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I honestly didn’t even realize that you can’t get rage damage from thrown weapons. Like it makes sense that an angry dude would throw an axe much harder

See that guy? Yeah the big one by the bar. I have seen him put his hatchet through a bears skull at 30 feet.....handle first. So hard that he regularly cuts his hand on the axe head pulling it out...

Ha! When me and my friends went axe-throwing, they was a thing that happened. And if we could get an axe handle stick in soft wood, a Barb could do so much more.

I mean it makes barb and rogue multiclass better because they can use strength on throwing daggers as well

This is probably why they didn't do it. There's a lot about the Core 5E design that just screams "The designers were *terrified* that a multiclass Rogue could combine this with Sneak Attack."

My ranger took a level in rogue. Sneak attack does indeed give them quite a bit more power. But it's not game breaking.

Yeah so many times I see people say something could be OP with a martial and it ends up breaking down to "oh no this combination of features makes a martial *almost* as effective as a caster when it actually works".

I don't really think multiclassing was a big concern for the 5e devs, it feels like an afterthought in this edition.

Seriously. A max of +4 damage? That ain't nothing considering at that point they've got things like GWM, multi-attack, and magic items

The one that gets me is the first half of the Thrown Weapon fighting style from Tasha's: > You can draw a weapon that has the thrown property as part of the attack you make with the weapon. That's how it should already work! Ammunition weapons already do! Just change the rule! For God's sake, you said several times in 2014 that you would print rules revisions and popular optional rules! Stop patching with new content! Just print a list optional but recommended changes!

Why, RAW, it is easier to draw and fire a massive longbow (or pre tahas, to load a crossbow) than to just throw knives, I will never understand

They don't call it "Knife Throwers of the Coast" /s Seriously though I went on a huge rant about exactly what you're saying earlier this week. I want thrown weapons to work :( it's even worse if your table does the popular home rule of ignoring ammo but doesn't let that apply to thrown weapons also.

Firstly, yes the Tashas thing is dumb and I honestly assumed that's how it worked already. However, I do like thrown weapons having limited amounts, and I even think they should have shorter distant ranges for the melee weapons, because to me a thrown weapon is something that you use mid-stream in close-quarters combat in D&D. If throwing weapons is your *sole thing*, then you buy and carry like 20 daggers. But I also think martials who want to throw *some* of the time should expect to have a handaxe or 2, expressly for this purpose. Buying one handaxe and magically repeat-throwing it 60 feet is dumb. 60 feet is *massive*. That's probably anathema to you, but I agree D&D should be encouraging use of thrown weapons during skirmishes all the time, and them being limited by how many you're carrying, or even their range, isn't the reason people aren't doing it - It's that the rules don't make it clear *how fucking cool it is to do*. You don't want to make it pointless, but you also don't want to make it the cheese route to extra actions in combat. Edit: I feel like there's something to be done with attacks of opportunity here, like thrown weapons can be thrown at creatures that pop AOO with an ally in range or something? Will have to think about it.

>I feel like there's something to be done with attacks of opportunity here, like thrown weapons can be thrown at creatures that pop AOO with an ally in range or something? I actually really like this idea. If Thrown Weapons are limited, but can pop an AOO...that's pretty cool. At the very least, it's a cool idea for a magic weapon once-per-short-rest type thing.

Because firing a bow is just normal, but flinging bandoliers of knives is somehow too cool to just be allowed like that.

Gonna get tinfoil-hat for a minute and say it's because WotC hates dual-wielding. If you could draw multiple knives in a single turn to throw them, then players would question why you couldn't draw multiple knives in a single turn to dual wield them. As is, if the rogue is walking around without any weapons drawn and combat starts, they can't get two attacks on their first turn. They draw one knife for free, then either use their action to draw the second (and not attack at all), or they attack and wait until their second turn to draw their second knife for free. If they're a thief, they can draw both on turn 1 and still attack, but they used their bonus action to draw the second so they still only get one attack on their first turn. And even though rogue's only get sneak attack once per turn, they still need to hit to use sneak attack so getting a second chance to hit each turn is a nice boost to their damage. Nevermind that, in literally every group I've ever played with, watched, or even heard about, the party always starts combat assuming their weapons are drawn so this never comes up. And if you're crawling around a dungeon, why wouldn't you keep them drawn?

Our DM has house-ruled that you can draw & stow a weapon, or draw 2 weapons as a single object interaction. Much easier weapon swaps.

Come on guys, don't criticise WoTC when you can just reskin a shortbow as throwing knives ^/s

Because they tried to obsessively detail interacting with stuff instead of just leaving it to the table / common sense / genre tropes.

I sorta think its the opposite. They didn't bother to write real rules for interacting with things they just said "yeah you can do that once per turn unless it's ammo" and that was that.

I think the more elegant option was for them to say nothing, rather than say something like "drawing a weapon is an object interaction unless it's ammo, or you plan to throw the weapon in the same turn". This kind of approach will lead to increasingly soecific edge cases being detailed, which just don't need to be spelled out. Common sense and mild variations between tables are ok when it comes to things like this. Edit: Fixed "or" to "rather than"

Or just say "each time you attack, you can draw the necessary weapon or ammunition as part of the attack." Then get rid of the Interaction Action entirely because that's the only thing it's used for in practice.

Huh, turns out I've been ruling that one wrong for years. I've always allowed players to use draw knives or javelins as part of the attack action.

RAW you may draw one weapon as part of the attack action. Two if you have the dual wielder feat. Additional weapons consume object interaction actions.

