the time and everyone can have their moments of fun in the campaign. You can tailor challenges, drop magic items, and narrate success/failure in such a way that no one feels like they're useless, even if any numeric analysis would strongly suggest they were. ;) [/QUOTE]
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What happens to the "suboptimal?"
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