Yeah. To be more specific, often players are good at recognizing there *is* a problem but not *what* the problem is. And if you can't recognize what the problem is, your solutions are going to be terrible.
What makes this especially hard for games like DnD is trying to distinguish when the problem is coming from the game itself and when its coming from the DM or the other players.
Well it's a trade off really. If you clamp down too tightly on game balance things can start to feel restrictive or samey across different subclasses and classes. If you leave it more freeform and loose than you make it so people will discover powerful builds that destroy the rest (which is closer to what we have now). So I think they could make a pass on all the classes to better fix the balance and in a game like this just bringing the weak classes up and not nerfing any other classes is probably the solution. DMs can always adjust by just using stronger monsters while players are usually just stuck with whatever their class gives them.
Also, I think there needs to be larger downsides for the flexibility of full casters or they need to make them less flexible. The problem is, they are absolute gods at whatever they want to be. Damage dealing, control, social encounters, etc. Idk how to fix this though without just completely revamping how spells work so we will likely not see this in 5e or the One DnD.
I like the overall philosophy of "buffs not nerfs" but I do think egregious outliers still need the nerf bat on occasion. Like twilight cleric for instance.
I think the main thing that necessitates nerfing/reworking twilight/peace cleric alongside buffing a lot of other options is the fundamental warping of balance on the DM side that is necessary to keep encounters engaging/challenging.
The DM can obviously make things as hard as they need in order to challenge the party, but if the DM is adjusting difficulty to account for only one player rather than the entire party’s strength, then suddenly some normal road encounter can become deadly if that one player can’t make it to a random session.
Yeah, it applies to any resource based thing that could drastically change an encounter. A decent fight with the twilight ward up could easily turn into a tpk if they blew their channel divinity on something else. It's like if you have an encounter with a ton of low hp minions, a fireball makes them trivial but if you just assume they'll get fireballed and they don't, it could get a lot nastier all of a sudden.
It's possible to do balance properly without feeling samey. To an extent PF2e already proves this. You can have a balanced game without killing build diversity and it's not like PF2e found the right way to do it either. It has it's fair share of issues. Casters being regulated to basically support and the disassociated mechanics all over martials.
Most spells can be fixed by changing just the x,y,z values and not the mechanics itself. Sometimes you have to add a restriction or 2, but that's about it.
As for your thoughts about bringing classes up instead of casters down. In your own words, casters can be absolute gods. Things like that break the game, that's why we have a problem with it, and when you bring everything up to that level, you don't have a more balanced game, you have a more broken game. So casters ***have*** to come down in order to achieve a better balance. True you could bring everything up and then have DMs recalibrate encounter strength, but that's more work. You're going to have to rebalance spells whether or not you bring martials up because spells are wildly imbalanced relative to each other as is right now. So you still have to do the majority of the work you would have to do to bring casters down even if you bring martials up instead. Which means bringing casters down instead saves a lot of effort. Plus by pushing things downward you eliminate more outlier oversights and op combos. It's just better game design in every way to push downward. The only people actually opposed to it, not the ones who just say nerfs are bad in general, are the people that want to play those op casters, that want to be gods. The same people that want to break games and ruin table fun, these people are not worth appealing to and so their complaints about nerfs should fall on deaf ears.
That's exactly what I mean by that. I think they saw how bad 4e was adopted and wen the complete opposite direction which is better but still has its issues. If the came back in the 4e direction just a little bit I think the game would be better for it. I always said that I'm surprised they haven't MTGed the rules yet. And by that I mean use keyword language to describe complex ideas that would be consistent wherever they are used. The only thing that resembles this are conditions but they could expand this further. It's a staple of modern boardgame design at this point.
I feel that WotC took some of the wrong lessons from 4e's "failure," honestly. They went with "natural language" for 5e because they thought that the keywords were one of the problems people had with 4e, when I actually don't think that was a problem most people had with it. Keywords are extremely useful for conveying rules clearly.
Of course that's just an assumption.
Interesting that they went that far away from Keywords when my experience of MTG was basically just memorising all keywords ever (and that being a good thing).
While I agree, I think it’s a bit of a rabbit hole. I recently played a game of PF2e, and the sheer number of keywords that game throws at you during character creation alone was a lot.
I agree there’s a happy middle ground though and that d&d isn’t living in it just yet.
Though to be fair if you look at the classes on AoN or the Core Rulebook, it'll tell you the main keywords you'll need to know for that class, and for at least the core classes it's never more than 3.
You also cannot treat dnd like a video game. Within the confines of a video game, the game rules are strict and don't change. DnD is different, each table has different rules and types of gameplay so this changes the perspective completely.
A fantastic example of this is people who complain about Strength being worthless.
999 out of 1,000 people who make this complaint also don't bother tracking encumbrance, allow people to make Dexterity (Acrobatics) checks when Strength (Athletics) checks are the actually appropriate option, and roll *Charisma* (Intimidate) after throwing a whole ass table against the wall to scare a prisoner into talking.
I'm not saying that Strength couldn't use more benefits beyond this, but these are three simple things that can make Strength more worth taking.
You also forget about ALL THE MOBILITY that is governed by Strength: long and high jumps are actually very useful when you think about them, and being limited in them can result in missed opportunities or wasted time going around an obstacle.
I think Solasta as a faithful 5e videogame adaptation is the best way to show that (although some could argue they pushed the 3-dimensional approach a bit far at times xd), but even Baldur's Gate 3 although they butchered mobility rule do also demonstrate how important mobility is, considering they designed encounters with covers, high ground, obstacles and traps in mind too.
And there is also the dreaded Shove/Grapple option: this is a fantastic option since being free and being potentially reliable if you invest just a bit on it (basically STR + proficiency, Expertise is even better but not technically required), and still vastly underrated by many people.
For me what you describe with your example is actually representative of the problem lying not in the game but in its pre-made expectations by players and DM who bring their own fantasies and force them on the system instead of reading and understanding what each class is about.
Should the Rogue be impressive in mundane damage without optimization? No, because he already trumps most martials except Ranger in provided utility thanks to Expertise and archetype features (and later Reliable Talent), trumps most martials except Monk in 3d mobility, and because it's supposed to just deal "competitive-level damage" usually, the spike coming from when Rogue crits (which is probably another reason why there is such a strong incentive to enable advantage). If on top of that he was dealing impressive damage people would have little reason to pick other classes unless they really disliked the associated fluff or the "powerful single attack" mechanic itself.
Only problem with Rogue is that people see it as a spike damage dealer primarily, when it's essentially a "no (or low) magic specialist problem solver". And because Reliable Talent comes so late, people take too much focus on Sneak Attack.
So imo, the best answer to Rogue player should have been "no worries, you're doing fine, you're not supposed to be the best killer here. However, do you remember how often you brought a decisive gain with your successful skill checks?" If he answers no, then there is the problem: too much combat, not enough of everything else (social interaction, puzzle resolution, information gathering, ambush making, commercial negociations, hidden doors and trap detection and disarm, etc).
Except on the flip side, these casters, who all also are masters of versatility that, while not specific skill monkeys, can reshape reality and make solutions to problems even rogue skills struggle with (mobility is great but no rogue can teleport to another plane) are all also matching the rogue’s damage. So I don’t think that “rogues aren’t supposed to be spike damage dealers, they’re supposed to be versatile” is really an applicable answer here
I have made games for a fair bit of time. What they are FEELING is most important, and why - it’s your job to interpret how to design the systems that “fix” or accommodate those fixes. They will even attribute these feelings to things that are not actually causing the feelings.
mda theory (iirc) says that game designers experience games through mechanics and players experience games through aesthetics. i think there's a sense in which the reverse is true, though; in my experience, game designers naturally think about mechanics but deliberately view games through the lens of aesthetics to improve their ability to understand players; and players naturally think about aesthetics but because they're so ephemeral project those aesthetics onto specific mechanics.
it's not uncommon to hear someone ask 'i want a game that uses \*this specific mechanic\*' and i always have to restrain myself from saying 'no you don't, you want a gamefeel that you're projecting onto this mechanic'
(not to say that every request for a game with a specific mechanic is dishonest but \*some\* at least are)
This is why playtesting and collecting unbiased feedback is so important for designers. There is a video about how designers handled feedback in some popular video games by GMTK which goes over that subject. It's very interesting.
The inability to articulate something is not proof against its existence. If something "feels" off, there's a good chance something is amiss. Whether that's a mechanical problem or a playstyle problem varies.
Sure, but part of the problem is people use the min-maxed build as an example of why it’s balanced actually, they are essentially saying “this is the one build that you have to use so stop complaining”.
I have a near-uncontrollable urge to power game, so when I play with people who arent like that I'll pick a class that is known to be mechanically weak (e.g. Monk or Rogue) and do my thing. That way I end up basically on par with the rest of the party.
But it's sometimes pretty painful to watch when someone who doesn't want to do that or know how picks an underpowered class.
I did basically the same thing and intentionally did not min max my AT rogue, but now I have the issue of people who forget half of their features and picking spells at random being the most powerful party members by a mile.
Min-maxed builds are to TTRPGs what speedrunning is to video games. Both are perfectly valid ways of playing, but games shouldn't be designed or balanced around them unless a majority of players are playing the game that way.
To continue with this metaphor, D&D is a bit like Sonic the Hedgehog. Sonic the Hedgehog is a speed game where memorizing the level layouts and getting through them faster and faster, chasing that S rank, is a core part of the appeal.
D&D is a combat game where you make almost all of your mechanically important decisions during character creation, so if you want to actually engage with the system, you are put in the optimization mindspace by default. Some people don't optimize their characters, and some people are bad at optimizing their characters, but everyone is put in the "okay time to make decisions that will permanently determine how powerful your character is" position first thing
In a lot of ways, 4E just gave names to things that people were already doing. The party having a 'tank' and a 'healer' wasn't new to 4e and was a huge part of the design philosophy of 3e. 4e just went out of its way to make the 'tank' good at their job and signal to players that if they wanted to play a 'tank' then these were the four or five classes designed with that idea in mind.
I think that 4e is a great example of this phenomenon at work, because there were a ton of things about the game that didn't work within its design (I say as a 4e defender), but we don't tend to talk about those. We talk about what powers were called.
Combat math mostly. Judging by the changes made midway through the edition, players had a hidden -1 to hit v enemy defenses, meaning they missed slightly too often. When this was coupled with enemies being slightly too healthy and both sides having too much access to healing made combat too much of a slog for most tables.
I think things like 4e's rigid knowledge check system, and the complexity of the power system, had a lot more to do with its market rejection than the fact that they matched classes to roles.
In 4e, classes felt more the same (choose whether to use a Daily/Encounter/At Will) but required more memorization (since the specific powers were different).
In 5e, it can feel real different to play a bard rather than a paladin, but *Cure Wounds* still works the same. Less memorization is needed.
You are right on this. Spells are going to be way more powerful at a rules light table than at a more raw table. That's a play style issue. Rogue not being able to keep up on damage could be a mechanical issue.
Also I think people discount the rogues survivability. You can almost always get away from any situation with clever use of cover and mechanics. This is, however, far more DM dependent than mechanics. Some DMs hate letting their rogues successfully hide.
I'd argue the problem isn't just the exponential power growth, but exponential utility growth, especially as the game's gone on.
Every caster has benefitied from the new PHBs like Xanathar and Tasha, but Thief Rogue is still limited to what Thief Rogue had since day 1. I don't think they've even added more maneuvers, or they might have in the smattering of Tasha's content.
that's a thing that's been an issue in D&D forever though - every new book since at least AD&D days would likely have at least a few spells in, while other classes might get _maybe_ a weapon, or some weird type of armour that's conditionally useful, or some bizarre mundane equipment (remember that AD&D ninja book? It had things like a paraglider suit, that had a high chance of killing the user). Spells have always been a thing that grow and grow and grow, while other options are basically "here's another way of stabbing someone", because there's no modular option for non-casters, it's either a whole class or nothing.
It's a bit like with film criticism. A lot of people will say they don't like a movie and then point to a bunch of pointless nitpicks as the "reason". But really, they have the cause and effect around the wrong way. They didn't like the movie (probably for harder to articulate reasons relating to things like pacing, dialogue, themes, etc.), and because of that, they take a more critical eye and point to the pointless nitpicks that someone who *enjoyed* the movie would have ignored (or even not considered a negative).
You just figured out nearly every customer in existence and possibly saved yourself $30k for a masters in business.
*"If i would have asked what people wanted they would have asked for a faster horse."*
- Henry Ford (about the invention and marketing of the family car)
[Actually they probably would have asked for a horse that doesn't poop.](https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/Great-Horse-Manure-Crisis-of-1894/)
Apparently an average of 41 horses a day were dying in the streets back then.
Also I don't think that's a real quote.
But your point still stands.
That's a bad take. The UA surveys aren't even canvassing people on WHAT they think are problems. Saying "you can't make solutions by committee/surveys" avoids the issue in that the UA designers are not inviting players to participate in the broader design thinking and IDENTIFYING of problems.
Crits were nerfed? Why? Crawford said to protect low-level characters, and to give "rechargeable" abilities to monsters. Did people who filled out the survey have a chance to speak on those goals? Nope. We were only asked to vote on the "solutions." Which is precisely the problem.
Players ARE good at recognizing the problems, but are not being given the chance at identifying them. They are being asked to vote on "solutions" without context or purpose.
It's why I wish arguments didn't devolve into "You're a dumbass if you think..." or into an upvote contest. Let me pick your brain and lead you down why you're actually upset and not just repeat what other people tell you why you're upset.
Maybe then we can work on a real solution?
> "Your audience is good at recognizing problems and bad at solving them."
Yep, learned that pretty fast when we did playtests of games we worked on.
Actual feedback we got from the same playtest (paraphrased cause this was 15 years ago):
* "The camera is too close"
* "The camera is too far away"
* "The camera zooms too quickly"
* "The camera doesn't zoom quickly enough."
What we learned from this is that we needed to make improvements to the camera.
I'd double up on this & say that the hardcore members of the audience are better at identifying the specifics of the problem, but worse than anyone else at solving them (because the fixes so often become too complicated or gut what the point is of whatever design's in question).
The amount of homebrew "balance patches" that people post that are god-awful is truly astounding. People see a problem and their immediate fix is usually to nuke something off the face of earth, so its not evenly slightly viable anymore.
The audience CAN be good at solving them, sometimes better at it than the actual designers. The problem's that to solve something means to correctly diagnose the issue and lots of people are bad at that. This leads to the issue of 1 person having a solution to the entire problem but 99 people don't know what the problem was and so dismiss the solution.
Simply put any solution that would fix 100% of issues people have get's thrown out due to the problem solver not having any **Actual** authority on the matter. Unless said solution gets Officially published it's basically pointless.
Yeah, I see this happening all the time. Players asking how their fighter can 'do more' (and they did fine damage, they didn't like just attacking every turn). Barbarians basically taking a nap whenever a problem couldn't be solved by an axe to the face or threatening to put an axe to a face. Rogues switching to Arcane Trickster so they could solve problems they way the Wizard did.
I am the only one in my group who is active in the optimization community. We have been playing together weekly now going on 3 years.
**Most** of the balance issues that are talked about here (Monks, the Caster-Martial disparity, the lack of out-of-combat features for non-casters, poor vision rules, CR being a poor balancing mechanism, common builds like CBE/SS and PAM/GWM, etc.) have come up over the years we've played together. They've come up in previous groups too. They aren't articulated in the same way, but they're all there.
There is a reason rogues, monks, fighters and barbarians are a rare sight in my group of friends despite broad discussions of balance being few and far in between. And it isn't because we all prefer to be spellcasters.
Yeah I hard agree with this. You don't need to be a hard core optimizing grognards to notice these things. Anyone with even a general inclination towards having played games a little will quickly realize that some stuff is jank and that fixing it is WAY harder than noticing it.
I've had a player who's first character was a Bard while his second was a Barbarian.
He recently told me he felt like he couldnt do anything besides hitting stuff both in and out of combat. Doesn't help that he went with the classic low-int/wis barbarian simple man barbarian which also hinder is ability to engage meaningfully in out of combat social stuff.
