D&D 5E I think Wizards balances classes using damage on a single target nova over 3 rounds.

[Incenjucar]

If we assumed PCs worked via the AOE = two targets rule, Burning Hands suggests a single-target simple arcane 1st level spell should deal 6d6 damage, save for half.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I don't really think classes are balanced at all

I mean, you're definitely and unquestionably wrong if you think WotC aren't trying to balance the classes, and don't have formulas for doing so. That's just a serious error on your part if you believe that. It's patently untrue.

Wizards are and should remain the most powerful class in the game.

This is obviously also a terrible opinion which goes against those of at least 90% of actual D&D players, and your logic for it absolute caveman stuff, stuff that was outdated in the 1990s, let alone any later period. It's obvious nonsense-logic in 5E.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Wizards are and should remain the most powerful class in the game.

And this is precisely why D&D will always crap on Fighters. The bolded bit is the problem.

A game built on teamwork absolutely should not have a class that is specifically designed to be more powerful than everyone else. That is literally contradictory to the fundamental goal of the game, to play together. (And if it were competitive, that would be even worse, to be clear. There is no refuge in escaping from "cooperative multiplayer" to "competitive multiplayer"!) Making one class more powerful than any other is a staple of only one kind of game: single-player.

And as Ruin Explorer said, it is obvious from the design of every WotC edition that its creators want to make a balanced game. Even 5e.

Both Full Plate armor and Rapiers were developed in the late middle ages, although the exact definition of a Rapier is subject to some debate.

The poster above does have a point about ball bearings, although the "Ball Bearings" sold in a D&D shop are not really ball bearing but rather just the balls without the races, it is not a bag of 1000 bearings. Actual bearings using rolling balls would be the modern era (19th centurry). The balls themselves could have conceivably been built by a Davinci rolling mill, but although he designed it, he was not ever known to have actually built one, and it would have been renaissance before they were in common use.

In any case even Renaissance is primitive compared to modern technology or the things Magic can do in D&D. I mean it is a world that has not yet invented trains, light bulbs or in most cases non-Magical gunpowder, but Wizards can fly and teleport and even at the lowest levels can create light without fire.

I believe the statement was not meant to pick between plate or rapiers, but to pick between:

• "very primitive pre-Renaissance worlds with very limited technology"
• full plate and rapiers (whether separately or together)

Full plate, rapiers, and guns were all very late-Medieval/early-Renaissance developments. Hence why I call the stock RPG setting "pseudomedieval faux-European quasi-Tolkienesque schizotech fantasy." Because most folks absolutely forbid you to have guns or even cannons for it to be a "medieval Fantasy setting," but absolutely require that you have plate armor which is newer than cannons and possibly newer than actual "handgonnes."

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I really wish you'd replaced the simplified with... Clearly communicated? Consistently structured?

A lot of the changes to monsters were part of the "apology edition" approach, which is why they were such a mess, and why they've changed again more recently.

A significant element of 5E's launch design was to make an edition with some aesthetic elements resembling older editions, and they were willing to throw usability/function, flavour, and principles of good design out the window to get this aesthetic.

This is very clear from the monster designs, especially the godawful reversion to "simple stat block, but with like 14 spells the monster can cast". That's a huge loss of usability, because you have to look up and understand all those spells to use the monster fully, it's extremely hostile to new DMs (but so was a lot of 5E, surprisingly, it's amazing how well it's done despite that, not because of it), and in general flavourful abilities from 4E were replaced with bland spells.

Now with the newest monster book this has changed again, and design of monsters is more 4E-like, with fewer spells, more abilities and their use much better handled, and I think it's safe to expect the new MM to be like that also.

 

[FallenRX]

Are you sure? The logic is still sound - PCs aren’t always fighting more than one monster, but they often are, and the cases when they’re not help balance out the cases where it’s possible to hit more than the expected 2 targets. I mean, if you’ve done the math and it looks like they’re not making that assumption for PCs, I can’t really argue with that. But it would make a lot of sense, especially if they’re otherwise balancing PCs the same way they balance monsters.

Its the only way it kinda makes sense at least from what im seeing, it goes back to my post that even if they are fighting more then 1 enemy, common formations can lead to it missing more times than not making it fishier for them.

 

[Vaalingrade]

pick one and only one

Powered armor with integrated railguns.

 

[Clint_L]

My compliments to the OP - there is a lot to unpack there, but it already has me thinking about class balance differently.

 

[ECMO3]

I mean, you're definitely and unquestionably wrong if you think WotC aren't trying to balance the classes, and don't have formulas for doing so. That's just a serious error on your part if you believe that. It's patently untrue.

I think classes were well balanced in 4E. I do not believe balancing classes is a central design theme of 5E, do not believe it should be, and if it is in fact a central design theme they did a very poor job of it.

They purposefully undid many of the things in 4E that provided balance.

That is my opinion on this. To be "unquestionably" wrong would require irrefutable evidence to the contrary and I have not seen that. What evidence I have seen, both in play and in the expansion of 5E material, actually strengthens my opinion on this.

This is obviously also a terrible opinion which goes against those of at least 90% of actual D&D players, and your logic for it absolute caveman stuff, stuff that was outdated in the 1990s, let alone any later period. It's obvious nonsense-logic in 5E.

I would say that it is an unpopular position certainly. However, while it is unpopular, I do not believe any empirical evidence actually supports the idea that balance is good.

4E was by far the most balanced version of D&D, it was also the least popular version. While that is anecdotal, I don't know of any evidence to the contrary.

Tashas and SCAG undoubtedly made the game more unbalanced, the first with subclasses that are OP compared to other subclasses in a class and the second with mostly subclasses that were objectively weaker. Yet I think both of these publications improved the game and made it more fun and the elements that made it more unbalanced are some of the most popular parts of those publications.

Finally, I will offer the fighter paradigm. Fighter is overwhelmingly the most popular class and people playing fighters generally have fun and continue playing fighters when other objectively more powerful classes are available.

I recognize that most players believe balance is good, but I respectfully disagree with them and have yet to see any evidence that makes me believe this is actually true.

 

[Vaalingrade]

4E was by far the most balanced version of D&D, it was also the least popular version. While that is anecdotal, I don't know of any evidence to the contrary.

Why continually make statements with admittedly zero proof? Ten years after the fact. What does this achieve?

 

[Charlaquin]

4E was by far the most balanced version of D&D, it was also the least popular version. While that is anecdotal, I don't know of any evidence to the contrary.

This is incorrect. According to everyone who had access to the data, 4e continued the pattern of each new edition of D&D outperforming the preceding edition.