D&D General Wizard vs Fighter - the math

[M_Natas]

My gut reaction would be - because they think a playing a fighter sounds cool. And also because "conventional wisdom" (though I think it's hogwash) is that playing a fighter is the "easier" option.

But if they start with a fighter - and then keep playing a fighter, then clearly they're satisfied (or at least satisfied enough) with the fighter, right?

I mean, in my game I give anyone the opportunity to respec at any time (and I never even charged 100gp like BG3 does) and I haven't had anyone respec out of a fighter.

I only ever exchanged a life cleric in a campaign. It was during the lost mines and she just felt ineffective. Incombat healing is useless, out of combat we got enough rests. And for her to do any damage she needed to use her spellslots, because sacred flame is just bad.

I exchanged her for an Evocation wizard.

 

[Oofta]

But that is actually quite strange. Maybe that is an American thing that the fighter is popular or I'm just a big outlier.
I'm from Germany and in all my time playing D&D 5e (I started with that edition) I never even saw a fighter st the table. I saw some barbarians (but no more than one at a time) and one Paladin. I mean that's probably not statically relevant, because I played with maybe a total of 50 different people, but I found it noteworthy.
Like in the game I'm a player right now we have no martial character at all and in the spelljammer campaign I'm running we have a Paladin and a Barbarian and then 4 casters.

Every 5E game I've ever played either home campaign or AL has had at least 1 fighter, frequently 2. After that it's pretty much spread out and runs that gamut, although I've never seen more than 1 of the other classes and don't always see a wizard or any other full caster. Probably the most common full caster is a cleric.

 

[Oofta]

And you think those people picking fighters have made a cost benefit analysis of the fighter's abilities and decided they are an efficient and powerful way of engaging with potential challenges?

Or did they pick them because the idea of fighters sounds cool?

I play classes I enjoy playing, which includes fighters. My current group just got done with a campaign that had most of the classes represented and we're going to have 2 fighters. The gal that played a wizard last time? Barbarian.

 

[Mort]

I only ever exchanged a life cleric in a campaign. It was during the lost mines and she just felt ineffective. Incombat healing is useless, out of combat we got enough rests. And for her to do any damage she needed to use her spellslots, because sacred flame is just bad.

I exchanged her for an Evocation wizard.

Toll the dead is strictly better than sacred flame in most situations (necrotic resistance/immunity being the obvious one). Less used save (wis vs. dex) and the damage difference really adds up.

But more than that. DPR isn't really the bread and butter of most casters. Wizards big effects are not DPR but control; a well placed web, wall, or hypnotic pattern will turn a fight towards the group better than any DPR spell!

And most bards have hilariously low DPR, yet are top tier. Last time I played a high level (15+) bard the rest of the group was in double or triple digits per combat on DPR, with the fighter leading the way - quite a few times achieving triple digits in 1 round. My bard was lucky to achieve double digits in any given combat. But between, inspiration, unsettling words (eloquence bard) and effective spell use - boy did I help in combat. And out of combat, well I wish I could have gotten a good look at the DMs face (it was an online game) when during a critical persuasion roll, I rolled a 1 and got to say "yeah, that's a 25" (any roll lower than a 10 is a 10 on the die roll, Eloquence bard gets that AT 3rd LEVEL!).

 

[Vaalingrade]

• Unless otherwise established, Humans are Humans and function like humans.

This one in particular is kind of hilarious given how little movie characters 'function like humans' and no one but the most cinema-experience-ruining people care.

 

[CapnZapp]

It is hard to believe, but the Damage Output of the Monsters is a separate thing. That a player character will go down is the big exception in 5e, so for game balance reasons we can focus solely on the damage output of the Player Characters.
And if the Wizard uses hypnotic pattern instead of fireball ... that's a good thing. The Wizard didn't do roughly 56 points of damage, so the fight gets longer, which adds a round or two to combat, so the fighter gets more damage output in comparison to the wizard.
Every time a spellcaster uses a spell that doesn't do damage, it allows the martials to shine more and tilts the balance more in favor of the martials.

But we can also look at it from a ressource standpoint:
So, what happens with hypnotic pattern? It negates enemy attacks. So what did the Wizard actually achieved?
He traded a 3d Level Spellslot to prevent a reduction in the HP pool of the party.
So the wizard traded his limited ressource, his spellslot for a preservation of the limited HP of the martials/the whole party. Which is great. Which helps game balance.

No I think you missed the point.

The point was: if the wizard cast a single spell that completely short-circuited, or even outright circumvented, the fight, how do you take that into account?

And, of course, the answer is you didn't (and nor should you).

But it goes to show that the difference between martials and magicians is even greater than what "only" damage numbers can show.


TL;DR: If the Wizard decides to compete only in the area of damage, the Warrior has already won.
But that suggests a Wizard player significantly less inventive than typical, and thus a Wizard that doesn't come close to his true potential.

