D&D (2024) Wow, 5.5e characters are STRONG!

[W'rkncacnter]

Getting a cantrip on top of a melee attack, such at the Warmagic feature of the Eldritch Knight, you consider trivial?

for one, it's not the full cantrip. it's just the rider. so you don't get the (scaling, by the way) damage with it, just the weapon damage.

for another...yeah. i'd consider "cantrip, but with some more damage" to be fairly minor.

I'm sorry, that is generally considered one of their best, and defining, features.

by who? because all i've seen about it is a bunch of complaining that it's mediocre at best, and that it only gets good at level 18 when you can use any spell. and running some numbers, it's only really worth it with booming blade, which was added pretty late in 5e (tasha's), so i'd consider it kind of an exception here in that eldritch knight most certainly wasn't written with it in mind.

booming blade is an interesting comparison though, because structurally it basically is a mastery - make a weapon attack and get a rider on top. the biggest difference is in scaling - masteries scale by hinging on extra attack, while booming blade scales by bumping up its damage - including on the rider itself.

except masteries really don't scale much at all, except for giving you additional chances to get them off. cleave explicitly negates scaling by only letting you use it once a turn. nick doesn't even get that. sap, slow, topple, and vex, however, are all interesting in that they don't explicitly negate their scaling, but rather just trigger effects that can't stack (in slow's case, arbitrarily, since it just outright states it doesn't even though normally it would). you could, theoretically, spread out your attacks to effect as many targets as possible - and i'm sure there's situations where that could be useful - but usually that's a pretty bad idea, since 5e so heavily encourages focused fire. the exception here is graze, and well...sure, damage on a miss is nice, but you really shouldn't be aiming to miss as much as possible. so really, i don't think eldritch knight is a particularly fair comparison. these are just different things.

writing this out, actually, i think masteries should have been made so that they could stack with themselves to create harsher effects. sure, they can stack with other masteries, but that's only really helpful if you're a high level fighter or you're two weapon fighting. but more importantly, letting masteries stack with themselves would really lean into the fact that martials, by and large, do damage by getting a bunch of attacks. having masteries not play nice with that just feels...well, it feels weird.

 

[Shardstone]

And people say older Ed’s are complicated.

Always makes me laugh

There is very little that is actually complicated in 5E other then some poorly written rule interactions. OD&D maintains that standard. There are literally elementary and middle school children who play D&D RAW.

 

[DarkCrisis]

There is very little that is actually complicated in 5E other then some poorly written rule interactions. OD&D maintains that standard. There are literally elementary and middle school children who play D&D RAW.

The complicated-ness shifted from THAC0 etc to feats, class abilities, racial abilities, sub classes, 500 classes and races and how they all interact with each other.

sure the math is easier but it got overly complicated in vastly other ways.

“I’m playing a human fighter” used to be easy to say. Now it needs 5 paragraphs that expands as you level up.

 

[Maxperson]

This,

while playing sorcerer with twin spell, you have to hold yourself back and not using twin banishment/dominate/hold all the time, rather just play nice with your summon aberration and fireballs.

You literally cannot use them all the time. Your slots do not spontaneously regenerate in-between every one of the 6-8 daily encounters. Sure they can dominate a few fights that way, but at the cost of the rest of the adventuring day. And at the cost of utility spells.

I constantly see those who misperceive casters as having a huge advantage, as incorrectly perceiving those casters being able to dominate every fight for damage, despite martials being very close in damage when the casters do that. Then they simultaneously argue that they have all the same spells that they are using to "dominate" combat to use on utility for every thing the party will possibly encounter. At the same time ignoring that the casters won't 1) have utility spells for every situation, 2) won't have them memorized a lot of the time, 3) refuse to see the limitations of spells like Dinner Bell, I mean Knock, and 4) think that the group will just rest for a day so that the caster can memorize the spell to get through the situation, rather than just having the martials do it far sooner the mundane way.

Casters are good. They are not gods compared to martials. They are a bit better which could be made up for by giving martials a few new social and exploration abilities.

Edit: cleaned up the language a bit.

