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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tormyr" data-source="post: 8084436" data-attributes="member: 6776887">I have been impressed with the quality and insight that has already come out of the level up team. I am looking forward to what develops down the line.Answering questions1. I think the graph shows that most classes are fairly well balanced if you average at will against nova for each class. A difference of 10 DPR does not feel like a lot to me (roughly the difference between the champion nova and battlemaster nova). This makes sense to a certain extent. Everyone has roughly the same bounded accuracy range and progression through the levels.What I think should set classes apart is how they express and use synergies between the characters in combat. A lot of these synergies already exist but sometimes get underutilized or ignored during theory crafting, but I feel they are key to the classes. fighter: should be able to hit things and capitalize on synergy opportunities from other classes.cleric: keep people in the fight and hit hard when neededwizard: set up synergies (grease, foresight, web) and nuke when neededpaladin: auras and the best nuke (decide to use after you crit)rogue: consistent high damage but needs teamwork to consistently utilize it.sorcerer: altering damage and buff spells to enhance effectivenessbarbarian: as much for soaking damage as dealing itbard: more about synergy than damage until they call a tidal wave or turn someone into a t-rexwarlock: consistent damage with a few nukesranger: got the short end of the stick. It is harder to reliably boost damage without hiding in the back with a bow and hunter's mark. Even then, you don't get a lot2. Damage is great, but I think that most classes are already somewhere close to each other when we exclude feats and synergies between PCs (and average the nova and at will damage). I would be interested in more ways of reliably creating synergies between PCs for each class. Some classes do that better than others, and some game styles prompt those synergies more readily. Finding ways to include those synergies across the different game types may be more useful than just focusing on damage. (although maybe spare a thought for the ranger)Some other thoughts I had reading this post:Assumptions. I like the assumptions. Although I tackle some things slightly differently when I am theory-crafting (and setting CR for custom monsters).1. I view average chance to hit as slightly higher at 65% based on the suggested AC from the DMG for creatures at a given CR. Your fighter comes out with the same average damage, so it looks like your spreadsheets came out to 65% and you just wrote 60%.2. My preference for estimating area of effect damage is to use the theater of the mind suggestions from the DMG. This equates to line length/30, cone length/10, and everything else (cube length, sphere radius, etc.)/5 and then round up. Then assume everyone makes their saving throws. The end result is that there is no difference for a fireball (2 at full damage is the same as 4 at half damage), but I feel it does a better job at estimating wide-reaching spells like firestorm as well as high-level dragon breath weapons and cone of cold.Lession 2. This reminds me of something Jeremy Crawford said, to paraphrase, "the options don't have to be balanced; they just have to feel like they are balanced." Lession 3. Too true that every fight is different. GWM is not a whole lot better if you use it all the time. Using it against weaker enemies or getting constant sources of advantage can make a GWM PC worth 2 PCs.I think other people will have better input on how to come up with specific scenarios for specific classes, but I will be interested in what happens when feats and synergies between classes come into play.A few places I have seen good synergy at high level:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Fighter with foresight. Lasts 8 hours (16 hours with Extended Spell  metamagic; longer than that, call your doctor). This is an extreme example. A champion fighter can do a few hundred damage in a round with foresight, GWM, and action surge. The foresight all but guarantees that the fighter can hit with GWM against almost any opponent and get the bonus action attack each round. It takes a 9th-level spell, a feat, no shield, and a short rest class feature. The fighter can do this twice, and every other round is (only) 100 damage or more. I would be interested to see if this fits with the nova model you have inferred if you incorporate a second class's nova (i.e. does it come out to 5 + (7 x level)?</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Monks stunning + just about anything. Splitting the enemy + granting advantage.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Multiclassing. I have a monk in my game that utilizes some monk + rogue class features to regularly  juice his AC to the low 20s. It doesn't matter as much if you do a little less damage if you almost never take any damage.</li> </ul></blockquote>

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