D&D 5E Why the claim of combat and class balance between the classes is mainly a forum issue. (In my opinion)

[Incenjucar]

That's essentially what I was saying. In 3e (or 2e, for that matter), your typical hedge wizard/town priest/magic item crafter/etc. gains BAB and HP and saves slowly with levels, but otherwise may be a total noncombatant who memorizes no spells with offensive combat applications whatsoever.

As a player making a spellcaster, you choose across a wide spread of options. You can optimize for damage, pursue one of the more indirect combat foci, mix and match completely unrelated spells, or play a loremaster and devote your character to divinations spells. Combat is not built in, it is a choice.

Eh. There's no edition where your wizard can't obliterate people at all times. The ability to use wands is a non-optional class feature. For wizards which can actually cast spells, combat ability is built-in but can be voluntarily ignored but you can kind of get some compensation out of it. The only real difference between the 4E wizard and previous wizards in this regard is that the 4E wizard can't memorize Bubble Bath fifty times instead. That's a legit criticism! But it can be solved by just adding to the game.

The same is true for the rogue, to some extent, which is where this tangent started. Your SA is built in, but your ability score allocation, skill choices, and special abilities can be chosen for combat or completely noncombat applications.

You can do the same in 4E. Indeed, rogues can have a lower Dexterity in 4E than they did in 2E, and will becomes nigh-useless in combat if they do so. You absolutely will end up with damaging powers, but in 2E you just got zippo instead, and aren't losing anything. It's not like you could drop Backstab damage in exchange for a higher Listen percentage, and 3E gave you a bunch of dodgy powers which 4E made into purely optional feats. Indeed, in 4E, rogues can be much more skill-oriented than ever before. A 4E rogue could be proficient with every single skill in the game at the same time by level 18, and will still have 7 more feats throughout their career to use for Skill Focus or Rituals or Alchemy. Previous-edition rogues don't have squat on the 4E rogue when it comes to access to non-combat options.

If you think having all characters be roughly equal in combat effectiveness (for their level) is the definition of balance, and you want that kind of balance, this character creation flexibility is a bug. If you don't, it's a feature. My perspective on the issue is that I wish things like BAB and health would be more decoupled from level than they are, have combat effectiveness be less baked in.

It's the definition of combat balance. I believe that characters should be balanced in all pillars of the game, combat is just the one that D&D has spent the most time working on. Has the dev team even talked about Social Balance yet? Because traditionally D&D has freaking terrible social balance.

 

[Ahnehnois]

It's the definition of combat balance. I believe that characters should be balanced in all pillars of the game, combat is just the one that D&D has spent the most time working on. Has the dev team even talked about Social Balance yet? Because traditionally D&D has freaking terrible social balance.

Whereas I definitely don't like the whole idea of breaking things up into "pillars", and I definitely don't want those pillars balanced in that way. Plenty of D&D characters are designed to be the scout of their group, face of their group, etc., and are much more effective than the others in those domains, which is fine by me.

 

[ImperatorK]

I guess being a great dancer is as cool as being a great football player, and it sure will come in handy if you score a point, but it won't really contribute to your team's success.

 

[Derren]

I guess being a great dancer is as cool as being a great football player, and it sure will come in handy if you score a point, but it won't really contribute to your team's success.

On the football field not all that much although the dexterity and body control helps. Off the field it is much more useful.
So unless you play football 24/7, which in in "RPG" terms is a hack and slash dungeon crawler being a great dancer is a valid and useful skill to have.

But according to your vision of balance, every person of note must be a football player. Sounds silly, right?

 

[pemerton]

And that is perfectly possible as long as you want to play a swashbuckling rogue, like a new player would, and not a 3D6+7 19-20x2 "thing" like you want.

I wanthe fluff and mechanic to match

As GMforPowergamers points out, in 3E "swashbuckling rogue" and 3d6+7 19-20/x2 are the same thing. The latter is the mechanical expression of the former.

