D&D 5E What is Over-Powered?

[Celtavian]

Over-powered is when an ability or combination of abilities gives a player a huge advantage over other players or against the environment that requires extraordinary and ridiculous measures to challenge on a continuous basis. An over-powered ability usually allows the player to hog the spotlight and be far more effective than other players that chose inferior options to the over-powered option.

That's who I determined if something is over-powered.

 

[Pickles JG]

Okay, time for the bard.

Hit dice: 1d4 per level.
Armor: as stated, both regularly and for college of valor, but can't cast spells while wearing armor.

Song of rest no longer heals. It shaves 20% off the time needed to rest, and helps characters to rest in noisy surroundings.

Inspiration dice: one full round to use. May use it four times + charisma modifier, minimum four.

College of valor, battle magic casts the spell at three levels higher than it is.

If you want a more combat-oriented bard, lose 7th level spells and up in exchange for 1d8 hit dice and no restriction on battle magic.

As the previous poster pointed out overpowered does not mean more capable than the characters I had back in the 70s

In another thread you suggested that rather than trying to make 5e more like their favoured edition it would be easier in the case of radical changes to take aspects of 5e they especially liked and add them to that edition.

I recommend you take your own advice as you do not seem to understand how 5e works or why. In fact I wonder why you are here?

 

[SirAntoine]

As the previous poster pointed out overpowered does not mean more capable than the characters I had back in the 70s

In another thread you suggested that rather than trying to make 5e more like their favoured edition it would be easier in the case of radical changes to take aspects of 5e they especially liked and add them to that edition.

I recommend you take your own advice as you do not seem to understand how 5e works or why. In fact I wonder why you are here?

You're welcome to disagree with me and others, but you shouldn't try to suppress anyone's opinions.

The work I am doing here will be available to everyone to use in 5th Edition. I am happy to do it. The subject of the other thread you mention must have struck me as too ambitious so I made the comment I did. It was an emotional lapse. Normally, I salute anyone who tries to really write extensive adaptations, re-writes, and new material. I have some knowledge of this as I am sure my players would remind me.

 

[Diamabel]

You're welcome to disagree with me and others, but you shouldn't try to suppress anyone's opinions.

The work I am doing here will be available to everyone to use in 5th Edition. I am happy to do it. The subject of the other thread you mention must have struck me as too ambitious so I made the comment I did. It was an emotional lapse. Normally, I salute anyone who tries to really write extensive adaptations, re-writes, and new material. I have some knowledge of this as I am sure my players would remind me.

You might consider starting up a thread in the homebrew section for this.. it doesn't really belong inside the "overpowered" thread. You would probably find more constructive feedback/criticisms there.

 

[SirAntoine]

The cleric now. There is much more text on it in the PHB, but I'll have a go.

I caught a big one in turning undead. Apparently, the ability works against any number of undead as long as they are within 30' of the cleric. They really botched this. The ability works against any level of undead, no matter the level of the cleric. The undead just need to roll a wisdom save to resist, but any undead, even a lich turned by a 1st level cleric like this, will be turned if it fails. There used to be a table showing the level or hit dice of undead a cleric of each level can affect. The goal here is simplicity.

I would suggest a cleric can affect undead with no more than five more hit dice than himself, and a maximum number of undead, of any hit dice, be five times the cleric's level in hit dice. Thus, a 1st level cleric can turn at most five skeletons assuming they still have 1 hit dice each, or one skeleton and one wight if they're caught together. The player should get to decide if the greater hit dice undead will be affected first in this new matrix.

Okay, let's look at all the other channel divinities now. These are based on subclass, in the cleric's case which domain he picks.

Clerics of knowledge. Read thoughts should let the victim make a saving throw to resist the suggestion.

Clerics of life. Channel divinity: preserve life, should require a long rest (at least) to re-use.

Clerics of light. Corona of light should switch to be the channel divinity feature, except enemies only have disadvantage on saving throws vs. radiant damage. Radiance of the dawn jumps to the 17th level ability spot.

Clerics of nature, tempest, trickery, and war are fine.

Going back to the basics for all clerics, divine intervention should only reproduce the effects of spells the caster can actually cast (and nothing greater).

With respect to weapons, clerics can only use blunt weapons unless their god permits them to use edged weapons.

 

[SirAntoine]

You might consider starting up a thread in the homebrew section for this.. it doesn't really belong inside the "overpowered" thread. You would probably find more constructive feedback/criticisms there.

I'll take this into consideration, thank you.

 

[Hussar]

Sir A, I'd point out to you here that Hit Dice are no longer the measure of a creature's overall power. A zombie can have far, far more HD than a lich, yet a high level cleric, in your system, could turn the lich and not the zombie.

You'd be far better off to tie things to CR, than to HD.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

You might consider starting up a thread in the homebrew section for this.. it doesn't really belong inside the "overpowered" thread. You would probably find more constructive feedback/criticisms there.

Bear in mind that SirAntoine is the OP of this thread, so to a certain extent he gets to define what the intent is of the thread.

SirAntoine, one thing I think you are missing is that HP in 5E are inflated by a factor of roughly 3x relative to AD&D. E.g. trolls have 85 HP instead of 6 HD + 6 (=33 HP), and they regenerate 10 HP per round instead of 3. If you're trying to modify 5E to have the same baseline as 5E you should state the goal up-front and add that "monster HP will be reduced by a factor of 3 to compensate". I'm not sure what needs to happen to monster damage but it probably needs to be reduced to no more than 50% of what it is today. Without those changes to monsters, AD&D-baselined 5E characters will be grossly underpowered in the 5E context.

Knowing that monster HP and damage will be grossly reduced ought to make things like d4 HP for bards/wizards more palatable for your prospective players.

 

[SirAntoine]

Sir A, I'd point out to you here that Hit Dice are no longer the measure of a creature's overall power. A zombie can have far, far more HD than a lich, yet a high level cleric, in your system, could turn the lich and not the zombie.

You'd be far better off to tie things to CR, than to HD.

What can you suggest?

 

[SirAntoine]

Bear in mind that SirAntoine is the OP of this thread, so to a certain extent he gets to define what the intent is of the thread.

SirAntoine, one thing I think you are missing is that HP in 5E are inflated by a factor of roughly 3x relative to AD&D. E.g. trolls have 85 HP instead of 6 HD + 6 (=33 HP), and they regenerate 10 HP per round instead of 3. If you're trying to modify 5E to have the same baseline as 5E you should state the goal up-front and add that "monster HP will be reduced by a factor of 3 to compensate". I'm not sure what needs to happen to monster damage but it probably needs to be reduced to no more than 50% of what it is today. Without those changes to monsters, AD&D-baselined 5E characters will be grossly underpowered in the 5E context.

Knowing that monster HP and damage will be grossly reduced ought to make things like d4 HP for bards/wizards more palatable for your prospective players.

Let's say 50% for now.