Absolutely, the "if your character isn't just the stereotype you're powergaming/doing it wrong" viewpoint can go die. Every time I hear "party composition" from actual players I know it's about to turn into a whole... *thing* where someone is going to try to force someone else to play some class they don't want to and that the party doesn't need for the sake of 'party balance'

Yep, this is a good tip. I'll think about that next time.

I paint figures while I listen, then have to leap up and go back when the data is on the screen or if I phase out. Very interactive! Love Treantmonk. Runehammer I recommend

Also he identified 4 components of support, with 3 of 4 being needed to be a full support character: 1) Buffer 2) Debuffer 3) Battlefield Controller 4) In-Combat Healer

"Pacifist" isn't a combat role.

@@BlackTempleGaurdian You've never heard of a pacif agressive fighter?

Good suggestions. Thanks!

@@TreantmonksTemple no problem, any time!

Talked to a friend and had to go back and find when he mentioned the lump so I can agree. That being said, I don't mind so much. Editing is very time consuming.

The good old powerpoint approach.

@@TreantmonksTemple I'd like to suggest a few tricks I used for presentations whenever I make one of those - I'm fairly certain it would make it easier to follow your vids, or rather the content of said vids :-P I add a couple dots or icons to a corner or side of the presentation. One for each chapter or topic I'm covering in the presentation, including one for the intro and one for the summary/outro. Then, I highlight the dot for whichever chapter or topic I'm currently on in a subtle but clear manner and mark the ones I have already covered in another also clear but not as eye-catching manner. That way there is a kind of "progress bar" effect. In addition, I also show the title of the current chapter/topic near that "progress bar" so that people have a small subtle reminder of where I am at during the presentation. Lastly, I always show a table of content kinda thing, a list of all the topics I intend to cover and, whenever I move to the next one, show it again with a clear marking of which ones are done, which is the one we are getting to now and which ones haven't been covered yet. just a few seconds to refresh the minds of the audience (5-10 seconds easily suffice). Together these three things, plus some cliff-notes/bullet points & helpful imagery on the slides themselves, really help people getting an idea of what I am talking about, what I will talk about, and where I'm at right now in relation to the other things I intend to cover. It also helps reduce needless questions by a lot since people can see that the topic they got a question about will come up later and thus keep that question back for when I get to that part of the presentation. I hope this helps you some and gives you a couple ideas for what you might do in future vids!!

What are your favorite utility and support invocations?

Why I want to try it

One of the many extra books( can't remember which one) for 4th ed included a chapter on types of players (not characters) at the table, lite sociology, it was good wisdom and should have been in every players handbook since.

Thank you!

Aequilix RP vs Optimization has always been a false dichonomy. The more you understand the system, the more you naturally start to optimize. D&D comes with way too much baggage from older generations of gamers. My group started on 5E and we learned the game from scratch together, so we never actually felt like the game must be played a certain way. If anything we played the game too much by the books, and in the beginning religiously ran the recommended 6-8 encounters every adventuring day, which caused us to wipe constantly. The flipside is we learned to optimize quickly and now we run like a well-oiled finely-tuned monster killing machine, and we level insanely fast compared to what we later learned to be the average 1-3 encounter group.

Aequilix That sounds like a solid group with good natural splits in terms of party roles. I hope the Druid is piloted by the experienced player, because for new players spells can be overwhelming.

M0ebius Oh naw thats one of the noobies :joy: the more experienced characters are the Pali and Rogue. I'ma do a bit of hand holdin if i need to for the Druid tho. Gonna like give him a list of recommended wild shape forms and we've talked about potential good spell choices. They got the benefit of preparing at least. Its a little more confusing then spells known on the surface, but the luxury is they can try out a lot of spells to see what they like/dislike.

Thank you!

Shadow sorcerer will be happening this month.

Synthcopath OffTheAir Totally agree. You can make some stickier melee builds, but without choke points or spells/abilities cutting up the battlefield you can at best occupy 2-3 attackers. My table runs all optimized characters with tons and tons of combat, and the best combination we find is to just put everyone, including the casters, in medium/heavy armor with shield backed by the Shield spell and when possible Absorb Elements.

Battle master plus sentinel feat equals tank.

