But the people on this board are not newbies and newbies that play the game are going to be limited primarily by lack of experience and familiarity with the game, not by the mechanics. A newbie playing a wizard is not more powerful than a newbie playing say a Monk (and arguably less powerful due to the mastery necessary to use spells effectively).
To make the Wizard be more powerful than other classes you have to understand the rules sufficiently to eek out those advantages.
That makes no sense, you're saying that you don't care if Newbies are not properly informed?
First off, nothing hints at it being the same.
Encounter building and CR don't have modifiers by class. If the composition of a party mattered, then they would be mentioned in encounter building, but they don't, meaning that CR should, technically, be the same regardless of class.
The other description uses terms like "diverse", "elite foot soldiers" and "metting out death"
You forgot 'conquering overlord' and 'unmatched' and 'staring death in the face'. You're just picking the less interesting aspect.
I don't know about you but literally bringing a devil onto the planet or calling down a meteor sounds or opening a portal to another plane is godlike, while the fighter description sounds about like your average U.S. Marine - pretty awesome as far as people go, but not godlike.
My wife has never played D&D, I asked her which of those paragraphs sounded more powerful and she said the first.
That's just fluff, probably not written by the same person who wrote the mechanics, and just show a lack of imagination rather than anything. That fluff is there to get your interested in the class, not to describe in vague terms its power level!
And if the only way to judge how strong two classes are compared to each other is to compare two random paragraphs of fluff, then that's a
terrible way to convey power level. I don't think 5e is that badly written.
I don't agree that other classes need to be improved similarly. Monk maybe, but not the others. I like the way they improved the Ranger, but I like the other classes how they are too. I think making the Ranger more magical made a lot of sense thematically, but doing the same to a fighter, Rogue or Barbarian would not make a lot of sense and would be more difficult from a thematic point of view IMO. A more magical Monk would be ok, Paladins are already heavily magical and are not that far behind I don't think.
It's pretty telling that the only way you can think to make a class stronger is to give it magic...
Can any class do that? Exactly what kind of power would this be? It's quite situational, but you're talking about what ... super intimidate?
Sure? Intimidate action in a cone. Why not?
And frankly, considering we're competing against "Wish" and, oh, let's just say "A level 20 Twilight Cleric", I don't see balance being much of an issue given the competitors. Being so fierce the mere sight of you causes an army to flee, compared to "I tear open a hole in reality and go to another universe entirely"?
Level 20 should be way more gonzo than it is now. Needs to be Epic Destiny level of crazy, with abilities that go "Once per day, when you die..." and not "Add your Wisdom to damage against your favored enemy" .
A 20th level fighter can square off against a grizzly bear while unarmed and completely naked, and reasonably expect to kill the bear (with their bare hands) within 6-12 seconds, with no meaningful harm to the fighter. I don't see how you can know that but also protest the idea that there should be anything remotely superheroic about a high level fighter.
And no, being able to solo a grizzly like this at 20th level, while basically impossible from a real world perspective, isn't all that impressive by the standard of a high level character. The monk could do the same thing, but even more effortlessly. Everyone knows it's a low CR creature.
A mythic martial would make the fighter basically obsolete , but it would be easy to balance in comparison to the wizard. It's why my default position is to improve the fighter.
Shame there's no martial character to base a Mythic Fighter on, eh? A propos of nothing... Remember when Hercules defeated an Hydra on his own? Or his
first labor where he wrestled and strangled the Nemean Lion who was impervious to weapons? Or what about when Roland, knight of Charlemagne, cleaved a mountain top two with a strike of his sword,
creating a pass that bear his name TO THIS DAY.
For me, I didn’t find myself especially smart, proud or better than the other players when I simply read a spell description and apply it. Even if it teleport the party to the other side of the world, that’s it, it’s done, no need to cheer up!
That's cause you're not a Wizard Fan
That makes no sense and the 4E stuff that had similar to that was unpopular. If you want that just give them spells.
The real problem people had were with
Dailies. Nobody was bothered by the Fighter's At-Will abilities. Even the Essential version had the Slayer and Knight gain stances that modified their basic attacks, as barely disguised At-Wills.
A 4e Fighter's At-Will could do things like: Push the target 5 feet, then let the Fighter follow them into their former space; trade a little accuracy to inflict extra damage equal to CO; increase accuracy in exchange for your STR mod damage; increase accuracy in exchange for making you easier to hit by the target (with extra CON damage if you use an axe, hammer or mace!); grant Temp HP if you have the right class feature; move 5 feet then slide the enemy into the space you left; let you grapple the target with your free hand; targeting FORT and then knock the foe prone in exchange for only inflicting STR mod dmg; inflict half STR mod damage on a miss (full STR with a two-hander); gives you a modicum of resistance to the target's attack until your next turn; use your shield to feint the target and gain a bonus to your next attack until the end of the next turn; punch the target with your free hand after hitting them; let's you change weapon as part of the action and gain a benefit based on the type of weapon use; inflict STR mod damage to a different adjacent creature.
None of these are spells, none of these were an issue, and none of these are possible with no ressource cost in 5e for no reason at all.
Having fighters be the strongest class is non-sensical. Fighters are people. Wizards are people with actual magic physics-breaking abilities.
Wizards are frail people who spent all their times in front of book, meaning they're just one good hit away from folding in half. Fighters are exceptional people who trained to the limit of what is possible.
That's just your Wizard bias showing again.
4E was more balanced than 5E. There is no doubt about it, yet 5E is VASTLY more popular.
4e's lack of popularity is a hugely complex thing that had nothing to do with balance. Only people who complained about that were whiny Wizard players who couldn't hog the spotlight anymore.
I think the lack of balance and putting each class in the place that makes sense is a small part of that popularity.
lol [citation needed]
That's a pretty big claim considering the designers themselves strived for balance. If they didn't, they wouldn't have bothered trying to fix the Ranger
multiple times and left it as a weak class.
As the primary damage dealer, the Fighter character should lead the party,
« hey you the wizard, you gonna teleport us there »
« you the rogue, stop looking at loot, and go scout the next room »
And tell the cleric, « if your god can finally help us, I will smash this mighty demon! »
A Fighter should just be a Warlord with a different name tag and a bigger sword.
