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General Tabletop Discussion
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Is the imbalance between classes in 5e accidental or by design?
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<blockquote data-quote="level2janitor" data-source="post: 8767789" data-attributes="member: 6993619"><p>Whether Wizards (and other full casters) seem overpowered comes down to a huge variety of factors & playstyle. Here's a few statements that, hopefully, aren't incredibly controversial.</p><ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Casters and martials mostly occupy different niches. Most casual players won't notice much of an imbalance, if casters are played as the designers seem to have expected, that being sub-optimally to some degree. If an imbalance does exist, classes are distinct enough that you have to dig into the system at least a <em>little</em> for it to become really noticeable.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Casters (besides Warlocks) are stronger during one-encounter days where combat ends faster than they can blow through their spell slots. Martial/caster disparity is much, much less of an issue during long days with multiple short rests in between. Most people, it turns out, don't prefer to play like this.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Casters and martials are mostly equal when it comes to skill use (and rogue and bard also exist). Casters tend to get more significant non-combat abilities outside of this, such as rituals, utility cantrips, and of course lots of non-combat spells.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Classes are generally well balanced in combat, from a perspective of raw power, at least at low levels, if you're running long days. Notably, casters with non-combat spells are also just as good in combat as martials, they just specialize at different aspects of it (i.e. not single-target damage).</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Casters do have to give up some combat power to use many non-combat abilities (excluding rituals & cantrips). Casting <em>scrying</em> leaves you with one less <em>synaptic static</em> later. However, this is still an option martials don't have - a wizard can choose to save their slot for a boss fight, but even a high-level fighter can't choose to burn both their action surges to, I dunno, crack a mountain in half or jump a 100-foot chasm. <span style="font-size: 12px">(Extensively houseruling that would probably fix 90% of the issue, honestly - I feel like most martial players would feel perfectly strong with good niche protection if they could, say, burn one of their rages to smash a castle wall.)</span></li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Martial abilities rarely scale other than having higher numbers, while magic becomes exponentially greater in scope as you level. Wizards go from deciphering languages and summoning friendly little owls to stopping time, teleporting across the continent and predicting the future. Martials go from doing a lot of damage to CR 1 enemies, to doing a lot of damage to CR 20 enemies. Skills have a higher success chance but the stuff that can be accomplished with those skills mostly stays the same forever. Martials used to get castles and armies to compensate, but that stuff is gone now. Martials are always designed for dungeon crawls, from level 1 to 20, while casters slowly break away from dungeon crawling and move towards changing the world on a grand scale.</li> </ul><p>Most of this stuff won't be noticed in casual play for a lot of tables, because most casual play is sub-optimal, fizzles before reaching high level, and honestly usually ends up with most casters being <em>worse</em> than martials in combat due to poor spell choice and the drastically higher number of ways you can potentially screw up. This ends up forcing a sort of incidental balance where martials shine in combat, and casters shine out of it, but neither to a degree they're <em>completely</em> useless when out of their element, even if the DM is rarely running that many encounters a day.</p><p></p><p>Really push the system and it snaps in half like a twig, though, unless the DM is working really hard to fix it.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="level2janitor, post: 8767789, member: 6993619"] Whether Wizards (and other full casters) seem overpowered comes down to a huge variety of factors & playstyle. Here's a few statements that, hopefully, aren't incredibly controversial. [LIST] [*]Casters and martials mostly occupy different niches. Most casual players won't notice much of an imbalance, if casters are played as the designers seem to have expected, that being sub-optimally to some degree. If an imbalance does exist, classes are distinct enough that you have to dig into the system at least a [I]little[/I] for it to become really noticeable. [*]Casters (besides Warlocks) are stronger during one-encounter days where combat ends faster than they can blow through their spell slots. Martial/caster disparity is much, much less of an issue during long days with multiple short rests in between. Most people, it turns out, don't prefer to play like this. [*]Casters and martials are mostly equal when it comes to skill use (and rogue and bard also exist). Casters tend to get more significant non-combat abilities outside of this, such as rituals, utility cantrips, and of course lots of non-combat spells. [*]Classes are generally well balanced in combat, from a perspective of raw power, at least at low levels, if you're running long days. Notably, casters with non-combat spells are also just as good in combat as martials, they just specialize at different aspects of it (i.e. not single-target damage). [*]Casters do have to give up some combat power to use many non-combat abilities (excluding rituals & cantrips). Casting [I]scrying[/I] leaves you with one less [I]synaptic static[/I] later. However, this is still an option martials don't have - a wizard can choose to save their slot for a boss fight, but even a high-level fighter can't choose to burn both their action surges to, I dunno, crack a mountain in half or jump a 100-foot chasm. [SIZE=3](Extensively houseruling that would probably fix 90% of the issue, honestly - I feel like most martial players would feel perfectly strong with good niche protection if they could, say, burn one of their rages to smash a castle wall.)[/SIZE] [*]Martial abilities rarely scale other than having higher numbers, while magic becomes exponentially greater in scope as you level. Wizards go from deciphering languages and summoning friendly little owls to stopping time, teleporting across the continent and predicting the future. Martials go from doing a lot of damage to CR 1 enemies, to doing a lot of damage to CR 20 enemies. Skills have a higher success chance but the stuff that can be accomplished with those skills mostly stays the same forever. Martials used to get castles and armies to compensate, but that stuff is gone now. Martials are always designed for dungeon crawls, from level 1 to 20, while casters slowly break away from dungeon crawling and move towards changing the world on a grand scale. [/LIST] Most of this stuff won't be noticed in casual play for a lot of tables, because most casual play is sub-optimal, fizzles before reaching high level, and honestly usually ends up with most casters being [I]worse[/I] than martials in combat due to poor spell choice and the drastically higher number of ways you can potentially screw up. This ends up forcing a sort of incidental balance where martials shine in combat, and casters shine out of it, but neither to a degree they're [I]completely[/I] useless when out of their element, even if the DM is rarely running that many encounters a day. Really push the system and it snaps in half like a twig, though, unless the DM is working really hard to fix it. [/QUOTE]
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Is the imbalance between classes in 5e accidental or by design?
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