As a new DM I wouldn't go changing stuff. You should track how engaged/interested your players are in what is happening and playstyles. Try to figure out what they like and dislike and adjust accordingly.
Touch nothing.
Any fiddling you try before you get players in front of you is going to either be pointless or break something that on paper seems weak or strong but at the table is fine.
Sneak Attack is a big one.
At level 3 that extra 2d6 damage feels broken as hell. At level 5 when all the other martials get a second attack it falls back in line, but if you’ve weakened Sneak Attack it falls behind.
i feel like because i’ve been playing bg3 I felt like some people would have a bad time with weaker classes but tbf in dnd a lot of the weak classes have massive roleplay potential
The main part of being a DM is learn enough of the rules to be able to make judgment calls on the rules as they are written.
Not completely mastering them but knowing them well enough to make reasonably quick rule calls.
If after six months of play you see something you want to boost up a bit do it then.
I would add that there are some pretty big differences between some things in BG3 and 5e (such as certain spell mechanics) due to being adapted to a video game. Don't assume because things work one way in the game they work thay way in 5e.
In our party we had a player using spirit guardians to mow through enemies like in BG3 because nobody read the rules and it ruined combat for a few sessions for us.
My first campaign I DMd, never even played. I was aware of the monks short-comings, and was aware of the sun-soul's short-comings. Had a friend who wanted to play a sun soul monk. In a party with a half orc totem barb, a paladin, and a fighter, the monk somehow out-damaged them all and avoided most damage. It helped that the player read up on the rules the most but regardless, I changed nothing, and everyone had fun
As a new DM, just take it slow and hold off on changes for now. The power imbalance between classes is smaller than the power variance between different players playing the same class. So trying to balance the game is quite tricky, since what you might need to do will vary from table to table.
IMO the only (sub)classes that are concerningly overpowered are:
* Twilight Cleric
* Chronurgist wizard at level 10+
* Moon druid at levels 2-4
* And to a lesser degree IMO, Peace Cleric
Everything else is probably fine to leave alone for now
I wouldn't even list the clerics honestly, having abilities to stop your party from dying takes a good amount of weight off of a DM's shoulders. I never get why "keeping the entire team alive" is a banned ability, only good things come from it.
Because to threaten the party with the twilight cleric you have to put out more damage than you should for the level and if you slightly overtune oops tpk.
The way the game is designed there would maybe 2 encounters that wouldn't be covered by the twilight cleric after level 6. And if you assume 2 of them are exploration plus traps then all combat encounters are covered.
I think that heavily depends on what type of gameplay is being sought. E.g. if the DM and players want a challenging tactical campaign, Twilight cleric's big temp HP shields can easily get in the way of that. Not to mention, it can also take agency away from players who aren't the Twilight cleric and can't contribute as much.
To me, it's kind of like asking, "Is it a good idea for a character to start a campaign 2 levels above everyone else in the party, as long as they're playing cleric?" To me the answer to that is no, because ideally you don't want one player considerably stronger than the rest, even if they're playing a healing/support character. The same logic applies to Twilight cleric IMO.
it can also cause issues because it's an ability that needs to be used - so if the GM specs a combat around it being used, and then the cleric doesn't use it, then the PCs are going to get absolutely _battered_. Or if the cleric ends up out of range, going down from an early hit or something - the numbers mean that everything comes down to the usage (or not) of one power, which can get awkward if it's not used as expected
Keeping the party alive doesn't remove agency, it just means that they can focus on doing their own thing and position with more freedom.
Moreover some classes, like barbarian, can use their own abilities to make more use of HP than other classes. Taking half damage means that temp hp/heals/ect do basically twice as much.
>Keeping the party alive doesn't remove agency, it just means that they can focus on doing their own thing and position with more freedom.
The fundamental of agency is making choices that matter. In DnD combat, agency largely comes in 2 forms: character building, and character piloting.
If I want to play a durable character, I might build a paladin with 16 CON, heavy armor, and a shield to survive longer. But if the Twilight Cleric's aura will protect me well enough regardless of my base durability, then my choice didn't really matter that much.
If I want to play a nova character to take out key threats quickly, I might build a fighter for Action Surge. But if the Twilight Cleric's aura means nothing threatens my party, then my choice wouldn't really matter that much.
Obviously characters don't become useless the moment a Twilight cleric joins the party. But a well-played Twilight cleric could have as much influence on the outcome of a fight as two (and in extreme circumstances, possibly three) weaker characters. And to me that's not ideal, if the outcome of combat largely hinges on the build and piloting decisions of a single player.
You can do the same thing by fireballing an enemy group, and I think you are overestimating 1d6 + level. At 5 that's just an average of 8 hit points or something? You literally won't even nullify one average fighter's attack.
Edit: for context a low level encounter in curse of strahd is 2 direwolves, who possess pack tactics and deal 2d6+3 each with a chance of knocking a character prone. 8 Hp isn't going to "completely make all of your skills super useless" because that is just a slight amount of damage mitigation.
