Experiences from late tier 2 / early tier 3

[Waazraath]

Hi Playground,

Here some experiences from my most recent games. We played White Plume Mountain and Dead in Thay, from the Tales of the Yawning Portal book. Both are mainly dungeon crawls, with little social interaction and exploration. We started with 3 players: a PAM/sentinel battle master fighter, a vengeance paladin, and a Shepard Druid. After White Plume Mountan, a Clockwork Sorcerer joined the fray, and the Druid retired and was replaced with a CBE/SS Battle Smith Arteficer, due to the druid being boring. I won’t go into more details, since I did that here: https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?623831-Summoner-druid-pretty-darn-boring . In Thay, our Paladin died and was replaced with a Devotion Paladin. We played no multiclass but with feats.

In this thread, in a more or less random order, some experiences of which I think they might are interesting to the community.

Saves

Let’s start with the saving throws. It is often remarked that characters get worse in their saving throws at the higher level, because (usually) 4 out of 6 don’t improve anymore. My recent games made me realize exactly how party dependent this is. With a Paladin (+3 or +4 on saves for everybody in 10 ft), and an Artificer (being able to give somebody +4 on a save after the dice is cast), hardly anybody failed a save, ever. And to make things worse: the fighter has a reroll - an ability often argued as ‘weak’ on these boards. It might be, if you need to reroll that save for which you only have a +0 on your roll. But if that +0 becomes a +4, and you can reroll it, and if it still isn’t enough the Arteficer can upgrade the result with another +4 – that’s incredible. I don’t think he missed a save at all, in dozens of sessions. Oh, and in the unlikely event that a save should be made with disadvantage, the Clockwork Sorcerer has a class feature to ignore that.

We didn’t aimed for this, when creating the party, but compare it with a party with, let’s say, a Cleric, Wizard, Ranger and Barbarian - the chance of failing saving throws is just so much higher, and the game would have been much more lethal. I always considered Paladin one of the best classes because of its aura, but as far as party optimization goes, I became more convinced that party wide saving throw increases are almost mandatory – be it with Paladin, Artificer or Bard, and if possible, with several, in addition to improving the saves of individual characters.

Balance

On class balance: if you play a dungeon crawl like these adventures, with a number of rests varying but more or less as intended (so no 5 minute adventuring days), it works exactly as it should. The Fighter was ‘always on’, until hit points were depleted. The Sorcerer needed to carefully manage resources – even up until early tier 3. Sometime he was encounter defining, quite more often than I expected he was plinking cantrips from the backline, and often just there contributing. And the two half casters were in between, having strong options that were always on (attack + aura’s for the Paladin and attack + steel defender for the Battle Smith), with solid boosts through resources that needed to be carefully managed.

To elaborate on the full caster: it was the most tricky to manage by far. Dead in Thay has many powerful casters as opponents, making counterspell really strong, but also made the Sorcerer burning through spell slots quite fast. And of course, being a sorcerer and spending sorcery points on metamagic (not on more spell slots), it had less spells than e.g. a wizard or land druid. There was a real trade-off, where a few times a possible TPK was averted with a counterspell, a room full of enemies was cleared by Fireball or Cone of Cold, and a Beholder or Kraken were taken out of the fight with Polymorph (and heightened spell) – which was massive fun. But the price for dominating a few encounters was to be not too relevant in many more, only cantripping for 2d10 or 3d10 damage. The player found it worth it.

The opposite was the PAM/sentinel Battle Master. Always relevant, just by positioning and keeping enemies at bay. Lots of tactical combat options: pushing enemies away (only to hit them again next turn with a reaction, or to break a grapple), frightening them, preventing them to move, using action surge for doubling attacks when needed to take somebody down who needed to go down fast or to close the distance with somebody just out of reach… it was the first time I saw a Battle Master at the table, and I was damned impressed. Maybe it was due to combining the right maneuvers with PAM/sentinel, but it was the character that by far had the most interesting tactical choices to make, and that in every combat (contrary to the other characters).

Battle Master / Maneuvers

Two things about maneuvers. In the first place, it is sometimes said that the design of the BM is flawed, because you pick the best maneuvers first at level 3, and all other times you can pick will be worse cause you already got the best. From what I’ve observed, this is simply not true. Maneuvers simply cover too many things to have ‘all the good things’ with the first few maneuvers. There’s: debuffing (menacing), making it easier to hit for you and your allies (trip), extra chance to hit (precision), skill bonus (ambush/tactical assessment), initiative bonus (ambush), positioning (pushing, bait & switch). And that’s without needing maneuvers to attack on a reaction (because of PAM already being in the build), which exist as well. The ones gained at level 10 were as welcome and useful as all the ones he had already. Because the number of times you can use them scales (and quite ok, given it’s a short rest resource), the die increases, and the different types of situations in which they are useful increases (with new maneuvers learned), they keep getting better. The design is really good.

Secondly, the Battle Master and its maneuvers are sometimes portrayed as a sorry excuse for Tome of Battle and classes like the Warblade. They’re not. I’ve played warblades, and swordsages, and seen all kind of martial adepts at my tables over the years. A well crafted Battle Master has in combat from round to round more than its equal in interesting choices to make compared to a Warblade of equal level. Earlier, I wrote this: https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?612915-Probably-unpopular-take-%96-we-have-large-portions-of-Bo9S-ToB-in-5e-already - Having seen a BM with a few well-chosen feats in play, I stand by it even more.

