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

[tetrasodium]

no... I disagree.

lets look at level 5 you have 4 cantrips... lets say they don't at all scale
they then have 4 1st level 3 2nd level and 2 3rd level... plus recall 2 levels (lets say a 2nd level slot)

in a given day that is 10 spells plus cantrips. if we assume that most encounters are about 3-5 (I am going to round to 4) so if every fight they use 2 spell slots and 2 cantrips they would go for 5ish encounters. Now having said that we could also have an encounter or two with ONLY cantrips.

tasha's hidus laugh can shut down an entire target.
Mysty step is teleporting not useing your action
hold person and charm person can both shut down a target.

none of the damage spells need to scale.

shield can turn a hit to a miss at the right moment at 20th level
comprehend language can give you the spotlight at any level
Detect magic and Identfy give you a level of flexability that no non caster has

none of the damage spells need to scale.



sigh... but those trade offs for '70% damage' didn't weaken the 'everything else' wizards get

hell to the no

or... and hear me out I know this is radical...

Magical characters don't have to be better then non magical ones of teh same level

right becuse sitting back while the casters handle the first 3-5 encounters then getting to shine in the last 2-3 is SOO much better and not at all a 5 min work day issue...

i actually know groups that run mega dungeons where you can go weeks of in game time (and almost a year out) going room by room with 90% of the time being fights... do you know what classes show up in those the most... full casters. Wizards not so much (but at least 1 per campaign) but warlocks, clerics druids and bards are often seen (sometimes multi of the same one in a campaign)

when you DO see a fighter or rogue it is almost ALWAYS 1 of 2 things... multi classed or the spell casting type (actually 2 different groups I have seen multi classed fighter (eldritch knight) with a full caster so they still get a spell level when they really want action surge.

Your math is off after players are about level 5 & gets worse the higher you go.. Here's some stuff to help:

• damage breakdown at various levels & loadouts
• a google doc spreadsheet you can use to see different outputs & how the math crunches here

Martials are very far ahead even before factoring in things like how the shift from spells scaling by caster level instead of slot level combined with the continual slowing of spell slot gains at levels 3 7 9 & 11.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Your math is off after players are about level 5 & gets worse the higher you go.. Here's some stuff to help:

what math?

I showed the number of spells and talked about how there are already 1st and 2nd (I don't think I named any 3rd) that are amazing even at 20th... no math needed

• damage breakdown at various levels & loadouts

and if the only thing fighters can get is damage why do they need ANY at will damage causers?

• a google doc spreadsheet you can use to see different outputs & how the math crunches here

Martials are very far ahead

and only in damage... that's it. Wizards and clerics can buff, debuff, SoS (at higher level still some SoD) and change environments and/or the course of entire encounters

even before factoring in things like how the shift from spells scaling by caster level instead of slot level combined with the continual slowing of spell slot gains at levels 3 7 9 & 11.

you DON'T need more spells. 10 spells at level 5 is already showing that you don't need more

 

[Helldritch]

no... I disagree.

lets look at level 5 you have 4 cantrips... lets say they don't at all scale
they then have 4 1st level 3 2nd level and 2 3rd level... plus recall 2 levels (lets say a 2nd level slot)

in a given day that is 10 spells plus cantrips. if we assume that most encounters are about 3-5 (I am going to round to 4) so if every fight they use 2 spell slots and 2 cantrips they would go for 5ish encounters. Now having said that we could also have an encounter or two with ONLY cantrips.

I once posted an indepth comparison of a 20th level 1ed wizard and a 5ed one. The 1ed can easily achieve double the damage output without magical items. If you add magical items, the 1ed can more than tripple what the 5ed can do. And this is without cantrips. Cantrips are great as they lowered the power of casters quite a bit but gave them more to do than throw a dagger or darts in the low levels. The 6-8 encounters per day just make it so that casters must rely on cantrips most of the time. And cantrips are doing a lot less damage at mid and high level than a corresponding multi melee attacking fighter at mid and levels. The less encounters you have, the more the casters become unbalanced. This is mathematically sound as the game was built around that assumption.

tasha's hidus laugh can shut down an entire target.
Mysty step is teleporting not useing your action
hold person and charm person can both shut down a target.

