D&D 5E Spellcaster/Warrior Imbalances Discussion

[Imaro]

Casters have both combat options and non combat options available simultaneously.

Fighters must choose whether he will be good at combat or good at non-combat. He doesn't get the power of simultaneous options that casters get.

The fighter is already good at combat... he can choose to be exceptional at the expense of utility or to continue being good and gain non-combat breadth.

 

[Imaro]

BUT Fighters can take non combat feats......lets be honest the non combat feats are mostly crap.

Sorry need something to back this assertion up outside of you just claiming its true.

 

[Jester David]

As has been pointed out, they're no longer as unbalanced, and martials can be super effective at ending fights at high levels. They're the kings of the combat pillar. Wizards and spellcasters are probably the kings of the exploration pillar then...

So they're not unbalanced. They're asymmetrical. Which is just fine.

 

[Dualazi]

How many of them are really going to matter enough to turn the tide of the battle?

Any that are second level or above. Web, Counterspell, Hold person, hypnotic pattern, fireball, haste... the list goes on. This is doubly true for CC spells, since non-legendary monsters have a hard time keeping their saves up to snuff with the caster's DCs.

And an action surging GWM fighter can show off just as many times per long rest, smacking down half a dozen mooks or one big tough critter in a single round.

How on earth are you arriving at this conclusion? First off, you don't get a second AS until level 17, so you're assuming 2 short rests per day. Second, only the battlemaster has other short-rest recharge abilities, with the champion of course being nothing but static buffs and the EK having no way of regaining spent spells, with a very slow slot progression. Continuing on my "level 8" example, they would have 6 spells over the course of the day. Third, even with GWM, you're not going to be reliably one-shotting anything CR 1 or above, so assuming the extra attack from GWM is largely in error. Plus, this is actually the wizard's strong suit; clearing minions with a single AoE spell.

Given this, i can only assume you're talking about the battlemaster, which yeah, can pump out damage, but none of the maneuvers he possesses even come close to the power of even second level spells. His 'showing off' is limited to combat (still), not as impactful as spells are, and is one of 3 official subclasses and doesn't speak for fighters as a whole.

Bonus points: If we're going off your assumption of 2 short rests, the wizard in question has 8 addition spell slot levels to spread as they wish, so the initial estimate of 1.5-2x encounter/spells would actually be even higher.

Im not sold on the 'Fighters cant contribute in non combat' either. Fighters are just as capable of roleplaying as anyone else, and have access to the same social skills as a Wizard does. They dont get charm person, but they do get more feats (so more things like Actor and the like if they wanted to be socially inclined).

...and so do the wizards. Nothing stops the wizard from also taking actor and social skills and still being better. This is because the basic chassis of the wizard allows them to specialize in all areas of the game and the fighter's do not. The wizard can also change his specialization on a day-to-day basis.

I could use my 2 extra feats as a fighter for Skilled (persuasion, deception and insight) to go along with intimidate I get as a fighter, plus take Actor (or persuasive, empathetic etc) as a feat on top. With an appropriate background Im solid as a party face.

And the wizard can put his feats toward something useful while coasting on charm person, alter self, and suggestion, to name a few.

Remember 99 percent of social pillar encounters are resolved via roleplaying (with a social DC usually at the end of it, based on the outcome of that roleplaying). Wizards might be able to charm person their way through the encounter, but the charmed creature knows this afterwards, and this comes with complications of its own.

There's not really a response to this other than "it varies by campaign". That can be the case, but many negotiations still come down to the die roll, and I've had many campaigns where the group never returns to a given location and doesn't really care about charming the gate guard to get in.

And charm person only grants you advantage to the social checks. A wizard is still better charming a critter, and then sitting back and letting the (rogue/ bard) doing the heavy lifting.

Er, are we back to combat again, or are we still discussing the social sphere?

Same deal with environmental challenges. Most of can be dealt with via a rope and a 10' pole. Athletics also helps with swimming and climbing. If you cant teleport to the dungeon, who cares? If the DM has set the encounter in a dungeon 1000 miles away he's going to provide you with the means to get there via macguffin, or it gets resolved in a montage anyway (after weeks of travel, you arrive at the dungeon entrance..).

Or, you know, the DM doesn't. In the campaign I currently run travel time and hazards are definitely taken into account and speed is definitely advantageous. I mean, with your method you've basically houseruled the teleport spells out of the game by other means, since you assume the distance element of the adventure is going to be hand-waved or otherwise resolved without expenditure of party resources.

If you have a party of fighters and the DM sets the adventure in the 5th plane of Hell, he'll be providing you with the means to get there (a magic gate, an NPC, artifact or other means of getting there via macguffin). Sometimes the macguffin will be a fellow PC (the wizard) who gets to cast plane shift and feel all chuffed about his awesome power (when all he has done is avoid the DM doing it for the party instead).

99 percent of the game is killing stuff and taking their things. Its where the advancement (XP) of the game lies, and its why the third book of the three CRB is dedicated to monsters (and not to social encounters or environmental puzzles). All abilities are framed in combat jargon (on your round you can do X as an action etc).

This is just the oberoni fallacy in full force, assuming that the DM will fix all the problems inherent in the system to get on with the run. Why would the wizard in this equation even bother learning or preparing said spell? He can just sit on his hands and the DM will ferry them to their destination anyway. So, I guess I agree with you in some sense, if the DM simply removes all the non-combat elements of the game then fighters and wizards are pretty equally impactful. In any campaign where the DM doesn't do this, this is not the case.

