Nod. The 6-8 encounter guideline /is/ intended to balance casters and non-casters. Casters now have at-wills that are pretty decent, so it takes a lot of rounds of casters falling back on cantrips to balance out the few rounds they spend casting spells. Frankly, I'm not convinced 6-8 will remain sufficient into double-digit levels, but, if your point is that there's not enough healing to see a party through that many encounters, the 'solution' should probably be more HD, not more spells, because HD are only used for healing, while spells can be used for anything.
Our DM is adding some house rules for the medicine skill and the healing kit. Combined with PC creation of healing potions (and presumably a few other DM aids like healing potions), it'll help.
Level 1 /is/ probably off - for the sake of tradition - you're also not level one for very long. Maybe you could try your analysis at level 5?
Sounds like a plan. Many games reach level 5, and level 5 is a major power boost level for PCs, so if it is off there, it will be off at levels that do not get a lot of boosts. Probably be a couple of days before I can get to this.
4e illustrated a /lot/ of things (for instance, that you could balance martial classes and casters), but that wasn't one of them.
Sure it was. 3x3 blasts tended to not attack many foes because of small area and the problem with attacking allies. Without forced movement, 2 was common, 3 was more rare. This was mitigated via PC synergies of pushing, pulling, and sliding foes where some PCs set up the AoE PCs. 5E doesn't really have much forced movement (pushing being the main one and then often only 5 feet).
The 5E fireball is huge, even when not in the hands of an Evoker. Approximately 78 squares in a square grid system. Kick open the door, hold the doorway, caster fills room with fire, foes 50% or more hurt. Mop up.
Burning Hands is so much more limited at 6 squares.
How many foes you can catch in an are depends on the circumstances of the battle and the size and tactics of the foes.
Few. 6 max. Are NPCs really going to pile up in a 6 square triangle? Doubtful. And this is where theater of the mind conflicts with grids and miniatures. A DM might be way overgenerous in allowing 3 or 4 foes in the blast in TotM where that would probably happen a lot less in a grid. In our game with hexes, this cone is super easy. 1 hex, 2 hexes, 3 hexes. If foes are not in the 6 hex triangle, then they are not.
Even with a front line fighter and an evoker with the fighter being surrounded by 6 foes, the most foes an evoker can get is 4 in a 6 hex cone. It's impossible to get 5 or 6. In a square grid with 9 foes around him, the most foes is 5.
How often is a fighter totally surrounded like this? Evokers in either system are typically limited to 3. Non-evokers, 2.
Frankly, in TotM, it also depends on the DM's approach. Some DMs may be a lot more generous than others. You might get anything from, "sure, you can hit all 5 orcs" to "you can't possibly cast that spell without hitting your allies."
Yup. Just one of many reasons I dislike TotM, but to each his own.
What you're missing is that what you're lamenting as 'boring' for the casters, because they're stuck doing it /some of the time/, is what non-casters do /all the time/.
No, I totally get that. My point is that the caster does 25%, 0%, 25%, 25% in four rounds. The non-caster does 50%, 50%, 0%, and 50% in four rounds. It feels like the caster is not doing as well (in addition to the fact that he isn't). And I would be totally ok with that in a 3 encounter day where the caster does 2 major in combat spells (in the case of the cleric, 2 spells, in the case of the wizard, 1 mage armor and 2 spells).
In a 3 encounter day, that's 2/3rds of the encounters and 2/9th of the rounds. In a 6-8 encounter day, that's 1/3rd to 1/4th of the encounters and 1/9th to 1/12th of the rounds. That's a lot of spamming.
I totally get that the melee guy is spamming, but a) he chose to be a melee guy, so he probably doesn't mind, and more importantly, b) he's being a lot more productive.
Greater contributions tend to be more fun than lesser contributions, especially when those lesser contributions are a significant (80+%) portion of the time. It's like the player who gets talked over by other more exuberant or talkative players. He might feel like he is not contributing as much due to circumstances.
That is another serious issue. In AD&D, there were six save categories, with some classes better at some than others, but /all/ saves improved with level (and, the fighter's improved fastest, giving him, overall, the best saves at high level). In 3e, 'poor' saves were /really/ poor, and the same is true in 5e. (Even in 4e, you had to pay a lot of feat taxes to keep one or two of your non-AC defenses from falling behind.)
Ring of Protections for everyone!!!
Btw, don't get me wrong. I like 5E balance for the most part. I just think that 6-8 encounters is going to be extremely difficult unless most of the foes are minions. Since I personally hate minion fights and I prefer 6-8 encounters, I do think that in order to get my comfort zone of play, the DM is probably going to have to hand out wands and potions and scrolls and healing resources so that the PCs have the resources to handle 6-8 non-minion encounters.
PS. At level 5 when the melee types get two attacks, a foe with 20 hit points is for all intents and purposes a minion. Not because he drops in a single hit, but because he often drops a foe in a single round by one PC attacking. I could probably use the word grunt instead of minion cause I mean a foe that can be often dropped in a single round by a single PC.