But you kinda can't. There are functionally only 4 roles in DnD. Tank, spank, control, and lead. Rangers could be semi spank and control... But that is what wizards are for. They can't be tank and spank better than fighters or barbarians. They're not tank and lead like Paladins. Or even spank and lead. They're pure non-combat. And there isn't really a way to fix them either. Short of giving them more attacks... Which has its own problems.
Plus they're thematically bad. They're supposed to be fighter/Druids but Druids are already fighter/Druids. If you pick hunter they're almost explicitly flavored as "fighters but with a bow or dual wield" and who decided to pick survival as a trained skill. If you pick beast they're a Druid that isn't very good at druiding.
So they functionally become someone you pick of you want to not deal with traveling. Which is kinda dumb.
If you have to keep the archetype as a hard mechanical structure then Ranger-hunter should be an offshoot of fighter. Probably setting on top of champion and ditching spells. And Ranger beast master should be an offshoot of barbarian. This time getting spells.
Alternately hunter could be an offshoot of rogue but I think it's better on top of fighter.
Bard similarly should be an offshoot of rogue.
If this was 4th edition with it's job hat design you'd have a point, but we're talking about 5th where things are a little more complicated.
As such I'd break down classes into these roles with some obvious overlap:
1. Front liner: someone who can decide the line of battle by being either too meaty or too crunchy to fall down quickly.
2. Flanker/skirmisher: classes that can do good damage but are too fragile to fight up front, work best as a second wave
3. Blaster: Someone who can dish out damage to a pile of enemies
4. Trickster: focuses on debuffs and incapacitation as opposed to straight damage
5. Skill focused: has a skill that is applicable to the situation at hand.
6. Medic: keeps you out of roll up a new character land.
7. Swiss army magic: when you need an alternate solution to a problem then what is obvious.
Ranger as Josh pointed out could easily have been a variation on paladin with a focus on disrupting the enemy, and still could be if they reworked how their magic worked a bit.
Like take hunters mark; I would have split it's effects so that it's tracking aspect was something you could do as something along the lines of 2+wis mod per long rest while the more fighty part of it I would have changed to a +2 to damage for all party members against the target.
Throw in some extra effects for tracking/hunting magic types and you could have a character that could easily fulfill roles 2,4 and 7.
4th didn't have job hat design. All its classes were tighter in terms of abilities to heal/damage/control. It simply recognized that different classes had different jobs and labeled them. The archetypes existed since the dawn of Chainmail, they're not intrinsically a part of any system except insomuch as they're a part of all of them.
You've substituted how classes do their jobs in 5e with what job they do.
Also "skills" and "creative magic" aren't a even a class archetype under that system.
Don't worry, when I make my 5e-Legend RPG-13th Age-Dungeon World chimera of a system the core class for Ranger or Paladin will be the same; Half-Fighter, Half-Divine with wide enough options and spell selection that you can flavor it out how you want.
I guess the DPR thing just sort of misses the point to me. The BBEG isn't going to enrage and wipe the party if you don't kill him in under 5 rounds.
And for all the various differences in potential class build efficiency, my PCs don't actually play their characters to maximal efficiency most of the time, let alone min-max the builds. I'm not sure if the rogue, before his death at level 5, used cunning action twice.
Add in a somewhat odd party a Monk, Pally/Warlock Polearm Master(the only character optimized at all), A Div Wizard(for Portent), a healing domain cleric, and a Barbarian, and even being pretty generous with magic items, They are striking way below what I'd think a more streamlined kill squad would put out. And that's something I need to account for, rather than just throwing a party of more optimized antagonists against them just to wipe the floor with them because, their dpr is bad, they heal more than they should, and they don't use their maneuverability & positioning well.
The issue is one of party construction. Designing classes so that they have strengths, weaknesses, but are not dominated in the primary method of play ensures that all players have a roughly even starting point to feeling "useful" in the game.
That is, you shouldn't feel punished because you chose a ranger instead of a fighter. In order to achieve this you need to not actually be punished because you choose a ranger instead of a fighter. Just like the classes are designed so that you aren't punished for not multi-classing.
To this end its not impossible for the ranger to be its own class. There just isn't a particular reason that it is instead of being part of fighter and/or barbarian. Making it its own class presents design challenges inherent in the structure of the system they have set up for the ranger (must use bows/twf).
Keeping the class makes it more likely that players will unintentionally put themselves in a position where they're going to be less effective than their friends. Where, if they play their class to perfection they're going to be less effective than their friends playing their class at a basic level.
Few of the other classes have this fundamental problem except maybe rogues. Primary spellcasters are primary spellcasters. Monks get a shit tonne of super cool and strong abilities. Paladins and Barbarians as well.(plus good damage on all of these classes). Rogues are kind of left out in that sneak attack doesn't do as much DPR as it probably ought to. But they're still better than rangers due to their combat tricks.
So when looking at your group which only has "one optimized character" you really have every character within 5 to 10% of each other. And you don't have any dominated classes.
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BrodyThe WatchThe First ShoreRegistered Userregular
Maybe the Ranger is Monte Cook's last present to D&D players.
"I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."
"Is good at tracking" can't really be a mechanical balance point. If you don't have a tracker, is your party just not going to have an adventure today?
I agree with your ultimate point, but in my last D&D game, tracking and using wisdom (survival) checks was a big part of getting where the party needed to if they were in the wilderness. It was the party Druid who took on those duties, but failing those checks doesn't mean you don't get to have an adventure. It meant that the party got lost for a while before trying to track the thing and the person doing the tracking ran them through underbrush filled with thorns or whatever and they all took some damage, or if they were trying to make survival checks in dangerous environments like intense heat/cold, levels of exhaustion for failing to find the way through easily.
As with all things, you have to have interesting fail-forward consequences for things like tracking outside of just "you don't find any tracks, adventure stops here."
Yeah, but if the fail-forward is interesting then there's no incentive/value in bringing a Ranger because the adventure isn't less successful, just different. And if it's not interesting, then it still doesn't make the party go 'man, we should have brought a Ranger', it just makes them turn to the dm and go 'all these random interminable wilderness encounters are boring, I want to know what happens with the lich we're supposed to be dealing with. Stop fucking us around and let us play the interesting part of the game.'
And there's the fact that the players generally roll their characters at the start of the game, and as a result the DM knows the party comp when designing sessions - so what's the point of making tracking a focus? Either you know they've got a Ranger, and the tracking stuff is immediately trivial and you're basically just giving the Ranger a freebie to justify his existence, or you know they don't, and the tracking stuff is just a time/resource tax you know they'll probably fail at on the way to the stuff that matters. At best, most campaigns will occasionally have a Survival check that is tuned for the party to be reasonably able to succeed at anyway and the Ranger will get to go 'I'm a Ranger! Auto-success!'
"Rangers are good at tracking things" has always been a thing that exists because Aragorn tracked the uruk-hai halfway across rohan, not because it's a necessary or interesting part of DnD. It's in the 'pointless flavor trinkets' family of class features alongside stuff like Thieves' Cant and Timeless Body; Rangers just suffer because it's inexplicably not treated that way and ends up eating a slot that should be occupied by a real class feature.
I guess the DPR thing just sort of misses the point to me. The BBEG isn't going to enrage and wipe the party if you don't kill him in under 5 rounds.
And for all the various differences in potential class build efficiency, my PCs don't actually play their characters to maximal efficiency most of the time, let alone min-max the builds. I'm not sure if the rogue, before his death at level 5, used cunning action twice.
A game should be designed so that the choices offered to players are meaningful, interesting choices without obvious right and wrong answers. Classes that underperform are traps for players - a player who doesn't realize that the class is bad shouldn't be punished with a shitty character, and a player who does realize that it's bad shouldn't have to choose between playing the character type they're interested in and playing a character that is good. I know people tend to get up in arms around this point because they feel like they're being told they're playing wrong, but they aren't and that's not the point: When there is an obvious mathematically right and wrong choice, a player who makes the 'wrong' choice is not failing at the game, he is being failed by the game. A game with poor class balance has design problems; if your group isn't impacted by those problems because it doesn't care about class balance, that's fine and you're not obligated to do so, but that doesn't mean the problems cease to exist.
And if we're gonna handwave balance discussion because DPR doesn't matter because the boss isn't going to enrage (and I mean, yours might not but I've definitely played games of DnD with enemies who did precisely that), doesn't that generalize to literally every part of the game? It's basically just "who cares if the party is good at stuff, the DM is tailoring the game to the party so that they can succeed". Why bring any healing? The DM will take that into account and make monsters do less damage. Why rest? The DM will account for the party's weakened state and give them easier fights. Why not rest as often as possible? The DM will adjust the timeline to make the game work. Why bring a Ranger to track stuff? The DM will just handwave the tracking. Why bring a character with good social skills? The DM will make the necessary people friendly and give the party the information they need for the adventure to work. Why bother packing resurrection spells or even trying not to die? It's not like the DM isn't going to let you play anymore if your guy dies or force you to play a character you don't want; your guy will come back if you want him to. Why have mechanics at all? Nothing matters and the game is a meaningless diversion as you and your friends drift inexorably toward oblivion.
I guess the DPR thing just sort of misses the point to me. The BBEG isn't going to enrage and wipe the party if you don't kill him in under 5 rounds.
