What Went Wrong, (5e)

/tg/ isn't /v/, friend, we can like some things.

but what don't YOU like about 5e?

I mean Monk and Ranger have a few trap options that can screw you in mid-high optimization, namely "Way Of The Four Elements" and "The Ranger". It also has a few broken combos involving some mix of Paladin, Sorcerer, and/or Warlock. Also Int is a bit garbage...

A lot of feats are traps.

It frustrates me because feats could be a really good way of subtly tying in a characters backstory to game play mechanics, but as it currently stands representing your characters experience in tavern brawling with the Tavern Brawler feat is an intrusive waste of an ability score upgrade.

However they did touch on this in Unearthed Arcana with some nice feats that add concrete benefits to things like cooks utensils and alchemist's supplies so I am not too mad though.

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44KB, 478x504px

>>54163168
>HP bloat is still a thing
>Casters still have way more agency for affecting a plot than Martials do
>Combat is basically resource-attrition with no real tactics or stragedy involved
>Non-combat skills are a joke because of how terribly proficiency bonus scales to level. Often being proficient in a skill means you've only got a 10-20% better chance of succeeding than somebody with no training at all.
>Too many special-snowflake races like dragonborn, firbolg, assimar, ect.
>Game balance still completely falls apart after about level 10 or 12, meaning half the stuff that's supposed to be in your character's development is wasted.
>D20 is just a garbage way-too-swingy resolution mechanic overall.

>>54163259

They really should have seperated 'Stuff that helps combat' and 'stuff that helps non-combat'. As it's hard to really justify 'Speaks some extra languages' compared to 'I will fuck all the shit up with 2 handed weapons'

>>54163168

>I'm curious to hear opinions other than the "it's awesome" echo chamber I have been hearing.

What kind of bizarro /tg/ have you been on? I see far more posts shitting on it for being D&D

>>54163259
That reminds me, Jesus H CHRIST are some of those feats worlds apart in terms of power. The tavern brawler feat get blown out of the water by the ability to NEVER be surprised while conscious.

>>54163168

I don't like how they completely inverted healing surges. The point of healing surges was to set a daily limit on how much healing you could receive and to make healing actually scale with your level so you didn't get Cure Light Wounds healing 1% of a high level guys HP.

They were a really good way of making sure that the group both had a reasonable amount of healing and also couldn't just keep healing up forever. As a result, 5e had to make most of it's healing effects just spells to limit them per-day.

>>54163168

Things I've felt were wrong shortly after launch:

> The Ranger is the largest trap option, with only one decent archetype and a complete trap of an option in the other

> The Monk's elemental archetype is too restrictive in cost for the very minor spell-like things it mimics

> Only one INT-based caster, combined with VERY few things that aid in having a high INT score, means that unless you're a Wizard or some min-max multiclass thing, there's no real reason to get it above a 10 outside of character background or training in the various knowledge scores.

Things I've noticed since it's release:

> A very slow release of published content, which they try to abate by having monthly playtest material for DMs and players to use and give feedback on.

> The lack of a true arcane-based half-caster (with Paladin being the divine-based half-caster and Ranger being the nature-based half-caster) leaves a rather large hole of options to homebrew in, with varying results.

> The decisions related to bounded accuracy make running a high-magic item game VERY wonky for designing encounters, and balance is soon thrown out the window because of it.

>>54163305

Honestly, the monks damage scaling is stupid itself.

Just have the monk start at a d8 and stay there. Rather than this 'Yay, I upgraded from d4 to d6. This is not a completely negligible increase at all!'

Make a non-monk have a d4 finesse unarmed and call it fine. It won't break the game to allow the fighter to actually punch out a guard during a prison escape. Oh no, it's a dagger you can't throw! The horror!

>>54163268
>That pic is real
>When he put level 1's against a fucking Dragolich

>>54163205
OP here. I have some personal examples.

I don't like how the proficiency system is irrelevant for the first 10 levels in comparison to the bonus from attribute.

I don't like how limited martials still are.

I don't like the shitty guidelines for how much equipment higher level characters get, and how it doesn't at all match up with what a character built at level 1 would have.

I don't like how the game heavily incentives you to generally not take any feats before level 8, or how there's a handful of feats that make a handful of combat styles worlds better than everything else.

I don't like how there is basically fuck all for skill dc guidelines beyond some vague shitty buzzwords.

I don't like that there's fuck all for combat maneuver rules.

And I don't like the straightjacketed subclass system and would have preferred the classes just be built to give you lots of choices at each level, much like pathfinder qinggong monk.

>>54163327

> Only one INT-based caster, combined with VERY few things that aid in having a high INT score, means that unless you're a Wizard or some min-max multiclass thing, there's no real reason to get it above a 10 outside of character background or training in the various knowledge scores.

I miss 4e's defences there. So you didn't have this 'Weak save' (Str, Int, Cha) and 'Strong Save' (Con, Wis, Dex) nonsense.

Many steps back from 4e, but a few steps forward.

The bounded accuracy thing is a good idea, but it just does not work well with such low bonus numbers and a d20, and the heroic scale 5e pretends to have.

>>54163268
Assimar equivalents or celestial blooded heros are hardly uncommon in fantasy stories or mythology. I have known idea why you would consider options like the Firbolg, Dragonborn, or any other "special snowflake" races inherently bad, I'm mean sure I could see crap players being encouraged to make their race their whole character but that's more a problem with the players not the game.
Everything else I can't really comment on.

>>54163353
Good list. Mostly agree.

>And I don't like the straightjacketed subclass system and would have preferred the classes just be built to give you lots of choices at each level, much like pathfinder qinggong monk.

Or, you know. 4e. Where literally all but about 2 (shitty essentials) classes work that way.

>>54163387
That part of 4e was good.

But i didnt like the "even low level pcs are superheroes" power level, how you have to build everything relative to the pcs rather than the pcs existing relative to the rest of the world, the tiny number of powers available in a given turn, the fact that your powers don't scale and you have to forget them for new powers, the arbitrariness of basically everything being 1/time period, all the individual resource tracking (5es at least a little better in that regard, but still far from ideal), or 4es very limited multiclass rules.

I also didn't like how almost all the utility magic was made into slow as fuck rituals, and that it couldn't do a decent job running FR or Planescape, because it was just a completely different gamethat didn't really resemble d&d and was basically just it's own thing.

Played it at release, and played it again shortly after essentials came out. Got about a year and a half of weekly campaigns, combined, but I haven't played it since like 2011 at this point.

>>54163387
>>54163461
But in short, even though I have a lot of annoyances and disappointments regarding 5e, I still prefer it to both 4e and pathfinder.

>>54163168
It's not 4e.

>>54163477
That's its best feature.

Its an honest attempt to fix d&d rather than the unrelated game with d&d branding that was 4e.

>>54163461
>But i didnt like the "even low level pcs are superheroes" power level

They really aren't and there are level 0 rules where they absolutely aren't.

> how you have to build everything relative to the pcs rather than the pcs existing relative to the rest of the world,

You don't HAVE to, it's just recommended and supported, since it makes a certain amount of sense for the more focused experience 4e is going for.

>the tiny number of powers available in a given turn

Option paralysis is one of the worst things about 4e. You have upwards of 10-14 powers available, on top of generic/improvised actions, using APs, etc. And most of them aren't even traps, most of the time. How the hell is that tiny?

>the fact that your powers don't scale and you have to forget them for new powers

Yepp, this one's bullshit

> the arbitrariness of basically everything being 1/time period

I mean... okay? You know 5e inherited this, right?

> all the individual resource tracking (5es at least a little better in that regard, but still far from ideal),

How is 5e not worse? It returned to slots +different number of /encounter /day abilities.

>or 4es very limited multiclass rules.

It's up for taste, but I can't think of anything you could reasonably have a problem with in actual play using hybriding+multiclass feats, or by just being a bard.

>I also didn't like how almost all the utility magic was made into slow as fuck rituals

Sure

>and that it couldn't do a decent job running FR or Planescape, because it was just a completely different gamethat didn't really resemble d&d and was basically just it's own thing.

FR, I'll give you, FR is its own beast, but it runs Planescape pretty well.

>Played it at release, and played it again shortly after essentials came out. Got about a year and a half of weekly campaigns, combined, but I haven't played it since like 2011 at this point.

I don't understand how you can get so many things wrong then.

>>54163461

Honestly, I really liked rituals because they were not tied to spellcasters. Anyone could learn to be good at rituals and it gave the knowledge skills more purpose.

Later on they actually introduced Standard Action options for rituals (There was one that made a portal between two nearby locations. If you did it as a standard action it only lasted a single turn rather than a good hour).

Rituals I'd call 'Good ideas but underdeveloped'. Which is why I really loathe the 5e rituals just being 'X spell doesn't take a wizard (As 90% of them are wizard spells) spell slot if he's got some time on his hands'

I'll agree on the power scaling. I'd have liked all powers to work like how 4e did At-Wills. You have a heroic power? It will list how it upgrades at paragon and epic. Bam, done AND the writers don't need to write as many powers.

>>54163487
4e was an honest attempt at fixing D&D.... the 3.5th edition in fact.

5e is some streamlining and nostalgia for everyone.

>>54163523
Memory is an imperfect thing, and it's been almost 7 years.

But:
>"Low level isn't superheroes"
The minion rules are what I'm referring to here. And things don't run so well if you try to run 4e without minions.

You don't have 10-14 options until late game. At the low levels you have very few. 10 options sounds reasonable for level 6 or so, after which point option acquisition could slow down.

1/time period isn't really inherited by 5e. Instead of every ability having individual tracking, more things use shared resource pools.

And in the case of your spell slot example, I can use the Spellpoint subsystem and then all of the spells use a single unified resource pool.

But even though you will have multiple resource pools in 5e (Bad), the number of resources to track is smaller than tracking each individual item individually. I don't have to track each power, just whether or not I still have ki points, or what have you.

Ideally, everything would run off of a single, unified MP pool, or everything would run on a strain type system like shadowrun or ghosts of Albion.

>4e multiclassing can handle whatever.
It can't handle changing careers at an arbitrary level due to ingame events.

And my other issues with it are just about personal preferences that lean more towards classless point buy.

>>54163547
4e was an attempt to fix 3.5 by building an entire game around aspects of 3.5 that many disliked, in a way that was no longer recognizably related to AD&D 1&2 or its settings.

The whole thing is built around the mechanics I hated most in 3e, from bo9s, and the individual resource tracking I hated along with it.

It also moves up to a very diablo power level where you're killing mooks by the dozen, which is simply not the kind of game I want to run, basically ever.

>>54163223
>"The Ranger"
kek

In all honesty, I think 5e is a step back from a lot of what made 4e good, and I think of 4e as the best edition of D&D so far. Glossing over minutia like the fluff complaints, I think my biggest issue is just how *low powered* everything feels in 5e compared to 4e.

Like, let's talk about Dragonborn.

In 4e, you know what you got? +2 Charisma, +2 to your choice of Con or Strength, +2s to History and Intimidate, Dragonborn Fury (+1 to attack rolls vs. Bloodied foes), Draconic Heritage (+Con bonus extra Healing Surges), and Dragon Breath racial power.

And don't forget that in 4e, a Short Rest was a 5 minute interval, not a freaking hour.

What do you get in 5e? +2 Strength, +1 Cha, Dragon Breath, Damage Resistance.

Even just in terms of amount of stuff, the 5e Dragonborn is a lot weaker. But it gets worse; in 4e, because every class could build from one of at least three stats, Dragonborn had at least one "in-stat" for Clerics, Fighters, Paladins, Rangers, Rogues, Warlocks, Warlords, Barbarians, Bards, Druids, Invokers, Shamans, Sorcerers, Wardens, Ardents, Battleminds, Monks, Psions, Runepriests and Seekers.

What classes do they synch up with in 5e? You tell me.

And to add insult to injury, Mike Mearls has freaking tweeted that he doesn't think Dragonborn are underpowered at all, because, and I quote:

"They might not come with as many total abilities but it's hard to argue with breathing fire."

>>54163168
They had some interesting and fun idea's in the open development process, and then listened to whining 3aboo's and threw them all out for the incredibly bland final product that we see on shelves today.

