Why do all classes have to be balanced?

[Bluenose]

Atacks on par? A level 9 fighter hits AC 0 on a 12 sans bonus. A level 9 cleric hits AC 0 on a 16. Sure we could assume the cleric has magic items to make this up that the fighter for some reason doesn't have access to but the cleric is still behind the fighter on the combat tables everything else being equal.

High level casters are very powerful but not without limitations. A level 9 magic user has 4 1st, 3 2nd, 3 3rd, 2 4th, and 1 5th level spell per day. These need to be carefully chosen to balance offensive, defensive, and misc. needs. If the MU decides to allot all spells to doing one thing for the day then he/she will be very weak in other areas.

Want to use charm to avoid negotiating with that NPC? Go for it but its a resource you won't have later.

Also certain magic items cannot be assumed to be freely available just because a character is at level X or has a certain amount of gold. Spells are also much easier to disrupt since a caster must declare them prior to initiative, cannot move, or even use a DEX bonus to boost his/her pitiful AC.


Oh but the caster has shield, protection from normal missiles, mirror image, etc.

Well yes, but these take valuable spell slots and don't last forever. If the rules are actually used then casters are not the unstoppable monstrocities that they are made out to be.

The Fighter has also got his 1/2 extra attack, by 9th level. At lower levels they aren't as far ahead of the cleric, but certainly in AD&D/BD&D the Fighter is much better than the Cleric at combat. I have things I don't like about the Fighter in those games, but that is not one of them.

On the other hand, that isn't remotely as true of 3rd edition. A lot of people don't want it to be true of 5th. I have some hope that Mearls is enough of an AD&D fan to make sure this happens, but there are also people extremely insistent that a game that isn't like 3e won't satisfy them, and this is supposed to be the one edition to unify them all. And we've already seen signs, in the cleric article, that gaining abilities similar to those of a ranger will be perfectly practical for a cleric of Apollo (who should be a cleric of Artemis, of course) and unless they're going to be bad at those things, then they're going to have to give up an awful lot of cleric-stuff to not end up being strictly better than the ranger.

Whether it's a good thing to have more than one way to make a character concept is a separate question. But if you allow someone to make a character concept one way, and then you give them another way to make that concept which also gives them other things on top, that's going to lead to some interesting results.

 

[prosfilaes]

Combat balance is important mostly because a large part of the game takes place there in the majority of tables. The idea is to make combat not look like this:

Fighter: "I attack the Orc and...miss."
Wizard: "I Fireball 30 Orcs. They can make a saving throw to take half damage of....39. They only have 18 hp? Well, they all die then regardless of their saving throw."
DM: "Alright, you got 30 of them, but the other 40 fire back in a huge volley of arrows equally spread out amongst the party. Each of you takes 10 attacks. They do 40 damage each."
Fighter: "Umm...that drops me."
Wizard: "I'm immune to arrows that are non-magical, I don't take damage."
Cleric: "I have a spell up to absorb the next 50 points of damage I take, it has 10 points left."
Druid: "Do they hit my AC in Half-Elemental Half-Golem Dragon form? It's 50."
DM: "Umm, sorry, no, none of them hit 50."
Druid: "Then I don't take damage either."

That has nothing to do with any pre-existing version of D&D, so it shouldn't be a concern for the creators of D&D 5. If you're implying that's like D&D 3, let me note that a fireball does a d6 per level, so that would be a lucky roll even cast from a 10th level wizard; a 10th level fighter is not likely with a +10 BAB and some ST and magic bonuses to miss anything with 18 HP; a 10th level fighter has 10d10 hit points + 10 * Con modifier, which is likely to be much more than 40, 10th level Druids can turn into large animals, not elemental golem dragons, and creatures with 18 hp are unlikely to be able to hit a 19 AC (easily accessible by a 10th level fighter) all that easily.

