D&D 5E The Fighter/Martial Problem (In Depth Ponderings)

[Tony Vargas]

(I should share a definition of balance that I encountered that I've found helpful
A game is better balanced the more choices it presents to the player that are both meaningful and viable.)

I don't think it is quite as simple in a game where the characters can be doing wide variety of things.

Perfect balance is impossible, and better balanced games are increasingly more difficult to create & maintain.
Presenting the characters with more choices, so they can do a wider variety of things that are worth doing, is creating a better balanced game.

Maybe not mysterious, but certainly nuanced and complicated. There are different ways to balance things, and not everyone agrees what sort of balance is desirable.

I don't believe the fundamental disagreement is about sorts of balance.

Have they? I haven't seen that. And as there is no default way to play the game I don't see how it even could be done.

The Fighter v Wizard math calculations are an example. They show the fighter theoretically balancing with the wizard in DPR (the fighter's best thing, nearly it's only thing & not exactly the much more versatile wizard's best thing), over the vaguely recommended 6-encounter day, if those encounters are against a relatively low number of foes, and non-DPR resources are not considered.

That there are so many other ways to play the game that place less emphasis on single-target DPR, only means the actual martial/gap is that much wider.

(Though, TBF, tradition implies the default way to play the game is grueling time-important dungeon crawls.)

Exactly. I think BA went far enough, that 'everyones got a shot' and it actually is a detrimental addition. Its never quite sat right with me.

I think it was just a pendulum-swing. 3e made skills the stuff of extreme specialization, you could either invest heavily in a skill and be awsome (insane/broken if it was Diplomacy), or as you leveled, you became utterly worthless at it against same-level challenges - "overwhelming the d20." 4e moved off that peak by giving everyone a baseline progression so even untrained stayed relevant at higher levels, while trained/specialized became extremely good. 5e continued towards the opposite peak, where training/level just doesn't make much of a difference and "everyone's got a shot" - Expertise has kept it off that peak.

 

[Oofta]

Still don't see how that's at all relevant to quality as opposed to marketing.

Did I say anything about "quality"? Because "lack of quality" seems to just mean "I don't like it."

What I said was that people playing the class indicates that it does what they want in the game.

 

[Oofta]

Mass popularity doesn't remove 5e from either criticism, shortcomings, or room for improvement.

Did I say that 5E was perfect or beyond criticism?

 

[Tony Vargas]

Did I say that 5E was perfect or beyond criticism?

Yes, the latter.

Any and all possible criticism is as validly dismissed by "but, most popular! loved by millions!" as are criticisms of balance.
(which is to say, dismissing any criticism with an appeal to popularity is not valid at all.)

 

[Crimson Longinus]

(I should share a definition of balance that I encountered that I've found helpful
A game is better balanced the more choices it presents to the player that are both meaningful and viable.)

I don't think that this is definition of balance at all. Sure, offering such choices is good game design, but only thing it has to do with balance is that more choices you have, harder balancing them all becomes.

I don't believe the fundamental disagreement is about sorts of balance.

I'm pretty sure it is at least part of it. 4e is considered well balanced, but it also is criticised to be both samey across the levels and samey between the classes. Homogenising things makes balancing them easier, but that is not the sort of balance everyone wants.

The Fighter v Wizard math calculations are an example. They show the fighter theoretically balancing with the wizard in DPR (the fighter's best thing, nearly it's only thing & not exactly the much more versatile wizard's only thing), over the vaguely recommended 6-encounter day, if those encounters are against a relatively low number of foes.

Right. So they're balanced under certain assumptions. Chance the assumptions and the balance is broken. So whose assumptions we are using when we talk about the balance?

 

[Aldarc]

Did I say that 5E was perfect or beyond criticism?

That certainly seemed to be the implication from your post here and often elsewhere. I sometimes get the feeling that you make appeals to popularity as a means to silence criticism of the game or any improvements/changes that other people may desire for the game. This is to say, there's no need to balance or improve the game because the game is already the most popular game and the fighter is the most popular class.

 

[Oofta]

Yes, the latter.

Any and all possible criticism is as validly dismissed by "but, most popular! loved by millions!" as are criticisms of balance.
(which is to say, dismissing any criticism with an appeal to popularity is not valid at all.)

Complete and total BS. I did not say that nor have I ever said that.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

That certainly seemed to be the implication from your post here and often elsewhere. I sometimes get the feeling that you make appeals to popularity as a means to silence criticism of the game or any improvements/changes that other people may desire for the game. This is to say, there's no need to balance or improve the game because the game is already the most popular game and the fighter is the most popular class.

