Theory crafting aside I have some very good ideas on how to break this game. It will also be broken in ways not seen since 3.5 as to break 3.5 you generally needed to be higher level and have splat book material to throw at the game. This is mostly around what I have seen in game and real adventures and gameplay as opposed to DPR theory crafting. Now you need to get your head around 2 things IMHO to really make this work.
1. DPR is a mugs game. Uber damage per round doesn't matter to much. It will get the job done sometimes but winning an encounter out right is a lot better.
2. Understanding class roles and what the god classes are. For example Warlocks and Bards seem to be regarded as an inferior wizard because they do not have the same spell power as a wizard. I would probably agree with this assessment. Stop thinking of the Bard as a wizard but better Rogue and start thinking of the Warlock as an archer.
3. Dexterity is better than strength. Surprise rounds and outside combat it just is. A two handed weapon can in theory out damage them but have a look at the sharpshooter feat, the archery style and buffing via bards and the faerie fire spell. Also have a look at the hunter ranger.
4. Monster defense do not scale very well expicially saving throws relative to spell DCs which do scale. Alot of monsters are not even proficinet in any saving throw, an Ogre is a big bucket of hit points and free xp even at level 1.
5. 5E has a generous (read broken) care bear healing/death system and you can abuse this worse than a poor old wand of CLW ever did in 3.5. And healing surges in 4E as well.
6. The Rogue is a bad bad class. Accept it and move on.
Now here is why damage per round doesn't matter to much. Do not get me wrong you do not want to tank your damage as such but you do not need to maximise it. The game is also built around the assumption you will have a 16 in your primary ability score. For those of you who played 4E there is very few riders and bonus damage to pile onto your attacks and monster defenses do not scale much. It is that lack of monster defenses scaling where you want to roger them in the erm nevermind. A sword and board PC using a rapier and the duelsist style is fine for damage. As long as you use the best weapon you can and use a 16 in your prime attribute it will not matter to much.Faerie Fire is really really good as a level 1 spell, betetr than what ioit was in 1st ed where it was only a +2 bonus. It does have a saving throw though.
Now the worst class in the game is probably the Rogue. It kind of looks good on paper, it has skills, and sneak attack. However damage doesn't matter to much and a Bard is better at skills than the Rogue with the exception of the thieves toolkit and a bard can also be proficent in them they just can't double thier proficiney bonus. Any smart PC should be doubling the super skills and by that I mean perception and stealth. A Bard should be good enough at skills and if they come across a trap they can use inspiration which is better than the Rogues expertise anyway. Worst case scenario due to the care bear healing system you can just trigger the trap its not like you will likely die anyway compared to traps in previous editions. Odds are you are not going to get hit by glyph of warding for 8d6 damage, have to make a DC 25 strength and fall down a chute taking 8d10 damage and then get hit with power word kill thank you Labyrinth of Madness adventure.
Surviving level 1 can be a little rough but the way to do it is use the good spells as opposed to damage. Healing is mostly a waste of time at least via cleric spells. Use guiding bolt instead. Now people are probably thinking Zard is smoking somethign as spells are a daily resource and I would agree with them. You may only have 4 level 1 spells available between a cleric and wizard. The solution here is to add more spell casters to the party. This means replacing the Rogue with a Bard (its the better class anyway) and if you have a archer use a warlock instead. THe best spells at level 1 to use seem to be Guiding Bolt (out damages most single target wizard spells and prodivdes advantage on the next attack, Faerie Fire and Sleep. It only takes 4-6 encounters to level up from 1st level the solution is to drench everything in sleep and if they are immune to that use faerie fire. Not that a bard can use both sleep and faerie fire and so can one of the warlock builds. If you have a wizard in the party as well you can now cast around 6 sleeps or ruin around 6 encounters for the DM at level 1. Have a cleric know the guidance spell as well and your skill monkey role is also covered.
