Ulisses which is also developing Wrath and Glory as mentioned below has allowed the old FFG games to be sold on DrivethroughRPG, but will not be producing further updates for them. Though the game-lines seem to be spreading faster than Orks , here are the systems so far:. Godspeed, you flippin dudes. Ads by Project Wonderful! Your ad here, right now: Ballistic Skill Ballistic Skill, Perception. Strength, Movement Speed Strength No translation for dealing damage.
Toughness Toughness No translation for dealing damage. Leadership Intelligence, Willpower, Fellowship. My two cents worth which wont mean much to most: If you want something more polished or newer, then pick up Pathfinder…both options are much better than this. Me personally, I run the old school stuff. Keep on gaming folks. If certain players know the system well enough, they will be way more powerful than other players. This mostly comes from the angle that the mechanics are more important than the story, however.
I agree with the Author. Ignore the rules or create your own replacements. Simplifying the rules made them unrealistic as well. Makes no thematic sense to me. Wizards will come out with 6th Edition in 2 years… and then the smart players will start to wake up and realize that they are being fleeced. I think I might be tempted. You can play it for free. All the things you mention about Pathfinder are available for 5e.
My gaming group and I quit playing regularly during 3. Dude, do you realise that the comment was on december , before the creation of the Dungeon Master Guild? You are picking on one minor point in his reply and missing the boat. Second, who cares if the DMG was not available in ? An open online discussion forum exists sonyou can add new information and continue the discussion. Innacurate comments should not be left uncorrected simply because they may have been accurate at the time they were made. Powergamers and control freaks revolt, and quickly, as soon as you deviate from the sacred book full of half-done rules.
They like those rules because they know how to exploit them. Some people say power-gamer when they mean war-gamer. Beastmasters are much, much better than you give them credit for. I think the problem is in the presentation of the class more than their balance. Their abilities are hidden away in the Monster Manual instead of being visible in the class description. Giant poisonous snakes are the best all around damage dealers with a high attack bonus and they deal a ton of damage, plus have blindsight and reach. There is also much potential for small beastmasters to ride their beasts.
Wolf the high passive perception? If you want to give it new instructions you have to use your action but you could simply tell it to attack a single target until it was dead. It would be similar in feel to the wild but commandable dire wolves or dragons from game of thrones. Creatures wether they are player characters, NPCs or monsters are not robotic game pieces on a game board unless specifically stated and in this case the rules as written make no mention of the companion doing nothing unless commanded. The companion is a creature with its own loyalties and motivations.
The rules make a clear implication that the player controls it ONLY the it uses its action to command it to do so, anything less is creates a strange narrative and smacks of lazy GMing. The core assumption in 5e is that anything can happen and that the rules presented are tools to help the GM adjudicate and clarify gameplay as well as create a base set of constraints to ground the expectations of reality in a fantasy world.
So broadly d20 restricts game play unless the action is liberated by a rules specification and 5e liberates game play unless a rules specification restricts it. I think people need to stop quoting out of context. On your turn, you can verbally command the beast where to move no action required by you. You can use your action to verbally command it to take the Attack, Dash, Disengage, Dodge, or Help action.
Once you have the Extra Attack feature, you can make one weapon attack yourself when you command the beast to take the Attack action. Not logical nor realistic. Just my opinion though. However the Wolf also has advantage on hearing or smell checks. It stays that way until level 9, when expertise becomes higher. What Wolves do in combat is prone enemies so that a damage dealer the Champion Fighter can murder them with advantage. Giant Frogs can also jump with some enemies in their mouth, and if you cast the Jump spell on them they can jump up to 30 feet.
Flying Snakes, incidentally, can also fly. They are effectively an extra attack option for you. Unearthed Arcana came up with a revised version of ranger, including Beastmaster 2. Some dude on enworld just rewrote the entire flaws list because it was so flawed. I have removed a comment for making personal statements about another commenter. I think the author needs to actually play a system instead of sitting around doing armchair theorycrafting before he makes a review of it. With the exception of Point 2 this is about as well-informed an argument as you can get.
