I do find the sorcerer a little underwhelming--almost as bad in practice as people claim the moon druid is overpowered--which I haven't seen be an issue.  Happily, since 5E makes magic equipment almost optional, you can easily get around such things by being a little generous with equipment for classes that are lagging at particular levels.  Gave a 5th level sorcerer a rod that effectively adds 1 to his spell save targets, and it was enough that 5th-7th the character is hanging in there fine.  In the right hands, the meta magic aspect of the sorcerer can be quite powerful in some situations, especially with, say, twin spell on spells that require concentration.  

I lean towards the idea that a particular campaign would be well served by using only one of wizard, sorcerer, or warlock--though not as sure on that last one.

Is the Moon Druid the shapeshifter? A good control on that is to simply require that the PC can only shift into animals that they would have intimate knowledge of from where their background indicates. And if they want to learn to turn into a new animal they have to befriend it first.

My biggest issue is the popping up and down of PCs as they hit zero hit points - particularly with multiple characters who have the Healing Word spell and/or other healing. Since only 1hp healing is needed to bring a PC back, this makes the end of some fights look like whack-a-mole.

First, it grates on believability, and second, it means that intelligent enemies really should hit downed PCs to kill them permanently - but it feels really arbitrary for me as DM about when monsters should dogpile and finish off a downed PC.

I was a combat medic.  I find magical and non-magical healing grates for me since I know far more about it then either the system designer or the DM.  

To solve your whack a mole problem.  Once they hit 0 they are out of the fight.  You can heal them and they aren't dieing but they really can't do anything strenous. If they try tell them they start to see stars and feel dizzy.  Then give them a Con save or pass out.  Have them throw up, give them a bleeding wound.  They need to keep prrasure on it or they bleed out.  Its not hard, no skill checks but if they take their hand off they start bleeding again.

I've run a couple sessions where magical healing was temporary, so 10 min after the fight, everyones magical strength (hp) drains away and their wounds open up again.  Needs more play testing but I like it.

Quote from: Voros;963169Is the Moon Druid the shapeshifter? A good control on that is to simply require that the PC can only shift into animals that they would have intimate knowledge of from where their background indicates. And if they want to learn to turn into a new animal they have to befriend it first.

We had this discussion about the moon druid.  Has anyone ever played in a game completely dominated by the moon druid?  Or is it all theory crafting?

Quote from: Headless;963295We had this discussion about the moon druid.  Has anyone ever played in a game completely dominated by the moon druid?  Or is it all theory crafting?

They are notably better, but not out of control, about levels 2-4.  There's seldom a good reason not to give the moon druid at least one decent combat form at that level, unless you are playing a game where the druid hasn't seen any large animals.  If that power curve continued, they'd dominate the game.  But it doesn't.  By 4th, if you are looking, they are already starting to lose their edge.  And then 5th comes along, with the multiple attacks for the warrior types.  And then 6th, 7th comes along, with creatures capable of putting an animal form down in one round.  At the point, the moon druid as an upfront melee character becomes a speed bump.  They are much better off being selective in their times to change, and remember that they have all those druid spells to use.

My verdict:  It's mostly theory crafting by people that played in small groups that rarely went past level 5.

On the healing thing, I really like giving one level of exhaustion each time a character hit zero hit points.  That doesn't directly solve the issue, because being up is still better than being down.  But it encourages healers to not let it get to that point, if they at all can, and earlier potion use.  And resting after.  You end up with occasional whack a mole because they players couldn't help it, but at least they are beat up after.  And sometimes if the fight is close, a character that has gone down and been healed decides to meekly stay quiet.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;963049I doubt the Sorcerer with its shorter spell list (It gets a total of 15 spells, like the Warlock) matches the sheer potential versatility that a Wizard will get.

Yes, and the Barbarian, with its two attacks, doesn't match the sheer damage output of the Fighter. And the Fighter, with its lack of spells, doesn't match the sheer versatility of the Paladin. Wow, different classes are different, imagine that. In practice, the sorcerer is a solid option for players who like blasting things. And since it's a CHA-based class, it picks up some of the more important skills as well.

QuoteThe Warlock's only saving grace, which isn't all that great is it gets it's 1-4 spell slots after a SHORT rest, but the real meat of the class, the Invocations suck so hard, I'm impressed the book doesn't implode in on itself whenever you open it to the page.

What exactly are you on about? The Warlock is one of the best consistent damage dealers in the game, up there with Fighter and Rogue. It's also the only character that is completely unhindered by darkness (great scout) and has always-on Detect Magic. It's also harder to kill than than a wizard, thanks to its higher AC and bigger hit die.

