D&D 5E Why does 5E SUCK?

[Sacrosanct]

A vial of acid had many uses other than combat, so I feel it's well worth it.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

On the weak side, almost certainly Fighter (especially Champion) and Warlock (especially Pact of the Blade). Both of them are sensitive to campaign pacing and are at risk of a sort of "reverse" five minute workday problem because of the in-game length of time for a short rest. The Fighter, as usual, got seriously shortchanged for noncombat stuff; Battlemasters get a tool proficiency (because Know Your Enemy is about combat stats, nothing more) and Champions can jump a piddly bit further and get a +1 or +2 (for most of the game) to stuff they aren't proficient in (with most of the benefit being, again, to combat)... On the powerful side, Paladin and Druid are the major standouts. Paladins have a robust, solid baseline, and a bunch of really nice class-specific spells, and an aura which "breaks" (or, IMO, fixes) saving throws substantially, since it gives almost everyone (and always the paladin) effective proficiency in ALL saves...which STACKS with any proficiency the recipient might already have...

If you're going to criticize the fighter for being combat-oriented, you don't have much standing to praise the paladin for his combat prowess unless you also show how much better he is at non-combat. Divine sense is nice, and healing is nice but really a part of combat just like the fighter's Second Wind. Other than that they play pretty similarly outside of combat--backgrounds will provide more differentiation than classes in this case.

 

[technophile]

Now that some folks are mentioning clerics, I must chime in on that as well.

1. I truly do hate the lack of differentiation with cleric cantrips. Sacred flame does not fit even half the clerics in the PHB.

2. Not giving light clerics access to sunburst and sunbeam was pure garbage. I added those to the level 17 light cleric ability. A light cleric that can't call on the power of the sun is poor conceptually.

3. Need more domains.

Seems like these spells should be on the cleric list to begin with.

 

[Bacon Bits]

You don't know how fast D&D ducks fly.

No, no, ducks float. Swallows fly.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

You don't know how fast D&D ducks fly.

Nerf Ducks Now! Nerf Ducks Now!

Do it for the dragons!

;-)

 

[EzekielRaiden]

If you're going to criticize the fighter for being combat-oriented, you don't have much standing to praise the paladin for his combat prowess unless you also show how much better he is at non-combat. Divine sense is nice, and healing is nice but really a part of combat just like the fighter's Second Wind. Other than that they play pretty similarly outside of combat--backgrounds will provide more differentiation than classes in this case.

Oookay, so you already did part of my work for me, because Divine Sense is still a pretty potent and useful non-combat ability (though it does have some potential use in combat, too--if you know the location of an invisible undead, it effectively loses the benefit of being invisible). Then there's Lay on Hands' ability to remove Exhaustion, Disease, and Poison; while all of them may be dangerous in combat, they're only (in general) seriously debilitating out of combat; in all the games I've played as paladins with Disease immunity, it was far more useful in exploration (I was able to touch and interact with things that could seriously injure, even kill, my comrades) than it was in combat. Cleansing Touch is both very powerful and very useful regardless of situation, despite coming rather late--nasty effects abound in combat, but so are cursed traps and all sorts of other magical dangers in exploration, and I'm certain that there are Social uses for the ability to remove curses (just consider Gandalf driving Saruman from King Theoden). Then you have the Auras, which vary in their combat- and non-combat applicability. Protection is useful always, because saves are common both in and out of combat. Courage is similar, though I could see it leaning more toward combat.

And all of that is just the baseline Paladin, without spells. Speaking of spells! The Paladin can cast Command, Detect Magic, Detect Poison and Disease, Purify Food and Drink, Find Steed, Lesser Restoration, Locate Object, Zone of Truth, Create Food and Water, Daylight, Magic Circle, Revivify, Banishment, Locate Creature, Geas, and Raise Dead.

Then you have the Oaths. Devotion has some nice stuff: adds Dispel Magic, Commune, and Freedom of Movement, and gives another aura (Devotion) which grants "friendly" creatures immunity to charm--a powerful tool in social situations. Ancients adds Speak with Animals, Misty Step, Plant Growth, Commune with Nature, and Tree Stride; plus there are some minor noncombat benefits to Undying Sentinel. Vengeance adds Misty Step, Dimension Door, and Scrying; all of its other features are exclusively combat-oriented though.

This is, again, compared to the baseline Fighter class, which adds...nothing non-combat from its actual mechanics (since I don't count "you get two skills" any more than I counted skills provided by your class in every other edition of D&D I've played, unless those skills were over and above what is normally available.) And compared to the subclasses, one of which adds a few feet of jump distance and half proficiency (meaning +1 or +2 until level 13) to physical checks you aren't proficient with, and another which gives you a free additional artisan tool proficiency (of highly, HIGHLY debatable merit) and a way to...compare the combat stats of enemies to your own.

