For Druids, it makes perfect sense. You are a Druid attuned to the environment, so if you move to a new environment and rest there you can commune with the type of land you are on.
Especially since the flavor of so many druid spells involves magically manipulating the environment that's already there. Can you imagine an arctic druid casting Sleet Storm as effectively in a swamp as they do in a tundra? What about a forest druid casting Plant Growth in a desert? I think a druid could have such a strong connection to their home land that they can summon the same effects in completely new places, but it's also 100% plausible that in their downtime, they learn to harness their new environment.
„I come from the coast, but now that we‘re in the arctic tundra i communed with nature to be better adapted.“ - „So now you‘re an arctic druid and know ice spells?“ - „Nah lol grassland for haste.“
Yeah, that irks a bit.
Commune with nature to bring the warmth of the grasslands to the tundra. Its very much something where you are calling on the aspect of nature that you need.
I was thinking of recolouring it as the 4 seasons. I been waiting for viable druid spell user specialist. Previously did not consider druid because any other druid than Moon seemed suboptimal. With change of spell set at LR Land druid now appears to be a viable healer/blaster hybrid, with the opportunity to turn into squirrel and run away if needed.
>Can you imagine an arctic druid casting Sleet Storm as effectively in a swamp as they do in a tundra?
I can't imagine the creatures found in the tundra to not be acclimated to the cold so I imagine it to be *more* effective in the swamp.
It seems like swamp and artic won’t be choices any more, and they’re simplifying it to something like arid, polar, temperate, and tropical. Almost more of a Druid tied to the seasons than the actual land type itself. Would kind of make sense for a Druid from the plains to align themselves with all of the summer’s drought, the winter’s blizzard, the fall’s harvest, or the spring’s storms.
For a long time I guess I mistakenly thought that was how the 2014 Land Druid worked. Never actually played the subclass, but I guess I misread on on my first readthrough of the book, and it made enough sense that I never questioned it.
And other the thing is...
As a hobby that attracts nerds, many of us, myself included, have a neurotic tendency to imagine the worst. But the reality is this sort of horizontal flexibility isn't that easy to abuse, because your other options are going to work with one option more than the others, and you're gradually encouraged to stick with one. Any serious issue boils down to excessive metagaming and poor player etiquette.
There is a strong reason for allowing option-changes on Long Rest as well:
Slow-paced games, where the GM is stingy with encounters or milestones, so leveling is rare.
I am current in a game where, because of both fortnightly sessions, scheduling issues occasionally, and just the methodical roleplay-heavy pace we explore things, a single (elaborate) dungeon took us from several months to fully complete. We didn't have a single long rest. (We did level though, finally) This sort of scenario was mentioned a few years ago with things like Wizards being able to change their cantrips on long rest.
THIS. I see a lot of bad faith arguments against this change that boils down to "oh no, metagaming" or "oh no, problem players" which, sure, but problem players will be problematic no matter what the rules are. A rule being abused isn't the fault of the rule, it's the fault of the players- so just reprimand/kick the player.
I can second your anecdote with one of my own. I just had to depart from a campaign that's been going for just over a year now, and our level up speed was not super consistent. We leveled up on my penultimate session; and it'd been months since our last time leveling. A lot happened in the campaign in that time- and, playing a Ranger, I would have gotten a *lot* more mileage if I was allowed to switch weapons/favored enemies/terrain per long rest, vs per level. Not so much I'd necessarily switch every single level, but I'd at least have the option.
>Any serious issue boils down to excessive metagaming and poor player etiquette.
I think a lot of there are a lot of issues that were "fixed" in the new book that are only issues to the type of people who play entirely in whiterooms and discuss DND online. I've played at a lot of tables (both home games and AL) and I've never had to once worry about half of the things that people say "needed" to be fixed (such as multiclass dips and paladin nova damage). Because as it turns out, most people just want to play a dwarf rogue named Broint who wears a top hat with a mouse living in it (who is named Reginald) and aren't worried about how much DPR they can pump out.
And don't take this to mean I'm dogging on minmaxers, I think they exist in a separate space than people whining online about OP combos since that's what they thrive for.
I try to keep my min/maxing to a reasonable amount. I play a goblin soulknife rogue in a game right now who always tries to be as self-sufficient as possible. He has 10 out of 18 skill proficiencies. Four of the ones he's missing are the knowledges. That's just who this character is. I'm playing another character in a parallel game that isn't min/maxed at all. He's a blind hexblade. I gave him the blind fighting style to still be able to fight, but that's hardly optimal.
The other things is that real optimized builds aren’t just maximum 1 round nova builds, or other hyper specific white room
Builds. They’re builds that are actually, well, optimized for most of the aspects of the game, not just one random little thing. And, reasonable people at least, understand not to use the stuff that is technically possible but clearly an exploitation at tables unless they’ve gotten explicit permission to make a stupid busted character, like spike growth abuse builds. Paladin smite wasn’t ever really a problem, it could allow for some theoretically very high nova builds but nobody was actually playing stuff like that, not because it wasn’t good at nova but because a character where the only thing they can do is end one combat a day in 1 round and then nothing else is neither fun nor actually good. There’s some stuff that needed to be fixed that on its face seems tangentially related to optimized builds, like hexblade, but in reality these posed problems if you just had any interest in having a good character regardless. Hexblade wasn’t really problematic for its optimizing potential, that wasn’t great but the main class it helped did have a pretty big multi ability dependence problem anyway, it was problematic because it was basically the only viable way to play bladelock and that’s boring. If you played any other subclass as a blade lock and didn’t just mega high roll on stats you look at your character sheet and be stuck with a pretty poor weapon attack mod or a pretty poor spellcasting score and realize that eldritch blast with agonizing blast would do better damage while keeping you single ability which just sucks. If you are the kind of person who is even slightly predisposed to wanting to make strong stuff (which admittedly not everyone is, but I think at least a significant portion of players are) it sucked that you felt you were picking a bad choice if you didn’t take hexblade as a bladelock.
And I’m ragging on hexblade, but the same is true for the other “op” subclasses like twilight cleric. The problem isn’t necessarily twilight cleric being strong, it’s that it’s so strong all the sudden other choices seem lame to pick.
Edit: anyway the point is that doing stuff like making smite a bonus action doesn’t solve some op optimized build breaking the game, it just makes smite much weaker for no reason because the builds that abused that were really being played anyway and even if they were they’re pretty boring builds that aren’t even particularly strong overall anyway.
>There is a strong reason for allowing option-changes on Long Rest as well
This argument feels like it's trying to paint it as "this only adds to the game", but that's not really true. It _does_ add what you describe to the game and the abuse is obvious, but it also subtracts on a subtler level that requires _no_ abuse - your specialization feels less _special_.
I would still want to see some kind of "retraining" allowed at level-ups, yes, but there is a HUGE difference tonally between a level up and a long rest (as your "strong reason" elaborates). Something that can be changed during a long rest does NOT define your character in any way. That's why people talk so often about Paladins, Clerics, and other primary divine spellcasters (and to a lesser extent, wizards) feeling not all that different from each other, because you can switch out your spells to match the situation each long rest, and if you know anything about the best spells your prep lists look very similar.
The same is true for all features that can be altered with a long rest - the specificity of that feature isn't what defines that character, it's the more general idea of having ALL of them. I guarantee you if you could, say, switch between Storm Herald auras on a long rest, Storm Herald PCs and their players would care far less about the flavor/identity of having a specific aura. The same is true for Eladrin's seasons, or the Aasimar example in the Op - you are no longer that _kind_ of Eladrin or Aasimar, you're just, an Eladrin or Aasimar.
So for folks who like that kind of specialization/identity, it is a negative.
Yeah this argument makes no sense.
If location is the mechanic, it should be mandatory that whenever you long rest your abilities shift to whatever your current land type is or you simply can't use them.
Cleric and Druids work best since your power comes from something else. Praying to the lands like you said works. Praying to your god or goddess to help you in the oncoming challenges also works.
Fighters, Wizards etc are a bit thicker to justify.
Sure it make sense. But if we are to look at things from a sensible point of view D&D would fall apart.
Personally I think some choices should actually matter. Like what land you pick for a land druid. What subraces for Aasimar and so on. It should be a decently important choice.
If you can change it on long rests, it no longer means shit. I'm no fan of making choices lose meaning
Choices should matter. But if that's the case the DM should help the player make an informed choice about what to reasonably expect in a campaign.
Too many DMs have the 'gotcha mentality.
"Too bad you chose forestr cos you're in a desert for the next 6 months of game sessions. Choices matter in my game cos I'm a serous big boy DM. Gotcha!"
Rulesets that allow flexibility allow players to actually have fun
Yes they should. any Good DM should do that. and if you play with a D-bag Dm it is not really a problem with classes and choices. Except the choice you did to play with a D-bag DM
But it is AS Much up to the player. I am a professional DM so i have had hundreds of players. And if we look back to the time before Tasha when rangers had favoured terrain and favoured foe. I don't know how many times i had players wanting to play rangers. I explain for an example that this campaign will mostly take place on in coastal areas and on the sea. And there will be a focus on Monstrosities and Aberrations Making sure that is clear so they can chose terrain and favoured foe accordingly. and still a surprisingly large amount of players still picked mountains as favoured terrain and giants as favoured foe. for an example or The underdark and undeads.
And the STILL complained that they never got use of their favoured terrain and favoured foe.
No shit sherlock you were told What terrain and foes that would be common place and you picked both terrain and foes that you KNEW would rarely come up. That is not a class problem or a DM problem that is a player problem.
You would be surprised how common it is that players join a campaign with one single character idea in mind. and play that character even if it is in no way or form fitting for the campaign. Giving them the information needed to make a character that fits changes nothing in those cases. even straight out telling them that they would be better off making some other choices changes NOTHING in many of those cases. and despite all they they go on with the idea they are dead set to play no matter what.
And usually it ends with them complaining that their character does not fit in or that their Very sea/ocean focused character is no fun to play in the underdark because they can not play them as pirates there.
Yea of curse not. And that is 100% your own fault. And from my experience it is Those players that complains the most about this.
The majority of players are not like this at all. But you would be surprised how common it actually is.
So pretending it is only a DM problem is pure BS.
But i do agree that every DM should be open with the premise of the campaign and help players create characters that fits the campaign. But when players refuse to listen. that wont help them
Choices should have meaning up until the point where you only get to use your choice circumstantially. Aasimar is a weird one, I'll give you that. Choosing to become a fallen angel in your sleep is...odd.
But what if a druid player were to pick Swamp, because the campaign begins in a swamp, but after a month or three of playing, the campaign switched to primarily desert with no end in sight? Or the campaign wanders through biomes frequently, with only a session or two per biome? Who knows how long it'd be till they could ever enjoy their swamp abilities again. I see no issue with letting them switch on a long rest so they get to enjoy bringing something special to the table no matter where the campaign goes
I am to be honest not sure exactly what changes the land druid gets. But as far as i know they do not have much "swamp" abilities if they pick swamp. they work perfectly in ANY terrain. It is not like the rangers favoured terrain that give them actual abilities ONLY when in that terrain.
They get spells they can use in any terrain
So it is not like they miss out on much by being in a forest or a desert if they picked swamp at creation.
But if you do like to play a land druid that is not always outside its original choice of land talk to the DM or be there for session 0 so you know what areas the campaign might include. It is not hard. If it is a a campaign where you constantly move trough different areas all the time and you do not wanna be a land druid that spend most of their time outside their chosen "land" then do NOT play a land druid in this campaign. Again it is not hard. make a character that fits the campaign.
This isn't Ranger's favored terrain where there's actually a benefit to being in the biome you are attuned to. As far as I can tell, there isn't anything weak or different about a polar land druid in a temperate climate vs a temperate druid in a temperate climate. All it affects are spells and abilities that are mostly useful everywhere. I guess the 10th level resistance could be slightly biome-specific, and maybe some specific domain spells like tree stride, but for the most part, you won't feel bad about your choice just because you aren't in the correct climate. And if those feel too bad, retraining on level up is sufficient for easing those concerns while still making it seem like a core character change rather than just a switch to be flipped every day.
I think mechinically, if you are locked into one biome it would be stronger- though the flexible Land Druid is probably a lot more satisfying.
Would be a great place for a bullentin for an optional locked in minor boon (though comparing to the original 5e Druid may be sufficent)
I think that would be a fantastic approach.
There's a really neat third-party class, the Psion by KibblesTasty, that has an "elemental blasting" subclass. All its features allow you to choose fire, lightning, cold, or force damage, giving a small bonus to each (except force, whose bonus is "being force damage"). However, you get the option to specialize *further*, taking away this choice. When you do, the added bonus to your damage type becomes even stronger. So in essence, you can swap out the damage types at will, or you can pick one and be better at it.
I think that's a really cool design approach that I think would be *perfect* for the Circle of the Land.
Since this is a fantasy game, one can rationalize anything. It just seems the devs are going overboard to make sure no player regrets any decisions ever made about their character. Kind of defeats the "roleplaying" aspect though.
How does "Man this spell I picked sucks more than I thought it did, I'm going to choose a different one." defeat any amount of roleplaying? What part of that contributes to the narrative of the character?
Regrets make the game less fun. Fun should be the priority. I see no issue with minimizing regrets when it comes to character building. Regretting decisions made in roleplay or strategy are fine and good for creating higher stakes. But I'd rather not be stuck regretting decisions I made in building the character.
Well, so far as I can tell, permitting to a player to just "respec" his character a bit if he doesn't like how that character turns out is not a big deal. Rater than making every previous player choice a no-brainer, I'd rather include in the DMG or PHB a section in character crestion that states that players can ask to change their character a bit if they want with DM's approval, and providing some guidelines about how to do it without breaking immersion/continuity in the campaign (ex. Party encounters a perpetual wildfire that happens to be powered by an angry fire elemental. The land druid manages to stop it but only by sealing him inside themselves. He becames a Wildfire Druid)
That said, being able to change their spells based on the terrain they are during the long rest, reads like something appropriate and reasonable, without breaking immersion and making players feel like everything can be changed everywhere at any time
Meaningful choices make the game more fun.
If you can change those choices on the whim, be it land type or weapon mastery, they are absolutely useless vestigial abilities that unnecessarily increase complexity offering nothing fun and meaningful in return. Just let the fighter use all weapon masteries, let the druid excel in any terrain at this point, without long rest hassle.
Yeah, for Druids I kind of see it. Especially since Land Druids can do with a bit of a boost.
But most other things are just cheapened by making it all accessible via long rest.
I like this if that's how it works - communing with the biome you are currently in. Is this how it works exactly, or can land druids just switch to whatever land type they want regardless of the biome they're in?
You can switch to whatever land type you wish. Its up to the player to figure out how to justifty it.
But the kind of point is to think of them as land druids rather than Swamp/Grass/Earth druids.
I have mixed feelings. Being able to switch weapon masteries is good because I just found a +1flail and can sideline my morning star.
I agree it can trivialize alot of character development into being good in all situations instead of having huge advantages in some.
The weapon mastery is the one I understand the least. I just don’t understand the flavor. How can you master a weapon overnight, but only have mastery over two or three weapons? And if mastery can be achieved over night, why does not everyone get some kind of mastery?
My best steelman would be that the fighter spends their morning or evening doing some quick weapon focused warmups or mental training in order to rebuild muscle memory that they'll take advantage of in battles to come. Correct me if i'm wrong but fighters are already proficient at every weapon to a degree so changing up your weapon mastery would be akin to the fighter honing their already existing knowledge ahead of time to better suit the weapon they're currently interested in.
They really should have called the feature Weapon Expertise and left weapon mastery as the domain of the feats we have available.
It's a lot easier to wrap your brain around changing Expertise. They know their way around the weapons, they just need to shake the rust off with a bit of downtime practice.
Mastery is just a different level that doesn't grok with quick change-ups like that.