>>54163168
Short bullet-point edition:
>It's far too dumbed down, making for a far less interesting gameplay than both in 3.x and 4e.
>It's stupendously low-power compared to literally any edition of AD&D and D&D before it - you feel like a janitor instead of a proper hero
>It's designed by the humongous cock-breathing faggot known as Mike Mearls

>>54163651
>The minion rules are what I'm referring to here. And things don't run so well if you try to run 4e without minions.
You can go through paragon without ever touching minions. Heck, half the minions in paragon tend to be things like giant rats and blind subterranian liazrds; things that are absolutely sensible to be oneshot without being a superhero. I'm not even sure how killing a kobold with one stab is somehow superheroic.

The game works perfectly without minions, and I'm not sure why you claim it doesn't.

>You don't have 10-14 options until late game. At the low levels you have very few. 10 options sounds reasonable for level 6 or so, after which point option acquisition could slow down.

You easily have 10 options by mid paragon.

I agree that you should probably start with more powers, but first 3 levels are trainingwheels basically. This is also a lot worse in 5e.

>resource stuff

Look, you are entitled to your opinion, but the fact that you prefer managing a mana pool instead of "have I used this in this encounter/day yes/no" as simpler is fucking insane to me.

>It can't handle changing careers at an arbitrary level due to ingame events.

Depends on how impactful it is. If you just want to start picking shit from another class, multiclass feats cover it. If it's "I want ALL the abilities from this other class!" well, only rebuilding will cover that regardless of edition.

Also, it won't cripple your character like suddenly starting to take wizard levels on a fighter in 5e or 3.5.

...

Heck, this can be covered very well in 4e with a feat + choosing the right paragon path.

>And my other issues with it are just about personal preferences that lean more towards classless point buy.

Makes sense.

>>54163651

>Ideally, everything would run off of a single, unified MP pool, or everything would run on a strain type system like shadowrun or ghosts of Albion.

That Psionic classes moved towards that. They had more at-will powers and encounter-recharging Power Points. You spent power points to upgrade your at-wills into bigger versions rather than having separate powers.

>It can't handle changing careers at an arbitrary level due to ingame events.

I think part of it is 'What do people want out of Multiclassing' as there is a pretty wide variety of options. 4e Multiclassing works very well for 'I would like some X in my Y'. It doesn't really work so well for 'I want to evenly spit X and Y'.

Retraining into a Hybrid helps a BIT there but Hybrids (And especially Paragon Multiclassing, which was supposed to give what you are talking about there) were rather underbaked.

I rather liked 4e multiclassing as it let you add some iconic stuff from another class into your character without worrying about 'Will this scale worth a damn' or 'Will it prevent my main class working right'.

Which I think is a lot of my issues with 5e. 4e had what were (In my opinion) some really good ideas they were starting to play with in interesting ways (Psionic and Primal Characters were going into some weird but fun areas) and then it all sort of...ended. 5e basically discarded all of it entirely and mostly tries to pretend 4e never happened rather than being a place for the new ideas to finally get to their full potential.

Minions were something I really loved. Mind you, I come from a background of 7th Sea where I originally saw a similar idea. They allowed for groups of weak enemies without them having attack and defence scores low enough to only be hitting on 19-20.

5e is just a newfagbait and casualized shit

im sticking to 3.5 until everyone i care for dies.

>>54163528
>AND the writers don't need to write as many powers.

But that would be boring since many nerds enjoy the powers treadmill.
Fire getting stronger on its own isn't as attractive as Fire Bolt < Greater Fire Bolt < Hellfire Blast

Off the top of my head, some changes that would've made 5e better...

#1: Come up with better race balancing mechanics. Seriously, I like the sub-race system as a concept, but the balance for 5e races is all over the place, and mostly it's because WoTC can't seem to figure out what racial features are actually "worth" because they're not using a formula like they did in the last edition. Seriously, in what fucking universe are you living where Powerful Build is anything more than flavor text!?

#2: Give us more mana! One of the biggest issues with the Sorcerer and the Way of 4 Elements Monk is that we're supposed to rely on our mana sub-system a lot to have fun, but we don't get enough mojo to really do so.

#3: Short Rests stay at 5 minutes, not 1 fucking hour!

#4: Sorcerers get bonus spells based on their Origin.

#5: Try to retain at least some of 4e's procedure of individualizing each caster class' spell-list. 5e says they want to avoid making new full classes as much as possible, so it's not like it'd be that much work. The damn Bladesinger stinks because all it's got to work with Wizard spells, made for long-range combat, and none of the close to medium range spells the Swordmage had in 4e.

#6: Try to keep martials interesting. We've gone backwards from "martials have fun stuff to do each round and can do utility stuff in and out of combat" to "martials park their asses at the front of the party and hit stuff". What's so wrong with letting the archery ranger having "I shoot a barrage of arrows into the wall to make an impromptu ladder for my allies" baked into the class mechanics?

#7: Stuck to the Points of Light/Nentir Vale stuff. It was the first time we had fluff that was built from the ground up to be exciting and not just an amalgamation of random junk left over from Basic with retcons building it higher and higher.

>>54163750
Yeah. I liked the 4e psionic classes.

Id have liked the game a lot more if the whole game used that framework instead of almost everything using aedu 1/x resource tracking.

>it's not so good at "evenly split x/y"
Agreed.

And hybrids were rather underwhelming.

>i liked that multiclassing never resulted in screwing up your primary progression.
Fair. That part was a definite improvement.

>>54163779
Speak for yourself. I want differences in kind. I don't want to have to choose between "this is a new power" and "scale up the power you've been using so it doesn't suck".

>>54163781
>where is powerful build anything more than flavor text?
In 3.5 there's a massive jump in weapon damage from medium to large, and using large weapons is what powerful build did. It let you have some stupidly powerful greatswords and the like.

But yeah. Some definite good points.

Except I have 0 interest in nentirvale.

>>54163168
I love 5e as a whole, but have a few problems with it.
>Incredibly slow content release pace, somewhat explained by the fact that WoTC team is about five guys
>Forget ranger - this one was actually fixed, and forget monk - it's only one bad subclass, the rest of it is good. Warlock is the true atrocity - it's wonky spell recovery system means that for the first ten levels or so half the spells you'll cast will be Hex. Warlock is the Fighter of casters.
>Speaking of fighters, there were mistakes in their design too. Being boring and making four attacks should have been champion's schtick. Battlemaster should be making one-two attacks, but resemble a Tome of Battle class much more, when so far it's like a cheap knockoff. It's like WoTC took one step forward and two steps back.
NOBODY LIKES SUPERIORITY DICE, MEARLS, STOP MAKING SUBCLASSES THAT HAVE THEM
>There were many awesome video games with DnD license in the past, but I don't really want to play them, because they're based on old systems I don't like, like Neverwinter Nights 2. Where's my 5e based vidya? Where?! Well, I suppose it's much more expensive to make a video game now.

>>54163816
>And hybrids were rather underwhelming.
Not if you knew what you were doing desu.
Some of the coolest builds I've seen were jank hybrids.

>>54163781

>#1: Come up with better race balancing mechanics.

I really liked 4e's system there. It gave a decent framework for making new races

>Primary +2 to a stat.
>Choice of +2 to a second stat from 2 options.
>Common + 1 other language.
>+2 to 2 skills
>Encounter power
>1-2 minor combat shinnies.
>A non-combat shiny.

>#5: Try to retain at least some of 4e's procedure of individualizing each caster class' spell-list.

God yes. 5e's sorcery spell list is a fucking joke. It's the wizard spell list with less options. There is no spells that go 'I am a sorcerer'.

They could easily invent a few generic spells for each level that most classes get and then a few spells for each class. Give the sorcerer spells a wizard doesn't know even if they share a good bit of the list.

>>54163816

>And hybrids were rather underwhelming.

Agreed. They suffered heavily from a lot of stuff that 4e suffered from. 'We are working with a new system and doing new things' so they made misteps. So Hybrids tended to either be underwhelming or utterly fantastic (I'm looking at you, Warlock/Swordmage)

They were a major step up from the predecessor, Paragon Multiclassing but not quite there.

>>54163833
>>54163827
Hybrids and multiclass feats are like 10 times better than level by level multiclassing. Any problem they had was in execution (costing too many feats, the hybrid parts being unevenly designed), not in the concept.

>>54163825
>Neverwinter Nights 2.

I hate that more than NWN1 and I hate that too despite the fantastic community modules and story because the gameplay sucks ass due to real-time and diablo style instead of ToEE style.
Camera is shit, 3D style is flat and somewhat uglier than NWN1. Quite long loading times between screens despite crap models. Effects is lackluster.

And yes, I prefer a 5e video game if I have to pick between 3.5 and 5th, if just for no boring bothersome essential pre-combat buffing every short while.

>>54163816
Yeah, sorry, I should have specified the 5e version of Powerful Build, which only lets you count as 1 size larger to determine your capacity to:
Push
Pull
Drag
Lift
Carry

Because... well, let's be honest; how often is "I can push a bigger block of stone" going to be a game-changing racial trait? By what twisted logic does that compete with "I can spew a 15ft cone of acid damage once every short rest"?

>>54163833
Exactly! They played around with the formula a little between the various races - Vrykolas had that unique trait of losing Healing Surges when Bloodied, Changelings could Change Shape at will and so could Hengeyokai - but, really, it worked fucking wonders. Not every race was brilliant, but when's the last time that you saw an actively weak 4e race? Seriously, compare the 4e Kobold to the 5e Kobold on 1d4chan, and tell me which looks more fun to play.

As for spells... gods, I could rant for hours about that. But no, rather than accept that the Pathfinder Crowd wasn't going to come back, we had to junk what was really taking off as its own edition for Comfy AD&D Nostalgia Edition, with the spell-list reverting almost perfectly back to the original Wizard spell-list from 2e and 3e.

>>54163860
>Hybrids and multiclass feats are like 10 times better than level by level multiclassing. Any problem they had was in execution (costing too many feats, the hybrid parts being unevenly designed), not in the concept.
Yeah, I agree.

>>54163825
Videogames are cheaper to make now due to standardized engines saving a lot of work from having to be done over and over again.

>>54163870
>By what twisted logic does that compete with "I can spew a 15ft cone of acid damage once every short rest"?

At least you aren't being an idiot when you push something, usually, and it makes you better at it. Breath attack scales so terribly for a standard that it's not worth doing at all after the first few levels.

>>54163882
>Videogames are cheaper to make now

Artist salaries are far bigger than before.

>>54163882
>Making an RPG in current year
>Not expensive
Anon, who's gonna voice all those characters? Text to speech device? You gotta hire stars, and stars don't come cheap. Why do you think TORtanic was so stupidly expensive to make?

>>54163860

If Hybrids had ended up being a bit more generally functional (As opposed to a few really good builds and a heap of cruddy ones) the multiclassing issues I feel would have been less of a problem. As someone who wants to be a full on Fighter/Wizard could hybrid the pair.

That and I think making Retraining more prominent/simpler to allow for someone to have downtime and retrain into a hybrid.

>>54163870

Yeah, 4e's worst races tended to be the ones where they sorta phoned it in (Generally skimping on the extra minor shinies) but most of them were at least functional.

>>54163885

1/encounter as a minor action really made the 4e Dragonborn breath shine. It wasn't the highest damage but it was an extra thing you did and it gave everyone some minion clearing.

>>54163892
Haha. I forgot about the rampant voice acting. I guess it's just shifted around what work is done.

There's less time spent programming than there used to be. That was my main point.

>>54163890
Have they? I hadn't heard that. What's the reason for the artist wage hike? Is there a shortage I hadn't heard of?

>>54163882
>Videogames are cheaper to make now

Not if you want to make a game that isn't a text browser game.
Unique 3D models are very expensive and cost more than a few thousand dollars just for the model alone, without any animations, which cost even more..

>>54163223
>pal/sorc/warloc
>broken
kek, it still deal less damage than EB Turret lock, you're out of ASIs and you need high stats. So broken

>>54163825
>Incredibly slow content release pace, somewhat explained by the fact that WoTC team is about five guys

This one is really inexcusable. 5e is the best selling edition to date and WotC/Hasbro can't give them a bigger team? We're officially 3 years into the official release and 4(?) years past playtest and all there is to show for it outside of adventures is one real supplement.

There are indie publishers who operate on 1/10,000th of WotC's budget and manage to put out 2-10x more content. This is a "shoot yourself in the foot" level business decision. A game with a budget like this should be getting quarterly releases at least, they don't have to go full Paizo and release 5 published books per month.