Are there cases where the wizard and cleric overshadow the fighter in D&D 3? Certainly. At the same time, when I can burn one of my highest-level spell and do 40 points a piece to 8 creatures (if I caught them early enough that they were all bunched up), and the fighter can do the 120 points to kill an unharmed one in one round, (both actual numbers from last night) I don't think either of us particularly felt overshadowed. I think the difference between a wizard and a fighter in combat in 3.x is a lot less then the portrait you're painting, especially if you have wizards and clerics who buff the fighter instead of themselves.

 

[Hussar]

I just love how people pick and choose their examples to "prove" their point. For example, Exploder Wizard makes a great deal about the fact that a 9th level fighter has a THAC0 of 12 and a 9th level cleric is 16. That's absolutely true. But, a 10th level fighter has a THAC0 of 12 and the 10th level cleric is 14. Suddenly the difference is not so pronounced. Yup, the fighter has 2 better to hit. Yup, the fighter has 1 extra attack every other round, but the cleric, at this point, has more spells than he knows what to do with.

I mean, this two point spread doesn't just hit at 10th level either. At 7th level and at 8th, there's also a two point spread. Wow, for one level out of four, the fighter gets to pull ahead significantly. Yeah, that's worth seven or eight levels of casting.

It would be far more constructive in these conversations if people would be a lot more honest in their choice of how they prove their point. Cherry picking elements and ignoring the rest is just arguing in bad faith. It only shows just how weak a point actually is. If the point was actually strong, it wouldn't be necessary to play silly buggers games.

There is absolutely no reason that the cleric isn't just as effective as the fighter in combat and he still has all sorts of goodies to fall back on.

-----------

Profislaes - of that 120 points of damage in a single round, how much of that was because of buffs from the casters? How much of that came directly from the character himself and not his magic items and various other gew gaws.

Because a 10th level caster doing 40 points of damage is about as weak as he can get. Let's not forget, he's got two levels higher for magic he can dish out. This isn't his big attack, this is his minor, afterthought attack.

 

[prosfilaes]

Profislaes - of that 120 points of damage in a single round, how much of that was because of buffs from the casters? How much of that came directly from the character himself and not his magic items and various other gew gaws.

None of it was from buffs. I tend to do see the casters buffing the fighters as a good thing; in my experience it tends to make them both feel like they're involved in the ultimate defeat of the enemy, instead of making one feel like they're overshadowing the other.

Quite a bit of that was probably from magical items. I don't really see that as a problem; it's not true that anybody could use them. A lot of them are large weapons, and even if he were medium size and the weapons similarly sized, he'd still be the one getting them. For him, the dragonlance is part of his character's identity.

The CoDzilla is a different matter; in this campaign, the cleric has wrapped herself in vows of non-violence, the druid doesn't have an animal companion (as the DM doesn't like secondary PCs and will kill them), and the druid's player doesn't strike me as terribly skilled. Heck, for all the claimed power of the wizard, I frequently feel like I must be playing it poorly because it doesn't feel that way to me.

In any case, I don't think anyone feels overshadowed in our party, caster or no.

Because a 10th level caster doing 40 points of damage is about as weak as he can get.

I'm not sure that's a productive discussion line. I think I proved my point, that the given example wasn't a realistic example, and it's very hard to work from an underdetailed and proved inaccurate example.

I don't debate that a cleric or druid can be a better fighter then a fighter; I don't really see a wizard being terribly overpowering in battle, but I can see that their versatility outside of battle can be a real problem.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

That has nothing to do with any pre-existing version of D&D, so it shouldn't be a concern for the creators of D&D 5.

It was meant as an example of the worst parts of all editions with a bit of exaggeration for effect. But if you want to go over the details, lets.

a fireball does a d6 per level, so that would be a lucky roll even cast from a 10th level wizard;

The average on 10d6 is 35, 39 is a whole 4 points above that. I'm fairly certain that falls squarely in the "average" of rolls on 10d6. It would be a moderately lucky roll for someone with an 8d6 fireball, which is more what I was going for. But even if you assume the caster had 10d6, it still proves my point. The spell when it affects a large number of creatures does easily 10 times more damage than a fighter could ever output. And in 3e, this spell is considered to be one of the WORST spells for Wizards.

