What archetypes does 5E not represent well?

[DSMatticus]

You are not surprised because you can't see your opponent. You are surprised because you haven't acted in combat yet. If you shoot something and it starts looking for you, combat has started and it has acted. You do not get your autocrits. You just get regular sneak attacks.

You have an attack of +7, 1d8+3(+4d6). With advantage, you hit the deva ~80% of the time. If you use sharpshooter, that's +2, 1d8+13(+4d6). With advantage, you hit the deva 51% of the time. You have some kind of magical weapon (maybe, probably, who knows, you'd better), and that changes things, but you shouldn't actually be using sharpshooter against the deva. It will take you seven rounds to drop it. The deva has change shape, which lets it dumpster dive for blindsight. I also want to point out that attacking breaks stealth and gives away the square you attacked from, so getting you within blindsight range is fairly trivial.

I'm too lazy to look at the rest.

[Username17]

The two Ninja-like options in 5e are Way of Shadows and Assassin. We will be doing Monk 3/Rouge 7.

5e D&D is already a comical farce at 10th level, as hardened warriors lose hard to "twenty orcs." You are not going to play the game at 10th level, because the game already collapsed into a singularity of absurdity several levels ago. Whether you can make a "ninja" at 10th level in 5e is as meaningless as whether you can cater to a concept in 3.5 at 20th level.

In 3.5 or Pathfinder you can write the word "Ninja" on your character sheet at first level and you can feel properly Ninjaesque by 4th. And the game is generally speaking still playable and enjoyable out to about 12th level or so. This gives an entire campaign's worth of "being a Ninja" to players who crave that. That would be an example of an archetype that those games handle well. If you care, it's pretty easy to make a Ninja character in champions at any power level you're playing at, and starting characters in Shadowrun do well as Ninjas in all editions. All you've done with your example is shown how 5e doesn't handle the Ninja archetype well.

Stuff your bluster back up your ass. 5e is a shitty game, and every time you open your mouth to defend it you embarrass yourself.

-Username17

[tussock]

Regular non-gaming people fucking love fantasy stories full of elves and winged horses and shit like that. Harry Potter sold a lot of fucking books and those people would all totally play a Wizard who slowly gains power through adventure against horrible things in dark tunnels, while trying to find better spells! Only D&D could give them a setting that was less pointlessly oppressive, you weren't surrounded by better Wizards all day, and where you could go left instead of right if you wanted, and also play a sort of sparkly vampire (by another name) if need be.

But really, what 5e lacks is any concept of heroes who are better than the town guard. Pathfinder's Golarion has this high-level set piece where the hellmouth is already open and you can go play there once you're up to it, but in 5e there is "bounded accuracy" so you just leave it to the local militia because they're always better than you.

Which do you fucking want?

The thing I said, where higher level PCs are a solution to problems that the militia cannot handle in any number, and also where low level PCs are not surrounded by higher level NPCs all day. Where A is the solution to X, but A is not always present.

Can we please stop with this bullshit?

Damned hidden class features. So, Wizards wear Heavy Armour with DR after spending four feats on it? Cool. Good to know. Oh, no, wait, that would be a terrible choice for most characters. You mean everyone multiclasses with Fighter or Paladin? Oh, that doesn't get you Heavy Armour.
So just 2-3 feats that none of the monsters have, then. It's so convenient.

But you make a good point, a small selection of PCs can stand against zero level foes in number, by mid level, so long as they don't grapple you or have a net or anything. Anyhoo.

Apprentice tier (1-4), facing threats to "farmsteads or villages".
Heroic tier (5-10), facing threats to "cities or kingdoms".
Paragon tier (11-16), facing threats to "whole regions and continents".
Epic tier (17+), facing threats to "the world or even the fundamental order of the multiverse".