Booming Blade+Sneak Attack is devastating when combined with something like Dissonant Whispers/Command/Fear/Commander’s Strike. But it doesn’t solve the fact that you can only pseudo-lock one guy at a time. For what it’s worth, my table do melee lockdown by running the Aura of Devotion/Hypnotic Pattern combo, and more rarely the Aura of Courage/Fear combo. We also use Spirit Guardians/Twinned Booming Blade when damage is needed or when dealing with charm immunity. Oath of Conquest Paladin is another excellent tank, particularly once you make it past level 7. However at high levels there are many fear-immune creatures, and in those instances you are more or less just a basic paladin.

tanks in DnD are more like bruisers. They have to threaten the enemies (via damage usually) enough to be worth targeting.

Cavalier fighter and Ancestral Guardian barbarian are pretty good at making it difficult for enemies to hit anyone else.

But then I give inspirations for cheesing content. I mean, if you're the DM, you can adjust (to keep the campaign stupid-dangerous). Let them have their cheesy-good moment of brilliance, since tomorrow, they may die. Unrelated, buffers/debuffers were really powerful in my favorite MMORPG. And I really liked the idea of breaking the holy trinity, and allowing for alternative group compositions. I do agree about the non-contributing character concept though. I just murder them until they take a plausibly valid build. (murder is ok, it happens to us all in the end).

I think you’re right. If a Druid tried this with me as a GM, I’d just have them roll once for stealth, once for perception, and once for investigation, and then use these rolls to determine how much I tell them.

I would be glad to answer in detail. In fact I HAVE! Check this out: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/lZ2oorWJrdfIoGw.html

And my in-combat healing really can keep up with the damage, somewhat. To be fair, that's largely because when someone's down below 20 hp I polymorph them into a big monkey or a t rex but recently me and a fighter were stuck in a fight against some creature we haven't discovered the background of yet. I threw my Healing Spirit next to the fighter who kept locking the enemy down with Booming Blade and basically I laid one spell down and gave him Regeneration (like the monster feature, not the spell) due to my Disciple of Life feature empowering the healz. Usually I avoid in-combat healing but when it became apparent that he could lock it down I saw good reason for it.

Kendra Jade Yeah Life Cleric 1 Lore Bard X is a super strong build and in my opinion the best healer in game hands down. My all-Hexblade dip party achieves a similar effect with Healing Spirit from the Lore Bard and Beacon of Hope from the Pally, but only in a pinch or when the party needs to heal badly.

Yeah, I'm busy that night. Gotta wash my hair ;)

@@TreantmonksTemple I think that's the funniest delivery of that line I've heard in a while.

Oof.

I’ve never played with a group that big. It seems like you can just crush most encounters through sheer action economy with that many people.

@@M0ebius I mean it throws the CR system way out of whack. 7 of us easily killed 10 goblins at lvl1 and we were split into multiple groups. We chewed through 250 hit points of modified adult green dragon and we were removed from the fight when we went unconscious before or last barb went down. If we could have been healed and put back up I guarantee you could have dropped it. It was a not tpk however and we are going to figure why next session.

let's see. Thinking about my group of 9 I'm going into. Tank, Support/ Striker, Striker, Support, Support, Support, Tank, Support, Tank. And one of those strikers is me, the paladin/ sorc. So I have the opposite problem. So many damn supports

The roles aren't strict character rolls, he mean that your party needs at least one player that satisfies each of these rolls. The rolls can be split between pcs in tons of different viable combinations. Obviously, rogues fit the glass cannon but if you have a melee character that's focused on damage you're going to want another tank. It's also possible to split the tank roll between a few characters since usually a party doesn't hinge around a single point as the front line of combat.

Some classes such as the Ranger have AOE melee abilities, but those tend to suck hard compared to spells. The closest thing to a melee AOE is probably just a Fighter action surging with tons of attacks.

I know they arent strict. I just wanted additional feedback on melee strikers, and whether he thinks there is any such thing as PBAoE or melee area striking.

