D&D General Martial/Caster balance and the Grease spell

[Neonchameleon]

In addition to what Vaalingrade has said, there is the following:

Either, (1) Grease and other first-level debuffs are not very useful especially in limited numbers, in which case low-level wizards are underpowered.

Or else, (2) Grease and other first-level debuffs are useful, in which case higher levels wizards have this thing which was useful even in limited numbers essentially on-tap. Hence higher level wizards are overpowered.

Or else (3) Grease and other low level debuffs are highly situational and you can't rely on them. Grease e.g. is a fine spell for dungeon crawling when you can use it to mess up a corridor but it's not great most of the time. This doesn't make it useless, especially when it's not one slot to one spell.

This doesn't occur with damaging effects, because hit points scale with level and hence damaging effects decrease in utility with level. The issue pertains to debuffs whose effectiveness doesn't scale down even as the resource cost of deployment decreases to (effectively) zero.

The low level spells that stay relevant and scale well are the defensive ones like Mage Armour, Shield, and Absorb Elements and the utility spells. Being able to halve incoming fire damage or gain a +5 to AC both do scale effectively and I think Featherfall gets more useful at high level. You don't need every spell to scale for the combined kit to.

 

[FrogReaver]

Either, (1) Grease and other first-level debuffs are not very useful especially in limited numbers, in which case low-level wizards are underpowered.

Or else, (2) Grease and other first-level debuffs are useful, in which case higher levels wizards have this thing which was useful even in limited numbers essentially on-tap. Hence higher level wizards are overpowered.

There are rarely only 2 options. So let me walk you through the 3rd option.

At level 1 you can prepare 4 spells and there are significantly stronger spells for low level characters to take. Sleep or Magic Missile or Burning Hands or even Silent Image all come to mind as strong general purpose level 1 spells. Grease is only very strong in very particular situations and offers very mild benefits otherwise. For example, one often can go whole campaigns and never have a setup where grease was as useful as it was in the Fire Giant encounter described. A level 1 Wizard also only gets 3 slots in the day (counting arcane recovery). He had better make those slots count and it's very unlikely using grease at low level is going to do so.

At higher level, (1) Level 3+ Concentration spells are the real powerhouses and you can only have 1 of those up at a time. (2) You end up with more than enough slots to cast 1 high impact level 3+ concentration spell every encounter (with plenty of slots left over). (3) Damage spells become relatively weaker (even at level damage spells start to fall off compared to the % of hp they take away from enemies). (4) A higher level wizard has enough spells to know/prepare that he can use some on situationally strong+efficient spells. (5) Grease and other non-concentration spells like blindness/deafness (blind grants advantage/disadvantage and many spells require sight) have additional strong use cases at higher level as they can be paired with strong concentration spells and (6) you have enough slots to do so without fear of too quickly running out.

TLDR: option 3 is that grease and other non-concentration non-damage spells tend to be very mediocre on low level wizards, while becoming relatively stronger on higher level wizards primarily through spell and slot proliferation, high scaling hp of enemies, and non concentration status. Even then, such non-concentration spells most often serve as helper spells to the more generally strong concentration spells and very rarely are situationally strong enough to use by themselves in any encounter of note.

*Of note: I agree that higher level Wizards are more powerful than fighters, just not because of grease.

This doesn't occur with damaging effects, because hit points scale with level and hence damaging effects decrease in utility with level. The issue pertains to debuffs whose effectiveness doesn't scale down even as the resource cost of deployment decreases to (effectively) zero.

Which ends up being a big part of why your analysis fails IMO. And resource cost isn't effectively zero. Your low level slots remain the most efficient slots to use for defensive spells and such spells will still be in competition with spells like grease.

In AD&D OA, warriors (7th level kensai, 6th level samurai) had an ability to cause 1 HD or fewer foes to flee or surrender in fear. The HD limit is fairly harsh (although less so in AD&D than in more recent versions of the game, because of conceits in early D&D around the role of guards, soldiers, bandits etc and how they are to be statted up), but this shows how high level warriors can be given AoE debuffs that are genre-appropriate.

IMO, There's a reason the game went away from such abilities.

 

[TwoSix]

Wizards don't need to maintain their 1st level spell slots. The low level slots need to disappear as they level up, so they are spending higher level spells if they wish to have this effect.

(Or if that seems counter-intuitive it's not that they lose slots, it's that their slots upgrade - like Warlocks. See the 13th Age progression for Wizards as an example. They cap out at 12 slots total).

Of course, this should really go along with reducing the numer of encounters expected per long rest.

Or Warlock style casting should simply be the standard.

 

[FrogReaver]

Or Warlock style casting should simply be the standard.

Be careful what you wish for: It might be worse (less balanced) for wizards to get short rest recharge on their spells.

 

[TwoSix]

Be careful what you wish for: It might be worse for wizards to get short rest recharge on their spells.

If they only have 2-3 slots? I'd be willing to risk it.

 

[Don Durito]

Grease specifically is fine balance wise because all it does it make it slightly easier for the PCs who do lots of damage to do that damage. Accuracy is already high so advantage is not really as much as a big deal as it may sound (unless you're fighting something overlevelled or with unusually high AC. Monsters main defence is bags of hit points.