A kingdom should have an army of tens of thousands. Allied continents should push armies in the hundreds of thousands. Can anything threaten the world when it's full of Giants and shit? None of the actual CR 19+ monsters do, because a few hundred archers or even foot troops just end them, or only a few Giants do. They do not threaten even a city on their own, which is the only way they appear, so the game never really gets beyond it's own definition of apprentice tier.

I know no one cares, because no one does that with the game, but it used to be a thing. Where a bunch of the monster manual was clearly going to roflstomp your home town unless the PCs came out and stopped them. It's, like, the plot of half the Pathfinder APs. Now they're just pretending it works that way and hoping no one checks.

It's lazy game design, all the high level stuff could just be immune to low level bullshit, including high level PCs. It's a "feature" of the bounded accuracy system that they're not, but I can't see that anyone really wanted that. E6 is a 1-page solution to a great many of 3e's problems, but it's not a guidebook for re-writing the monster manual. Hell, part of the fun of E6 is that there's still CR 13 monsters who will always kill any PC (give or take).

[Grek]

Frank, stop being a tool. Writing the word "Ninja" on your sheet does not make you a ninja. And I picked 10th because that was the level DSM was going on about. You can do ninja at any level. Go on, pick a level.

[Dean]

Hey, Dean: Fuck you.

Hey.

A few things: Your 10th level character's attack is at +2 which is amazingly terrible, he requires resting for an hour between each fight to function and you discount anyone you're fighting using ready attacks which they would obviously do and which fuck you up hardcore. If your opening attack (at +2) doesn't end things then ready attacks are in the mix which means you appear, get attacked, then try to attack back at +2 for OK damage. It’s not a great plan.

But past combat how do you do at being a Ninja? Can you launch deadly shuriken? (no) Can you slow fall? (no) Can you run across water or blades of grass (no) Can you poison people (Kind of!). Not great is the answer. Some of those things you could do if you take 6 more levels of monk so maybe they’ll be online by level 16.

By 10th level through the game you’ve made a character who can, if given an hours rest and who doesn’t stub his toe on the way to the fight, have a pretty high damage opening attack and be lame 100% of the rest of the game. I consider this unimpressive.

[erik]

The 20 orc calculation is probably a bit off since I don't know how 20 will engage simultaneously in melee. But DSM's point remains that DR is unimportant compared to the fuckery of bounded accuracy in shitting on the helms of heroes.

To compare generously to 3.5, the shitty example 3.5 NPC level 10 fighter can handle 20 orcs no problem even without DR and only 79 HP, since orcs only hit on a 20 for avg 9 dmg, and Fighter will be killing 3 per round thanks to Cleave or all of them within reach on the each round if you take Great Cleave.

A level 10 martial character in 3.5 can reasonably expect to plow through all the orcs and all the commoners.


[edit]

Frank, stop being a tool. Writing the word "Ninja" on your sheet does not make you a ninja.

Nobody even implied that. You're just assuming the worst of people who disagree with you. He meant that you can write it on there (i.e. not actually take the Ninja class literally) and become able to do ninja-like feats at level 4 via appropriate character building.

[Niles]

The 20 orc calculation is probably a bit off since I don't know how 20 will engage simultaneously in melee.

5e gives everyone spring attack; so it's ludicrously easy.

[erik]

Aha. Thanks, I did not know that. One more feather in the cap of the unwashed masses of commoners in 5e.

[Echoes]

Ok, you can pick DR at low levels in 3.5 if you're willing to play the robot splatbook race and spend a feat anyway, or if you pick one of two pseudo-caster classes from a widely banned splatbook.

You realize that those are not exclusive lists, right? There are other ways to prove you wrong, those were just the ones that immediately came to mind because I've actually played with them in actual games.

In 5e you can pick said DR as a core option regardless of race and for more than 2 classes that don't happen to work on level 1-9 abilities divided by schools that must be prepared on slots.

Your claim:

Your average militia will have a much easier time slaughtering the party's martial dudes in 3e and PF, because martials in 3e and PF have no way at low levels to grab DR at all[.]