If you are playing the Lost Mines of Phandelver you can sleepwalk your way to level 2 and probably level 3 hint hint hint. Sleep also scales and it also seems to be one of the best level 2 spells as well. The Bard is also one of the most powerful classes in the game. It slices it dices and more importantly it can manipulate dice rolls. This ability is more powerful than sheer damage as you can apply it to saving throws as well. You can take a bad situation for the NPCs and make it even worse via cutting words which a bard can get at level 3. Do not play the Valorious bard BTW the College of Lore is better. Even a level 1 Bard can ruin an encounter or 2 with sleep and faerie fire but it also has 3 uses of inspiration dice (assumning a 16 cha). Start thinkiing of these as another 3 level 1 daily spells if it helps although at level 5 they recharge after a short rest which I will come to later. They allow you to add a 1d6 roll to any skill check, attack roll or saving throw. These dice also scale upwards. This is a cute ability but at level 3 you can use them to penalise a an NPCs saving throw. Hold Person is also a Bard spell BTW and it combos well with any other spell that requires a saving throw.
I am sure you can see where I am going with this by now. You did rememebr to load the party up with a large percentage of spellcasters right? I would recommend around 100% of your party should be spell casters. This means take an eldritch knight if you really want to be a fighter and make it dex based so make it a high elf. This also means consider taking a valorious bard or a war cleric instead of a fighter. Just remember to replace the Rogue (any of them) with a college of Lore Bard. If you must play Rogue use the Arcane Trickster as you get more sleep spells. Take a wizard and make it a diviner as they can also manipulate dice rolls at level 2. Dice roll manipulation is better than damage. The icing on the cake for the Bard is that it lets the party heal a lot faster and it can steal other classes spells at levell 6. Fireball should take care of monsters immune to sleep spells and at lower levels use faerie fire. The Bard can also steal spells from any other class not just wizard spells.As I said you do not want to tank you damage but you do not need to maxmise it. At level 1 you should have 4-6 sleep spells available at level 2 that becomes 6 or 9+ 1 more if you are a wizard. Really consider using a Warlock as an archer as well as they can deal decent damage via eldritch blast.
Now this may be getting absurd the key to the combo is a Bard which seems to be an outright better class than the Rogue so you are not missing out on to much. Vicious Mockery via a Bard and Eldritch Blast via a warlock seem to be the best cantrips in the game. Vicious Mockery does nasty things to Ogres and BBEG type NPCs and once again it is a manpipulate the dice rolls type cantrip. You will need around 2 melee characters so a War or Tempest Cleric helps along with a fighter type of some descriiption I would be tempted by a Paladin personally.
1 melee Fighter type (Paladin, Ranger, Fighter etc)
College of War Bard
Diviner Wizard
Maybe a warlock/archer or even a melee warlock. Play whatever you like it won't matter.
Melee Cleric
You could probably key the entire party off dexterity as you want to use surprise rounds and win initiative rolls with your control abilites. Now WoTC were good enough to also include in this game very cheap wands of cure light wounds which is really known as the Healer feats. Its main ability is that it can heal you for 1d6+4 damage plus your HD per long rest or short rest. This feat heals you at a rate that will quickly put a wand of CLW to shame but you can only benefit from it once per short rest per person unlike a wand of CLW. However you get 10 uses for 25gp which is even cheaper than a wand of CLW and resting for an hour is not hard to do and unless you have a time limit on your advneture who cares right?
Now what else can combine with short rests? At level 5 Bardic inspiration recharges and so does clerical channel divintiy features several of which are crazy powerful. So does fighter 2nd wind for even more healing. yay for the care bear healing approach of 5th ed lets just marry it up with encounter powers erm I mean short rests. The wizard doesn't benefit as much as a cleric fomr the short rest mechanics we are going to replace him with another cleric. The light Cleric for example has some good blasting spells, so does the tempest cleric and you need a melee type PC so a war cleric is also attractive. The solution is obvious take 3 clerics.
