Quote from: The Butcher;853025But the lack of a good summoner class is, to my eyes, the only really glaring omission.

I'm a little confused here because my group's druid keeps summoning bears and shit and they really make a difference. I'm a little nervous about when he reaches the level where he can start conjuring pixies and their spell selection.

Quote from: The Butcher;853025I really, honestly feel a fantasy RPG without rules for magicians who summon and bind demons is a fucking travesty.

Well there is the Gate spell, and to a lesser extent Conjure Celestial (which can be flipped to Conjure Fiend with minimum effort, not sure why that options isn't there already).

Also, the Warlock with a fiend patron represents many common demon summoning/binding tropes (in the classic sense of summoning the demon to grant you power, not to fight on your behalf).

I really like the core classes and races as they are and don't feel the need for more character classes and options.
They're all very flexible.

All in all, I'm pretty happy with 5E.

Will I get expansion books and stuff... ?  Well probably I suppose, if only for a good read (RPGs on the whole are dirt cheap when you compare the amount of hours of fun you get out of them for your $$s) , but I might not use additional stuff.

Action economy is one of those recent discussion topics of The Balance (/lightning /horse whinney). I would at least like to see representation for villain tropes. But I understand why they are keeping a tight grip on such things. Already people are squealing about Moon Druids, Necromancers and the like, so summoned creatures, genie pacts, and or spirit pacts will likely just be more oil on a grease fire.

I may be sad that they don't put out more settings, but I understand why they hold tightly to the product they do put out. Splat treadmill and the subsequent minigame of how to break it does the game no favors. Any new stuff I'd try to keep to UA playtesting and campaign optional material. Don't feed the Gaming Den as it were.

Quote from: Opaopajr;853227Already people are squealing about Moon Druids...

What's your take on the moon druid situation?

I'd hardly go with "already," Moon Druids were recognized as problematic quite some time ago. If they had about 80 less hit points per short rest, it'd help a little bit.

My Moon Druid just made 6th level. He was awesome at 2nd-3rd level (kept a slightly lower level party alive by killing everything almost alone and then healing the other party members who had dropped). But then at 5th level with comparable level characters, he didn't stand out. The CR1 beasts weren't really tough enough: typically fairly low AC and lower attack bonus than he got as himself -- many other characters got a lot tougher going from 4th level to 5th level than he did. But now he's 6th level and it's CR2 beasts, so life is good again.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;853255What's your take on the moon druid situation?

I am of the opinion that if that is the worst problem they have (which it was way too soon to tell a year ago, still a bit premature a year in) WotC got off easy, all else considered. I also think there are other contenders for "problematic" things. I am no fan of things like Sharpshooter ignoring cover, for example.

For AL for Season 1 you were restricted to the beasts in PHB Appendix, which really toned things down. Season 2 is/was such a crunch-fest it sort of didn't matter, as adventures were mainly geared for high tank/bloat and go nova builds and very narrow, almost railroads. Which is a pity as some cool social setting leverage came into the scene with Mulmaster (and which they are trying again with Hillsfar).

Over levels it begins to level off, especially around tier-ups, like lv 5 as Rawma was talking about. Sadly a lot of the cool recon, exploration ideas didn't really pan out too many opportunities last AL season (I sat out most of it because too much of it seemed silly). Then again, a lot of finesse stuff tends to be sidelined by any Organized Play (like PC illusionists unfortunately).

I think the real genius of the 5E PHB is how classes, class subtypes, feats and backgrounds work. They all link up totally seamlessly in play, they're sufficiently balanced to avoid a character build arms race, but most importantly between the number of classes, class subtypes, feats and backgrounds you can come up with an insanely diverse range of character types. Want your character to have mildly different skills than your standard member of that class? Pick a background. Want them to diverge from the norm in a somewhat more potent way than that? Pick a suitable feat. Want to make a whole swathe of changes that diverge from the classic conception of a class whilst still recognisably staying in the same class category? The class subtypes might have you covered. Can't get what you wanted out of a particular class? Take a look around, one of the other classes might do you better.

The great thing about this is how it not just offers a heap of choices, but also lets you come up with some great homebrew stuff without wrecking the game or having to spend ages about it. Backgrounds are trivially easy to homebrew and have a fairly low impact on the game. Feats are more substantial, but there's enough examples in the book to help you judge whether a new feat is a) even necessary and b) balanced against the existing feats. Subclass has an even bigger impact than feats, but the way the different subclasses are built is transparent enough that it isn't too much work to come up with new ones.

Conversely, cooking up a whole new class is a huge task, but at the same time it seems to me that it'd be very, very rare that you'd want to do it; you'd only need to go that far if you can't get to where you want with suitable homebrewed backgrounds, feats or subclasses. (For the same reason, I rarely see people multiclassing in 5E, because it's usually both easier and more sensible to take a single class and appropriate feats/backgrounds.)

