And I would argue that those unaccounted factors are more important that you realize. I will agree that we can definitely do a ranking, just that much of what the original post casts aside is very important. I would argue, for example, that the setting and type of game are by far the most important factors as to which classes perform better, and that several classes have in build "fluff" that cannot be cast aside, of have abilities that in one person's hands are absolutely terrible, but in another's are very powerful. Want an example of this? Thieves Cant. In the hands of a skilled rogue (and admittedly lenient DM) you could literally use it to destroy a campaign. Would most use it in such a way? No. But it could be done.
I would love to hear examples of how you think Thieves' Cant can 'destroy' a campaign, or how it's really valuable at all, since I don't think I've heard of anyone even mention it as a ribbon ability, let alone a significant class feature. At best it's a low-level means of conveying information, but as usual by the time you get significant levels you can do so just as safely and over larger distances with spells like
Sending or
Animal Messenger. So yeah, if you're comparing Thieves' Cant to actually valuable class features that will reliably show up in almost every campaign then you can clearly see its lack of relative value. Corner cases and outliers are not a very compelling reason to say that something is balanced against the whole product.
Slight hyperbole aside, we run into a definitional issue the original post does not address: what is "good"? Are we defining it as broadest applicable functionality? We do we define as functional? The player having fun? The character being superior to all others? The ability requiring a munchkined/min maxed character in order to be deemed good?
I typically operate on the assumption we are talking about mechanical strength cutting as close to RAW as possible, simply for the obvious reason that doing anything else is a fool's errand. It's pointless to debate class strengths when someone chimes in constantly about how their setting does X or their DM allows Y and the class is balanced for those reasons. RAW and all that goes with it sets a series of easily understood conditions for the sake of debate.
What about abilities like the paladin oaths? Are they considered crunch or fluff? What about patrons or dieties? What about alignments, party compositions, encounters, etc?
Party compositions can partially be included since a class that relies heavily on buffing allies will of course need allies taken into consideration. Most of the rest can be discarded, encounters are out because unless you're running a tightly themed campaign there will probably be a decent variety in presentation over the course of the campaign (I would hope), so unless your DM is running flying foes 100% of the time then arguing from that position isn't really helpful. All the rest is undoubtedly fluff, paladin abilities work just fine regardless of target alignment, oaths are purely DM discretion and are thus are not quantifiable, and IIRC cleric and paladins aren't even required to have a deity at all, they can just be devoted to "good".
What reports? I'll concede some subclasses function better in certain games (whispers bard), but as far as I'm aware, short of ranger and *maybe* sorcerer, pretty much every class functions just fine in nearly any sort of game. What matters far more is genre conventions, setting stuff, and alignments/party social relations (i.e. a CE Minion Necromancer probably won't work with a Vengeance Paladin who focuses on slaying undead with a passion no matter which class is deemed "better" and neither character will fit well in a game about saving a town from dragon cultists and their dragon master.
I'm not sure what this tangent is getting at. A paladin and necromancer choosing not to work together has nothing to do with either class, as either enemies or allies, and has no effect whatsoever on analysis regarding their relative effectiveness. In both that example and the cultist campaign, your only point is that one player has hobbled the campaign by intentionally choosing to play a character that's incompatible with another's or with the campaign in general, which again is not a mark for or against the class. If I have a player that plays fighter and refuses to party with elves, that doesn't make elves weak mechanically.
And I'll refrain from making assumptions such as this, nor do I assume that one forum website known for having a disproportionate number of power gamers and munchkins is representative of the larger D&D community. What I do however not like, is the idea of spreading misleading information to potential new players that certain things "don't matter" when they might to certain DM'S or gaming groups.
Well until Wizards feels like sharing the results of their polling it's the best we have to work with, and frankly when it comes to balance it's the powergamer's opinions whose are actually valuable. If little johnny plays a gnome fighter with 12 str and has a blast, good for him, it doesn't mean that this was a good choice mechanically or that fighter is imbalanced if he under-performs with it.
I don't have a lot of experience with the published adventure paths, so I'd appreciate others' input, but from what I have read of them they seem unsurprisingly geared towards what you could call the "expected" D&D experience, which leads me to believe that they are not so specialized as to significantly shift balance expectations. I really doubt that a paladin has a titanic shift in usefulness from Lost Mines to Elemental Princes to Tombs of Annihilation.
Who says that flexibility is always considered stronger? Isn't the entire *point* of subclasses to help specialize your character? To say nothing of the issue that everyone rolling generalists often ends up with a dysfunctional group of "Lone Wolves" who tread on each others toes and don't allow others a chance to have a spotlight in a game. The game is a cooperative experience and any survey needs to consider this.
To answer; not really. They could have been, but many of them have very little major effect on the playstyle of the parent class due to conservative design. Also, the opposite of your statement is true, when the party is flexible and everyone can help in a given task or goal, the party works as an actual team. If you have one dude who's the face, one dude who's the lockpick, and one dude who is the muscle, then you typically end up in situations where one member shines and the rest just let them do their thing, or maybe chip in with a help action. In all my years playing D&D, no generalist combatant or wizard has ever come close to being as 'lone wolf' status as the requisite super stealth player or heavily invested party face.
Secondly, flexibility is simply unambiguously stronger, especially in the context of most of your objections. A lore bard can easily build himself to any campaign and contribute meaningfully, and that does mean that it has an edge over classes that cannot do so. If the lore bard is just fine in a combat heavy game as well as an intrigue based one, then it is the better option over a more specialized class that only excels in one arena.
What would be a far better thing to do would be to try to identify types of games, situations, and group setups where each class, race, background, and subclass not only performs well, but also fits the game, in order to help new players roll characters that will allow the maximum fun for both themselves and their gaming groups, rather than rank them as "best to worst".
Which would again be a mostly pointless exercise summed up by saying "talk to your DM", which would also serve to disguise legitimate balance or design problems in the game. For example, the Ranger was so unpopular that Wizards is currently working on officially re-releasing the class, and that's not because people didn't like the fluff of the ranger. It's because it was a mess mechanically and generally a very sub-par options when compared to basically anything else, and even a ranger-themed campaign can't save it from that.
On these points we actually agree. I just am pointing out that we cannot disregard roleplaying, fluff, and settings, ad that context matters.
And I'm saying in the context of mechanically inclined discussions they really don't matter, and attempting to bring those elements into consideration bogs the discussion down with useless minutia. If this was a discussion about say, DPR, it doesn't matter how you think paladins should be played or what houserules your DM has, because those factors apply to you alone and not the class RAW.