1 Fighter
War Cleric
Tempest Cleric
Light Clerics
College of Lore Bard
You lack a wizard but the control aspect is picked up by the 3 clerics+bard which should be more than enough. Someone has to bite the big one though and take the healer feat. You could even sub in a life cleric but you will have more than enough healing to go around IMHO. You are really trying to abuse the short rest mechanic and have healing at a greater rate than anything seen since 3.5 without giving up to much on the control and damage side of things. You do lose out on some sleep spells at lower levels so you may want to only have 2 clerics. 3 clerics+ the healer feat is a lot of healing to go around and the Bard can also do it as well. This will liekly drive your DM nuts though as you ideally want to short rest after every fight to nova off the Clerics channel divinty options. For blasting options you can use a combination of Guiding Light and the light and tempest clerics to melt face and the Bard can pick up some blasting spells as well at level 6. You could probably replace one of the clerics with a wizard or a valorious bard.
Now some of this may look cheesy and abusive to you and it probably is but it seems to be the optimal way to play. Dmage is a mugs game and it looks like WoTC has made another lacklustre rogue 3 times in a row. It is OK Paizo can't do any better in that regard either. Abuse the dex to damage ting, abuse the short rest mechanic, abuse the crappy saving throw mechanics, abuse the care bear healing rates. Hell even abuse the rapid advancement rates at level 1 and 2 you may actually level up before you run out of daily spells if you cram enough casters into the party and some casters such as the warlock can still do respectable DPR. That shattering sound in the back ground is the game reaking starting from level one, that weeping sound is probably your DM.
For those of you who like dex to damage and rapid healing I hope you are happy
Had you voted for AD&D type saving throws we probably would not have threads like this where it is stupidly easy to break the game. Even fort/ref/will which we more or less have already scaling at a better rate would have prevented this.
1eejit wrote:
Oh sure as a thought experiment it's fine, I meant actually trying to optimise a party in play.
1eejit wrote:
Lady_Auralla wrote:
So... max out your dex because the tiny bonus that will give to initiative will let you win all the surprise rounds.
Take all clerics so you can cast lots of sleep.
Don't worry about damage because sleep, which keys of number of HPs remaining so benefits from damage, will win all your fights.
Die we mention sleep is suuuper powerful, load up all your spell slots with it... even though there is a good chance it won't even sleep a single gnoll, who would then immediatly be woken up by his buddy even if it did land
Bards are better than rogues.
Faerie Fire always lands to increase your damage, which you shouldn't worry about because damage isn't important.
Got it.
Lady_Auralla wrote:
Really, I will play rogues anyway. I will play other classes anyway. But these are things that should have been picked up during playtest. I love Rogues by the way, long live the rogue.
If this is how your group plays, I pity you.
seti wrote:
Zardnaar wrote:
Mistwell wrote:
A long, meandering, stream-of-consciousness post, in which the OP makes several bold, sweeping generalizations and proceeds to back them up with... well, nothing. Zard, weren't you making threads week or two ago in preparation for your first sessions, asking if certain encounters were "too brutal"? Glad to see you've mastered the system in such a short period of time, to the point that you can dismiss entire classes as superfluous.
Vowtz wrote:
Dark_Stryke wrote:
Zardnaar wrote:
> claims the Bard is a better Rogue
> has no Rogue in party with which to compare
Shirebrok wrote:
Cutting words doesn't affect saving throws. Attack rolls, ability checks, or damage rolls. Saving throws are not ability checks.
Ashrym wrote:
sure, characters might want to rest. Might try to rest. Or even need to rest. But {I} control the wandering monsters & such.....You could probably key the entire party off dexterity as you want to use surprise rounds and win initiative rolls with your control abilites. Now WoTC were good enough to also include in this game very cheap wands of cure light wounds which is really known as the Healer feats. Its main ability is that it can heal you for 1d6+4 damage plus your HD per long rest or short rest. This feat heals you at a rate that will quickly put a wand of CLW to shame but you can only benefit from it once per short rest per person unlike a wand of CLW. However you get 10 uses for 25gp which is even cheaper than a wand of CLW and resting for an hour is not hard to do and unless you have a time limit on your advneture who cares right?
Noon wrote:
Zardnaar wrote:
SwampDog wrote:
My guess is this is based off a lot of low level play. Many damage builds won't kick in until higher level play when feats are more available and magic items start to roll in. It's also when monster HP starts to inflate.
Dracones wrote:
Zardnaar wrote:
Sleep is good early on but you have very low limits on hit point totals for the creatures you can affect. Just allow a savng throw if it feels too powerful. If targets succeed on their save have them have disadvantage on all rolls their next turn as they fight off the sleep effects.