Content drought WILL be the death of 5e and I'm already seeing interest wane with longtime players of the system and start reverting back to 3.PF. It's sad to see the potential 5e has get wasted.

>>54163892
>>54163890
Just go for the pixel aesthetic, then cheat with simple 3d models (like, say, Dead Cells does it).

>>54163902

>As someone who wants to be a full on Fighter/Wizard could hybrid the pair.

Eh, it's not actually a terrible hybrid, I think (genasi musclewizards could go well with fighter maybe?) but I'm not sure why you wouldn't just go with a class that does that out of the box.

>>54163913
Sorclock doubles up EB turret.

>>54163909
Anon, it's a d&d game.

We don't need closeup high poly models like in an FPS, we just need diablo 3/torchlight 2 type models that read well from a small scale.

>>54163923
Reminder that you're making an RPG. Reminder that your competition is, say, Witcher 3 - definitely not Pillars of Etenity or Tyranny, because those are niche games not made for wide audience.

>>54163908
>What's the reason for the artist wage hike? Is there a shortage I hadn't heard of?

Adjustment of salary because of the Internet, social media and sites like deviant art and pinterest which make competent artists and managers realize just how valuable their skills are and adjust the pricing of contracts appropriately, which priced them out of the range of optimistic indie idiots who think he can score talented artists for the cheap on the Internet

>>54163917

>Eh, it's not actually a terrible hybrid, I think (genasi musclewizards could go well with fighter maybe?)

Yeah, it was more of a general example of a classic D&D thing than a specific example of two that don't line up. 4e Hybrids were very uneven in design and quite fiddly, which hurt them.

>>54163915
I know a lot of players who left 5e to go back to pf because of the lack of content.

I held off on playing 5e for 2 years because there wasn't enough content for me to consider it worth my time, and what convinced me was the UA content and oota

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>>54163168
It's just boring.

3.PF is a horrible mess but at least it's still sort of fun to play, with a lot of character options and spells and shit to choose from, and zany schemes to get into - mostly everything is possible by the system.

4e was reviled for a while but it's actually a pretty good system for tactical fantasy combat, and does that stuff well enough.

AD&D is all sorts of a mess rules-wise, very little of it makes sense by modern reckoning, but put together it all still works quite well and actually makes for a reasonably balanced game that's a lot of fun.

B/X is the most focused of D&Ds, and as a consequence the most balanced and the most solid: I find very little fault in it.

But 5e? 5e is more a product than a game. It tries to take everything people like from all these things, tries to please everyone, and as a result it just makes for a completely bland tasteless mess. It has absolutely no identity of its own. It works decently as a game, but there's very little fun to be had in it that any earlier edition couldn't do much better.

>>54163917
Then why you say the melee pal/sorc/warlock is broken when not only full EB warlock ia better but also the one you posted? And on top of that, Battlemaster deals more damage per encounter than all of them

>>54163168
Dexterity is overpowered. I don't understand how do you even fuck up this hard at game design, to be honest. Strength is completely useless for everything except two-handed fighter and monk, and neither is good. Finesse weapons were a mistake.

Lots of stuff is poorly defined, I'm looking at you Primeval Instincts. An example of it being used would have been nice.

Player characters do too little damage to monsters in order to be more balanced against each other. This makes it more viable to have them fight NPCs rather than monsters so that every combat is not a huge ten turn headache of HP bloat in which attack rolls are so statistics that you might as well remove rolling to hit completely and just nerf the damage by equal amount.

Hunter would have been fine if Mark of the Hunter scaled at least like a shitty smite or had more powerful version of itself, Monk would have been fine if he had it the same.

The beastmaster and no-summoning is in fact just an effect of the game by large reducing player agency. The idea is good but it's executed too harshly.

>>54163940
And now we play "Spot the 4rrie".

>>54163945
>Str
>Monk
wut?
Also what about Barb? or Pal?

>>54163945
Holy shit, you have no idea about anything, do you.

>>54163941
I'm not the guy who you originally replied to, and I understood it as "warlock/paladin" and "warlock/sorcerer".

>And on top of that, Battlemaster deals more damage per encounter than all of them

Only on short encounters and with magic weapons IIRC. Sorclock deals the same or better damage over 4 turns.

>>54163932
It's a d&d game. Your competition need not be witcher 3. If you want to go low budget, pillars and tyrant and torchlight are the way to do that.

If you think you can compete with witcher 3, well, you're probably wrong. Almost nobody can make those expensive games and not make them shit. Bethesda makes them passable, and cdpr makes them good. Bioware has been shit since after me1. And obsidian is making isometrics now.

So go with the isometrics and make a bunch of them.

>>54163949
Fighter can afford the feats that you actually need to go two-handed more easily.

1d6 finesse weapons are just the best melee option in the game if you can't do 1d8 ones. You could upgrade them to a rapier, but that's actually a waste.

It might be more that weapons are just shit. Spears are not a thing.

>>54163939

>I know a lot of players who left 5e to go back to pf because of the lack of content.

5e is rather on a shoestring budget after all that went to the shitter with marketing, murder-suicides and unexpected competition from 4e's run.

It's sorta why the UA content has been big for it. It's something they can whip up with an intern or over a lunch break and don't need to commission a heap of art/pay printing costs.

>>54163946

Does it really count if people are saying 'I like 4e'? That's like playing 'spot the redneck' and pointing at the guy with a 'my cousin has a purty mouth' t-shirt. They are not really trying to hide being a 4e fan.

>>54163933
>Indie idiots.
Oh. You're talking about amateur artists. I thought you were saying professional illustrators and AAA 3d modelers have jumped up in price significantly.

>>54163956
Sorlock deals 80 damage or so on average, Battlemaster deals 150+ first turn without counting magic items, 100 second turn

>>54163973

Dex weapons make for very good low-investment weapons. Raise your defence stat and you'll also get better with the dex weapon.

Str weapons (And Str armour) cap out better though. Full plate blows away 20 dex and 2 handed weapons murder dex weapons with all the support they get.

>>54163967
And again, you're wrong. You think Hasbro will let a license go to waste with some isometric indie-tier shit that looks like it was made fifteen years ago? No. Of course not.
>But Pillars and Tyranny
Pillars was made to make money on nostalgia. It worked, sort of, while Tyranny flopped.

>>54163978
>AAA 3d modelers have jumped up in price significantly.
Those charged tens of thousands for a model though and they usually do a set.

>>54163981

Sorclock does 8(d10+d6+5 ~ 14) at bare minimum with Hex. That's 112.

And then fighter goes down to about 60-70 for turns 3-4.

As said, it evens out.

>>54163999
Those are generally paid salary, not commissioned piece work.

You pay them by the year.

>>54163987
And Diablo 3? I mentioned it for a reason.

There are isometric games that aren't designed to play like Baldur's Gate.

>>54164015
Depends. They sometime do side jobs if the contract permitted.

>>54163205
Why did they remove superiority dice for all martials?
Why do martials get jacksquad to compensate for cantrip utility.

>>54164026
Sure. They can.

But wotc isn't going to give the d&d license to some indie developer working from his basement. They'll give it to a development studio. Who have their own artists, etc.

And those artists will be paid salary, not by the model. And it wont come out to anywhere close to 10k a model.

>>54164048
>Why do martials get jacksquad to compensate for cantrip utility.

I think the idea is that Strength and Dexterity have a lot of mundane uses without any cantrips to begin with.

They sorta... undershot it, but it's not a bad idea.

>>54164051
Give the 4e license to Firaxis already so they can make the game they always wanted to make.

>>54163987

>It worked, sort of, while Tyranny flopped.
This is the message every AAA game development going to take to heart.
Nostalgia sell but 2D RPG on its own don't. Hopefully, Beamdog listen to it too before they get crushed by reality.

>>54164051
Well, I was going on reply chain from someone who said video game development is cheap.
Obviously it's not.

>>54164070
>Give the 4e license to Firaxis already

They are already making XCOM 3. Besides, making RPG isn't their forte and it shows. Strategy is.

>>54163885
Oh yeah, seriously, you get more damage with Breath Weapon in 5e than in 4e and it's still pathetic by comparison, as I mentioned up in >>54163700

>>54163902
Tell me about it. I think 4e's Minotaur was usually considered one of the worst in the game prior to Essentials, and even then it wasn't so much "bad" as "no real benefits if you weren't a melee fighter".

Plus, we had Paragon Paths and Feats to try and buff up many of our races, and they could be some pretty awesome things. Remember that feat where a dragonborn could basically turn their breath weapon into a fireball-style ranged explosion?

>>54164095
>Remember that feat where a dragonborn could basically turn their breath weapon into a fireball-style ranged explosion?

Hurl breath. It gives me a really cool mental image.

>>54164095

>Remember that feat where a dragonborn could basically turn their breath weapon into a fireball-style ranged explosion?

I preferred the one that removed ally damage and gave them an accuracy buff for a turn as the flames of your breath ignite the hearts of your allies (Or whatever analogy you wanna use for your particular element).

>>54163268
>>D20 is just a garbage way-too-swingy resolution mechanic overall.
oh go fuck yourself whiner

>>54164070
Str has single skill you are right on dex.

But I can (and normally will) have good/high dex on any char since godstat

>>54164089
I agree Firaxis need to improve their RPG mechanics which is pretty lacking in their XCOM series despite how we are supposed to care a lot about the squad members.

>>54164155
>Str has single skill

That skill has a very wide range of applications, and you also use it for things that it doesn't cover; breaking, lifting, etc.

If the game was designed a bit differently, I'd roll CON into STR probably to be on par with DEX on the combat side.

>>54164187
Don't forget jumping

>>54164175
The new expansion seems to amp that up, with more random upgrades and even bonds forming between team members.

>>54164193
Jumping is covered by athletics, isn't it?

>>54164203
Don't remember though, but your jump distance is your str score

>>54163945
>Finesse weapons were a mistake.

Rapiers were a mistake. As long as the trade off was lower damage die it would be fine. A Rapier having the same damage die as a Longsword is bullshit.

>>54164089
That was me.

I didn't say it was cheap, I just said it can be significantly cheaper than it used to be, in response to the guy who said it's way more expensive now.

>>54164149
Eh. Not that guy, but he's got a point.

Its incredibly swingy compared to other games, due to the large size of the dice and the small size of the modifiers.

>>54164240
I really wish the ways of +1 damage dice from 1e didn't disappear, back when weapons could deal 1d4+1, 2d4+1, 1d6+1

>>54163700
5e is meant to be lower powered though, that's its entire premise. You seem have a fundamental misunderstanding of what's it's meant to bring forward as a game.

>>54164265
Yeah, the problem is the modifier size compared to the die size.

SW SAGA had the right modifiers for a d20 imo.

>>54164293
But it's only low powered for half the cast. The other still gets to Wish and Simulacra and whatever they want, basically.

>>54164089
Isometric arpgs are still selling, aren't they? Diablo, torchlight, etc? It's not like tyranny is the only game style with that kind of graphics.

>>54164293
5e is several times less lower powered than 3.PF at low levels. It takes at least 7 levels in 3.PF to reach the power of a 3rd level 5e character.

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>>54163168
Not much. There are some fiddly bits and some classes should have been playtested more. It'll be interesting to see how it moves forward with Beyond as a digital release platform and Mearls' idea of backwards-compatible updates instead of any more edition-rebooting down the line.

If things go well it could easily be the basis for D&D for the next 20 years. But if it starts losing steam they might strongarm someone else in and ruin any sustainable long-term plans the edition has.

>>54164310
Only if your compare monks or something.

7th level fullcaster mops the floor with a 3rd level full caster.

>>54164293
Low power=/UP as fuck.

Dragonborn is quite UP

>>54164293
Its not just power level, dude. Its also that most races are way more rigid, making vhuman even more abnormal.

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>>54163168
oh, boy, this should be good

>>54163268
there we go

>>54164149
these threats never disappoint

>>54164298
>The other still gets to Wish and Simulacra and whatever they want, basically.

Bullshit. 5e casters are weakest from any edition (barring 4e).

>>54163168
Things are too locked down into classes. There's very little variety outside of what you can find in each class's CYOA advancement structure. The game is also laser focused on combat.

>>54164337
Sure, but in no way actually low powered or grounded, or anything like that.

>>54163385
It may be a problem with the players and not the game, but the game still presents the moral hazard as a default option.

>>54164325
Vhuman aka the second most op human race in any rpg!

4th edition is never coming back you whining child.

Real D&D is back.