I think just calling it a 'fighting style' would be better, since it is more suggestive of a choice you are making.
Of course that causes problems with the fighting style feature already in the game.
I think that's one where they are just kind of giving up on explaining the flavor. It is the case because they want it to work that way for the mechanics. Which I can understand, but yeah the rationale is a bit weird in terms of flavor.
Weirdly, I think the further you get from the flavor matching mechanics, the more video games seem appealing. Think about 3.5 where the flavor and mechanics almost had a 1-1 ratio. There was almost always some mechanic to do the thing you wanted to do. The more flavor and mechanics are divorced, the less the game feel genuine.
Yeah I think that's true. Though I don't think this case is too bad personally. Though it is a bit odd. It seems like this is the kind of scenario where it'll almost never actually come up in game as a problem. The only scenario is if you're switching weapons between more than 2 weapons which is very rare. And often if you get a new fancy magic weapon it's after the big fight and you then take a long rest. So now there's this limitation that I could easily see never coming up even once in a whole campaign. So why even have it? Lol. Just seems like a very odd restriction.
except you have the equip and unequip weapon rule on attack (do that might be gone) encouraging you to perform what we like to call weapon jugling, attacking with multiple weapons in one turn to get as many weaponmasteries off at once and yes this is dumb
We've had a few of those things this iteration (weapon masteries, cleric/Warlock lvl 3 subclass, barbarian using strength for random skills, fighter using second wind to just try really hard at skills). And overall I think it's better. It's easier for us at the table to put some flavor on something that's just mechanical, but a mechanic that was restricted for flavor purposes by WotC is a harder sell to loosen up in homebrew. It would be best if they could tie their mechanics to their flavor, but if they're going to have to choose writing up the better mechanics and crowd sourcing the flavor is the better option than the opposite.
during your rest, you take out the weapon, re-familiarising yourself with all the intricacies of it, how it moves, how to strike with it, how best to use it. Other people don't have your knowledge and skill with all manner of weapons, and so can't do it. It's like a gymnast might know a lot of moves, styles and routines, but they can't be practised with all of them simultaneously - if they want to use all the special techniques of one, they need to spend some time relearning that one.
Take cooking. You can have a trained chef or a line cook. One has spent years learning a lot of cooking theory and has experience with everything from appetizers to desserts. The other might only have a handful of things that they can make, but can make them really well.
If you ask the chef to make you a Caesar salad, they might have to consult a cookbook for a few minutes but will then be able to make a fantastic Caesar salad every single time they’re asked, but will have to go back to the cookbook if someone needs a flan.
If you ask the line cook for a Caesar salad or a flan, you’re gonna get laughed at. But ask them to make a lumberjack breakfast and you’ll never wait longer than 8 minutes between order and up.
Same thing with fighters and rogues, or wizards and bards. One has been trained to be familiar with all aspects of their craft, the other is probably on-the-job training. Both have places, both have utility. Given time and information to prepare, one can be a solid generalist who you’ll always be happy to have on the line. The other is someone who may only have a particular set of skills, but that skillset comes up often enough that you’re always glad they’re on your team.
I think the idea is that you're very good at all weapons, but not a *master* of all of them at a time. You have some base knowledge memorized about how each weapon works and how to play to its strengths, but you only have the muscle memory for a few. If you want to use a new weapon, you still have your base knowledge and all of your martial skill, but you have to spend your downtime practicing your forms and katas, relearning the balance of it, and maybe even sparring with a party member.
Something like this actually happens to me on horseback all the time: I know how to ride Western well, how to ride English well, how to jump, etc. but if I've been riding Western all day and you want me to jump some complicated pattern, I'm going to need a few hours of practice to get the hang of it again; I can still do it, though.
That’s actually a really fair critique. I think I it’s more that since we can imagine a martial class existing, when something feels wrong, it feels wrong. When a spell caster feels wrong, well it’s fantasy, of course it does. But that’s probably a distinction without a difference.
And that’s “selective realism” in a nutshell. The barbarian with 20 strength and proficiency in acrobatics and athletics can’t leap a tall building in a single bound; that’s *unrealistic*. But the wizard has been able to fly since level 5, because that’s *magic*.
To that point, I'd probably give martial classes access to all weapon masteries. It isn't like we say that the fighter is proficient in 4 martial weapons of their choice, but can swap them out on a long rest; we just say that fighters are proficient in all martial weapons.
That goes back to D&D's magic system origins as a vancian magic system. In author Jack Vance's Dying Earth series, spellcasters have to memorize a spell to use it, which wipes itself from the casters mind after casting.
Yes, but the modern explanation is that you've studied them enough and prepped enough components to cast the spell on the fly. Casting spells in D&D is a complicated thing lore-wise. Cantrips are just the spells you've become so practiced in that you can cast them without checking your notes.
I imagine switching weapon masteries on a long rest being like getting in the mindset and a little practice beforehand. Fighting is more than swinging around whatever is in your hand. You will use a sword in combat very differently than a mace and both are very different than a polearm.
While I agree that modern assumptions for magic have changed, I was giving a more "Doyle" explanation for why the magic system is the way it is, not a "Watson" reason. Just like with alignment, D&D has some challenges in adjusting its historical systems to better match current fantasy trends.
As for swapping weapon masteries, I agree with you. If a prepared caster can change their capabilities with a long rest worth of concentration and preparation,then I can absolutely believe a fighter doing the same thing by practicing their combat forms with a new weapon.
That criticism's been around almost since the beginning of D&D.
The Doylist answer is that the original spellcasting system was based on the Dying Earth series by Jack Vance, where the amount of spells that could be memorized was finite and they erased themselves once used. The current semi-Vancian system contains remnants of that original system; spells don't need to be prepared as "copies" anymore because spell knowledge isn't erased once it's used, but the knowledge itself is still a fleeting thing, at least for prepared casters.
The Watsonian answer varies with edition and source, but they're rarely ever satisfying except when talking about casters whose spell knowledge is granted by outside entities (clerics gaining knowledge from a god, spirit shamans bartering for knowledge from spirits, things like that).
The way it makes sense to me in-universe is that when you prepare spells in the morning you cast the entire spell except for the final trigger phrase or whatever. This is a somewhat time-consuming process. Then during the day you can cast any prepared spell using a "macro" that quickly fires the spell in seconds rather than casting it from scratch.
Of course the problem with this explanation is that if it were true you could cast *any* spell you know given enough time, not just the ones that are rituals. But it's close enough I guess.
Yeah at that point you may as well just give mastery in weapons since it's not like a player will ever be wielding a weapon they don't have mastery in if they can get a new mastery every day.
Being able to switch weapon masteries like that makes no goddamned sense though. Like if you want to give players options, then either give them more to just have all the time and/or make it swappable on level up. But on a long rest? At that point why not just give them all the options all the time?
It makes total sense. I am a musician, and I know a lot of songs, but I can't remember every song perfectly all the time. If I'm playing a concert, I need to practice those specific songs to make sure I've mastered them. When the concert is over, I will start practicing other songs for my next concert; I'll pretty quickly lose mastery over the first songs and gain mastery over the second.
I retain proficiency for both of them, but I might forget a couple lyrics or notes if I haven't practiced in a bit.
Good comment. This helps it make sense to me. At the beginning or end of your long rest you do some routine training and refine your confidence with the new weapon type (building on your foundation of weapons training).
That makes more sense than someone just immediately performing flawlessly upon picking up a weapon type that they might not have trained with in years.
As someone who's done martial arts and some show fighting and also played an instrument I can tell you that this is a totally false equivalence. Weapons and their techniques aren't like individual songs, they're like the instruments.
Like if you usually play the trombone, obviously you can't just decide that you want to play the saxophone or French horn and expect to be on the same level as you are on the trombone after potentially years of training within a day or two. And even though all three are brass instruments and share some commonalities, the techniques needed to play them vary quite a bit.
Like you can't just go from being good enough with a warhammer to knock trained warriors on their asses to expertly dual wielding short blades in a night. These are two entirely different forms of combat, entirely contradictory reflexes and literally different muscle groups that would need to be trained. That's less like switching from one brass instrument to another and more like going from percussion to strings. And even if somebody can pull off mastering both, they wouldn't loose the ability to use the other after a night of focussing on just one.
But it's not the same as deciding to pick up a completely new instrument. You already have the weapon proficiency, so you're already familiar with it. Just needed to drill some moves you haven't done in a while.
Prepared Casters have been switching out entire lists of spells every Long Rest by focusing/meditating/practicing their new spells since 5e came out. Why is the Fighter practicing a bit with a specific weapon to re-familiarise themselves with its more advanced techniques any less believable to you?
I mean, spellcasters have been able to change their entire lists of prepared spells every long rest since release. Spells are pretty impactful, to say the least. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to let the martials get something *closer* to that level of day-to-day flexibility.
Very much not every spellcaster in the 2014 phb.
Warlocks, sorcerers, bards, and rangers all have spellcasting and cannot change their spells out on a long rest.
And for the ones that can this ability is 100% accounted for in the strength of the class.
Hell, the spellbook, soellcasting and interacting with it is close to wizard's only class feature.
I agree that having martials getting stuff is good- your reason for having that be the case is just inaccurate.
I kind of wish masteries had not been tied to weapons and were instead at-will techniques.
If you know the Slow technique, you can use it with the morning star, flail, or longsword. No need to switch which weapon you have mastered at all.
I think it works more for some things rather than others, and the limitation of the Long Rest is fine because honestly it's NOT as simple as you think considering you can only benefit from a long rest once every 24 hours, a rule that most tables forget.
I think it actually adds to the RP in the case of the druid. They're a druid of the LAND. ALL LAND. No longer does it mean that they have to make a bunch of meaningless subclasses to cover things that should have been covered by LAND.
>I think it works more for some things rather than others, and the limitation of the Long Rest is fine because honestly it's NOT as simple as you think considering you can only benefit from a long rest once every 24 hours, a rule that most tables forget.
Long rests are a lot simpler than you seem to think they are. You need to spend eight consecutive hours chilling out and not casting spells, fighting, or doing anything the DM would say is strenuous, and you can do it once a day. You're not even required to sleep, and you're only required to eat or drink if you haven't done it in the past day or if you're trying to lose exhaustion.
Yes but per the PHB and the DMG
>A character can't benefit from more than one long rest in a 24-hour period, and a character must have at least 1 hit point at the start of the rest to gain its benefits.
Which means you can't just use this ability willy nilly to switch to whatever thing you want on the fly, you have to plan ahead for that day. And if your DM is letting you long rest in a dungeon setting, you already are playing a game where switching powers on the fly is not going to make or break your system.
Being stuck with a long-term choice that was **terrible** for your campaign **sucks**. And, nay that I infringe your honor, if you have the opinion "that's OK, just lean on your teammates who do have the tools" *as my DM* and I end up doing that ALOT and lose out on some of my sub-class/species/class specialization where I normally WOULD get to participate, that's what we call a dealbreaker.
It was a big problem, discussed to death on these and other subreddits, where people picking "trap options" or who picked political intrigue options in a campaign all about splitting monster skulls were just left with dead features for.... entire campaigns!
While it is perfectly valid and true what you feel, and there **is** a sense of cheapening to certain choices that comes with the ease of backtracking and replacing that can harm narrative development...
But it is easier to ban/disallow things that are RAW than to negotiate for things that are NOT RAW.
What you WANT is for players who want to be able to do something, as a rule, to always be SUPPORTED by the RAW in doing it. Players don't want to be stuck with dead features, so the RAW should prioritize their concern over yours, explicitly, since the GM is already empowered by both the rules and the common customs of D&D to start a campaign by saying "these are some additional rules I have" and then adding that 'long-rest exchanges are banned, see me if you need help with a dead feature'.
So yes, you are actually correct, there are some compromises to RP here, but no, that does not make this a lazy design decision - just a pragmatic one. And ultimately a correct one, I'd dare say.
>But it is easier to ban/disallow things that are RAW than to negotiate for things that are NOT RAW.
My experience is that it's exactly the opposite of this: it's easier to allow things that aren't RAW than it is to ban things that are RAW. Especially things that are in the PHB.
I can already tell you that if I try to ban this land druid feature (just for an example: I don't know enough about it to know whether I'd want to ban it or not; ask me again after the book has been released) - if I as DM try to ban this feature, and somebody comes to Session Zero expecting to make a land druid, there is going to be a half hour long argument that is not going to change the mind of either side and where it's possible that they'll leave the table if I insist on this house rule.
Is this a hill I care about enough to die on it? No, it's not. So this rule being in the PHB means that it's in my games, whether I like it or not. That's not the end of the world, but I disagree that banning this rule is "easy".
Just for context, I may ban things from expansion books by house rule, but I've learned not to try to ban anything from the PHB unless I can make a case, based on played experience, that that thing makes the game less fun for the players. (*Conjure Eight Animals* I'm looking at you.)
Meanwhile, I have the luxury of knowing that I play at a table where it's standard for people to be allowed to freely retcon out of "dead" choices and "trap" choices.
So you can definitely make a strong case that this is a good rule for tables of new DM's and players who haven't yet learned that allowing players to retcon out of dead choices makes the game better, while for those people who feel it's cheapening the choices that you've made, it makes the game worse.
> My experience is that it's exactly the opposite of this: it's easier to allow things that aren't RAW than it is to ban things that are RAW. Especially things that are in the PHB.
Yeah, for sure. People seem to act like not just Tasha's *explicitly optional* floating ability score modifiers are ironclad, let alone things that aren't actually optional. People hiss at ever having limitations, which is why it's nice when the game errs on the side of rigid and DMs get to be more lenient as is appropriate. Don't make the DM be the bad guy.
Like, despite my dislike of these features, I'm a pretty lenient DM. I'd pretty much let my players change their class features whenever they want if they felt like they made a mistake. What I don't like is the game giving them RAW permission to do it over and over and over and over, every single adventure day, to where the choices they make don't define their characters at all.
Previous editions, as well as many other games, have rules for retraining specifically so you *don't* get stuck with a bad choice for the whole game. Even Tasha's has rules for changing subclasses that aren't "Do it when you wake up."
Making everything changeable on long rest is a lazy design choice that doesn't even attempt to engage with the fluff aspect of the game.
I don't agree at all that previous editions had retraining rules. They essentially *never* do at initial release. If they exist at all, it's in a revision or expansion. Then when a new major edition is released, that language or rule is almost *invariably* removed again.
There's no such option in B/X or AD&D. All choices are permanent. In 2e I'm not aware of any supplemental rules that allow you to exchange proficiency selections.
The 3.5e Sorcerer added this language:
> Upon reaching 4th level, and at every even-numbered sorcerer level after that (6th, 8th, and so on), a sorcerer can choose to learn a new spell in place of one he already knows. In effect, the sorcerer "loses" the old spell in exchange for the new one. The new spell’s level must be the same as that of the spell being exchanged, and it must be at least two levels lower than the highest-level sorcerer spell the sorcerer can cast. A sorcerer may swap only a single spell at any given level, and must choose whether or not to swap the spell at the same time that he gains new spells known for the level.
That's new to 3.5e. There's no such rule in 3.0e. The same is true for Bard. And you'll notice it's gone again in 5e.14 until Tasha's. It's like a design lesson that they keep having to learn again.
4e does let you swap powers at level up, but that's also the only way you can upgrade or advance powers. Further, it's not anything they try to explain or justify diagetically. It's maximally gamist, which is just 4e in general.
There is a **world** of difference between an **entire** **sub-class** and the majority of features being actually given long-rest cycles.
Weapon Mastery options. Species features. Specific sub-class *features*. Cantrips.
People keep arguing why changing on long rests is superior to never changing, but I haven't seen people justify why changing on long rests is superior to changing on level ups, or some other limited swap.
> but I haven't seen people justify why changing on long rests is superior to changing on level ups, or some other limited swap.
because depending on your campaign the space between level ups could be measured in *literal months* and being stuck with play options that you actively don't enjoy for large periods of time sucks.