And for all the various differences in potential class build efficiency, my PCs don't actually play their characters to maximal efficiency most of the time, let alone min-max the builds. I'm not sure if the rogue, before his death at level 5, used cunning action twice.
A game should be designed so that the choices offered to players are meaningful, interesting choices without obvious right and wrong answers. Classes that underperform are traps for players - a player who doesn't realize that the class is bad shouldn't be punished with a shitty character, and a player who does realize that it's bad shouldn't have to choose between playing the character type they're interested in and playing a character that is good. I know people tend to get up in arms around this point because they feel like they're being told they're playing wrong, but they aren't and that's not the point: When there is an obvious mathematically right and wrong choice, a player who makes the 'wrong' choice is not failing at the game, he is being failed by the game. A game with poor class balance has design problems; if your group isn't impacted by those problems because it doesn't care about class balance, that's fine and you're not obligated to do so, but that doesn't mean the problems cease to exist.
You seems to be taking an MMO design philosophy and applying to D&D. You can not offer meaningful choices to players in a game as free form as D&D and not offer them obvious wrong answers.
It is okay to have suboptimal choices for players because there isn't any reason they need to make optimal choices. BBEG isn't WoW Patchwerk Fight v6.0 or whatever number they are up to now. Where if you bring two frost mages and a balance druid instead of 3 arms warriors you can not mathematically defeat the boss, because the boss now and forever has 900 million hit points and enrages in 6 minutes after aggro'd. And that is game breaking to any frost mage or balance druid players.
One of my players just had his Barbarian pick up Tavern Brawler at lvl 8, instead of Great Weapon Master, because he want to be able to punch people harder. Does WoTC need to buff Tavern Brawler, since it's clearly the mathematically wrong choice?
Will the party be fucked for the next 4 levels because the Barbarian decided to not get the 25%? damage a round boost he would have gained with GWM instead of Tavern Brawler. I mean, that basically puts him down in rogue, or maybe even gasp ranger levels of output. He's basically ruined the game for himself and he doesn't even know it. Atleast he picked a half orc, imagine if he had made a halfling barbarian, the game would be a complete disaster!
I'm not saying they couldn't stand to buff ranger damage output some more, but I don't think alpha strike damage output at level 20 is the end all be all of 'balancing' the classes. D&D isn't WorldOfSimcraft.
And if we're gonna handwave balance discussion because DPR doesn't matter because the boss isn't going to enrage (and I mean, yours might not but I've definitely played games of DnD with enemies who did precisely that), doesn't that generalize to literally every part of the game? It's basically just "who cares if the party is good at stuff, the DM is tailoring the game to the party so that they can succeed". Why bring any healing? The DM will take that into account and make monsters do less damage. Why rest? The DM will account for the party's weakened state and give them easier fights. Why not rest as often as possible? The DM will adjust the timeline to make the game work. Why bring a Ranger to track stuff? The DM will just handwave the tracking. Why bring a character with good social skills? The DM will make the necessary people friendly and give the party the information they need for the adventure to work. Why bother packing resurrection spells or even trying not to die? It's not like the DM isn't going to let you play anymore if your guy dies or force you to play a character you don't want; your guy will come back if you want him to. Why have mechanics at all?Nothing matters and the game is a meaningless diversion as you and your friends drift inexorably toward oblivion.
“The secret we should never let the gamemasters know is that they don't need any rules.”
That players should have agency and meaningful, interesting choices is not "MMO design philosophy", it's just game design philosophy. You're not supposed to waste players' time with trivial choices. The game doesn't need to be designed so that Tavern Brawler is as good as GWM for a Barbarian with a greatsword, but it should be designed so that it's a valid addition to a grapple build and that grapple builds can perform well in a group.
But the weird defensiveness and sarcasm and 'lol mmos' stuff suggests you might have missed my point re: the player not failing, but being failed.
Just to mention Rogue for a second, the Rogue is not a huge damage output striker in 5E. They have good consistent damage, but the main thing the rogue brings to the table is the utility of cunning action and very surprising survivability.
Between evasion (half or no damage on DEX saves), uncanny dodge (half damage from an attack made against you once/round), and cunning action, they're crazy hard to pin down.
My buddy in the campaign I just ended took the mobile feat so that he could use his cunning action for dash or hide instead of disengage, and it allowed him to play the campaign with only 12 CON yet still be very survivable. He got KOed less than the party fighter who had 16 CON (and others), just because he was very hard to threaten with a lot of enemies. It was great. Trying to figure out ways to have melee opponents threaten him was a really fun part of combats, and a lot of the time I just couldn't do it.
Rogue does decent damage, but its not right to call it consistent. And they are slippery (one of the necessities of them being primarily melee) but slippery is what you expect a melee damage dealer to be. The rogue isn't there body blocking for the wizard they're up in the front where they can't really be body blocked for but you want to anyway.
The main issue that makes them "weak" in terms of DPR is that great weapon mastery (and similarly the ranged equivalent) is OP. A GWF greatsword does 8.33 average damage, so a fighter will do a max of roughly 13 average damage per attack. GWP makes this 23 and they can crit for another 8.33 avg.
If you leave out GWM fighters attack between 1 and 4 times per round and if they hit 50% of the time* they're doing 6.26 average damage per attack. So between 6.26 and 25.066 average damage/round.
They attack up to 4 times, smoothing their damage curve significantly. And can attack more with reaction attacks in a fashion that is highly favorable to damage (due to the large weapon damage they do, rather than conditional)
Rogues do 1d4+dex for damage, and can try again 1d4+dex if they're want with a dual wield attack(which would generally be done if they miss the first attack). If they hit either then they get to do sneak attack damage. 1d6 per 2 levels. So for every attack a fighter get rogues get 2d6 sneak die plus some extra. Assuming the same 50% hit rate and assuming the rogue does not decide to attack if the first attack hits then they do 7. + 3.5/rank avg damage/hit but when they crit they crit for another 2.5 + 3.5/rank. They hit at a rate of 75% but only ever get "one" attack at that 75% hit rate(50% to hit, on miss, 50% to hit again is mathematically identical to a 75% hit rate). So they do between and 8.7** and 36.625 damage per round. But the variance is a lot higher. On a crit they do nearly twice as much damage. 25% of the time they do nothing. Their attacks are compromised of almost entirely damage die, increasing the variance even further. A fighter only has that kind of variance before level 5 and that doesn't include them using their abilities.
They are also, legitimately, one of the higher damage dealing classes in the game not counting deliberate/conditional spike damage(of which they have pretty much none, and makes their very high DPR come down a good deal in oomph)
In general the rogue is one of the higher variance damage dealers in the game. (wizards et all are higher due to higher variance general hit probabilities[which means closer to .5]) But really anything that adds attacks and does more damage from flat sources compared to damage die will have lower variances. Of the melee's the rogue is the highest. To compare the fighter at 4 attacks (and for ease assuming you can only hit for average damage) has a standard deviation of 6.26 (variance of 39 and change). The Rogue has a standard deviation of 18.3. And this is before you get into the increased variance from the die.
Note also that using GWM doesn't necessarily increase variance. (probably does if you move from 15 to hit to 10, but from 11 to 7 will probably decrease it)
*A number conveniently chosen to make GWM not valuable. Its breakeven point with this particular fighter is a to-hit required of 12. But this is, as far as i can tell the highest value that its possible to have for GWM breakeven. And, more importantly, the hit probability of players tends to go up as you get higher in levels for various reasons. (including conditional ability use and other things)
**If you're concerned about what happens before you have 20 dex, at 16 dex the rogue does 7.2 damage/round the fighter will drop down to 5.6 for the first levels.
Yeah, if we're going to compare them to GWM or Sharpshooter then they look bad for sure, as do most any classes that can't take advantage of those feats. Those two feats are as must-have as anything in 5E can be.
I feel bad for my friend who played the rogue that he didn't hold back his rogue concept for our 13th Age game though, because in that game the class is just ridiculously well-designed, as most of the classes are, and actually gets to do a lot of cool stuff that just screams rogue and stands out. He's loving his monk though, so it's all good.
You know, looking at it again, i don't think GWM is that OP (Sharpshooter is, a lot because you can get the +2 attack for "free" and because it negates a lot of the attack penalties). I mean, its super strong, but its not like end of the world strong, unless your fighter has a really easy time hitting.
Spreadsheeting it the breakeven point is a base to-hit(I.E minimum number to roll in order to hit) roll of 9 (greatsword + Great Weapon Talent) normally and 11 with advantage. The damage increase at a base to-hit of 5 is 37.5% for advantage and 16% without. OK, its pretty ridiculous when you're almost guaranteed to hit though
These numbers will be better for non great sword GWF fighters but at the end of the day through the pretty relevant range its not that much of an increase in expected damage. The damage increase from polearm mastery is about 30%(technically larger since i compared it to a polearm that for some reason does 2d6 damage) (slightly more with GWM)
If you can guarantee advantage its not bad to very good... but at the same time if you have any other sources of bonus damage it loses a lot of its luster pretty quickly.
doing a spreadsheet of fighter and rogue damage i think the problem might actually just be the number of attacks the fighter gets, or heavy weapons in general. A rogue outperforms a 2 handed longsword fighter(1d10 without GWF reroll) throughout the entire relevant range. A rogue is beaten by a GWF greatsword fighter at a to-hit of like 10 (with advantage, without the rogue probably does better) and the GWF GWM GS fighter on a to-hit of 9.