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>>54163461
>But i didnt like the "even low level pcs are superheroes" power level, how you have to build everything relative to the pcs rather than the pcs existing relative to the rest of the world,
Funny, this is literally what I loved about 4e... well perhaps I'd word it differently, but yeah,, they definately had a certain type of game in mind (PC's are the protagonists of a fantasy novel) and built specifically with that in mind. If you like that kind of game, 4e is for you, if you don't like that kind of game, it's not. At-least it's a game that knows what it's doing and who it's pleasing, rather than trying to please everyone and being mediocre-but-not-bad-enough-to-turn-down at everything... which is incedentally what I hate about 5e: it's the Denny's of RPG's. It's not great, but it's not bad... it's just bland, but it's barely good enough, and you can always find one.

>>54163700
Maybe if you like power fantasy. I prefer my games much more grounded, which is why 4e fell flat.

It was like eating dinner blindfolded and the first bite being a fork full of gummy worms instead of spaghetti. Not unpleasant, but not something Id eat a whole plate of.

Am I the only one who abhors the streamlined skill/proficiency system in 5e? Honestly I don't even like the improvements via reduction of amount of skills that PF made over 3. And don't even get me started on the overall skill power level scaling/impossibility to diversify skills beyond 1st level chargen choices.

>>54164346
They're really not a big deal. The 2-3 noncaster classes certainly do their job just fine.

Of those 2, 1 is heavily focused on noncombat skills and does just fine, 1 is typically the battlemaster, who has a truly unique utility effect that cannot be replicated by magic and is extremely useful.

>>54163781
I think your first point is interesting because while 5e is designed around a nice balanced campaign, most people play D&D nowadays as a dungeon crawl or some other slugfest.

>>54164384
>grounded
>any D&D
Tell me about meatpoints again hun.

>>54163833
>Sorcerer spell list is just trimmed down Wiz!
Thats always been the case though.

>>54164414
Except 3.PF where sorc/wizard share the literal same spell list

>>54164414

In 3.5 it was the exact same spell list, not a trimmed down one.

In 4e they had completely different lists.

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>>54164361
>Real D&D is back.
>3.5 Cloning is "Real" D&D

Uppity millennials who started playing after Wizards bought TSR don't get to act like grognards.

>>54163902
>As someone who wants to be a full on Fighter/Wizard could hybrid the pair.
A lot of 4e is learning the zen of the refluff. The "wizard/Fighter" while not actually the worst hybrid option out there (there are some STINKERS) is done infinitely better using the Swordmage, Dagger-lock, Refluffed Druid (who switches "stances" when he "changes shape") etc...

>>54164391
> 1 is heavily focused on noncombat skills and does just fine

Not only does it have the boring as fuck-est combat out of all the classes, the fact that it is limited what you can achieve with skill rolls limits its potential.

Not only that, but even if that was not the case, Bard gets expertise as well.

>1 is typically the battlemaster, who has a truly unique utility effect that cannot be replicated by magic and is extremely useful.

>telling how many fighter levels somebody has after observing him for multiple minutes
>in a system where monsters aren't built with class levels
>useful

It's only not replicated by spells because it's absolutely fucking worthless.

>>54163902
Hybrids are VERY functional.
They also wind up feeling a lot like 2e multiclass chars, at least imo.

>a heap of cruddy ones

Match the stats. We must cater to everyone and restrictions are evil so multiclass/hybrid/race/etc. combos have to be based on good/bad rather than possible/not possible.

You can make 4e hybrids that are analogous to all basic AD&D class combos other than that AD&D thieves are spotty in terms of conversion (they're more just a skill package in AD&D).

>>54164550
>Not only does it have the boring as fuck-est combat out of all the classes

High mobility + high damage + lots of options for their bonus action makes them pretty good. Maybe fighters and rogues aren't for you.

>It's only not replicated by spells because it's absolutely fucking worthless.

Detecting presence or absence class levels is a unique and powerful effect. Dead giveaway an NPC is hugely important.
Detecting hit points is a CRAZY unique and powerful effect.
Detect Str, dex, con, and AC are all unique and fairly effects.
Can't really differentiate an acolyte from an archmage or most other humanoid NPCs, and in general what magic just can't seem to do in 5e is give you much info on humanoids at all.

>>54164149
Real systems have curves.

>>54164567
>High mobility + high damage + lots of options for their bonus action makes them pretty good

What it makes them is pretty boring. Your optimal strat in every single turn is to get your sneak attack in somehow. At least the fighter is free to give up an attack to grab/shove, because that's only a fraction of his damage a turn. Or he can use an improvised action/attack.

As a rogue, you don't have that luxury, because you have 1 weapon attack/attack action and if you don1t make it count, you are basically a glorified NPC that turn.

>Maybe fighters and rogues aren't for you.

Not in 5e, at least.

>Detecting presence or absence class levels is a unique and powerful effect. Dead giveaway an NPC is hugely important.

NPCs are NOT built with class levels you dense fuck. Not only that, but that's metagamey as shit.

>Detecting hit points is a CRAZY unique and powerful effect.
>Detect Str, dex, con, and AC are all unique and fairly effects.

Not when it takes fucking minutes.

>Can't really differentiate an acolyte from an archmage or most other humanoid NPCs

if you have minutes to interact with them? Sure you can.

It's worthless as fuck.

>>54163268
> D20 is just a garbage way-too-swingy resolution mechanic overall.

This.
A d100, percentile system is far superior.

Your best choice = go find some WFRP 2E books and experience good fantasy role playing.

>>54163223
The ranger has been fixed with an Unearthed Arcana update. Now it's awesome.

>>54164604
>Your optimal strat in every single turn is to get your sneak attack in somehow.

Maybe if you're only doing straight combat, but my DM - and me as a DM - frequently have combat be *about* something rather than just fighting. Like, I dunno, an orc has a MacGuffin and is running away with it while his buddies escape. In that case the rogue (and monk) is the best class to have because it can move and dash and still have an attack, or move and dash twice and so rapidly overtake the running orc.

I played a rogue for a full Horde of the Dragon Queen/Rise of Tiamat campaign, and while it's certainly true that I spent a lot of combats trying to get in Sneak Attacks (and succeeding, it's relatively easy), I never once felt like I was pigeonholed into doing JUST that, and usually had plenty of things to do each combat beyond just hitting stuff.

>NPCs are NOT built with class levels you dense fuck.

No, anon, it is YOU who re the dense, retarded, possibly illiterate faggot.

DMG pg. 92, "NPC statistics".

>"When you give an NPC game statistics, you have three main options: giving the NPC only the few statistics it needs, give the NPC a monster stat block, or give the NPC a class and levels."

It's perfectly permissible to give an NPC class levels, it's just that an NPC's class level has little to do with its Challenge Rating, so once you've built your NPC with class levels you should run it through the CR calculator at the back of the book, if such things matter to you as a DM (they don't to me, I just assume its CR is equal to its level minus 2. Close enough for most purposes).

(this is also discussed on pg. 282-283 of the DMG).

>>54163781
>Seriously, in what fucking universe are you living where Powerful Build is anything more than flavor text!?

My goliath carried the head of a fucking dragon from castle ravenloft to the church of thos revenants cucks all by himself and without much trouble (on carrying it, of course)
Get fucked

>>54163781
>#3: Short Rests stay at 5 minutes, not 1 fucking hour!

Nah, gonna have to disagree with you there. If a short rest is going to be as short at 5 minutes, you might as well not have a "rest" at all and just allow players to automatically recover some stuff at the end of each combat. The point of making it 1 hour is so that the decision to rest can have an actual meaningful impact on the flow of the game.

In practice during campaigns I've been in/ran, the question of to short rest or not short rest has had a big, flavorful, and mechanical impact on a LOT of decisions.

> "I shoot a barrage of arrows into the wall to make an impromptu ladder for my allies" baked into the class mechanics?

I'll take "there shouldn't need to be a specific option to do this, you should just be able to do it" for $500, Alex.

>Stuck to the Points of Light/Nentir Vale stuff.

Blegh.

>>54165886
>Maybe if you're only doing straight combat, but my DM - and me as a DM - frequently have combat be *about* something rather than just fighting. Like, I dunno, an orc has a MacGuffin and is running away with it while his buddies escape. In that case the rogue (and monk) is the best class to have because it can move and dash and still have an attack, or move and dash twice and so rapidly overtake the running orc.

Or a class with misty step, or hold person or a longer ranged attack (like EB)...

I'm not saying fights where movement comes in handy never happens, but you still need to kill the rest of the orcs, usually. And you are going to do so by abusing hide mechanics or kiting still doesn't make your options any more exciting.

> I never once felt like I was pigeonholed into doing JUST that, and usually had plenty of things to do each combat beyond just hitting stuff.

I played through PotA and it was the most boring slog. I honestly tried to do my best with my AT's mage hand but it was fucking pointless 90% of the time.

>It's perfectly permissible to give an NPC class levels...

Show me a single published adventure with a fighter NPC in it that you can watch for a few minutes and gain any sort of benefit from knowing he has fighter levels.

>>54165917
>Look, my character did this thing that was basically pointless, so you can fuck off!
>Also, don't mention Tenser's floating disc.

Wish monks had more fun and useful stuff, Stun is so good and the rest of ki options so fucking shit you'll always use Stun or save ki points for potential Stuns in the future.

>>54164410
I said "more grounded" not "a totally and utterly perfect simulation of reality".

>>54166047
>I played through PotA and it was the most boring slog.

Well...yeah, that's you're problem. You played Princes of the Apocalypse. It's just a mega-dungeon with no real story other than enabling that mega-dungeon, and no real goal other than killing four or five dudes and their minions. It's great for people who like mega-dungeons, but not so good for people who prefer to have more of a storyline and plot - which, for the record, includes me.

Get back to me after you've played through Out of the Abyss, Curse of Strahd, or Storm King's Thunder. Or hell, even Hoard of the Dragon Queen/Rise of Tiamat.

>Show me a single published adventure with a fighter NPC in it that you can watch for a few minutes and gain any sort of benefit from knowing he has fighter levels.

There hasn't been one yet, but that's not the point. The point is, you said "NPCs are NOT built with class levels", when in fact that's wrong. They can be. They just haven't been yet in any published adventure. But I'm certain there are tons of DMs who have built NPCs with class levels for their own home campaigns, or even introduced them into published campaigns.

For example, in the Out of the Abyss campaign I'm running right now, I re-build all 9/10 NPCs that you encounter in the drow dungeon with class levels.

>Also, don't mention Tenser's floating disc.

Yeah...because it wasn't relevant. The disc only has a duration of 1 hour, which might not be long enough to get an object wherever you need it to go. You could cast it multiple times, I guess, but that seems like a horrible waste of resources - those spell slots might be needed elsewhere.

I mean, it's okay if the campaigns you take place in all occur in these tiny little areas where everything is within 1 hour of everything else, but my campaigns tend to take place across huge swaths of land that might take a week, or more, to cross, even on horseback.

>>54166047
>Or a class with misty step, or hold person or a longer ranged attack (like EB)...

So other classes have their own way of dealing with the situation. That does not invalidate the rogue's own options.

>>54166222
> but not so good for people who prefer to have more of a storyline and plot - which, for the record, includes me.

The hell does all that help me with the rogue being boring mechanically?

>Get back to me after you've played through Out of the Abyss, Curse of Strahd, or Storm King's Thunder. Or hell, even Hoard of the Dragon Queen/Rise of Tiamat.

I played non-WotC modules, just not with the rogue. At no point did I go "man, I wish I was a rogue!".

>There hasn't been one yet, but that's not the point.

It absolutely is the point. It's an ability that comes up literally 0 times in game in all of the currently published adventures.

>For example, in the Out of the Abyss campaign I'm running right now, I re-build all 9/10 NPCs that you encounter in the drow dungeon with class levels.

And what are the chances of the battlemaster taking advantage of that? Will the Drows hang around for the fighter to scout their powerlevel before beating him up?

>Tenser's floating disc.

It's a ritual, brosephine. It takes no slots. And for what it's worth, a pack mule should be even cheaper. Or just, you know, have multiple characters carry it.

I mean, it's a nice roleplaying benefit but it was absolutely superfluous mechanically in this situation.

>>54166234
>So other classes have their own way of dealing with the situation. That does not invalidate the rogue's own options.

I'm just saying the option isn't really that rare that it gives some sort of
unique advantage to the rogue.

