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

[Neonchameleon]

Yes, well, I have the converse issue, where I find that a lot of people are incredibly keen on class reductionism über alles, even when that means shoehorning together things that would really, really benefit from being separated. E.g., the people who say we don't NEED Paladins and Rangers, because they can just be divine and nature-y versions of Eldritch Knight; and we don't NEED Barbarians, because they can just be a rage-centric version of Fighter; and we don't NEED Clerics and Druids and Warlocks, because those can be just divine/nature-y/patron-linked Wizards with a stat swap; and we don't NEED Monks because they can just be a pugilist Fighter type; etc., etc., ad nauseam.

Parsimony is not the only virtue in game design. Sometimes, giving a concept or an idea the space to stretch out can make the difference between "functional" and "bad" (or at least dull/ineffectual/etc.; consider the Purple Dragon Knight/Banneret subclass, which has been generally panned as a pretty ineffectual attempt to kludge a "Warlord Fighter" that isn't based around maneuvers. The big problem being that the Fighter is so hard-coded to do a lot of damage by itself, have a lot of personal bonuses, and take a lot of actions personally, that it's really hard to build into it much in the way of ally support.

One interesting example here is the barbarian class. Introduced in 3.0 I find the 3.0 and 3.5 barbarian entirely surplus to requirements - there is nothing in the conceptual design of the 3.X barbarian that a 3.X fighter shouldn't be able to do. So shoehorning in the barbarian probably stole design space from the fighter and made the fighter worse.

By contrast 4e said "we've got this thing called the barbarian. What can we do with it?" And then dropped it in the primal power source, effectively incubating it into a real class that both didn't overlap with the now more focused fighter and allowing designers to explore the space. Which is how we get things like Storm Herald and Totem Warrior barbarians in 5e.

So just hacking off a bit of design space from the fighter IMO meant that the 3.X barbarian made the fighter worse. But actively incubating the barbarian in 4e meant that it's now a worthy class on its own in both 4e and 5e.

Now, of course, this gets into thorny, aesthetically-driven arguments. But parsimony is already an aesthetic argument. "Less is more" is only true when, y'know, you actually DO get more out of it. Sometimes, surprisingly enough, less is less.

And sometimes it's not this bit of the aesthetics that matter but the desire to explore them.

 

[pemerton]

Although it's out-of-vogue to say it, 4e's scene/encounter-based design mostly had solved this issue for the pacing of adventures.

Out of vogue? I'll cheerfully say it: of the various reasons 5e has very little appeal for me, the asymmetry in the recovery rules is right up near the top. It's a recipe for intraparty imbalance in effectiveness, unless the GM railroads things to ensure a "properly"-paced adventuring day.

4e has no issue of this sort. It leaves the GM with the bulk of control over scene-framing and pacing; and because of (i) the symmetrical player resource suites and (ii) the ease of adjusting an encounter in virtue of the transparent encounter-building rules, it doesn't really matter where the rests fall relative to the encounters.

 

[Maxperson]

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.)

Oberoni won't apply, because the Battle Master isn't broken. The "fix" being offered is to the desire for the class to be different, not to fix something that is truly broken.

 

[Maxperson]

Sure. We've been playing with 'gritty realism' rests recently, and I really helps with this issue. Still, I feel that six to eight fights between long rests is just way too much. I don't know how fast and how long sessions people play, but there is no bloody way I could fit that much in one session. Four fights is pushing it.

They don't all have to be in one session. You could run the game similar to the show 24. Each session could be an hour of the day. You wouldn't even need to include a fight in each session if you did that and you'd have your 6-8 encounters before the long rest.

 

[Maxperson]

But that's not a fair comparison. It could just as well be "I would like the official designers hotfix this class that exists by adding in an official rule." and "You can fix this issue by homebrewing an unofficial additional class." Fixing an existing class and crating a new class are both creating rules and those rules can be in either case be created officially or unofficially.

There's nothing that really needs fixing, though. I think a lot of DM's are still suffering from 3e and 4e syndrome where they needed to set DCs in the 20s to 30s a lot. 5e is bounded, so DCs from 10-15 should be the vast majority of those that you will come across. You don't need to be a 12th level fighter with +10s and +11s to do well in social and exploration. Fighters have multiple out of combat skills that they can choose from and backgrounds provide more. With proficiency and +0 or +1, they can be hitting those DCs pretty regularly and doing well in non-combat situations.

There is a desire by some to make them better, but that desire does not equate to the class being broken. You aren't fixing the class with the house rule, but rather helping someone meet their preference on how they would rather the class be. Oberoni doesn't apply.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

They don't all have to be in one session. You could run the game similar to the show 24. Each session could be an hour of the day. You wouldn't even need to include a fight in each session if you did that and you'd have your 6-8 encounters before the long rest.

Yes, but at least to me it would feel pretty damn jarring if in real time months have passed but in game time only days or even hours.

 

[FrogReaver]

Yes, but at least to me it would feel pretty damn jarring if in real time months have passed but in game time only days or even hours.

That seems like an odd criticism. It’s not like game world time matches the pace of real time. Sometimes it passes faster. Sometimes it passes slower.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

That seems like an odd criticism. It’s not like game world time matches the pace of real time. Sometimes it passes faster. Sometimes it passes slower.

Sure, but if disparity gets to big it just gets hard to immerse to the situation.

 

[Maxperson]

Yes, but at least to me it would feel pretty damn jarring if in real time months have passed but in game time only days or even hours.

As @FrogReaver noted, the game paces differently anyway. Couple that with the fact that my gaming group meets once a week and 2 months of real time isn't even 2 months of real time, it's really 8 or 9 days of real time and it's just not a problem for us.

 

[FrogReaver]

As @FrogReaver noted, the game paces differently anyway. Couple that with the fact that my gaming group meets once a week and 2 months of real time isn't even 2 months of real time, it's really 8 or 9 days of real time and it's just not a problem for us.

Yea, I can see there being some limit though. Game could feel boring or boring in scope just playing through 1 day over months of sessions.

I think the other way might be more interesting. Each session entails the most dramatic events over years of game time. You have that session to complete your goals. Start of next session the dm narrates the conclusion along with player input and fast forwards years into the future to the start of the next high stakes dramatic event. Players can describe what they did in that time and how they all ended up together again.