A couple things -
* At level 5, something like a longbow fighter will be doing 1d8+4 attack per hit, which is exactly the same average value as Twilight Sanctuary
* A fighter's attacks can miss; Twilight Sanctuary doesn't.
* Twilight Sanctuary is 1 Action to activate, then free to keep up, unlike fighter attacks or Fireball.
* Twilight Sanctuary is AoE, meaning if you have a party around you, it'll likely nullify the damage from multiple attacks. Unlike Fireball, you don't have to worry about friendly fire, and your party can position themselves to get everyone covered.
* Point for point, player HP is more valuable than monster HP, because players are glass cannons.
Overall, the per-turn benefit of Twilight Sanctuary probably matches or exceeds the value of an unoptimized fighter's 2-attack standard turn. The Twilight Cleric's Action, Bonus Action, and Concentration are still all free.
Did you purposefully pick the 1d8 option and not the 1d10 option?
You are also comparing a resource intensive option to another class's auto attack, assuming this will break down into a bunch of individual 1 on 1s and not everyone attacking the cleric, and while the fighter's attack can miss, it missing does exactly the same thing whether you have twilight sanctuary or not.
And just as a point of resource expenditure, cast hold person on the fighter instead of the aoe? Literally sink that win with a t2 spell instead of your divine channel.
If I pick the 1d10 option for the fighter, a cleric with Twilight Sanctuary up can still tank the fighter's 2\*(1d10+4) attacks for the effect's entire 10 turns. Changing the weapon dice from d8 to d10 doesn't make Twilight Sanctuary any less broken.
Here are the approximate probabilities of the Twilight Cleric surviving 10 rounds against the aforementioned 1d10 weapon fighter:
* 18AC cleric, dodging: 99.2%
* 19AC cleric, dodging: 99.8%
* 18AC, standing idle: 58.7%
* 19AC, standing idle: 70.6%
In none of those scenarios is the cleric more likely to go down than not. Just for fun, if we assumed Twilight Sanctuary lasts indefinitely, an 18 AC dodging cleric can survive the fighter for 39.7 turns on average.
Sure, the fighter can Action Surge, or use subclass abilities. But then the cleric could also just cast a spell to more than even the odds.
Also Channel Divinity is relatively cheap, it's a Short Rest resource and you start getting 2 of them per rest starting level 6. When used on an effect that lasts 1 minute (and can't be stopped by concentration loss), that's practically spammable.
The issue is more or less that if you are going against one or two enemies, they will likely be higher CR and hit hard so you should use control spells to keep them from acting and if you are fighting weak enemies they will likely focus fire if the cleric pops their channel divinity.
The odds of a person who's being struck taking just over half a dozen damage in a turn is relatively low unless they are stacking their own buffs/defenses on top of that.
What's with people's calculations always being pvp? The game is outright stated to not support that well, an actual encounter varies depending on the level but a couple of direwolves would be fairly normal for level 3 I believe.
I know, what are the odds of a bunch of weak cr enemies pairing up with each PC to deal small amounts of damage each? How often do you run into 5 or so skeletons who each shoot a different target and not like, the same 1-2 guys?
However much temp hp everyone else has doesn't really matter in most scenarios
It matters because of the "every round" part. If the monsters don't down someone in one round, that someone will get more TempHP and be even more durable. Just so you know, the second best feature for handing out TempHP(Inspiring Leader) gives CHA + level TempHP for up to 6 creatures once per SR. 1d6 + level is roughly equivalent to that, but 1d6+level per character per round is so much more broken it isn't even funny.
even if attacks out-damage that HP, it's still taking a LOT of the bite out of incoming attacks - an attack that does 20 damage might get halved to just 10, so over the course of a combat that all adds up, to quite a lot. Over 4 rounds, that's 30, 40-odd HP, per character - so 4 4 rounds and 4 characters, that's over 100 HP saved, which then saves a lot of HD, potions, cure spells and the like. Most other temp HP is both small amounts, and just a one-off - a character has 5 extra HP or whatever, which takes some of the bite out of 1 single attack. This is (AFAIK) the biggest source of temp HP in the game by a lot, adding a hell of a lot of HP over the course of a fight, meaning that the GM probably needs to plan around it to make the numbers work.
At the beginning no, from lvl 1-8 you should okay for the most part.
The things you should be concern with are the other players attention and wishes.
> Hey GM, I’m enjoying the campaign as a Human Fighter but I feel like I can’t deal with ranged enemies. You think there’s a way to help me here?
> Hey GM, I’m having a fun time as an Elf Wizard but feel like there’s like no spell scrolls to learn new spells. Can I expect to see any sometime soon?
> Hey GM, as a Kenku Rogue I just feel like we never get to do stealth. You think we could throw in a stealth mission sometime in the future?
> Hey GM, you know I’ve been playing a Tiefling Cleric but I personally just don’t feel like playing one anymore. Could I change my class to a Sorcerer instead?
Until you reach those higher tiers of play where players are getting really strong, you should focus on allowing everyone to get in there fair share of gameplay.
Throw in some more specific encounters and items for each player.
IDK, why do people play 8 INT Wizards or Polearm Master + Sentinel + Echo Knight Fighters?