>>54166373
>And what are the chances of the battlemaster taking advantage of that?

Given that no one is playing a battlemaster, probably something around 0%, I guess. Anon, you don't play battlemaster for that ability. You play it for the maneuvers. The analysis ability is mostly for flavor. And even then you're getting hung up on ONE aspect of it, and grasping at straws so that you can continue to do so when your entire original fault with it was wrong.

>"man, I wish I was a rogue!".

Really? I'm constantly wishing that any time I'm not a rogue. I hate coming upon a locked chest and not being able to pick it open, or a trap and not being any good at disabling it. Not to mention the lack of Dash/Disengage/Hide/Sleight of Hand as a bonus action (I play thieves), or climb at full speed (which includes movement and dashing! I'm fuckin' Spider-Man)

Honestly, Sneak Attack may have been a good combat option, but my most consistently used class features were the climbing one I mentioned, and the ability to Dash and Sleight of Hand as a bonus action at will.

>The hell does all that help me with the rogue being boring mechanically?

Fights that are about more than just killing some dude tend to allow you to make better use of your other class features.

>It's a ritual, brosephine.

You might not have a ritual caster in the party. Or a pack mule.

>I mean, it's a nice roleplaying benefit but it was absolutely superfluous mechanically in this situation.

One could argue just as well that a character with powerful build makes a pack mule or Tenser's Floating Disk superfluous.

>>54165133
>A d100, percentile system is far superior.

Lets break down the odds of a d20. Every side has 5% odds of being landed on. Thus math is being moved up or down 5% or every point of math.

WFRP and the 40k RPGs do stat growth in 5% upgrades and equipment & test penalties in 10%. The percentile system is more swingy in theory and play. That is not its asset, rather degrees of success are. It makes that swingyness matter more.

>>54163168
The combat is a tad boring, but 5e is pretty good as an introduction to homebrewing thanks to the system being as simple as it is, which makes it quite a great game to introduce people to tabletop and develop new things, if they're interested.
I feel like D&D has almost always been the introductory RPG for people, but now it's at least much easier to grasp if you have no knowledge of RPGs, and once you've tasted D&D for a while you can try other systems that take certain concepts more in-depth. I stopped running D&D games for about a year now, but I still appreciate 5e for gathering my current group together

>>54163825
I like superiority dice, conceptually, a lot.

So what are the tradeoffs of all the different races if there's only pluses to stats and added abilities compared to the typically more baseline humans?

>>54164387
Hoo boy is Rolemaster the game for you.

>>54166047
>Also, don't mention Tenser's floating disc
>what is spell economy
>what is innate ability to carry really heavy shit
>just waste spell slots anon xD

>>54163168
>What Went wrong?
Everything.

>>54166373
>I mean, it's a nice roleplaying benefit but it was absolutely superfluous mechanically in this situation.
Not everything in DND must have mechanical benefits, sometimes a 8 foot tall grey dude who can lift 2400 lbs is all you need as a racial trait

>>54163168
The Temple of Elemental Negroes
Their Halflings
Shitty marketing as per usual
Bisexual Strahd Von Zarovich characterized more like Angelus from Buffy the Vampire slayer who want's to turn BLACKED Ireena into a Vampire spawn and not vampire bride (because they fucking released this shit without establishing any of the old Ravenloft vampires under the pretense of a curse or forethought to how this would affect the plane as a whole I.E Van Richten having no reason to be there, underplaying just how FUCKING JEWISH the Vistanti are, making Strahd literally just not fucking strahd, and having PC's spend more time outside castle ravenloft in a string of buffer quests that barely have any involvement, even managing to bring BACK THE ISSUE OF THE VERY FIRST RAVENLOFT IN HOW PEOPLE GET THEIR FOOD, BECAUSE ALL THE VILLAGERS EAT IS WINE AND GROUND UP CHILDREN

It's casualized as fuck, marketted poorly and not in line with modern day effort to get people into lore, people don't make good Never Winter Nights 1 playhtroughs and videos, and simpyl put, there's just no fucking effort anymore

The fucking beholders reprroduce by dreaming now and are creatures exemplied in tyranny, it's even less creative than their defunct 1e ecology now, it's awful.

>>54167185
There is no excuse to making more subclasses that use them when battlemaster exists.

>>54167687

>underplaying just how FUCKING JEWISH the Vistanti are

The Vistani have always been Gypsies, not jewish. I mean, complete with the fucking Evil Eye being a thing with them.

> and having PC's spend more time outside castle ravenloft in a string of buffer quests

God forbid Ravenloft make getting to the Dreadlord himself a major part of the adventure. Strahd's castle has always been a complete fucking bitch to get into from outside. It literally has an instant-death wall of mist about it and has since TSR.

>>54167687
i played and runned CoS several times and this is what i gather:

>Buffy the Vampire slayer who want's to turn BLACKED Ireena into a Vampire spawn and not vampire bride
That doesn't matter, all Strahd wants is Ireena, above all else, if he gets her, the entirity of Barovia will be destroyed, for he doesnt give a fuck anymore, he has what he ever wanted.

>Van Richten having no reason to be there
I agree on this one, he seems underplayed, and if he's your companion he wont provide much information, but, like almost ALL the random companions that you can get, it depends on the DM. You can make Ezmeralda extremely important or you can make that puppet fuccboi important, it's up to the DM.

>having PC's spend more time outside castle ravenloft in a string of buffer quests that barely have any involvement
Castle ravenloft it's almost a dungeon for itself, it's stupid big and it has plenty of room to explore, just avoid the place of the final confrontation and you can go in and out as you please (almost)

>>54167806
You might want to read how in almost all of the works they appear in they're literally the Askenazi, right down to the playing themselves off as victims part. They're the most detestable sort written, next to Kender, the shit they get away with is awful say the least, right to punish others according to their laws, the murder, curses, use of a G-word to describe non-Vistani? They're fuckin jews man, and are utter scum in all their depictions, hell, the reason why they're always traveling is because they committed some heinous act (I.E everything Jews did before they get kicked out of their respective countries, See the term "Wandering Jew") that they pissed some deity off with.

Anyhow, off the subject of Vistani, Strahd wants Ireena as an Object, it isn't nearly as involved or perverse as the other Ravenloft modules, and Strahd lacks his initial boisterous charismatic character, nevermind the sheer lack of encounters he's involved in, a streamlined Demiplane which lacks many initial features in prior editions, erroneous cosmological errors (the soulless thing, Demiplanes, cursed or not should not have that kind of power and souls are actually distributed from soul fonts located from the Positive Plane of energy per the questlines which revealled this in lore).

Most importantly, the point of Strahd getting Ireena is that he loved her, this nu-Strahd? Wants her as a an object and Trophy, hell, Strahd himself lacks all the initial cockiness and proclaiming victory sort of action, he's more or less a generic MM vampire in this on par with a Joss Whendon "Typical CE vampire" you're told to characterize in said material, it's almost like some jackass staked Strahd, kept him locked up and went around posing as him, he acts nothing like Sthrad.

>>54167964
>all this pandering about jews

i'm not judging anon, but are you projecting by any chance?

>>54167964

>You might want to read how in almost all of the works they appear in they're literally the Askenazi, right down to the playing themselves off as victims part. They're the most detestable sort written, next to Kender, the shit they get away with is awful say the least, right to punish others according to their laws, the murder, curses, use of a G-word to describe non-Vistani? They're fuckin jews man, and are utter scum in all their depictions, hell, the reason why they're always traveling is because they committed some heinous act (I.E everything Jews did before they get kicked out of their respective countries, See the term "Wandering Jew") that they pissed some deity off with.

You know those are all Gypsy stereotypes too right? Except jews don't come with stereotypes about duelling, knife fighting and evil eyes like the Gypsies/Vistani

>Wants her as a an object and Trophy

Did you ever read the actual Ravenloft books? Strahd objectifies the ever loving shit out of her in both I, Strahd and Vampire of the Mists. Even before Ravenloft he wanted her as his brother's wife and her beauty, not because they had some deep emotional connection.

>Strahd himself lacks all the initial cockiness and proclaiming victory sort of action

So he's the I, Strahd or Vampire of the Mists version of him? Who was Morose, dark and not very social? He has times when he's very charismatic but it's clearly something he needs to make himself do rather than how he is normally.

>>54164048
Playtesters and trying to appeal to 3.5 assholes who want every game to be 3.5 and want martials to do nothing but full attack.
>>54163353
These are all reasonable complaints. I mean, DCs are weird in 5e but its mostly just how the DM wants his campaign to feel.

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>>54163168
Casters still have more agency in both combat and noncombat situations at mid/late levels, and have more variety in all levels.

Half Casters are all of the "start gaining spells at 3rd level" variety instead of the "slow spell progression" variety, which is boring as shit.

The coolest martial ability (Battlemaster Fighter maneuvers) are locked into one class and dozens of really shitty versions of that class. On top of that, while all casters get even more variety in the way of new spells in almost all material released, there have been exactly zero new weapons, armors, or maneuvers released.

The ranger started as a trap option, then they attempted to fix it ten times, and now it's just flat-out the best option for low level games.

Finesse is native, which is nice, but there are very few useful finesse weapons. Additionally, Finesse weapons AND ranged weapons (yes, all of them) add your Dex bonus to damage rolls, so now pretty much every class is best served as a dexterity based character and STR is a fluffy roleplay option.

Feats are rare, very general, and have many trap options. Technically they're optional rules too. Altogether it lead to a huge loss in character customization.

Rubber-banded accuracy is boring as shit.

Many monsters don't play by the same rules as player characters, and you can feel it.

SEVERE lack of classes that use INT

Skill/ability distribution for classes is minimal, and the game both heavily favors min-maxing and likewise makes it much harder to do so.

Again, boring equipment. Everything is essentially a 1d8 beatstick, a 1d8 DEX beatstick, a longbow, or a 1d10ish two handed beatstick. The variety is both minimal and BORING. If there were more weapons and armors you could forgive some of them being strictly inferior to others for fluff/variety reasons, but when there are only like six one-handed weapons to pick from, making one of them just a flat-out worse version of another is dumb (looking at you, trident).

>>54163168
Alot of things I dislike to some degree but one thing stands out:
Advantage.

I remember hearing about it when the beta was out and it sounded okayish, but after spending about 2 years actually playing it, Ive grown to despise it.

It accentuates my big problem with 5e: Hardly anything works in synergy.
You want to make an attack easier for your fighter by using a spell? If he has any source of advantage (target prone, someone is flanking) you effectively don't do anything. You are shooting at long range, in dark, target is prone, but you have a single source of advantage? Flat roll since adv/disadv cancel eachother out completely.
Other examples:
You want buff up your barbarian that has been hurt real bad last encounter with some mage armour? It doesnt do anything for him except giving him a choice to use lower AC.
You have this idea of a cool multiclass? 90% chance that if you actually read the rules word by word it doesnt actually work.

Ive not been there for adnd or 3e but I get the idea all those stupid restrictions were put in place to prevent munchinks and such, alas two issues:
1)it makes it really dull and boring, lack of interaction is never good in my eyes
2)if your idea of fixing interactions being too good is to not make them work together at all, chances are your rules are just badly written.

my 2 cents anyway

>>54167185
>superiori
The Martial Dice system from the playtets was way more flexible and had a lot of potential.

>>54165979
>I'll take "there shouldn't need to be a specific option to do this, you should just be able to do it" for $500, Alex.
I'll take "then the DMG needs to imprint this kind of though process about power levels and differing kinds of fantasy onto the DM so that martials aren't lagging behind their caster counterparts" for $300 Alex.

>>54163825
>Forget ranger
Ranger got reworked. Read UA

>>54163168
Combat is boring, rules for anything besides combat is "the DM makes something up", WotC basically abandoned it as soon as it was out the gate resulting in a severe lack of content.

>>54168853
Not him, but how did the ranger get buffed?

Admittedly I haven't followed 5e much since the complete fucking trainwreck the playtest was.

>>54170462
>Combat is boring, rules for anything besides combat is "the DM makes something up"
How is this different from any other edition of D&D?

>>54170979
3.x had rules for everything.

>>54171168
To it's detriment admittedly, to the point you couldn't take a shit without needing a feat tree and rolling on 3 charts spread across 2 sourcebooks.

>>54171242
Yes there was too much locked behind feats, but there were at least decent skill dc rules, not just some buzzwords with numbers attached, and it had standard mechanics for combat maneuvers rather than "i dunno make something up"

>>54170979
4e had fun combat.