I had figured, given how long the benefit list is, that I did not need to spell it out; but now I have. Does this satisfactorily explain things? The Paladin is *at worst* only slightly behind the Fighter for (potential) damage output, unless there are numerous short rests per day. And then the Paladin has a bunch of nice non-combat toys even *before* she starts casting spells. And then she has spells, too (though I admit that spellcasting and smiting are competing for the same resource pool, the Paladin at least gets to choose how that resource gets spent.)

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Oookay, so you already did part of my work for me, because Divine Sense is still a pretty potent and useful non-combat ability (though it does have some potential use in combat, too--if you know the location of an invisible undead, it effectively loses the benefit of being invisible). Then there's Lay on Hands' ability to remove Exhaustion, Disease, and Poison; * snip* And all of that is just the baseline Paladin, without spells. Speaking of spells! The Paladin can cast Command, Detect Magic, Detect Poison and Disease, Purify Food and Drink, Find Steed, Lesser Restoration, Locate Object, Zone of Truth, Create Food and Water, Daylight, Magic Circle, Revivify, Banishment, Locate Creature, Geas, and Raise Dead. * snip* Ancients adds Speak with Animals, Misty Step, Plant Growth, Commune with Nature, and Tree Stride; plus there are some minor noncombat benefits to Undying Sentinel. *snip* This is, again, compared to the baseline Fighter class, which adds...nothing non-combat from its actual mechanics (since I don't count "you get two skills" any more than I counted skills provided by your class in every other edition of D&D I've played, unless those skills were over and above what is normally available.) And compared to the subclasses, one of which adds a few feet of jump distance and half proficiency (meaning +1 or +2 until level 13) to physical checks you aren't proficient with, and another which gives you a free additional artisan tool proficiency (of highly, HIGHLY debatable merit) and a way to...compare the combat stats of enemies to your own. *snip*

1.) Lay on Hands doesn't remove Exhaustion. Too bad or else Paladin/Frenzy Barb would be a much more attractive party.

2.) Good point about Oath of Ancients. Plant Growth/Speak with Animals/Commune with Nature does actually add a new dimension of utility to the class. I don't find most of the rest of the list very useful in a non-combat setting; Create Food and Drink, Find Steed, and Zone of Truth are the most useful.

3.) If you're considering subclasses and 20th level characters, Eldritch Knight must be considered too: Find Familiar adds a whole new dimension of utility to fighters comparable to the Plant Growth/Speak With Animals Stuff (although Commune with Nature is probably a level above that). Battlemaster evaluation a la "compare the combat stats of enemies to your own" should definitely not be sneered at in a noncombat setting. Who but a battlemaster can safely tell you whether it's safe to throw down with the mafia don's bodyguard or if he'll eat you alive? What are you going to do, risk your life on a guess that you'll be good enough to play nasty? The utility of that ability is highly campaign-dependent and I believe you come from a 4E background, so I'm not surprised you don't value it in your campaigns, but the same thing is true of Commune With Nature and disease resistance.

Overall you make a good argument that paladin utility is somewhat wider than fighter utility outside of campaign (primarily the arguments which resonate with me are the Oath of Ancients spells, and disease resistance), and thank you for making that argument explicitly, but they're both still quite limited out of combat compared to either backgrounds or especially to classes like Tome Pact Warlock, Wizard and Druid. I can enumerate the ways in which druids are versatile and fun out of combat (wildshape, Transport Via Plants, ritual Water Breathing, ritual Water Walking, Animal Shapes!, Awaken!, Conjure Elemental + Planar Binding!, Meld Into Stone, Wind Walk, Plane Shift, Wall of Stone, Polymorph--all of these are awesome and most of them are awesome in completely different ways from each other) and it ought to be clear that they're on a completely different level from paladins, so much so that paladins and fighters look pretty much the same. IMHO. It's obviously a matter of taste to some degree, so YMMV.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

1.) Lay on Hands doesn't remove Exhaustion. Too bad or else Paladin/Frenzy Barb would be a much more attractive party.

Ah, the "confuse playtest and final product" error strikes again. My bad.

2.) Good point about Oath of Ancients. Plant Growth/Speak with Animals/Commune with Nature does actually add a new dimension of utility to the class. I don't find most of the rest of the list very useful in a non-combat setting; Create Food and Drink, Find Steed, and Zone of Truth are the most useful.

