D&D 5E Is the imbalance between classes in 5e accidental or by design?

[EzekielRaiden]

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.

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."

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.

 

[Micah Sweet]

4e would beg to differ

4e was based on a completely different design paradigm. What worked there wouldn't work in 5e.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I think that's a good working definition.

And I would say that in general yes 5E is balanced. Of course if the party chose to be a group of 4 assassin rogues etc I would indeed have to adjust a published adventure. The party just might have skills or capabilities to accomplish some goals as written. But that, to me, is more of an adventure design issue than a game balance one.

Not the experience of my party. I've posted actual statistics in threads like this one before. As well, you seem to focus on damage time and again, and imo that's a really poor measure of balance. But ey, if that's what balance is for you, then sure, 5E is not particularly balanced, but that's not what this thread is about. The OP asked a question, is any imbalance between the classes intentional or not. That is the question we should be discussing.

Damage (and hit points) are pretty much WotC's definition of balance. It's certainly the basis of their CR system.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

4e was based on a completely different design paradigm. What worked there wouldn't work in 5e.

While I take your point, in the sense that one cannot just pluck out many design elements of 4e and drop them unchanged into 5e and hope that it all works out, it's not actually that hard to adapt a large number of 4e mechanics to 5e without that much difficulty.

Hit dice aren't healing surges, but they can be adapted into them without too much effort. Battle Master maneuvers aren't 4e Fighter powers (and I still find it hilarious when people suggest otherwise), but it isn't that hard to change them.

And we can see a lot of that at work....in Level Up. It may not have intended to resemble "4e translated into 5e's language," but much of what I've seen looks quite a bit like that.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Tell me you never played 4e without telling me you never.played 4e

I played two campaigns in 4e into the mid twenties, and the AEDU certainly felt boring to me (although it wasn't my biggest problem with 4e).

 

[Micah Sweet]

While I take your point, in the sense that one cannot just pluck out many design elements of 4e and drop them unchanged into 5e and hope that it all works out, it's not actually that hard to adapt a large number of 4e mechanics to 5e without that much difficulty.

Hit dice aren't healing surges, but they can be adapted into them without too much effort. Battle Master maneuvers aren't 4e Fighter powers (and I still find it hilarious when people suggest otherwise), but it isn't that hard to change them.

And we can see a lot of that at work....in Level Up. It may not have intended to resemble "4e translated into 5e's language," but much of what I've seen looks quite a bit like that.

You can make some of 4e's design work, yes. You just need to avoid AEDU, make sure the rules reflect the narrative (not the other way around), and fix the "automotive manual" presentation, and a lot of other stuff can be made to fit.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Mod Note:

(This will be a maxi modding post.)

1) Don’t threaten use of the ignore or report functions; use them. Announcements and threats just escalate tensions.

2) We don’t usually moderate emoji button abuse, but it’s been on the rise lately. So, given the behavior in this thread, it’s time for exceptions.

3) too many people are getting personal up 8n here. Stop.

4) There are also word games of all kinds popping up- erecting strawmen, etc.

There’s a lot of bad behavior going on in here. Some people have earned warnings. Much more of this will earn threadbans..

 

[Micah Sweet]

IMO, the first and second are only half-true. IMO, #3 isn't true at all, but as requested, I'll leave that aside.

But it's important to note, "it was designed that way" does not mean "the designers knowingly wanted it that way." Instead, it could be subconscious bias. From Rob Heinsoo's interview about the design for 4e, archived here, we can see how this almost happened even then:

We have little reason to doubt him...and it seems just as likely that 5e experienced the same push, but had no Heinsoo to push back.

I doubt it was active effort. I truly believe the designers want a balanced game with equitable character power. But tradition, unconscious bias, and subconscious acts continuously push "magic" (read: spellcasting) higher, and thus weaken non-"magic" by comparison. Wizards, the effective "specialists" (more on that later!) in using spells, are inherently buoyed by anything which boosts magic overall.

They clearly tried to both cut down on caster power (fewer slots, only cantrips auto-scale, hard to raise your spell DC, etc.) and add new limits (Concentration.) Such things are silly if the goal is greater spellcaster power. So, was it covert intent, subconscious actions/biases, or accident?