 

[CapnZapp]

And out of combat, well I wish I could have gotten a good look at the DMs face (it was an online game) when during a critical persuasion roll, I rolled a 1 and got to say "yeah, that's a 25" (any roll lower than a 10 is a 10 on the die roll, Eloquence bard gets that AT 3rd LEVEL!).

Yep. I'm playing a non-typical Rogue much more interested in dancing than anything else, with some lucky items that augment her own abilities.

We found an elven city with some "sword dancing" contest. So Performance & Acrobatics checks to influence (i.e. give advantage to) combat rolls. I could see the look on the DMs face when my character regularly reported results in the 25-30 range, and of course, having constant advantage is a good thing when you're a rogue... Since I betted all my money on myself (suitably disguised, the character's other specialty) we could leave town with an unexpected extra haul of gear

Although having access to our Diviner's Portent die of 18 if needed (for a total north of 30) was a nice insurance

 

[James Gasik]

This one in particular is kind of hilarious given how little movie characters 'function like humans' and no one but the most cinema-experience-ruining people care.

I suppose for some, admitting that humans need special abilities to survive in a magical world would be a bitter pill to swallow; or maybe the issue is more that, once humans stop being humans as we know them, the game becomes far less grounded and harder to grasp.

Once we throw out human limitations, the ability of a DM to decide how long it takes to accomplish a task or how hard it is goes right out the window. The fantasy of being "a normal guy who holds his own in a not-so-normal world" vanishes, as no one is normal, and everyone is a superbeing.

D&D made the mistake of treating other races (sorry, species) a lot like how Star Trek does "well, they're basically humans with makeup and somewhat flanderized traits" long ago, so most of the time, no matter what you play, you're still "human but...".

Curiously, the exceptions to this are, historically, among the species most likely to get pushback when you want to play them. Like, I saw a DM lose his mind when coming to the realization that a 3.5 Warforged is truly built different, and doesn't care about a lot of human frailties. Doesn't need sleep, doesn't need to eat, doesn't need to breathe, doesn't get tired, isn't bothered by poison or (most) disease- he treated them like they were some kind of broken uber-species (never no mind they couldn't heal naturally or could rust, lol) and quickly banned them from his Eberron campaign ("pending review")!

And the fact that there really isn't a compelling downside to a player to be an Elf or Aasimar compared to a regular old human doesn't help either- most D&D worlds were built human-centric, but now in the year 2023, it really stops making a lot of sense that this is the case (if it ever did).

Recently, an old thread from 2014 was necromanced about Drow being able to overcome their light-blindness and it really opened my eyes (pun not intended) about the changing attitudes towards species in D&D.

Once, to play anything other than a human, with cool special powers and a unique look and culture, you had to take penalties. As time has gone on, these penalties have been removed, and at each step, there have been those who feel very strongly about it. I remember the backlash about Tieflings and Dragonborn being in the 4e PHB, for example. Putting the Drow in the 2014 PHB was seen by many to be some kind of sin.

Now in 2023, Drow are accepted among other races (species, did it again), and they don't even flinch in the daylight anymore. And it becomes glaringly obvious that humans are very much not special in any way, and in the future, they might not even be the main characters of D&D, replaced by cooler and more interesting races entirely.

They won't go away, of course, but perhaps one day, instead of threads decrying the reasons for halflings to exist in D&D, we might see threads about "remove humans from the PHB, they're boring and have no place in the world!".

Or maybe the pendulum will swing the other way, and 6e will remove all species mechanics entirely to avoid offending anyone, and what you are is what you say you are. Who can say?

 

[Clint_L]

But that is actually quite strange. Maybe that is an American thing that the fighter is popular or I'm just a big outlier.
I'm from Germany and in all my time playing D&D 5e (I started with that edition) I never even saw a fighter st the table. I saw some barbarians (but no more than one at a time) and one Paladin. I mean that's probably not statically relevant, because I played with maybe a total of 50 different people, but I found it noteworthy.
Like in the game I'm a player right now we have no martial character at all and in the spelljammer campaign I'm running we have a Paladin and a Barbarian and then 4 casters.

I can't speak to what happens in Germany - my understanding is that D&D is not very big there - but we know from WotC's own data that fighter is the most popular class by a significant margin, so your experiences are an outlier in the wider context of D&D, yes.

In my own experience: tons of fighters, and almost every party has either a fighter or a barbarian, sometimes both. Fighters are also the most popular choice among my players who choose to multi-class, but this is not news: fighters are a famously popular multi-class choice.

 

[Aldarc]

If humans mechanically sucked as an ancestry, humans would still be the most popular ancestry.

Popularity is not the best metric of balance or even satisfaction. Many times people are drawn to a class or ancestry due to the appeal of the fantasy. Crawford said as much himself in a recent video.