D&D 5E (2024) A critical analysis of 2024's revised classes

[billd91]

I've said it before and I'll say it again... I have always felt it's the people complaining about "wizard supremacy" who are louder and angrier about it than any "wizard fan" demanding that the wizard be king or bitching when another class supposedly moves in on their territory.

Now maybe I just don't go to the places where the "wizard fans" are actually bitching when something isn't designed to keep that class the best... but at least around here it's always seem to me people suggesting that the wizard fans keep yelling and getting mad, than it is than actually seeing the wizard fans themselves behave that way.

I can't say that I've seen wizard partisans arguing that the class should be the best... like, ever. I don't think I've ever actually seen that, at least not that I can actually remember.
What I have seen is people arguing that magic should be, well, magical. That it should transcend the bounds of mundanity. And if that means that powerful casters have reality warping powers - that's what you should expect from magic. I suspect that some people who complain about the wizard partisans see that and interpret it as wizard fans demanding the wizard be supreme PC.

I too think magic should be magical and that reality warping power is an expectation of having magic around. But I don't think wizards should be viewed with any kind of PC supremacy. Rather, in a party of 6 players, the wizard is one of six - not a "first among equals". And while a wizard's (or any other high level caster's) spells may enable certain sorts of adventuring, that doesn't mean they have to dominate the play agenda. As a DM, I'm giving equal power to set the play agenda to the other five players at the table as I give that wizard player.

 

[Pedantic]

100% agreement. There are too many popular assumptions around class tropes and design that are in direct contradiction. There's no way to square the circle.

To be fair, no one is really trying. I think it's still very possible to back engineer a set of design principles that make characters "mundane" and there's space to control what high level magic can do. Probably not in removing top-end spell effects, but in separating them across classes or specialties and/or controlling frequency.

It's just a lot of work, that will require a lot of testing and iteration and no one will do it. Quantifying out of combat interaction beyond generic skill checks at all, much less trying to model the utility of different tools, is very much out of the design zeitgeist.

 

[Minigiant]

At 20th level, of course they should. There's no point in having your game go to 20 if you aren't.

But that then means the 20th level Fighter should also have campaign altering abilities to match... but then that brings out all the players who don't want the Fighter to be anything but "mundane". Which of course begs the question what exactly is a 20th level mundane character supposed to be able to do?

And even when someone attempts to make a mundane 20th level Fighter that is.mechanically balanced against that same wizard... folks who care about "verisimilitude" complain about the unrealistic of that.

You can't win.

And that essentially is the source of "wizard supremacy".

Like most supremacy, it's about keeping a group down more that pushing a group up.

From my history in gaming, the loudest crying is when the limited gains options.

 

[Charlaquin]

I’ve often wondered about this. Fighters have always been one of the stronger classes in 5e, yet any thread about martial/caster balance tends to focus on them.

I am also struck by how much those discussions tend to focus on top tier abilities, despite those being a negligible part of the game, more aspirational than anything else. Like, sure, a wizard can potentially get wish, but they are highly unlikely to ever get close to it.

Yeah, I’m not sure what is up with that. It’s pretty notable in thread after thread. It’s especially surprising since the 2024 rules came out; they were extremely good to fighters.

I think you’re right on the money. If we’re talking about pure combat balance, 2024 5e has reached a pretty good spot. Casters, for the most part, are capable of dealing reasonable damage per round, but are less efficient at it than martials, except in cases where they are able to use AoE damage against a very large number of weaker targets. Control spells are more efficient for dealing with individual targets, but are mainly enablers for the primary damage dealers (the martials) to finish off the controlled target more quickly and safely. And healing is very valuable now, with monster damage output and healing spell power both having increased without PCs’ base hit point totals having increased at all. That means an optimal party will involve a combination of martial damage dealers, AoE and Control focused casters, and healing focused casters. Which is a pretty good place to be in, combat-balance wise. Everyone contributes something different and valuable.