My example was more meant as a 2e example, however. Where you are often fighting against hordes of smaller hitdice creatures. This happens in some 3e games and applies equally in those games.

a 10th level fighter is not likely with a +10 BAB and some ST and magic bonuses to miss anything with 18 HP;

Depends, in 1e and 2e things with 18hp could be missed by fighters all the time. It's likely the only bonus you had was from stat and your THAC0 was small enough that you had a chance to miss them, maybe it was only a 30% chance, but my point is the Wizard has a 0% chance to miss. Also, a 0% chance to do anything but kill every enemy in the area of effect. This is often the case. Spells with no saving throw exist in all editions(even a couple in 4e), people will find the spells with the most likely chance to hit and use them. In 3e, people tended to use the Orb spells because there was no save for half and since they were touch attacks, they often hit on a 2. Which meant there was a 95% chance of hitting and doing full damage. The fighter often had to worry about having a 30%+ chance of hitting and had to deal with damage resistance and a number of special abilities(immunity to non-magic weapons, immunity to less than +3 weapons, etc).

Force Orb in particular didn't allow Magic Resistance, so it was guaranteed damage.

a 10th level fighter has 10d10 hit points + 10 * Con modifier, which is likely to be much more than 40

True, we don't know how many hitpoints the fighter started at or what edition this took place in. I was thinking of an 8th level fighter from 2e who rolled poorly on his Con. Average hitpoints for that character are 44. If they rolled even slightly poorly, 40 damage would kill them outright. If this was a 8th level fighter from 3.5 edition who also had a 10 con, then they've have 50 hitpoints. If this wasn't the first round of combat, it could have dropped them as well. Heck, if this wasn't the first round of combat, it could have dropped a fighter with 100 hitpoints.

10th level Druids can turn into large animals, not elemental golem dragons, and creatures with 18 hp are unlikely to be able to hit a 19 AC (easily accessible by a 10th level fighter) all that easily.

They can change into such things with the right paragon paths and feats(and a certain reading of the rules). I know, I've played a game with the guy who was in ooze form for the entire adventure. It was a slight exaggeration and that particular combination is likely impossible. It was meant to be kind of funny.

However, they can change into all sorts of forms that increase their AC to much, much higher than the fighter. The point was supposed to illustrate this without having to come up with a new monster. If you've ever been in the group with a Druid who has a Ape animal companion who wears magic armor and wields a magic weapon who had more hitpoints, bonuses to hit, and AC than the fighter, you'll know what I'm talking about.

Are there cases where the wizard and cleric overshadow the fighter in D&D 3? Certainly. At the same time, when I can burn one of my highest-level spell and do 40 points a piece to 8 creatures (if I caught them early enough that they were all bunched up), and the fighter can do the 120 points to kill an unharmed one in one round, (both actual numbers from last night) I don't think either of us particularly felt overshadowed.

I should note that 40 damage to 8 creatures is a total of 320 points of damage. Nearly 3 times the damage the fighter did in the round. You may not have felt overshadowed....but I certainly would.

Also, if both of these things are happening in the same game and the same level, then something is really wrong. By the time our fighter was doing 120 damage in a round, our Wizard was throwing around much worse than that.

In 3e, our average encounter was against 1 or 2 opponents. Area of effect spells suck in those situations. So, instead the ability to hit an enemy with a spell that prevented them from fighting back or killed them outright in one round was the best. Also, when fighting against 1 opponent, they tend to have way more AC than enemies you fight 40 at a time. It reduced the damage of the fighter dramatically while leaving the Wizard's unchanged.

I think the difference between a wizard and a fighter in combat in 3.x is a lot less then the portrait you're painting, especially if you have wizards and clerics who buff the fighter instead of themselves.

I've seen this argument before, and I disagree. Even if they buff the Fighter, the Fighter is only doing well because of them. Balance shouldn't depend on the group composition as much as it does. If classes are balanced, then a group of 3 Fighters should be able to take on just as difficult enemies as a group of a Fighter, a Wizard, and a Cleric. That just isn't the case at all.

