Authors Saving Throw / Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition

• One of the biggest complaints with dragonborn as first released in the PHB was that they didn't really fit a niche or do anything that another race couldn't do better. The changes brought on by the Fizban's Treasury of Dragons splatbook towards the race were regarded as much-needed improvements. For starters, a dragonborn's breath weapon can now be used in place of one of their attacks instead of costing a full action, and it scales better with level. The metallic dragonborn get Protective Wings to give an ally a momentary bonus to AC, and also get Cure Wounds to help with their staying power. Chromatic dragonborn can now make themselves immune to the damage type of their draconic ancestry, which is a huge help in defensive struggles. It also introduced the gem dragonborn, which give breath weapons and resistance to damage types the dragonborn didn't have before — force, psychic, thunder, radiant, and necrotic — while also letting gem dragonborn summon wings to fly with, and gave them telepathic communication to boot. Finally, dragonborn stats changed to either +2 to one stat and +1 to another, or +1 to any three stats, allowing the race to be more than just bruiser classes like Fighters and Barbarians. While still somewhat of a Master of None race, all of these changes made dragonborn much more versatile, and they were seen by the playerbase at large as a huge step in the right direction.
• Tasha's Cauldron of Everything fixed one of the biggest criticisms of the edition since day 1: the race features/stats. Playable races were stuck with their stats and features being locked in place, creating situations where players were discouraged from using certain races or subraces with certain classes due to the way stat distribution was handled, effectively gimping a character if said stats didn't line up with the class picked (Dwarf Wizard for example), or had weak/useless racial features that the player couldn't control. It resulted in certain races like Humans and Half-Elves becoming the consistently chosen options due to their flexible stat allocation, and their racial abilities being better compared to other options. Even players not focused on stats found it to be restrictive and hard to ignore when making their character. Tasha's Cauldron of Everything allows the player to adjust both of these, such as redistributing the extra stats and/or replacing features that were useless/not beneficial for a module with other options. As a result, players can now freely have races and class combos previously though to be too hard to work with.
• Monsters of the Multiverse addressed two major criticisms of playing 5th Edition; the first being that it was hard to keep track of all the different new playable races because many of them were released in many different books, and the second being many weak racial abilities. Monsters of the Multiverse compiled all the previously released races into one book, and then made changes to many of them to bring their racial abilities to a better state, such as adjusting many abilities to be usable more often, or slightly nerfing some races that were simply too strong. Between it and Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, players now have better ways of handling what they want to play, and no longer need to worry about weak options.
• While not the first edition to do this, martial classes (like Fighter, Barbarian, and Rogue) were given a much more earnest attempt to address the problem of Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards and make playing a martial class more interesting. Previous editions, especially 3e and 3.5e, were plagued with martial classes being made redundant by caster classes being able to do almost everything they could do, and do it better. 5e's "archetypes" allow much more thought being put into building a martial class, and upgrades involve doing more than just dealing more damage. Martial classes in 5e get more chances to debuff their enemies, extra attacks, the ability to gain resistances or mitigate damage, and to get advantage on certain kinds of saving throws. While the gap between martial classes and caster classes isn't entirely gone, it's certainly a lot closer than it used to be by comparison.
• Ranger:
  • The class was generally seen as the weakest one in the game upon initial release, particularly its Beast Master subclass. Two years later, the developers released a full rework of the class that was much better-received. While the developers did not outright replace it, and have said they do not intend to, making it an official option went a great way to fix the class. To coincide with this, later subclasses have been given better overall abilities and skills to help the base Ranger class have more power to it, making it possible for a non-rework Ranger to be strong in spite of the limits, and even better if it's a rework Ranger.
  • Tasha's Cauldron of Everything included alternative class features that can replace a number of very situational or outright useless abilities of the Ranger; rather than having chosen terrain types that the Ranger can't get lost in and where they can forage more food in (Natural Explorer), they instead get Expertise in a skill, permanent increases in movement speed, and the ability to heal themselves of exhaustion over short rests instead of long rests (Deft Explorer). Instead of being able to expend a spell slot to know if any if a type of creature is within a mile of them but not the vital information of where the creatures are or how many of them there are (Primeval Awareness), they gain access to a number of thematic spells such as Beast Sense and Locate Creature and can cast them without spell slots once per long rest (Primal Awareness). Instead of being able to spend a minute making camouflage that helps hide them... as long as they don't, you know, move or do anything useful while hidden (Hide In Plain Sight), they can call upon the power of nature to outright make them invisible for short periods of time, and can do so during combat (Nature's Veil).
