D&D General The Crab Bucket Fallacy

[pointofyou]

Well, having seen this discussion play out approximately (checks notes) One Hundred Million Billion Times per month on EnWorld (numbers are approximate, yet also completely true), I think that the reason that there is no common ground on this issue is that because, at root, it goes down to deep-seated preferences.

In the end, it's fine that people have different preferences. Really! Seriously, there are those that want their martials all mundane, or, at most, a little Conan-y. And there are those that want Martials goin' all Wuxia and wielding swords that are four times the length of their bodies and jumping up 200 feet to bash a demon lord in the face.

There is no wrong preference. Problem is, people feel the need to argue that their preference is a universal "correct" way to do it, usually by asserting various collateral arguments (anything from verisimilitude to balance to tradition to the need to change with the times to whatever) when those aren't going to sway people.

People like what they like. You can't force someone to like something. You can expose them to it, but if they don't like it, that's they way that it is. You can't talk them out of it, no matter how often, and in how many threads, and no matter how many different ways you make the same point.

And these different preferences are only a problem in two situations that I've seen.

One is when there are people at the table with different preferences on this and it leads to play not matching expectations. The solution here of course is to talk about it like reasonable people and figure out how to make it work. Or maybe figure out that you can't make it work in which case someone needs to deal with not getting their preference or leave the table.

The other is when someone cannot walk away from someone else being wrong on the Internet. The solution here of course is to spew pointless pixels at each other ad infinitum or at least ad nauseum.

 

[jgsugden]

If all classes do the same things, then there is essentially only one class. Each class should have their own areas to shine. Thus, if you are going to have different classes, each class should have different capabilities - with different strengths and weaknesses.

I am totally fine with the idea of a non-magical leader that buffs their allies through direction, tactics and strategy. However, that class should not be as good at melee combat as a fighter. They also should not just be a reskinned wizard. They need to be their own thing in order to have a real place in the game.

So if you come at me with a martial class design that fights as well as a fighter, but gets other benefits not typical for a fighter but found more often on a spellcaster ... I'll say that is not a good design that fits in with the existing materials. It might be an Eldritch Knight equivalent, or it may just be a gish that is overpowered. We can do better.

If you come at me with a warlord design that is less capable in melee combat than a fighter, but can do things with their leadership that we often see in magical classes (such as equivalents to bless, calm emotions, haste, etc...), I'll look to see if they're really filling a new role - or if they're just a reskinned wizard.

There is room for a martial leader class. We saw it in 4E. We do not have it in core 5E. However, what you describd in the initial post - at first blush - would not fill a gap IMHO, and I'd recommend going back to the drawing board to greater differentiate it.

 

[Oofta]

No I think the name is apt because the people using that argument are using a bad argument.

I wouldn't have made this thread if it wasn't something that I saw used multiple times. The form given in the OP is more complex than the most common form, which was like this:

1: Bob proposes a buff to a martial class
2: Caesar says that the buff makes the class OP, because the buff makes it stronger than some other martial class

Does the buff take anything away from the fighter? Because if it doesn't then, yes there is a problem. I know there's this theoretical gap between fighters and wizards, I've just never seen it in actual gameplay if you look at the actual effectiveness of the classes for doing what they're designed to do. Is the fighter more flexible? Sure, in the right campaign with the right tools and depending on the goals of the player. Are they a better fighter? No.

That's why this whole thing is based on a strawman for a lot of people. The hypothetical wizard that I have never actually seen is more powerful than the fighter in ways. Because people are choosing aspects of wizards that fighters are simply not designed to fill. Add those aspects to the fighter without reducing the existing strengths and yes, you will have an overpowered class.

 

[Deset Gled]

If you want to claim that a particular class is imbalanced against another class, you must compare against ALL classes. You can't just arbitrarily decide that only a subset of the classes are valid for comparison.

To address the main argument here, I would say that this works well on a small scale, but falls apart on the larger scale. Obviously, it becomes much more nebulous to try and compare something to "all" as "all" gets bigger. And this isn't just a question of size, it's a question of applicability. There are always gray areas of classes (or spells, whatever) designed for specific settings, modules, or circumstances. Inevitably, an argument will occur where someone claims "we have to consider this class" and someone says "we can't consider that class". Trying to make some sort of a universal rule about what "all" covers will only make these arguments worse.

But at an even larger scale, this is a recipe for power creep. Yes, it is wrong to only to consider the "weakest" (whatever that means) classes for comparison. But if you compare every class to the "strongest" class, it also quickly leads to design where every class is near the top end of the power scale. Which inevitably makes the top end more powerful, and leads to more powerful classes. Over time, what is considered "balanced" at the end is no longer "balanced" with what you had at the beginning.

