D&D 5E Class Analysis: Fighter and Bard

Sacrosanct

Legend
That's a good question. I can only give my opinion on that, which is I don't think so. Actually in my experience in 'real play' things tend to get worse, as the weaknesses of the system become magnified. The white room scenario actually works in favour of the martial class, which operates pretty much the same regardless of the context, not having much of an option to adapt and cope otherwise.

My experience is the exact opposite. White room favors the caster by exponential levels because it often assumes:

* casters have had access to the spell to begin with
* casters have the spell prepared/memorized
* caster is never interrupted when attempting to cast the spell
* caster has all of the required components (as necessary)
* caster has full complement of spell slots available
* environment/opponent is set up to have the spell work reliably (no spell resistance, etc)

And in my actual play experience, rarely do all of those things align. Certainly not after the first encounter. The only assumption with marital PCs is that they have a weapon handy.
 

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Cybit

First Post
That's a good question. I can only give my opinion on that, which is I don't think so. Actually in my experience in 'real play' things tend to get worse, as the weaknesses of the system become magnified. The white room scenario actually works in favour of the martial class, which operates pretty much the same regardless of the context, not having much of an option to adapt and cope otherwise.

For Utility purposes, white rooms tend to favor casters heavily. Because the list of things they could do is much higher in a vacuum, while in an in-game scenario, the confines of the specific scenario generally will limit how much of that utility is actually useful or usable. Utility is far more seductive in a vacuum (look at the 8000 things I can do), repeatability is more seductive in a confined situation (I can do one thing really well and make it work in all situations).

Also, bards are probably the most utilitarian casters in the game from my experience. Although the number of spells they know is lower, it isn't about how many spells you know generally, it's how many you can prepare. Unless given extreme foreknowledge of a situation, preparation > knowledge.

EDIT: Also, legendary monsters tend to hose casters in this edition far more than they hose martial characters. The "automatically make X saves per day" feature absolutely can terrorize a spellcaster.
 

ZombieRoboNinja

First Post
So, a couple things are going on here that muddy the waters.

First off, the bard is using smite spells. This is perfectly legal but also extremely powerful and annoying. (Why is a bard SIGNIFICANTLY better at smiting than a paladin?) I would disallow this as a DM, as a house rule. If you get rid of the smites, the bard's damage falls below the fighter's more significantly.

Second, as much as it simplifies things to ignore magic items, it really SHOULD be taken into account that a level 20 fighter will get more benefit from them than any other character (except a monk with a magic monk weapon). Twice as much as a bard, in fact. So we don't even have to dip into house rules to fix this issue; just give everyone in the party a Flametongue weapon (+1 weapon, +1d6 fire damage on hit), and the fighter with his extra attacks will get a proportionally higher benefit from it. Likewise, AC bonuses are more powerful the higher your AC already is: if we assume the fighter has 19 AC and the bard has 17 AC, that means an enemy with +8 to hit needs an 11+ to hit the fighter and a 9+ to hit the bard (50% chance to hit vs. 60%). That means that giving everyone +2 armor will reduce the damage to the fighter by 20% and to the rogue by only 16.6%. So aside from the fact that this chart inexplicably ignores the impact of AC, if we assume that the fighter normally has even slightly better nonmagical AC, giving the entire party magic armor will still benefit the fighter more.

Third, the fighter is a champion who is apparently taking only three feat out of his eight ability score increase slots. Of those three, one is GWM (hard to argue with), the next is Durable, and the last is, um, Linguist. As I mentioned in a previous post, if the goal is for the fighter to "win" this chart, he should be taking stuff like Inspiring Leader, Ritual Caster, Healer, and Magic Adept. Possibly Alert and Observant too. (Plus plenty of other combat-related stuff, like Sentinel.) Assuming 3 short rests per day, Inspiring Leader alone would add 80 "health points" to the fighter's total at level 20, if we're following the rules and only counting the healing he does to himself. The +2 Con he takes instead only adds 20.

While we're at it, if the goal is to find a non-magical warrior who can rival a bard's broad array of tricks and powers, why on Earth are we looking at a Champion fighter? A rogue or Battlemaster is just as nonmagical. In fact, given generous short rests, the Battlemaster will do MORE damage than the Champion, and also have lots of in-combat utility the Champion doesn't (much of it hard to quantify, granted). And a rogue will have better skills than the bard as well as some other great class abilities (Reliable Talent, Stroke of Luck).