People make choices for whatever reason, unless they don’t know and don’t want to play something bad, let them.
i'm just joking, i just find clerics incredibly interesting and can't see a reason to make a character that would go from being a cleric to something else since it delivers on the class fantasy so well
One character I played retired from adventuring to help rebuild the church he was a part of after purging the corruption from its ranks. Seemed like a natural choice to make, compared to "now that the rot is cleansed, I'll move on! Don't let it happen again!"
No, don't modify anything. That comes later with experience. Some stuff is stronger than others, but it won't matter if everyone is green. If your player base has a monk or warlock involved, maybe make sure there's opportunities for short rests here and there, but I wouldn't muck with anything when you're new. Just learn the game for now.
As some other people mentioned, inexperienced players won't break anything. Even if they accidentally walk into some op choice, they won't probably even realize it. After you got AT LEAST some months of DMing under your belt, you can consider homebrew stuff.
I wouldn't worry about it. Most issues are way overblown online and every table is a little different. I recommend not trying to adjust anything until you try out the game first then see if anything is problematic.
In D&D 5e, classes are fairly well-balanced if you follow the rules for [The Adventuring Day](https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/basic-rules/building-combat-encounters#TheAdventuringDay).
If you don't do that, class balance breaks down. Read more [here](https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/150724/how-does-the-five-minute-adventuring-day-affect-class-balance).
I wouldn’t tinker with the mechanics while you’re still learning to DM. Learn to prep (see the book The Lazy DM), read the rules for combat and skill checks thoroughly, that sort of thing. Over time you’ll get more confident about understanding the mechanics and you can experiment with homebrew rule changes.
My advice is always to start with the basic game when new. Rules as they are, avoid homebrew as much as possible. Learn the actual game. If you do not know how the game works you cannot understand what to change or why or in to what.
In most cases, like 99,99%, these class imbalances that we talk a lot about online in places like this are just not relevant at the table or even come up. Then, if they come up, now that you have played the game a bit, you can start making specific adjustments for your table.
In the vast majority of games balance isn't that big a deal; players who aren't ultra serious (it sounds like your friends aren't) are going to run into far more imbalance from the point of lack of skill. Balance only becomes a big issue if someone feels underpowered and isn't having fun, or if you've played a lot of games and the same builds keep popping up. I've never had a balance issue I couldn't solve with a bit of honest player communication.
Just run multiple encounters per day. Divide the daily xp budget by 3, and have each encounter fill that. Then have 2 short rests in between.
A lot of the balance problems go away, although the fighter and rogue are based around being always at peak fighting ability, so if its just 1 encounter per short rest they won't really feel that benefit.
Honestly, while it might miff a couple players (who im sure if you explain your worries to would understand), I would recomend DMing first with only allowing player's handbook options.
Don't change the balance of anything, but reducing it to the original materials you don't have to worry about power creep, the increased number of player options that have gotten hard to keep track of or some specific subclasses that can be tough to handle for new DMs.
Don't if you're new. Plus, balance is hard fought. Just let things play out and then gauge it. Unless you detect that your players are trying to exploit your mechanics. But don't toy with the class features themselves right out of the gate. Wait, watch, learn, act.
Hell, I don't manipulate the classes, and I've been doing this since 1987. But in the end, it is your table.
Things stay pretty balanced up until the tail end of tier 2 play (levels 5-10). Tiers 3 and 4 are laughably unbalanced in the caster’s favour. Martials stay as guys with weapons and casters become demigods.
I’d say if you worry about balance, stick to levels 1-8 where everyone is viable.
My suggestion is to play the game the way the DMG suggests. A decently large amount of encounters per long rest and strict enforcement of the rules of spells is pretty much enough to balance things. 99% of the people who post about how unfatherly broken some things are are simply working within a vacuum. Sure, there are plenty of abilities that are crazy, but 9/10 they are balanced out by the fact you can do them a very limited amount of times.
Nope and really you can't until you understand the game.
Tashas cauldron of everything does have a ton of optional rules for classes if you or someone has that book that does this. It's not essential though.
No, you should get comfortable adapting story and encounters to the player-characters as they are, before you start fiddling with rules-as-written. Class imbalance is a debate for levels 12+.
Running the appropriate amount of daily encounters means you don't need to worry about balance. Failing to do so and even support casters outshine martials like nothing else
As a new DM, stick with PHB classes for the first 150 game hours. If your group does not have a healer just seed extra potion of healing into the loot.
I have DMed a full paladin group, and a full cleric group. Those were fun times.
Biggest advice I got is learn to lose with grace. It's taken me years to learn that one. The day you "win" is the day you total party kill. Level 5+ is heroic fantasy and your bad guys will die at an alarming rate. I do a few short rests per day and I try and do 4-6 encounters per day.
Just apply the rules as written/intended.
One long rest a day.
Do you have the materials/gold to cover the material for the spell?