I'd like to make it clear though, that while I am disgruntled with this imbalance between the two, 5e has done a much better job curtailing it than prior editions, so hopefully that trend continues whenever 6e hits way down the line.

 

[Krachek]

Just dont play fighter if you dont like them.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Im not sold on the 'Fighters cant contribute in non combat' either. Fighters are just as capable of roleplaying as anyone else, and have access to the same social skills as a Wizard does. They dont get charm person, but they do get more feats (so more things like Actor and the like if they wanted to be socially inclined).

I could use my 2 extra feats as a fighter for Skilled (persuasion, deception and insight) to go along with intimidate I get as a fighter, plus take Actor (or persuasive, empathetic etc) as a feat on top. With an appropriate background Im solid as a party face.

A class should never be balanced against the assumption that you're using any particular rule option. Saying that fighters are fine because they can take feats is making the same category of error as saying that the wizard is fine because the DM can change the length of a long rest to prevent them from going nova everyday.

Outside of the combat pillar, fighters have slightly higher stats than other classes, and sometimes they can action surge to do more in time-critical situations. That's what they have to compare with the wizard's utility spells. They ability of the player to talk their way through social encounters is irrelevant, as it doesn't reflect one way or another against the character, unless you want to argue that the fighter may have slightly higher Charisma or Wisdom which the player may choose to represent by being more sociable.

 

[Imaro]

A class should never be balanced against the assumption that you're using any particular rule option. Saying that fighters are fine because they can take feats is making the same category of error as saying that the wizard is fine because the DM can change the length of a long rest to prevent them from going nova everyday.

Outside of the combat pillar, fighters have slightly higher stats than other classes, and sometimes they can action surge to do more in time-critical situations. That's what they have to compare with the wizard's utility spells. They ability of the player to talk their way through social encounters is irrelevant, as it doesn't reflect one way or another against the character, unless you want to argue that the fighter may have slightly higher Charisma or Wisdom which the player may choose to represent by being more sociable.

If you feel fighters are lacking in the utility department... why in the world would you then choose not to use feats? There's a problem... there's an optional solution to your problem (because not everyone experiences the same problems with the game as evidenced by this very thread), but you choose not to use it and complain about said problem??

 

[Tony Vargas]

And how many of you have figured out 5E uses a lot of 4Eisms.

They did try to hide it as best they could. ;P

I would prefer non-casters to get more utility.
There are a few classes that can barely contribute anything outside of combat.
For that reason, I miss 4E Utility Powers.

Meh, most 4e utility powers were still oriented more towards combat, anyway - a missed opportunity, really.

I have quite crunchy players that love combat and minmaxed characters.

And yet they keep choosing martial characters.

I did that in 3.x, too. The optimization challenge of taking a tier-5 class and bringing it up to snuff can be a rewarding one.

Besides, even the crunchy among us may /also/ like to play a certain concept, and optimize within that.

:shrug:

If you feel fighters are lacking in the utility department... why in the world would you then choose not to use feats?

Well, feats also increase complexity and, like MCing, open up 3e-style 'builds,' which you may not want to deal with, and there are some very attractive combat feats that one might worry would crowd out the non-combat or make the fighter OP in combat.

There's a problem... there's an optional solution to your problem, but you choose not to use it and complain about said problem??

Feats are a less specific solution to the problem of "5e doesn't feel enough like 3e to me..."
Fighters not having much out-of-combat utility is a little more on the order of the problem "5e feels too much like D&D" (because, seriously, fighters have always been that way, and I mean always, 'always,' not just always-except-for-4e, 'always' like most perennial D&Disms).
Which is a more problematic sort of problem.

Even so, you /could/, say, lift specific feats and make them into class features of the fighter, perhaps replacing those two extra ASIs.

These situations are ones in which magic actually feels like magic. If every person can do things which mimic the effects of such magic then they aren't magical anymore.

But what happens when the meta game tells savvy players that a Bard, Cleric, Druid, Wizard party makes the best party and everyone is throwing around magic?

You don't have to worry so much about intra-party balance?

(Also, I doubt that's definitively the best party: I'm sure there are arguments for weighting it more towards Wizards, including a Warlock, having two or more Clerics with different Domains, even throwing in a Paladin, perhaps...)

 

[The Crimson Binome]

If you feel fighters are lacking in the utility department... why in the world would you then choose not to use feats? There's a problem... there's an optional solution to your problem (because not everyone experiences the same problems with the game as evidenced by this very thread), but you choose not to use it and complain about said problem??

I didn't say that there was a problem. I said that if there was a problem, then the existence of feats as an optional rule does not negate the fact that the problem exists.

There are plenty of reasons to not use the feats subsystem in this edition. Even if you assume that fighter utility is a real problem, allowing feats is a big decision that can have a lot of ramifications elsewhere in the game.

 

[FrogReaver]

The fighter is already good at combat... he can choose to be exceptional at the expense of utility or to continue being good and gain non-combat breadth.

As if the caster can't do this? The fighter gets 1 feat more than the caster for most of the game. You think 1 feat and maybe double single target damage compared to the caster really make up the difference?