 

[Nightfly]

“I’m playing a human fighter” used to be easy to say. Now it needs 5 paragraphs that expands as you level up.

You can still say "I'm a human fighter", and players do in fact say that all the time. But now the complexities added on top makes the game deeper and more fun, as opposed to THAC0 and "let's flip through the DMG for ten minutes".

source: started on 1e

 

[Shardstone]

The complicated-ness shifted from THAC0 etc to feats, class abilities, racial abilities, sub classes, 500 classes and races and how they all interact with each other.

sure the math is easier but it got overly complicated in vastly other ways.

“I’m playing a human fighter” used to be easy to say. Now it needs 5 paragraphs that expands as you level up.

Most racial abilities aren't really that interesting. There's maybe 2-3 that have a really mechanically significant one.

The subclasses have imbalances, but nothing that is so bad that it breaks the game. Classes don't feel horrible by each other. Optimization isn't necessary to feel like you're part of the party.

Your example about the fighter proves that you're really just making stuff up. Playing a Fighter is literally super easy. At level one, you only have a fighting style and second wind. At level 2, you get Action Surge. Where's the 5 paragraphs at? Literally nowhere to be found. Most Fighting Styles are one line, and that one line is super simple, and its literally mainly flavor as opposed to huge mechanical change. Its, does your character prefer a bow, or do they prefer to wield two swords? Is a player answering the kind of weapon they like to fight with too complex?

Just in case it wasn't abundantly clear yet, literally nothing you typed is true.

 

[Nightfly]

for one, it's not the full cantrip. it's just the rider. so you don't get the (scaling, by the way) damage with it, just the weapon damage.

You're the second person to say this, and I don't get it. The rider of Vicious Mockery is kind of the point of the spell -- that's why it does the lowest damage in the game. If the rider weren't really good no one would use it, just like no one ever used the current 5e True Strike. Bards would just throw darts like magic-users did back in 1e. Or to put it another way: if Vicious Mockery did d10 damage, it would be absurdly good and your fellow party members would be angry at you for casting Toll The Dead instead.

Obviously fighters won't get four attacks a round and somehow also cast a spell for free with each of the four attacks which scaled in damage. That would be silly. Just the fact that they get these nasty spell-like effects is impressive enough. Again, I'm not complaining about martials getting these goodies -- in fact I like it. I'm just saying it's a big buff, for better or worse.

 

[W'rkncacnter]

You're the second person to say this, and I don't get it. The rider of Vicious Mockery is kind of the point of the spell -- that's why it does the lowest damage in the game.

or maybe - and this is just a thought - it does the lowest damage in the game both because of the rider and because it's a bard-specific cantrip, and bards aren't really meant to be blasting? i mean, frostbite has the exact same rider as vicious mockery (i mean, restricted to weapon attacks, but still), and it's a d6, not a d4.

...wait, frostbite has (almost) the same rider as vicious mockery? i thought it slowed you...oh, that's ray of frost, which is a d8. more on ray of frost later.

If the rider weren't really good no one would use it, just like no one ever used the current 5e True Strike.

nobody uses true strike because it is literally better to just use your action to attack twice. it is, functionally speaking, completely useless. vicious mockery is decent, and it also has really good flavour (which, in fact, is the biggest reason i've ever seen it be used - it's funny).

Bards would just throw darts like magic-users did back in 1e.

why would they do that? charisma's their best stat, and the damage of vicious mockery actually scales, unlike bard attacks (unless you're running a subclass that gets extra attack, in which case you're probably not using vicious mockery much anyway).

