How good/bad is 5e compared to previous D&D editions in terms of caster supremacy, specifically in combat?

you cant really make a skill monkey in 5e in the sense that its all the character is good at. if you wanna have 1 more skill that everyone else be a rogue. if you wanna be good at all skills and like fucking amazing at 2 be a bard.

>and the editions before that cares so little about balance that it's hard to compare to

Confirmed for knowing jack shit about TSR era D&D. Well, except for later 2nd edition, which was a mess.

When the team designing 3e was making the cleric, they couldn't get people interested in playing it. So they basically kept heaping more and more goodies onto the class until it was so ridiculously overpowered that people were willing to play the "healing class" who at that point could heal, fight better than the fighter, and basically do everything ever forever five times per day.

If you're interested in being an overbloated powerhouse and a monument to bad design theory, play 3.5. If you want to play a cleric, play 5e.

Alternatively, may I present a quick demonstration of the differences between the two.

An opportunity attack is a simple concept: someone with a melee weapon gets an advantage when they close in on a ranged attacker or a spellcaster. Here are the rules for opportunity attacks in 5e.

And here are the rules for attacks of opportunity in Pathfinder (mostly ripped straight from D&D 3e).

Less caster supremacy than 3.pf, more than 4e (as 4e had none)

Rogue and Bard, the go-to skill monkies, are both pretty damn good at their jobs. However, the smaller skill list notably lessens the need for skillmonkey characters, so it becomes more of a secondary benefit.

5e isn't bad, it's just aggressively bland. It has no real identity in and of itself, no new ideas or things it adds to the D&D brand. It fills the space in the most inoffensive way possible.

And from the response to it? That's what a lot of people wanted. I can bitch and moan about wanting strong design direction and innovative mechanics all I like, but the sale figures show that the direction they chose was the right one for their primary audience, and that I'm not part of it.

>However, the smaller skill list notably lessens the need for skillmonkey characters, so it becomes more of a secondary benefit.

That fails to take expertise into account which is VERY useful in 5e.

It's easier to add flavor to something bland than to take flavor out where it would be inappropriate.

In this case "flavor" is referring to "mechanical identity", to play off "bland". I realize that's a bit confusing with it already having a meaning in the context of TTRPGs.

Also Reliable Talent, which is redonkulous. Put the two together and in late levels you've got a guaranteed minimum roll of 27.

Well, it assures that they'll be damn good at their job.

Bland but modular and easily customizable I think (within reason). Ive played in a lot of 5e games that were houseruled with simple rules and little tweaks that made the game feel VERY focused and designed.

I think part of the idea was giving you a game that you could make your own very easily.

I meant "redonkulous" in a good way. I think it's awesome. I like rogues.

>Martials aren't as fun as they were in 4e.

That's impossible, because Martials are zero fun in 4e.
Along with everything else.

Pros
>They took 3.PF and ACTUALLY FIXED, or at-least alleviated most of the glaringly obvious problems.

Cons
>They took 3-point-fucking-PF of all things, and wasted their time polishing THAT turd?

Second best.

Is this a good time to tell you about the Lord and Savior, Old School Roleplay?

It's never a bad time to talk about old-fashioned gaming.

Fighters are reliant a bit on magic weapons to keep up at later levels but if they have those they keep up in terms of damage while being able to survive in combat not too mention feats

Do mention feats.

Because fighters without feats drop in DPR a lot. Making feats mandatory... which is okay, I guess, since they don't really have anything else to spend the stat increases on after maxing their attack stat anyway.

Your skillmonkey will also be able to waste niggas.

The pool of feats is pretty small, and most of them are at least fun, if not very good, so it's a small price to pay.

Great weapon master is beady good if you have any sort of advantage like from knocking the creature prone from trip attack

In a featless game theres almost no reason to use anything but Sword&Board since 2H weapons offer nothing but an average or 2 damage over a 10% less chance of getting and combined wih Fighter styles benefiting this style more even hat falls to S&B supremacy. Its actually exactly like it was in AD&D except more weapons but the Longsword/Bow have usable stats

In a game with feats 2H weapons polearms and Crossbows all get a big boost in viability because of good feats based around them.S&B also benefits from Shield Master which keeps it in there and

In a no feat game damage is roughly restricted to D8+Str/Dex+Magic item bonus and then the odd bonus like Rage or Dueling style of about +2.Your getting about 15 damage a hit tops. This can make a lot of enemies gigantic meat walls that can take a surprisingly long time to cut down

With feats the +10 to damage options stack tremendously with multiple attacks and a few feats even grant them.A guy that gets advantage now hits with them very reliably and puts out 2D6/D12+10+All above possible mods.Meat walls are much easier to cut down and the damage dealing melee guys have a higher ceiling

Monks Rogues and EB turret Warlocks have the same moderately good damage in both versions. They become a little less relevant in a feat game but dont completely fall off the map

Warlock deals best consistent damage among every full caster. Sorcerer is kinda meh as blaster, but makes great controller with metamagic.