No doubt, certain classes shine better than others in certain aspects if you are a mountain dwarf warrior you are never going to fly without the aid of a mage , but overall they are all useful. Also, the Backgrounds are a major standpoint besides Class and Race. Also, if you stand for the Magic User in combat, you are clearly wrong: He even breaks its concentration automatically if he wants to use the feat Mage Killer.
And he can, easily, because he got one more ASI than the mage at the same level. Of course, the wizard still can fly or fireball goblins, but still, in fight, the fighter is better. Your Beastmaster also has multiattack, and can stop easily with arrows to the neck or two weapons attacks.
Beast Masters, for example, excells on a Survival-Exploration game. On combat they are still useful, although arguably not as much as a fighter. Every subclass has his own flavor assassin is infiltration guy; Hunter is damagey guy, Champion is DPR guy, Battlemaster is tactics guy, etc , but all of them are still very competent on game. All classes are useful in some way or another, and the options are clear and sound: If you want to, you explore feats to increase your odds or give you an edge; most classes hold their own on almost every situation. Intelligence is your basic ST against psionics, so if your campaign is going to be illithid-themed, you HAVE to invest on this.
Also, Investigation traps, clues, etc is an Intelligence skill. And Arcana, if you are going to be in a magic strong campaign; Nature, History, and Religion too are Int checks. Strenght, in my games, is a big deal: Because BA, you can give world-fixed difficulties without arbitrary number inflation. But there is situational flat modificators: The variation of capabilities of every group is going to vary wildly the effectiveness of some classes.
Paladins are going to be very useful against undead, and a wight or shadow is going to be nasty against Fighters or martials of any kind. Also, most traits are situational: This requires a little bit of mastery on the DM, but: Ghouls on sewers are going to be deadlier than in daylight. All in all, you had it wrong. Even if you are running a combat-focused, dungeon-crawly game, you are wrong. You write about a great combination for the fighter, but only mention 1 spell option for a caster class.
Yes if a fighter is in position and wins init, they can slay a wizard in one round with good rolls. Suggestion, hold person, command can stop a fighter from drawing a weapon, getting close or attacking. Mirror image grants even more protection when needed. Invisibility allows for a respite if needed, heat metal allows 2d8 extra damage guaranteed with no attack rolls. The action economy and the way most disabling spells work in 5e make it extremely difficult to win a one-on-one fight with them.
It also ONLY works for 1-on Mirror image is only likely to last one round against a competent fighter, and it takes your action to cast so in a one-on-one fight you essentially just waste a spell slot to get a one-round stalemate. Every tabletop game that has been written since the beginning of writing has had the amazing ability to let people do what they want and think for themselves. That may be the sassiest non sassy argument I have ever heard on the internet. But the number of complaints that Oren has with the system would leave a skeleton of a rules set by the time he has finished.
The number of rules that would have to be tossed out would kinda defeat the purpose of having any of them. Players will beat you over the head with the book if they are control freak and powergaming types. That is not the character I want to play in the story we are writing together. I definitely agree that the game is unbalanced as all hell. Evidence of that is that you can get to the point in 5e where you can, with the right combination of classes, feats, gear etc be rolling easily over d6 in one combo. The fact that a party member I had could one shot someone like orcus without batting an eye, makes the tension kind of be lost.
I am going to link a forum post that proves my point, and this is low compared to what people can achieve. By doing a simple google search, you can find stuff like the smite knight build, which also is doing a ridiculous amount of damage. In fact, practically all of the ones who fancy themselves as serious players put optimization roll-playing over flavor any day.
This is because they see the game not as a role-playing game but as a combat simulator. I am the odd duck who thinks the GM should encourage people to play the flavor they like and compensate with house rules. I tried this and most of them balked.
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If this were a Phil class or a court of law, you might have a point. That does not, however, mean you cannot have fun with 5e, and many people appear to be doing just that. Is it unfair or cruel to put deadly traps or turn to stone monsters against low level PCs? If it exists, its there to be used. DM needs to feel out the party and determine what they can handle. So no, the cleric wizard example is wrong. The balance attempt is not struck there — it comes with the teiring of class features — 5th level is a tipping point for most classes for example — you either get a big casting boost fireball or extra attack which can result in 25dpr or more.
