D&D 5E Why Has D&D, and 5e in Particular, Gone Down the Road of Ubiquitous Magic?

[Caliban]

It doesn't (achieve the goal of the wilderness warrior), it's just the next best thing. But despite the cosmetics, the outlander fighter is just an outdoorsy fighter, not a ranger. There are still things the ranger class has that fit the ranger archetype (Land's stride and favorite terrain i.e.). Which means you need to MC. Even if your DM is OK with you MC-ing, it leads to mechanical problems, like stat requirements. That is extra baggage. So no, it's not a solution, not by long shot. And refluffing spells leads into even more mechanical difficulties. And now the paladins seam to take the same road, except they still have the slot to smite conversion to save their face.

BTW, my quarrel with the ranger isn't about how viable the class is in play. I don't think it's a dog. I just don't think it should be the name holder for the type of play it requires.

Fair enough. Although I think that most people I've played with have multi-classed their characters to a greater or lesser extent. Single classed characters exist, but it is less than half, from what I've seen in my local Adventure League and home games.

 

[Mouseferatu]

Fair enough. Although I think that most people I've played with have multi-classed their characters to a greater or lesser extent. Single classed characters exist, but it is less than half, from what I've seen in my local Adventure League and home games.

Wow. Granted, my subject pool is small, since I only have my own group and a few friends' groups to draw from--I don't do AL/other organized play--but that's the exact opposite of my experience. In 4E and 5E both, I've seen very few multiclass characters, and even going back to 3E, most of the multiclassing I saw was in prestige classes exclusively.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Wow. Granted, my subject pool is small, since I only have my own group and a few friends' groups to draw from--I don't do AL/other organized play--but that's the exact opposite of my experience. In 4E and 5E both, I've seen very few multiclass characters, and even going back to 3E, most of the multiclassing I saw was in prestige classes exclusively.

This has been my experience as well. IIRC, my group has played around 18 PCs in 5e, and of those I'm fairly certain only one was multiclassed (a wizard who dipped a single level to be a cleric of Boccob).

 

[Caliban]

The group I played in today had a Paladin/Warlock/(soon to be a 3rd class), a Sorcerer/(planning to multi into Warlock or cleric), a Fighter/Warlock, A Bard, and my Cleric (Trickster domain) who may take a level of rogue soon.

 

[Hussar]

IME the real effect of making Hunter's Mark, Eldritch Blast etc into chosen spells is that new players don't realise they have to take these to be effective - they probably don't read the description of every cantrip & 0th level spell in their spell lists, they just take what looks cool. I know I play a Paladin, & I certainly haven't read through every spell on his list to work out what I 'should' be doing. The result is nerfed, ineffective PCs, like the Warlock in my online game who took Poison Spray instead of Eldritch Blast. This stuff should be core class abilities, 4e hatred aside. If you need it to make your PC as functional as the other classes, it shouldn't be hidden in spell lists.

This is one thing that smacked me in the face recently about 5e. It isn't that hard to create a character that, through some poor choices that aren't necessarily obvious, that sucks rocks. My current Champion fighter was a perfect example - I tried going shield defence and whatnot and ended up with a character that had slightly better AC's than every other fighter in the group (we have 4 fighter types) and dealing about half the damage. It was extremely frustrating. There's the paladin, with exactly the same fighting style as me, same AC as me, dealing about twice the damage because of smites. It is a bit disheartening.

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On multiclassing. I don't think we can draw any sort of conclusions from anecdote. Our group is about half and half between the two campaigns we're playing. A couple of players have really glommed onto the idea of multi classing and a few of us don't bother. It's really going to come down to taste. And since multi-classing doesn't really make huge differences to balance - 5e is more than robust enough to handle this - it's not really an issue AFAIC.

 

[TheLoneRanger1979]

And since multi-classing doesn't really make huge differences to balance - 5e is more than robust enough to handle this - it's not really an issue AFAIC.

This. Since most campaigns are low to mid tier anyways, there is no balance issue with MCing. In my group of 5 i am the only one who has expressed an interest in doing it (for the above concept reasons), but i can see why there would be optimization uses of the feature, especially if you know a campaign isn't going to pass some level.

 

[Arilyn]

IME the real effect of making Hunter's Mark, Eldritch Blast etc into chosen spells is that new players don't realise they have to take these to be effective - they probably don't read the description of every cantrip & 0th level spell in their spell lists, they just take what looks cool. I know I play a Paladin, & I certainly haven't read through every spell on his list to work out what I 'should' be doing. The result is nerfed, ineffective PCs, like the Warlock in my online game who took Poison Spray instead of Eldritch Blast. This stuff should be core class abilities, 4e hatred aside. If you need it to make your PC as functional as the other classes, it shouldn't be hidden in spell lists.

Yes, I've been noticing this problem as well. It's also vaguely annoying if you feel you have to take a particular spell or cantrip. Now, I'm no power gamer, but the insidious thing I've been noticing with my 5e characters, is I'm starting to behave a little like one, because there are some very obvious advantages to certain choices. If some choices are WAY better, then even old "narrative" me is going to feel a little put out by sub-standard choices. There's a lot of talk about 5e not being a power-gamer game, and not about the "builds", but it is not always true, unfortunately.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

[MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION], one does not need to take hunter's mark nor eldritch blast to be effective.

That is a distorted perception by which the best option from many suitable options falsely appears to be the only option and all options not at least as good, no matter how slightly they might be behind, falsely appear as useless - the reality is that there is a very wide margin of effective enough, even if not the most effective between having these particular options and being actually ineffective.

 

[Azurewraith]

[MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION], one does not need to take hunter's mark nor eldritch blast to be effective.

That is a distorted perception by which the best option from many suitable options falsely appears to be the only option and all options not at least as good, no matter how slightly they might be behind, falsely appear as useless - the reality is that there is a very wide margin of effective enough, even if not the most effective between having these particular options and being actually ineffective.

Maybe at lower levels but I find with HP being the monsters go to defensive state the extra damge from EB stops things becoming a slog that +20damge an attack soon stacks up. There's a reason char oppers have wet dreams about static damage and multi hits.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

Maybe at lower levels but I find with HP being the monsters go to defensive state the extra damge from EB stops things becoming a slog that +20damge an attack soon stacks up. There's a reason char oppers have wet dreams about static damage and multi hits.

Maybe it's just my group managing some wildly abnormal game-play speed, maybe it's just a different threshold for the term "slog"... but, 5th edition never becomes a "slog", with or without picking the highest damage-dealing options available.