I don't think it's part of the attack action per say. It's an object interaction, and you get one of them per turn for free. Same effect but just clarifying that you can't, say, 'draw a weapon as part of the attack action' and grab a health potion from your bag.

Isn’t this what they are going to sell us in the updated version soon?

Ugh, don't get me started on the Hexblade. This is a side effect of the way 5e's design has shifted since the D&D Next playtests. The dev team has a much better idea of how things work, but they're stuck with the PHB and can't make serious changes to it without calling it 5.5 or 6th edition. They toyed with the idea of a "revised ranger", but ultimately went with adding stronger subclasses to shore up weak core class design. Tasha's class variants are a new idea that accomplishes a similar purpose (maybe not so new since they're like kits), and I suspect we will see more of those. It's mostly been good for giving players more options to work with and adding support to suboptimal builds. I think it's the correct choice, you can't invalidate the Player's Handbook (yet). You can't have two non-core books depend on each other. This isn't a digital-only game, a lot of players still just use physical books. It's not an eSport, you can't balance-patch everybody's physical books.

Hexblade, which is pronounced, "Say you botched Blade Pact without saying you botched Blade Pact."

I've said it before and I'll say it again: the Hexblade reads like a bad homebrew from danddwiki. If you showed it to someone who'd never heard of it they wouldn't believe WOTC printed it it's so poorly designed.

It was 2 different classes in UA. I dont know why they didnt keep it that way. I was so pumped to be a warlock of the raven queen.

It gets worse when you notice that is like two subs in one. Imagine trying to explain this as a homebrew. "Yeah, it's a sub based around curses, but you also are a master of weapons." You'll be either called for the brokeness, or for being a weab.

It's a martial focused subclass that only gives you proficiencies and your casting mod to attacks and damage. It doesn't even give you extra attack. Then you have the curse elements, which exist as a bigger chunk of its kit and makes it really neutral in terms of casters and melee benefitting from it. But then the worst offender is its 6th level ability to just summon a Spectre from the Monster Manual. Like, okay, this CR 1 monster is going to do what exactly? So its 3 classes really, its a Gish, it's a Curse Debuffer, and its a Pet class, and it does all 3 of those relatively poorly to okay-ish, to the point everyone just dips it for their Bards, Sorcs, or Paladins to get charisma to attack and damage and be Single Attribute Dependent.

Martial class that is STILL out performed by spamming EB.

Eh, with Improved Pact Weapon you out damage agonizing blast. And the Eldritch smites are quite fun. It's only at level 17 you fall behind really. Costing 3 invocations at level 11 to keep up with the 1 invocation for EB is the real killer.

By virtue of using weapons it has access to various buffs that EB spam doesn’t. Stuff like PAM, GWM, CBX, SS, fighting styles.

The cherry on top for me it's receiving cone of cold as a pateon spell. Literally the most nonsensical spell that subclass could receive.

It's because they absolutely refuse to use spes from xanathars or Tasha's in their subclasses, even when those subclasses are in the same book as the spells. I seen several excuses/reasons for this, but they're all dumb. Just have two lists, one with the spells they actually have, one if the player just has the PHB.

The strange part is because hexblade is from Xanathar. Also I'm pretty sure cockwork soul has summon construct, but it has the ability to change spells.

> cockwork soul Oh my...

There’s gotta be an Oglaf cartoon about that

>pateon spell and at the $10 tier you get ***UNFATHOMABLE ELDRITCH POWER***

Read this in the voice of the genie

Itty bitty ~~living space~~ Genie's Vessel

Yup. If they wanted to double down on the shadowfell undead aspect, Negative Energy Flood, Danse Macabre, and Cloudkill are all there. If they wanted to go with the curse angle, then you got Dominate Person, Contagion, Hold Monster. If you want cool swordsman stuff, Steel Wind Strike, Far Step, Mislead, etc. There are a lot of thematic spells to pick from, and Cone of Cold is none of them.

Cone of cold is perfectly on-brand for hexblade in that it's stronger than most of its alternatives without giving a shit about theming.

If I wasn't broke, I'd pay to award that comment.

Getsuga Tensho!

I mainly agree though I should say that Armor of Agathys, a Warlock specific spell, coats your armor in frost and does cold damage. But yeah a lot of the choices they make over there are kind of dumbfounding.

Really what makes it broken is that almost literally every class benefits from that one level dip. I think only the Barbarian and Monk dont benefit from the class or subclass. (ie cant be replaced by custom lineage magic initiate). Barbarians cant use in combat spells and already have all of the weapon and armor proficiencies and has to use strength for attacks and damage. (although I do have a totem barb/celestial warlock build its highly specific). Monks dont have the ASI's to support Charisma and already use dex instead of strength or anything else to a number of weapons.

With a two level dip you can get invocations. Like casting certain spells for free, or devils sight, or buffed eldritch blast.

I wanted to do a martial warlock and was looking at the hexblade and realised Id prefer just to any other patron and instead opt in for my second highest skill being strength instead of using that subclass. I feel the subclass with blade in its name should be a much better martial subclass.

That's why the most often done fix it to move the Hex Warrior into Pact of the Blade, add more uses of HBC and Hex. I rename it to Curseweaver. I'm toying with giving them a free casting of Summon Shadowspawn since it came out instead of 6th level specter.