At later levels, the most powerful spells 7th-9th only ever get cast once per day, which maps with the most powerful features for melee classes — relentless rage, persistent rage and indomitable might for example. Magic item balance is also a nightmare some uncommons are clearly superior to rares etc. But the game does give you guidance in the DMG on what level of character should have A one magic item of a particular rarity.
The full plate knight at level 20 and the full plate knight at level 1 both have 20 AC. I do think that Monster Challenge Rating was a major fumble. Almost all of the monsters who arent Dragons are far over-rated. You are conveniently ignoring the key text you quoted on multitasking.
You can use those slots, but only to cast your lower-level spells. This shows you can use your combined slots across all your multi-classes. For most it also limits what spells you can take by what your level makes available. However, since Clerics have access to all their spells from level one they can use those higher spell slots regardless of Cleric level. You do that by looking at the single class rules including the table.
Want to add to the discussion?
Then next you determine your slots per day using the multi class table. IOW, a 1st level Cleric can not cast 9th level spells. They can only cast 1st level spells. I always laugh at these kinds of posts. I launched a campaign world that we still use today. Let them and then add more orcs or trolls or whatever. Their spells go from ending encounters to making them manageable for the party.
There are plenty of monsters resistant or downright immune to magic as well. Then they will be glad the fighters are there…. Min-maxing is not a bad thing. The goal of the game is to be able to clear challenges. The fact that many options given to the player are objectively worse at clearing the challenges offered is a massive flaw in design. This statement is the antithesis of an RPG. If you have a specific type of player as the dominant voice in your group. Some of the comments the author made demonstrate complete misunderstandings of the rules.
I think the author may be running this game completely wrong at his table and blaming the system for being bad as a result. You show a very deep lack of understanding of this system. Your multiclassing example is empirically wrong, and you showed no mention of attunement as a limiting factor in magic items. The GM adjusts on the fly to tell the story. The common misconception there needs to be balance on a one on one class basis though seems to be as persistent as the damn wage gap myth.
Some things ARE poorly made, clearly done with a minimum of effort. The result is something below the minimum acceptable standard. And yes, some things in 5e fit this frame. Holy old posts batman, but yea I can agree to your points. I find it a good game for introducing people with zero tabletop rpg experience to role playing, but prefer 3. Doing so from scratch is altogether different. They are lazy because they have lazy thinking. Rather than write spells for wizards- spells is plenty- and a ton of filler monsters rather have fewer that are high quality and make design easy for any others DM want and make the system better with more thematically explained elements.
You must think Hollywood is so hard working make the same movie types from varied initial scripts. They do a lot of work to ensure experts never have any real input as consultants on movies. Ok, they may not be perfectly balanced, but they are a far cry from the unbalanced mess that is 3.
In the campaign where I DM 15th level , the champion fighter is one of the more useful players even though this is his first time playing an RPG of any kind and we have a cleric power-gamer, a sorcerer, and bard. Yes, they can use their 9th level spell slots to cast a cleric spell, but it would have to be a 1st level cleric spell cast at 9th level. However if has hoard tables and how many times you should use each table. Does it do damage? If so, then it wakes them up. You answered your own question if you payed attention. Encounters That seems hard to believe. I think the GM might have miscalculated the XP.
The calculator is a guide, like a very loose tolerance slide rule. Its not perfect, nor is it correct in every circumstance. If you let loose some monster that is supposed to have its big bad attack be turning you to stone, and all the characters have magic gear that prevents it, suddenly that monster is a cake walk, even though the XP adds up. Ironically this can be seen as a form of railroading, if you give the PCs some magic items and then sidestep their boosts entirely by never throwing a monster at them that does that, or doing the opposite by not giving PCs magic items to save against effects and only using those types of monsters.
The reason 5e feels like a big mess is because it really is one, like having all the ingredients to cook 50 different meals on your counter. Magic items can get out of control, especially if you have hoarders, powergamers, and control freaks sometimes all wrapped up in one at the table. The party was more like a walking department store assembly of animated mannequins covered in rare magic items than a group of people.