And?????? What's the point in saying that? Everyone knows that. That has been the strength of casters from the begining.

none of the damage spells need to scale.

IF you remove cantrips, yes.

shield can turn a hit to a miss at the right moment at 20th level
comprehend language can give you the spotlight at any level
Detect magic and Identfy give you a level of flexability that no non caster has

none of the damage spells need to scale.

A flexibility no non casters need. Gold is there to buy these if needed. Languages are a thing too. Pick one different per character and you should be good.

sigh... but those trade offs for '70% damage' didn't weaken the 'everything else' wizards get

Are you jealous of casters or what? They got higher HP and thus better survivability. They lost in damage potential in the process but kept their versatility... By boosting their HP, WoTC created an imbalance. To restore the balance, just give them 1d4hp per level.

hell to the no

or... and hear me out I know this is radical...

Magical characters don't have to be better then non magical ones of teh same level

Hear me out. This is radical. Very radical. Yes, they must be more versatile with their spells than what martials are. What martials really need, is a bit more skills. Nothing else.

right becuse sitting back while the casters handle the first 3-5 encounters then getting to shine in the last 2-3 is SOO much better and not at all a 5 min work day issue...

Nah... If you remove the 5mwd and apply the 6-8 encounters per day, casters must rely on their cantrips (which do less damage than the same attack by a martial). Try it, this is what I see in my games. Most caster use about 3 to 5 cantrips per fights (which lasts around 5 to 8 rounds in average.

i actually know groups that run mega dungeons where you can go weeks of in game time (and almost a year out) going room by room with 90% of the time being fights... do you know what classes show up in those the most... full casters. Wizards not so much (but at least 1 per campaign) but warlocks, clerics druids and bards are often seen (sometimes multi of the same one in a campaign)

when you DO see a fighter or rogue it is almost ALWAYS 1 of 2 things... multi classed or the spell casting type (actually 2 different groups I have seen multi classed fighter (eldritch knight) with a full caster so they still get a spell level when they really want action surge.

An all caster team? This is an invitation for beholders and high magic resistant foes. This kind of group would simply die very fast in my games. When you build monotype encounters, this is what you get. A silence spell with a wall of force at high level will simply shut down that group in no time. Do not assume that what you see in some group is THE solution or THE ultimate examples. The same goes for me. But at least, I know that none of my martials feel less important to the group than the casters. Simply because I do not use monotype encounters (or should I say, rarely use...). Monotype encounters is a sure way to make casters shine even more unless they are stuck with a magicless environement, prevented from casting and similar things. And when a caster is deprived of magic, this is a dead caster if no martials are there.

 

[tetrasodium]

what math?

"70% damage", I even bolded it for you..

I showed the number of spells and talked about how there are already 1st and 2nd (I don't think I named any 3rd) that are amazing even at 20th... no math needed

The number of spells is not sufficient at any level to change cantrips in the way you are suggesting. You are talking about changing cantrips using a spherical cow 5mwd as justification & simply ignoring too many factors in the process to support the justifications.

and if the only thing fighters can get is damage why do they need ANY at will damage causers?

Fighters can already do a lot of things beyond damage & even have extra ASI/Feat budgets to further support doing so. The damage that fighters deal is notable because it's dramatically further ahead of other classes than your reasoning pegs it at.

and only in damage... that's it. Wizards and clerics can buff, debuff, SoS (at higher level still some SoD) and change environments and/or the course of entire encounters

Concentration, Magic Resistance, Legendary resist. The higher level you go the more prevalent those are & unlike "resistant to nonmagical bB/P/S" there is no way to ignore them with a tool that casters can expect to get under RAW around tier2 like a +1 weapon after meeting one of a few trivial hurdles

you DON'T need more spells. 10 spells at level 5 is already showing that you don't need more

you failed to show any such thing because your whiteroom cow is too spherical

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I once posted an indepth comparison of a 20th level 1ed wizard and a 5ed one. The 1ed can easily achieve double the damage output without magical items. If you add magical items, the 1ed can more than tripple what the 5ed can do. And this is without cantrips.

Okay... wizards went from over 9000 power to over 7000 power over the course of 40 years...

