D&D 5E D&D needs to let go of the 'all classes are equal' concept

[tetrasodium]

Every class should be able to meaningfully contribute to every aspect of the game that is considered a vital part of play. In 5e, this has been helpfully defined for us: the three "pillars," combat, exploration, and socialization. These are the things the game designers have explicitly called out as what D&D 5e is "for" in some sense. Classes not designed to meaningfully contribute to any one or more of these pillars should not exist. Period. If the designers wish to make a game that is about other things, that's totally fine--but they should then discuss what this new game is itself about, so that we can know what its player options should do.


... I'm sorry, what? I'm literally using the words in their common meanings. A cooperative game is one where multiple players coordinate with one another in order to succeed (whatever the metric of success is for a given game). An asymmetrical game is one where different players have genuinely different resources and contributions, such that it is not possible for player A to contribute the way player B does (and, usually, vice-versa; it's generally unwise to make an asymmetrical game where one player can do everything another can and also more things too, not ALWAYS unwise but generally.) Baseball, for example, is cooperative (within a team), competitive (between teams), and partially asymmetrical (different players have completely different and distinct roles while playing "defense," such as pitcher or outfielder, but just one role while playing "offense," batter). D&D has a referee, the DM, who is not "playing" the game in the usual sense (hence why her characters are non-player characters), just as baseball has an umpire who is not "playing" either. So if we focus on just the "player characters," the game is symmetrical: each player is offered an identical selection of options for approaching the game, which the text of the game treats as neither stronger nor weaker, just different; and each player is responsible for the same thing in terms of the success metric, rolling high numbers on dice (or obviating the need for dice) in each of three important areas, explicitly called "exploration," "socialization," and "combat." This has been the case (other than the official and explicit callout of the three "pillars") in, as far as I'm aware, every edition since at the very least 3rd, and possibly much earlier (I have not read the 2e nor 1e PHBs in full like I have the 3e, 4e, or 5e ones so I hesitate to make sweeping statements about their contents.)

What version of D&D, at least since 3e, and (unless I'm mistaken!) possibly 2e, tells the players, "This class is just better than that class"? Which version of D&D tells its players that it is not a cooperative game?

"meaningfully contribute" does not always mean "deal damage" & certainly does not mean deal "modest to good" damage. A fighter or blaster isn't any better at battlefield control or buffing/debuffing because classes that have a large part of their identity wrapped up in doing those things are hamstrung to be lackluster & poor to modest at those things.

You can go on about how the three pillars are defined and all, but that doesn't change the fact that the classes are poorly designed to revolve largely around one specific brick on one specific pillar & sacrifice a strong showing on some other brick in that combat pillar or even other pillars entirely because of it.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

"meaningfully contribute" does not always mean "deal damage" & certainly does not mean deal "modest to good" damage. A fighter or blaster isn't any better at battlefield control or buffing/debuffing because classes that have a large part of their identity wrapped up in doing those things are hamstrung to be lackluster & poor to modest at those things.

Part of the problem, here, is that a lot of these things are very nearly binary: either they're great, or they suck. Consider "status effect magic." In the vast majority of video games, these effects are pointless because most (important) creatures are immune to them, or their rate of effectiveness is so low that they generally aren't worth using. Otherwise, these effects would quite literally trivialize every combat encounter. Stuff like "instant death," long-term inability to act ("paralysis"), attacking one's allies or oneself ("confusion"), etc. are almost never things that work in "important" fights because such things would supersede all other considerations.

And if you think this doesn't apply to D&D, just take a look at Legendary Resistance. Literally a mechanic to no-sale fight-ending (or at least fight-trivializing) effects unless the party is willing and able to stake lots of resources (and usually time) on getting them to land. The exact same design problem applies to D&D: "crowd control" is really hard to design so that it is interesting and useful, but not completely dominant. 3.x/PF made it very clear how difficult the "save-or-die"/"save-or-suck" concept is as a design component, and how easy it is to, by accident, create a situation where someone supposedly only

Buffs are another area that, while less thorny, can still be a huge headache. I have been point-blank told by multiple people across multiple forums that the most effective way to play 3.x/PF is to solely optimize your personal contribution, and it's borne out in the game's design. Buffs require far too much opportunity cost: why give a buddy, say, a 20% boost to whatever they do next, when you can contribute something of your own that is 50% of what they can do normally? Even if it is more fun to be a team player, it is demonstrably and consistently more effective to be effectively several solo adventurers who just coincidentally adventure in the same place at the same time. That's terrible design for a game where teamwork (such as buffing and debuffing) is supposed to be important.