Part of the problem is trying to make what happens each session seem important. That can mean doling out powerful loot each time, because people have so little time in their lives to devote to gaming. The idea is to try to cram as much value into a session as possible.
But, when powerful things become mundane, by being expected entitlement then you lose value. That said, it can be boring to go through a lot of complex effort and end up with a useless dagger and a few gold for all of your trouble. You make the game fun and YOU make the adventure work. So what is the point in playing any particular game? Are all RPGs the best because they can be homebrewed? Fact is, many people have complained about all the editions. They have points and failings. It comes with the package.
We will never agree, and I get something you like was not praised and was attacked by someone else. I appreciate your reasonable response 3Comrades.
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Going through the six points: This is a misconception based on misreading the rules as discussed above. If you believe some specializations are better than others, fine. How does this impact players? Again, simply not true. Also, guidelines are present DMG p. Proof is in the pudding.
The PHB gives guidelines for how to avoid any pitfalls for each character class; if a player ignores them, whose fault is that? The point on saves is irrelevant, since all classes have a strong and weak save. The examples are weak.
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I have no problems adjudicating the sleep spell and invisibility. Yes, you can summon Giant Owls with Conjure Animals, and they can grapple creatures on an attack and possibly fly away with them. In any case, it too is trivially answered by a very reasonable DM call e. How does this affect a game in any mechanical way, other than the player wastes his or her turn? This one is hard to answer, since links in the story are to irrelevant posts elsewhere on this blog, and no specifics are given. It seems fictional to me.
So, six points made. Two of them 1, 3 based on not reading the rules. Three of them unsubstantiated prejudice 2, 4, 6. And one 5 that makes a potentially valid point about summoned owls. A lot for me to respond to. But I think I will. It simply means the characters have to think more strategically, and use the environment to back them up if possible. The right combination of classes can deal with a number of threats as well, and the PCs are expected to retreat, rest, regroup, then press forward. The GM runs the game based on the information presented by the players. The characters they make tell the GM what kind of game the players want.
You build a campaign around social encounters, politics, and intrigue. Not happening unless you want to gimmick by trying to get advantage all the time to cancel out disadvantage, since you compare these at 1: Grenadiers followed suit of being the larger, stronger person at the vanguard of assaults. Even gnomes would need to raise fighters to protect their assets in their lands. Halberds are just wooden handles with a metal head, easily reduced like a sawed off shotgun to make it compatible for a shorter individual.
The fight over editions is also the fight over ideologies regarding fun. My legs can, but it is bothersome and time consuming, so I prefer a bicycle, a car or a bus instead. Spellcasters have always had a power advantage over the other classes. The thing that used to keep it in check were the divergent XP requirements. Compare Charm Person from 1e with Charm Person of 5e.
Compare Phantasmal Force for a gnome illusionist vs. The way multi-classing and spellcasting is addressed is flat out wrong, either intentionally or through lack of knowledge. I think many of your complaints can be ascribed to too much rules lawyering and not an assertive enough GM which is a problem in any game world or when familiarizing yourself with a new ruleset.
If the book says players should get K XP for a not dangerous enough encounter, then the XP reward is simply set too high and should be adjusted down to better reflect the experience. A GM who permits so much rule bending has some experience themselves they need to acquire. When I wanted to play something complicate, I used to play Rolemaster. Now 3rd edition, 3. If you are of the generation of WoW, probably you cannot understand. They streamlined the mechanics and created a leaner game.
If you are searching for blance in rpg, you need to change kind of games. You can look for balance in boardgames Descent, Heroquest… , there is the right place. In rpg the opportunity are granted by your group and, most of all, by the DM. Good DM know how to keep everybody entertained, not just the guy with the most powerful character at the table.
Again, the comparison you do might even be true I do not know, I do not even think to start doing this kind of evaluations , but the issue is at the root. That is the most dull-witted reading of how spellcasting works for multiclassed characters possible. It clearly states, as the very first sentence of Spells Known and Prepared: It then gives examples in case you try to go out of your way to misunderstand. To assume truth in the incredible is tautologically insane. Sure seems like it, given the smug tone and the general lack of knowledge about the subject matter. Well this makes sense.