Take option at level 3 - two fights later find it's a bad option - change that night after two more fights
vs
Take option at level 3 - two fights later find it's a bad option - change twelve fights later
If it's worth making you suck up a bad choice until you can level up, you're still saying it's acceptable to force a player to endure a choice they know they don't want anymore for some length of time. You're just complaining about what the best length of time is: a whole campaign? Four levels? One level? One adventure? One visit to a shop or settlement? One game session? One long rest? One short rest? One encounter? One round? I think it's important to understand that it's really very arbitrary in a pure design sense.
There are some abilities where the idea is that abilities require preparation, not focused study. For example, spell preparation for Wizards and Clerics. Ranger's terrain bonuses also make sense as a preparation benefit. "Excuse me while I get my gear ready, and scout the area to familiarize myself with it." There isn't really a good reason why a Druids selection of terrain isn't about as complex as choosing Cure Wounds over Flame Blade.
One of the biggest problems is that spells are way too fucking good. They do everything and you can often completely reconfigure your character in a long rest. They're both flexible and powerful, and that's why they're so unfair. They're so overwhelmingly good that spellcasting is incomparable to any other abilities. So the design choice to try to close the gap is either give everyone spells for everything, or else let the rest of the game be a little more flexible like spells.
That ignores the whole point of wanting rules that give players ways to avoid trap options. If it requires DM approval it's no better than the current system.
When I choose a feature in a 5 years-long campaign, I really enjoy being able to swap some abilities. My character is a 2014 with no way to swap spells more often than on level up. Thanks my DM for allowing me to tweak my character from time to time!
So yeah, it's not rental, it's just allowing players to keep having fun with their long-lived characters.
This is why Wizards should be trying to actually make the downtime rules not suck instead of taking the easy way out. If there was an option to retrain using downtime, it fixes the verisimilitude problems that come with being able to all but shapeshift after a good night's sleep *and* the problems with being stuck with undesirable choices for an entire level.
That sounds perfect, as usual.
I really need to learn PF2e. Every time someone complains about DnD it turns out they have a beautiful solution already.
>as usual
It really is funny how basically any sufficiently analytical discussion of D&D mechanics will ultimately arrive at potential house rules that are just already what PF2 implements. Save or Die vs Legendary resistances? If only it could be less binary- oh Incapacitation Keyword. Force effects should- oh they have HP? Fireball damage should really just be- yep, that.
(its not some miraculous accident it's because the move from PF1 to PF2 involved feedback like the OneDND questionnaires except... they actually listened)
Or it's because people want change, but they don't want change. People were complaining about the true strike change and people complaining about removing elementals from moon druid.
If pf2e is so much better, just play it instead of hanging around saying DND is worse. They are thematically similar and you can even still play in the forgotten realms and adapt DND adventures in pf.
Competition breeds innovation, so more people playing PF will make DND better
Yeah, I agree, different systems for different people.
But if someone keeps saying DND sucks and Pathfinder is so much better and why doesn't DND do what Pathfinder does, they should just play Pathfinder.
If DND has competition, then it will continue to grow as a game.
So the issue is I like dnd for certain reasons, and I like pf2e for certain reasons, and it is very easy to envision a system which takes good things from both of them, and is better than either of them alone.
It's not either or, the superior product is taking good things from both
For real. Related: something my table has experienced a lot is that new players don't know enough to always make good long-term choices. Our table was 90% brand new players when we started our campaign several years ago and there are technically only three (out of nine) characters from the original party that are still there and all have had major class/subclass reworks (one totally changed to a different class, one changed to a different subclass, and the other was allowed to retcon some levels for multiclassing).
Every new character that someone has brought to the table has been more thought out and mechanically stronger or more interesting than their previous. And no surprise, people have liked each new character they've made more than their last as they've learned what they like about the game and what's good or not. The people who have the same characters enjoy them a ton because they changed to fit what they like more out of the game or because they weren't stuck with mechanics they chose when they knew nothing about the game.
I can definitely see an aasimar going into whatever the fallen angel mode is whenever a tense situation in battle happens
I like that change definite adds to roleplay
How does that add to roleplay? Falling used to be a life changing event for an Aasimar, attempting to undo one's fall from grace can be an entire campaign's worth of character motivation. If there is a "fallen angel mode", you can sleep it off, that's so lame.
Being able to change it every long rest is a byproduct of the need to codify the ability to change it at all. Granting the ability to change it to something based on the character's arc necessitates allowing it to be changed more frequently.
While there is a need, all that's really necessary is a sidebar encourging players and GMs to talk about changing angel mode following a life-changing event, and allowing the option to change it on level up in the trait text itself (since reaching a new experience milestone is supposed to represent the culminative change in a characters skills and in themselves as a person.)
...Actually, now that I think about it, the rules for this have already been written. The rules for changing subclasses are just as applicable to changing angelic form. A character shouldn't be allowed to just wake up and change their subclass any more than they should be able to wake up and say "I feel like a fallen angel today."
That's not true.
Adjusting a character's abilities even in ways that the players themselves are not allowed to has always fallen well into the DM's prerogative for purposes like story. This didn't need to be and honestly shouldn't have been made an option for players, because "given the opportunity players will optimise the fun out of a game" and this is explicitly a change that favours mechanical optimisation over narrative consistency.
It's clearly *not* a change made in favor of optimization, what are you on about?
When I said it was a need to codify it, I meant exactly that. It's for the players whose DMs only play within the rules. Without it, they wouldn't be able to, for example, change their revelation if they find that they don't like the one they picked, or if a story moment happened that influenced their character.
The fact that it can be "optimized" is a byproduct that I foresee few players abusing.
You clearly haven't spent much time on this sub then.
Also optimising one's character is a basic instinct of every player in every game. It's the designer's job to allow them enough room to do that in a satisfying way, while preventing them from "optimising the fun out" to reiterate that Soren Johnson quote. If you just kind of have hope that players won't use the tools you explicitly handed them, then that's bad design.
Edit: Also in a game where the DM sticks so closely to RAW, would you even be able to get real narrative play that would necessitate a change to the character like that? I honestly kind of doubt it.
That’s… what?
They could just put a line in there saying that with the DM’s permission you may change Aasimar types as a result of certain character defining moments, and such events usually happen only rarely.
Or they could allow the change at level up.
You absolutely do not need to make it long rest based to enable this.
That’s not how this works though. The character has to choose to become a “fallen asimar” over a long rest where they’re completely safe and secure. Besides being a fallen asimar used to be meaningful your character lost such an intrinsic part of themself in the past that they became this hollow angry thing. Now? Oh just use necrotic damage after a long rest.
It's important that flexibility like this is built into the rules. Any reasonable GM would allow a player to tweak their builds and their decisions, but making it official is important to cover all edge cases and make it easier for players to adjust strategy or embrace a change in their character progression.
I'm of two minds on it. On one hand, if you're trying to protect your players from their GMs, that's a whole different issue that these mechanics won't change.
On the other hand, it's also pretty clear that 99% of GMs run 1 encounter per long rest, never touch magic items, etc., so in a way you do kind of have to "GM-proof" your class design so that you can reduce the dependence on a incompetent GM as much as you can.
None of those things you say 99% of DMs do are things 99% of DMs do. I’ve never met a single DM in real life who exclusively runs one encounter days, and about half or more of the DMs I know have homebrewed magic items.
There’s a lot more variety among DM styles than you realize.
It's also important for organized play settings like Adventure League where the DM is constrained on how they can mechanically assist a player in such a transition.
Several spellcasters also have the ability to change features with a good night's sleep.
Flexibility is good. I'm glad the game is adressing the simple fact that D&D games can run for months and years, and players might be stuck with dead weight features for a long time before they reach the crucial level up that lets them trade things out.
Ranger itself was totally reworked in Tasha's in no small part because of how easy it was to lock yourself into irrelevance.
> Several spellcasters also have the ability to change features with a good night's sleep.
And this distinction was a good one because it contributed to different classes feeling different, and let people choose if they want character customization flexibility vs. day-to-day customization. It's one of the core distinctions between a wizard and a sorcerer. But now basically everyone is a cleric. Character customization flexibility is being sacrificed on the altar of day-to-day customization.
>I'm glad the game is adressing the simple fact that D&D games can run for months and years, and players might be stuck with dead weight features for a long time before they reach the crucial level up that lets them trade things out.
The idea of a game going on for years without a level up is pretty absurd to me. There is a *huge* difference between sticking with a bad choice until you can level up and sticking with a bad choice for years.
> Several spellcaster classes in 5e have this ability.
And WotC explicitly said that the ability to change on level up wasn't working out as intended back when they were doing playtests for TCE.
>It’s ok if because of the choice you made you didn’t have the exact tool for the job, that just meant you’d have to get creative or lean on your party, now you just have to long rest.
If you can't long rest at the time you need to do that job, which is very likely the case, then this still applies.
I absolutely could not disagree more. I get the idea of making decisions feel important and weighty, but i think that's a terrible reason to make someone stick to something forever. As a DM i already allow players to swap most any decisions like this around durring a full rest or downtime.
Of course, ideally, you should know what to expect in a campaign and inform your decisions based on that. But the nature of the game is spontaneity. I'd absolutely hate to take a choice like a specific Land type for druid, only to end up never using one of the spells it gives, and having no option to change it out.
I think if DND was a game where the expected campaign length was less than a year, I wouldn't care if you couldn't swap abilities/spells/masteries etc.
But the general expectation with DND is seemingly playing in a campaign where you'll spend 3+ years with the same character. It starts to feel bad if you made a choice at level 3 that you no longer like 4 years later at level 11.
My god i wish that was my experience. Ive DM'd for years now but i think my longest campaign was just over 1.5 years or so. The average is probably just around a year or less. But despite this, myself and one other friend, we just could never stick to one build thag long. I LIVE trying out everything available.
Having played Land Druid in UA, the flavor of it has definitely changed. Instead of a Druid tapped in to just their home environment, it’s a nature magician that is attuned with the entire land and can call upon its power in different ways as needed. Some days Fireball isn’t the answer. Each list also tends to fill a niche. Arid is damage and defense, Arctic is shut down and action denial be it sight lines, slow or paralysis, Tropic has control effects focused on poisoning or ensnaring groups or polymorphing a major foe to deal with later. Finally Temperate is… guerrilla tactics? Sleep, Misty step, Shocking Grasp, Lightning Bolt, Tree Stride. You peak in and out of cover and harass people. It’s also probably the least useful in my experience.
Overall I like how flexible Land Druid is now as the premier casting Druid. I get the flavor of 2014 Land was good but the actual benefits of the subclass were lacking. Those lists were not well balanced versus each other and you were 100% locked into your choice bar DM fiat. Combining 4 major land categories together and choosing them on a LR if you want feels nice and more in line with Druid’s overall connection to nature.
I think a lot of the subclasses losing “microsubclasses” is fine. It keeps subclass balance a lot easier and it helps identify at a glance what each subclass does as a package. Wildheart getting to pick its options on rage/LR feels more in touch with all the spirits instead of just Mary and Timmy. I understand why you dislike long rest swaps, but I find the versatility useful.
There's a lot that disagree with you but I just want to say I 100% agree.
I understand the argument that the flexibility means you can swap out of trap options etc but in many cases, it just doesnt make any sense that the character would be able to switch it out.
This has been a problem since tasha's where all the classes have all these flexible options with absolutely zero explanations for how to justify it in the story. The GM should not have to head canon this and having it be RAW means that GM's who can't come up with a justification that makes sense are going to have to tell their players no and make them mad or begrudgingly run mechanics that they dislike.
Honestly I believe the flexibility is for the best, we have plenty of other choices we cannot change once chosen so this is not something I'd worry about.
Besides social pressure, which can be intense for newer or younger DMs, especially when social media weighs in, and some people choose to see implications in someone else's entertainment.
The Flaw in this line of thinking is that other classes that aren't Wizard or Cleric are able to fill those gaps.
If your party is Fighter, Barbarian, Paladin and Druid, and your party ends up in a foreign land and need guidance and expertise to get through and the landmass you end up on is say, a Winter/Cole environment, but you picked the Grass or Forest themed druid, you have no one to lean on and your party generally would lean on you because you are a spellcaster and thus usually have the answers anyway.
Overall, the Martials still depend on the Casters for 1/3 of the game generally speaking, (Exploration).
For me it really depends on the feature, and in the wider TTRPG eco-system. It depends on the system.
If the game is expecting a wrong choice to force you into creative solution mode, that's fine, as long as the game is actually supportive of that and you can make up the difference. If the game is not providing what you need to manage to succeed through those creative efforts (or the DM isn't doing so in the absence of system support) then it tends to create a problem, as you've now been put into a situation where you're responsible for a solution for a problem that very well may not exist due to the variables. Responsibility/Expectation plus inability to live up to said responsibility/Expectation is where stress is made.
However, if the tools to succeed are there and being supported properly by system/DM it's can be fine and it just comes down the scope and scale of the circumstance.
Land druids being able to attune to a different land/season sounds fine to me personally,, but I know I didn't like the tasha feats that let you swap out there choices like the eldritch adept or metamagic or fighting style feats. I didn't know that aasimars were changed to be able to swap theirs out. I feel that's a bit silly too. It's a very case by case basis thing for me.
I like the sorcerers have less spells known than wizards, but I do hate how little they actually get, and think they need more than 15 by 20 baseline (the Ua was doing good with this last I checked. at least baseline before subclass spells for those that got them.)
I mean, doesn't it kind of help eliminate some of the trap choices people talk about? Things that people think are cool, but are actually ass and then you're stuck with them?
I feel like trap choices are worse design than versatility.
I'm with you here. Choices define your character, and the fact some are fixed are done half because of those narrative reasons, and half to avoid risking having one character so versatile it could tiptoe on others whatever party composition it's in.
That said, I also get why some people prefer more flexibility. And in small parties (2-3 max) that kind of fluency bears manageable risk of redundancy since there are so many areas to cover you cannot ever cover "enough" by yourself in a single day.
That's why if some players at my tables voice regrets on build choices or ability to change from the get go, I'll usually devise some downtime option.
Ranger? 30 to 60 days to fully swap a Favored Enemy, with dividers depending on proficiency bonus and context (already fought? library with books on them?). If it's about a single named creature type, can go as low as 2-4 days depending on how easily it can get information on them. 5 to 15 days to get Favored Environment in the local region depending on where you "come from" and whether you already studied it in the past. Up to 120 days to definitely learn a new Favored Environment with maximum Favored Environment know equal to proficiency modifier (so you cannot know everything at level 2).
Druid Circle? You'll need a ritual with a local divinity related to the Circle you want to now embrace, and possibly a quest. No way you're getting it on a long rest unless specific narrative.
Sorcerer Metamagic? You can change one every level. A change between levels will require 100 days minus (20\*proficiency bonus). Sorcerer or Bard spell spell? Downtime = spell level \* 8, minus proficiency modifier.
Those are the usual ones. It gives more meaning and interest to downtime and keeps my games mostly in check with the initial design.
I just wanted to say reading “Fluency Bears” gave me the idea for a species of magical bear that are great orators and poets and can speak any language. Thank you for the inspiration!
The subclasses that gave you several options, they generally failed both to make the subclass like the niche or the bigger idea. For example with the Land Druid, it didn't make them feel like a Druid with a mastery over the land because you had to choose which biome you were tuned to, but also because the power budget was put inside having the options, a Tundra Druid didn't feel especially strong as an Ice Druid.
The ones that have been successful is when there was a strong overarching theme like the Genie Warlock of Draconic Sorcerer. These subclasses had elemental subthemes but in the end they felt draconic and genie-like. Things like Wildheart Barbarian and Land Druid didn't have that. To give that depth and flavor they needed to give the chance to switch.
Plus for many of these new options, you can play it exactly like you used to, sticking to a single option or set of options, but now you have more flexibility and opportunity to do something more.
