For a couple years I played a Shepherd druid/Cleric of Life that I designed to be the most optimized healer 5e could possibly allow, It took months to get the build online, with some 7 levels of straight up underpowered play, but once my most powerful abilities and spells were all available, my sweet little girl became the beating, unkillable heart of the party, and entirely shifted the way we played, with the DM starting an armsrace of power scallation that brought us straight into high fantasy just because I could pump some 50-100 hp into each member of a party of 8 per round. By the time I started adding in levels of paladin and going for those aura effects, our party felt truly like legendary heroes in a way few 5e games have felt for me. My playstyle inspired the others to optimize their characters, with our rogue becoming the definition of a glass cannon, outputting nonsense amounts of damage to single targets in suicide runs they knew I would bring them back from. Our warlock made a point of striking a deal with any and every powerful being that would lend it more magic in whatever form it came. The DM got to bring out monsters and traps that he'd only ever dreamed of without risking a tpk, piling up to 6 deadly encounters per day and just having the time of his life. But alas, by the time the pandemic relented and we begun talking about resuming the campaign, WOTC had moved in and errata'd away half my build. Was it broken? Yes, but it was also extremely fun, and required I worked hard to get there for a long time. Without that build, we soon found playing healers was not only suboptimal, but boring, which was much more detrimental, and ultimately caused me to retire that character as an npc and take on a new role (as a cleric of the forge/fighter/paladin with 30 AC) that again caused huge changes in our group's playstyle.
This is a perfect example of something being 1000% broken and yet not being a problem at the table because everyone is still having fun 😁 I’m delighted by this story, thanks for sharing it!
@@SupergeekMike Thank you so much for actually taking the time to read my comments! I've recently rediscovered your channel and have been binging all the videos youtube didn't bother to tell me about this year, heh.
I would consider something "game breaking" if it is, for one reason or another, taking away the fun of a different person at the table. If the Ranger gets an ability that allows them to rapid-fire and take out all the mooks you throw at them, that might take away from the Barbarian's game experience of smashing skulls if all of a sudden, the only skulls to smash are the ones that take the whole fight to take out. Think about how Travis felt every time Grog got a kill mid-battle, even a little one. It was part of his enjoyment of the game! Now imagine if Percy decided to take care of the action economy and only fire at the weakest enemies, rather than unloading into the main threat. It's also important to remember that the DM having fun running the game is just as important as the players' fun playing. This is why the Deck of Many Things is commonly regarded as a game breaking item, it can cause so many powerful magical effects that can completely disrupt the narrative the DM was trying to weave. This is why Matt probably took extra care in what cards he put in the deck Grog got, because one Vizier card could significantly impact the trajectory of the story they were trying to tell. Sorry if that was rambly, I hope my point came across.
Hi SuperGeek...your comment about the GM vs Player mentality with old school D&D is pretty spot on. I started playing in the early 1980s, and every GM that I ever had really was trying to kill everyone most of the time. I had a couple of GMs who were more fun and funny about it, but for me, the relationship to the GM was ALWAYS adversarial. I cannot tell you how much I would like to try playing with a GM that was not trying to kill my character most of the time, and was really focused on making the game fun for me. 💯✌
I noticed this too. I tried a 3.5 (considerably later but you catch my drift) game where the DM was clearly having a GREAT time trying to kill us all... and we were miserable. The whole experience was kinda yucky feeling for me personally and I know that opinion was shared by some others at the table. Clearly that DM cared more about his own fun (which seemed to be derived directly from us struggling to accomplish even basic tasks) than ours. I think that's where the shift happened- DM's started realizing that if they play this way, it's possible that only the DM OR the players can be having fun at any one time. It's a see-saw for fun. Of course it works for some players who like that particular brand of struggle, but there are so many others for whom it isn't suitable. If the DM can have fun in a game where the players are also at that moment having fun, then it's more likely to work out long term IMO.
Something my brother and I have talked about a lot is how "game breaking" can be EXTREMELY dependent on the experience level of the players, especially in a group of mixed experienced players and newbies. In a game with as much depth as D&D, system mastery means a LOT, which means that even with the exact same character build, an experienced player will get a lot more utility out of various features than a newbie who doesn't know how to combine various mechanics to their greatest effect. It doesn't matter, for example, how OP a spell is if your newbie wizard doesn't cast it at the optimal time. My brother in particular is a math person, good at keeping track of statistics and odds in his head, meaning that he very often knows what the optimal choice is in a given moment. In some of our games, we play with friends who are lovely to play with and very fun at the table but don't know the rules as thoroughly as he does. He has taken to DELIBERATELY building his character in a slightly sub-optimal way, knowing that his system mastery at the table will make up for it. He doesn't want to overshadow our friends and make it less fun for them, so he tones back his choices. And on the flip side, we will encourage newbies towards feats or spells, etc, that maybe are a little OP, knowing that their LACK of system mastery will mean that rather than breaking the game, it just brings them up to par with the rest of the table. In the game my brother DMs, for example, the rogue had the Sentinal feat (a great way to get an extra sneak attack on opportunity attacks) but kept sticking to ranged combat, and his damage levels were falling behind the paladin as we leveled up. So my brother gave the rogue a dope magical sword with some excellent powers to encourage him to engage in melee and make use of his Sentinal feat. Is the sword OP? It would be if we had given it to the paladin, that's for sure. But no one in the game feels slighted, because all it did is let the rogue keep up with the party.
Even though I haven't D&D for years (playing VTM, L5R, and other games like it), I always appreciate thoughtful, nuanced takes on TTRPGS and the experience of playing them. Only thing I can add is that don't be afraid to go beyond into new systems. Maybe D&D doesn't do a particular style of play well without heavy homebrewing and houserules. There's nothing wrong with that, of course, but checking out new systems that do a particular genre/fantasy/type of roleplaying better is a great option!
Big agree. I play lots of smaller narrative style games on rotation in a weekly group. The hardest part is wrapping your head around new sets of rules and breaking away from DnD ruts, but there are plenty of games out there more lightweight and easier to understand than DnD... Just, far fewer resources to help someone get into those games. QQ I can google "How to make a DnD character" and get millions of hits. Trying to search for different kinds of help in smaller games can be more difficult.
@@randomguy019 XD One of my DMs has been wanting to play that for years. Some irl stuff has gotten in the way unfortunately but I'm hoping we'll all be able to play it soon.