What the martial vs. caster debate is really about is not combat balance, but narrative authority. Casters can use spells to simply make a thing happen, whereas martials can really only rely on skills, filtered through DM adjudication, to make things happen. At low levels, this means the martials have to play the “mother, may I?” game with the DM to solve problems that don’t involve reducing a pool of hit points to zero, while casters have access to a toolbox of ready-made solutions. See arguments about stealth and thieves’ tools vs. Invisibility and Knock. At high levels, this means casters get access to things like teleportation, telepathy, flight, and of course eventually Wish, while martials are stuck doing the same things they’ve been doing since first level but with higher numbers.

And that’s why this debate will never be resolved. Even if martials were mathematically provably better at combat than casters in all scenarios, it would not resolve the core underlying issue that casters have abilities that grant (temporary, limited) narrative authority, and martials don’t. And it’s likely they never will in D&D, because the one edition where this balance was directly addressed, performed commercially poorly. This is a stark thematic divide within the D&D fandom, of people who want non-spellcasting characters to be capable of superhuman feats (and not just in combat), and people who want all superhuman feats to be acts of magic, which D&D ties inextricably to spellcasting.

 

[TorgoTheWhite]

To me, it is this uneven ease doing your thing and the outcry if the act of actually doing magic was more limited. The old superhero power argument and just flinging around spells like a gunslinger. Yeah, Wizbiz can have disadvantage up-close.. but that doesn't feel like it is enough to me, also I will just switch to imposing a saving throw. The wizard that is grappled by dark tentacles has no RAW reason that they can't go on just spellslinging away... unless its me "being a dick" as the DM... There is more to that, but yeah it would be more railing against magic as it is setup at its core in DnD

 

[Kinematics]

A character's game mechanics that are given to a "base class" versus given to a "subclass" are arbitrary. The designers just select a handful and then flavor them with their cutesy names to say that "these mechanics are from being a Cleric, and those mechanics are from being in the 'Light domain'." But what those mechanics are is just whatever a designer came up with. So there is absolutely no reason why a player or DM themselves couldn't just arbitrarily say that certain mechanics one gets at 1st level from the "class" are now going to be mechanics they get from their "subclass" and just assign them that way.

If a player is selecting the "Light Domain" at 3rd level because they are a Cleric of Lathander... then they can just say that certain mechanics they are getting at 1st level are because of their worship of the "Light domain" rather than because being a "Cleric" gave it to them.

I can't believe it never occurred to me before, but yeah, this helps define what I think "should" be the way to view subclasses.

There has been lots of arguing about moving the subclasses to level 3, and what that means for, for example, a Fiend Patron warlock to not actually choose a patron until level 3. How is he a warlock until that point? The answer is that the subclass has already been chosen, he just hasn't unlocked any of the "feat chain" benefits yet.

Similar for sorcerer (which is another class where the failure to specialize at 1st level really bugged me). A Draconic sorcerer has always been a Draconic sorcerer. She wasn't some amorphous sorcerer-like 'thing' before level 3, when she actually chose to settle on certain Draconic benefits. She just hadn't yet solidified the power into something concrete that could manifest outwardly.

A Champion fighter and an Eldritch Knight fighter will not be built the same way at level 1. That difference will be because the player intends to take a particular subclass when it's available, but in truth the character is already a Champion or Eldritch Knight in the making, just from taking up the sword to become an actual classed (fighter) individual. Level 3 is just when those specific benefits manifest, showing the fruits of the player's work to embody that subclass.

Adding a level 1 ribbon feature for subclasses would be a nice touch, though, just to show what path you're on.