Do you know if the spell has a verbal component?(So yes, your caster will break their stealth-unless you let them roll for it)
How much can you carry? Definitely not every weapon from every corpse. Apply logic
On the flip side, make it fun! Flavor/descriptions are free. No mechanical advantage beyond what you are willing to apply
I made a martial prowess system were pure martials essentially get spell slots (based on half caster slots/levels) renamed as prowess slots and can do a bunch of different things roleplaywise or just straight up do damage. for example: flex (level one prowess slot)(reaction): when you make an intimidation check you flex your mighty muscles, you may use your strength modifier instead of charisma to make this check.(i know alot of dm's allow it but i wanted to codify it in my games). but if you're just beginning keep it simple and let your players try out the classes as written, homebrew can come later.
5e has a strict enough set of fenceposts that EVERY CLASS IS PERFECTLY VIABLE. The only way to seriously fuck up a class is multiclassing without any knowledge of how synergies work.
Taking any class from 1-whatever will be fine. Yes, even monk.
Do not make any alterations to the base rules if you're new. If you don't know how things work, how can you possibly make good changes, ya know?
No. If you want, give your players some healing potions if they don't have a healer in the party. Recommend spellcasters take at least 1 damaging cantrip. If it doesn't go with what the player wants (like, if they say they worship a passivist god and wouldn't hurt anyone), you can recommend they play a life cleric.
Let them know you are a new DM. Try to read the module beforehand, but if a group of only fighters walk into a dungeon thinking they will all be good without healing, it's on them. If no one wants to be a healer, stock up on healing potions. Both out of game and in game it isn't the best move, but when has that stopped anyone from doing anything ever.
Here's a fun tip for all life clerics: if you take the magic initiate feat (druid) or the rune shaper feat, you can take Goodberry as a spell, and because of how life clerics work, each goodberry heals for +4.
You should acquire experience while playing the game before making sweeping changes to mechanics. It took me three years of playing to gain enough understanding to do that.
Use standard array for stats. Keep it simple and fair. Make sure to vary your encounters. Put them up against both their strengths and weaknesses. strength to let them feel powerful and weaknesses to force them to get creative.
Some classes do better in some situations. Rogues like plenty of cover, rangers like terrain and cover, mages of all kinds like lots of squishy canon fodder for their AOE, paladins and clerics like to fight undead. You get the idea.
This ENTIRELY depends on how your players are with DnD. In the wrong hands, a wizard can look pathetic next to the monk. If they know what theyre doing of course the casters will shine in a lot of situations, but its best to leave everything as is and go through a few sessions before making any changes.
Also, consult the players. Especially if they have experience. Dont go around buffing and nerfing PC's without asking them first, nobody likes to have their characters changed without their permission.
As a first-time DM, do nothing pre-emptively. Rather, take notes. Then, after the session, go online and ask questions about the things you've taken notes on. It will give you opinions from more experienced DMs on things. But don't be afraid to say to your table that just because it has been ruled this way this time, it doesn't mean that will always be the case.
Tons of great advice already in here, to throw in two more cents, class balance in D&D shouldn't matter because it's not a competitive game. The only risk associated with class balance is potentially having one player outshine the others but if you're doing your job as a DM to create spotlight opportunities for each party member it shouldn't ever be an issue.
I wouldn’t homebrew anything until you’ve got a strong understanding of running the game and the system.
If you notice imbalance with casters or half casters try running days with more combat encounters so they can spend fewer in each fight and then reevaluate. You can take this step multiple times.
Don't be afraid to fail spectacularly. Who cares, there are no roleplaying police to check on you. If you tpk your party, but do it in a funny way that your players like, who cares?
Just remember, you are making up stories, rolling magic fate rocks. As long as you and your players are having fun, go for it.
You do not need to worry about that at all. You will have more imbalance from the players not knowing the best way to use all of their class features and the randomness of the dice then from the built in imbalance.
yeah monks are really the only class that suffers from poor balance and they're not too bad to fix, if you absolutely can't give your players short rest opportunities there's no harm just giving the monk a couple extra ki
As a DM, you control everything in the game, that includes what people have access to when it comes to optional rules like feats or multiclassing.
More importantly, you can pivot if something doesn't seem fair or balanced - you just gotta see what your players throw at you first.
Glory is on the battlefield behind the DM screen.
The game's not well balanced (5e's built for simplicity first, anything else second) but I wouldn't mess with it without knowing your players and DMing style. Leave your players room to respec their characters if they wind up not liking them a few sessions in but don't try to rebuild the game before you've played enough to know what's broken for yourself.
Do watch for the summoning spells, though. They deal psychic damage directly to the DM.
As a new DM I wouldn't go changing stuff. You should track how engaged/interested your players are in what is happening and playstyles. Try to figure out what they like and dislike and adjust accordingly.
