D&D 5E Where are the options?

[Jester David]

Sure. As long as you don't say that as an argument to do nothing, which would be absurd.

I don't think producing a 5.5 Edition PHB with revised classes is a good idea.

I imagine they could do a document with variants. Possibly for the DMsGuild. But then, so could anyone else.
(Feel like making some money? Put out a book of "fixed and rebalanced options".)

Really, making that book still has to be worth the time it would take. Which would be a big ol' maybe, since they'd need to be written, carefully evaluated, and playtested. Which is a lot of work for little reward.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Starting with the PHB numbers is flawed. Because not everyone with a PHB would play using a Prestige Class (since there were no PrC in the PHB). You have to use the number of copies of the splatbook being sold, which could be as low as 50k.

Fine, each splatbook didn't have 1000 PrCs in it, though. What single supplement introduced the most PrCs? Assume it also sold the least copies, that's 50k chances for each PrC in that book to get played at least once. Doesn't seem that far fetched.

Isn't that just a big ol' variant of the Oberoni or Rule 0 Fallacy?

In a sense it is, just a variant that might not be so fallacious, afterall. It isn't a game that tried to be balanced, failed, and then hides behind the ability of the DM to fix it. It's a game that wasn't meant to be played a particular way, so didn't try to be balanced, but left that sort of tuning to the DM, upfront. Balancing it the way you like is just part of running it, of 'making it your own,' not a fix. Indeed, if another DM ran exactly the way you did, he might not find it 'fixed' at all, he might even find it 'broken.'

But, say, there was one such class? Which one was it? How do you figure that out before you even publish it, so you can exclude it? What's the gain of publishing one less PrC out of hundreds?

The rules of a game aren't flawed because they can be ignored, or one or more "house rules" can be made as exceptions.

It might be fair to say they're designed to a different standard. 5e rules aren't built to the standard of a balance that 4e rules were, nor to standard of RAW-coherence that 3.5 rules were, but neither 3.5 nor 4e were built to the standard of DM Empowerment that 5e is. Different design goals, different designs.

Or, as you're arguing, content doesn't need to be balanced because the DM can control the balance.

In essence, yes. When you design content with the idea that the user will only use the bits he wants, the way he wants, you don't have to worry so much about how each and every bit interacts with each and every other bit, or how every bit balances with every other bit.

I think it's safe for game designers to assume that DMs don't want to put out fires at their game table and work around problematic options.

No matter how time-hallowed and long-since-worked-around those options may be?

That DMs don't want to have to nerf options and make hard one-sided rulings to keep PCs in check.

The broader set of GMs might not want to, but DMs have been doing so for so long, we should mostly be OK with it, by now - even a little put out if we're not. Though, you don't have to formally house-rule or 'nerf' anything, you just have to keep the game varied, fun & interesting. A weapon that does 0.5 more DPR than another, or a class that lacks daily resources, or an obscure perk rom an obscure supplement, or whatever else, isn't that hard to deal with, among the set of things present in a single party of PCs, which is all the DM needs to deal with. That doesn't change appreciably if the players chose from a lot of content or a little.

 

[Olaf the Stout]

I've had this thought roll around in my brain cage for a while. It's been stated 5e was not going to be a splat-heavy edition of D&D (by WotC employees and others, some quoted in this very thread), and it sure hasn't been. There have been some scattered and random options as the OP mentioned, but nothing akin to the handbooks and Complete class books of old. I suspect there never will be (not from WotC anyway).

I'm finding the options are left up to imagination. 5e seems (from my perspective) to buck what I've viewed as a trend in current role-playing circles. Specifically, 'The Build'. I define 'The Build' as character creation done simply by the numbers, or at the very least where the numbers are the primary aspects a character is created by (and optimized), with the concept and actual character (or personality) a distant, if ever considered, second.

5e certainly can function in this way just fine for those that like it, but it's certainly not an ideal system for it (3.x/PF is far more suited for it if you're looking for close-to-D&D rules for Build characters).

5e, really, has gone back to a more "Concept First" approach. Your imagination is left to fill in the blanks of who your character is. That defines what you play instead of letting numbers tell you what you're playing.

Neither approach is wrong. Some people love one over the other or love another way of doing it altogether. They're all doing it right, since it's the way they enjoy it. I myself favor concept over stats, but that's mainly due to having started playing with a group that favored that approach, and luckily managed to find myself in groups that preferred it as well (though we do like the numbers to support our concepts).

I find myself looking over to my Pathfinder books and wishing 5e had as many options....but then I think about it and realize there isn't much in PF that I can't do, conceptually, in 5e.

I get what you’re saying in terms of “The Build” vs “The Concept”. However, I don’t think the two are mutually exclusive. For example, there is an optimiser in my group that love building characters. However, he often does this via a character concept.

For example, he thinks up a concept for his character and then tries to create a build that makes a character that best matches the concept. For example, the concept may be a highly armoured ranged weapons specialist, or a Conjurer who focuses on summoning creatures.