Why do these possibilities not occur to the OP? Why is this board not flooded with complaints of "OMG RITUAL CASTER OP, FIGHTER STOLE MY UTILITY"? Because most people actually don't value such utility that highly. If I'm a fighter, I let the wizard deal with setting up Alarm spells and interpreting riddles and whatever; it's my job to hit stuff. You want to spend a bonus action every round healing some chumps or yourself? Enjoy, I'll be using MY bonus actions to hit stuff. (Or to protect allies or whatever.) If you are running a campaign that DOES focus more on non-combat encounters, AND you're not the kind of "old-school" role-player who enjoys contributing to those scenarios without mechanical support, AND you want to play a nonmagical character, then use some of the feats and subclasses I just mentioned to do so.

The game still isn't perfectly balanced on this axis, ESPECIALLY after level 17 or so. (Following the progress of the play tests, you can just tell that they were aware of this and kept trying to add awesome stuff for super-high-level martial characters, but apparently kept getting shot down by the players, because most of that was gone by release. Apparently a lot of people really, really want to play a level 20 fighter who still Just Hits Stuff.) Dealing with level 9 spells while maintaining some semblance of balance is probably never going to be easy in 5e; if you want to play a campaign that high up, you might have to just ride the lightning and let the necromancer have his skeleton horde, and be sure to give the martial characters fortresses and personal armies and whatever else they need to keep up.
 

Capricia

Banned
Banned
@Capricia

Two comments

1) I'm not sure going till 9th level spells is necessarily the best assumption. There has been a lot of work done about how long games go, and I think they said something like less than 1% of games even get to level 16. So I'd personally cap the levels at 16, as I think that's where the Tiamat storyline ends up (The first one is 1-8, so guessing second one is 9-16).

2) Concentration, concentration, concentration. Of those spells you have taken, how many can be used at the same time, or for more than one round? (Lent out my PHB to friends, so I am alas without it) The thing about playing a spellcaster that is different in 5E than in 3.5E is that concentration ends up meaning casters don't get to use all of their spells in a given day. Because many of the spells that work well for utility and duration are either used for a single round and used in a very inefficient way, or casters keep concentrating and are unable to use all of their spells in a given day.

That would be my perspective; while on paper spells can be used in an optimal way, in practice, the unpredictability of a given day as well as the limitations of the spell slots and concentration rules hamper casters rather dramatically.

1) The book goes as far to mention level 17 and beyond as its own tier of play, so I don't really see why we should be discouraged from talking about it.

2) For my analysis, concentration doesn't really factor in. Yes, concentration is a very nice mechanic. Sure, resilient+war caster makes it virtually impossible to lose a spell to damage, but only having one buff at a time is a hindrance. Even so, a lot of great spells either don't use concentration--foresight, for example--or don't last very long, like the smite spells.


This is a strawman. I don't think I ever implied that "fighter as powerful as wizard" = "fighter is actually wizard." The closest I came was the reference to the serial numbers thing. For example, if a wizard can cast a spell that bypasses AC to deal direct damage and a fighter has a maneuver that bypass AC to deal direct damage, the only real difference is the name of the spell/maneuver and fluff. To me that's boring because there's no difference between the two other than fluff. And to go back to my niche protection comment, I don't like a game where every character type is just as effective as every other one in combat, at skill challenges, etc. Again, to me that feels like the same car with just a different name and paint job. I like characters to have that diversity, where they are better than any other class at a specialty, but might not be as good as others in another field. And I'm positive I'm not the only one who feels this way.

Additionally, you're doing the exact thing I was cautioning at earlier. I.e. it seems you're looking at classes through a lens of how powerful they are as if "power" is some universally agreed upon metric, and possibly only considering white room scenarios. What is "powerful"? DPR measurement? Instant win abilities? Does it factor in things like environment? You might consider a spell like fireball to be really powerful, but if it can only be cast a very limited amount of times, it's really not in the context of the entire game.

From my perspective, the strawman is that you're arguing that classes shouldn't be equally capable in every single aspect of the game. Because no one is saying that. What my position actually is that you can have magical and martial, simple and complex characters playing the same game and everyone can contribute in a way that makes them feel important. It's a tricky thing though, because even way back when people were playing 3e, a fighter dealing less than half as much damage as the Druid's pet could still feel like they were important. Math isn't the only factor in this. That's why I think it's important to look at what classes can do and the control they have over the flow of the game.

@Capricia Would you remove formatting on your post? It looks like this to anyone using the dark background.

ApeE5MN.png

Sure thing.
 


ZombieRoboNinja

First Post
If the goal is to help everyone subjectively FEEL helpful, part of the trick is probably to ensure that everyone can do something useful every turn, and can occasionally take the spotlight. Fighters can do both in combat (thanks to Action Surge and to legendary resistances), but not so much out of combat without spending feats on it.
 

Capricia

Banned
Banned
So, a couple things are going on here that muddy the waters.

First off, the bard is using smite spells. This is perfectly legal but also extremely powerful and annoying. (Why is a bard SIGNIFICANTLY better at smiting than a paladin?) I would disallow this as a DM, as a house rule. If you get rid of the smites, the bard's damage falls below the fighter's more significantly.