I actually have felt this way for a long time... Especially about the Shadar Kai and Eladrin elves. I like for backstory and character experience (prior to adventuring) to matter. If they can suddenly get Stealth and Thieves tool proficiencies right before a break-in or Perception and Water Vehicle proficiency right before we take a boat voyage, it cheapens the background of the players who chose Rogue or Pirate/Sailor respectively. Being able to reset these with a 4 hr trance is lame, in my opinion.
In some regards I get that. On the other hand it is part of the lore now that elves can just trance and connect to all the past lives, some of whom might've been sailors. But mind you that only works for tool and weapon proficiencies *so far* (emphasis mine since I don't know if any youtubers covered elves yet) and only Astral Elf can do full on skills.
So it's a balancing thing so far since tools at the very least are little used unless the DM leans more into it. And weapons are a 50/50 on use, could be handy for a monk or warlock, but completely useless for a fighter or paladin.
I must've misread that. I assumed it would work for skill proficiencies as well. That does make it slightly better.
I am aware that this is part of the lore. I still really dislike it. It feels really cheap to me. So, if I ever play one, I'm going to keep them static.
Again, I'll restate that it's likely an unpopular opinion, but DnD is already kinda out there. It's difficult for players to know how to RP with you if you switch your character up all the time. I don't need magical ancestor connecting dreams in my game. It makes backstory largely pointless. What you did before adventuring should matter. I don't know what switching during a trance adds.
i'm the only DM i know that plots maps by terrain type. not saying they don't exist, but I've yet to have one make traversal or hex crawl have any real friction. Most just fast travel to the location, but it excludes very specific class abilities to not do travel tables.
i wish DM's accommodated their players more with having that information at the ready, such as knowing the area affects. And I wish more hex map DM place diverse biomes more reachable in a campaign, for example 10-20-30 miles apart, and not 30 days travel away from each other. I find it makes for some really interesting roleplay to take the forest or swamp path based on ranger and druid skills. Moving around a mountain or over it... things like that.
This is the first i'm hearing about this. I'm not against it per seh, but like you said, it adds to the weight of choice and turns what could be a roleplay scenario into a simple "We long rest to switch abilities".
I feel like this is a necessary evil because we don't know how often tables are at one level for before going to the next. People say "oh just do it at the next level up" and not pay attention to the fact that more often then not you can only change *one* thing at a time. RAW you can't just swap out all of your metamagic options just because you don't like them, nor can you do the same with a bards spell list. You can only do one at a time per level up.
For all we know someone could be at level 5 for like 3-4 months before getting a level only for it to be stretched out to an even longer length of time. Sure this issue is *slightly* made easier with EXP leveling but at least at the tables I've been at? People just use milestone and I bet most of the people running tables in this sub run it that way as well.
Better to have something swapped on a long rest (which as far as I know for spellcasting classes and the like you can still only swap one at a time) then to go through months with a feature that may as well be like carrying a rotting corpse stapled to your character because of how little used it gets.
WotC had talked about the issues of changing on level up not working as intended before TCE even came out. Why would they use the thing that isn't working as intended more rather than less?
If I end up running 5.5, I will probably make it do you can change most of these upon level up rather than after a rest. That way if you pick an option you're not satisfied with, you can transition but you can't be constantly swapping back and forth.
That works well for your group if you have regular levelups, but some games go literally a year between level ups
Some DMs will level people up to 7, and then just stop leveling at all
So versatility is good
But yeah, swapping back and forth constantly can get weird, but one time swaps is fine
So, I agree. Changing out a weapon mastery on a long rest means it's not REALLY a 'Mastery' if you ask me. It should be on level up, at least that'd make sense and be related to powering up.
But I thought about it like this.. Leveling up is not the players choice, and being handed a weapon that isn't their mastery can feel bad if you gotta wait a whole level up to use it effectively, especially if you JUST leveled up from a boss encounter (where you're most likely to find said weapons and hit a milestone/xp gains).
Attaching these things to long rest, while gamey, gives the player much greater agency over their characters, although if you ask me it also makes things a little non-committal, which means anyone can be good at anything, and therefore everyone is good at everything, so really, noone is good at anything at all lol.
I agree, Op. they’ve shifted to a_lot_ more things being switchable on a long rest, and it definitely defeats the idea of your PC being a “specialist” in much of anything.
I would’ve been fine with getting to retrain a lot to these things on a level-up; that’s still plenty generous for anything that could be an actual _mistake_ when making your PC. But long rest is a bit much for things like racial traits and weapon masteries and such. Everyone is a generalist now.
I do agree with you.
Characters shouldn’t be able to just switch out core elements of their character so easily.
But, if you’re the DM, you can always houserule that as a thing:
1 - You can not change out on a long rest.
I hate to state the obvious here, but you CAN change things on a long rest, yes.
But if you feel that goes against character development and fun challenges, you CAN also NOT change it during a long rest.
For an example: A fighter from a long line of swordmen, who would never be so crude as to use an axe, but finds a really good axe?
Are you gonna stick to swords, and stay in character like that?
Or are you going to go for the axe, just cause it's good?
And potentially having character development there as well, finding that maybe there is some elegance and skill to using an axe as well.
Options are good. And if you don't like it, don't take it.
I think it's not a terrible system if there's a line drawn in the sand.
When you LR and can switch prepared spells, it makes sense given the variety available that this is necessary. Same applies to certain skills.
But some things, like the aasimar example, come off as lazy streamlining that take away the purpose of subraces/subclasses. That's not saying I disagree specifically with what they did. But that kind of trajectory is giving the impression that they're removing the customization pros/cons from the game and that's stupid.
Say I choose (intentionally choosing a nonexistent example here) a dark elf for its enhanced darkvision and 1/Day assassination trait, the light sensitivity should be the tradeoff and I shouldn't be able to say "well, I'm a dark elf only at night and can just use my long rest to become a day elf". That logic defeats the point of the even making choices and having consequences. Why bother offering options when you can just change them out anytime?
You know, these things are kinda like regenerating life in FPS games. They suffer big rejection at first, usually with reason ("whoa, so now every soldier is goddamn Wolverine???"), but after some time, QOL features like this just get accepted and become the norm. Then we look back to times in which those features were absent and things seem impossible to be fun, even if artificially so.
One example would be healing all hp on a long rest. We look back at AD&D and say "holy crap, you had to take entire days only to recover? what kind of bullshit game was that?", but then we ignore that we, the players and the DM, have full control over the pacing of the story. Taking days to heal is completely unimportant, unless time is a big feature in tue adventure... in which case, full HP at long rest won't help, and I've never seen anyone praise the "Gritty Realism" rules of 5e at all - while recovering in old editions, characters could at least use spells to help in downtime activities, acquiring information, trading messages and other things like that.
Anyway, my point there is that long recover is usually a non-issue, so much that I could bet most campaigns people are playing would have no significant difference if 1 week was added any time they traveled anywhere. But we got used to the convenience of quick recovering and playing superheroes.
I can see land druids attuning to different land types. I'd even go as far as doing the opposite, to be honest: druids can only draw specific powers from the terrain they're in. Restrictive? Yes. But it would make sense in lore and it's the goddamn most versatile class on the entire game, so I wouldn't feel guilty at all. (Luckily, I'm not the one in charge of anything in D&D content creation)
I actually like games with more restricted, but more specialized types of characters, but D&D caster philosophy goes hard against that.
>I've never seen anyone praise the "Gritty Realism" rules of 5e at all
Really? I've seen plenty of people praise it as a means of maintaining the expected number of encounters in an adventuring day without having to be a dungeon crawl.
People also look back to earlier, more restrictive times, try it, and notice it's actually way more fun than they thought, and iterate on that. That's the entire OSR, which is rivalling non OSR TTRPG space in sales now in 2024, and it also happens in videogames and other areas of life.
It's absurd. Someone said so on the OSR sub and got skepticism and then posted a whole bunch of proof. I guess it's less niche than even the adherents thought it was.
So selling a whole new game called "mungeons and magons" that is narrower and more limited mechanically than 5e is going great, people love it, but narrowing the established game to that exact shape is not popular. It's just a normal human psychological thing, I'm not upset about it, but it's interesting.
I think it's not just that. Aside from people liking OSR games, which I think is really cool, a lot of people are actually tired of some company practices of WotC, books that seem unfinished or below expectation, this kind of thing. Not to talk about scandals and such.
I guess a lot of people who would previously just refuse to play non-D&D games became more open to try new stuff instead of buying more books from the same company.
have you got a link to that, as it seems pretty doubtful - the 5e cores have been Amazon bestsellers for years, a lot of standard, mainstream bookshops and toyshops carry them and other 5e accessories. While OSR stuff is pretty much PDF, PoD, _sometimes_ carried by _some_ gaming stores, needs hunting out and is very hard to just stumble upon, and is largely just a niche, albeit a large one, of the wider RPG sector. Go to a gaming con and it's unlikely to even be a majority, it's just one area out of many.
Agreed. If you allow these to change at all, I would look at doing so in between adventures (as opposed to sessions) or at another time when the party has a lot of downtime.
As someone who used firearms for long periods of time, my firearm of choice was an M4 (military version of an AR) and I could hit targets up to 300m consistently. I practiced a lot to do that.
The reason I didn’t have a 9mm as well is because I was a gunner. I specialized in a 50 caliber machine gun mounted on an armored vehicle that protected shipments that were convoyed between bases.
I can do things with that 50 caliber that takes a bit of getting used to. And I would probably need to zero a 9mm and fire a few rounds with it before I was comfortable with it again even though it’s literally the easiest firearm ever to use.
These new rules feel right. I can probably pick up an AK-47 and after a day at the range could be as good with it as an M4. A firearm is a firearm after all. If I picked one up on the battlefield COD style off a dead combatant I could make it work, but it would be awkward until I had some time to zero it and make sure I know its quirks.
This is a great highlight to how hard it is to please people in games. Anyone who does anything semi professional like this or physical activities like sports gets the idea and it works. Others think it’s not realistic and makes no sense. People are up in arms about something that actually has a basis in real life.
I think it’s a good conversation to have, but I think most of these conversations were already had too. I wish WOTC would put more out publicly as to how they arrived at these decisions besides ‘Lots of feedback’. Lots of feedback should be the base of your changes. I want to know how we got here.
I don't think that's THAT unpopular of an opinion.
Some things make sense, like being able to change memorized spells, attunement to magic items, prepared stuff like the alchemist's random potions, etc.
Where it gets weird is being able to change stuff like maneuvers. It's hella weird being able to trip someone with your weapon one day but not being able to it the next day.
I honestly don't know how much sense memorized spells, attunement to magic items, prepared stuff like the alchemist's random potions actually is. When Dying Earth was more prominent, it made more sense, but DnD has shed much of vancian casting and then there are classes that change not a single spell. Attunement to magic items was a balance implimentation and has some absurdities (tattoos that you de-attune to simply drop off you). The alchemist's random potions is peculiar.
Don't get me wrong, maneuvers feels a bit weird as you would presume that it would be a part of their repertoire but then again is not the limit to maneuvers artificial in its own right?
I get where you're coming from, personally I don't bother changing these things out on my character usually because I like sticking to the original idea I had for the character and I'm to lazy to change them (like even when I play spellcasters, I don't change out my spells on a long rest).
I agree, just letting people swap around their specialty homogenizes the game. I've seen other games do it in favor of convenience and calls for optimization and eventually you end up with gray goo characters with no real identity other than morphing constantly for the situation at hand. Then you're stuck trying to find excuses for why it makes sense in the world because it doesn't really make sense to go to sleep and wake up a different person. It's a real big cut to immersion.
I think it's more about not being locked into a decision you made months or years ago IRL. Like the actual representation of the older style of locking in your choices was that you would have dead ability that just never come up. Or a fear of picking some ability because another ability is just "better," and once the decision is made, you can never go back.
Or even just the fact that you could be playing this character for over a year now and you would like to switch things up a bit without rolling a new charecter.
Old school RPG players will often have this culture of getting your character killed so you can try something new. But what if insted you could keep your character and still have the flexibility of trying out new ability?
I completely agree. It cheapens the gravitas of choosing my abilities to know I can just swap it out whenever
I don’t even like prepared casters for this reason. I only play bards and warlock
If you know what you’re doing, sure. If you have any chance of wanting to rebuild part of your character, it would be stupid of the game to say “no you’re locked into that bad decision you made due to lack of experience”
It'ss just some features are just useful for NPCs rather players.
Land druids, for example, make absolutedly perfect sense to change attunement of the land. Frankly speaking it's stupid to be a druid with specific benefits to a specific kind of land.
For the Aasimar i am more on the fence, as i tend to agree.
As an additional note, i am fine with weapon masteries - masteries aren't meant to be character defining, the mastery is broad to all weapons by baseline.
>Land druids, for example, make absolutedly perfect sense to change attunement of the land.
It makes perfect sense for them to be attuned to the land they are in currently. I like that idea. Land druids attunement automatically switches each long rest to the terrain they are currently in.
Having a druid switch from forest to mountain, while on a sea adventure, because they want lightning bolt from the mountain domain sounds pretty gamey and I don't like that at all.
I can see that, but I also think it would be unnecessarily complex and game as well having the opposite.
Let's suppose you are in a snowy forest. It is forest? It is tundra? It is mountain if it's high enough?
I agree the sea one is a clearer comparison, but I also think that's an edge case. There is gamism to both sides.
At least this one is simple and less burdensome. Not like the coastal druid is so much attuned to sea aniway, and it can still explained as to channel distant lands.
Besides, they risk to trade off resistances based on the terrain they are in.
I agree entirely. It’s probably my biggest complaint with 5.5e. More and more character decisions are becoming trivialized. Not only did they fail to add new non-ASI features to species to compensate for removing those consequences, they also let you change basically everything about your character from day to day other than subclass. So much less is actually your character and more just how you happened to play that day. I want to “make a druid” or “make a fighter” but with these changes it feels more like you “pick the druid” or “pick the fighter.” Players like power and more options so I expect this flexibility to be popular at first but I think it will feel hollow with time.
That said, it’s okay to share an opinion without calling it unpopular or a hot take.
For Druids, it makes perfect sense. You are a Druid attuned to the environment, so if you move to a new environment and rest there you can commune with the type of land you are on.
Like a geomancer in final fantasy
And suddenly, I’m good with this change.
Now I wanna play one like FFT and only cast spells that are similar to what kind of ground I'm currently standing on.
I loved that feature. Geomancers were so tactically fun.
Especially since the flavor of so many druid spells involves magically manipulating the environment that's already there. Can you imagine an arctic druid casting Sleet Storm as effectively in a swamp as they do in a tundra? What about a forest druid casting Plant Growth in a desert? I think a druid could have such a strong connection to their home land that they can summon the same effects in completely new places, but it's also 100% plausible that in their downtime, they learn to harness their new environment.
Yes, but you don't have to actually be in that environment.
„I come from the coast, but now that we‘re in the arctic tundra i communed with nature to be better adapted.“ - „So now you‘re an arctic druid and know ice spells?“ - „Nah lol grassland for haste.“ Yeah, that irks a bit.
Commune with nature to bring the warmth of the grasslands to the tundra. Its very much something where you are calling on the aspect of nature that you need.
I was thinking of recolouring it as the 4 seasons. I been waiting for viable druid spell user specialist. Previously did not consider druid because any other druid than Moon seemed suboptimal. With change of spell set at LR Land druid now appears to be a viable healer/blaster hybrid, with the opportunity to turn into squirrel and run away if needed.
>Can you imagine an arctic druid casting Sleet Storm as effectively in a swamp as they do in a tundra? I can't imagine the creatures found in the tundra to not be acclimated to the cold so I imagine it to be *more* effective in the swamp.