And regardless of the above? This is getting far too deep into the specifics. I spoke at the high level I did for a reason. D&D has nothing even remotely comparable to the differences between a pitcher (someone who rarely moves and almost exclusively throws balls) and an outfielder (someone who should never be completely stationary and who almost exclusively catches balls). And that's because every player is supposed to be engaged in every fundamental activity. To squeeze the baseball metaphor further, every single player should be pitching and catching and running and batting on the regular. They need not all be equal at all of them, but minimum competence at every one of the important things is important. And, yes, that (whether you like it or not) includes some kind of minimum competence at dealing, and taking, damage. Because "deal and/or take damage" is possibly the single most common individual behavior D&D characters engage in--because it doesn't just happen in combat.

You can go on about how the three pillars are defined and all, but that doesn't change the fact that the classes are poorly designed to revolve largely around one specific brick on one specific pillar & sacrifice a strong showing on some other brick in that combat pillar or even other pillars entirely because of it.

...Yes. That is literally what I'm saying. They are poorly designed to do that thing, because that kind of thing is an unwise design decision in the kind of game D&D is. Whatever goals the designers set--the pillars just happen to be defined for us--the kind of game they have put on offer is one where "classes...designed to revolve largely on one specific brick on one specific pillar" aren't going to be good classes. They are practically guaranteed to be overwhelming or inconsequential, and that is bad when the game presents its offerings as equally valid choices for equal participation.

An asymmetrical cooperative game can be tons of fun. Consider Keep Talking And No One Explodes. And an asymmetrical competitive (but symmetrically cooperative) game can also be tons of fun; consider the rising popularity of Among Us, which is basically just the parlor game "Mafia" or "Werewolf" facilitated by the internet. Asymmetry as a design decision is perfectly valid. It's just not the decision the D&D designers made. They chose to make a symmetrical game (again, leaving aside the DM, whose role is less "player" and more like an artist, referee, and director rolled into one), one where each player is implicitly given the same opportunities regardless of the thematic preferences they bring to the table.

Does this mean every class needs to do the same amount of damage? No. It means the designers should set benchmarks for minimum competence in the things they think are important to do while playing the game, and then test mechanics against those benchmarks until those benchmarks are met (up to a reasonable statistical distribution, of course--D&D is probabilistic, not deterministic.)

If you want a truly asymmetrical cooperative game, it's certainly possible within the confines of D&D style thematics. It's just not the kind of game D&D has billed itself as, nor that D&D's designers have sought to make, for decades. The really unfortunate thing is that, in being a game that includes asymmetrical (sometimes wildly asymmetrical) options but presents them as symmetrical ones, we get a game that tries to serve two masters and often fails to serve either. Those who want a genuinely asymmetrical experience can't get it because they'll always start out too symmetrical and it can take a long time to really reinforce the asymmetry, and those who want a symmetrical experience are genuinely denied it in relatively short order. (This has often been phrased as the "sweet spot" problem, at least when discussing editions prior to 5e.)

 

[Minigiant]

The AD&D Thief was not good at combat. He had bad armour, bad to hit tables, bad weapons, and his backstab wasn’t great and it was hard to pull off. His main role was scouting, sneaking, and trap disarming - basically stuff in the exploration mode.

And yet we never had any shortage of Thieves in our parties. People knew when they were taking a Thief that they would take a back seat in combat to other classes. They didn’t mind, because their PC shone in other situations.

I think this only work if there is an assumption of how the adventure takes place.

1e and AD&D were dungeon crawling games. Most of the rules was for dungeon crawing, the dungeon, and the area right outside the dungeon. The mechanics for outside the adventure were few and usually just equipment and item based. So a player of a thief would always expect that their time to shine would always show up constantly.

Some time in later AD&D2e, other areas of adventuring started being added in. So if you made a character based on these things, the relibility of your expertise showing up at any given session dropped. This is where the problems starts.

 

[ph0rk]

And that's because every player is supposed to be engaged in every fundamental activity.

Only that isn't really the case outside of combat for classes like fighter and barbarian. Sure, they don't have to pay the cross-class skill penalty anymore, but base stat matters a lot, and with how much expertise is being tossed around these days (even more for some classes in TCoE), mere proficiency in persuasion or intimidate with a base stat of 12 isn't engaged in the social pillar after Tier 2.

