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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 6769112" data-attributes="member: 6790260">I think a decent portion of it is simply that people have the perfectly natural assumption that, when combat IS joined (because it WILL be joined, now and then), classes which were designed to be "squishier" will provide attendant benefits in some other combat-centric area. And some classes do in fact follow that pattern, particularly Wizards, and to a lesser but still meaningful extent casting-focused Druids (e.g. Land-type) and Clerics (e.g. Light, Knowledge, etc.)But some just flat don't. Wizards has chosen a different model, one that requires people to approach things with a different and IMO not quite as natural set of assumptions. Specifically, we have a design where it is considered perfectly appropriate to have roleplay- or style-dependent benefits (like scouting or socializing) in exchange for losing significantly less style-dependent benefits, and where the difference in combat between a damage-specialized "squishy" character and a splitting-the-difference "tanky bruiser" character is almost undetectable until very high levels. When combined with the significant probability of deaths in the earliest levels (I in fact actually should have lost a character to a merely "hard" fight at level 2, and only kept it because the DM and my fellow players were exceedingly gracious; we only averted a near-TPK because of a lucky death save crit), this leads to some significant expectation whiplash for a fair number of players. 5e, generally speaking, requires a much more mercenary attitude, and in that sense is very, very much "old school" in mindset. A fight you haven't specifically made slanted in your favor is a fight you have a non-negligible chance to die in at any level, and particularly level 1 or 2.All that can really be said is: in 5e, the exchange rate for defense to offense is not anywhere near parity, and massively favors defense as far as class features are concerned. (Feats, which are not a class feature, generally tend to be kinder to offense than defense...but almost purely for "warrior"-type classes, so the "skirmisher" types are still not in a great position comparatively speaking.) This is a natural consequence of Bounded Accuracy (when attack remains low, but pretty much all damage scales up very quickly, each point of extra defense is a more valuable investment*), and is too deeply hardwired into 5e's design to be changed without a massive overhaul.*Though humorously, the key offense-related feats GWM and SS invert this relationship: they add so much damage to each attack, being nearly as good as an extra max-damage roll, that when combined with the multiple-attacks-per-action effect, it's totally worth giving up some of your precious attack bonus. You hit less often, but because you make so many attacks per fight, most of them will hit, and hit like a truck when you do.</blockquote>

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