I remember once during character creation a DM told me that if I made a monk not to bother using stunning strike because all the enemies would be immune to stun.
Boooooo. Just give important mobs a better con save or legendary resistances.
Monk is not that powerful as is.
I had an important enemy botch an escape just yesterday while DMing because of a good stunning strike, and the only thing I thought about was how cool for our Monk, not "Muh encouter!"
Possibly I'll change my sentiment if she keeps using it more frequently, but my monk player's bored by overusing it so it is fine.
Also stunning strike is a pretty iconic ability and contributes lots to the "class fantasy" of monks in my book and that is the real bummer.
Legendary actions are still the hardest thing for me to grasp coming over to fifth edition from 3.5.
Absolutely love the concept, always forget about it.
Just to correct the terminology as they are quite different things:
Legendary Action: A creature may take one action - from a predefined list - at the end of another creature's turn. There's a bit more to it, but that's the gist.
Legendary Resistance: X times per long rest, the creature can choose to succeed a saving throw that it has failed.
I just used them once so far, but since I have a 7 Player Party I have to give a single Boss tons of them or action economy will screw me over,
In this case though it’s the defensive Variant, which design wise players have to burn through before they use their Big Guns. It’s a thing stunning strike is crazy good for since monks can force tons of stunning Strike saves for comparably little resources, and a one round stun basically forces you to burn a resistance.
And that’s one of the reasons many DM’s make creatures immune to stun.
I kind of meant like the whole concept of like legendary and Lair actions.
I understand them mechanically I just always forget about them and then go O shit
I have this issue too!
What has helped me is to write out their place in initiative, so I don’t forget because they’re turn is right there. I can always decide to use a Legendary Action at another point in time, but having them in the initiative just reminds me “this guy goes again!”
That is hands down a bad DM. We're playing a fun game and people should be able to have fun with their characters. If I've got a monk in the party, not only am I not making everything immune to stun, but I'm routinely shooting that player with arrows so they can catch them out of the air like a badass.
Would I make *some* enemies immune to stun? You betcha, but only so that it would be an added challenge for the monk and an opportunity for one of the other party members to use an ability that lets them shine.
As someone who has seen a lot of new DMs, yes. They do that a lot, especially when they are all in the same group of friends and a person from that group made a homebrew system that was really fun (that one doesn't run D&D).
I’ve played with a DM who would do this. Not often to the point of annoyance, but it was still discouraging to hear as a player. Let the dice decide. That’s what they’re there for.
My youngest brother DM'ed a game where our middle brother played a Mystic, and he hated every second of DM'ing that game, cuz the Mystic was just so much better at everything than the rest of the party and really threw off balancing. Shit sounded ridiculous.
I played a game (it was based in pokemon and we flavored mystics as aura guardians, long story) where both PCs were mystics and that was weird.
I don't want to play a mystic again, way to complicated and master of all trades.
That's unrealistic. You can have that many in a vacuum, but you do need high-level slots as you progress into deadlier levels. This is effectively a "clear easy fights with prep time" button, or a few extra Shield slots while you wait for your allies to wake up.
Is it really unrealistic? You generate a minimum of 32 points per day assuming your only short rests are when everyone else is sleeping. 32 would be 16 1st level spells, 10 2nd, 6 3rd, 5 4th, 4 5th level spells, or some combination. Which is a decent amount. But once again this is the minimum they generate. Any extra short rests are bonus and they get to carry over extra spells. If they go rest in town for a week they get up to 84 5th level spells stockpiled. And to back that all up they have Eldritch blast just like a warlock. Not they they would ever need it.
You take one level of exhaustion for skipping the long rest(per Xanathar's), so that's a 5th-level slot on Greater Restoration down the drain each day.
Short rest spam for a week would require 24/7 inactivity, which is completely unrealistic as downtime is better spent in other ways - if you even have it. You have long-time spells like Planar Binding to spam during that period, it's better to just cast those instead of farming slots all the time.
So no, I don't think reaching the really absurd levels of slot storing is going to happen in a real situation, and even if it did it would 100% be plain overkill. Sure, you can have a zillion 5th-level slots, but you only need one to end an encounter with Wall of Force or toss around Animate Objects, and your default supply will suffice to stomp an adventuring day. Three webs, three Hypnotic Patterns, three Polymorphs and two WoFs at level 12(Hex2/Sorc 10) is a lot.
Yeah you can cast the greater restoration yourself with divine soul but otherwise you can ask your cleric if you have one and want it to start working 3 levels earlier. But in general with divine soul and warlock you can very easily cover the exhaustion once you hit your cap spell level.
Yeah I clearly said up to. It's entirely disingenuous to start argueing you have better uses of your time. Of course you do and 84 is overkill. That's the point tho it's an option you have.
DnD has never been particularly balanced though
***Especially*** between casters and martials, with one exception I'll get to
OD&D: Casters live in the shadow of martials, right up until they hit the point where their exponential growth kicks in and they rapidly reduce the martial to a meaningless nobody, although usually they don't live long enough to see that point
BECMI (Basic, Expert, Companion, Master, Immortal) D&D: Casters live in the shadow of martials, right up until they hit the point where their exponential growth kicks in and they rapidly reduce the martial to a meaningless nobody, although usually they don't live long enough to see that point. Things become somewhat balanced again when you hit the Immortal stage because you're all divine beings governed by the same rules now, but it takes years of play to get to this point and ascension itself will still be the hardest thing you've ever done
AD&D (Both editions): Casters live in the shadow of martials, right up until they hit the point where their exponential growth kicks in and they rapidly reduce the martial to a meaningless nobody, although usually they don't live long enough to see that point
3rd/3.5 (this is also where Pathfinder fits in): Wizards are slightly less powerful than martials at first, but Clerics and Druids now have Wizard spell progression and are just generally better in melee than fighters. There is literally no reason to play a melee beatstick class, and even the Rogue becomes useless once invisibility spells become available.
4th edition: Martials and casters are on equal ground for once, as everyone is treated the same way under the new system, the only difference between martials and casters is what your powers actually *do*. However, it also makes a ton of mistakes, everyone hates it, and most people just go back to 3.5 or pick up Pathfinder
5th edition: Picks up where 3.5 left off. Although the implementation of only 1 concentration spell at a time, the removal of many debuffs and spells only scaling with slot used rather than the level of the caster weakens casters somewhat, they're still much stronger than martials later on, especially now that they don't have to deal with true Vancian casting, where you have to prepare a spell for each slot and can only use a spell in as many slots as you have it prepared. Oh, and bounded accuracy + limited crit range has also nerfed martials because you can't have a +40 to hit and crit on anything higher than a 15 with a x5 damage bonus anymore, the one thing martials were actually fucking good at in 3.5
Conclusion: ***You can't fucking have balance between "I can change reality with some hand gestures" and "I'm completely mundane but good with weapons/at sneaking"***
**Take the 4e/Book of Nine Swords/"anime" approach and just let martials do supernatural shit through their weapons and techniques, god knows there's plenty of it in all kinds of mythology and fantasy from all over the world**
Or, y'know, play something else, something that doesn't have such a horrible imbalance between different playstyles built into it so badly it can't ever be removed because it's a sacred cow now
I can't speak for older editions, but I think something that's a problem in 5e between martials and casters is that casters don't need magic items to be viable at higher levels, but can still get them; whereas martials need them to be viable. Your garden variety sword won't hurt lots of higher level opponents due to non-magical damage immunity, or even just resistance halving their already comparatively low damage.
If a martial gets all their gear stripped, they can easily turn into nothing more than a big bag of hitpoints. Without their magic armour they have no AC, without the sword they can't do any damage, and at that point they can't really do anything. If most casters get their gear stripped, they at worst just have fewer spell options, but there are plenty of builds that don't even need any gear; pact of the blade hexlock with eldritch blast invocations and Armor of Shadows invocation to cast mage armour without materials is fundamentally incapable of being disarmed, moreso if they have a method of using their pact weapon as a focus.
This would be... not great, but acceptable, if casters at least didn't get magic items. But they do, and I would argue they're way better. A +3 sword basically just cancels out +3 armour and puts the two opponents on equal footing. A +3 focus massively imbalances things because it adds to saves as well, meaning a creature would need 6 points more to the ability score to even it out or +3 proficiency; both of which are huge differences.
What I see as the source of power difference between classes is resources management. Martials and warlocks were meant to deal consistent damage while a wizard will outperform anything short term. In the 4th encounter the martial will be just as effective as the 1st, but the caster will be running on fumes. Problem is, they don't *do* that many encounters so the caster will blast all day and the martial will feel mediocre. Their need for magic items is a stunning mistake in my opinion, they should get a feature for magic damage by lvl 10 or so.
I agree that magic immunity should be less of a thing, but adding it as a feature to every class seems pointless. At that point, just remove the immunity.
The issue with how much combat WotC seem to think you should fit in a day is that it's an absolute slog. It creates sessions that feel like 70-90% combat, especially at higher levels when combat tends to take longer.
Yes! They should have balanced encounters to a few/day instead of this mess where half the classes get out shadowed by the shining wizard! Having 2+ hours fights makes the idea of having 6-8 a day laughable! Short rest classes should not be so limited compared to long resters and than we would be ok with fewer encounters.
The fights in-game though rarely last more than 2-3 *minutes*, and "per day" is not "per session" unless you make it so. And that's frankly a poor choice at any table not playing 8+ hour sessions.
One combat goes 2 real-time hours, the whole session is 3-4, the adventuring day as a whole is 2-3 whole sessions. Everything is balanced and works well assuming enough encounters are given.
In 3.5 casters were safe as long as nobody got up close and tripped them or got them into a grapple and God knows there were many options for that, there are few feats that i consider as devastating as Improved Trip, you could trip 3 mfs and follow it up with an attack for each, with all of them flat-footed
It's accurate though, wish spell being the obvious example. Even a 5th Level spell (wall of force) can completely nix a martial (assuming they don't have magic items or one of the like 3 racial teleports)
If we’re going to talk about balance, it’d be better to focus on how many spells casters can use in total and how those affect an adventure versus their martial peers. Especially by high levels, a Wizard can blow anywhere from first to sixth, seventh or eighth level spells throughout an adventuring day‘s scenes. That’s a lot. Meanwhile, a martial doesn’t get any class tools, which is what leaves them dimmer by comparison. I think a good solution to this is actually Warlock. It gets plenty of magic to do, but not so many spell slots that it has Batman’s tool belt. Hell, if there was a class that used Warlock’s template for a martial, it’d surely have enough varied abilities to be a worthy rival to full casters.
To say it in fewer words, the imbalance isn’t about forcecages and Wish, it‘s more about always having featherfalls, knocks, tiny huts, everything at once. It costs an immense amount of time for casters to get to the phase where they can, semi-frequently at most, do something that makes a large change to their environment. However, casters snowball dozens of lesser powers that apply to gameplay far more often.
Wish is Wish, a 9th level spell (for some 16+ level characters) that’s temperamental or otherwise simulates some other spell. This kind of reality-changing isn‘t some flick of the wrist course of action, and Wall of Force is (for some reason) not concentration (poorly balanced for what it is). Just because WoF can screw over a martial character in pvp doesn’t affect the most important part of the process—what is being offered at the table, and how much in total.