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webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
GWM comes into its own with a battle master fighter who has taken precision strike as one of his maneuvers. While not perfect, being able to add 1d8 to your attack roll after you've rolled your attack is pretty nice. Add lucky as another feat and you get to roll a 2nd d20 up to three times a day and that increases your chance to hit even more.
Sure but you could always just add 2d8 to an attack you crit with with a damage maneuver without taking the feat. (not that precision is bad, but it doesn't change the GWM math all that much since you can only use it so often)
I guess the DPR thing just sort of misses the point to me. The BBEG isn't going to enrage and wipe the party if you don't kill him in under 5 rounds.
And for all the various differences in potential class build efficiency, my PCs don't actually play their characters to maximal efficiency most of the time, let alone min-max the builds. I'm not sure if the rogue, before his death at level 5, used cunning action twice.
Add in a somewhat odd party a Monk, Pally/Warlock Polearm Master(the only character optimized at all), A Div Wizard(for Portent), a healing domain cleric, and a Barbarian, and even being pretty generous with magic items, They are striking way below what I'd think a more streamlined kill squad would put out. And that's something I need to account for, rather than just throwing a party of more optimized antagonists against them just to wipe the floor with them because, their dpr is bad, they heal more than they should, and they don't use their maneuverability & positioning well.
I pretty much never play optimally, usually for RP reasons. I'll build my character as well as I can, usually optimally, put the stats in the right place, but my choices in a fight will always be based on my character's personality.
Heck, the last fight we did in my group my Paladin left melee combat with two to three enemies, provoking opportunity attacks, in order to engage an enemy that was going to harm an innocent NPC. Because I'm a Paladin of Tyr and defending the innocent is goal number one. Gameplay wise? Bad move. RP wise? Heroic as fuck.
That players should have agency and meaningful, interesting choices is not "MMO design philosophy", it's just game design philosophy. You're not supposed to waste players' time with trivial choices. The game doesn't need to be designed so that Tavern Brawler is as good as GWM for a Barbarian with a greatsword, but it should be designed so that it's a valid addition to a grapple build and that grapple builds can perform well in a group.
But the weird defensiveness and sarcasm and 'lol mmos' stuff suggests you might have missed my point re: the player not failing, but being failed.
No I'm saying your metric for being failed of 'obvious mathematically wrong choices existing' is a flawed one. Because nothing in the game requires mathematically optimized characters or a tight equivalency between the characters.
A gnome barbarian will do worse DPR than a half orc, lacking the +2 starting str, the inability to use heavy weapons because of disadvantage and therefor no GWM, not having Savage attack. All of these things combined to make Biljin FlintChip forest gnome barbarian a mathematically wrong choice versus Marsk Fangface half-orc barbarian, and the reverse if we are comparing wizards instead of barbarians, and probably not much difference at all if we are looking at rogues, where they'd both be worse than an Elf or an alt-human.
This isn't a failing of D&D, that every race-class combination isn't equally good, because nothing hard built into the game requires "Party of 5 lvl 8 characters must kill 200HP AC 16 monster in under 5 rounds or TPK will happen", there isn't PvP to balance.
Each class should be fun to play, and for example the non UA beast master ranger wasn't, but if they had pushed its dpr through the roof it wouldn't have fixed that. And a champion fighter won't be as fun as many other classes, despite its dpr edge over most of them.
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BrodyThe WatchThe First ShoreRegistered Userregular
That players should have agency and meaningful, interesting choices is not "MMO design philosophy", it's just game design philosophy. You're not supposed to waste players' time with trivial choices. The game doesn't need to be designed so that Tavern Brawler is as good as GWM for a Barbarian with a greatsword, but it should be designed so that it's a valid addition to a grapple build and that grapple builds can perform well in a group.
But the weird defensiveness and sarcasm and 'lol mmos' stuff suggests you might have missed my point re: the player not failing, but being failed.
No I'm saying your metric for being failed of 'obvious mathematically wrong choices existing' is a flawed one. Because nothing in the game requires mathematically optimized characters or a tight equivalency between the characters.
A gnome barbarian will do worse DPR than a half orc, lacking the +2 starting str, the inability to use heavy weapons because of disadvantage and therefor no GWM, not having Savage attack. All of these things combined to make Biljin FlintChip forest gnome barbarian a mathematically wrong choice versus Marsk Fangface half-orc barbarian, and the reverse if we are comparing wizards instead of barbarians, and probably not much difference at all if we are looking at rogues, where they'd both be worse than an Elf or an alt-human.
This isn't a failing of D&D, that every race-class combination isn't equally good, because nothing hard built into the game requires "Party of 5 lvl 8 characters must kill 200HP AC 16 monster in under 5 rounds or TPK will happen", there isn't PvP to balance.
Each class should be fun to play, and for example the non UA beast master ranger wasn't, but if they had pushed its dpr through the roof it wouldn't have fixed that. And a champion fighter won't be as fun as many other classes, despite its dpr edge over most of them.
You are equating options which will sometimes "fail" to an option that will always "fail." Choosing a gnome barb isn't a great mathematical choice, but Gnome itself isn't a trap, as it can be great for other classes. Ranger, however, will always have the same problems, no matter what other choices you make.
"I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."
Actually a gnome barbarian will have a relatively minor disadvantage which goes away with time due to the hard limit on base statistics. Plus, TWF barbs are not very disadvantaged compared to GWM (worse as frenzy barbs but fatigue is rough anyway)
The difference will be less than the effect of using a shield (+2 to AC being roughly equivalent )
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webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
In the end the party has to be balanced with itself. If you have a huge disparity in the party in regards to power then encounter design will become erratic from the DM standpoint.
If everyone is unoptimized then everyone is fine, the party is balanced and the DM can design encounters around than. If you have 3 murder machines and one character is playing a blind ranger for flavor, well that ranger might not be too useful compared to everyone else. Vice versa where you have a super character and everyone else is playing for flavor versus mathematic perfection, the combats can get real swingy where the DM is trying to provide challenge to the super strong guy, but not trying to wipe the other three.
That's why I like session zeroes. Everybody makes their characters the first session and you can set the theme for your party correctly.
At what point, is balancing the game at lvl 20 a priority?
I mean, among the general population of people playing DND campaigns - what's the average levels they go through - before they start another campaign or roll some other characters or what?
Is a ranger, or rogue an inferior choice opposed to a fighter when you're level 5? or level 11?
I guess for me its different, as my group (all being people with full time jobs spread out over multiple-cities, and sometimes we just want to go out to dinner or hit a bar and get drunk) plays once every 5-6 weeks, as opposed to every week so progression is a lot slower.. getting to the higher levels just takes a long-long time.
Regarding beastmaster, I think its more important that the animal pet actually feels useful as opposed to i have pet, yay, let me just shoot my bow. Even though I agree that ranger just reads like a pointless class at this point.
Ultimately, at lower-levels where percentile damage differences aren't as big - in total output, classes just need to feel like they're doing what they're supposed to be doing, and that it should feel really really freaking awesome - to use your tavern brawler feat and punch people really fucking hard, because that's why you picked it. Or that the bard can come up with wicked insults that effect a creature, just because vicious mockery is a thing that exist.
But if you're a ranger and want to be legolas - and the fighter shoots a bow better than you, I guess that's a problem.
At what point, is balancing the game at lvl 20 a priority?
I mean, among the general population of people playing DND campaigns - what's the average levels they go through - before they start another campaign or roll some other characters or what?
Is a ranger, or rogue an inferior choice opposed to a fighter when you're level 5? or level 11?
I guess for me its different, as my group (all being people with full time jobs spread out over multiple-cities, and sometimes we just want to go out to dinner or hit a bar and get drunk) plays once every 5-6 weeks, as opposed to every week so progression is a lot slower.. getting to the higher levels just takes a long-long time.
Regarding beastmaster, I think its more important that the animal pet actually feels useful as opposed to i have pet, yay, let me just shoot my bow. Even though I agree that ranger just reads like a pointless class at this point.
Ultimately, at lower-levels where percentile damage differences aren't as big - in total output, classes just need to feel like they're doing what they're supposed to be doing, and that it should feel really really freaking awesome - to use your tavern brawler feat and punch people really fucking hard, because that's why you picked it. Or that the bard can come up with wicked insults that effect a creature, just because vicious mockery is a thing that exist.
But if you're a ranger and want to be legolas - and the fighter shoots a bow better than you, I guess that's a problem.
Nobody's mentioned level 20 at all except tinwhiskers, because he's trying to reduce his opposition to absurdity.
The math people have been discussing has all been comparing characters at levels 5-11, because 5 and 11 are big power jumps for most classes and often when they get access to big class-defining things, and most campaigns can expect to reach those levels. Yes, ranger and rogue both deal significantly less damage than fighters in that level range, although as mentioned rogue has the saving grace that it's trading damage for durability (and to a lesser extent, mobility and skillmonkey things like more skills and Expertise) because 5e rogues are oddly tanky.