And more support for non-combat.

>>54166488
>Given that no one is playing a battlemaster, probably something around 0%, I guess. Anon, you don't play battlemaster for that ability. You play it for the maneuvers. The analysis ability is mostly for flavor. And even then you're getting hung up on ONE aspect of it, and grasping at straws so that you can continue to do so when your entire original fault with it was wrong.

The other aspects are also worthless. You brought it up as a saving grace for the battlemaster. It's not. As you say, it's flavor at best.

>I hate coming upon a locked chest and not being able to pick it open, or a trap and not being any good at disabling it.

It's almost as if literally anyone with tool proficiencies and good dex primary/secondary could do this.

Or you could just easily play around it.

>Fights that are about more than just killing some dude tend to allow you to make better use of your other class features.

But this is true of everyone! Except the rogue has the least amount of class features to take these advantages... aside from fighter/barbarian I guess,

>You might not have a ritual caster in the party. Or a pack mule.

Nobody playing 1 level of wizard? Fat chance. Rituals are so good you are gimping yourself if you have absolutely noone, so much so that if there's really no wizard, someone should pick the feat up. A pack mule costs pittance and you are swimming in money (barring houseruled sinks) after the first few levels anyway.

And as I pointed out, you could also just carried it together. There was really no reason for your character to carry it alone aside from having him feel all macho like I guess. Which could be important, but not as a defining feature of your race imo.

>One could argue just as well that a character with powerful build makes a pack mule or Tenser's Floating Disk superfluous.

Yes, but one is a racial ability that you are stuck with, the other two can be bought for 25 gold... maybe 50, don't remember.

>>54167531
Still a ritual.

The worst thing about 5e is that it tries to pass itself off as a ROLE-PLAYING game, rather than a roleplaying GAME.
The system is constructed in such a way that the world does not make sense by necessity. The further you stray from '6 encounters a day, with a couple short rests in between and a long rest at the end' the more broken it is.

The thing is, they market the system as if 'intrigue' campaigns are possible - but they aren't, because if the adventure is based on role-playing , the party's resources aren't being drained constantly and thus every fight is either trivial or unwinnable (super-hard to balance). And if nobody dies, fighting has zero mechanical consequences since you'll be up to full strength tomorrow. Not to mention that you either have to scale NPCs (the skyrim 'bandit in daedric armor' problem) or 'lose access' to content that's under/over your level
HP bloat is terrible, feels like it turns PCs nigh-invulnerable, and makes absolute zero sense (except if you're making a fucking videogame).

Ironically enough, the thing it's actually designed for (hack n slash) is hindered by the stated design objective (roleplaying). Because you're expected to put some thought into your character and create a backstory for him, you're straight up not supposed to die. Most encounters are not potentially lethal, or dangerous at all - they just drain resources. They're not exciting, because you can't really lose. They're literally there to waste your time.

>>54170934

It didn't exactly get buffed but it did get brought in line with the rest of 5e class design. Beast Master is a great example. The PHB version was an oddly designed creature that relied on one specific feats, weapons, and animal companion build path to generate both magical and mundane crowd control in a way that specifically buffs other melee characters but especially melee Rogues. And it pays for that with lousy damage.

If you wanted that, and knew how to build that, and your group needed that more than it needed damage it was a blast to play, and I loved playing mine. But it was a fragile tower: if you needed the damage more, if you didn't know which feat and which two weapons were needed, if you didn't have the right pet, if you didn't have a rogue, if your teammates couldn't capitalize on disadvantaged opponents, or any other thing wasn't in place it fell completely apart.

The Revised Beast Master Ranger, on the other hand, is a DPR class that gains flexibility by offsetting it's extra attacks onto pet choice which is now super-buffed, resurrectable and can make attacks on its own initiative. The low-damage combos that drove the PHB Beast Master still work, albeit with slightly different timing, but they're no longer necessary. There's a lot more right answers now, and the play style is a lot more obvious and accessible straight out of the box.

In short, the new Ranger builds do play like the old Ranger builds looked like they should play, and the net result is that even if the on-paper boosts aren't actually that huge people are having much, much better tabletop experiences with them which feels like a huge boost.

>>54172507
>The further you stray from '6 encounters a day, with a couple short rests in between and a long rest at the end' the more broken it is.
I'm starting to believe this. The DMs I've played with have only around 2-3 encounters a day with a chance to short rest after each one. One of them thinks our party is overpowered but that's because we can go balls-out and nova as hard as possible. I think we would have fared better with another system than D&D entirely.

>>54163168
I don't like how there's a worse-than-4E gulf between PC damage and threatening monsters' HP, except when 4E did it it was in service of tactical combat.

I don't like how the best martial in 5E still sucks and is a less interesting and less effective version of a 3.5 and 4E class and is somehow less effective than their AD&D equivalent. I also don't like how almost every noncaster class has a casting archetype with awful spell progression and bad features just because spells are that potent.

I don't like how monster design is back to the days of making you reference spell lists, which are also horribly organized for no reason.

I don't like bounded accuracy as a concept whatsoever and I especially don't like how it makes the game's skill system so swingy that you can see untrained, untalented characters succeed at something a trained and talented character has a 50% chance of failing.

I don't like how short rests are an hour long and so require the DM to restructure everything around 5E's assumption that you're getting a lot of them despite the fact that sitting down in a dungeon for an hour would almost certainly get you attacked in any other edition of the game.

>>54174048
What about if you change the duration of short and long rests?

>Short rest is a nights sleep, long rest is a week off?

>>54163345
>Implying d8 without any way of improving it unlike other classes have magic items and feats isn't shit

>>54172507
This. Running a megadungeon in 5E is awful. It seems like it will all work out because 5E was supposed to be "back to the roots" of D&D. There are decent light rules, travel rules, rations matter, there are time rules (although I'm not sure what Wizards intends with those).

But nope, find some monsters that are too tough, it's a Deadly encounter, there are no reaction rules and the morale rules are rubbish. The DM has to story their way out of it or the players roll up new characters, hope you didn't spend too much time on that 3-page character sheet!

>>54164149
He's right, though.

>>54174115
This is an optional rule in the 5E DMG and it really should be the standard.

Regaining ALL hit points after a night's sleep is so dumb. There's no reason to stick around in town, it's just 8 hours of rest then off to the next encounter! What do you mean this entire, sprawling campaign has only been two weeks in-game?!

>>54172300
>a pack mule
It's 8 gp in the player's handbook.

>>54174115
>What if we make monks even more useless
Monks, with all their ki, are only able to not be too much behind, remove their ki and they're shit

>>54174225
And everyone else?

If monks are the only problem with that, and it fixes glaring problems, then make then change and fix monk.

>>54174243
Rogue doesn't have short rest stuff that really matters
Same for Barb
Same for Fighter, even if you're a battlemaster you can still grapple/shove/trip without spending superiority dice (the wonders of having str)

Monk becomes shit, because is already meh as fuck
Paladin becomes meh
Ranger becomes shit because is already meh as fuck

Casters in general become less strong, because even though 5e isn't 3.5, casters are still above everybody else, just less so

>>54174185
>This is an optional rule in the 5E DMG and it really should be the standard.
It's been a long time since D&D stopped being gritty, anon, now is just a combat ttrpg game

>>54174115
I did that with a game I ran and it worked for a while. It helped that the game was rather slow-paced, with lots of investigation before heading full-tilt into an adventure.

>>54174274
>Hurr durr now monk and ranger are even more useless
Nothing of value was lost.

>>54174336
There's no reason you can't skip over it though. Even if you're keeping track of inn stay costs, it's not like it takes any more than a few extra minutes at the table.

In fact there are all these rules for downtime which are great, but why ever have downtime? All you need is a night's rest. Maybe two or three if you want more Hit Dice.

What do Hit Dice even represent, anyway? Why do they come back after resting?

>>54163168
It's still only DND
Class based, non-options with feat exceptions, wizards rule bullshit

>>54164384
Why is grounded always synonymous with "less options" for people like you?

>>54174440
>What do Hit Dice even represent, anyway? Why do they come back after resting?
I think they were supposed to be functionally similar to 4e's healing surges, but modified in a way that it doesn't trigger the 3.PFnards.

>>54174115
My dm does it for hp only and it's honestly awful.
Now mind you, I can't if this can't work on its own (though i dont know whatd you expect from anyone using resources if they regain them after a week), but we ALWAYS have something that need doing RIGHT NOW and if we tarry there "WILL BE CONSEQUENCES TO OUR ACTIONS".
My character (nearly 2 year long campaign at this point, but its more monthly deal) hasnt had his hit dice restored in about a year. The only reason he has 2/7 is because he leveled up twice in the meantime.

tl;dr I would never trust a DM to use such a system and not have it drag the campaign into mud instantly.

>>54165133
WFRP 2e is only better than D&D in one regard - its spellcasters. The rest is basically the same, and it's terrible.

>>54174575
Just give a GM like that the finger and take your time anyway.

>>54174185
See, being a guy who likes to err on the side of realism I agree, however 5ed is absolutely not balanced around the idea of characters not getting a reset.
If you want low power adventures, don't do DnD. You can keep the settings or whatnot, but use a different system and forget the "dozen deadly encounters with DC15 (easy) traps" a day advice.

>>54174570
Yeah but what are they? Why do they come back?

>>54174655
They represent health points, like in a video game.

>>54174655
what does superiority dice represent? what does ki points represent? what everything represents? half the time? not much, this isn't a simulatior, is a game so it has a gamist approach most of the time

>>54174678
No, hit points represent health points. And for all the debate they make some sense as a combination of wounds, fatigue, and will.

So then what the hell is spending a Hit Die? You can rest one day, but the next day you're too tired to rest some more? Whaaat?

>>54174715
It's a game thing.

>>54174635
He is a friend and also beside myself the only person who actually has time to DM anything in our group.
The problem is he is also a houserule stubborn asshole that doesnt really care that much about player feedback and refuses to understand that we like to participate for the enjoyment and person to person interaction, rather than because we adore his houserules. We have to seriously dance around the rules to not die and move the plot in some capacity.

Fuck this shooting into melee is a disadvantage shit, there are rules for cover in the PHB already, for crying out loud.

>>54174756
I guess but it's just a bit too far from reality. >>54174713's examples come back after a sleep so you can call them some kind of magic or inner strength, but Hit Dice come back slowly and are weird.

>>54174715
It's a tabletop game, ya' doof.
It's also your ability to recovery from injury and exhaustion.
Like every other non-magical source of self-healing.

>>54174797
Yeah but why does it go away then slowly come back, meanwhile after one day your entire health goes back to full?

I remember a D&D interview where one of the novel authors explained how she worked healing surges into her book. I really, really want to read that novel now.

>>54174769
So don't dance around the rules and don't move the plot. Play to your enjoyment even if it means that your character dies.

>>54164433
Fucking this. Don't these 3.pf fags get that their precious edition was considered utterly shit and "not DnD at all" when it came out?

And it still isn't DnD now, it's overpowered Diablo bullshit.

>>54174715
>So then what the hell is spending a Hit Die?
Resolution
Conviction
To share a conversation, laughs with friends that will bring courage to your tired soul

>>54172300
>The other aspects are also worthless.

I'm sorry, but please explain. You're making this claim, defend it. How are the Battlemaster maneuvers useless?

>>54174894
Yeah, I might have overdramatised, I meant consequences as in "evil overlord will rape the small town full of poorly defined NPC's and that would be awful since i didnt prepare for this occurance", rather than "you're getting booted from the game".

We actually always do just that, go to places that are supposed to have something before going anywhere meaningful. God bless the wizard hitting level 5 exactly the session we started moving anywhere in winter though, nothing quite like seeing the exteremely disappointed look on DMs face when his "worsening Con save every hour or take an exhaustion level" weather table he gloated about beforehand becomes completely irrelevant before it does anything.

Anyhow, back on topic, someone mentioned how they like there are travel rules and how they like how it makes rations matter. I can't say I agree. Its streamline but it seems like bad streamline. You always move at a fixed pace a day, which is really awful since it makes actually using mounts useless besides extra book keeping. If you move faster it somehow makes your eyes worse, a bit of logic I don't really follow. If anyone in the party has the outlander ,I think its called, background, it nullifies any need to keep track of rations unless youre moving through some really awful terrain.