On the topic of balance I'd like to add a tip for games I'd heard that buffing the weak is often more fun than nerfing the strong, but each situation is unique (Note I know you basically said this but just really thought it can always be restated)
I feel like theres one more thing about 'game breaking' Mike didn't fully cover which is something that weighs on my mind as a DM - things that take too much time. The worst offender for this are a lot of players with summons or familiars, which can work in some parties - I know it can - but waiting 5 minutes for a player's turn just sucks the fun imvho. Mainly because as the DM I want to try and course-correct and take as little time for an enemy's turn, which leads to boring combat. The same, for me as a DM, also occurs if a party has one or two players who have a lot of downtime or sidequests they've got to do, or created, whilst another party member doesn't... its started happening in one of my campaigns and is starting to derail the tension lol as well as making me worry for the other players' fun or attention spans
Here's something that DMs should always keep in mind. It's OK to block the party's progress with an obstacle they can't defeat, as long as there's a another path for them to travel that they can overcome, and that alternate path isn't something the party could only discover by accident. If you present the party with an insurmountable obstacle, with no reasonably discoverable alternative, then the party's only option is to spend more time than is necessary rolling their own deaths, and that simply isn't fun for anyone at the table, unless the DM is a sadist or a psychopath.
I hope your wife is feeling better. I don't really have anything to add on the topic of things being game breaking but I do on dungeon design. I've been using maps of Sumerian and Akkadian digs for a lot of my dungeons recently. The bigger buildings have a wonderfully sprawling structure, with large open rooms and a lot of smaller side rooms and twisting passages. I've used them with a fair amount of success for underground ruins so far.
I think of "broken" rules in two very different categories. The first is similar to what you mention with the Goodberry spell: mechanics that directly obstruct a particular style of gameplay. Related to that, there are also spell that, if as prevalent as vanilla d&d rules suggest, would have extreme implications on how the world actually works. Long distance teleporting is an obvious one there. The other category is where rules (typically for a subclass introduced in later material) intrudes upon an existing "fantasy" of play (to use your terminology) and becomes " required" to make it work well. The best example of this is the Hexblade: it came in as a clumsy "fix" for the well-documented weaknesses in the Pact of the Blade. The problem was, they wrapped it all in a specific "patron" subclass rather than making it available to all blade pact warlocks. The fallout of this has been very obvious ever since with famous warlocks like Fjord in Critical Role, using the Hexblade subclass while having a patron that could be far more interesting and more thematically represented with another option.
There is definitely a issue with certain themes game breaking and the fun of certain players and or gms. It's often the case of that one person's theme and or fun is diametrically opposed to another person's theme and or fun. A classic example of this conflict is when one or more players gets their fun from things being hard and 1 or more players gets their fun from things being easy. Your example was slightly less opposed than this but moving in that direction.
With any game, knowing the 'meta' can definitely give you clues of how to 'break' it. For dnd, there still feels like a meta that things like CR are actually compared against. That's why we have banshee at CR 2 even though their scream kills you. They assume you will have a cleric or paladin. Then you add in that playtesting reinforces the 'meta', esp since you have people that have always had either a paladin or cleric in their party, you will groups say it's fine and others complain that the designs 'forces' them to play a certain way. It's why I push for strategy and creativity. It's why I was eager to see what I could do with a 'useless' spell like heat metal. Heating armor to have reliable constant damage. Heat a weapon to make your enemy drop it and limit their damage output. Yeah, broken when used that way but I'm not sure a lot of people would use it that way so it's never an issue. I don't mind going by the letter of a spell but I do try to see how that 'rule' could apply to strange or wacky situations. I've done the same with videogames. Playing a game like league of legends has the same sort of situation. I used to confuse the heck out of people building my support as a full mage but once they saw how effective it was, people were all on board. It worked because her abilities improved immensely and because of the way I play in general (slightly more gutsy than the average support) I could sneak in with the last minute save that the opponents never saw coming. What is "broken" vs underpowered vs fair is a combination of a lot of stuff. Expectation is the main thread of the entire picture though. Yours vs the game's vs other people's.
Though people have different focuses in the game, there are commonalities; ie even osr games want a FAIR game, power gamers want to win, but they do not want a cake walk every fight... it is a spectrum here, but all players want the same things just not all at once.
Game Breaking for me is something that removes or trivializes a pillar of play such as combat, exploration, or social. Hell I had a couple players that wanted homebrew that broke two of the damned pillars and got upset when I said I'd have to nerf whatever gimmick (and its almost always a gimmick) they were going for.
What do YOU find to be the most fun part of D&D? Thanks so much to WorldAnvil for sponsoring this video! Visit www.worldanvil.com/supergeekmike and use the promo code SUPERGEEK to get 40% off any annual membership! www.worldanvil.com/supergeekmike
Since im actively working on the system we use i tell my players if they feel something is underpowered or overpowered to let me know as well if i do change something I always tell the players in a group chat but the player(s) effected I'll dm before i before I change anything and let them know why and what im thinking on doing
About Goodberry What makes the spell good is not the ability to fill your tummy Goodberry is the best spell to regain HP between fights. 1 level in Life Cleric and 1 in Druid and suddenly your party is able to regain 120 HP between fights, if you dump your 3 level 1 spell slots the night before a big adventuring day. It's so much better than a short rest, it's not even funny
The site TvTropes has a good section on story-breaker powers. Interesting stories need obstacles (conflict) to be challenging. Not trivial or unsurmountable. Of course players enjoy getting shiny new powers, and being awesome. But I don't believe a lot of players would enjoy playing the entire game on god-mode. Imagine a campaign where the players have a magical wellspring of ExP in their backyard where they can haul up 10 000 experience points per bucket. And they are dressed in magical heirlooms that gains powers as their owners gains levels. So the characters quickly becomes super powered and that feels good yeah. But the only thing the GM throws at them is small warcamps of lvl 1-3 goblins. Game night after game night of levelling up and exterminating increasingly trivial and helpless opposition. I don't think you'll find a lot of players who'd actually enjoy that for a whole season. Broken mechanics break the story by making conflicts trivial. Or insurmountable. They make teamwork impossible, or unneccessary. Exactly what does this will vary by story. If the GM is planning a Whodunnit murder mystery, it's probably a bad idea to allow necromancers who can rez the murder victim for interrogation, or mindreaders who can force all suspects to tell the full truth and nothing but the truth, or clairvoyants who can see what happened in the library between midnight and morning as if the were there. If the conflict includes difficult journeys - don't allow easy teleportation. If you're planning to have a lot of combat, don't allow invincible combat-monsters.