Rogues do 1d4+dex for damage, and can try again 1d4+dex if they're want with a dual wield attack(which would generally be done if they miss the first attack). If they hit either then they get to do sneak attack damage. 1d6 per 2 levels. So for every attack a fighter get rogues get 2d6 sneak die plus some extra. Assuming the same 50% hit rate and assuming the rogue does not decide to attack if the first attack hits then they do 7. + 3.5/rank avg damage/hit but when they crit they crit for another 2.5 + 3.5/rank. They hit at a rate of 75% but only ever get "one" attack at that 75% hit rate(50% to hit, on miss, 50% to hit again is mathematically identical to a 75% hit rate). So they do between and 8.7** and 36.625 damage per round. But the variance is a lot higher. On a crit they do nearly twice as much damage. 25% of the time they do nothing. Their attacks are compromised of almost entirely damage die, increasing the variance even further. A fighter only has that kind of variance before level 5 and that doesn't include them using their abilities.
Snipping this down to address something. Why are you having the Rogue do 1d4+dex damage? Rapier's are finesse and do 1d8. Additionally, Rogues can use Sharpshooter for bow or crossbow, and get that +10 damage in addition to their sneak attack damage, all while remaining much, much harder to pin down than a fighter.
Lastly, is it that wrong that a Fighter or Barbarian can do the most amount of damage in the round? They literally have nothing else to contribute meaningfully to the mechanics of the game. Rogues have all kinds of out of combat places to shine, whereas if Combat isn't happening, the fighters and barbarians get kinda left in the dust.
To me, each class should have it's stage to shine on. The fact that they are all better at shining on different stages is a feature, not a bug.
If you have a player who is outshining everyone else in combat, cool - find ways to allow the other players to shine and have their moments as well.
In my current campaign, my friend is playing a halfling paladin with extremely poorly rolled stats. He (the player) basically hates D&D combat, but loves role playing and acting. I picked Moon Druid, so my character is a bit of an unstoppable juggernaut in combat. Out of combat, though, our cute little halfing paladin gets to do all the party facing, and gets to pick the places we investigate.
Meanwhile, if the DM picks a difficulty roughly in between challenging me and challenging him, rather than challenging me directly, my challenge becomes "can I keep my friends alive in this fight". Still works, I think.
Ultimately, D&D combat is never going to be perfectly balanced, but that's not why I'm playing it. I'm playing it because things can happen in a D&D session that can't happen anywhere else, and for me, the tactile feel of miniature based grid combat adds something ineffable that has seemed to be missing when I played other RPG systems.
Diagnosed with AML on 6/1/12. Read about it: www.effleukemia.com
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webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
Rogues do 1d4+dex for damage, and can try again 1d4+dex if they're want with a dual wield attack(which would generally be done if they miss the first attack). If they hit either then they get to do sneak attack damage. 1d6 per 2 levels. So for every attack a fighter get rogues get 2d6 sneak die plus some extra. Assuming the same 50% hit rate and assuming the rogue does not decide to attack if the first attack hits then they do 7. + 3.5/rank avg damage/hit but when they crit they crit for another 2.5 + 3.5/rank. They hit at a rate of 75% but only ever get "one" attack at that 75% hit rate(50% to hit, on miss, 50% to hit again is mathematically identical to a 75% hit rate). So they do between and 8.7** and 36.625 damage per round. But the variance is a lot higher. On a crit they do nearly twice as much damage. 25% of the time they do nothing. Their attacks are compromised of almost entirely damage die, increasing the variance even further. A fighter only has that kind of variance before level 5 and that doesn't include them using their abilities.
Snipping this down to address something. Why are you having the Rogue do 1d4+dex damage? Rapier's are finesse and do 1d8. Additionally, Rogues can use Sharpshooter for bow or crossbow, and get that +10 damage in addition to their sneak attack damage, all while remaining much, much harder to pin down than a fighter.
Lastly, is it that wrong that a Fighter or Barbarian can do the most amount of damage in the round? They literally have nothing else to contribute meaningfully to the mechanics of the game. Rogues have all kinds of out of combat places to shine, whereas if Combat isn't happening, the fighters and barbarians get kinda left in the dust.
To me, each class should have it's stage to shine on. The fact that they are all better at shining on different stages is a feature, not a bug.
If you have a player who is outshining everyone else in combat, cool - find ways to allow the other players to shine and have their moments as well.
In my current campaign, my friend is playing a halfling paladin with extremely poorly rolled stats. He (the player) basically hates D&D combat, but loves role playing and acting. I picked Moon Druid, so my character is a bit of an unstoppable juggernaut in combat. Out of combat, though, our cute little halfing paladin gets to do all the party facing, and gets to pick the places we investigate.
Meanwhile, if the DM picks a difficulty roughly in between challenging me and challenging him, rather than challenging me directly, my challenge becomes "can I keep my friends alive in this fight". Still works, I think.
Ultimately, D&D combat is never going to be perfectly balanced, but that's not why I'm playing it. I'm playing it because things can happen in a D&D session that can't happen anywhere else, and for me, the tactile feel of miniature based grid combat adds something ineffable that has seemed to be missing when I played other RPG systems.
I'm of the belief that all characters should be able to contribute effectively to combat, whether that be damage, crowd control, buffing/de-buffing, whatever. Combat is so central to D&D that ignoring that aspect can potentially de-balance a group. Session Zero for the win there again.
I think that loops it into the ranger because whatever you want to do as a ranger in combat you can do better with a different class. Playing a ranger is going to be a RP decision more than a mechanics based one.
I would probably be a bit annoyed at the Paladin if they couldn't effectively contribute to combat in whatever role their character is spec'd for. I'm a big fan of the array for assigning points to a character though, and I use it whenever I run a game. I like to know roughly the starting power level of my group, as whatever characters they pick will be capable in their roles.
Rogues do 1d4+dex for damage, and can try again 1d4+dex if they're want with a dual wield attack(which would generally be done if they miss the first attack). If they hit either then they get to do sneak attack damage. 1d6 per 2 levels. So for every attack a fighter get rogues get 2d6 sneak die plus some extra. Assuming the same 50% hit rate and assuming the rogue does not decide to attack if the first attack hits then they do 7. + 3.5/rank avg damage/hit but when they crit they crit for another 2.5 + 3.5/rank. They hit at a rate of 75% but only ever get "one" attack at that 75% hit rate(50% to hit, on miss, 50% to hit again is mathematically identical to a 75% hit rate). So they do between and 8.7** and 36.625 damage per round. But the variance is a lot higher. On a crit they do nearly twice as much damage. 25% of the time they do nothing. Their attacks are compromised of almost entirely damage die, increasing the variance even further. A fighter only has that kind of variance before level 5 and that doesn't include them using their abilities.
Snipping this down to address something. Why are you having the Rogue do 1d4+dex damage? Rapier's are finesse and do 1d8. Additionally, Rogues can use Sharpshooter for bow or crossbow, and get that +10 damage in addition to their sneak attack damage, all while remaining much, much harder to pin down than a fighter.
Lastly, is it that wrong that a Fighter or Barbarian can do the most amount of damage in the round? They literally have nothing else to contribute meaningfully to the mechanics of the game. Rogues have all kinds of out of combat places to shine, whereas if Combat isn't happening, the fighters and barbarians get kinda left in the dust.
To me, each class should have it's stage to shine on. The fact that they are all better at shining on different stages is a feature, not a bug.
If you have a player who is outshining everyone else in combat, cool - find ways to allow the other players to shine and have their moments as well.
In my current campaign, my friend is playing a halfling paladin with extremely poorly rolled stats. He (the player) basically hates D&D combat, but loves role playing and acting. I picked Moon Druid, so my character is a bit of an unstoppable juggernaut in combat. Out of combat, though, our cute little halfing paladin gets to do all the party facing, and gets to pick the places we investigate.
Meanwhile, if the DM picks a difficulty roughly in between challenging me and challenging him, rather than challenging me directly, my challenge becomes "can I keep my friends alive in this fight". Still works, I think.
Ultimately, D&D combat is never going to be perfectly balanced, but that's not why I'm playing it. I'm playing it because things can happen in a D&D session that can't happen anywhere else, and for me, the tactile feel of miniature based grid combat adds something ineffable that has seemed to be missing when I played other RPG systems.
I'm of the belief that all characters should be able to contribute effectively to combat, whether that be damage, crowd control, buffing/de-buffing, whatever. Combat is so central to D&D that ignoring that aspect can potentially de-balance a group. Session Zero for the win there again.
I think that loops it into the ranger because whatever you want to do as a ranger in combat you can do better with a different class. Playing a ranger is going to be a RP decision more than a mechanics based one.
I would probably be a bit annoyed at the Paladin if they couldn't effectively contribute to combat in whatever role their character is spec'd for. I'm a big fan of the array for assigning points to a character though, and I use it whenever I run a game. I like to know roughly the starting power level of my group, as whatever characters they pick will be capable in their roles.
See, I have to disagree with this based on one bit of criteria based off of 3 years of observation at my local store with it's 30 some odd players: no one plays a land druid since everyone would much rather turn into animals then cast spells.
As a result, the ranger inherits the druids spell duties.
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BrodyThe WatchThe First ShoreRegistered Userregular
I feel like DPR, and the issue with Rogue, came up tangential to the original concern, which is that Ranger doesn't provide any mechanical benefits, and can be just as effectively RP'ed using mechanical options provided by other classes.