I certainly agree that most of the base list, and even much of Oath of the Ancients, is combat-specific. I think you're selling Misty Step a bit short though--being able to teleport 30 feet is nothing to sneeze at for exploration. Especially if your DM doesn't oppose the idea that it can be 30 feet up or down, as long as you meet the "you can see it" requirement.

3.) If you're considering subclasses and 20th level characters, Eldritch Knight must be considered too:

There is a reason I did not mention it. The Eldritch Knight "cheats." That is, I freely agree that it provides utility to the class, but only because it fundamentally alters what the class is. The EK is a caster. Half, sure, but "a caster" nonetheless. No other type of Fighter is a caster. Utility benefits are, thus, still gated behind choosing to play a spellcasting class, and I think that's a pile of sh*t.

Battlemaster evaluation a la "compare the combat stats of enemies to your own" should definitely not be sneered at in a noncombat setting. Who but a battlemaster can safely tell you whether it's safe to throw down with the mafia don's bodyguard or if he'll eat you alive? What are you going to do, risk your life on a guess that you'll be good enough to play nasty?

Except...they can't actually do that? They can check to see if two out of a list of things is better, the same, or worse than their own. That list is: A physical ability score (not super sure what use this is?), AC, current HP, or total/Fighter class level. And even then, it's STILL almost purely about combat, just in a (IMO pedantically) "recon" sense--and only gives you "higher, lower, same." I'd still call that a "guess" as to whether you can take him or not; obviously the two stats you'd want to check every time are current HP and either AC or whatever you guess the enemy

The utility of that ability is highly campaign-dependent and I believe you come from a 4E background, so I'm not surprised you don't value it in your campaigns, but the same thing is true of Commune With Nature and disease resistance.

I do come from a 4e background, but I fail to see how that's relevant. The vast majority of my experience with Paladin immunity stuff actually comes from playing B/X and Dungeon World.

Commune With Nature lets you ask open-ended questions that can relate to any of the pillars (exploration, socialization, or combat), and gives you ALL facts relevant to those questions, without resorting to crappy "less than/greater than/equal to" obscurantism or even the Divine Sense "well you know *where* it is but nothing else" stuff. Know Your Enemy gives you a rough comparison against your own stats, and no more. For example, if you're a fourth-level Fighter and you check to see an opponent's Fighter level, you could get "higher than yours." Well, how *much* higher? You have no idea. Could be just level 5, could be level 15, you have no way of knowing. Even if you pair it with HP, you only know if they're higher or lower *than your own.* Perhaps the guard doesn't have very high HP, but has amazing AC. You'll never know, because you can only check two things. I mean, maybe you could...I hesitate to say "houserule," more like "house interpretation" it, so that you could repeat it once a day against the same enemy (since your old info COULD expire, thus permitting checking again), but as it stands, the text doesn't support being able to do it multiple times (else why would you be limited to only 2 comparisons?) It doesn't *contradict* using it more than once, but it would require reading in something that isn't there--not even by "logical extension" or whatever.

Overall you make a good argument that paladin utility is somewhat wider than fighter utility outside of campaign (primarily the arguments which resonate with me are the Oath of Ancients spells, and disease resistance), and thank you for making that argument explicitly, but they're both still quite limited out of combat compared to either backgrounds or especially to classes like Tome Pact Warlock, Wizard and Druid.

I don't personally think the Paladin's utility is nearly as limited as most of the backgrounds; I haven't really dug through them to know which ones are top-tier and which ones stink, though, so perhaps I've only looked at the "meh" or worse backgrounds. I definitely think that the Fighter-derived class features are barely at (or even below) the level of every background I've read, *other* than spells because spells are high-utility by nature (something I felt didn't need to be said, but our conversation has proven otherwise).

I can enumerate the ways in which druids are versatile and fun out of combat (wildshape, Transport Via Plants, ritual Water Breathing, ritual Water Walking, Animal Shapes!, Awaken!, Conjure Elemental + Planar Binding!, Meld Into Stone, Wind Walk, Plane Shift, Wall of Stone, Polymorph--all of these are awesome and most of them are awesome in completely different ways from each other) and it ought to be clear that they're on a completely different level from paladins, so much so that paladins and fighters look pretty much the same. IMHO. It's obviously a matter of taste to some degree, so YMMV.