All buffing the fighter does is change perception, not actual power. I played a cleric for years in 3.5e. I'd buff every Fighter and melee based class at the table(it was Living Greyhawk, so I never knew what my party composition would be like from game to game). We kicked butt. However, I knew the entire time we kicked butt mostly because of my buffs. It made the fighters feel better about themselves though to think they did it all. So, I'd rarely say anything about it.

A couple times when we had a really poor Fighter who was extremely unoptimized at a table, I'd use all my buffs on me instead, and I'd shine so badly that almost everyone at the table agreed that Clerics were horribly broken. I remember this one time a group of 5 people from another city visited who played together all the time. Their group had no cleric or healer of any kind and they were almost all Sorcerers and Wizards to make up for the lack of healing. In fact, they had almost never seen a Cleric, certainly not a high level one. They played one game with me where my buffs made it so they didn't take damage for an entire 5 hour session. They were extremely surprised at how much better their group did with a cleric.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Quite a bit of that was probably from magical items. I don't really see that as a problem; it's not true that anybody could use them. A lot of them are large weapons, and even if he were medium size and the weapons similarly sized, he'd still be the one getting them. For him, the dragonlance is part of his character's identity.

But it means that a large amount of his power is based on things he can't control. Have a DM who hates magic items and refuses to give them out? Sucks to be the Fighter. Have a DM who makes a choice to play in a "low magic world"? Sucks to be the Fighter. Find yourself captured and all your items taken away but the Wizard has a full compliment of spells prepared? Sucks to be the Fighter.

The CoDzilla is a different matter; in this campaign, the cleric has wrapped herself in vows of non-violence, the druid doesn't have an animal companion (as the DM doesn't like secondary PCs and will kill them), and the druid's player doesn't strike me as terribly skilled. Heck, for all the claimed power of the wizard, I frequently feel like I must be playing it poorly because it doesn't feel that way to me.

It sounds it. You have your poor players playing the over powered classes so the other classes seem balanced in comparison. I've seen this happen fairly often. In most threads about balance someone shows up and says "My Wizard casts a Magic Missile for 20 damage in a round while our 30 Strength Fighter/Barbarian/Frenzied Berzerker with the Large sized +1 Frost/Flaming/Acidic/Sonic/Shock Greatsword with the Greater Magic Weapon on hit cast by the Cleric makes it a +5 weapon does 150 damage in a round. Wizards/Clerics/Druids aren't overpowered!"

As opposed to the Wizards who are using temporary caster level increases to animate way more powerful undead than the spell should allow or casters who are scrying and teleporting the whole party to the location of the BBEG when he goes to the washroom. Or the one who casts a maximized, empowered disintegrate on the BBEG killed him with one spell.

In any case, I don't think anyone feels overshadowed in our party, caster or no.

I'm not saying this isn't the case. Not every Wizard is horribly broken. In fact, most people don't have the head for optimization that would allow them to create a truly broken Wizard. I know I certainly don't. Which is partially why my examples are so vague. I've DMed games where these broken Wizards played in. But I didn't often have time to examine every inch of their character sheet to see how they did it.

Most people play Wizards underpowered. And I'll admit that Clerics and Druids are even more powerful than Wizards. But Fighters are so much worse than any of them it hurts. Not just in combat. In combat they are only overshadowed a little bit by Wizards, start factoring in everything else Wizards can do outside of combat and it becomes absurdly overpowered.

Plus, it sounds like your Fighter is extremely optimized. The situation is quite a bit different when your 8th level Fighter has a 16 str and 10 con because he wanted to have a 14 int, wis, and char. He only has a +1 weapon because the DM hasn't given him anything better yet, he was restricted to the races in the PHB so he is using a normal sized longsword(for roleplaying reasons, his character doesn't like two handed weapons). Then replace your Fighter with that one and see how underpowered he feels compared to your Wizard.

 

[prosfilaes]

It would be a moderately lucky roll for someone with an 8d6 fireball, which is more what I was going for.