 

[Sacrosanct]

The mechanics for outside the adventure were few and usually just equipment and item based.

You don't have the same 1e DMG I have then

 

[tetrasodium]

Part of the problem, here, is that a lot of these things are very nearly binary: either they're great, or they suck. Consider "status effect magic." In the vast majority of video games, these effects are pointless because most (important) creatures are immune to them, or their rate of effectiveness is so low that they generally aren't worth using. Otherwise, these effects would quite literally trivialize every combat encounter. Stuff like "instant death," long-term inability to act ("paralysis"), attacking one's allies or oneself ("confusion"), etc. are almost never things that work in "important" fights because such things would supersede all other considerations.

And if you think this doesn't apply to D&D, just take a look at Legendary Resistance. Literally a mechanic to no-sale fight-ending (or at least fight-trivializing) effects unless the party is willing and able to stake lots of resources (and usually time) on getting them to land. The exact same design problem applies to D&D: "crowd control" is really hard to design so that it is interesting and useful, but not completely dominant. 3.x/PF made it very clear how difficult the "save-or-die"/"save-or-suck" concept is as a design component, and how easy it is to, by accident, create a situation where someone supposedly only

There are a lot of buffs & debuffs & so on still in 5e. Sure a lot of them are crippled in one or more ways to stomp that, but then they needlessly weigh them down with near universal concentration requirements to ensure you can't do things like use more than one no matter the situation. They knew getting rid of all those spells would make it such an obvious failure to be d&d that they couldn't, so they just crippled anyone who dares build for those roles.

Buffs are another area that, while less thorny, can still be a huge headache. I have been point-blank told by multiple people across multiple forums that the most effective way to play 3.x/PF is to solely optimize your personal contribution, and it's borne out in the game's design. Buffs require far too much opportunity cost: why give a buddy, say, a 20% boost to whatever they do next, when you can contribute something of your own that is 50% of what they can do normally? Even if it is more fun to be a team player, it is demonstrably and consistently more effective to be effectively several solo adventurers who just coincidentally adventure in the same place at the same time. That's terrible design for a game where teamwork (such as buffing and debuffing) is supposed to be important.

Yes it was and that's true of 5e. The problem is the only personal contribution that anyone can optimize for to any meaningful degree is really a list that contains the word "damage" over & over again. Meanwhile every other niche is crippled & pegged to being on par with an unoptimized damage dealer with no feats & no magic items. It results in damage dealers that excel to a significant degree while niche classes lack both feats & magic items capable of even pretending they can optimize. Even optimizing for damage is largely limited to one specific type of damage, namely weapons where they have both +Ability mod to damage, +x weapons, a wide selection of feats to influence it, & multiple attacks each round to multiply the impact of those things on a system balanced around two of them not being allowed in play. The result leaves all other forms of damage feeling pretty lacking, but then you add the over use of energy resistance & magic resistance stacked against resistant to the nonmagic weapons the game is balanced against & the already slanted field veers into an area that makes all the other hamstrung niche areas those classes could be filling all the more grating to the caster who practically needs the GM to set up the battlefield to "press x to save the day" levels of obvious setup.

Take web for example.... It went from a 20foot radius (40ft across) circle with a range & duration that improved as the caster leveled to a 20 foot cube (ie about half the size) with a meaningless but longer duration, shorter range, and it tops the whole thing off with being a concentration spell to ensure you won't ever really save the day by casting it more than once if the things that need to be webbed aren't mindlessly bunched up within the blast of a single fireball.... Just to be safe, there are a ton of normal creatures far below the realm of legendary resist & lair actions who get advantage on that save & wotc set the scales to ensure that magic items with +x focus items will be pretty rare from most GMs by rarely including any in the HC adventures & certainly not including them to a degree similar to the
+x or +x&more weapons cram packed in those same HCs when they do throw in a +1 pity wand of the war mage or things like a spellbook at the very end of an adventure but not enough gold to do much with it.