Cantrips are great as they lowered the power of casters quite a bit but gave them more to do than throw a dagger or darts in the low levels. The 6-8 encounters per day just make it so that casters must rely on cantrips most of the time.

and if cantrips don't scale (or as I suggested just scale less) they still have the show stoppers and something to throw all day

And cantrips are doing a lot less damage at mid and high level than a corresponding multi melee attacking fighter at mid and levels. The less encounters you have, the more the casters become unbalanced. This is mathematically sound as the game was built around that assumption.

and none of that deals with SoD and SoS or just rewriting reality... it is JUST damage...the one thing we all agree fighters should be good at.

in order to go back to no concentration and scaled spells you would need to remove cantrips entirely, drop HD to d3 and remove getting con bonus to HP above 2... then MAYBE

And?????? What's the point in saying that? Everyone knows that. That has been the strength of casters from the begining.

so the AND is if wizards get to keep up with damage why don't fighters get lesser teleports and lesser sleep effects... you know to keep up. oh wait the wizard strength is things fighters can't do at all... but the fighter strength needs to be something tthe wizard can do 3/4 as well

IF you remove cantrips, yes.

I wasn't removeing cantrips... I wasn't even saying remove ALL scaleing just less scale (1 die at 11th for damage only ones and a die type for the control effect ones, and I even added the caster stat at 5th and showed my math)

A flexibility no non casters need. Gold is there to buy these if needed. Languages are a thing too. Pick one different per character and you should be good.

I mean then take those spells from the wizard...they have gold and languages too.

Are you jealous of casters or what?

yes and no... I just don't play non casters because it wont be fun, and I see that most of my groups follow suit. We have to go out of ourway to play under optimized (read badly) or all agree not to have casters in the world to see non casters 9/10 of the time...

They got higher HP and thus better survivability. They lost in damage potential in the process but kept their versatility... By boosting their HP, WoTC created an imbalance. To restore the balance, just give them 1d4hp per level.

that is a start...again even if we go back to d4's I don't see concentration going away (although I will say it still needs work too).

Hear me out. This is radical. Very radical. Yes, they must be more versatile with their spells than what martials are. What martials really need, is a bit more skills. Nothing else.

why? look to 4e and everyone was able to balanc

Nah... If you remove the 5mwd and apply the 6-8 encounters per day,

did that (with a few low level adventures aside) and STILL caster supremacy raigns

An all caster team? This is an invitation for beholders and high magic resistant foes.

beholders are worse against a hole martial team... they are basicly casters.
magic reistat is a joke... advantage on saves when most (not all) monsters have 2-4 bad saves

This kind of group would simply die very fast in my games.

lol... make a dungeon for 4 level 3-5 adventurers, have a fighter, ranger, rogue, and monk run through it
then make a hexblade, druid, wizard, and bard and watch how much easier the dungeon is.

When you build monotype encounters, this is what you get. A silence spell with a wall of force at high level will simply shut down that group in no time.

unlti you remember spells that don't need verbal, or silent spell, or combinations

Do not assume that what you see in some group is THE solution or THE ultimate examples.

yet you assume you know the solution for all groups... remember you just said

If you remove the 5mwd and apply the 6-8 encounters per day,

The same goes for me. But at least, I know that none of my martials feel less important to the group than the casters.

way to go... so roud you think you know better then everyone else.

Simply because I do not use monotype encounters (or should I say, rarely use...). Monotype encounters is a sure way to make casters shine even more unless they are stuck with a magicless environement, prevented from casting and similar things. And when a caster is deprived of magic, this is a dead caster if no martials are there.

what is monotype?

let me pull up my notes... I have an adventure set up from 2 weeks ago.

encounter 1 is 3 modified warforged with shoulder cannon 1/sr power and slam attacks and magic resist and immune to psychic damage.
encounter 2 is a warlock with 2 white bangle tigers 'familiars' that are with him (but he is most likely not going to be a fight) encounter 3 is 3 spheres of energy immune to all damaging spells but that only make opp attacks when something moves within 20ft of them (there is a path that is safe if they realize it, or they can create barriors (since the orbs can't move) or they can teleport. encounter 4 is a SUPER deadly one with a refluffed dragon multi levels above the party, in game it is an ice statue that fires out cones of cold and has 3 slam attacks (refluff claw/claw/bite) and it has 3 spell like abilities one of them is the dreaded counterspell (also shield and grease). encounter 5 is a gimmie encounter... it is 11 refluffed kobolds with 20hp each and cold and magic resist and immune to force in game they are smaller ice golems that are actually snow men that swarm. encounter 6 is another location not monster this one there is no combat work around they either need to have found a key earlier or have a way to defeat a magic lock. encounter 7 and 8 are both ones that are optional (a path they don't have to take) but 1 is 3 more warforged, and the other is a group of slimes (some homebrewed) that will be dropped on the party.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

