If you were playing Bilbo in DnD 5e, the class that makes the most sense to give bilbo is Rogue. Commoner isn’t a class; bilbo could only be one if he was an NPC.

Does he exactly map onto the DnD rogue chassis? No, he doesn’t, but he maps worse onto every other class.

Rogues aren’t really designed to be good at everything, they are designed to be very good at a few skills (in 5e). Bards are the ‘generalists’ (which, imo. is blatantly OP considering they are also good spell-casters).

PF2e is where they just kinda get all the skills (along with investigators).

I mean, if we’re talking DnD 5e, rogues are one of the weaker classes.

In part, its cause they’re only okay at combat. Pretty good damage (but not amazing), only moderate control options, and little defense, while relying on modes of attack that require work to function (sneak attack, stealth)

And, they do work as a skill monkey, but Bards are just kinda… better, at almost everything, on that front. Magic is just generally overtuned in its effectiveness, so really, a Wizard can be a better skill monkey, if they prep utility spells that day.

Big disagree, though still upvoted you cause that is a hell of a hot take.

Sneaky stabbers are cool, and I like skill monkies. Not just ‘the theivery havers’, but also the bag of tricks, the preppers. Batman is basically a rogue.

And, sure, it can be interesting to have the party be bad at Stealth on purpose. To have to bumble their way through everything. I don’t think Rogues are strictly necessary. But I like that they’re an option.

Its cause you really only need one person good at a skill in the party. Once you have one person with high thievery (or, any other skill, really), each addition of another character with that skill is worth less and less.

While, combat focused classes are kind of the opposite. Hard to have too many combat classes in most dnd-likes, and the more classes you have narrowly focused on combat, the better the party is at that task.

Nah, you probably did it right. WFRP is a deadly system, which cuts both ways. PCs will win fights hard and fast, much of the time. Its just that, when the fight turns, when they get bad luck on rolls or are outnumbered/outmatched, they die hard and fast.

Short answer: read Jack Vance’s ‘tales of a dying earth’. It’s the reason dnd magic is called ‘vancian’.

Longer answer: in that series, magic works by just remembering words, and then saying them. But these magic words are powerful things, weighty in the mind, hard to carry. And, when said, they tear themselves out of your mind, causing you to forget them.

So, not ‘spell slots’ per se, but the idea is you’re prepping spells almost as a ‘potion’, something you carry in your mind, and consume to cast out a spell.

Mmm, psionics, Shadow Weave Magic, Initiate of Mystra.

A min-maxed character is one with dumpstates and weaknesses. A powergamed character is one with fewer weaknesses than a ‘normal’ character. Anything that can challange an OP build will wipe the floor with a party of ‘standard’ characters.

If they’re actually powergaming, the likely answer is: “No, I’m immune.” Or: “okay, with my buffs, I get to add +200 to this.”

It really depends.

I’m thinking about 3.5 in particular, where an optimized wizard will be able to do the job of the rest of the party (assuming they’re built to be fine, but not power-gaming), better than them.

There’s no real in-world way to balance that. Either the DM Fiats the power-gamer weaker, the DM tells the power gamer “no”, or the rest of the party power games to. Its just too unbalanced.

If we’re talking 5e, that’s all out the window then. If 3.5’s power runs from 0-10, the strongest 5e build is like a 6, and the weakest is like a 3. Its still extra work for the DM to balance, but can be done all in-world without needing to rely on metagame fiat.

And, of course, there’s lots of other systems out there, where the above can be more true or less true depending on what kind of game it is, though 3.5’s power ceiling is probably higher than 95% of the systems out there.

Eh, disagree. Unless everyone is power gaming to the same degree (which can be fun!), an OP character being adequately challenged will probably result in all the other players feeling irrelevant.

I think it should just crib notes from PF2e; make it a bonus action, and also a 1st level spell. Though, they should also rewrite the confusing ‘no slotted bonus action spell with non-bonus action slotted spell’ bandaid too.