D&D 5E I think Wizards balances classes using damage on a single target nova over 3 rounds.

[Pedantic]

You underestimate the appeal of "Badass Normal" characters. They're prodigious in fantasy fiction (consider Conan the Barbarian, John Carter of Mars, or Beren son of Barahir) and often quite beloved both classically and currently (consider Sokka from AtLA, or Batman, particularly DCAU Batman.)

There are absolutely folks who love D&D that would feel explicitly excluded if you told them, "No one is allowed to be Badass Normal in this game."

That's a whole separate issue. Firstly, I don't know that I agree that "not doing supernatural stuff" is actually that important, particularly in light of how magic items have historically been used to fill the gap, just not in a particularly player agency forward way.

Even if it is though, then you're going to have to disappoint those people by the time allowing rewriting of the rules of reality several times a day is on the table, so supporting them has a lot more to do with expanding play options and offering alternative scaling/campaign off ramps before high levels kick in. It's design malpractice to print a class that can't compete.

 

[ECMO3]

Teams are not made of identical people: therefore, balance can only mean being identical and nothing else. What else was this supposed to mean?


Teammates in some card games can have different power: therefore, balance can only mean uniformity and nothing else. What else was this example supposed to mean?

Ok thank you, you took that out of context. My point was on teams - say a Football team, you have positions where ahtletics are the most important thing and positions that are more cerebral, some are the "glory" positions, some are leadership position and some supporting positions. These are not balanced, either at the player or the position level. A receiver or a runningback is just more important in modern American Football than a Fullback is. Most Runningbacks and Tight Ends in the NFL can (and often do) play Fullback. Few pure Fullbacks can play tailback or tight end effectively. An Offensive Lineman, while arguably being just as important as a QB is not going to get the glory or recognition a QB will get.

The positions are just are not equal or balanced. Yet all players on the team cooperate to achieve the team goals and everyone contributes.

This is the same in modern D&D, putting characters like Fighters and Monks in supporting roles on the team with Wizards and sometimes Clerics that are going to be the power on the team and get the glory.

Here you explicitly use the word "parity." What else could you mean here, other than that being balanced must mean being uniform and identical?

I did not mean exactly equal, and neither does the word "parity". Parity is a synonym for balance. They mean the same thing in this context.

There are weaker positions and stronger positions in team sports, in team card games and in D&D partys. A Fighter or a Monk is not as strong a class as a Wizard. It just isn't.

As for the rest of the points, player skill is a wholly separate consideration--and I absolutely, fundamentally disagree with your core assertion. No amount of player skill is going to let a Fighter player rewrite in-game reality. Unless you can show some other way for Fighter players to perform feats that affect the game world to a degree similar to casting wish? I would absolutely love to hear it--that would be a conclusive slam-dunk against casters being grossly overpowered!

To cast Wish an inexperienced player needs to get to 17th level, get Wish in his spellbook and understand the dynamics for casting it and he has to realize he needs to get 60 feet away from Vecna so it doesn't get counterspelled. None of those things are gauranteed, or even likely for a noob player. RAW a player who starts at level 1 will no longer be inexperienced by level 17.

That same noob player when he is second level is going to forget to cast shield (if he even took shield as a spell) when the Hobgoblin cuts him down after he ran to the front to stab him with his dagger .... or he is going to cast Charm Person on a Skeleton. Meanwhile the savvy fighter is going to recognize the danger the Hobgoblin poses and either shove or grapple the Wizard and move him out of the way. The Savvy Fighter is going to drop his Sword and pull his back-up weapon - a Flail or Warhammer to beat the skeleton because he is vulnerable to bludgeoning damage and he understands damage types.

Unless you can show me a an example of a newbie playing a Wizard actually outplaying a vetran playing a Fighter I am not going to agree with your claim. There are thousands of examples of games online, find just one where this is happening and I will be satisfied.

Also I will point out that you can have someone who swings a sword and also casts Wish in the current game. The Bladesinger does that quite well, so that thematic option is available and with feats and races you can build that out largely however you want. It just doesn't have "fighter" written on the top. Since the Wizard already has this theme covered, I don't really see the need to give a Wish option to a fighter as well.

