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<blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 8763811" data-attributes="member: 18">That might be your experience, but it's very peculiar if so, and reeks of victim-blaming. I've seen 33 years of D&amp;D at this point, and it's certainly not my experience.It's absolutely a power-level issue in design, combining with how the design works.I will say that in 5E, I haven't seen there be serious power-level issues in combat that don't relate to player skill/system mastery, but outside combat? Given equal levels of system mastery, Full casters tend to dominate over Martials and Half casters by a noticeable amount. The game still works, but the idea that it's a good thing or intentional in the &quot;well-designed and carefully considered&quot; sense seems laughable to me. Rather it's semi-intentional in that 5E is an &quot;apology edition&quot;, and that apology wouldn't have worked if a certain kind of grog couldn't get an advantage through system mastery and picking Wizard. Wizard is basically a class that exists to allow people to exploit system mastery at this point. That's like, it's whole deal. It also attracts system masters like flies. So you get this &quot;force multiplier&quot; effect, where you have the person most system mastery consistently playing full casters, often Wizards, and full casters are the ones where system mastery has the most impact outside combat.You say &quot;everyone contributes meaningfully despite...&quot;, and you know what? That's usually true, because &quot;contributes meaningfully&quot; is a really low bar. But some people get to contribute tons more than others. And that's not a good thing. Yes, I can &quot;just go run a different RPG&quot;, and right now, that's actually what I'm doing, I'm not running D&amp;D in part because it rapidly becomes &quot;Full casters do stuff whilst others stand around and discuss&quot; out of combat (esp. after L5 or so). In combat again, weirdly fine.Absolutely not.That's not rational, logical, or reasonable sorry, but it isn't.If we want to discuss purely &quot;how the the designers originally, in 2014, saw class balance&quot;, then we can talk about that angle, but we can also say:A) They were clearly wrong. The made bad and unrealistic assumptions that their own chart which you keep referring shows them up as being wrong on a very basic level.B) We don't have to discuss real in-game balance solely they way they saw it, because their frame for balance was fundamentally bad and kind of dumb.C) Personally, I don't actually trust that they stuck to their own frame. Their own charts suggest they didn't.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Ruin Explorer, post: 8763811, member: 18"] That might be your experience, but it's very peculiar if so, and reeks of victim-blaming. I've seen 33 years of D&D at this point, and it's certainly not my experience. It's absolutely a power-level issue in design, combining with how the design works. I will say that in 5E, I haven't seen there be serious power-level issues[I] in combat[/I] that don't relate to player skill/system mastery, but outside combat? Given equal levels of system mastery, Full casters tend to dominate over Martials and Half casters by a noticeable amount. The game still works, but the idea that it's a good thing or intentional in the "well-designed and carefully considered" sense seems laughable to me. Rather it's semi-intentional in that 5E is an "apology edition", and that apology wouldn't have worked if a certain kind of grog couldn't get an advantage through system mastery and picking Wizard. Wizard is basically a class that exists to allow people to exploit system mastery at this point. That's like, it's whole deal. It also attracts system masters like flies. So you get this "force multiplier" effect, where you have the person most system mastery consistently playing full casters, often Wizards, and full casters are the ones where system mastery has the most impact outside combat. You say "everyone contributes meaningfully despite...", and you know what? That's usually true, because "contributes meaningfully" is a really low bar. But some people get to contribute tons more than others. And that's not a good thing. Yes, I can "just go run a different RPG", and right now, that's actually what I'm doing, I'm not running D&D in part because it rapidly becomes "Full casters do stuff whilst others stand around and discuss" out of combat (esp. after L5 or so). In combat again, weirdly fine. Absolutely not. That's not rational, logical, or reasonable sorry, but it isn't. If we want to discuss purely "how the the designers originally, in 2014, saw class balance", then we can talk about that angle, but we can also say: A) They were clearly wrong. The made bad and unrealistic assumptions that their own chart which you keep referring shows them up as being wrong on a very basic level. B) We don't have to discuss real in-game balance solely they way they saw it, because their frame for balance was fundamentally bad and kind of dumb. C) Personally, I don't actually trust that they stuck to their own frame. Their own charts suggest they didn't. [/QUOTE]

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