If they had kept the magic more along the lines of 5th edition with the 4th edition mechanics it would be damned near a perfect game system. Obviously nothing is perfect. I fixed my problem with all other game systems. I just broke down and started making my own. A few Sci-Fi and an ongoing Fantasy campaign that wreaks of stolen Skyrim material although fun as hell.
This voids the rules lawyer because there arent rules to cover every little thing. My system doesnt just have hit points. I tried to take more than one aspect of damage into account…. So an Axe may do so much damage to the flesh, but also being so heavy may stun the target and even cause him to bleed. Yes, its all done with numbers, but the end effect is more detailed without adding too much extra accounting. The system only covers very basic stuff like Role Playing and combat and a few other things to help the GM figure out things like missed shots and where they go.
I wanted to be opened ended. Let the GM run the game, make quick decisions about things that come up in the game and keep the rules lawyers at bay so everyone could have fun instead of 30 minutes looking for some obscure damned rule that we all forgot what page it was on.
The counterpoint to the dreaded rules lawyer is the neopotist GM, the one who plays favorites at the table. Otherwise, it quickly turns into the nepotist GM problem. Or, the casters must resort to simple blasting. There is a line between a player who knows the rules and tries to use them to be effective and a player who is using the rules just to be combative toward the GM. There is also a line between a GM who is playing favorites and one who is uniform about the rules. The problem typically is, as I said, casters getting the shaft… especially when it comes to things like illusion.
One had no idea what was going to happen when one would try to use an illusion spell with that GM. Typically, it was the nerf bat. I agree with much of what is said here. This is because it should be obvious to the players and GM what to do given a certain situation. Repelling Eldritch blast, Smite on melee with Polearm feat, and bardic inspiration. Overall I like 5e, but I find so many problems with it that I need to house rule a ton to make it playable.
Look overall magic is always a problem when it comes to balance. I think too often we think in terms of game mechanics rather than role play. A spell caster wields great power and are far rarer than a skilled swordsman. The only hope most mortals would have against them in reality is magic, cunning, or faith and on rare occasion science.
Even Conan had Crom whom he beseeched when matched against sorcery. So when fighting a wizard as a martial character you do not engage them unless you can get close and the closer the better. A spell caster grappled, with the hands of an enraged barbarian around his throat is likely a goner magic or no.
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Like wise a barbarian caught in the open or unawares by a well planned spell or series of spells from a spell caster often finds himself at a severe disadvantage. Trying to create a game where all the classes are equal is why the game requires so much gear grinding. It ends up in an arms race on who can have the best gear rather than on being brave, creative and a good team. My fighter cannot move mountains but with a simple piece of steal he can cut down fifty orcs. My spell caster can blow up mountains but a knife in the dark as he sleeps still kills him. Stop trying to be a badass and try and play a character.
I saw it in action, guy created a half-Orc Fighter with high Int and Cha. However, this is the case in ANY system- noobs can and will create terrible characters. The player is not to blame for choosing the flavors that suits them. There obviously are terrible characters. The high int and cha, low everything else fighter given as an example here is a perfect example. I have a friend who apparently enjoys that sort of thing. This guy is a joke. Go fully read page of the PHB … It is misleading if you only pull out a single sentence out of context.
You can use the spell slots of those levels to cast the spells you do know-and potentially enhance their effects. Meaning sure you have high level spell slots. Grats on casting magic missile and cure wounds with level 7 slots. Too bad your party cant greater restoration or revivify. You can use those slots, but only to cast your lower level spells. Balance is not good, randomization is very high. Go play Candy Crush if you want a game that tells you how to win. Lol This guy is the reason I read to the bottom of this thread. Yeseylon, thank you for being a reasonable person.
RPG means role-playing game. That role could have practically no gear at all. There are some points in article I can agree but most significant problem I found in DnD5e is absurdly high amount of random elements. D20 makes wide range of randomness and when you add some critical hits, some numbers could be insane compared to level of characters. I am not high experienced GM and compared to other editions, I find hard to make interesting and still challenging encounters with 5e.