I think it is mostly as response to people who state the game being terrible or something like that as an objective fact. I think quite a few people here cannot separate them not liking how the game works from the game being badly designed. That one doesn't like it is not proof that it is badly designed.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I don't think that this is definition of balance at all. Sure, offering such choices is good game design, but only thing it has to do with balance is that more choices you have, harder balancing them all becomes.

Balance is good game design, yes. And better balance is harder. Presenting no choices, for instance, is easy, and not balanced, at all.

A game is better balanced the more choices it presents to the player that are both meaningful and viable.

That's not really incompatible with what you just said. One of the things I find useful about that definition is that it does include maximizing choices and making them meaningful, not just making them viable, which can be accomplished by taking away choices or making them identical.

I'm pretty sure it is at least part of it. 4e is considered well balanced, but it also is criticised to be both same across the levels and samey between the classes.

True, and those criticism were both factually incorrect, play changed significantly as you gained levels, and at each Tier, classes were strongly differentiated by Source and Role and even classes with both in common had their own unique power sets.
Even were the latter true, it'd've made 4e /less/ well balanced, since the choice of class would have been less meaningful or even meaningless.
The former was more nearly valid on a numeric level: like 5e proficiency, 4e had a common basic scaling for all characters for attack & skill checks - unlike 3e which had different progressions for BAB, skill (in- vs cross-class), and saves (good/bad) - which is good for creating at-level challenges, since it makes level a more meaningful yardstick of party capability, but potentially reduces differentiation among classes (or even skills) and thus can make choices less meaningful. So, while different levels are strongly differentiated by scaling, if you factor out that scaling, the differentiation is down to the nature/power and number of resources (and, outside of relatively minor utilities, the latter scaled quite slowly after heroic).
4e can be held up as the best-balanced version of D&D, especially as far as class balance, but it's only the best of a bad lot.

Homogenising things makes balancing them easier, but that is not the sort of balance everyone wants.

It depends on what you mean by "homogenizing."
Standardizing resolution on the d20 like 3e did, is homogenizing, for instance. Deciding to model psionics as mechanically identical to spellcasting, like 5e did, is homogenizing. Neither are necessarily bad or good for balance. It depends on whether it erodes how meaningful those choices are.

Right. So they're balanced under certain assumptions. Chance the assumptions and the balance is broken. So whose assumptions we are using when we talk about the balance?

As you said...

And as there is no default way to play the game

..so balanced under a tight group of assumptions that favor one side of the comparison, just isn't balanced.
Or, you could say, is very poorly balanced.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Balance is good game design, yes. And better balance is harder. Presenting no choices, for instance, is easy, and not balanced, at all.

No, it is perfectly balanced. It just is terrible game.

A game is better balanced the more choices it presents to the player that are both meaningful and viable.

That's not really incompatible with what you just said. One of the things I find useful about that definition is that it does include maximizing choices and making them meaningful, not just making them viable, which can be accomplished by taking away choices or making them identical.

I simply don't agree with your definition of balance. Yes, having multiple choices is good game design, but that is not balance. A game with three equally viable choices is just as balanced than a game with 78 equally viable choices. The latter is probably a batter game, but not because it is more balanced, but because it offers more agency.

True, and those criticism were both factually incorrect, play changed significantly as you gained levels, and at each Tier, classes were strongly differentiated by Source and Role and even classes with both in common had their own unique power sets.

It is not incorrect compared to the other editions of the game.

Even were the latter true, it'd've made 4e /less/ well balanced, since the choice of class would have been less meaningful or even meaningless.
The former was more nearly valid on a numeric level: like 5e proficiency, 4e had a common basic scaling for all characters for attack & skill checks - unlike 3e which had different progressions for BAB, skill (in- vs cross-class), and saves (good/bad) - which is good for creating at-level challenges, since it makes level a more meaningful yardstick of party capability, but potentially reduces differentiation among classes (or even skills) and thus can make choices less meaningful. So, while different levels are strongly differentiated by scaling, if you factor out that scaling, the differentiation is down to the nature/power and number of resources (and, outside of relatively minor utilities, the latter scaled quite slowly after heroic).
4e can be held up as the best-balanced version of D&D, especially as far as class balance, but it's only the best of a bad lot.

Yet the cost it took to get even there was too much for many. So why was this sort of balance important again?

..so balanced under a tight group of assumptions that favor one side of the comparison, just isn't balanced.

Yes it is. It simply limits what way you need to run the game if you desire balance. And you must always balance around some assumption.

Or, you could say, is very poorly balanced.

I don't think there can be RPG that is balanced regardless of how it is run, that nonetheless can be ran on myriad different ways, unless you homogenise the characters massively. The characters will have capacities usefulness of which will depend on the situation they find themselves in. So in effect the "power" of the character will be different depending on the frequency of situations that their capabilities are optimal for.