"70% damage", I even bolded it for you..

hat was a guesstimate not math...

The number of spells is not sufficient at any level to change cantrips in the way you are suggesting.

every level after 5th is more then enough (especially if you aren't increasing # encounters then you get more and more spells by level 11 you aren't going to need cantrips if you use them half the time at 5th)

You are talking about changing cantrips using a spherical cow 5mwd as justification

who is useing 5mwd?

& simply ignoring too many factors in the process to support the justifications.

you seem to be dreaming up a 5mwd that no one is suggesting... I don't always have 8 encounters but some days I have it up to 20 and some days 1... rarely can my PCs know ahead.

Fighters can already do a lot of things beyond damage & even have extra ASI/Feat budgets to further support doing so.

lol yes a fighter has 1 extra feat/asi at level 9 and 2 at level 17. at level 10 that 1 extra feat is compared to 5th level spells

The damage that fighters deal is notable because it's dramatically further ahead of other classes than your reasoning pegs it at.

fighter with longsword deal 1d8+3 at 1st 2d8+8 at level 5 and 3d8+15 at level 11
a bard with a scimitar deals 1d6+3 at 1st and 2d6+3 at 5th BUT ALSO are full casters
a hexblade with a longsword deals 1d8+3 at 1st level and 2d8+8 at 5th level and get 2 encounter recharge spells lots of a level equal to the best wizard spells until 11th level...
BOTH BARDS AND HEXBLADES GET CANTRIPS TOO

cleriics not only keep up but they ALSO deal +1d8 radiant on there 2 attacks at 11th to equal out that 3rd attack

Concentration, Magic Resistance, Legendary resist.

spells without concentration, targeting bad saves, no save spells, or save for half spells

The higher level you go the more prevalent those are & unlike "resistant to nonmagical bB/P/S" there is no way to ignore them

spells without concentration, targeting bad saves, no save spells, or save for half spells

you failed to show any such thing because your whiteroom cow is too spherical

what white room every example I give comes from years of playing

 

[Lanefan]

I once posted an indepth comparison of a 20th level 1ed wizard and a 5ed one. The 1ed can easily achieve double the damage output without magical items. If you add magical items, the 1ed can more than tripple what the 5ed can do.

Of course it can! It's not a fair comparison, given the in-system context.

In 1e a 20th-level Wizard is sitting at about double the game's soft-capstone level; where in 5e a 20th-level Wizard is right at the captsone.

So, to make the comparison fair it'd either have to be between a 10th-level 1e Wizard and a 20th level 5e one, or a 20th-level 1e Wizard and a 40th-level 5e one. (good luck finding anything that runs 5e design out to 40th level )

And this is without cantrips. Cantrips are great as they lowered the power of casters quite a bit but gave them more to do than throw a dagger or darts in the low levels. The 6-8 encounters per day just make it so that casters must rely on cantrips most of the time. And cantrips are doing a lot less damage at mid and high level than a corresponding multi melee attacking fighter at mid and levels. The less encounters you have, the more the casters become unbalanced. This is mathematically sound as the game was built around that assumption.

And?????? What's the point in saying that? Everyone knows that. That has been the strength of casters from the begining.

IF you remove cantrips, yes.

A flexibility no non casters need. Gold is there to buy these if needed. Languages are a thing too. Pick one different per character and you should be good.

Are you jealous of casters or what? They got higher HP and thus better survivability. They lost in damage potential in the process but kept their versatility... By boosting their HP, WoTC created an imbalance. To restore the balance, just give them 1d4hp per level.

Hear me out. This is radical. Very radical. Yes, they must be more versatile with their spells than what martials are. What martials really need, is a bit more skills. Nothing else.

