Interesting in combat; versatile out.

[Seekergeek]

I get bored. I guess that is what this thread boils down to. I get bored, and then I commit character suicide so that I can try something new. It is disruptive to the party, it creates issues for the DM having to introduce a new PC every five sessions or so, and I'm starting to feel pretty down on myself about it. Currently I am playing a warlock who I can already feel is not long for this world.

Up to this point, the most fun I've had was playing a bard/paladin who died of...you know...pointy things (but not because I wanted him to, and sort of just let it happen as is usually the case). I found him to be varied enough in combat that I didn't feel tied in to a pattern of hack/slash/repeat and dynamic enough out of combat that I felt like he constantly had something to contribute. That being said, I don't really think I can bring that class combo back to the table again in the same campaign.

It seems to me that a lore bard could be a great pure class to play given my shortcomings as a player, using magical secrets to pick up some atypical damage options like spiritual weapon and/or conjure animals. Despite its shortcomings, I feel like a beast master could have some potential to be a fun character to play - maybe a street urchin with a swarm of rats? I'm not sure. What have been your most dynamic characters? What has been the most fun to you?

For what it is worth, we are currently in an 8th level party comprised of a land druid, a swashbuckler/battlemaster, and a paladin. My group are made up of 30 somethings who are not optimizers, so overt power takes a back seat to fun I'd say.

[MaxWilson]

Sounds like your group would benefit from adopting (2nd edition) Darksun-style character trees (http://bluishcertainty.blogspot.com/2016/07/dark-sun-character-trees.html), so that you can switch PCs without the suicide bits.

RE: your actual question, I've had lots of fun with all kinds of classes, but if I had to pick one I'd say my Paladin/Sorcerer has been the most unexpectedly fun, partly because of his personality but also because he's really useful to the party. As the party tank/healer/controller and secondary ranged specialist (planning on Warlock 2 eventually to replace Fire Bolt) and good all-around generalist, he's been an all-star and the other PCs really appreciate him, which is one way to feel really good. (He also willingly steps up to do the dishes and other camp chores, and he's always pleasant to talk to and never snappish, both of which are appreciated by other PCs and also very different from my actual personality, which makes me like him even more.)

I'd advise you to try to cram as many roles as possible onto a single chassis. Maybe try something like a Life Cleric 1/Enchanter X who is simultaneously a tank, a secondary healer, a controller, and artillery/control/utility when necessary. Fighter 1/Necromancer X is fun too in a completely different way. So are bardlocks with Conjure Animals and Aura of Vitality and lots of people skills.

-Max

[Seekergeek]

It's really just me that has the problem. The others tend to get pretty invested in their characters. We rarely deal with deaths outside my own, and when we do it is typically well earned.

I don't want to give the impression anyone in the group gives me a difficult time over it, we've been playing together for the better part of 15 years (though I attend via skype now, having moved all over the damn place since high school), and no one really takes things too seriously. I may approach our DM about letting me have a roster of options, though. He'll bust my balls about it but will likely hand-wave it if I really want.

[MaxWilson]

Consider also the possibility that you may just be tired of TTRPGs for now. Maybe taking up fencing or mountain climbing is what you really need, for a while. Do some introspection and figure out if it's really the characters you're burned out on, or the game.

Just a thought.

[Seekergeek]

Consider also the possibility that you may just be tired of TTRPGs for now. Maybe taking up fencing or mountain climbing is what you really need, for a while. Do some introspection and figure out if it's really the characters you're burned out on, or the game.

Just a thought.

Upsettingly insightful. I have recently taken up mountain biking in the actual mountains up here, but the game is more or less my only tie to home and it bums me out to admit I'm burned out on that last connection to home. Yoooou jerk, Max Wilson!

[MaxWilson]

Sorry.

Life is long. I was away from D&D for fifteen years, from 1999 or so until 5E's debut in 2014. Even during that time I had a good four-month break (a period of time when everyone had schedule conflicts, which was fortunate because I was feeling kind of burned out DMing).