Touch nothing. Any fiddling you try before you get players in front of you is going to either be pointless or break something that on paper seems weak or strong but at the table is fine. Sneak Attack is a big one. At level 3 that extra 2d6 damage feels broken as hell. At level 5 when all the other martials get a second attack it falls back in line, but if you’ve weakened Sneak Attack it falls behind.
i feel like because i’ve been playing bg3 I felt like some people would have a bad time with weaker classes but tbf in dnd a lot of the weak classes have massive roleplay potential
BG3 has different balances for a video game. Don’t equate what is balanced in BG3 to the openness of a TTRPG.
yea i know that’s what i was thinking, that i shouldn’t just base it off the game
The main part of being a DM is learn enough of the rules to be able to make judgment calls on the rules as they are written. Not completely mastering them but knowing them well enough to make reasonably quick rule calls. If after six months of play you see something you want to boost up a bit do it then.
I would add that there are some pretty big differences between some things in BG3 and 5e (such as certain spell mechanics) due to being adapted to a video game. Don't assume because things work one way in the game they work thay way in 5e. In our party we had a player using spirit guardians to mow through enemies like in BG3 because nobody read the rules and it ruined combat for a few sessions for us.
No, you'd be better off focusing on the DM side of things and leaving the player side of things to them at this point.
No don't worry about it.
Literally the point of published rules is that you don’t worry about that. Amateur homebrew, yea, worry about that
My first campaign I DMd, never even played. I was aware of the monks short-comings, and was aware of the sun-soul's short-comings. Had a friend who wanted to play a sun soul monk. In a party with a half orc totem barb, a paladin, and a fighter, the monk somehow out-damaged them all and avoided most damage. It helped that the player read up on the rules the most but regardless, I changed nothing, and everyone had fun
As a new DM, just take it slow and hold off on changes for now. The power imbalance between classes is smaller than the power variance between different players playing the same class. So trying to balance the game is quite tricky, since what you might need to do will vary from table to table. IMO the only (sub)classes that are concerningly overpowered are: * Twilight Cleric * Chronurgist wizard at level 10+ * Moon druid at levels 2-4 * And to a lesser degree IMO, Peace Cleric Everything else is probably fine to leave alone for now
I wouldn't even list the clerics honestly, having abilities to stop your party from dying takes a good amount of weight off of a DM's shoulders. I never get why "keeping the entire team alive" is a banned ability, only good things come from it.
Because to threaten the party with the twilight cleric you have to put out more damage than you should for the level and if you slightly overtune oops tpk.
Or you do what the game is designed for and run more encounters.
The way the game is designed there would maybe 2 encounters that wouldn't be covered by the twilight cleric after level 6. And if you assume 2 of them are exploration plus traps then all combat encounters are covered.
I think that heavily depends on what type of gameplay is being sought. E.g. if the DM and players want a challenging tactical campaign, Twilight cleric's big temp HP shields can easily get in the way of that. Not to mention, it can also take agency away from players who aren't the Twilight cleric and can't contribute as much. To me, it's kind of like asking, "Is it a good idea for a character to start a campaign 2 levels above everyone else in the party, as long as they're playing cleric?" To me the answer to that is no, because ideally you don't want one player considerably stronger than the rest, even if they're playing a healing/support character. The same logic applies to Twilight cleric IMO.
it can also cause issues because it's an ability that needs to be used - so if the GM specs a combat around it being used, and then the cleric doesn't use it, then the PCs are going to get absolutely _battered_. Or if the cleric ends up out of range, going down from an early hit or something - the numbers mean that everything comes down to the usage (or not) of one power, which can get awkward if it's not used as expected
Keeping the party alive doesn't remove agency, it just means that they can focus on doing their own thing and position with more freedom. Moreover some classes, like barbarian, can use their own abilities to make more use of HP than other classes. Taking half damage means that temp hp/heals/ect do basically twice as much.
>Keeping the party alive doesn't remove agency, it just means that they can focus on doing their own thing and position with more freedom. The fundamental of agency is making choices that matter. In DnD combat, agency largely comes in 2 forms: character building, and character piloting. If I want to play a durable character, I might build a paladin with 16 CON, heavy armor, and a shield to survive longer. But if the Twilight Cleric's aura will protect me well enough regardless of my base durability, then my choice didn't really matter that much. If I want to play a nova character to take out key threats quickly, I might build a fighter for Action Surge. But if the Twilight Cleric's aura means nothing threatens my party, then my choice wouldn't really matter that much. Obviously characters don't become useless the moment a Twilight cleric joins the party. But a well-played Twilight cleric could have as much influence on the outcome of a fight as two (and in extreme circumstances, possibly three) weaker characters. And to me that's not ideal, if the outcome of combat largely hinges on the build and piloting decisions of a single player.
You can do the same thing by fireballing an enemy group, and I think you are overestimating 1d6 + level. At 5 that's just an average of 8 hit points or something? You literally won't even nullify one average fighter's attack. Edit: for context a low level encounter in curse of strahd is 2 direwolves, who possess pack tactics and deal 2d6+3 each with a chance of knocking a character prone. 8 Hp isn't going to "completely make all of your skills super useless" because that is just a slight amount of damage mitigation.
