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So Tasha's has dropped and there's a gak ton in it. Thoughts anyone? Any new subclasses people want to play?

I want to try and Artificer/Fighter multiclass with Armorer as primary. I could actually maybe use my Techmarine model for it! I like the lore of the WIldfire Druid but am disappointed in its actual toys. Swarm Ranger actually looks super cool.

I actually like the new origin rules? My characters tend to be oddballs (Hobgoblin sorcerers, Tiefling Druids, etc) so the normal racial bonuses don't always let me maximize a character's potential like I'd like. The new rules look like they're perfect for a lot of the characters I actually play.

Voss wrote:
Its mostly neither. Monsters have ACs that their designer 'felt about right'

A Pit Fiend at level 20 has an AC of 19
An Ancient Red dragon is level 24, and has AC 22.
The Tarrasque, the 'ultimate monster' (unless you can fly, and then its a math problem) is AC 25 and level 30.

Various named demon lords in Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes have AC from 18 to 20. Assorted 'elder elementals' are AC 17-21. Most of these are level 20-26

A basic goblin (level 1/4) has a 15, a level 1 goblin boss a 17.
A flesh golem is level 5 and has an AC 9.
A level 2 Ogre is AC 11. Its half ogre kin is AC 12 at level 1. But roughly half the HP (30 rather than 59).


As Da Boss says, its mostly about HP bloat.
Monsters with 20+ AC feel really bad to fight with 5e's math, so they didn't do it much, but higher level monsters are such bullet sponges that it gets boring anyway.

----
On the PC side of things, it gets weirder. You can, in theory, start with an AC of 9 (don't do this, some monsters hit like absolute trucks), or a level 1 fighter with entirely mundane gear can wander around at AC21 (though not a starter character, as plate mail is pricey). Buffs and magic items can get it pretty high (you can hit 25 or so at relatively low levels), but you have to build for it. At various points, monster attack bonuses are such that you either go all in and still take some hits (on a 15+), or just accept that they're going to smack you around on the regular.
Once you've really started min/maxing AC, ways to apply disadvantage (like the 2nd level spell, blur) are worth WAY more than another +1 AC.

Thanks. Those are definitely some unexpected numbers especially at super high CR's and in a way it's good to know that a pc can at least hit them (but I assume they've got some mega damage resistances that need to be overcome on top of that). I'm not sure I like the bullet sponge route either at least from my experiences in Starfinder but at least the monsters don't seem to have bonkers to hit bonuses on top of that like in that game. Yeah, I've been doing some initial notes on characters using online wikis at the moment and I don't see myself increasing the AC's too much at least for the first few levels beyond whatever gear I may find. It helps though that one of the top contenders is a tortle that starts at 19 with his shield.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Da Boss wrote:
ACs don't tend to go up as quickly for monsters, instead they have loads of HP.

I'll have to look that up. HP bloat for monsters was one of my least favorite features of 4e iirc. :(


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 LordofHats wrote:
So Tasha's has dropped and there's a gak ton in it. Thoughts anyone? Any new subclasses people want to play?

I want to try and Artificer/Fighter multiclass with Armorer as primary. I could actually maybe use my Techmarine model for it! I like the lore of the WIldfire Druid but am disappointed in its actual toys. Swarm Ranger actually looks super cool.

I actually like the new origin rules? My characters tend to be oddballs (Hobgoblin sorcerers, Tiefling Druids, etc) so the normal racial bonuses don't always let me maximize a character's potential like I'd like. The new rules look like they're perfect for a lot of the characters I actually play.

Bladesinger wizard or the Wild Magic barbarian for me and I tend to favor oddballs myself as well. I have a steampunk ironman mk 1 fig from heroclix that would make for a good warforged arficer in full plate. I'm a bit torn on the variant origins though as I think they're a min-maxers dream and will likely be used by those types as well. At least in the past, a min maxer had to deal with the attribute bonuses as written to get the desired racial abilities but now they can just have both. Plus there is the iconic factor in that they've been around for so long.

I'll have to look that up. HP bloat for monsters was one of my least favorite features of 4e iirc. :(

Like AC, HP isn't on any real metric.

The ancient red dragon has 546 hp up near the top end.