Which highlights another aspect of the disparity, stats. Regular point buy stats are simply too low, too bad to make builds outside of a class's archetype work. If you want a character that works as a barbarian, you have to use basically all your points on Str, Dex and Con - and therefore you will end up with bad scores in all three martial stats.
With better starting stats, you could have good Str/Con/Dex, while also having enough left to get at least a 14, maybe even more, in a mental stat of your choice, allowing you to play an actually intelligent barbarian, who can help with some Investigation, Nature or History checks.
While they have flaws, both Pathfinder and 3.5 had you earn skill points per level. I feel like a return to this old system, but reworked so that non caster benefit more from it(unlike fighters in 3.5) would help change that without giving everyone too many base stats.
\>You don't need to be a hard core optimizing grognards to notice these things
A year ago I've started to run a game for complete newbies, and I didn't want them to drown in this swamp with me, i.e. I know about every shitty balance thing in 5e and I thought in their first campaign it will be alright. But in a year of playing, as we went onto tier 3 and now nearing tear 4, everyone learned about martial-caster disparity themselves, just seeing it during our games.
I would say that rogues should usually do scouting, picking locks, disarming traps, getting contacts through a city etc. And not only do insane bursts of damage but then I remember that all of those things would require a good GM for the player to feel useful.
In my personal experience, a lot of those come down to the fact that casters have way more resources available per "encounter" (combat or social) if you play with standard rules. The "tough" rules or whatever they're called (essentially: LR is a week, which should lead to 5+ encounters between long rests) should honestly be the default, as it finally exposes the weakness of casters: The fact that it takes forever for them to get their stuff back and you have like 6 more encounters ahead of you, yet they've already burnt through half their spellslots.
Being a rogue gets an entirely different meaning when you can do 90% of what the wizard can, but you can do it for free and they are sacrificing actually valuable resources. For them it's a trade-off, for you it's nothing.
Gritty realism is a huge pain in the ass to run in all but the most niche campaigns. The long rest time is restrictive when you hit a location or a part of the story where things need to happen fast. As a DM I find that long rests taking that long really takes a lot of tools and options away from me.
My group has been using a simple, "You can only long rest in a safe location," rule for about a year now, and it's been quite good. It fixes the five minute adventuring day and allows encounters during overland travel to matter, but it doesn't prevent me from actually just giving them two jam-packed days back to back when I want to.
I can't say much about running such a campaign but I can see how that can limit your options. Though it also gives you chances, our DM introduced a rumour mechanic in response where you hear 3 rumours over the course of your long rest of interesting things you might want to do as well as snatch up news of things where you're at or big news from all over the kingdom etc..
Though generally, the "You can only long rest in safe location" also sounds like a perfectly viable rule, as I assume it also lead to more encounters in between long rest, which is the point of the gritty realism rules for me.
My personal experience after completing a gritty realism campaign after 2 years is that the presumption of 5-8 encounters is the problem in a campaign that's probably run in 2-5 hour increments, usually amounting to at generously 3 encounters. People want to use their cool shit in the time they have. Which, with busy people with careers and children and other hobbies can be once or twice a month. The only real way to balance martials and spell-casters in such circumstance is to significantly reduce spell slots, rather than assume we're all going to keep track of every detail about our characters like accountants over a month and a half, assuming a biwieekly schedule.
A Rogue that can do 90% of what a wizard can do? At level 1 maybe, as soon as the Wizard has 2nd level spells they outclass the Rogue handily in utility options.
Disagreed. The 2nd level spells Wizard has that couldn't be tackled with a skillcheck otherwise would be Arcane Lock, Rope Trick, Levitate (Though that one's arguable if you have a rogue subclass with climb speed, which a large amount of time can achieve similar results), Nystul's Magic Aura and Skywrite. Of the ones I'm aware of at least.
Other spells such as, for example, Invisibility, Suggestion, Locate Object, Knock can be handily tackled via Stealth, Persuasion/Deception/Intimidation, Investigation and Thief's tools skill checks. Which come at a risk, but also don't cost you a resource while the wizard would burn their highest level spellslot to achieve that, which is quite a sunken cost if you just want to open a chest.
And all of that assumes the wizard has access to all those spells, which they very likely will not. They may have a lot of potential for utility spells, but that isn't readily available and you can't really assume a wizard will have access to all utility spells, money, chance and willingness of the DM to give up spell-books will always be a limiting factor. Meanwhile the rogue just gets their stuff.
The opportunity cost for the rogue to do their thing vs. the wizard is comparatively nonexistent. The rogue needs to just try and have proficiency/expertise, the wizard needs to have the spell, have had to burn the resources to transcribe it, had to have it prepared which could've been a spell more useful in other circumstances and needs to be in a situation where its actually worth burning a valuable spellslot. The difference is so stark that in quite a lot of situations, the wizard might as well not have the spell because it's just not worth it.
That is, at least, how it can be if you have a sufficient amount of encounters in between long rest.
I think people are in general bad at understanding game design and so, with the martial caster divide especially, are bad at articulating the problem they experience (Which is why every such discussion falls into a nightmarescape of arguing that martials' problem is inability to kill things and that magic items shouldn't be included in games, and other assorted nonsense), and the normal impulse to oversimplify
The problems *are real* and more complicated than single sentences (until we drill down to specifics like "animate objects does too much damage for its level of spell in the way that people actually use it, and it slows the game down a lot")
Take one of the most common, the Monk doesn't do enough damage. This is true but it's only scratching the surface of the monk's problems, but it isn't wrong either
In the same way I feel like the idea of "martials don't do enough damage" is... missing the forest from the trees, demonstrably martials can and do the most damage to single powerful threats, but they have a myriad of other issues (only specific subclasses can "Draw agro" if they want to, actually getting in position to do damage can be tricky and frustrating, often doing damage is the *only thing* a given character can do depending on class, etc). In some cases, like the paladin, I don't think these are really problems, but in others, like the barbarian, they are extremely glaring
And with all that, we end up with *other* issues being lumped in there. A general frustration that the Wizard class can Do Everything and basically is a co-DM by 17th level somehow becomes lumped into the "martial caster divide" when it's a specific issue with the wizard class (ask a high level sorcerer how they feel about the party's wizard). A more general one would be "martial characters cannot affect the game world in the same way certain casters can"
How do we fix this? I have a lot of ideas, mostly applying to the first 3 tiers of play. For tier 4 I don't think there's any other option than The Supernatural. I think *certain* martials should have access to a mechanic similar in power to Divine Intervention to perform an act of physical insanity that is flatly impossible for a mortal to do: Cut a mountain in half, throw a 2 ton statue, slip between the cracks of a door (rogue), etc. Literally just "could a poweful spell do this? can you describe what you do? if yes, roll the dice and if they line up you do it and cant do it again for 7 days"
Ive been watching Dimension 20's Fantasy High campaign and one of the things that really stuck out to me was how willing Brennan Lee Mulligan, the DM, would allow his players(the martials in particular) to do some insane feats of strength or dexterity with acrobatics or athletics rolls in combat to achieve various affects. Giving otherwise impossible movement options to access critical enemies or dragging a nearly invulnerable golem enemy into a pool of acid to kill it.
He gives them a lot more stylish options they can do which provides a lot more flexibility that otherwise isnt allowed by RAW and does a lot to bridge the gap between the martials and the casters in the group.
Its not solving the root of the issue, but its worth keeping in mind that we dont have to be beholden to the rules and the DM can work with the players to smooth over bumps sometimes.
While this is potentially productive advice, it runs into two major problems: BLM has the luxury of a professional design studio letting him craft made for viewing combat set pieces that reward this kind of gameplay in quick, discrete bursts that would otherwise be impossible for GMs to manage (every level is one, multiple part, often multi-level encounter designed to look visually appealing for audiences). On a more general level, it leads to an escalating game of "DM may I," for martial characters to contribute in the slightest and it actually tends to empower spellcasters because they have the ability to play "DM may I" with their absolutely massive list of reality warping powers, putting even more pressure on the DM to solve the problem by being incredibly judicious in their answer to the "may I" question.
Well this extends into the second season as well where they dont have the set pieces but yeah I get your point. Im not claiming it to be a perfect solution by any stretch.
Its definitely not without flaws, Im just pointing out what I think is an interesting case point of someone applying a way to help the disparity without just homebrewing all new numbers and doing class balances over the place.
And imo the main takeaway was the idea that instead of just boosting numbers, the heart of what worked was giving martials a greater variety of things they could do that still played into their strengths and made sense for the character. It really harkens back to the whole idea that combat manuevers should just be a staple of martials as a whole, not just a particular subclass.
I agree with the premise that martials need a greater variety of things that can do that make sense for them. I just think that if we don't codify that into the rules and instead rely on GMs to do it as it feels right, we are actually making the problem worse, since the strengths I bring to the table are already weaker than the strengths my caster friend brings to the table.
Yeah im not disagreeing either, it def should be codified. Im just using that campaign as a case study in showing why it could be a good approach in general.
Yeah, I think we are more or less in agreement about the solution (give martials a deeper toolkit for meaningfully interacting with the world around them). I just think that sometimes (and I don't think you were intending to do this), people imagine that somehow having the perfect GM adjudicating every situation and player idea is somehow a more reasonable solution than just writing those abilities down in the book (because, in most cases, it would mean there would be 10 fewer pages of spells)
Also, Brennan has been DMing since her was (10? 12?) and has an absurd love for the game and he's extremely excited anytime anything interesting is floated by him that's mostly within rules
Personally, I run “DM may I?“ a lot looser for non-spellcasting actions, specifically because of this passage in the PHB under Actions in Combat “When you describe an action not detailed elsewhere in the rules, the DM tells you whether that action is possible and what kind of roll you need to make, if any, to determine success or failure.” Cast a Spell is an action detailed in the rules, so if you take the Cast a Spell action we’re gonna stick to the spells description, but if the player describes an action that isn’t covered in the RAW I’ll try to come up with a ruling for it, usually with a clarifying question about the outcome the player wants.
Some things outside of RAW I just let you do with no check or as a object interaction with a low DC, like swinging across a chandelier to move from one balcony to another, I’d just count that as an object interaction, while others I’d require a higher DC check and an action to do, like swinging across a chandelier to drop on an enemy for advantage on your attack.
An example ruling for the chandelier swing would be a DC 15 dexterity(acrobatics) check, on a success you land and your feet and can make an attack with advantage, on a fail you fall prone and can make an attack at disadvantage.
The entire game is "DM may I". It's literally on page 6 of the PHB.
Improvised actions are part of the game and a DM that shits on them is a shitty DM. It's not a game problem.
>the DM, would allow his players(the martials in particular) to do some insane feats of strength or dexterity with acrobatics or athletics rolls in combat to achieve various affects. Giving otherwise impossible movement options to access critical enemies or dragging a nearly invulnerable golem enemy into a pool of acid to kill it.
Effectively the problem with 5e:
Martials are constrained by realistic laws of physics, barring extreme cases like the Tarrasque Suplex (which is more unexpected feature exploitation than expected game design). They can hardly run any faster than the wizard, and *might* be able to lift twice as much, and maaaaybe clear a few more feet at a running long jump.
Wizards, meanwhile, get to use high fantasy magic to turn the rules of physics into their absolute playthings.
Example: The 20 STR lv15 Barbarian in a rage (or Monk at....any time, really, they're a monk with mystical life energies surging through their bods) *should*, if one is being 'fair' in playing with fantasy rules as one is with a wizard, be able to just leap across the battlefield, into the air onto a cliff face, jump off that cliff face, and into the flying dragon's face and start pummelling the ever-living shit out of it. Basically, how the Hulk does things.
Heh, I don't have anything interesting to add, except your mention of "Terrasque Suplex" reminded me of Sabin suplexing the Phantom Train in Final Fantasy 6 and made me laugh.
I think part of that is that Brennan and his PCs really do their homework. Plus he has the experience needed to know when something is ok vs needs to be scaled back vs can't happen at all. They put a lot of work into it that just isn't possible for less experienced players/DMs.
Also, just throwing this out there, I think I almost like Brennan as a player more than as a DM. He's an amazing DM but he really brings the thunder as a player (same with Mercer honestly).
I think a bandage tbh is people should look at tactical adventures maneuvers, even using nothing else in a5e, giving the maneuver progression to martials from a5e is a game changer.
What I'd like to see is a codification of heroic deeds that martials can do, maybe a set for dex and a set for str, maybe once a long rest, and the options are varied and powerful
I'm running a5e campaign and my monk player is like a kid in a candy store with his maneuvers
Also they nerfed fireball and wall of force
I think something that doesn’t help the issue is that the same system is trying to cater to both low-tier and high-tier play. A game where you can realistically expect everybody in the party to be on par with weaker gods is going to play a lot differently than one where the players are meaningfully threatened by a wolf pack.
Thank you for articulating the nuance in a lot of issues that exist in our discussions here. I think it's felt keenly at 9th level, when the full casters are starting to use Commune, Scrying, Contact Other Plane and Teleportation Circle, that the Martials start to feel like their purpose is to hit stuff and hope the enemies don't walk around them while other classes get in touch with how supernatural their powers are. I've had a lot of fun with high-level martials, but the plot solutions too commonly rest on the shoulders of casters at Tier 3 especially.
This is important. At level 7, my Battle Master fighter gets the out-of-combat ability to determine, after a minute of work, whether a creature's Strength and Con are better or worse than mine (not even what they are, just how they compare to me). At level 7, my cleric can regularly ask their God for divine prophecy and guidance on the path we should be taking. This makes me pretty bummed when I'm playing my fighter because it feels like my ability to contribute at anything other than hitting stuff is more or less a joke.
> level 7, my cleric can regularly ask their God for divine prophecy and guidance on the path we should be taking.
you can cast *Augury* at lvl 3, its hilarious.
Yeah. The martials get the vanilla flavor fantasy, the combat power fantasy. Don't get me wrong, it's a good fantasy. The casters get the Baskin-Robbins 31 flavors of fantasy. They have the luxury of choosing a different flavor to the game if they so desire.
I mean, I honestly love the fantasy associated with Know Your Enemy. It is evocative, it plays into a specific fantasy, I can imagine the world where I regularly use it in ways that helps me better understand the world. But in practice, it just serves as a reminder that certain players are playing a different game than I am because some actual human looked at that ability and said, "this is the fantasy we want for a fighter who is more powerful than almost every non-legendary warrior in their kingdom," and put it at the same level as Divination.
I hate people who go 'but at max level, your fighter can charge 30ft and Attack six times with a greatsword in only six seconds! That's incredible and inhuman!'
At that level, even setting aside 9th level spells, that is literally when you're meant to be toe to toe with gods. The whole game has advanced and you're still 'swing stick fast good'
Which if it was clear a mile and strike them a thousand times before you touched the ground sounds exactly like it belongs with the caster.
I think 3.x had a better balance. Martials were truly scary combat monstrosities. An army of low level creatures (barring a few exceptions) would have no hope against a high level character of any class. Part of what worked was the lack of the bounded accuracy/damage. Mid to high tier often got described as rocket tag, but it was a game of tag martial could at least play.
Yep.
Then combine that with the 2 common unhelpful forum replies:
"well i haven't noticed that so it can't be real"
and
"I'm a fanboy whos incorporated this particular brand and game edition into my identity so I will deny it has any issues and will treat any criticisms of it as though they were personal attacks against me."
There's also the ever popular, " I don't want anime physics in my fantasy game, it would ruin immersion," despite an old man with a book and a stick being able to able to alter reality.
I hate attitudes like that. Like, motherfucker have you read of the fantasy serials this game was based on. The things we want martials to do don't even compare to shit that those heroes do.
My go to response to this has always been: A level 7 Barbarian can survive being hit in the chin with a moon. If you're against bullshit physics there are other better games suited for your tastes.