  • The Beast Master subclass was given specific alternate features in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything that made it much stronger and less of a hassle to play. Rather than choosing a specific animal as a companion, (which players disliked due to how weak and fragile the available options were), a Beast Master can instead summon a primal beast in the form of an animal - either a Beast of the Earth (slightly tougher and can climb), a Beast of the Sky (slightly faster and can fly), or a Beast of the Sea (both tough and fast - but can only move around in water). A Primal Companion does what Beast Master players had wanted for years: scales and grows stronger as the Beast Master does. Additionally, it can be revived with a spell slot if it is killed: before, a Beast Master's pet could only be revived the same way a player character could, requiring expensive diamonds and a willing spellcaster who knows a spell to bring them back. Most parties weren't able or willing to shill out thousands of gold pieces worth of diamonds to bring back one player's pet.
• Sorcerer:
  • The Unearthed Arcana revisions released for the Sorcerer have been very well received due to giving the class some needed buffs. To clarify; the two largest changes they received were Spell Versatility^note During a long rest, they can change a spell to a different one of the same level and three more ways to use their Sorcery Points^note Give themselves advantage on a check, make a weapon magical, and give themselves temporary HP based on amount spent. Both of those additions have made the class more viable since they now can swap out useless spells for better ones, as well as use their Sorcery Points for more useful situations then simply attacking. While the class is still regarded as deeply flawed, it's considered a step in the right direction. However, Sorcerers did not keep Spell Versatility once Tasha's Cauldron of Everything came out with alternative class features, something that some Sorcerer fans have chosen to ignore and include anyway because of how much it fixes some of the core issues they have.
  • On the topic of Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, the Sorcerous Origins introduced in that expansion address one of the biggest complaints regarding the Sorcerer class: versatility. Both Clockwork Soul and Aberrant Mind come with ten spells (and, in Abberant Mind's case, a cantrip) that are added at the thresholds for each spell level up to 5th, like what Cleric Domains get. And, in a departure from any other features like this, the Sorcerer can retrain these spells, even outside the Sorcerer class! The only caveats are the schools of magic, the level of the spell, and what classes the spells can be drawn from, but that's still a lot of variety to work with. Now Sorcerers, beings almost literally made of magic, can have more known spells than Bards. The features for each subclass are also incredibly diverse and unique, such as eliminating a creature's advantage to saving throws (something most mages groan about, given how every Fiend has magic resistance), creative body modifications, and a way to immediately end spell effects.
• Tasha's Cauldron of Everything introduced a new Eldritch Invocation, Investment of the Chain Master, that addressed many of the complaints with Warlock's Pact of the Chain. The Warlock's familiar only takes a bonus action to command to attack rather than requiring the Warlock's entire action, the damage it deals is considered magical (bypassing the resistance to non-magic piercing/bludgeoning/slashing damage that most enemies past early game have), any save that it forces an opponent to make — such as a pseudodragon's poisoned stinger tail or quasit's scare ability — use the Warlock's own spell save DC rather than the (low) DC that the familiar has by default, and the Warlock can use their reaction to grant their familiar resistance to damage when it's injured to help compensate for how fragile the familiar is.
• The spell Danse Macabre basically saved the Necromancer Wizard. Before Danse Macabre was released, the Necromancer had a huge issue with being useless starting around the mid-game; Grim Harvest is strictly inferior to every other ability that restored HP upon killing an enemy (and there are many, including strictly better variants thereof, such as Way of the Long Death Monk's Touch of Death and the Grave Domain Cleric's Keeper of Souls), resistance to Necrotic damage and immunity to HP reduction just wasn't worth ten levels in a class (especially considering an Aasimar is already resistant to Necrotic damage from the start), and the majority of Undead a party fights by the time they reach 14th level have high charisma saves, high intelligence, or both. Danse Macabre, however, took the core feature of the subclass and made it potent; before, Undead Thralls was practically worthless by mid-game, where a Zombie or Skeleton's +2 to hit is abysmal, but with Danse Macabre, a Necromancer suddenly had a team of powerful HP bags that could actually deal consistent and passable damage. Danse Macabre and Animate Dead even had interesting means of varying the Undead you got, so that you could use Animate Dead if you just wanted walking shields, and you could use Danse Macabre if you wanted to actually harm enemies.
• Tools were generally regarded as useless aside from flavor (with the exception of Thieves Tools, which were used for lockpicking). With the release of Xanthar's Guide to Everything, what comes in a tool kit are elaborated upon for creative players, and some examples of their use are given (like Cobblers being able to fit compartments into their teammates' shoes, or gaming sets can be used to determine the other character's personality).
• As time went on, the official modules became widely criticized for lack of support for high-level gameplay. Due to the fact that after publishing three campaigns ending at level 15, from 5e's third year on average end level of a campaign would steadily decrease, first to 13, then 10, with Dungeon of the Mad Mage being the only official campaign to reach level 20, and content for higher levels more and more becoming limited to standalone adventures in athologies. As of 2023 however, Wizards would rectify this with the official Planescape campaign to catapult players from level 10 to 17 for the endgame, and both giving a blessing to 3rd party Chains of Asmodeus and announcing Vecna: Eye of Ruin, campaigns starting respectively at levels 13 and 10, and ending both at 20, allowing them to act as sequels to many of the earlier campaigns.

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