Insightful video as ever Mike ! And I think I find myself disagreeing with you for the first time, re: martial-caster disparity. It is for me a bit game breaking in the sense that it forces martials into very specific just to keep up with casters who, in turn, keep a lot of freedom to experiment. And I guess that this would be for me another definition of game-breaking: a rule/object/skill/spell that by merely existing, would bring such a gap of player effectiveness among the PCs at my table that some of them would get frustrated, feeling they don't contribute as much to the group. Another point you made that is very true is that it all depends on the table. I ban twilight cleric and silvery barbs at mine because we can only play "short" (2-3h) sessions and these two specific things tend to either increase the number of fights needed to really challenge tour PCs, or significantly lengthen the duration of fights. To avoid running sessions that end up mostly being long combat slogs, I've therefore asked my players to not take these options. But if we played 6h long sessions, i mean... Silvery barbs let's go !
@@user-fe2ne7qx9z absolutly. I don't play dnd, never have, and I don't think I ever will, but I still watch Mike's videos. Because most of what he says applies to my table aswell. It's just really hard to find creators that actively try to make system agnostic content, so everything is dnd flavoured. Even if it's generic advice.
I would love to see some of your Dungeon23 progress! I actually heard about Dungeon23 because of your community post about it and am so glad that I've been doing it. I think YT shorts/ TikTok is really good for showing the progress, I've been doing those myself and it's so fun to make that nice snack size content for each room.
Yes, yes and yes! Game breaking is what ever takes the fun out of the game. I think we really need to take that into consideration when talking about game breakers. One particular instance I have noticed is, that lots of people think that giving pcs access to greater wealth right from the get go is game breaking. I'm just about to start a new adventure and most of my players have asked for wealthy npc connections. They don't want to have their pcs worry about income, they want to be able to hop on an airship and explore the world. In our case it would be game breaking to tell them "no, you have to earn your money first and your stuck in our starting town until you can afford your travel expanses." I can see why people might think I am crazy for giving my players those npc connections, because they would indeed break a game where earning money and working up to being able to buy that airship ticket is half the fun. That's just not the story we want to tell. It's also part of the reason why we don't use a system where financial growth is baked into the mechanics like it is in dnd. We are actually homebrewing our own system from scratch. Making a definitiv statement about what is and isn't game breaking really is like telling someone their fun is wrong. And what's more, something that breaks your game today, might be great fun in a diffrent context tomorrow.
DM made our game 'broken' by giving my cleric both luba's tarokka and fulminating treatise (and letting me use it) but... it works bc im the only caster in that party, and mostly an utility caster.. so it wroks! he also did a lot of de-buffing too and it's not all good but yeah, can't judge these things in a vacuum when talking abt dnd
As someone who's looking through the B/X rules and trying to "balance" them I'd define broken as any option that invalidates an other option. Either because they're similar but just clearly better elves vs magic users have that issue or because even in an apples to orange comparison one is much better (that's the risk with buffing magic users, a few too many spells and they'd be so strong that they'd just outperform melee characters too often). So for the goodberry example the issue is that goodberry invalidates actions like foraging. This isn't usually an issue as foraging is rarely a primary focus and goodberry does on paper have a cost, but sometimes the slot is just worth it.
The super slow level-up and high stat requirements are supposed to balance elves, particularly if you roll stats in order and don’t allow re-assignment (I encourage the former, but allow the latter) but ymmv.
I come from the world of video games and after the decades I have come to the conclusion that balance is overratted. There is alot of fun to be had in those imbalances. In fact perfect balance creates nothing more then a illusion of choice if everything is equal no choice matters.
I’m sure I’ll have to do another one soon, but until we actually know more, I *have* to press on and talk about other things too. It’s really hard to push forward when the future of the hobby is so unsure, but I still gotta try!
@@SupergeekMike You’re doing great man. Keep up the energy. We all need to remember this moment and the history that got us here when the next cool thing arrives. It would be nice if enough of us in the community supports those future official releases. That way those creatives won’t need a parent company or capital investment firm to survive and make a dime. I suspect that to be the cause of this unfortunate direction.
For me it’s less about how it affects fun and has more to do with something significantly impacting the flow of the game itself (thereby breaking it). There are plenty of ridiculously over powered spells that are not necessarily game breaking because, while they may have massive impact in a certain situation, they ultimately do not affect the game as a whole. Something as small as a healing cantrip on the other hand, while minimally impactful in any given situation could be spammed between encounters, greatly reducing the need for rest, a central aspect of the game. This quite literally breaks the game and is the very reason healing cantrips don’t exist. Even so, some tables might love the ability to top off HP between every encounter.
Through the entire intro I was thinking "It's something that makes the game less fun!" so gratifying when he got to 4:36 and landed on the same definition.
Most of the time as long as everyone is having fun it doesn't really matter. Though if something thinks something sounds a little weak or a little overly powerful. They likely should mention it and not try to hoard it and complain when people are like maybe that needs to be adjusted some. Like imagine a spell called Iceball came out. That spell does EVERYTHING fireball and is at fireballs level does but also freezes everyone it hits stopping them from moving until they make their save. Effectively full stunning them. Why would you ever want to take fireball over Iceball? It does what fireball does + another powerful effect at the same exact cost. Little excessive of an example there but I have seen such things were does what X thing does but also does more things. While not giving up anything for that extra power and utility. Doing that is also just bad design.
I know it is off topic for this video but I'd be interested to see the comparisons of when the OGL was changed for fourth edition and started pathfinder to now with project black flag & paizo's announcement.
Game Breaking I think, can be options that end up reducing options by virtue of their power above others. This can make the character feel forced and fabricated, options are picked for power alone. Easy example is a hexblade dip, makes no narrative purpose and it's just there for the power. For the reduction of option is the sentinel/polearm/greatweapon combo forcing a character into a specific weapon and reducing the flair of characters. On frustrations that can come from it can be from fellow players or the DM, the sentinel combo above leaving a enemy stranded doing nothing without any save might be funny the first time, less so the third, moreso should the monster be intimidating. A big part of breaking the game so to speak is in ignoring rules such as the pesant railgun that seeks to weaponise the ability to pass a object for a devestating effect not covered by the rules. Something I've seen at play is the use of prestigitation to pick a lock, something that would make all other options redunant, why have thieves tools, crowbar or the knock spell when the cantrip would do? IE allowing the use of the cantrip to have effects outside it's rules would break the game and make it less fun for everyone else and remove challanges of locks.