It gets better.

[Grod_The_Giant]

I'd say Moon Druid looks like about the widest-reaching class out there. Full access to the second most versatile spell list in the game, plus massive amounts of wildshaping.

[Socratov]

play a trigger happy magic initiate (for the extra spellslot for a specific spell) Wild Magic sorcerer.

I have had heaps of fun already and try to complete the list. and them make another. and make sure you surge pretty much every time by triggering it on a 1 on a d4.

another thought: have you tried DMing? it enables you to make characters (NPC's) by the handful and ahving them slaughtered either through plot or by players.

[Sigreid]

Well, bard literally gets almost all of the toys to play with. Personally, I think they gave bard a bit much, but I'm not that fussed about it.

[Seekergeek]

I love the bard class. I think, probably, a straight lore bard will get the next and probably final run before I take Max's advice closer to heart.

I'm thinking of focusing the magical secrets on some combat options to act as staples to allow me to take mostly utility spells otherwise. Again, I'm not concerned with being optimal so much as interesting. I was thinking pairing spiritual weapon for a non-concentration eating option with conjure animals or call lightning may be a couple of good potential choices. Alternatively Bless could take up my concentration while I use vicious mockery and spiritual weapon round to round. That could free up the majority of my other choices for more utility spells as a great amount of our campaign has to this point involved social interaction as much as combat.

Oh. Question on the SCAG alternate features for the Half-Elf: would the high-elf cantrip still be INT driven, or would it be CHA based? I suppose since it doesn't say otherwise, it would be INT?

[Giant2005]

It sounds to me like you won't enjoy playing any character - not if you are so willing to throw them away due to perceived lack of usefulness.
The only way you can enjoy the character is if you actually enjoy the character's character. Make a character and take the time to give him a damn good backstory. Fall in love with who that character is supposed to be. If you do that, it doesn't matter what he does in combat, nor does it matter how versatile he is; you won't want to give him up regardless.
Then again, you could just be playing a pseudo-war game where roleplay isn't really part of the equation at all. If that is the case, talk to the group and try to add a bit more flavor to the game. Hack and Slash will bore anyone eventually, regardless of how mechanically interesting things are.

[Seekergeek]

Well that's just not the case. Roleplay makes up the vast majority of our games, and it is what I enjoy the most - however that doesn't eliminate the mechanical aspects of the game and no matter how much I enjoy playing Ronnie the Woodelf, (He's a 12 year old Goblin that was raised by a small Woodelf community after they slaughtered his parents in a violent misunderstanding - essentially, he's a DnD version of Will Ferrell's character from Elf. When Ronnie's goblin tribesmen fell on the settlement en-masse seeking revenge, Ronnie begged for the favour of any being that cared for the elves to help him, and was granted power by the Green Lord Oran to dispatch the Goblin tribe and save his adopted family. Now he serves as a Green Knight of the Fey...except it wasn't actually Oran who answered his call, it was Uluu Thalongh and Ronnie's powers have a much darker bent than he suspects). I really like the character a lot. He's innocent and entirely oblivious to his own dark powers and the way they appear to those around him. He believes himself to be an Elven child, and behaves as such. He has a good heart and is well liked by his party members as they track down a soul held captive by an evil lich.

None of this means I don't find the warlock a bit of a drag to play in the parts of the game which involve its mechanics.

In contrast, I equally loved Palaver Firesong, the paladin/valor bard of Millil - but I enjoyed him on a lot of levels beyond the character. He was an interesting character who could do interesting and varied things within the mechanical structure of the game. That's the difference, I guess. If it were simply a dungeon crawl or war-table game then Ronnie would be just fine because I wouldn't need/want/hope he could do more within the written rules to expand on his character traits. Palaver could do that. Palaver also stumbled across a deck of many things in our 2e conversion of Ravenloft and that was the end of him...

