I like the multi-classing pre-reqs and other limitations. Could be tighter, but missing out on upper level goodies tends to be the bigger limiter on players dipping. It's a start at least, and a welcome one to put the kibosh on build shenanigans.

Feats for the most part are interesting, but not chained requirements. That and they're for the most part flavor dipping, not permission taxes. Everyone can attempt just about any mundane thing, if you're willing to accept the penalties.

Yes, your Wizard can start with Chain Mail, Shield, and wield a Battleaxe. Now it has AC 18 and a Battle axe to take advantage of its high STR (your wizard has high STR, right?). That wizard in a tin can also has Disadv on ability checks, saves, attack rolls, no PB on that weapon, and has their Spd reduced by 10', too.

As for my experience with mid-levels, they're good so far. Already I think we have too much stuff too fast, as Starter Set followed by Hoard of the Dragon Queen is like a rocket of power leveling to experienced players. But one of the episodes was put to good use to power level my Adventure League adaption of Michael Jackson (yes, the entertainer) from lvl 1 to lvl 5 in one short episode, so who am I to complain. I'll throw him onto the 5e NPC topic if there's popular demand.

I'm trying to savor my other Adventure League characters before they get too high too fast for my tastes.

Quote from: jibbajibba;798568well ...

At this point I am just trolling because 5e is starting to feel more like 3e than 1e or 2e...
Basically people using feats or multiclassing to create builds rather than developing characters though play, people looking to future class power and/or feats as a way of increasing Damage per round or whatever.

That's a function of your players, dude.

None of my guys are picking over stuff trying to figure out how to wring the most bang for their buck out of their characters. Literally the closest I've come to this is when our Monk hit level 3 and stared at the Way of the Open Hand and Way of the Four Elements and picked Way of the Open Hand because Way of the Four Elements sounded like way too much to keep up with. All he REALLY cares about is that he left the monastery with three names on his list...he's met two and killed one. The Barbarian only cares about making up for the bad stuff her tribe was involved in...and bedazzling her weapons (seriously). The Ranger only cares about the apocalyptic visions he had and squaring things away with the man that saved him from a wrongful lynching.

Playing the exact same game as you, but my players care about what their characters are doing and not what they can do.

Quote from: jibbajibba;798809Going back to the thread on "are classes better for fantasy" if you make multiclassing trivial then you may as well use a skills paradigm and remove classes all together. It will be a lot less jarring and the "exploits" will be reduced because you can't just pick up a level in something and immediately inherit all the base level special stuff.

In 5e you don't pick up all the other class's profiencencies. Again read the rules PLEASE!!! There are many other limits and subtle changes beyond the obvious also.

Quote from: Tommy Brownell;799143That's a function of your players, dude.

None of my guys are picking over stuff trying to figure out how to wring the most bang for their buck out of their characters. Literally the closest I've come to this is when our Monk hit level 3 and stared at the Way of the Open Hand and Way of the Four Elements and picked Way of the Open Hand because Way of the Four Elements sounded like way too much to keep up with. All he REALLY cares about is that he left the monastery with three names on his list...he's met two and killed one. The Barbarian only cares about making up for the bad stuff her tribe was involved in...and bedazzling her weapons (seriously). The Ranger only cares about the apocalyptic visions he had and squaring things away with the man that saved him from a wrongful lynching.

Playing the exact same game as you, but my players care about what their characters are doing and not what they can do.

My players don't min/max at all becuase for 3 of them this is their first ever RPG and the other 3 have been playing in my games for a year and the closest we came to min/maxing was a short M&M2e campaing which I ran just to give them experience of other systems, as before that they had never played tabletop RPGs. so meh...

However, you look at the way the rule open up and the options that present then feats and multiclassing are risky if you want to keep optimisation to a minimum.

Quote from: Marleycat;799166In 5e you don't pick up all the other class's profiencencies. Again read the rules PLEASE!!! There are many other limits and subtle changes beyond the obvious also.

Stop....

If I pick a level of say Warlock do I get cantrips, spells, ? if I pick up a second level do I get invocations etc ... yes

they have tried to mitigate by starting classes quite light and then adding powers at levels 2 and 3 and mitigated this for single clased PCs by havign very fast XP curve to level 3. This is partially because they don't want people to dip into a class and then get a host of class abilities in one bite, so its an attempt but no one would disagree, surely, that a class based model where each class has a host of class powers is very vulnerable to people dipping into classes to collect those powers and this is far more jaring from an immersion perspective than a skills based system where you can buy any skill you like but all skills progress so it feels more natural.

You will see people dipping into fighter to get the additional action  you will get people dipping into casters to get a ranged cantrip, you will see casters dipping into rogue to get disengage without AoO.
These things all feel more 3e system mastery to me. All driven by Optimisation not roleplay.
The optimisation threads are already out there and it feels similar to a new release of Magic. Everyone searching forthe exploits.

Hey maybe I will grow to love it

I'm going to repeat this.  I say repeat because I'm sure someone has said it at some point.

People will play in a style they want to play.  Optimizers will try to optimize.  That has been true of every edition.  If you're going to avoid a game because optimizers will find loopholes, then I'm guessing your table is pretty empty.

It's not different than the specialized dart throwers in AD&D.

Here's what should happen.  Talk to your players.  Communicate how you want to play the game.  5e is actually very good at allowing several different styles of play, from "old school dungeoncrawl" to "charop builds".  Feats are optional.  Multi-classing is optional.  If you have a concern a player is charopping from purely a min/max standpoint, talk to them and don't allow it unless they can give an adequate explanation as to why it makes sense in game.

That right there would solve 99% of your problems jibba.  Stop blaming the game and play with players who share your gaming style.