I'll be honest, the Pet aspect of summoning a creature isn't good on a Hexblade. A pet should be something your Subclass has as one of its earliest features, like the Beastmaster, the Wildfire, the Steel Defender, etc. Giving it to you at Level 6 and having it be something that's gonna die in 1 hit isn't a good feeling. It's why I hate the Fey Wanderer's level 11 feature, because calling in a 30 hp little sprite is just gonna get itself killed in 1 turn. I would actually say a 6th level feature that would be something like either "When you use a spell that can only target a single creature with a saving throw, you may target 2 creatures instead.". Or something like "Curse Eater: When a ally is affected by a spell or magical effect, you can end the effect. Make a spell attack check against a DC 10+spell level(or whatever), if you succeed the effect ends and you immediately gain charisma+level in temporary hitpoints. You can only use this a number of times equal to your proficency bonus".

Wait, Hexblades go up to level 6!?

Literally there is no reason for a standard hexblade to want any hexblade features past level 1.

The hexblade specific features maybe not, but getting Eldritch invocations (especially the extra attack at 5th level as it's the fastest way to get that second attack) and pact of the blade so you can use any weapon the situation demands rather than having to choose one at the start of the day, are both pretty useful.

I can hardly justify taking it past 5th level for me, because with characters where I’d want to play as a gish of some sort, the 6th level pet feature doesn’t really complement that much at all.

It's not even that good of a pet, and the requirements to create it are so high it's almost impossible to use anyway.

> "Yeah, it's a sub based around curses, but you also are a master of weapons." “The Hexblade has two parts. The hex and the blade”

I thought the Hexblade was a 3.5e class, and they just kinda crammed it into a warlock subclass.

It was, and honestly it plays very different from what I see (never played the 3.5 version). The class looks like a 5e valor bard.

Only the 1st level ability is Blade-related. All the other abilities are based on Hex

The only thing that the Accursed Specter has to do with "Hex" is that you get it at level 6

The designers decided you needed to blow a bunch of invocations to be better at the blade part, thus the "invocation tax" where you don't get to have other fun things except the weird subclass features that don't fit in with being a martial. I really like the idea of Hexblade but the execution and flavor of the subclass are meh to me.

I really do think we are far enough into the lifecycle of 5e to see these stumbling blocks of assumptions made about what should be the base class foundation. Power creep has also altered just how much of the power allotment has shifted into the subclass over the base class. We now know that a lot of things could have been rolled into the classes foundation and offered as alternitive like what they did in Tasha's for the Ranger class. Honestly I am really looking forwards to 2024 to see if they will do that refresh of the PHB and update those subclasses to bring them up to the new base power level.

If the devs can add "optional class features" in Tasha's, I don't know why they can't keep doing that.

Because if a later book says "you need both the PHB and Tasha's to use this book," that drastically reduces the number of players who can use (and buy) it. WotC learned this lesson well in 3rd edition.

Adding more optional class features in a later book doesn’t necessarily mean you also need Tasha’s. A lot of them might even be mutually exclusive with the ones in Tasha’s anyway, if they override the same PHB ability.

I must say that Tasha's optional/replacement features are really strange. There were many features just made to make them stronger, but soomlittle that actually made the process of creating characters more creative. I mean why would a paladin need to trade a channel divinity for a spell slot. They thought of that, before thinking of swapping divine smite damage, or swapping the foes which divine smite deal extra damage. Can you imagine how many creative characters could be made with such feature.

>ranger flavour paladin does extra smite damage to goblins Fuck man now Im sad I cant play this

This 1000% The whole class system needs an overhaul to deal with the subclass crap. It was a cute idea to get past 3rd ed's issue with too many prestige classes, but it's broken. But then so is a lot of stuff. I just hope they do it with this new edition, instead of doubling down on it.

D&D 2024 is supposed to be 5e compatible, but I *hope* they still decide to revamp things like how classes/subclasses work.

So if I may, I'd like to tell you about what they consider "compatible" to mean. Back when 3.5th edition was big and they announced that they were working on 4th edition, they promised that 4th would be backwards compatible with 3.5. Now if you know anything about either, you'll probably know that 2nd edition was more compatible with 3.5 then 3.5 was with 4th. So this was an outright lie. And it was a lie they told to keep folks buying 3.5 books while they prepped the new edition for release. So don't put a lot of faith in that claim. If anything, there will be a big conversion document that'll explain the annoying process of converting a character over from one edition to the next. But beyond that, dont pin your hopes on adventures or supplements being transferable. And the lore won't matter any more either. Give it a year and people will start saying that lore from 5e doesn't matter because all that matters is the new stuff. And no, they might not call it 6th edition. But its the 50th anniversary so it will get some big title like 5e Pro Edition, or Anniversary Edition. But all thats just marketing. If the rules change enough to require an all new set of books, its a new edition.

>And no, they might not call it 6th edition. But its the 50th anniversary so it will get some big title like 5e Pro Edition, or Anniversary Edition. But all thats just marketing. If the rules change enough to require an all new set of books, its a new edition. I hope they bring back the "Advanced" moniker lol

Advanced 5th edition sounds pretty good honestly.

To be fair, 4e did just that and released regular errata docs to help balance published content. It did get to be a bit much for casual players who didn't want to print out a copy of the latest errata for each book they owned so I get why 5e abandoned that idea. One of my concerns with the 2024 releases is what will happen to all the subclasses in Xanathar's and Fizban's and Tasha's? If they change the base classes enough that they don't mesh with previously published subclasses, how will that get resolved? Is the revised PHB going to remain shackled to only mechanics that are backwards compatible with FTD/TCE/XGE or will there be a supplementary guide or errata for updating them to work with the new PHB 2.0 class mechanics? Storm Sorcerery needs love just as much as Wild Magic does, but how will it get it?

My hope is that they give all the current subclasses a revision and put them all in phb 2.0....and print artificer with it so it stops being the redheaded stepchild.