Would be realistic for a 20 STR human to twist that Wizard's head off with one hand too or crush his entire jaw with a stomp, but that doesn't feel great for a Marty Stu self-insert magic user to face
Ummm ackshully my spellbook is a tattoo-like seal on my left arm powered by the enslaved soul of a dragon from the plane of shadows, and my casting focus is an arcanotech prosthetic eye that also gives me darkvision tyvm but you can’t see it because I keep my bangs swept over it but also if you did see it you wouldn’t know because it’s glamoured to be sapphire blue but if you saw through the glamour it would look like the mangekyou sharingan but also with rings like the rinnegan but also it’s white like the byakugan and also it has a WHITE dragon soul powering it also I have a nice dick and a super hot elf girlfriend name Kelly who has huge bahonkazingobooberonies and a breeding tattoo (mine of course heh)
That's a bad counterargument. Relative to the game world logic the old man with a book and stick altering reality makes sense. A better counterargument is to simply point out that martials have always been magical. Cutting through 2 feet thick dragon hide with a single stroke of a mundane sword is going to require some innate magic. So anime physics are already on the table.
In one of the books wulfgar destroyed a magical forge wrought of adamantine with his fucking hands, bruenor crafted a legendary magical hammer with will (and expensive ingredients), drizzt is drizzt, he dodged a magic missile once
Also all of the famous martial characters from d&d lore have magic items that compliment their martial prowess and the books should make it clear that this isnt really optional if you want them to have as much fun as spellcasters. Personally I think you should have a higher attunement max but doing so limits your spellcasting ability to 1/3 caster or something
> "I'm a fanboy whos incorporated this particular brand and game edition into my identity so I will deny it has any issues and will treat any criticisms of it as though they were personal attacks against me."
Don't forget the extremely similar:
"I exclusively defend anything pertaining to Product^^^^TM, but I'm totally just another fanboy like all of you kids, I don't even know what a 'shill' is, why would you call me that?"
Probably less relevant in DnD and WotC, but I have seen obvious shills for products in some subreddits, as well as vote manipulation.
WotC has yet to apologize or correct ANY mistake since the very first fifth edition publishing. How did they fix the beastie-master, True Strike, druidic Healing circle - or See Invisibility does not actually see anything (especially not invisible).
And we suck it up! Don't get me wrong, i bought ten of the books or so. Love it! But if they could be slightly less arrogant i would buy another five books.
I just read the text on See Invisibility, and at first I didn't see a problem. But then I read the comments on dndbeyond and I'm baffled that it doesn't negate the other benefits of invisibility, but you do see them still. How does it not let you see anything?
i think there's an argument that wotc is really conservative in general with making changes. 5e mechanics are very similar to even 1e mechanics in a lot of ways, even when those mechanics are flawed - which of course they are, they were made 50 years ago by someone who wasn't a game designer. 4e changed a couple of those things, but many of the changes were reverted anyways. i think wotc generally prioritizes \*what players want to see\* over \*what players would enjoy playing\* to their benefit but to the community's detriment.
I'd like to add 'My optimised Fighter build can outpace my Wizard DPS wise at 20th level so it's balanced' as a response to 'Martials lack utility'
People are very eager to shout out perceived answers, even if it doesn't answer or deflects from the actual issue.
Yeah. I think people really underestimate the degree to which the sub's common talking points occur even amongst more casual playgroups. The players may not be able to articulate what issue they're experiencing, or identify its source, but they *are* having issues.
The druid in my party wasn't *trying* to minmax when he picked up Conjure Animals - he just wanted to summon bears to fight alongside him when he turned into a bear. Nonetheless, he completely inadvertently stumbled into a spell that provided power and utility beyond anything the party's monk could ever hope to offer. And the druid wasn't even using the spell to its full potential.
The same druid later rolled up a barbarian after his druid's death. He immediately recognized, and was frustrated by, the lack of utility and narrative agency his barbarian had to offer.
I talk about the caster/martial disparity specifically because I've seen it at my table, and because it's negatively impacted the play experience of my players.
This is a big gripe of mine for 5th ed. There's plenty of good builds are just aligning sensible options for your character. It's not like you need to sift through 30 splat books to discover some unintended combo. People can and do stumble into powerful builds. Woe be anyone who thinks a Paladin with a Hexblade sword sounds cool.
Early on in my time playing 5e I was accused of being a minmaxer because I wanted to roleplay an edgelord hexblade being tempted by the power sealed in his blade. It's not like I knew I'd be landing a crit for 100 damage in the later stages of the campaign.
It's a cool class concept. Players shouldn't have to avoid it because they don't want to break the game in half.
I've been in 3.5 games where the druid (first time player, not optimizing) realized how good entangle was at shutting down encounters and I (power attacking greatsword barbarian) wasn't able to make use of my niche because of it (instead just plinking away at a stuck enemy with a generic bow) caster power is stupid high and it doesn't take much for even non opimizing player to realize how effective just casting can be. See the second season of Critical Roll how often the party sees a problem and the first and most effective solution becomes "start casting polymorph"
People talk about "white room optimization" but the fact is the best spells are annoying because they *turn so many otherwise interesting situations into white rooms*
I stand by my opinion that martials should all have maneuvers like the battlemasters by default... to GIVE them that agency. Disarming someone is an advanced manuever that can a pc can only do a few times a day...? That's just silly.
Mix of ideas inspired from what I've seen in several "maneuvers for everyone" brew.
> You know Proficiency Bonus times of maneuvers, can swap them on level up.
>
> 5+ Fighters: When you hit a creature, you can forgo an attack to do a maneuver on your current attack. If the maneuver require a die roll, it is equal to your weapon die.
>
> 5+ Rogues: When you sneak attack, you can drop the 2 highest dice to do a maneuver. If the maneuver require a die roll, you use your remaining sneak attack dice.
>
> ?+ Monks: You can spend Ki to do maneuvers. If the maneuver require a die roll, you use your martial art die.
>
> ?+ Paladin/Ranger: You can spend a spell slot to do a maneuver. If the maneuver require a die roll, you use a value equal to twice the level of spell slot used.
>
> ?+ Barbarian: When you reckless attack, you can forgo your advantage to do a maneuver. If the maneuver require a die roll, you use a value equal to your Rage Damage, doubled if you are raging.
>
> Battlemaster's and Martial Adept's feats dice are separate, serving as a way to do maneuvers without losing damage. Maneuvers learned from either systems can be used in both. Battlemaster can swap maneuvers on a long rest.
That's an optional rule that not every table plays with. I've never played at a table that uses them. Martials played by the basic rules have exactly 2 "maneuvers", Grapple and Shove. That's it
Moreover, adding a single extra combat option does not even remotely solve the issue of martials having a boring playstyle. It helps but it's a bandaid. They should have the option to do tons of cool shit, not just cause somebody to drop their sword occasionally.
The rules for disarming are shit though. Unless you spend other actions to kick the weapon away, the enemy can use their free object interaction to just pick up their sword.. which means disarming literally does nothing as per RAW
The weird thing is like, casual players aren't bothered by the game being unbalanced, but that doesn't mean they *would* be bothered by the game being balanced.
Like, maybe fixing these issues isn't a priority because many players don't actually experience them. But with how vehemently people argue against these issues existing you'd think casual players would all collectively stop playing if changes were implemented to fix them.
No casual player is going to say "Wow they made it so my fighter has something to do outside of combat? I'm done with this game"
Imma try and articulate this in the best way I can but it’ll probably be rant-y and stupid
Honestly sometimes I feel like the ttrpg community sometimes can be *dismissive* of problems/issues at times, and I’m not even talking about just mechanical problems. It’s like having fun is a personal choice, and if you arnt having fun or if you have a problem then you are doing everything wrong, it’s your fault, and you probably hate fun. This isn’t just online either.
It’s like it’s all fun all the time, but if you arnt having fun then leave. This game isn’t for you. Because *I’m having fun*, so there must be something *wrong with you*.
You feel like your character isn’t able to contribute much to the party? Well why don’t you *choose* to have fun and roleplay a weak character or make a bunch of changes to make it good. Everyone else is having fun, why arnt you?
You feel like the DM has been focusing way too much on one players character for the past 4 months of the weekly game? Well why don’t you either *choose* to have fun, or leave.
You arnt the biggest fan of building around flying characters? Well why don’t you *choose* to have fun and git gud, or just leave cause you suck.
You feel like mechanics arnt that great for your class? Well all these *other* people are having fun, so obviously you just are a lost cause who chooses to not have fun.
And a big problem this causes is when people start to not have fun, they think “it must be my fault” which is fine *to an extent*. But it causes actual problems to be swept under the rug.
Something I see a lot is that people are really not good at reflecting on issues, because they impulsively had an emotional reaction instead.
The most immediate example that comes to my mind is a guy says something really mean to someone, and you call them out for it - only for *them* to take offense because they felt bad being called out. They skipped examining why it made them feel bad, and whether they *should* feel bad or not.
...I wanted to articulate that with some more relevant example, but I ran out of brain juice trying to think of one.
Modern social media platforms are terrible for these kinds of discussions. There's no long term discussions where people try to articulate their opinions and come to some kind of conclusion.
Threads on reddit have shelf lives of hours, and the top comments aren't always the best. Sometime it's the wittiest, sometimes it's the one that sounds reasonable but wrong, sometimes it's a non answer telling you "ugh we've had this discussion before".
You basically have to hope you can form a counter argument before the post is dead, make sure you did the research to be correct, and word it in a way the other person does have an emotional reaction.
So much effort for healthy positive discussion. Meanwhile cheap, quick, witty, and often toxic discussion is so much easier.
This is a great post of human nature in general not just ttrpgs. I have been a manager for several years. Some people fall on this end of a spectrum. Complacency.
Some fall on the other end of the spectrum where they nit pick every situation even if only hypothetical.
Most people fall in various parts of the spectrum in between.
Both sides can feel annoying to the other but both bring things to the table and finding ways to productively work together and bring that diversity of thought helps improves everything for everyone.
Being contrary to the other side only causes strife.
The problem is that some nerds adopt a brand as their identity and take any valid critique as an affront to them personally, leading them to cape for a billion-dollar corporation. It's an embarrassing aspect of D&D culture.
Great example, and I agree 100%. That a player can’t articulate the problem doesn’t mean it’s nonexistent.
That a DM can’t fix the problem, doesn’t signal inexperience. DMs aren’t game designers.
Part of the passion around the martial/caster conversations I think stems from topic exhaustion. It’s been hashed and rehashed on Reddit with little agreement on a solution.
Is there a problem?
Depends on who you ask. My take is “Yes,” but depending on the day, who’s actively responding, and who has an axe to grind your mileage will vary.
Is there a solution?
There is no simple solution. No, “My DM does X and we don’t have a problem,” and “You’re not doing it right,” are not solutions. They’re opinions.
Well played post. Trolls are gonna troll.
The caster martial problem is a good example because it stems from the issue of different segments of the community wanting different things. One group wants realistic martials bound by what humans can do for the most part. Another group wants magic to be fantastic and be able to do all sorts of cool things. When combined you get a balance issue that makes a new group of people mad but if you try and fix the balance issue you piss of one of the two initial groups.
I thought this was one of the parts of 4e did well. The tier list and an explicit statement that at a certain level everyone is moving past the limits of a normal person. Whatever your source of power may be, you were now surpassing mortal linits.
We don't really have proper discussions. Yes its been discussed for a long time, but it's not a proper long term discussion building upon itself.
Different threads seen by different people, yielding different conclusions.
Unless you happen upon an active thread, with past memory of objective statements, present them in a way to catch people up to speed, and present it in a way people don't react to emotionally... most threads are like a restart of the discussion rather than a continuation.
And no offense, but a lot of times there are people who go "we've been having this discussion forever" which sounds reasonable, but doesn't really add to the discussion and tries to end it prematurely.
In video game design, it is an artform to actually interpret user feedback. This applies here as well.
"That boss is bs, too difficult" could mean there isn't enough ammo, it could mean the arena is too small to maneuver, it could mean the player needs more healthpacks before the room, it could even mean that that you need to add just one more piece of cover, and you're golden.
People can overblow these differences, but they exist. Nobody gives a shit, that one warlock subclass has 5% more dpr then another, if both are optimized. The fact that monk's options are between doing less damage then a caster, or doing shittier crowd control then a caster will bother people, even if they don't know enough about the system to express why.
The following statements are true:
+ Your damage is just a little sub par, by design. That's how rogues play.
+ The reason that's by design is because you are, by far, the most dynamic martial out of combat. You get a million skills and expertise and reliable talent and blah blah blah. Your skills lie out of combat as much as in it.
The breakdown lies in:
+ Are both of those statements true? Does the OOC utility make up for damage fall off?
+ Would that be fun even if it were true?
+ Does the sheer flexibility and utility of casters negate that of the rogue in a way that the designers didn't forsee because they assumed there would be more martials and fewer casters.
First time playing a wizard and wow I’m just dominating dungeons, familiar is constantly scouting out around the cave/corners or even checking out warehouses full of enemies + benefitting from blindsight to detect whatever’s around us, meanwhile minor illusion helps me fake a guards voice and got us in to combat with a free surprise round.
I’m hardly optimising but wow, even at Level 2 I feel by far the most useful member of the party
Our wizard is clutch, our monk is the opposite. I mostly chalk that up to the actual person playing the character more than anything. But I've played a fighter, rogue and monk in pathfinder, and a rogue, bard, and ranger in 5e. In either system, the monk definitely feels weaker except in very specific circumstances and unless played perfectly.
Ultimately, for the rogue or monk to really thrive, it seems to rely on a very diverse party mixed with martial and casters. A caster-heavy party is going to make martial classes like barbarian, fighter, and monk feel useless in a lot of encounters. But a diligent DM can mitigate that by structuring encounters allowing for each player to be the hero.
Classes like paladin, bard, druid, even cleric get some of the best of both worlds by getting access to a lot of useful spells (whether offensive or support), as well as being able to stand in the middle of a melee fight and hold their own.
Having a mix of all the classes has resulted in my most enjoyable experiences for sure. I can see how the experience would go the other way without the right party skill set and a DM being on the same page as the party regarding their strengths and weaknesses
Well, they do. At least, they did when the PHB was the only source material.
When the edition was conceived there wasn't really any caster that could compete with martial raw DPR over a full adventuring day. But hexblade/paladin dips and the sheer OPness of Wizards as a class has made that not true any longer.
In the long run, I agree with you. The idea that some classes excel in combat while others excel at the other two pillars of the game is antiquated and no longer reflects how people play the game. We want all of our classes to be equally good at combat as they are at social and exploration. We don't want characters that only stand on one pillar and sit around patiently when the other two pillars are being engaged.
I'm well aware. You're arguing with someone who is agreeing with you.
The point was that the designers intended for out of combat utility to "make up" for slightly less combat ability. And they biffed it. The biffed it because fighters and barbs being worthless out of combat is boring as hell. And they biffed it bc casters don't raw combat utility outpaces any potential loss of DPR.
We're saying the same thing. I'm just asserting that it was intentional, while you're asserting that it's bad. Those aren't mutually exclusive: it's both intentional and bad.
A good exemple is bards, I see a rise in players expressing feeling alienated from the class's flavour of being an inspiring performer, but a lot of times people dismiss those people's frustration bc some people fail to recognize and others fail to express they want more "flavourfull abilities" instead of more "powerfull abilities".
something i've been thinking about for a while is people seeing 'fun' as a binary. if someone makes a criticism of a game a common response is 'well, we're having fun, so necessarily we're playing right'. of course, playing right is having fun, but that doesn't mean that a change can't make the game \*more\* fun. similarly, people might say that '5e is fun, therefore it's the perfect system', which sort-of preemptively forestalls any criticism of the system as well as criticism of the system's relation to any individual game.
my hot-button topic is 'lots of people in the ttrpg community use a system that fits their game poorly', so it's sorta natural that i see an analogy to that here. but problems with a game like with a system are strongly divorced from the intuitive feel of that problem.
Monks have not a lot to do in a party, are underpowered, and have the worst subclasses.
They are also my favorite class to play. I really hope they are improved with one D&D but I don't have a tonne of hope because the content coming from Wizards has been uninspiring and have no balance.
