D&D General Chris just said why I hate wizard/fighter dynamic

[UngainlyTitan]

I still feel 99% of all decisions made about the creation of 5e can be summed up by asking "if you could make one last definitive edition of D&D that summarized everything that came before and do it before Hasbro pulled the plug on the game permanently, what would you want it to look like?"

Mike Mearls pretty much said as much in one of the early interviews on this. He was referring to this edition as the ever green edition.

 

[Remathilis]

Mike Mearls pretty much said as much in one of the early interviews on this. He was referring to this edition as the ever green edition.

I honestly think that WotC didn't think 5e would be anything but a moderate success and would get a few supplements and adventures a year, but that failure of 4e to grow the brand into a premium Hasbro brand (the goal of 4e) left them just hoping the old girl would hold its spot as a big fish in a small pond. I don't think anyone expected it to grab the cultural zeitgeist like it did thanks to CR and streaming, and now they are reevaluating the game less as a game on permanent life support and more as that premium brand they wanted 4e to be.

Ironic in a way.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I still feel 99% of all decisions made about the creation of 5e can be summed up by asking "if you could make one last definitive edition of D&D that summarized everything that came before and do it before Hasbro pulled the plug on the game permanently, what would you want it to look like?"

Yeah, probably. And most part it worked pretty damn well.

 

[Aldarc]

I agree. It seems like they leaned into old school dungeon crawls way too much.

WotC (particularly Mearls) was trying to court/woo the hot OSR scene back to D&D. (Spoilers: Overall, it didn't work.)

 

[tetrasodium]

Mike Mearls pretty much said as much in one of the early interviews on this. He was referring to this edition as the ever green edition.

That is really o5e's biggest self inflicted injury. Rather than making any changes that might invalidate something they just keep piling on more half measures that tinker around the edges. You can see it in xge's crafting rules, the excuses for why rests are difficult in toa/rotfm & so much else.

 

[Minigiant]

In my opinion, a lot of these issues go back to when designing 3e WotC made Hit Point progression go for all 20 levels. 1-2e only had HD go to level10 or so with maybe a +1 or 2 HP per level after that.

Much of the intention was that around levels 10 or so the PC's will move on to domain play. But Domain play was firmly dropped by the time 3e came out.

The continued HP progression has caused math scaling issues in the game that WotC has never fully been able to get a handle on. Combine that with high level magic that is virtually impossible to account for in module design, and you get the virtually total lack of support for high level play.

I feel that part of the solution would have been to go back to 1-2e style HP progression, as it would have flattened out a lot of the math of high level PC's and Monsters. But I really don't see WotC walking that back for a variety of reasons.

Actually that's that not the problem. HP is fine.

Here's the thing, if you look at the damage of a 1st level spell and a 9th level spell...

Then look at the number of attacks a 1st level fighter and a 20th level fighter.

The 20th level fighter has too few attacks.

The 20th level fighter should have 6-10 attacks BASE with over 15 attacks with action Surge.

THAT'S the problem.

If the fighter progressed in combat like how the wizard progressed in magic effect, it would be the most annoying and unbearable class with its thirty minute turns attack fifteen times and moving hundreds of feet.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Actually that's that not the problem. HP is fine.

Here's the thing, if you look at the damage of a 1st level spell and a 9th level spell...

Then look at the number of attacks a 1st level fighter and a 20th level fighter.

The 20th level fighter has too few attacks.

The 20th level fighter should have 6-10 attacks BASE with over 15 attacks with action Surge.

THAT'S the problem.

If the fighter progressed in combat like how the wizard progressed in magic effect, it would be the most annoying and unbearable class with its thirty minute turns attack fifteen times and moving hundreds of feet.

And how many of those 9th level spells can the caster cast..?

 

[Minigiant]

And how many of those 9th level spells can the caster cast again..?

How many action surges does a fighter have?

4-5 Surges a day = 5 6th-9th level spells?

 

[DND_Reborn]

How many action surges does a fighter have?

If you follow the typical 2 short rest max per long rest:

6 surges vs. 6 spells of 6th-9th levels at level 20.

At level 17:

6 surges vs. 4 spells (6th-9th)

But then the Fighter doesn't have Extra Attack (3) so it is relatively even IMO.

 

[Guest 7034872]

I'm going to come clean on something here. For years now I've not seen much force to the complaints about game balance vis-à-vis caster classes and martial classes, even granting that 5e has plenty of imbalance in that area. Assuming all party members are working together and prefer working together instead of against each other, why should it really matter so much that one player can do lots more than another so long as all players consistently get to make important, meaningful contributions to the adventure's progress? I used to play characters who were four or five levels below other players and never minded doing it. To me, actually, it kind of made the whole thing more fun, you know? My thinking was, "Okay, so here I am playing a guy like Pippin while Jeff is playing Aragorn, son of Arathorn; this is awesome!"

In 1e, we regularly had some players advance much faster than others just on account of the fact that gold pieces converted directly into experience points. None of us objected to that; we found it plausible and helpful to the overall story.

So let's just grant the premise that Wizards are OP when compared against Fighters. So what? So long as they aren't so badly overpowered that no one ever wants to play a Fighter anymore (and in my group, anyway, we've not had that problem), what's the big deal? Balance, schmalance: is everyone having fun? If the answer to that is "Yes," then I'm satisfied.