D&D 5E (2014) Why Good Players Do Not 14.25.

[Zardnaar]

Really? This thread again?

Just ban the feats if they're causing you so much grief, or replace the -5/+10 with a +1 to Str/ Dex.

New information about the average AC.

 

[Flamestrike]

New information about the average AC.

Id hazard a guess that around 50 percent of the monsters in the MM can wear armor pretty easily.

Just throw armor on them to increase thier AC.

A quick and dirty method to adjust monsters on the fly to account for magic items in your party is to give them +2 to AC, hit, saves, skills and damage.

There are plently of ways to tweak your encounters if you dont want to tweak the feats available in your games.

Again; I strongly suggest simply placing time constraints on your quests, and pushing longer adventuring days on your party. If you cant be bothered, use the gritty realism rest variant.

Your clerics will be a lot more reluctant spamming Bless when its going to take them a whole week in town to recover those expended spell slots.

Another variant you might want to consider is to allow everyone only the one feat. Youre either lucky, a polearm master or a great weapon master. Youre either a crossbow master or you're a sharpshooter. Youre either a warcaster or you're resilient (Con). Youre alert or you're a skulker. Youre either a sentinel or you're a mage slayer.

It lets PCs customise their characters, while toning down the impact of those feats.

 

[Zardnaar]

Id hazard a guess that around 50 percent of the monsters in the MM can wear armor pretty easily.

Just throw armor on them to increase thier AC.

A quick and dirty method to adjust monsters on the fly to account for magic items in your party is to give them +2 to AC, hit, saves, skills and damage.

There are plently of ways to tweak your encounters if you dont want to tweak the feats available in your games.

Again; I strongly suggest simply placing time constraints on your quests, and pushing longer adventuring days on your party. If you cant be bothered, use the gritty realism rest variant.

Your clerics will be a lot more reluctant spamming Bless when its going to take them a whole week in town to recover those expended spell slots.

Another variant you might want to consider is to allow everyone only the one feat. Youre either lucky, a polearm master or a great weapon master. Youre either a crossbow master or you're a sharpshooter. Youre either a warcaster or you're resilient (Con). Youre alert or you're a skulker. Youre either a sentinel or you're a mage slayer.

It lets PCs customise their characters, while toning down the impact of those feats.

Never claimed you can't come up with in game solutions and we have tried the higher AC thing.

The fact you have to do that is the point. We like using feats those ones are a bit OP relative to the others.

My players also tried different thing like dex based mellee in the current party but the latest player took a hunter ranger with sharpshooter.

Current cleric doesn't bother with bless to much as its powerful but a bit boring if you do it all the time.

Another poster recommend stop catering to the powergamers and they get bored and try something else and it worked better.

 

[Flamestrike]

Never claimed you can't come up with in game solutions and we have tried the higher AC thing.

The fact you have to do that is the point. We like using feats those ones are a bit OP relative to the others.

You dont 'have to'. You can alter the feats if you want.

Those feats are not an issue for many gamers. I do get that they are an issue for others (including you).

Its just that Im sick to death of the same people making the same complaints (and starting a new thread about them) on a weekly basis. You, Captain Zapp and a few others seem obsessed with doing it. Its tiresome, and we get it.

That said, I and others are trying to help. There have been many proposed solutions given to you. Including:

1) Ban feats. They're optional remember.
2) Rmove the -5/+10 and replace it with something else
3) Change your DMing style
4) Gritty realism resting
5) Change the numbers (-5/+1d10 or similar)
6) Only allow them to be used 1/ turn
7) Only allow each PC 1 feat.
8) Upgrade your monsters (increasing AC, proficiency, hit points, or both)
9) Use a mix of monsters
10) Tweak your encounter design

etc etc etc.

Another poster recommend stop catering to the powergamers and they get bored and try something else and it worked better.

That fits into 'Change your DMing style' recomendation above.

There isnt always a 'math based' answer to your problems mate. DMing is an art as much (more so) as it is a science.

If your players are always selecting the same feats/ classes/ options then consider the issue may not lie with just those feats/ classes/ options, but also how you run your game.

Players being players will take the path of least resistance. They'll pick options that are better more often than not. So run your games differently, and you should see different options being picked.

For example if you start your encounters at long range (100' plus) in the open, expect sharpshooter to shine. If you only run 1-2 (deadly+) encounters per adventuring day expect nova builds to feature heavily (paladins, barbarians and full casters) and Champions and Warlocks to suck. And so forth.

I find that the guys that complain the loudest about 'encounters being weak' are the same crew that dont understand (or dont enforce) the longer adventuring day. They get an encounter crushed by novaing PCs, so they dial up encounter difficulty. This of course simply forces the players to Nova from then on. Instead of fixing the problem, this DM has just made it worse and all but rendered some classes obsolete (and rendered some 'builds' much better than others).