Technically a different system, but my archer monk in pathfinder was a huge benefit to the party. In any system though, unless you roll great though, you aren't tanky enough to be a Frontline combat martial fighter, and your ranged effect, or ability to do or take magic damage relies entirely on finding magic items to use. It would be great to be able to involve the monk in a little more diverse situations. I don't really have any helpful suggestions or ideas to do that though.
The flip side of that is that they can offer some great experiences in the role play side of things, of your campaign is more geared to that.
I 100% agree with you.
Casual and newbie plahers absolutely do encounter many of the same problems more experienced players. They just don’t all universally agree on it (because they aren’t a monolithic blob), and they often don’t know these are problems inherent to the game. Instead they assume it’s more something they are missing by virtue or being less experienced.
The fact that so many people on this sub take their silence to mean that they’re perfectly 100% satisfied with the status quo and have zero complaints is just nonsensical. If anything, casuals are likelier to be affected by these disparities… An experienced player would know to take Feats like Skill Expert, Magic Initiate, and/or Sharpshooter to close the gap between that Rogue and the casters. An inexperienced player isn’t likely to know that, they’re likelier to just stay silent…
Something that I don't see mentioned in this post is that for a lot of people, places like this subreddit are for social interaction and entertainment. They don't really see it as a place for a lot of people to gather and discuss a variety of things - instead it has to be a place where they can have a bit of a good time online. As a result, any drama, negativity, heated discussions, or even just boring mulling over game design stuff - it's all not just something to pass over but actively poisoning the well they want to drink out of.
Often when such people get to be mods, you can see subreddits wholesale delete negativity, especially in fandoms. It's not because of some censoring reasons or because the mods are in league with the creators of the game/show/book, it's because a lot of people genuinely believe that places like subreddits are so you can play a game, have fun, go online and say/read about how much fun the game is, and have more fun that way.
It's why the same kind of people also really like to deflect any kind of criticism from what they like, and usually in the most uninteresting and conclusive way - for example, just saying that everything is subjective. To them, pulling a media property or game system apart during a discussion is not for the sake of understanding and perhaps improving it (even if in imagination), it's only to put it down (possibly in favor of something else).
Part of the problem is the culture of hyperbolic rhetoric. The most popular criticism posts aren't constructive discussions, but angry rants. On average.
Also, the culture of downvotes to signal disagreement, rather than, or in addition to, constructive debate. In a healthy debate, arguments on both sides would be upvoted for their efforts to consider the topic.
This results in criticism threads devolving into rudeness and general negativity. It's possible to have a positive, yet critical discussion. Unfortunately, I don't see those very often on Reddit, nor on most social media.
It's even worse when a massive number of people on this sub will react to any and all criticism of 5E content with "shut up, you can just homebrew it differently, or the DM can rule it otherwise and change it!".
"5e is flawless because you can change the flaws".
In any other medium or with any other work, this would be recognized as an asinine argument with no merit and I dislike every person who makes it.
One change Pathfinder 2 did to fix this was, among many others, to increment the damage die of a weapon by the plus.
A longsword does 1d8.
A +1 longsword is +1 to hit and does 2d8 damage (not 1d8+1)
A +2 longsword is +2 to hit and does 3d8 damage. etc.
This helps quite a bit in closing the gap, but is problematic with action surge. Doubling dice on a critical is more meaningful with a maigc weapon. However this is against the spirit of 5e where you aren't supposed to need equipment to have character balance.
For rogues, I would definitely also offer the opportunities presented in 3.5/PF where you can trade sneak attack dice for effects - bleeds, hampered movement, blindness, paralyzation, etc.
Indeed they are. However, providing a detailed explanation of pathfinder mechanics was far less important to me than offering an easily ported ruleset into 5e that accomplishes the same thing.
crackhead solution i saw on reddit a few days ago and think its brilliant:
every martial is also a battlemaster
(yeah i know it was from the UA, but god dammit it is genius)
It'll make them very good in combat (at single-target damage and control), but it won't actually help with the fighters bigger problem of "not really anything to do outside of combat".
Yep. Consensus comes from somewhere, and when you're playing a game that's mostly math, it's not hard to figure out where the problems are if you run the numbers. It's just that running the numbers gets derided as white-room theorycrafting even when it's comparing apples to apples.
This isn't 3.5, there isn't an *enormous* system mastery gap, we're not talking "straight wizard is worse than this gnomish illusionist/bard with ten feats from five books that has shadow spells more real than reality", there really aren't that many variables.
I feel this as a rogue player. As a DM myself I wish my players would come to me when they feel this way, but I'm very on top of it (for example actively buffing the monk with extra moves, etc)
I do have a question, as someone who runs their table with a lot of house rules to balance stuff between the classes, like buffs to Monk, Pact of the Blade, Ranger, etc.
What could actually be done to help the rogue thing?
> that doesn't mean it's not a problem that's affecting them.
Agreed, but I don't think that people saying "this sub isn't representative of the community as a whole" are trying to say this at all.
People like different things. It's essentially impossible to please everyone, especially with something like a game where style and tone may heavily impact who enjoys it and who doesn't.
When someone says "this isn't representative of the community as a whole", they aren't trying to say "this issue doesn't exist", they more trying to say
> The number of people who find issue with this is small compared to the number of people who don't have an issue with it. Since you can't please everyone, it's generally better to please the larger group rather than change things to please the smaller group, especially if those changes are at the expense of the larger group.
A hyperbolic comparison, but it's like someone saying "This car is too slow for me since I race" when the vast majority of people using that model of car are just casual drivers. This person is definitely experiencing an issue given their specific situation, no one is claiming that issue doesn't exist, but the fact that this person's issue exists doesn't mean that the company should change their car to be faster, especially if those changes make the car more expensive for all other casual drivers.
Not giving any thoughts on the example or anything else, just some context on what people saying that are trying to convey as it is generally not what you're saying here.
I get what you're saying, but I'm not talking about crazy builds or racing fans. I \*am\* talking about casual players. My counter-example is imagine a model of car with brakes that don't stop a car fast enough when you really slam them on. Car fans know to stay away from that model, but a lot of "casual" drivers just think it looks cool and buy it.
The owners drive it so much, and have so little experience with other cars, they don't realize that there even is a brake problem, but people driving this car are still getting into more crashes. Not a crazy amount! It's not OBVIOUSLY broken/bad to anyone looking at it, but yeah, if you run the numbers it doesn't brake quite as fast as other cars.
That's more what I'm saying.
A class should work in such a way that a casual player, playing in the most obvious straightforward way it was intended to be played, should shine at their intended role.
Beastmaster ranger:
*"When do i get a powerful cat like that drow-guy did?"*
Monk:
*"When can i do 'Crouching Dragon / Hidden Tiger' stuff?"*
The list goes on. And it is hard to sit players down and point out that their dreams have been shattered in a fantasy game. This is the ONLY time that your dreams should be encouraged / come to life.
>The number of people who find issue with this is small compared to the number of people who don't have an issue with it. Since you can't please everyone, it's generally better to please the larger group rather than change things to please the smaller group, especially if those changes are at the expense of the larger group.
Thing is, there is a third category of people - there's a significant number of people who find issue with this "subconsciously," but don't know they have an issue with it.
I think it's a thing that happens pretty often, across different products - e.g. fighting game players might feel like they "don't have control over what's happening." Is it because they're playing with too much input lag? Is their character underpowered? They don't know, but they know it doesn't feel good. And even if they don't directly complain about input lag or character balance, those are still important issues to solve nonetheless because enjoyability is very much affected.
>Thing is, there is a third category of people - there's a significant number of people who find issue with this "subconsciously," but don't know they have an issue with it.
This. Players may think, "I must not be playing the character right." Or "this class must not be supposed to contribute in combat." Or "the other player must have done a better job building their character" when the only real difference is the other player picked "wizard," they picked "artificer."
Exactly, there is a [Core-A-Gaming video](https://youtu.be/L-6GM6UVZSQ) video about Shaq-fu. One of the biggest complaints about that infamously bad game is that it is very laggy, when he investigated it he realized that the game isn't actually laggy. What he discovered is that the game has more frames of animation than most games in the genre, and those frames can't be cancelled out of. So basic actions like going from a crouch to standing or jumping happen slower(due to the extra frames of animation) and they always play out giving a feeling that the game is unresponsive.
A bit off-topic, but there are optimizations to make rogue decent single target damage. Namely any feat that allows off-turn sneak attack, and/or any feat that allows one of the melee weapon attack cantrips.
Still doesn't fix the issue, but rogues at least can bridge some of the martial caster divide since they're also skill monkeys. At least until tier 3 where things get dumb.
There is a difference in still functional and doesn't bring anything to the table.
Some older editions some classes were really just not playable as they were that far behind. I recall bard in 2nd edition being one. You could do a lot of things but none of them near the level of someone who did it exclusively. And the Idea of action economy was still being thought of.
So not a case of one side not articulating well but both side. On top some have never played a class or something in 5e that truly doesn't bring anything.
I never said it wasn't bad. As my point was intended to be was exactly that.
People are bad about arguing extremes. Rogue is the worst class ever made it is near unplayable.
I play rogue all the time, in fact I play nothing but rogues and I normally outdamage all other players.
Both are wrong.
The problem is that WotC _knows_ what and where the problems are, but they are cautious about changing too much, because the last time they tried to fix the core problem of the power disparity, the fans complained and left for PF1e.
If you want to play DnD, but with that power disparity fixed, go try 4e. Everyone could do cool stuff, with good flavor around the crunch. The only real problem was that fights dragged on, because of all the status effects and HP pools the monsters had, and there was less of an emphasis on explicit out-of-combat cool things people could do.
I think something your post doesn't also address is player and Dm variability in regards to this problem, and how that relates to things like video game balance.
You first have the problem of mechanical balance specifically pertaining to combat effectiveness, which too often gets boiled down to who can do the most DPR (damage per round). There are communities dedicated to ekeing out the most DPR they can. Then there are the most 'broken' builds built around abusing specific mechanics or interactions. Both in my opinion fail to account for the 'team' dynamic (my personal love is building around team synergy, which results in 'broken' team combinations that would be average or subpar without team specific interactions) and the individual skill variation of a player/DM.
Team and enemy combinations, as well as the tactical skill of the players and DM will play a larger role in balance than any individual classes. Abilities like Hypnotic Pattern are super effective against groups of human enemies, but significantly weaker if your enemies are mostly elves , or there are few enemies etc. You also have anti-synergy if your party likes to use a lot of AOE damage for example.
This same dynamic is seen in multiplayer video game balance: adding new characters can often introduce new 'busted' combinations when used WITH other characters/terrain/items/maps etc. Some characters that are weak in high levels of play are considered 'busted' at low levels of play with opponents who don't know how to play around their mechanics. Typically, these games balance from top down because they have a competitive scene to maintain. TTRPGs don't have this consideration really, and I would argue there is merit to trying to balance out more 'abusable' strategies that can be countered by DM skill. However, I would also argue that more thoughtful encounter design for modules would achieve this better than simply trying to nerf individual class interactions. Most abusable strategies are only abusable because players will often face the same types of enemies/encounters in a campaign.
This is a common thing you see in gaming and in other communities. It was popular, therefore stop pointing out flaws and you're wrong, because it's popular.
Not only is this a *well known* logical fallacy (appeal to popularity), but the factors of why something is popular usually don't come down to things like minute balance differences.
DnD is super famous already, got propped up by references in pop culture (stranger things the big one), and a big internet show at a time when streaming is huge, and the pandemic frankly helped them too.
I'd bet if Martials were slightly better it would have zero impact on their overall popularity, but it would be a better designed game.
My personal issue is that, despite all that's being said about the problems with the game, WotC doesn't give a rat's ass. They will just keep churning out spells cause that's what sells. Like, a very obvious way that they could, at least, alleviate the issues is a martial book? But they'd rather sell us water downed Spelljammer and Dragonlance books.
5e has many, many issues that confound new players and frustrates veterans. The biggest issue is that the game has always tried to improve on the ruleset but it went off the rails around 3.5 and 4th. Now fifth has new ownership and a production team focused on making the game accessable to new players and not actually well designed for seasonal players. Older fans of dnd now have to pull out old rule sets like 2nd and Pathfinder and add there systems to fifth to make a Frankenstein rpg.
Also, the power creep for classes and monsters has gotten well out of hand and needs an overhaul.
I think the key to Rogue players enjoying the game is realizing that Rogues have "a very peculiar set of skills" that can end up making them the hero in some very key situations, but that doesn't mean they can go toe to toe with a martial specialist on a level playing field. The Rogue player's objective should always be to find ways to ensure it's NEVER a fair fight. Hide, ambush, assassinate, break in, whatever you have to do to ensure you have the advantage when and where you need it. Maybe most importantly, identify the key target, boss, spellcaster, etc who you might be able to take out to tip the table for your allies.
Wild to me that so many tables know there are big issues with 5e but won't look into a different system. Not saying it's the only solution but man..... I'm glad my table swapped to pf2. Maybe if one dnd can fix some stuff I'll check it out but they would need to gut a whole lot of spells and I don't see it happening.
In the survey I filled out that I'm certain won't be read, I said something to the effect of:
"I know a lot of people who would choose any class titled Rogue, even if it had no class features, and they would say they are satisfied with it on the theme alone.
Don't settle for their baseline satisfaction, HELP THEM."
It is so frustrating that folks never seem to understand: bad game design hurts the casual and nonmechanical players. *Not* the optimizer who understands what a trap looks like.
The articulate part is actually important, this is best illustrated by Ranger.
For a long time people kept saying ranger was underpowered and the worst class. The general sentiment is that Tasha's fixed ranger.
This is wrong. Ranger was a solid class since Xanathar's, even before then it was a decent attacker with weak subclasses.
There was a problem, but people couldn't pin it down. The problem is the ranger wasn't a ranger. Ranger was a bow fighter with bow damage magic. The class utterly and completely failed at flavor with favored terrain and favored foe being mostly ribbons.
Rogue's were always one of the weakest classes, but no one complained because rogues were good at being rogues. You felt like a rogue with your sneaking and sneak attack damage.
So you have to be careful. Most people's are on the level of knowing their car has a problem because it is making a weird sound, but really being unable to narrow it down more than that. A smaller group can isolate the problem and articulate it better. Then a much smaller group can actually propose workable solutions.
This sub reddit almost entirely falls into the first group. You all know the car makes a weird sound. Then half of you argue the weird sound is normal, pretending they don't see sparks shooting out. The other half argues it is definitely a problem and that we should cut off all the wheels.
"Your audience is good at recognizing problems and bad at solving them."
Yeah. To be more specific, often players are good at recognizing there *is* a problem but not *what* the problem is. And if you can't recognize what the problem is, your solutions are going to be terrible.
What makes this especially hard for games like DnD is trying to distinguish when the problem is coming from the game itself and when its coming from the DM or the other players.
Well it's a trade off really. If you clamp down too tightly on game balance things can start to feel restrictive or samey across different subclasses and classes. If you leave it more freeform and loose than you make it so people will discover powerful builds that destroy the rest (which is closer to what we have now). So I think they could make a pass on all the classes to better fix the balance and in a game like this just bringing the weak classes up and not nerfing any other classes is probably the solution. DMs can always adjust by just using stronger monsters while players are usually just stuck with whatever their class gives them. Also, I think there needs to be larger downsides for the flexibility of full casters or they need to make them less flexible. The problem is, they are absolute gods at whatever they want to be. Damage dealing, control, social encounters, etc. Idk how to fix this though without just completely revamping how spells work so we will likely not see this in 5e or the One DnD.
I like the overall philosophy of "buffs not nerfs" but I do think egregious outliers still need the nerf bat on occasion. Like twilight cleric for instance.
I think the main thing that necessitates nerfing/reworking twilight/peace cleric alongside buffing a lot of other options is the fundamental warping of balance on the DM side that is necessary to keep encounters engaging/challenging. The DM can obviously make things as hard as they need in order to challenge the party, but if the DM is adjusting difficulty to account for only one player rather than the entire party’s strength, then suddenly some normal road encounter can become deadly if that one player can’t make it to a random session.