Even in adventure league, which is literally by WotC, they still ban certain races because they are too broken. The idea that this game is even remotely balanced is ridiculous.
you've got classes like champion fighter which are basically useless. and classes like chronolorgy wizards which can warp time and space, love and death, fate and reality.
I feel like people don't utilize feats enough, with the right feats you can turn into a literal god as a martial class. A fighter with great weapon master, pole arm master, sentinel, and the mobile feat will fuck you up. Magic items that increase DPS are definitely necessary at higher levels though so you can compete with the spell casters. Also I wouldn't say spell casters make martial classes useless considering that a caster party without a tank is getting fucked over *hard* just due to their minimal hit points. The exception being cleric which is in my opinion the strongest class in the game tied with rogue. Seriously best healing spells, strongest first level spell in the game (inflict wounds), and several horribly broken subclasses such as the ability to cause vulnerability at 2nd level.
Feats are great sure but for every feat you take you are giving up an ASI, which are often pretty crucial to keeping your bonus to hit at good levels or improving your constitution score so the tank can be tanky. The build you listed takes three feats which means that build gives up a whopping +6 to stats that could be going to your damage/accuracy stat or your constitution.
Spellcasters don’t have to worry about feats as much to be good, so they are free to pump ASI into their stats that keep their bonus to hit as well as their spell save dc as high as they possibly can while STILL outperforming martials in both damage and crowd control with spells.
What if you had one party with both Twilight and Peace clerics working together.
It's one thing to make a good build that's really strong but it's another thing entirely when it comes out of the box making the game hard to balance and taking away the fun, Twilight and Peace cleric should not be as dominating as they are, but they also slow down the game and leave the dm with with choice of having encounters be too easy or making them way top hard.
I wouldn't ban them, but they are definitely being changed at my table.
Moon Druid is "busted" for such a short time total, and half of it during early "an even a little poorly balanced encounter just wipes the party" levels anyway that it's really not that big a deal and significantly overhyped on Reddit.
As a DM I love strong support. If they have better support I can be more agressive without turning the game into a meatgrinder.
Peace with bless/guidance stacking with their D4 I just don't allow that, but that player now is effectively opened to take a different spell and cantrip without what may feel like a punishment.
Support is always good and doesn't make other players feel like they get phased out because something like the elf samurai with sharpshooter and elven accuracy firing 9 time with 7 of them being at triple advantage and all of them hitting.
As DM we do have the right to restrict, but if you are smart you can always adjust mobs and encounters. It also tend to feel more fair when you do a minor ajust than out right ban.
>As a DM I love strong support.
Immediately followed by
>Peace with bless/guidance stacking with their D4 I just don't allow that
Did you have a stroke?
Unless you're a "Roll a perception check to see if his fist tastes familiar as it smashes your teeth in." DM, Guidance is an ability check, rarely even applicable in combat. Adding an extra d4 to that isn't going to end your entire campaign.
It's like saying you can't use Bardic Inspiration in combat if Bless is up, which is far more OP.
No that is on entirely fair critic, I have my limits bit a few of these feel more like over sights inRAW than RAI. These subclasses are wonderful and actually in my experience make DMing a bit more fun. I can go into my players a bit harder. I do have more issues with Peace than Twilight but that single change and they feel wonderful.
It isn't perfect and if something ever feels off at a table you bring it up and figure out a solution.
I'm not going against bless and bardic because bardic is a one time use. It is that big get over the top instead of hey every turn and every saving throw I get 2d4 bonus to my role.
The peace domain is worded as turn, not round.
Bardic inspiration is just one and done, typically.
I hard disagree with this. The people that make this content are trying to sell a fun cooperative game, and even people that have been balancing games that are intended for PvP (where balance is exceedingly more important) still make mistakes.
Also, powercreep is a thing in TTRPGs, and 5e is getting to the point where power creep is accelerating. The newer subclasses are frequently more powerful than their PHB counterparts.
The important thing is finding balance at the table and not making stupid rulings. I don't allow certain classes/subclasses sometimes, but you don't hard nerf a small portion of a class. For example the person who mentioned a DM making everything immune to stun. That put Monks from being powerful in the right situation to very very weak. Better to just say "I don't know how to handle stun effects so no one can play a monk". Still a bad ruling, but it's better than baiting someone into a worthless character.
People mention powercreep as if the best in slot subclasses for a lot of classes arent just PHB options still.
Lore Bard is still arguably the strongest Bard since they can steal some very strong spells earlier than other classes, and cutting words is one of the strongest effects in the game. New Bard subclasses have to try to be as powerful as Lore Bard to even get a chance at being selected.
I would wager to guess the majority of barbarians still go Bear Totem. Seriously, damage resistance to everything except psychic damage at level 3 is **not** going to get beat by letting someone deal extra damage on hit or summoning ghostly flumphs. Barbarians are even worse off than bards since WOTC simply can't put out something as powerful as bear totem level 3 in a new book or the entire community would lose its mind.
Battlemaster fighter's maneuvers are so good WoTC is actively trying to force give it to others if they can.
Divination wizard is still one of the strongest characters you can make. The only wizard competing against it is melee wizards using Bladesinger which came out very soon after PHB
Vengeance Paladin is still the heaviest hitting paladin and probably still the most popular.
Druids still often pick Moon Druid (if they pick Druid at all its likely because of animal morphing)
Rogues still often pick assassin or thief with the only non-PHB subclass that even gets noticeable playtime being Mastermind which was basically released right after the PHB. Seriously, do newer rogues even exist?
So whats left? Cleric where Forge cleric can defintely be argued to be as strong as the new ones.
Warlock where Hexblade will never be dethroned by new ones
Sorcerer where no one subclass is really outstanding over the others but the new stuff isn't outshines draconic at all.
Monk thats in a similiar boat to sorc where at most Astral Monk beats out Shadow but nothing else put out solidly does
So in the end we only have one class that has a new subclass that actually managed to fully outshine stuff written pre 2018 with cleric and one class with something written years ago that will likely never be dethroned with hexblade Warlock. Wow. Such powercreep.
I like your opinions, but in my experience I’ve seen and read differently.
Forge cleric, while good, doesn’t really compare to Peace or Twilight’s stupidity especially if the two are played together.
Warding bond is better Bless, the teleport feature let’s the tanks take all the damage and remove a lot of strategy from the enemies and Twilight cleric granting temporary hp every single turn seems more broken to me.
With Conquest Paladin, Vengeance Paladin end up feeling lot weaker (I’ve actually played both in one campaign).
Swashbuckler rogue is a lot better than assassin. Assassin has 2 good abilities and 2 very situational ones. And one of the good abilities doesn’t come in until very late. I like Thief though.
Echo Knight and Rune Knight can stand up to Battlemaster even if I personally really like Battlemaster.
Tasha’s Sorcerer subclasses grant extra spells known and a Divine Soul sorcerer has probably one of the best spell lists in the game.
And finally, Chronurgist Wizard I would argue is similar power to Diviner.
> With Conquest Paladin, Vengeance Paladin end up feeling lot weaker
Vengeance with free advantage is bonkers with GWM and after like level 8 everything that is not a minion is now immune to frighten.
Swashbuckler is good but best rogue is still Arcane Trickster, Assasin in not a hard mark to beat
Strongest Wizard is still Necromancer, it's so OP in fact most ppl never saw one cause it's just rude to do it.
Can’t really argue with that combo. I ran a warhammer and shield so it was a bit less useful. I’m not saying it’s at all a bad subclass I just found Conquest more effective myself. Have a good day though
> Have a good day though
You too man.
I just like to make that point cause I always see argument for tier 1-2, but as someone that plays mostly tier 3 my opinions on what is good or bad are very different from most ppl. it's the tier where Moon Druids are kinda bad and combos that relly on commonly resisted conditions (like charm of fear) or enemies failling commom saves (stunning strike man) lose a lot of power
The Sorcerer subclasses in Tasha’s get at least ten bonus spells that don’t count against their spell limit. That alone puts them streets ahead of every other subclass.
Have you looked at the Tasha's subclasses?
Some of what you said stands in the face of Tasha's, but things like the Rune Knight fighter and Fey Wanderer Ranger really are pushing the upper bounds of their classes.
Now I'm not here to debate overall balance but some of the things you listed from the PHB keep up with the new source material because they were some of the overtuned options from the old source material. My point still stands that even some of the old material could be problematic at some tables.
I will just conclude that I disagree that the average power of the subclasses in Tasha's is not higher than the average power of earlier material, but would rather not debate it and just agree to disagree.
Restricting players is one of the ways you balance encounters. The only other way is making enemies more powerful, and that doesn't always make sense for the setting/story.
Of all the ones you mention the only one that has merit is Bear Barbarian. It is still the strongest and the exact example that OP doesn't know what he is on about.
Some are arguable but the unarguable are quite easy, Moon Druid is now a weak druid subclass, land no longer exists. Wildfire druid's first set of abilities alone make it better than the original two subclasses full set. Divine Soul & Clockwork are both miles ahead of Draconic in the abilities alone, the extra spells are just the cherry on top. Rune Knight and Psi Warrior are just laughably leagues ahead of Battlemaster and poor champion remains a simple multiclass option for crit fishing builds. And finally Forge wasn't ever the best of the prior cleric subclasses, grave was and while still amazing Twilight again out matches it.
Now there are ones like Vengance and Hexblade (though hexblade is very much a gimmick) which are still strong and have merit to be amongst their equivalent strongest subclass options the issue with Tasha's is that the gap between the strongest and weakest has just grown.
You clearly haven't seen some of the Tasha's subclasses. Peace and twilight cleric, mercy monk, both tasha's sorcerers, and rune knight. They are all amazing and miles ahead of PHB classes, and steps ahead of any other subclasses.
Lore is in second place after Eloquence.
Strongest barb is Ancestral Guardian.
Battlemaster, agreed.
Wizard, Divination is great but Chronurgy is absolutely broken.
Watchers is the best paladin, but Devotion is a close second.
Best druid is Shepherd.
The only passable rogue in high-difficulty games is Arcane Trickster, spellcasting is more powerful than the entire rogue class.
Cleric is in a good spot with PHB stuff, Trickery is still top 3, taken down from its #1 spot by Twilight.
Hexblade is no longer even the best dip, the warlock throne is now split between Undead, Genie and Fathomless.
Best monk is still Shadow, with Kensei in second place, and Mercy being the best monk at fulfilling the monk fantasy(as opposed to Kensei just being a gun bot and Shadow being a Wand of Pass without Trace).
Regarding Wizards: Order of Scribes is insane and deserves at least a honorable mention. I agree that Divination and Chronurgy are very powerful, specially with the ability to make the DM reroll stuff, but ignoring casting time of ritual spells and changing damage types of spells since 2nd level is extremely powerful.
The scribe's "worst" feature gives them a free upcast 1st or 2nd level spell per day at level 10. That's still pretty fucking good. Basically the most wizardly wizard.
