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

[GMforPowergamers]

The main failure I see with some of the arguments is the assumption that everyone at the table wants the spotlight. I can tell you as a 100% fact that not all do. Some people come in with a character concept and let the game take ot from there. Their current and future actions and sometimes even dice rolls will determine where their character goes and what he ends up doing. He could possibly, through his actions, become a figure in the spotlight or, he may not. Some players don't to the table with a preconceived notion of how much "attention" they want and the game should not try and force equal spotlight time on a group.

I agree 100%, I've seen people who were playing druids prep 4 cure light wounds, and 3 cure mod wounds have an animal companion dog that they describe as a mini colly and never once roll intative, because all they plan on doing is "Hold action till someone needs healing"

That's fine. If that's what they want, but I that isn't what I've fought against.

My problem is (AND I HAVE SEEN PEOPLE RAGE QUITE OVER IT TWICE IN 3.5) when you sit down with little to no experience in the game and try to make an effective character, and don't make stupid choices, but still they don't work togather and you end up with a sucky character (By the way the one way no one can argue weaither the character suck or not is if you don't have fun with it)

Using comics, books, and movies is a really bad example when trying to compare it to D&D because all of those are written with certain circumstances envolved. You would never see an outright fight with Crossbones and the Hulk without any outside help or crazy lucky circumstances.

again that is 100% accurate it is an example that has it's flaws.

back to my unbalanced complaint from page 9... if one PC has a 28 AC and a +16 to hit and can reliable deal 25+ damage, and another player has a 17 AC and +9 to hit and on crits rolls 20ish damage then how do you make monsters that challenge both without over loading either?
In fiction you make minons and big bosses, and black widow and cap fight aliens on the ground well hulk thor and iron man fight giant flying monsters... in game your as likely to watch black widow get mad shooting a flying monster to no effect well Hulk Great Cleaves half the minnons in one turn


Just like I've heard many people tell my friend Joe (He almost always plays fighters and almost always complains level 8+ he wants to start another level 1 game) if he would push on past the wizard, cleric, or psion was low or out of powers he would be the star of the... but he will still point to the time in 2e (before I even met him) when he did so and ran into a troll with no way to start a fire and no way to heal... He was for years (Before 4e that was a godsend to him) his own worst enemy... he only wanted to play at levels where the fighter and casters could both play without worry...

 

[Derren]

That's fine. If that's what they want, but I that isn't what I've fought against.

By demanding that every base class is balanced in combat and that every class which is weaker than your baseline is optional and marked with a warning label you are doing exactly that.

What you seem to want is not balance, but clearer and correct labeling than what was done in 3E and I agree that would be a good thing.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

So D&D is about combat but somehow people are perfectly able to play it without combat...
Now you are just silly.
Either D&D is a combat game and people playing it differently are doing it wrong, or people can play D&D in different ways, meaning it is not a game about combat.

That's not true at all. Just because a game is about something doesn't mean it CAN'T be played in other ways. Monopoly is a game about buying properties and making money. However, if people wanted to, they could choose never to buy a property at all and to collect as many Chance cards as they can as an effort to see how many they can get before the game ends.

Is the game still about buying properties and making money? Yes. Is the game also about collecting Chance cards? Sure. However, the GOAL of the game is making money. Chance cards are simply one aspect of the game. That doesn't prevent people from concentrating on that one aspect of the game above all else. That doesn't prevent them from setting a different goal.

I see D&D as being about combat. In so much as making money is the goal of Monopoly. It has hundreds of pages of text that apply ONLY during combat(no matter which edition you look at). It has hundreds of published adventures whose content is at least 60% combat. There was a mandate from WOTC in 4e given to the Living Forgotten Realms admins that all adventures had to have at least 2 combats in a 4 hour long adventure because WOTC had determined that combat was the core of D&D and their customers complained when there wasn't at least that much fighting. It is based off of source material where the average plot is "kill the dragon and save the princess". The GOAL of the game is to defeat your enemies.

In the same way that you can focus on Chance cards and ignore the properties in Monopoly, you can focus on the non-combat aspects and completely ignore combat in D&D. That's not saying you are playing it "wrong" per se. However, you are concentrating on one aspect of the game(and not the intended one by the designers) above all else.

 

[Bedrockgames]

anks. :/

Somewhere between the strict enforced balance of 4e and the laissez faire magica of AD&D/d20 is a happy medium.

One thing to keep in mind with pre-3E editions is there was a lot more incertainty around spell acquisition. A wizard could out thief a thief, but in practice very few wizards i encountered did. There is also the issue of resource depletion for wizards. A wizard can, if he has the right spells and uses his slots for them, take on theiving roles or other class abilities, but the vancian system means he loses them as he uses them. A thief can pick locks all day long, a fighter can swing his sword all day long. A wizard burns spells and can't cast them until he memorizes them again.