Atheosis wrote:
Zardnaar wrote:
Zardnaar wrote:
Mistwell wrote:
I think you are badly overestimating the healer feat. It's good, but is like being able to cast one CLW (or maybe cure moderate wounds, really) on every party member if you are able to take an hour's rest. That's nothing at at all like taking 10 hits from a CLW wand in one minute.
And unlike a wand it takes the very scarce resource of feat slots rather than the usually very expendable resource of gold.
Oooh, and also: each healers' kit (also required!) weighs 3 pounds for 10 uses. (A opposed to "no more than 1 ounce" for a 3.5e wand). How many of those are you carrying into the wilderness?
mattdm wrote:
Zardnaar wrote:
Zardnaar wrote:
CCS wrote:
Damage isn't important and Rogues are rubbish?
Err... NO.
You can "sleep walk" your way to lvl. 2 in Mines?
Sleep is great early on, as it should be, to help the party survive. Later on most monsters are straight up immune to sleep, or will take a few rounds of beating to get it to work on ONE of them, and then their buddy will wake them up anyway.
The healer feat is very different to spamming CLW from older editions, I imagine, mostly because you need a 1 hr rest between each use of the "wand"..... Which in most dungeons, just isnt going to be possible on a regular basis.
As for the rogue, I think it is one of the most powerful classes. Fast hands give free potion use, free wand use, all sorts of crap. Uncanny dodge = super tank against low numbers of enemies. SA is murderous is damage, esp if you get an OA or an extra attack from a commander's strike or whatever.
Or you can throw in a few small quick encounters to draw the sleep spells out. Resource attrition to set up later combats has always been a valid tool.
Well, I wouldn't want to change an established adventure just too punish someone for clever builds. That trick won't last long. I generally prefer starting players out at 4th level (but haven't for now), especially if it is for organized play. That is the thing about making your own adventures, you know how to challenge your players.
1eejit wrote:
Lady_Auralla wrote:
This may work well if you and 4 buddies stroll in to a DnD Encounters League. Or use a module but feel you MUST stick to it all costs because...reasons?
But at a table with friends, the DM is not a robot. He sees, he learns, he adapts. He knows the strengths and weaknesses of each PC in order to give them their time in the sun. I've always liked this approach instead of the "your powers are useless" thing, because it allows one person to feel SUPER awesome, and the others feel okay, as opposed to one person feel super terrible and the others are just normal. So sometimes "Sleep" will be a great solution, other times not (and I don't always mean a "they're immune" kinda way). Similarly, there are plenty of Strength-based challenges (doors, closing walls) or Strength save spells/effects (grappling, pushing, etc) that can give those DEX-based PCs a little extra challenge!
Anyway, DnD is more than just "abusable" numbers. Situations (and context) are key. Remember, short rests are an HOUR now, not five minutes like in 4th (thank goodness!). I also think the "everyone is fully healed after a long rest" is sorta annoying, but can still be dealt with in a reasonable manner. And how is it DM metagaming if they try to short rest in the wilderness or dungeon? Are they not on a time-table for any quests, ever? Are you throwing encounters at them "just cause"? If you know they're just going to sleep right after this, why are you throwing a "standard" encounter at them (I never make this mistake in 4E due to daily powers and such).
Dice manipulation is nice, but it's just as viable as other builds/strategies (which includes DPS). And I'm pretty sure everyone agrees that healing in combat is sorta wasteful. That is, until you need it 
And I suppose if you (and/or your PCs) are going to stress low-ish damage, to also stress high DEX. Only makes sense, really. CON and DEX are good stats for anyone to increase, since it makes you harder to kill, and in some cases adds to attack and damage.
