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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 6709806" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Okay, so, the conversation has since drifted outside of the bounds in which meaningful mathematical analysis can be done, so I'm probably just going to not do that (unless people really want the crunched math, in which case I'll do it tomorrow or the day after).That said, though, I do think there are two very meaningful points that can, and should, be addressed here. Plus the minor point that I think it's...more than a little unfair to be bringing in homebrew content for a comparison between the classes.1) "The Fighter is balanced in the combat pillar, and the other pillars."This is a bit of a problem, at least compared to most of the other rhetoric I've seen on this forum. Back during the heyday of the "what is wrong with the Fighter" threads,* one of the topics that came up rather frequently was "the Fighter doesn't get any 'meaningful' non-combat features." People debated what "meaningful" meant, of course, but the far more common response was "the Fighter is the best at combat, that's why it isn't so great at other things; people demanding more non-combat stuff are demanding unfair favoritism." But now, in this thread, we seem to be admitting that even when the Fighter goes all-out for combat, they're only slightly better than someone else going all-out for combat--and the Paladin can always choose to spend daily resources on non-combat stuff, while the Fighter cannot. Even Second Wind (roughly 5.5+level, once per rest) doesn't quite stand up to Lay on Hands (5*level, can be used to remove disease/poison); it takes at least 3 short rests per day at that level to exceed LoH at level 5, and 4 per day at level 10 (the formula being: # of short rests = 5*(level)/(5.5+level)), though slightly lucky rolls can make early-level SW competitive with LoH.The bigger point, though, is that the Paladin can cast several potent non-combat spells instead of doing extra damage, whereas the Fighter can never get more than "one extra action's worth of effect" per short rest. The Fighter, even if she goes balls-out damage, is well within the whims of random variation, in terms of extra damage she can deal, while never bringing more to the non-combat table than an artisan tool proficiency (most of which are...very narrow in application) or (generally) an extra +1 or +2 to some skills (and five extra feet of jump distance!). So the Paladin appears to be, at very worst, only a single notch below the Fighter in terms of...well, fighting, while having numerous party-friendly passive/always-on abilities and the ability to "exchange" some of that fight-might for other stuff--presumably only when it would be really useful, so there's never a question of "lost" utility for it.2. "Having less than 2 short rests per day is just a mistaken choice by the DM."From what I've heard, this is not actually the case. That is, nearly every group I've heard discuss the topic has said that the average is 1 a day, with the occasional day with 2 and even some days with none at all; days with 3 or more are rare or even unheard of, even when there are more than 6 encounters. The book can say there's two, sure--but the condition is so soft that I think most DMs don't even realize that it really, seriously matters for certain classes. While I wasn't a member of ENWorld at the time, I did voice this as a criticism back during the playtest--having some classes primarily or near-exclusively dependent on short rests for their critical abilities, while others are primarily or even exclusively long-rest dependent (and a rare few, like the Rogue, are largely rest-independent) would lead to one or the other getting shortchanged. My fears were focused on the short-rest classes, mostly because a short rest is now an hour long--taking more than two a day means, for most adventuring parties, that you spend nearly as much time not doing anything as you do adventuring (3 hr SR + 8 hr LR = 11 hrs resting, vs. 13 hr doing *everything else*).Despite the mechanical and personal incentive (for players) and the advice of the books (mostly for DMs), the evidence I've seen suggests that 5e players and/or DMs favor taking fewer than the expected number of short rests per long rest--closer to one every three encounters rather than every two. The Paladin is (largely) unfazed by this trend, if indeed it is a trend--while the Fighter is pretty significantly penalized by it, to the tune of losing a third of its daily bonus damage. Although I have frequently stated my distaste for forum polls, <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?469262-Short-Rests-How-many-does-your-group-get-take-between-long-rests-on-average" target="_blank">I have created one</a> just to get a sense of how "people who read the 5e section and choose to vote" (a small, woefully unrepresentative sample, sadly) tackle the short-rests-per-long-rest issue, for anyone interested in voting.*which I guess you could say were the, or at least a, "first wave" of 5e criticism around here, followed by the "Warlord debate" threads which are now the current long-running discussion</blockquote>

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