At more reasonable levels...
A werewolf is level 3, AC 11/12 depending on form and 58 hp
A manticore is also level 3, but has AC 14 and 68 hp.
Minotaur, level 3, AC 14 and 76 hp. (yeah, nearly a 20 point variation among level 3 monsters)
A weretiger is level 4, has AC 12 and jumps to 120 HP. (yep. A level 4 were-critter has twice the HP of the level 3 one. Who knows why? That'd be at least 6 levels of HP for a PC with a good Con)
Hill giant is level 5, but drops in HP to 105. Its damage curve is a lot higher though, two attacks a +8 for ~18 each rather than two at +5 for ~7 each. [5e is disturbingly hard to plan for. Juggling the difference between TPK and utterly dull is not obvious]
A medusa is level 6, a 15 AC, and 127 HP.
Because... um, reasons.

Of course, by level 6, the martial characters have an extra attack, a proficiency increase and more will likely have magic weapons and spellcasters have more and better spells and abilities, so the medusa is actually a fair bit squishier than the weretiger is to characters of its level. The weretiger fight is an early slog, but a pointless one because its basically attacking with nerf bats.

I do not recommend the werewolf personally

We had it in my campaign recently, it wasted about 3 sessions to expunge the curse from our party and completely derailed the story!
It's not even a fun creature to fight as it is immune to most damage it seems.

Non-magical weapon damage yeah (except silver).

One of the signs that I've played D&D too long is I always expect people to pick up at least back-up weapons of silver (and cold iron from 3rd edition onwards), and I find the game frustrating if the DM isn't handing out at least some magic items on schedule. It really is required and its frustrating that 5e kind of pretends it isn't. But the game fails hard when the party runs into something like this.*

It doesn't have to be the full Christmas Tree by any means, but the main fighting folks need magic swords or whatever, and the spellcasters can use some additional utility or defensive options (especially defensive).


*on the other hand, the setting needs monsters like this. Way too many of the major threats in 5e D&D-land are simply solved by a guard company of archers, all the way up to dragons. It'll be slow, but the math will obliterate most threats to the point that towns aren't capable of being threatened (other than by armies, and 5e doesn't deal with large fights well at all). 'Adventurers' are a frankly bizarre concept, and need some reason to exist.

 LordofHats wrote:
So Tasha's has dropped and there's a gak ton in it. Thoughts anyone? Any new subclasses people want to play?

I want to try and Artificer/Fighter multiclass with Armorer as primary. I could actually maybe use my Techmarine model for it! I like the lore of the WIldfire Druid but am disappointed in its actual toys. Swarm Ranger actually looks super cool.

I actually like the new origin rules? My characters tend to be oddballs (Hobgoblin sorcerers, Tiefling Druids, etc) so the normal racial bonuses don't always let me maximize a character's potential like I'd like. The new rules look like they're perfect for a lot of the characters I actually play.

I was playing a Rune Knight Fighter / Armorer Artificer using the UA, and Tasha's frellin KILLED me. The changes to Armorer feel like typos, honestly. Like, they took away Shield but added Thunderwave? How does Thunderwave even fit? Artillerist gets Thunderwave, and it's a 180 on concept from the Armorer. The THP from Guardian armor nerf hurts, especially when Moon Druid infinite HP is still a thing, and Artillerist gives out more THP to more people from a DPS focused subclass. Wut? They even nerfed the stealth access of Infiltrator mode, since you can get Advantage to Stealth so many places that doing that instead of just removing the Disadv. of other heavy armors means you'll never have advantage anymore by RAW. It's baffling.

Rune Knight? It's now the worst fighter subclass there is. Bar none. Giant Might is now a fething joke, and doesn't mesh with the base abilities of the Fighter class. +1d6 damage once per turn, from the class whose literal WHOLE SCHTICK is attacking a lot. *finger twirl* wooooo Apparently you get real big and then shrink your weapon once you hit something. Runes? Instead of fixing the bad runes they just level locked the good runes and inexplicably nerfed Frost into near uselessness. They didn't add any options either, so when you take the class you get to pick 2 out of 4 runes, so there's not even variety really. Defensive Runes instead of boosting AC forces a reroll, so rather than being able to reliably turn a hit into a miss, you risk turning a hit into a crit, or burning your reaction to do nothing at all. And as a more minor nitpick, I feel like switching the class from Str/Int to Str/Con loses out on some of the flavor. That's a really minor nitpick though, compared to them just shredding literally every feature of the archetype.