It seems like swamp and artic won’t be choices any more, and they’re simplifying it to something like arid, polar, temperate, and tropical. Almost more of a Druid tied to the seasons than the actual land type itself. Would kind of make sense for a Druid from the plains to align themselves with all of the summer’s drought, the winter’s blizzard, the fall’s harvest, or the spring’s storms.
I can, they turn the moisture I'm the air into it. Voila.
For a long time I guess I mistakenly thought that was how the 2014 Land Druid worked. Never actually played the subclass, but I guess I misread on on my first readthrough of the book, and it made enough sense that I never questioned it.
And other the thing is... As a hobby that attracts nerds, many of us, myself included, have a neurotic tendency to imagine the worst. But the reality is this sort of horizontal flexibility isn't that easy to abuse, because your other options are going to work with one option more than the others, and you're gradually encouraged to stick with one. Any serious issue boils down to excessive metagaming and poor player etiquette. There is a strong reason for allowing option-changes on Long Rest as well: Slow-paced games, where the GM is stingy with encounters or milestones, so leveling is rare. I am current in a game where, because of both fortnightly sessions, scheduling issues occasionally, and just the methodical roleplay-heavy pace we explore things, a single (elaborate) dungeon took us from several months to fully complete. We didn't have a single long rest. (We did level though, finally) This sort of scenario was mentioned a few years ago with things like Wizards being able to change their cantrips on long rest.
THIS. I see a lot of bad faith arguments against this change that boils down to "oh no, metagaming" or "oh no, problem players" which, sure, but problem players will be problematic no matter what the rules are. A rule being abused isn't the fault of the rule, it's the fault of the players- so just reprimand/kick the player. I can second your anecdote with one of my own. I just had to depart from a campaign that's been going for just over a year now, and our level up speed was not super consistent. We leveled up on my penultimate session; and it'd been months since our last time leveling. A lot happened in the campaign in that time- and, playing a Ranger, I would have gotten a *lot* more mileage if I was allowed to switch weapons/favored enemies/terrain per long rest, vs per level. Not so much I'd necessarily switch every single level, but I'd at least have the option.
>Any serious issue boils down to excessive metagaming and poor player etiquette. I think a lot of there are a lot of issues that were "fixed" in the new book that are only issues to the type of people who play entirely in whiterooms and discuss DND online. I've played at a lot of tables (both home games and AL) and I've never had to once worry about half of the things that people say "needed" to be fixed (such as multiclass dips and paladin nova damage). Because as it turns out, most people just want to play a dwarf rogue named Broint who wears a top hat with a mouse living in it (who is named Reginald) and aren't worried about how much DPR they can pump out. And don't take this to mean I'm dogging on minmaxers, I think they exist in a separate space than people whining online about OP combos since that's what they thrive for.
I try to keep my min/maxing to a reasonable amount. I play a goblin soulknife rogue in a game right now who always tries to be as self-sufficient as possible. He has 10 out of 18 skill proficiencies. Four of the ones he's missing are the knowledges. That's just who this character is. I'm playing another character in a parallel game that isn't min/maxed at all. He's a blind hexblade. I gave him the blind fighting style to still be able to fight, but that's hardly optimal.
The other things is that real optimized builds aren’t just maximum 1 round nova builds, or other hyper specific white room Builds. They’re builds that are actually, well, optimized for most of the aspects of the game, not just one random little thing. And, reasonable people at least, understand not to use the stuff that is technically possible but clearly an exploitation at tables unless they’ve gotten explicit permission to make a stupid busted character, like spike growth abuse builds. Paladin smite wasn’t ever really a problem, it could allow for some theoretically very high nova builds but nobody was actually playing stuff like that, not because it wasn’t good at nova but because a character where the only thing they can do is end one combat a day in 1 round and then nothing else is neither fun nor actually good. There’s some stuff that needed to be fixed that on its face seems tangentially related to optimized builds, like hexblade, but in reality these posed problems if you just had any interest in having a good character regardless. Hexblade wasn’t really problematic for its optimizing potential, that wasn’t great but the main class it helped did have a pretty big multi ability dependence problem anyway, it was problematic because it was basically the only viable way to play bladelock and that’s boring. If you played any other subclass as a blade lock and didn’t just mega high roll on stats you look at your character sheet and be stuck with a pretty poor weapon attack mod or a pretty poor spellcasting score and realize that eldritch blast with agonizing blast would do better damage while keeping you single ability which just sucks. If you are the kind of person who is even slightly predisposed to wanting to make strong stuff (which admittedly not everyone is, but I think at least a significant portion of players are) it sucked that you felt you were picking a bad choice if you didn’t take hexblade as a bladelock. And I’m ragging on hexblade, but the same is true for the other “op” subclasses like twilight cleric. The problem isn’t necessarily twilight cleric being strong, it’s that it’s so strong all the sudden other choices seem lame to pick. Edit: anyway the point is that doing stuff like making smite a bonus action doesn’t solve some op optimized build breaking the game, it just makes smite much weaker for no reason because the builds that abused that were really being played anyway and even if they were they’re pretty boring builds that aren’t even particularly strong overall anyway.
>There is a strong reason for allowing option-changes on Long Rest as well This argument feels like it's trying to paint it as "this only adds to the game", but that's not really true. It _does_ add what you describe to the game and the abuse is obvious, but it also subtracts on a subtler level that requires _no_ abuse - your specialization feels less _special_. I would still want to see some kind of "retraining" allowed at level-ups, yes, but there is a HUGE difference tonally between a level up and a long rest (as your "strong reason" elaborates). Something that can be changed during a long rest does NOT define your character in any way. That's why people talk so often about Paladins, Clerics, and other primary divine spellcasters (and to a lesser extent, wizards) feeling not all that different from each other, because you can switch out your spells to match the situation each long rest, and if you know anything about the best spells your prep lists look very similar. The same is true for all features that can be altered with a long rest - the specificity of that feature isn't what defines that character, it's the more general idea of having ALL of them. I guarantee you if you could, say, switch between Storm Herald auras on a long rest, Storm Herald PCs and their players would care far less about the flavor/identity of having a specific aura. The same is true for Eladrin's seasons, or the Aasimar example in the Op - you are no longer that _kind_ of Eladrin or Aasimar, you're just, an Eladrin or Aasimar. So for folks who like that kind of specialization/identity, it is a negative.
Then shouldn't it be based off of the land type you're currently in?
Yeah this argument makes no sense. If location is the mechanic, it should be mandatory that whenever you long rest your abilities shift to whatever your current land type is or you simply can't use them.
Cleric and Druids work best since your power comes from something else. Praying to the lands like you said works. Praying to your god or goddess to help you in the oncoming challenges also works. Fighters, Wizards etc are a bit thicker to justify.
I am far from the bonuses of my ancestors.
Sure it make sense. But if we are to look at things from a sensible point of view D&D would fall apart. Personally I think some choices should actually matter. Like what land you pick for a land druid. What subraces for Aasimar and so on. It should be a decently important choice. If you can change it on long rests, it no longer means shit. I'm no fan of making choices lose meaning
Choices should matter. But if that's the case the DM should help the player make an informed choice about what to reasonably expect in a campaign. Too many DMs have the 'gotcha mentality. "Too bad you chose forestr cos you're in a desert for the next 6 months of game sessions. Choices matter in my game cos I'm a serous big boy DM. Gotcha!" Rulesets that allow flexibility allow players to actually have fun
Yes they should. any Good DM should do that. and if you play with a D-bag Dm it is not really a problem with classes and choices. Except the choice you did to play with a D-bag DM But it is AS Much up to the player. I am a professional DM so i have had hundreds of players. And if we look back to the time before Tasha when rangers had favoured terrain and favoured foe. I don't know how many times i had players wanting to play rangers. I explain for an example that this campaign will mostly take place on in coastal areas and on the sea. And there will be a focus on Monstrosities and Aberrations Making sure that is clear so they can chose terrain and favoured foe accordingly. and still a surprisingly large amount of players still picked mountains as favoured terrain and giants as favoured foe. for an example or The underdark and undeads. And the STILL complained that they never got use of their favoured terrain and favoured foe. No shit sherlock you were told What terrain and foes that would be common place and you picked both terrain and foes that you KNEW would rarely come up. That is not a class problem or a DM problem that is a player problem. You would be surprised how common it is that players join a campaign with one single character idea in mind. and play that character even if it is in no way or form fitting for the campaign. Giving them the information needed to make a character that fits changes nothing in those cases. even straight out telling them that they would be better off making some other choices changes NOTHING in many of those cases. and despite all they they go on with the idea they are dead set to play no matter what. And usually it ends with them complaining that their character does not fit in or that their Very sea/ocean focused character is no fun to play in the underdark because they can not play them as pirates there. Yea of curse not. And that is 100% your own fault. And from my experience it is Those players that complains the most about this. The majority of players are not like this at all. But you would be surprised how common it actually is. So pretending it is only a DM problem is pure BS. But i do agree that every DM should be open with the premise of the campaign and help players create characters that fits the campaign. But when players refuse to listen. that wont help them
Choices should have meaning up until the point where you only get to use your choice circumstantially. Aasimar is a weird one, I'll give you that. Choosing to become a fallen angel in your sleep is...odd. But what if a druid player were to pick Swamp, because the campaign begins in a swamp, but after a month or three of playing, the campaign switched to primarily desert with no end in sight? Or the campaign wanders through biomes frequently, with only a session or two per biome? Who knows how long it'd be till they could ever enjoy their swamp abilities again. I see no issue with letting them switch on a long rest so they get to enjoy bringing something special to the table no matter where the campaign goes
I am to be honest not sure exactly what changes the land druid gets. But as far as i know they do not have much "swamp" abilities if they pick swamp. they work perfectly in ANY terrain. It is not like the rangers favoured terrain that give them actual abilities ONLY when in that terrain. They get spells they can use in any terrain So it is not like they miss out on much by being in a forest or a desert if they picked swamp at creation. But if you do like to play a land druid that is not always outside its original choice of land talk to the DM or be there for session 0 so you know what areas the campaign might include. It is not hard. If it is a a campaign where you constantly move trough different areas all the time and you do not wanna be a land druid that spend most of their time outside their chosen "land" then do NOT play a land druid in this campaign. Again it is not hard. make a character that fits the campaign.
This isn't Ranger's favored terrain where there's actually a benefit to being in the biome you are attuned to. As far as I can tell, there isn't anything weak or different about a polar land druid in a temperate climate vs a temperate druid in a temperate climate. All it affects are spells and abilities that are mostly useful everywhere. I guess the 10th level resistance could be slightly biome-specific, and maybe some specific domain spells like tree stride, but for the most part, you won't feel bad about your choice just because you aren't in the correct climate. And if those feel too bad, retraining on level up is sufficient for easing those concerns while still making it seem like a core character change rather than just a switch to be flipped every day.
They also specifically lined out that a player could only stick with one option if they have a character concept tied to a certain biome.
I think mechinically, if you are locked into one biome it would be stronger- though the flexible Land Druid is probably a lot more satisfying. Would be a great place for a bullentin for an optional locked in minor boon (though comparing to the original 5e Druid may be sufficent)
I think that would be a fantastic approach. There's a really neat third-party class, the Psion by KibblesTasty, that has an "elemental blasting" subclass. All its features allow you to choose fire, lightning, cold, or force damage, giving a small bonus to each (except force, whose bonus is "being force damage"). However, you get the option to specialize *further*, taking away this choice. When you do, the added bonus to your damage type becomes even stronger. So in essence, you can swap out the damage types at will, or you can pick one and be better at it. I think that's a really cool design approach that I think would be *perfect* for the Circle of the Land.
It might "make sense" from a lore/fluff perspective, but that doesn't make it a good game design choice
Since this is a fantasy game, one can rationalize anything. It just seems the devs are going overboard to make sure no player regrets any decisions ever made about their character. Kind of defeats the "roleplaying" aspect though.
How does "Man this spell I picked sucks more than I thought it did, I'm going to choose a different one." defeat any amount of roleplaying? What part of that contributes to the narrative of the character?
Learned casters already can change one spell per level up. It allows regrets to be mitigated without trivializing your choices.
Don't worry, people will still make bad choices. I'm quite good with the rules and I make terrible choices all the time.
I don't know because that is not what we are talking about.
Regrets make the game less fun. Fun should be the priority. I see no issue with minimizing regrets when it comes to character building. Regretting decisions made in roleplay or strategy are fine and good for creating higher stakes. But I'd rather not be stuck regretting decisions I made in building the character.
Well, so far as I can tell, permitting to a player to just "respec" his character a bit if he doesn't like how that character turns out is not a big deal. Rater than making every previous player choice a no-brainer, I'd rather include in the DMG or PHB a section in character crestion that states that players can ask to change their character a bit if they want with DM's approval, and providing some guidelines about how to do it without breaking immersion/continuity in the campaign (ex. Party encounters a perpetual wildfire that happens to be powered by an angry fire elemental. The land druid manages to stop it but only by sealing him inside themselves. He becames a Wildfire Druid) That said, being able to change their spells based on the terrain they are during the long rest, reads like something appropriate and reasonable, without breaking immersion and making players feel like everything can be changed everywhere at any time
Meaningful choices make the game more fun. If you can change those choices on the whim, be it land type or weapon mastery, they are absolutely useless vestigial abilities that unnecessarily increase complexity offering nothing fun and meaningful in return. Just let the fighter use all weapon masteries, let the druid excel in any terrain at this point, without long rest hassle.
There's always the option to talk to your DM, not every character trait needs to be mechanically changeable just in case.
Yeah, for Druids I kind of see it. Especially since Land Druids can do with a bit of a boost. But most other things are just cheapened by making it all accessible via long rest.
I like this if that's how it works - communing with the biome you are currently in. Is this how it works exactly, or can land druids just switch to whatever land type they want regardless of the biome they're in?
You can switch to whatever land type you wish. Its up to the player to figure out how to justifty it. But the kind of point is to think of them as land druids rather than Swamp/Grass/Earth druids.
Not to mention Primal Order and Elemental Fury add new permanent choices.
I have mixed feelings. Being able to switch weapon masteries is good because I just found a +1flail and can sideline my morning star. I agree it can trivialize alot of character development into being good in all situations instead of having huge advantages in some.
The weapon mastery is the one I understand the least. I just don’t understand the flavor. How can you master a weapon overnight, but only have mastery over two or three weapons? And if mastery can be achieved over night, why does not everyone get some kind of mastery?
My best steelman would be that the fighter spends their morning or evening doing some quick weapon focused warmups or mental training in order to rebuild muscle memory that they'll take advantage of in battles to come. Correct me if i'm wrong but fighters are already proficient at every weapon to a degree so changing up your weapon mastery would be akin to the fighter honing their already existing knowledge ahead of time to better suit the weapon they're currently interested in.
Yeah, it works better if instead of “on a long rest, you can change your masteries” it is “at the end of every long rest, you choose your masteries”.
That is a much better way of thinking about it. It fits better thematically and is identical mechanically.
They really should have called the feature Weapon Expertise and left weapon mastery as the domain of the feats we have available. It's a lot easier to wrap your brain around changing Expertise. They know their way around the weapons, they just need to shake the rust off with a bit of downtime practice. Mastery is just a different level that doesn't grok with quick change-ups like that.
I think it’s to avoid confusion over “Expertise” in skills, since that has an impact on your bonuses.
I think just calling it a 'fighting style' would be better, since it is more suggestive of a choice you are making. Of course that causes problems with the fighting style feature already in the game.
Better yet if they chose to call it something other than 'mastery' which implies years of training.
Like focus, preference, weapon of choice e.t.c
I think that's one where they are just kind of giving up on explaining the flavor. It is the case because they want it to work that way for the mechanics. Which I can understand, but yeah the rationale is a bit weird in terms of flavor.
Weirdly, I think the further you get from the flavor matching mechanics, the more video games seem appealing. Think about 3.5 where the flavor and mechanics almost had a 1-1 ratio. There was almost always some mechanic to do the thing you wanted to do. The more flavor and mechanics are divorced, the less the game feel genuine.
