In theory I like the background giving you the bonus, because it lets you tailor your character to be slightly different.  For example you could be a Fighter who was a goon for a crime boss or something and take the Criminal background, or maybe you want your Fighter to have originally been training as a mage and take the Sage background so you can get some cantrips.  But it seems like just another "pick this to min-max, pick this other thing if you're a casual scrub" kind of thing.

Like on paper that sounds great.  But I doubt it works that way in practice.

Quote from: Nobleshield on September 18, 2024, 09:15:07 PMIn theory I like the background giving you the bonus, because it lets you tailor your character to be slightly different.  For example you could be a Fighter who was a goon for a crime boss or something and take the Criminal background, or maybe you want your Fighter to have originally been training as a mage and take the Sage background so you can get some cantrips.  But it seems like just another "pick this to min-max, pick this other thing if you're a casual scrub" kind of thing.

Like on paper that sounds great.  But I doubt it works that way in practice.

In terms of game design, if classes have prime ability, then it mucks up the balance if other choices (like race or background) have important ability modifiers. i.e. If fighters depend on Strength, then having super-Strength ogre as a race option ruins other fighters.

AD&D dealt with this mainly by having only small modifiers (+1 or -1 max), and Basic/BECMI had no ability modifiers. AD&D mods were a little unbalanced, but it was only a small effect. This got a little worse with 3E which went to +-2, and it's stayed that way for a while until recently.

I think it's also bad to put ability modifiers hard-coded with backgrounds. The playtest 2024 rules had an optional rule for players just taking whatever ability shifts they want with background, and I think that made more sense. It also is very reasonable that, say, a criminal fighter has a bonus to Strength as he went around breaking people's legs who messed with the gang.

Quote from: jhkim on September 19, 2024, 12:16:29 AMIn terms of game design, if classes have prime ability, then it mucks up the balance if other choices (like race or background) have important ability modifiers. i.e. If fighters depend on Strength, then having super-Strength ogre as a race option ruins other fighters.

If the super-Strength ogre only really has strength going for him but humans have some feat access, and some other wacky auxiliary splatbook elf has a teleport, then maybe the thing isn't about attributes; there will always be a One True Build if you are minmaxing for a fixed goal, but maybe these other things make good fighters too.  That's the power of racial picks; you can have more stuff going for them, and in a non-OSR game you should (an OSR game doesn't really have that as an obligation).

The game suffers immensely by taking away the attribute modifiers from races.  The game doesn't even seem to think it has races, calling the species.

Quote from: Eric Diaz on September 18, 2024, 12:57:42 PMSystem-wise, they didn't seem to even fix obvious things, e.g., this was already bad and they've made it WORSE:

Great Weapon Fighting
Fighting Style Feat (Prerequisite: Fighting Style Feature)

When you roll damage for an attack you make with a Melee weapon that you are holding with two hands, you can treat any 1 or 2 on a damage die as a 3. The weapon must have the Two-Handed or Versatile property to gain this benefit.

I really have no idea why this nerf happened.  GWF was already the worst of the weapon focus things, by quite a bit- the old one (which allowed for a reroll) capped out at an average of +1.33 if you used one of the 2d6 two handed weapons, and was lower in all other cases.  By contrast of course, dueling (which works on weaker weapons) is +2 to damage, and the general strongest out of all of them, archery, remains a mighty +2 to hit (granted, there's no more sharpshooter power attack here).  This is a really bad change for sure, and it's exactly the type of easy-to-avoid L that I assumed they would never willingly go on a quest to retrieve.

Yet here we are.

QuoteThis one was sub-par and now it is mandatory for anyone with the soldier background (which seems to be the go-to "martial" background):

Savage Attacker
Origin Feat

You've trained to deal particularly damaging strikes. Once per turn when you hit a target with a weapon, you can roll the weapon's damage dice twice and use either roll against the target.

Ok so here you're not being fair to the bad feat.  While this feat needed a lot of help in 5.0, in 5.5 it is an "origin feat", meaning you get it at level 1 as part of some other selection (such as the soldier background you mention).  If you go to the section on origin feats, you'll see that they all are designed to a lower power level.  The "general feats" are the ones for higher levels, and those have all gotten stronger (exceptions include like the top four feats in the game, which even in their nerfed form have become feats that give you +1 to a stat so even they are kind of a wash).

There are, as you might guess, some clear winners in the Origin Feat category- but it's still much closer to those than it was to all the other real feats in 5.0.

QuoteThe longsword and the mace have the same "sap" trait, for example.

A lot of weapons have the sap trait- I don't see any common reasoning for it.

QuoteThe shortsword curiously seem to only function if you have more than one attack, which is odd.

For most shortsword users (like in the game world), the function of Vex seems to be to give advantage on an opportunity attack (aka "everyone has more than one attack, if the enemy turns tail and runs").  If you gain a second attack obviously it becomes easier to make use of that, though.

I really don't know what to think of these weapon traits.

Quote from: Venka on September 19, 2024, 01:05:22 AMOk so here you're not being fair to the bad feat.  While this feat needed a lot of help in 5.0, in 5.5 it is an "origin feat", meaning you get it at level 1 as part of some other selection (such as the soldier background you mention).  If you go to the section on origin feats, you'll see that they all are designed to a lower power level.  The "general feats" are the ones for higher levels, and those have all gotten stronger (exceptions include like the top four feats in the game, which even in their nerfed form have become feats that give you +1 to a stat so even they are kind of a wash).

There are, as you might guess, some clear winners in the Origin Feat category- but it's still much closer to those than it was to all the other real feats in 5.0.

Fair enough, I hadn't considered this is supposed to be one of the "weak" feats now. Still, it is the WORST origin feat in the SRD IMO. Well, Alert is not that great either - but everyone should prefer three skills or 2 cantrips + spell over a couple of points of damage once per turn.

And IIRC - this is a couple of points of damage AT MOST. You'd need a d12 weapon, which doesn't have a decent fighting style. Even if you have the -5/+10 feat (is this still a thing?), would make your meager +2 damage matter even less. And, of course, it has diminishing returns as you go up in level and get more attacks...

I doubt there is any possibility that this can ever beat the dueling style, since it also gets you a shield and doesn't cost you your origin feat.