I also have a straight Wildfire Druid, and while the lore IS pretty fun to play to, the actual class is now garbage. Even the small nerf to the HP of the Wildfire Spirit hurts since ALL your other features depend on it being out. We were in an inside fight last night and I couldn't summon the Wildfire spirit without hurting my friends (and we were already kind of beat up). All my subclass features essentially ceased to exist, and with the nerf you're not even getting a free cantrip out of it. They nerfed the summon damage from 2d10 to 2d6, sure it was high before but it didn't scale. Now it's low and it still doesn't scale, so eventually your spirit just becomes a power source for your other features, assuming that it doesn't die to AoE (which it will). You don't really get any important spell access that all druids don't already get, Flaming Sphere conflicts with using your Wildfire spirit, and of course the kick in the nuts that is losing Fireball. (but hey, they gave you burning hands to compensate, that's something, right? RIGHT?! no, it's not.)

Those complaints aside, there are some other classes I'm interested in. The Stars Druid is really good, College of Eloquence continues to be the Bardiest Bard, Peace and Twilight Domains are both solid and Spores got a small but important boost moving the bonus damage from Poison to Necrotic so less things resist or are immune to you. I also like the Phantom Rogue better than the Revived Rogue that it was based on for some inexplicable reason.

Honestly the biggest disappointment is the obvious lack of care that went into the noncaster sections of the book. A couple of the Fighter Sample Builds they wasted a page on, include taking the Weapon Mastery feat, which does LITERAL nothing for fighters at all. Of the 41 non-artifact magic items, 11 are Wizard exclusive; none are for noncasters. Linear Fighter Quadratic Wizard may not be a rule anymore, but it's clearly still a focus of the developers. It's like fething Stockholm Syndrome at this point.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 warboss wrote:

I'll have to look that up. HP bloat for monsters was one of my least favorite features of 4e iirc. :(

That's what minions were for.

Yeah, what you say about Wildfire sounds how I'd expect it to play, which is what bums me out. A class completely dependent on a fragile pet to do any subclass things sounds like a bad subclass.

Good thing I liked the original Spore Druid, so the improved version should be fun for all my wacky druidy business.

I think Sorcerer continues to be the most underappreciated class in the game. Most people just call them worse Wizards cause they have less spell flexibility, but honestly that criticism has never clicked with me. Sorcerers have all the 'good' spells they need and have crazy strong subclasses. The two new ones they get I think as OP as Divine Soul, so I'm baffled everyone is talking about Wizards when Sorcerers remain game breaking with even the smallest amount of min-maxing.

I'm unsuprised they removed Shield from armorer. It was OP as feth that they had it in the first place imo and Wizards seems to agree. They've religiously (pun) taken Shield away from any classe that natively has heavy armor. Forge Cleric also lost it when it went from UA to Xanathar's. They seem to want to avoid anything that in one go lets your AC break 20, and as someone who played a 'let me max out my AC' Forge Cleric for over a year, it is absolutely broken.

Nothing can kill you when you're boating AC 23 at level 3 (not in typical module play). You're effectively immortal till level 8 or 9, still mostly immortal till level 11 or 12. Anything a DM can come up with that can break your AC and actually hurt you will likely slaughter the rest of the party. At least the Forge Cleric does little real damage to compensate for being neigh unkillable.

EDIT: I'm also finding myself looking at Patrons and all the cool things that can be homebrewed with them. Maybe I'll take this as a chance to get my first self-made campaign off the ground and see what happens. I like the idea of using the Patron rules to create factions and then importing the faction rules from Fate Core to get a different kind of campaign going than you normally see in DnD.

 streamdragon wrote:

That's what minions were for.

Yup. That's the one mechanic 4e introduced that our group genuinely liked. We stopped playing/got disgusted by iirc 4th level though so we didn't encounter them too much.

Voss wrote:
Non-magical weapon damage yeah (except silver).