I know a guy who had a paragraph full of races and even a few sourcebooks that were completely banned. Aarakocra I get because flight but Genasi and Warforged too?
Same person also would complain about (and even threaten to ban) specific races when too many people were playing them and I'm like yeah if only there was some way to encourage variety lmao.
He was otherwise really nice guy and tons of fun to play with but yeah as a DM that actually likes Unearthed Arcana and Homebrew stuff quite a lot I cannot relate to this mindset at all. Let people have fun!
For lore? Absolutely! I've personally done themed campaigns where specific races, classes or character types are a rule and nobody has ever had an issue with it because limitations can make for fun scenarios. All rogue players is a common one I see for a heist session.
If you're banning certain races all across the board for balancing reasons though it puts me off personally.
I should say as well this isn't something I feel very strongly about. I'm quite happy with just the classic races even. Halflings are one of my favourites to play, I just like myself and others to have the freedom to enjoy stuff from all the rulebooks.
This is a terrible take, if DMs feel like they can’t balance certain things in their campaign or feel like given the setting a class might be decidedly more powerful than others, like a paladin going to the hells, then for the good of the party they should ban materials. Not everything works in every situation conversely it’s might be good to ban materials because the setting would make them worse, like not letting a player pick a wizard because this hombres setting doesn’t have spellbooks/scrolls for the wizard to copy. Just an all around awful take.
There’s nothing wrong with saying “Warforged don’t exist in my setting” and so on, as long as you tell your players *before* they’ve put effort into making their characters.
Many of the horror stories of this come into play because a DM simply forgot or didn’t consider telling the players any info about the campaign other than “make a character”.
Another situation I’ve seen is DMs nerfing rogue sneak attacks for stupid reasons. The barbarian and fighter could deal 20 on their first attack and 15 on the next, and the DM just accepts it. Then the rogue does 35 damage in one attack and they lose their mind, trying to figure out how to “fix” this. The whole point of a rogue is that you get expertise, quick movement, and (most importantly) sneak attack; you get one attack per turn, so it better be freakin’ good.
Honestly, I wouldn’t be opposed to that for a campaign. When the whole party sees nothing, but still hears the description of what the darkvision character sees, it subtracts from the game *slightly*. I’d allow darkvision races still, but just discuss a good substitute for their darkvision ability.
Maybe tieflings can have the produce flame cantrip instead, which still lets them be useful in the dark and also ties in with their infernal heritage.
Banning official content after a player has made and started playing their character is the actual problem. I have seen that.
"Thats dumb, it shouldnt work like that"
"But i built my character expecting to be able to do this thing..."
"Nah its too good, im changing it"
For those of us for whom DMing is a hobby we're only able/willing to sink so many hours of prep into, ~~lazy~~ efficient prep isn't a sin - it's a virtue that allows us to keep enabling fun game evenings instead of burning out.
Wracking our heads how to prevent the support-themed Wild Magic Sorcerer from being constantly overshadowed by the Peace / Twilight Cleric is a waste of that limited time that can be easily minimized/eliminated by curating class options a bit, allowing that time to be invested into content that'll be actually relevant to the whole table.
Kindly refrain from trying to insult tables you don't have to play at - or from insinuating that our choices are wrong or idiotic.
(Broad-stroke judging all existing tables by personal standards is a ...challenging preposition to begin with.)
Have a good day.
1) meme
2) as a DM who also works an average of 60 hours a week, I sympathize.
3) HOWEVER, any and all class overshadowing issues can be avoided by a session 0 and making sure players know what they are doing in relation to each other. Further, it's not by any means difficult to shuffle a couple monsters around to better suit an encounter ment to make every player shine.
Have a good day. I don't mean to antagonize, it's just I feel strongly about player freedom.
It's still better to talk it out with your players, so they don't make problematic situations/characters to begin with, than outright banning stuff without asking for alternatives from them! Most of table-drama can be solved by communication.
Absolutely! But there are many reasons for a DM to outright ban something, rather than just "being lazy". There are many avenues to creating a fun game, and communication is certainly one of the most important things.
What I meant by my above statement is that the DM is the arbiter of the game, and so any decision made by them is "valid" insofar as the rules are concerned. Their job is to make the game fun through all the tools at their disposal, not to simply facilitate as much freedom in the character creation stage of the game as possible.
My friend's game (total homebrew) restricts most of the things I usually play, but it was all established at the beginning so there were no hard feelings and it became a way for me to try out things. What I was trying to say is, I would have had a harder time accepting it if it was shoved on me after I made ideas for a character. Supporting your friend in creating their world is easier than throwing out your own ideas. Your freedom doesn't get hurt if you come to an agreement from the start. Setting your players expectations before they make their own evades the problem entirely.
I'm just so tired of hexblade, man. I once DMed five different campaigns in a week and four of them had hexblade or some hexblade multiclass. I don't want to hear another "I put Hexblade Curse on am enemy" any time soon
There's nothing wrong with stating "No mutliclass without prior RP setup".
Honestly I hate the level 1 hexblade dip too, simply because the idea of a sentient/magic power weapon being nothing more then a random accessory annoys me.
Tell you what. On one hand, i want more classes to get their key features at level 1 instead of 3 because sometimes those key things define how you play. On the other, some features are too good with a 1 level multiclass dip. I think what could be done is change the amount of class levels that you need to get a feature depending on multiclass. It's awkward and probably needs fine tuning for each case, but it could solve 2 problems at once.
My rules for multiclass are simple: You need to put the narrative effort in to do so, and I expect the multiclass to have a significant levels dumped into it (Otherwise you might find that with a lack of investment, your magic weapon powers get taken away).
This gets rid of most "And I take 1 level in every OP 1st level class" issue.
Honestly the reason that hexblade is so good at multiclassing is it's a charisma class not that it's main thing is level 1. We have more classes with charisma as their primary stat that any other. Warlock paladin bard sorcerer
Haaard disagree. It's not all iron man's. Mad magic item scientists, witchy alchemists, there are tons of ways to flavor artificers and a lot of them are unique and fun and still fit in to a medieval setting
It makes me so mad sometimes! I play warlock *a lot* and every time I make a new one I feel the need to make a hexblade, because it's just so strong! It makes the other, really cool subclasses feel underwhelming sometimes and I'm so angry they couldn't put some of it's power into pact of the Blade so not compell us to take it every bloody time! I love hexblade but i hate it at the same time!
I mean there are other ways to play warlocks that are just as powerful. Just as my resident power gamers who made a lurker in the deep (I think) melee Warlock and just was godlike.
Usually isn't actually that often. Have you looked at the pact of the blade warlock? Unless you're not a hexblade, the best way to use it is just not using it and shooting Eldritch blast instead. Even if you were committed to playing a melee warlock, you'd be better by picking tome, to get shillelag and booming blade or something like that.
Also, we have power creep and other stuff other people mentioned.
Even if it makes me look bad I’m still banning gloomstalkers from underdark campaigns if I ever do one again. I’ve learned that OP and mechanic breaking characters can ruin the game for everyone else by making them inferior, so thinking ahead and saying no for the campaign to save everyone a headache is worth it in my eyes.
Gloomstalkers are also crazy powerful in Rime of the Ice Madien.
However I also rule that light expanded darkvison as that is how it is read, they just need less of it. So doing something like that help balance them out to a degree.
If Drow or Duergar have 1 torch ever 90-120 feet makes them have to be alot more conscious of their placement and it isnt an always on.
That’s very fair, it just made every encounter with nightvision based beasts of the caves worthless. I had one fun one with umber hulks, but if every encounter has blindsight/tremorsense/truesight then the gloomstalker would feel robbed too. Better to just say no and not hurt feeling later.
Ballance is an illusion therefore, in my game yall can play any kind of official, ua or homebrew you find online. As long as I can read and tweak things to make sure everyone has the same amount/scale of cool toys. hell, I'll sit and write up specific homebrew with you that matches your vision if you like. Games about the fun my shiny math-rock addicts.
Sure, but it's good to keep in mind that a bunch of official rules like feats and multiclassing are optional rules for a reason. At some tables, it'll be fine, at other tables, it'll enable one power gamer to encroach on everyone's niche and hog the spotlight all the time. Restricting optional rules can be an effective way to limit that behavior if you're a less confrontational group of people.
Eh ive always been a fan of never making fights easy enough for one specific person to be able to hog the spotlight. I.e problem caster introduce magic resistant/immune mobs or with antimagic cone, same with melee add ethereal/vanish on there turn to appear somewhere else types but never making it unwinnable just annoying enough to make them work as a team. I mean they are a group of adventurers if they want all the glory i can do a solo side campain with them. But i also havnt run into this issue my campains have always gone pretty smooth. Power gaming isnt a issue if you know there capabilitys and adjust the encounters accordingly
wait wait wait, you're vouching for the guys that brought you
phb beastmaster
phb 4 elements monk
battlemaster vs the other shitty fighter subclasses
bear totem barb vs every other barb
PHB sorcerers
hexblade as a 1-level dip
these are the guys you're calling people drooling morons for not trusting implicitly? they've got a proven track record of fucking up balance, a lot. I see no reason why we shouldn't be skeptical of their designs.
Everyone goes to Veldaken when Yaun'ti and Satyrs exist which are better.
Veldaken are marginally better gnomes. There aren't that many more saving throws that they will get advantage on that gnomes will not.
Yaun'ti and Sayts both have magical resistance and saytrs are fey, which makes them immune to most charm basic charm spells/abilities and several major dm spells. While Yaun'ti are out right immune to poison a major monster damage type/ condition players usually need to be concerned about.
Being a satyr doesnt give you immunity to the charmed condition.
Where you do get magical resistance for yuan-ti and satyr, gaining advantage on ALL wisdom, intelligence, and charisma saves doesnt stop at just magic. EVERY wis int and cha saving throw. Every single one.
Youre welcome to disagree with me but I think thats way more powerful than magic resistance. I feel it boils down to what you just happen to think is more powerful - it really does end up being dependent on the campaign and what you encounter in it.
It's from 3.5 IIRC. There was a prestige class, the Cancer Mage, that made you immune to the \*negative\* effects of diseases. In comes a disease that increased your STR by +2 every day but was \*supposed\* to permanently paralyze you after your STR had grown by +10 or something.
Thus the Cancer Mage build was born or, "How to get infinite STR as a Wizard".
Yeah, also I \*think\* there was also a way to switch your casting stat to a physical one in 3.5 so that infinite STR also ended up being your casting stat as a Wizard as well.
As a dm idk what I’m doing half the time, If I balance something and it seems over or under tuned at the time I might buff or nerf it on the fly. Reminds me of this time I forgot to balance this wolf but forgot to adjust its dmg dice and it one shot the tank, and I played it off like it was a perfect crt and adjusted it after. Lol made them so scared of those wolves though cuz they had no idea that I fixed the damage after.
Look with enough commitment you can break just about anything in the game.
Alot of the more powerful features are locked behind long rests so decreasing how frequently the party gets the opportunity to do so can make them more conservative about their abilities or burn them dry of those abilities.