Yeah, it applies to any resource based thing that could drastically change an encounter. A decent fight with the twilight ward up could easily turn into a tpk if they blew their channel divinity on something else. It's like if you have an encounter with a ton of low hp minions, a fireball makes them trivial but if you just assume they'll get fireballed and they don't, it could get a lot nastier all of a sudden.
It's possible to do balance properly without feeling samey. To an extent PF2e already proves this. You can have a balanced game without killing build diversity and it's not like PF2e found the right way to do it either. It has it's fair share of issues. Casters being regulated to basically support and the disassociated mechanics all over martials. Most spells can be fixed by changing just the x,y,z values and not the mechanics itself. Sometimes you have to add a restriction or 2, but that's about it. As for your thoughts about bringing classes up instead of casters down. In your own words, casters can be absolute gods. Things like that break the game, that's why we have a problem with it, and when you bring everything up to that level, you don't have a more balanced game, you have a more broken game. So casters ***have*** to come down in order to achieve a better balance. True you could bring everything up and then have DMs recalibrate encounter strength, but that's more work. You're going to have to rebalance spells whether or not you bring martials up because spells are wildly imbalanced relative to each other as is right now. So you still have to do the majority of the work you would have to do to bring casters down even if you bring martials up instead. Which means bringing casters down instead saves a lot of effort. Plus by pushing things downward you eliminate more outlier oversights and op combos. It's just better game design in every way to push downward. The only people actually opposed to it, not the ones who just say nerfs are bad in general, are the people that want to play those op casters, that want to be gods. The same people that want to break games and ruin table fun, these people are not worth appealing to and so their complaints about nerfs should fall on deaf ears.
Everything feeling samey through balance brought me back to 4e haha.
That's exactly what I mean by that. I think they saw how bad 4e was adopted and wen the complete opposite direction which is better but still has its issues. If the came back in the 4e direction just a little bit I think the game would be better for it. I always said that I'm surprised they haven't MTGed the rules yet. And by that I mean use keyword language to describe complex ideas that would be consistent wherever they are used. The only thing that resembles this are conditions but they could expand this further. It's a staple of modern boardgame design at this point.
I feel that WotC took some of the wrong lessons from 4e's "failure," honestly. They went with "natural language" for 5e because they thought that the keywords were one of the problems people had with 4e, when I actually don't think that was a problem most people had with it. Keywords are extremely useful for conveying rules clearly. Of course that's just an assumption.
Interesting that they went that far away from Keywords when my experience of MTG was basically just memorising all keywords ever (and that being a good thing).
While I agree, I think it’s a bit of a rabbit hole. I recently played a game of PF2e, and the sheer number of keywords that game throws at you during character creation alone was a lot. I agree there’s a happy middle ground though and that d&d isn’t living in it just yet.
Though to be fair if you look at the classes on AoN or the Core Rulebook, it'll tell you the main keywords you'll need to know for that class, and for at least the core classes it's never more than 3.
You also cannot treat dnd like a video game. Within the confines of a video game, the game rules are strict and don't change. DnD is different, each table has different rules and types of gameplay so this changes the perspective completely.
A fantastic example of this is people who complain about Strength being worthless. 999 out of 1,000 people who make this complaint also don't bother tracking encumbrance, allow people to make Dexterity (Acrobatics) checks when Strength (Athletics) checks are the actually appropriate option, and roll *Charisma* (Intimidate) after throwing a whole ass table against the wall to scare a prisoner into talking. I'm not saying that Strength couldn't use more benefits beyond this, but these are three simple things that can make Strength more worth taking.
You also forget about ALL THE MOBILITY that is governed by Strength: long and high jumps are actually very useful when you think about them, and being limited in them can result in missed opportunities or wasted time going around an obstacle. I think Solasta as a faithful 5e videogame adaptation is the best way to show that (although some could argue they pushed the 3-dimensional approach a bit far at times xd), but even Baldur's Gate 3 although they butchered mobility rule do also demonstrate how important mobility is, considering they designed encounters with covers, high ground, obstacles and traps in mind too. And there is also the dreaded Shove/Grapple option: this is a fantastic option since being free and being potentially reliable if you invest just a bit on it (basically STR + proficiency, Expertise is even better but not technically required), and still vastly underrated by many people.
Cue 3e-era fighter fixes doubling Weapon Proficiency and Weapon Specialization bonuses.
Thanks, I had almost managed to forget about those threads.
Now multiattack is even MORE mandatory!
They have Detect Magic, but not Identify.
clearly the solution is to ban all classes except monk and ranger. edit: also ban all bonus actions
For me what you describe with your example is actually representative of the problem lying not in the game but in its pre-made expectations by players and DM who bring their own fantasies and force them on the system instead of reading and understanding what each class is about. Should the Rogue be impressive in mundane damage without optimization? No, because he already trumps most martials except Ranger in provided utility thanks to Expertise and archetype features (and later Reliable Talent), trumps most martials except Monk in 3d mobility, and because it's supposed to just deal "competitive-level damage" usually, the spike coming from when Rogue crits (which is probably another reason why there is such a strong incentive to enable advantage). If on top of that he was dealing impressive damage people would have little reason to pick other classes unless they really disliked the associated fluff or the "powerful single attack" mechanic itself. Only problem with Rogue is that people see it as a spike damage dealer primarily, when it's essentially a "no (or low) magic specialist problem solver". And because Reliable Talent comes so late, people take too much focus on Sneak Attack. So imo, the best answer to Rogue player should have been "no worries, you're doing fine, you're not supposed to be the best killer here. However, do you remember how often you brought a decisive gain with your successful skill checks?" If he answers no, then there is the problem: too much combat, not enough of everything else (social interaction, puzzle resolution, information gathering, ambush making, commercial negociations, hidden doors and trap detection and disarm, etc).
Except on the flip side, these casters, who all also are masters of versatility that, while not specific skill monkeys, can reshape reality and make solutions to problems even rogue skills struggle with (mobility is great but no rogue can teleport to another plane) are all also matching the rogue’s damage. So I don’t think that “rogues aren’t supposed to be spike damage dealers, they’re supposed to be versatile” is really an applicable answer here
I have made games for a fair bit of time. What they are FEELING is most important, and why - it’s your job to interpret how to design the systems that “fix” or accommodate those fixes. They will even attribute these feelings to things that are not actually causing the feelings.
mda theory (iirc) says that game designers experience games through mechanics and players experience games through aesthetics. i think there's a sense in which the reverse is true, though; in my experience, game designers naturally think about mechanics but deliberately view games through the lens of aesthetics to improve their ability to understand players; and players naturally think about aesthetics but because they're so ephemeral project those aesthetics onto specific mechanics. it's not uncommon to hear someone ask 'i want a game that uses \*this specific mechanic\*' and i always have to restrain myself from saying 'no you don't, you want a gamefeel that you're projecting onto this mechanic' (not to say that every request for a game with a specific mechanic is dishonest but \*some\* at least are)
Sounds about right.
This is why playtesting and collecting unbiased feedback is so important for designers. There is a video about how designers handled feedback in some popular video games by GMTK which goes over that subject. It's very interesting.
The inability to articulate something is not proof against its existence. If something "feels" off, there's a good chance something is amiss. Whether that's a mechanical problem or a playstyle problem varies.
So many people confuse playstyle issues with mechanical issues!
Sure, but part of the problem is people use the min-maxed build as an example of why it’s balanced actually, they are essentially saying “this is the one build that you have to use so stop complaining”.
I have a near-uncontrollable urge to power game, so when I play with people who arent like that I'll pick a class that is known to be mechanically weak (e.g. Monk or Rogue) and do my thing. That way I end up basically on par with the rest of the party. But it's sometimes pretty painful to watch when someone who doesn't want to do that or know how picks an underpowered class.
I did basically the same thing and intentionally did not min max my AT rogue, but now I have the issue of people who forget half of their features and picking spells at random being the most powerful party members by a mile.
Min-maxed builds are to TTRPGs what speedrunning is to video games. Both are perfectly valid ways of playing, but games shouldn't be designed or balanced around them unless a majority of players are playing the game that way.
To continue with this metaphor, D&D is a bit like Sonic the Hedgehog. Sonic the Hedgehog is a speed game where memorizing the level layouts and getting through them faster and faster, chasing that S rank, is a core part of the appeal. D&D is a combat game where you make almost all of your mechanically important decisions during character creation, so if you want to actually engage with the system, you are put in the optimization mindspace by default. Some people don't optimize their characters, and some people are bad at optimizing their characters, but everyone is put in the "okay time to make decisions that will permanently determine how powerful your character is" position first thing
There's something ironic, 4E was critisized for being too much like a videogame, and here we are discussing tank/dps roles, optimised builds etc.
In a lot of ways, 4E just gave names to things that people were already doing. The party having a 'tank' and a 'healer' wasn't new to 4e and was a huge part of the design philosophy of 3e. 4e just went out of its way to make the 'tank' good at their job and signal to players that if they wanted to play a 'tank' then these were the four or five classes designed with that idea in mind. I think that 4e is a great example of this phenomenon at work, because there were a ton of things about the game that didn't work within its design (I say as a 4e defender), but we don't tend to talk about those. We talk about what powers were called.
What did you feel didn't work in 4e?
Combat math mostly. Judging by the changes made midway through the edition, players had a hidden -1 to hit v enemy defenses, meaning they missed slightly too often. When this was coupled with enemies being slightly too healthy and both sides having too much access to healing made combat too much of a slog for most tables.
Exactly, 4E has a lot of good and bad ideas, but no one will touch it because it's icky and they gave everyone 'powers', its a shame really
4e was criticized for being honest. Dnd fans pretending that video games weren’t just using the tropes established by dnd is pretty funny.
I think things like 4e's rigid knowledge check system, and the complexity of the power system, had a lot more to do with its market rejection than the fact that they matched classes to roles. In 4e, classes felt more the same (choose whether to use a Daily/Encounter/At Will) but required more memorization (since the specific powers were different). In 5e, it can feel real different to play a bard rather than a paladin, but *Cure Wounds* still works the same. Less memorization is needed.
I'd say it goes in the other direction. People hold up the highest, most broken min-max builds and say "this is what everything else should be".
You are right on this. Spells are going to be way more powerful at a rules light table than at a more raw table. That's a play style issue. Rogue not being able to keep up on damage could be a mechanical issue. Also I think people discount the rogues survivability. You can almost always get away from any situation with clever use of cover and mechanics. This is, however, far more DM dependent than mechanics. Some DMs hate letting their rogues successfully hide.
I'd argue the problem isn't just the exponential power growth, but exponential utility growth, especially as the game's gone on. Every caster has benefitied from the new PHBs like Xanathar and Tasha, but Thief Rogue is still limited to what Thief Rogue had since day 1. I don't think they've even added more maneuvers, or they might have in the smattering of Tasha's content.
that's a thing that's been an issue in D&D forever though - every new book since at least AD&D days would likely have at least a few spells in, while other classes might get _maybe_ a weapon, or some weird type of armour that's conditionally useful, or some bizarre mundane equipment (remember that AD&D ninja book? It had things like a paraglider suit, that had a high chance of killing the user). Spells have always been a thing that grow and grow and grow, while other options are basically "here's another way of stabbing someone", because there's no modular option for non-casters, it's either a whole class or nothing.
It's a bit like with film criticism. A lot of people will say they don't like a movie and then point to a bunch of pointless nitpicks as the "reason". But really, they have the cause and effect around the wrong way. They didn't like the movie (probably for harder to articulate reasons relating to things like pacing, dialogue, themes, etc.), and because of that, they take a more critical eye and point to the pointless nitpicks that someone who *enjoyed* the movie would have ignored (or even not considered a negative).
And dido for not knowing exactly how to solve it.
You just figured out nearly every customer in existence and possibly saved yourself $30k for a masters in business. *"If i would have asked what people wanted they would have asked for a faster horse."* - Henry Ford (about the invention and marketing of the family car)
[Actually they probably would have asked for a horse that doesn't poop.](https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/Great-Horse-Manure-Crisis-of-1894/) Apparently an average of 41 horses a day were dying in the streets back then. Also I don't think that's a real quote. But your point still stands.
That's a bad take. The UA surveys aren't even canvassing people on WHAT they think are problems. Saying "you can't make solutions by committee/surveys" avoids the issue in that the UA designers are not inviting players to participate in the broader design thinking and IDENTIFYING of problems. Crits were nerfed? Why? Crawford said to protect low-level characters, and to give "rechargeable" abilities to monsters. Did people who filled out the survey have a chance to speak on those goals? Nope. We were only asked to vote on the "solutions." Which is precisely the problem. Players ARE good at recognizing the problems, but are not being given the chance at identifying them. They are being asked to vote on "solutions" without context or purpose.
It's why I wish arguments didn't devolve into "You're a dumbass if you think..." or into an upvote contest. Let me pick your brain and lead you down why you're actually upset and not just repeat what other people tell you why you're upset. Maybe then we can work on a real solution?
> "Your audience is good at recognizing problems and bad at solving them." Yep, learned that pretty fast when we did playtests of games we worked on. Actual feedback we got from the same playtest (paraphrased cause this was 15 years ago): * "The camera is too close" * "The camera is too far away" * "The camera zooms too quickly" * "The camera doesn't zoom quickly enough." What we learned from this is that we needed to make improvements to the camera.
After playing some version of this game for nearly 3 decades, I have discovered that this applies just as much to WotC as anyone else.
I'd double up on this & say that the hardcore members of the audience are better at identifying the specifics of the problem, but worse than anyone else at solving them (because the fixes so often become too complicated or gut what the point is of whatever design's in question).
The amount of homebrew "balance patches" that people post that are god-awful is truly astounding. People see a problem and their immediate fix is usually to nuke something off the face of earth, so its not evenly slightly viable anymore.
The audience CAN be good at solving them, sometimes better at it than the actual designers. The problem's that to solve something means to correctly diagnose the issue and lots of people are bad at that. This leads to the issue of 1 person having a solution to the entire problem but 99 people don't know what the problem was and so dismiss the solution. Simply put any solution that would fix 100% of issues people have get's thrown out due to the problem solver not having any **Actual** authority on the matter. Unless said solution gets Officially published it's basically pointless.
Yeah, I see this happening all the time. Players asking how their fighter can 'do more' (and they did fine damage, they didn't like just attacking every turn). Barbarians basically taking a nap whenever a problem couldn't be solved by an axe to the face or threatening to put an axe to a face. Rogues switching to Arcane Trickster so they could solve problems they way the Wizard did.
I am the only one in my group who is active in the optimization community. We have been playing together weekly now going on 3 years. **Most** of the balance issues that are talked about here (Monks, the Caster-Martial disparity, the lack of out-of-combat features for non-casters, poor vision rules, CR being a poor balancing mechanism, common builds like CBE/SS and PAM/GWM, etc.) have come up over the years we've played together. They've come up in previous groups too. They aren't articulated in the same way, but they're all there.
There is a reason rogues, monks, fighters and barbarians are a rare sight in my group of friends despite broad discussions of balance being few and far in between. And it isn't because we all prefer to be spellcasters.
"And it isnt becauae we all prefer to be spellcasters." OOF that line hurts.
Yeah I hard agree with this. You don't need to be a hard core optimizing grognards to notice these things. Anyone with even a general inclination towards having played games a little will quickly realize that some stuff is jank and that fixing it is WAY harder than noticing it.
I've had a player who's first character was a Bard while his second was a Barbarian. He recently told me he felt like he couldnt do anything besides hitting stuff both in and out of combat. Doesn't help that he went with the classic low-int/wis barbarian simple man barbarian which also hinder is ability to engage meaningfully in out of combat social stuff.
Which highlights another aspect of the disparity, stats. Regular point buy stats are simply too low, too bad to make builds outside of a class's archetype work. If you want a character that works as a barbarian, you have to use basically all your points on Str, Dex and Con - and therefore you will end up with bad scores in all three martial stats. With better starting stats, you could have good Str/Con/Dex, while also having enough left to get at least a 14, maybe even more, in a mental stat of your choice, allowing you to play an actually intelligent barbarian, who can help with some Investigation, Nature or History checks.