I run dnd for three different groups and each group likes and dislikes certain things about dnd. One group is filled with war gamers who love the power fantasy of being a badass while still being challenged. One group hates combat but they play the game to role play characters and make memories. And the final group are there to have fun and experience a good story. I didn't start each campaign knowing what the players liked but I had to experiment and test what they find fun, like the group that hates combat fondly remember the encounter they had with a kracken at level 5 because of how outrageously under-prepared they were for it. But the real "game-breaking" things I don't like are the meta character creation choices. What I'm talking about is since I've been playing 5e for so long I know so much about character creation that I know what is optimal and it's hard in my mind to justify any other choices. Like for the longest time picking variant human for the extra feat was so good that every character that my friends would play (specifically the group who like combat) would just be a party of humans and I don't like mono parties (unless it's something funny). I don't like every martial build narrowing down to either being a sharpshooter or great weapon master build, and I don't like knowing which spells are the most optimal to take because I know just how useful and often they come up. To me, the meta just makes things boring and breaks my enjoyment for the game as a dm. But of course I've thought of ways to combat this like allowing for any race to pick a feat at level 1 and letting you chose which ability scores you boost, and encouraging uniqueness.
I think what is game breaking depends on the style of adventures, the dreaded sharpshooter/crossbow expert/ranger even at lower levels can sustain some pretty high damage, the polearm master/sentinel character can lock down even powerful foes, etc so if you are have a more combat oriented campaign then this can be problematic. It can force the DM to ramp up challenges to make them more challenging and this can make players who haven't min/maxed feel underwhelming. Even though a Wizard has access to some significant firepower, they tend to be vulnerable to how frequently you allow resting in adventures. If your campaign and adventures revolve around more roleplaying style content then access to utility and RP aid spells/abilities can be far more powerful than combat oriented abilities. Ultimately it is about having fun and characters should feel more powerful as they progress. I don't like granting automatic power gains, as the DM I always have to approve characters created and then when it comes to spells, feats, etc that players want I would incorporate them into the campaign as something they would have to seek out, be it a legendary npc that can teach them, perform a quest for access to a spell by a deity, etc. Something that I felt was too powerful at their current level I would just make it harder to acquire and something they can gain access to later on when it more fit the power level of the party and the campaign. But it depends on the group, if the players wanted to be high powered min/max characters that want to play more of a dungeon hack style, I would allow them to do so, but I would "tweak" the battles so they were challenging. I think you have to be flexible as a DM and not make it into an You vs Us type of mindset.
One thing I usually call "broken" is when a class or subclass fundamentally fails to deliver on its core fantasy, especially by being worse at that core fantasy compared to other classes - or worse, other subclasses for the same class. The easiest example here, the one that _always_ comes to mind for me, is the Armourer artificer. It wants to be a tank subclass… which is why it doesn't get Shield (even though Artillerist does!), and why its temp HP is heavily limited in uses compared to Artillerist's temp HP cannon, and why it can't impose disadvantage on attacks against _itself_ as well as everyone else. In other words, by trying to be a tank, it is made to be a worse tank than two of the other three artificer subclasses. Now, from a flavour rather than a party role perspective, what else is the Armourer doing? They have a fancy, weaponized suit of armour that makes them a fantasy Iron Man. The fantasy here is that your armour and the customizations you give it are your main source of power, and that it should have multiple weapons to unleash a dizzying barrage on your foes. However, because your weapon is your armour, and your spellcasting focus is _also_ your armour, you are _worse_ at using infusions to customize your gear than a normal artificer is, because no provision is made to let you customize these aspects of your armour as if they were separate pieces of gear until 9th level. Additionally, you only get Intelligence to attack and damage with the one weapon that is built into your armour, so you are worse at unleashing hell with a wide variety of weapons than a battle smith or artillerist artificer (because the former gets Int to attack and damage with any magic weapon, and the latter can cast spells and fire their cannon in the same turn). A potential fix for this would be to give Armourer the Bladesinger wizard's unique version of extra attack, letting them replace one of their attacks with their armour's weapon with a cantrip, which is flavoured as them activating some gadget or hidden weapon on their armour. (Also, armourer can't use Booming Blade or Green-Flame Blade with their armour's Thunder Gauntlets, 'cause they do not have a listed value so they aren't valid material components for the spell. That should probably be fixed, too.)
Yeah that's true still from a game design stand point it's better for things like classes in 5e to not be wildy different balance wise elsewise why would you use that class? Which your right it depends on your table but like you metioned it's also what the game is going for... Like 5e wants you to have a reason to use each class or else why add them? Like for my game a universal TT wargame/RPG I need to balance all level 1 things that cost the same the same with thing of higher level or lower cost differently or it will break the game... Like why upgrade to an expensive level 2 spell f the level 1 spell is more powerful and cheaper?
Mike answered the question you posed in the first sentence. Why would you use a class that isn't the most powerful? Because it's fun to you. Not everyone gets their kicks from being the most powerful person in the group, doing the most damage, getting the most kills, healing the most, etc. I understand that to a lot of people that is the fun, but I prefer a narrative game and sometimes play (non DnD) ttrpg in which we just... don't need to roll. Combat of that nature just doesn't ever come up. In that sort of game, combat balance is entirely irrelevant but it's no less fun for the people involved if that's their thing, and it's deff still a tabletop game.
There is only one broken subclass choice and it is Bladesinger. I’m GMing for one now and I’ve never considered banning a subclass before now. I joke, I joke. But now that I have your attention, Elven Accuracy is actually a problem and continues the trope of some races being better than others. It needs the boot or it needs to be rewritten to be an option for non-elves.
For a couple years I played a Shepherd druid/Cleric of Life that I designed to be the most optimized healer 5e could possibly allow, It took months to get the build online, with some 7 levels of straight up underpowered play, but once my most powerful abilities and spells were all available, my sweet little girl became the beating, unkillable heart of the party, and entirely shifted the way we played, with the DM starting an armsrace of power scallation that brought us straight into high fantasy just because I could pump some 50-100 hp into each member of a party of 8 per round. By the time I started adding in levels of paladin and going for those aura effects, our party felt truly like legendary heroes in a way few 5e games have felt for me. My playstyle inspired the others to optimize their characters, with our rogue becoming the definition of a glass cannon, outputting nonsense amounts of damage to single targets in suicide runs they knew I would bring them back from. Our warlock made a point of striking a deal with any and every powerful being that would lend it more magic in whatever form it came. The DM got to bring out monsters and traps that he'd only ever dreamed of without risking a tpk, piling up to 6 deadly encounters per day and just having the time of his life. But alas, by the time the pandemic relented and we begun talking about resuming the campaign, WOTC had moved in and errata'd away half my build. Was it broken? Yes, but it was also extremely fun, and required I worked hard to get there for a long time. Without that build, we soon found playing healers was not only suboptimal, but boring, which was much more detrimental, and ultimately caused me to retire that character as an npc and take on a new role (as a cleric of the forge/fighter/paladin with 30 AC) that again caused huge changes in our group's playstyle.