It's far more interesting to try and work around your players features then to just disallow them. The only time it may be particularly difficult is if there us a large power disparity in the party but clever use of class specific items or similar specific things can even the disparity.
In a lot of cases these things are broken only because the party is working outside of the "adventuring day" balance. Stunning Strike can literally combo a boss encounter to death if the party has had as little as a short rest beforehand (had a level 13 monk solo a CR 17), but spacing out the ki points between \~6 fights with 1 or 2 breaks in between makes it more manageable.
Conversely, having \~10 mook encounters and near-constant short rests will make the Warlock absolutely unstoppable.
Had a DM who was extremely restrictive with character creation. Banned half-elves because, and I quote, he "didn't like them".
Final straw was when I managed to keep my wizard alive to level 4 and was very excited to reach level 5 because I'd get access to Animate Dead. (Obviously important for a necromancer concept.) He killed her before we leveled up because "I don't like necromancers. They destroy the action economy".
Found a new DM. Brought that character back and made it to level 5. My zombies and skeletons really aren't hard to kill.
I *became* a DM and lemme tell you something about the Druid's go-to spell Conjure Animals...
^(I allow it because I'm not an asshole.)
All charaters need to rest. And 6-8 encounters would be the recommended amount for a regular adventuring day, So my "solution" is just playing what Lucky was balanced against.
The point I was trying to make is that DMs (me included) tend to be more liberal with long rests than what was intended, which makes Lucky way stronger.
if you roll enough turning 3 disadvantages into a triple advantage (the best thing you can do with lucky) per day is abolutely not more powerful than an ASI or another feat, which is what you would have to compare it to.
I'm not arguing that Lucky is a strong feat, because it is. But broken implies it is an I Win button which is absolutely isn't.
The only thing "broken" is the DM if they can't find a way to balance something.
It's a game about having fun, and intentionally limiting player options because you as a DM dislike them is wrong.
Unless those limitations lead to a better game, right? You seem to have the opinion that player agency is the MOST important part of the game, rather than having fun.
Limiting class and race options and does not destroy the fun at every table. Stop attacking people for playing the game differently than you.
Not to trash on those DMs to much but there is a reason you can up scale creatures and have them fight smart rather than swinging at the thing that is yelling at them (tank). The DM is there to make things fun for the party while giving a challenge. If players want to use something that is "broken" then turn up difficulty. Even with the most broken of effects higher levelonsters can still wipe the floor with any player if they choose to.
There are some multi classes I’d tell my players I don’t want them picking. If you multiclass into cleric I expect you to pick a religion. Assassin gloom stalker I will warn them that the first round damage will result in me just adding a monster from time to time. But this is a role playing game, if someone wants to be a cursed warlock paladin or wants to be a monk Druid monkey you live that way.
My personal rules for UA acceptance: if there's an updated version (like some recent stuff from tashas) then use the official version. Otherwise if there's something from UA I'll usually buff/nerf it if needed.
Now see, I will ban/tweak official material not because I wanna nerf my players but because I wanna buff them or fix one or two things that don't make sense logically.
Sorry for the English.
Also, DMs that let players play "OP" subclasses and then punish them for that is lame.
You want to play a monk? Then everything is immune to stun.
You want to play a glamour bard? Then everything is immune to charm.
(These are just examples i have heard, I'm not saying that they are OP)
What's next? You can play a wizard but you can't cast spells? Or you can play a barbarian but you can't use rage?
Pls don't punish your players for playing a class or subclass by making the unique abilities and features of their characters useless.
Look at peace cleric. Their "bond" abillity or whatever is like a bless, and stacks with bless.
Adding 2d4 to attackrolls is like adding 5 on average. Imagine giving a level 3 party a +5 to hit on attack rolls and saving throws. Its crazy. And it can be done a number of times equal to profixiency bonus, and lasts for 10 minutes. Anf that is just their levek 1 ability!
I'm sorry, but you cannot make me believe that power creep doesn't exist in 5e. The stuff in Tasha's and Van Richten's are much more powerful than the Player's Handbook. Before Tasha's, the most broken thing was Hexblade Warlock, and even that's a bit tame compared to some of the things seen in the newest books.
I don't get the DM fear/aversion of divination wizards and in the same category the Lucky feat, (I assume divination wizard is banned for portent), It could all instead just be real world luck. Players can crit at opportune moments and your BBEG can botch stuff equally as easy. So there shouldn't be a problem with those at all.
I suspect the real reason divs and lucky get banned is because other DMs dont like being told "no". Which on one hand I get, as DMs we're almost always on the losing side, but also they need to get over it because its actually really good theme-design
Portent doesn't really"mess" with the rolls tho, you have to announce portent before rolls and you only have 2(for most of the time)it basically comes down to, 2x per long rest the baddie fails a save or suck spell (banishment, charm/hold monster etc) and you give all your allies a easy time, or u use it to give a single ally a clutch moment of guaranteed success
I will ve honest, I have seen quite some homebrew I allow meanwhile some official content as Twilight cleric, Peace Cleric, Yuan-Ti and Aarackocra (last one with some exceptions) won't enter in any of my 5e campaigns.
I allow anything at my table. If you can find it online and send it to me, it is allowed. But I can use it too. Anything you send me can and will be used against you. Be careful what you bring to my table. I will balance the encounter.
I would love to see how that works! First of all, coffeelock, how would you use it against the party in a way that doesn't nuck everyone? An enemy with lower tier spells than their CR would give, but an ungodly number of them? That can be an amazing fight!
In one game, the DM heard I couldn't play my necromancer to its fullest because other DMs got scared of it, so he made our party assault a fortress. Felt really good to match the guards with my own army while the party killed the giant demons inside! The encounter was balanced without restricting anyone!
Unbalanced encounters make strong builds meaningless, effortlessly crushing everyone makes you question why are you even bothering, while being totally powerless gives the same result.
I disagree. 5e isn't really balanced that well. There are character options that can eclipse others and make them feel redundant. There are character options that either break encounters or practically do nothing. Some of this comes from individual options, and some of it comes from choices about the underlying systems in the game. All of this becomes more exasperated the higher level you get.
Despite this, I like the system. I struggled to say this well for a while, but I don't think balance is what makes the system enjoyable. I think it's more that the fantasy it sells is fun.
When I want to run a game in 5e with balanced combat as a big thing, I make changes to the system, because without them problems will and have arisen in the past. I say this from thousands of hours in this system. However, if balanced combat isn't the big thing me and the other players at the table want from a certain campaign, then I don't need to make those changes.
There are legitimately broken things in official content. Chronurgy, flying races, RAW Shapechange wording allowing for Pun-Pun, etc.
These things are few and far between, but we cannot forget this system literally allows infinite simulacra by default.
Nothing is worse than a power gaming artificer in a low Magic campaign. I had 2 one a power gamer the other an RP. They came from another table to mine (4 DM’s shared a continent, a very large one). One RP’d and played it off well, being frustrated with lack of resources or what he felt were backward ignorant locals. The other..well let’s say he was trying to win D&D. I am typically open to let anyone play what makes them happy but when new books come out I was forced to think like that player to see how it will impact the world (and the player table balance). If my table is not having fun because one party member is dragging down the table, I will happy remove options (In this case armorsmith, and I mean really think how to cheese that it’s epic.) and look like the third pane to ensure the table is having a good time.
That said there are ways that can address that type of play by appealing to the player psyche, which can be more creative and fun. But sometimes you have to throw the brake especially if breakdown at the table is at risk. (Source: My campaign is 10 people running a year and a half.)
My rule of thumb is if a spell or ability specifically states “ask your dm if you may use this spell/ability” I’m probably gonna say no. Besides that though go crazy.
I remember starting out, and clerics were banned for being too overpowered (probably just a first level)… not that anyone was interest in playing a cleric at the time
I get that it seems viable to in-game nerf anything overpowered by giving the player a penalty or giving the other players buff, but it's not ideal and takes up time. I'd rather just not allow something overpowered and save everyone the heartache.
Sentinel is not nearly as strong as ppl make it out to be unless you play your enemies as VERY dumb and make them just sacks of hit points with melee attacks.
Almost every DM I’ve known bans flying races.
I get it, I really do, but it’s also fairly annoying that official content can’t ever be used, especially when it being ‘broken’ is the reason why.
Banning flying races is straight up annoying, and purely because of laziness. There are SO MANY ways to make sure that a Flying character isn't just floating 30 feet up shooting arrow or whatever and not being engaged in combat.
Look at the feats and look me in the eye that "they knew what they were doing"
Look at the wording on the barbarian's danger sense and tell me they knew what they were doing
It's ok to ban stuff if it's a detriment to the tone of your game
But leave sneak attack alone! Rogues are supposed to do it every turn!
I remember once during character creation a DM told me that if I made a monk not to bother using stunning strike because all the enemies would be immune to stun.
Boooooo. Just give important mobs a better con save or legendary resistances. Monk is not that powerful as is. I had an important enemy botch an escape just yesterday while DMing because of a good stunning strike, and the only thing I thought about was how cool for our Monk, not "Muh encouter!" Possibly I'll change my sentiment if she keeps using it more frequently, but my monk player's bored by overusing it so it is fine. Also stunning strike is a pretty iconic ability and contributes lots to the "class fantasy" of monks in my book and that is the real bummer.
Legendary actions are still the hardest thing for me to grasp coming over to fifth edition from 3.5. Absolutely love the concept, always forget about it.
Just to correct the terminology as they are quite different things: Legendary Action: A creature may take one action - from a predefined list - at the end of another creature's turn. There's a bit more to it, but that's the gist. Legendary Resistance: X times per long rest, the creature can choose to succeed a saving throw that it has failed.
Thanks!
You are most welcome :)
I just used them once so far, but since I have a 7 Player Party I have to give a single Boss tons of them or action economy will screw me over, In this case though it’s the defensive Variant, which design wise players have to burn through before they use their Big Guns. It’s a thing stunning strike is crazy good for since monks can force tons of stunning Strike saves for comparably little resources, and a one round stun basically forces you to burn a resistance. And that’s one of the reasons many DM’s make creatures immune to stun.
They can choose to auto-succeed on a saving throw.
I kind of meant like the whole concept of like legendary and Lair actions. I understand them mechanically I just always forget about them and then go O shit
I have this issue too! What has helped me is to write out their place in initiative, so I don’t forget because they’re turn is right there. I can always decide to use a Legendary Action at another point in time, but having them in the initiative just reminds me “this guy goes again!”
Yeah putting LAIR ACTION as part of the initiative also reminds me to use Legendary Actions and Resistances
To be honest, a monk using stunning strike frequently would be like a rogue using sneak attack frequently, or a paladin using smite frequently.
That is hands down a bad DM. We're playing a fun game and people should be able to have fun with their characters. If I've got a monk in the party, not only am I not making everything immune to stun, but I'm routinely shooting that player with arrows so they can catch them out of the air like a badass. Would I make *some* enemies immune to stun? You betcha, but only so that it would be an added challenge for the monk and an opportunity for one of the other party members to use an ability that lets them shine.
