D&D 5E Why Should I Allow Feats

[Joe Liker]

This is REALLY disappointing to hear. I had thought that bounded accuracy was supposed to make it EASIER for the DM to deal with min/maxers.

I regularly DM for my local group, and we've moved from 3.5 to Pathfinder. They're a bright bunch of guys who tend to enjoy min/maxing, and most recently my "fix" was to play various variants of E6. The players have gotten sick of E6, though, and I was hoping that moving to 5E would keep us all happy.

Now I'm hearing that the game breaks down by level 10-12 if you have min/maxers playing it? Ugh. Not again. Why?

You're hearing that from people who haven't figured out how the game works. It simply isn't true.

Honestly, there are very few minmax problems that can't be cured simply by increasing the number of monsters in the encounter. Outnumbering the party always makes things vastly more difficult for them. You probably don't even have to go outside the XP budget if you don't think that's fair.

 

[sithramir]

Wait a second. Bless. I re-read it and it's not so clear as I thought before. Are you allowing every single attack for the duration to gain a 1d4 to it? If so then HOLY COW that's a powerful 1st level spell.

The way we've been playing is it lasts up to 1 minute and you get to add 1d4 to an attack or save but once you roll it the spell ends on that character. You could say it lasts the entire round of use too I guess. I'm not saying it's not the intent but it seems way too powerful to give that bonus nonstop to 3 players.

As people have mentioned making the feats -5/+5 instead (or scaling) and maybe making bless not give a bonus the entire time would be viable house rules that would mitigate the damage some.

It seems they should still be missing a whole lot even with bless and without bless they might realize on opponents with higher AC that it's a hassle. Just ideas that help fix it.

It seems bless and those feats are a powerful min/max combo basically saying here's +10 to all your attacks with almost no negative.

I wouldn't take all feats out just ensure that when something so crazy happens it's tweaked enough to be powerful but not game ruining?

Also, what kind of foes do they fight? Seems like it shouldn't be quite the cake walk when casters can be using hold person potentially stopping them for a few rounds, etc. Rogues that sneak and get into melee right away, having mooks or even the BBEG's getting into melee range means they still incur attacks of opportunity even if they don't have disadvantage from the feats.

Amazing what a few goblins running in melee does to archers for the BBEG. Suddenly the fighters are forced to deal with those smaller foes allowing the BBEG more time for a round or two.

Unfortunately 5E seems to last 2-3 rounds most of the time so the epic feel of longer battles just doesn't happen like it used to even against big foes because if it does usually you're dead due to the higher damage volume.

Just some thoughts

EDIT: Also, i've noticed with more than 4 players the numbers don't work at all for our group. I mentioned to the DM of one of the groups (we were 3rd level) that having 3-4 orcs show up is almost not worth a fight. He realized he wasn't boosting it to handle 6 instead of 4 people. With 3-4 orcs they didn't even get actions where suddenly if it's 6 orcs it's a quick and somewhat easy fight but a few get actions we take some damage and it's not quite so easy. I guess my point is to ensure those are taken into account if more than 4 players.

 

[jodyjohnson]

If I were a player ... I'd pack up and leave the game. Talk about taking your ball and going home ...

If we're all going to grab our balls and go home, make sure everyone only takes their own balls. I've seen too many sticky fingers.

 

[Mallus]

I like the approach to Feats used in 5e. It packs a lot of customization into a (relatively) lightweight package. I enjoy them in the campaigns I'm playing in now, and will use them in the games I run (sometime in 2015).

Maintaining an appropriate level of challenge as a group of PCs reaches mid-level and beyond is a problem we've always had with us. The best solution I've found is simply to adjust the encounter difficulty up, and to (sparingly) use enemies that target various PC weaknesses.

 

[SilverfireSage]

This is REALLY disappointing to hear. I had thought that bounded accuracy was supposed to make it EASIER for the DM to deal with min/maxers.

I regularly DM for my local group, and we've moved from 3.5 to Pathfinder. They're a bright bunch of guys who tend to enjoy min/maxing, and most recently my "fix" was to play various variants of E6. The players have gotten sick of E6, though, and I was hoping that moving to 5E would keep us all happy.

Now I'm hearing that the game breaks down by level 10-12 if you have min/maxers playing it? Ugh. Not again. Why?

I don't believe this is true. As I said in my post, it just takes a bit to get used to, but I've found it far easier to challenge players than when we played Pathfinder.

Also, Bounded accuracy technically has nothing to do with min/maxers. All bounded accuracy does is make lower level creatures a viable threat at higher levels.

 

[SilverfireSage]

This is not as easy as simply not letting them rest. Clever groups, particularly groups with spell casters like mine (Wizard, Cleric, Bard) can dictate the pace of the resting, and it gets easier as they get more powerful.

Not every adventure can be a race against time, or railroad the players into not resting, such as the opening of HoTDQ. As a player I hated that opening, it was so contrived.

I'm assuming you're talking about using the Mordenkainen spells to make 5 minute workdays? i.e. Fight a monster, cast Mordenkainen's Mansion, rest, fight a monster the next day, cast Mordenkainen... etc. That's all well and good, but it takes 1 minute to cast Magnificent Mansion, plenty of time for a group of giants to come and wreck your day, and its a 7th level spell, so PCs are going to be rather high level before they can even cast it, not to mention it will be the only 7th level spell they can cast and there are a bunch of really nice ones that they might have to use just to survive! If you're going with Private Sanctum, that takes a whopping 10 minutes to cast, so they'd better be doing a hell of a job protecting their wizard just to get that long rest!

This seems to me like a problem of not reading the full rules. I've had this problem many times, like just recently when the party druid got Wind Walk. It seemed massively overpowered, essentially invisibility+fly for the whole party, until we realized that it takes a minute to go in and out of it. So if you decide to reveal yourselves in the middle of a giant encampment, they get to wail on you for 10 rounds before you can fight back. Every instance of a "balance issue" has come down to this, and while there probably are balance issues in the game, I haven't seen them yet.

 

[BigVanVader]

Why are you counting polearms as Great Weapons? I think polearms should be their own thing. I mean in history they maybe possibly occupied vaguely the same place in warfare(we think so anyway, but there are a lot of differing theories), but D&D isn't played that way. Polearms poke things and keep them far away, and great weapons deal massive absurd amounts of damage.

 

[Joe Liker]

Why are you counting polearms as Great Weapons? ... D&D isn't played that way.

I assume he's allowing it because that's how the rule is written. So if you mean that D&D isn't played according to the rules of D&D, I'm not sure where this conversation can go.

 

[Joe Liker]

Wait a second. Bless. I re-read it and it's not so clear as I thought before. Are you allowing every single attack for the duration to gain a 1d4 to it? If so then HOLY COW that's a powerful 1st level spell.

The word "whenever" means "every time," so yes, it counts for every attack.

There are many ways to counter bless. The easiest is dispel magic, which cancels any spell of level 3 or lower on the target without even making a roll. You could also break the caster's concentration. Yet another option is bane, the success of which will depend on saving throw proficiencies and bonuses -- not a great option because your targets are perforce getting a bonus from bless.

 

[BigVanVader]

I assume he's allowing it because that's how the rule is written. So if you mean that D&D isn't played according to the rules of D&D, I'm not sure where this conversation can go.

It isn't though. The guidelines of D&D are played to the hard rules of the DM.

Or at least played to the hard rules that the players can't fast talk, manipulate or bully their way past.