And regardless of the above? This is getting far too deep into the specifics. I spoke at the high level I did for a reason. D&D has nothing even remotely comparable to the differences between a pitcher (someone who rarely moves and almost exclusively throws balls) and an outfielder (someone who should never be completely stationary and who almost exclusively catches balls). And that's because every player is supposed to be engaged in every fundamental activity. To squeeze the baseball metaphor further, every single player should be pitching and catching and running and batting on the regular. They need not all be equal at all of them, but minimum competence at every one of the important things is important. And, yes, that (whether you like it or not) includes some kind of minimum competence at dealing, and taking, damage. Because "deal and/or take damage" is possibly the single most common individual behavior D&D characters engage in--because it doesn't just happen in combat.


...Yes. That is literally what I'm saying. They are poorly designed to do that thing, because that kind of thing is an unwise design decision in the kind of game D&D is. Whatever goals the designers set--the pillars just happen to be defined for us--the kind of game they have put on offer is one where "classes...designed to revolve largely on one specific brick on one specific pillar" aren't going to be good classes. They are practically guaranteed to be overwhelming or inconsequential, and that is bad when the game presents its offerings as equally valid choices for equal participation.

An asymmetrical cooperative game can be tons of fun. Consider Keep Talking And No One Explodes. And an asymmetrical competitive (but symmetrically cooperative) game can also be tons of fun; consider the rising popularity of Among Us, which is basically just the parlor game "Mafia" or "Werewolf" facilitated by the internet. Asymmetry as a design decision is perfectly valid. It's just not the decision the D&D designers made. They chose to make a symmetrical game (again, leaving aside the DM, whose role is less "player" and more like an artist, referee, and director rolled into one), one where each player is implicitly given the same opportunities regardless of the thematic preferences they bring to the table.

Does this mean every class needs to do the same amount of damage? No. It means the designers should set benchmarks for minimum competence in the things they think are important to do while playing the game, and then test mechanics against those benchmarks until those benchmarks are met (up to a reasonable statistical distribution, of course--D&D is probabilistic, not deterministic.)

If you want a truly asymmetrical cooperative game, it's certainly possible within the confines of D&D style thematics. It's just not the kind of game D&D has billed itself as, nor that D&D's designers have sought to make, for decades. The really unfortunate thing is that, in being a game that includes asymmetrical (sometimes wildly asymmetrical) options but presents them as symmetrical ones, we get a game that tries to serve two masters and often fails to serve either. Those who want a genuinely asymmetrical experience can't get it because they'll always start out too symmetrical and it can take a long time to really reinforce the asymmetry, and those who want a symmetrical experience are genuinely denied it in relatively short order. (This has often been phrased as the "sweet spot" problem, at least when discussing editions prior to 5e.)

It's absolutely possible, just one of 5e's many poorly thought out design decisions was to design against it. The OP may have said "d&d needs to let go..." but 5e broke from previous editions where classes had their own niches to enforce one specific niche for all.

 

[Minigiant]

You don't have the same 1e DMG I have then

I was talking about the PHB. Class mechanics barely reached far away from the dungeon. The classes spotlight was "balanced" around dungeons and the outdoor areas around the dungeon.

Classes based around courtrooms, audience chambers, workshops, and dancehalls would be at a major disadvantage.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Only that isn't really the case outside of combat for classes like fighter and barbarian. Sure, they don't have to pay the cross-class skill penalty anymore, but base stat matters a lot, and with how much expertise is being tossed around these days (even more for some classes in TCoE), mere proficiency in persuasion or intimidate with a base stat of 12 isn't engaged in the social pillar after Tier 2.

Yes.

That's the problem I'm talking about.

The game is billed as offering these things. And then it doesn't. That is bad. Either the game should live up to its billing, description, and design goals, or it should change the billing, description, and design goals so that they agree with the game offered.

There are a lot of buffs & debuffs & so on still in 5e. Sure a lot of them are crippled in one or more ways to stomp that, but then they needlessly weigh them down with near universal concentration requirements to ensure you can't do things like use more than one no matter the situation. They knew getting rid of all those spells would make it such an obvious failure to be d&d that they couldn't, so they just crippled anyone who dares build for those roles.

Sure. 5e didn't have the manpower to properly design those things once they had to finally buckle down and settle on a specific design, and they wasted a year or more faffing about before they did settle on a design to begin with. Much of this COULD have been implemented if 5e's designers had set the design goals and actually tested benchmarks early on, but they failed to do. Their reasons for those choices are the subject of a completely different thread, and thus I will leave that line of reasoning there.

Yes it was and that's true of 5e. The problem is the only personal contribution that anyone can optimize for to any meaningful degree is really a list that contains the word "damage" over & over again.