I think we can rule out covert intent right away, simply on charity and respect. I just can't imagine them rubbing their hands with glee about deceiving players into thinking fighters and wizards are equal while knowing they aren't. Likewise, "accident" seems much too uncharitable. I certainly think they had some foolish accidents they should have foreseen, e.g. the "ghoul surprise," but I can't see them so foolish as to stumble butt-first into this situation. Which leaves subconscious acts and bias, augmented by "tradition" and other things. Given the Heinsoo interview, we even have precedent for this pattern.

So: Yes. I 100% believe that this was "designed intentionally," but I do not believe that "intentionally" there means "we explicitly want wizards to be the best class in the game." I think that what it actually means is powering up individual spells without heed for how that powers up magic generally. That it means underestimating the power gap in past editions, and thus barely shifting casters down or non-casters up. That it reflects (long-standing) unwarranted skepticism of "always-on" power, and (likewise long-standing) unwarranted permissiveness with power gated by daily resources. That it comes from not understanding the math/stats behind features (e.g. Champion's crit range bonus is horribly weak.)

As a result, I was forced to vote "any imbalance between the classes is on purpose," even though I DON'T believe it was conscious purpose. Instead, I believe that their explicit and genuine intent was NOT to make unbalanced classes, but their subconscious impulses pushed them continuously away from balance in a way that favored spellcasters over non-spellcasters.

Which brings me to something I said I would cover later: wizards as the "specialist in magic" (or, rather, specialist in spellcasting.) Only Land druids can match wizards for daily spells cast. This results in de-flavoring the wizard (it gets essentially zero features to support its bookish, academia-driven, "ivory tower researcher" theme) while at the same time empowering it, which is the worst of both worlds. Spellcasting has always been very powerful. 5e very, very slightly blunted that power, without meaningfully addressing the real issue, which is that non-spellcasting characters are simply not capable of affecting the world on the same level as spellcasting characters, especially full casters.

That real issue just isn't fixable without either down-powering magic in general or completely remaking the fighter. Either would have fans up in arms, and WotC wants a simple fighter anyway.

 

[Micah Sweet]

If someone is declaring that a particular design goal is impossible--as Max explicitly did--then it should not matter whether it is in the context of video games or tabletop games or board games. Asymmetrical balance is a goal for essentially all multiplayer cooperative video games, and these are substantially bigger than D&D, making millions or billions of dollars.

Perhaps you would prefer an example that is a roleplaying game, and thus more obviously directly applicable? Final Fantasy XIV is an extremely well-balanced game, despite having asymmetrical classes. The differences between the performance of the absolute highest-performing, top-tier jobs and the worst-performing jobs is....5.5%. That's it. Literally the entire spread of class performance in FFXIV right now is a window of 5.5%, and even that is only in the high-performance, bleeding-edge content. If you're just a casual player playing ordinary stuff? You'll almost never notice these differences. Skill, individual investment, and player preference vastly outweigh these concerns in anything other than "world first races" (trying to be the first group to complete difficult content) or "ultimate prog" (trying to advance through, and eventually beat, the specially-made ultra-brutal content.)

The developers have set a reasonable standard of balance, and pay careful attention to the long-run performance of the various jobs. If there are issues, they can and will be addressed, and usually very quickly. Now, an MMO is both much more complex and much more editable than a pen-and-paper RPG, but the first is a boon (it's much easier to test!) and the second just means thorough testing is warranted.

It is, 100%, possible to produce well-balanced, asymmetrical play experiences in video games, even ones explicitly rooted in D&D (anyone who's played the Final Fantasy series can identify D&D's influence on the franchise!) It is likewise possible to produce well-balanced, asymmetrical play experiences in tabletop games. This is not some unattainable goal off in the stratosphere, some lofty perfection that cannot be reached even in principle. It is practical, it can be done.

Can you provide an example that isn't a video game?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Can you provide an example that isn't a video game?

I mean, 4e. People tend to make all sorts of reasons why that's not acceptable. 13th Age is also very well-balanced, but it's often disqualified for not being as popular. I hear good things about PF2e, but haven't played it, and it also gets the "not popular enough" disqualifier.