D&D 5E Spellcasters and Balance in 5e: A Poll

[Flamestrike]

How is the GM in charge of when the campaign ends?

Because in most cases when that happens, its the DM bailing on the campaign, and not the players in unison bailing on it.

I also don't follow how the GM is in charge of encounters per rest.

Doom clocks, rest variants, environmental challenges, or just 'nope'.

If your DMs have no control over the 5MWD, that DM probably shouldn't be running games at all.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Who? I didn't read all 24 pages...did I miss something? I missed something, didn't I. Yeah...I missed something.

The Oberoni fallacy is a commonly-used (informal) fallacious argument, wherein a person asserts that, because the issue can be patched around with house-rules or other forms of DM intervention, there is no issue with the rule in question.

You haven't quite committed it, as you admitted there IS an issue and you'd like to see it addressed. But you're getting very, very close to doing so, in that you'ree basically saying, "everyone who runs 5e should be willing to adjust any of the rules at any time, so this shouldn't actually be an issue in practice."

The 'fix' doesn't have to be a complete re-write or anything even noticeable. For example, the one idea of just "Battlemasters get a bonus number of Superiority Dice equal to their Intelligence Modifier". Done. It's the least intrusive and requires zero rules adjustments. It's, effectively, like the PC just taking a Short rest...once a day for 'free'.

Even adjustments as small as this have gotten pushback when I've requested them. Heck, something as incredibly minor as, "Can I get History proficiency as a Dragonborn, because Dragonborn kind of suck and I like the History skill for flavor reasons?" tends to get either firm "no" or suspicious "what con are you trying to pull" questions a significant majority of the time. It's part of why I've mostly stopped applying for 5e games (alongside the aforementioned "it takes 2-3 sessions minimum to reach level 2, let alone get into the actually interesting levels.")

For Players that "disapprove of..." houserules/homebrew, I always ask myself: "Er...just why are you playing this in stead of a computer game then?". One of the major points of a TTRPG is that it isn't set in stone and that the Players and DM's use their imaginations to do, well, whatever. Not "approving of" houserules is like someone not "approving of" someone choosing to use a blue pen over a black pen when signing their name. It's just...weird...

Whether it is weird or not, it's a demonstrable thing I've experienced while looking around for 5e games. I don't know anyone I can game with IRL, and I'm more comfortable gaming online, so I have to apply to offered games. I've found that online gaming for 5e isn't meaningfully different from what it was like back in the days of 3e, nor from what Pathfinder games are like today. Most DMs want to run the rules purely as-written, or exclusively with their personal set of modifications and nothing else, not changing these things over the course of a campaign. Players that request third-party or self-made content are almost always denied, even if the DM in question has no actual problem with the design of the content in question.

Doom clocks, rest variants, environmental challenges, or just 'nope'.

If your DMs have no control over the 5MWD, that DM probably shouldn't be running games at all.

Oh, if this is the case then there's no point discussing the aforementioned Wizard vs Fighter. If you don't believe the 5MWD is even potentially an issue, we literally cannot discuss the balance question in the first place. I appreciate you being forward with this, it saves me rather a lot of time and proverbial ink, as it were. I promise I'm not being flippant when I say that. If we disagree on such fundamental things, trying to play around with far more extended elements is just going to frustrate both of us, and I'd rather not waste your time and mine with pointless frustration.

 

[Minigiant]

It's not even a 5MWD issue. Once the players walk outside a dungeon or danger zone, maintaining 6-8 encounters a day is rather hard. Creating an interesting campaign for 13+ levels is not easy. Keeping players from trap building while shifting spotlight isn't easy. So D&D shouldn't assume every DM is an expert at the game and skilled at major fiddling with it by default.

That's why the whole martial/caster discussions keep happening

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I chose 2, but with a grain of salt.
I think combat should be fun for everyone, because it takes a large part of total playtime. So if one is sitting around doing nothing useful is bad.
Spellcasters should be at least useful to control the tides of battle or helping or hindering enemies.
But more importantly, spellcasters and the rogue should be able to prevent combat at all or start with favourable conditions (surprise, light, high ground etc.)
They should also be a bit like a swiss army knife. Not the best at combat, but always being able to contribute by chosing the right spells. While a martial character with the right weapon can goe toe to toe with the right enemy, there might be enemies that need to be adressed differently.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

It's not even a 5MWD issue. Once the players walk outside a dungeon or danger zone, maintaining 6-8 encounters a day is rather hard. Creating an interesting campaign for 13+ levels is not easy. Keeping players from trap building while shifting spotlight isn't easy. So D&D shouldn't assume every DM is an expert at the game and skilled at major fiddling with it by default.

That's why the whole martial/caster discussions keep happening

Use optional healing rules... Yes, there is an issue with the base assumtion of 6 to 8 combats a day outside dungeons. Take the slow healing option and it all goes away... and it is not even a house rule, because it is explicitely mentioned in the DMG.
I think those optional rules should be more prominently featured and discussed in the PHB.
And maybe a different default rule should be in place.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Verging dangerously close to Oberoni there.

