D&D 5E Is the imbalance between classes in 5e accidental or by design?

[Undrave]

I can't see how it's not intentional. The Playtest ended up heavily tipping toward casters and they've expressly said things like how Fireball is purposefully unbalanced 'for tradition'. Which makes me wonder if Ford should sell a Legacy car with a crank starter.

So would you say WotC tried to make a balanced caster, but the Wizard fans in the play test influenced the result?

Do you agree with me that, if one class was meant to be stronger, it's not really conveyed in the books?

 

[Larnievc]

I know there is a Wizard bias, but can you elaborate?

Well they obviously had a stab at it when compared with 3.5 but shied away from the one size fits all of 4E. The actual internal drivers of what made them settle on 5E are probably multi factorial.

They reined in pure spell casters and boosted the relative power levels of martials to some extent but quite probably the reason they settled in what we have was time constraints in both testing and product delivery.

 

[Retreater]

They purposefully didn't care about catching accidents.
And they didn't playtest past level 9.

 

[Ancalagon]

I can't see how it's not intentional. The Playtest ended up heavily tipping toward casters and they've expressly said things like how Fireball is purposefully unbalanced 'for tradition'. Which makes me wonder if Ford should sell a Legacy car with a crank starter.

And yet... fireball is much weaker than in used to be. A fireball used to have a sliding damage based on level (5-10 d6 was the range) which makes comparison a bit difficult, but since 8d6 is in the middle of that range, we still can compare.

A 2n e ogre had an average hp of 19. A fireball would drop an ogre reliably if it failed it save. Now it takes three fireballs to bring down an ogre (if it fails all its saves) reliably...

In the old days, the wizard was explicitly balanced to be weaker at low levels, stronger at high levels. In 5e it is very clear efforts have been made to balance it with the other classes. While it is questionable if balance has actually been achieved, I highly doubt that the goal was to make the wizard stronger than the others.

 

[Ancalagon]

They purposefully didn't care about catching accidents.
And they didn't playtest past level 9.

... what is a catching accident?

 

[Vaalingrade]

So would you say WotC tried to make a balanced caster, but the Wizard fans in the play test influenced the result?

I don't actually see any evidence of a balanced caster. Everything else just got pushed down to make them the proud nail.

Do you agree with me that, if one class was meant to be stronger, it's not really conveyed in the books?

I agree with the statement, but D&D has ~traditionally~ had a lot of opaque design for no good reason.

 

[beancounter]

Again, not the question.

The paladin was intentional. Not sure about the rogue

 

[billd91]

And yet... fireball is much weaker than in used to be. A fireball used to have a sliding damage based on level (5-10 d6 was the range) which makes comparison a bit difficult, but since 8d6 is in the middle of that range, we still can compare.

And that 5-10d6 range was imposed with 2e. In 1e, there was no upper limit on the fireball dice.

 

[Stormonu]

I know there is a Wizard bias, but can you elaborate?

Well, the question here is not ‘is the Wizard unbalanced’, but rather ‘did WOTC try to make it balanced or did they try to make it stronger’. I'm questioning the design intent and how well it is communicated in the book.

They created a veneer of being balanced, but could not actually make it balanced due to outcry by the player community. I think they hoped that if they didn't point out the imbalance, only those who were already knee-deep in the game would notice.

So it was intentional imbalance, but an attempt was made to conceal it. Substitute Bruno with spellcasters.

 

[Retreater]

... what is a catching accident?

In baseball terms, an error: like missing a pop fly.
In the terms of this conversation, they made accidents in the design and didn't care about catching them.