D&D General Wizard vs Fighter - the math

[Oofta]

Well, yes. Now having a spell that is a limited expendable resource to do more than an always available skill is fair, but even besides that there is an issue. I think 5e is lacking is codified examples of what skills can achieve and at what frequency and at what difficulty, and a lot of how effective stuff like this is depends on the GM. Not that I think that stuff like skill challenges (that are easily usable in 5e too) are much better in this regard, as with them too it is up to GM what sort of skill challenge to attach to which fictional situation.

It would be a good thing if the 2024 DMG includes more examples and advice on using skills. When it comes to things like preparing a town for a siege perhaps there are some 3PP that discusses it, but this is not something that comes up on a regular basis. D&D simply doesn't revolve around this sort of thing. Modern D&D is centered around a small squad of people, not war games.

While it is quite a flexible game, there's obviously a lot of things D&D can't cover. Even the Dragonlance campaign didn't try to stretch D&D into this arena and instead just said "Play this board game". For better or worse these kind of edge cases are in the realm of the DM running the gam, therefore it's up to the DM to figure out how multiple PCs can contribute if they want.

 

[James Gasik]

It's been my experience that many DM's are very conservative about improvised actions and what you can accomplish with "mundane" abilities like skills or tools, but when you produce a spell that says "I can do X", they might read the spell very carefully, but if it truly can do X, then it works.

This does impact the playstyle of non-spellcasters, and design absolutely should reflect that. By saying "well, the DM should figure out how to make sure everyone can contribute" is no different to me than Bethesda's "eh, we can release the game in a mostly finished state, the modding community will finish it for us", lol.

But it's worse than that. In my previous post, I mentioned how the DM has a lot of extra workload to keep spells from doing too much. Well, finding ways non-spellcasters can contribute is exactly that. Additional workload to balance something the designers didn't.

And for those of you who have never seen this problem, I hope you can at least appreciate that it is a potential problem. Which means it will come up somewhere, sometime, and the average DM is not prepared for it.

 

[Scribe]

I think the conversation constantly shifts from the fact that the Fighter and Wizard in 5e were designed around delving 8+ room dungeons and the balance breaks the second the party steps out the dungeon or can split the dungeon into parts and long rest with magic.

Which succinctly points out a way to improve (for a given definition of improve) the balance (for a given definition of balance) of the game.

Remove the spells which enable ways to get around basic design assumptions.

 

[Minigiant]

Which succinctly points out a way to improve (for a given definition of improve) the balance (for a given definition of balance) of the game.

Remove the spells which enable ways to get around basic design assumptions.

We tried that.

People complained that they were not able to get around the based design assumptions.

 

[Oofta]

It's been my experience that many DM's are very conservative about improvised actions and what you can accomplish with "mundane" abilities like skills or tools, but when you produce a spell that says "I can do X", they might read the spell very carefully, but if it truly can do X, then it works.

This does impact the playstyle of non-spellcasters, and design absolutely should reflect that. By saying "well, the DM should figure out how to make sure everyone can contribute" is no different to me than Bethesda's "eh, we can release the game in a mostly finished state, the modding community will finish it for us", lol.

But it's worse than that. In my previous post, I mentioned how the DM has a lot of extra workload to keep spells from doing too much. Well, finding ways non-spellcasters can contribute is exactly that. Additional workload to balance something the designers didn't.

And for those of you who have never seen this problem, I hope you can at least appreciate that it is a potential problem. Which means it will come up somewhere, sometime, and the average DM is not prepared for it.

There are a ton of things that are a potential problem. It's a game with many moving parts implemented in an ad-hoc basis by millions of different players. So all anyone can really do is go by their experience and their subjective judgement. For the dev designers all they can do is do playtests and surveys to attempt to make the game as broadly appealing as possible.

No game can be perfect for everyone. There are certainly things I'd like to see changed and, for example I'd like to see a bunch of alternate rest rules in the DMG. But I also accept that compromise means I can't get everything I want.

 

[Oofta]

Which succinctly points out a way to improve (for a given definition of improve) the balance (for a given definition of balance) of the game.

Remove the spells which enable ways to get around basic design assumptions.

I'm not even sure you need to do that. Just make it costly in some way so people aren't automatically using those spells every time.

 

[Minigiant]

I'm not even sure you need to do that. Just make it costly in some way so people aren't automatically using those spells every time.

We tried that.

People complained that they were not able using those spells every time because they costed too much.

 

[pemerton]

It's been my experience that many DM's are very conservative about improvised actions and what you can accomplish with "mundane" abilities like skills or tools, but when you produce a spell that says "I can do X", they might read the spell very carefully, but if it truly can do X, then it works.

To me, this seems consistent with what I posted not far upthread: the problem here is with action resolution.

Particularly as the essence of a RPG - that is, of a game in which the fiction matters to resolution - is "improvised actions", that is, players imagining things that their PCs might do in the fiction, and then declaring that their PCs do those things.

There are a ton of things that are a potential problem. It's a game with many moving parts implemented in an ad-hoc basis by millions of different players. So all anyone can really do is go by their experience and their subjective judgement. For the dev designers all they can do is do playtests and surveys to attempt to make the game as broadly appealing as possible.

It's not that hard for a RPG to give advice on how to resolve actions. Many RPGs do so, including versions of D&D.

The issue that WotC has is quite different: a significant part of its current player base wants action resolution to have a very minimal impact on the shared fiction; and in that part of the player base that does want action resolution to have an impact on the shared fiction, many want that impact to occur largely via curation/negotiation rather than the application of the game's ostensible action resolution mechanics.

As I posted upthread,

there is a big part of the D&D play community for whom the principal function of the PC sheet is to serve as a loosely-rated series of descriptors, and for whom the principal element in resolution is not the maths but the GM.

It undermines the interests of these parts of the player base to present the game as one with a robust, mechanical action resolution framework.

 

[Oofta]

We tried that.

People complained that they were not able using those spells every time because they costed too much.

At a certain point you have to do a secret poll of the group (no need asking the people complaining they can't break the game of course). Is everyone okay with this? If so, then you have to decide if you want to continue DMing them. If it's just one or two players you simply have to learn to say "no". Not sure what else to say.

 

[Scribe]

We tried that.

People complained that they were not able to get around the based design assumptions.

I'm not even sure you need to do that. Just make it costly in some way so people aren't automatically using those spells every time.

We tried that.

People complained that they were not able using those spells every time because they costed too much.

At a certain point you have to do a secret poll of the group (no need asking the people complaining they can't break the game of course). Is everyone okay with this? If so, then you have to decide if you want to continue DMing them. If it's just one or two players you simply have to learn to say "no". Not sure what else to say.

I just wonder what this list of balance breaking spells would look like. Is it just things which break rest constraints? Is it the second level spells that replace a bunch of skills? Is it the fact they went away from memorizing to known?

If the problem is really there, it should be trivial to list and solve for.