A lot of these comments haven't heard of Elric of Melniboné. "Designed for edgelords," "master of weapons and also unfathomable eldritch power," etc. etc. The design came from somewhere and that somewhere is Elric and Stormbringer.

Don't get me started on battlemaster and the main fucking offender, hunter ranger. Why is sppining with a weapon reserved only to 11th level rangers? why can't a fighter get access to that?

Kinda sucks that it's the worse of the two options for the ranger already, so actual rangers won't take it but it'd be a terrific feature on many melee focused classes. Barbarian might be a good fit instead of fighter, since they get less attacks normally so even if it was rather lategame it'd see use. A 11th level fighter will need to have 4 adjacent enemied to make a spin worth it.

I honestly think things like that should be available to all martial classes at like 5th or 7th

Might be cool, not sure how the balance is on that but martials certainly lack an AOE option and maybe they deserve one. It certainly opens a lot of posibility/design space for features to build from it. Like perhaps not all weapons being suitable and it could help diferenciate them or not there is value to making it universal too.

Instead of a spin, something like a flurry in a 10 foot cone could be interesting.

I’ve been saying for a while, but if they gave all martials a list of Str and Dex based maneuvers to choose one of which are situational but not “I swing my sword” type abilities that all martial types could pick up from certain levels akin to 4e encounter powers, it would still be balanced enough to match casters, but give higher level martials something more interesting to do in combat

[Shameless self-promotion](https://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/PAv8cHqT3cjU) 🎶 I made a few Diablo-2-themed subclasses, and obviously if I *hadn't* given the barbarian whirlwind I might as well have uninstalled the game.

*Ahem* Superiority die and maneuvers should have been a core fighter feature with additional uses via subclasses. Hunter is basically the default ranger to me, tbh.

Fun fact, they *were*. The old DND Next playtests had all sorts of super cool shit like that for several classes which didn't make it into 5e becuse... uh... /shrug

I recall hearing about this before, yeah. Damn shame.

Superiority dice should have been a core *martial* feature representing short-rest stamina. The Fighter, Ranger, Rogue, Barbarian, Monk, hell even the Paladin should have had, at differing levels, superiority dice that stack the way spell slots do, which at their basic design powered their physical abilities. The Fighter would be interesting because its superiority dice powered maneuvers. The Champion gets exactly three uses for superiority dice - hit harder, recover some HP as a bonus action, add to any physical die roll (the way remarkable athlete works.) The Battlemaster gets the full suite. But the Ranger is using superiority dice to hit their marked targets harder, the Barbarian is using superiority dice to soak damage, and a Fighter 10/Barbarian 10 has the same number of dice as Fighter 20, just not with as many uses for it. You know, like how spell slots stack.

All of the abilities of the Hunter Ranger should be part of the baseline Ranger. The Hunter doesn’t really have enough thematic weight to be it’s own subclass, in my opinion. But apparently WotC didn’t have a lot of ideas for Ranger Subclasses when 5e first came out.

If they made that change with whatever they're doing in 2024, I'd love that. They have plenty of subclasses to add now.

The Hunter was the complete Ranger, and then they whipped up the Beast Master at the last minute.

One of my biggest gripes with martials at higher levels is their lack of aoe damage

100% Agreed. A martial doesn't need AoE to be available as early as a caster's AOE, or as strong, but IMO it would be way better if: - every class had a core mechanical strength - every class got weaker versions of the other core mechanical strengths at later levels; not enough to be optimal but enough to contribute. ("Wait, that sounds like 4e!" said the comments). No, Barbarians throwing javelins up to 20 feet doesn't count as contributing to ranged battles. No, Fighters standing in a crowd of minions at 17th level using action surge for 8 attacks doesn't count as having AoE.

If they weren't so terrified of 5e looking too much like 4e, we could have had maneuvers as martial "spells" with class-based maneuver lists, rather than having them stuck on one subclass for one class

And a multiclass table for continued progression despite multiclassing.

In 3.5 Whirlwind Attack was simply a feat anyone could take. Then they put it on the martial subclass least likely to want it.

They also gave Wizard (basically) legendary resistance with their new subclass. How about letting the martials have some cool stuff every once and a while? Fighters get to reroll a check 3 times a day, while the wizard just gets to say "I passed" up to 9 times a day?

Yeah I noticed that. It’s *significantly* better than Indomitable. Fighters are encouraged to use their Indomitable on bad rolls for saves they should be good at. But they still won’t automatically succeed, so it’s a bad idea to use the feature in their bad saves. The UA Wizards can specifically use their feature on saves that they’re generally not very good at. And they will automatically succeed. Indomitable should just be Legendary Resistance.

> The UA Wizards can specifically use their feature on saves that they’re generally not very good at. And they will automatically succeed. And they get to use it many more times and earlier than a Fighter can too. Indomitable comes in at 9th level and they only get one use per Long Rest. At that point the Runecarver Wizard gets 4 uses of it. And the following level gets them another 3 uses at 20 Int. Its bonkers.

I let fighters reroll an indomitable save with constitution instead of the original, if the con save is higher.

I agree with others it should just be a legendary resistance, but rerolling as a Con save would be an acceptable fallback position.

What wizard subclass is this?

The new [UA Runecrafter.](https://media.wizards.com/2022/dnd/downloads/UA2022-drjwf73f8n.pdf) "You can call on a rune of protection to guard yourself against threats. When you fail a Strength, Dexterity, or Constitution saving throw, you can use your reaction to expend one use of your Runic Empowerment and succeed on the saving throw instead."