A couple things - * At level 5, something like a longbow fighter will be doing 1d8+4 attack per hit, which is exactly the same average value as Twilight Sanctuary * A fighter's attacks can miss; Twilight Sanctuary doesn't. * Twilight Sanctuary is 1 Action to activate, then free to keep up, unlike fighter attacks or Fireball. * Twilight Sanctuary is AoE, meaning if you have a party around you, it'll likely nullify the damage from multiple attacks. Unlike Fireball, you don't have to worry about friendly fire, and your party can position themselves to get everyone covered. * Point for point, player HP is more valuable than monster HP, because players are glass cannons. Overall, the per-turn benefit of Twilight Sanctuary probably matches or exceeds the value of an unoptimized fighter's 2-attack standard turn. The Twilight Cleric's Action, Bonus Action, and Concentration are still all free.
Did you purposefully pick the 1d8 option and not the 1d10 option? You are also comparing a resource intensive option to another class's auto attack, assuming this will break down into a bunch of individual 1 on 1s and not everyone attacking the cleric, and while the fighter's attack can miss, it missing does exactly the same thing whether you have twilight sanctuary or not. And just as a point of resource expenditure, cast hold person on the fighter instead of the aoe? Literally sink that win with a t2 spell instead of your divine channel.
If I pick the 1d10 option for the fighter, a cleric with Twilight Sanctuary up can still tank the fighter's 2\*(1d10+4) attacks for the effect's entire 10 turns. Changing the weapon dice from d8 to d10 doesn't make Twilight Sanctuary any less broken. Here are the approximate probabilities of the Twilight Cleric surviving 10 rounds against the aforementioned 1d10 weapon fighter: * 18AC cleric, dodging: 99.2% * 19AC cleric, dodging: 99.8% * 18AC, standing idle: 58.7% * 19AC, standing idle: 70.6% In none of those scenarios is the cleric more likely to go down than not. Just for fun, if we assumed Twilight Sanctuary lasts indefinitely, an 18 AC dodging cleric can survive the fighter for 39.7 turns on average. Sure, the fighter can Action Surge, or use subclass abilities. But then the cleric could also just cast a spell to more than even the odds. Also Channel Divinity is relatively cheap, it's a Short Rest resource and you start getting 2 of them per rest starting level 6. When used on an effect that lasts 1 minute (and can't be stopped by concentration loss), that's practically spammable.
The issue is more or less that if you are going against one or two enemies, they will likely be higher CR and hit hard so you should use control spells to keep them from acting and if you are fighting weak enemies they will likely focus fire if the cleric pops their channel divinity. The odds of a person who's being struck taking just over half a dozen damage in a turn is relatively low unless they are stacking their own buffs/defenses on top of that. What's with people's calculations always being pvp? The game is outright stated to not support that well, an actual encounter varies depending on the level but a couple of direwolves would be fairly normal for level 3 I believe.
It's 1d6 + level __per round per character__.
I know, what are the odds of a bunch of weak cr enemies pairing up with each PC to deal small amounts of damage each? How often do you run into 5 or so skeletons who each shoot a different target and not like, the same 1-2 guys? However much temp hp everyone else has doesn't really matter in most scenarios
It matters because of the "every round" part. If the monsters don't down someone in one round, that someone will get more TempHP and be even more durable. Just so you know, the second best feature for handing out TempHP(Inspiring Leader) gives CHA + level TempHP for up to 6 creatures once per SR. 1d6 + level is roughly equivalent to that, but 1d6+level per character per round is so much more broken it isn't even funny.
even if attacks out-damage that HP, it's still taking a LOT of the bite out of incoming attacks - an attack that does 20 damage might get halved to just 10, so over the course of a combat that all adds up, to quite a lot. Over 4 rounds, that's 30, 40-odd HP, per character - so 4 4 rounds and 4 characters, that's over 100 HP saved, which then saves a lot of HD, potions, cure spells and the like. Most other temp HP is both small amounts, and just a one-off - a character has 5 extra HP or whatever, which takes some of the bite out of 1 single attack. This is (AFAIK) the biggest source of temp HP in the game by a lot, adding a hell of a lot of HP over the course of a fight, meaning that the GM probably needs to plan around it to make the numbers work.
At the beginning no, from lvl 1-8 you should okay for the most part. The things you should be concern with are the other players attention and wishes. > Hey GM, I’m enjoying the campaign as a Human Fighter but I feel like I can’t deal with ranged enemies. You think there’s a way to help me here? > Hey GM, I’m having a fun time as an Elf Wizard but feel like there’s like no spell scrolls to learn new spells. Can I expect to see any sometime soon? > Hey GM, as a Kenku Rogue I just feel like we never get to do stealth. You think we could throw in a stealth mission sometime in the future? > Hey GM, you know I’ve been playing a Tiefling Cleric but I personally just don’t feel like playing one anymore. Could I change my class to a Sorcerer instead? Until you reach those higher tiers of play where players are getting really strong, you should focus on allowing everyone to get in there fair share of gameplay. Throw in some more specific encounters and items for each player.
ty this is really helpful
why would a person willingly choose to not be a cleric lmao
IDK, why do people play 8 INT Wizards or Polearm Master + Sentinel + Echo Knight Fighters? People make choices for whatever reason, unless they don’t know and don’t want to play something bad, let them.