And it's usually going to be the Martials to do the damage and take advantage of Grease.

A character that gives other people the chance to be awesome is not really much of a balance problem.

 

[FrogReaver]

If they only have 2-3 slots? I'd be willing to risk it.

IMO. They would just rest alot more. Could actually make them more powerful.

 

[TwoSix]

IMO. They would just rest alot more. Could actually make them more powerful.

I haven't seen that too much, even in parties with multiple short resters. Now, if every caster was on a short-rest schedule, you might see a "one encounter, rest for an hour paradigm" emerge, that's true. But not having access to the the low-level defensives like shield and mirror image still hurts wizards quite a bit.

 

[tetrasodium]

The big problem with the "casters become really powerful when low level slots are more available" is that the continual slowdown of slot progression ensures that never really happens while preventing the from gaining much growth in high level slots after the first

• Level five is anything but "high level" and is where the slowdown begins when they fail to gain their 4th second level slot. It's not that they gain it later, a level 20 full caster still only as 3 second level slots.
• Level seven is a decent level but probably not what many typically consider "high level". Here too they fail to gain a 4th 3rd level slot that never comes. Instead they gain one 4th level slot rather than 2 like when they got 2 first second & third level slots at 1 3 & 5
• Level eight the slowdown continues as they gain a second level 4 slot a level late.
• Level nine the slower progression of 4th level slots continues with casters gaining the 3rd 4th level slot a level late and continue with the slow 1 slot start on 5th level spells
• Level ten could be considered high level with casters gaining one 6th level slot & not gaining the second until level nineteen A caster might gain one 7th one 8th and one 9th level slot but they are effectively frozen where they were a level or two ago
• Level 11 fighters gain 3rd attack and caster spell slot gains are basically frozen.

Back in 3.5 casters got a lot of power as they accumulate lots of spell slots with powerful spells, 5e took aim at the spells as well as the slot progression, removed the hit penalty on second/third/fourth attack, added concentration, tuned monsters to thwart the 3.5 caster

 

[Dessert Nomad]

* Your optimal path of movement to a high mobility + kite-capable target is (say) 6 squares (within your move).

* A spell that plops down a 4 SQ control zone which connects other pieces of continuous terrain punishment then turns your 6 squares of movement into 8 or 9 (as you have to reroute from the prior optimal path)...now you're screwing with action economy sufficient to equal action denial of melee multiattack by proxy. Your left with a catch 22 of spending action economy to Dash and hope you can close to melee to deploy multiattack...except the Swashbackler can just dance away without OA and the Wizard has Misty Step at-will (so both have AoE avoiding Dash at-will). So you're in a position of pretty much being locked out of multiattack...so your potential damage output is wrecked.

You just jump over the grease effect if it's in your optimal path. If someone does the readied spell thing to catch the first 'giant', then that giant slips and falls blocking the hall... then uses it's action to dash, which lets it stand up and move 3 squares out of the way and clears the hallway for its buddies. So you've used an 18th level spellcaster's action to block one enemy from getting attacks for a turn. That might be a reasonable trade, but it isn't 'wrecking' anything about the action economy, you're trading one PCs main action and reaction (and, again, in a lot of level 18 fights giving up the ability to counterspell for a round is a big deal) to stop one enemy's main action.

If you're they can't jump over it because you've decided the roof is too short, I'd say that the scenario is too contrived to be a general rule. I'm also not really sure how the 4 giants with a 30' move the lead one of which needed at least 20' of movement to get to a PC who is in an area that's generally 10' wide were going to gang up on a PC without grease blocking one. It sounds like the best they could do without grease is get one giant engaged with a PC and the rest stuck behind him, or maybe have one squeeze next to the PC and a second one engage the PC with the other two behind. 30' move large creatures can't gang up very well in 10' wide corridors.

* This terrain-abuse (lets call it) makes you hugely kiteable (which crushes your potential dps output).

Move 30 creatures against level 18 PCs are generally highly kiteable unless there's something about the terrain that forces the PCs to fight instead of kite. The grease spell doesn't have anything to do with that.

Finally, no you can't just horizontal jump over anything that is prone.

You're wrong about this, but I deliberately cut those points out of my response because I'm not interested in arguing about the jumping rules, and literally none of what I'm discussing involves jumping over a prone creature. There's no reason for one of the giants to lay prone in the grease, they can always dash, stand up, and clear the way for those behind.

And linking terrain features by way of a strategically placed 4 SQ zone which complicates your path to your potential melee multiattack targets by even +15 ft (or 3 SQ) can create action denial and turn melee multiattackers into single target ranged attackers as they're forced to deal with terrain + movement enabled kiting

Again, it doesn't complicate their path. If one gets caught by a readied action casting then he dashes to clear the way (effectively trading one PC's action and reaction to stop one enemy's attack sequence), and the others just jump over the grease. I don't think that using the dash action and 'no roll required' jumps is anything special, and 18th level characters kiting 30' move enemies who are in a space that is more confined for them than for PCs is generally going to be pretty easy.