A 39 is about 1 in 50 times.

I should note that 40 damage to 8 creatures is a total of 320 points of damage. Nearly 3 times the damage the fighter did in the round.

And didn't drop a single creature.

By the time our fighter was doing 120 damage in a round, our Wizard was throwing around much worse than that.

They're 14d6 damage area effect spells.

If classes are balanced, then a group of 3 Fighters should be able to take on just as difficult enemies as a group of a Fighter, a Wizard, and a Cleric.

That doesn't follow at all. It's a good thing for mixed parties to be more effective then mono-classed parties, and the fact that that is true says nothing about relative balance.

All buffing the fighter does is change perception, not actual power.

But the problem is the perception, not the actual power. Angel Summoner and BMX Bandit is only a problem because the BMX Bandit doesn't feel effective. If everyone could have fun, one person playing a first level kobold fighter and the other playing 20th level Wizard / 20th level Cleric, then everything would be fine.

But it means that a large amount of his power is based on things he can't control. Have a DM who hates magic items and refuses to give them out? Sucks to be the Fighter. Have a DM who makes a choice to play in a "low magic world"? Sucks to be the Fighter. Find yourself captured and all your items taken away but the Wizard has a full compliment of spells prepared? Sucks to be the Fighter.

Find yourself in an antimagic zone? Sucks to be the wizard. Find yourself captured after a long battle where most of your spells have been cast and them actually take all your items away, including your spellbook? Sucks to be the wizard. The DM pushes you to complete an endless series of battles before sleeping, possibly with the help of NPC healing? Sucks to be the wizard.

Personally I miss the first round of most combats, because they usually start with a spot check (a cross-class skill for wizards) and those who fail don't get to act the first turn.

Nothing in D&D is under the player's control. It means that DMs need to think about magic items as part of class balance. Don't be the guy who doesn't like magic items and play D&D like it supports that style well.

 

[GreyICE]

I think the problem for party balance is that a group with a Fighter, a Cleric, a Rogue, and a Wizard should be more effective than a group of:

A Cleric, a Druid, a Wizard, an Artificer

And yet they really, really weren't. Despite having four classes that are all theoretically quite similar, the former group is just completely overshadowed and crushed by the latter group. The druid is simply a more effective melee combatant than a fighter - harder to hit, hits harder and more frequently (thanks iterative attacks on monsters). The Artificer is a thousand times more versatile than the rogue, easily handling every single rogue task, and becoming a true monster in combat.

So by replacing the fighter with a druid, and the rogue with an artificer, the group has been strictly upgraded, to the point where the DM would be hard pressed to challenge that group without literally just throwing multiple monsters at +5 CR for the group.

Now what if we go the other way? Fighter, Monk, Rogue, Barbarian?

Heh.

 

[Neonchameleon]

A 39 is about 1 in 50 times.

And didn't drop a single creature.

They're 14d6 damage area effect spells.

Honestly, the example was a bad one. The first thing any newbie playing a wizard should do if he wants to be poweful is specialise. I don't care what in - or whether he gets no damage at all. The only spell worth taking in the entire Evocation domain in the SRD is Contingency and a caster who's a focussed specialist in Evocation having dropped Conjuration, Transmutation, and something else, he probably isn't any more powerful than a fighter.

I exaggerate for effect. But not very much.

To illustrate, let's take the humble fireball spell. It's great for clearing out chaff. And dead is the best control condition there is. But if all 8 targets survived, all 8 get to hit back at the fighter. Say instead that the wizard had cast Stinking Cloud. Anyone who fails their save against that is out of the fight for an average of four and a half rounds (one round to leave and a further three and a half afterwards) and a minimum of three. That's a minimum of three rounds the party is either able to ignore them or treat them like pinatas. More on average or if you can trap the poor suckers in there. Even if you assume the cloud had only 75% of the effectiveness of the evocation as fortitude is normally higher than reflex (i.e. two saved against the stinking cloud) that's still six out of the eight that are out of the fight rather than hitting back until someone gets round to putting the boot in.