Nah... If you remove the 5mwd and apply the 6-8 encounters per day, casters must rely on their cantrips (which do less damage than the same attack by a martial). Try it, this is what I see in my games. Most caster use about 3 to 5 cantrips per fights (which lasts around 5 to 8 rounds in average.

Sorry, @Helldritch , but it's thinking like this that got us into this mess in the first place.

First thing: stop treating the 5MWD as a problem to be solved and instead see it as something wise adventurers would do as a matter of course. Then, design as if the 5MWD is the standard, or close - two or three encounters a day maybe, rather than 6 to 8 like 5e seems to want.

Second thing: don't use damage output as your only metric for comparison. There's many other ways a character's abilities can be more or less effective in play, though they're not always as easily quantifyable/measurable as damage output.

Third thing: harshly limit casters (all of them, not just Wizards) by making spells harder to cast in combat and by giving less of them per day. Get rid of at-wills. Flip side: make the spells that do get cast actually able to Do Cool Stuff, albeit sometimes with risks attached.

Ideally, Wizards are the hares. Fighters are the turtles. And who won that race?

An all caster team? This is an invitation for beholders and high magic resistant foes. This kind of group would simply die very fast in my games.

This assumes such foes are commonplace in one's game, also that the PCs have no idea what they're getting into when embarking on an adventure i.e. no info-gathering is done first so their lineup can be adjusted to suit.

That said, I agree monotype parties (of any class) are far more all-or-nothing than are more class-diverse groups: they either blow the adventure away or themselves get blown away, depending how well they happen to suit - or not - the situation.

 

[Shadowedeyes]

To be fair, the hare only lost in the story because the hare was reckless and stupid, not because of anything the turtle did. At least generally, there might be some variations on the tale.

 

[tetrasodium]

hat was a guesstimate not math...

Your "guestimate" is off to an extreme degree & it taints everything that follows. If you want to talk about an objective metric like damage where raw numbers are used math rather than random numbers pulled from the ether needs to be used & I've already provided you the numbers as well as a spreadsheet you can use.

every level after 5th is more then enough (especially if you aren't increasing # encounters then you get more and more spells by level 11 you aren't going to need cantrips if you use them half the time at 5th)

How does this random topic shift relate to the section of my post that you quoted? Sure it might not seem out of place when you omit "You are talking about changing cantrips using a spherical cow 5mwd as justification & simply ignoring too many factors in the process to support the justifications." from the quote but it is very much not true

Spoiler: Spell slot progression slowing builds off each of the prior slowdowns

spell slot progression does not keep up and because spells only scale by slot level casters are incapable of either upcasting lower spells or using newly gained higher level spells in sufficient numbers needed to keep up.

the rest of your post builds off these inaccuracies in ways that bury any points it might contain in too much fog to be meaningful

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

Your math is off after players are about level 5 & gets worse the higher you go.. Here's some stuff to help:

• damage breakdown at various levels & loadouts
• a google doc spreadsheet you can use to see different outputs & how the math crunches here

Martials are very far ahead even before factoring in things like how the shift from spells scaling by caster level instead of slot level combined with the continual slowing of spell slot gains at levels 3 7 9 & 11.

You rely on GWM, the only viable path for a strength character, using an optional feat that has endured endless complaints, to pull ahead. You've also ignored a 2 level warlock dip for EB/AB because it doesn't suit your agenda.
You've whiteroomed that in a theoretical mindless hack and slash game where enemies drop out of a tube in front of the GWM fighter, with perfectly timed hour long naps, he deals acceptable damage.

Fighters can already do a lot of things beyond damage & even have extra ASI/Feat budgets to further support doing so. The damage that fighters deal is notable because it's dramatically further ahead of other classes than your reasoning pegs it at.

Citation needed.

Concentration, Magic Resistance, Legendary resist. The higher level you go the more prevalent those are & unlike "resistant to nonmagical bB/P/S" there is no way to ignore them with a tool that casters can expect to get under RAW around tier2 like a +1 weapon after meeting one of a few trivial hurdles

Oh right, we all know that every single adventure comprises of roughly 50% anti magic rooms and beholders. And we're the ones whiterooming? How much did Big Caster pay you to write this?