Or to put it another way: if Vicious Mockery did d10 damage, it would be absurdly good and your fellow party members would be angry at you for casting Toll The Dead instead.

i mean, sure, it would be a fair bit better, but if your party is that mad that you casted one cantrip instead of another one, then they need to relax. unless the cantrip you casted was true strike. then it's totally deserved.

that said, comparing a cantrip to another cantrip to try to demonstrate one isn't a minor effect is an...interesting choice. if you really wanted to be convincing, i'd recommend comparing cantrips to 1st or 2nd level spells instead. can vicious mockery (or frostbite) compete with burning hands? or dissonant whispers? grease? ray of sickness? cause fear? in terms of damage i suppose they can at higher levels, but that's from damage scaling, not the actual rider. aside from damage, i'd say no, they can't. disadvantage on your first attack roll in a turn isn't a lot compared to disadvantage on all ability checks and attack rolls for one (ray of sickness) or more (cause fear) turns, or being able to hit an entire group of creatures at once (burning hands), or knocking creatures prone and slowing them down at the same time (grease), or just straight up forcing the target to run away (dissonant whispers).

that's what i mean when i say vicious mockery is a "minor effect" - it's the sort of thing you'd never bother spending an actual resource on.

Obviously fighters won't get four attacks a round and somehow also cast a spell for free with each of the four attacks which scaled in damage. That would be silly.

i wasn't saying they should, i was just pointing out that his statement was inaccurate. i also later elaborated on why how cantrips scale is fundamentally different from how masteries scale.

Just the fact that they get these nasty spell-like effects is impressive enough. Again, I'm not complaining about martials getting these goodies -- in fact I like it. I'm just saying it's a big buff, for better or worse.

yeah. it's a buff. but at the end of the day, it's pretty much just ripping an effect from a cantrip and then slapping it on a weapon. it's a minor effect with extra damage.

in fact, looking at ray of frost (hey!), i think that's actually how they went looking at how to balance masteries, since its rider is just slow. that'd also explain why slow doesn't let you stack it on the same creature - because ray of frost is a single attack.

i'm not saying that masteries are a bad thing. i'm not even saying masteries can't stack up with other changes to change how the game plays. what i'm saying here is very simple: vicious mockery's rider is a minor effect. well, that and i think masteries could've been done in a more interesting way that feels like they're more integrated with extra attack, but that ship has sailed at this point.

 

[Arilyn]

You literally cannot use them all the time. Your slots do not spontaneously regenerate in-between every one of the 6-8 daily encounters. Sure they can dominate a few fights that way, but at the cost of the rest of the adventuring day. And at the cost of utility spells.

I constantly see those who misperceive casters as having a huge advantage as being able to dominate every fight for damage, despite martials being very close in damage when the casters do that. Then they simultaneously argue that they have all the same spells that they are using to "dominate" combat to use on utility for every things the party will possibly encounter. At the same time ignoring that the casters won't 1) have utility spells for every situation, 2) won't have them memorized a lot of the time, 3) refuse to see the limitations of spells like Dinner Bell, I mean Knock, and 4) think that the group will just rest for a day so that the caster can memorize the spell to get through the situation, rather than just having the martials do it far sooner the mundane way.

Casters are good. They are not gods compared to martials. They are a bit better which could be made up for by giving martials a few new social and exploration abilities.

Yes, exactly. We haven't seen this huge disparity between martial and casters either. Casters simply cannot mimic all other class abilities all day long and dominate the battlefield. They don't have nearly enough slots for that.

I'd like to see cantrips toned down though. What happened to cantrips bing well, cantrips?

 

[DarkCrisis]

Most racial abilities aren't really that interesting. There's maybe 2-3 that have a really mechanically significant one.

The subclasses have imbalances, but nothing that is so bad that it breaks the game. Classes don't feel horrible by each other. Optimization isn't necessary to feel like you're part of the party.

Your example about the fighter proves that you're really just making stuff up. Playing a Fighter is literally super easy. At level one, you only have a fighting style and second wind. At level 2, you get Action Surge. Where's the 5 paragraphs at? Literally nowhere to be found. Most Fighting Styles are one line, and that one line is super simple, and its literally mainly flavor as opposed to huge mechanical change. Its, does your character prefer a bow, or do they prefer to wield two swords? Is a player answering the kind of weapon they like to fight with too complex?

Just in case it wasn't abundantly clear yet, literally nothing you typed is true.

Do you really want to compare a 1E fighter and its abilities at level 1-20 vs the amount of options a 5E Fighter gets?

Just in case it wasn't abundantly clear yet, literally nothing you typed is true.