Well, mostly because the comparison was to see how well the bard could do at the job of hitting things with something sharp, and the smite spells are good for that. Generally, area of effect spells like Fireball are going to be a lot more effective, since you're dealing a bunch of damage to multiple targets all at the same time. Hunter's Mark from the Ranger's list is another good general buff for damage. Aura of Vitality is handy for healing 20d6 with a 3rd level slot. Swift Quiver lets the bard make 4 ranged bow attacks a round at level 10. The whole point of Magical Secrets is that it lets the bard steal the juicy stuff from other classes. The larger point is that releasing new spells increases the versatility and power of classes that use spells in a way that releasing new feats or subclasses doesn't, because there's a much larger opportunity cost for taking one feat instead of another when you only have 5-8 and preparing a different spell when you have 22.

Second, as much as it simplifies things to ignore magic items, it really SHOULD be taken into account that a level 20 fighter will get more benefit from them than any other character (except a monk with a magic monk weapon). Twice as much as a bard, in fact. So we don't even have to dip into house rules to fix this issue; just give everyone in the party a Flametongue weapon (+1 weapon, +1d6 fire damage on hit), and the fighter with his extra attacks will get a proportionally higher benefit from it. Likewise, AC bonuses are more powerful the higher your AC already is: if we assume the fighter has 19 AC and the bard has 17 AC, that means an enemy with +8 to hit needs an 11+ to hit the fighter and a 9+ to hit the bard (50% chance to hit vs. 60%). That means that giving everyone +2 armor will reduce the damage to the fighter by 20% and to the rogue by only 16.6%. So aside from the fact that this chart inexplicably ignores the impact of AC, if we assume that the fighter normally has even slightly better nonmagical AC, giving the entire party magic armor will still benefit the fighter more.

I actually do mention that the fighter gets heavy armor, both in the writeup for level 1 and on the chart. But that's a level one benefit, that can be gained either from a class dip or a feat. I don't think I would need to mention something like "yep, fighter still gets to wear heavy armor!". As for the magical items...I actually think that this is the design space that should be used to balance the classes. Fighters should not only benefit more from magic items, but those and other benefits should be a general assumption for them and not something for the more powerful classes. Unfortunately, the magic item guidelines we have right now assume that everyone gets the same amount of loot and there aren't any non-loot benefits heroes can acquire outside their class.

Third, the fighter is a champion who is apparently taking only three feat out of his eight ability score increase slots. Of those three, one is GWM (hard to argue with), the next is Durable, and the last is, um, Linguist. As I mentioned in a previous post, if the goal is for the fighter to "win" this chart, he should be taking stuff like Inspiring Leader, Ritual Caster, Healer, and Magic Adept. Possibly Alert and Observant too. (Plus plenty of other combat-related stuff, like Sentinel.) Assuming 3 short rests per day, Inspiring Leader alone would add 80 "health points" to the fighter's total at level 20, if we're following the rules and only counting the healing he does to himself. The +2 Con he takes instead only adds 20.

Inspiring Leader is nice, but its 13 charisma requirement makes it a bit difficult for the fighter to pick up. Much easier for the bard. The problem with Ritual Caster is that it gives you two 1st level rituals and that's it. Anything else is considered rather expensive treasure, and I wasn't use magic items for this writeup. Healer is good, so good that I think it's almost required for a party, since it basically gives everyone a stronger version of the fighter's Second Wind at the cost of half a gp per use. Magic Initiate doesn't really scale very well and I wouldn't say it's worth a feat slot. Alert and observant are handy too.

The reason for the choices were based on what the classes could take that the other couldn't. Bard doesn't naturally have proficiency in big weapons, so Great Weapon Master is something the Fighter gets that the Bard really doesn't. Durable is good because the fighter can more easily afford to have a high constitution due to being less MAD and has a higher hitdie. Linguist was just me being silly because at that point, it was over 3000 words long already.

While we're at it, if the goal is to find a non-magical warrior who can rival a bard's broad array of tricks and powers, why on Earth are we looking at a Champion fighter? A rogue or Battlemaster is just as nonmagical. In fact, given generous short rests, the Battlemaster will do MORE damage than the Champion, and also have lots of in-combat utility the Champion doesn't (much of it hard to quantify, granted). And a rogue will have better skills than the bard as well as some other great class abilities (Reliable Talent, Stroke of Luck).

The champion fighter is important because it's the iconic fighter, the one that's presented to us in the Basic Rules. It's the one that Mike Mearls is talking about way back in that Fighter Design Goals article when 5e was still being designed. In truth, the rogue might very well have been a better comparison, because both classes fill the niche of skill monkey. Since they both have expertise and a Lore bard actually has six skills to the rogues four, the bard has such flexible use of the Inspiration mechanic, and a huge range of spells that produce effects impossible to replicate through skills, I think the bard would come out ahead on pretty much every single metric.