This is demonstrably false. Now eat your fucking crow.

But by all means, please demonstrate all of these viable builds that pick up Heavy Armor Mastery that aren't Fighter or Paladin. Furthermore, please demonstrate how all of these viable builds acquire Heavy Armor Mastery at low levels. That was, after all, your criteria.

Edit: Fucking tags. I suck a barrel of BBCode cocks.

[fearsomepirate]

The 20 orc calculation is probably a bit off since I don't know how 20 will engage simultaneously in melee. But DSM's point remains that DR is unimportant compared to the fuckery of bounded accuracy in shitting on the helms of heroes.

To compare generously to 3.5, the shitty example 3.5 NPC level 10 fighter can handle 20 orcs no problem even without DR and only 79 HP, since orcs only hit on a 20 for avg 9 dmg, and Fighter will be killing 3 per round thanks to Cleave or all of them within reach on the each round if you take Great Cleave.

A level 10 martial character in 3.5 can reasonably expect to plow through all the orcs and all the commoners.

The way stats slid in 3rd (and, by the way, 4th) edition didn't mean your tenth level character cleaved through countless hordes of 2nd-level monsters, at least not in any game I've played. It means you never saw those monsters ever again, because it's a waste of game hours to resolve rolls for trivial challenges. So either you never saw them, or the DM adjusted the stats to make them worth your time to kill.

Personally, I like being able to pull the night's combat encounter out of a larger section of the MM without having to adjust stats. It takes me *far* less prep to use the resources I want to set up the sort of event I want.

There's also a strong subjective element. I'm one of the people that disliked how ridiculously large attack/skill bonuses got in the d20 system. If to you, that's what made 3rd fun, okay, but it's not really something that was objectively good with no drawbacks.

[ishy]

The way stats slid in 3rd (and, by the way, 4th) edition didn't mean your tenth level character cleaved through countless hordes of 2nd-level monsters, at least not in any game I've played. It means you never saw those monsters ever again, because it's a waste of game hours to resolve rolls for trivial challenges. So either you never saw them, or the DM adjusted the stats to make them worth your time to kill.

Well if we're sharing anecdotes, I literally had such a fight yesterday. DM is running a campaign based on baldur's gate. System is a modified 3.e / pathfinder.
We were 3 level 4 PCs.
were fighting ~20 bandit mooks and one bandit cleric. The ranger cast entangle and all the mooks could only hit us on a 20.
Took us a bit longer than you'd expect since we rolled terribly though.

Though usually when I am DMing, I make it 'cinematic' instead. Like when 5 lvl 12 characters wanted to clear out a goblin warren. So I asked my players to describe to me, the DM, how their individual characters/ group cleared out the warren instead of wasting game time emulating it.

[Dean]

Even if your DM doesn't make you fight a gang of orcs it's important to high level characters to know they can. My characters don't fight groups of children with bats ever but WoD is a bad system because in WoD you can't.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

Frank, stop being a tool. Writing the word "Ninja" on your sheet does not make you a ninja.

http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/ulti ... ninja.html

http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=2823.0

In 3.5 and pathfinder, it actually does make you a ninja.

[Chamomile]

I love low-to-mid power stuff. I am completely on board with a game where the bulk of character advancement is horizontal and not vertical. I am pretty much exactly the kind of person 5e was trying to reach. And I still think that a mid-level Fighter being unable to hack through twenty orcs is stupid. While I am totally on board with a game where an arbitrarily large number of bog-standard orcs is always a threat, I am not on board with a game where Aragorn can't fight three dozen orcs and their leveled boss and squeak out a victory - and only has to squeak because of that boss.

[sandmann]

Personally, I like being able to pull the night's combat encounter out of a larger section of the MM without having to adjust stats. It takes me *far* less prep to use the resources I want to set up the sort of event I want.