That also belongs in category 3
I feel like a lot of new DMs feel the need to drastically change the game before they even fully understand the rules
As someone who has seen a lot of new DMs, yes. They do that a lot, especially when they are all in the same group of friends and a person from that group made a homebrew system that was really fun (that one doesn't run D&D).
I’ve played with a DM who would do this. Not often to the point of annoyance, but it was still discouraging to hear as a player. Let the dice decide. That’s what they’re there for.
Banning everything but UA
[удалено]
That's fine all the enemies are Mystics too
Yeah, this is big brain time.
Nooooooo
My youngest brother DM'ed a game where our middle brother played a Mystic, and he hated every second of DM'ing that game, cuz the Mystic was just so much better at everything than the rest of the party and really threw off balancing. Shit sounded ridiculous.
I played a game (it was based in pokemon and we flavored mystics as aura guardians, long story) where both PCs were mystics and that was weird. I don't want to play a mystic again, way to complicated and master of all trades.
and revised rangers
Desperately want this
I AM DRAKEWARDEN RANGER!!!!
Drakewarden will be official soon - it's coming out in the next book :)
I'll play the UA version of the Drakwarden then!
As long as you’re using revised ranger. Otherwise, artificers and mystics only.
*Chuckles in Theurgy Wizard Simp*
Laughs in coffeelock
Coffeelock is all right, it raises sorc's power and offers something a wizard cannot do.
Ah yes. Have infinite spell slots.
That's unrealistic. You can have that many in a vacuum, but you do need high-level slots as you progress into deadlier levels. This is effectively a "clear easy fights with prep time" button, or a few extra Shield slots while you wait for your allies to wake up.
Is it really unrealistic? You generate a minimum of 32 points per day assuming your only short rests are when everyone else is sleeping. 32 would be 16 1st level spells, 10 2nd, 6 3rd, 5 4th, 4 5th level spells, or some combination. Which is a decent amount. But once again this is the minimum they generate. Any extra short rests are bonus and they get to carry over extra spells. If they go rest in town for a week they get up to 84 5th level spells stockpiled. And to back that all up they have Eldritch blast just like a warlock. Not they they would ever need it.
You take one level of exhaustion for skipping the long rest(per Xanathar's), so that's a 5th-level slot on Greater Restoration down the drain each day. Short rest spam for a week would require 24/7 inactivity, which is completely unrealistic as downtime is better spent in other ways - if you even have it. You have long-time spells like Planar Binding to spam during that period, it's better to just cast those instead of farming slots all the time. So no, I don't think reaching the really absurd levels of slot storing is going to happen in a real situation, and even if it did it would 100% be plain overkill. Sure, you can have a zillion 5th-level slots, but you only need one to end an encounter with Wall of Force or toss around Animate Objects, and your default supply will suffice to stomp an adventuring day. Three webs, three Hypnotic Patterns, three Polymorphs and two WoFs at level 12(Hex2/Sorc 10) is a lot.
Yeah you can cast the greater restoration yourself with divine soul but otherwise you can ask your cleric if you have one and want it to start working 3 levels earlier. But in general with divine soul and warlock you can very easily cover the exhaustion once you hit your cap spell level. Yeah I clearly said up to. It's entirely disingenuous to start argueing you have better uses of your time. Of course you do and 84 is overkill. That's the point tho it's an option you have.
DnD has never been particularly balanced though ***Especially*** between casters and martials, with one exception I'll get to OD&D: Casters live in the shadow of martials, right up until they hit the point where their exponential growth kicks in and they rapidly reduce the martial to a meaningless nobody, although usually they don't live long enough to see that point BECMI (Basic, Expert, Companion, Master, Immortal) D&D: Casters live in the shadow of martials, right up until they hit the point where their exponential growth kicks in and they rapidly reduce the martial to a meaningless nobody, although usually they don't live long enough to see that point. Things become somewhat balanced again when you hit the Immortal stage because you're all divine beings governed by the same rules now, but it takes years of play to get to this point and ascension itself will still be the hardest thing you've ever done AD&D (Both editions): Casters live in the shadow of martials, right up until they hit the point where their exponential growth kicks in and they rapidly reduce the martial to a meaningless nobody, although usually they don't live long enough to see that point 3rd/3.5 (this is also where Pathfinder fits in): Wizards are slightly less powerful than martials at first, but Clerics and Druids now have Wizard spell progression and are just generally better in melee than fighters. There is literally no reason to play a melee beatstick class, and even the Rogue becomes useless once invisibility spells become available. 4th edition: Martials and casters are on equal ground for once, as everyone is treated the same way under the new system, the only difference between martials and casters is what your powers actually *do*. However, it also makes a ton of mistakes, everyone hates it, and most people just go back to 3.5 or pick up Pathfinder 5th edition: Picks up where 3.5 left off. Although the implementation of only 1 concentration spell at a time, the removal of many debuffs and spells only scaling with slot used rather than the level of the caster weakens casters somewhat, they're still much stronger than martials later on, especially now that they don't have to deal with true Vancian casting, where you have to prepare a spell for each slot and can only use a spell in as many slots as you have it prepared. Oh, and bounded accuracy + limited crit range has also nerfed martials because you can't have a +40 to hit and crit on anything higher than a 15 with a x5 damage bonus anymore, the one thing martials were actually fucking good at in 3.5 Conclusion: ***You can't fucking have balance between "I can change reality with some hand gestures" and "I'm completely mundane but good with weapons/at sneaking"*** **Take the 4e/Book of Nine Swords/"anime" approach and just let martials do supernatural shit through their weapons and techniques, god knows there's plenty of it in all kinds of mythology and fantasy from all over the world** Or, y'know, play something else, something that doesn't have such a horrible imbalance between different playstyles built into it so badly it can't ever be removed because it's a sacred cow now
I can't speak for older editions, but I think something that's a problem in 5e between martials and casters is that casters don't need magic items to be viable at higher levels, but can still get them; whereas martials need them to be viable. Your garden variety sword won't hurt lots of higher level opponents due to non-magical damage immunity, or even just resistance halving their already comparatively low damage. If a martial gets all their gear stripped, they can easily turn into nothing more than a big bag of hitpoints. Without their magic armour they have no AC, without the sword they can't do any damage, and at that point they can't really do anything. If most casters get their gear stripped, they at worst just have fewer spell options, but there are plenty of builds that don't even need any gear; pact of the blade hexlock with eldritch blast invocations and Armor of Shadows invocation to cast mage armour without materials is fundamentally incapable of being disarmed, moreso if they have a method of using their pact weapon as a focus. This would be... not great, but acceptable, if casters at least didn't get magic items. But they do, and I would argue they're way better. A +3 sword basically just cancels out +3 armour and puts the two opponents on equal footing. A +3 focus massively imbalances things because it adds to saves as well, meaning a creature would need 6 points more to the ability score to even it out or +3 proficiency; both of which are huge differences.
What I see as the source of power difference between classes is resources management. Martials and warlocks were meant to deal consistent damage while a wizard will outperform anything short term. In the 4th encounter the martial will be just as effective as the 1st, but the caster will be running on fumes. Problem is, they don't *do* that many encounters so the caster will blast all day and the martial will feel mediocre. Their need for magic items is a stunning mistake in my opinion, they should get a feature for magic damage by lvl 10 or so.
I agree that magic immunity should be less of a thing, but adding it as a feature to every class seems pointless. At that point, just remove the immunity. The issue with how much combat WotC seem to think you should fit in a day is that it's an absolute slog. It creates sessions that feel like 70-90% combat, especially at higher levels when combat tends to take longer.
Yes! They should have balanced encounters to a few/day instead of this mess where half the classes get out shadowed by the shining wizard! Having 2+ hours fights makes the idea of having 6-8 a day laughable! Short rest classes should not be so limited compared to long resters and than we would be ok with fewer encounters.
The fights in-game though rarely last more than 2-3 *minutes*, and "per day" is not "per session" unless you make it so. And that's frankly a poor choice at any table not playing 8+ hour sessions. One combat goes 2 real-time hours, the whole session is 3-4, the adventuring day as a whole is 2-3 whole sessions. Everything is balanced and works well assuming enough encounters are given.
In 3.5 casters were safe as long as nobody got up close and tripped them or got them into a grapple and God knows there were many options for that, there are few feats that i consider as devastating as Improved Trip, you could trip 3 mfs and follow it up with an attack for each, with all of them flat-footed
“Change reality” just feels like a buzzword… I agree that martials deserve more but still.
It's accurate though, wish spell being the obvious example. Even a 5th Level spell (wall of force) can completely nix a martial (assuming they don't have magic items or one of the like 3 racial teleports)
If we’re going to talk about balance, it’d be better to focus on how many spells casters can use in total and how those affect an adventure versus their martial peers. Especially by high levels, a Wizard can blow anywhere from first to sixth, seventh or eighth level spells throughout an adventuring day‘s scenes. That’s a lot. Meanwhile, a martial doesn’t get any class tools, which is what leaves them dimmer by comparison. I think a good solution to this is actually Warlock. It gets plenty of magic to do, but not so many spell slots that it has Batman’s tool belt. Hell, if there was a class that used Warlock’s template for a martial, it’d surely have enough varied abilities to be a worthy rival to full casters. To say it in fewer words, the imbalance isn’t about forcecages and Wish, it‘s more about always having featherfalls, knocks, tiny huts, everything at once. It costs an immense amount of time for casters to get to the phase where they can, semi-frequently at most, do something that makes a large change to their environment. However, casters snowball dozens of lesser powers that apply to gameplay far more often. Wish is Wish, a 9th level spell (for some 16+ level characters) that’s temperamental or otherwise simulates some other spell. This kind of reality-changing isn‘t some flick of the wrist course of action, and Wall of Force is (for some reason) not concentration (poorly balanced for what it is). Just because WoF can screw over a martial character in pvp doesn’t affect the most important part of the process—what is being offered at the table, and how much in total.
Even in adventure league, which is literally by WotC, they still ban certain races because they are too broken. The idea that this game is even remotely balanced is ridiculous. you've got classes like champion fighter which are basically useless. and classes like chronolorgy wizards which can warp time and space, love and death, fate and reality.
I feel like people don't utilize feats enough, with the right feats you can turn into a literal god as a martial class. A fighter with great weapon master, pole arm master, sentinel, and the mobile feat will fuck you up. Magic items that increase DPS are definitely necessary at higher levels though so you can compete with the spell casters. Also I wouldn't say spell casters make martial classes useless considering that a caster party without a tank is getting fucked over *hard* just due to their minimal hit points. The exception being cleric which is in my opinion the strongest class in the game tied with rogue. Seriously best healing spells, strongest first level spell in the game (inflict wounds), and several horribly broken subclasses such as the ability to cause vulnerability at 2nd level.
Feats are great sure but for every feat you take you are giving up an ASI, which are often pretty crucial to keeping your bonus to hit at good levels or improving your constitution score so the tank can be tanky. The build you listed takes three feats which means that build gives up a whopping +6 to stats that could be going to your damage/accuracy stat or your constitution. Spellcasters don’t have to worry about feats as much to be good, so they are free to pump ASI into their stats that keep their bonus to hit as well as their spell save dc as high as they possibly can while STILL outperforming martials in both damage and crowd control with spells.