Combine them for best damage, or at least same ballpark as GWM fighters.

3.5 is sometimes referred to as CoD edition. As in "Cleric or Druid".

Take that as you will.

>3.5 is sometimes referred to as CoD edition. As in "Cleric or Druid".
Why, when Wizards clearly have the more powerful spells? They are the ones who do game breaking/universebusting things.

Better than other editions, although optimized casters are better than optimized martials in most circumstances.

Because CoDzilla's are more obvious, and need less levels.

A level 1 druid is already basically two character's worth of stuff with its animal companion+spells.

Read a book nigga

Clerics/Druids get access to their entire spell list without having to find them can replace Martial classes on a whim and do their jobs better while still being a full caster and their spells dont really lack in any department either

If we assume a skill you have prof. with at lvl 11, and expertise, and that your max ability is an 18 (+4), then you might have a guaranteed min. of 22 with reliable talent.

except monk, monk deals the lowest damage of martials while being heavily dependent on stats for defense (while other clases can grab a shield or armor) only compared to vanilla warlock without even using hex

Rogue 6/Lore Bard 10 + Skilled feat gives 4+2+1+3+3=13 proficiencies, and 8 Expertises

Without feats Monks are fine, they deal similar damage to rogues (though due rogues being able to choose when to apply SA their damage is more consistent), but once feats enter the ring, man, do they fall behind, something between dealing half the rest of even 1/4 of Fighters. No wonder people call them stun guns.

Confirmed for knowing jack shit other than memes.

In combat casters are probably the weakest they've ever been in DnD's history. The concentration system they added (only being able to maintain concentration on one concentration tagged spell at a time, and when casting another; the first ends) went a pretty long way in shutting down the battlefield controller playstyle and limiting spell choices for wizards. Their buffs are good now, but they can usually only have one active at a single time so it's very situational.

Blastercasters rank among the lowest DPR of any class in the game even when fully optimized.

nice to see that crooked trees is still active

>3.P vs 5e thread again
They sacrificed complexity for the sake of balance. The goal was to get new people into the hobby and they pretty much achieved this. Game is of course much shallower for it. Cant really complain though since everyone concerned is happy. Newcomers get an easy to digest albeit bland rpg that helps them get started and the old guard who prefer a more complex system with a wealth of options (admittedly some better than the others) while still having a fairly modern chassis can stick to 3.5 and pathfinder. Everybody wins and publishers still get to make money to keep the hobby supported.

Sure we get some bad eggs from both ends but hey, halo/cod players sneer at counterstrike players and the latter also fling shit from time to time.

I think a lot of people forget / fail to realize that martial characters very much WERE balanced at the start of AD&D 2E. Namely, they were balanced through the implementation of having a small army at their beck and call.

Your Level 15 Fighter wasn't supposed to fight a Level 15 Wizard one-on-one and win 50:50 if you were both equally competent at character building and had the same luck with relevant attributes. That was never the intent. You would set out with your house guard to fuck the Wizard's shit up, because as nice as his abilities are 20-30 Level 2-3 elite soldiers alongside 60+ level 0 troopers would generally serve as more than enough to get the Wizard to burn the majority of their spells (especially since - at level 15 - there's a very real risk that a single arrow from any one of them scoring a critical hit would take away 20-33% of their health) and even their defensive preparations would be poorly suited for 80+ invading troops with good morale backing them.

If you were playing a Fighter in 2E and you tried to stick your level 20 dick into a level 20 Wizard's meat grinder all on its own then you got what was coming to you because you were casting aside an ass-ton of benefits (your being landed, the free garrison to come with your keep, whatever other guard you housed inside, etcetera) to pull a Fingolfin.

Confirmed for getting defensive about a game that couldn't even survive when it had the D&D flagship brand.

I played 4e with groups for two years. That's more than the chance it deserved, and it was consistently awful.

Also, re:3.5 and balance comparisons: You can play a Fighter, Paladin, or Monk to Level 20 in 5E, using them as-written in the PHB, without taking a single multi-class, and remain viable and relevant throughout the campaign using only the PHB / DMG's materials.

By all means, show me the inter-class balance of 3.5 that lets someone play a Fighter, Paladin, or Monk to Level 20 without dragging out a dozen supplementary books, magazines, campaign splats, or so-on while remaining viable and relevant to the campaign. No multi-class, no "Here's a magic item from a single-print Dragon Magazine that allows you to use this skill for this ability", no "Here's a home-brew publish that has Fighter Bonus Feats level up like cantrip damage dice", nada: Straight "1-20 Fighter (or Paladin or Monk) using the PHB and DMG materials only".

