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

[pemerton]

There's also the aforementioned network effects, and people...well, for lack of a better term, staking part of their identity on the form of the game.

The bitter and acrimonious debates, particularly over what is permitted to count as "D&D," speak to a vein of identity that is bound up in being "a D&D player." In effect, for some, I think it flat doesn't matter whether the game tries to be more enjoyable, nor whether it tries to solve issues with its design. For these folks, the only thing that matters is having their identity validated, an identity built in some small way on a specific conception of D&D's essence and fundamental nature.

The network effects are part of the path dependency - they're what generate the cost of change (which is the standard cause of non-change in path-dependent explanation).

The identity issue I reckon is only a very small number of D&D players. Though they play an important role in popularising (or not) a particular version of D&D (see eg 4e) in virtue of their role in the networks, I don't think they are actually that numerous.

 

[pemerton]

I don't believe that's a reasonable conclusion.

Druids are at the bottom of that list. Does ANYONE genuinely believe that the druid is one of the weakest classes? I would say it is definitely one of the stronger classes in the game.

It is and it arguably needs to be because no one wants to play it.

The fact that a class is not all that popular doesn't seem a good reason to make it more powerful and hence more attractive. That just means that if/when it is played it will be overpowered!

I mean, it's not as if any table's game of D&D will suffer because no one at the table cares to play a druid.

 

[pemerton]

What do we mean by Balance here? Everyone just assumes combat. Fighters are pretty much fine in combat.

Take the following situations for a level 17 party.

• You need to find the location of the prison of the fallen Angel who stole the key to the dead gods prison.
• You need to negotiate with one of the major powers of the planes to find out how you can get in and out of this prison.
• You need to research how the dead god was killed and imprisoned the last time he threatened the multiverse, which also means finding the one library in the multiverse where record of him has not been wiped from existence.
• Once you reach the prison of the fallen Angel you need to find your way through the magical labyrinth created by the Lady of Pain, out of the fallen Angels own shame and past to reach it's centre.
• In order to do all of the above the party must plane hop and travel to diverse locations.

How many of these encounters/ situations can the Fighter usefully contribue to?

These are the sort of situations the 3e tier system had in mind when the tier system was made. It certainly wasn't just about combat.

They can at least potentially contribute to all except the last one as they seem like situations that would involve some skill checks. The last one seems to be clear 'requires a spell' territory though. But for example the sage fighter I suggested earlier would be handy for several of these as they would have knowledge of history of the situation and could effectively research related information.

This is something I don't quite get. Why is spell casting necessary to travel to diverse locations, including other planes? Or to put it another way, how is a group of D&D players meant to work out that an ability/skill check - probably Intelligence (Arcana) - can't be used to find a way between planes?

Page 5 of the Basic PDF talks about the fundamental importance of magic, and links it to chapters 10 and 11 (ie not the chapters about ability checks). But how do we know that it needs magic, in that sense, to travel between planes? Why can't a fighter use a skill check to find a magical crossing or portal?

 

[ph0rk]

Page 5 of the Basic PDF talks about the fundamental importance of magic, and links it to chapters 10 and 11 (ie not the chapters about ability checks). But how do we know that it needs magic, in that sense, to travel between planes? Why can't a fighter use a skill check to find a magical crossing or portal?

I'd say this is because the spell already exists, and the sorts of things skill checks can uncover are left deliberately vague. (See also: Horizon Walker).

Of course, even if Arcana did the job, going off point buy and the stat that governs Arcana, a fighter might not be making that check even if the DC were made plain for them.

This is something beyond the thread (and should be its own thread), but the skill system being linked to attribute scores with important skills not evenly distributed across stats characters are likely to boost means that some classes just have naturally better access to the skill check game. Yes, you can build a fighter that is pretty good at Arcana (great, even, if you pump int and take Skill expert), but you are spending considerable resources to do it, and that is but one skill.

I think it is exactly the vagueness of how skills work in 5e (particularly, but not entirely, social skills) that means it is a less discussed balance domain than spellcasting, but it is an important one.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

This is something I don't quite get. Why is spell casting necessary to travel to diverse locations, including other planes? Or to put it another way, how is a group of D&D players meant to work out that an ability/skill check - probably Intelligence (Arcana) - can't be used to find a way between planes?

Page 5 of the Basic PDF talks about the fundamental importance of magic, and links it to chapters 10 and 11 (ie not the chapters about ability checks). But how do we know that it needs magic, in that sense, to travel between planes? Why can't a fighter use a skill check to find a magical crossing or portal?

You're correct, that indeed seems like a perfectly valid thing to do. I personally removed the plane shift spell from my game, so any travelling to other planes requires finding some sort of portal or liminal zone. But basically this is one of those things where you can either have an entire adventure about it, or if you have a wizard with the spell, and they can just snap their fingers and skip the whole thing. The former seems eminently more fun to me. I really feel that these sort of 'skip the adventure' spells are the the big problem, I'm not so fussed about smaller stuff.

