Class Balance - why?

[Majoru Oakheart]

I disagree. Multi-class only between base classes and you won't do anything more broken than you could while single-classing. It's PrCs that are broken. I only use them like originally intended - as options I offer when PCs have joined an organization in game (or more generally done something plot related, they don't know if doing it enables a PrC or which).

It's not just that. The number of people who take 1 level of Sorcerer for their Fighter so they can cast True Strike or Shield is amazing.

I knew a Wizard who took one level of Rogue just to get trapfinding and the Rogue skills as class skills. He then used his really high intelligence to take all of the Rogue skills. It was a Living Greyhawk character, so he played with many different groups. But his Search skill in order to find traps was better than every Rogue he ever encountered. And the rest of his Rogue skills were on par or better than them. So, he tended to make Rogues feel useless.

Fighters with one level of Barbarian are way better than Fighters without it. Especially when you can just take a feat to increase the number of Rages per day you have.

There are many other examples. Being single classed in 3.5e was unoptimal.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

No, Vancian magic is specifically based on the idea that in-game your wizard can only prepare so many spells that he can hold in his mind simultaneously. There are, of course, metagame reasons to have the specific numbers, but the limit is something that exists in the game world.

And that in-game reason is entirely made up by the creators of D&D(with a little help from Vance). We all accept it because...well, it's magic, it's supposed to be weird and we can't compare it to anything in real life since magic doesn't really exist.

But when you think about it? Why can't Wizards hold more spells in their mind at the same time? It doesn't make any sense. It's an in-game reason, but a poor one.

Now you could come up with an in-game limiting mechanic for the fighter, like fatigue. If that results in a good D&D, I'm fine with them using something like that.

I just did come up with an in-game reason for it. See my above post. They are secretly Wizards.. Or look at the 3 or 4 in game reasons they give in the 4e PHB.

 

[nightwyrm]

Being single classed in 3.5e was unoptimal.

Unless you're a caster who couldn't get into a PrC, or a druid.

First law of optimization: Thou shalt not lose caster levels.

It's the melees who have to jump around cherry picking class abilities coz their base chassis sucks.

 

[Hassassin]

[snip]
There are many other examples. Being single classed in 3.5e was unoptimal.

We may have a different definition of broken.

I wouldn't have any problem with Fighters taking a level of Sorcerer - they are sacrificing consistency for better attacks when prepared. The Wizard taking Rogue wouldn't be a problem in a rogueless party. Pure Fighters are weak, but the one level of Barbarian will still mean you get some feats a level later.

None of these give you a character that either 1) is strictly better than a single-classed character of one of those classes or 2) gets to do something no single-classed character can.

But when you think about it? Why can't Wizards hold more spells in their mind at the same time? It doesn't make any sense. It's an in-game reason, but a poor one.

Subjective.

I mean even more subjective than the rest of this discussion.

I just did come up with an in-game reason for it. See my above post. They are secretly Wizards.. Or look at the 3 or 4 in game reasons they give in the 4e PHB.

A fightomancer might be an interesting character, but sometimes I want to play a non-magical character.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Part of the high level casters problem--of which wizards have been the poster child--is that with the right assumptions at the table, you can balance it. You can do this in any editions, though the "right assumptions" move a bit by edition.

For example, in 1E, it is very easy to go full "operational resource management" mode and keep the wizard balanced well into the teen levels. And in 3E, you can do a bit of that mixed with "throw situations that only the casters can handle, that deplete their resources, and get the party nothing--then move onto the main adventure pieces." (In that latter styles, you'd put the giant on the bridge and make the giant over-powered, because you know full well that you are going to drain a teleport or similar magic out of the wizard. Do this enough, and don't spend too much time on it, then you've used effectively mere color to bring the casters back into balance.)

The problem is, however, that most people don't want to balance this way. They've been complaining about it since D&D started, whether because the DM or rules went overboard and the low-level wizard was this cat-fearing, treasure bearing, glorified link-boy that took a share of the XP as an investment by the party for later returns--or because the DM or rules turned him into Mr. Teleport/Timestop/MeteorSwarm/Wish god. And even with a system as balanced as 4E, people are still complaining about needing about 4 encounters per day.

In fact, one of the ways that BECMI and 1E fight against this is with the importance of items. Since items aren't intrinsically tied to the characters, you can handle a lot of these balance issues with distribution. Don't want Link-boy? Give the poor low-level wizard a wand and some scrolls. They'll get used up. Give him some more. When he stops needing them, stop giving them. Later, don't want Wish-god? Be stingy with equipment approrpriate for the upper level wizard, not so much for everyone else. (Check out the probabilities on the random treasure in the 1E DMG. This bias is built in.)

4E nodded in the direction of this with some things, but then undermined itself in other ways. For an example of how it might have been stronger, take the 3E conception of items, tweak the assumptions to be like 1E to deliberately favor the non-casters (whether assigned or random tables or straight fiat--it doesn't matter), and then use only one change from 4E: Move the problematic spells into "rituals" and do not tie them to character advancement at all. Make them a mix of equipment and plot device. You can cast a ritual because you find a scroll that lets you do that, and while the right character can make that scroll, it is tough to do. It's not a thing you do very often, and when you get one you save it for when it really matters. Sometimes, you find them. Sometimes, a "ritual" magic is part of a location or other immovable object.

There. Now the giant on the bridge encounter can be handled one of two ways, and the players get to pick:

1. Engage with it as normal.
2. Bypass it using magical resources that are essentially non-renewable--at least on any regular schedule.

Whether you then want the flavor of the wizard doing something magical with that magical resource--or prefer that such bypassing be more spread out amongst the group--doesn't matter for balance. Do it how ever you want.