This is a perfect example of something being 1000% broken and yet not being a problem at the table because everyone is still having fun 😁 I’m delighted by this story, thanks for sharing it!
@@SupergeekMike Thank you so much for actually taking the time to read my comments! I've recently rediscovered your channel and have been binging all the videos youtube didn't bother to tell me about this year, heh.
I would consider something "game breaking" if it is, for one reason or another, taking away the fun of a different person at the table.
If the Ranger gets an ability that allows them to rapid-fire and take out all the mooks you throw at them, that might take away from the Barbarian's game experience of smashing skulls if all of a sudden, the only skulls to smash are the ones that take the whole fight to take out. Think about how Travis felt every time Grog got a kill mid-battle, even a little one. It was part of his enjoyment of the game! Now imagine if Percy decided to take care of the action economy and only fire at the weakest enemies, rather than unloading into the main threat.
It's also important to remember that the DM having fun running the game is just as important as the players' fun playing. This is why the Deck of Many Things is commonly regarded as a game breaking item, it can cause so many powerful magical effects that can completely disrupt the narrative the DM was trying to weave. This is why Matt probably took extra care in what cards he put in the deck Grog got, because one Vizier card could significantly impact the trajectory of the story they were trying to tell.
Sorry if that was rambly, I hope my point came across.
Hi SuperGeek...your comment about the GM vs Player mentality with old school D&D is pretty spot on. I started playing in the early 1980s, and every GM that I ever had really was trying to kill everyone most of the time. I had a couple of GMs who were more fun and funny about it, but for me, the relationship to the GM was ALWAYS adversarial. I cannot tell you how much I would like to try playing with a GM that was not trying to kill my character most of the time, and was really focused on making the game fun for me. 💯✌
I noticed this too. I tried a 3.5 (considerably later but you catch my drift) game where the DM was clearly having a GREAT time trying to kill us all... and we were miserable. The whole experience was kinda yucky feeling for me personally and I know that opinion was shared by some others at the table. Clearly that DM cared more about his own fun (which seemed to be derived directly from us struggling to accomplish even basic tasks) than ours.
I think that's where the shift happened- DM's started realizing that if they play this way, it's possible that only the DM OR the players can be having fun at any one time. It's a see-saw for fun. Of course it works for some players who like that particular brand of struggle, but there are so many others for whom it isn't suitable. If the DM can have fun in a game where the players are also at that moment having fun, then it's more likely to work out long term IMO.
Something my brother and I have talked about a lot is how "game breaking" can be EXTREMELY dependent on the experience level of the players, especially in a group of mixed experienced players and newbies. In a game with as much depth as D&D, system mastery means a LOT, which means that even with the exact same character build, an experienced player will get a lot more utility out of various features than a newbie who doesn't know how to combine various mechanics to their greatest effect. It doesn't matter, for example, how OP a spell is if your newbie wizard doesn't cast it at the optimal time.
My brother in particular is a math person, good at keeping track of statistics and odds in his head, meaning that he very often knows what the optimal choice is in a given moment. In some of our games, we play with friends who are lovely to play with and very fun at the table but don't know the rules as thoroughly as he does. He has taken to DELIBERATELY building his character in a slightly sub-optimal way, knowing that his system mastery at the table will make up for it. He doesn't want to overshadow our friends and make it less fun for them, so he tones back his choices.
And on the flip side, we will encourage newbies towards feats or spells, etc, that maybe are a little OP, knowing that their LACK of system mastery will mean that rather than breaking the game, it just brings them up to par with the rest of the table. In the game my brother DMs, for example, the rogue had the Sentinal feat (a great way to get an extra sneak attack on opportunity attacks) but kept sticking to ranged combat, and his damage levels were falling behind the paladin as we leveled up. So my brother gave the rogue a dope magical sword with some excellent powers to encourage him to engage in melee and make use of his Sentinal feat. Is the sword OP? It would be if we had given it to the paladin, that's for sure. But no one in the game feels slighted, because all it did is let the rogue keep up with the party.
you and your brother have a good awareness of group dynamics!
It’s refreshing to watch a D&D video that isn’t about the new ogl, especially after the announcement that WoTC is noticing our push back
Your line about Die Hard vs James Bond is exactly what I needed to hear for my next Campaign Pitch
Glad to hear it!
Even though I haven't D&D for years (playing VTM, L5R, and other games like it), I always appreciate thoughtful, nuanced takes on TTRPGS and the experience of playing them. Only thing I can add is that don't be afraid to go beyond into new systems. Maybe D&D doesn't do a particular style of play well without heavy homebrewing and houserules. There's nothing wrong with that, of course, but checking out new systems that do a particular genre/fantasy/type of roleplaying better is a great option!
Big agree. I play lots of smaller narrative style games on rotation in a weekly group. The hardest part is wrapping your head around new sets of rules and breaking away from DnD ruts, but there are plenty of games out there more lightweight and easier to understand than DnD... Just, far fewer resources to help someone get into those games. QQ I can google "How to make a DnD character" and get millions of hits. Trying to search for different kinds of help in smaller games can be more difficult.
Not so good with the acronyms, is L5R Legend of the Five Rings?
@@lkriticos7619 Yup, it is!
@@randomguy019 XD One of my DMs has been wanting to play that for years. Some irl stuff has gotten in the way unfortunately but I'm hoping we'll all be able to play it soon.
On the topic of balance I'd like to add a tip for games I'd heard that buffing the weak is often more fun than nerfing the strong, but each situation is unique
(Note I know you basically said this but just really thought it can always be restated)
I feel like theres one more thing about 'game breaking' Mike didn't fully cover which is something that weighs on my mind as a DM - things that take too much time.
The worst offender for this are a lot of players with summons or familiars, which can work in some parties - I know it can - but waiting 5 minutes for a player's turn just sucks the fun imvho. Mainly because as the DM I want to try and course-correct and take as little time for an enemy's turn, which leads to boring combat.
The same, for me as a DM, also occurs if a party has one or two players who have a lot of downtime or sidequests they've got to do, or created, whilst another party member doesn't... its started happening in one of my campaigns and is starting to derail the tension lol as well as making me worry for the other players' fun or attention spans
Here's something that DMs should always keep in mind. It's OK to block the party's progress with an obstacle they can't defeat, as long as there's a another path for them to travel that they can overcome, and that alternate path isn't something the party could only discover by accident. If you present the party with an insurmountable obstacle, with no reasonably discoverable alternative, then the party's only option is to spend more time than is necessary rolling their own deaths, and that simply isn't fun for anyone at the table, unless the DM is a sadist or a psychopath.