QuoteThe Bard is a 'face', he's got a wide array, but most of the spells are about illusion and interaction with others.

Okay, now I'm pretty sure you've done nothing but theorycraft 5e, because the bard is arguably the best class in the game.

Quote from: Headless;963295We had this discussion about the moon druid.  Has anyone ever played in a game completely dominated by the moon druid?  Or is it all theory crafting?

At high level, the best thing a Moon Druid can do is shift into an elemental form, which consumes both uses of Wild Shape. It's pretty rad when they do, but hardly makes them dominant. A raging Barbarian is flat-out a much better tank by that point.

Quote from: Omega;9629681: Long rests are 8 hours. The only way to break a long rest is to keep the PCs active in combat, doing stuff continuously for a whole hour. Short rests can be interrupted. Long rests you cant short of jumping through a few hoops. Combat rarely lasts more than a minute or two so you'd have to throw masses of Zulus at them non-stop to interrupt a long rest and thats more likely to just kill the PCs through gradual attrition.

Common sense of course says Long Rest should work otherwise for interrupting. But according to the designers no. That is how it is supposed to work and it can be a pain in the ass if you have players trying to exploit that. Haven't had it happen personally. But another DM running the Adventurer's League had a group pull that in the middle of an active, not cleared out, dungeon.

Common sense says that whether a single interruption of ABC time and XYZ intensity should be able disrupt a night's sleep (sorry, 'Long Rest') needs to be handled on a case-by-case basis by the DM. Any one specific ruling is going to be disappointing because we can contrive a counterexample where it makes no sense. I wish they hadn't made a hard fast rule on needing a full hour, but any other hard fast rule would be the same level of disappointing.

Quote from: Headless;963295We had this discussion about the moon druid.  Has anyone ever played in a game completely dominated by the moon druid?  Or is it all theory crafting?

It is theory crafting. Like lots of things, some things just seem like they would be a problem, regardless of how well they work in play. The druid gets a significant amount of bonus hp that recover on short rests. That hits people the wrong way (even though a fighter or a cleric/warlock also get healing mechanics that recover on a short rest. Still, as mentioned, at levels 2 and 3 a moon druid is pretty darn awesome. I think it also helps the moon druid > alles narrative is that the other PHB alternative, the land druid, simply doesn't get all that much to compensate for their inferior shape change.

Quote from: fearsomepirate;963311Yes, and the Barbarian, with its two attacks, doesn't match the sheer damage output of the Fighter. And the Fighter, with its lack of spells, doesn't match the sheer versatility of the Paladin. Wow, different classes are different, imagine that. In practice, the sorcerer is a solid option for players who like blasting things. And since it's a CHA-based class, it picks up some of the more important skills as well.

A sorcerer is fine (especially a red or gold dragon sorcerer). They would probably look better if evoker wizard or light clerics couldn't also compete in that arena. They get really good when combined with paladin (and with the charisma synergy). Sorcerer-warlocks also dominate, mixing SR-and LR recoverable abilities, and allowing for the super high damage density eldritch-blast + quickened eldritch blast technique.



To the OP, unless you expect all race-class combos to be perfectly balanced with each other, or you really were hoping 5e would be "[your favorite edition], version 2.0," it holds up pretty well. There is some vagueness around things like skills (when do you use perception, when do you use investigation?), tools, hand use, and such. However, mostly it's just trivial details.

That does not mean, of course, that the game that the edition incentivizes is the one you necessarily want to play. As many have mentioned, the jack-in-the-box PCs and incentivizing enemies to attack downed opponents is a great example. That however, is a perfectly fine design decision with certain consequences.

Quote from: fearsomepirate;963311Yes, and the Barbarian, with its two attacks, doesn't match the sheer damage output of the Fighter. And the Fighter, with its lack of spells, doesn't match the sheer versatility of the Paladin. Wow, different classes are different, imagine that. In practice, the sorcerer is a solid option for players who like blasting things. And since it's a CHA-based class, it picks up some of the more important skills as well.

Look, apples, oranges.  The Barbarian is not competing with the Fighter.  The Barbarian's abilities are built around two handed weaponry and raw survival (which frankly the Berserker tree sucks at, to be fair) or melee utility (The Totems are generally considered the best of the abilities), and the Paladin's utility is defined (oddly) by its ability to heal others, so it's also not competing with the Fighter either.