 

[Luce]

One thing to keep in mind with pre-3E editions is there was a lot more incertainty around spell acquisition. A wizard could out thief a thief, but in practice very few wizards i encountered did. There is also the issue of resource depletion for wizards. A wizard can, if he has the right spells and uses his slots for them, take on theiving roles or other class abilities, but the vancian system means he loses them as he uses them. A thief can pick locks all day long, a fighter can swing his sword all day long. A wizard burns spells and can't cast them until he memorizes them again.

To expand on that Wizards:
1) Did not get extra spells for high INT, since "magic marts" are not present they have to acquire scrolls and spellbooks trough adventure.
2) Even if the spell is available still have to pass "chance to learn" roll. So there is no guarantee to get what they want, Well I expect the chance to be fairly high (60-70% for INT14-16) but still.
3) There is a limit (tied to INT) of how many spell per level a wizard can learn. In other words diversification was not always a good idea.
By all means if there is no thief in the party knock and find traps spells were advantages, but detracted from being able to do other things.
I also want to add that the typical adventuring day, at least based on my experience with "Dungeon" magazine modules, was somewhere between 6 and 8 encounters.

 

[Remathilis]

First off, that's not true. Of the classical player types, I can think of at least two (wallflower and method actor) that actively enjoy being relatively useless. Those aren't the people that post on forums, so they get no voice, but there are a lot of personality types among people playing D&D that are not all that interested in being dominant or even useful. Some people are modest and want to play modest characters, some are just along for the ride. Some are team players and like supporting their friends. These are not radical ideas.

I'm sure there are some players who never care if their PC has a shining moment; the diplomacy check or critical hit that moves the game. I have played with lots of Rides, Girlfriends, and other disinterested players as well, along with the occasional Frodo-esque player who doesn't want to shine. That is completely fine.

The question is; does D&D need to cater to them with sub-par options and do they need sub-par options to shine?

In d20, a method actor could put a low score in his prime, spread his skill points out across all skills, or play an NPC class. If I'm playing an Aristocrat because it fits my concept, I'm not looking for parity. But if I'm playing a Rogue or a Bard, I don't want to be a second-class citizen.

As far as I know, in D&D the players are not equal and there is no requirement that their characters have equal status in the game.

No, sorry, but that is bull. Every player should have a chance to shine.

If anything, I think D&D works best when it does focus on some players more than others transiently at least. Things tend to naturally balance out in the long term, but I think it's a good thing when one character emerges as the star of a session or even of an extended adventure.

That is what I'm talking about. A rogue should beat most PCs in scouting. A fighter should be the best a melee combat. If a wizard can beat a rogue in scouting AND still have magic to fireball his foes, or a cleric who can buff up over his fighter buddy and then heal himself after, you don't have parity, you have wizard and his entourage.

 

[Mistwell]

Because D&D is primarily about combat. 90% D&D rules are for combat.

ROFL

So D&D is about combat but somehow people are perfectly able to play it without combat...
Now you are just silly.
Either D&D is a combat game and people playing it differently are doing it wrong, or people can play D&D in different ways, meaning it is not a game about combat.

Naw, you misquoted him. He said two things: 1) it is primarily about combat (primary means roughly 51% or more), and 2) 90% of the rules are for combat, not that 90% or 100% of what happens during the game is about combat.

I think we can agree that a lot of the stuff that happens in the game that is non-combat in nature, is also often (but not always) not rules-focused in nature. It's people role playing, without rules-constraints (much of the time, but not always). He's saying that takes up 49% or less of what happens during the game, not 0%.

So it's not mutually exclusive to say that D&D is primarily about combat, that 9 out of 10 rules are about combat, and also that it is not a game about combat. Because that 1 in 10 rules about non-combat stuff can result in far more than 1 in 10 minutes at the table used for actual play (for role playing). In his view it takes up less than half the game, in his view the majority of time is combat oriented. But he's not saying it's only combat.

I know it's a bit of a subtle difference, but that is the difference he is focusing on, and you did strawman him by misconstruing what he said. He never said "D&D is about combat" or that "people playing it differently are doing it wrong". Those are all words you put in his mouth, and what he's upset about.

Some friendly advice, which you are free to discard at will: instead of paraphrasing what you think people said, just quote their actual words in your response and don't re-phrase it. Every time in this thread when you've paraphrased what people have said, you got it wrong (from their perspective) and change some context or removed some part of it that the poster felt was important to what they were saying. If you stop inferring meaning and just talk about what they directly said, and just what they said, you'd likely get a lot fewer people pissed off at you and sticking you on their ignore list. Again, that's just friendly advice, I am in no way a moderator, so feel free to entirely ignore it if you so choose. But, I think it would make things go easier here.

 

[Derren]

He never said "D&D is about combat" or that "people playing it differently are doing it wrong". Those are all words you put in his mouth, and what he's upset about.

