EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
This idea only works in an environment where reaching high level as a spellcaster is, in fact, actually difficult--where it is not merely "you are weak and must wait to grow strong," but "you are weak and may not survive to grow strong."Wizard being the strongest class, is actually a intentional design decision and has been since the game's inception, this game was not made to go past level 10, and anyone still playing at that point gygax expected to be a wizard, because thats what it is for. The idea is most players will likely never play that long, for it to matter anyway. This is stuff big G man said himself, and 5E was trying to be more "classic" DnD so this is something that held.
The idea that Casters should be "Weak" early, but very strong "Late" Game.
Problem is, that hasn't been a fundamental assumption of D&D since at least 3e, and possibly earlier.
This is one of the things I'm referring to when I say that the designers do things intentionally, but do not do them with the intent to create imbalance. "It sucks to constantly lose your character at low level!" is a perfectly valid thought in isolation. "Spellcasters can have their phenomenal cosmic power at high level even though others don't and still be balanced by rarely getting to high level, and by non-spellcasters getting awesome worldly rewards that give them powers a spellcaster simply cannot mimic, like armies and territory and money" is also a perfectly valid thought in isolation. "Domain management is tedious and doesn't end up doing very much for many players, so let's make that an optional rule" is likewise perfectly valid in isolation.
But when you combine these together, you get, "Spellcasters can have phenomenal comic power at high level even though others don't and still be balanced." Because the first thought cancels out "by rarely getting to high level," and the third thought cancels out "by non-spellcasters getting awesome worldly rewards." And that thought is simply incorrect.
With the exception of 4e, D&D has been a long and steady history of taking away both explicit and implicit benefits given to non-spellcasting characters, and giving great power and few, easily-avoided limitations to characters focused on spellcasting ("full spellcasters.") Now, admittedly, if we had jumped straight from 3e to 5e, this wouldn't be true, but we didn't. We jumped from 3e to 4e, and then 4e to 5e. So the pattern remains true. Relative to the previous edition, every edition except 4e has taken power and benefits away from non-spellcasting characters and given power and benefits and fewer restrictions to spellcasting characters. 5e gave less power and fewer benefits, removing fewer restrictions than was the case for 2e arising out of 1e or 3e arising out of 2e. But it still kept up that trend.