"I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."
Rogues do 1d4+dex for damage, and can try again 1d4+dex if they're want with a dual wield attack(which would generally be done if they miss the first attack). If they hit either then they get to do sneak attack damage. 1d6 per 2 levels. So for every attack a fighter get rogues get 2d6 sneak die plus some extra. Assuming the same 50% hit rate and assuming the rogue does not decide to attack if the first attack hits then they do 7. + 3.5/rank avg damage/hit but when they crit they crit for another 2.5 + 3.5/rank. They hit at a rate of 75% but only ever get "one" attack at that 75% hit rate(50% to hit, on miss, 50% to hit again is mathematically identical to a 75% hit rate). So they do between and 8.7** and 36.625 damage per round. But the variance is a lot higher. On a crit they do nearly twice as much damage. 25% of the time they do nothing. Their attacks are compromised of almost entirely damage die, increasing the variance even further. A fighter only has that kind of variance before level 5 and that doesn't include them using their abilities.
Snipping this down to address something. Why are you having the Rogue do 1d4+dex damage? Rapier's are finesse and do 1d8. Additionally, Rogues can use Sharpshooter for bow or crossbow, and get that +10 damage in addition to their sneak attack damage, all while remaining much, much harder to pin down than a fighter.
Lastly, is it that wrong that a Fighter or Barbarian can do the most amount of damage in the round? They literally have nothing else to contribute meaningfully to the mechanics of the game. Rogues have all kinds of out of combat places to shine, whereas if Combat isn't happening, the fighters and barbarians get kinda left in the dust.
To me, each class should have it's stage to shine on. The fact that they are all better at shining on different stages is a feature, not a bug.
If you have a player who is outshining everyone else in combat, cool - find ways to allow the other players to shine and have their moments as well.
In my current campaign, my friend is playing a halfling paladin with extremely poorly rolled stats. He (the player) basically hates D&D combat, but loves role playing and acting. I picked Moon Druid, so my character is a bit of an unstoppable juggernaut in combat. Out of combat, though, our cute little halfing paladin gets to do all the party facing, and gets to pick the places we investigate.
Meanwhile, if the DM picks a difficulty roughly in between challenging me and challenging him, rather than challenging me directly, my challenge becomes "can I keep my friends alive in this fight". Still works, I think.
Ultimately, D&D combat is never going to be perfectly balanced, but that's not why I'm playing it. I'm playing it because things can happen in a D&D session that can't happen anywhere else, and for me, the tactile feel of miniature based grid combat adds something ineffable that has seemed to be missing when I played other RPG systems.
I'm of the belief that all characters should be able to contribute effectively to combat, whether that be damage, crowd control, buffing/de-buffing, whatever. Combat is so central to D&D that ignoring that aspect can potentially de-balance a group. Session Zero for the win there again.
I think that loops it into the ranger because whatever you want to do as a ranger in combat you can do better with a different class. Playing a ranger is going to be a RP decision more than a mechanics based one.
I would probably be a bit annoyed at the Paladin if they couldn't effectively contribute to combat in whatever role their character is spec'd for. I'm a big fan of the array for assigning points to a character though, and I use it whenever I run a game. I like to know roughly the starting power level of my group, as whatever characters they pick will be capable in their roles.
And the idea that fighters are dead weight outside of combat just isn't accurate to begin with. They're gonna get 4-5 skill proficiencies, the way backgrounds work they're going to have access to pick any skill they want/need, and that 4-5 is only 1 less than the 5-6 most classes get. They even get a tool proficiency through student of war, which is more than can be said for the Ranger or Barbarian.
They don't make ideal party faces like a CHA class would, but neither does a Ranger or Barb (or a Rogue, for that matter, at least compared to a Warlock or Paladin or Bard).
Sure but you could always just add 2d8 to an attack you crit with with a damage maneuver without taking the feat. (not that precision is bad, but it doesn't change the GWM math all that much since you can only use it so often)
Precise attack makes a big difference in the power attack scenario because:
A) In a lot of games, the Fighter can get a short rest between every combat so you're looking at 4 (more later) uses of superiority die per combat. You get to wait until you roll to decide whether to use it, so that's 4 times per combat the Fighter gets to power attack, then see they rolled like a 10, knowing that they will miss without the precise and then using it. If they roll high they just won't use it, and if they roll really low they just won't waste it.
Crit fishing with superiority die is rarely the way to go, because 5% chance to crit just isn't that much in the first place so you'll waste them trying to hold them for that. Better to just power attack almost all the time and get +10 damage.
I agree with your earlier point that Sharpshooter is more powerful than GWM in general because the +2 from archery style and also ignoring all cover are a big deal. Being able to fire a longbow from 600 feet without penalty is a big deal depending on where you're fighting too.
That being said, GWM offers one thing that Sharpshooter doesn't, and that's the synergy with polearm master giving you a bonus action attack to get another +10 damage hit.
Edit: Actually n/m, for two feats an archer just takes Crossbow Expert and Sharpshooter and gets the extra bonus action attack for another +10 dmg too. Either way, they're both must-have feats for an optimized Fighter.
To be fair, you're supposed to only be getting a short rest every other combat - the recommended adventuring 'day' is 2 encounters, short rest, 2 encounters, short rest, 2 encounters, long rest, and theoretically that's what the game is balanced around.
I'm on board with the rest, though - Precision attack is a pretty big deal and produces a lot more damage than most other maneuvers.
Really the only other maneuvers I see getting much use are Riposte (to pick up a whole extra attack) and tripping attack (to knock the target prone on the first swing so you have advantage on the rest of your attacks).
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tzeentchlingDoctor of RocksOaklandRegistered Userregular
Question - is there any large downside to houseruling that players may add the higher of their Dex or Int to their AC, instead of limiting it to Dex? The only class I can offhand see this affecting significantly is the Wizard, who's then free to max Con and Int and not worry about also needing Dex to be at all survivable, but I'm OK with this in general.
I simply feel like for most classes, who aren't Bard/Wizard/Arcane Trickster Rogue, Int is just an obvious dump stat and doesn't have as many useful out-of-combat applications. It also leads to things like Clerics who are bad at Religion checks. This seems like it might open up a few more options for characters and give more RP/build options. But I haven't played a lot of 5e, so I don't know if this would break any fundamental gameplay designs.
Question - is there any large downside to houseruling that players may add the higher of their Dex or Int to their AC, instead of limiting it to Dex? The only class I can offhand see this affecting significantly is the Wizard, who's then free to max Con and Int and not worry about also needing Dex to be at all survivable, but I'm OK with this in general.
I simply feel like for most classes, who aren't Bard/Wizard/Arcane Trickster Rogue, Int is just an obvious dump stat and doesn't have as many useful out-of-combat applications. It also leads to things like Clerics who are bad at Religion checks. This seems like it might open up a few more options for characters and give more RP/build options. But I haven't played a lot of 5e, so I don't know if this would break any fundamental gameplay designs.
True story: in my current group of six players, during the first session we realized that the highest INT in the party was 8. The DM graciously allowed me to swap my 8 INT with my 10 STR so that at least someone in the party could muster a +0 modifier for intelligence checks.
Question - is there any large downside to houseruling that players may add the higher of their Dex or Int to their AC, instead of limiting it to Dex? The only class I can offhand see this affecting significantly is the Wizard, who's then free to max Con and Int and not worry about also needing Dex to be at all survivable, but I'm OK with this in general.
I simply feel like for most classes, who aren't Bard/Wizard/Arcane Trickster Rogue, Int is just an obvious dump stat and doesn't have as many useful out-of-combat applications. It also leads to things like Clerics who are bad at Religion checks. This seems like it might open up a few more options for characters and give more RP/build options. But I haven't played a lot of 5e, so I don't know if this would break any fundamental gameplay designs.
I'm pretty sure it won't break anything - Wizards will net a better AC, nobody else will really be affected (arcane trickster rogues won't get a boost because their dex is already higher, eldritch knights will have more int than dex but will be spending most of their time in plate so they won't get to add either bonus, and...does anybody else actually use int at all? Jeez.)
Honestly it might not be going far enough to solve your problem - for anyone who's not using int as a primary stat and is just picking a tertiary to get incidental bonuses, "+1 to AC and History/Religion checks" is pretty much always going to be worse than "+1 to AC, initiative, the most commonly checked save, and stealth/acrobatics checks"
Even if you let them add higher of dex/int to initiative, dex saves make up literally more than a third of all saves and int saves are virtually nonexistent - it's tough to mechanically justify boosting int over dex on that basis alone.
Question - is there any large downside to houseruling that players may add the higher of their Dex or Int to their AC, instead of limiting it to Dex? The only class I can offhand see this affecting significantly is the Wizard, who's then free to max Con and Int and not worry about also needing Dex to be at all survivable, but I'm OK with this in general.
I simply feel like for most classes, who aren't Bard/Wizard/Arcane Trickster Rogue, Int is just an obvious dump stat and doesn't have as many useful out-of-combat applications. It also leads to things like Clerics who are bad at Religion checks. This seems like it might open up a few more options for characters and give more RP/build options. But I haven't played a lot of 5e, so I don't know if this would break any fundamental gameplay designs.
