D&D 5E (2024) Fireball is a C Tier Spell

[Horwath]

Note, Pathfinder 2e does the +1 per level scaling. If you want like a bigger power gap between levels.

this is so bad that they even released official version of no bonus per level at all.

 

[mellored]

this is so bad that they even released official version of no bonus per level at all.

That's been an optional rule since the beginning, but the default is +1 per level.

Also, the HP thing is flatly wrong. Because 5e HP give your Con mod per level, 5e characters end up surpassing even higher-level 4e characters. A 30th level Fighter, even with 22 Con, has 22+15+6x29 = 211. A 20th level 5e Fighter with 20 Con has 15 + 11x19 = 224. So...no, the goblin is actually doing proportionally less HP damage per hit.

You forgot to count healing surges / hit dice. 4e got 9+Con mod healing surges, worth 1/4 your HP each.

5e Fighter has maybe 500HP a day, including hit dice and second wind.

4e Fighter would have closer to 1000 per day.

Again, people make up all these...white room...comparisons with 4e, ignoring the actual math and structure of it.

The structure of 4e has much greater number scaling. Along with each battle having it's own pool of resources.

The structure of 5e reduced the scaling a lot, and resources are more per long rest. Though there's more variety between classes.

 

[Horwath]

That's been an optional rule since the beginning, but the default is +1 per level.


You forgot to count healing surges / hit dice. 4e got 9+Con mod healing surges, worth 1/4 your HP each.

l like healing surges more than HDs in 5e

5e Fighter has maybe 500HP a day, including hit dice and second wind.

4e Fighter would have closer to 1000 per day.

that is true

The structure of 4e has much greater number scaling. Along with each battle having it's own pool of resources.

having short rests on 5min is much better than 1hr.
1hr is not a "short" rest.

The structure of 5e reduced the scaling a lot, and resources are more per long rest. Though there's more variety between classes.

but the number scaling is much better in 5e

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I'm more inclined to trust the many, many, many times they said that that's what they were aiming for, over this claim.

They tried to fix a long-standing issue with the earlier editions of D&D (particularly 3rd, but it was also an issue in 1st and 2nd - see Baldur's Gate 2) of attack and AC numbers becoming wildly out of step. Bounded Accuracy made the problem less, but it wasn't a complete fix.

But this is not why WotC introduced 5e. That was because 4e wasn't selling. This is just something they tried to fix whilst they were about it.

I don't know what the marketers actually said, because I gave up on D&D after 3rd edition, and didn't come back to it until I discovered 5e didn't suck, but everyone knows not to believe market speak because its bovine excrement.

Especially since "burdensome and restrictive rules" still absolutely applies to 5e. Just ask anyone who's tried to squeeze a gritty survival story out of it.

No, it does not. The reason D&D doesn't do "gritty survival" is that Conan never died from dysentery or running out of water whist crossing the desert. D&D was never an Oregon Trail RPG, not even in 1st edition. Create Food and Drink and Leomund's Tiny Hut have been a part of D&D since 1st edition.

 

[Horwath]

But this is not why WotC introduced 5e. That was because 4e wasn't selling. This is just something they tried to fix whilst they were about it.

this is true, however, 4E runs really good when you remove +1/2 bonus per level from everything.

 

[GrimCo]

Idea of high number of low cr monsters being viable threats for high level PC's was good one. At least from the world building and in setting consistency point. It makes imaginary world feel more real and less video game like.

Problem is, for that to work, it starts to trickle into tactical combat (positioning, using covers and distance, high ground, multiple angles of attack, ambushes with overwhelming numbers etc) and edges on the dreaded "mass combat". It's also almost non existent in published adventures, at least from what i seen going trough them.

Minions was one of the things i really liked in 4e. They had good idea and i still use it in 5e. Also, it makes sense that Ogre starts as Boss and ends up as minion. Monster power is same, but when measured against party power which grows over time, that Ogre becomes less challenging. For lv 1 party, Ogre is scary. For lv 11, fighter can probably solo it with some effort. For level 21, it's one hit kill. Minons are there to soak up hits and give main boss time to do his cool stuff. Action economy.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

You forgot to count healing surges / hit dice. 4e got 9+Con mod healing surges, worth 1/4 your HP each.

5e Fighter has maybe 500HP a day, including hit dice and second wind.

4e Fighter would have closer to 1000 per day.