On the Artificer

Since I’ve written over a 1000 words already, I won’t waste much more time on the Paladin and the Artificer. Everybody knows how strong the Paladin class is. As for the Artificer: what made this build so nice, was that in combat, a normal action was: 3x attack with a hand crossbow, if something with a low AC was present -5/+10 damage, and position the Steel Defender next to a melee warrior to give disadvantage. That was already bloody strong, Steel Defender took many hits (but could be healed to full with a cantrip), prevented many hits landing on allies, blocked chokepoints… while the normal attack rountine was the highest DPR in the party (though nova’ing, the Pally and Fighter hit harder of course). That meant spells were just bonuses: extra defense, extra damage, extra utility, but never needed to make the character work. I think that’s the reason why e.g. a Battle Smith feels so much stronger compared to an Alchemist: the latter needs his spells for combat, and is empty when out of spells; an Battle Smith can keep going and be really effective as long as there are hitpoints – and with an AC of easily 20-22, and with shield and absorb elements as spells, that’s a long time.

[Ignimortis]

Battle Master / Maneuvers

Two things about maneuvers. In the first place, it is sometimes said that the design of the BM is flawed, because you pick the best maneuvers first at level 3, and all other times you can pick will be worse cause you already got the best. From what I’ve observed, this is simply not true. Maneuvers simply cover too many things to have ‘all the good things’ with the first few maneuvers. There’s: debuffing (menacing), making it easier to hit for you and your allies (trip), extra chance to hit (precision), skill bonus (ambush/tactical assessment), initiative bonus (ambush), positioning (pushing, bait & switch). And that’s without needing maneuvers to attack on a reaction (because of PAM already being in the build), which exist as well. The ones gained at level 10 were as welcome and useful as all the ones he had already. Because the number of times you can use them scales (and quite ok, given it’s a short rest resource), the die increases, and the different types of situations in which they are useful increases (with new maneuvers learned), they keep getting better. The design is really good.

Secondly, the Battle Master and its maneuvers are sometimes portrayed as a sorry excuse for Tome of Battle and classes like the Warblade. They’re not. I’ve played warblades, and swordsages, and seen all kind of martial adepts at my tables over the years. A well crafted Battle Master has in combat from round to round more than its equal in interesting choices to make compared to a Warblade of equal level. Earlier, I wrote this: https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?612915-Probably-unpopular-take-%96-we-have-large-portions-of-Bo9S-ToB-in-5e-already - Having seen a BM with a few well-chosen feats in play, I stand by it even more.


What you seem to be missing is that half of the maneuvers you mentioned (Ambush, B&S, Tactical Assessment) are very recent content, only being officially released in Tasha's. They do a lot to fix the BM's issues in lacking good maneuvers. Otherwise the fighter would've picked up everything (Pushing, Menacing, Precision, Trip) by level 7, plus Riposte, and would've had very little to look forward to. Also, maneuver choices sometimes don't really mesh with the character, like Commanding Strike or Menacing Strike.

My experience with BMs and martial adepts is the reverse, as well. As a mid-level martial adept, I had to consider action economy and how to best use it with what I've got. A warblade has few readied maneuvers even at level 10, but the ability to use them several times per encounter often means that you combine them a lot and weave normal attacks in sometimes. On Path of War classes, which I consider to be an almost complete refinement and improvement of ToB (which was a rough first draft, after all), I had at least 6 maneuvers (and generally grabbed "extra readied maneuver" if I could afford it), which were not limited by resources.

As a level 8 pre-Tasha's battlemaster (I've never gone higher), most of my choices and maneuver usage really were hampered by the simple fact that I had very few superiority dice and no way to restore them dynamically. That, in turn, lead to using maybe one or two per combat, constantly trying to save some for emergencies if I wasn't sure of a rest afterwards. So yes, I did have 5 "maneuvers readied" on a BM, but my usage of them was very calculated and infrequent, unlike, say, my Harbinger who used normal attacks only when I made a mistake in estimating whether an enemy would die and was left with no strikes at all.

[Waazraath]

What you seem to be missing is that half of the maneuvers you mentioned (Ambush, B&S, Tactical Assessment) are very recent content, only being officially released in Tasha's. They do a lot to fix the BM's issues in lacking good maneuvers. Otherwise the fighter would've picked up everything (Pushing, Menacing, Precision, Trip) by level 7, plus Riposte, and would've had very little to look forward to. Also, maneuver choices sometimes don't really mesh with the character, like Commanding Strike or Menacing Strike.

I didn't miss it. First, my post is just writing down my experiences, and they are post-Tasha. And second, I still see (even a few weeks ago I think) people posting here what I refered to, how maneuvers aren't worth it after picking the best 3 etc. Even if it was true once, it isn't anymore afais. And while I haven't seen it in play, depending on build/party, it can be very worthwhile to have commander's strike (with a rogue in the party), pushing attack (any PAM build), Riposte (any build without good use for reactions), disarming strike (when you or somebody else can pick up weapons), while Menacing Trip and Precision are almost always good. There are very few bad choices. But yeah, Tasha's definitely made the subclass stronger and more versatile.


