So, in the recent thread "
Are Wizards really all that?", fellow user
@ECMO3 claims that:
- Yes, the Wizard is 'all that', it's the most powerful class in the game
- It was designed that way
- The game is better like that
Putting aside the first and third statement, we got into a major argument over the second one.
I argued that any imbalance was accidental, that there is nothing in the books to indicate that one class is more powerful than the other, especially not to someone who just picks up the book as a newbie and that if the classes WERE designed to be stronger or weaker than each other, the lack of conveyance is a bad design, and that the CR encounter building system would include adjustments per-class (and that WOTC wouldn't have tried to fix the Ranger multiple time if it was fine that it was weaker). ECMO3 argues that the fluff clearly puts the Wizard above the others (Supreme magic user and all that guff) and, furthermore, anyone can tell from the mechanics, and also that there is no indication in the book that all classes should be considered equal.
It got me curious how the rest of the board falls on this issue, because I've never seen anybody else with the same view as ECMO3
4e attempted to make the Martial types and the Spellcaster types balanced.
To that end, Martial types gained many cool things they could do to impact the game narrative beyond "I swing a sword and deal HP damage", and resource management to limit their tool use.
On the other hand, Spellcaster types had their world-altering abilities filed away (wish, etc), and their game narrative impact abilities reduced to something similar to what the Martial PCs had.
Both had access to similar non-combat engines (skill challenges, rituals) that could be used to enact larger world-scale-altering effects, but neither had them by fiat.
There was a massive backlash. 5e was (in part) a response to that backlash.
Fighters where
intentionally reduced back towards dealing HP damage and losing narrative control, and spellcasters where
intentionally given back world-scale-altering abilities.
The champion fighter in 5e only has "I hit and damage it" fiat abilities. The BM has very limited non-"I hit and damage it" fiat abilities.
The wizard regained wish, demiplane, clone, magic jar, and abilities of similar scale.
The math work in 4e (AC/ATK/HP/Damage/etc) was retained in 5e with a fresh coat of paint and covered with OD&D seasoning.
...
The thing to watch out for is the assumptions of wizard supremacy.
What is going on is that the Wizard and Fighter both start out at roughly the same level of competence, but the Wizard is more amenable to a higher level of optimization. The Fighter, when optimized, does more damage; the Wizard, when optimized, rewrites the game narrative.
BUT: If you pick relatively random abilities, subclasses, spells for each, you won't usually even see this effect.
I mean, for every wish spell, there is a weird spell; a 9th level AOE 22 damage per turn fear spell.