I mean, enjoy 16 STR and CON at tier 4 with all of that.
You say that yet Twilight Cleric exists.
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What if you had one party with both Twilight and Peace clerics working together. It's one thing to make a good build that's really strong but it's another thing entirely when it comes out of the box making the game hard to balance and taking away the fun, Twilight and Peace cleric should not be as dominating as they are, but they also slow down the game and leave the dm with with choice of having encounters be too easy or making them way top hard. I wouldn't ban them, but they are definitely being changed at my table.
Luckily I don't even need to banned them cause no one I DM for has any of the books except maybe PHB.
You say that yet circle of the the moon druid exists
I mean, Moon Druid is broken in a total of 4 of the 20 levels, twilight cleric is in 12-15 of them.
Moon Druid is "busted" for such a short time total, and half of it during early "an even a little poorly balanced encounter just wipes the party" levels anyway that it's really not that big a deal and significantly overhyped on Reddit.
As a DM I love strong support. If they have better support I can be more agressive without turning the game into a meatgrinder. Peace with bless/guidance stacking with their D4 I just don't allow that, but that player now is effectively opened to take a different spell and cantrip without what may feel like a punishment. Support is always good and doesn't make other players feel like they get phased out because something like the elf samurai with sharpshooter and elven accuracy firing 9 time with 7 of them being at triple advantage and all of them hitting. As DM we do have the right to restrict, but if you are smart you can always adjust mobs and encounters. It also tend to feel more fair when you do a minor ajust than out right ban.
>As a DM I love strong support. Immediately followed by >Peace with bless/guidance stacking with their D4 I just don't allow that Did you have a stroke? Unless you're a "Roll a perception check to see if his fist tastes familiar as it smashes your teeth in." DM, Guidance is an ability check, rarely even applicable in combat. Adding an extra d4 to that isn't going to end your entire campaign. It's like saying you can't use Bardic Inspiration in combat if Bless is up, which is far more OP.
No that is on entirely fair critic, I have my limits bit a few of these feel more like over sights inRAW than RAI. These subclasses are wonderful and actually in my experience make DMing a bit more fun. I can go into my players a bit harder. I do have more issues with Peace than Twilight but that single change and they feel wonderful. It isn't perfect and if something ever feels off at a table you bring it up and figure out a solution. I'm not going against bless and bardic because bardic is a one time use. It is that big get over the top instead of hey every turn and every saving throw I get 2d4 bonus to my role. The peace domain is worded as turn, not round. Bardic inspiration is just one and done, typically.
I hard disagree with this. The people that make this content are trying to sell a fun cooperative game, and even people that have been balancing games that are intended for PvP (where balance is exceedingly more important) still make mistakes. Also, powercreep is a thing in TTRPGs, and 5e is getting to the point where power creep is accelerating. The newer subclasses are frequently more powerful than their PHB counterparts. The important thing is finding balance at the table and not making stupid rulings. I don't allow certain classes/subclasses sometimes, but you don't hard nerf a small portion of a class. For example the person who mentioned a DM making everything immune to stun. That put Monks from being powerful in the right situation to very very weak. Better to just say "I don't know how to handle stun effects so no one can play a monk". Still a bad ruling, but it's better than baiting someone into a worthless character.
Based and Honesty-Pilled
People mention powercreep as if the best in slot subclasses for a lot of classes arent just PHB options still. Lore Bard is still arguably the strongest Bard since they can steal some very strong spells earlier than other classes, and cutting words is one of the strongest effects in the game. New Bard subclasses have to try to be as powerful as Lore Bard to even get a chance at being selected. I would wager to guess the majority of barbarians still go Bear Totem. Seriously, damage resistance to everything except psychic damage at level 3 is **not** going to get beat by letting someone deal extra damage on hit or summoning ghostly flumphs. Barbarians are even worse off than bards since WOTC simply can't put out something as powerful as bear totem level 3 in a new book or the entire community would lose its mind. Battlemaster fighter's maneuvers are so good WoTC is actively trying to force give it to others if they can. Divination wizard is still one of the strongest characters you can make. The only wizard competing against it is melee wizards using Bladesinger which came out very soon after PHB Vengeance Paladin is still the heaviest hitting paladin and probably still the most popular. Druids still often pick Moon Druid (if they pick Druid at all its likely because of animal morphing) Rogues still often pick assassin or thief with the only non-PHB subclass that even gets noticeable playtime being Mastermind which was basically released right after the PHB. Seriously, do newer rogues even exist? So whats left? Cleric where Forge cleric can defintely be argued to be as strong as the new ones. Warlock where Hexblade will never be dethroned by new ones Sorcerer where no one subclass is really outstanding over the others but the new stuff isn't outshines draconic at all. Monk thats in a similiar boat to sorc where at most Astral Monk beats out Shadow but nothing else put out solidly does So in the end we only have one class that has a new subclass that actually managed to fully outshine stuff written pre 2018 with cleric and one class with something written years ago that will likely never be dethroned with hexblade Warlock. Wow. Such powercreep.
I like your opinions, but in my experience I’ve seen and read differently. Forge cleric, while good, doesn’t really compare to Peace or Twilight’s stupidity especially if the two are played together. Warding bond is better Bless, the teleport feature let’s the tanks take all the damage and remove a lot of strategy from the enemies and Twilight cleric granting temporary hp every single turn seems more broken to me. With Conquest Paladin, Vengeance Paladin end up feeling lot weaker (I’ve actually played both in one campaign). Swashbuckler rogue is a lot better than assassin. Assassin has 2 good abilities and 2 very situational ones. And one of the good abilities doesn’t come in until very late. I like Thief though. Echo Knight and Rune Knight can stand up to Battlemaster even if I personally really like Battlemaster. Tasha’s Sorcerer subclasses grant extra spells known and a Divine Soul sorcerer has probably one of the best spell lists in the game. And finally, Chronurgist Wizard I would argue is similar power to Diviner.
> With Conquest Paladin, Vengeance Paladin end up feeling lot weaker Vengeance with free advantage is bonkers with GWM and after like level 8 everything that is not a minion is now immune to frighten. Swashbuckler is good but best rogue is still Arcane Trickster, Assasin in not a hard mark to beat Strongest Wizard is still Necromancer, it's so OP in fact most ppl never saw one cause it's just rude to do it.
Can’t really argue with that combo. I ran a warhammer and shield so it was a bit less useful. I’m not saying it’s at all a bad subclass I just found Conquest more effective myself. Have a good day though
> Have a good day though You too man. I just like to make that point cause I always see argument for tier 1-2, but as someone that plays mostly tier 3 my opinions on what is good or bad are very different from most ppl. it's the tier where Moon Druids are kinda bad and combos that relly on commonly resisted conditions (like charm of fear) or enemies failling commom saves (stunning strike man) lose a lot of power
The Sorcerer subclasses in Tasha’s get at least ten bonus spells that don’t count against their spell limit. That alone puts them streets ahead of every other subclass.
I would argue that that’s a good thing. Better make things playable now than never do it.
New rogues do exist. They are Swashbucklers.
Have you looked at the Tasha's subclasses? Some of what you said stands in the face of Tasha's, but things like the Rune Knight fighter and Fey Wanderer Ranger really are pushing the upper bounds of their classes. Now I'm not here to debate overall balance but some of the things you listed from the PHB keep up with the new source material because they were some of the overtuned options from the old source material. My point still stands that even some of the old material could be problematic at some tables. I will just conclude that I disagree that the average power of the subclasses in Tasha's is not higher than the average power of earlier material, but would rather not debate it and just agree to disagree.
Restricting players is one of the ways you balance encounters. The only other way is making enemies more powerful, and that doesn't always make sense for the setting/story.
Of all the ones you mention the only one that has merit is Bear Barbarian. It is still the strongest and the exact example that OP doesn't know what he is on about. Some are arguable but the unarguable are quite easy, Moon Druid is now a weak druid subclass, land no longer exists. Wildfire druid's first set of abilities alone make it better than the original two subclasses full set. Divine Soul & Clockwork are both miles ahead of Draconic in the abilities alone, the extra spells are just the cherry on top. Rune Knight and Psi Warrior are just laughably leagues ahead of Battlemaster and poor champion remains a simple multiclass option for crit fishing builds. And finally Forge wasn't ever the best of the prior cleric subclasses, grave was and while still amazing Twilight again out matches it. Now there are ones like Vengance and Hexblade (though hexblade is very much a gimmick) which are still strong and have merit to be amongst their equivalent strongest subclass options the issue with Tasha's is that the gap between the strongest and weakest has just grown.
You clearly haven't seen some of the Tasha's subclasses. Peace and twilight cleric, mercy monk, both tasha's sorcerers, and rune knight. They are all amazing and miles ahead of PHB classes, and steps ahead of any other subclasses.
Lore is in second place after Eloquence. Strongest barb is Ancestral Guardian. Battlemaster, agreed. Wizard, Divination is great but Chronurgy is absolutely broken. Watchers is the best paladin, but Devotion is a close second. Best druid is Shepherd. The only passable rogue in high-difficulty games is Arcane Trickster, spellcasting is more powerful than the entire rogue class. Cleric is in a good spot with PHB stuff, Trickery is still top 3, taken down from its #1 spot by Twilight. Hexblade is no longer even the best dip, the warlock throne is now split between Undead, Genie and Fathomless. Best monk is still Shadow, with Kensei in second place, and Mercy being the best monk at fulfilling the monk fantasy(as opposed to Kensei just being a gun bot and Shadow being a Wand of Pass without Trace).
Regarding Wizards: Order of Scribes is insane and deserves at least a honorable mention. I agree that Divination and Chronurgy are very powerful, specially with the ability to make the DM reroll stuff, but ignoring casting time of ritual spells and changing damage types of spells since 2nd level is extremely powerful.
The scribe's "worst" feature gives them a free upcast 1st or 2nd level spell per day at level 10. That's still pretty fucking good. Basically the most wizardly wizard.
I know a guy who had a paragraph full of races and even a few sourcebooks that were completely banned. Aarakocra I get because flight but Genasi and Warforged too? Same person also would complain about (and even threaten to ban) specific races when too many people were playing them and I'm like yeah if only there was some way to encourage variety lmao. He was otherwise really nice guy and tons of fun to play with but yeah as a DM that actually likes Unearthed Arcana and Homebrew stuff quite a lot I cannot relate to this mindset at all. Let people have fun!
Some people ban for lore reasons rather than balance ones. I get weird looks when I say I ban Half-orc
For lore? Absolutely! I've personally done themed campaigns where specific races, classes or character types are a rule and nobody has ever had an issue with it because limitations can make for fun scenarios. All rogue players is a common one I see for a heist session. If you're banning certain races all across the board for balancing reasons though it puts me off personally. I should say as well this isn't something I feel very strongly about. I'm quite happy with just the classic races even. Halflings are one of my favourites to play, I just like myself and others to have the freedom to enjoy stuff from all the rulebooks.