The Wizard on the other hand fills the same niche as a Sorcerer and does it BETTER.  It has a wider array of choices when it comes to spells.  Which I might add, overlap.  In fact, with a cursory look through, the Wizard's list has the same spells as the Sorcerer and more.  If you want a true blaster, go Evocation Wizard.  Has all the Blasty you could want, but without the pesky lack of spell options.

Still, the Bloodline powers are cute, if uninspiring, and Font of Magic to recover spell slots is sorta useful?  I guess.  Doesn't match the ability to Ritual quite a few spells, though.

Quote from: fearsomepirate;963311What exactly are you on about? The Warlock is one of the best consistent damage dealers in the game, up there with Fighter and Rogue. It's also the only character that is completely unhindered by darkness (great scout) and has always-on Detect Magic. It's also harder to kill than than a wizard, thanks to its higher AC and bigger hit die.

Single target, yes.  But let's be fair, magic outstrips melee and always have, when it comes to combat utility.  Also, I said MOST Invocations are useless.  The best path so far seems to be Tome.  Also, a misconception. Eldritch Sight requires you to cast it each time, it requires concentration AND it fades after 10 minutes, which means in combat, it's often not on, unless you spend the Action to turn it on.  Most of the other no level requirement Invocations often require a Long Rest to recover, AND take up one of the 2 (When you can choose them) spell slots you have.  But at least you get that slot back on a Short Rest.  Yay?

And then there's the poor Pact of The Blade.  The Warlocks best Stat should be Charisma, the second might be Con or Dex.  But for a Blade, unless you put your secondary stat in Dex and choose a Light weapon, any chose you make will require to depend on a tertiary stat.  Like Strength if you want a one handed weapon, like the suggest 'axe' for Fiends, as an example.  It's nice that you get Proficiency, but you don't get to use Charisma to hit with it.  It doesn't say which stat you use, so I'm left assuming that it's the appropriate stat for the weapon you choose/change the weapon into.  And Thirsting Blade let's you attack twice, but unlike the Rogue, who also is limited to Light Armour, the Blade Lock doesn't get extra mobility or a power to burn a reaction to cut the damage in half, nor does it get the College of Valor's added bonus of being able to upgrade to Medium Armour for free.  A great scout?  Really?  What, 'skills' don't work in your game or something?

The best Invocations seems to any that boost Eldritch Blast, Eldritch Sight, Devil's Sight, Book of Ancient Secrets (which makes Path of The Tome even better), Mask of Many Faces, Eyes of The Runekeeper, and Misty Visions.  And a few of those aren't really all that impressive.

So no, the Warlock is a lackluster, sub-par class that most who've played at the local AL tables often multiclass out of as fast as possible.

Quote from: fearsomepirate;963311Okay, now I'm pretty sure you've done nothing but theorycraft 5e, because the bard is arguably the best class in the game.

Maybe in Everquest.  And what the hell does theorycrafting do?  It's all 'white room' bullcrap with no applicability in actual play.  Why the hell would anyone do that???  The Bard in terms of utility rates MUCH higher than the Warlock, even if you go College of Valor, it's got heals, a few enchantments and illusions, but the place where the Bard absolutely shines is NPC interaction.  It's no Wizard in terms of raw magic utility though.  Still, as much as I hate the Bard, I'd be down to playing it over the Warlock or Sorcerer any day of the year.

Well, there's the "rough spot" that always gets me -- endless roundabouts dealing with the various classes and their widgets. (put another star next to the note, "Only run 5E with the BASIC packet...").:-)

Not that I don't enjoy a class merits discussion, I was really hoping to point out and clear up parts of the rules where play slows down, or players and DMs regularly have different interpretations of how the rules are supposed to work.

Quote from: Headless;963399Not that I don't enjoy a class merits discussion, I was really hoping to point out and clear up parts of the rules where play slows down, or players and DMs regularly have different interpretations of how the rules are supposed to work.

Stealth. Make sure players and the GM are on the same page as to how hiding/sneaking/etc. are going to work at the table, because the official rules are basically "take an action to hide" and otherwise let the GM make a call. This causes a lot of issues with, say, the warlock who wants to take advantage of Darkness on a loud, chaotic battlefield but supposedly needs to take an extra action to hide when completely obscured by a big globe of magical blackness. I've seen many long threads about stuff like this, with people arguing over what the rules say and what they don't.

Quote from: Headless;963399Not that I don't enjoy a class merits discussion, I was really hoping to point out and clear up parts of the rules where play slows down, or players and DMs regularly have different interpretations of how the rules are supposed to work.

Magic.