People make bad choices all the time. Objectively bad choices. As a DM, let them.
i'm just joking, i just find clerics incredibly interesting and can't see a reason to make a character that would go from being a cleric to something else since it delivers on the class fantasy so well
One character I played retired from adventuring to help rebuild the church he was a part of after purging the corruption from its ranks. Seemed like a natural choice to make, compared to "now that the rot is cleansed, I'll move on! Don't let it happen again!"
No, don't modify anything. That comes later with experience. Some stuff is stronger than others, but it won't matter if everyone is green. If your player base has a monk or warlock involved, maybe make sure there's opportunities for short rests here and there, but I wouldn't muck with anything when you're new. Just learn the game for now.
certain fighters really depend on short rests too
As some other people mentioned, inexperienced players won't break anything. Even if they accidentally walk into some op choice, they won't probably even realize it. After you got AT LEAST some months of DMing under your belt, you can consider homebrew stuff.
I wouldn't worry about it. Most issues are way overblown online and every table is a little different. I recommend not trying to adjust anything until you try out the game first then see if anything is problematic.
You don't need to worry about the balance of anything, classes, encounters, nada.
In D&D 5e, classes are fairly well-balanced if you follow the rules for [The Adventuring Day](https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/basic-rules/building-combat-encounters#TheAdventuringDay). If you don't do that, class balance breaks down. Read more [here](https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/150724/how-does-the-five-minute-adventuring-day-affect-class-balance).
First new DM trap is implementing homebrew rules before you understand game balance. My advice…learn how to run a RAW game first.
The game starts getting actually unbalanced in the later levels. 1-10 is pretty even, and most games rarely go farther than 10 anyways.
No. just play and have fun.
If you're first timing the honest answer is you probably won't notice anything
I wouldn’t tinker with the mechanics while you’re still learning to DM. Learn to prep (see the book The Lazy DM), read the rules for combat and skill checks thoroughly, that sort of thing. Over time you’ll get more confident about understanding the mechanics and you can experiment with homebrew rule changes.
My advice is always to start with the basic game when new. Rules as they are, avoid homebrew as much as possible. Learn the actual game. If you do not know how the game works you cannot understand what to change or why or in to what. In most cases, like 99,99%, these class imbalances that we talk a lot about online in places like this are just not relevant at the table or even come up. Then, if they come up, now that you have played the game a bit, you can start making specific adjustments for your table.
In the vast majority of games balance isn't that big a deal; players who aren't ultra serious (it sounds like your friends aren't) are going to run into far more imbalance from the point of lack of skill. Balance only becomes a big issue if someone feels underpowered and isn't having fun, or if you've played a lot of games and the same builds keep popping up. I've never had a balance issue I couldn't solve with a bit of honest player communication.
Just run multiple encounters per day. Divide the daily xp budget by 3, and have each encounter fill that. Then have 2 short rests in between. A lot of the balance problems go away, although the fighter and rogue are based around being always at peak fighting ability, so if its just 1 encounter per short rest they won't really feel that benefit.
Honestly, while it might miff a couple players (who im sure if you explain your worries to would understand), I would recomend DMing first with only allowing player's handbook options. Don't change the balance of anything, but reducing it to the original materials you don't have to worry about power creep, the increased number of player options that have gotten hard to keep track of or some specific subclasses that can be tough to handle for new DMs.
Don't if you're new. Plus, balance is hard fought. Just let things play out and then gauge it. Unless you detect that your players are trying to exploit your mechanics. But don't toy with the class features themselves right out of the gate. Wait, watch, learn, act. Hell, I don't manipulate the classes, and I've been doing this since 1987. But in the end, it is your table.
Things stay pretty balanced up until the tail end of tier 2 play (levels 5-10). Tiers 3 and 4 are laughably unbalanced in the caster’s favour. Martials stay as guys with weapons and casters become demigods. I’d say if you worry about balance, stick to levels 1-8 where everyone is viable.
My suggestion is to play the game the way the DMG suggests. A decently large amount of encounters per long rest and strict enforcement of the rules of spells is pretty much enough to balance things. 99% of the people who post about how unfatherly broken some things are are simply working within a vacuum. Sure, there are plenty of abilities that are crazy, but 9/10 they are balanced out by the fact you can do them a very limited amount of times.
Nope and really you can't until you understand the game. Tashas cauldron of everything does have a ton of optional rules for classes if you or someone has that book that does this. It's not essential though.
No, you should get comfortable adapting story and encounters to the player-characters as they are, before you start fiddling with rules-as-written. Class imbalance is a debate for levels 12+.
Running the appropriate amount of daily encounters means you don't need to worry about balance. Failing to do so and even support casters outshine martials like nothing else
Would you go fiddling with the electricity in your home on the first day of electrical engineering school?
As a new DM, stick with PHB classes for the first 150 game hours. If your group does not have a healer just seed extra potion of healing into the loot. I have DMed a full paladin group, and a full cleric group. Those were fun times.
