D&D General Where Report Card Ranking Methods Fail

[FrogReaver]

I rate power over versatility as people tend to spam the same spells or piwer or whatever over and over. He ce comparatively high rating i put on Sorcerers. Command for example is an S tier spell. Its S+ when a sorcerer uses it.

I dont rate most damage that high. 5.5 might be better off slowing some 1 round and not taking the damage. Unless you're 5MWD if youre doing that a lot of things dont actually matter and you win anyway.

I'm not penalizing Barbarians for being bad at support or bards for low damage. Its not their thing. If they're good at their thing and their thing is relevant I'll make them high. More things they're good at higher mark they get.

This part directly ties into my OP, at least with respect to combat where the action economy is tight. The reason you often find power more important than versatility is because action economy, resource economy and concentration economy is typically shared between the various things you may be good at. Which is to say you are only actually good at one at a time. If you are either really strong at one of those things, or if the thing you are strong at is higher impact than the others, then anything outside that main loop becomes very niche due to the opportunity costs. Your example of the opportunity cost of a bard doing damage instead of controlling is great.

One reason I'm a bigger fan of survivability features than most is that survivability features can be used at the same time as whatever your default action economy loop is without action economy opportunity costs to consider.

 

[Zardnaar]

This part directly ties into my OP, at least with respect to combat where the action economy is tight. The reason you often find power more important than versatility is because action economy, resource economy and concentration economy is typically shared between the various things you may be good at. Which is to say you are only actually good at one at a time. If you are either really strong at one of those things, or if the thing you are strong at is higher impact than the others, then anything outside that main loop becomes very niche due to the opportunity costs. Your example of the opportunity cost of a bard doing damage instead of controlling is great.

One reason I'm a bigger fan of survivability features than most is that survivability features can be used at the same time as whatever your default action economy loop is without action economy opportunity costs to consider.

Yup. Thats the cost part.

Wizards have great soelk list but theyre still constrained by action economy.

Rituals are cool but outside combat skills generally accomplish the same thing.

I'm also rating defenses higher in 5.5. You dont want to be trading damage with 5.5 monsters or flunking wisdom saves. At all levels youre a crit and a couple of good rolels away from faceplanting the ground.

Bad saves are dex+strength and dex+int. Hell you can go a whole campaign with 0 int saves.

Had 4 hobgoblins last night chew up 4 PC at level 2. Higher level youre using fiends or whatever but similar results. You'll roll well around 1 in 3 or 4 combats. White room ignores that.