One of the signs that I've played D&D too long is I always expect people to pick up at least back-up weapons of silver (and cold iron from 3rd edition onwards), and I find the game frustrating if the DM isn't handing out at least some magic items on schedule. It really is required and its frustrating that 5e kind of pretends it isn't. But the game fails hard when the party runs into something like this.*

It doesn't have to be the full Christmas Tree by any means, but the main fighting folks need magic swords or whatever, and the spellcasters can use some additional utility or defensive options (especially defensive).


*on the other hand, the setting needs monsters like this. Way too many of the major threats in 5e D&D-land are simply solved by a guard company of archers, all the way up to dragons. It'll be slow, but the math will obliterate most threats to the point that towns aren't capable of being threatened (other than by armies, and 5e doesn't deal with large fights well at all). 'Adventurers' are a frankly bizarre concept, and need some reason to exist.

Well we were all scrupulously avoiding 'meta-ing' and failed any intelligence checks for clues about silver hurting them so things did get rather painful...
We're only level 4 characters so don't have any fancy gear yet, we are still in the journeyman adventurer stage

It was actually a good challenge, I was enjoying the main plot though so it was a shame to get derailed.

Personally, I think monsters are the kinda boring side of DnD, so I don't mind them taking a back seat in 5ed.

Role playing with sentient creatures is the unique part of a tabletop RPG that can't be replicated in a computer game very well.
My group tends to focus on that side of things, with the odd monster popping in for a challenge.

Actually we worked out in this campaign we are doing so much roleplay that we're actually playing in real time... each 4 hour session is covering about half a day of game time!

LordofHats wrote:
I think Sorcerer continues to be the most underappreciated class in the game. Most people just call them worse Wizards cause they have less spell flexibility, but honestly that criticism has never clicked with me. Sorcerers have all the 'good' spells they need and have crazy strong subclasses. The two new ones they get I think as OP as Divine Soul, so I'm baffled everyone is talking about Wizards when Sorcerers remain game breaking with even the smallest amount of min-maxing.

I'm unsuprised they removed Shield from armorer. It was OP as feth that they had it in the first place imo and Wizards seems to agree. They've religiously (pun) taken Shield away from any classe that natively has heavy armor. Forge Cleric also lost it when it went from UA to Xanathar's. They seem to want to avoid anything that in one go lets your AC break 20, and as someone who played a 'let me max out my AC' Forge Cleric for over a year, it is absolutely broken.

Nothing can kill you when you're boating AC 23 at level 3 (not in typical module play). You're effectively immortal till level 8 or 9, still mostly immortal till level 11 or 12. Anything a DM can come up with that can break your AC and actually hurt you will likely slaughter the rest of the party. At least the Forge Cleric does little real damage to compensate for being neigh unkillable.

Oh the Armorer artificer does terrible damage, they make up for it by being a disadvantage tank via Thunder Gauntlets. They're just squishier now than they were before, with no real boost to compensate. It's not terrible, but compared to Battle Smith or Artillerist, you go into this knowing your main job is to punch tank things and if you're not in a position to do that, you're dead weight.

warboss wrote:
Yup. That's the one mechanic 4e introduced that our group genuinely liked. We stopped playing/got disgusted by iirc 4th level though so we didn't encounter them too much.

I played in a campaign from first to about 17th or 18th level. We only stopped because people started moving away and it made it hard to game at the time. That remains one of my favorite campaigns of any edition.

My group also liked healing surges, the short/long rest split, Bloodied as a condition, and a few other things. I genuinely loved 4e, I fully admit it had its flaws (when you ended the game rolling 1d20 + 30 or whatever to hit, there should have been a bit better of a squish), but it was nice that a balanced party stayed a balanced party, and the cross player synergy made a party feel like an actual party. Instead of getting to level 7 and suddenly "save or die" was all that mattered.

My biggest gripe with tashas is that the more custom aspects of character creation are just done in a kinda boring way. I think that Ancestry and Culture from the homebrew supplement I found a while back is what my group is going to keep using for customized races.

In essence, Ancestry and Culture has you split the abilities that racial features give you into Ancestry (things that come from your character's physical body) and Culture (things that they learned from their upbringing.)

