5E Caster vs Mundanes & Spell Evaluation (General)

[Unbeliever]

^ it's unfair, but pretty relevant from an early adopter standpoint.  It's a challenge any new game system faces.  RPGs come with substantial start-up costs, setting aside the $$$ even.  So, they are forced to answer the "why should I bother switching?" question. 

The answer, in many cases, may have a "wait and see" element.  But, it can't help but be compared to the available options and what has gone before.  On the plus side, it also gets to draw on those, too.

[awaken_D_M_golem]

A lot of OD&D stalwarts are looking at it and saying "There's more than one edition?   BAH!"

 

What arrr' these Feats things?  BAH!

[Arz]

Point for mundanes: Fighter gets 7 ability enhancements and rogue gets 6. Most get 5. So thats feats for you.

Monk and barbarian seem to be the least customizable and have weaker high level abilities.

[Nunkuruji]

*No PHB yet, just basic rules

Unless I'm running a module, I like to have a reasonable base of splatbooks to draw from.

I like the 5e ruleset

I perceive deficiencies in the base classes, such as dead levels, or lack of features: +1 is not exciting, spells and maneuvers are exciting.

Caster vs. Mundane: Actions & Options win. I do appreciate that mundanes no longer have to spec up things like grapple just to be able to use them effectively. But, in most cases I'd want to have a 1/4 of my 20 levels as a caster class. Just having the 1-3rd level spells available for adaptive buffs or reactions beats the hell out of a lot of the higher level class features. You also can't necessarily rely on another to burn their concentration on buffing you. I think I'd rather be a Fighter5/Wizard5 against a Red Dragon than a Fighter10, for instance. I haven't seen feats, so that could change my mind.

[Mortadelas]

I'm going to switch to 5th.
Once you know what spells can do, 3.5 quicly becomes a cheese fest unless you are serious about holding back and ban half the spells. Problem with holding back is that encounters are no longer chalenging.
So truth be told I'd switch to anything that doesn't resemble mmos(4th) or require to learn a vast cosmology (talislanta) I don't care about or makes it impossible to survive anything (rolemaster).
5th seems like what I'm looking for, customizing without breaking, bettering your oppoments by advantage, not because of stacking things through the roof.
We will see how it goes once DM's is out.

[awaken_D_M_golem]

You can play now, with the Basic D&D free download.  Mix in the PHB and MM for lots more flavor.  Basic has gotten a few updates, to improve playability while the DMG isn't out just yet.

[Azrael]

Monks are actually great anti-casters if you build them correctly, and interestingly enough, this can be done at level 4 if you play a human monk. Simply make a way of the shadow monk with the mage slayer and sentinel feats and you can basically lock down any caster that doesn't have the mobile feat (which is why mobile is one of the MOST IMPORTANT feats for every caster to have!).

[Nunkuruji]

Before making the blanket statement, I would closely look at two things

1. Can a monk still shut down a caster a mid-high levels, or are the power of the spells enough to shutdown the monk in 1 round: save or lose, or no save and lose. Only in close quarters? Also at range?

2. Can a monk shut down monster casters with innate spellcasting, can they do so within appropriate CRs for their level.

[oslecamo]

Before making the blanket statement, I would closely look at two things

1. Can a monk still shut down a caster a mid-high levels, or are the power of the spells enough to shutdown the monk in 1 round: save or lose, or no save and lose. Only in close quarters? Also at range?

There's still some nasty high level spells, however, spell slots for those are a lot more scarce now, and none of those are really "lol screw you mundane peasant, no save" anymore. Also you can't cover yourself in a zillion magic buffs in 5e either, so I would say the monk remains a threat to the caster.

2. Can a monk shut down monster casters with innate spellcasting, can they do so within appropriate CRs for their level.

Monsters with innate spellcasting are a lot more rare now (Solar doesn't have it all now for example), and those who do still have innate spellcasting usually have crappy prepared spells and it's not very clear if you can swap those around.

[Azrael]

Pretty much what oslecamo said.

I think it occasionally comes down to who wins initiative but in 3.5 that wouldn't have even mattered with this matchup so that's already saying something in the monk's favor. There are still some tricky things the caster can do but a lot of it relies on proper contingencies (which are nerfed in 5e to occur after the action has taken place instead of before so you have to have something that triggers on their move action so they don't get to the attack step, which will likely end up wasting a lot of contingency triggers on inferior enemies if not worded properly), or other setups to stay ahead of the monk.

The bottom line is, as far as core is concerned (and this may change when the DMG comes out) wizards don't have nearly the same action economy breaking and buffing power as they did in 3.5 which is a big reason why they won these matchups in the first place.

Essentially I think the smartest thing would be to tie one's contingency to when you use a dagger to attack an enemy (which you will only do while using the mobility feat on lockdown) so that you have some control over when it goes off and the precise situation it's going to be occurring in.