u/Weak_Lion5326

Not the only offender, but they deliberately changed the wording on spirit guardians style spells so they activate every round when you run them past people. Like, they didn't used to work this way, and now they do and a bunch of classes have such spells.

I mention druids in the title because they're the worst for it - our wildfire druid used to make enemies take three separate saves against conjure woodland beings every round, before we realised they could just turn into a small bird and get chucked around easily to shred teams.

And again, this is something they deliberately enabled. There are any number of tricks - artificer can have a half dozen full power elementals up at once, our necromancer has a battle familiar and a summoned undead and some reanimated skeletons all up at once, the list goes on - but what all those tricks tend to have in common is they're done by casters.

But the perception seems to be that the one big martial advantage is damage is higher? It's not even longer lasting, they run out of hit points eventually and the caster stuff tends to be one long lasting concentration boost that enables them to attack from a safer position. Is there something I'm missing?

I'm not looking to strawman here, there are people wanting the option to pick a martial with a deeper pool of choices and I'm not going to conflate you with the occasional troll who wants to literally be Goku.

But for those who've put some serious thought into it. Experienced what they feel is more suitable martial gameplay in other editions or games, or have ideas for how it could be done in a better feeling way, or can articulate what's not working for them in 5e. What could they release that would have you agreeing that things are now in a good place?

Sure, Season of Champions turned out not to be martial books which is sad considering Arcane Unleashed did turn out to be a caster book, but there are releases further in the future. It is at least in theory possible that we'll get proper martial content. And side note if someone else says "more weapon masteries! Battlemaster maneuvers for everyone!" and you don't think that's helpful, explain why in a nice way.

Which Aragorn can't do, it's simply not that kind of story. And wouldn't be as good if he could.

My point is that a lot of times the fantasy is "down to earth guy who keeps up with Gandalf despite lack of fancy bullshit", but the problem seems to be that as levels get higher you are genuinely entering territory where you instead need to be Heracles to compete, going to to toe with dragons and getting all your blood back by taking a short rest.

Oftentimes I hear "solve it with magic items!", but while some love it others don't want their power to come from an external source. The wizard and druid certainly don't need the magic items to cope with a world of high powered fantasy bullshit, they're off teleporting and scrying and whatever under their own power.

Is this solvable (outside of simply not being an issue for some people, depending on what they want from their character) or an innate part of the equation?

I did some quick googling, and found a lot of classes that used to exist in D&D - I'm just going to go ahead and assume they aren't all unique enough to be their own class. But, I also find it difficult to believe that there isn't a single class in here at least as different from current classes as current classes are from each other.

Not expecting anyone to care about the whole list, but is there anything familiar from it people would say would make sense as a subclass or wouldn't make sense as only a subclass?

• Warlord
• Warden
• Truenamer
• Totemist
• Swordsage
• Swordmage (are these two genuinely different classes?)
• Shaman
• Seeker
• Runepriest
• Psychic Warrior
• Psion
• Ninja
• Invoker
• Incarnate
• Factotum
• Duskblade
• Dread Necromancer
• Dragonfire Adept
• Crusader
• Binder
• Beguiler
• Battlemind
• Avenger
• Ardent
• Archivist

It was a delightful D&D class back in the day, make pacts with vestiges for various suites of abilities. A quick google tells me people have homebrewed a few 5e versions - has anyone tried one they can verify as enjoyable and balanced? Starting a new campaign and the DM is very UA/homebrew friendly.

It's a great all around class, and I'm not saying losing the tank focus was a bad choice. I like the way 5e did them a lot!

But my first character last edition was a paladin, and I miss both the range of smites (like smite of the flame cage, make an arena of fire for you and your target to fight in) and the baseline thing of being able to tank for your party. You could mark enemies, penalising any moves that didn't also target you, and the first time each round they used a claw or fireball or whatever that didn't target you they automatically took a bunch of radiant damage.

Meant that while they could target other party members, they'd really regret it, and I really enjoyed the paladin as the knight you had to deal with thing as the theme for the class. They're definitely capable still, more of a very good all-rounder! But unlike the past paladin, there's a bunch of situations they can't tank in since they lack a blanket 'target anyone else and get hurt'. Would it be appropriate as a subclass feature? They made the cavalier subclass, and all its features are just the features fighters got at level 1 last edition.