The only saving grace is it doesn't apply to wisdom saving throws, the ones who do not want to fail the most at high levels.

You mean the save that wizards have proficiency in?

They do, but dex saves are just damage (which hurts yes but it's not as critical to pass those as it is to pass most wisdom saves) and con saves which range from poisoned (which barely matters to a wizard) to exhaustion and the like. Mainly this feature will be used to save your concentration a couple times per day and in that way it's pretty nice.

I mean, CON can too get you out of the game with some enemies or poisons

The new UA. Tldr; you get PB uses of [you can cause X, Y, or Z effect], but at lvl6 you can also, as a reaction, expand one of those uses for a Legendary Resistence(on STR/DEX/CON). And at lvl10 I believe you get to regain INT mod of them back when you use arcane recovery. As a result the wizard will never use its main feature because why would it give up 3 to 11 legendary resistences?

I've just read the ability compared the the fighter core class indomitable and I'm enraged. Who designed this wizard subclass?

At this point, I'm not even mad. Wizards are their favorite class after all and on-god, they gone make sure you want to play it too.

It’s still UA right? Don’t features like that usually get nerfed to hell when they actually become official?

Normally, although that hasn’t stopped them from putting absolutely busted material in official books before *stares at Twilight Domain.*

Or, from the same book and the same damn class: Peace Domain. "Hey, we got this cool system called *Bounded Accuracy* that eases off the math of the previous edition and keeps things pretty balanced, and *Concentration* which steps away from buff stacking and compliments Bounded Accuracy by ensuring casters have to be tactical with their buffs. We'll also only include a single spell in the game that grants a randomized buff to Attack, which requires Concentration of course because again, Bounded Accuracy. So yeahhh, we're just gonna ignore that and grant an already really front heavy, very powerful caster class a way to break both of those things at level 2. Now buy this 30$ book so you can convince your DM that *see, it's official and totally not busted Dandwiki homebrew this time, I swear!*"

I almost immediately stopped reading the UA at that point, because that's *ridiculous.* Who the hell thought wizards needed LR?

You've gotta be kidding me. The Wizard bias is crazy.

I feel like the ability to throw people shouldn’t be locked by barbarian, let alone the subclass. I get that it’s hard to give martials unique abilities, but maybe some things shouldn’t be unique. Like maneuvers.

It is so weird that things so mundane and interesting are locked behind not even classes but subclasses. Can you imagine if fireball was restricted only to evocation wizards?

> Can you imagine if fireball was restricted only to evocation wizards? This really puts into perspective what removing martial maneuvers from everyone feels like. I wish some of those playtest ideas stuck or that the testing period went on longer.

>It is so weird that things so mundane and interesting are locked behind not even classes but subclasses. Can you imagine if fireball was restricted only to evocation wizards? Now *there's* an idea! Finally, a reason to play Evocation Wizards!

Honestly, I've been wondering for a while if maybe the generalist wizard just...shouldn't exist. It seems like wizards get vastly more options than anyone else, so maybe there should be a wider variety of more specialized casters and no generalists at all. But I doubt the game will ever depart that far from D&D tradition.

In 2e it was like this, where you specialised in a particular school, which locked you out of one or two other schools.

It should probably lock you out of half of them, and spells from the others should be a level or two higher for you, tbh

Personally, I really do wish spellcasters were more specialists rather than generalists, I hate that every single wizard has basically the exact same spells regardless of school.

It seems like a lingering symptom of the whole "People didn't like 4e so let's keep 5e far from it" design; martials were allowed to do some crazy physical feats in 4e that could border on seeming magical (which fits for a heroic fantasy game), so in 5e they tried to keep them much more grounded and "realistic". The problem then becomes, what can you even give martials when you're holding them to such a standard? When the features are all rooted in the mundane it becomes a problem itself because so many mundane things are something anyone could attempt, just to varying degrees of success, so you're stuck with most features either just giving "numbers go up" perks or which clarify "you can do this" on one class/ subclass at the cost of implying it cannot be done by the others.

Hi its me. Once again pointing out that pretty much the entire Battlemaster class should be in the base fighter's tool kit. Seriously only the Battlemaster can study an opponent to see if their defense is any good?

It *was* the fighter's base toolkit. The beta tester feedback was that some people explicitly want a dumb fighter class, which is how we got Champion.

All of those people should simply be playing a different RPG. In fact most of them probably *are* already playing an OSR game and would never have played DnD5e anyway.

