Which brings us back to the need to efficiently manage you characters action economy during both initial creation and advancement. Not that you implied differently of course. I tend to avoid spending advancement resources on things that complete for action use if I can help it.
Stick it on a grappling-based character and go full lucha.
Ah interesting. Basically encounters are events that provoke the PCs to spend some of their resources, right? Spells, abilities, equipment, time... those sorts of things?
Not necessarily any of those resources but likely at least one, even if it’s just time. A puzzle might be one. A social encounter with a guard to get news and maybe get the lay of the political landscape may be another.
very unlikely, other than variant humans are demonstrable better than humans. But it's a pretty minor thing.
well, lack of healing will definitely be a thing, and there are a fair number of spells on the clerics list that won't be in the wizards. Also, this is definitely sounding like an S&S campaign, and I would generally recommend another system.
well, there is the healing. I don't think this will be a big thing, other than a lot of work.
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Grappling mechanic is one of my favorites in 5e. I played a grappling Barbarian and it was so fun! Almost every creature in the MM has a terrible Athletics rating so it's real easy to grapple on round 1 then shove 'em to the ground on round 2 then let everyone whale on 'em with advantage. Or drag dudes into hazards. Or shut down casters. Or hold a couple dudes in place while the Evocation Wizard lands an AoE on top of you. Or use it to climb on top of a giant monster and whale on it with advantage (DMG pg 271).
I feel like we're both indexing the same sorts of CO thread. Im fine with a little optimization in the service of realizing a concept, but that's about it. Maximizing DPR or nova just isn't something I find that interesting.
Hey man I think of the same damn thing and the implications of commonplace magic drives me nuts.
No! I keep saying, tweak these meta game mechanics and features around your world.
That's the way to do it. I wish the DMG had more advice for changing rules to fit genre and setting tropes. Yes there is always 3rd part material or DIY but I think it is important to have a wealth of "official" ways to do things as guidelines
Justin Alexander wrote about the misreading of encounters in 3rd edition way back in 2008.
It would have been more accurate for me to say that OD&D, B/X, and AD&D have had decades of playtesting by many thousands of players.
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I think there's an assumption that while characters can use a variety of kit, they'll probably just pick one armour group and weapon group and stick with that; so once you've got your 20, picking the relevant combat style feat is the only real power bump left to you, and at that point it's a stronger pick than starting to work on a second attribute.
Agree here. I feel like people are getting the wrong impression about all of this and think I am saying that you have to set up a formulaic adventuring day of 6-8 carefully balanced encounters and 1-2 short rests like a robot. Yes, everything is based around the adventuring day but in practice there is a lot of variance. Most times the players largely control the pace by exploring the dungeon, trying to get as much treasure as possible (or reach their objective, as the case may be) before their resources run dry and they have to retreat. Sometimes an "adventuring day" might only have 2-3 encounters with no rest but as you said the uncertainty and previous experience (deaths LOL) compels the players to carefully shepherd their resources. I don't stock a dungeon with carefully balanced encounters of Medium difficulty; I put a wide variety of difficulty in a dungeon, from Easy to Run Away. There's all kinds of tricks to keep things fresh like wave attacks. Anyway I can go on but my point is that the more system mastery a GM has the more they can play with and bend the adventuring day formula.
The good thing about 5e is that it broke from the "optimize or die" approach of earlier editions. If someone takes a feat for fun they aren't going to feel like the guy with a little dick who shows up to an orgy. I played an Eldritch Knight with Magic Initiate feat. It was a "suboptimal choice" from a pure min-max perspective but eldritch blast and hex were fun to play with and still effective. Same with grappling builds, they aren't the 100% most optimal way to play but they are a lot of fun and still quite effective.
One important thing to note is that Long Rests only restore 1/2 of a character's Hit Dice. This can make adventuring day after day dangerous since Hit Dice should be the primary means of hit point recovery. My players didn't realize that and it bit them in the ass during an expedition.