Completely disagree. It is entirely possible to optimize for skill checks or crowd control. Those things aren't as easily optimized as raw damage output/mitigation/avoidance, but they never have been in any edition of D&D. Pushing numbers up has always been primarily oriented toward dealing, mitigating, or avoiding damage, or improving your ability to do those things sooner, quicker, or more sustainably. Consider the very simple fact that every edition has had +N weapons and armor--aka, magical improvements to your combat abilities--but +N items that improve skills are nowhere near as universal (indeed, the two that were best for them were 3e and 4e, the editions people call out for being opposed to non-combat solutions to things!) As far as I'm aware, 5e includes very, very few items, if any, that provide +N bonuses to skill checks. (Note that I am excluding things which interact with the proficiency system, because attacks already factor that in as it is.)

Honest question: How much power does crowd control have to have for you to accept it as sufficiently supported? Because, quite frankly, it sounds to me like you require crowd control and other effects that end fights on the regular. And that's a serious problem in a game where the very same person who ends fights with a single spell on the regular also ends investigations with a single spell on the regular and also ends exploration with a single spell on the regular and also ends perilous journeys and survival challenges with a single spell on the regular and...

That, by the way, is what I meant by "bells and whistles." I didn't mean frilly do-nothing addenda, or "ribbons," or whatever. I meant that we have this class called "Wizard," which can memorize disguise self, web, fly, and greater invisibility all by level 7, and in so doing, frequently obviate at least one social, combat, travel, and stealth challenge each day. And that's only four of the (presumably) 8-11 spells they can prepare each day. They may easily know two other great combat spells and a useful social spell like tongues, or have access to repeatably-usable rituals like phantom steed, comprehend languages, Leomund's tiny hut, Tenser's floating disk, unseen servant, etc. And the only spell of 4th level I've mentioned here is greater invisibility; I could've instead gone with regular invisibility, and thus brought things down to only Wizard 5.

A Fighter or Rogue must work, hard, to optimize for non-combat situations. A Wizard must merely pick up one utility spell every character level, and maybe invest some of their otherwise-not-very-useful gold pieces on ritual spells. Likewise, a Wizard need merely pick one damage-dealing or crowd-control spell per spell level to be completely competent at those things.

It's absolutely possible, just one of 5e's many poorly thought out design decisions was to design against it. The OP may have said "d&d needs to let go..." but 5e broke from previous editions where classes had their own niches to enforce one specific niche for all.

Wait. So. I just want to be completely sure I understand what you mean when you say this. I had skipped over this line before, and that was an error on my part.

Are you saying that it is a bad thing that 5e has made it so every class is treated as being able to pursue every niche if desired? I want to be absolutely certain this is actually what you are saying.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Doublepost. Sorry.

 

[tetrasodium]

Yes.

That's the problem I'm talking about.

The game is billed as offering these things. And then it doesn't. That is bad. Either the game should live up to its billing, description, and design goals, or it should change the billing, description, and design goals so that they agree with the game offered.


Sure. 5e didn't have the manpower to properly design those things once they had to finally buckle down and settle on a specific design, and they wasted a year or more faffing about before they did settle on a design to begin with. Much of this COULD have been implemented if 5e's designers had set the design goals and actually tested benchmarks early on, but they failed to do. Their reasons for those choices are the subject of a completely different thread, and thus I will leave that line of reasoning there.


Completely disagree. It is entirely possible to optimize for skill checks or crowd control. Those things aren't as easily optimized as raw damage output/mitigation/avoidance, but they never have been in any edition of D&D. Pushing numbers up has always been primarily oriented toward dealing, mitigating, or avoiding damage, or improving your ability to do those things sooner, quicker, or more sustainably. Consider the very simple fact that every edition has had +N weapons and armor--aka, magical improvements to your combat abilities--but +N items that improve skills are nowhere near as universal (indeed, the two that were best for them were 3e and 4e, the editions people call out for being opposed to non-combat solutions to things!) As far as I'm aware, 5e includes very, very few items, if any, that provide +N bonuses to skill checks. (Note that I am excluding things which interact with the proficiency system, because attacks already factor that in as it is.)

