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

[FrozenNorth]

That's an alternate rule from the DMG, not a house rule. I do it for pacing and because I prefer longer than a night's rest for full healing. Before I chose to do it, I still regularly had the same number of encounters between long rests.

The only house rule that I apply for spell casters is that any spell that lasts for half an hour or more gets it's duration multiplied by 5 to balance out the change to long rests which ends up being a fairly significant buff.

This is exactly my point! No, you are not just playing with the alternate DMG rule. You have modified the alternate DMG rule into a house rule by increasing the duration of several spells.

Note if you DON’T do that, the alternate house rule doesn’t work particularly well, and it overnerfs wizards at low levels.

 

[Oofta]

This is exactly my point! No, you are not just playing with the alternate DMG rule. You have modified the alternate DMG rule into a house rule by increasing the duration of several spells.

Note if you DON’T do that, the alternate house rule doesn’t work particularly well, and it overnerfs wizards at low levels.

So ... I nerfed wizards because I made some of their spells more powerful?

All I'm doing is stretching out the time of the narrative so that it fits my style and pacing better. I had no problem getting in roughly the same number of encounters between long rests before I made the change, it didn't really change anything. This rule only applies to campaigns I run, I have also played and continue to play in other campaigns where I don't see massive issues.

 

[NotAYakk]

You also have hammers, nails, saws, and wood. If you can't fix any problems with your kitchen furniture using these tools you aren't creative enough. Which is why it's just fine that no two legs of any chair in this set are the same length.

When I buy a set of RPG rules from a publisher one of the things I am paying for is professional game design and playtesting. I can write and fix my own game rules - but it takes time, effort, and skill - and 95% of DMs don't know the system as well as the designer and don't have as good an understanding of game design.

Also I don't want to be a helicopter DM, making sure that rather facing challenges and overcoming them there is automatic spotlight balance. Instead I'd rather give the players opportunities and actually value their creativity.

I hate to tell you, there aren't any RPGs out there that aren't non-ultra-simple-mechanics roleplaying games that satisfy your requirements.

Zero, non, zilch.

You can buy the "here are stumps of wood as chairs" version of the RPG, or you can buy ones with fancy chairs that require the end-user to do self maintenance.

There isn't anything else on the market. Not red box, not AD&D 1st, not AD&D 2nd, not vampire, not GURPS, not RIFTS, not mage, not shadowrun, not pathfinder, not call of cthulu, not ORE, not d6 SW, not paranoia, not ars magica.

The only ones that come close are ultra-simple ones that embrace near narrative styles, or ones that pretend it doesn't matter if the rules give one player control of a PC that has orders of magnitude more control and impact on the story than others.

 

[Li Shenron]

Wow... basically 40% of the people believe D&D is defective by design, but are still happy to buy another iteration of it?

 

[Alzrius]

Wow... basically 40% of the people believe D&D is defective by design, but are still happy to buy another iteration of it?

I suspect that they don't equate "unbalanced" with "defective." There's room to see the unbalanced aspects of the game as a feature, rather than a bug.

 

[NotAYakk]

I'm not sure I follow? that doesn't adress my issue with the lack of guidelines on how to distribute magic items. The game basically lies by saying you don't really need them, but then the game is littered with monsters who resist non-magical damage.

If the issue of "martial PCs who lack magic weapons have problems damaging foes immune or resistant to non-magic weapons" is a primary concern, then I'm not worried about 5e martial:caster problems. That problem looks trivial to solve.

So no, I'm not addressing it? It is like people discussing how to get someone to the moon, and you are bringing up the flavor of bagels that the astronauts prefer in their briefings. I mean, it is a problem that needs solving, but it isn't all that important to the overall issue, nor is it hard to solve.

Magic item distribution is a tool the DM has to control how PCs interact with the world. The scope this permits the DM is large enough to handle almost all imbalance between PC capabilities.

At the low end of optimization, it is true that you probably want most martial PCs to have at least 1 magic weapon by middle of T2, and if you don't creatures immune/resistant to non-magic weapons become harder for martial PCs to deal with.

At the high end of optimization, the ability for the DM to generate custom items and pick which items occur in the game is important. You shouldn't use the PCs wish lists as a source of what items to give them, because the more optimized PCs will tend to have better wish lists as well. Instead, you should seek to provide items useful to the least optimized PCs in the effectiveness realm, and utility items useful to the most optimized PCs.

You can also just punt and use random item generation. This will tend to provide enough magic weapons for most martial PCs by mid T2 to have one if I have seen the math (if not their ideal weapon choice for optimized PCs).

The worst of all worlds is magic item shops (or equivalent, wish lists or whatever), providing a full shopping list of magic items that the Players can pick and choose over for their character's build.

 

[Art Waring]

The game basically lies by saying you don't really need them, but then the game is littered with monsters who resist non-magical damage.

I've mentioned this myself in another thread, but I have given it some thought...

Non-magical resistance can still have a narrative purpose, it could explain why commoners and the local guards have no magic, and need a group of adventurers to slay the local monster for them.

It gives the players a good reason for having some form of magic and at least one magic weapon to deal with magical foes. Additionally, it makes the players feel a little more special.

Unfortunately, the book doesn't encourage this. But you are free to run your home game however you like. Personally I tend to make sure each character has at least one magic weapon for these situations.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I hate to tell you, there aren't any RPGs out there that aren't non-ultra-simple-mechanics roleplaying games that satisfy your requirements.

And there isn't a car which doesn't need fuel. Which doesn't mean that fuel efficiency should be ignored or that a car that goes one mile to the gallon is acceptable. 5e is far worse than its immediate predecessor at this. Or for that matter oD&D.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I suspect that they don't equate "unbalanced" with "defective." There's room to see the unbalanced aspects of the game as a feature, rather than a bug.

Yeah, people are very much underestimating the burgeoning subculture of 'balance is bad' in D&D and basically only D&D.

 

[FrozenNorth]

So ... I nerfed wizards because I made some of their spells more powerful?

I’ll assume you are being sincere…

The alternate DMG rule overnerfs wizards at low levels: a 1st level wizard has 3 1st level spells, and if there is combat on 2 consecutive days, he’s used up 2/3rds of his spots just on mage armor.

You’ve modified that by increasing spell durations. But you don’t get to claim that wizards are balanced RAW when a) you are using an alternate rule; and b) that alternate rule doesn’t work and you have to houserule it to make it work.