No, see, I completely agree with you, and I *don't* think it's a matter of taste. Full casters (with the possible exception of the Sorcerer) blow absolutely everyone else out of the water in terms of out-of-combat ability. For exploration and socialization, we're back to having a tier system, and the Fighter is smack dab at the very, very bottom, bringing less to the table than many options for universal character components (like backgrounds). Appropriating the old Tier system from 3e, Druids are absolutely the upper limit of Tier 1, while Fighters scrape the bottom of Tier 5, and Paladins lie somewhere around low Tier 3 or high Tier 4. They're straight-up better in all (utility) ways than Fighters, capable of doing significantly more and more interesting things than the Fighter can, but they're far from the *best* utility characters. If they were, Paladins would be overwhelmingly broken in the context of 5e, being *easily* the second-best combatants, competent support, AND second-best utility would be...well, the new CoDzilla. As it stands, the Paladin seems like it trades a very, very small amount of combat ability for a compared-to-the-Fighter enormous increase in utility.

I mean, yes, if you set your standard as "the stuff a Druid or Tome-Warlock can do," then the differences between the Fighter and...well, pretty much *anyone* else, even *Rogues,* are small. But that's like Einstein or Marilyn vos Savant as your intelligence standard and wondering why you can't really distinguish between someone with a mild learning disability and someone with exactly median intelligence. Don't get me wrong, I think *everyone* should have as much flavorful, interesting, flexible utility potential as the Druid or Tome-Warlock does. Instead of defining the Tome-Warlock as 1, and therefore needing to describe the Fighter as (say) 0.001, isn't it easier to say the Fighter has 1 (smallest whole-number amount) and the Warlock has 1000? The Paladin might still only be 15 or 20, but it certainly seems like a lot more to compare 1 to 20 as opposed to comparing 0.020 to 0.001.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

25 gp is about how much I typically price cantrip scrolls, and 2d6 to a single target feels cantrip-level to me. Alchemist's fire, on the other hand, is way overpriced. For 50 gp, there shouldn't be such a big possibility that it will deal less damage than a flask of acid would. A scroll of the same price would deal around 2d10 damage to a single target. I make alchemist's fire deal 1d8 + 1d6 damage on the initial hit, and 1d6 on subsequent rounds.

That said, magic item pricing is weird, too, and it may well be that both things are overpriced. If you make the prices follow the exponential trend from start to finish, inserting midpoints so you get a price for each spell level, acid should cost 8 gp and alchemist's fire, 25.

I don't suppose you'd be willing to make a fixed pricing chart for magic items (and dmg poisons, etc), for those of us who just stared blankly at the screen as you explained how you came to those numbers?

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Wizards do nothing but study the Arcane. They get up in the morning. They study the Arcane. They have a bite to eat. They study the Arcane. They get a bit of dinner. They study the Arcane. Then they go to bed.

Wizards, not Bards or Clerics, have always held the central place of knowledge -- in literature as well as in-game. They're the most intelligent and their low hp was always attributed to their eschewing the real world for knowledge and magic.

Bards, in the context of D&D, study music. And fighting. And poetry. And thievery. And odd bits of lore. And diplomacy. And healing. And a little bit of everything. If there's one thing a Bard should never, ever be, it's an expert. Maybe an expert in music or the arts or hisotry, but certainly not an expert when compared to anybody who has dedicated their life to a very limited range of study, as most every other class has.

But...what?

The Bard is the Renaissance Man of DnD, not some amateur dilettante. The defining feature of that archetype is the ability to be an expert in multiple, diverse and distinct subjects simultaneously.
And the Bard has always included the mastery of lore as part of the class concept. The Wizard may be the master of Arcane Lore, but no one has a more comprehensive, encyclopedic pool of knowledge on matters mundane, arcane and otherwise, as the Bard.

I suppose so. I mean, if we had three classes, then it would be obvious which class any given character belonged to. That's really what it all comes down to, is I strongly believe that there must be exactly one way to represent any given character. There should never be a question about which class a character belongs to, and if there is, then there are too many classes. If you have to change the in-game nature of the character in order to justify changing the class, then that is as it should be.

OK, I've got a room full of heads spinning in confusion after reading this aloud to the room...

Can you please explain how you came to this belief? I literally just can't fathom it, in any way. It's like someone is telling me that gravity is a repulsive force, and photons make things darker.

I can't think of many rules, game mechanics, etc. that doesn't have at least as many proponents as haters (and even the two mentioned aren't considered "burn WotC to the ground" bad by everyone).

I don't know...most people I know do consider the halfling art that bad.

Like, want to play one, and then see the art when you open the page, and decide to play literally anything else instead, because you don't want to keep throwing up in your mouth every time you think about what your character looks like.

Like, that bad.

Someone should be open hand slapped in the face for the halfling art.