I assume the limits from armor type would still apply.
I like the idea, I'd just exclude wizards. I think the buff it would give them would just be too big in the early/mid part of the game. Going from an AC of 12 to an AC of 15 at lvl 8, is pretty huge. Say a swarm of cr 3 or 4 creatures with +6 to attack, they go from hitting 75% of the time to 55%, and a creature swinging at +10 misses twice as often as they would otherwise. Plus the wizard they are hitting gets, maybe an extra 10-15% hit points, because of even a single +1 modifier increase in con score, 3 AC doesn't seem like a ton, but going from needing a 6 to needing a 9, is approximately the same as the creatures having permanent disadvantage when attacking the wizard.
And this assumes a player takes the very slanted 15-15-15-8-8-8 buy, if they'd have dropped their dex and/or con even modestly to have say better perception checks, or charisma skills in a more diplomacy based game, it becomes even more pronounced.
The place it might get weird too, is that for classes with a Dex save, but not necessarily Dex-based damage it sort of gives them a third save proficiency. Because instead of say the bard having a +4 to Dex and a +5 to Cha saves, he'd have a +2 to Dex, +5 to Cha, and +2 to Int saves. Not that Int saves are that common. So I'm not sure it really matters.
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tzeentchlingDoctor of RocksOaklandRegistered Userregular
Question - is there any large downside to houseruling that players may add the higher of their Dex or Int to their AC, instead of limiting it to Dex? The only class I can offhand see this affecting significantly is the Wizard, who's then free to max Con and Int and not worry about also needing Dex to be at all survivable, but I'm OK with this in general.
I simply feel like for most classes, who aren't Bard/Wizard/Arcane Trickster Rogue, Int is just an obvious dump stat and doesn't have as many useful out-of-combat applications. It also leads to things like Clerics who are bad at Religion checks. This seems like it might open up a few more options for characters and give more RP/build options. But I haven't played a lot of 5e, so I don't know if this would break any fundamental gameplay designs.
I assume the limits from armor type would still apply.
I like the idea, I'd just exclude wizards. I think the buff it would give them would just be too big in the early/mid part of the game. Going from an AC of 12 to an AC of 15 at lvl 8, is pretty huge. Say a swarm of cr 3 or 4 creatures with +6 to attack, they go from hitting 75% of the time to 55%, and a creature swinging at +10 misses twice as often as they would otherwise. Plus the wizard they are hitting gets, maybe an extra 10-15% hit points, because of even a single +1 modifier increase in con score, 3 AC doesn't seem like a ton, but going from needing a 6 to needing a 9, is approximately the same as the creatures having permanent disadvantage when attacking the wizard.
And this assumes a player takes the very slanted 15-15-15-8-8-8 buy, if they'd have dropped their dex and/or con even modestly to have say better perception checks, or charisma skills in a more diplomacy based game, it becomes even more pronounced.
The place it might get weird too, is that for classes with a Dex save, but not necessarily Dex-based damage it sort of gives them a third save proficiency. Because instead of say the bard having a +4 to Dex and a +5 to Cha saves, he'd have a +2 to Dex, +5 to Cha, and +2 to Int saves. Not that Int saves are that common. So I'm not sure it really matters.
Limits from armor type still apply - only good on light or medium to +2.
You're right that it does affect Wizards a lot. I'm curious, though - how often do you find your Wizards going for protective magic items instead of cool ones? Cloak of Protection, etc? I feel like I've seen a few builds that work that in anyway, so they can have a reasonable armor save. This basically lets them take different, more flavorful stuff instead if they want.
One thing I don't like about playing a Wild Mage sorcerer is that it feels like I have to spend all my 1st level slots (and spells known, for that matter) on Mage Armor and Shield in order to not explode into chunks if an enemy even looks at me funny. Less of an issue at higher levels when the low level spell slots become more expendable, but I was feeling the hurt pretty bad at 3rd level. Dragon Sorcerer basically gets permanent Mage Armor as a class feature, which helps quite a bit. I don't think Wizard has that option, though?
Don't worry, when I make my 5e-Legend RPG-13th Age-Dungeon World chimera of a system the core class for Ranger or Paladin will be the same; Half-Fighter, Half-Divine with wide enough options and spell selection that you can flavor it out how you want.
How balanced or compelling does this look? It's still 5e enough that I want to throw it in here instead of the Roleplaying Thread.
Not trying to constantly mention 13th Age in the D&D thread or anything, but I just happen to have finished playing D&D and started playing 13th Age, and one of the things I love in that game is how you add the middle modifier of 3 stats to your defenses instead of just one. So a character with 20 DEX, 12 WIS, 12 CON still only adds +1 mod to their AC, not +5. Works the same way for physical and mental defenses, which are the other two defenses in the game. Really helps with how OP DEX usually is in d20 based games. It's still very useful in 13th Age, but not as powerful as in say D&D.
Posts
1 = Defender
2 = Striker
3 = Striker
4 = Controller
5 = Controller
6 = Leader
7 = Controller
These roles existed before 4E, and they still exist after 4E. They even exist in the Great and Holy 13th Age, Long May It Be Recommended.
You've substituted how classes do their jobs in 5e with what job they do.
Also "skills" and "creative magic" aren't a even a class archetype under that system.
And for all the various differences in potential class build efficiency, my PCs don't actually play their characters to maximal efficiency most of the time, let alone min-max the builds. I'm not sure if the rogue, before his death at level 5, used cunning action twice.
Add in a somewhat odd party a Monk, Pally/Warlock Polearm Master(the only character optimized at all), A Div Wizard(for Portent), a healing domain cleric, and a Barbarian, and even being pretty generous with magic items, They are striking way below what I'd think a more streamlined kill squad would put out. And that's something I need to account for, rather than just throwing a party of more optimized antagonists against them just to wipe the floor with them because, their dpr is bad, they heal more than they should, and they don't use their maneuverability & positioning well.
That is, you shouldn't feel punished because you chose a ranger instead of a fighter. In order to achieve this you need to not actually be punished because you choose a ranger instead of a fighter. Just like the classes are designed so that you aren't punished for not multi-classing.
To this end its not impossible for the ranger to be its own class. There just isn't a particular reason that it is instead of being part of fighter and/or barbarian. Making it its own class presents design challenges inherent in the structure of the system they have set up for the ranger (must use bows/twf).
Keeping the class makes it more likely that players will unintentionally put themselves in a position where they're going to be less effective than their friends. Where, if they play their class to perfection they're going to be less effective than their friends playing their class at a basic level.
Few of the other classes have this fundamental problem except maybe rogues. Primary spellcasters are primary spellcasters. Monks get a shit tonne of super cool and strong abilities. Paladins and Barbarians as well.(plus good damage on all of these classes). Rogues are kind of left out in that sneak attack doesn't do as much DPR as it probably ought to. But they're still better than rangers due to their combat tricks.
So when looking at your group which only has "one optimized character" you really have every character within 5 to 10% of each other. And you don't have any dominated classes.
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
Yeah, but if the fail-forward is interesting then there's no incentive/value in bringing a Ranger because the adventure isn't less successful, just different. And if it's not interesting, then it still doesn't make the party go 'man, we should have brought a Ranger', it just makes them turn to the dm and go 'all these random interminable wilderness encounters are boring, I want to know what happens with the lich we're supposed to be dealing with. Stop fucking us around and let us play the interesting part of the game.'
And there's the fact that the players generally roll their characters at the start of the game, and as a result the DM knows the party comp when designing sessions - so what's the point of making tracking a focus? Either you know they've got a Ranger, and the tracking stuff is immediately trivial and you're basically just giving the Ranger a freebie to justify his existence, or you know they don't, and the tracking stuff is just a time/resource tax you know they'll probably fail at on the way to the stuff that matters. At best, most campaigns will occasionally have a Survival check that is tuned for the party to be reasonably able to succeed at anyway and the Ranger will get to go 'I'm a Ranger! Auto-success!'
"Rangers are good at tracking things" has always been a thing that exists because Aragorn tracked the uruk-hai halfway across rohan, not because it's a necessary or interesting part of DnD. It's in the 'pointless flavor trinkets' family of class features alongside stuff like Thieves' Cant and Timeless Body; Rangers just suffer because it's inexplicably not treated that way and ends up eating a slot that should be occupied by a real class feature.
A game should be designed so that the choices offered to players are meaningful, interesting choices without obvious right and wrong answers. Classes that underperform are traps for players - a player who doesn't realize that the class is bad shouldn't be punished with a shitty character, and a player who does realize that it's bad shouldn't have to choose between playing the character type they're interested in and playing a character that is good. I know people tend to get up in arms around this point because they feel like they're being told they're playing wrong, but they aren't and that's not the point: When there is an obvious mathematically right and wrong choice, a player who makes the 'wrong' choice is not failing at the game, he is being failed by the game. A game with poor class balance has design problems; if your group isn't impacted by those problems because it doesn't care about class balance, that's fine and you're not obligated to do so, but that doesn't mean the problems cease to exist.