I like the blended concept of tank and support, especially the battlefield control part of support. In City of Heroes (and other games) we called these Tank-trollers. Basically with the right build you can dominate terrain and battlefield control with your melee presence. I think there are polearm and/or sword and board builds in D&D who can do this, with sentinel and polearm master and maybe some other tricks. But I would love to combine tanking with point blank AoE striking. I guess you could do Eldritch Knight 5 / Evoker 5 and just drop fireballs on top of yourself. :)

My best example of a melee striker also capable of AoE would be my Ultimate Spellsword build.

If no one else ever plays a healer, for example, you might feel forced to always include it in your build, even if it's something as minimal as the healer feat with med packs. Or you might always be stuck with a rogue or bard type for traps/lock picking or something. Really you should be encouraging the others to branch out, but I understand where the tweet is coming from.

I actually find that group function goes way up when no healing is available. Healers burn long rest slots keeping idiots alive, because the idiot knows he'll get healed. When there is no healing available, the idiots think their actions through more, and while they may never become geniuses, they at least aren't dragging the party down.

My favorite healer by far was the grave cleric who's only healing spell was Healing Word

SharkForce I pretty much agree with what you are saying here. I don’t think it’s wise to have an adventurers entire role in the party be healing, but I do think healing is better classified as it’s own category rather than just as a subset of the support role, and I think healer is a good role to fill IN ADDITION to being a support caster/striker/tank

SharkForce hit dice do definitely make healers not strictly necessary, but I think any of the roles in this video can be absent and a party would still be survivable depending on the campaign. A face isn’t necessary for a campaign without a lot of social components, and battle tactics can be altered to account for a lack of a tank, a striker, or a support caster. Dungeons of Drakkenheim is a good example of a party that is doing fine without a healer, but as a result they do rely a lot more on healing potions, and there has been at least one time they’ve had to leave an area and come back later because they needed a long rest. I’m not trying to claim a healer is necessary for a party’s survival, just that there are enough class features specifically dedicated to healing and a healer’s presence/absence in a party has a significant enough impact on battle tactics that I think it should count as it’s own role.

This is certainly relative. Someone who is smart and willing to dedicate a lot of effort into figuring out their character abilities/spells and game tactics will be just fine playing a wizard as a first PC. Admittedly, most players will struggle with full prepared casters like wizard or cleric as first time characters, even smart players if they aren't dedicated to learning the game and game tactics. Edit: I'm just going to add on that a campaign lasts a long time in IRL, even if a player struggles, and long as he/she is having fun and takes advice well, I think it's fine to have player spend a few levels to figure out how to fill their character's role appropriately.

@@jbjefe there are exceptions but I don't want to waste energy sifting through them. Again, brand new player, let them observe the experienced players and learn the mechanics with a simple character. My campaigns never last longer than a season and I always give my PCs an option to retire surviving characters and create new ones so it's not like they are locked in for years.

@@chy03001 Oh man, what would that be like? Sounds nice. My current campaign started almost 5 years ago.

@@jbjefe usually a campaign would be the length of a module; Saltmarsh, Ravenloft, Red Hand of Doom etc. After the module or campaign is done we take a break for a few weeks/months. When I feel up to it again we reconnect and start a new campaign and assume it's been a few in-game years. Not everyone comes back but when they do, they can pick up their old character or roll a new one.

@@chy03001 Yeah, that's a very modular play style. I might actually be able to get my friends back into D&D if we did it that way. So, back to your original point, in this context I would have to agree. I would default to routing new players into playing a primarily martial class like fighter or barbarian.

Not any good reason, just because I'm fickle I guess. Wizard vids will happen, that's a promise.

No reason. The guy who finds traps doesn’t need to be the investigator who figures out how to disarm. I’m fact an awesome scout would find away around the trap ! Of course the trap finder and disabled can be the same person.

Christian Swensen Do you constantly play with different groups? Because it only took a few party wipes over the course of maybe 6 months for my group to become pretty hardcore optimizers.

@@M0ebius not so much entirely different, as continually changing. We rarely have the exact same group for more than a couple weeks, and party wipes are so common that it's pretty standard to have to reroll more than once per month. Twice in 2019 already, I have been the proverbial last man standing, and I wasn't even playing a tank!

If you notice someone in your game optimizing far more than the other players, my tip would be to encourage them to use their talents for a support character. This will eliminate the unbalance issues.