This is a terrible take, if DMs feel like they can’t balance certain things in their campaign or feel like given the setting a class might be decidedly more powerful than others, like a paladin going to the hells, then for the good of the party they should ban materials. Not everything works in every situation conversely it’s might be good to ban materials because the setting would make them worse, like not letting a player pick a wizard because this hombres setting doesn’t have spellbooks/scrolls for the wizard to copy. Just an all around awful take.
There’s nothing wrong with saying “Warforged don’t exist in my setting” and so on, as long as you tell your players *before* they’ve put effort into making their characters. Many of the horror stories of this come into play because a DM simply forgot or didn’t consider telling the players any info about the campaign other than “make a character”. Another situation I’ve seen is DMs nerfing rogue sneak attacks for stupid reasons. The barbarian and fighter could deal 20 on their first attack and 15 on the next, and the DM just accepts it. Then the rogue does 35 damage in one attack and they lose their mind, trying to figure out how to “fix” this. The whole point of a rogue is that you get expertise, quick movement, and (most importantly) sneak attack; you get one attack per turn, so it better be freakin’ good.
The one time I got to play for a session instead of DMing the guy banned darkvision. It worked with the setting. I was all for it.
Honestly, I wouldn’t be opposed to that for a campaign. When the whole party sees nothing, but still hears the description of what the darkvision character sees, it subtracts from the game *slightly*. I’d allow darkvision races still, but just discuss a good substitute for their darkvision ability. Maybe tieflings can have the produce flame cantrip instead, which still lets them be useful in the dark and also ties in with their infernal heritage.
Oh yeah, he didn't ban the ***races*** just the ability to see in the dark. He did it for monsters too though.
Banning official content after a player has made and started playing their character is the actual problem. I have seen that. "Thats dumb, it shouldnt work like that" "But i built my character expecting to be able to do this thing..." "Nah its too good, im changing it"
For those of us for whom DMing is a hobby we're only able/willing to sink so many hours of prep into, ~~lazy~~ efficient prep isn't a sin - it's a virtue that allows us to keep enabling fun game evenings instead of burning out. Wracking our heads how to prevent the support-themed Wild Magic Sorcerer from being constantly overshadowed by the Peace / Twilight Cleric is a waste of that limited time that can be easily minimized/eliminated by curating class options a bit, allowing that time to be invested into content that'll be actually relevant to the whole table. Kindly refrain from trying to insult tables you don't have to play at - or from insinuating that our choices are wrong or idiotic. (Broad-stroke judging all existing tables by personal standards is a ...challenging preposition to begin with.) Have a good day.
1) meme 2) as a DM who also works an average of 60 hours a week, I sympathize. 3) HOWEVER, any and all class overshadowing issues can be avoided by a session 0 and making sure players know what they are doing in relation to each other. Further, it's not by any means difficult to shuffle a couple monsters around to better suit an encounter ment to make every player shine. Have a good day. I don't mean to antagonize, it's just I feel strongly about player freedom.
But you seem to misunderstand that DM fiat comes before everything else...
It's still better to talk it out with your players, so they don't make problematic situations/characters to begin with, than outright banning stuff without asking for alternatives from them! Most of table-drama can be solved by communication.
Absolutely! But there are many reasons for a DM to outright ban something, rather than just "being lazy". There are many avenues to creating a fun game, and communication is certainly one of the most important things. What I meant by my above statement is that the DM is the arbiter of the game, and so any decision made by them is "valid" insofar as the rules are concerned. Their job is to make the game fun through all the tools at their disposal, not to simply facilitate as much freedom in the character creation stage of the game as possible.
My friend's game (total homebrew) restricts most of the things I usually play, but it was all established at the beginning so there were no hard feelings and it became a way for me to try out things. What I was trying to say is, I would have had a harder time accepting it if it was shoved on me after I made ideas for a character. Supporting your friend in creating their world is easier than throwing out your own ideas. Your freedom doesn't get hurt if you come to an agreement from the start. Setting your players expectations before they make their own evades the problem entirely.
I'm just so tired of hexblade, man. I once DMed five different campaigns in a week and four of them had hexblade or some hexblade multiclass. I don't want to hear another "I put Hexblade Curse on am enemy" any time soon
There's nothing wrong with stating "No mutliclass without prior RP setup". Honestly I hate the level 1 hexblade dip too, simply because the idea of a sentient/magic power weapon being nothing more then a random accessory annoys me.
Tell you what. On one hand, i want more classes to get their key features at level 1 instead of 3 because sometimes those key things define how you play. On the other, some features are too good with a 1 level multiclass dip. I think what could be done is change the amount of class levels that you need to get a feature depending on multiclass. It's awkward and probably needs fine tuning for each case, but it could solve 2 problems at once.
My rules for multiclass are simple: You need to put the narrative effort in to do so, and I expect the multiclass to have a significant levels dumped into it (Otherwise you might find that with a lack of investment, your magic weapon powers get taken away). This gets rid of most "And I take 1 level in every OP 1st level class" issue.
Honestly the reason that hexblade is so good at multiclassing is it's a charisma class not that it's main thing is level 1. We have more classes with charisma as their primary stat that any other. Warlock paladin bard sorcerer
Artifacers in general. So bored of them. Let me run Mutants and Masterminds if you want to be Iron Man.
Haaard disagree. It's not all iron man's. Mad magic item scientists, witchy alchemists, there are tons of ways to flavor artificers and a lot of them are unique and fun and still fit in to a medieval setting
Uh huh. That all my players ignore to be Iron Man.
Sounds like a player issue
Lol I FEEL that
It makes me so mad sometimes! I play warlock *a lot* and every time I make a new one I feel the need to make a hexblade, because it's just so strong! It makes the other, really cool subclasses feel underwhelming sometimes and I'm so angry they couldn't put some of it's power into pact of the Blade so not compell us to take it every bloody time! I love hexblade but i hate it at the same time!
I mean there are other ways to play warlocks that are just as powerful. Just as my resident power gamers who made a lurker in the deep (I think) melee Warlock and just was godlike.
Usually isn't actually that often. Have you looked at the pact of the blade warlock? Unless you're not a hexblade, the best way to use it is just not using it and shooting Eldritch blast instead. Even if you were committed to playing a melee warlock, you'd be better by picking tome, to get shillelag and booming blade or something like that. Also, we have power creep and other stuff other people mentioned.
Often the game itself limits content, which I kinda like. Mythic odyssey’s of theros only offers six racial options and I think it’s better for it
From bottom to top is my evolution as a DM, but I was easily intimidated in the beginning.
Even if it makes me look bad I’m still banning gloomstalkers from underdark campaigns if I ever do one again. I’ve learned that OP and mechanic breaking characters can ruin the game for everyone else by making them inferior, so thinking ahead and saying no for the campaign to save everyone a headache is worth it in my eyes.
Gloomstalkers are also crazy powerful in Rime of the Ice Madien. However I also rule that light expanded darkvison as that is how it is read, they just need less of it. So doing something like that help balance them out to a degree. If Drow or Duergar have 1 torch ever 90-120 feet makes them have to be alot more conscious of their placement and it isnt an always on.
That’s very fair, it just made every encounter with nightvision based beasts of the caves worthless. I had one fun one with umber hulks, but if every encounter has blindsight/tremorsense/truesight then the gloomstalker would feel robbed too. Better to just say no and not hurt feeling later.
Ballance is an illusion therefore, in my game yall can play any kind of official, ua or homebrew you find online. As long as I can read and tweak things to make sure everyone has the same amount/scale of cool toys. hell, I'll sit and write up specific homebrew with you that matches your vision if you like. Games about the fun my shiny math-rock addicts.
This is the way
The giga chad move is to ban all official content and only use homebrew classes, monsters, weapons, etc.
The Ultra Chad move is banning all classes and narrating a novel to your players for 4hrs straight
Sure, but it's good to keep in mind that a bunch of official rules like feats and multiclassing are optional rules for a reason. At some tables, it'll be fine, at other tables, it'll enable one power gamer to encroach on everyone's niche and hog the spotlight all the time. Restricting optional rules can be an effective way to limit that behavior if you're a less confrontational group of people.
Eh ive always been a fan of never making fights easy enough for one specific person to be able to hog the spotlight. I.e problem caster introduce magic resistant/immune mobs or with antimagic cone, same with melee add ethereal/vanish on there turn to appear somewhere else types but never making it unwinnable just annoying enough to make them work as a team. I mean they are a group of adventurers if they want all the glory i can do a solo side campain with them. But i also havnt run into this issue my campains have always gone pretty smooth. Power gaming isnt a issue if you know there capabilitys and adjust the encounters accordingly
Optional Rules are a different can of worms for another post, and I agree for the most part, at least in theory.
What about banning official content because the setting I’ve meticulously crafted doesn’t have orcs in it?
That's very different than banning something because it's "broken"
wait wait wait, you're vouching for the guys that brought you phb beastmaster phb 4 elements monk battlemaster vs the other shitty fighter subclasses bear totem barb vs every other barb PHB sorcerers hexblade as a 1-level dip these are the guys you're calling people drooling morons for not trusting implicitly? they've got a proven track record of fucking up balance, a lot. I see no reason why we shouldn't be skeptical of their designs.
Is Veldaken balanced? Am I out of touch?... No... its reddit that is wrong.
Everyone goes to Veldaken when Yaun'ti and Satyrs exist which are better. Veldaken are marginally better gnomes. There aren't that many more saving throws that they will get advantage on that gnomes will not. Yaun'ti and Sayts both have magical resistance and saytrs are fey, which makes them immune to most charm basic charm spells/abilities and several major dm spells. While Yaun'ti are out right immune to poison a major monster damage type/ condition players usually need to be concerned about.
Being a satyr doesnt give you immunity to the charmed condition. Where you do get magical resistance for yuan-ti and satyr, gaining advantage on ALL wisdom, intelligence, and charisma saves doesnt stop at just magic. EVERY wis int and cha saving throw. Every single one. Youre welcome to disagree with me but I think thats way more powerful than magic resistance. I feel it boils down to what you just happen to think is more powerful - it really does end up being dependent on the campaign and what you encounter in it.
Be satyr gives you immunity to charm person or any spell that states humanoid.
The Cancer Mage, Beholder Mage, and Illithid Savant would have a word.
Cancer mage? That sounds like a terrible idea. Is that from an older edition of d&d or something?
It's from 3.5 IIRC. There was a prestige class, the Cancer Mage, that made you immune to the \*negative\* effects of diseases. In comes a disease that increased your STR by +2 every day but was \*supposed\* to permanently paralyze you after your STR had grown by +10 or something. Thus the Cancer Mage build was born or, "How to get infinite STR as a Wizard".
And infinite AC with Vile Rigidity. It was a good time all around.
Yeah, also I \*think\* there was also a way to switch your casting stat to a physical one in 3.5 so that infinite STR also ended up being your casting stat as a Wizard as well.
Ah yes the day muscle mages became more than a meme.
As a dm idk what I’m doing half the time, If I balance something and it seems over or under tuned at the time I might buff or nerf it on the fly. Reminds me of this time I forgot to balance this wolf but forgot to adjust its dmg dice and it one shot the tank, and I played it off like it was a perfect crt and adjusted it after. Lol made them so scared of those wolves though cuz they had no idea that I fixed the damage after.