Then you forgot Hit Dice, and only counted them in a biased way here. You absolutely DO NOT have access to all of your surges in a given combat. You almost never have access to more than three of them in a single combat, until extremely high level.

And round and round we go.

I'm done here.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

but the number scaling is much better in 5e

Is it though? Is it really?

Because one of the most common complaints I see about 5e around here, and from my more casual 5e player friends, is that it feels like you just never go anywhere, except ever-bloated HP and damage numbers. You never make any progress, because you always fight exactly the same things for ages and ages.

 

[Horwath]

Is it though? Is it really?

yes,
I would rather have attack scaling from +5 to +14(+3 weapon) than from +6 to +22ish(with +5 weapon)

or in 3.5 where it went from +5ish to +35 or something like that

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Idea of high number of low cr monsters being viable threats for high level PC's was good one. At least from the world building and in setting consistency point. It makes imaginary world feel more real and less video game like.

Problem is, for that to work, it starts to trickle into tactical combat (positioning, using covers and distance, high ground, multiple angles of attack, ambushes with overwhelming numbers etc) and edges on the dreaded "mass combat". It's also almost non existent in published adventures, at least from what i seen going trough them.

I would rather say: it is a good-SOUNDING idea. Like prestige classes, and skill points, and a host of other ideas, it sounds wonderful. It sounds like it gives you everything you could want and nothing you don't.

And then the practicalities of actual game design hit, as you say. The idea falls apart as soon as it makes contact with anything like real, experienced gameplay.

In other words, it's one of the few actual "white room" things. An idea that sounds absolutely wonderful in theory, and which people will die on a hill for...even though in practice it runs into constant issues and causes the game to become something other than what the designers wanted it to be.

Minions was one of the things i really liked in 4e. They had good idea and i still use it in 5e. Also, it makes sense that Ogre starts as Boss and ends up as minion. Monster power is same, but when measured against party power which grows over time, that Ogre becomes less challenging. For lv 1 party, Ogre is scary. For lv 11, fighter can probably solo it with some effort. For level 21, it's one hit kill. Minons are there to soak up hits and give main boss time to do his cool stuff. Action economy.

Certainly. Because minion (and solo, and various other things) recognize a fundamental truth:

The game is an abstraction, and that abstraction is not and cannot be a 100% perfectly naturalistic mapping of absolutely consistent things, while also delivering the experience that D&D claims to provide and which, in general, players are actually looking for.

Naturalistic design is wonderful when you can include it. You always should try, if you can. But the simple fact is, the threat that a particular enemy poses to the party really does change over time. Something that really was a horrendously powerful foe, something you would run terrified from at level 1, becomes an absolute cakewalk...and a single numerical system, bound by so many other requirements (it must have low numbers, it must be very fast, it must not bog down on details, it must be easy to teach, it must, it must, it must!), cannot 100% perfectly accurately depict that while still delivering, as the books say, "heroic" adventure.

Minions recognize that the actual threat posed by an enemy is, to a certain extent, relative to how strong the PCs themselves are. That particularly strong PCs actually do perceive a given threat differently once they have grown too far past it. That all you need is a single strong hit, which--because hitting and damage are highly abstracted in D&D, of all stripes--is best represented by an abstraction of occasionally needing to make a few more hits, or an abstraction of an unavoidable minimum amount of damage (e.g. "a hail of arrows" meaning you're still struck by something, or "a fiery inferno across the floor" meaning if you're in that space, you're taking damage, it just might be lesser or greater). That actually captures what it would FEEL like to fight an enemy you are now so far beyond, they're cannon fodder to you.

The whole point of game design is to capture some kind of feeling, some kind of experience, not to make a picture-perfect world simulator that is accurate down to centimeters and copper pieces. It's why economics has always been a weak point for D&D, and results in trivially-generated nonsense if the players do more than casually glance at it. It's why to-hit and AC are a terribad representation of the way actual melee combat works, why HP are so grossly abstracted that they completely flub almost every part of injury and healing (healing should be very slow, but total removed-from-fight injuries should be quite difficult to inflict, keeping someone from developing circulatory shock which you can in fact do with exhortations and shouting! is much more important than any faffing about with "curing" wounds which isn't even a thing you do to wounds!, etc.)

That terribad representation of the actual process of causing, receiving, and treating wounds is, however, quite effective at inculcating an experience of heroic combat--hence why it's used in D&D.