My experience with BMs and martial adepts is the reverse, as well. As a mid-level martial adept, I had to consider action economy and how to best use it with what I've got. A warblade has few readied maneuvers even at level 10, but the ability to use them several times per encounter often means that you combine them a lot and weave normal attacks in sometimes. On Path of War classes, which I consider to be an almost complete refinement and improvement of ToB (which was a rough first draft, after all), I had at least 6 maneuvers (and generally grabbed "extra readied maneuver" if I could afford it), which were not limited by resources.

As a level 8 pre-Tasha's battlemaster (I've never gone higher), most of my choices and maneuver usage really were hampered by the simple fact that I had very few superiority dice and no way to restore them dynamically. That, in turn, lead to using maybe one or two per combat, constantly trying to save some for emergencies if I wasn't sure of a rest afterwards. So yes, I did have 5 "maneuvers readied" on a BM, but my usage of them was very calculated and infrequent, unlike, say, my Harbinger who used normal attacks only when I made a mistake in estimating whether an enemy would die and was left with no strikes at all.

Well... tbh I don't know what a Harbringer or Path of War is. I assume Pathfinder, since they more or less are considered 3.75, but I consider it both onofficial or maybe even another game altogether (never played it). So yeah, you could be right those classes/systems feel much more powerful, but I'm not comparing against them.

I did a direct comparison at level 7 in the thread I linked to:


So what could this Warblade have readied on a standard adventuring day? White Raven Tactics most likely: “give an ally an extra turn as a swift (bonus) action is just too good to pass up. Probably also at least one maneuver to help its abysmal wisdom saving throw (dominates, holds and charms were more lethal in 3.5, and wis was a dump stat for the warblade) – probably Moment of Perfect Mind – more or less an auto-succeed on a wis saving throw, if you optimized the concentration skill. That leaves 2 maneuvers to prepare: Battle Leaders Charge does 10 extra damage, and allows you to negate attacks of opportunity when charging. Depending on whether you want to do more damage or be more defensive oriented, you probably pick something like the 4th level Ruby Nightmare Blade (double damage) or Iron Heart Surge (end a negative effect, +2 on attacks next turn). Two 1st level stances remain, leading the charge deals extra damage for you and allies when charging (pretty strong), and Hunter’s Scent gives the scent ability – a nice out of combat feature for utility.

So this it. In 3.5, this was pretty cool, and a straight upgrade against an unoptimized fighter.

But compared with 5e, especially with a Battle Master fighter? They can move and attack anyway, without losing attacks or getting opportunity attacks. They have action surge (maneuver in ToB), swift action healing (maneuver in ToB), choose 4 maneuvers from their own list that partly correspond with ToB maneuvers (disarm, trip, precision, menacing), and for good measure, if they go sword and board pick a fighting style that emulates a maneuver. That’s more than the 3.5 single class Warblade gets.

(I was wrong btw where I said 4 maneuvers known it should have been 5). But anyway, at the levels I'm describing, the Warblade has a few more maneuvers readied, and cause they could be used more or less without limit each combat it probably is more interesting and has more options than at lvl 7. But given that Second Wind and Action Surge are also Maneuver equivalents, a lvl 10 BM has 7 every short rest so lets say 21 on an average adventuring day, which is fine - and that's disregarding that any martial in 5e can do stuff that a 3e martial needed a maneuver to pull off (most obvious one 'move and make a full attack).

[J-H]

Your experience generally meshes with mine (party is currently level 16). The Monk/Paladin/Artificer combo means saves are very rarely failed.

[Sception]

There really is a huge difference between parties with and without paladins in tiers 2+. To the point that it's kind of a problem, to the point that I ALWAYS play a paladin if the party is otherwise lacking one, regardless of whatever else the party might be missing. That's ok for me, I like how paladins work in 5e otherwise, but even as a paladin fan it's kind of limiting.

Aura of protection is just too much, and probably ought to be reigned back, but there also probably needs to be some scaling of all saves, not just proficient ones, for medium & higher level characters to not just get clowned on by debilitating effects targeting their weaker saves.

[Oramac]

First, thank you for sharing your experience. Mine is generally similar when I've been able to play/run higher level stuff.

The only thing I'll say is in response to this:


Saves

With a Paladin (+3 or +4 on saves for everybody in 10 ft)

You're talking about a lot of dungeon crawls. Generally it will be pretty easy for the players to stay close to each other in those situations, which makes the paladin aura incredibly strong. Playing in a different adventure that spends more time outside would make it significantly more difficult for the party to gain the paladin aura. I've seen this first hand, as I love playing paladins.

I'm not trying to discount your experience. It's truly great and I like what you've said. Just making an observation based on my own similar experience in a different setting.

[PhoenixPhyre]

You're talking about a lot of dungeon crawls. Generally it will be pretty easy for the players to stay close to each other in those situations, which makes the paladin aura incredibly strong. Playing in a different adventure that spends more time outside would make it significantly more difficult for the party to gain the paladin aura. I've seen this first hand, as I love playing paladins.