Sometime I expect that enemy is strong and somehow my party wins in 2 turns and compared, in my party, low level monster one shot our tank with one good role. Randomness is the problem, and not enough rule mechanics to balance it. You blame author so much because he did not understood one of rules as it was intended. But… is there problem with Oren… or problem with hard to read and non-consistent rules? Also compered to 3.
I tweaked the above comment because while most of the content is fine, the opening line was clearly mocking the previous commentor, which is not allowed. Personally I like 5e. While I agree that randomization is higher in 5e, the balance between the classes is actually a lot better than 3.
Casters may have some extra benefits, but there are not broken as in 3. I might have a different view than most players out there and that is probably why I disagree with this article at all.
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I have done combat heavy dungeon crawls with no point but to kill and those get repetitive and boring. The author here sounds like they need to stick to Diablo. Regardless, we are all entitled to our own opinions and I for one have thoroughly enjoyed 5th edition. Read the 1e books sometime. Look at all the pretty tables from Classic, too.
This is the reason online games have markets and auction houses: Even a 1st level spell can enslave someone for weeks, maybe months. Even a 1st level spell can create a group of well-armed deadly archers. I realize that some play very fast and loose with the franchise but it has been a combat simulation crunchy tactics from the start. DnD has always been crunchy, but I would strong disagree with you that it is a combat simulator.
DnD seems to take the idea that social encounters need fewer rules than combat encounters. Personally, I hate games that add too many rules to the social side of the game. I need rules to adjucate combat, I need rules to adjucate non-combat skills when failure versus success means something. I much prefer 5e, though I have only been a DM for it. No lie, I do love that this article was published nine days after I wrote my review.
Someone at Blizzard is a fan, I think. Also a DM who tries to subvert their players plan by denying them the kind of animal they want is going to foster a very hostile environment at the table. Another point regarding the summoned owls is that, per the Sage Advice, they are under the control of the DM, not the player. Oren, you create a hostile environment. To be fair, though, that is what the internet is for.
I am personally a fan of summoning a horde of Boars and trampling bosses to death. But in large part because I respect so many of your thoughts and insights, I feel drawn to express my contrary opinion on this subject. Quite the opposite in fact: One of my biggest problems with 5e is that there are very few options for building your character I know any mechanical combination I come up with will already have been done before, probably by many others before me. Overall, I think 5e accomplished a lot of its goals with regards to being friendly to new players and less rules intensive.
With less number crunching, there is more room for actual roleplaying, which is definitely a good thing. Though, with all that being said, I personally still prefer 4e even with its many flaws. And understanding where the author stands in this area validates or negates the points they are trying to make.
I guess maybe an ability where he gains a high Adversary rating temporarily while his guard up would work? This is where abilities such as Defensive Stance, Dodge, and the like come in. A skilled opponent will be using those maneuvers to make themselves harder to effectively hit. Opponents not using those maneuvers i. A thousand times this. You can do a search of this subreddit to find all the other times this topic has been brought up. But in a nutshell, your combat skill only shows how well you are at hitting a target. Avoiding hits, and doing fun manoeuvres, are all in the talents you take.
It does come up a lot, and I think part of it's to do with the fact that there is a degree of system mastery involved in talent selection. Probably more so than Star Wars, now that Genesys has moved away from the easily digested trees and into a more daunting universal talent list. The sheer volume of options can lead to the perception that talents are optional trimming and not a strong reflection of a character's core competencies.
It's a problem I've been contemplating how best to approach in my own future groups. One option I'm considering is making a "core talent" handout, with the most basic and ubiquitous crunch talents -- Grit, Toughened, Knack, etc -- and a very brief explanation of why they'd want to take it. I think it might help if I can filter out a lot of the noise for their first pass through the system.
I actually go the opposite direction. I ask them what they want their character to do and where they want to take it, and suggest talents that would help. I don't think those are necessarily mutually exclusive concepts though. I would expect in any environment where the GM or other players have a degree of system knowledge like that, that there are going to be collaborative suggestions, regardless of other resources.
It's already how I'm handling things currently at my table. The talent pyramid makes it so exponentially more character choices have to be made as you go higher. If we brainstorm together and decide a Tier 3 talent is perfect for them, they still need to pick out 5 other talents to prop it up.