I will admit that personality is this one player’s weakness (and he know this is the case). He often struggles to create a name for his character and usually “borrows” a character name from a movie or video game.

However, he is also good at helping other players in the group come up with the mechanics to play the character concepts we want. As he loves looking at crunch, we just tell him our character concept and the types of things we want the character to be good and/or bad at, he finds the character options and abilities to help deliver that concept and lets us pick from the various options.

Those options don’t necessarily result in an optimised character, but they definitely help to deliver a character that matches the character concept. So “The Build” and “The Concept” can work together, although I appreciate that the types of players interested in “The Build” often don’t invest as much time and energy into “The Concept” for their characters.

 

[Patrick McGill]

I tend to be of the mind that the PHB has a lot of what you might expect from eventual splat of other editions already in it. Because of the subclass system, you have quite a few flavors of each class. Things like the Eldritch Knight and the Arcane Trickster haven't really been in the core books before. I feel like a lot of the customization you'd have to wait a little bit for is already there. Between the subclasses, the feats, the backgrounds, the subraces, it's got a lot of options going for it right out of the gate.

Add in the Elemental stuff and the SCAG stuff, and I really don't think we're in an option drought at this point, a little less than 2 years out.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I tend to be of the mind that the PHB has a lot of what you might expect from eventual splat of other editions already in it. Because of the subclass system, you have quite a few flavors of each class. Things like the Eldritch Knight and the Arcane Trickster haven't really been in the core books before.

I feel the same way, but you've probably chosen bad examples. The elemental monk and nature paladin are variant concepts that would normally come later into an edition cycle, but both Eldritch Knight and Arcane Trickster were right in the DMG for third edition.

 

[Yavathol]

There's always a weakest option.
If you buff all the weakest options to move them into the black, then opinions of the remaining options shift and they become red.

It should be possible to have to make a choice between two meaningful alternatives, like meleers choosing between 2H, dual and sword and board.

In terms of spells, there are choices between low damage autohit or higher damage with possibility of a miss. Those spells which are highly specialized should be really good on those times when the conditions are right.

The hard part is that you are picking 3 or 4 spells from ten or more, instead of 1 melee style from 3..

 

[Jabborwacky]

Crunch may be high profit, but it tends to burn out an entire system if you add too much of it. Too much like homework for new players.

However, you might want to look into the DMsGuild. It's currently a bit disorganized, but there's certainly a lot of stuff to go through.

Yeah, but the spell list needs to be rounded out a lot more to be effective. There aren't enough summoning spells to make the conjuration bonuses really that useful. Similarly, the core sorcerer spells do not include enough elemental damage spells to make any dragon element specialization besides fire worthwhile. EE players guide seems to help cold spells a lot, but we're still missing options for acid and lightning. Enchantment spells are also pretty far and few between.

My suggestion would be to fit the additional spell support into the psionics supplement, with the purpose of the additions being to fill the gaps in the core caster spell lists. They could even reprint the spells from the EE player guide so they are all in one place with the other new spells.

 

[Patrick McGill]

I feel the same way, but you've probably chosen bad examples. The elemental monk and nature paladin are variant concepts that would normally come later into an edition cycle, but both Eldritch Knight and Arcane Trickster were right in the DMG for third edition.

I didn't realize that. I stand corrected.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I find that most "options" in the form of prestige classes or sub-classes or kits or whatever any given edition classifies them as are pretty pointless. I'd go so far as to say that many folks only want more options so that their choices seem better by comparison.

I mean, I've been playing since first edition when I was a kid, and began playing pretty seriously with 2E, and my group has consisted of about 15 or so people, 10 of which played for several years, and 5 of which were more limited. I've seen dozens upon dozens of player characters across many editions and even some other systems, and I can honestly say that most of the options are pretty crappy. There are a handful of good options that build upon the core classes, and the rest is pointless.

I had all the 2E Complete Handbooks. Each of them presented about 10 kits for the given class. There were maybe 2 or 3 good choices, 1 or 2 decent ones, and the other half of the kits were garbage.

Same thing with 3E. Some of the prestige classes had a strong thematic idea...like the assassin. But in play, the class sucked. Others were more suited to NPCs, like the Lore Master. Only a few prestige classes were worthwhile....the Archmage springs to mind, as does the Shadow Dancer (whose abilities were cool, but whose fluff was lousy).

I wouldn't mind if they added a couple of subclasses to each class, provided there was a concept worth examining. I don't want them to create subclasses just to do so. Which is what I think a strong majority of the options are...filler to make sure a splat book seems to have enough content to warrant the purchase.

 

[CapnZapp]

I don't think producing a 5.5 Edition PHB with revised classes is a good idea.

Now that you're saying what you really think, instead of using absurd arguments, I have an easier time relating.

I know they won't want a 5.5. The fixes will have to arrive as new options, lightly disguised.

What I want, though, is something that easily can happen within this framework: a concerted effort to single out the scrape at the bottom of the barrel, and refreshing it.

(As opposed to leaving it to rot, and moving on to evermore greener pastures.)