Yeah. Or even dungeons with larger rooms and enemies at multiple ends. Our hexblade gets caught in Wisdom saves quite a bit because he tends to be all "CHARGE!!!!" and the paladin goes all "CHARGE!!" at different targets. The paladin's super durable, but the poor warlock has gotten zapped quite a few times.

I'd say that, if anything, the bard picking up hero's feast was the single most valuable decision any of them have made. The first time they used it was before they (not knowing this at the time) went up against a huge group of yuan-ti and other poison types...sigh.

[Ignimortis]

Well... tbh I don't know what a Harbringer or Path of War is. I assume Pathfinder, since they more or less are considered 3.75, but I consider it both onofficial or maybe even another game altogether (never played it). So yeah, you could be right those classes/systems feel much more powerful, but I'm not comparing against them.

Basically yes, a ToB-style update/addon for PF 1e, except more expansive (more classes, more disciplines, wider range of possibilities).


I didn't miss it. First, my post is just writing down my experiences, and they are post-Tasha. And second, I still see (even a few weeks ago I think) people posting here what I refered to, how maneuvers aren't worth it after picking the best 3 etc. Even if it was true once, it isn't anymore afais. And while I haven't seen it in play, depending on build/party, it can be very worthwhile to have commander's strike (with a rogue in the party), pushing attack (any PAM build), Riposte (any build without good use for reactions), disarming strike (when you or somebody else can pick up weapons), while Menacing Trip and Precision are almost always good. There are very few bad choices. But yeah, Tasha's definitely made the subclass stronger and more versatile.

The thing is, there were still non-comparable maneuvers/stances that you simply can't even replicate as a 5e Fighter, like Iron Heart Surge (Indomitable just doesn't cut it), Mountain Hammer, Crushing Vise, Hearing the Air, Sudden Leap, etc. And if we take a look at some of the Path of War disciplines, they went even further with what could be a martial power.

Also, several maneuvers just scale poorly. Tripping a Large or smaller creature is all fine at level 5, but at level 15+ it's often unusable, since a lot of demons and dragons and such are Huge or larger. Parry stops working as soon as you start taking damage higher than 2d6+STR. Rally is again fine at level 3 (it's potentially a third of your caster's healthbar in temp HP), but at level 15, it becomes something that gets removed by a single attack that still eats into the target's health hugely.



(I was wrong btw where I said 4 maneuvers known it should have been 5). But anyway, at the levels I'm describing, the Warblade has a few more maneuvers readied, and cause they could be used more or less without limit each combat it probably is more interesting and has more options than at lvl 7. But given that Second Wind and Action Surge are also Maneuver equivalents, a lvl 10 BM has 7 every short rest so lets say 21 on an average adventuring day, which is fine - and that's disregarding that any martial in 5e can do stuff that a 3e martial needed a maneuver to pull off (most obvious one 'move and make a full attack).

Second Wind is more of a feat equivalent, there was one such feat, and just like Second Wind, it scaled rather poorly. Also, I patched up the Will save by getting Steadfast Determination ASAP, though MoPM is still the best 1st level maneuver that Warblade gets.

Still, yes, 5e has some of the features baked in that 3.5 had you go out of your way to get. However, enemies also got all of those benefits, so it's not exactly something that only Fighters or even only PCs benefit from, and thus it's more of a zero-sum change.

I'm not sure it has made the game a lot better (movement now is very cheap, and moving the opponent doesn't matter unless it moves them directly into something dangerous, or out of range so you can catch them again with a Sentinel+PAM combo, i.e. it only matters if there are already conditions for it), but if martial adepts were to be designed for 5e, they'd have to take the changes into account.

In short, if you liked BM Fighter and found it decent enough, that's your view and I'm not contesting that it was fine for you. But I do think that BM barely reaches the height of Warblade in ability width and amount of turn-to-turn choice to make, and it was already the least maneuver-dependent class of ToB.

[Hytheter]

Also, several maneuvers just scale poorly. Tripping a Large or smaller creature is all fine at level 5, but at level 15+ it's often unusable, since a lot of demons and dragons and such are Huge or larger.

You should try playing a grappler. I even stocked up on growth potions but the amount of gargantuan monsters mine faces is painful.

[PhoenixPhyre]

You should try playing a grappler. I even stocked up on growth potions but the amount of gargantuan monsters mine faces is painful.

That's odd. Let me guess, you usually face one enemy per encounter and usually only a couple encounters per day? Because there just aren't that many gargantuan creatures, and the bulk of enemies aren't even huge. Yes, even at high levels. Unless of course you're doing a "boss fight only" run (ie mostly only big solo enemies).

[Hytheter]

That's odd. Let me guess, you usually face one enemy per encounter and usually only a couple encounters per day? Because there just aren't that many gargantuan creatures, and the bulk of enemies aren't even huge. Yes, even at high levels. Unless of course you're doing a "boss fight only" run (ie mostly only big solo enemies).

To clarify it's not that I only face gargantuan opponents, but that most of the opponents who aren't also aren't worth grappling. The mooks are best cleaned up ASAP while the guys who would be worth locking down are too big to hold on to.