I have also greatly enjoyed the Moon Druid, but again I don't want to bring the same classes to the table time and again. The lore bard seems like a really solid bet for me - as does a cleric, perhaps.

[MaxWilson]

Well, bard literally gets almost all of the toys to play with. Personally, I think they gave bard a bit much, but I'm not that fussed about it.

...sort of. The bard class has access to almost all the toys, but you'd probably have to play a dozen bards before you'd have access to most of the best toys at some point.

Trying to pick spells for a high-level Lore Bard is an exercise in anxiety. There's so much stuff you want and so little you can actually afford!


In contrast, I equally loved Palaver Firesong, the paladin/valor bard of Millil - but I enjoyed him on a lot of levels beyond the character. He was an interesting character who could do interesting and varied things within the mechanical structure of the game. That's the difference, I guess. If it were simply a dungeon crawl or war-table game then Ronnie would be just fine because I wouldn't need/want/hope he could do more within the written rules to expand on his character traits. Palaver could do that. Palaver also stumbled across a deck of many things in our 2e conversion of Ravenloft and that was the end of him...

Mechanically, here are three characters I'd love to play if I got the chance, all of whom have a variety of mechanical options:

(1) Wood Elf Eldritch Knight 11/Swashbuckler 9 with Sharpshooter, Mobile and Skulker feats [EK 1 first then Swashbuckler 1-5, EK 2-5, Swashbuckler 6-9, EK 6-11]: mobile, high at-will DPR, can exploit darkness (EK Darkness spell or the real thing), has amazing Athletics despite low Str so can do the grapple/prone trick for control, has single-target control via Panache that bypasses legendary resistance, gets sneak attack damage on practically anything even at long range, has Uncanny Dodge for defense on a hit OR Shield occasionally to make it a complete miss, Skulker + Stealth Expertise lets you hide from even monsters with Darkvision in the dark using your Cunning Action to be almost unhittable by non-AoE attacks.

(2) Life Cleric 1/Enchanter X w/ high Str and Heavy Armor Master and Warcaster. Awesome party tank who can grapple enemies, hypnotize them almost at will with his gaze, force them to hit each other with Instinctive Charm, and paralyze them with Hold Monster/etc. (double efficiency for Enchantment/Charm spells), in addition to all the normal wizard tricks like Fireball/Planar Binding/Wall of Force.

(3) Barbarian 1-2/Fiend Bladelock X with Great Weapon Master and Polearm Master. All the normal Reckless Attack/Rage fun of a barbarian PLUS temp HP on kill PLUS Armor of Agathys that lasts twice as long as normal (Rage resistance) and therefore does double damage PLUS eventual Mass Suggestion/True Polymorph shenanigans.

[Seekergeek]

Life Cleric 1/Enchanter X w/ high Str and Heavy Armor Master and Warcaster. Awesome party tank who can grapple enemies, hypnotize them almost at will with his gaze, force them to hit each other with Instinctive Charm, and paralyze them with Hold Monster/etc. (double efficiency for Enchantment/Charm spells), in addition to all the normal wizard tricks like Fireball/Planar Binding/Wall of Force.

I've toyed with almost the same concept - a life cleric 1/enchanter x Aasimar who focused entirely on manipulating his enemies and buffing his allies so he never had to raise a finger himself, because really physical combat is so very gauche. Instinctive Charm and Sanctuary seem to make a heck of a good combo that way.

[Giant2005]

Enchanters are excellent, too excellent in fact.
One of my characters is a Life Cleric 1/Enchanter X that was initially awesome, but his awesomeness ruined the game enough for the DM to render him crappy. Now, everything either has fantastic Wisdom saves, or is immune to charm.
That could be just my DM, but I expect that sort of thing is fairly common among DMs. If your character is too good at something and that something can easily ruin encounters, then the DM will step forward to make sure you are no longer too good at that something.