Edit: Also, very importantly, assuming that any putative 5e DM is willing to make this change for you. IME, 5e DMs are much less willing to make major changes like this than people overall expect them to be. I've seen some who will at least entertain the notion, but the vast majority disapprove of player-requested houserule or homebrew content. I would know; I tried rather hard to get into a game where I could test my Silver Pyromancer PrC, and less than a quarter of the games I applied for were okay with it, despite nearly all of them agreeing that it seemed reasonably well-balanced. (I was actually quite flattered at the compliments....but even those who liked it in principle usually said no.)

But in this discussion people are demanding completely separate new classes. That is far more major rule change than just tweaking an existing class. I really find this bizarre, the same is happening in the witch thread. "The existing class doesn't do this one little thing I want; solution: write a complete new class." Like what? Why? Just fix the one bloody little thing that was an issue in the first place! And of course these don't need to be just houserules, WotC would update/errata/provide new options for existing classes far more easily than write all these countless new classes people keep demanding.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

It's less feats being optional and more that all but 2 "races" can't take a feat until level 4. And getting your primary score to 18 or 20 is morevital to your character's strength and the assumptions of the game. Especially if your party is not big and can afford heavy diviation of core power.

I mean the power is pretty much illusory. The GM will probably calibrate the difficulty to whatever power level your party happens to have anyway.

But yea, I agree that the feats competing with ASIs is not ideal. In my campaign I just give them both at ASI levels (with certain caveats.)

 

[EzekielRaiden]

It's not even a 5MWD issue. Once the players walk outside a dungeon or danger zone, maintaining 6-8 encounters a day is rather hard. Creating an interesting campaign for 13+ levels is not easy. Keeping players from trap building while shifting spotlight isn't easy. So D&D shouldn't assume every DM is an expert at the game and skilled at major fiddling with it by default.

That's why the whole martial/caster discussions keep happening

The designers have even explicitly said that, through their own examination of how people play, people are doing neither the expected number of combats per day (much closer to 3-5 rather than 6-8), and that short rests are happening far less frequently than intended (0-1 most days, as opposed to 2-3 most days). It's part of why you're seeing movement in the design away from short-rest-based mechanics and toward "uses equal to your proficiency bonus" that refresh on a long rest instead. People just aren't playing the game the way they thought people would, and it's specifically in the direction of 5MWD stuff. It may not ACTUALLY be 5MWD, but it's definitely "people are consistently taking long rests more often than intended, and it's shortchanging classes that were balanced around longer gaps between long rests and getting multiple recharges from short rests."

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I generally prefer more consistent uses of ability scores, but also a more even distribution of them ala PF2 or any game where there are exponential costs for specialization. Given how attainable a basic level of physical conditioning is the idea of the frail spellcaster is pretty much a D&D proud nail. Any wizard who spends a sizeable portion of their time adventuring should acquire basic physical competency pretty quickly just from all the backpacking they are doing. It's pretty much only a D&D thing. You don't see it in other games or fantasy fiction not directly inspired by D&D.

Yeah, certainly true. I wish the rules better supported having more well-rounded characters. They encourage hyper focusing on one thing far too much, and I feel 4e did this in certain ways even more with how defences and variant attack ability feats worked. But even in 5e it irks me how easy it is for example to completely dump strength even as a physical warrior. Leads to a bizarre situation where characters are either super strong (they use a strength weapon) or miserably weak (they don't.) No one is just 'kinda fit' which is probably the most common state of an adventurer in most fiction.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

But in this discussion people are demanding completely separate new classes. That is far more major rule change than just tweaking an existing class. I really find this bizarre, the same is happening in the witch thread. "The existing class doesn't do this one little thing I want; solution: write a complete new class." Like what? Why? Just fix the one bloody little thing that was an issue in the first place! And of course these don't need to be just houserules, WotC would update/errata/provide new options for existing classes far more easily than write all these countless new classes people keep demanding.

There is a difference between "I would like the official designers to create this additional class," and "You can hotfix this class that exists by adding in an unofficial rule."

There's also a major difference between "the existing class doesn't do this one little thing I want" and "I feel the Fighter is significantly shortchanged compared to most spellcasters to a degree that it is not easily addressed." The former is a single small tweak. The latter is heavily modifying or even completely rewriting a class. Think of it as the difference between issuing errata on a single class feature, such as "Warlock invocations with level prerequisites refer to your Warlock class level, not your character level," and completely rewriting the whole class, e.g. the numerous Ranger rewrites that have come out of UA. They're fundamentally different, and conflating the two is unfair to the people asking for the latter.

(I also disagree with pming about whether that proposed fix actually solves the problem. I just gave the more pertinent and less arguable criticism, since my experience is simply what I've lived through, whereas my estimation of whether something addresses a problem or not is speculation. That is, my criticism that such house-rule/homebrew fixes are not actually that likely to be accepted by DMs if requested by players, and, implicitly, that implementing them yourself in your own game is missing the point if your goal is to play, not run.)

I mean the power is pretty much illusory. The GM will probably calibrate the difficulty to whatever power level your party happens to have anyway.

But yea, I agree that the feats competing with ASIs is not ideal. In my campaign I just give them both at ASI levels (with certain caveats.)

You have rather a lot of confidence in a GM's ability to spot, diagnose, and treat these issues. As someone with a reasonably fair amount of DM experience at this point, I find this confidence more than a little excessive. And this is me talking about a game where I am very specifically going out of my way to be a reasonable DM, all of the participants are friends of mine, and I'm the one writing a good 10% of the mechanics to begin with.