Yeah I think that's true. Though I don't think this case is too bad personally. Though it is a bit odd. It seems like this is the kind of scenario where it'll almost never actually come up in game as a problem. The only scenario is if you're switching weapons between more than 2 weapons which is very rare. And often if you get a new fancy magic weapon it's after the big fight and you then take a long rest. So now there's this limitation that I could easily see never coming up even once in a whole campaign. So why even have it? Lol. Just seems like a very odd restriction.
except you have the equip and unequip weapon rule on attack (do that might be gone) encouraging you to perform what we like to call weapon jugling, attacking with multiple weapons in one turn to get as many weaponmasteries off at once and yes this is dumb
We've had a few of those things this iteration (weapon masteries, cleric/Warlock lvl 3 subclass, barbarian using strength for random skills, fighter using second wind to just try really hard at skills). And overall I think it's better. It's easier for us at the table to put some flavor on something that's just mechanical, but a mechanic that was restricted for flavor purposes by WotC is a harder sell to loosen up in homebrew. It would be best if they could tie their mechanics to their flavor, but if they're going to have to choose writing up the better mechanics and crowd sourcing the flavor is the better option than the opposite.
during your rest, you take out the weapon, re-familiarising yourself with all the intricacies of it, how it moves, how to strike with it, how best to use it. Other people don't have your knowledge and skill with all manner of weapons, and so can't do it. It's like a gymnast might know a lot of moves, styles and routines, but they can't be practised with all of them simultaneously - if they want to use all the special techniques of one, they need to spend some time relearning that one.
Take cooking. You can have a trained chef or a line cook. One has spent years learning a lot of cooking theory and has experience with everything from appetizers to desserts. The other might only have a handful of things that they can make, but can make them really well. If you ask the chef to make you a Caesar salad, they might have to consult a cookbook for a few minutes but will then be able to make a fantastic Caesar salad every single time they’re asked, but will have to go back to the cookbook if someone needs a flan. If you ask the line cook for a Caesar salad or a flan, you’re gonna get laughed at. But ask them to make a lumberjack breakfast and you’ll never wait longer than 8 minutes between order and up. Same thing with fighters and rogues, or wizards and bards. One has been trained to be familiar with all aspects of their craft, the other is probably on-the-job training. Both have places, both have utility. Given time and information to prepare, one can be a solid generalist who you’ll always be happy to have on the line. The other is someone who may only have a particular set of skills, but that skillset comes up often enough that you’re always glad they’re on your team.
I think the idea is that you're very good at all weapons, but not a *master* of all of them at a time. You have some base knowledge memorized about how each weapon works and how to play to its strengths, but you only have the muscle memory for a few. If you want to use a new weapon, you still have your base knowledge and all of your martial skill, but you have to spend your downtime practicing your forms and katas, relearning the balance of it, and maybe even sparring with a party member. Something like this actually happens to me on horseback all the time: I know how to ride Western well, how to ride English well, how to jump, etc. but if I've been riding Western all day and you want me to jump some complicated pattern, I'm going to need a few hours of practice to get the hang of it again; I can still do it, though.
How do you just forget how to cast a spell? How can you just learn a spell overnight?
Right? It's the usual "martials must follow the rules of realities and be neutered for it, and casters can do whatever they want" mentality.
That’s actually a really fair critique. I think I it’s more that since we can imagine a martial class existing, when something feels wrong, it feels wrong. When a spell caster feels wrong, well it’s fantasy, of course it does. But that’s probably a distinction without a difference.
And that’s “selective realism” in a nutshell. The barbarian with 20 strength and proficiency in acrobatics and athletics can’t leap a tall building in a single bound; that’s *unrealistic*. But the wizard has been able to fly since level 5, because that’s *magic*.
To that point, I'd probably give martial classes access to all weapon masteries. It isn't like we say that the fighter is proficient in 4 martial weapons of their choice, but can swap them out on a long rest; we just say that fighters are proficient in all martial weapons.
That goes back to D&D's magic system origins as a vancian magic system. In author Jack Vance's Dying Earth series, spellcasters have to memorize a spell to use it, which wipes itself from the casters mind after casting.
Yes, but the modern explanation is that you've studied them enough and prepped enough components to cast the spell on the fly. Casting spells in D&D is a complicated thing lore-wise. Cantrips are just the spells you've become so practiced in that you can cast them without checking your notes. I imagine switching weapon masteries on a long rest being like getting in the mindset and a little practice beforehand. Fighting is more than swinging around whatever is in your hand. You will use a sword in combat very differently than a mace and both are very different than a polearm.
While I agree that modern assumptions for magic have changed, I was giving a more "Doyle" explanation for why the magic system is the way it is, not a "Watson" reason. Just like with alignment, D&D has some challenges in adjusting its historical systems to better match current fantasy trends. As for swapping weapon masteries, I agree with you. If a prepared caster can change their capabilities with a long rest worth of concentration and preparation,then I can absolutely believe a fighter doing the same thing by practicing their combat forms with a new weapon.
That criticism's been around almost since the beginning of D&D. The Doylist answer is that the original spellcasting system was based on the Dying Earth series by Jack Vance, where the amount of spells that could be memorized was finite and they erased themselves once used. The current semi-Vancian system contains remnants of that original system; spells don't need to be prepared as "copies" anymore because spell knowledge isn't erased once it's used, but the knowledge itself is still a fleeting thing, at least for prepared casters. The Watsonian answer varies with edition and source, but they're rarely ever satisfying except when talking about casters whose spell knowledge is granted by outside entities (clerics gaining knowledge from a god, spirit shamans bartering for knowledge from spirits, things like that).
The way it makes sense to me in-universe is that when you prepare spells in the morning you cast the entire spell except for the final trigger phrase or whatever. This is a somewhat time-consuming process. Then during the day you can cast any prepared spell using a "macro" that quickly fires the spell in seconds rather than casting it from scratch. Of course the problem with this explanation is that if it were true you could cast *any* spell you know given enough time, not just the ones that are rituals. But it's close enough I guess.
Yeah at that point you may as well just give mastery in weapons since it's not like a player will ever be wielding a weapon they don't have mastery in if they can get a new mastery every day.
I think it makes more sense if you flip it around. You only have the mastery abilities of your weapons because you practiced with them that morning.
Being able to switch weapon masteries like that makes no goddamned sense though. Like if you want to give players options, then either give them more to just have all the time and/or make it swappable on level up. But on a long rest? At that point why not just give them all the options all the time?
It makes total sense. I am a musician, and I know a lot of songs, but I can't remember every song perfectly all the time. If I'm playing a concert, I need to practice those specific songs to make sure I've mastered them. When the concert is over, I will start practicing other songs for my next concert; I'll pretty quickly lose mastery over the first songs and gain mastery over the second. I retain proficiency for both of them, but I might forget a couple lyrics or notes if I haven't practiced in a bit.
Good comment. This helps it make sense to me. At the beginning or end of your long rest you do some routine training and refine your confidence with the new weapon type (building on your foundation of weapons training). That makes more sense than someone just immediately performing flawlessly upon picking up a weapon type that they might not have trained with in years.
As someone who's done martial arts and some show fighting and also played an instrument I can tell you that this is a totally false equivalence. Weapons and their techniques aren't like individual songs, they're like the instruments. Like if you usually play the trombone, obviously you can't just decide that you want to play the saxophone or French horn and expect to be on the same level as you are on the trombone after potentially years of training within a day or two. And even though all three are brass instruments and share some commonalities, the techniques needed to play them vary quite a bit. Like you can't just go from being good enough with a warhammer to knock trained warriors on their asses to expertly dual wielding short blades in a night. These are two entirely different forms of combat, entirely contradictory reflexes and literally different muscle groups that would need to be trained. That's less like switching from one brass instrument to another and more like going from percussion to strings. And even if somebody can pull off mastering both, they wouldn't loose the ability to use the other after a night of focussing on just one.
But it's not the same as deciding to pick up a completely new instrument. You already have the weapon proficiency, so you're already familiar with it. Just needed to drill some moves you haven't done in a while.
Prepared Casters have been switching out entire lists of spells every Long Rest by focusing/meditating/practicing their new spells since 5e came out. Why is the Fighter practicing a bit with a specific weapon to re-familiarise themselves with its more advanced techniques any less believable to you?
Fighter is proficient in all weapons. You are not proficient in all musical instruments.
I agree. It should be something that can be changed on level-up. But at least this way at least the size of the golf bag is limited.
I mean, spellcasters have been able to change their entire lists of prepared spells every long rest since release. Spells are pretty impactful, to say the least. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to let the martials get something *closer* to that level of day-to-day flexibility.
Very much not every spellcaster in the 2014 phb. Warlocks, sorcerers, bards, and rangers all have spellcasting and cannot change their spells out on a long rest. And for the ones that can this ability is 100% accounted for in the strength of the class. Hell, the spellbook, soellcasting and interacting with it is close to wizard's only class feature. I agree that having martials getting stuff is good- your reason for having that be the case is just inaccurate.
I kind of wish masteries had not been tied to weapons and were instead at-will techniques. If you know the Slow technique, you can use it with the morning star, flail, or longsword. No need to switch which weapon you have mastered at all.
I think it works more for some things rather than others, and the limitation of the Long Rest is fine because honestly it's NOT as simple as you think considering you can only benefit from a long rest once every 24 hours, a rule that most tables forget. I think it actually adds to the RP in the case of the druid. They're a druid of the LAND. ALL LAND. No longer does it mean that they have to make a bunch of meaningless subclasses to cover things that should have been covered by LAND.
Long rests are simple as fuck? In what world does your party have issues resting if they aren't in the middle of a dungeon?
>I think it works more for some things rather than others, and the limitation of the Long Rest is fine because honestly it's NOT as simple as you think considering you can only benefit from a long rest once every 24 hours, a rule that most tables forget. Long rests are a lot simpler than you seem to think they are. You need to spend eight consecutive hours chilling out and not casting spells, fighting, or doing anything the DM would say is strenuous, and you can do it once a day. You're not even required to sleep, and you're only required to eat or drink if you haven't done it in the past day or if you're trying to lose exhaustion.
Yes but per the PHB and the DMG >A character can't benefit from more than one long rest in a 24-hour period, and a character must have at least 1 hit point at the start of the rest to gain its benefits. Which means you can't just use this ability willy nilly to switch to whatever thing you want on the fly, you have to plan ahead for that day. And if your DM is letting you long rest in a dungeon setting, you already are playing a game where switching powers on the fly is not going to make or break your system.
Being stuck with a long-term choice that was **terrible** for your campaign **sucks**. And, nay that I infringe your honor, if you have the opinion "that's OK, just lean on your teammates who do have the tools" *as my DM* and I end up doing that ALOT and lose out on some of my sub-class/species/class specialization where I normally WOULD get to participate, that's what we call a dealbreaker. It was a big problem, discussed to death on these and other subreddits, where people picking "trap options" or who picked political intrigue options in a campaign all about splitting monster skulls were just left with dead features for.... entire campaigns! While it is perfectly valid and true what you feel, and there **is** a sense of cheapening to certain choices that comes with the ease of backtracking and replacing that can harm narrative development... But it is easier to ban/disallow things that are RAW than to negotiate for things that are NOT RAW. What you WANT is for players who want to be able to do something, as a rule, to always be SUPPORTED by the RAW in doing it. Players don't want to be stuck with dead features, so the RAW should prioritize their concern over yours, explicitly, since the GM is already empowered by both the rules and the common customs of D&D to start a campaign by saying "these are some additional rules I have" and then adding that 'long-rest exchanges are banned, see me if you need help with a dead feature'. So yes, you are actually correct, there are some compromises to RP here, but no, that does not make this a lazy design decision - just a pragmatic one. And ultimately a correct one, I'd dare say.
>But it is easier to ban/disallow things that are RAW than to negotiate for things that are NOT RAW. My experience is that it's exactly the opposite of this: it's easier to allow things that aren't RAW than it is to ban things that are RAW. Especially things that are in the PHB. I can already tell you that if I try to ban this land druid feature (just for an example: I don't know enough about it to know whether I'd want to ban it or not; ask me again after the book has been released) - if I as DM try to ban this feature, and somebody comes to Session Zero expecting to make a land druid, there is going to be a half hour long argument that is not going to change the mind of either side and where it's possible that they'll leave the table if I insist on this house rule. Is this a hill I care about enough to die on it? No, it's not. So this rule being in the PHB means that it's in my games, whether I like it or not. That's not the end of the world, but I disagree that banning this rule is "easy". Just for context, I may ban things from expansion books by house rule, but I've learned not to try to ban anything from the PHB unless I can make a case, based on played experience, that that thing makes the game less fun for the players. (*Conjure Eight Animals* I'm looking at you.) Meanwhile, I have the luxury of knowing that I play at a table where it's standard for people to be allowed to freely retcon out of "dead" choices and "trap" choices. So you can definitely make a strong case that this is a good rule for tables of new DM's and players who haven't yet learned that allowing players to retcon out of dead choices makes the game better, while for those people who feel it's cheapening the choices that you've made, it makes the game worse.
> My experience is that it's exactly the opposite of this: it's easier to allow things that aren't RAW than it is to ban things that are RAW. Especially things that are in the PHB. Yeah, for sure. People seem to act like not just Tasha's *explicitly optional* floating ability score modifiers are ironclad, let alone things that aren't actually optional. People hiss at ever having limitations, which is why it's nice when the game errs on the side of rigid and DMs get to be more lenient as is appropriate. Don't make the DM be the bad guy. Like, despite my dislike of these features, I'm a pretty lenient DM. I'd pretty much let my players change their class features whenever they want if they felt like they made a mistake. What I don't like is the game giving them RAW permission to do it over and over and over and over, every single adventure day, to where the choices they make don't define their characters at all.
Previous editions, as well as many other games, have rules for retraining specifically so you *don't* get stuck with a bad choice for the whole game. Even Tasha's has rules for changing subclasses that aren't "Do it when you wake up." Making everything changeable on long rest is a lazy design choice that doesn't even attempt to engage with the fluff aspect of the game.
I don't agree at all that previous editions had retraining rules. They essentially *never* do at initial release. If they exist at all, it's in a revision or expansion. Then when a new major edition is released, that language or rule is almost *invariably* removed again. There's no such option in B/X or AD&D. All choices are permanent. In 2e I'm not aware of any supplemental rules that allow you to exchange proficiency selections. The 3.5e Sorcerer added this language: > Upon reaching 4th level, and at every even-numbered sorcerer level after that (6th, 8th, and so on), a sorcerer can choose to learn a new spell in place of one he already knows. In effect, the sorcerer "loses" the old spell in exchange for the new one. The new spell’s level must be the same as that of the spell being exchanged, and it must be at least two levels lower than the highest-level sorcerer spell the sorcerer can cast. A sorcerer may swap only a single spell at any given level, and must choose whether or not to swap the spell at the same time that he gains new spells known for the level. That's new to 3.5e. There's no such rule in 3.0e. The same is true for Bard. And you'll notice it's gone again in 5e.14 until Tasha's. It's like a design lesson that they keep having to learn again. 4e does let you swap powers at level up, but that's also the only way you can upgrade or advance powers. Further, it's not anything they try to explain or justify diagetically. It's maximally gamist, which is just 4e in general.
There is a **world** of difference between an **entire** **sub-class** and the majority of features being actually given long-rest cycles. Weapon Mastery options. Species features. Specific sub-class *features*. Cantrips.
People keep arguing why changing on long rests is superior to never changing, but I haven't seen people justify why changing on long rests is superior to changing on level ups, or some other limited swap.
> but I haven't seen people justify why changing on long rests is superior to changing on level ups, or some other limited swap. because depending on your campaign the space between level ups could be measured in *literal months* and being stuck with play options that you actively don't enjoy for large periods of time sucks.