I hope your wife is feeling better.
I don't really have anything to add on the topic of things being game breaking but I do on dungeon design. I've been using maps of Sumerian and Akkadian digs for a lot of my dungeons recently. The bigger buildings have a wonderfully sprawling structure, with large open rooms and a lot of smaller side rooms and twisting passages. I've used them with a fair amount of success for underground ruins so far.
thanks for the video @SupergeekMike... gonna give my love here
I think of "broken" rules in two very different categories.
The first is similar to what you mention with the Goodberry spell: mechanics that directly obstruct a particular style of gameplay. Related to that, there are also spell that, if as prevalent as vanilla d&d rules suggest, would have extreme implications on how the world actually works. Long distance teleporting is an obvious one there.
The other category is where rules (typically for a subclass introduced in later material) intrudes upon an existing "fantasy" of play (to use your terminology) and becomes " required" to make it work well. The best example of this is the Hexblade: it came in as a clumsy "fix" for the well-documented weaknesses in the Pact of the Blade. The problem was, they wrapped it all in a specific "patron" subclass rather than making it available to all blade pact warlocks. The fallout of this has been very obvious ever since with famous warlocks like Fjord in Critical Role, using the Hexblade subclass while having a patron that could be far more interesting and more thematically represented with another option.
This channel is close to my heart.
Why did this not get pushed into my notifications!? I'm mad I found this hours later
There is definitely a issue with certain themes game breaking and the fun of certain players and or gms. It's often the case of that one person's theme and or fun is diametrically opposed to another person's theme and or fun.
A classic example of this conflict is when one or more players gets their fun from things being hard and 1 or more players gets their fun from things being easy. Your example was slightly less opposed than this but moving in that direction.
With any game, knowing the 'meta' can definitely give you clues of how to 'break' it. For dnd, there still feels like a meta that things like CR are actually compared against. That's why we have banshee at CR 2 even though their scream kills you. They assume you will have a cleric or paladin. Then you add in that playtesting reinforces the 'meta', esp since you have people that have always had either a paladin or cleric in their party, you will groups say it's fine and others complain that the designs 'forces' them to play a certain way. It's why I push for strategy and creativity. It's why I was eager to see what I could do with a 'useless' spell like heat metal. Heating armor to have reliable constant damage. Heat a weapon to make your enemy drop it and limit their damage output. Yeah, broken when used that way but I'm not sure a lot of people would use it that way so it's never an issue. I don't mind going by the letter of a spell but I do try to see how that 'rule' could apply to strange or wacky situations. I've done the same with videogames. Playing a game like league of legends has the same sort of situation. I used to confuse the heck out of people building my support as a full mage but once they saw how effective it was, people were all on board. It worked because her abilities improved immensely and because of the way I play in general (slightly more gutsy than the average support) I could sneak in with the last minute save that the opponents never saw coming. What is "broken" vs underpowered vs fair is a combination of a lot of stuff. Expectation is the main thread of the entire picture though. Yours vs the game's vs other people's.
Finally had time to watch the vid after surgery. Happy new year Mike and so excited to see what brings us this 2023.
Thank you, Manuel!
Insightful as always, Mike!
This is a Colville-level video. Nice work.
Thank you very much!
Though people have different focuses in the game, there are commonalities; ie even osr games want a FAIR game, power gamers want to win, but they do not want a cake walk every fight... it is a spectrum here, but all players want the same things just not all at once.
You have a really good way of speaking.
I love it
Oh, I have all four of those books on my wish list, too.
Game Breaking for me is something that removes or trivializes a pillar of play such as combat, exploration, or social. Hell I had a couple players that wanted homebrew that broke two of the damned pillars and got upset when I said I'd have to nerf whatever gimmick (and its almost always a gimmick) they were going for.
Thank you for another great video!
What do YOU find to be the most fun part of D&D?
Thanks so much to WorldAnvil for sponsoring this video! Visit www.worldanvil.com/supergeekmike and use the promo code SUPERGEEK to get 40% off any annual membership!
www.worldanvil.com/supergeekmike
It's usually when hobbies becomes inflated due to circumstances and then the company burns the bridge while standing on it.
Since im actively working on the system we use i tell my players if they feel something is underpowered or overpowered to let me know as well if i do change something I always tell the players in a group chat but the player(s) effected I'll dm before i before I change anything and let them know why and what im thinking on doing
See also Retired Adventurers blog post on the Six Cultures of Play.
This was a great suggestion and a thoroughly enjoyable read, thanks!
About Goodberry
What makes the spell good is not the ability to fill your tummy
Goodberry is the best spell to regain HP between fights. 1 level in Life Cleric and 1 in Druid and suddenly your party is able to regain 120 HP between fights, if you dump your 3 level 1 spell slots the night before a big adventuring day. It's so much better than a short rest, it's not even funny
The site TvTropes has a good section on story-breaker powers. Interesting stories need obstacles (conflict) to be challenging. Not trivial or unsurmountable. Of course players enjoy getting shiny new powers, and being awesome. But I don't believe a lot of players would enjoy playing the entire game on god-mode. Imagine a campaign where the players have a magical wellspring of ExP in their backyard where they can haul up 10 000 experience points per bucket. And they are dressed in magical heirlooms that gains powers as their owners gains levels.
So the characters quickly becomes super powered and that feels good yeah. But the only thing the GM throws at them is small warcamps of lvl 1-3 goblins. Game night after game night of levelling up and exterminating increasingly trivial and helpless opposition. I don't think you'll find a lot of players who'd actually enjoy that for a whole season.
Broken mechanics break the story by making conflicts trivial. Or insurmountable. They make teamwork impossible, or unneccessary.
Exactly what does this will vary by story. If the GM is planning a Whodunnit murder mystery, it's probably a bad idea to allow necromancers who can rez the murder victim for interrogation, or mindreaders who can force all suspects to tell the full truth and nothing but the truth, or clairvoyants who can see what happened in the library between midnight and morning as if the were there.
If the conflict includes difficult journeys - don't allow easy teleportation.
If you're planning to have a lot of combat, don't allow invincible combat-monsters.
I would love if you reviewed those books. I’m enjoying your videos
(Just sneaking in to say I looove the idea of shorts from you.)