Darkvision, size, speed, natural weapons, etc are based on Ancestry, and core stat bonuses, weapon and tool proficiencies, spells, etc that the character would have picked up being raised within a culture are based on Culture.

So a hill dwarf who was raised within wood elf culture would have a speed of 25, resistance to poison, speed wouldn't be reduced by heavy armor, +1HP per level, and Darkvision, but he would have +2 Dex +1 Wis, Longbow Shortbow Shortsword and Longsword proficiency, Proficiency in Perception, would speak Common and Elvish, and would have Mask of the Wild.

Obviously, certain ambiguous abilities you need to think critically about and slot into either race or culture to make things a little bit more balanced, and certain combos are self-evidently better than others (kinda like how the race system currently works...) but in general it just allows for a nice, easy, out of the box way to customize races that feels more organic than just 'if you're making a wizard, give him +2Int +1Dex"

It also gives you a super easy plug in for WHY your, whatever, gnome is a raging barbarian with +2S and +1Con - he grew up among the Goliaths in the frosty wastes! He cares not for tinker's tools, they would not even fit in his MUSCULAR FINGERS, he has resistance to cold damage instead! Also nobody among the goliaths has heard of razors, so he is a four foot tall guy with six feet of beard.

At this point I am a bit tired of D&D 5e. Like most editions of Dungeons and Dragons it has it's good points and it's bad points, but it suffers heavily from the only properly finished system in the rules being spellcasting, and the rest of it being lazily half baked.
It is clear the designers don't really take their jobs particularly seriously and the expectation is for DMs to shell out for premium priced books but then do a lot of work themselves to make certain parts of the game actually functional.

Thinking about moving to something a bit more stripped down like Worlds Without Number or Knave for future games, saving me money and time spent "homebrewing" solutions to obviously half baked rules.

Didn't it have a public playtest for years as D&D Next? I was out of the loop but even I heard of that when it started though I didn't participate. Were your issues brought up during that time?

 warboss wrote:
Didn't it have a public playtest for years as D&D Next? I was out of the loop but even I heard of that when it started though I didn't participate. Were your issues brought up during that time?

Yeah, but that's been much maligned for how many features people liked from the play test that never made it into the final game.

One of the standout examples I see mentioned all the time is that Battle Maneuvers (from the Battlemaster fighter subclass) were utilized by all the Martial classes. They were called other things, but Fighters, Rogues, and Barbarians had them. People apparently really liked that cause it gave melee and non-magic characters options in combat besides rolling to attack. I've even played a few one-shots that let every martial class automatically have the Martial Adept feat at no cost, and it's actually super fun and didn't seem badly balanced. With some of the new maneuvers coming out, it also gives them something to toy with out of combat, which is where I think the real problems between magic users and non-magic users become apparent (magic can do anything if you know the right spell, leaving any character who just has skill bonuses in the dust).

This feature never made it into the final game with no explanation from Wizards as to why. This is true of a lot of their "balance" changes that aren't "balance changes." Wizards very poorly communicate the reasons behind their decisions. They'll reference balance in one statement, and then act like it isn't important in another. I think it's accurate to say they assume GM's will fix what they don't like, so they are kind of lazy about some things.

Some of these things are super weird too, like Rapiers not being light weapons even though rapier + dagger is a classic fighting style (most DM's I play with let you wield a Rapier with a Dagger anyway, but the rules still RAW don't allow it). Why is the Trident materially exactly the same as spear even though its supposedly martial vs simple? Can Booming Blade and Greenflame Blade be used with Reach weapons? As of Tasha's the answer is apparently no, even though that doesn't make sense and most people I played with before didn't play it that way.

Part of the issue I think is that Wizards has a pinpoint target on the kind of audience they want; a broad one. They want the game to appeal to as many people as possible. It's worked great from a financial stand point and I think very casual players like me who are mostly there to see stuff happen and chat with other players (I guess I'd say the game is primarily a social experience and an RPG second?) are well suited for the kind of game 5E is, which is a game predominantly focused on level 1-14 module play. I think it leaves more dedicated and experienced players though noticing the holes the system, particularly how badly suited the game is for dedicated RP.