*Edit*  Oh, and one more thing.  STOP BASING YOUR ASSUMPTIONS FROM WHAT YOU READ ON A CHAROP FORUM.  Go play the actual game and see how it goes firsthand.

Quote from: jibbajibba;799303Stop....

If I pick a level of say Warlock do I get cantrips, spells, ? if I pick up a second level do I get invocations etc ... yes

Yep, they do extremely limited of course, the question is how many levels do you dip? Mostly for full effect it's 9-11 so pick your preferred base class and understand what you lose as you pick up another level in some other class (hint for you it takes 5-6 levels to really be a particular class while not actually falling behind for the 3e level dipping you seem to fear).

I explained what you get and lose for level dipping into Warlock in your cantrip thread. So fuck you and actually play and quit trolling CLEAR?

We already did the 18/2 dip I'm guessing you're worried about something more balanced or maybe 5-6/15-14? Tell us the actual split and what classes are involved before going pure STUPID okay?

There was that thread on multiclassing where we picked apart the idea and showed how weird things could get like multiclassing Warlock several times to become a Blade/Chain/Tome pact to A fey, an infernal and a elder thingy for example.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;799323I'm going to repeat this.  I say repeat because I'm sure someone has said it at some point.

People will play in a style they want to play.  Optimizers will try to optimize.  That has been true of every edition.  If you're going to avoid a game because optimizers will find loopholes, then I'm guessing your table is pretty empty.

It's not different than the specialized dart throwers in AD&D.

Here's what should happen.  Talk to your players.  Communicate how you want to play the game.  5e is actually very good at allowing several different styles of play, from "old school dungeoncrawl" to "charop builds".  Feats are optional.  Multi-classing is optional.  If you have a concern a player is char-opping from purely a min/max standpoint, talk to them and don't allow it unless they can give an adequate explanation as to why it makes sense in game.

That right there would solve 99% of your problems jibba.  Stop blaming the game and play with players who share your gaming style.


*Edit*  Oh, and one more thing.  STOP BASING YOUR ASSUMPTIONS FROM WHAT YOU READ ON A CHAROP FORUM.  Go play the actual game and see how it goes firsthand.

I always do these things and all of my questions are coming from my players. My players are all new to D&D.

I am only now reading the charop forums because I want to know some of the pitfalls of RAW before I encounter them. I don't want the game to spin out of control cos of some feat or char op thing I didn't see coming. I MOSTLY want to avoid telling a player the session AFTER he outclassed the entire party that I an NERFING his character because...

So I am actively looking for the likely issues and trying to head them off so I can continue to deliver a great game my players enjoy.

I will explain what I mean with an example. When we were playing M&M 2e one of the PCs took 12 ranks in Corrosion. I read the power and understood it but there are lots of powers 4 PCs etc so I never followed through the charop possibilities.
It was a great game with time travel, flash back , the whole thing worked really well . Then eventually they came to the showdown against the Big Bad. All theeh players are ready to show their Kewl Powers. Round 1 the corrosion guy activates a thing that gets him initiative. OKAY np. Then he activates a thing that gives him some max attack benefit moving from damage to hit, then he hits with Corrosion and ... the big bad is hit looses all their toughness then takes damage based on their new toughness and so is ,...dead... No other PC got to do a thing.
Now if I had done some due diligence and surfed through the Charop Forums I could have seen that coming, the flags on the overpower/Abuse of Corrosion are manifest.
This wasn't a charoper. This was a smart guy who simply built a character with a cool theme that was a competent as he could make it.

So what I am doing here is trying to be aware of any issues so that my players get the best game they can get. They all feel like they are relevant and they all feel like they have a role to play.
I can make the setting vibrant, the NPCs realistic well rounded, scary, amusing or whatever and I can make the monsters tactics clever and engaging, I can do that because I have been doing that forever. What I can't predict and what I want to avoid is at nth level the Warlock making the archer feel pointless, the Sorcerer being able to clear the battle field or eliminate an environmental challenge etc, all because of some rule combo that seems innocuous but had unforeseen effects.

Well the good news is that 5th is driving the charoppers and whatevers nuts because its not geared to accomodate them and multiclassing isnt the be-all-end-all thed hoped. In fact its pretty useless.

As for trying to curb problems before they happen. Word of warning. Some of the pervieved "problems" are merely in the heads of the people crying "broken!" and sometimes its because they are not playing a rule correctly or possibly deliberately reading a rule in a way its not meant.

Quote from: Omega;799396Well the good news is that 5th is driving the charoppers and whatevers nuts because its not geared to accomodate them and multiclassing isnt the be-all-end-all thed hoped. In fact its pretty useless.

As for trying to curb problems before they happen. Word of warning. Some of the pervieved "problems" are merely in the heads of the people crying "broken!" and sometimes its because they are not playing a rule correctly or possibly deliberately reading a rule in a way its not meant.

And so I come here .... where at least I know what folks are like to get a less biased opinion.....

Quote from: jibbajibba;798801I like that.
How are you handling feats?

Feats I'm using as written for the time being. Unlike a level in a new class, a feat uses up a limited resource slot from the character improvement pool. A feat is gained at the cost of +2 to an ability score that could have been gained instead.

Due to the limited number of them that characters get (especially non fighters), I haven't seen any problems with them so far, and if I'm not seeing anything broken in actual play then I don't bother trying to fix it.

I would suggest not allowing multiclassing until your group knows the game very well.

It's really unnecessary, and more likely to confuse, particularly if they are used to 3e.

I am not allowing multiclassing at all unless someone has a really good reason for it AND is willing to accept that they are going to not be as heavy a hitter as a single classed character.

Yeah, there'd be no multiclassing in my games either.