D&D General Wizard vs Fighter - the math

[EzekielRaiden]

I rarely use orcish hordes in my games, or if I do it's because it's an invasion from another realm. So totally realistic of course. Most of the monsters in my game are people.

I enjoy the contrast. Sometimes, people truly are the real monsters. And sometimes, WYSIWYG. Currently on a "people are the real monsters" adventure in my home game, but once the players have wrapped this arc up, they'll be getting a nice "monsters are the real monsters" palate cleanser with a hefty dash of (almost surely short-term) space piracy.

 

[soviet]

I rarely use orcish hordes in my games, or if I do it's because it's an invasion from another realm. So totally realistic of course. Most of the monsters in my game are people.

Man that's too real

 

[soviet]

Isn't the real lesson of the last few pages this:

• If the game is strongly balanced around a structure of 6-8 encounters a day (the dungeoncrawl model)
• but lots of its audience want to play more story or exploration focused games with 1-2 encounters a day
• and so those people feel a need to contort their games around a need for more and more encounters
• then the game is not very well balanced for a significant chunk of its audience
• which is a big failing when the game is otherwise trying to be the 'big tent' unfocused game

 

[Oofta]

Isn't the real lesson of the last few pages this:

• If the game is strongly balanced around a structure of 6-8 encounters a day (the dungeoncrawl model)
• but lots of its audience want to play more story or exploration focused games with 1-2 encounters a day
• and so those people feel a need to contort their games around a need for more and more encounters
• then the game is not very well balanced for a significant chunk of its audience
• which is a big failing when the game is otherwise trying to be the 'big tent' unfocused game

I do a very story/exploration focused game and get in 4-8 (high end at low-mid levels, lower at high) fights in by using gritty rest rules. I don't remember the last time I did an old school dungeon crawl. It works just fine.

Having 1-2 fights per day has never really worked in D&D (it was a bit better in 4E) in any edition. If that's the style you want, you can still do it but have to get creative on your encounters. Have enemies show up in waves, come from different directions, have different goals other than just "kill all the bad guys".

The perceived issues are largely because D&D is such an open ended game. But we have the game we have. It's not perfect, nothing ever is especially with a game that has as broad a target as D&D. So you can either adjust your game or accept the consequences.

 

[payn]

Isn't the real lesson of the last few pages this:

• If the game is strongly balanced around a structure of 6-8 encounters a day (the dungeoncrawl model)
• but lots of its audience want to play more story or exploration focused games with 1-2 encounters a day
• and so those people feel a need to contort their games around a need for more and more encounters
• then the game is not very well balanced for a significant chunk of its audience
• which is a big failing when the game is otherwise trying to be the 'big tent' unfocused game

Thats the impression of some folks on ENworld.

 

[Minigiant]

Seems like a lot of fighting to keep "start every long rest with 10 fireballs" and vehemently fighting D&D from adapting to "start every long rest with 3 fireballs and get 1 more if you short rest so you can never chuck more than 3 fireballs in 2-3 fights".

 

[Minigiant]

Thats the impression of some folks on ENworld.

I think WOTC at least acknowledges and believes the first 4 bulletpoints.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I think WOTC at least acknowledges and believes the first 4 bulletpoints.

Exactly.

And before anyone jumps on this, we could already see the writing on the wall back in Tasha's.

• New subclasses almost always tied their mechanics to PB/long, not 1/short or 2/short etc.
• Alternative takes on existing options had been floated for a while.
• Explicit statements from Crawford told us that Warlocks were falling behind other classes because they weren't getting enough short rests.
• Rangers had been controversial from the beginning, and subclass fixes only made up part of the difference.

Now that we have had an actual playtest for quite a while, we can easily see these goals, particularly the "fix the rest dependency issue," are in full force. Further, classes like Fighter, Ranger, and Warlock are getting buffs, and subclasses like Beast Master, Champion, and Berserker are having their flaws addressed.

I don't always care for the solutions they're using (shock and horror, me disagreeing with decisions made by WotC?!), but they clearly have taken a concrete stand on these and other issues.

If folks haven't seen problems themselves, cool, that honestly is a great thing for you. But WotC themselves inarguably recognize there are significant problems here that need fixing. The fact some people didn't encounter those problems or did but addressed them on their own does not mean the problems aren't there, nor that WotC shouldn't do anything about them.

Of course, it's still pretty frustrating to have called out many of these problems for a decade or more, on top of having been told for so long that no these things couldn't possibly be problems. But can we please just put to rest the argument that there simply isn't a problem? Because at this point WotC explicitly and officially agrees there are problems here, on these specific issues. The Champion is widely-played but unpopular, disliked by almost half of players! That alone is proof enough that there are issues here.

 

[Scott Christian]

Where did they came from when you sat on your arses for a week? Gee, I wonder! Seems like an attitude problem, not a game problem. In an adventuring game there usually is some sort of a situation/crisis/conundrum going on, that needs solving, and you just cant dillydally for weeks at any moment. I really don't understand what sort of static games people are running if this is not the case.

As with all of it, it is a DM problem. Everything about rests is a DM problem. Not being able to challenge players is a DM problem. And one class always outperforming the other is a DM problem.
This is not to say they can't make it easier or harder for the DM to run the game without these problems. But right now, it is pretty darn easy to run a game without any of the imbalances.

The biggest mistake WotC did was to not make the gritty rests the default,

They go on the MMORPG assumption (and I am going to guess they are correct) - everything should be easier for the player. And I do not mean easier in a bad way. But easier in all ways: mechanically, heroically, and computationally.

 

[Scott Christian]

So I use the gritty rest rules, a short rest is overnight a long rest is a week or more. Further, long rests require actual downtime in someplace you can actually rest and relax. Even before I started doing that (and I do a lot of non-combat stuff in my game) I figured out how to have, shall we say, interesting days. Or even a couple of days with constant harassments.

While I have never used this for D&D, my other ruleset definitely uses this. I never did understand the thought of healing without a safe and comfortable place to rest. Narrowed it down to No Rest, Rugged, and Comfortable; each requiring a specific length of time to heal X amount of health. Narratively, this does the story some great justice.