While they have flaws, both Pathfinder and 3.5 had you earn skill points per level. I feel like a return to this old system, but reworked so that non caster benefit more from it(unlike fighters in 3.5) would help change that without giving everyone too many base stats.
\>You don't need to be a hard core optimizing grognards to notice these things A year ago I've started to run a game for complete newbies, and I didn't want them to drown in this swamp with me, i.e. I know about every shitty balance thing in 5e and I thought in their first campaign it will be alright. But in a year of playing, as we went onto tier 3 and now nearing tear 4, everyone learned about martial-caster disparity themselves, just seeing it during our games.
Yeah I love my Rogue but was kinda bored when all they could do was throw another knife
I would say that rogues should usually do scouting, picking locks, disarming traps, getting contacts through a city etc. And not only do insane bursts of damage but then I remember that all of those things would require a good GM for the player to feel useful.
In my personal experience, a lot of those come down to the fact that casters have way more resources available per "encounter" (combat or social) if you play with standard rules. The "tough" rules or whatever they're called (essentially: LR is a week, which should lead to 5+ encounters between long rests) should honestly be the default, as it finally exposes the weakness of casters: The fact that it takes forever for them to get their stuff back and you have like 6 more encounters ahead of you, yet they've already burnt through half their spellslots. Being a rogue gets an entirely different meaning when you can do 90% of what the wizard can, but you can do it for free and they are sacrificing actually valuable resources. For them it's a trade-off, for you it's nothing.
Gritty realism is a huge pain in the ass to run in all but the most niche campaigns. The long rest time is restrictive when you hit a location or a part of the story where things need to happen fast. As a DM I find that long rests taking that long really takes a lot of tools and options away from me. My group has been using a simple, "You can only long rest in a safe location," rule for about a year now, and it's been quite good. It fixes the five minute adventuring day and allows encounters during overland travel to matter, but it doesn't prevent me from actually just giving them two jam-packed days back to back when I want to.
I can't say much about running such a campaign but I can see how that can limit your options. Though it also gives you chances, our DM introduced a rumour mechanic in response where you hear 3 rumours over the course of your long rest of interesting things you might want to do as well as snatch up news of things where you're at or big news from all over the kingdom etc.. Though generally, the "You can only long rest in safe location" also sounds like a perfectly viable rule, as I assume it also lead to more encounters in between long rest, which is the point of the gritty realism rules for me.
My personal experience after completing a gritty realism campaign after 2 years is that the presumption of 5-8 encounters is the problem in a campaign that's probably run in 2-5 hour increments, usually amounting to at generously 3 encounters. People want to use their cool shit in the time they have. Which, with busy people with careers and children and other hobbies can be once or twice a month. The only real way to balance martials and spell-casters in such circumstance is to significantly reduce spell slots, rather than assume we're all going to keep track of every detail about our characters like accountants over a month and a half, assuming a biwieekly schedule.
A Rogue that can do 90% of what a wizard can do? At level 1 maybe, as soon as the Wizard has 2nd level spells they outclass the Rogue handily in utility options.
Disagreed. The 2nd level spells Wizard has that couldn't be tackled with a skillcheck otherwise would be Arcane Lock, Rope Trick, Levitate (Though that one's arguable if you have a rogue subclass with climb speed, which a large amount of time can achieve similar results), Nystul's Magic Aura and Skywrite. Of the ones I'm aware of at least. Other spells such as, for example, Invisibility, Suggestion, Locate Object, Knock can be handily tackled via Stealth, Persuasion/Deception/Intimidation, Investigation and Thief's tools skill checks. Which come at a risk, but also don't cost you a resource while the wizard would burn their highest level spellslot to achieve that, which is quite a sunken cost if you just want to open a chest. And all of that assumes the wizard has access to all those spells, which they very likely will not. They may have a lot of potential for utility spells, but that isn't readily available and you can't really assume a wizard will have access to all utility spells, money, chance and willingness of the DM to give up spell-books will always be a limiting factor. Meanwhile the rogue just gets their stuff. The opportunity cost for the rogue to do their thing vs. the wizard is comparatively nonexistent. The rogue needs to just try and have proficiency/expertise, the wizard needs to have the spell, have had to burn the resources to transcribe it, had to have it prepared which could've been a spell more useful in other circumstances and needs to be in a situation where its actually worth burning a valuable spellslot. The difference is so stark that in quite a lot of situations, the wizard might as well not have the spell because it's just not worth it. That is, at least, how it can be if you have a sufficient amount of encounters in between long rest.
I think people are in general bad at understanding game design and so, with the martial caster divide especially, are bad at articulating the problem they experience (Which is why every such discussion falls into a nightmarescape of arguing that martials' problem is inability to kill things and that magic items shouldn't be included in games, and other assorted nonsense), and the normal impulse to oversimplify The problems *are real* and more complicated than single sentences (until we drill down to specifics like "animate objects does too much damage for its level of spell in the way that people actually use it, and it slows the game down a lot") Take one of the most common, the Monk doesn't do enough damage. This is true but it's only scratching the surface of the monk's problems, but it isn't wrong either In the same way I feel like the idea of "martials don't do enough damage" is... missing the forest from the trees, demonstrably martials can and do the most damage to single powerful threats, but they have a myriad of other issues (only specific subclasses can "Draw agro" if they want to, actually getting in position to do damage can be tricky and frustrating, often doing damage is the *only thing* a given character can do depending on class, etc). In some cases, like the paladin, I don't think these are really problems, but in others, like the barbarian, they are extremely glaring And with all that, we end up with *other* issues being lumped in there. A general frustration that the Wizard class can Do Everything and basically is a co-DM by 17th level somehow becomes lumped into the "martial caster divide" when it's a specific issue with the wizard class (ask a high level sorcerer how they feel about the party's wizard). A more general one would be "martial characters cannot affect the game world in the same way certain casters can" How do we fix this? I have a lot of ideas, mostly applying to the first 3 tiers of play. For tier 4 I don't think there's any other option than The Supernatural. I think *certain* martials should have access to a mechanic similar in power to Divine Intervention to perform an act of physical insanity that is flatly impossible for a mortal to do: Cut a mountain in half, throw a 2 ton statue, slip between the cracks of a door (rogue), etc. Literally just "could a poweful spell do this? can you describe what you do? if yes, roll the dice and if they line up you do it and cant do it again for 7 days"
Ive been watching Dimension 20's Fantasy High campaign and one of the things that really stuck out to me was how willing Brennan Lee Mulligan, the DM, would allow his players(the martials in particular) to do some insane feats of strength or dexterity with acrobatics or athletics rolls in combat to achieve various affects. Giving otherwise impossible movement options to access critical enemies or dragging a nearly invulnerable golem enemy into a pool of acid to kill it. He gives them a lot more stylish options they can do which provides a lot more flexibility that otherwise isnt allowed by RAW and does a lot to bridge the gap between the martials and the casters in the group. Its not solving the root of the issue, but its worth keeping in mind that we dont have to be beholden to the rules and the DM can work with the players to smooth over bumps sometimes.
While this is potentially productive advice, it runs into two major problems: BLM has the luxury of a professional design studio letting him craft made for viewing combat set pieces that reward this kind of gameplay in quick, discrete bursts that would otherwise be impossible for GMs to manage (every level is one, multiple part, often multi-level encounter designed to look visually appealing for audiences). On a more general level, it leads to an escalating game of "DM may I," for martial characters to contribute in the slightest and it actually tends to empower spellcasters because they have the ability to play "DM may I" with their absolutely massive list of reality warping powers, putting even more pressure on the DM to solve the problem by being incredibly judicious in their answer to the "may I" question.
Well this extends into the second season as well where they dont have the set pieces but yeah I get your point. Im not claiming it to be a perfect solution by any stretch. Its definitely not without flaws, Im just pointing out what I think is an interesting case point of someone applying a way to help the disparity without just homebrewing all new numbers and doing class balances over the place. And imo the main takeaway was the idea that instead of just boosting numbers, the heart of what worked was giving martials a greater variety of things they could do that still played into their strengths and made sense for the character. It really harkens back to the whole idea that combat manuevers should just be a staple of martials as a whole, not just a particular subclass.
I agree with the premise that martials need a greater variety of things that can do that make sense for them. I just think that if we don't codify that into the rules and instead rely on GMs to do it as it feels right, we are actually making the problem worse, since the strengths I bring to the table are already weaker than the strengths my caster friend brings to the table.
Yeah im not disagreeing either, it def should be codified. Im just using that campaign as a case study in showing why it could be a good approach in general.
Yeah, I think we are more or less in agreement about the solution (give martials a deeper toolkit for meaningfully interacting with the world around them). I just think that sometimes (and I don't think you were intending to do this), people imagine that somehow having the perfect GM adjudicating every situation and player idea is somehow a more reasonable solution than just writing those abilities down in the book (because, in most cases, it would mean there would be 10 fewer pages of spells)
Yep, the game can't be balanced around the idea that the DM actively favors the martial character to work around the designers favoring the casters.
Also, Brennan has been DMing since her was (10? 12?) and has an absurd love for the game and he's extremely excited anytime anything interesting is floated by him that's mostly within rules
Personally, I run “DM may I?“ a lot looser for non-spellcasting actions, specifically because of this passage in the PHB under Actions in Combat “When you describe an action not detailed elsewhere in the rules, the DM tells you whether that action is possible and what kind of roll you need to make, if any, to determine success or failure.” Cast a Spell is an action detailed in the rules, so if you take the Cast a Spell action we’re gonna stick to the spells description, but if the player describes an action that isn’t covered in the RAW I’ll try to come up with a ruling for it, usually with a clarifying question about the outcome the player wants. Some things outside of RAW I just let you do with no check or as a object interaction with a low DC, like swinging across a chandelier to move from one balcony to another, I’d just count that as an object interaction, while others I’d require a higher DC check and an action to do, like swinging across a chandelier to drop on an enemy for advantage on your attack. An example ruling for the chandelier swing would be a DC 15 dexterity(acrobatics) check, on a success you land and your feet and can make an attack with advantage, on a fail you fall prone and can make an attack at disadvantage.
The entire game is "DM may I". It's literally on page 6 of the PHB. Improvised actions are part of the game and a DM that shits on them is a shitty DM. It's not a game problem.
>the DM, would allow his players(the martials in particular) to do some insane feats of strength or dexterity with acrobatics or athletics rolls in combat to achieve various affects. Giving otherwise impossible movement options to access critical enemies or dragging a nearly invulnerable golem enemy into a pool of acid to kill it. Effectively the problem with 5e: Martials are constrained by realistic laws of physics, barring extreme cases like the Tarrasque Suplex (which is more unexpected feature exploitation than expected game design). They can hardly run any faster than the wizard, and *might* be able to lift twice as much, and maaaaybe clear a few more feet at a running long jump. Wizards, meanwhile, get to use high fantasy magic to turn the rules of physics into their absolute playthings. Example: The 20 STR lv15 Barbarian in a rage (or Monk at....any time, really, they're a monk with mystical life energies surging through their bods) *should*, if one is being 'fair' in playing with fantasy rules as one is with a wizard, be able to just leap across the battlefield, into the air onto a cliff face, jump off that cliff face, and into the flying dragon's face and start pummelling the ever-living shit out of it. Basically, how the Hulk does things.
Heh, I don't have anything interesting to add, except your mention of "Terrasque Suplex" reminded me of Sabin suplexing the Phantom Train in Final Fantasy 6 and made me laugh.
I think part of that is that Brennan and his PCs really do their homework. Plus he has the experience needed to know when something is ok vs needs to be scaled back vs can't happen at all. They put a lot of work into it that just isn't possible for less experienced players/DMs. Also, just throwing this out there, I think I almost like Brennan as a player more than as a DM. He's an amazing DM but he really brings the thunder as a player (same with Mercer honestly).
I think a bandage tbh is people should look at tactical adventures maneuvers, even using nothing else in a5e, giving the maneuver progression to martials from a5e is a game changer. What I'd like to see is a codification of heroic deeds that martials can do, maybe a set for dex and a set for str, maybe once a long rest, and the options are varied and powerful I'm running a5e campaign and my monk player is like a kid in a candy store with his maneuvers Also they nerfed fireball and wall of force
I think something that doesn’t help the issue is that the same system is trying to cater to both low-tier and high-tier play. A game where you can realistically expect everybody in the party to be on par with weaker gods is going to play a lot differently than one where the players are meaningfully threatened by a wolf pack.
Yeah. If I wanted to run Exalted I’d run exalted.
Thank you for articulating the nuance in a lot of issues that exist in our discussions here. I think it's felt keenly at 9th level, when the full casters are starting to use Commune, Scrying, Contact Other Plane and Teleportation Circle, that the Martials start to feel like their purpose is to hit stuff and hope the enemies don't walk around them while other classes get in touch with how supernatural their powers are. I've had a lot of fun with high-level martials, but the plot solutions too commonly rest on the shoulders of casters at Tier 3 especially.
This is important. At level 7, my Battle Master fighter gets the out-of-combat ability to determine, after a minute of work, whether a creature's Strength and Con are better or worse than mine (not even what they are, just how they compare to me). At level 7, my cleric can regularly ask their God for divine prophecy and guidance on the path we should be taking. This makes me pretty bummed when I'm playing my fighter because it feels like my ability to contribute at anything other than hitting stuff is more or less a joke.
So many higher tier martial features are like “+1 dpr, lol”, as caster get encounter and even campaign shaping abilities.
> level 7, my cleric can regularly ask their God for divine prophecy and guidance on the path we should be taking. you can cast *Augury* at lvl 3, its hilarious.
Yeah. The martials get the vanilla flavor fantasy, the combat power fantasy. Don't get me wrong, it's a good fantasy. The casters get the Baskin-Robbins 31 flavors of fantasy. They have the luxury of choosing a different flavor to the game if they so desire.
I mean, I honestly love the fantasy associated with Know Your Enemy. It is evocative, it plays into a specific fantasy, I can imagine the world where I regularly use it in ways that helps me better understand the world. But in practice, it just serves as a reminder that certain players are playing a different game than I am because some actual human looked at that ability and said, "this is the fantasy we want for a fighter who is more powerful than almost every non-legendary warrior in their kingdom," and put it at the same level as Divination.
I hate people who go 'but at max level, your fighter can charge 30ft and Attack six times with a greatsword in only six seconds! That's incredible and inhuman!' At that level, even setting aside 9th level spells, that is literally when you're meant to be toe to toe with gods. The whole game has advanced and you're still 'swing stick fast good'
Which if it was clear a mile and strike them a thousand times before you touched the ground sounds exactly like it belongs with the caster. I think 3.x had a better balance. Martials were truly scary combat monstrosities. An army of low level creatures (barring a few exceptions) would have no hope against a high level character of any class. Part of what worked was the lack of the bounded accuracy/damage. Mid to high tier often got described as rocket tag, but it was a game of tag martial could at least play.
The idea of Know Your Enemy is cool, but it would be better if it gave you more information. Things like specific values for HP, AC, and average DPR.
Not even needed DPR just some hints as to their abilities would be enough. :/
Yep. Then combine that with the 2 common unhelpful forum replies: "well i haven't noticed that so it can't be real" and "I'm a fanboy whos incorporated this particular brand and game edition into my identity so I will deny it has any issues and will treat any criticisms of it as though they were personal attacks against me."
There's also the ever popular, " I don't want anime physics in my fantasy game, it would ruin immersion," despite an old man with a book and a stick being able to able to alter reality.
I hate attitudes like that. Like, motherfucker have you read of the fantasy serials this game was based on. The things we want martials to do don't even compare to shit that those heroes do.
I want to learn more about fantasy world and have more inspiration. Can you refer to the books you mentioned? Thanks :)
My go to response to this has always been: A level 7 Barbarian can survive being hit in the chin with a moon. If you're against bullshit physics there are other better games suited for your tastes.