This is not saying that 5E has no flaws, or 3.5 no redeeming qualities. But when it comes to inter-class balance, one edition requires you to break out Microsoft Excel and a repository of supplementary published material to keep some classes relevant (often times even then Multi-Class needing to be involved), and the other doesn't.

Full warlock deals more damage than Full Monk or Rogue (without feats) though so I dunno what to say.

Also Sorcerer can twin/quick two spells and if using a cantrip that can be like 8d10+10, which is also more than Rogue (without feats) and Monk

And Druid in wildshape also can outdamage Monk

Martials need at least 1 magic weapon though, there's like a 15% of monsters in the game who are resistant or even immune to non magical damage

Eldritch Knight is a functional path, if not quite as optimal in DPS as Battlemaster or certain Champion builds. Even excluding EK, however, see the DMG reference: If you are playing a Level 20 campaign and your DM has not handed out any magical weapons (in any D&D edition), odds are they're either extremely stingy, you're in a low fantasy setting, or they hate you.

5e is a good game.

This is kind of surprising, as no previous edition of D&D was a good game. You could certainly have fun with them, hanging out with your friends and fighting monsters, but the game mechanics were bad. Other game systems were better.

But 5e is good. Advantage/disadvantage is an excellent mechanic. The class balance isn't perfect (it can't be unless you make every class the same) but it's definitely close enough that every class is fun and playable. It's fun to play, pretty smooth to DM. It's the first D&D I would actually recommend.

Holy fuck, does that mean that characters cannot move further once they've suffered an opportunity attack?

It can depend. They have a feat in 5e called Sentinel in which one of the abilities is that if you hit something with an OA, they're speed will be set to 0.

Worse than 4e, better than 3.5e

>"I am a butthurt 4erry in 2017"

I thought you went extinct five years ago.

Wizard only gets powerful at high levels. A low-level wizard is a scrub who cna cats one or two spells a day, and dies if you sneeze at him. If he somehow survives to 10th level or so, he turns into a god who bends the system over and rapes it in the ass, but in most cases he dies before that.
A cleric or druid has lower maximum power due to more limited spell selection (although they're still miles above even the strongest martials), but at lower levels they're better than wizards due to not only having spells but also being able to take and deliver hits. Wizard has an inverse difficulty curve where you'll have hard time in low levels but will wipe the floor with enemies at high level, while cleric and druid is effectively playing DnD on easy mode; you shouldn't have any difficultiees regardless ot level, even if at high levels you aren't quite as powerful as the wizard (fighter incidentally has a difficulty brick wall, where you do fine at low levels where "I hit it with a sword" is how most fighst are expected to go, but as soon as you start fighting enemies where you're expected to have casters that actually have spell slots left in your party you become dead weight).

They can move, but one of the main problems of 5e is their "natural wording" of rules, that are all but natural. When they say interrupt they mean not interrupt, hope that makes it easier for you.

When it comes to class balance as OP was asking about? It certainly is more symmetrical in combat.

Dunno if 3aboo or 5thdora, anyway read OP's question

4e is the most balanced d&d edition bar none. 5e is the second most balanced, but is just more fun, with free multiclassing and all.

Bullshit Wizard cuold run from a Fighter with fly and teleport and shit but in a fight a high level Fighter had so many HP nothing could faze him and his saves were made on a 1 since Magic gear added to saves back then as well. Wizard worked best casting shit like Fly and Haste on the Fighter who belendedrized things in place of shitty damage spells and SoS/SoDs that failed 95% of the time

>free
It can cost you ASIs which are essential for stats and multiclass happens to have MAD problems more often than not

And I thought you were banned virt

Wizard can do 3d6 in a cone at lv1 all a fighter can manage is 1d8+3

I have a feeling you're thinking of an entirely different edition of D&D. One that didn't age the Fighter by one year every time they let the Wizard cast Haste on them instead of using Potions of Speed or the like.

A wizard can do 3d6 in a cone, once or twice. A fighter can do 1d8+3 with a higher to-hit bonus every round for an entire day, not to mention they've got a higher base of HP, a more practical skill base, and the ability to use better gear.

And that's assuming a defensive fighter sitting on a fat AC bonus if they're just using a longsword; Using Duelist style instead moves their attack to 1d8+5, using a Greatsword deals 2d6+3 with re-rolling 1's (Which means the average damage shoots up past the wizard's 3d6), or dealing 1d8+3 / 1d6+3 damage dual-wielding.

It's not that bad.

5e is not as balanced as 4e but it does a pretty good job actually being a DND game, whereas 4e kinda failed at every aspect of DND except balance and combat.

