Allowing full weapon swaps every turn makes melee/missile combat too powerful compared to spell combat. According to the rules "stowing" a weapon requires an action. If you are going to swap a missile weapon for a melee weapon and attack in the same turn you will have to drop the missile weapon on the ground according to 5e rules. (and vice versa)
Drawing a weapon is a free action but stowing uses an action.
Absolutely not. Drawing or sheating is exactly one item interaction. If you just sheathe a weapon (like dual-wielding -> one-handed to free a hand for casting), it doesn't require action.
Exactly like as a one-handed you can draw a throwable weapon for your free interaction and chain up with attack.
What does require an action if not for Dual Wielder feat (or Thrown Weapon fighting style) is making two of those interactions at the same time, like drawing two weapons or sheathe one to draw another.
What Solasta houserules which is indeed powerful is the ability to swap entirely from one set to another even if it means technically up to 3 or 4 interactions at the same time (typically going from two throwable weapons to spear and shield).
Likewise, Solasta provides a bonus action attack if you're dual wielding even if you didnt Attack IIRC, which is a big power boost albeit a situational one.
That said, nothing prevents you to force yourself to respect 5E RAW while playing the game. :)
Drawing a single weapon is a free action according to 5e rules. Stowing or sheathing a weapon is a full action according to 5e rules. This is why they are dropped in 5e rules gameplay.
Allowing melee/missile characters to freely swap back and forth thus getting all of their attacks in each round makes them more powerful in relation to their casting counter parts. They are supposed to be dropping stuff or dashing to get in range rather than moving 30 shooting bow, moving 30 striking with sword, etc.
I much prefer the simplified system in Solasta to the mess of trying to keep track of all the things changing hands in RAW 5e. And it seems to me that a lot of tables tend to drift away from actually using the rules over time.
What we have now is a straightforward and easy to understand system. I like it this way.
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They got the inventory interaction correct but the weapon interaction is unbalanced. The weapons can be powerful and moreso when they can be swapped and used every turn. It overshadows spell use.
They got the inventory interaction correct but the weapon interaction is unbalanced. The weapons can be powerful and moreso when they can be swapped and used every turn. It overshadows spell use.
You mean that Solasta actually gives us a reason to use martial characters in 5e? The horror.
If your casters are overshadowed by a warrior dealing good damage, you're playing your spellcasters very suboptimally. Or do you mean Paladin, Ranger, Spellblade and Shadowcaster spell use is overshadowed by weapon use? Because that's the point; martial characters supported by magic. Which you'd also have to play suboptimally to come to that conclusion.
Typos happen. More so on the phone.
Honestly, one switch of weapons is not OP in the game.
Let's say I switch to shield/weapon before ending my turn : yes that is beyond the scope of the actual 5e rules, true, but I won't be able to do it again next turn if I re-switch to the first weapon set I was using. Yes, you can also switch melee/ranged every turn I believe, which does have the "cost" of not having a melee in hand some turns for some Attacks of Opportunity and you cannot use another item interaction.
In tabletop rules, you could also pull out your bow on the second turn (just not in the middle of two attacks).
Not a huge deal : it's a storm in a glass of water. Tactical Adventures still imposes one single item interaction per turn, unlike other CRPG who never bother to impose such a limit. In most CRPGs, you can switch between weapon sets at will, use your quick items, etc. Except in Pathfinder CRPGs (by Owlcat) where switching weapon sets cost a Move Action.
As many players are not tabletop 5e veterans nor Pathfinder players, many video games allow weapon switching as a user-friendly design and it is often preferred by those players. Like in BG3 (Early Access) where I can switch to my shield before ending each turn (which is silly ; it is a bit limited in Solasta in comparison).
For example, I tried playing a Druid with a shield, using the official rules in Solasta, and it was a pain in the butt ! I ended up turning off Somatic spell components in the settings.
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Honestly, one switch of weapons is not OPand it is often preferred by those players. Like in BG3 (Early Access) where I can switch to my shield before ending each turn (which is silly ; it is a bit limited in Solasta in comparison).
Turns out, that doesn't do anything for your AC. Even with your ranged weapon equipped, you have the AC as if you have a shield ready. I learned that recently. It does enable melee weapon reactions though.
Typos happen. More so on the phone.
Turns out, that doesn't do anything for your AC. Even with your ranged weapon equipped, you have the AC as if you have a shield ready. I learned that recently. It does enable melee weapon reactions though.
In Solasta or BG3 ? You quoted my BG3 line, so I guess you mean in BG3. If so, fair enough, as it helps the average player.
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Turns out, that doesn't do anything for your AC. Even with your ranged weapon equipped, you have the AC as if you have a shield ready. I learned that recently. It does enable melee weapon reactions though.
In Solasta or BG3 ? You quoted my BG3 line, so I guess you mean in BG3. If so, fair enough, as it helps the average player.
BG3, yes. I should've specified. Just an interesting little interaction of the system. I like that we can freely swap back and forth there, because it lets us see the options / ranges etc for our weapons.