Encounter quantity is admittedly a factor though (an unavoidable consequence of my particular play environment), as is custom stat blocks (I am also slightly resentful of the number of save-based abilities my DMs slap on their bosses. That ram attack should be an attack roll damn it!)

[Ignimortis]

To clarify it's not that I only face gargantuan opponents, but that most of the opponents who aren't also aren't worth grappling. The mooks are best cleaned up ASAP while the guys who would be worth locking down are too big to hold on to.

Encounter quantity is admittedly a factor though (an unavoidable consequence of my particular play environment), as is custom stat blocks (I am also slightly resentful of the number of save-based abilities my DMs slap on their bosses. That ram attack should be an attack roll damn it!)

That in particular is something that crops up at higher levels — things that are weak enough to grapple/shove/put debuffs on reliably aren't worth spending time and resources on. Meanwhile, good luck getting your Menacing Attack to stick to a dragon or something it would actually be worth using against.

[5eNeedsDarksun]

I'd say our group's experiences are largely similar to what you describe. Saves aren't missed much, unless the DM starts including baddies that are on paper significantly more powerful than they are supposed to be. And we've pretty much had a Paladin in every party, and many times the save bonus has been +4/+5 due to prioritizing Chr.

Balance isn't bad either and we've often found the martials doing most of the damage, particularly in boss fights where resistances are common. I will say that getting the 6-8 encounters in gets trickier though as the party levels, particularly if you're not in a dungeon. At low level if you're in the wilderness a simple bridge out can cause loss of significant resources, but it's just a hickup at the levels you're talking about. If you're at sea there's only so many storms that can come about before it gets a bit tiresome to try to drain something before the pirates show up. So I know you mentioned your experience was mostly in dungeon crawls and the like, but there are other parts of DnD that our group likes to lean into in terms of travel/ exploration. Unfortunately by about the beginning of tier 3 a DM has to be pretty creative to keep those bits both interesting and balanced in terms of Long and Short Rest characters.

Bang on with the BM having meaningful decisions to make.

[Oramac]

I'd say that, if anything, the bard picking up hero's feast was the single most valuable decision any of them have made. The first time they used it was before they (not knowing this at the time) went up against a huge group of yuan-ti and other poison types...sigh.

Oh for sure. Heroes Feast is a severely underrated spell. I've used it so much that it's basically a guaranteed pick if its on my spell list. It's just so damn useful. Last time I used it was a level 20 one-shot going against Tiamat and the Cult of the Dragon. Completely negating her fear and one of her heads was a game changer.

[Waazraath]

You're talking about a lot of dungeon crawls. Generally it will be pretty easy for the players to stay close to each other in those situations, which makes the paladin aura incredibly strong. Playing in a different adventure that spends more time outside would make it significantly more difficult for the party to gain the paladin aura. I've seen this first hand, as I love playing paladins.


Yeah. Or even dungeons with larger rooms and enemies at multiple ends. Our hexblade gets caught in Wisdom saves quite a bit because he tends to be all "CHARGE!!!!" and the paladin goes all "CHARGE!!" at different targets. The paladin's super durable, but the poor warlock has gotten zapped quite a few times.


I think that while both statements are spot on, even outside and in larger dungeons there is some players choice/tactics involved. A character that wins initiative and charges out of the protective aura, and gets zapped by an enemy forcing a save can happen of course, but is up to a point preventable (ready an action, cast a buff spell or make a ranged attack while staying in the aura, when facing something you know will probably target saves). And additionally, if you don't have a counterspeller or face enemies with non-spell area attacks (dragons) staying close together has its disadvantages as well.

That's one advantage of the Artificer above the paladin btw, that Flash of Genius has a 30ft range. Costs a reaction, targets only 1 character, and limited to max 5 times/day, so has obvious drawbacks. But combine it with a party that has over all good saves and/or a paladin, and you won't need it that often.



The thing is, there were still non-comparable maneuvers/stances that you simply can't even replicate as a 5e Fighter, like Iron Heart Surge (Indomitable just doesn't cut it), Mountain Hammer, Crushing Vise, Hearing the Air, Sudden Leap, etc.

Agreed for most of these, though Sudden Leap was used ime mostly to close the distance with a bonus (swift) action while still being able to make a full attack (which any 5e character can do anyway). But yeah, I definitely agree ToB had a lot of stuff you can't do in 5e - which makes sense since 3.5 had an entire book with these kind of options. So I guess when you play 5 Battle Master's in a row, and 5 martial adepts from ToB, the former will be more samey and boring quick. But for me, I still haven't played every class in 5e, let alone every subclass, let alone re-playing subclasses I'v already played, so I don't mind.


Also, several maneuvers just scale poorly. Tripping a Large or smaller creature is all fine at level 5, but at level 15+ it's often unusable, since a lot of demons and dragons and such are Huge or larger. Parry stops working as soon as you start taking damage higher than 2d6+STR. Rally is again fine at level 3 (it's potentially a third of your caster's healthbar in temp HP), but at level 15, it becomes something that gets removed by a single attack that still eats into the target's health hugely.

Fair, I haven't played at these levels but seems plausible.