Insightful video as ever Mike ! And I think I find myself disagreeing with you for the first time, re: martial-caster disparity. It is for me a bit game breaking in the sense that it forces martials into very specific just to keep up with casters who, in turn, keep a lot of freedom to experiment. And I guess that this would be for me another definition of game-breaking: a rule/object/skill/spell that by merely existing, would bring such a gap of player effectiveness among the PCs at my table that some of them would get frustrated, feeling they don't contribute as much to the group.
Another point you made that is very true is that it all depends on the table. I ban twilight cleric and silvery barbs at mine because we can only play "short" (2-3h) sessions and these two specific things tend to either increase the number of fights needed to really challenge tour PCs, or significantly lengthen the duration of fights. To avoid running sessions that end up mostly being long combat slogs, I've therefore asked my players to not take these options. But if we played 6h long sessions, i mean... Silvery barbs let's go !
I may rewatch after the WotC dumpster fire is resolved. Hard for me to concentrate on the balance of a game I'm seriously rethinking ATM.
His advice is quite system agnostic. Pathfinder is quite literally better dnd. (And on the plus side not run by Hasbro.)
@@user-fe2ne7qx9z absolutly. I don't play dnd, never have, and I don't think I ever will, but I still watch Mike's videos. Because most of what he says applies to my table aswell. It's just really hard to find creators that actively try to make system agnostic content, so everything is dnd flavoured. Even if it's generic advice.
I would love to see some of your Dungeon23 progress! I actually heard about Dungeon23 because of your community post about it and am so glad that I've been doing it. I think YT shorts/ TikTok is really good for showing the progress, I've been doing those myself and it's so fun to make that nice snack size content for each room.
Yes, yes and yes! Game breaking is what ever takes the fun out of the game. I think we really need to take that into consideration when talking about game breakers.
One particular instance I have noticed is, that lots of people think that giving pcs access to greater wealth right from the get go is game breaking. I'm just about to start a new adventure and most of my players have asked for wealthy npc connections. They don't want to have their pcs worry about income, they want to be able to hop on an airship and explore the world. In our case it would be game breaking to tell them "no, you have to earn your money first and your stuck in our starting town until you can afford your travel expanses." I can see why people might think I am crazy for giving my players those npc connections, because they would indeed break a game where earning money and working up to being able to buy that airship ticket is half the fun. That's just not the story we want to tell. It's also part of the reason why we don't use a system where financial growth is baked into the mechanics like it is in dnd. We are actually homebrewing our own system from scratch.
Making a definitiv statement about what is and isn't game breaking really is like telling someone their fun is wrong. And what's more, something that breaks your game today, might be great fun in a diffrent context tomorrow.
DM made our game 'broken' by giving my cleric both luba's tarokka and fulminating treatise (and letting me use it) but... it works bc im the only caster in that party, and mostly an utility caster.. so it wroks! he also did a lot of de-buffing too and it's not all good but yeah, can't judge these things in a vacuum when talking abt dnd
What is fun? I recommend a bit of research into 8 types of fun and the MDA framework.
As someone who's looking through the B/X rules and trying to "balance" them I'd define broken as any option that invalidates an other option. Either because they're similar but just clearly better elves vs magic users have that issue or because even in an apples to orange comparison one is much better (that's the risk with buffing magic users, a few too many spells and they'd be so strong that they'd just outperform melee characters too often).
So for the goodberry example the issue is that goodberry invalidates actions like foraging. This isn't usually an issue as foraging is rarely a primary focus and goodberry does on paper have a cost, but sometimes the slot is just worth it.
The super slow level-up and high stat requirements are supposed to balance elves, particularly if you roll stats in order and don’t allow re-assignment (I encourage the former, but allow the latter) but ymmv.
I come from the world of video games and after the decades I have come to the conclusion that balance is overratted. There is alot of fun to be had in those imbalances. In fact perfect balance creates nothing more then a illusion of choice if everything is equal no choice matters.
Thanks Mike for not doing another OGL video.
I’m sure I’ll have to do another one soon, but until we actually know more, I *have* to press on and talk about other things too. It’s really hard to push forward when the future of the hobby is so unsure, but I still gotta try!
@@SupergeekMike You’re doing great man. Keep up the energy. We all need to remember this moment and the history that got us here when the next cool thing arrives. It would be nice if enough of us in the community supports those future official releases. That way those creatives won’t need a parent company or capital investment firm to survive and make a dime. I suspect that to be the cause of this unfortunate direction.
For me it’s less about how it affects fun and has more to do with something significantly impacting the flow of the game itself (thereby breaking it).
There are plenty of ridiculously over powered spells that are not necessarily game breaking because, while they may have massive impact in a certain situation, they ultimately do not affect the game as a whole.
Something as small as a healing cantrip on the other hand, while minimally impactful in any given situation could be spammed between encounters, greatly reducing the need for rest, a central aspect of the game. This quite literally breaks the game and is the very reason healing cantrips don’t exist. Even so, some tables might love the ability to top off HP between every encounter.
These books are great.
Through the entire intro I was thinking "It's something that makes the game less fun!" so gratifying when he got to 4:36 and landed on the same definition.
Most of the time as long as everyone is having fun it doesn't really matter. Though if something thinks something sounds a little weak or a little overly powerful. They likely should mention it and not try to hoard it and complain when people are like maybe that needs to be adjusted some.
Like imagine a spell called Iceball came out. That spell does EVERYTHING fireball and is at fireballs level does but also freezes everyone it hits stopping them from moving until they make their save. Effectively full stunning them. Why would you ever want to take fireball over Iceball? It does what fireball does + another powerful effect at the same exact cost.
Little excessive of an example there but I have seen such things were does what X thing does but also does more things. While not giving up anything for that extra power and utility. Doing that is also just bad design.
I know it is off topic for this video but I'd be interested to see the comparisons of when the OGL was changed for fourth edition and started pathfinder to now with project black flag & paizo's announcement.
Please review the books for the channel
If I consider PF2E's 3-action economy more fun than 5e's action system, does that mean 5e's action system is broken?
Game Breaking I think, can be options that end up reducing options by virtue of their power above others. This can make the character feel forced and fabricated, options are picked for power alone. Easy example is a hexblade dip, makes no narrative purpose and it's just there for the power. For the reduction of option is the sentinel/polearm/greatweapon combo forcing a character into a specific weapon and reducing the flair of characters. On frustrations that can come from it can be from fellow players or the DM, the sentinel combo above leaving a enemy stranded doing nothing without any save might be funny the first time, less so the third, moreso should the monster be intimidating.