If it really is important the DM can certainly fix this with magic items. Something like a ring of Wishes or a Luckblade can get a fighter the ability to cast Wish without messing up the class at all. If this is necessary it is as easy as making the magic item available and making sure the fighter gets it when the party gets to 17th level.

And I'm saying it's both wrong-headed and actively bad for the game to outright punish players who like Fighters by enforcing that their characters MUST be weak, and likewise to reward players simply because they like playing Wizards.

No it isn't. The player chose a weak class on purpose. It is punishing them to enable and thereby have the rest of the party expect them to contribute as much as the Quaterback (ie the Wizard) when they purposely chose a class that is a support class.

It is bad to put the fighter player into a position where he is expected to save the party with a Wish spell, because that is not his role and players who take that class do not intend to be in that role.

up above you pointed this out - Fighters don't have Wish. Are you suggesting they should have Wish or the ability to alter reality in a similar fashion?

Because that's what actually happens in practice. Repeatedly.

Maybe in some games but certainly not in others and not in any I have played in personally.

 

[ECMO3]

After all, in multiple editions running, Fighter is the most beloved class in the game. (Which shows that it has little to do with implementation and everything to do with theme, but that's a separate consideration.)

But this is fundamentally contrary to your argument that the imbalance (i.e. implementation) is a problem.

 

[MichaelSomething]

Want to bump up Fighters to equal Wizards at high-level? Just remove the 20 Stat limit for single class Fighters and give them five to ten extra ASI between levels ten and twenty.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

D&D players don't seem to believe in Badass Normal though.

Hell, they don't believe in actual human being capable of impressive feats like Oylmpians or Jack LaLane.

And they work very hard to hedge out those who do.

Oh, I certainly agree that there's a serious conflict here between what people claim to want, and what their behavior reflects. It's extremely frustrating and I have yet to find an effective solution.

It's design malpractice to print a class that can't compete.

I agree. I just don't think that you have to print a class that can't compete in order to print a Fighter who doesn't (personally) use magic. I also don't think "uses a few, straightforward magic items" is any kind of stumbling block for such a character. Conan has his Atlantean sword; no one would accuse him of wielding magic as a result.

But this is fundamentally contrary to your argument that the imbalance (i.e. implementation) is a problem.

Unless you can actually explain why, I'm afraid I just don't see how that follows, to even the smallest degree.

Something can be popular and also be badly-made. Something can be unpopular (meaning, disliked) or simply not popular (neither liked nor disliked) yet also a brilliant design. The latter, while unfortunate, is not necessarily surprising. Surely the former should increase concern, not decrease it!

 

[ECMO3]

Unless you can actually explain why, I'm afraid I just don't see how that follows, to even the smallest degree.

Your argument is that implementation in the fighter class "punishes" players, at the same time you state that theme is what is important and that implementation has "little to do" with whether players like to play a class.

Something can be popular and also be badly-made.

Sure and it is popular, loved and people like it. Being badly-made would not be a compelling reason to change something that is popular.

The old saying - if it is working don't fix it.

 

[Hussar]

Want to bump up Fighters to equal Wizards at high-level? Just remove the 20 Stat limit for single class Fighters and give them five to ten extra ASI between levels ten and twenty.

That would probably do it quite well. Heck you do t really even need to limit it to single classed fighters. Just an asi at level 12 and then another every other level. With no stat cap. Hrm…

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Your argument is that implementation in the fighter class "punishes" players, at the same time you state that theme is what is important and that implementation has "little to do" with whether players like to play a class.

Yes. I don't see those things as remotely contradictory. People base their choices of play heavily on theme, regardless of mechanical function. Mechanical function is not irrelevant--if it is truly horrendous, it can drive people away--but it has to be pretty bad. That does not, at all, mean that it isn't punitive. "All experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed."

Sure and it is popular, loved and people like it. Being badly-made would not be a compelling reason to change something that is popular.

No, it absolutely is a reason. Because it would be popular no matter what form it takes, unless it were so horribly, egregiously bad that no one could justify playing it. It being popular is in fact an extremely GOOD reason to fix it, so that it actually meets the things the people who play it expect of it.

For God's sake, the 3e Fighter was in the top 3 favorite classes of that edition. And it's incredibly bad! Basically everyone agrees about that--and when I say "basically everyone," I include the designers of 3e, 4e, 5e, and Pathfinder. They all agree that there were serious flaws that needed to be fixed, and which could not be fixed with simply papering over the issues. Do you really think that, simply because the 3e Fighter was popular, it should have been preserved exactly as-is?

