Hadriker's page

I played D&D 3.5 for about a year before my group fully switched to 5e. We've been a mostly 5e group since its release, playing other systems occasionally.

I DM most of the time for our 5e campaigns. I've ran a few modules and a homebrew where i took the players all the way to level 20 that lasted almost 2 years.

I picked up the CRB a couple months ago and have been running one shots at various levels so my group could get a feel for the system and character building. Its been a pretty great success.

My table definitely leans towards power gaming. My table is more into the character building and wargaming part of TTRPGs. 2e supports that tactical style of play much better than 5e does. The 3 action system and wealth of character options really makes that style of play more rewarding and fun.

As a DM, building encounters has never been easier due to the tight math. I can use the encounter builder in the CRB and know it will be right at or close to the kind of challenge i want. 5e's encounter building kind of goes out the window with balance once you get past level 8 and start introducing magic items. Its telling when WoTC rarely has modules go past level 10 and don't even follow their own encounter building rules.

I plan on starting a full fledged campaign once i can get a hold of an APG. my table is looking forward to it.

Dave2 wrote:

It is largely comparing PF1 Wizard to PF2. I like the Wizard in PF2 and is much more balanced. This came up in 5e also. People were saying over and over the wizard and casters in general were nerfed. My opinion they needed to be rebalanced from 3rd/3.5. Also 5e seems to be doing just fine with the rebalance of casters. As indicated above very same thing was said about Pathfinder 1 versus 3.5. Wizards and casters were nerfed in PF1. I think the rebalancing in PF2 of casters and Wizards specifically was needed thing from PF1. Also there seems to be no agreement of what the issues are so very hard thing to fix.

As far as the Witch goes they gave good update in preview video's of the witch Paizo Con in the APG panel. They I think do have access to divine lists also now which was change from playtest.

I have to least give the 5E wizard done some props in that the shapechanging and summon spells are still good. My recollection is the Wizard class abilities also were very nice and something to look forward to. You actually wanted to run a wizard to high level for those abilities because they were a meaningful, interesting, and useful increase in power.

I still recall one wizard player having all kinds of fun with the Conjuration wizard abilities in 5E.

the 5e Wizard is fun and the arcane traditions are generally at least okay. but they generally aren't all that impactful.

That's becasue the 5e wizards power is still mostly derived from the wizard spell list. The God Wizard is still very much a thing in 5e. Its easily the most powerful/versatile class in the game.

Balance between casters and martials in 5e has been an often talked about and argued portion of the 5e game design. high level wizards are basically demi-gods in 5e, where as martials just hit stuff more often. Wizards in 5e are most definitely fun but a lot of that fun is derived from how ridiculously powerful and game breaking they can be.

I personally prefer 2es more balanced approach to casting. I can definitely understand how they feel off when coming from 5e or 3.x D&D or PF1e though.

As a GM, I can't think of many things that would get you kicked from my table faster than being a no-show without either announcing it in advance or having a seriously good reason. Showing up unannounced is similar - I've never had it happen but it almost seems worse to me.

You may not feel the same way Dirtypool, but I consider it to be one of the most disrespectful and disruptive things a player can possibly do.

I understand this stance and its a valid one, but its not really relevant to the OP. OP seems to be okay with the fact that his group could be anywhere between 4 and 6 people with no advanced warning and tells us it hasn't really been a problem until they started playing 2e.

It seems more like his lack of understanding of the encounter building rules is what led the problem more than the players showing up or not. he even says it hasn't been an issue with other systems.

He also made some poor choices in dealing with the issue (making them play an NPC? thats a little WTF to me). So really these issues due stem from how OP reacted to these two issues.

I mean. adjusting encounters is very easy to do in this system. much easier than say 5e is. I really think OP kind of dropped the ball here more than the players.

Never been a fan of fumble rules. Like oh you drop your sword or your arrow veers to the left and hits one of your group mates.

i use crit fails or successes as a narration tool for the fight rather than adding extra rules.

But the worst is the house rule that over compensates for something the DM has deemed overpowered/underpowered becasue they don't understand the game design. Typically done by newer DMs.

A non PF example would be the rogue sneak attack in D&D5e. So many new DMs see the sneak attack damage as "OP" especially at lower levels and will do anything they can to deny the advantage you need to get it. When in reality the rogue is balanced around getting sneak attack the majority of the time. Nerfing it makes the class objectively worse then any other martial class.

I disagree that darkvision is a problem in general, but I definitely agree with #7. It is an absolute pain to adjudicate vision at a table in anything other than a VTT with dynamic lighting. This is less true in 2E now that darkvision no longer has a range and low-light is doing more useful things, but its still annoying to handle.

Shoutout though to VTTs with dynamic lighting. Really makes vision fun by automating the whole thing and giving each player a different view based on their capabilities.

So true. Dynamic lighting makes vision stuff a blast to use. My group has always been in person but when Covid hit we moved to roll20 and as the GM the dynamic lighting options we so fun to employ