Second Wind is more of a feat equivalent, there was one such feat, and just like Second Wind, it scaled rather poorly. Also, I patched up the Will save by getting Steadfast Determination ASAP, though MoPM is still the best 1st level maneuver that Warblade gets.
Dunno about second wind, ToB had a maneuver to gain hp as a swift/bonus action, that was 6th(!) level Iron Heart Endurance.


In short, if you liked BM Fighter and found it decent enough, that's your view and I'm not contesting that it was fine for you. But I do think that BM barely reaches the height of Warblade in ability width and amount of turn-to-turn choice to make, and it was already the least maneuver-dependent class of ToB.
It's not just that I liked what I saw (it wasn't my character), it was that I thought it was at least as interesting from turn to turn as most martial adepts I played/saw in 3.5. But ymmv, agree to disagree afaic.


I'd say our group's experiences are largely similar to what you describe. Saves aren't missed much, unless the DM starts including baddies that are on paper significantly more powerful than they are supposed to be. And we've pretty much had a Paladin in every party, and many times the save bonus has been +4/+5 due to prioritizing Chr.

Balance isn't bad either and we've often found the martials doing most of the damage, particularly in boss fights where resistances are common. I will say that getting the 6-8 encounters in gets trickier though as the party levels, particularly if you're not in a dungeon. At low level if you're in the wilderness a simple bridge out can cause loss of significant resources, but it's just a hickup at the levels you're talking about. If you're at sea there's only so many storms that can come about before it gets a bit tiresome to try to drain something before the pirates show up. So I know you mentioned your experience was mostly in dungeon crawls and the like, but there are other parts of DnD that our group likes to lean into in terms of travel/ exploration. Unfortunately by about the beginning of tier 3 a DM has to be pretty creative to keep those bits both interesting and balanced in terms of Long and Short Rest characters.

Maybe it's possible that D&D 5e is mostly designed as (and balanced for) dungeon crawling, and that despite the talk about "three pillers of the game" and the option to run the game in all other settings, it just works best there? Also given that combat has most support by the rules?

[Ignimortis]

Maybe it's possible that D&D 5e is mostly designed as (and balanced for) dungeon crawling, and that despite the talk about "three pillers of the game" and the option to run the game in all other settings, it just works best there? Also given that combat has most support by the rules?

Yep, that's my impression of the system after more than 5 years of play, too. 5e functions well when used as a dungeon-crawling engine and in accordance with the base design (2-3 short rests per LR, for example), in general. It certainly doesn't lend itself as well to stuff that it gets advertised as, i.e. a "generic fantasy adventure simulator".

[Thunderous Mojo]

Yep, that's my impression of the system after more than 5 years of play, too. 5e functions well when used as a dungeon-crawling engine and in accordance with the base design (2-3 short rests per LR, for example), in general. It certainly doesn't lend itself as well to stuff that it gets advertised as, i.e. a "generic fantasy adventure simulator".

People have been stating opinions like this going back to 1e.
I've never found the contention to hold up to strict scrutiny.

Even in 1e, before Non Weapon Proficiencies existed, if you were in a group of people that wanted to Roleplay and not constantly fight...D&D worked, and worked well.

White Plume Mountain, in my eyes, is over-rated...frankly it is a linear boring Dungeon.

Dead in Thay is a sprawling, huge complex, that on it's own is pretty straight forward. You sneak around and hope you don't bump into Stormtroopers err Red Wizards... collect enough keys and eventually you Blow up the Death Star...err Szas Tam's Phylactery.

Considering I've used 5e to run an Exploration heavy Science Fantasy Campaign, a Social/Dungeon Crawl Waterdeep campaign, a Social/Court Intrigue campaign inspired by the Captain Alatriste novels, and reading what WotC designed in the Wilds Beyond the Witchlight....5e as a system is robust enough to handle most themes, in my experience.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Yep, that's my impression of the system after more than 5 years of play, too. 5e functions well when used as a dungeon-crawling engine and in accordance with the base design (2-3 short rests per LR, for example), in general. It certainly doesn't lend itself as well to stuff that it gets advertised as, i.e. a "generic fantasy adventure simulator".

I'd have to see some advertising that calls it a generic fantasy adventure simulator first. Because it hasn't been advertised that way at all. People assume it is, mostly based on 3e-age memories (when they did try to make a universal system out of it). But it isn't advertised that way at all.

D&D works fine for a lot of things as long as you don't insist on pushing the boundaries. I don't do dungeon crawls, I don't police the adventuring day, and yet I don't have any of the problems people complain about. Oh, and I don't have a list of houserules longer than "hey guys, wish/sim chains are bad, mmmk?". Why? Because my players don't try to push for power-optimization above all. They remain engaged at the fictional level and work there, rather than thinking they need a button that solves each problem or trying to break things.

That's my experience--things work for most D&D-style adventuring unless you're actively trying to break them. And things breaking when you're trying to break them...isn't the system's fault. Sure, if you want a highly-mechanized social sim or a game without any combat at all[1] or a gritty, death-is-cheap game, 5e probably isn't your gig. But it never claimed to be in the first place, so...

[1] I routinely have sessions without combat. But if you only had combat once or twice in a campaign, then 5e means you're carrying around lots of dead weight doing so.