Matthew Niemi In my experience, the more you care about the game and bothered to learn the rules, the more optimized your character naturally becomes. The real problem is that most people never learn the mechanics even after many sessions.

@@TreantmonksTemple thank you for the reply. It honestly hasn't been a huge problem, just that I can see how dms and other players can be put off by it. But I like that advice a lot.

@@M0ebius that's a fine perspective to have, but it doesn't help my players have fun. 4/5 aren't happy, so I have to talk to the 5th. It'd be different if it were the other way around, almost easier. But I can't turn 4 people into rules loving monster killing machines, but I can say multiclassing is optional and likely not fit for this pc in this group. But I honestly like the idea of asking him to play a support instead.

Matthew N Different strokes for different folks. I don’t believe in catering to the lowest common denominator and made it a point to teach the table basic concepts like Action Economy and how to juice AC and damage from a given build. But I play with a bunch of former competitive gamers and our natural inclination is to power game, so it was easy for me and everyone bought in. I understand that in real life many people don’t want to bother learning the game and expect “fun” to be given rather than earned.

TexasFriedCriminal Yes I agree. It used to be sick when my DM allowed Dragon’s Breath to be Twin Spelled by my Sorclock. I used to twin it onto an EK’s Owl familiar and a Warlock’s Imp familiar and we’d hose down legions of mooks.

Deacon Newcomb If the DPR can get through every encounter via going nova, your DM is not running enough encounters.