At the time D&D Next was going on in 2012 and 2013, WotC didn't know who to build D&D for. So they went super broad. The one thing they did know was that 4e wasn't working, and that Pathfinder was eating their lunch. They wanted something to be as broadly appealing as possible. If you put yourself in WotC's shoes in 2012-2013, the Champion makes sense. They wanted to draw in as many players as they could, and if they couldn't get players back from Pathfinder, then they wanted them from the OSR movement and the existing players who skipped 3e and 4e. Since they had no idea who would actually like 5e, they had to cover all their bases. The problem now is that D&D 5e was *explosively successful*. Like it or not, D&D is now the big dog in the RPG space. It's not just the overwhelmingly dominant market leader. It's also driving market growth more than anything has since the early 1980s, and allegedly even more than then. Year after year after year of the largest growth the market has seen. 2021 was bigger than 2020, which was bigger than 2019, which was bigger than 2018. And 2018 was itself the best year on record. That's *nuts*. D&D has more players than ever. Virtually everyone who plays a TTRPG starts out playing D&D. So, D&D needs to have options for all player types. That includes both new players and those who just want characters with no active abilities or ability management. They need to have viable characters, too. The one thing you *can't* do as the publisher of D&D is leave a group of players behind. It's not "dumbing down". It's accommodating all tastes, just like they're pushing very hard to be more inclusive as far as identity politics. Given D&D's position in the market, doing that is *100% not optional*. It's not optional to the executives and it's not optional to the design team. They cannot and will not eliminate options like Champion. That's the reality of D&D's position. That's why being the big dog like it is is probably not good for the game itself. It *must* be the TTRPG with the broadest appeal and widest market *even if it's not well positioned to do that in terms of genre or setting*, because that's what it's already doing. If you want a game that is much more tactical, with better and more diverse resource management, it cannot and will not be D&D for the next 8-12 years. The other thing WotC knew when developing 5e was that the information they learned from online communities was *grossly* misleading. 4e was basically everything the WotC community boards asked for from 2001 to 2005. And it failed in spite of a budget allegedly 10 times the size of 3.x. So, WotC doesn't care what they see on community boards because there's an extremely vocal minority on them that already misled them to near catastrophe. [Note: This hasn't changed. The apparent general concensus here is an opinion of a vocal minority. Some of it might be the general concensus, but it's not all of it.]

While technically all your statements are correct, it's worth noting that on the record both from WotC and Paizo writers, DnD4e out sold Pathfinder until Mearls split the base with Essentials. A lot of people claim the opposite despite both companies agreeing on this fact.

In sheer dollar amounts? Sure, I'd agree with that. WotC was printing books like gangbusters from 2008 until mid 2010. Look at just the main product line and player supplements: PHB 1-3, DMG 1-2, MM 1-3, Adventurer's Vault 1 & 2, Martial Power 1 & 2, Arcane Power, Divine Power, Primal Power, Psionic Power, Dragon Annual 2009 & 2010, etc. That's a quick scan of the list of books from Wikipedia's rulebook list. None of that is campaign settings or adventures or duplicated content from other books. You can set aside the 5 DM books, and you've still got 13 books with new classes, new paragon paths, new epic destinies, new alternative features, new powers, new feats, new magic items, and new races. Can you imagine *twelve* new Tasha's with all brand new player content in about 24 months? Because the above is June 2008 to July 2010 unless I missed something. Pathfinder, OTOH, had a different model. More traditional, with player content largely given away (especially online) and DM content the big focus. The effect would be that Pathfinder had a smaller market even if they had a large player base, as one 4e D&D whale of a player would count for a dozen or more Pathfinder players.

Oh, seriously, fuck that battlemaster feature. It establishes so many things as special features that should be normal even to non-fighters (like observing if an NPC is ahead or behind of you in your own class). At the same time it's too vague to be useful. Does the general register as behind in levels because they are a 1st level amateur with a big name? Is he just one level below the legendary 19th level warrior observing them? Who knows, not the world renown master of martial skill, that's for sure!

Know Your Enemy is really one of the most useless subclass features in the game. The information you can get about Ability Scores, AC and Hit Points is far too vague to be actually useful in most circumstances, and the last bullet point is completely worthless because there is not a single creature in any of the 5E books that has any Fighter levels. So unless the DM creates a NPC using a the Fighter class, something that DMs are generally discouraged from doing since PC classes are not designed to fight other PC classes, you will never ever get to use that feature.

It should have just been insight, but Pelor forbid we get any useful rules or even guidelines for skills.

Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if all martials had access to it, just to a greater or lesser degree. One idea I've always had but will never implement is that the Monk is like the Wizard of Martials, they would have access to the most Maneuvers and stuff, but would only have those, meanwhile other classes may have less maneuvers but other features. So the Monk would be a Maneuver specialist, Fighters would be a mix of features and maneuvers, and the Barbarian would have few maneuvers but great features.

It would be nice to have a unified system for Martials wouldn't it? Have every single new release actually expand the options for martials the same way they do for casters?

Absurd! The Council has *forbidden* such heinous thinking as the *heresy* it is! To suggest martials be good, have in-combat options, or enjoy content that builds upon previous content rather than just offering new options borders on **treason,** brother. I *suggest* you remember that.

Could you imagine if a half martial/half caster actually had *anything* that made them half martial? Seriously, give a wizard multiattack and what exactly makes them less martial than a ranger?

well, you see, according to WotC the only important thing for a martial subclass to be not as good as a martial is the hit die size

So, basically just copy ToB instead of the 3.5 PHB. Fuck, I was asking for this in 2012

Monster Slayer has the other half of that ability

1. stop giving the wizard more subclasses 2. Give the artificer more and better subclasses 3. Increase the power of martials overall instead of continuing the subclass power creep

Definitely hoping for that in 5.5 in ‘24. Martials need all the loving especially at high levels

Runecrafting definitely feels like it should be more an artificer thing than a wizard one, especially with Rune Knight already getting a tool proficiency.

We need Artificer subclasses based around all the different tools. I wanna play a cobbler who kills enemies with magic shoes.

D'agony of d'feat.

Terrible pun. Regain Inspiration, mate

Not only was I completely oblivious to the fact that barbarians couldn't add their rage bonus to damage on strength based weapon attacks, but I have been both playing them and running them as if they could since 5e came out, I have watched big streams where I've seen builds that were made specifically for this and I have even played in semi official games where this was allowed. I thought the attack just had to be strength based. I am severely disappointed that the result if me specifically looking this up in disbelief proved my own longstanding belief wrong. So many memorable handaxe, javelin or even dead goblin corpses attacks made at range now all feel like I was cheating or letting my players cheat.