There's also a strong subjective element. I'm one of the people that disliked how ridiculously large attack/skill bonuses got in the d20 system. If to you, that's what made 3rd fun, okay, but it's not really something that was objectively good with no drawbacks.

No, it is not a choice or anything like that. If you want to create a system where everything can be killed by "more goons", you need to actually write that system. The problem is that DnD5 is NOT written like that. The fluff of the Tarrasque says that it is the scorge of worlds, a legendary threat, the devourer of nations. And ... it really isn't. Mechanically, it's not a threat to middle earth, it's not a threat to gondor, hell it's not a threat to Minas Tirith. It's a threat to lake town. Or a very big elbish scouting party. The whole fluff is off, not by a small margin, but by worlds and worlds. Level 20 heroes are supposed to fight legends, and they cannot kill a medium-sized garrison. So either the mechanics are garbage, or the fluff is. Those are really the only options. And THAT is the problem.

[Whipstitch]

So either you never saw them, or the DM adjusted the stats to make them worth your time to kill.

That's a really common opinion but the implications people draw from it are uniformly dumb bullshit that ends up limiting the system unnecessarily. D&D does not inherently suffer from the level 20 rodents problem, and that's a good thing. High level characters rarely slum with low level characters but the fact that prior editions at least attempted to create a system that could handle such a scenario without tripping over its own dick was a good thing, not a bad thing. The whole "offscreen shit doesn't matter" paradigm is a big part of what helped torpedo 4e. It's just a train of thought that never ends well.

[fearsomepirate]

No, it is not a choice or anything like that. If you want to create a system where everything can be killed by "more goons", you need to actually write that system. The problem is that DnD5 is NOT written like that.

Neither is any edition of D&D. Everything has at least a 5% chance to hit.

( Total HP ) / ((Goon die / 2 + goon bonus) * 0.05) = how many low level goons it takes, on average, to kill you at a stroke.

I just don't see how your high fantasy can work with 2200 guards taking down an ancient blue dragon in a single volley of arrows (3.5), but just has a total conceptual meltdown if it takes 830 guards (5e) instead.

I started trying to work out the math for 2nd, but screw those tables.

[Whipstitch]

In my book 3 times the people and magical equipment requirements is actually a pretty damn big difference.

[erik]

It means you never saw those monsters ever again, because it's a waste of game hours to resolve rolls for trivial challenges

Oops, you actually stumbled into truth. It meant those were trivial challenges in 3rd edition. As I alleged.

In 5th edition they are not trivial challenges. They are player killing challenges.

There's also a strong subjective element. I'm one of the people that disliked how ridiculously large attack/skill bonuses got in the d20 system. If to you, that's what made 3rd fun, okay, but it's not really something that was objectively good with no drawbacks.

Right. It's a genre, fantasy/hero. 3rd edition proposed larger than life characters and the mechanics backed it up. D20 modern was a clusterfuck of awfulness in part because it tried to use a fantasy rule set to make a modern game.

5th edition is like a bizzarro d20 modern. 5th edition suits itself more for a modern/gritty/raelizm game where you cannot bar brawl against a biker gang without getting your teeth kicked in, and a swarm of police officers is a more potent response force than a squad of self-styled citizen heroes. Unfortunately it is also lacking things you'd want for a modern game like stealth engine and various challenge/resource mechanics.

[John Magnum]

2200 guards don't instagib an ancient blue dragon in 3.5 because it has DR 15/magic and none of their attacks can deal damage at all, even on a 20. I don't know how much DR a 5e dragon has.

[ishy]

I just don't see how your high fantasy can work with 2200 guards taking down an ancient blue dragon in a single volley of arrows (3.5), but just has a total conceptual meltdown if it takes 830 guards (5e) instead.

Uhmmm. Ancient blue dragons have DR 15/Magic in 3.5.
Guards are level 1 warriors. Assuming generously, they are medium and have a mighty longbow, for 1d8 +1 damage, you'd need to confirm your critical thread and roll higher than 15 dmg to be able to hurt the dragon.
You're going to need way, way more than 2200 guards.
And that is before we actually account for the abilities an ancient blue dragon has.
For example : a burrow speed, frightful presence, veil, in fact all the spells it gets.