On the whole, I think they've hit a fantastic balance between providing enough choice to make character creation feel like it has enough options whilst at the same time avoiding a 3.X-style character build arms race.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;853255What's your take on the moon druid situation?

Couple of months ago over on RPGG there was a one guy ranting on and on and on and on about how broken the moon druid was.

One of his examples? Strapping a keg of gunpowder to a moon druid in spider form to sneak in and blow up every enemy because they cant be killed by it. We dissected this six ways to Sunday and still this git wouldn't shut up.

Kefra plays a moon druid and so far her damage output in bear form is less than Jannets but better than mine in melee and about comprable to my  (rarely used) eldritch blast. She would be about on par if she could ever spot a giant scorpion.

And that is the huge limiter on the moon druid or druid in general. Aint seen it? Cant be it. At level 9 she got access to nothing new as we have so far never come across any dinosaurs, giant scorps, or orcas.

Quote from: Omega;853472Couple of months ago over on RPGG there was a one guy ranting on and on and on and on about how broken the moon druid was.

One of his examples? Strapping a keg of gunpowder to a moon druid in spider form to sneak in and blow up every enemy because they cant be killed by it. We dissected this six ways to Sunday and still this git wouldn't shut up.

Yeah, git is all sorts of wrong it's not even worth dissecting. Very "received knowledge" complaint rather than an even basic reading of the rules and informed complaint. HP bloat can be a thing, but that sort of ill informed criticism doesn't help.

And yes, aside from damage spillover, "animals seen" is a strong limiter. Unless the AL FR campaign has Disney safari tours to Chult (druid circle discount! inquire within!), or the campaign equivalent, I put little stock into such complaints. Seeing the damage output of a party can be in a round, it didn't pass the faint test much then, still isn't my biggest concern now.

In my experience with the system so far, moon druids seem to have quite a power boost advantage from levels 2 to 4 or 5. After that, their power levels off quite smoothly and they are closer in line with the rest of the party.

The only other time when they might become problems again is level 20 with unlimited uses, but I haven't seen that in actual play.

A-lot of players seem to forget, or try to, that druids do not get access to flight capable forms until level 8.

The new Circle of the Hive (some alternate spells) and Circle of the Swarm (limited to insect forms. And access to ones not availible to regular shifters) druids are interesting though.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;853153Well there is the Gate spell, and to a lesser extent Conjure Celestial (which can be flipped to Conjure Fiend with minimum effort, not sure why that options isn't there already).

Also, the Warlock with a fiend patron represents many common demon summoning/binding tropes (in the classic sense of summoning the demon to grant you power, not to fight on your behalf).

Fair enough on the Warlock. But Gate is a 9th level spell, and Conjure Celestial is a Cleric spell. I want wizards summoning eldricht abominations out of Lovecraft and hellish nightmares out of a Medieval demonology grimoire.

Quote from: Opaopajr;853227Already people are squealing about Moon Druids, Necromancers and the like, so summoned creatures, genie pacts, and or spirit pacts will likely just be more oil on a grease fire.

Quote from: Warthur;853310Conversely, cooking up a whole new class is a huge task, but at the same time it seems to me that it'd be very, very rare that you'd want to do it; you'd only need to go that far if you can't get to where you want with suitable homebrewed backgrounds, feats or subclasses. (For the same reason, I rarely see people multiclassing in 5E, because it's usually both easier and more sensible to take a single class and appropriate feats/backgrounds.)

I haven't come up with anything I would want a new class for; but there seems to be room for expanded options within some classes (like more pacts for warlocks).

I have seen a lot of multiclassing of a modest sort; people treating one level (or occasionally several) of a complementary class as a sort of enhanced feat.

Quote from: rawma;853812I have seen a lot of multiclassing of a modest sort; people treating one level (or occasionally several) of a complementary class as a sort of enhanced feat.

I have only seen multi-classing at the very lowest levels of play. In the first campaign I started, it was open multi-classing. We were trying to get a sense of how everything worked and playing with all the bits & pieces as an experiment.

A couple players opted for multi-class options and now that the campaign is at 5th level, one player has switched characters to a single classed character of a different class and the other wants to retire the multi-classed character and bring in a new one.

In subsequent games, for flavor reasons, I decided that multi-classing could only be done with sufficient downtime. 250 days and 250 gp just like learning a tool or language. The players all had single classed characters when we entered a campaign break at 5th level. An entire year of game time passed and I was advancing everyone to level 7 for the next part of the campaign. There was sufficient downtime for anyone that wanted to take one or both of their 2 levels in a 2nd class.

Not a single player chose to multi-class. Some of the players were a bit disappointed at not being able to multi-class sooner, yet when they had the opportunity, still didn't take it. To me this reinforced my supposition that most multi-classing desires were short sighted and not well thought out.