I don't really agree. In my opinion, 5e has 3 tiers of damage. The below average damage, the consistent damage, and the high damage, also known as DPR. The consistent damage is granted by martial characters that use weapons. In practice, you're doing consistentdamage when you're rolling some dice to deal damage AND you add a certain constant value to it, making it reliable and consistent. When you roll for weapon damage, let's say a Longsword, you're dealing 1D8+STR damage. A lot of classes can do those kinds of damage. Even if it's a 1D4+STR, it's still consistent and reliable.It's gonna be present pretty much in any balanced party. Fighters, Barbarians, Paladins, Rangers, and some Clerics. This kind of damage is "at will", in the sense that you don't use any resource to deal it. Your character is built to do it all the time. The below average damage is granted by classes that don't do as high "at will" damage as the other classes. They're usually casters, which have ways to do at will damage through cantrips but it's gonna be either lower or less reliable and less consistent. Let's take the Firebolt example: 1D10 Fire damage, 5.5 damage on average. At level 5: 2D10 Fire damage, 10 damage on average. The thing is that the only thing that comes in here is the average damage. You could get low damage or high damage at the same chance because you're not adding anything to it, making it kinda unreliable and inconsistent. It's not bad damage per se, but with 0 resources spent it's gonna be lower than average. The classes that deal this kind of damage have resources to do some burst damage or to change the tides of the battle with spells. In short, dealing good damage consistently AND reliably isn't their job. Consistently means without using expendable resources. The high damage character, also called DPR, is someone deals consistent and reliable damage, but it's higher than average. This includes Rogues, Monks and Warlocks for sure, but there are several options avaiable to potentially everyone to increase the damage a lot. Rogues do only 1 attack but as they level up their sneak attack becomes very strong. Monks do low dice damage but they're gonna apply their modifier at least thrice by default, without investing anything. If you spend resources, Monks can apply their modifier damage 4 times and apply several effects also. Warlocks have Eldritch Blast and Agonizing Blast that lets them do high unresisted damage reliably and consistently. They also can spend resources to increase their DPR even further with Hex or even with spells that disrupt enemies, effectively making damage easier to apply. There are also feats and multiclassing that help in dealing high damage consistently. Feats include Great Weapon Master, Sharpshooter, Polearm Master, and so on. Multiclassing easily achieves it also. The reality about high damage characters (DPRs), is that they usually do a lot of damage, but they're gonna spend resources in it and/or find themselves in particular situations in order to do so. Spending resources doesn't only mean they're spending a spell slot or a ki point, but also means they're renouncing one feature in favor of another one, like picking Great Weapon Master instead of Sentinel for example. Or taking Agonizing Blast instead of another useful invocation. What I want to say is that it's hard to find a character that can be considered a DPR that also has the potential to turn the tides like a caster, or the tanking ability of martial characters, or both, or even support. There's the Sorcadin that happens to do all of those things, but that's a multiclass that isn't perfect at all and it's often considered the pinnacle of character power. If you're playing at tables where the DPR gets ALL the job done without letting other people have some fun, there's something problematic at that table, that's for sure. Even a Sorcadin can't steal everyone's fun. Maybe your DM is not building encounters well, maybe that DPR character is spending all the resources in one fight and the DM isn't "punishing" it by running more encounters between rests. I wrote "punishing" but it's not an actual punish, it's how the game usually works, it's balanced about not spending every resource in a fight. If you need to spend every resource in a fight, then the fight is REALLY difficult, maybe there are a shitload of enemies + tactical disadvantages, or maybe you're against a single legendary creature like a Beholder. And that DPR nova-ing in that situation is perfectly fine, but it's not gonna solve the situation immediately. For example, I'm playing in a campaign with a new DM and relatively new players also. I'm the only one that has some experience behind, and I'm playing a Conquest Paladin. Conquest Paladins deal consistent damage, but have the option to spend resources to deal even more damage (Divine Smites and Spirit Weapon), but also need to use those resources to buff/control the battlefield with Bless or fear effects. We did 3 sessions as now, we're at level 5, and I still didn't heal anyone, still didn't even Divine Smite once, still didn't cast Hold Person. Just Bless and Spiritual Weapon (once). Why? Because there's a Seeker Warlock (U.A. territory, meaning it's not balanced well) that only has options to deal damage and always spends ALL of his resources in the few encounters we had. In those 3 sessions I always ended up thinking "well I might as well save my resources for later". But in those 3 sessions we only had 1 fight per rest. Basically the Warlock could spend all the resources in those battles, and I, fearing next encounters, was spending almost no resources, basically just attacking and occasionally grappling. Complaints rised fast, other players were unhappy with this Warlock. The truth is that this Warlock wasn't even optimized. He's a pact of the blade warlock that rolled very high stats (he has 20 Charisma and 18 Strength, more than my paladin that went for point buy) but never actually summoned his pact weapon. He always casts Vampire Touch (a mediocre spell) and uses his Seeker feature that grants him resistance to all damage and basically free 10 damage per turn in a vast area. He has 10 AC and 30-ish HP, so he's very frail. But the game is structured in such a manner that those opinable choices are not gonna have a side effect for him. I was the only competent player at that table because I have 3 years of playing experience and 2 years of DMing behind me. And I said, without wanting to offend anyone: "Guys chill out, this Warlock is getting all the spotlight because so far we never actually faced difficult encounters. He could spend every resource in every fight, while we others never actually spent our strong abilities. I'm sure that the next sessions will be harder and will give us more spotlight". In fact, the Wizard only used level 1 spell slots. No level 3 spells. Same for the Bard. It's almost 3 weeks that we don't play together now. There were some problems with the DM and with the players because of work and other things, but I have a feeling that the DM knows that he needs to work harder and didn't expect that DMing is actually hard. So, TL;DR: if a player gets all the spotlight, it's usually the DM's fault. Don't blame DMs though, it's an hard job to do.

@@M0ebius Most high DPR builds are off classes that use short rests to replenish resourxes eg Waelock, Monk, Fighter. Average amount of combats per resta is 1.5 according to D&D beyond which is pulling aggregate data from about 100k tables. Also most people who build for damage can pull off some amazing damage with the broken feats eg sharp shooger and great weapon master

@@KhristianBolano when I say DPR class i am saying a character that can get north of 50 damage in 1 turn. Unless the DM staggers mobs by slowly introducing them or pads there hp totals like give monster full hp instead of average hp. The DPR player make the encounters last 2 maybe 3 rounds when it would be more like 5 to 10 rounds. Less rounds equals less opportunities to deplete resources. Usually this eventually breaks down in the long run as your arms are too short to box with god. As in your competing against a DM with unlimited resources and are trying to out damage him. Ultimately if you try to enter in a nuclear arms race with them you will lose. The nature of the tank and healer are to exstend the combat phase and the Striker and Face shortens it. Most people allow the DPR to do his thing becauae at thw end of the day usually the PC's survive and they get to keep playing there characters. But did they really get to play?