Typos happen. More so on the phone.
If your casters are overshadowed by a warrior dealing good damage, you're playing your spellcasters very suboptimally. Or do you mean Paladin, Ranger, Spellblade and Shadowcaster spell use is overshadowed by weapon use? Because that's the point; martial characters supported by magic. Which you'd also have to play suboptimally to come to that conclusion.
Do you long rest after every encounter? If so that is how you are able to play your casters optimally. Hopefully they will institute wandering encounters on maps to address that sort of abuse. Fighter classes start to shine in the long haul whereas classes with abilities that recharge on long rests can shine every time they blow their wad. I tend to play conservatively and only rest when all abilities are used up and hit points are low with no remaining hit dice to use on short rests. The rules were crafted very carefully with class balance in mind. That is why 5e only allows a single concentration spell to be active at a time. Freely swapping weapons was not intended and destroys the balance between the classes.
Possibly off-topic but I thought that I remember that when Solasta was in very early EA you were able to use each campfire only ONCE so taking a Long Rest was not as easy as it is today -- especially if you disable the requirement for Food (which was not even an option back then). This limitation forced spellcasters to conserve their spell slots and made martial types more desirable; this was before Warlocks were introduced, btw. It also made Inns a more desirable place to rest since you could use them multiple times.
Personally, I think they should introduce "Wandering Monsters" to add an element of risk to resting -- even Short Rests -- as well as random but, relatively, low-level spawns in "wild" areas to keep players on their toes.
If your casters are overshadowed by a warrior dealing good damage, you're playing your spellcasters very suboptimally. Or do you mean Paladin, Ranger, Spellblade and Shadowcaster spell use is overshadowed by weapon use? Because that's the point; martial characters supported by magic. Which you'd also have to play suboptimally to come to that conclusion.
Do you long rest after every encounter? If so that is how you are able to play your casters optimally. Hopefully they will institute wandering encounters on maps to address that sort of abuse. Fighter classes start to shine in the long haul whereas classes with abilities that recharge on long rests can shine every time they blow their wad. I tend to play conservatively and only rest when all abilities are used up and hit points are low with no remaining hit dice to use on short rests. The rules were crafted very carefully with class balance in mind. That is why 5e only allows a single concentration spell to be active at a time. Freely swapping weapons was not intended and destroys the balance between the classes.
I don't. I usually try to go as long as possible without resting to give martial classes the best possible chance to show their strengths. Casters and half-casters still tend to shine, because it isn't expensive to change the outcome of a fight a lot of the time if you know what spells to cast.
If you treat your spellslots like wads to blow, no wonder something as innocent as a martial getting a weapon swap feel off to you. Optimally played casters usually focus on control or support; effects that has a lot of value for their spellslots. Having some burst dmg as a backup is smart, but it isn't very efficient to try to nuke things with a caster. A lot of the time I don't even consider the Paladin's Divine Smite all that important compared to spells like Protection from Evil and Good, which can last several encounters, unless I can Smite to kill something scary that turn.
If you are already focused on those sorts of efficient spells and still think martials getting a weapon swap makes them too powerful, then you really need to reconsider what metric you're judging it by. Because at that point, anything short of casters completely dominating with dmg, control and support in every fight sounds like they will feel like they are too weak to you.
In short, no, the weapon swap isn't overpowered and 5e was definitely not finely tuned for balance. If it was, the spellcasting classes wouldn't be consistently more useful in and out of combat than classes without spellcasting. This is pretty much independent of what sort of caster it is, be it full-, half- or third casters.
Solasta made it a bit easier to be a martial class with relatively easy access to powerful enchanted weapons and gear, but even that tend to benefit martial classes with spellcasting more, since they get the best of both worlds.
Possibly off-topic but I thought that I remember that when Solasta was in very early EA you were able to use each campfire only ONCE so taking a Long Rest was not as easy as it is today -- especially if you disable the requirement for Food (which was not even an option back then). This limitation forced spellcasters to conserve their spell slots and made martial types more desirable; this was before Warlocks were introduced, btw. It also made Inns a more desirable place to rest since you could use them multiple times.
Personally, I think they should introduce "Wandering Monsters" to add an element of risk to resting -- even Short Rests -- as well as random but, relatively, low-level spawns in "wild" areas to keep players on their toes.
As long as they're not as imbalanced as the Random Encounters can sometimes end up being (especially in Lost Valley), I'd be fine with that. Would probably make me rest more, not less, to ensure I at least have some resources left to deal with it. I really didn't like getting ambushed by 10 Thugs at lvl 3, or a Young Black Dragon at lvl 4. Somehow it didn't seem like a reasonable encounter.
Typos happen. More so on the phone.
Martial classes are already the most powerful classes in 5e without being able to freely swap weapons.
Martial classes are already the most powerful classes in 5e without being able to freely swap weapons.
