D&D General Wizard vs Fighter - the math

[FrozenNorth]

Yes, this is pretty typical. This is how we play and I suspect how most people play these days. And gritty rests fix most of the issues for this type of pacing. I literally don't understand why people refuse to use it; using it is hella easier than redesigning the entire game from ground up around the assumption of fewer combat encounters between rests. The biggest mistake WotC did was to not make the gritty rests the default, as it better match the pacing of a typical game and a lot of people refuse to touch optional rules.

I disagree that gritty rest would solve the solution. At low levels, the classes tend to be balanced sufficiently. Starting about 7th level, casters have enough spells and their spells are sufficiently versatile, they outshine martials, especially fighters.

Gritty rest may mean that at higher levels, casters have to manage their spells more. This may give martials more of an opportunity to shine. But at low levels, it tends to have the opposite problem of making spellcasters feel underpowered.

 

[Oofta]

I kind of skipped over a couple of pages of the same old "fighters suck" but I did have one comment about gritty rest rules.

How static is your world if the PCs can take a rest for an entire week and nothing changes? I can't imagine how that would work. In my game, PCs are frequently hesitant to rest overnight to get a short rest. As others have stated, a long rest means just that - resting. As it says in the PHB resting means "light activity, such as reading, talking, eating, or standing watch. If the rest is interrupted by a period of strenuous activity — at least 1 hour of walking, fighting, casting spells, or similar adventuring activity — the characters must begin the rest again to gain any benefit from it."

It's basically bed rest for a week. I frequently sort of hand-wave this when downtime is measured in multiple weeks, months or even years. But the assumption is that you have to spend the time recuperating, not continuing on with non-combat adventuring.

Meanwhile if the group takes a rest for a week the bad guys call in reinforcements, add fortifications, pick up shop and leave, execute the king or otherwise do bad guy things. For that matter they'd likely hunt down the adventurers and attack while the lazy bums were trying to rest.

 

[Oofta]

I disagree that gritty rest would solve the solution. At low levels, the classes tend to be balanced sufficiently. Starting about 7th level, casters have enough spells and their spells are sufficiently versatile, they outshine martials, especially fighters.

Gritty rest may mean that at higher levels, casters have to manage their spells more. This may give martials more of an opportunity to shine. But at low levels, it tends to have the opposite problem of making spellcasters feel underpowered.

At lower levels those casters should have to fall back on things like cantrips on a regular basis, that's part of the design of the game. That's what cantrips are for. About the only "penalty" is on spells like mage armor which only lasts 8 hours which may or may not cover an entire adventuring day under standard rules.

 

[M_Natas]

I disagree that gritty rest would solve the solution. At low levels, the classes tend to be balanced sufficiently. Starting about 7th level, casters have enough spells and their spells are sufficiently versatile, they outshine martials, especially fighters.

Gritty rest may mean that at higher levels, casters have to manage their spells more. This may give martials more of an opportunity to shine. But at low levels, it tends to have the opposite problem of making spellcasters feel underpowered.

That's why you need my Gradual Gritty Realism Rest rules that fixed all that! They boost casters at low levels relativ to martiald, but makes them a little weaker at higher levels. And even with one encounter a day it can enforce ressource attrition!

https://www.enworld.org/threads/long-rest-variant-my-gradual-gritty-realism-variant-rules.700415/#post-9162672

 

[Vaalingrade]

Gritty Rest just wastes even more in-universe time to enforce resource attrition that could be spent adventuring and having fun. wasting an hour on a short rest is already a pace breaker, dialing everything down to a glacial pace is just interminable.

Again, what the resource grind actually amounts to is forcing players to not play their character concept for a chunk of time once they spend the tiny amount of 'be your concept' mojo the game doles out in inexplicably tiny doses.

Oh, the fighter is all about attacking a lot -- once an hour, then they just swing, swing, swing with nothing extra or interesting.

The barbarian is a rage-powered magical girl that turns into a wolf or something - a couple of times a day, then they're a fighter with worse armor.

The monk can do all sorts of stuff -- a handful of times, then they just slap people.

The attrition model aims to have some encounters just be crazy boring where you aren't really playing your class except--as always--the casters who get cantrips. and to me, this is a fail state. An encounter to me is a setpiece that you do because it is fun and you get to play out the fantasy of your class, not something to drain your pips and you're just doing it because it's there and you have to.

 

[payn]

Gritty Rest just wastes even more in-universe time to enforce resource attrition that could be spent adventuring and having fun. wasting an hour on a short rest is already a pace breaker, dialing everything down to a glacial pace is just interminable.

Again, what the resource grind actually amounts to is forcing players to not play their character concept for a chunk of time once they spend the tiny amount of 'be your concept' mojo the game doles out in inexplicably tiny doses.

Oh, the fighter is all about attacking a lot -- once an hour, then they just swing, swing, swing with nothing extra or interesting.

The barbarian is a rage-powered magical girl that turns into a wolf or something - a couple of times a day, then they're a fighter with worse armor.

The monk can do all sorts of stuff -- a handful of times, then they just slap people.

The attrition model aims to have some encounters just be crazy boring where you aren't really playing your class except--as always--the casters who get cantrips. and to me, this is a fail state. An encounter to me is a setpiece that you do because it is fun and you get to play out the fantasy of your class, not something to drain your pips and you're just doing it because it's there and you have to.

For those who prefer strategy play over tactical play, its engaging taking on the adventure in a skill play fashion. Your view on this is not universal.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I would rather reach into a garbage disposal full of lemons than deal with skilled play.

Or tag literally everything I say as 'it's like... my opinion, man'. We all know everything we say about the game is not universal. That doesn't need to be constantly reiterated. Especially when it's said in reply to someone else's opinion. I didn't tell Crimson their concept wasn't universal.

 

[AnotherGuy]

Gritty Rest just wastes even more in-universe time to enforce resource attrition that could be spent adventuring and having fun. wasting an hour on a short rest is already a pace breaker, dialing everything down to a glacial pace is just interminable.

Again, what the resource grind actually amounts to is forcing players to not play their character concept for a chunk of time once they spend the tiny amount of 'be your concept' mojo the game doles out in inexplicably tiny doses.

Oh, the fighter is all about attacking a lot -- once an hour, then they just swing, swing, swing with nothing extra or interesting.

The barbarian is a rage-powered magical girl that turns into a wolf or something - a couple of times a day, then they're a fighter with worse armor.

The monk can do all sorts of stuff -- a handful of times, then they just slap people.

The attrition model aims to have some encounters just be crazy boring where you aren't really playing your class except--as always--the casters who get cantrips. and to me, this is a fail state. An encounter to me is a setpiece that you do because it is fun and you get to play out the fantasy of your class, not something to drain your pips and you're just doing it because it's there and you have to.

What fantasy game do you play because attrition is all D&D knows?

 

[payn]

I would rather reach into a garbage disposal full of lemons than deal with skilled play.

Or tag literally everything I say as 'it's like... my opinion, man'. We all know everything we say about the game is not universal. That doesn't need to be constantly reiterated. Especially when it's said in reply to someone else's opinion. I didn't tell Crimson their concept wasn't universal.

You didn't actually quote them so it was confusing.

 

[Vaalingrade]

What fantasy game do you play because attrition is all D&D knows?

Attrition is not all D&D knows. In fact it's pretty bad at attrition without doing so many fights they become meaningless.