[Seekergeek]

EIf your character is too good at something and that something can easily ruin encounters, then the DM will step forward to make sure you are no longer too good at that something.

Absolutely, which is why optimization exercises seem strange outside of a white room to me. Anyway, I did talk to my DM about the concept and he loved it and when a DM loves an idea, I find they are less likely to nerf it. At least my DM.

[MaxWilson]

Enchanters are excellent, too excellent in fact.
One of my characters is a Life Cleric 1/Enchanter X that was initially awesome, but his awesomeness ruined the game enough for the DM to render him crappy. Now, everything either has fantastic Wisdom saves, or is immune to charm.
That could be just my DM, but I expect that sort of thing is fairly common among DMs. If your character is too good at something and that something can easily ruin encounters, then the DM will step forward to make sure you are no longer too good at that something.

Among bad DMs, yes. Good DMs will not customize adventures to nullify specific characters; that nullifies player choices. In the words of AngryDM:


Ragnar, Jozan, Lidda, Mialee, and Soveliss are my Platonic Party. They aren’t real characters, they don’t have stats, and they don’t even need names. I just gave them names because the “iconic character” idea was kind of neat and I wish 4E and 5E had done it. Plus, they make great examples when you’re writing thousands of stupid words of DMing advice.

Ragnar, Jozan, Lidda, Mialee, and Soveliss represent my conceptual understanding of the “standard adventuring party.” They are the Platonic reality of D&D groups and each is a conceptual understanding of what a fighter, cleric, rogue, wizard, and ranger can do. They can be different levels, they function a little differently in different systems and editions, but they are just the idea of Adventurerness and Fighterness and Rogueness and so on. *snip*

The other question you might ask is, when I’m designing encounters, why don’t I just use the PCs instead of a mystical Platonic Party. And I realize I haven’t actually talked about how I use this party yet, but I’ll get there. But the reason I don’t use the actual PCs is because that would be brutal and brutally unfair. Unless there is some in-game story reason for an enemy to know everything about the PCs AND you have decided you hate your players and want to punish them for existing, you NEVER build an encounter to your specific group of PCs. It’s tantamount to punishing them for the choices they’ve made. And it means their unusual choices and strategies and the specifics of the races, classes, and equipment they’ve chosen are never rewarded. *snip*

So, invent yourself a Platonic Party, a conceptual understanding of the standard adventuring party that you can pull out to build encounters with.

Don't play with bad DMs.

====================================


I've toyed with almost the same concept - a life cleric 1/enchanter x Aasimar who focused entirely on manipulating his enemies and buffing his allies so he never had to raise a finger himself, because really physical combat is so very gauche. Instinctive Charm and Sanctuary seem to make a heck of a good combo that way.

Yeah, stacking heavy armor (AC 20) + Sanctuary + either Blur or Dodge + possible Shield means you'll NEVER get hit, practically speaking. Especially if you're also Lucky. :) Instinctive Charm isn't quite as good defensively because you have to use it on an attack--you can't save it for only an attack that would hit--but in terms of hilarity it is even better than Shield.

But, if you insist on never raising a finger yourself, you are kind of boxing yourself in, and that could lead to burnout on the PC. There will be a lot of things that you're physically capable of (grappling, Webbing enemies, Fireball, digging pit traps with Mold Earth) which may lie outside the "manipulative enchanter" idiom. It might be better to focus on a personality and motivation instead of a mechanical strategy: perhaps he finds blood icky and smelly, so he generally tries to avoid being within the splatter radius of anything that dies, and he likes Hypnotic Pattern better than Fireball because you don't have to deal with the burnt pork smell afterwards--but he might be 100% okay with Ray of Frost. If your character concept is "this guy is a one-trick pony mechanically" then, well, he'll be a one-trick pony. And I can see how that could get boring.

[Giant2005]

Among bad DMs, yes. Good DMs will not customize adventures to nullify specific characters; that nullifies player choices. In the words of AngryDM:

Don't play with bad DMs.

