D&D 5E What is balance to you, and why do you care (or don't)?

[Micah Sweet]

could yo imagine... being a full castr means you CAN learn spells butt you have to find them as treasure form the DM

Full casters with few limits are what most of the fans want, so they are here to stay.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

I have to ask: what type of characters do you play in 5e? Do you play fighters and endure the pain, or do you play casters and wish WotC gave you a good fighter so you could play what you want?

Normally I DM, but when I do play it tends to be bard, paladin, or warlock. In 4E I REALLY loved my Bravura Warlord, and had a Fighter that was awesome, though the subclass name escapes me ATM (not the Slayer).

 

[Maxperson]

Bounded accuracy probably couldn’t handle it.

And I’m not a fan of how the fighting styles work, but those are thematically supposed to represent the fighter’s expertise with weapons. Granted, some other classes get those too and they probably shouldn’t. Also I’d prefer if fighters were just more competent with all weapons instead of being pigeonholed into one style from the get go.

Fighters already hit things very easily. Weapon expertise wouldn't make much difference, except to make those using Great Weapon Master and Sharpshooter. You'd see even more Fighters get those two feats, narrowing the variety of Fighters even more than it already is.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Normally I DM, but when I do play it tends to be bard, paladin, or warlock. In 4E I REALLY loved my Bravura Warlord, and had a Fighter that was awesome, though the subclass name escapes me ATM (not the Slayer).

Cool. The people who have been speaking up on this divide make me wonder though. How many people on this thread who strongly disagree with the current balance between casters and martials are also 4e enthusiasts? I suspect there's a correlation...

 

[Maxperson]

Well, they also, y'know...became landed nobility, something none of the other classes could do. That's pretty unique and also, y'know, really powerful. What with all the retainers and taxes and maybe even legislating.

Only kinda sorta, though. At 9th level the Fighter could go out and clear land not owned by another and create a freehold. At that point he had to either have made it so far from civilization that no kingdom claimed that land(which would mean few to no people living there other than him), or pray that the king didn't come kill him for his temerity and instead supported him.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Only kinda sorta, though. At 9th level the Fighter could go out and clear land not owned by another and create a freehold. At that point he had to either have made it so far from civilization that no kingdom claimed that land(which would mean few to no people living there other than him), or pray that the king didn't come kill him for his temerity and instead supported him.

It can take some time to build up a freehold, but the long term benefits are significant. When this game began, you weren't meant to adventure forever. Removing that option from the rules was a tragedy, and I'm glad several 3rd party developers have filled in this vital gap.

 

[Maxperson]

it has been brought to my attention that the DMG talks about a theoretical +4

It's not theoretical. There is a chart that specifically says that legendary items have a max bonus of +4. Since artifacts can be better, that means that you can get even higher than +4 theoretically

 

[Lanefan]

could yo imagine... being a full castr means you CAN learn spells butt you have to find them as treasure form the DM

Er...that's exactly how it worked in 0e-1e-2e, and still does. Random availability for the win! Or not-so-random availability should a DM want to keep a spell rare or write it out of the setting.

Further, being able to learn a new spell you'd run across wasn't automatic - you had to roll for success, with usually-reasonably-good odds based on your Intelligence; and if you blew it you had to wait until either you gained a level or your Int score improved before you could try learning that spell again.

Edit - thoroughly ninja'ed by @billd91 above.

 

[Lanefan]

did they not get 2 per level?

No. They got 4 (or, at DM's option, 5) to start with, as per the DMG; then [this might be RAW or just an ages-old houserule, I'm not sure] got one random new one each time they trained into a new level.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Despite the frequent complaints levelled at the system on forums and the like, players seemed content with how martials operated at the time that this data was pulled from D&DBeyond. Perhaps WotC saw this and somehow felt Fighters were in a good place while Sorcerers and Druids needed some juice?

People keep trotting this out and never acknowledge or accept that fighter is used as the 'starter' class, meaning most people start with it, and then that in turn is used to justify keeping fighters 'simple' (actually: option poor).