 

[Sithlord]

In oD&D and AD&D a level 1 fighter was explicitly a veteran.

That said sorcerers and warlocks can easily be entirely inexperienced at level 1. But few other classes.

Have u looked at the starting age of a wizard in 1E, mid 30s. It was explained that it took decades to be able to learn to cast a first level spell. That’s why I don’t like the ease of multiclassing for 3E and 5E.

 

[Sithlord]

They may all be the same class(I don't agree, because I view Paladins and Rangers as warriors), but they are not all the same subclass. Having the Champion is not a problem. That's the subclass for the Lazy/new player.

Not necessarily lazy/new player. It could be for a guy that just finished a very long stressful day and just wants to hit something hard and beat someone senseless. Yes I have had days where I came in to play and looked at the wizard and told him to let me know who to hit hard because I’m so tired and stressed I may take it out on the mouthy nobles son. And Sometimes you just want a simple class where you don’t worry too much about rules and you can just focus on the story of the game. Both have their appeal. But I agree it is great for new players. I dread the person that has never played before and decides to start with wizard.

 

[ph0rk]

It could be for a guy that just finished a very long stressful day and just wants to hit something hard and beat someone senseless.

It would be nice if the subclass was actually better at that than it is.

 

[pemerton]

You're correct, that indeed seems like a perfectly valid thing to do. I personally removed the plane shift spell from my game, so any travelling to other planes requires finding some sort of portal or liminal zone. But basically this is one of those things where you can either have an entire adventure about it, or if you have a wizard with the spell, they can just snap their fingers and skip the whole thing. The former seems eminently more fun to me. I really feel that these sort of 'skip the adventure' spells are the the big problem, I'm not so fussed about smaller stuff.

I don't necessarily think an entire adventure should be required. I'm a big fan of telescoping in or out in detail of action declarations to suit pacing and interest.

In 4e D&D the basic structural difference between a spell (or ritual in 4e parlance) and a check is that the former will often guarantee a success in a skill challenge. I could also envisage - depending on context - that travelling instantly between planes might open up some fictional possibilities that are closed off by having to travel to, and through, a portal.

But that doesn't make spell casting essential.

I'd say this is because the spell already exists, and the sorts of things skill checks can uncover are left deliberately vague. (See also: Horizon Walker).

Of course, even if Arcana did the job, going off point buy and the stat that governs Arcana, a fighter might not be making that check even if the DC were made plain for them.

This is something beyond the thread (and should be its own thread), but the skill system being linked to attribute scores with important skills not evenly distributed across stats characters are likely to boost means that some classes just have naturally better access to the skill check game. Yes, you can build a fighter that is pretty good at Arcana (great, even, if you pump int and take Skill expert), but you are spending considerable resources to do it, and that is but one skill.

I think it is exactly the vagueness of how skills work in 5e (particularly, but not entirely, social skills) that means it is a less discussed balance domain than spellcasting, but it is an important one.

I don't play 5e D&D, and my two main reasons for not being that interested in it are the asymmetric rest periods (related to the 6-8 encounter "day") and its underdeveloped to non-combat resolution (ability and skill checks).

But for those players who find the non-combat framework satisfactory, I don't see that it needs to be tightly quarantined so as to make spells essential to achieve goals like travelling to other parts of the multiverse.

That doesn't respond to the other matters that you raise. To the extent that useful non-spell abilities are gated behind non-physical stats, it makes sense to think about how those stats can be made viable for martial PCs.

 

[Don Durito]

The thing about high level casters is not that they can solve the problem of travelling to another plane with a spell; it's that they can approach solving an entirely different problem by travelling to another plane, or teleporting the party across the world, or summoning an outsider for a chat.

And spells generally just work. The problem with skills in D&D is that if we do x, then we can do y, then we can do Z, doesn't really work too well, but there's not much guarantee you can do X, so thinking too far ahead doesn't work.

Spells let X just happen. If travelling to another plane is the first step to possibly solving the problem and your chance of success is uncertain, both probability wise, but also in regard to the steps involved, then you're less likely to even throw it on the table.

And also this is the fun of high level D&D. I think you're really missing something if you don't have the experience along the lines of where you prepare that the only person who knew the true name of the lich king is dead and you expect them to track down his family and investigate and finally find that his secret has been passed down over generations to a young woman living an entirely ordinary life, but instead the PCs go visit the god of the dead and negotiate with him permission to travel into his realm, find the soul of the dead guy and speak to him directly.

Would I let PCs do this with just skills? Yes. Would they? My experience is probably not. (Well maybe in Planescape) People whine about players looking at their character sheets to solve problems but that is part of the fun, people look at their character sheet - see Planeshift and start thinking "How can I leverage that?"