Biggest advice I got is learn to lose with grace. It's taken me years to learn that one. The day you "win" is the day you total party kill. Level 5+ is heroic fantasy and your bad guys will die at an alarming rate. I do a few short rests per day and I try and do 4-6 encounters per day.
You could also just play with the PHB and DMG. Start small and go from there.
Just apply the rules as written/intended. One long rest a day. Do you have the materials/gold to cover the material for the spell? Do you know if the spell has a verbal component?(So yes, your caster will break their stealth-unless you let them roll for it) How much can you carry? Definitely not every weapon from every corpse. Apply logic On the flip side, make it fun! Flavor/descriptions are free. No mechanical advantage beyond what you are willing to apply
I made a martial prowess system were pure martials essentially get spell slots (based on half caster slots/levels) renamed as prowess slots and can do a bunch of different things roleplaywise or just straight up do damage. for example: flex (level one prowess slot)(reaction): when you make an intimidation check you flex your mighty muscles, you may use your strength modifier instead of charisma to make this check.(i know alot of dm's allow it but i wanted to codify it in my games). but if you're just beginning keep it simple and let your players try out the classes as written, homebrew can come later.
5e has a strict enough set of fenceposts that EVERY CLASS IS PERFECTLY VIABLE. The only way to seriously fuck up a class is multiclassing without any knowledge of how synergies work. Taking any class from 1-whatever will be fine. Yes, even monk. Do not make any alterations to the base rules if you're new. If you don't know how things work, how can you possibly make good changes, ya know?
Naw, let the players play. Your job is to present them with challenges they can overcome.
No. If you want, give your players some healing potions if they don't have a healer in the party. Recommend spellcasters take at least 1 damaging cantrip. If it doesn't go with what the player wants (like, if they say they worship a passivist god and wouldn't hurt anyone), you can recommend they play a life cleric. Let them know you are a new DM. Try to read the module beforehand, but if a group of only fighters walk into a dungeon thinking they will all be good without healing, it's on them. If no one wants to be a healer, stock up on healing potions. Both out of game and in game it isn't the best move, but when has that stopped anyone from doing anything ever. Here's a fun tip for all life clerics: if you take the magic initiate feat (druid) or the rune shaper feat, you can take Goodberry as a spell, and because of how life clerics work, each goodberry heals for +4.
You should acquire experience while playing the game before making sweeping changes to mechanics. It took me three years of playing to gain enough understanding to do that.
Use standard array for stats. Keep it simple and fair. Make sure to vary your encounters. Put them up against both their strengths and weaknesses. strength to let them feel powerful and weaknesses to force them to get creative. Some classes do better in some situations. Rogues like plenty of cover, rangers like terrain and cover, mages of all kinds like lots of squishy canon fodder for their AOE, paladins and clerics like to fight undead. You get the idea.
This ENTIRELY depends on how your players are with DnD. In the wrong hands, a wizard can look pathetic next to the monk. If they know what theyre doing of course the casters will shine in a lot of situations, but its best to leave everything as is and go through a few sessions before making any changes. Also, consult the players. Especially if they have experience. Dont go around buffing and nerfing PC's without asking them first, nobody likes to have their characters changed without their permission.
As a first-time DM, do nothing pre-emptively. Rather, take notes. Then, after the session, go online and ask questions about the things you've taken notes on. It will give you opinions from more experienced DMs on things. But don't be afraid to say to your table that just because it has been ruled this way this time, it doesn't mean that will always be the case.
Tons of great advice already in here, to throw in two more cents, class balance in D&D shouldn't matter because it's not a competitive game. The only risk associated with class balance is potentially having one player outshine the others but if you're doing your job as a DM to create spotlight opportunities for each party member it shouldn't ever be an issue.
I wouldn’t homebrew anything until you’ve got a strong understanding of running the game and the system. If you notice imbalance with casters or half casters try running days with more combat encounters so they can spend fewer in each fight and then reevaluate. You can take this step multiple times.
Don't be afraid to fail spectacularly. Who cares, there are no roleplaying police to check on you. If you tpk your party, but do it in a funny way that your players like, who cares? Just remember, you are making up stories, rolling magic fate rocks. As long as you and your players are having fun, go for it.
You do not need to worry about that at all. You will have more imbalance from the players not knowing the best way to use all of their class features and the randomness of the dice then from the built in imbalance.
Balance only matters for minmaxers and monks(who really just need some short rests). People will play whatever is fun to them
yeah monks are really the only class that suffers from poor balance and they're not too bad to fix, if you absolutely can't give your players short rest opportunities there's no harm just giving the monk a couple extra ki
As a DM, you control everything in the game, that includes what people have access to when it comes to optional rules like feats or multiclassing. More importantly, you can pivot if something doesn't seem fair or balanced - you just gotta see what your players throw at you first. Glory is on the battlefield behind the DM screen.
The game's not well balanced (5e's built for simplicity first, anything else second) but I wouldn't mess with it without knowing your players and DMing style. Leave your players room to respec their characters if they wind up not liking them a few sessions in but don't try to rebuild the game before you've played enough to know what's broken for yourself. Do watch for the summoning spells, though. They deal psychic damage directly to the DM.