And if we're gonna handwave balance discussion because DPR doesn't matter because the boss isn't going to enrage (and I mean, yours might not but I've definitely played games of DnD with enemies who did precisely that), doesn't that generalize to literally every part of the game? It's basically just "who cares if the party is good at stuff, the DM is tailoring the game to the party so that they can succeed". Why bring any healing? The DM will take that into account and make monsters do less damage. Why rest? The DM will account for the party's weakened state and give them easier fights. Why not rest as often as possible? The DM will adjust the timeline to make the game work. Why bring a Ranger to track stuff? The DM will just handwave the tracking. Why bring a character with good social skills? The DM will make the necessary people friendly and give the party the information they need for the adventure to work. Why bother packing resurrection spells or even trying not to die? It's not like the DM isn't going to let you play anymore if your guy dies or force you to play a character you don't want; your guy will come back if you want him to. Why have mechanics at all? Nothing matters and the game is a meaningless diversion as you and your friends drift inexorably toward oblivion.
You seems to be taking an MMO design philosophy and applying to D&D. You can not offer meaningful choices to players in a game as free form as D&D and not offer them obvious wrong answers.
It is okay to have suboptimal choices for players because there isn't any reason they need to make optimal choices. BBEG isn't WoW Patchwerk Fight v6.0 or whatever number they are up to now. Where if you bring two frost mages and a balance druid instead of 3 arms warriors you can not mathematically defeat the boss, because the boss now and forever has 900 million hit points and enrages in 6 minutes after aggro'd. And that is game breaking to any frost mage or balance druid players.
One of my players just had his Barbarian pick up Tavern Brawler at lvl 8, instead of Great Weapon Master, because he want to be able to punch people harder. Does WoTC need to buff Tavern Brawler, since it's clearly the mathematically wrong choice?
Will the party be fucked for the next 4 levels because the Barbarian decided to not get the 25%? damage a round boost he would have gained with GWM instead of Tavern Brawler. I mean, that basically puts him down in rogue, or maybe even gasp ranger levels of output. He's basically ruined the game for himself and he doesn't even know it. Atleast he picked a half orc, imagine if he had made a halfling barbarian, the game would be a complete disaster!
I'm not saying they couldn't stand to buff ranger damage output some more, but I don't think alpha strike damage output at level 20 is the end all be all of 'balancing' the classes. D&D isn't WorldOfSimcraft.
“The secret we should never let the gamemasters know is that they don't need any rules.”
But the weird defensiveness and sarcasm and 'lol mmos' stuff suggests you might have missed my point re: the player not failing, but being failed.
Between evasion (half or no damage on DEX saves), uncanny dodge (half damage from an attack made against you once/round), and cunning action, they're crazy hard to pin down.
My buddy in the campaign I just ended took the mobile feat so that he could use his cunning action for dash or hide instead of disengage, and it allowed him to play the campaign with only 12 CON yet still be very survivable. He got KOed less than the party fighter who had 16 CON (and others), just because he was very hard to threaten with a lot of enemies. It was great. Trying to figure out ways to have melee opponents threaten him was a really fun part of combats, and a lot of the time I just couldn't do it.
The main issue that makes them "weak" in terms of DPR is that great weapon mastery (and similarly the ranged equivalent) is OP. A GWF greatsword does 8.33 average damage, so a fighter will do a max of roughly 13 average damage per attack. GWP makes this 23 and they can crit for another 8.33 avg.
If you leave out GWM fighters attack between 1 and 4 times per round and if they hit 50% of the time* they're doing 6.26 average damage per attack. So between 6.26 and 25.066 average damage/round.
They attack up to 4 times, smoothing their damage curve significantly. And can attack more with reaction attacks in a fashion that is highly favorable to damage (due to the large weapon damage they do, rather than conditional)
Rogues do 1d4+dex for damage, and can try again 1d4+dex if they're want with a dual wield attack(which would generally be done if they miss the first attack). If they hit either then they get to do sneak attack damage. 1d6 per 2 levels. So for every attack a fighter get rogues get 2d6 sneak die plus some extra. Assuming the same 50% hit rate and assuming the rogue does not decide to attack if the first attack hits then they do 7. + 3.5/rank avg damage/hit but when they crit they crit for another 2.5 + 3.5/rank. They hit at a rate of 75% but only ever get "one" attack at that 75% hit rate(50% to hit, on miss, 50% to hit again is mathematically identical to a 75% hit rate). So they do between and 8.7** and 36.625 damage per round. But the variance is a lot higher. On a crit they do nearly twice as much damage. 25% of the time they do nothing. Their attacks are compromised of almost entirely damage die, increasing the variance even further. A fighter only has that kind of variance before level 5 and that doesn't include them using their abilities.
They are also, legitimately, one of the higher damage dealing classes in the game not counting deliberate/conditional spike damage(of which they have pretty much none, and makes their very high DPR come down a good deal in oomph)
In general the rogue is one of the higher variance damage dealers in the game. (wizards et all are higher due to higher variance general hit probabilities[which means closer to .5]) But really anything that adds attacks and does more damage from flat sources compared to damage die will have lower variances. Of the melee's the rogue is the highest. To compare the fighter at 4 attacks (and for ease assuming you can only hit for average damage) has a standard deviation of 6.26 (variance of 39 and change). The Rogue has a standard deviation of 18.3. And this is before you get into the increased variance from the die.
Note also that using GWM doesn't necessarily increase variance. (probably does if you move from 15 to hit to 10, but from 11 to 7 will probably decrease it)
*A number conveniently chosen to make GWM not valuable. Its breakeven point with this particular fighter is a to-hit required of 12. But this is, as far as i can tell the highest value that its possible to have for GWM breakeven. And, more importantly, the hit probability of players tends to go up as you get higher in levels for various reasons. (including conditional ability use and other things)
**If you're concerned about what happens before you have 20 dex, at 16 dex the rogue does 7.2 damage/round the fighter will drop down to 5.6 for the first levels.
I feel bad for my friend who played the rogue that he didn't hold back his rogue concept for our 13th Age game though, because in that game the class is just ridiculously well-designed, as most of the classes are, and actually gets to do a lot of cool stuff that just screams rogue and stands out. He's loving his monk though, so it's all good.
Spreadsheeting it the breakeven point is a base to-hit(I.E minimum number to roll in order to hit) roll of 9 (greatsword + Great Weapon Talent) normally and 11 with advantage. The damage increase at a base to-hit of 5 is 37.5% for advantage and 16% without. OK, its pretty ridiculous when you're almost guaranteed to hit though
These numbers will be better for non great sword GWF fighters but at the end of the day through the pretty relevant range its not that much of an increase in expected damage. The damage increase from polearm mastery is about 30%(technically larger since i compared it to a polearm that for some reason does 2d6 damage) (slightly more with GWM)
If you can guarantee advantage its not bad to very good... but at the same time if you have any other sources of bonus damage it loses a lot of its luster pretty quickly.
doing a spreadsheet of fighter and rogue damage i think the problem might actually just be the number of attacks the fighter gets, or heavy weapons in general. A rogue outperforms a 2 handed longsword fighter(1d10 without GWF reroll) throughout the entire relevant range. A rogue is beaten by a GWF greatsword fighter at a to-hit of like 10 (with advantage, without the rogue probably does better) and the GWF GWM GS fighter on a to-hit of 9.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
I pretty much never play optimally, usually for RP reasons. I'll build my character as well as I can, usually optimally, put the stats in the right place, but my choices in a fight will always be based on my character's personality.
Heck, the last fight we did in my group my Paladin left melee combat with two to three enemies, provoking opportunity attacks, in order to engage an enemy that was going to harm an innocent NPC. Because I'm a Paladin of Tyr and defending the innocent is goal number one. Gameplay wise? Bad move. RP wise? Heroic as fuck.
No I'm saying your metric for being failed of 'obvious mathematically wrong choices existing' is a flawed one. Because nothing in the game requires mathematically optimized characters or a tight equivalency between the characters.
A gnome barbarian will do worse DPR than a half orc, lacking the +2 starting str, the inability to use heavy weapons because of disadvantage and therefor no GWM, not having Savage attack. All of these things combined to make Biljin FlintChip forest gnome barbarian a mathematically wrong choice versus Marsk Fangface half-orc barbarian, and the reverse if we are comparing wizards instead of barbarians, and probably not much difference at all if we are looking at rogues, where they'd both be worse than an Elf or an alt-human.
This isn't a failing of D&D, that every race-class combination isn't equally good, because nothing hard built into the game requires "Party of 5 lvl 8 characters must kill 200HP AC 16 monster in under 5 rounds or TPK will happen", there isn't PvP to balance.
Each class should be fun to play, and for example the non UA beast master ranger wasn't, but if they had pushed its dpr through the roof it wouldn't have fixed that. And a champion fighter won't be as fun as many other classes, despite its dpr edge over most of them.
You are equating options which will sometimes "fail" to an option that will always "fail." Choosing a gnome barb isn't a great mathematical choice, but Gnome itself isn't a trap, as it can be great for other classes. Ranger, however, will always have the same problems, no matter what other choices you make.
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
The difference will be less than the effect of using a shield (+2 to AC being roughly equivalent )
If everyone is unoptimized then everyone is fine, the party is balanced and the DM can design encounters around than. If you have 3 murder machines and one character is playing a blind ranger for flavor, well that ranger might not be too useful compared to everyone else. Vice versa where you have a super character and everyone else is playing for flavor versus mathematic perfection, the combats can get real swingy where the DM is trying to provide challenge to the super strong guy, but not trying to wipe the other three.