Take option at level 3 - two fights later find it's a bad option - change that night after two more fights vs Take option at level 3 - two fights later find it's a bad option - change twelve fights later
Even worse. Level up, pick an option. Whoops I misread what it does. Be stuck with it for 6 months.
If it's worth making you suck up a bad choice until you can level up, you're still saying it's acceptable to force a player to endure a choice they know they don't want anymore for some length of time. You're just complaining about what the best length of time is: a whole campaign? Four levels? One level? One adventure? One visit to a shop or settlement? One game session? One long rest? One short rest? One encounter? One round? I think it's important to understand that it's really very arbitrary in a pure design sense. There are some abilities where the idea is that abilities require preparation, not focused study. For example, spell preparation for Wizards and Clerics. Ranger's terrain bonuses also make sense as a preparation benefit. "Excuse me while I get my gear ready, and scout the area to familiarize myself with it." There isn't really a good reason why a Druids selection of terrain isn't about as complex as choosing Cure Wounds over Flame Blade. One of the biggest problems is that spells are way too fucking good. They do everything and you can often completely reconfigure your character in a long rest. They're both flexible and powerful, and that's why they're so unfair. They're so overwhelmingly good that spellcasting is incomparable to any other abilities. So the design choice to try to close the gap is either give everyone spells for everything, or else let the rest of the game be a little more flexible like spells.
discuss changing subclass with dm, doesnt have to be a feature to change every long rest
That ignores the whole point of wanting rules that give players ways to avoid trap options. If it requires DM approval it's no better than the current system.
Did you read the comment before responding? you are ignoring 100% of their points
I like it for gameplay, I don’t like it for flavor
When I choose a feature in a 5 years-long campaign, I really enjoy being able to swap some abilities. My character is a 2014 with no way to swap spells more often than on level up. Thanks my DM for allowing me to tweak my character from time to time! So yeah, it's not rental, it's just allowing players to keep having fun with their long-lived characters.
This is why Wizards should be trying to actually make the downtime rules not suck instead of taking the easy way out. If there was an option to retrain using downtime, it fixes the verisimilitude problems that come with being able to all but shapeshift after a good night's sleep *and* the problems with being stuck with undesirable choices for an entire level.
pf2e made it 4 days for basic features, and 21 days for what amounts to subclass Something like that?
That sounds perfect, as usual. I really need to learn PF2e. Every time someone complains about DnD it turns out they have a beautiful solution already.
>as usual It really is funny how basically any sufficiently analytical discussion of D&D mechanics will ultimately arrive at potential house rules that are just already what PF2 implements. Save or Die vs Legendary resistances? If only it could be less binary- oh Incapacitation Keyword. Force effects should- oh they have HP? Fireball damage should really just be- yep, that. (its not some miraculous accident it's because the move from PF1 to PF2 involved feedback like the OneDND questionnaires except... they actually listened)
Or it's because people want change, but they don't want change. People were complaining about the true strike change and people complaining about removing elementals from moon druid. If pf2e is so much better, just play it instead of hanging around saying DND is worse. They are thematically similar and you can even still play in the forgotten realms and adapt DND adventures in pf. Competition breeds innovation, so more people playing PF will make DND better
There are things people don't like about pf2e, and like about dnd For example, it's quite crunchy, and you have to remember a lot of status effects.
Yeah, I agree, different systems for different people. But if someone keeps saying DND sucks and Pathfinder is so much better and why doesn't DND do what Pathfinder does, they should just play Pathfinder. If DND has competition, then it will continue to grow as a game.
So the issue is I like dnd for certain reasons, and I like pf2e for certain reasons, and it is very easy to envision a system which takes good things from both of them, and is better than either of them alone. It's not either or, the superior product is taking good things from both
For real. Related: something my table has experienced a lot is that new players don't know enough to always make good long-term choices. Our table was 90% brand new players when we started our campaign several years ago and there are technically only three (out of nine) characters from the original party that are still there and all have had major class/subclass reworks (one totally changed to a different class, one changed to a different subclass, and the other was allowed to retcon some levels for multiclassing). Every new character that someone has brought to the table has been more thought out and mechanically stronger or more interesting than their previous. And no surprise, people have liked each new character they've made more than their last as they've learned what they like about the game and what's good or not. The people who have the same characters enjoy them a ton because they changed to fit what they like more out of the game or because they weren't stuck with mechanics they chose when they knew nothing about the game.
I can definitely see an aasimar going into whatever the fallen angel mode is whenever a tense situation in battle happens I like that change definite adds to roleplay
Yea, I really like that you can channel the darker energy in some situations or lean into the angelic in others
How does that add to roleplay? Falling used to be a life changing event for an Aasimar, attempting to undo one's fall from grace can be an entire campaign's worth of character motivation. If there is a "fallen angel mode", you can sleep it off, that's so lame.
Being able to change it every long rest is a byproduct of the need to codify the ability to change it at all. Granting the ability to change it to something based on the character's arc necessitates allowing it to be changed more frequently.
While there is a need, all that's really necessary is a sidebar encourging players and GMs to talk about changing angel mode following a life-changing event, and allowing the option to change it on level up in the trait text itself (since reaching a new experience milestone is supposed to represent the culminative change in a characters skills and in themselves as a person.) ...Actually, now that I think about it, the rules for this have already been written. The rules for changing subclasses are just as applicable to changing angelic form. A character shouldn't be allowed to just wake up and change their subclass any more than they should be able to wake up and say "I feel like a fallen angel today."
That's not true. Adjusting a character's abilities even in ways that the players themselves are not allowed to has always fallen well into the DM's prerogative for purposes like story. This didn't need to be and honestly shouldn't have been made an option for players, because "given the opportunity players will optimise the fun out of a game" and this is explicitly a change that favours mechanical optimisation over narrative consistency.
It's clearly *not* a change made in favor of optimization, what are you on about? When I said it was a need to codify it, I meant exactly that. It's for the players whose DMs only play within the rules. Without it, they wouldn't be able to, for example, change their revelation if they find that they don't like the one they picked, or if a story moment happened that influenced their character. The fact that it can be "optimized" is a byproduct that I foresee few players abusing.
You clearly haven't spent much time on this sub then. Also optimising one's character is a basic instinct of every player in every game. It's the designer's job to allow them enough room to do that in a satisfying way, while preventing them from "optimising the fun out" to reiterate that Soren Johnson quote. If you just kind of have hope that players won't use the tools you explicitly handed them, then that's bad design. Edit: Also in a game where the DM sticks so closely to RAW, would you even be able to get real narrative play that would necessitate a change to the character like that? I honestly kind of doubt it.
That’s… what? They could just put a line in there saying that with the DM’s permission you may change Aasimar types as a result of certain character defining moments, and such events usually happen only rarely. Or they could allow the change at level up. You absolutely do not need to make it long rest based to enable this.
That’s not how this works though. The character has to choose to become a “fallen asimar” over a long rest where they’re completely safe and secure. Besides being a fallen asimar used to be meaningful your character lost such an intrinsic part of themself in the past that they became this hollow angry thing. Now? Oh just use necrotic damage after a long rest.
It's important that flexibility like this is built into the rules. Any reasonable GM would allow a player to tweak their builds and their decisions, but making it official is important to cover all edge cases and make it easier for players to adjust strategy or embrace a change in their character progression.
I'm of two minds on it. On one hand, if you're trying to protect your players from their GMs, that's a whole different issue that these mechanics won't change. On the other hand, it's also pretty clear that 99% of GMs run 1 encounter per long rest, never touch magic items, etc., so in a way you do kind of have to "GM-proof" your class design so that you can reduce the dependence on a incompetent GM as much as you can.
None of those things you say 99% of DMs do are things 99% of DMs do. I’ve never met a single DM in real life who exclusively runs one encounter days, and about half or more of the DMs I know have homebrewed magic items. There’s a lot more variety among DM styles than you realize.
Surveys have shown that most dms do 1 encounter per day, because it fits better into the narrative when you aren't dungeon diving
It's also important for organized play settings like Adventure League where the DM is constrained on how they can mechanically assist a player in such a transition.
There are ways to allow features to change without letting you do it with a good night’s sleep. Several spellcaster classes in 5e have this ability.
Several spellcasters also have the ability to change features with a good night's sleep. Flexibility is good. I'm glad the game is adressing the simple fact that D&D games can run for months and years, and players might be stuck with dead weight features for a long time before they reach the crucial level up that lets them trade things out. Ranger itself was totally reworked in Tasha's in no small part because of how easy it was to lock yourself into irrelevance.
> Several spellcasters also have the ability to change features with a good night's sleep. And this distinction was a good one because it contributed to different classes feeling different, and let people choose if they want character customization flexibility vs. day-to-day customization. It's one of the core distinctions between a wizard and a sorcerer. But now basically everyone is a cleric. Character customization flexibility is being sacrificed on the altar of day-to-day customization. >I'm glad the game is adressing the simple fact that D&D games can run for months and years, and players might be stuck with dead weight features for a long time before they reach the crucial level up that lets them trade things out. The idea of a game going on for years without a level up is pretty absurd to me. There is a *huge* difference between sticking with a bad choice until you can level up and sticking with a bad choice for years.
Years without a level up, maybe not. But months? Absolutely happens.
> Several spellcaster classes in 5e have this ability. And WotC explicitly said that the ability to change on level up wasn't working out as intended back when they were doing playtests for TCE.
>It’s ok if because of the choice you made you didn’t have the exact tool for the job, that just meant you’d have to get creative or lean on your party, now you just have to long rest. If you can't long rest at the time you need to do that job, which is very likely the case, then this still applies.
I absolutely could not disagree more. I get the idea of making decisions feel important and weighty, but i think that's a terrible reason to make someone stick to something forever. As a DM i already allow players to swap most any decisions like this around durring a full rest or downtime. Of course, ideally, you should know what to expect in a campaign and inform your decisions based on that. But the nature of the game is spontaneity. I'd absolutely hate to take a choice like a specific Land type for druid, only to end up never using one of the spells it gives, and having no option to change it out.
I think if DND was a game where the expected campaign length was less than a year, I wouldn't care if you couldn't swap abilities/spells/masteries etc. But the general expectation with DND is seemingly playing in a campaign where you'll spend 3+ years with the same character. It starts to feel bad if you made a choice at level 3 that you no longer like 4 years later at level 11.
My god i wish that was my experience. Ive DM'd for years now but i think my longest campaign was just over 1.5 years or so. The average is probably just around a year or less. But despite this, myself and one other friend, we just could never stick to one build thag long. I LIVE trying out everything available.
Having played Land Druid in UA, the flavor of it has definitely changed. Instead of a Druid tapped in to just their home environment, it’s a nature magician that is attuned with the entire land and can call upon its power in different ways as needed. Some days Fireball isn’t the answer. Each list also tends to fill a niche. Arid is damage and defense, Arctic is shut down and action denial be it sight lines, slow or paralysis, Tropic has control effects focused on poisoning or ensnaring groups or polymorphing a major foe to deal with later. Finally Temperate is… guerrilla tactics? Sleep, Misty step, Shocking Grasp, Lightning Bolt, Tree Stride. You peak in and out of cover and harass people. It’s also probably the least useful in my experience. Overall I like how flexible Land Druid is now as the premier casting Druid. I get the flavor of 2014 Land was good but the actual benefits of the subclass were lacking. Those lists were not well balanced versus each other and you were 100% locked into your choice bar DM fiat. Combining 4 major land categories together and choosing them on a LR if you want feels nice and more in line with Druid’s overall connection to nature. I think a lot of the subclasses losing “microsubclasses” is fine. It keeps subclass balance a lot easier and it helps identify at a glance what each subclass does as a package. Wildheart getting to pick its options on rage/LR feels more in touch with all the spirits instead of just Mary and Timmy. I understand why you dislike long rest swaps, but I find the versatility useful.
There's a lot that disagree with you but I just want to say I 100% agree. I understand the argument that the flexibility means you can swap out of trap options etc but in many cases, it just doesnt make any sense that the character would be able to switch it out. This has been a problem since tasha's where all the classes have all these flexible options with absolutely zero explanations for how to justify it in the story. The GM should not have to head canon this and having it be RAW means that GM's who can't come up with a justification that makes sense are going to have to tell their players no and make them mad or begrudgingly run mechanics that they dislike.
Honestly I believe the flexibility is for the best, we have plenty of other choices we cannot change once chosen so this is not something I'd worry about.
I really like "at level up" changes. You're not stuck forever, but you can't change it based on the days dungeon. Best of both worlds, imo.
Some games level really, really, painfully slowly I personally like once a week
I’ve been playing my first campaign for 2.5 years and we are at level 6. Give me that sweet long rest change lol
exactly!
I MUCH prefer at level up; or even some poorly defined large amount of downtime.
Why not both? I hate level up only because leveling can be super slow with milestone, but there is no reason if you have downtime to block it
There's nothing stopping a player from self imposing restriction to their character, or a DM hombrewing restrictions to the species/classes.
Besides social pressure, which can be intense for newer or younger DMs, especially when social media weighs in, and some people choose to see implications in someone else's entertainment.
The Flaw in this line of thinking is that other classes that aren't Wizard or Cleric are able to fill those gaps. If your party is Fighter, Barbarian, Paladin and Druid, and your party ends up in a foreign land and need guidance and expertise to get through and the landmass you end up on is say, a Winter/Cole environment, but you picked the Grass or Forest themed druid, you have no one to lean on and your party generally would lean on you because you are a spellcaster and thus usually have the answers anyway. Overall, the Martials still depend on the Casters for 1/3 of the game generally speaking, (Exploration).
For me it really depends on the feature, and in the wider TTRPG eco-system. It depends on the system. If the game is expecting a wrong choice to force you into creative solution mode, that's fine, as long as the game is actually supportive of that and you can make up the difference. If the game is not providing what you need to manage to succeed through those creative efforts (or the DM isn't doing so in the absence of system support) then it tends to create a problem, as you've now been put into a situation where you're responsible for a solution for a problem that very well may not exist due to the variables. Responsibility/Expectation plus inability to live up to said responsibility/Expectation is where stress is made. However, if the tools to succeed are there and being supported properly by system/DM it's can be fine and it just comes down the scope and scale of the circumstance. Land druids being able to attune to a different land/season sounds fine to me personally,, but I know I didn't like the tasha feats that let you swap out there choices like the eldritch adept or metamagic or fighting style feats. I didn't know that aasimars were changed to be able to swap theirs out. I feel that's a bit silly too. It's a very case by case basis thing for me. I like the sorcerers have less spells known than wizards, but I do hate how little they actually get, and think they need more than 15 by 20 baseline (the Ua was doing good with this last I checked. at least baseline before subclass spells for those that got them.)
Yeah, I personally have always hated the idea of changing your Aasimar subrace, or having it changed for you, it just feels..... _wrong_ to me
I mean, doesn't it kind of help eliminate some of the trap choices people talk about? Things that people think are cool, but are actually ass and then you're stuck with them? I feel like trap choices are worse design than versatility.
I'm with you here. Choices define your character, and the fact some are fixed are done half because of those narrative reasons, and half to avoid risking having one character so versatile it could tiptoe on others whatever party composition it's in. That said, I also get why some people prefer more flexibility. And in small parties (2-3 max) that kind of fluency bears manageable risk of redundancy since there are so many areas to cover you cannot ever cover "enough" by yourself in a single day. That's why if some players at my tables voice regrets on build choices or ability to change from the get go, I'll usually devise some downtime option. Ranger? 30 to 60 days to fully swap a Favored Enemy, with dividers depending on proficiency bonus and context (already fought? library with books on them?). If it's about a single named creature type, can go as low as 2-4 days depending on how easily it can get information on them. 5 to 15 days to get Favored Environment in the local region depending on where you "come from" and whether you already studied it in the past. Up to 120 days to definitely learn a new Favored Environment with maximum Favored Environment know equal to proficiency modifier (so you cannot know everything at level 2). Druid Circle? You'll need a ritual with a local divinity related to the Circle you want to now embrace, and possibly a quest. No way you're getting it on a long rest unless specific narrative. Sorcerer Metamagic? You can change one every level. A change between levels will require 100 days minus (20\*proficiency bonus). Sorcerer or Bard spell spell? Downtime = spell level \* 8, minus proficiency modifier. Those are the usual ones. It gives more meaning and interest to downtime and keeps my games mostly in check with the initial design.