While I am loathe to appeal to popularity or authority, I think this is a case where anyone else stumbling upon this could use the context. I've never seen anyone who show an understanding of the 5e system reflect this opinion. It doesn't matter if you're looking for indepth guides for Solasta or tabletop 5e, the full caster classes are pretty much universally regarded as the strongest ones in the system, followed by Paladin and then by Gloom Stalker Ranger. It's usually only after these that you start to see other classes listed in terms of power or usefulness. At best, you'll find highly synergistic multiclass combinations among these, but that is about it and even they usually have to include the top classes.
If you are under the impression that the martial classes are the most powerful in 5e, the only thing I have to say is that you need to learn to cast spells and you probably need to learn to evaluate classes on what they're capable of doing besides just damage per round (DPR).
DPR is actually a very limited metric and usually isn't good at measuring anything but how martial classes compare to one another. An alternate way of measuring class effectiveness could be "actions denied" or "action economy manipulation". This would be a lot more time consuming and require a lot more specifics about a given situation, so it isn't hard to see why people usually aren't doing that. So let's take a hypothetical example.
A Fighter (without spellcasting) and a Wizard are both fighting their own ogre or whatnot. The Fighter, with their good DPR kills the ogre is 5 rounds. The Wizard having lower DPR, has to spend 10 rounds. So the Fighter is better, right? Wrong.
Since the Fighter has no means of denying actions outside of killing something, the ogre will have all of their 5 actions. The Wizard might take a bit longer, but they have a number of effects to deny or weaken the ogre's ability to do, well, anything. Even just in Solasta, we have Fog Cloud to impose permanent disadvantage, we have Hideous Laughter for hard CC, we even have Expeditious Retreat which would force the ogre to keep Dashing instead of attacking to get into range. Going into 2nd lvl spells, we have things like Spider Climb or Levitate to let you stay out of reach, or Ray of Emfeeblement to half the dmg the ogre does per attack. 3rd lvl we can use Haste to kite the monster and potentially double our dmg if we have a passable dex and a crossbow, or use Fear to prevent it from moving closer to us. 4th lvl and Greater Invisibility is going to counter such an encounter on its own. When fighting a decently played Wizard, the ogre might get 2-3 actions that impact the combat and would otherwise just have to keep using their turns to either chase after the Wizard or do nothing because they can't.
You wouldn't need to spend all of these spells to win this 1 v 1. One or two would probably suffice, and you've probably got plenty by the time you try. And this is about as favorable as a comparison as a Fighter could ever get. The more complicated the encounter, and when you have party members that can take advantage of the situations your magic creates, the more you can do with magic.
This isn't to say martial classes aren't useful to have in a party, but even they benefit greatly from having the spellcasting feature compared to if they don't have it. A simple example of this could be that fight with the ogre, but now the Fighter is competing with a Ranger. Setting aside that Rangers typically have pretty good DPR for lvl 2-10, let's look at how some of their spells could impact the fight. Fog Cloud, as mentioned, gives permanent disadvantage, which favors the side with more attacks and higher AC. Ogres have low AC and a single, powerful attack (for its CR). Spike Growth could rack up a significant amount of damage (5 dmg per 5 feet of movement on avg, + half walking speed) if the ogre is forced to go through rather than around it, and even if they can go around, that is a lot of free rounds for the Ranger to use their bow. Conjure Animal could let you turn the fight into a 3 on 1 with Dire Wolves, who have Pack Tactics and an automatic trip attack to manipulate the movementspeed of the ogre. Worst case scenario, the wolves function as ~70 temp HP while you wear down the ogre, which would take it about 5-6 rounds to get through. That's some 10 more actions for you from the Dire Wolves and 5-6 less actions for the ogre.
And, again, this is about as favorable as things get for the Fighter, because in a more complicated and dangerous encounter, the Ranger's spells could be used for greater impact. Like setting up Silence on a dangerous spellcaster.
This is just considering spells from Solasta. Go into tabletop and the options multiply, as does the power level of spellcasting with it.
Typos happen. More so on the phone.
Drawing a single weapon is a free action according to 5e rules. Stowing or sheathing a weapon is a full action according to 5e rules.
Again NO. all of them fall under "item interaction", you have one for free per round, that is all.
Since you are apparently too lazy to check by yourself before pushing a blatantly false rule, here is the relevant excerpt to avoid further useless ping ping.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/basic-rules/combat#OtherActivityonYourTurn
"
Your turn can include a variety of flourishes that require neither your action nor your move.
You can communicate however you are able, through brief utterances and gestures, as you take your turn.
You can also interact with one object or feature of the environment for free, during either your move or your action. For example, you could open a door during your move as you stride toward a foe, or you could draw your weapon as part of the same action you use to attack.
If you want to interact with a second object, you need to use your action. Some magic items and other special objects always require an action to use, as stated in their descriptions.
"
Emphasis mine. They simply give ONE example AMONG OTHERS when saying you can draw a weapon as part of the same action you use to attack. If they needed to list EVERY POSSIBLE interaction, it would take a dozen pages that nobody would ever read anyways.
Sheating/stowing a weapon is an item interaction, ergo, you can do it for free if it's your only interaction in your turn. Period, end of story.