VanCucci's page

I feel like (and probably i'm wrong) that DEX to Damage shouldn't be an option, not for realism or balance, but because that would lead to the standarditation of PCs:

So, let's start from the widest diffusion of Dex to Damage: every light or finesse one handed weapon hit and damage is governed by Dex, like 5e did. This would push (under an optimitation point of view) every agile combattant to never raise their Str over 10.

Ok, let's try with "Feat gives Dex to damage". Well the result wouldn't be much different. Having a cost would make SOME people go with a decent Str and stick with that. But, because beign SAD is almost always optimal, many people would cry out "feat tax!"...and in my opinion they wouldn't be so wrong.

And, with the current option of Finesse Striker, we would have the same issue: people dipping like crazy Rogue 1 for their Monk, Rangers and Fighters. And those not dipping would complain about the cost needed to pay to achieve an optimal version of the character envisioned.

Dex to damage is like drugs man, increasing its cost doesn't decrease its demand: its an optimal choice to be as SAD as possible, and people will go to any lenght to obtain it...doing things like PUTING SKILL RANKS IN PERFOMANCE(DANCE), the horror...

Agile and swift warriors should receive benefits from their playstyle in a way that dosen't make a decent Str score useless. Yes there are multiple istances and examples of heroes and characters relying on their agilty more than on their strenght, but it never shows them having an 8 or 10 in their hypotetical character sheet.

I've seen many suggesting to implement the same mechanic used by one of the Vigilante's feats: adding a fixed bonus damage when attacking using Dex. IMO That would be a good start.

It is really hard to cram every weapon onto a scale of d2 to d12 and still wind up with distinctive weapons, more so if you also ignore the imaginary dice (d2, d3, and d5). Even more so when at 1st level your Ability Score can contribute more to your average damage than most of the weapons available to you.

That's why they added more specific weapon traits: to make weapons feel more distinct.

I mean, look at the scimitar, it's not just a d6 damage weapon, is also a weapon really good when swung around a lot, to multiple enemies. The same for the rapier, if you have a really high accuracy or you are facing a low AC enemy, this thing is DEADLY. We have to see what two handed weapons have to offer; they might have cleave-like traits, trip or stuff like that.

Using a shield requires an action every turn, so, action economy wise, a Two handed fighter that used one of his hands to do something else and wants to regrip his greatsword is still on par with a SaB fighter that wants to get his defenses up:

2H: [F]Take one hand off [A]Do thing [A]Hand back on weapon [A]Attack

SB: [A]Attack [A]Attack [A]Shield up

Seems pretty balanced if the action taken with one and is on par with a second attack.

Sincererly, if you want to fight with the highest damage weapon (considering also how magic weapons damage scales), i think is fair to give up a little bit of versatility in the process, last edition it was hard to make a SaB or 1H fighter viable, 2H dominated everything.

Talking about crossbows tho, i'm a bit disappointed that they are so...bland. I would've prefered them to have the reload trait to make up for another trait that made shooting once a turn enough (something like deadly, but more reliable).

Rogue's Dex to damage isn't the only Class Feature that ends up being useless in some builds:
Fighters focusing mainly on archery on ranged combat in general will have their Attack of Opportunity unused 90% of the time.

I think an elegant way to address this is to have a Class Feat (or more, one for each option) avaible at lv1 that allows to swap out the first Class feature + giving some benefit tied to the "non standard" playstyle; this way you make the first Class Feature relevant to how you want to play, and get the benefit of having taken a normal Class Feat at 1st level like a "standard" Melee Fighter or Dex Rogue.

In my opinion tho, i think is more important to nail down the archetypical type of characters (like say Bard playing instruments, archery Ranger, Tanky Paladin etc...), and then think about more atipical builds, which is SUPER EASY to do with the modularity offered from this system.
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or not, this is just my opinion.

Hey! We are supposed to be hating on new classes here! Stop discussing rules and start talking about how the core book had the most balanced classes ever.

The Inquisitor is such a bad class: It isn't spanish and it was preannounced.

The high casters can be used; they just need to be role-played well.

I'm used to "Rogues are fine, you have to play them cleverly", but this is a new one...

"Casters are fine, you have to play them stupidly"

Because having an arch-enemy, that you could kill by just looking at them, alive for more than 2 encounters...well it makes you pretty incompetent.

And nope! If you think killing world-threating criminals is immoral and you have the power to do so, you're responsible for everything they do, thus making your choice immoral at the same level they are (which is pretty bad).

Saying that to play full casters you need to pull your punches, by whatever means, just shows how much broken they are even more.