D&D General The Crab Bucket Fallacy

[Tony Vargas]

Sure, but in the TSR days, they certainly weren’t talking about a “social pillar”.

I hate to think how middleschool boys in the 80s would've taken "social pillar"

 

[Scribe]

I hate to think how middleschool boys in the 80s would've taken "social pillar"

Right...the 80's....

 

[Minigiant]

To me this whole "fallacy" is due to a Chunk of the fanbase saying

One Element/Classes/Subclass/Race being a +7
and
One Element/Classes/Subclass/Race being a +4

And being restricted in design between +3 difference.

I mean what is the Damage Difference between a 5e Fighter and Cleric before level 5.

2 damage? 3 damage?

From level 5-10 what is it. 4-10 damage before "extreme optimization"

The base elements of D&D 5e doesn't have the range to accommodate much because the range between Great and Average is small but the range from Average to Bad is massive.

 

[jasper]

psst psst. Not all classes and subclasses are all balanced against each other. Nor should they be.

 

[Minigiant]

I really don't understand why modern versions of D&D don't let fighters be the best in combat. It literally mystifies me.

It's not that the fighter isn't best in combat in modern D&D.

It's that everyone is not far behind. The Fighter is tier A. Everyone is Tier B or has a subclass that brings them to Tier B. Tier C is empty. And Tier D is just noncombat classes taking noncombat subclasses.

Which wouldn't be a problem if the fighter could pick a subclass to be B in social or exploration. But they can't.

You see the same thing with races. Races with flexibility like choosable spells, skills, or minifeats rank high. The races with powerful features are slightly higher. And the rest are "in the terlet" as my grandfather would say because "power" is focused on a niche and races overall have little power to play with and usable have no customization within.

--

It's all like something I said back ing the TCOE days with flexible ASI.

5e was designed around everyone playing stereotypes and DMs running stereotypical worlds.

It wasn't designed for you to play against type like many players would eventually want to.

And went the designers decided to support Alternatives and Subversions of Stereotypes, it was uneven due to:

1. Slow schedule
2. Limited design space
3. Lack of forward thinking in 5edesign
4. Lack of drive in Official designers for it
5. Lack of restraint in 3PPs

---

The "Crab Bucket" fallacy is mostly due to the limited design space of core 5e without introducing power creep OR gutting the system ala A5e.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Right...the 80's....

hey, TSR was still around in the 90s...

 

[Scribe]

hey, TSR was still around in the 90s...

The point is boys today would react in exactly the same way.

 

[Tony Vargas]

It's not that the fighter isn't best in combat in modern D&D.

It probably is that, in the full breadth of what combat means.

An optimized BM with Feats allowed might top some single-class-only white room DPR calculations.

 

[Minigiant]

psst psst. Not all classes and subclasses are all balanced against each other. Nor should they be.

Sure, but then you should have more of these unbalanced classes and subclasses to provide the wanted affects.

 

[Minigiant]

...no, that would be going too far... nevermind...

It probably is, in the full breadth of what combat means.

An optimized BM with Feats allowed might top some single-class-only white room DPR calculations.

You missed my point.

It's not that the fighter is best in combat, it's that the melee cleric, bladesinger wizard, hexblade warlock, Swashbuckler rogue, and every other martial far and away good enough.

It's that you don't need the "best in combat" to deal with 5e's easy combat.

You don't need the fighter 's 50 or optimized 60 damage per turn when 40 damage per turn is all you need and 10 classes can do that.