 

[Belen]

I think you’re right on the money. If we’re talking about pure combat balance, 2024 5e has reached a pretty good spot. Casters, for the most part, are capable of dealing reasonable damage per round, but are less efficient at it than martials, except in cases where they are able to use AoE damage against a very large number of weaker targets. Control spells are more efficient for dealing with individual targets, but are mainly enablers for the primary damage dealers (the martials) to finish off the controlled target more quickly and safely. And healing is very valuable now, with monster damage output and healing spell power both having increased without PCs’ base hit point totals having increased at all. That means an optimal party will involve a combination of martial damage dealers, AoE and Control focused casters, and healing focused casters. Which is a pretty good place to be in, combat-balance wise. Everyone contributes something different and valuable.

What the martial vs. caster debate is really about is not combat balance, but narrative authority. Casters can use spells to simply make a thing happen, whereas martials can really only rely on skills, filtered through DM adjudication, to make things happen. At low levels, this means the martials have to play the “mother, may I?” game with the DM to solve problems that don’t involve reducing a pool of hit points to zero, while casters have access to a toolbox of ready-made solutions. See arguments about stealth and thieves’ tools vs. Invisibility and Knock. At high levels, this means casters get access to things like teleportation, telepathy, flight, and of course eventually Wish, while martials are stuck doing the same things they’ve been doing since first level but with higher numbers.

And that’s why this debate will never be resolved. Even if martials were mathematically provably better at combat than casters in all scenarios, it would not resolve the core underlying issue that casters have abilities that grant (temporary, limited) narrative authority, and martials don’t. And it’s likely they never will in D&D, because the one edition where this balance was directly addressed, performed commercially poorly. This is a stark thematic divide within the D&D fandom, of people who want non-spellcasting characters to be capable of superhuman feats (and not just in combat), and people who want all superhuman feats to be acts of magic, which D&D ties inextricably to spellcasting.

The full caster players also end up doing more work for the game. I spend way too much time trying to balance out my available spells for the party. A caster has limited slots. It's not as if they always have these utility spells handy and they have to balance them with the need for combat spells.

A fighter almost always have their abilities all the time.

That said, I would not mind seeing the fighter gain natural resistances or an AC bonus at higher levels. I think that getting a +2 or +4 bonus to AC because they have grown in sheer prowess would be awesome.

 

[I'm A Banana]

But that then means the 20th level Fighter should also have campaign altering abilities to match... but then that brings out all the players who don't want the Fighter to be anything but "mundane". Which of course begs the question what exactly is a 20th level mundane character supposed to be able to do?

Traditionally, a high-level fighter impacts the world through ruling kingdoms and commanding armies and raising castles. But, this kind of world impact doesn't work for some games (it's useless, for instance, in a monster-slaying game where DPR matters more than the number of commoners you can get in your army).

5e at the moment has decided that balance in a combat encounter is sufficient (a fighter and a wizard are fairly balanced when it comes to slaying monsters), but 5e also leans fairly strongly in a "D&D is a monster fighting game" direction out of the box. Teleports and wishes and resurrections and such don't strongly feature into that kind of design. Teleporting doesn't clearly make you any better at slaying a monster.

This conversation goes very differently if the level cap is 10 or if level 6 spells take a month to cast or something.

 

[TwoSix]

And that’s why this debate will never be resolved. Even if martials were mathematically provably better at combat than casters in all scenarios, it would not resolve the core underlying issue that casters have abilities that grant (temporary, limited) narrative authority, and martials don’t. And it’s likely they never will in D&D, because the one edition where this balance was directly addressed, performed commercially poorly. This is a stark thematic divide within the D&D fandom, of people who want non-spellcasting characters to be capable of superhuman feats (and not just in combat), and people who want all superhuman feats to be acts of magic, which D&D ties inextricably to spellcasting.

I do think, though, that one way to solve the divide would be to make martials not just provably better at combat but obviously better at combat. Put "control over narrative" and "control over combat" as two opposed poles that class archetypes would have to pick between.

 

[Minigiant]

And that’s why this debate will never be resolved.

It's only still a debate because non-spell features is 75% not defined by the rules and adjudicated by the whims of individual DMs. And the other 25% are often just tweaks of the base rules.

The debate ends once other features are given rules or even real bounds.