Honest question: How much power does crowd control have to have for you to accept it as sufficiently supported? Because, quite frankly, it sounds to me like you require crowd control and other effects that end fights on the regular. And that's a serious problem in a game where the very same person who ends fights with a single spell on the regular also ends investigations with a single spell on the regular and also ends exploration with a single spell on the regular and also ends perilous journeys and survival challenges with a single spell on the regular and...

That, by the way, is what I meant by "bells and whistles." I didn't mean frilly do-nothing addenda, or "ribbons," or whatever. I meant that we have this class called "Wizard," which can memorize disguise self, web, fly, and greater invisibility all by level 7, and in so doing, frequently obviate at least one social, combat, travel, and stealth challenge each day. And that's only four of the (presumably) 8-11 spells they can prepare each day. They may easily know two other great combat spells and a useful social spell like tongues, or have access to repeatably-usable rituals like phantom steed, comprehend languages, Leomund's tiny hut, Tenser's floating disk, unseen servant, etc. And the only spell of 4th level I've mentioned here is greater invisibility; I could've instead gone with regular invisibility, and thus brought things down to only Wizard 5.

A Fighter or Rogue must work, hard, to optimize for non-combat situations. A Wizard must merely pick up one utility spell every character level, and maybe invest some of their otherwise-not-very-useful gold pieces on ritual spells. Likewise, a Wizard need merely pick one damage-dealing or crowd-control spell per spell level to be completely competent at those things.


Wait. So. I just want to be completely sure I understand what you mean when you say this. I had skipped over this line before, and that was an error on my part.

Are you saying that it is a bad thing that 5e has made it so every class is treated as being able to pursue every niche if desired? I want to be absolutely certain this is actually what you are saying.

In no particular order...


It doesn't matter what they "COULD" have done or considered doing for the purposes of "D&D needs to let go of the 'all classes are equal' concept" and how what they eventually settled on spotlights the need to do that.


Yes it is a bad thing that 5e pretends "every class is treated as being able to pursue every niche if desired" as 5e does it. It may have been a good or even noble idea to pursue, but the effort is too flawed and needed to protect the one area where it was tightly tuned by declaring that feats & magic items were "optional" in order to dismiss the complete collapse of that tuning as they were added. Only a handful of classes are treated that way, the rest have secondary niche roles that are crippled in too many ways to pretend otherwise because for whatever reason they were not willing to "let go of the 'all classes are equal' concept" as the thread is titled & instead decided to put making them equal in a bizarrely unusual white room setting above making sure classes with one or more niche roles on some other brick in the combat pillar or different pillars felt competent in those niche roles.


Buffing, debuffing, & battlefield control are a very tightly linked trio of abilities in a ttrpg where the three need to be used in conjunction as the needs are played out yet concentration ensures those play out in isolation while the spells are individually balanced as if they always play out in conjunction and thus need severe handicapping. I talked about web because there is no real context needed and the combined flaws are too obvious to excuse as anything but bad by design. Yes buffing and debuffing can be very powerful in a perfect situation but they can also be a nearly irrelevant waste of spell slots, I avoided them because the truth is usually somewhere in between & too complicated for simple generalized discussion like this.

Also it was entirely possible to optimize a build for some variation of those three things, there is quite a bit of detail on examples of doing just that or making those things have a unique twist here.. 5e just fails by a combination of omission & excessive concentration. The amount of power a character specializing in those is something that could be debated endlessly with specific scenarios played against each other till the end of time, what is more important is that 5e misses the mark to a significant degree by deliberately undershooting nearly all of the tools such a character needs in every possible way.

The fact that a glass cannon can no longer really specialize to a notable degree like melee types using feats & magic items has a severe repercussion on a character who optimized for or focused on buffing/debuffing/battlefield control because now the two are not meaningfully divided when it comes to damage output. Using evoker as an example, the at will & nova damage output from an evoker is not meaningfully different from any other wizard archetype & as a result those other archetypes are not meaningfully different in their little niche either. Sure there might be some small differences here & there but nothing too major & 5e lacks feats to meaningfully widen that gap.

In the end it comes down to equality versus equity. You can find zillions of articles detailing that on google, but in a nut shell equality is everyone gets the same thing no matter if they need it, want it, or are even helped by it while equity is that everyone gets a fair amount of a thing based on needs. 5e design largely enforces equality on a limited subset of the class roles for one specific situation (no feats or magic items) then dismisses equity & hamstrings anything outside that specific role to make up for the fact that the one true niche few play in is the same rather than giving adequate equity.