Just as it wouldn't make sense to label a character with 6 STR as muscular, so it doesn't make sense to label a character who is no more effective in combat than a farmer with a pitchfork as a swashbuckling rogue.

desiring mechanical balance doesn't need to detract from roleplaying.

<snip>

I feel it's important that people are aware that there's more than one definition of "roleplaying" within our hobby. (I'd even go so far that there isn't a definition, just a whole lot of consensuses that are often left unexamined.) Anyway, the point is that people wanting niche protection or mechanical support for their concepts are not necessarily min-maxing powergamers. People can want synergy between their roleplaying and their mechanics, and I think it would be swell if they didn't get insulted for it.

I hope someone XPed this. (I wasn't able to.)

To be honest, I'm curious what [MENTION=2518]Derren[/MENTION] thinks the point of the mechanics in the game is at all, given that he doesn't seem to recognise them as expressions of the underlying fiction. (I think [MENTION=6695799]ImperatorK[/MENTION] has made this same point upthread, or something close to it, and I didn't really see an answer it.)

I know several people who have done this. They were only invested in casting specific spells out of combat. They would buff other characters before combat and would take no actions during combat. I've had wizards where I didn't even bother writing down my to hit. He always memorized all out of combat utility spells.

A friend of mine always played his rogues like Batman minus the combat. He maxed out his skills, especially UMD and just ran around buffing people

In 4e it is possible to build a PC whose to-hit number doesn't matter - namely, a lazy warlord.

Whether it is more fun to buff out combat or during combat strikes me as a matter of taste. But I find it hard to credit the notion that a combat-buffing wizard or rogue is a non-combat character (even if s/he does the buffing in advance)!

 

[ImperatorK]

So unless you play football 24/7, which in in "RPG" terms is a hack and slash dungeon crawler being a great dancer is a valid and useful skill to have.

Even non-dungeon crawls have a lot of combat. That's the nature of a game who's rules are 90% combat.

But according to your vision of balance, every person of note must be a football player.

Since when is that my vision of balance?
And yes, every person that plays football often (like for example professionally) should be more of a football player than a dancer. If you're not a football player, you obviously don't have to care about playing football, in which case what are you even doing on a football field?

 

[Imaro]

Even non-dungeon crawls have a lot of combat. That's the nature of a game who's rules are 90% combat.


Since when is that my vision of balance?
And yes, every person that plays football often (like for example professionally) should be more of a football player than a dancer. If you're not a football player, you obviously don't have to care about playing football, in which case what are you even doing on a football field?

Yep, this is why Frodo was never allowed to travel with the likes of Aragorn and Legolas... oh wait, he did...

 

[Halivar]

Yep, this is why Frodo was never allowed to travel with the likes of Aragorn and Legolas... oh wait, he did...

Technically, he was on a side quest most of the time. His player had to work on regular game night.

 

[ImperatorK]

Yep, this is why Frodo was never allowed to travel with the likes of Aragorn and Legolas... oh wait, he did...

A novel has relevance to a game... how?
If anything, Frodo would be a DMPC together with Gandalf.

 

[Imaro]

Technically, he was on a side quest most of the time. His player had to work on regular game night.

Yeah but he was there for the "Mines of Moria" adventure... and by ImperatorK's logic, along with the other hobbits, Frodo should have never been allowed to set a single foot in that dungeon with the likes of Aragorn, Gimli, Gandalf and Boromir...

On a more serious note, My thoughts are that I'm not sure the game should force everyone to play Aragorn, Legolas, or Gimli when one of the most well known fantasy characters in the world right now... isn't combat proficient in any meaningful way when compared to the companions listed previously... yet he (and the other hobbits) still adventure, are still entertaining, and make meaningful contributions (though rarely through direct combat prowess). I'd rather have a game that allowed a range of combat prowess as opposed to one that tells me what is and isn't a "valid" choice, even if I have to spend a little time playing and mastering the game in order to determine how to create the character I want...