If you were to play in a campaign where the DM pushed a dozen encounters on you before you got the chance to long rest (but was permissive with short rests), it would be a very different campaign to one where you only ever got the one encounter per day. Classes would play very differently. Encounters would balance very differently.

Have a think about what you're doing as DM that enables problems at your table. Im not saying 'the way you play and run your games is wrong' but I am saying 'the way you play and run your games is almost certainly contributing to the problems you're having'.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

The fact you have to do that is the point.

That isn't a point, it's a misconception.

There is nothing different about what a DM that doesn't allow feats and a DM that does allow feats is doing to arrive, either way, at a table experience which is devoid of this kind of sticking point.

This is, as things often are, the false spectre of "metagaming". The DM becomes adverse to choosing to use higher AC enemies because they don't want to "metagame", but the result of refusing to use those higher AC enemies is the exact thing that is supposedly being avoided; choosing the monsters' AC because the player has taken that feat - evidenced strongly by the fact that no one would call it "metagaming" if the DM chose higher AC enemies without a character in the party with one of these feats.

 

[Flamestrike]

Zardinaar: Good Players shouldnt game a monsters AC or optimise too heavily.

Last week the advice was to avoid playing either Champions or Rogues using bows because they're suboptimal.

Is anyone else seeing the disconnect here?

Seems like there is a very narrow sweet spot to be a 'Good player' in Zaards books.

One day he'll twig onto the fact that a Good DM can accomodate all the above. In other words, the problem lies elsewhere.

 

[Cyrinishad]

...there seems to be a growing consensus those feats are overpowered (OP) if not out right broken...unless the DM metagames against you...

I almost feel like I'm just beating a dead horse with this post, but it's starting to seem like it may have had an Animate Dead spell cast on it...
So, I'm going to lay out two points on this thread:

1. A perceived consensus surrounding an inherently flawed premise is irrelevant when trying to assess the efficacy of optional rules that are being applied to cookie-cutter scenarios/monsters, or printed adventures that are designed to be used as written under the presumption that people are not using optional rules. That kind of a consensus makes me imagine a bunch of people standing around agreeing with each other that "good" bike riders should never loose their balance and fall over, because all you have to do is attach "overpowered" training wheels.

2. A DM should always be metagaming against you... Not in an adversarial way, but in a cooperative way to ensure that the players feel challenged by the adventures and endangered by the monsters. If there is no danger or risk, there can be no heroism. If the players are using optional rules, it is the responsibility of the DM to make optional adjustments to pre-printed materials to create appropriate challenges. This rewards and validates the decisions the players make when they are building their characters and choosing their feats, by making those decisions essential to their success in their adventures.

 

[Corwin]

I gave up scorching ray on my fire sorcerer because trying to compete with single target damage with the Sharpshooter and Great Weapon Master in our party was pointless.

Compete? Wow, I'm so glad I don't play at tables like this anymore. I'd be willing to bet your sorcerer was helping take down the bad guys. But number envy made it hard for you to see your various contributions. *Including* killing monsters.

Granted, I think martial characters should be better at doing single target damage than casters, but it was a little humbling how thoroughly I was outclassed even with a 2nd level spell.

I love that you thought your sorcerer should have been at least close to comparable to a fighter who invested two feats in his attack shtick. Two feats. If he's *not* vastly better than you at that point the entire premise of the feat system is what is failing. Not your character.

At least I still have fireball.

So the real truth is that your scorching ray should have been able to somehwat "compete" with the fighter, *and* you get to have fireball. Poor fighter. Everyone secretly wants to be him. No one is willing to let him be good at his thing.

 

[wedgeski]

That is metagaming, which is widely considered to be uncool.

Did you just accuse a *DM* of metagaming??! Truly, we are living in a post-sanity multiverse.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I think I'm misunderstanding this conversation. What I'm reading is basically:

"These feats are broken because monters' ACs are too low."
"Then give them better armor to wear."
"I shouldn't have to."

That can't be right, can it? I mean, we've been buffing humanoid monsters since day 1 in the 70s by simply giving them variations in the armor they wore and weapons they used. That.....doesn't seem like some major effort or something. It certainly has a lot of precedence. "I shouldn't have to."? You're not making a major tweak here, and it's been part of D&D's history (and expectation) since the very beginning that people will tweak things to fit their preference.

"I shouldn't have to" is a statement that tells me that that particular individual expects D&D to be built entirely around their personal preferences only. I.e., "I want the game to work exactly how I prefer right out of the box." Which seems a very unreasonable expectation to me because we all have different preferences.