The old saying - if it is working don't fix it.

But it's not working. It's just that people are willing to overlook the problems. That's literally what I said.

You don't have something "working" that gets so much frustration, sustained, over a long period of time. That's literally the definition of it not working. People are just willing to put up with the issues--or paper over them.

 

[Pedantic]

Oh, I certainly agree that there's a serious conflict here between what people claim to want, and what their behavior reflects. It's extremely frustrating and I have yet to find an effective solution.


I agree. I just don't think that you have to print a class that can't compete in order to print a Fighter who doesn't (personally) use magic. I also don't think "uses a few, straightforward magic items" is any kind of stumbling block for such a character. Conan has his Atlantean sword; no one would accuse him of wielding magic as a result.

This isn't new ground. No amount of fighting skill lets you fly and go to other planes and sooner or later you need to fly and go to other planes. Plus, martial utility even when we do provide it is nearly always reactive, instead of proactive. You get to roll skills to mitigate problems or handle them as you approach, and you get to use spells to change the situations you face in the first place, and the latter is the much more interesting game.

That circular conversation aside can continue to disagree about precisely what utility is necessary for high level play and what archetypes get you there, but I think we both agree we currently live in the worst of all possible worlds. Frankly I just don't think it's worth the fight to try and salvage the Fighter, given the baggage already on display. You're never going to break the people who define it by what it can't do, so it's better to start fresh with some new martial archetypes that no one is invested in complaining about when you let them do things.

Honestly, if we just had the other martial classes (give or take the Rogue, which is a whole other problem), and everyone was some variant of Barbarian, Ranger or Paladin, it would be so much easier to give them level appropriate tools, without constant comparison to the Fighter dragging them down. You can justify giving any of those characters wings, or wind stepping or super jumps at say, level 9 or 13 or whatever when they need them.

 

[ECMO3]

Yes. I don't see those things as remotely contradictory. People base their choices of play heavily on theme, regardless of mechanical function. Mechanical function is not irrelevant--if it is truly horrendous, it can drive people away--but it has to be pretty bad. That does not, at all, mean that it isn't punitive. "All experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed."

No, it absolutely is a reason. Because it would be popular no matter what form it takes, unless it were so horribly, egregiously bad that no one could justify playing it. It being popular is in fact an extremely GOOD reason to fix it, so that it actually meets the things the people who play it expect of it.

Ok, to start with this presumes it is broken and that "fixing" it would make it better, which I don't believe and which you certainly haven't proven.

I think it is meeting the things most people want when they play it. It certainly meets the needs I want when I play it. I think there is a small minority of players who are upset over the mechanics want to change the fighter class to be more competitive with the best classes in the game, but I think those are a minority.

Also to go back to your statement theme is important and implementation is of "little importance". If it is of little importance to the fans of ffighters then at its very best "little" to gain by fixing it, but at its worst attempted fixes could destroy the class for many.

If mechanics are of little importance and the class in fact needs to be "fixed" (something I do not agree with) then logic would dictate it is the theme that needs to be changed for any sort of significant improvement for the masses, not the implementation which is by your admission largely irrelevant anyway.

But it's not working. It's just that people are willing to overlook the problems. That's literally what I said.

People overlooking alleged problems that by your own admission are not important.

One of my shoelaces is frayed at the end and has been for a year. This is an undeniable problem, however fixing my shoelace is of little value as my shoes still fit, they can still be tied, they still work well. It is not worth driving to walmart to buy a new lace. If the sole was missing, or for that matter if they looked bad, or if the things that matter were wrong with it, then it would be worth fixing my shoes.

BOTTOM LINE: If implementation is of "little value" to people who enjoy playing the class then there is little to be potentially gained in "fixing" it for them. They are already happy. Meanwhile there are many who do not want the kind of "fixes" you would implement and many who do not want the fighter changed, especially those playing other classes that see the theme of the fighter being 2nd tier and support. Those people will be hurt a lot because you are screwing with the theme, making Fighters superman or whatever so they can compete with someone who casts Wish, who by all rights, they should not be competing with. Meanwhile most of the fighter players will not gain much because these changes are not important to them.