The game's entire feature economy completely breaks if you don't do the recommended 2-4 encounters per adventuring day for example. Having an adventuring day that is nothing but conversation leaves half the classes with nothing to do with any of their class features (which only support combat). Those same classes are also dependent on short rests being a thing, but because spell casters get everything back on a long rest, most groups just take a long rest unless the DM is super stingy about it so Fighters, Monks, and Warlocks never even use their feature economy the way it is intended to be used.

 LordofHats wrote:
One of the standout examples I see mentioned all the time is that Battle Maneuvers (from the Battlemaster fighter subclass) were utilized by all the Martial classes. They were called other things, but Fighters, Rogues, and Barbarians had them. People apparently really liked that cause it gave melee and non-magic characters options in combat besides rolling to attack. I've even played a few one-shots that let every martial class automatically have the Martial Adept feat at no cost, and it's actually super fun and didn't seem badly balanced. With some of the new maneuvers coming out, it also gives them something to toy with out of combat, which is where I think the real problems between magic users and non-magic users become apparent (magic can do anything if you know the right spell, leaving any character who just has skill bonuses in the dust).

I haven't played (first game will actually be tomorrow virtually unless something messes up that plan) so I can only comment broadly in theory about mechanics and specifically about the thematic impact. That said... I'm glad they didn't give battle maneuvers to every martal class standard. I was already surprised enough that fighting styles seemed to have made it in but was ok with that. Frankly, I think the maneuvers should have been a core feature to the fighter just like rage is to the barbarian to distinguish them thematically and mechanically from the other martial classes but obviously that didn't happen. That said, I wouldn't have been opposed to the PHB having the (new released in Tasha?) martial adept feat either to let them dip their toes into that style a bit without resorting to multiclassing. YMMV and I think what ultimately came out was somewhere in the middle... not optimal but not horrible either. That's admittedly faint praise though...

Part of the issue I think is that Wizards has a pinpoint target on the kind of audience they want; a broad one. They want the game to appeal to as many people as possible. It's worked great from a financial stand point and I think very casual players like me who are mostly there to see stuff happen and chat with other players (I guess I'd say the game is primarily a social experience and an RPG second?) are well suited for the kind of game 5E is, which is a game predominantly focused on level 1-14 module play. I think it leaves more dedicated and experienced players though noticing the holes the system, particularly how badly suited the game is for dedicated RP.

I used to be as hardcore as you could get back in 3/3.5. I was DMing one campaign and playing in another resulting in effectively a D&D game every week for years. At the same time, I was also active in the local D&D minis league (not the same thing but still thematically D&D) and posting on their wizards forum daily. Obviously my interest nosedived with 4th edition of the RPG (and the accompanying 2nd edition of the minis game that initially wiped out 90% of my minis collection in one swoop) and over the 13 years I've been effectively a non-fan. No video games, no tabletop games, no merch... nothing that was official D&D since my group unanimously gave up on 4e after a few months. That said... I'm ok with the casualization of the game at this point. My view might be skewed by my non-fan status for over a decade and may admittedly change if/when I get more experience under my belt. At least right now, I'm ok with the baseline being a broader approach to the RPG after the mega-crunch of 3.x (I'm including Pathfinder 1e in there) and the tactical-minis-game-in-all-but-name of 4e. The way I see it is that it's easier to start broad to appeal to that casual audience (as long as it's not too extreme to the point that there is no room for customization/depth) and then build on that for the hardcore crowd eventually with an entirely optional "advanced" PHB sized book (but not a series of books as that would indicate too shallow of an initial approach!) that focuses on adding crunch/options as well as focus on high level play. YMMV.

The game's entire feature economy completely breaks if you don't do the recommended 2-4 encounters per adventuring day for example. Having an adventuring day that is nothing but conversation leaves half the classes with nothing to do with any of their class features (which only support combat). Those same classes are also dependent on short rests being a thing, but because spell casters get everything back on a long rest, most groups just take a long rest unless the DM is super stingy about it so Fighters, Monks, and Warlocks never even use their feature economy the way it is intended to be used.