 

[Deadboy]

Encounters and Dailies for martial characters aren't REALLY that hard to look at in a way that makes sense.

Consider this: I tell my friends I'm going to attack one of them. I run up to one and stomp on his foot. He probably wasn't expecting that so I succeed. Now, if I try to stomp on his foot again, he's going to see it coming and move his foot, and possibly stomp on my foot that's currently bearing my weight. However, if instead of trying to stomp on his foot again, I tweak his nose, I stand a much better chance of succeeding. Spamming Foot Stomp or Nose Tweak will never work.

Encounters are a lot like that. They're flashy, easily countered moves that leave you open once an enemy knows to expect them. Which is why I have my At Will, Face Slap. Face Slap I can spam because that doesn't require an easy to predict vector - I can use either hand, I can backhand - and I don't leave myself as open to counterattack as my hands are still in a good position to defend.

Dailies are a bit harder, but they represent bigger, flashier moves that the situation only aligns for every once in a while. So getting back to my example, if I try to break out my Daily, Nipple Twist, on my friend, I better make sure I'm going to catch my friend totally off guard or I'm gonna regret it.

It's a more narrativist way of looking at things than simulationist, which is how some players seem to look at things in D&D (which I've never understood as I've always seen D&D as very poor for simulationism, but that's just my perspective).

 

[Deadboy]

But Ryan Dancey doesn't know everything. Please don't use the "4th edition was fine, it was Hasbro that set the dollar bar to high" excuse. Hasbro has been around for a long time and they are involved in a lot of things. I'm sure they didn't roll to d10's and decided to add "million" to whatever came up and said that's what needs to be made.

Wizards will most likely be listening to people who either didn't like 4th edition and/or the people who thought 4th was okay but would rather have something else. Actually listening to die hard 4th edition fans is rather pointless because they want 4th edition or another edition that will mirror it. You don't want to mirror something that was essentially a failure.

I'm pretty sure they're going to try to put out something that's going to please as wide a variety of D&D fans as possible. Which means not ignoring the desires of 4th fans. And nobody ever said anything about mirroring anything.

It won't work if they mirror 3rd edition either. What's the point in getting back one segment of your audience and losing another? Especially when the segment they're trying to win back already have a game - Pathfinder - so they can't count on the entirety of that segment coming back? That sounds like a recipe for a brand new failure. They can't possibly try to succeed without making sure they keep a large portion of their current audience.

It's most likely that they will include different modular segments of the games that fans of each edition will be able to be able to add in to flavor the game to their tastes; at least that's what Mearls and Cook both seem to be saying.

And I'll take Dancey's opinion over yours anyday.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Encounters and Dailies for martial characters aren't REALLY that hard to look at in a way that makes sense.

Consider this: I tell my friends I'm going to attack one of them. I run up to one and stomp on his foot. He probably wasn't expecting that so I succeed. Now, if I try to stomp on his foot again, he's going to see it coming and move his foot, and possibly stomp on my foot that's currently bearing my weight. However, if instead of trying to stomp on his foot again, I tweak his nose, I stand a much better chance of succeeding. Spamming Foot Stomp or Nose Tweak will never work.

Encounters are a lot like that. They're flashy, easily countered moves that leave you open once an enemy knows to expect them. Which is why I have my At Will, Face Slap. Face Slap I can spam because that doesn't require an easy to predict vector - I can use either hand, I can backhand - and I don't leave myself as open to counterattack as my hands are still in a good position to defend.

Dailies are a bit harder, but they represent bigger, flashier moves that the situation only aligns for every once in a while. So getting back to my example, if I try to break out my Daily, Nipple Twist, on my friend, I better make sure I'm going to catch my friend totally off guard or I'm gonna regret it.

It's a more narrativist way of looking at things than simulationist, which is how some players seem to look at things in D&D (which I've never understood as I've always seen D&D as very poor for simulationism, but that's just my perspective).

Welcome to the boards but not to curb your enthusiam but every variant of explaination and justification has been hashed out on these boards over the last couple of years and people still do not agee. It is better to accept this and move on.
For the records i completely agree with you and lack of simulation in D&D.

 

[Mallus]

You can make your 1st level rouge just as interesting and fun as a 20th level sorceress with the power to level mountains.

Let's think about this for a minute...

How, exactly, do you make a 1st level rogue as interesting as a 20th level sorcerer?

Well, the person playing the rogue can give him or her an entertaining personality! And the player can contribute clever ideas and actions not covered by the rules!

But wait -- the person playing the sorcerer can do the exact same things! In addition to moving/flattering/temporally-suspending mountains.

(I like to call this the "There's Nothing Stopping the Guy Playing Superman From Playing Batman At The Same Time" Principal of role-playing games)

So we're back to square one. Two interesting, clever characters, one who, on a good day, hide sometimes and pick a pocket, and the other, who can redecorate the surrounding landscape on a whim.

The rules can't really give a PC an interesting personality or clever idea. They can attempt to keep the number and scale of rules-defined options for interacting with the game environment somewhat on par between PCs, more-or-less.

And they should do that, because, after all, D&D is still a game.

 

[pemerton]

Well, the person playing the rogue can give him or her an entertaining personality! And the player can contribute clever ideas and actions not covered by the rules!

But wait -- the person playing the sorcerer can do the exact same things!

Not if the GM is harsher on the player of the sorcerer than the player of the rogue in adjudicating free-roleplayed action resolution.

Or if the GM designs encounters that the sorcerer will feel obliged to engage mechanically, while creating space in the same encounter where the player of the rogue can free roleplay.

This is not how I particularly like to run or play the game, but I think it is what the OP has in mind, and I think it is a fairly widespread way of playing D&D (I would say it became widespread in the mid-80s and would associate it mostly with a certain type of 2nd ed AD&D approach).