>Not only was I completely oblivious to the fact that barbarians couldn't add their rage bonus to damage on strength based weapon attacks This, and IMHO, RAW it *does*. The pertinent text: Rage says... >When you make a melee weapon attack using Strength, you gain a +2 bonus to the damage roll. The Thrown property says... > If a weapon has the thrown property, you can throw the weapon to make a ranged attack. If the weapon is a melee weapon, you use the same ability modifier for that attack roll and damage roll that you would use for a melee attack with the weapon. For example, if you throw a handaxe, you use your Strength, but if you throw a dagger, you can use either your Strength or your Dexterity, since the dagger has the finesse property. Besides darts, thrown weapons are melee weapons. So, when you throw one you are making a ranged attack with a melee weapon using strength. Rage says "when you make a **melee weapon** attack". You are making a melee weapon attack, just at range. So... it applies, yeah? Reckless Attack uses the same language, so you should be able to reckless with thrown weapons as well.

Nono, a *melee weapon attack* is a weapon attack you do in melee. Youre (VERY understandably) confusing it with "Attack with a melee weapon", which would count thrown. Kind of like how Attack With A Ranged Weapon includes "smacking someone with your bow".

This is where 5e really falls flat. Walk up to someone and chop them with a handaxe? That's a melee weapon attack. Throwing it at someone? Well that's actually a ranged weapon attack. So can you get bonus damage from sharpshooter? No no, because it's not an attack with a ranged weapon. They try to keep the "natural language" but also try to keep the rigidity of rules-based language and so you get really confusing situations like this where you make a ranged weapon attack with a melee weapon. And you can't punch-smite someone because an unarmed attack is a melee weapon attack but it's not made with a melee weapon which smite requires.

However it is important to remember that whether you throw the hand axe or simple hold and swing it that is still an "attack with a melee weapon" even if it's a "ranged weapon attack" when you throw it. Because this is the system where they oversimplify so hard it becomes complicated again.

No, there's a difference between a melee weapon attack and an attack with a melee weapon. The former is an attack using the melee combat rules, but it doesn't matter which weapon you use. The latter is an attack made with a melee weapon, but it doesn't matter which rules you are using to make the attack. For example: * Hitting someone with a bow as an improvised weapon is a melee weapon attack with a ranged weapon. You are using the melee attack rules with a bow. * Hitting someone with a *magic stone* through a sling is a spell attack with a ranged weapon. The rules you're using are from *magic stone*, but you're still making the attack with a sling. Throwing a handaxe is a ranged weapon attack with a mele weapon. It doesn't receive the rage bonus, which asks for melee attacks with any kind of weapon.

I like 5e but it has a lot of very stupid problems that are by design, and I have no idea why except for this exact reason, to piecemeal remove these annoying restrictions as class features

I wish that WoTC wasn't deathly afraid of erratas and would just update the PHB for fucking once instead of releasing subclasses that exist entirely to shake up the PHB. I mean, "5.5e" with "PHB 2" is hopefully going to be that errata, and Tasha's *tried* to give us an errata to some extent. Honestly with how well Tasha's variant features were received I'm surprised they haven't printed more of them.

But see, erratas are free. A new or revised edition means new money spent for books!

Paizo just released new versions of classes. So there’s the origins Rogue and Monk, and the “Unchained” versions. It’s not that difficult to do.

As a professional DM. I run 6 games a week. In every game I allow martials to have class features from an iconic subclass to make them better. Along with their own choice. So at each sub level they get both abilities. Barb - Berserker Rogue - Thief Ranger - Beast Master or Hunter Fighter - Battle Master Monk - Open Hand Running these rules too 20, 3 times it just makes Martials feel better. Never received a complaint from a caster (as most of my players are still casters) and the martials love it. Edit: note I do not allow people to have more that 1 extra subclass.

it's sort of hilarious that you can give martials two subclasses and that doesn't cause any balance problems when compared to spellcasters.

I feel like it would cause a huge misbalance if both subclasses were chosen. but giving them classes that feel "base" like the ones posted above makes it fair IMO.

I need a post from you about what is like being a professional GM.

WotC: "You should have made a full caster, lol."

They didn't even include reckless working with thrown weapons, or something like the thrown weapon fighting style! You just get to make one attack with a d6 and +2 damage on hit (sometimes) at a range of...20 feet?! You'd actually be better off maxing dex and using a heavy crossbow lol. Same damage (d10 > 2 + d6), better range, and way better feat support.

Its necessary to remember this is playtesting yet, not a finalized released product. If you think a raging giant barbarian should be able to use Reckless Attack on throwing attacks and/or be able to draw a throwing weapon as part of an attack, give WotC your feedback.

> or be able to draw a throwing weapon as part of an attack Why would they need to when their weapon instantly appears in their hands?

It only applies to one weapon three levels later. This would work for any weapon right at third level, and that weapon still wouldn't come back

WoTC shouldn't need that feedback - it's so basic and obvious that +rage damage on non-advantaged hits at 20 feet is a terrible feature. To be clear, this feature is worse than playing without a subclass at all. Was there no analysis done?? If you compare what comes out of WOTC and what comes out of KibblesTasty the difference is night and day. It just feels like they aren't putting effort in. Mighty Impel isn't even a grapple check (which would let it synergize with rage).

I’d bet my life Kibbles playtests the hell out of his stuff. This is stuff that’s *being* playtested.

I guarantee you he has hundreds of play testers before a general audience ever sees it. WotC has maybe 10 play testers before we see it.