I'd argue that is an issue with the individual group/GM moreso than the mechanics. The rules are there and I think the intent has been explictly stated in the years since (whether through social media, faq's, subsequent books, etc) but you can only lead a player horse to water. I saw a bit of that in 3rd as a GM but I put the stop to it with an out of character post game conversation following a particularly brutal midday "random" encounter when the party just stopped to rest for the whole day at lunchtime while in enemy territory.

 warboss wrote:
I'd argue that is an issue with the individual group/GM moreso than the mechanics.

I agree. I think it's only an issue at all because of how few classes (only 3 out of 13) actually use a short rest for class features. You wouldn't even notice the issue if your group lacks one and I think it's simply produced a habit in players and GMs that then gets annoying for anyone playing one of those three classes.

 warboss wrote:
I'm ok with the casualization of the game at this point.

Same. When I was younger and had more time on my hands, I'd probably have liked a crunchier game but these days I like how all the work of getting DnD going is mostly at character creation. Once you have the character it's extremely easy to just drop in and play and all the rules you need are straightforward and easy to remember because they follow a streamlined format.

I started in 3rd edition but I have played a wide variety of RPGs over the years. I am a big fan of the pulp adventure style that D&D springs from, though a lot of it these days is more like "heroic soap opera" (which is fine, just not my cup of tea).

5e is fine, it has some improvements over 3e for sure and learned some lessons of 4e quite well, without throwing out EVERYTHING that was good from that edition.

But the longer I play it the lazier it seems to me. Stuff like subclasses being blatantly not internally balanced (Totem Barbarian vs. Frenzied Berserker) within the PHB, or stuff like potion and poison crafting being referenced, and part of the abilities of Assassin for example, but then with REALLY half baked rules that basically shrug and say "DMs sort it out".
Cool thanks, so glad I paid 50 euro for this book where you said the rules would be. Same sort of crap with making rules "optional" so you don't have to balance any of them, etc etc.

Like you say, fine for casual play where you don't actually explore the system, and not something I cannot deal with as a DM, but I am not really in the mood to homebrew, I bought dungeons and dragons as sort of the premium, complete game where I could plug and play because I am pretty tired and don't have the energy for it anymore, and instead got a pretty weak indie dev game with high production values.
Edit: I should say, I am not really looking for crunch, but just that if you put crunch in the game I shouldn't have to fix it or balance it after the fact. Just leave it out entirely, I would be happy with a 4 class game with no subclasses, unfortunately players tend to see all the stuff in the book and think that it is gonna work and be fun (not an unreasonable expectation).

 LordofHats wrote:

 warboss wrote:
I'd argue that is an issue with the individual group/GM moreso than the mechanics.

I agree. I think it's only an issue at all because of how few classes (only 3 out of 13) actually use a short rest for class features. You wouldn't even notice the issue if your group lacks one and I think it's simply produced a habit in players and GMs that then gets annoying for anyone playing one of those three classes.

I fully admit that I've done a deep dive only on a few classes in detail (cleric, wizard, barbarian, and fighter) and even then only for rougly levels 1-7. For every long rest limited ability like rage or bladesinging (in Tasha's) there is a short rest limited one like channel divinity or action surge/second wind. Plus isn't the dice based natural healing linked to short rest? I'm not trying to be contrary but rather genuinely asking as it seemed like there was a good mix at least in the limited slice that I took a look at.

Generally I've found that the short rest issue is mostly resolved by allowing short rests to occur without the party necessarily having to stop doing what they're doing and declare one. If a party member has an ability they want to refresh or they're low on HP and want to take a short rest, they can opt to be taking a breather during the next social or puzzle scene (they don't have to necessarily stop roleplaying, but they can't contribute mechanically as their character is taking a rest.)

The more mechanics you bolt on, the less effective a system. It gets bloated.

This is really hard for a company because if you DON'T add stuff you have nothing to sell!

Then, eventually a game gets too much bloat, and then the company comes out with a new "streamlined" edition and the process starts again!

I have played more than enough games to recognize this pattern. It is not unique to D&D.

It is also relatively easy to make the short rest recharge abilities for those three classes just 3 per long rest instead.

I would limit it to just the Short Rest classes and remove it from any multiclassed characters just to prevent any weird interactions with that half baked system.

 Eilif wrote:
Thanks,
I decided on Swashbuckler. It was a very tough choice because I was equally attracted to the character archetypes of the high-climbing thief and the rapier-wielding-scoundrel.