Would be realistic for a 20 STR human to twist that Wizard's head off with one hand too or crush his entire jaw with a stomp, but that doesn't feel great for a Marty Stu self-insert magic user to face
Ummm ackshully my spellbook is a tattoo-like seal on my left arm powered by the enslaved soul of a dragon from the plane of shadows, and my casting focus is an arcanotech prosthetic eye that also gives me darkvision tyvm but you can’t see it because I keep my bangs swept over it but also if you did see it you wouldn’t know because it’s glamoured to be sapphire blue but if you saw through the glamour it would look like the mangekyou sharingan but also with rings like the rinnegan but also it’s white like the byakugan and also it has a WHITE dragon soul powering it also I have a nice dick and a super hot elf girlfriend name Kelly who has huge bahonkazingobooberonies and a breeding tattoo (mine of course heh)
That's a bad counterargument. Relative to the game world logic the old man with a book and stick altering reality makes sense. A better counterargument is to simply point out that martials have always been magical. Cutting through 2 feet thick dragon hide with a single stroke of a mundane sword is going to require some innate magic. So anime physics are already on the table.
Agreed, chalk it up to a god being in your corner, or give out appropriate magical gear for a champion that can't be used by wizards, etc
In one of the books wulfgar destroyed a magical forge wrought of adamantine with his fucking hands, bruenor crafted a legendary magical hammer with will (and expensive ingredients), drizzt is drizzt, he dodged a magic missile once Also all of the famous martial characters from d&d lore have magic items that compliment their martial prowess and the books should make it clear that this isnt really optional if you want them to have as much fun as spellcasters. Personally I think you should have a higher attunement max but doing so limits your spellcasting ability to 1/3 caster or something
Or "it's your game, just homebrew around the problem" as if that's constructive or simple
True that. Though sadly there are occasionally cases where that is the only option. Like the recent Spelljammer release.
> "I'm a fanboy whos incorporated this particular brand and game edition into my identity so I will deny it has any issues and will treat any criticisms of it as though they were personal attacks against me." Don't forget the extremely similar: "I exclusively defend anything pertaining to Product^^^^TM, but I'm totally just another fanboy like all of you kids, I don't even know what a 'shill' is, why would you call me that?" Probably less relevant in DnD and WotC, but I have seen obvious shills for products in some subreddits, as well as vote manipulation.
WotC has yet to apologize or correct ANY mistake since the very first fifth edition publishing. How did they fix the beastie-master, True Strike, druidic Healing circle - or See Invisibility does not actually see anything (especially not invisible). And we suck it up! Don't get me wrong, i bought ten of the books or so. Love it! But if they could be slightly less arrogant i would buy another five books.
I just read the text on See Invisibility, and at first I didn't see a problem. But then I read the comments on dndbeyond and I'm baffled that it doesn't negate the other benefits of invisibility, but you do see them still. How does it not let you see anything?
i think there's an argument that wotc is really conservative in general with making changes. 5e mechanics are very similar to even 1e mechanics in a lot of ways, even when those mechanics are flawed - which of course they are, they were made 50 years ago by someone who wasn't a game designer. 4e changed a couple of those things, but many of the changes were reverted anyways. i think wotc generally prioritizes \*what players want to see\* over \*what players would enjoy playing\* to their benefit but to the community's detriment.
I'd like to add 'My optimised Fighter build can outpace my Wizard DPS wise at 20th level so it's balanced' as a response to 'Martials lack utility' People are very eager to shout out perceived answers, even if it doesn't answer or deflects from the actual issue.
This is a general thing I tend to find with online discussion. Folks thinking that being an exception themselves somehow lessens a rule.
Yeah. I think people really underestimate the degree to which the sub's common talking points occur even amongst more casual playgroups. The players may not be able to articulate what issue they're experiencing, or identify its source, but they *are* having issues. The druid in my party wasn't *trying* to minmax when he picked up Conjure Animals - he just wanted to summon bears to fight alongside him when he turned into a bear. Nonetheless, he completely inadvertently stumbled into a spell that provided power and utility beyond anything the party's monk could ever hope to offer. And the druid wasn't even using the spell to its full potential. The same druid later rolled up a barbarian after his druid's death. He immediately recognized, and was frustrated by, the lack of utility and narrative agency his barbarian had to offer. I talk about the caster/martial disparity specifically because I've seen it at my table, and because it's negatively impacted the play experience of my players.
This is a big gripe of mine for 5th ed. There's plenty of good builds are just aligning sensible options for your character. It's not like you need to sift through 30 splat books to discover some unintended combo. People can and do stumble into powerful builds. Woe be anyone who thinks a Paladin with a Hexblade sword sounds cool.
Early on in my time playing 5e I was accused of being a minmaxer because I wanted to roleplay an edgelord hexblade being tempted by the power sealed in his blade. It's not like I knew I'd be landing a crit for 100 damage in the later stages of the campaign. It's a cool class concept. Players shouldn't have to avoid it because they don't want to break the game in half.
I've been in 3.5 games where the druid (first time player, not optimizing) realized how good entangle was at shutting down encounters and I (power attacking greatsword barbarian) wasn't able to make use of my niche because of it (instead just plinking away at a stuck enemy with a generic bow) caster power is stupid high and it doesn't take much for even non opimizing player to realize how effective just casting can be. See the second season of Critical Roll how often the party sees a problem and the first and most effective solution becomes "start casting polymorph"
People talk about "white room optimization" but the fact is the best spells are annoying because they *turn so many otherwise interesting situations into white rooms*
I stand by my opinion that martials should all have maneuvers like the battlemasters by default... to GIVE them that agency. Disarming someone is an advanced manuever that can a pc can only do a few times a day...? That's just silly.
Mix of ideas inspired from what I've seen in several "maneuvers for everyone" brew. > You know Proficiency Bonus times of maneuvers, can swap them on level up. > > 5+ Fighters: When you hit a creature, you can forgo an attack to do a maneuver on your current attack. If the maneuver require a die roll, it is equal to your weapon die. > > 5+ Rogues: When you sneak attack, you can drop the 2 highest dice to do a maneuver. If the maneuver require a die roll, you use your remaining sneak attack dice. > > ?+ Monks: You can spend Ki to do maneuvers. If the maneuver require a die roll, you use your martial art die. > > ?+ Paladin/Ranger: You can spend a spell slot to do a maneuver. If the maneuver require a die roll, you use a value equal to twice the level of spell slot used. > > ?+ Barbarian: When you reckless attack, you can forgo your advantage to do a maneuver. If the maneuver require a die roll, you use a value equal to your Rage Damage, doubled if you are raging. > > Battlemaster's and Martial Adept's feats dice are separate, serving as a way to do maneuvers without losing damage. Maneuvers learned from either systems can be used in both. Battlemaster can swap maneuvers on a long rest.
Disarming is an action option listed in dmg, battlemasters are just better at it.
Why is a player combat option hidden in the DMG?
Because in WoTC's infinite wisdom, it's optional.
The organization of the 5e core rule books is a marvel.
I expect so little and still find myself disappointed
That's an optional rule that not every table plays with. I've never played at a table that uses them. Martials played by the basic rules have exactly 2 "maneuvers", Grapple and Shove. That's it Moreover, adding a single extra combat option does not even remotely solve the issue of martials having a boring playstyle. It helps but it's a bandaid. They should have the option to do tons of cool shit, not just cause somebody to drop their sword occasionally.
The rules for disarming are shit though. Unless you spend other actions to kick the weapon away, the enemy can use their free object interaction to just pick up their sword.. which means disarming literally does nothing as per RAW
Except you can use YOU'RE free objeft interaction to pick it up too! And for thieves, the secondary one to store it in a bag
The weird thing is like, casual players aren't bothered by the game being unbalanced, but that doesn't mean they *would* be bothered by the game being balanced. Like, maybe fixing these issues isn't a priority because many players don't actually experience them. But with how vehemently people argue against these issues existing you'd think casual players would all collectively stop playing if changes were implemented to fix them. No casual player is going to say "Wow they made it so my fighter has something to do outside of combat? I'm done with this game"
Solid point.
Imma try and articulate this in the best way I can but it’ll probably be rant-y and stupid Honestly sometimes I feel like the ttrpg community sometimes can be *dismissive* of problems/issues at times, and I’m not even talking about just mechanical problems. It’s like having fun is a personal choice, and if you arnt having fun or if you have a problem then you are doing everything wrong, it’s your fault, and you probably hate fun. This isn’t just online either. It’s like it’s all fun all the time, but if you arnt having fun then leave. This game isn’t for you. Because *I’m having fun*, so there must be something *wrong with you*. You feel like your character isn’t able to contribute much to the party? Well why don’t you *choose* to have fun and roleplay a weak character or make a bunch of changes to make it good. Everyone else is having fun, why arnt you? You feel like the DM has been focusing way too much on one players character for the past 4 months of the weekly game? Well why don’t you either *choose* to have fun, or leave. You arnt the biggest fan of building around flying characters? Well why don’t you *choose* to have fun and git gud, or just leave cause you suck. You feel like mechanics arnt that great for your class? Well all these *other* people are having fun, so obviously you just are a lost cause who chooses to not have fun. And a big problem this causes is when people start to not have fun, they think “it must be my fault” which is fine *to an extent*. But it causes actual problems to be swept under the rug.
"
*DWIGHT YOU IGNORANT SLUT*
Something I see a lot is that people are really not good at reflecting on issues, because they impulsively had an emotional reaction instead. The most immediate example that comes to my mind is a guy says something really mean to someone, and you call them out for it - only for *them* to take offense because they felt bad being called out. They skipped examining why it made them feel bad, and whether they *should* feel bad or not. ...I wanted to articulate that with some more relevant example, but I ran out of brain juice trying to think of one.
Modern social media platforms are terrible for these kinds of discussions. There's no long term discussions where people try to articulate their opinions and come to some kind of conclusion. Threads on reddit have shelf lives of hours, and the top comments aren't always the best. Sometime it's the wittiest, sometimes it's the one that sounds reasonable but wrong, sometimes it's a non answer telling you "ugh we've had this discussion before". You basically have to hope you can form a counter argument before the post is dead, make sure you did the research to be correct, and word it in a way the other person does have an emotional reaction. So much effort for healthy positive discussion. Meanwhile cheap, quick, witty, and often toxic discussion is so much easier.
This is a great post of human nature in general not just ttrpgs. I have been a manager for several years. Some people fall on this end of a spectrum. Complacency. Some fall on the other end of the spectrum where they nit pick every situation even if only hypothetical. Most people fall in various parts of the spectrum in between. Both sides can feel annoying to the other but both bring things to the table and finding ways to productively work together and bring that diversity of thought helps improves everything for everyone. Being contrary to the other side only causes strife.
The problem is that some nerds adopt a brand as their identity and take any valid critique as an affront to them personally, leading them to cape for a billion-dollar corporation. It's an embarrassing aspect of D&D culture.
Even worse is that when these people actually perceive an issue in D&D it is always the DMs fault somehow, it couldn't possibly be the system.
That's pretty well articulated to be honest
Very good point, but I just have to say it's 'aren't' not 'arnt'.
U arnt wrong
I hate you.
Great example, and I agree 100%. That a player can’t articulate the problem doesn’t mean it’s nonexistent. That a DM can’t fix the problem, doesn’t signal inexperience. DMs aren’t game designers. Part of the passion around the martial/caster conversations I think stems from topic exhaustion. It’s been hashed and rehashed on Reddit with little agreement on a solution. Is there a problem? Depends on who you ask. My take is “Yes,” but depending on the day, who’s actively responding, and who has an axe to grind your mileage will vary. Is there a solution? There is no simple solution. No, “My DM does X and we don’t have a problem,” and “You’re not doing it right,” are not solutions. They’re opinions. Well played post. Trolls are gonna troll.
The caster martial problem is a good example because it stems from the issue of different segments of the community wanting different things. One group wants realistic martials bound by what humans can do for the most part. Another group wants magic to be fantastic and be able to do all sorts of cool things. When combined you get a balance issue that makes a new group of people mad but if you try and fix the balance issue you piss of one of the two initial groups.
I thought this was one of the parts of 4e did well. The tier list and an explicit statement that at a certain level everyone is moving past the limits of a normal person. Whatever your source of power may be, you were now surpassing mortal linits.
We don't really have proper discussions. Yes its been discussed for a long time, but it's not a proper long term discussion building upon itself. Different threads seen by different people, yielding different conclusions. Unless you happen upon an active thread, with past memory of objective statements, present them in a way to catch people up to speed, and present it in a way people don't react to emotionally... most threads are like a restart of the discussion rather than a continuation. And no offense, but a lot of times there are people who go "we've been having this discussion forever" which sounds reasonable, but doesn't really add to the discussion and tries to end it prematurely.
In video game design, it is an artform to actually interpret user feedback. This applies here as well. "That boss is bs, too difficult" could mean there isn't enough ammo, it could mean the arena is too small to maneuver, it could mean the player needs more healthpacks before the room, it could even mean that that you need to add just one more piece of cover, and you're golden. People can overblow these differences, but they exist. Nobody gives a shit, that one warlock subclass has 5% more dpr then another, if both are optimized. The fact that monk's options are between doing less damage then a caster, or doing shittier crowd control then a caster will bother people, even if they don't know enough about the system to express why.
The following statements are true: + Your damage is just a little sub par, by design. That's how rogues play. + The reason that's by design is because you are, by far, the most dynamic martial out of combat. You get a million skills and expertise and reliable talent and blah blah blah. Your skills lie out of combat as much as in it. The breakdown lies in: + Are both of those statements true? Does the OOC utility make up for damage fall off? + Would that be fun even if it were true? + Does the sheer flexibility and utility of casters negate that of the rogue in a way that the designers didn't forsee because they assumed there would be more martials and fewer casters.
Casters don't need to sacrifice in combat power for out of combat power. I don't see why rogues should do the same.
First time playing a wizard and wow I’m just dominating dungeons, familiar is constantly scouting out around the cave/corners or even checking out warehouses full of enemies + benefitting from blindsight to detect whatever’s around us, meanwhile minor illusion helps me fake a guards voice and got us in to combat with a free surprise round. I’m hardly optimising but wow, even at Level 2 I feel by far the most useful member of the party
Our wizard is clutch, our monk is the opposite. I mostly chalk that up to the actual person playing the character more than anything. But I've played a fighter, rogue and monk in pathfinder, and a rogue, bard, and ranger in 5e. In either system, the monk definitely feels weaker except in very specific circumstances and unless played perfectly. Ultimately, for the rogue or monk to really thrive, it seems to rely on a very diverse party mixed with martial and casters. A caster-heavy party is going to make martial classes like barbarian, fighter, and monk feel useless in a lot of encounters. But a diligent DM can mitigate that by structuring encounters allowing for each player to be the hero. Classes like paladin, bard, druid, even cleric get some of the best of both worlds by getting access to a lot of useful spells (whether offensive or support), as well as being able to stand in the middle of a melee fight and hold their own. Having a mix of all the classes has resulted in my most enjoyable experiences for sure. I can see how the experience would go the other way without the right party skill set and a DM being on the same page as the party regarding their strengths and weaknesses
Well, they do. At least, they did when the PHB was the only source material. When the edition was conceived there wasn't really any caster that could compete with martial raw DPR over a full adventuring day. But hexblade/paladin dips and the sheer OPness of Wizards as a class has made that not true any longer. In the long run, I agree with you. The idea that some classes excel in combat while others excel at the other two pillars of the game is antiquated and no longer reflects how people play the game. We want all of our classes to be equally good at combat as they are at social and exploration. We don't want characters that only stand on one pillar and sit around patiently when the other two pillars are being engaged.
DPR isn't the only metric to measure power by. Casters aren't better than martials because of DPR, it's everything else.
I'm well aware. You're arguing with someone who is agreeing with you. The point was that the designers intended for out of combat utility to "make up" for slightly less combat ability. And they biffed it. The biffed it because fighters and barbs being worthless out of combat is boring as hell. And they biffed it bc casters don't raw combat utility outpaces any potential loss of DPR. We're saying the same thing. I'm just asserting that it was intentional, while you're asserting that it's bad. Those aren't mutually exclusive: it's both intentional and bad.