I think you have found a criticism of your dm's, not damage dealers. If you have player characters and a couple are doing a single die of damage (1d8+3) and you have a couple doing( 2d6+4) and have one doing (1d6 + 2d6+ 4) you certainly are not killing the majority of opponents in one shot, and even if you did a dm should understand the parties capabilities and add more foes. A good dm could even sprinkle in a few 1 hp bad guys , so everyone gets some carnage time.

smbakeresq My only experience with D&D is 5E. In the 5E system, Gishes can easily be built into any kind of specialists you need. And a team of Gishes still needs to work together to have fun let alone survive. I totally agree with everything else you said, but that’s more of a human problem than character problem. Even in a campaign with 5 identical Rogues you still need to respect each other’s turns. One thing I’ve noticed though is that D&D gamers from older generations seems to have a lot more people who are socially awkward and passive-aggressive when compared to the modern generation of gamers.

M0ebius I find the opposite to be true. The younger generation has no idea how to play as a team, no idea how to share the spotlight, and little concept how to be a specialist in a role and make it stick. TM mentions this in his wizard guide, a group was dying all the time, he jumps in a plays a controller wizard that does little damage, he gets ridiculed for doing little damage, everyone stops dying, no one recognized the controller was the cause. Dedicated support and dedicated tank are a lot harder to play well then other roles and this seems lost in the video games DPS craze we are in. Makes it easy to show and play though at a table, you will always be useful and almost no one will have a duplicative PC to yours.

smbakeresq That’s interesting how our experiences differ. I actually enjoy playing with competitive e-sport gamers because they invariably pick up rules the fastest and can easily grasp the mechanical aspects of the game. And cooperative video gamers coming from MMORPGs are well-versed in the different D&D roles. I also enjoy gaming with people that had experience in team sports, as that tend to combine the best aspects of both the competitive and the cooperative gamers. And yes every party needs support characters, though support as defined by TM covers virtually everything besides damage. They are harder to play because supports tend to be casters, and casters in general just has more options. Dedicated tanks on the other hand barely exist in 5E, as there aren’t many builds that can be sticky enough to be effective. Generally it is more ideal for the whole party to have a decent AC and mobility options. Personally I don’t like parties with characters that are too specialized in one thing, because they tend to be gimmick builds. I prefer a balanced party with well rounded characters in overlapping roles, as that gives you a built-in redundency that makes the team much more resilient.

@@M0ebiusIn my experience playing with E-sports gamers they will sacrifice anything for their own survival and gain. This is epsorts gamers from WOT, OW, etc. "Team" is a relative concept to them, if you are on a paid team with them they care, otherwise nope.

@@M0ebius And its a party of specialists, not specialized party, that's different. A party of specialists is well rounded. I get where you are coming from, you just want to play gishes after Hexblade came out, everyone does, its the season of the gish.

But how many of those seconds does it take to make my attacks? A rogue's DPS will be several times higher than a fighter's because it all happens in one hit, but that will literally never matter because they both still take one turn. And it would be a superfluous extra step to divide your DPR by 6 in order to find your "DPS". AND you have to specify that you are counting in-game seconds, not IRL seconds. One can certainly make the case that a barbarian has higher DPS than a monk because her turns don't take as much time IRL.

@@Spyger279 dps is measured by averaging all the seconds, not just looking at individual seconds.

The rules for tea parties is a supplement I think I might be ok not buying.

Yeah DnD is full of rules for combat. 2 core books are dedicated entirely to it (PHB and MM), while the DMG is also about it. And they cost 50$ bucks each, so they aren't very cheap. If someone wants to play DnD and wants a pure storytelling and roleplaying game without "rollplaying" or doing combats, maybe DnD is the wrong game for those ones. Since DnD is still a roleplaying game rather than a board game, storytelling and roleplaying are still big factors. But DnD isn't all about that.

A lump does more than create roleplaying gaps. They (or the ones I'm thinking of) actually interfere with the roleplaying of others in a variety of ways.

Treantmonk's Temple But really, disruptive dicks can come from both end of the RP spectrum. It really just comes down to some people simply do not care about others.

@@M0ebius ya, its about timing and sharing the spotlight... too much or too little is not good.