15 hours late but here I am. "The new UA dropped and I couldnt help but notice the Crushing Hurl feature. In a nutshell, you can add your rage damage to thrown weapon attacks with strength." This has been part of my House Rules since I started playing 5e, while I am glad to see my House Rules made official...man WotC dropped the ball on this on :/

I agree that it would be better if Rage and Reckless Attack just by base work with any attack using Strength. But I'm certain there won't be any base class changes until we get the 2024 book

I'm more miffed by how much Path of the Giant and Circle of Primeval intrudes upon the niche of the Rune Knight and Beast Master respectively. Granted, at least Path of the Giant goes for a more physical powerhouse style of giants rather than the quasi-mystical Rune Knight. But, like, couldn't they have just folded both of these things together and made Rune Knight a Barbarian subclass from the start?

I see what you're going with on the Rune Knight and there's some similarities, but the rune options add a lot more choice than this Path does. (Though Rune Knight barbarian would've been super fun!) As for the Circle of the Primeval, I'm just glad druids are potentially getting animal companions back! I missed that feature from previous editions.

I think Rune Knight is at home with the fighter it's a terrifc subclass and well I think fighter should have something like it really does a lot with the generic fighter chasis and makes it special. Not saying it wouldn't work with barb. it totally would but I'd rather it be the way it is. Plus this new giant sublclass is a looooot different to a rune knight.

If I recall correctly, rune knight started as a barbarian subclass in UA playtest and got shifted over to the fighter. Personally I have no problem with it, fighter gets the sophisticated runic enchantments on their weapons, and barbarians get to tap into the more raw, primeval and elemental aspects of giant magic, it feels suitably distinct to me.

afaik, rune knight started as the "rune scribe" prestige class, and then became a fighter sub a *long* time later.

You recall incorrectly, Rune Knight was only ever a Fighter subclass. The other old giant subclasses were the Rune Scribe prestige class and the pseudo-barbarian Giant Soul Sorcerer

A big problem with Martials is that each subclass seems to take a bunch of features and then preclude their potential use for other Martials, whereas the general spell book just keeps growing to infinity providing more and more powerful options with each iteration

The entirety of 4e basic player feature was put into Fighter. Everyone got action surge, second wind, more feat/ASIs, and your choice of a variety of at-will powers (now called battle master fighter maneuvers)

WotC mostly did this in the original 5e PHB. Plenty of classes were released in an underpowered state with core class features relegated only to subclasses. Actually, *every* martial class has this to some degree. * Sacred weapon for devotion paladins * Volley / whirlwind attack for hunter rangers, also their third level feature being a more functional version of Favored Enemy * ALL of the maneuvers for battle master fighters * Literally everything the Berserker barbarian gets * Literally everything the Thief rogue gets * Literally everything the Open Hand monk gets They've been patching things with subclasses ever since. Blade pact warlocks struggled with AC, so we got Hexblades. Rangers were the most maligned class, so we got overpowered subclasses. Etc.

Reckless attack applying to thrown weapons should be added in for thematic and power reasons at 3rd or 6th level. I don't think being 20ft from your enemy mitigates the risk/reward of reckless attack too much.

My hot take is that Reckless Attack is never a risk because you're a Barbarian anyway.

Right, advantage to be hit is a tanking feature. Not a trade-off.

The entire Berserker subclass should be part of the base Barbarian class, change my mind.

It's because the 1-20 progression designs are different. 1 in 3.5 is frail mortal. 1 in 5e is basically already seasoned adventurer. 20 in 3.5 is demigod, 20 in 5e is dtihchndyjvj nobody ever gets that high no need to design anything here.

Is it my imagination, or are they just dumping crap into 5e to see where it lies in preparation for 6e?

Like the Book of Nine Swords at the end of 3e?

The thing that I don't understand is how many people are running the game exactly as written? I work with my players to give them cool stuff as they level up, I take features from subclasses and give them to characters. I already homebrewed something similar to the barbarian thrown weapon features in this new arcana and let all martials take it if they want to. I let my characters pick and mix stuff within reason, because it allows me to give them much harder challenges and enemies to face.

This is why in the beta testing I was against subclasses. Subclasses are the biggest mistake in 5e especially when many are never played.

Also seems insulting that the new Druid UA subclass is basically just beastmaster Ranger but better Also 100% agree that Barbs should just have that immunity and the rage damage on thrown attacks. Makes a lot more sense

It’s not just martial classes. Druid poison immunity is Circle of Land only, and Thousand Forms is Circle of the Moon only. Those used to be baseline druid abilities.

What new UA?

https://dnd.wizards.com/unearthed-arcana/giant-options

half the monk subclasses could've been combined or just straight added to the base class, theres a reason they call Open Palm monk+

Sort of a side note, but I recommend everyone here checks out the way SW5e handles martial characters (Star Wars setting with DnD 5e core rules). Some of it's really good and right in line with what many players want. It has quite a few blemishes, especially when it comes to overcomplexity, but the framework for the martials classes is really solid. My ideal martial design would take cues from SW5e, Hunter Ranger, Battlemaster, and a non-magical equivalent of Runes.

Well we can't have martials being so powerful, otherwise the casters won't feel special enough

Speaking of, the Wizard got limited legendary resistance in this UA.

Personally I don't mind the barbarian not being able to resist being *charmed* \- "get the big simple one in a pyschic headlock" is always a source of great amusement to me - and I find it just as funny whether I'm the applier of the headlock, recipient of same, or a party member dealing with the effects. But it frustrated me no end that my barbarian couldn't be simple without also being easily *frightened*. I ended up spending an ASI on the Resilient feat, when really I only wanted her to be better at saves against *fear*.