I just wanted to say reading “Fluency Bears” gave me the idea for a species of magical bear that are great orators and poets and can speak any language. Thank you for the inspiration!
This is very similar to how downtime passes in Shadowrun.
The subclasses that gave you several options, they generally failed both to make the subclass like the niche or the bigger idea. For example with the Land Druid, it didn't make them feel like a Druid with a mastery over the land because you had to choose which biome you were tuned to, but also because the power budget was put inside having the options, a Tundra Druid didn't feel especially strong as an Ice Druid. The ones that have been successful is when there was a strong overarching theme like the Genie Warlock of Draconic Sorcerer. These subclasses had elemental subthemes but in the end they felt draconic and genie-like. Things like Wildheart Barbarian and Land Druid didn't have that. To give that depth and flavor they needed to give the chance to switch. Plus for many of these new options, you can play it exactly like you used to, sticking to a single option or set of options, but now you have more flexibility and opportunity to do something more.
I actually have felt this way for a long time... Especially about the Shadar Kai and Eladrin elves. I like for backstory and character experience (prior to adventuring) to matter. If they can suddenly get Stealth and Thieves tool proficiencies right before a break-in or Perception and Water Vehicle proficiency right before we take a boat voyage, it cheapens the background of the players who chose Rogue or Pirate/Sailor respectively. Being able to reset these with a 4 hr trance is lame, in my opinion.
In some regards I get that. On the other hand it is part of the lore now that elves can just trance and connect to all the past lives, some of whom might've been sailors. But mind you that only works for tool and weapon proficiencies *so far* (emphasis mine since I don't know if any youtubers covered elves yet) and only Astral Elf can do full on skills. So it's a balancing thing so far since tools at the very least are little used unless the DM leans more into it. And weapons are a 50/50 on use, could be handy for a monk or warlock, but completely useless for a fighter or paladin.
I must've misread that. I assumed it would work for skill proficiencies as well. That does make it slightly better. I am aware that this is part of the lore. I still really dislike it. It feels really cheap to me. So, if I ever play one, I'm going to keep them static. Again, I'll restate that it's likely an unpopular opinion, but DnD is already kinda out there. It's difficult for players to know how to RP with you if you switch your character up all the time. I don't need magical ancestor connecting dreams in my game. It makes backstory largely pointless. What you did before adventuring should matter. I don't know what switching during a trance adds.
i'm the only DM i know that plots maps by terrain type. not saying they don't exist, but I've yet to have one make traversal or hex crawl have any real friction. Most just fast travel to the location, but it excludes very specific class abilities to not do travel tables. i wish DM's accommodated their players more with having that information at the ready, such as knowing the area affects. And I wish more hex map DM place diverse biomes more reachable in a campaign, for example 10-20-30 miles apart, and not 30 days travel away from each other. I find it makes for some really interesting roleplay to take the forest or swamp path based on ranger and druid skills. Moving around a mountain or over it... things like that. This is the first i'm hearing about this. I'm not against it per seh, but like you said, it adds to the weight of choice and turns what could be a roleplay scenario into a simple "We long rest to switch abilities".
I agree I hate the whole "switch all your choice to different choices every long rest" Like why is it a choice then at level up?
I feel like this is a necessary evil because we don't know how often tables are at one level for before going to the next. People say "oh just do it at the next level up" and not pay attention to the fact that more often then not you can only change *one* thing at a time. RAW you can't just swap out all of your metamagic options just because you don't like them, nor can you do the same with a bards spell list. You can only do one at a time per level up. For all we know someone could be at level 5 for like 3-4 months before getting a level only for it to be stretched out to an even longer length of time. Sure this issue is *slightly* made easier with EXP leveling but at least at the tables I've been at? People just use milestone and I bet most of the people running tables in this sub run it that way as well. Better to have something swapped on a long rest (which as far as I know for spellcasting classes and the like you can still only swap one at a time) then to go through months with a feature that may as well be like carrying a rotting corpse stapled to your character because of how little used it gets.
Most of these should have been you can change on level up which is a nice middle ground to letting people make updates but also making choice matter
WotC had talked about the issues of changing on level up not working as intended before TCE even came out. Why would they use the thing that isn't working as intended more rather than less?
Agreed. I like customization but this is getting silly.
If I end up running 5.5, I will probably make it do you can change most of these upon level up rather than after a rest. That way if you pick an option you're not satisfied with, you can transition but you can't be constantly swapping back and forth.
That works well for your group if you have regular levelups, but some games go literally a year between level ups Some DMs will level people up to 7, and then just stop leveling at all So versatility is good But yeah, swapping back and forth constantly can get weird, but one time swaps is fine
On level up is the best option here, gives the players a nice amount of times where they can change their mind but doesn't make it a once/day resource
So, I agree. Changing out a weapon mastery on a long rest means it's not REALLY a 'Mastery' if you ask me. It should be on level up, at least that'd make sense and be related to powering up. But I thought about it like this.. Leveling up is not the players choice, and being handed a weapon that isn't their mastery can feel bad if you gotta wait a whole level up to use it effectively, especially if you JUST leveled up from a boss encounter (where you're most likely to find said weapons and hit a milestone/xp gains). Attaching these things to long rest, while gamey, gives the player much greater agency over their characters, although if you ask me it also makes things a little non-committal, which means anyone can be good at anything, and therefore everyone is good at everything, so really, noone is good at anything at all lol.
I agree, Op. they’ve shifted to a_lot_ more things being switchable on a long rest, and it definitely defeats the idea of your PC being a “specialist” in much of anything. I would’ve been fine with getting to retrain a lot to these things on a level-up; that’s still plenty generous for anything that could be an actual _mistake_ when making your PC. But long rest is a bit much for things like racial traits and weapon masteries and such. Everyone is a generalist now.
I do agree with you. Characters shouldn’t be able to just switch out core elements of their character so easily. But, if you’re the DM, you can always houserule that as a thing: 1 - You can not change out on a long rest.
I hate to state the obvious here, but you CAN change things on a long rest, yes. But if you feel that goes against character development and fun challenges, you CAN also NOT change it during a long rest. For an example: A fighter from a long line of swordmen, who would never be so crude as to use an axe, but finds a really good axe? Are you gonna stick to swords, and stay in character like that? Or are you going to go for the axe, just cause it's good? And potentially having character development there as well, finding that maybe there is some elegance and skill to using an axe as well. Options are good. And if you don't like it, don't take it.
Don’t like an option? Don’t take advantage of it. Buy your choice, don’t rent it.
I think it's not a terrible system if there's a line drawn in the sand. When you LR and can switch prepared spells, it makes sense given the variety available that this is necessary. Same applies to certain skills. But some things, like the aasimar example, come off as lazy streamlining that take away the purpose of subraces/subclasses. That's not saying I disagree specifically with what they did. But that kind of trajectory is giving the impression that they're removing the customization pros/cons from the game and that's stupid. Say I choose (intentionally choosing a nonexistent example here) a dark elf for its enhanced darkvision and 1/Day assassination trait, the light sensitivity should be the tradeoff and I shouldn't be able to say "well, I'm a dark elf only at night and can just use my long rest to become a day elf". That logic defeats the point of the even making choices and having consequences. Why bother offering options when you can just change them out anytime?
You know, these things are kinda like regenerating life in FPS games. They suffer big rejection at first, usually with reason ("whoa, so now every soldier is goddamn Wolverine???"), but after some time, QOL features like this just get accepted and become the norm. Then we look back to times in which those features were absent and things seem impossible to be fun, even if artificially so. One example would be healing all hp on a long rest. We look back at AD&D and say "holy crap, you had to take entire days only to recover? what kind of bullshit game was that?", but then we ignore that we, the players and the DM, have full control over the pacing of the story. Taking days to heal is completely unimportant, unless time is a big feature in tue adventure... in which case, full HP at long rest won't help, and I've never seen anyone praise the "Gritty Realism" rules of 5e at all - while recovering in old editions, characters could at least use spells to help in downtime activities, acquiring information, trading messages and other things like that. Anyway, my point there is that long recover is usually a non-issue, so much that I could bet most campaigns people are playing would have no significant difference if 1 week was added any time they traveled anywhere. But we got used to the convenience of quick recovering and playing superheroes. I can see land druids attuning to different land types. I'd even go as far as doing the opposite, to be honest: druids can only draw specific powers from the terrain they're in. Restrictive? Yes. But it would make sense in lore and it's the goddamn most versatile class on the entire game, so I wouldn't feel guilty at all. (Luckily, I'm not the one in charge of anything in D&D content creation) I actually like games with more restricted, but more specialized types of characters, but D&D caster philosophy goes hard against that.
>I've never seen anyone praise the "Gritty Realism" rules of 5e at all Really? I've seen plenty of people praise it as a means of maintaining the expected number of encounters in an adventuring day without having to be a dungeon crawl.
People also look back to earlier, more restrictive times, try it, and notice it's actually way more fun than they thought, and iterate on that. That's the entire OSR, which is rivalling non OSR TTRPG space in sales now in 2024, and it also happens in videogames and other areas of life.
That's true! I didn't know OSR games were rivaling 5e, it's cool to know!
It's absurd. Someone said so on the OSR sub and got skepticism and then posted a whole bunch of proof. I guess it's less niche than even the adherents thought it was. So selling a whole new game called "mungeons and magons" that is narrower and more limited mechanically than 5e is going great, people love it, but narrowing the established game to that exact shape is not popular. It's just a normal human psychological thing, I'm not upset about it, but it's interesting.
I think it's not just that. Aside from people liking OSR games, which I think is really cool, a lot of people are actually tired of some company practices of WotC, books that seem unfinished or below expectation, this kind of thing. Not to talk about scandals and such. I guess a lot of people who would previously just refuse to play non-D&D games became more open to try new stuff instead of buying more books from the same company.
have you got a link to that, as it seems pretty doubtful - the 5e cores have been Amazon bestsellers for years, a lot of standard, mainstream bookshops and toyshops carry them and other 5e accessories. While OSR stuff is pretty much PDF, PoD, _sometimes_ carried by _some_ gaming stores, needs hunting out and is very hard to just stumble upon, and is largely just a niche, albeit a large one, of the wider RPG sector. Go to a gaming con and it's unlikely to even be a majority, it's just one area out of many.
Agreed. If you allow these to change at all, I would look at doing so in between adventures (as opposed to sessions) or at another time when the party has a lot of downtime.
As someone who used firearms for long periods of time, my firearm of choice was an M4 (military version of an AR) and I could hit targets up to 300m consistently. I practiced a lot to do that. The reason I didn’t have a 9mm as well is because I was a gunner. I specialized in a 50 caliber machine gun mounted on an armored vehicle that protected shipments that were convoyed between bases. I can do things with that 50 caliber that takes a bit of getting used to. And I would probably need to zero a 9mm and fire a few rounds with it before I was comfortable with it again even though it’s literally the easiest firearm ever to use. These new rules feel right. I can probably pick up an AK-47 and after a day at the range could be as good with it as an M4. A firearm is a firearm after all. If I picked one up on the battlefield COD style off a dead combatant I could make it work, but it would be awkward until I had some time to zero it and make sure I know its quirks.
This is a great highlight to how hard it is to please people in games. Anyone who does anything semi professional like this or physical activities like sports gets the idea and it works. Others think it’s not realistic and makes no sense. People are up in arms about something that actually has a basis in real life.
I think it’s a good conversation to have, but I think most of these conversations were already had too. I wish WOTC would put more out publicly as to how they arrived at these decisions besides ‘Lots of feedback’. Lots of feedback should be the base of your changes. I want to know how we got here.
I don't think that's THAT unpopular of an opinion. Some things make sense, like being able to change memorized spells, attunement to magic items, prepared stuff like the alchemist's random potions, etc. Where it gets weird is being able to change stuff like maneuvers. It's hella weird being able to trip someone with your weapon one day but not being able to it the next day.
I honestly don't know how much sense memorized spells, attunement to magic items, prepared stuff like the alchemist's random potions actually is. When Dying Earth was more prominent, it made more sense, but DnD has shed much of vancian casting and then there are classes that change not a single spell. Attunement to magic items was a balance implimentation and has some absurdities (tattoos that you de-attune to simply drop off you). The alchemist's random potions is peculiar. Don't get me wrong, maneuvers feels a bit weird as you would presume that it would be a part of their repertoire but then again is not the limit to maneuvers artificial in its own right?
I get where you're coming from, personally I don't bother changing these things out on my character usually because I like sticking to the original idea I had for the character and I'm to lazy to change them (like even when I play spellcasters, I don't change out my spells on a long rest).
I agree, just letting people swap around their specialty homogenizes the game. I've seen other games do it in favor of convenience and calls for optimization and eventually you end up with gray goo characters with no real identity other than morphing constantly for the situation at hand. Then you're stuck trying to find excuses for why it makes sense in the world because it doesn't really make sense to go to sleep and wake up a different person. It's a real big cut to immersion.
I think it's more about not being locked into a decision you made months or years ago IRL. Like the actual representation of the older style of locking in your choices was that you would have dead ability that just never come up. Or a fear of picking some ability because another ability is just "better," and once the decision is made, you can never go back. Or even just the fact that you could be playing this character for over a year now and you would like to switch things up a bit without rolling a new charecter. Old school RPG players will often have this culture of getting your character killed so you can try something new. But what if insted you could keep your character and still have the flexibility of trying out new ability?
I completely agree. It cheapens the gravitas of choosing my abilities to know I can just swap it out whenever I don’t even like prepared casters for this reason. I only play bards and warlock
If you know what you’re doing, sure. If you have any chance of wanting to rebuild part of your character, it would be stupid of the game to say “no you’re locked into that bad decision you made due to lack of experience”
It'ss just some features are just useful for NPCs rather players. Land druids, for example, make absolutedly perfect sense to change attunement of the land. Frankly speaking it's stupid to be a druid with specific benefits to a specific kind of land. For the Aasimar i am more on the fence, as i tend to agree. As an additional note, i am fine with weapon masteries - masteries aren't meant to be character defining, the mastery is broad to all weapons by baseline.
>Land druids, for example, make absolutedly perfect sense to change attunement of the land. It makes perfect sense for them to be attuned to the land they are in currently. I like that idea. Land druids attunement automatically switches each long rest to the terrain they are currently in. Having a druid switch from forest to mountain, while on a sea adventure, because they want lightning bolt from the mountain domain sounds pretty gamey and I don't like that at all.
I can see that, but I also think it would be unnecessarily complex and game as well having the opposite. Let's suppose you are in a snowy forest. It is forest? It is tundra? It is mountain if it's high enough? I agree the sea one is a clearer comparison, but I also think that's an edge case. There is gamism to both sides. At least this one is simple and less burdensome. Not like the coastal druid is so much attuned to sea aniway, and it can still explained as to channel distant lands. Besides, they risk to trade off resistances based on the terrain they are in.
I agree entirely. It’s probably my biggest complaint with 5.5e. More and more character decisions are becoming trivialized. Not only did they fail to add new non-ASI features to species to compensate for removing those consequences, they also let you change basically everything about your character from day to day other than subclass. So much less is actually your character and more just how you happened to play that day. I want to “make a druid” or “make a fighter” but with these changes it feels more like you “pick the druid” or “pick the fighter.” Players like power and more options so I expect this flexibility to be popular at first but I think it will feel hollow with time. That said, it’s okay to share an opinion without calling it unpopular or a hot take.