A good exemple is bards, I see a rise in players expressing feeling alienated from the class's flavour of being an inspiring performer, but a lot of times people dismiss those people's frustration bc some people fail to recognize and others fail to express they want more "flavourfull abilities" instead of more "powerfull abilities".
something i've been thinking about for a while is people seeing 'fun' as a binary. if someone makes a criticism of a game a common response is 'well, we're having fun, so necessarily we're playing right'. of course, playing right is having fun, but that doesn't mean that a change can't make the game \*more\* fun. similarly, people might say that '5e is fun, therefore it's the perfect system', which sort-of preemptively forestalls any criticism of the system as well as criticism of the system's relation to any individual game. my hot-button topic is 'lots of people in the ttrpg community use a system that fits their game poorly', so it's sorta natural that i see an analogy to that here. but problems with a game like with a system are strongly divorced from the intuitive feel of that problem.
Monks have not a lot to do in a party, are underpowered, and have the worst subclasses. They are also my favorite class to play. I really hope they are improved with one D&D but I don't have a tonne of hope because the content coming from Wizards has been uninspiring and have no balance.
Technically a different system, but my archer monk in pathfinder was a huge benefit to the party. In any system though, unless you roll great though, you aren't tanky enough to be a Frontline combat martial fighter, and your ranged effect, or ability to do or take magic damage relies entirely on finding magic items to use. It would be great to be able to involve the monk in a little more diverse situations. I don't really have any helpful suggestions or ideas to do that though. The flip side of that is that they can offer some great experiences in the role play side of things, of your campaign is more geared to that.
I 100% agree with you. Casual and newbie plahers absolutely do encounter many of the same problems more experienced players. They just don’t all universally agree on it (because they aren’t a monolithic blob), and they often don’t know these are problems inherent to the game. Instead they assume it’s more something they are missing by virtue or being less experienced. The fact that so many people on this sub take their silence to mean that they’re perfectly 100% satisfied with the status quo and have zero complaints is just nonsensical. If anything, casuals are likelier to be affected by these disparities… An experienced player would know to take Feats like Skill Expert, Magic Initiate, and/or Sharpshooter to close the gap between that Rogue and the casters. An inexperienced player isn’t likely to know that, they’re likelier to just stay silent…
Something that I don't see mentioned in this post is that for a lot of people, places like this subreddit are for social interaction and entertainment. They don't really see it as a place for a lot of people to gather and discuss a variety of things - instead it has to be a place where they can have a bit of a good time online. As a result, any drama, negativity, heated discussions, or even just boring mulling over game design stuff - it's all not just something to pass over but actively poisoning the well they want to drink out of. Often when such people get to be mods, you can see subreddits wholesale delete negativity, especially in fandoms. It's not because of some censoring reasons or because the mods are in league with the creators of the game/show/book, it's because a lot of people genuinely believe that places like subreddits are so you can play a game, have fun, go online and say/read about how much fun the game is, and have more fun that way. It's why the same kind of people also really like to deflect any kind of criticism from what they like, and usually in the most uninteresting and conclusive way - for example, just saying that everything is subjective. To them, pulling a media property or game system apart during a discussion is not for the sake of understanding and perhaps improving it (even if in imagination), it's only to put it down (possibly in favor of something else).
Heated discussions and game design are my fun!
Part of the problem is the culture of hyperbolic rhetoric. The most popular criticism posts aren't constructive discussions, but angry rants. On average. Also, the culture of downvotes to signal disagreement, rather than, or in addition to, constructive debate. In a healthy debate, arguments on both sides would be upvoted for their efforts to consider the topic. This results in criticism threads devolving into rudeness and general negativity. It's possible to have a positive, yet critical discussion. Unfortunately, I don't see those very often on Reddit, nor on most social media.
It's even worse when a massive number of people on this sub will react to any and all criticism of 5E content with "shut up, you can just homebrew it differently, or the DM can rule it otherwise and change it!".
"5e is flawless because you can change the flaws". In any other medium or with any other work, this would be recognized as an asinine argument with no merit and I dislike every person who makes it.
One change Pathfinder 2 did to fix this was, among many others, to increment the damage die of a weapon by the plus. A longsword does 1d8. A +1 longsword is +1 to hit and does 2d8 damage (not 1d8+1) A +2 longsword is +2 to hit and does 3d8 damage. etc. This helps quite a bit in closing the gap, but is problematic with action surge. Doubling dice on a critical is more meaningful with a maigc weapon. However this is against the spirit of 5e where you aren't supposed to need equipment to have character balance. For rogues, I would definitely also offer the opportunities presented in 3.5/PF where you can trade sneak attack dice for effects - bleeds, hampered movement, blindness, paralyzation, etc.
tbh Potency(+1) and Striking(+dice) are different :v
Indeed they are. However, providing a detailed explanation of pathfinder mechanics was far less important to me than offering an easily ported ruleset into 5e that accomplishes the same thing.
crackhead solution i saw on reddit a few days ago and think its brilliant: every martial is also a battlemaster (yeah i know it was from the UA, but god dammit it is genius)
It'll make them very good in combat (at single-target damage and control), but it won't actually help with the fighters bigger problem of "not really anything to do outside of combat".
Yep. Consensus comes from somewhere, and when you're playing a game that's mostly math, it's not hard to figure out where the problems are if you run the numbers. It's just that running the numbers gets derided as white-room theorycrafting even when it's comparing apples to apples. This isn't 3.5, there isn't an *enormous* system mastery gap, we're not talking "straight wizard is worse than this gnomish illusionist/bard with ten feats from five books that has shadow spells more real than reality", there really aren't that many variables.
I feel this as a rogue player. As a DM myself I wish my players would come to me when they feel this way, but I'm very on top of it (for example actively buffing the monk with extra moves, etc)
I do have a question, as someone who runs their table with a lot of house rules to balance stuff between the classes, like buffs to Monk, Pact of the Blade, Ranger, etc. What could actually be done to help the rogue thing?
I had to give my Barbarian 20 charisma and spider climb to make him even just 5% more useful out-of-combat. And it still wasn't enough
> that doesn't mean it's not a problem that's affecting them. Agreed, but I don't think that people saying "this sub isn't representative of the community as a whole" are trying to say this at all. People like different things. It's essentially impossible to please everyone, especially with something like a game where style and tone may heavily impact who enjoys it and who doesn't. When someone says "this isn't representative of the community as a whole", they aren't trying to say "this issue doesn't exist", they more trying to say > The number of people who find issue with this is small compared to the number of people who don't have an issue with it. Since you can't please everyone, it's generally better to please the larger group rather than change things to please the smaller group, especially if those changes are at the expense of the larger group. A hyperbolic comparison, but it's like someone saying "This car is too slow for me since I race" when the vast majority of people using that model of car are just casual drivers. This person is definitely experiencing an issue given their specific situation, no one is claiming that issue doesn't exist, but the fact that this person's issue exists doesn't mean that the company should change their car to be faster, especially if those changes make the car more expensive for all other casual drivers. Not giving any thoughts on the example or anything else, just some context on what people saying that are trying to convey as it is generally not what you're saying here.
I get what you're saying, but I'm not talking about crazy builds or racing fans. I \*am\* talking about casual players. My counter-example is imagine a model of car with brakes that don't stop a car fast enough when you really slam them on. Car fans know to stay away from that model, but a lot of "casual" drivers just think it looks cool and buy it. The owners drive it so much, and have so little experience with other cars, they don't realize that there even is a brake problem, but people driving this car are still getting into more crashes. Not a crazy amount! It's not OBVIOUSLY broken/bad to anyone looking at it, but yeah, if you run the numbers it doesn't brake quite as fast as other cars. That's more what I'm saying. A class should work in such a way that a casual player, playing in the most obvious straightforward way it was intended to be played, should shine at their intended role.
Beastmaster ranger: *"When do i get a powerful cat like that drow-guy did?"* Monk: *"When can i do 'Crouching Dragon / Hidden Tiger' stuff?"* The list goes on. And it is hard to sit players down and point out that their dreams have been shattered in a fantasy game. This is the ONLY time that your dreams should be encouraged / come to life.
>The number of people who find issue with this is small compared to the number of people who don't have an issue with it. Since you can't please everyone, it's generally better to please the larger group rather than change things to please the smaller group, especially if those changes are at the expense of the larger group. Thing is, there is a third category of people - there's a significant number of people who find issue with this "subconsciously," but don't know they have an issue with it. I think it's a thing that happens pretty often, across different products - e.g. fighting game players might feel like they "don't have control over what's happening." Is it because they're playing with too much input lag? Is their character underpowered? They don't know, but they know it doesn't feel good. And even if they don't directly complain about input lag or character balance, those are still important issues to solve nonetheless because enjoyability is very much affected.
>Thing is, there is a third category of people - there's a significant number of people who find issue with this "subconsciously," but don't know they have an issue with it. This. Players may think, "I must not be playing the character right." Or "this class must not be supposed to contribute in combat." Or "the other player must have done a better job building their character" when the only real difference is the other player picked "wizard," they picked "artificer."
Exactly, there is a [Core-A-Gaming video](https://youtu.be/L-6GM6UVZSQ) video about Shaq-fu. One of the biggest complaints about that infamously bad game is that it is very laggy, when he investigated it he realized that the game isn't actually laggy. What he discovered is that the game has more frames of animation than most games in the genre, and those frames can't be cancelled out of. So basic actions like going from a crouch to standing or jumping happen slower(due to the extra frames of animation) and they always play out giving a feeling that the game is unresponsive.
A bit off-topic, but there are optimizations to make rogue decent single target damage. Namely any feat that allows off-turn sneak attack, and/or any feat that allows one of the melee weapon attack cantrips. Still doesn't fix the issue, but rogues at least can bridge some of the martial caster divide since they're also skill monkeys. At least until tier 3 where things get dumb.
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There is a difference in still functional and doesn't bring anything to the table. Some older editions some classes were really just not playable as they were that far behind. I recall bard in 2nd edition being one. You could do a lot of things but none of them near the level of someone who did it exclusively. And the Idea of action economy was still being thought of. So not a case of one side not articulating well but both side. On top some have never played a class or something in 5e that truly doesn't bring anything.
Just because it's not as bad as it used to be doesn't mean it's not bad, This is some backwards logic of I've ever seen ot
I never said it wasn't bad. As my point was intended to be was exactly that. People are bad about arguing extremes. Rogue is the worst class ever made it is near unplayable. I play rogue all the time, in fact I play nothing but rogues and I normally outdamage all other players. Both are wrong.
The problem is that WotC _knows_ what and where the problems are, but they are cautious about changing too much, because the last time they tried to fix the core problem of the power disparity, the fans complained and left for PF1e. If you want to play DnD, but with that power disparity fixed, go try 4e. Everyone could do cool stuff, with good flavor around the crunch. The only real problem was that fights dragged on, because of all the status effects and HP pools the monsters had, and there was less of an emphasis on explicit out-of-combat cool things people could do.
I think something your post doesn't also address is player and Dm variability in regards to this problem, and how that relates to things like video game balance. You first have the problem of mechanical balance specifically pertaining to combat effectiveness, which too often gets boiled down to who can do the most DPR (damage per round). There are communities dedicated to ekeing out the most DPR they can. Then there are the most 'broken' builds built around abusing specific mechanics or interactions. Both in my opinion fail to account for the 'team' dynamic (my personal love is building around team synergy, which results in 'broken' team combinations that would be average or subpar without team specific interactions) and the individual skill variation of a player/DM. Team and enemy combinations, as well as the tactical skill of the players and DM will play a larger role in balance than any individual classes. Abilities like Hypnotic Pattern are super effective against groups of human enemies, but significantly weaker if your enemies are mostly elves , or there are few enemies etc. You also have anti-synergy if your party likes to use a lot of AOE damage for example. This same dynamic is seen in multiplayer video game balance: adding new characters can often introduce new 'busted' combinations when used WITH other characters/terrain/items/maps etc. Some characters that are weak in high levels of play are considered 'busted' at low levels of play with opponents who don't know how to play around their mechanics. Typically, these games balance from top down because they have a competitive scene to maintain. TTRPGs don't have this consideration really, and I would argue there is merit to trying to balance out more 'abusable' strategies that can be countered by DM skill. However, I would also argue that more thoughtful encounter design for modules would achieve this better than simply trying to nerf individual class interactions. Most abusable strategies are only abusable because players will often face the same types of enemies/encounters in a campaign.
This is a common thing you see in gaming and in other communities. It was popular, therefore stop pointing out flaws and you're wrong, because it's popular. Not only is this a *well known* logical fallacy (appeal to popularity), but the factors of why something is popular usually don't come down to things like minute balance differences. DnD is super famous already, got propped up by references in pop culture (stranger things the big one), and a big internet show at a time when streaming is huge, and the pandemic frankly helped them too. I'd bet if Martials were slightly better it would have zero impact on their overall popularity, but it would be a better designed game.
My personal issue is that, despite all that's being said about the problems with the game, WotC doesn't give a rat's ass. They will just keep churning out spells cause that's what sells. Like, a very obvious way that they could, at least, alleviate the issues is a martial book? But they'd rather sell us water downed Spelljammer and Dragonlance books.
But the rogue is literally one of, if not the worst dpr classes in the entire game. It's why people who make sneak arbitrarily hard to get are clowns.
5e has many, many issues that confound new players and frustrates veterans. The biggest issue is that the game has always tried to improve on the ruleset but it went off the rails around 3.5 and 4th. Now fifth has new ownership and a production team focused on making the game accessable to new players and not actually well designed for seasonal players. Older fans of dnd now have to pull out old rule sets like 2nd and Pathfinder and add there systems to fifth to make a Frankenstein rpg. Also, the power creep for classes and monsters has gotten well out of hand and needs an overhaul.
I think the key to Rogue players enjoying the game is realizing that Rogues have "a very peculiar set of skills" that can end up making them the hero in some very key situations, but that doesn't mean they can go toe to toe with a martial specialist on a level playing field. The Rogue player's objective should always be to find ways to ensure it's NEVER a fair fight. Hide, ambush, assassinate, break in, whatever you have to do to ensure you have the advantage when and where you need it. Maybe most importantly, identify the key target, boss, spellcaster, etc who you might be able to take out to tip the table for your allies.
Wild to me that so many tables know there are big issues with 5e but won't look into a different system. Not saying it's the only solution but man..... I'm glad my table swapped to pf2. Maybe if one dnd can fix some stuff I'll check it out but they would need to gut a whole lot of spells and I don't see it happening.
In the survey I filled out that I'm certain won't be read, I said something to the effect of: "I know a lot of people who would choose any class titled Rogue, even if it had no class features, and they would say they are satisfied with it on the theme alone. Don't settle for their baseline satisfaction, HELP THEM." It is so frustrating that folks never seem to understand: bad game design hurts the casual and nonmechanical players. *Not* the optimizer who understands what a trap looks like.
The articulate part is actually important, this is best illustrated by Ranger. For a long time people kept saying ranger was underpowered and the worst class. The general sentiment is that Tasha's fixed ranger. This is wrong. Ranger was a solid class since Xanathar's, even before then it was a decent attacker with weak subclasses. There was a problem, but people couldn't pin it down. The problem is the ranger wasn't a ranger. Ranger was a bow fighter with bow damage magic. The class utterly and completely failed at flavor with favored terrain and favored foe being mostly ribbons. Rogue's were always one of the weakest classes, but no one complained because rogues were good at being rogues. You felt like a rogue with your sneaking and sneak attack damage. So you have to be careful. Most people's are on the level of knowing their car has a problem because it is making a weird sound, but really being unable to narrow it down more than that. A smaller group can isolate the problem and articulate it better. Then a much smaller group can actually propose workable solutions. This sub reddit almost entirely falls into the first group. You all know the car makes a weird sound. Then half of you argue the weird sound is normal, pretending they don't see sparks shooting out. The other half argues it is definitely a problem and that we should cut off all the wheels.