D&D 5E Which would you rather have?

[EzekielRaiden]

I picked haste, but I always play frontliners.

All three would be sweet, though. On anyone.

Frankly I don't entirely get the case for bless here.

Front-liners love the movement opportunities and many appreciate the extra attack from haste, especially non-Fighters who get various ways to make fewer but stronger attacks (the extra dice of damage of Improved Divine Smite or Sneak Attack, static damage from Thirsting Blade, spells that tack on bonus damage on melee hits, etc.) Unless you know you're going to be rolling lots of dangerous saves, it seems to me that haste grants front-line types more benefit.

Spellcasters love Disengage and get a lot less out of bless due to leaning much more heavily on inflicting saving throws rather than making attack rolls (not that there aren't spells, sometimes good ones, with attack rolls, just that most good spells are save-based.) So again it seems like haste grants more benefit than bless.

And nobody is gonna complain about always having a free chance to quaff a healing potion while still doing your main thing. Oh! And haste still offers defensive benefits due to giving +2 AC, which is always desirable in 5e's math. Getting +2 AC is gonna be a lot more consistently useful overall than getting on average +2.5 to saves!

Haste offers a lesser version of Action Surge...except it's available literally every single round. Bless is a buff, yes. One that goes outside of Advantage/Disadvantage on a small set of prevalent and important rolls (saves and attacks you roll). If bless applied to your saving throw DC as well as to attack rolls you make, then it would be WAY more tempting. As it stands...I really think it's only Fighters and maybe Barbarians who would really benefit from bless more than haste.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Does haste still age you faster? I would not want just 10 more years to live or such. I would likely want bless. Being 10% better at everything would be great for my golf game, and to quote Nugenix- "and guys, she'll like it too."

Not in 5e. I mean, the DM could always do that as a jerk move but...why. Seriously why.

 

[James Gasik]

It's not like saving throw boosters are common though; and when you're talking about one of your non-proficient saves, as you gain levels, you're going to want every point you can get.

 

[billd91]

Ring of Bless. Eventually, the DM’s going to realize the Ring of Haste is too good and nerf it. I’m gonna avoid poking that bear.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Ring of Bless. Eventually, the DM’s going to realize the Ring of Haste is too good and nerf it. I’m gonna avoid poking that bear.

I was assuming the DM would not do such a thing. If the items do not actually work as presented because they'll be rewritten by the DM as suits them after being used, then obviously all bets are off.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

It's not like saving throw boosters are common though; and when you're talking about one of your non-proficient saves, as you gain levels, you're going to want every point you can get.

Sure, save bonuses can be hard to find, I certainly grant that (if that weren't true, bless would be pretty clearly weaker than haste). But 5e is already leaning very hard into "exploit cover ruthlessly" tactics. This lets you do that in essentially all situations. Disengage lets you move your full speed without worrying about opportunity attacks, so unless you fight on featureless flat planes, that's very likely to be valuable. If you don't need to worry about Disengage, Dash gives you double movement, which can almost certainly put you out of range--or let you use your full speed to approach, then use your full speed to retreat again.

More or less, haste is much easier to exploit because it involves strategies where you don't even present a target for your opponents to cast spells upon. By this reckoning, bless is preparing for expected failures, while haste is preparing so you don't even have the chance to fail in the first place, and thus haste would still be superior.

Again, not saying an eternally-sustained bless would be bad. Honestly, if you could get both a ring of constant bless and a ring of constant haste, they'd likely be the two best rings you ever could find. You'd basically never want to take them off.

 

[Slit518]

I am surprised by how many folks have chosen Bless, and how Blur is lacking behind. Really surprised.

Haste being in the lead does not surprise me though.

 

[Dausuul]

Yeah, I'd go with haste too. I might consider bless if I were leaning hard into the -5/+10 feats... maybe. (Those feats want as many attack bonuses as you can layer on. But they also want as many attacks as you can get, so haste is still in contention there. I'd have to crunch some numbers to figure out which is better when.)

Blur is a great defensive buff, but that's all it is. I can't think of a build where I'd prefer blur to haste. Even as a spellcaster, +2 AC and double speed and a free Disengage or Dash every round is better than giving attackers disadvantage. Particularly since the +2 AC stacks with everything, while you can only impose disadvantage once.

(Also: If you pick the bless ring and get someone to cast haste on you the regular way, you risk losing a turn if the caster's concentration breaks. If you pick the haste ring and get someone to cast bless on you, there's no such risk. Yet another reason to go with haste.)

 

[billd91]

I was assuming the DM would not do such a thing. If the items do not actually work as presented because they'll be rewritten by the DM as suits them after being used, then obviously all bets are off.

See, I’m not willing to make that assumption as a player. Rather, I’m going to assume that a Ring of Haste that’s always on is a mistake because it’s pretty overpowered. And as a player, I don‘t want to be blatantly OP. That’s why I described it as not poking that bear - I don’t want to provoke the DM into changing something they homebrewed up because it was poorly designed or balanced.
Frankly, the Ring of Bless is probably too good as well, but it’s less too good and so less provocative to accept.

 

[Seramus]

Bless if it benefits two other people beside myself. I could probably take that to the Olympics or some other competitive activity.

Haste and Blur are obviously cheating and would probably get me disqualified or even dissected by the government.