[5eNeedsDarksun]

I think that while both statements are spot on, even outside and in larger dungeons there is some players choice/tactics involved. A character that wins initiative and charges out of the protective aura, and gets zapped by an enemy forcing a save can happen of course, but is up to a point preventable (ready an action, cast a buff spell or make a ranged attack while staying in the aura, when facing something you know will probably target saves). And additionally, if you don't have a counterspeller or face enemies with non-spell area attacks (dragons) staying close together has its disadvantages as well.

That's one advantage of the Artificer above the paladin btw, that Flash of Genius has a 30ft range. Costs a reaction, targets only 1 character, and limited to max 5 times/day, so has obvious drawbacks. But combine it with a party that has over all good saves and/or a paladin, and you won't need it that often.



Agreed for most of these, though Sudden Leap was used ime mostly to close the distance with a bonus (swift) action while still being able to make a full attack (which any 5e character can do anyway). But yeah, I definitely agree ToB had a lot of stuff you can't do in 5e - which makes sense since 3.5 had an entire book with these kind of options. So I guess when you play 5 Battle Master's in a row, and 5 martial adepts from ToB, the former will be more samey and boring quick. But for me, I still haven't played every class in 5e, let alone every subclass, let alone re-playing subclasses I'v already played, so I don't mind.



Fair, I haven't played at these levels but seems plausible.


Dunno about second wind, ToB had a maneuver to gain hp as a swift/bonus action, that was 6th(!) level Iron Heart Endurance.


It's not just that I liked what I saw (it wasn't my character), it was that I thought it was at least as interesting from turn to turn as most martial adepts I played/saw in 3.5. But ymmv, agree to disagree afaic.



Maybe it's possible that D&D 5e is mostly designed as (and balanced for) dungeon crawling, and that despite the talk about "three pillers of the game" and the option to run the game in all other settings, it just works best there? Also given that combat has most support by the rules?

Even in mods that are kind of designed for travel many of them only go half way at best. I'm thinking of Ghosts of Saltmarsh and Descent into Avernus where I had to do a lot of work to make the journey half as fun as the destination. GoS is really nutty in the sense they don't really plan around your group actually getting a ship and completing the thing by boat... and the scale of the map is about 1/10 of what it should be to get the sense of moving from place to place. As it is you get everywhere in a day or two at most.
The other thing about GoS is that ranged characters are stupid OP if you actually have sea battles. Everyone else might just about go home by the time the archer unloads on another boat from 600 feet in. Not a huge issue in close quarters where you might get an extra round off now and again.

[Drascin]

Yep, that's my impression of the system after more than 5 years of play, too. 5e functions well when used as a dungeon-crawling engine and in accordance with the base design (2-3 short rests per LR, for example), in general. It certainly doesn't lend itself as well to stuff that it gets advertised as, i.e. a "generic fantasy adventure simulator".

Honestly, dungeon environments have, typically, not been particularly more conducive to the "expected" rest distribution than anywhere else. Ie, it still basically never happens (and the high resource expenditure enviroment of a dungeon only throws it into sharper relief)

Generally, I find that the main problem of "if your party is in a position where they can swing a full hour plus preparations of uninterrupted rest, 80% of the time they can reasonably swing the 6-8 hours for a long rest - and if things are too risky or too time-limited to long rest, the same likely applies to short rest" is every bit as alive in dungeons as elsewhere. It just means that the chances for said rests, long or short, are much fewer and further between due to the nature of the environment.

[Ignimortis]

People have been stating opinions like this going back to 1e.
I've never found the contention to hold up to strict scrutiny.

Considering I've used 5e to run an Exploration heavy Science Fantasy Campaign, a Social/Dungeon Crawl Waterdeep campaign, a Social/Court Intrigue campaign inspired by the Captain Alatriste novels, and reading what WotC designed in the Wilds Beyond the Witchlight....5e as a system is robust enough to handle most themes, in my experience.

And my DM has once ran something that approached epic fantasy, but that took a lot of homebrewing and tweaking the rules. Honestly, my experience is that 5e does well with low-powered heroic fantasy (as that worked wonders for the first two campaigns), but as soon as something requires anything like:
1) competent, consistent and common skill usage with DCs above "easy"
2) heroes not being able to nova a single encounter for the day
3) any decent exploration being done at all

The system kinda stops supporting you. It doesn't break down, but you do have to either fight against it quite a bit, or design your own subsystems that patch the holes the system has.


I'd have to see some advertising that calls it a generic fantasy adventure simulator first. Because it hasn't been advertised that way at all. People assume it is, mostly based on 3e-age memories (when they did try to make a universal system out of it). But it isn't advertised that way at all.

Frankly, looking at the success of Critical Role and the like, I'd say that it's very much advertised as such — just not directly by WotC. Still, the amount of people who try to shoehorn 5e into everything is comparable to the amount of people who tried to use the d20 system for everything. I've seen cyberpunk based on 5e, for instance, and I simply cannot understand how that should even function with a system that goes against everything cyberpunk tends to be in fiction and other systems.