HP is also just a number. Those ogres with pools of hitpoints? How about a few throwing rocks from above? A sleep spell will get one, then get woken up by his buddy. Sleep is indeed VERY powerful (always has been, really) due to its versatility (a PC used Sleep when a bad guy ran away into a crowd. The entire crowd fell asleep EXCEPT for him, making it very easy to spot him...and difficult terrain for him to escape!). But it's not amaze-balls. There can be plenty of times where all that HP-pool is wasted, unlike a Fireball or burning hands, because that damage WILL happen. Rolling 39 on a 45 HP monster does nothing. Rolling 19 on two 10 HP creatures sleeps one, and wastes 9 "damage" on the other (who may then spend an action to slap his buddy awake). Overall, Sleep is powerful, but balanced, due to this. That's why it uses d8's and a big Dice Pool at level one, because of the chance it might just whiff, or not be NEARLY as effective as you'd like it to be
And your post didn't read very easy, but I do thank you very much for spacing it well (despite the fact you repeated yourself several times, but also contradicted yourself a lot!)
In summary, you're doing fine as a DM as long as you and your friends are having fun! But you're being pretty terrible at it (and judging game mechanics) if you think this is applicable to all tables and situations. Most of this stuff is easy to work around before you even get into houserules...
Zardnaar wrote:
1eejit wrote:
Zardnaar wrote:
Well you can look on the bright side, your party is using faerie fire rather than the in every practical way better bless which...
- doesn't have a save
- works on all monsters, not just the ones nicely standing in a 20 foot cube
- stacks with advantage
- also boosts PC saves (including concentration)
dmgorgon wrote:
Noon wrote:
FFSAA wrote:
1eejit wrote:
Reformatted it and made it a bit more understandable (hopefully) with in game examples and math .
http://community.wizards.com/forum/product-and-general-dd-discussions/threads/4139161?page=1#new
Zardnaar wrote:
FFSAA wrote:
Zardnaar wrote:
CLW wands have been called Candy Canes, for years, for a reason.
FFSAA wrote:
Noon wrote:
I think he was mopre or less meaning that having hordes of undead show up conveniently and it wierd locations could be weird or odd. Undead in a forest or in town seems a bit out of place and the DM would be blatantly metagaming against the PCs. I will throw them curve ball encounters on occasion just not all the itme as players tend to get a bit grumpy.
Ok but that's putting words in my mouth, I never suggested Undead show up everywhere, just that they show up occasionally.
At some point you could try encounters with some enemies casting Silence if your spellcasters are breezing through most fights. Or fight in a location where there's been Hallow providing permanent Silence.
Capable players need a challenge.
1eejit wrote:
Zardnaar wrote:
1eejit wrote:
Zardnaar wrote:
Tydanosaurus wrote:
CCS you can do that but now you are blatantly metagaming against the players.
[/quote] Wich part do you disagree with? Me actively crafting adventures all of us at the table will actually enjoy? Or me not allowing the rest system to be abused?CCS wrote:
Zardnaar wrote:
Saelorn wrote:
Zardnaar wrote:
Saelorn wrote:
Zardnaar wrote:
1eejit wrote:
Zardnaar wrote:
I think you might underestimate a variant human Fighter 2/Warlock 2/Dragonblood Sorcerer 16. It may take a few levels to really get going, but it is worth it in the end.
Ultimately the DM can always challenge the party. Just keep upping the number of foes, or their CR, until you reach the sweet spot. Every table will be different, depending on number of PCs, are they powergamers, are the PCs combat heavy or exploration heavy, etc. The game is as easy as the DM wants it to be. I suppose this is more difficult to do in organised play, but it is still doable. You should be able to gauge the group's power level after an encounter or two. Tailor the rest from then on.
Chakravant wrote:
Zardnaar wrote:
Zardnaar wrote:
Psikerlord wrote:
Noon wrote:
It's pretty easy (and boring) to sit down and break any TTRPG. The only problem, is the more "broken proof" can lead to homogenisation and boredom.
Brock_Landers wrote:
Personally I would never write an adventure that didn't challenge the players, and at the same time have encounter that let them feel like badasses. I think 1st to 4th is suppose to be introductory and training levels. I don't think it is a flaw of the system, just an adventure where that spell is overly effective. At the same time I don't want to write a series of encounters where players are feeling I am nerfing or negating all their cool abilities.
CCS wrote:
Ashrym wrote:
Chakravant wrote:
Zardnaar wrote: