D&D 5E Balancing Full Casters with Non-Casters

[5ekyu]

I have contained all creatures in a room and casually walked up to the item/objective and casually walked out without losing any life with it. Squads B and F you say? Well I probably just teleport out of there.

While not at all going to argue with smart play sometimes winning an encounter - this particular "examp-othetical" does not hold to scrutiny well.

You are presuming a 9th level caster with two slots available at 5th at least **and** the mission objective separated from the adversaries their to challenge you to keep it.

So we must assume those adversaries have less capability to match their level than you? In the "objective challenge?"

honestly, at least one of my players if met with such a circumstance would stop and say "why don't they have competent protections here?" or at least wonder why the "adversaries" were making it this easy.

if later on the realized the macguffin recovery actually delivered a trojan curse to the "princess" or whatever sent us to seek the macguffin, they would go "oh yeah, now we know."

 

[Phion]

Congratulations, you looted the wrong item and left the dungeon early thinking yourself the victor. The Orcs have reinforced their dungeon, relocated the valuables within it and you remain unpaid by your benefactor.

You don't play a lot of dungeons do you?

Well in the circumstance I given you that did not happen because the correct item was taken, it was not a example of what could happen. It did happen. Also I have done tomes of horror and the same campaign where I used the wall of force we were going against 3-4 death knights and liches per fight in fairly large dungeons; while I would not say I have done lots of dungeons, I have done enough to know what I am talking about.

Besides, we are talking about balance, to a none spell caster the scenario I provided would not even be an option. A wizard can do this while also taking high damage spells with a lot of utility (I have a level 20 wizard, again I know this because it happened).

 

[Phion]

While not at all going to argue with smart play sometimes winning an encounter - this particular "examp-othetical" does not hold to scrutiny well.

You are presuming a 9th level caster with two slots available at 5th at least **and** the mission objective separated from the adversaries their to challenge you to keep it.

So we must assume those adversaries have less capability to match their level than you? In the "objective challenge?"

honestly, at least one of my players if met with such a circumstance would stop and say "why don't they have competent protections here?" or at least wonder why the "adversaries" were making it this easy.

if later on the realized the macguffin recovery actually delivered a trojan curse to the "princess" or whatever sent us to seek the macguffin, they would go "oh yeah, now we know."

Equally you are presuming the world will suddenly have a equal level challenge around every corner, this is not reflective of the world typically. Yes the Dm should increase the frequency of challenges as it is they who controls the narrative, but a player might think why has every npc suddenly become competent to the point that they should be able to solve their own problems. I prefer to do a world where a low level character might be unfortunate enough to come across a high level character and end up dead if they are foolish, but equally when they are high level themselves they still interact with low level threats; not saying that's how it should be done, just a preference.

 

[5ekyu]

Equally you are presuming the world will suddenly have a equal level challenge around every corner, this is not reflective of the world typically. Yes the Dm should increase the frequency of challenges as it is they who controls the narrative, but a player might think why has every npc suddenly become competent to the point that they should be able to solve their own problems. I prefer to do a world where a low level character might be unfortunate enough to come across a high level character and end up dead if they are foolish, but equally when they are high level themselves they still interact with low level threats; not saying that's how it should be done, just a preference.

And nothing in the discussion assumes otherwise. They may encounterbplenty of low leel folks and do... Millions of them in fact depending on world size but if they are after something important enough they are not going to be expecting it to be guarded by nobodies. Also, if they encountered guards and the like that the setying and experience said were weak, why waste the high power?

The key is we can discuss "balance" between characters all day but if we decide we should be using "against weak foes" as our baselines we wont get much productibe output.

But hey, to each their own.

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[Phion]

And nothing in the discussion assumes otherwise. They may encounterbplenty of low leel folks and do... Millions of them in fact depending on world size but if they are after something important enough they are not going to be expecting it to be guarded by nobodies. Also, if they encountered guards and the like that the setying and experience said were weak, why waste the high power?

The key is we can discuss "balance" between characters all day but if we decide we should be using "against weak foes" as our baselines we wont get much productibe output.

But hey, to each their own.

Sent from my [device_name] using EN World mobile app

A fair point. Of course a foe could be very strong and nullified by a spell like wall of force as it stops most things short of a disintegrate or counterspell which not every npc will have. Of course that's one spell and a lot of spell casters don't have access to it; in general I don't think there is a dire need for change but maybe more of a rethink of spells such as wall of force, counterspell and clone.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Beings that can threaten planes aren't going to wait around for the PCs to rest.