That's why I like session zeroes. Everybody makes their characters the first session and you can set the theme for your party correctly.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
I mean, among the general population of people playing DND campaigns - what's the average levels they go through - before they start another campaign or roll some other characters or what?
Is a ranger, or rogue an inferior choice opposed to a fighter when you're level 5? or level 11?
I guess for me its different, as my group (all being people with full time jobs spread out over multiple-cities, and sometimes we just want to go out to dinner or hit a bar and get drunk) plays once every 5-6 weeks, as opposed to every week so progression is a lot slower.. getting to the higher levels just takes a long-long time.
Regarding beastmaster, I think its more important that the animal pet actually feels useful as opposed to i have pet, yay, let me just shoot my bow. Even though I agree that ranger just reads like a pointless class at this point.
Ultimately, at lower-levels where percentile damage differences aren't as big - in total output, classes just need to feel like they're doing what they're supposed to be doing, and that it should feel really really freaking awesome - to use your tavern brawler feat and punch people really fucking hard, because that's why you picked it. Or that the bard can come up with wicked insults that effect a creature, just because vicious mockery is a thing that exist.
But if you're a ranger and want to be legolas - and the fighter shoots a bow better than you, I guess that's a problem.
Nobody's mentioned level 20 at all except tinwhiskers, because he's trying to reduce his opposition to absurdity.
The math people have been discussing has all been comparing characters at levels 5-11, because 5 and 11 are big power jumps for most classes and often when they get access to big class-defining things, and most campaigns can expect to reach those levels. Yes, ranger and rogue both deal significantly less damage than fighters in that level range, although as mentioned rogue has the saving grace that it's trading damage for durability (and to a lesser extent, mobility and skillmonkey things like more skills and Expertise) because 5e rogues are oddly tanky.
Snipping this down to address something. Why are you having the Rogue do 1d4+dex damage? Rapier's are finesse and do 1d8. Additionally, Rogues can use Sharpshooter for bow or crossbow, and get that +10 damage in addition to their sneak attack damage, all while remaining much, much harder to pin down than a fighter.
Lastly, is it that wrong that a Fighter or Barbarian can do the most amount of damage in the round? They literally have nothing else to contribute meaningfully to the mechanics of the game. Rogues have all kinds of out of combat places to shine, whereas if Combat isn't happening, the fighters and barbarians get kinda left in the dust.
To me, each class should have it's stage to shine on. The fact that they are all better at shining on different stages is a feature, not a bug.
If you have a player who is outshining everyone else in combat, cool - find ways to allow the other players to shine and have their moments as well.
In my current campaign, my friend is playing a halfling paladin with extremely poorly rolled stats. He (the player) basically hates D&D combat, but loves role playing and acting. I picked Moon Druid, so my character is a bit of an unstoppable juggernaut in combat. Out of combat, though, our cute little halfing paladin gets to do all the party facing, and gets to pick the places we investigate.
Meanwhile, if the DM picks a difficulty roughly in between challenging me and challenging him, rather than challenging me directly, my challenge becomes "can I keep my friends alive in this fight". Still works, I think.
Ultimately, D&D combat is never going to be perfectly balanced, but that's not why I'm playing it. I'm playing it because things can happen in a D&D session that can't happen anywhere else, and for me, the tactile feel of miniature based grid combat adds something ineffable that has seemed to be missing when I played other RPG systems.
I'm of the belief that all characters should be able to contribute effectively to combat, whether that be damage, crowd control, buffing/de-buffing, whatever. Combat is so central to D&D that ignoring that aspect can potentially de-balance a group. Session Zero for the win there again.
I think that loops it into the ranger because whatever you want to do as a ranger in combat you can do better with a different class. Playing a ranger is going to be a RP decision more than a mechanics based one.
I would probably be a bit annoyed at the Paladin if they couldn't effectively contribute to combat in whatever role their character is spec'd for. I'm a big fan of the array for assigning points to a character though, and I use it whenever I run a game. I like to know roughly the starting power level of my group, as whatever characters they pick will be capable in their roles.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
See, I have to disagree with this based on one bit of criteria based off of 3 years of observation at my local store with it's 30 some odd players: no one plays a land druid since everyone would much rather turn into animals then cast spells.
As a result, the ranger inherits the druids spell duties.
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
And the idea that fighters are dead weight outside of combat just isn't accurate to begin with. They're gonna get 4-5 skill proficiencies, the way backgrounds work they're going to have access to pick any skill they want/need, and that 4-5 is only 1 less than the 5-6 most classes get. They even get a tool proficiency through student of war, which is more than can be said for the Ranger or Barbarian.
They don't make ideal party faces like a CHA class would, but neither does a Ranger or Barb (or a Rogue, for that matter, at least compared to a Warlock or Paladin or Bard).
Precise attack makes a big difference in the power attack scenario because:
A) In a lot of games, the Fighter can get a short rest between every combat so you're looking at 4 (more later) uses of superiority die per combat.
Crit fishing with superiority die is rarely the way to go, because 5% chance to crit just isn't that much in the first place so you'll waste them trying to hold them for that. Better to just power attack almost all the time and get +10 damage.
I agree with your earlier point that Sharpshooter is more powerful than GWM in general because the +2 from archery style and also ignoring all cover are a big deal. Being able to fire a longbow from 600 feet without penalty is a big deal depending on where you're fighting too.
That being said, GWM offers one thing that Sharpshooter doesn't, and that's the synergy with polearm master giving you a bonus action attack to get another +10 damage hit.
Edit: Actually n/m, for two feats an archer just takes Crossbow Expert and Sharpshooter and gets the extra bonus action attack for another +10 dmg too. Either way, they're both must-have feats for an optimized Fighter.
I'm on board with the rest, though - Precision attack is a pretty big deal and produces a lot more damage than most other maneuvers.
Really the only other maneuvers I see getting much use are Riposte (to pick up a whole extra attack) and tripping attack (to knock the target prone on the first swing so you have advantage on the rest of your attacks).
I simply feel like for most classes, who aren't Bard/Wizard/Arcane Trickster Rogue, Int is just an obvious dump stat and doesn't have as many useful out-of-combat applications. It also leads to things like Clerics who are bad at Religion checks. This seems like it might open up a few more options for characters and give more RP/build options. But I haven't played a lot of 5e, so I don't know if this would break any fundamental gameplay designs.
True story: in my current group of six players, during the first session we realized that the highest INT in the party was 8. The DM graciously allowed me to swap my 8 INT with my 10 STR so that at least someone in the party could muster a +0 modifier for intelligence checks.
I'm pretty sure it won't break anything - Wizards will net a better AC, nobody else will really be affected (arcane trickster rogues won't get a boost because their dex is already higher, eldritch knights will have more int than dex but will be spending most of their time in plate so they won't get to add either bonus, and...does anybody else actually use int at all? Jeez.)
Honestly it might not be going far enough to solve your problem - for anyone who's not using int as a primary stat and is just picking a tertiary to get incidental bonuses, "+1 to AC and History/Religion checks" is pretty much always going to be worse than "+1 to AC, initiative, the most commonly checked save, and stealth/acrobatics checks"
Even if you let them add higher of dex/int to initiative, dex saves make up literally more than a third of all saves and int saves are virtually nonexistent - it's tough to mechanically justify boosting int over dex on that basis alone.
I assume the limits from armor type would still apply.
I like the idea, I'd just exclude wizards. I think the buff it would give them would just be too big in the early/mid part of the game. Going from an AC of 12 to an AC of 15 at lvl 8, is pretty huge. Say a swarm of cr 3 or 4 creatures with +6 to attack, they go from hitting 75% of the time to 55%, and a creature swinging at +10 misses twice as often as they would otherwise. Plus the wizard they are hitting gets, maybe an extra 10-15% hit points, because of even a single +1 modifier increase in con score, 3 AC doesn't seem like a ton, but going from needing a 6 to needing a 9, is approximately the same as the creatures having permanent disadvantage when attacking the wizard.
And this assumes a player takes the very slanted 15-15-15-8-8-8 buy, if they'd have dropped their dex and/or con even modestly to have say better perception checks, or charisma skills in a more diplomacy based game, it becomes even more pronounced.
The place it might get weird too, is that for classes with a Dex save, but not necessarily Dex-based damage it sort of gives them a third save proficiency. Because instead of say the bard having a +4 to Dex and a +5 to Cha saves, he'd have a +2 to Dex, +5 to Cha, and +2 to Int saves. Not that Int saves are that common. So I'm not sure it really matters.
Limits from armor type still apply - only good on light or medium to +2.
You're right that it does affect Wizards a lot. I'm curious, though - how often do you find your Wizards going for protective magic items instead of cool ones? Cloak of Protection, etc? I feel like I've seen a few builds that work that in anyway, so they can have a reasonable armor save. This basically lets them take different, more flavorful stuff instead if they want.
It might also prevent them all from using their feats for armor. (They all do this right?)
How balanced or compelling does this look? It's still 5e enough that I want to throw it in here instead of the Roleplaying Thread.
https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/1l-MrmN4w3xUrS4Lww0btY6YTYAp1JgpAJK1FG5pO0js/edit?usp=sharing
Also, ranger seems much more like a profession/background.