Hi everybody!
Did some work on the pregens in the tumultuous week-before-Finals, and I have some commentary on new areas!
Armor
Even though these characters were fourth level, I decided to start them all with the usual 175 GP. This resulted in some pretty uninspiring choices for armor - in fact, the answer was almost always obvious after consulting the character's proficiencies and DEX score. The only real question was for medium armor users - "Do I value 1 point of AC or ability to be stealthy more?" Padded, hide, and ring mail armor seem totally useless (worldbuilding?), which is a pity. Similarly, Splint, Banded, and Plate mail are totally unavailable without access to buckets of cash. The
Personally, I didn't mind the 4E method of six armor types, and now that the math doesn't need Cloth, I would easily be happy with the traditional Leather (sneaky/skirmishers), Hide (lightly armored melee types), Scale (medium armored melee), Chain (heavy armored melee), and Plate (slow tanks) each available at level 1. Certainly each of these could be flavored as studded leather, banded mail, or what-have-you.
In terms of actual armor class, I found that most characters stayed in the 15 or 16 range, with the AC-focused melee fighters verging into the 18s. The Barbarian's AC feature is useful about half the time depending on build - but with a 13 Dex and 14 Con, it's often wiser to pick up some scale armor. The Wizards were actually able to achieve fairly good AC with Mage Armor (which seems a near-mandatory spell), but the Enchanter, with his/her 16 DEX and Aura of Antipathy feature (disadvantage to melee attacks), seems particularly untouchable. This is the kind of ability worth dipping two levels for with a melee class.
I also found an ambiguity in the rules - does an un-dextrous character wielding, say, Scale Mail suffer a penalty to AC? If so, why does the same character not suffer that penalty with Chain Mail?
Spells
Clerics and Druids get a lot of prepared spells. The Clerics, in particular, had nine prepared spells (four free from domain), which outclassed the Wizard (five prepared) substantially. I'm really worried about handing these characters to brand-new players, especially with other class features to track like Channel Divinity and (eek!) the Druid's shapeshifting.
Lots and lots of characters can cast healing spells - Bards, Clerics, Druids, Rangers, and Paladins can all take Cure Wounds (which scales), and 3/5 of those can take Healing Word as well. I'm inclined to think this is a good thing, but we'll see how it pans out in actual play.
Some of the buff spells seem pretty weak. For example, I gave the Dwarf Ranger the Longstrider spell (+10' speed for 1 hour), but I can't imagine he/she'll ever use it with Hunter's Mark and Fog Cloud available. Similarly, Shield of Faith takes up Concentration for a +1 buff to AC. With Bless (+1d4 to the whole party's attack rolls/saves) available, who'd bother?
I feel like each class, especially the Cleric and Druid, need one or two more cantrips to choose from. Choice of cantrips for those classes didn't seem to mechanically differentiate those characters a whole lot. In particular, the Druid could use one more attack cantrip (both Fire Seeds and Shillelagh don't fit every character).
Aside from the issues I mentioned, I really enjoyed picking out spells for most characters, and I think the players will have a ton of fun playing them. Charge into battle and cast Thunderwave? War Wizard. Burn enemies with divine fire? Oracle. Gust of Wind foes into a Spike Growth? Mountain Savant. Smite the heck out of evil? Justicar.
Racial Features
The core races get quite a few more features than the rest, who typically only get dark/low-light vision and one or two combat/other abilities. I'd like to see, for example, the Dragonborn gain a bonus to History like the Elf gets to Perception, or have the Tiefling gain some bonus when dealing with planar knowledge (Arcana, perhaps?).
I feel like the Half-Orc and the Half-Elf get really short shrift. The Half-Orc gets two situational features (although a pretty good stat boost) and the Half-Elf is literally always worse than a full elf (unless you really want that +1 Charisma and additional language). Both of these races could really use a revamp.
Humans are easy to make, but they don't get many cool things. I'd like to see a human with more options.
Drow are interesting. They're the only race with a disadvantage (Light Sensitivity), and it's a pretty steep one, but they get free spells (the equivalent of a feat, albeit a bad one) and other good features. They seem like they'd be very campaign-specific (good in underground/dungeon crawling, bad in wilderness adventuring), but I suppose that's rather the point of optional races. At any rate, they'll be plenty effective in Vault of the Dracolich.
Next time, I really get to sink my teeth into things - class features. Stay tuned!
