D&D General Which (non 4e) edition of D&D had the best class balance?

[dmhelp]

Stick to the PHB if applicable for the edition. Each edition has its own Unearthed Arcana/Complete X Handbook/Prestige Classes/Tasha’s…. 4e excluded because I suspect it would win, yet it generally isn’t liked.

 

[Shiroiken]

While not perfect, it's obviously 5E. The Ranger is often lamented as the weakest class, and IMO Paladin is the strongest, yet both can be in the same party and still feel they contribute. 3E was certainly the worst, with CODzilla and QWLF. AD&D wasn't quite as bad, but since characters used different xp charts, it's harder to pin down exactly.

 

[GreyLord]

This is a site where "new" is the in thing. If 5e doesn't win this poll, I'd be surprised.

 

[Vaalingrade]

To a certain value of 'balance', probably 1e, which just straight punished spellcasters for using spells, then gave fighting men progressively more rewards for sticking out the whole 'not being magical' thing.

But that's coming from a place of not enough information. I don't know much about BCEMI or 2e, but I cannot in good conscience suggest 3e or 5e have class balance.

 

[Guest 7034872]

SARCASM WARNING: the following is not sincerely meant:

"Clearly, the answer must be '1e,' because in there the bard was relegated to an appendix."

Nyuk.

 

[Jacob Lewis]

Stick to the PHB if applicable for the edition. Each edition has its own Unearthed Arcana/Complete X Handbook/Prestige Classes/Tasha’s…. 4e excluded because I suspect it would win, yet it generally isn’t liked.

So you're conceding that 4e had the best class balance of all editions and this poll is just to decide the 2nd best? Odd poll, but ok. Have fun with that.

 

[payn]

My experience is that 5E is the least noticeable and/or the easiest to run when it comes to class balance.

 

[Jer]

Since what we call "balance" wasn't really a consideration prior to 2nd edition at all, and was left entirely in the hands of the DM to manage, I can't pick an edition prior to 2e. Even 2e only nudged in the direction of creating some kind of "balance" of the nature that we think of, and 3e was a refinement of that trajectory into what we now would call balanced via the math in the edition rather than via advice on how to keep your own personal campaign "balanced".

3e and 3.5 were the first editions to be built ground up with some kind of definition of mathematical balance in mind. 4e (as the poll assumes) is the most mathematically balanced edition of the game. 5e has better balance (IMO) than 3e because it learned the lessons of 4e design, figured out how to rescale the math to keep the things they could keep, and use "bounded accuracy" to attempt to keep balance where the rescaled math is not used in 5e (such as saving throws and skill checks that don't scale with proficiency bonus). Since it was starting from a more "balanced" starting point and working backwards from it, it's able to be more "balanced" mathematically than 3e.

So I'd put 5e.

 

[Blue]

Basically, quadratic wizard linear fighter outweighs any other balance mismatch between the classes in terms of scale. As long as you are talking over all levels, then the answer can't be anything but 5e as the best balance - the range from the most powerful classes to the least powerful classes at high levels was wider in every other edition. Remember CoDzilla? Remember AD&D with potion-bottle 1st level magic-users with a single spell (and no cantrips) a day as very weak, and 20th level godlike casters outdoing martial classes?

Just such a wide gap between full casters and non-casters at high levels in earlier editions that it dwarfed other class balance mismatches.

 

[FangTheDelectable]

5e is the most balanced because everything does the same damage, super duper boring.