Different guy but
A wizard can deal 1d10 (4d10 at 17th level, +Int if evocator) at will with the same to-hit bonus as a fighter for an entire day
Or 1d6 (4d6 at 17th level, +Int if evocator) to two creatures with the same to-hit bonus as a fighter for an entire day

Sure, fighter tends to deal more (unless poorly made) but wizards aren't useless in damage department if they build towards it

If your DM drops zero magic items, it's still significantly better, but if your DM drops a moderate amount of them by 5e standards (which isn't that many, but the party's gotta have some sorta magic weapon for all martials eventually, plus some cool utility toys so you're less reliant on spells for every damn thing) then I'd actually argue the balance is really good, especially if your DM does the sort of traditional D&D "long adventuring day" where you're constantly pressured by wandering monsters, escalating threats, and multiple opportunities in the same day.
It also helps if your DM uses a few of the nice DMG options for actions during combat.

When compared, 5e is always much more balanced across the board than previous "main branch" D&Ds, for a lot of misc reasons. (the only more balanced D&D was a board game called 4th edition)
If you want excellent balance, though, you still need to keep magic items and adventuring day length in mind.

If you forget to drop magic items, or do a shorter adventuring day, it drifts away from being balanced and starts favoring classes with good daily resources, like Wizards and Paladins, rather than good encounter/short rest resources and good unlimited attacks (Warlocks, Fighters, etc.)
But even then, it's still way better than 3.5e, and arguably better balance than AD&D (though the latter depends heavily on the DM's stance on various rules like interrupting spells, initiative, availability of the best spells for the casters to learn or not, etc.)

In 5E everyone is a Caster with slightly different fluff.

Don't you mean 4E?

...yes. Whew, how the time flies.

If a full caster at 17 is using cantrips in a typical dangerous encounter something is wrong or they're just cleaning up/passing, where you have more important spells, magic items, scrolls and consumables. Casters tend to take the role of item user and knowledge checker.

t. DM with two full casters players at level 17 that spend their downtime making scrolls and potions

I dunno, my two GFB per turn in my sorcerer are better than most of my high level spells in combat.

This thread is pretty encouraging, it looks like edition wars are over and done with.

>Ranger needed a buff, don't know if it came out.
They got it.

The damage happens before the move, so if you would die or an ability stops you, you don't move. Otherwise you do.

I mean I think its kinda fair but most of my games never go anywhere. Except bards and warlocks. They're extra gud.

So... why is everyone favoring 4th edition?
We all know it is gutter shit.

Several classes have "your attacks are treated as magical" around level 6 or 7.

It's the best and the most fun edition to play.
Not that you will know since you never play tabletop with a group of friends outside of online.

Would Louie be a Wizard or an Eldritch Knight?

Rune Soldier
Rune (Eldritch) Soldier (Knight)
That's my take on it at least.

>MARTIALS
Opinion immediately discarded

>age the fighter 1 year
Doesn't matter when they're all elves and dwarves.

Louie is an 18 Strength wizard.

Harsh Truth. people call 5e bland... 4e was simultaniously hyper bland while it's over the top "cool" power descriptors... had no real effect on game world. Case in point : Hurl through hell

That's not to say it didn't have anything to bring to the table. If it was simply titled Dungeons and Dragons Tactics and billed as a Tabletop game with a hint of RP it would have been far better off. I'd still herald it as a great game and play it regularly. however trying to pass it off as engaging roleplay experience? not so much

Yes i realize i'm on the verge of shitposting

It's not like PF at all, both in its mechanics and the fact it's actually well designed and good.

False complexity. A lot of 3.5e and PF was really badly designed, that's needless complexity.

What exactly is the problem with hurl through hell?

Especially since 5e infernal warlock gets the same power IIRC.

Wait...what? Hurl Through Hell literally has 'They vanish into hell' as part of the power. You can sustain the power to keep them there up to 3 turns. Along with them suffering a massive amount of fire damage, being sickened and stunned as a result of the hell visit.

4e and 5e have the literal same skill mechanics (and very, very similar combat mechanics), except the scaling was cut in half and the modifiers replaced with advantage/disadvantage.

The class design is overall simpler, but not much simpler than an Essentials class.

So basically, what I'm saying is that mechanically, 5e does not encourage roleplaying any more than 4e does.

You could possibly argue that 4e encourages tactical combat more, since it has more rigidly grid based mechanics, but I don't see how that takes away from being able to roleplay.

Well, 5e goes a bit further with backgrounds than 4e does, hell, backgrounds weren't even in PHB1 in 4e, and there's no doubt that backgrounds exist to encourage roleplay

Sure, I guess. 4e backgrounds (imo) are a bit better though, cause they keep being relevant after level 1, giving extra stuff.

Plus PHB1 4e was kinda crappy anyway, I'll not argue with that.

Eh, 5e backgrounds have more in common with 4e Themes. Since they give abilities.

A bit less complex than 4e themes though. We've yet to see one for 'Being a motherfucking werewolf'.