Actually he did say that D&D is about combat

Yes, becasue D&D is a game primarily about combat, whether you like it or not, just like football is about running with a ball and not dancing.

And when people play a game intended for combat without a focus on combat they are playing it wrong. Just like the football players who dance around the football field without a ball are playing the game wrong.

But when those people are not playing the game wrong, like he isnsists they don't, then the only explanation is that the game, while possessing a lot of combat rules, is not about combat after all, but about whatever the individual group wants, including non combat. But he denied that too by saying that it is not his game which is about combat, but all of D&D is.

>> You mean your game is primarily about combat, right?
No, the game. D&D. Do you even know the rules of D&D? Because you're talking like you don't.

You can't have both, a game about combat and players playing the game correctly without combat.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

To expand on that Wizards:
1) Did not get extra spells for high INT, since "magic marts" are not present they have to acquire scrolls and spellbooks trough adventure.

Making magic items were hard. Infact even the power gamed mages I know of only used what they found.

2) Even if the spell is available still have to pass "chance to learn" roll. So there is no guarantee to get what they want, Well I expect the chance to be fairly high (60-70% for INT14-16) but still.

They still started with a few and got 2 per level.

3) There is a limit (tied to INT) of how many spell per level a wizard can learn. In other words diversification was not always a good idea.

I can not stress this enough...
Int
14 Max spell level-7th chance to learn spell 60% max # of spell per level known 9
15 Max spell level-7th chance to learn spell 65% max # of spell per level known 11
16 Max spell level-8th chance to learn spell 70% max # of spell per level known 11
17 Max spell level-8th chance to learn spell 75% max # of spell per level known 14
18 Max spell level- 9th chance to learn spell 85% max # of spell per level known 18

Think about that for a moment then remember back then upping stats was HARD... no level up points, and very few magic items did it.

So if you start with a 16 Int in 3.5 you could have any number of spells you want and can get your greedy hands on over 10 levels (lets say 2-12) you would get at level 4,8,and 12 free stat bumps plus could buy magic items... you could easily have a 20-22 Int by level 12.

That same situation in 2e though you start at level 2 and go to level 12 with a 16 Int you start most likely a 16 Int you still have... Max spell level-8th chance to learn spell 70% max # of spell per level known 11 at 12th level you could cast 6th level spells so you could know 11 1st level 11 2nd level 11 3rd level 11 4th level 11 5th level and 11 6th level...that's it no more...

I also want to add that the typical adventuring day, at least based on my experience with "Dungeon" magazine modules, was somewhere between 6 and 8 encounters.

In 2e we had so many house rules we never ran mods... so I can't say

 

[Mistwell]

By demanding that every base class is balanced in combat and that every class which is weaker than your baseline is optional and marked with a warning label you are doing exactly that.

What you seem to want is not balance, but clearer and correct labeling than what was done in 3E and I agree that would be a good thing.

I agree with you that things that vary from the baseline should not be labelled optional. We don't need actual balance between various character building choices.

I's better to help inform readers more fully about the choices presented, so they don't inadvertently choose something that isn't what they really intended to choose. And it's better to encourage them to work with the DM and other players concerning their choices.

What I'd like to see is simply more discussion in the players handbook about these issues. Better guidelines on character building, communication between you and the DM and the other players, and how some options are more combat-focused while others are more non-combat focuses, and how you should work with your DM to make sure your expectations for the game and how your choices will interact with the world matches (or doesn't match with) your DMs views and plans for the world and the game and the other players.

Then, for various choices within the character building process, it wouldn't hurt to mention things like "This ability is likely to come up more often when negotiation, rather than combat, is the more likely or desired result of the challenge". Or "This ability is more useful for wilderness-based travel, as opposed to dungeon exploration". Just things like that to help inform players of the typical (but not only) types of challenges the ability is most likely to be used with.

If players make informed choices to choose non-combat options, that's fine ("good" even). I think most of the complaints about this topic are people making choices they didn't mean to make, because it was an uniformed choice. Either the choice didn't work like they think it does, or it doesn't come up very often in the game because the DM isn't aware it's important to the player, or because the player wasn't aware the DM was presenting a setting where that choice wasn't like to come up very often, or because the preferences of their fellow players are so different than the player's choices that it becomes a struggle on where the party goes and what they do so frequently (and in a lopsided manner) that the player's choices never come up. Like, for example, if the player chooses negotiation abilities for his character, and several other players just heedlessly charge into battle no matter what the circumstances making negotiation difficult or impossible.

Bottom line, better advice and guidelines in the Player's Handbook, and DMG, can help with this issue more than actually trying to perfect balanced choices against each other. Some level of balancing I think is helpful, I don't think it should be ignored by the authors of the rules, I just don't think it should be the highest priority or the greatest focus for their time. Some of that time I think is better spent on better guidelines.