The better solution, IMNSO, is to have a base set of classes that you compare a particular class to when considering balance. But good luck getting group of nerds to agree on what that set is. As new, innovative classes are released, you can't rely on just the core set. And as more options come out (more spells, domains, fighting archtypes, warlock pacts, etc), even the core/base classes will change.

Balance is hard.

 

[overgeeked]

Balance is hard.

Not that hard. Quite a few tabletop RPGs, video games, board games, etc seem to manage more or less just fine. The martial caster gap is something almost unique to D&D and its derivative games. A lot of D&D players are heavily invested in keeping the gap in place. For some reason.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Not that hard. Quite a few tabletop RPGs, video games, board games, etc seem to manage more or less just fine. The martial caster gap is something almost unique to D&D and its derivative games. A lot of D&D players are heavily invested in keeping the gap in place. For some reason.

It's because they want magic to be powerful and cool, and not enough people favor TSR and 4e's very different solutions.

 

[Shadowdweller00]

Counterpoint: Crab buckets are good eatin'.

I'm not a fan of eating buckets, personally. Too...metallic or plasticky. Maybe the wooden ones wouldn't be too bad, but those are uncommon these days.

 

[Tony Vargas]

It's because they want magic to be powerful and cool, and not enough people favor TSR and 4e's very different solutions.

But, TSRs and 4e's magic was both powerful and cool. Just TSR's spellcasting was harshly limited, and 4e's martials were also powerful & cool.

(it's like, "I can't feel powerful & cool, unless someone else at the table is forced to feel powerless & ..."
...have y'noticed that the couple colloquial words for decidedly-not-cool are, like, problematic? .... like abelist or homophobic?
... 'square' is too old... and the wrong sense of un-cool...
...er...um...
...tepid?
Powerless & Tepid?)

Also, some of these preferences are for practical purposes mutually exclusive, partially due to difficulty in balancing very different options, partially for tone and asthetic reasons for a particular campaign. You just can't always have both.

That's the kind of decision that can be made on a campaign basis, tho. Like, I might create a campaign where Psionics is completely inappropriate, just spell-casting, thank you. (In fact, I did that in AD&D, threw out psionics and replaced it with a School of Mysticism... I was quite the ambitious nerd back in the day, I doubled the number of schools.)
That doesn't mean I'm pleased that WotC never added not-magic style psionics to 5e. Lots of campaigns and setting do call for psionics that's notionally & mechanically distinct from magic, and why should I begrudge others their fun?

Having it supported in the system doesn't force anyone to actually use it.

 

[Micah Sweet]

But, TSRs and 4e's magic was both powerful and cool. Just TSR's spellcasting was harshly limited, and 4e's martials were also powerful & cool.

(it's like, "I can't feel powerful & cool, unless someone else at the table is forced to feel powerless & ..."
...have y'noticed that the few familiar words for decidedly-not-cool are, like, problematic? .... like abelist or homophobic?
... 'square' is too old...
...er...um...
...tepid?
Powerless & Tepid?)


That's the kind of decision that can be made on a campaign basis, tho. Like, I might create a campaign where Psionics is completely inappropriate, just spell-casting, thank you. (In fact, I did that in AD&D, threw out psionics and replaced it with a School of Mysticism... I was quite the ambitious nerd back in the day, I doubled the number of schools.)
That doesn't mean I'm pleased that WotC never added not-magic style psionics to 5e. Lots of campaigns and setting do call for psionics that's notionally & mechanically distinct from magic, and why should I begrudge others their fun?

Having it supported in the system doesn't force anyone to actually use it.

First of all, I don't understand the conversation you were having with yourself in the first part there. Both TSR's and 4e's solutions solve the problem, they just aren't popular. Personally, I felt 4e's method made magic less cool because it worked exactly the same as not magic, but that's just my preference.

Secondly, I agree that multiple options should be supported. But unless there's some verbiage in the book that makes it clear everything isn't core simultaneously, people will assume it is, especially if it's in the main book, and you'll have that extra fun experience of explaining to your players that they can't use everything in the PH just because it's there.

 

[Clint_L]

It's not promising when a thread starts with a straw man argument, as Snarff pointed out. I don't even want to talk about a warlord class, as that's just not happening. As for fighters and wizards...we have plenty of threads on that already. Suffice to say that not all of us see the massive disparity that some very active posters on the subject do.