I think what might have tipped the balance was when my wife (who is playing a Barbarian) said "the party needs more fighters". Maybe not the best way to decide, but certainly not the worst and I don't think I'll regret it.

Just wanted to check in.

We're now 10 sessions in of weekly play. I did go with Swashbuckler and it has turned out well. We have a Paladin, ranger and Barbarian, but the Swashbucker is still a formidable and useful fighter. My wife has really taken to it as well (possibly more than I_) and it's been a great weekly activity to do together.

Likewise, most of the other players are really getting into it as well and figuring out who the characters really are.

 Da Boss wrote:
At this point I am a bit tired of D&D 5e. Like most editions of Dungeons and Dragons it has it's good points and it's bad points, but it suffers heavily from the only properly finished system in the rules being spellcasting, and the rest of it being lazily half baked.
It is clear the designers don't really take their jobs particularly seriously and the expectation is for DMs to shell out for premium priced books but then do a lot of work themselves to make certain parts of the game actually functional.

Thinking about moving to something a bit more stripped down like Worlds Without Number or Knave for future games, saving me money and time spent "homebrewing" solutions to obviously half baked rules.

Might I suggest Forbidden Lands?

A fantastic game that has a lot of value in it's initial box (2 faux leather hardcovers with ribbon book marks, a pamphlet with character generators, story generators, and monster generators, a map of the setting all for a 50.00 price tag). The rules are simple and light but the world has stakes and it's built from the ground up to be run as home brewed settings as well. It has some of the best GM tools I have ever seen in a game for generating content when you need to including NPCs, Monsters, Story hooks, and adventure sites.

And it's considered an OSR for that pulpy old school adventuring while having a lot of the quality of life mechanics of modern games.

I will certainly give that a look, thanks!

 Da Boss wrote:
It is also relatively easy to make the short rest recharge abilities for those three classes just 3 per long rest instead.

I would limit it to just the Short Rest classes and remove it from any multiclassed characters just to prevent any weird interactions with that half baked system.

The only definition for what a sort rest is in the rulebook is "A short rest is a period of downtime, at least 1 hour long, during which a character does nothing more strenuous than eating, drinking, reading, and tending to wounds."

The reason people don't do short rests is because generally, it requires the game to just stop for a moment so that every member of the party sits down and takes an hour long rest. Often, many members of the party get next to nothing out of that, and you run into a realism issue of 'could you REALLY stop and chill for an hour in the middle of this dungeon?' If everybody else is still progressing, working on a puzzle or exploring some rooms, and the other person is taking a rest and just roleplaying for a while, then that allows them to use their short rest mechanic while applying a trade-off to the party of not having their mechanical advantages for the next room.

I think if short rests were 5 minutes like they used to be it would probably work better.

I don't recall what 4e healing surges entailed but the equivalent in Starfinder is a 10 minute rest to regain "stamina" (basically their first layer of HP). I think that's a bit more reasonable thematically than a full hour.

 warboss wrote:
I don't recall what 4e healing surges entailed but the equivalent in Starfinder is a 10 minute rest to regain "stamina" (basically their first layer of HP). I think that's a bit more reasonable thematically than a full hour.

The only limits on healing surges were that you could only use one by yourself during a combat scene (second breath action or something like that, IIRC), but you could use as many as needed during a short rest, and that a character had a limit of healing surges until taking a long rest, which resetted them.

Usually, healing spells allowed a character to spend a healing surge and had an additional riding effect.

Other than that, short rests were 5 minutes, as Da Boss stated.

I find most groups homerule the rest rules hard.

Short rests are anywhere from 5-30 minutes, unless someone is doing an RP heavy campaign. Then they use the variant rule from the DMG where a short rest is a good nights sleep and a long rest is a week's vacation. One group I played with switched between rest lengths as was thematically appropriate (shorter in dungeon delving with eating more rations accounting for the shorter time).

That is my preference - gritty realism for wilderness adventures, rules as written or maybe even 5 min short rests for Dungeons. I justify it by having a distinction between places in the Weird which have a lot of magic for whatever reason and the rest of the world - healing and spell recovery is faster due to the background magic in dungeon areas, and that is also why you get so many dangerous monsters there.