D&D 5E Balance of Power Problems in 5e: Self created?

[ccs]

The game itself doesn't care about class/character imbalance. The designers do, somewhat. Many players at individual tables care.

The imbalance I've seen has less to do with inflicting damage in combat than it does with overcoming challenges in the other pillars of gameplay.

Let's take a hypothetical situation:

The DM picks up a adventure for his mid-to-high level group (say 7-9th level). The adventure requires the PC to discover the whereabouts of the BBEG, travel there under time constraint, launch an assault on his underwater base of operations, and has a final battle inside an iceberg that inflicts continuous cold damage on anyone unprepared. The adventure is designed to exploit the abilities of a well-rounded group of 4-6 PCs with at least one martial combat machine, one arcane caster, one divine caster, and one skill-based PC.

Scenario 1: the group is well-rounded. The adventure plays fine. Divine and arcane casters handle the discovery, travel, and life support needs of the group.
Scenario 2: the group is composed only of divine casters. Discovery, travel, assault are fine. Traps and alarms are triggered, but survivable. The final battle is a little tricky with the reduction in combat performance.
Scenario 3: the group is composed only of arcane casters. Discovery is a bit harder. Travel and assault are fine. Secondary tactics like summoning prove very useful during the assault to limit damage. The final assault fails because the environmental damage takes its toll. The PCs manage to escape with the last of their spells rather than TPK.
Scenario 4: the group is composed of martial combatants and skill-based classes only. Discovery is a challenge that ends up burning a lot of time. Travel duration exceeds the available time so the mission fails. That's OK though because even if the group managed to reach the underwater base, they can't survive the trip to the entrance and the environmental damage inside the iceberg would likely cause a TPK since escape options for the group are limited. The actual assault and final fight would have been a breeze though, should the PCs be handed a route to it!

Of course it helps you make your point that those hypothetical players in #4 are apparently just stupid....

 

[MostlyDm]

Of course it helps you make your point that those hypothetical players in #4 are apparently just stupid....

Yeah, I proposed an alternative for how the all martial version of this might play out on the first page.

 

[dco]

Some will find a problem and others not, but its doesn't mean the problem is self created.
I've seen this in play, 3.5 edition, a fighter, a rogue with chains, a druid and a wizard. The player who had the fighter was not happy, he was helping the team but he had few skills to do things out of combat and in a fight he was the worst by a huge margin.

Yes, I find the feats break balance, I don't like the design of multiclass and I'm not happy with the DEX vs STR status.

 

[Dualazi]

We never asked the question as kids. We played what sounded fun and interacted with the world. There was a little bit of competition later and perhaps jealousy when someone had multiple 18s, but we played what we wanted. With magic-users being obvious power brokers in the old days, there was less separation in my experience when exceptional strength was factored out. You could survive or die with back luck regardless and likewise contribute to the party (--in my group’s experience!).

Growing up I never minding imbalances in video games either, that didn't mean it was a good idea to ignore it, or that it doesn't diminish my enjoyment in replaying them down the line. That magic user power brokering you mentioned is one of the oldest on most contentious issues in my experience, and users not encountering it really isn't a defense.

Questions of usefulness were asked less often. A party wants to be able to turn undead (level draining sucks!) and everyone wants healing. If you really want healing though, a cleric is the man/woman/creature!

If you wanted healing at all you brought a cleric, save maybe a druid. Niche protection is one way of doing balance yes, but it's not a great one, I think, since there's been a long-standing anecdote of people swapping who plays the cleric because no one wants to be the group nanny.

But what about magic-users? They are all powerful, right? Yes, unless they are hit for one point of damage. Kiss the spell goodbye. Grappled? If you can figure those rules out, they may not be able to cast at all and a few orcs can see to it that your fireball dies before you can imagine it.

None of those are effective counters to wizards at mid-high levels, which is where the imbalance shows since older editions were more balanced around the campaign as a whole rather than each individual level. This is bad design because 1) it means the word 'level' is meaningless. If you have a level 10 fighter and level 10 wizards, you expect their power to be, well, the about the same level. This rapidly is not the case. 2) if you don't play the full campaign range, someone is left out in the cold. A level 1-3 campaign is boring and dangerous for casters, and a level 17-20 campaign has them solving all the problems themselves.

In short, the complete interdependence of a group was encouraged by these mechanics. It seems to be less the case of late. We can “self-heal” cast in combat without worry (save for concentration requirements). In this context there are MANY questions about the “tier” of character and their relative capability level.

The interdependence was largely forced and the classes were still imbalanced. Thieves suck in combat in 2e, hard, and you only bring one to problem solve traps, which coincidentally only they can do (baring the already mentioned casters once they have slots to spare.) That makes the rogue necessary, not fun or balanced.

With all of that said, how much of the concerns about power are self-inflicted (i.e. not implicit in the mechanics of the base game)?

There's no helpful answer here, the question is so broad it goes both ways. Some people are too finicky about balance being exact, some are too willing to blindly reject power analysis and say the DM can fix it.

Of those who complain about the relative power of characters, have you considered dropping feats and multiclassing? Of those who have dropped feats and multiclassing, is there as much concern about power imblanaces? Lastly, of all the complaints about “bags of hit points” creatures “easily defeated,” is this as much of a concern with no optional rules?

No. Aside from a few outlier feats in general are fine, and the prevailing wisdom is to go with stat bumps until later anyway. Feats also had nothing to do with the old ranger sucking, or with way of the elements Monk sucking presently. Those deficiencies are occurring at the base level of the game.