A big part of breaking the game so to speak is in ignoring rules such as the pesant railgun that seeks to weaponise the ability to pass a object for a devestating effect not covered by the rules. Something I've seen at play is the use of prestigitation to pick a lock, something that would make all other options redunant, why have thieves tools, crowbar or the knock spell when the cantrip would do? IE allowing the use of the cantrip to have effects outside it's rules would break the game and make it less fun for everyone else and remove challanges of locks.
I run dnd for three different groups and each group likes and dislikes certain things about dnd. One group is filled with war gamers who love the power fantasy of being a badass while still being challenged. One group hates combat but they play the game to role play characters and make memories. And the final group are there to have fun and experience a good story. I didn't start each campaign knowing what the players liked but I had to experiment and test what they find fun, like the group that hates combat fondly remember the encounter they had with a kracken at level 5 because of how outrageously under-prepared they were for it.
But the real "game-breaking" things I don't like are the meta character creation choices. What I'm talking about is since I've been playing 5e for so long I know so much about character creation that I know what is optimal and it's hard in my mind to justify any other choices. Like for the longest time picking variant human for the extra feat was so good that every character that my friends would play (specifically the group who like combat) would just be a party of humans and I don't like mono parties (unless it's something funny). I don't like every martial build narrowing down to either being a sharpshooter or great weapon master build, and I don't like knowing which spells are the most optimal to take because I know just how useful and often they come up. To me, the meta just makes things boring and breaks my enjoyment for the game as a dm. But of course I've thought of ways to combat this like allowing for any race to pick a feat at level 1 and letting you chose which ability scores you boost, and encouraging uniqueness.
I think what is game breaking depends on the style of adventures, the dreaded sharpshooter/crossbow expert/ranger even at lower levels can sustain some pretty high damage, the polearm master/sentinel character can lock down even powerful foes, etc so if you are have a more combat oriented campaign then this can be problematic. It can force the DM to ramp up challenges to make them more challenging and this can make players who haven't min/maxed feel underwhelming.
Even though a Wizard has access to some significant firepower, they tend to be vulnerable to how frequently you allow resting in adventures.
If your campaign and adventures revolve around more roleplaying style content then access to utility and RP aid spells/abilities can be far more powerful than combat oriented abilities. Ultimately it is about having fun and characters should feel more powerful as they progress.
I don't like granting automatic power gains, as the DM I always have to approve characters created and then when it comes to spells, feats, etc that players want I would incorporate them into the campaign as something they would have to seek out, be it a legendary npc that can teach them, perform a quest for access to a spell by a deity, etc. Something that I felt was too powerful at their current level I would just make it harder to acquire and something they can gain access to later on when it more fit the power level of the party and the campaign.
But it depends on the group, if the players wanted to be high powered min/max characters that want to play more of a dungeon hack style, I would allow them to do so, but I would "tweak" the battles so they were challenging. I think you have to be flexible as a DM and not make it into an You vs Us type of mindset.
Arguably, everybody playing a videogame will also have a different experience.
Lol true but for a different reason
“Game breaking” is anything that makes a game unfun. Absolutely. It’s so dependent on player/fiction/GM etc.
One thing I usually call "broken" is when a class or subclass fundamentally fails to deliver on its core fantasy, especially by being worse at that core fantasy compared to other classes - or worse, other subclasses for the same class.
The easiest example here, the one that _always_ comes to mind for me, is the Armourer artificer. It wants to be a tank subclass… which is why it doesn't get Shield (even though Artillerist does!), and why its temp HP is heavily limited in uses compared to Artillerist's temp HP cannon, and why it can't impose disadvantage on attacks against _itself_ as well as everyone else. In other words, by trying to be a tank, it is made to be a worse tank than two of the other three artificer subclasses.
Now, from a flavour rather than a party role perspective, what else is the Armourer doing? They have a fancy, weaponized suit of armour that makes them a fantasy Iron Man. The fantasy here is that your armour and the customizations you give it are your main source of power, and that it should have multiple weapons to unleash a dizzying barrage on your foes.
However, because your weapon is your armour, and your spellcasting focus is _also_ your armour, you are _worse_ at using infusions to customize your gear than a normal artificer is, because no provision is made to let you customize these aspects of your armour as if they were separate pieces of gear until 9th level.
Additionally, you only get Intelligence to attack and damage with the one weapon that is built into your armour, so you are worse at unleashing hell with a wide variety of weapons than a battle smith or artillerist artificer (because the former gets Int to attack and damage with any magic weapon, and the latter can cast spells and fire their cannon in the same turn). A potential fix for this would be to give Armourer the Bladesinger wizard's unique version of extra attack, letting them replace one of their attacks with their armour's weapon with a cantrip, which is flavoured as them activating some gadget or hidden weapon on their armour.
(Also, armourer can't use Booming Blade or Green-Flame Blade with their armour's Thunder Gauntlets, 'cause they do not have a listed value so they aren't valid material components for the spell. That should probably be fixed, too.)
Yeah that's true still from a game design stand point it's better for things like classes in 5e to not be wildy different balance wise elsewise why would you use that class? Which your right it depends on your table but like you metioned it's also what the game is going for... Like 5e wants you to have a reason to use each class or else why add them? Like for my game a universal TT wargame/RPG I need to balance all level 1 things that cost the same the same with thing of higher level or lower cost differently or it will break the game... Like why upgrade to an expensive level 2 spell f the level 1 spell is more powerful and cheaper?
Mike answered the question you posed in the first sentence. Why would you use a class that isn't the most powerful? Because it's fun to you. Not everyone gets their kicks from being the most powerful person in the group, doing the most damage, getting the most kills, healing the most, etc. I understand that to a lot of people that is the fun, but I prefer a narrative game and sometimes play (non DnD) ttrpg in which we just... don't need to roll. Combat of that nature just doesn't ever come up. In that sort of game, combat balance is entirely irrelevant but it's no less fun for the people involved if that's their thing, and it's deff still a tabletop game.
Answer, It makes the DM cry. There I saved you 20 minutes :)
I'M NOT CRYING! YOU'RE CRYING!!
so you need to install mods in your game?
Memnership lol
There is only one broken subclass choice and it is Bladesinger. I’m GMing for one now and I’ve never considered banning a subclass before now.
I joke, I joke.
But now that I have your attention, Elven Accuracy is actually a problem and continues the trope of some races being better than others. It needs the boot or it needs to be rewritten to be an option for non-elves.
"What is fun? I am not a robot. I promise..." 😄 Well now, I want to game with GM Baymax 🤍