maglag wrote:5e may have less magic item customization, but multiclassing is a lot more profitable. In particular it's a lot easier for martials to get useful magic with just a level or even a feat. 5e allows characters concepts to work without need of magic items, point.
One of the printed items is a +2 sword that does 2d6 extra damage. It's a sentient evil sword, so your DM is supposed to fuck with you until you give up on using it, but that weapon is more powerful than almost any build decision a martial character might make.
Multiclassing as a caster is still kind of stupid. You use your class level, not your character level, to determine the highest level of spell you can cast. Not getting the highest level of spell as quickly as possible is painful as fuck, just like it was in 3.5.
Multiclassing as a martial is basically mandatory. The classes are incredibly front-loaded. So you hit level 5 or level 6 (extra attack, maybe an ability score improvement) and leave to start another incredibly front-loaded martial class and grab its core features.
maglag wrote:So, by "interesting", do you actually mean "completely broken"?
So, by [words you actually said], do you actually mean "I am a stupid strawmanning assface?"
Here, let me walk you through this slowly. If the 5e necromancer is the most interesting 5e character (it is, in that they are the only ones who ever gets to be more than a protagonist in a particularly boring Conan book), and the 5e necromancer is less interesting than the 3.5 necromancer, then that doesn't bode well for "5e characters get plenty of interesting things!", does it?
By interesting, I mean capable of doing interesting things. The only thing that makes magic jar worthwhile is the fact that you can grab "immune to peasant archer militia." Say "immune to peasant archer militia" out loud. Grab your character sheet and write "immune to peasant archer militia" on it. Are you fucking excited yet?
Animate dead gives you a pile of human skeletons, human zombies, or the ability to beg your DM for something else. That is obviously less interesting than being able to grab increasingly powerful skeletons/zombies as you level up, and the only reason anyone cares about animate dead at all is because bounded accuracy means piles of skeleton archers never stop being a threat.
maglag wrote:Great job on completely ignoring the other 5e barbarian options, like picking up the eagle totem and gaining bonus dash actions, super-vision and non-magical flight.
Good job on trading actual combat power at
level 3 for the ability to fly at
level 14. Also notice that you can only fly when you're raging, your fly speed is only equal to your movement speed, and your rage ends if you fail to deal or take damage for a turn. If your DM is playing a flying ranged attacker intelligently, odds are good this ability will not help you. If your DM is playing a flying ranged attacker like an idiot (like he needs to to keep melee beatsticks mattering), then this ability will not help you. Too fucking little too fucking late.
Also notice I said level 1-10, at which point your eagle totem has only given you dash as a bonus action (and enemies have disadvantage on opportunity attacks) and a fluff "see very far" ability (and no disadvantage on perception checks in dim light). Notice that the fluff "see very far" ability has no actual mechanical benefits listed, and the rules (DMG) already tell the DM that the players can see
two miles away on a clear day. Your "super-vision" is
one mile.
Maglag wrote:That's self-contradictory. You find broken spells "interesting". But they're "interesting" because they allow the mages to replace universal combat rules with character-specific options (You have one set of actions per turn, I have a zillion on them because spells and magic minions and I'm also immune to mundane damage sucks to be you).
Mages will always shit on martials as long as martials are forced to play by the universal combat rules and mages aren't.
"3.5 martials are more interesting than 5e martials because they have access to at-will abilities in the universal combat rules while only SOME of the 5e martials have access to arguably inferior character-specific abilities."
"3.5 casters are more interesting than 3.5 martials because 3.5 casters get access to character-specific abilities that are more interesting than the abilities in the universal combat abilities that 3.5 martials have access to."
"I'm maglag, and I think the above two sentences are contradictions because I am a professional idiot."
3.5 martials are not boring because they don't get planar binding, and planar binding is broken, and broken things are interesting. 3.5 martials are boring because, like 5e martials, they don't get to make interesting decisions or take actions with interesting effects.
3.5 casters are not interesting because they get planar binding, and planar binding is broken, and broken things are interesting. 3.5 casters are interesting because they get to make meaningful decisions between lots of different abilities and take actions that do meaningful things both in and out of combat. Some of those actions are genuinely game-breaking, and that's bad. Some (most) of those actions are aligned with a way different balance point than the balance point martials are aligned with. And that's bad, but can be fixed by giving fighters nice things.
It's not difficult. Stop making it difficult.
EDIT: If you want me to be perfectly clear, 5e casters obviously have it better than 4e casters, which says... almost nothing. 5e's approach was to keep the 3.5 iconics (to avoid pissing people off by simply not printing them, like they did with 4e), but nerfbat the fuck out of their scope with the concentration mechanic and other tricks (so you can't really use them to shake up the game and it keeps being the adventures of the Conan Crew for 20 levels). It's pretty fucking bad, and the 4e thought process is palpable, even if a few spells survived the nerfbatification (and as a result many are relatively even more broken than they were in 3.5).
Meanwhile, the 5e MM is absolutely 4e-tier ass. A balor is nothing but melee attacks. It's seriously a giant beatstick. At least the pitfiend has some ranged AoE and can potentially say something other than "I hit it with my sword," but its single non-combat ability is detect magic and its single non-damaging combat ability is hold monster. You're never going to have an interesting encounter with that shit that you could not have also had with a bunch of kobolds at level 1, whether it's a combat encounter or a social encounter or anything else. 90% of it's just bigger numbers, all the way to the top, exactly like 4e.