Beings that can threaten planes have no reason to know that the PCs even exist. Six months ago, these particular mortals were indistinguishable from any other speck of dirt on the Prime Material. Meanwhile, my cosmic plan has been moving forward for a thousand years.

If PCs are supposed to go from saving a town from bandits to saving the entire multiverse, then it should take them more than a year to get there.

 

[Sunseeker]

Well in the circumstance I given you that did not happen because the correct item was taken, it was not a example of what could happen. It did happen. Also I have done tomes of horror and the same campaign where I used the wall of force we were going against 3-4 death knights and liches per fight in fairly large dungeons; while I would not say I have done lots of dungeons, I have done enough to know what I am talking about.

Besides, we are talking about balance, to a none spell caster the scenario I provided would not even be an option. A wizard can do this while also taking high damage spells with a lot of utility (I have a level 20 wizard, again I know this because it happened).

Wow, this went exactly where I expected it to.

 

[Phion]

Wow, this went exactly where I expected it to.

Likewise to your response.

 

[CapnZapp]

My game group normally will not get past 10th level in a campaign, but now that we are staring down that reality my group is complaining that full casters (Wizard, Cleric, Druid) are going to warp the game. I can't say that I disagree, I have always felt like the D&D classes were playing in two different games; medieval combat movie and magic-users warp reality. Fourth edition was the only times things felt balanced, but that system had its own issues. Compounding this issue; our previous campaign we played using Adventures in Middle Earth, which has no casters, and had a blast.

My question is, how would you propose to either reign in full casters or buff up non-casters to make things feel more balanced in 5e?

First off you need to tell us more about your specific group.

Do you use feats. (And multi-classing, but mostly feats)?

In your group, are some players better min-maxxers than others? If yes, are these players playing martials or casters?

Your answers make a world of difference. Generally, martials overshadow casters at low levels if feats are available. And conversely, casters definitely outshine martials at high levels if feats are not used.

Any more detailed analysis will have to await your particular group's composition.

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[schnee]

I had neglected to take the number of encounters per day into account. Working around that or using the spells recharge after X number of encounters approach might help. To be honest I can't think of any time I designed an individual adventure based on number of encounters; I usually just do what make sense in narrative. Also, what kind of session length do you do for 6-8 encounters per day? It seems like you would have to track spell slots between sessions or do 8-12 hour marathon games. We are lucky if we get in 4 hours for a session anymore (family obligations and such) and a lot that is spent on general hanging out and tomfoolery.

We have talked through this extensively with our players, and this is what we have in our 'House Playing Style' document:

The game is balanced around 6-8 encounters and 2 short rests per long rest. We basically get half of that per session, so for the game to be fun for every class, we need to have the party get a long rest about every other game day regardless of the narrative. That means keeping track of spell slots, hit die, hit points, etc. between sessions sometimes.

As GMs we'll do our best to make it work in the story. It may manifest via regular play, as in a night-time random encounter, or it may be something we just narrate with a bit of hand-waving. It won't always make 100% perfect sense, but it will never stick out as arbitrary.

I wrote this for further explanation for potential new GMs (in our West Marches game) and for players who are skeptical:

If long rests come too frequently, full spellcaster classes have way too many spells at their disposal, and they trivialize everything in and out of combat. When they have to stretch their resources out over a full day, they not only have to be careful about what they cast and when, but they end up deploying spells in a far different way - to complement the rest of the party at key moments, rather than directly solve every problem or threat.

So, just think of it this way: sometimes it's just difficult to get a long rest. In the wilderness, you need to be on alert for hungry monsters and patrolling humanoids, and some nights it's just impossible to get deep sleep. In an unfamiliar city, the constant hustle and bustle keeps you on edge, and it's hard to separate the general fear, suspicion and mistrust that heavily-armed adventurers engender from regular folk from the possibility that one of them might be an actual enemy sizing you up for a midnight assault.

In the cases where it's a bit hard to justify, we request that you just go with it, in the interests of making sure each class - full casters, short-rest classes, skill monkeys, and tanky martials - has their chance to shine.

It hasn't been a problem at all, and the game is markedly better than before we started paying attention to it.