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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hautamaki" data-source="post: 5912718" data-attributes="member: 42219">Good post but I have two points to make. First off, you have to consider the present day environment.  People back in the day were happy to play the wizard and thief (which was also weak as you point out) for 2 main reasons that really no longer apply today.  The first main reason is that D&D itself did not have the same level of competition for the same fanbase as D&D today does.  Absent any alternative, of course people in general were willing to settle for less design-wise.  Now of course there are still people, like you, who prefer that design.  But it's inarguable that if WotC were to put out BECMI for example today, it would not be nearly as successful as when TSR put it out 30 years ago because most people, while not necessarily power gamers, do not want to play a character that basically can't contribute any more than a peasant could in the majority of rounds of combat. The second main reason people were happy to play thieves and wizards back in the day was that combat was a much smaller part of the game.  The game itself has evolved to the point where about 60-80% of the play time of any given session is spent in combat.  Back then it was a much more even split with role-play and exploration, so even if you had a guy that couldn't do much in combat that was only about 30-40% of the game and if he could shine for the other 60-70% that was great. Now if 5e can somehow get back to combat being less than half of the average session then balancing PC combat ability becomes that much less important.  Their attempt to do so in 4e with the skill-challenge mechanic was a dismal failure by most accounts (including mine).  I think that adventure design is a much more important factor in non-combat related play; and even more important than that is the preferences of the group, ultimately.  If a given group of players would rather fight stuff than talk to it or explore a way around it, that's what they're going to do regardless of any non-combat type mechanics you try to design. But even with groups that don't fight much for whatever reason, I would argue combat ability balance is still important.  Even if your character is weak for only 30% of the time rather than 70% of the time, it's still 30% of the time most people are not having as much fun as they would be if their character was more balanced. That said I'm not favor of unlimited at-will cantrips in any case as I said above.  In my perfect world a vancian caster will have X number of spells, say 30, and that won't change, or if it does, very little.  A lvl 1 caster might have 20 spells total while a lvl 30 caster might have 30; the main difference is that almost all of a level 1 caster's spells will be weak cantrips.  As a wizard gains levels he can start to cast more and more higher level spells, but never more than 30 (or whatever) per day.</blockquote>

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