[erik]

I just don't see how your high fantasy can work with 2200 guards taking down an ancient blue dragon in a single volley of arrows (3.5), but just has a total conceptual meltdown if it takes 830 guards (5e) instead.

2200 guards cannot harm an ancient blue dragon unless they crit and roll over 15 damage (avg. 13.5 on crit).

DR 15/magic. So make it 100,000 archers vs one dragon and maybe you can one round it. Except it can also use its 13th level sorcerer casting to lay down hurt, and nevermind that a dragon isn't going to be surprised by 100,000 medium creatures, but if you don't one round a 3.5 dragon it can teleport away or whatever.

And in 5e it takes much less than 830 guards if you allow for them to kill it in more than 1 round.

So take your equation and go round by round to see how many guards per round the dragon kills and how much damage per round the guards deal, and you get pitiful numbers like 150 archers taking down a pit fiend.


[edit: Hey you fucks. Just because you wrote ninja on your character sheets doesn't mean you can do this to me!]

[fearsomepirate]

The real difference isn't in exactly how many hundreds it takes to do something at high levels, because once you're into the hundreds, no one's counting. Okay, maybe you play at tables where the DM precisely enumerates the size of the king's army and makes sure that the number is always just large enough to satisfy the rules lawyer's insistence that everything be computed, but that's never been my experience.

The implications are significant closer to the monster's level. It takes somewhat fewer monsters to pose a threat at slightly more levels. My experience is that removing the +1/2 level slider has added a total of about 2 or 3 levels of usefulness to a monster. It really doesn't change the game as much as you imagine it would. If I want 20 monsters, I reach slightly lower on the CR table. I can build an encounter out of a slightly broader range.

Okay, yeah, I missed the DR column on dragons. So the king buys acid arrows for his archers. DR isn't nearly as aggressive in 5e since unlike 3rd and 4th, they don't build the assumption of magic weapons into the stats. Did someone say 5e is more low-fantasy on these boards? Whoever said that is right.

[Insomniac]

2200 archers against an Ancient Dragon in 3.5 or Pathfinder are in for a world of hurt.

First off, those systems don't labor under the delusions of "Bounded Accuracy" so dragons have Fuck You levels of non-Touch Armor Class in the 30s and maybe even the 40s before magic. At some point, a Dragon should stop worrying about ragtag militias of jumped up turnip farmers.

Unless we've all got 2200 people with the capability to fly and throw flask weaponry, they're boned.

Then they've got innate DR 15/Magic. So unless they've got their flasks or they all got magical weaponry or magical arrows, which would cost tens or even hundreds of thousands of gold, they're not dealing damage.

The people within 300 feet of an Ancient Dragon have to make saves against a Frightful Presence approaching DC 30. That's well within the realm of "roll a 20 or piss yourself because ITS AN ANCIENT DRAGON!"
so 2090 of them are too scared to do anything.

Then the mob just eats a bunch of breath attacks, spell-like abilities and supernatural abilities from range. There is no reason to presume that an under-CRd dragon will choose to give up its flight, magical ability and ranged advantage to try to go toe to toe with the mook army like a Feng Shui character.

Its a false equivalency. 3.5/Pathfinder fights against mobs don't play out like 5E combats at all, where arch-evils like Balors and Pit Fiends go down to about 100 or 200 archers or just 200 attackers who can somehow reach them period in 2 or 3 rounds or even less, AKA "any decent sized county's local militia."

[Stinktopus]

Okay, yeah, I missed the DR column on dragons. So the king buys acid arrows for his archers.

100k Corrosive +1 Arrows would cost 16.7 million gold in 3.5. I think you could get some seriously more impressive shit than 100k archers who are good for one shot for 16.7 million gold.