Honestly, dungeon environments have, typically, not been particularly more conducive to the "expected" rest distribution than anywhere else. Ie, it still basically never happens (and the high resource expenditure enviroment of a dungeon only throws it into sharper relief)

Generally, I find that the main problem of "if your party is in a position where they can swing a full hour plus preparations of uninterrupted rest, 80% of the time they can reasonably swing the 6-8 hours for a long rest - and if things are too risky or too time-limited to long rest, the same likely applies to short rest" is every bit as alive in dungeons as elsewhere. It just means that the chances for said rests, long or short, are much fewer and further between due to the nature of the environment.

Dungeons also offer ways to make rest stops less spontaneous and more planned. For example, putting in a room with a single entrance and a sturdy door means the players can rest there, no problem.

Still, you're right in that short rests are just hard to take with any pressure at all being applied, and long rests are hard to not take unless the DM enforces "you can only benefit from a long rest once per 24 hours". So there always has to be some kind of pressure that simultaneously excuses an hour-long rest, and punishes a 24-hour long rest. Appealing to common sense and saying "why do you want to waste so much time" when characters are likely to be in a deadly fight soon, and thus wish to have as many chances as they can, also kinda doesn't work.

Having short rests be 5 minutes relaxes the pressure, but IME, that just means that players take short rests at any moment they can, because why wouldn't they? When we tested that change, the party short rested four times before finishing the dungeon completely and going for a long rest outside.

[J-H]

Simply by enforcing "1 LR/24 hours" I have not had any issues with this.

[dana96]

You should try playing a grappler. I even stocked up on growth potions but the amount of gargantuan monsters mine faces is painful.

I would recommend this too. Grapple only requires one hand. You can grapple your target to gain advantage while bashing them with a one handed weapon. Fun stuff.

[shipiaozi]

1. Yes, saves become easier in late levels. Player would have more reroll abilities.

2. Sorcerer should be melee, sword cantrip would deal a lot more damage than 2d10/3d10

3. Battle Master is the best fighter subclass, although it almost gain no useful ability after lv3. Mostly because Precision Attack is too strong and other maneuvers should not be used.

4. Paladin is never a strong class as some people believed, only a medium class(7th of 13).

5. Artificer is currently weakest class in 5e that only fine when team have no magic weapon. Every one with extra attack can have 3 attacks and -5+10. Compare to Fighter/Paladin, artificer only deals about 70% of their damage. Compare to full casters with extra attack, artificer lacks tons of spell slots.

[Zuras]

What you seem to be missing is that half of the maneuvers you mentioned (Ambush, B&S, Tactical Assessment) are very recent content, only being officially released in Tasha's. They do a lot to fix the BM's issues in lacking good maneuvers. Otherwise the fighter would've picked up everything (Pushing, Menacing, Precision, Trip) by level 7, plus Riposte, and would've had very little to look forward to. Also, maneuver choices sometimes don't really mesh with the character, like Commanding Strike or Menacing Strike.

My experience with BMs and martial adepts is the reverse, as well. As a mid-level martial adept, I had to consider action economy and how to best use it with what I've got. A warblade has few readied maneuvers even at level 10, but the ability to use them several times per encounter often means that you combine them a lot and weave normal attacks in sometimes. On Path of War classes, which I consider to be an almost complete refinement and improvement of ToB (which was a rough first draft, after all), I had at least 6 maneuvers (and generally grabbed "extra readied maneuver" if I could afford it), which were not limited by resources.

As a level 8 pre-Tasha's battlemaster (I've never gone higher), most of my choices and maneuver usage really were hampered by the simple fact that I had very few superiority dice and no way to restore them dynamically. That, in turn, lead to using maybe one or two per combat, constantly trying to save some for emergencies if I wasn't sure of a rest afterwards. So yes, I did have 5 "maneuvers readied" on a BM, but my usage of them was very calculated and infrequent, unlike, say, my Harbinger who used normal attacks only when I made a mistake in estimating whether an enemy would die and was left with no strikes at all.


The criticism of BM maneuvers is that since there are no level-gated maneuvers, players inevitably pick the ones most useful to them first, meaning the additional maneuvers received at higher levels are their fourth (or worse) choices among the maneuvers, not that those maneuvers aren’t useful. If you removed all the warlock invocations with level prerequisites, players would still be excited to get new invocations, but the class as a whole would clearly be less powerful.

The argument here (at least when I am making it) is that the lack of maneuver scaling or better maneuvers at higher fighter levels makes the higher levels of fighter less attractive in comparison with casters. For example, a multiclassed Fighter 5 (Battle Master)/Cleric 5 (War) is going to find it much more attractive to take their next two levels in Cleric, because access to 4th level spells is much more exciting than getting your 4th and 5th choice maneuvers.

This isn’t a phenomenon limited to Battle Masters. The Eldritch Knight gets higher level spells, but nothing ever matches the power boost of picking up Shield and Absorb Elements at 3rd level. Whether the issue is that the Fighter is excessively front-loaded as a class or that the back nine levels are too feature light, and whether the phenomenon is annoying enough to constitute a problem worth fixing are separate debates.

The problem is not as acute with Fighters compared to say, Barbarians, but since it could be addressed more easily (just add some level gated maneuvers) it gets mentioned more.