Why do these possibilities not occur to the OP? Why is this board not flooded with complaints of "OMG RITUAL CASTER OP, FIGHTER STOLE MY UTILITY"? Because most people actually don't value such utility that highly. If I'm a fighter, I let the wizard deal with setting up Alarm spells and interpreting riddles and whatever; it's my job to hit stuff. You want to spend a bonus action every round healing some chumps or yourself? Enjoy, I'll be using MY bonus actions to hit stuff. (Or to protect allies or whatever.) If you are running a campaign that DOES focus more on non-combat encounters, AND you're not the kind of "old-school" role-player who enjoys contributing to those scenarios without mechanical support, AND you want to play a nonmagical character, then use some of the feats and subclasses I just mentioned to do so.

If it's a classes job to "hit stuff" as you say, and not really do anything else, then I think its fair to say that the class should be really, really, really good at hitting stuff. It shouldn't be the case that a class that does a dozen other things should be within striking distance of your ability to hit stuff, and it certainly shouldn't be the case that a shapeshifting druid or a handful of the wizard's skeletons manage to completely overshadow you.
 

KarinsDad

Adventurer
I thought that this was a great post.

I copied all of it except the last two paragraphs about how unfair it was, and sent it to my wife who is playing a Bard.

My wife almost always plays Paladins and is testing the waters with a Bard. When she reads that her PC will be very pertinent to encounters, even though she might not always be up in front swinging a weapon, she's going to like it. A lot.

Thanks OP! :lol:
 

Cybit

First Post
1) The book goes as far to mention level 17 and beyond as its own tier of play, so I don't really see why we should be discouraged from talking about it.

2) For my analysis, concentration doesn't really factor in. Yes, concentration is a very nice mechanic. Sure, resilient+war caster makes it virtually impossible to lose a spell to damage, but only having one buff at a time is a hindrance. Even so, a lot of great spells either don't use concentration--foresight, for example--or don't last very long, like the smite spells.

1) True; but I do think a reasonably balanced game through L17 shouldn't be completely disregarded because of a spell level that most people won't get.

Also, I think the MM will allay some fears in this regard; last I saw, it seems that higher level monsters are better designed to deal with spellcasters and the typical I-Win buttons that casters generally have.

2) Concentration is probably the single biggest balancing mechanic for spellcasters. While I understand why it is not easily applicable in an analysis such as this one (the amount of assumptions you would need to make would become far more numerous and complex), I'm not sure the downsides of casters are really visible without concentration being looked at.

3) I'd also say that since Utility is an aspect of analysis (and it would be pretty unfair to a bard to not consider their utility), the Fighter_Champion is probably the single worst martial class to compare to a bard, by virtue that it has no utility, and is designed to be simple and effective, which I feel it is even at high levels. When utility is brought into the equation; I do wonder whether a Monk or Barbarian would come across as better. Also, using a point buy system, the fighter can probably rock two 16s to begin with, as they are only really dependent on two stats (STR/CON), while as a Bard needs three (CHA/DEX/CON).
 

pming

Legend
Hiya.

I think the analysis isn't looking at the whole picture. IMHO, one shouldn't "just compare damage/combat output". If you want to get a good feeling for class balance, you need to look at it from all "pillars" of the game (the ones listed on page 8 of the PHB). Then, you need to take into account consequences of actions. A bard that uses up half his spells in one encounter may outshine the fighter. But what about the next one? The one after that? Or after that? Or when they are heading back to camp? Or when they are camped at night and on watch? Looking at "class X can do Y, therefore Z" in a purely mathematical way is almost pointless. An RPG is not just a series of unrelated 'encounters'. In an RPG, there are thinking beings opposing the PC's. They don't just sit around waiting to be killed. If a goblin lair is assaulted, you can be your left nut that they will be prepared for the next one, taking measures to reduce the losses they just suffered.

So, I don't put much stock in these "look at the numbers" type analysis (analysis's? analysese?) as they don't take into account the myraid of other things that are constantly going on in a well run campaign. Most certainly not past about level 8 to 10...after those levels, there is probably so much going on in the PC's lives that attempting you use a sterile, clinical "this is what the book says" comparison is a waste of time. It's the same as the old 3.x/PF argument that casters are always better than non-casters. I (and my group) have never, ever, and I mean ever seen a caster be 'overpowered' in comparison to other PC's in the group. Usefull as all get out? Hellz yeah...but that's kind of the point of magic, isn't it? I'm seeing the same arguments here; theory, but in actual play...doesn't hold up at all.

^_^

Paul L. Ming
 

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