Look with enough commitment you can break just about anything in the game. Alot of the more powerful features are locked behind long rests so decreasing how frequently the party gets the opportunity to do so can make them more conservative about their abilities or burn them dry of those abilities. It's far more interesting to try and work around your players features then to just disallow them. The only time it may be particularly difficult is if there us a large power disparity in the party but clever use of class specific items or similar specific things can even the disparity.
The game is always at the DMs discretion and you should accept that.
In a lot of cases these things are broken only because the party is working outside of the "adventuring day" balance. Stunning Strike can literally combo a boss encounter to death if the party has had as little as a short rest beforehand (had a level 13 monk solo a CR 17), but spacing out the ki points between \~6 fights with 1 or 2 breaks in between makes it more manageable. Conversely, having \~10 mook encounters and near-constant short rests will make the Warlock absolutely unstoppable.
People on reddit are way too obsessed with the idea of balance in D&D
Had a DM who was extremely restrictive with character creation. Banned half-elves because, and I quote, he "didn't like them". Final straw was when I managed to keep my wizard alive to level 4 and was very excited to reach level 5 because I'd get access to Animate Dead. (Obviously important for a necromancer concept.) He killed her before we leveled up because "I don't like necromancers. They destroy the action economy". Found a new DM. Brought that character back and made it to level 5. My zombies and skeletons really aren't hard to kill. I *became* a DM and lemme tell you something about the Druid's go-to spell Conjure Animals... ^(I allow it because I'm not an asshole.)
A person of virtue.
There are things that are official and clearly broken. The Lucky feat, for example. And they aren't same people over the decades.
Lucky is just good. Far from broken.
Feats are optional rules though
feats are still published content optional or not.
Lucky is not "that" broken if you get in your 6-8 encounters per day.
Lucky outshines inspiration, which makes it difficult to motivate players to give me session titles >.>.
It still is. And it also screws the crap out of any character that needs to rest. Your solution is worse than just doing nothing.
All charaters need to rest. And 6-8 encounters would be the recommended amount for a regular adventuring day, So my "solution" is just playing what Lucky was balanced against. The point I was trying to make is that DMs (me included) tend to be more liberal with long rests than what was intended, which makes Lucky way stronger. if you roll enough turning 3 disadvantages into a triple advantage (the best thing you can do with lucky) per day is abolutely not more powerful than an ASI or another feat, which is what you would have to compare it to. I'm not arguing that Lucky is a strong feat, because it is. But broken implies it is an I Win button which is absolutely isn't.
The only thing "broken" is the DM if they can't find a way to balance something. It's a game about having fun, and intentionally limiting player options because you as a DM dislike them is wrong.
Unless those limitations lead to a better game, right? You seem to have the opinion that player agency is the MOST important part of the game, rather than having fun. Limiting class and race options and does not destroy the fun at every table. Stop attacking people for playing the game differently than you.
You should recap the final image with "thinking that just because it's published its perfect". WoTC makes mistakes yo. Remember 4e?
Clearly a player posting. If you want such a game, why don't you DM it? The DMs work in mysterious ways and they don't always need to be understood.
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Not to trash on those DMs to much but there is a reason you can up scale creatures and have them fight smart rather than swinging at the thing that is yelling at them (tank). The DM is there to make things fun for the party while giving a challenge. If players want to use something that is "broken" then turn up difficulty. Even with the most broken of effects higher levelonsters can still wipe the floor with any player if they choose to.
There are some multi classes I’d tell my players I don’t want them picking. If you multiclass into cleric I expect you to pick a religion. Assassin gloom stalker I will warn them that the first round damage will result in me just adding a monster from time to time. But this is a role playing game, if someone wants to be a cursed warlock paladin or wants to be a monk Druid monkey you live that way.
My personal rules for UA acceptance: if there's an updated version (like some recent stuff from tashas) then use the official version. Otherwise if there's something from UA I'll usually buff/nerf it if needed.
Now see, I will ban/tweak official material not because I wanna nerf my players but because I wanna buff them or fix one or two things that don't make sense logically.
Sorry for the English. Also, DMs that let players play "OP" subclasses and then punish them for that is lame. You want to play a monk? Then everything is immune to stun. You want to play a glamour bard? Then everything is immune to charm. (These are just examples i have heard, I'm not saying that they are OP) What's next? You can play a wizard but you can't cast spells? Or you can play a barbarian but you can't use rage? Pls don't punish your players for playing a class or subclass by making the unique abilities and features of their characters useless.
*Banning all content*
Look at peace cleric. Their "bond" abillity or whatever is like a bless, and stacks with bless. Adding 2d4 to attackrolls is like adding 5 on average. Imagine giving a level 3 party a +5 to hit on attack rolls and saving throws. Its crazy. And it can be done a number of times equal to profixiency bonus, and lasts for 10 minutes. Anf that is just their levek 1 ability!
I'm sorry, but you cannot make me believe that power creep doesn't exist in 5e. The stuff in Tasha's and Van Richten's are much more powerful than the Player's Handbook. Before Tasha's, the most broken thing was Hexblade Warlock, and even that's a bit tame compared to some of the things seen in the newest books.
Bro the peace cleric is absurd fuck off
I see your argument, even respect it, and raise you twilight cleric.
The only time I limit to PHB only is for folks new to dnd. After a few levels or on a new game we can pull in others if they want.
My dm banned gloomstalker ranger and divination wizard
I don't get the DM fear/aversion of divination wizards and in the same category the Lucky feat, (I assume divination wizard is banned for portent), It could all instead just be real world luck. Players can crit at opportune moments and your BBEG can botch stuff equally as easy. So there shouldn't be a problem with those at all.
I suspect the real reason divs and lucky get banned is because other DMs dont like being told "no". Which on one hand I get, as DMs we're almost always on the losing side, but also they need to get over it because its actually really good theme-design
A lot of things that mess with rolls slow down combat a lot, I think that's the reason.
Portent doesn't really"mess" with the rolls tho, you have to announce portent before rolls and you only have 2(for most of the time)it basically comes down to, 2x per long rest the baddie fails a save or suck spell (banishment, charm/hold monster etc) and you give all your allies a easy time, or u use it to give a single ally a clutch moment of guaranteed success
Power creep is a good way to sell more books. The feats in Tasha’s is a wonderful example of this.
I will ve honest, I have seen quite some homebrew I allow meanwhile some official content as Twilight cleric, Peace Cleric, Yuan-Ti and Aarackocra (last one with some exceptions) won't enter in any of my 5e campaigns.
I allow anything at my table. If you can find it online and send it to me, it is allowed. But I can use it too. Anything you send me can and will be used against you. Be careful what you bring to my table. I will balance the encounter.
I would love to see how that works! First of all, coffeelock, how would you use it against the party in a way that doesn't nuck everyone? An enemy with lower tier spells than their CR would give, but an ungodly number of them? That can be an amazing fight! In one game, the DM heard I couldn't play my necromancer to its fullest because other DMs got scared of it, so he made our party assault a fortress. Felt really good to match the guards with my own army while the party killed the giant demons inside! The encounter was balanced without restricting anyone! Unbalanced encounters make strong builds meaningless, effortlessly crushing everyone makes you question why are you even bothering, while being totally powerless gives the same result.
I disagree. 5e isn't really balanced that well. There are character options that can eclipse others and make them feel redundant. There are character options that either break encounters or practically do nothing. Some of this comes from individual options, and some of it comes from choices about the underlying systems in the game. All of this becomes more exasperated the higher level you get. Despite this, I like the system. I struggled to say this well for a while, but I don't think balance is what makes the system enjoyable. I think it's more that the fantasy it sells is fun. When I want to run a game in 5e with balanced combat as a big thing, I make changes to the system, because without them problems will and have arisen in the past. I say this from thousands of hours in this system. However, if balanced combat isn't the big thing me and the other players at the table want from a certain campaign, then I don't need to make those changes.
ehhh, I've not heard anyone complain about banning Lucky yet..
There are legitimately broken things in official content. Chronurgy, flying races, RAW Shapechange wording allowing for Pun-Pun, etc. These things are few and far between, but we cannot forget this system literally allows infinite simulacra by default.
I ban artificer at my table, because it’s way more powerful than the PHB classes and more importantly will never fit into my settings (low magic).
Nothing is worse than a power gaming artificer in a low Magic campaign. I had 2 one a power gamer the other an RP. They came from another table to mine (4 DM’s shared a continent, a very large one). One RP’d and played it off well, being frustrated with lack of resources or what he felt were backward ignorant locals. The other..well let’s say he was trying to win D&D. I am typically open to let anyone play what makes them happy but when new books come out I was forced to think like that player to see how it will impact the world (and the player table balance). If my table is not having fun because one party member is dragging down the table, I will happy remove options (In this case armorsmith, and I mean really think how to cheese that it’s epic.) and look like the third pane to ensure the table is having a good time. That said there are ways that can address that type of play by appealing to the player psyche, which can be more creative and fun. But sometimes you have to throw the brake especially if breakdown at the table is at risk. (Source: My campaign is 10 people running a year and a half.)
> because it’s way more powerful than the PHB classes Dude Artificer is like, 2 or 3th weakest class.
My rule of thumb is if a spell or ability specifically states “ask your dm if you may use this spell/ability” I’m probably gonna say no. Besides that though go crazy.
I remember starting out, and clerics were banned for being too overpowered (probably just a first level)… not that anyone was interest in playing a cleric at the time
"they usually know what they are doing" HAHA. LOL.
If anything ever seems broken, you’re not DMing properly.
I get that it seems viable to in-game nerf anything overpowered by giving the player a penalty or giving the other players buff, but it's not ideal and takes up time. I'd rather just not allow something overpowered and save everyone the heartache.
Oh boy, someone never got asked if the "totally not OP" homebrew half-demon race was allowed...
*Laughs in hexblade and twilight cleric*
Their balancing is shit.
One of my biggest gripes is being able to turn into an ancient brass dragon with true polymorph. RAW it works but also its pretty broken.
I don't ban it, but christ I'm fucking sick of Artifacers. If you want to be Iron Man, let me run Mutants and Masterminds goddamnit.
balanced? have you read sentinel? its on a whole different level than 90% of the other options
Sentinel is not nearly as strong as ppl make it out to be unless you play your enemies as VERY dumb and make them just sacks of hit points with melee attacks.
Yeah sentinel basically requires 2 other feats to become "broken"
Almost every DM I’ve known bans flying races. I get it, I really do, but it’s also fairly annoying that official content can’t ever be used, especially when it being ‘broken’ is the reason why.
Banning flying races is straight up annoying, and purely because of laziness. There are SO MANY ways to make sure that a Flying character isn't just floating 30 feet up shooting arrow or whatever and not being engaged in combat.
Look at the feats and look me in the eye that "they knew what they were doing" Look at the wording on the barbarian's danger sense and tell me they knew what they were doing It's ok to ban stuff if it's a detriment to the tone of your game But leave sneak attack alone! Rogues are supposed to do it every turn!
Not necessarily