>>54175291
I know what you meant, you should still do whatever you like. I had GMs like that, it taught me to make flexible characters.

>>54174769

Don't play with cunts.

>>54175184
Nobody claimed the maneuvers were worthless, just that the aspects of the 7th level battlemaster feature were worthless.

>>54175014
If you post like this, then D&D Basic isn't D&D at all since it's gameplay are even more like Diablo which takes lot of inspiration from the tabletop.

>>54175014
4e fag detected.

You can always spot a 4e fag by the fact that he spends more time crying about 3.PF than discussing the topic at hand.

>>54163168
I was really following along closely during the open playtest period. At one point, they were doing some really cool stuff with martial bonus dice. Could've used a bit more in the way of non-combat uses (feats of physical prowess like lifting/breaking shit and the like), but they were really onto something there.

Unfortunately, the finished product scrapped all that, and it now survives only in super limited and uninspiring form in certain class archetypes (such as the Battle Master fighter).

I honestly wouldn't say that 5e is all that bad -- the main reason I don't play it is more that I've simply found other systems I like even better -- but if they'd followed through on that route it would've been way better.

>>54176975
I also kinda miss the Gish Sorcerer that would start out spellcasty and turn into more of a frontline physical fighter as he started running out of spell slots.

>>54163833
>Warlock/Swordmage
Warlock/Paladin is where it's at.

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>>54178277

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>>54178637

>>54178707
Just saying that if you went back in time and told kid me playing old D&D that in the future someone would tell me to make a multiclass warlock/paladin and it would be not only allowed but also in the core PHB I would straight up not believe you and laugh my ass off about that weird lie you were telling

>>54176975
>>54177013

Personally I'd like to see them expand out more with the Superiority Die system for the other Martial classes, and introduce some out of combat maneuvers/uses for them as well.

I'd also be ok with the Sorcerer getting an archetype where the more spells he burns, the more "feral" he gets, until the end he's little more than just raging so hard his weak cantrips start vaporizing people left, right, and center and he's shanking people to get more magical power back to sling around more spells.

>>54163168
I personally find it very bland and I'm not a fan of how stifling the bonus action system is (I.E. you can only take one bonus action per turn but there's dozens of things that grant bonus actions so it's kind of just seems like the rule is there simply to encourage people not to diversify their characters when the system otherwise handles that well)

>>54178739
In the case of a warlock/paladin multiclass, try and think of the "warlock" part as just a name under which a bunch of abilities are organized.

>>54163168
Lair mechanics are fucking trash. I want the boss to be dificult because it's strong, not because it can just go "lol nope perfectdefense" 3 times a day.

>>54179011
past me is playing D&D, dummy he knows what a fucking class

past me is furious that "warlock" is in the phb because it's super edgy MTV liquid television fucking garbage not that warlock has whatever faggy powers it undoubtedly has. Warlock/Paladin is just the icing on the "I shouldn't do this but I'm gonna just because I shouldn't" cake

>>54179079
Warlock should just be a blasting warmage. Power source should not be so explicit in class makeup.

>>54179229
Warlock should be an enemy only class at best and not in D&D at all in any sane timeline. It's fucking retarded.

>>54179229
It's no more explicit than it is with a cleric or sorcerer.

>>54179266
The idea of people who draw power from some kind of pact is a classic in fantasy. Even if we set that aside, no one who isn't boring doesn't want the half-orc race to be part of core D&D. If we have an "evil" (but could be good) race, why not an "evil" (but could be good) class?

Or as another way of looking at things, paladins used to be LG-only but have been rebranded to be capable of being any alignment. So the idea of a warlock who could be non-evil seems fine to me as well, particularly in the case of the Archfey or Great Old One.

>>54179354
Warlock is fucking retarded garbage

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>>54179412
lol no u.

>>54179619
Give any reason whatsoever that warlock belongs in D&D as a core class, let alone being in D&D at all

>>54179657
Because it's cool. And it really needs no other justification - that's the only reason why the barbarian, bard, druid, monk, paladin, ranger, and sorcerer are in D&D, after all. All that's actually needed is just the warrior, rogue, priest, and mage.

>>54179732
Faggy-ass literally fey emo retards are cool now? Oh, right. You're a millennial. Well at least the version of D&D made for you knows their audience. :^)

>>54179773
>Oh, right. You're a millennial.

I'm not actually sure about that one. I was born in the latter part of '87, and consider my childhood to have been the 90s for the most part. But as I was only 12 when the Millennium hit, I might also be described as a Millennial, I guess.

More relevantly, I started D&D with 2nd Edition.

>Faggy-ass literally fey emo retards are cool now?

I dunno, I'm sure you've rolled up an elf or two in your time.

>>54179851
>playing an elf
lol think again I only play the good race (human)

Besides, when have elves ever been cool? Legolas maybe?

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>>54179883
Well, several Drizzt books have been New York Times bestsellers. So they're cooler than you, at least.

>>54163223
>multiclassing ranger and monk right now
Should I just reroll my character?

>>54179984
>elf defense force swoops in for the desperate holding action
lol

>>54179354
I'd pull the fluff out of cleric and sorcerer and wizard, too.

Genericized.
Themed.
Mechanical.
Ability.
Packages.

And half orcs are dumb. Give me orcs or hobgoblins.

>>54167195
So, I'm guessing there is no downside?

>>54167195
>>54180345
I'm assuming you mean in 5e?

The tradeoffs are specialization. Humans (not variant humans) get more plusses to stats than any other race. The other races just get other abilities and sometimes bigger plusses, but never to as many stats.

>>54166691
You forget that DH/WHFRP use modifiers, while 5E uses advantage/disadvantage system.

DH/WHFRP 's modifiers are also encouraged heavily, with nearly every roll having some modifier on it, whereas 5E's (dis)advantage system is only for special occasions and clear benefits/penalties.

The swingyness in the roll itself is still there, yes, but the percentile system in DH/WHFRP is less evident when your ambush results in only a 10% chance of failure instead of 5E's reliance on at least 1 of 2 d20's rolling favorably.

>>54163327
>lack of a true arcane-based half-caster
Eldritch knight not good enough for you?

>>54180497
>Eldritch Knight
>Half caster
It's a 1/3 caster m8. Read the multiclass rules sometime.

>>54180497
>>54180506
Artificer.

>>54180555
Also a 1/3 caster. They get spellcasting at level 3 and cap out at 4th level spells. It's literally the same progression as eldritch knight. I don't know what's so hard about this.

>>54180436
There's also the scale of the various modifiers.

5e has abilities max at +25% and proficiency takes forever to get to +30% for a total bonus of +55%. You can get that up to +85% with proficiency.

In d100 systems, you can often get to well over a +100% before modifiers.

>>54180497
There's a magus 3pp.

But yeah, no official arcane half caster.

>>54177013

I still have the class materials for that in my inspirations notebook. It would have been so amazing if they could have gotten it working, but it was so, so clear that it was never really going to work right.

I've taken a couple stabs at making a class that uses it, but I can't get it working, either.

>>54179657

Mike Mearls said so and there's literally nothing you can do about it besides cry tears of impotent nerd rage in this thread.

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>>54163168

There's nothing wrong with it really, but there's nothing right either. It's just a return to 3.5, with a bit of cleaning up. It feels like a total waste of an edition to me, because if I wanted to play 3.5 I could do that before they published this edition. I wish they'd tried something new like they did with 4e, even if it hadn't worked out at least it would be different.

>>54180032

Depends, what were you going for and how well is it working?

>>54181273
Well I mean warlock isn't in any of the versions of D&D that I like, so it's more like watching a car wreck as I drive past on the highway and saying "look at the asian woman driving that wrecked car, guess the stereotypes are true after all!"

>>54180345

AFAIR only two classes have a -stat, a few have sunlight sensitivity, and I want to say at least 1 has a damage vulnerability, I think.

For the most part, though, they've tried to stick to making classes pure positive selection: you get to pick a bundle of positive things, but picking one means not getting any of the others.

>>54181286

>"Waaaaaaaah. Stop liking what I don't like. Waaaaaaah."

>>54181286
I dunno what you expected. If you have not liked any WotC D&D before this, why did you expect this one to be different?

>>54181336
Who the fuck likes warlock? This might be valid if there was one single human being who saw "warlock" and was like "FUCK YES I LOVE THAT IDEA"

>>54181358
>This might be valid if there was one single human being who saw "warlock" and was like "FUCK YES I LOVE THAT IDEA"
Reporting in. I love the idea of a faustian bargain and bargaining with demons for power.

inb4 moving goalposts with "but your opinions are bad"

>>54181398
I said "human being" but I guess you are definitely single, huh.

>>54181398
I like that too.

But i hate the class. The class is garbage.

I also hate the idea that all faustian bargains play out the same. That's like saying all contracts are the same. It doesn't make sense.

Give me faustian paladins and clerics and wizards and sorcerers. Give me faustian feats and magic items. Give me Faustian templates.

But a single homogenous faustian class, whose shtick is to just run around shooting lasers?

Ugh.

>>54181358

>Core PHB class
>6th most commonly played class
>"Durr hburr nobody in my bedroom likes them FAPFAPFAPFAPFAP"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WHptG35EWU

>>54181445
Exactly. "What's your special warlock power" "I shoot an anime beam" "that's the entire focus of the whole class, an anime beam" "yes, I love Warlock(TM)"

>>54181445
The pathfinder faustian class was better, even though it had its issues.

Witch was all about hexes and curses and nature magic, with some stuff about claws and polymorphism and pr3h3nsile hair and flight.

It filled a niche.

It also wasn't presented as what happens to everyone who makes a faustian bargain, simply one possibility.

>>54181445
It's almost as if everyone was complaining that (especially after the pretty okay previous two versions of warlock).

>>54181481
PF witch is literally a wizard with some unique cantrips.

>>54181496
Pf witch is a limited list druid/wizard hybrid caster, with the Hex subsystem filling out most of its abilities.

Witch hexes are basically scaling cantrips (cantrips are of limited value in pf), and a good many of them are curses or mind affecting effects.

>>54181496
I hated the 3.5 warlock more than the 5e one, and I never played in a group with the 4e warlock.

Theres now a pf warlock 3pp called the avowed. It's as disappointing as the WotC warlocks.

Bust basically, warlock is a letdown of an approach to faustian deals.

The bovd feats were a better approach than warlock, and they weren't great either.

ACFs, Magic Items, Feats, Templates, and bonus features that add to ability breadth without adding additional depth, in exchange for story obligations and consequences.

>>54181621
And faustian consumables

>>54181445
>I also hate the idea that all faustian bargains play out the same. That's like saying all contracts are the same. It doesn't make sense.
This is actually the biggest problem I have with 5e in general. It's too homogeneous. You get a little bit of variation between subclasses and some classes have it much better than others, but at the end of the day every mastermind rogue or dragon sorceror feels exactly the same.

>>54181621
4e Dark Sun was the best DnD warlock in my opinion. The way it was set up the being that you were making a pact with was a very real, very concrete being. You had some wiggle room in deciding what exactly your relationship was with your patron, but whatever you picked it would have pretty clear obligations baked in.

>>54181284
Scout type
So far 4 levels in monk and 2 levels in UA ranger

>>54181657
And that is the sort of bargain you want but what you get in exchange for that bargain should vary 100% depending on what you want and who your patron is.

None of this pacts = lasers bullshit

>>54181657
I was a fan of the Vestige Warlock, where instead of making a big pact with a powerful patron, you were generally making multiple smaller pacts with lesser beings. I played one that went a bit insane from all the pacts he was making for power.

Admittedly "le wacky" insane, but only because I played him as more dementia-style insane and it was hitting a little too close to home for one player, so I had to tone it down a bit.

4e Warlock was pretty nice in general.

>>54181691
>what you get in exchange for that bargain should vary 100% depending on what you want and who your patron is.
That's just fluff though. The warlock class covers (at least in theory) what's probably the most common case of trading something for power. That being, your mortal soul in exhange for magical strength. Anything else is really easy to insert into the system.

>My "druid" can shapeshift because of a pact with a nature spirit
>My "wizard" obtained this ancient tome by bargaining with devils
>My "fighter" was a scrawny kid until he traded his left eye for strength

>>54181575
I agree that PF witch is a better designed class than the wizard and has much more flavorful features.

But as is, it may as well be a wizard archetype. The hexes fit in with school abilities in power (there's like 3 good ones, last time I checked) too. There was really no need for it as a new class.