After the stinking cloud goes down the rest becomes a mopping up excercise. Which the fighter can be pretty good at. But it's still mopping up.

That doesn't follow at all. It's a good thing for mixed parties to be more effective then mono-classed parties, and the fact that that is true says nothing about relative balance.

It's not about being monoclassed.

Fighter, Wizard, Cleric > Fighter, Fighter, Fighter
Cleric, Cleric, Cleric > Fighter, Wizard, Cleric
Druid, Wizard, Cleric > Fighter, Wizard, Cleric
Cleric, Wizard, Cleric > Cleric, Cleric, Cleric, > Fighter, Wizard, Cleric > Fighter, Fighter, Fighter

If we want to be insulting,
Bard, Wizard, Druid > Fighter, Wizard, Druid

The core problem is that when it comes to absorbing damage (the only serious method of tanking 3.X has), the ability to cast Cure Light Wounds on yourself is enough to make you more resilient than a figher. And especially so is a druid level animal companion. And polymorph or serious cleric buffs mean you can challenge the fighter at what he does.

Find yourself in an antimagic zone? Sucks to be the wizard. Find yourself captured after a long battle where most of your spells have been cast and them actually take all your items away, including your spellbook? Sucks to be the wizard.

And CoDzilla is still at full strength in that last case. And kicking ass in the antimagic zone.

The DM pushes you to complete an endless series of battles before sleeping, possibly with the help of NPC healing? Sucks to be the wizard.

If you're running the right save-or-suck spells, the wizard can last a looooong time. See my Solid Fog example.

If I'm playing an 11th level specialist conjurer with effective Int 22 (or more), I have:

Three 6th level spells
Four 5th level spells
Five 4th level spells,
Six 3rd level spells,
Seven 2nd level spells, and
Seven 1st level spells.

AoE fight winners start at second level (Glitterdust). And even Colour Spray might be relevant if there's chaff around of less than four hit dice. So let's ignore the first level spells for now. I have twenty five spells of second level or above. Assume I kept five back for buffs and utility.

This leaves me with twenty spells. I think I can get by on casting and average of two spells that turn groups of enemies into pinatas per fight, and still pull my weight. Or combine Stinking Cloud with something like Web to keep them in the cloud until we can be bothered to deal with them. (And before you mention spell resistance/immunity, most conjurations including Glitterdust, Solid Fog, and Evard's Black Tentacles ignore SR and Spell Immunity).

So twenty spells at two chances to turn a mass of people into pinatas per fight gives me ten back go back fights in a day. If I need more than that I'm going to be very bored of combat and wonder what the DM is playing at.

(If using Complete Mage I can be a focussed specialist in conjuration for an extra spell per level making me last even longer)

Personally I miss the first round of most combats, because they usually start with a spot check (a cross-class skill for wizards) and those who fail don't get to act the first turn. Nothing in D&D is under the player's control.

And what exactly was your party scout doing? Why let yourselves be surprised? The precautions you take are under your control.

It means that DMs need to think about magic items as part of class balance. Don't be the guy who doesn't like magic items and play D&D like it supports that style well.

Or if you do try 4e. We don't need magic items for clas balance.

 

[prosfilaes]

Honestly, the example was a bad one. The first thing any newbie playing a wizard should do if he wants to be poweful is specialise. I don't care what in - or whether he gets no damage at all. The only spell worth taking in the entire Evocation domain in the SRD is Contingency and a caster who's a focussed specialist in Evocation having dropped Conjuration, Transmutation, and something else, he probably isn't any more powerful than a fighter.

Great. So perhaps the problem isn't the wizard, it's certain specialized ways to play the wizard? I mean, you're sitting here talking about how it's in the nature of the wizard to overwhelm other players, and my real-life example gets dismissed as how I should play it better. (And no, it wasn't evocation; it was a conjuration spell.)

Why let yourselves be surprised?

Thank you, Mr. Back Seat Driver. I'm glad your experience with my DM lets you instantly divine the nature and solution of the problem.