(As an aside, I am not particularly hung up on fighters being better than X. I play what I have a craving to play but want to be as capable as I can but within the confines of my character concept).

I think that's ultimately what most people focused on balance want, all classes to be useful at all levels of play. Some are always going to come out ahead, like early moon druids, but overall sharp power imbalances are unhealthy for the game in my opinion.

 

[CydKnight]

Some will find a problem and others not, but its doesn't mean the problem is self created.
I've seen this in play, 3.5 edition, a fighter, a rogue with chains, a druid and a wizard. The player who had the fighter was not happy, he was helping the team but he had few skills to do things out of combat and in a fight he was the worst by a huge margin.

Yes, I find the feats break balance, I don't like the design of multiclass and I'm not happy with the DEX vs STR status.

All problems are self created since you have the power to choose whether something is a problem, or not. If feats are viewed as something that breaks balance, it will. Feats are not a problem in my games because I have not chosen to view them as a problem. This is not to say that something should not be improved if it can be but allowing something within your game to simply be as it is can go a long way to maintaining harmony in your game. So, in that regard, I agree with the OP suggestion that balance of power/imbalance issues are indeed self-created.

 

[Valetudo]

When it comes to straight combat, 5th is mostly balanced. There are a few classes that are at the top of exploration/skill challenges, but its not as bad as some editions. Class doesnt really matter for roleplaying in my opinion. So I dont really see the problem. Not as balanced as 4th, but more than the early editions.

 

[Nagol]

So the only way to effectively discover the whereabouts of the BBEG are... what, in this scenario? Scrying doesn't work if you don't know who you're scrying for. Seems like you're assuming some kind of divination spell, but I can't for the life of me figure out what.

There are lots of hypothetical information sources. Off the top of my head: Commune, Divination, Contact Other Plane, potentially Clairvoyance, Conjure Elemental (and talk to it), Sending(ask a far-away subject matter expert), and Scrying.

And the only way to make the time constraint is teleport? Which means the all divine casters fail at step 2, by the way, as 9th level divines have no mass transit magic. And this was for PCs 7-9 so it's worth mentioning that every party of 7th or 8th level also fails... Teleportation Circle is a 5th level spell.

Or Fly + Floating Disk, scroll of Wind Walk or Word of Recall, Planar Binding (for a group mount), Control Weather (to guarantee perfect sailing conditions and best ship speed)...

Let's assume you didn't intend to limit the success criteria only to parties that have a 9th level Wizard/Sorcerer/Bard who happens to have Teleportation Circle. Is that fair to say? I'm going to say it anyway.

This is another option for how the all-martials party plays out: If we're truly all-martial, we only have 4 classes to choose from. Let's say we have a Totem Barbarian, a Battlemaster, a Shadow Monk, and an Assassin. Just because.

The rogue and the monk infiltrate the BBEG's outpost and steal documents that reveal his secret underwater lair. Since there are two of them, and they're very good at this, it's a bit of a cakewalk. Perhaps the Assassin even goes in the front door, masquerading as one of the BBEG's lieutenants. They don't even have to kill anybody! While they're there, they steal the BBEG's latest shipment of water-breathing potions that he sends to the humanoid minions who might need to visit him in his very inconvenient underwater base.

<snip>

Already took that form of attack into consideration. That's why the martial group ran out of time. Infiltrating the local lair takes longer than a couple of hours. Taking a ship without at least a Control Weather to guide the winds takes too long. Try again next time.

 

[Nagol]

Of course it helps you make your point that those hypothetical players in #4 are apparently just stupid....

I've runs monolithic groups before. A lot of the time our play circle generates characters separate and blindly. Each person brings what they want to play and we see how well the group does.

 

[MostlyDm]

There are lots of hypothetical information sources. Off the top of my head: Commune, Divination, Contact Other Plane, potentially Clairvoyance, Conjure Elemental (and talk to it), Sending(ask a far-away subject matter expert), and Scrying.

None of those are remotely guaranteed to tell you the precise location of an unknown BBEG's lair. Do you have some explanation for one of them you think would work really superbly well?

They're useful spells, but they aren't a panacea for finding information. None of them is actually as effective as, for example, finding a map to your target location.

Or Fly + Floating Disk, scroll of Wind Walk or Word of Recall, Planar Binding (for a group mount), Control Weather (to guarantee perfect sailing conditions and best ship speed)...

Fly lasts 10 minutes. Word of Recall is a 6th level spell, and it takes the caster back to his sanctuary, which helps... how? Planar Binding... what are they binding? What group mount? Planar Binding doesn't do anything useful for them by itself.

Control Weather is an 8th level spell.

You're just grasping at straws at this point.

Already took that form of attack into consideration. That's why the martial group ran out of time. Infiltrating the local lair takes longer than a couple of hours. Taking a ship without at least a Control Weather to guide the winds takes too long. Try again next time.

Longer than a couple hours? For our intrepid heroes? Please. How big is this complex? They'll be in and out in under an hour, just like the time they stole the Frozen Crown from the Dead King on the day of his wedding.

Edit: And they aren't taking a ship, they're taking Cyclops-trained Griffons!

 

[MostlyDm]

Look, I get your point, [MENTION=23935]Nagol[/MENTION].

Some stuff is harder for a party that lacks magic. That's the point of magic. That's a feature of the game, that you can have a game with a bit of a more low-fantasy feel with difficult environmental challenges, where assaulting an underwater frozen base requires a sophisticated strategy and preliminary resource gathering.

But you're going so far overboard on the other end, in painting non-spellcasters as fundamentally inept adventurers. It's pretty silly, in my view.