>>54181691
Each pact gives you a different at-will, although you always receive either eldritch blast or one of its variant as well. 4e (and WotC D&D in general) assumes everyone can fight on roughly the same level, so receiving some form of combative magic is expected.

>>54179657
>complaining about a class' fluff instead of glaring mechanical problems in the system

kill yourself

>>54163268
>Combat is basically resource-attrition with no real tactics or stragedy involved
True for all editions and most systems, even.
>Non-combat skills are a joke because of how terribly proficiency bonus scales to level. Often being proficient in a skill means you've only got a 10-20% better chance of succeeding than somebody with no training at all.
Somewhat alleviated by avoiding the dice trap. Not everything needs rolling, and even a good roll shouldn't allow you to do everything. If you're proficient in some things, a decent DM will make you autosucceed on easy tasks, have partial success on failures and able to attempt stuff nonproficient people cannot.
>Too many special-snowflake races like dragonborn, firbolg, assimar, ect.
Don't include them if you don't like them. These aren't the rules backbone, but setting-specific options.
>D20 is just a garbage way-too-swingy resolution mechanic overall.
Agreed, use 2d10 or 3d6. A simple fix.

>>54181766
4elocks also have a wide enough selection of powers, plenty geared specifically toward certain pacts, that you can have pacts manifest in multiple ways.

Like Sorcerer King-Locks getting more mental powers, psychic damage, and a bit of a Leader-y leaning with some of their abilities.

>>54181725
You misunderstand me. It's not just fluff.

Im not describing your class features. Sure that could just be fluffed as a different power source giving you some of your abilities.

But im talking about making the patron a tangible entity, who is a significant part of the campaign, and either restricting the pc's options through obligations, or tempting them to do things they don't want to do, with consequences and rewards.

Things like granting a ring that provides some useful power, but requires you to perform tasks which could be difficult, or distasteful, or both, in the game, to keep the ring powered.

Or be granted a template giving you a limited gestalt type setup wherein you're getting additional level appropriate abilities that don't stack with your class features but give you additional options, but their use has in game consequences.

Maybe you rack up debts that need to be paid off in labor, as a variant on my first example. Or maybe every 3 kills you make gates in a devil for a hell is army, and eventually the campaign will have to deal with the army.

Or powers/items that are fueled by soul gems, which you must either buy, or charge up yourself, calorific the souls of the creatures you kill. Using the soul gems sends their soul to your patron, or destroys the souls provoking the ire of inevitables, or what have you.

That sort of thing.

And this isn't some kind of player Munchkinry, I'm a forever dm these days.

Can we talk about how removing "action sizes" (move, standard, and full-round) actions was fucking retarded?

My players were running away from a battle. One of them was down and bleeding out, so he needed to be carried by the party's fighter. Since the rogue could dash as a bonus action, she could use her action to administer first aid to the wounded and still run at full speed.

I'm still mad.

>>54181861
"No, you can't administer first aid while running full speed, sorry"

>>54163781
>What's so wrong with letting the archery ranger having "I shoot a barrage of arrows into the wall to make an impromptu ladder for my allies" baked into the class mechanics?
Because if you start making rules for such specific things, you start saying implicitly "anything else not listed here, you can't do".

The system already has the mechanics to let the DM resolve such actions.

Just do it.

>>54181861
if you can dash as a bonus action, that means you can dash twice in one turn, stacking their effects
The rogues "full speed" is actually half-again as fast as how fast she was moving

>>54181861
>Since the rogue could dash as a bonus action, she could use her action to administer first aid to the wounded and still run at full speed.
No, she couldn't. A rogue's full speed is dashing twice.

>>54181895
>just ignore the system
>just deny the rogue one of her core class features whever you want

>>54181903
Yeah - but she was still running at a normal human's sprinting speed.
Honestly, what I think really got me is that everyone laughed (including me) and then the rogue's player said "See? This is way better than [SYSTEM WHERE RETARDED SHIT LIKE THIS DOES NOT HAPPEN]!"

>>54181949
>just do your job as a dungeon master

>>54181976
>your job as the dm is to change the rules without warning to prevent your players from having any fun.

Wew lad.

>>54182034
The job of the GM is to say "Sorry despite what the wording of the rules say in this instance it would be silly for it to work that way so instead it works in this different and reasonable way"

>>54181949
If he was a thief, he could have also used his healer's kit as a bonus action instead.

You just have to accept that 5e rogues move 1.5 times as fast as everyone else.

>>54182081
Another option would have been to say "sorry, you need to put him down to heal him" which would have took up another action; the rogue would still be able to move, while everybody else wouldn't, but it makes sense that you can't heal him while he's in your hands/on your back.

>>54181976
>>54182069
The rules intend for this to happen, rather obviously. This isn't a case of 'the rules weren't clear enough'

>>54182081
My players aren't smart enough to buy healer's kits, or any other consumable item for that matter. They just get builds from the internet and run with that

>>54182096
This breaks down if there's two rogues - dropping the guy is a free action for the fighter, the one who picks up the wounded can dash as a bonus action.
Even if there were no rogues at all, three people could run at "jogging" speed and still heal the wounded. They wouldn't get to dash, but they're still moving without stopping.

>>54182137
Did you count encumbrance?

That should affect movespeed too, right?

>>54182137
>"Sorry, in this instance the rules are retarded and this is how it's going to work from now on"

or

>"Sorry, no matter how stupid the rules are we need to do exactly what they say as if we're playing magic cards"

It's okay, not everyone has what it takes to run a game.

>>54182160
You don't understand me - the problem is not really the speed at which they are moving. The problem is that they can keep moving at this speed, whichever that speed is it is the fastest they can move with their friend on their backs, while at the same time doing things that one would suppose take a significant amount of time and concentration, like bandaging wounds.

>>54182177
>The solution is to ignore the system - a system which supposedly has been carefully balanced by its designers, and tinkering with it without considering the consequences could make it go crashing down like a jenga tower.
I'd rather switch to another system rather than ignore the fact that mine doesn't do what I want it to.
You're literally removing the rogue's main thing. If you DM, I'm really sorry for all the martials in your games.

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>>54182204
>THE ROGUE'S MAIN THING
>IS TO BE ABLE TO PERFORM FIRST AID
>WHILE SPRINTING
>AND CARRYING A DUDE

Fucking kekkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk

>>54163168
idk where you've been anon, but almost everytime someone talks about D&D on here (every FUCKING day) 5e is mentioned as having it's flaws.

>>54163268
Remember to ignore all posts with this image kids.

>>54182218
Let's try to not sperg out like fucking retards, okay? It's pretty embarrassing for both of us.

See, in some dusty, forgotten dungeon, a rogue is being chased by monsters. He's in a dark tunnel, and his enemies are getting closer and closer. The passage goes on and on, but there's a door to the left. The rogue knows it's locked, and he also knows there's a bloodthirsty monster inside, which would fight his foes buying him time to get away. Our little scoundrel decides to run up to the door using his dash, use his bonus action to pick the lock, and open the door and keep running away using his movement.

So... won't you allow him to do what the class is fucking designed for, although it makes no goddamn sense to do all that in SIX SECONDS?

>>54182251
But that isn't performing first aid while sprinting while carrying an adult in much the same way that you are sprinting backwards carrying the goal posts

>>54182204
>>54182137

I think switching systems because of how 1 action works is kinda silly. While I agree that it is a pretty meh way of handling houseruling that "to stabilize a person, he must be held stationary" or something totally works as a hotfix if that bothers you.

Also, while picking up/dropping an item is a free action, I'd totally bump picking something heavy and cumbersome up (i.e. a person) as a standard, and the same for putting down if you don't just want to drop the guy on his head.

>>54182262
NOPE RAW ONLY OR YOU ARE LITERALLY FUCKING RUINING ROGUE FOREVER YOU FUCKING FUCKER

>People sperging out because this isn't 3.5 with 7 million books covering every single option the players could possibly think of and slowing the game to a halt as the DM walks over to his library of books and spends 3 hours searching for some obscure rule somewhere

There's a reason 5e is so heavy on the "DM makes a lot of these rules" stuff. Though I will admit it can be too rules light at times

>>54182258
Learn to read: the rogue was not the one carrying the wounded.
Though I'd argue that it's easier: applying a bandage is way simpler than lockpicking a door, it requires much more precision and fine movement.

>>54182262
I didn't switch systems just because of the actions thing - it's only one of the things that bothered me. In the end, I decided that D&D just wasn't meant for what I wanted to do and stopped trying to fit the proverbial square peg into the round hole.

And, while what you say is true, and fine for a 'hotfix', the issue is not in the actual carrying of the person - even if the guy was just laying there the rogue could have ran past and healed him, like a healing version of the tasmanian devil. See >>54182251


>>54182270
(you)

>>54182299
ROGUE IS FUCKING RUINED NOW WAY TO GO

>>54178739
Why wouldn't a paladin be allowed to multiclass into warlock and viceversa?

>>54182299
>Applying a bandage

Look at what paramedics do to injured people as a first response.

They keep the body still, they clean the wounded area, apply multiple bandages and wrappings over cuts, potentially even set up splints either prepare or makeshift

Now could you do any of that in a full sprint with the body bouncing around? Fuck no. I'm fine with you springing by, providing first aid and sprinting back into the fight. But the body needs to be stable to be treated

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>>54182332

>>54182332
Because their fluff in 3.5 made that unfeasible.

>>54182348
Of course nobody can do that shit - but can somebody pick a lock and move 60 feet in six seconds, throw fireballs, or be completely fine after falling 50 feet?

>>54182354
Warlock is a dude who received his powers from a morepowerful being in exchange of serving him. Think of cleric but instead of Gods it can be powerful Demons/Devils, Powerful Feys, Powerful Undeads, Powerful creatures from beyond the planes and powerful beings FROM THE POSITIVE PLANE VOWED TO DESTROY DARKNESS WITH LIGHT

So if you don't like Warlock, why you allow Cleric or Sorcerer who work in a similar way?, yeah, sorcerer is not only "my grand daddy was a dragon" it can be as explained by the description "I formed a pact/bond with a dragon". I think we don't need both Warlock and Sorcerer knowing how similar are in lore, they should make both have a similar mechanic and unify both classes anyway, but your aversion to warlock is pretty weird

>>54182371
>Because their fluff in 3.5
>in 3.5
>3.5
...thank god this isn't 3.5 then

>>54182388
I just went ahead and fused warlock/sorcerer/"divine" classes in my homebrew

>>54182405
lol

>>54182400
I know, right?

Some people just can't move on.

>>54182372
>what is a bump key and running
Happens every day

>>54178637
>Warlock Paladin
Makes sense if the patron falls to the lower planes, but the Paladin has been, and always will be loyal to said deity.

>>54182581
>Warlock Paladin
>Makes sense

>>54182581
It makes sense with the fluff of both classes in 5e and 4e.

>>54182388
Warlock is mechanically a garbage class

>>54182622
Makes sense regardless given that a warlock patron can be like, an archangel.

>>54182641
Don't forget Thematically

>>54182663
Faustian deals are good. A class isn't how I'd prefer to address them, but I can see a witch class like they did in pathfinder being good.

I don't take an issue with warlock thematically.

I take lots of issue with it mechanically

>>54182818
Oh yeah I loved how in classic fantasy heroes were always making deals with devils for supernatural power. That was my favorite running theme in D&D.

>>54182838
>heroes
>implying D&D characters are heroes

>>54182838
I'm sorry, are the likes of Faust and and Dorian Grey not fantastical enough for you, or just not G-Rated enough?

>>54182852
>>54182888
Heh, I remember being an edgy retarded teenager too. That impression is dead on.

>>54182891
>You can't include flawed protagonists who fuck up without it being for edge value.
Or, y'know, variety can also be good.

I don't want to play through the same pseudo Arthurian fantasy tropes over and over.

You sound like you are a seriously wimpy "edgy teenager".

And when I was a teenager I was a metal head. Our d&d games often centered on running criminal drug running/gambling/mafia esque guilds, with greedy mercs as our most good guy campaigns.

After the session we'd generally go get really drunk and do stupid teenager things, like wander around town stealing real estate broker signs.

Big damn heroes can be lots of fun. So can deus vult. And then sometimes you just want to play a military campaign, or boardwalk empire, or dexter.

You don't have to be afraid of everything that doesn't belong in a 1980s children's cartoon.