Sure that aspect of him is less than ideal, but he is far from a bad DM. He is the best DM I have had for Dungeons and Dragons (and yet he has other negative qualities as a DM, that are far worse than this one). Combat is such a small part of the game that it doesn't matter so much how badly he rules it. He handles the non-combat aspects so flawlessly that the good far out-weighs the bad.

[Lombra]

What about a valor bard? Very capable in combat and he's the face of the group, plus most of his spells are unique to his class.

[MaxWilson]

Sure that aspect of him is less than ideal, but he is far from a bad DM. He is the best DM I have had for Dungeons and Dragons (and yet he has other negative qualities as a DM, that are far worse than this one). Combat is such a small part of the game that it doesn't matter so much how badly he rules it. He handles the non-combat aspects so flawlessly that the good far out-weighs the bad.

Combat may be a small part of the game, but agency (the perception on the part of the player that their choices actually matter to the outcome) is fundamental. To be a good DM you must understand and fully support agency. It's the whole point of D&D.

It's possible I suppose that he might support player agency in everything else and just have this blind spot when it comes to combat; but without your explicit say-so I'm reluctant to believe that is the case. Based on the little information I have, I think it is more likely that he's just the least-bad DM you've had than that he is actually a good DM.

[Seekergeek]

Yeah, stacking heavy armor (AC 20) + Sanctuary + either Blur or Dodge + possible Shield means you'll NEVER get hit, practically speaking. Especially if you're also Lucky. :) Instinctive Charm isn't quite as good defensively because you have to use it on an attack--you can't save it for only an attack that would hit--but in terms of hilarity it is even better than Shield.

But, if you insist on never raising a finger yourself, you are kind of boxing yourself in, and that could lead to burnout on the PC. There will be a lot of things that you're physically capable of (grappling, Webbing enemies, Fireball, digging pit traps with Mold Earth) which may lie outside the "manipulative enchanter" idiom. It might be better to focus on a personality and motivation instead of a mechanical strategy: perhaps he finds blood icky and smelly, so he generally tries to avoid being within the splatter radius of anything that dies, and he likes Hypnotic Pattern better than Fireball because you don't have to deal with the burnt pork smell afterwards--but he might be 100% okay with Ray of Frost. If your character concept is "this guy is a one-trick pony mechanically" then, well, he'll be a one-trick pony. And I can see how that could get boring.

Oh yeah, its certainly more about avoiding lowering himself to the baser results of direct damage. Hed likely have spells like web, grease, banishment, ect. at his disposal. Probably even something like disintegration down the road for desperate times.

[Herobizkit]

If you don't want versatile characters, don't play a Bard. ^_^

If you want epic versatility, slap some Lore Bard and Land Druid together. I've also played a Diviner Wizard/Tempest Cleric that never ran out of things to do.

#Realtalk, it sounds like you're hungry for a 4e experience. Grid battles, tons of powers and actions per round, starting at around an equivalent 3rd-level character in 5th edition.

[MaxWilson]

Oh yeah, its certainly more about avoiding lowering himself to the baser results of direct damage. Hed likely have spells like web, grease, banishment, ect. at his disposal. Probably even something like disintegration down the road for desperate times.

I know! What if he's a germaphobe?! Not only does he refuse to stab people with daggers, but he won't shake hands with them either, and he goes out of his way to avoid getting hit with their filthy weapons even if he could afford the HP loss!

He may have other health fetishes too. :)

[Seekergeek]

Maybe he launches into an evocation frenzy if one of those dirty brutes actually manages to hit him with those filthy weapons. Disgusting savages.

[MaxWilson]

Maybe he launches into an evocation frenzy if one of those dirty brutes actually manages to hit him with those filthy weapons. Disgusting savages.

Yeah. Drop a fireball on himself and the disgusting savage both. Cleanse the germs!