D&D 5E Merlin and Arthur or Batman and zatana

[Paul Farquhar]

In games I play I don't care who executes the details of the plan, making the plan is the important bit. I can't count how many times that Jo says "Hey Bob if you could cast X or do ritual Y..."

Then again I don't care about "balance", different members of the team contribute in different ways.

I agree, my players often spend as long planning as the do acting. And during the planning stage character power is irrelevant. It's all on the players.

I wouldn't say balance "never" matters. If you are in a situation where everyone is playing X and no one is playing Y, then the imbalance between X and Y is a problem. I see a bit of this with the Twighlight Cleric. But if you look at fighters and wizards, the statistics constantly show more people playing fighters than wizards, even though the white room says wizards are far more powerful. The classes are imbalanced, but that imbalance is not a problem. The game works just fine, and if you made fighters stronger and wizards weaker then people might stop playing wizards altogether.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I agree, my players often spend as long planning as the do acting. And during the planning stage character power is irrelevant. It's all on the players.

I wouldn't say balance "never" matters. If you are in a situation where everyone is playing X and no one is playing Y, then the imbalance between X and Y is a problem. I see a bit of this with the Twighlight Cleric. But if you look at fighters and wizards, the statistics constantly show more people playing fighters than wizards, even though the white room says wizards are far more powerful. The classes are imbalanced, but that imbalance is not a problem. The game works just fine, and if you made fighters stronger and wizards weaker then people might stop playing wizards altogether.

Because no one would ever play a weak and poorly designed thing simply because they like the flavor or were told to play it by someone else. Everyone always makes perfectly rational calculations about the best choices and thus there cannot be a persistent problem here. Nope never not at all.

And Wizards certainly didn't have to redesign the fourth-most-popular race because it was super weak, despite growing in popularity year after year...

 

[Fanaelialae]

The game works just fine, and if you made fighters stronger and wizards weaker then people might stop playing wizards altogether.

I think a more reasonable conclusion is that many players choose their class based on concept rather than power level. Which means that if you were to make fighters stronger, wizards would continue to be played, because people would still be attracted to playing characters based on the wizard archetype.

If you somehow managed to actually make fighters stronger than wizards, which would be quite the feat itself, then the only change I would expect is that optimizers would gravitate to fighters over wizards.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

wizards would continue to be played, because people would still be attracted to playing characters based on the wizard archetype.

On the whole, I find players don't want to play wizards, but someone gets their arm twisted into playing one. The short straw.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Because no one would ever play a weak and poorly designed thing simply because they like the flavor or were told to play it by someone else. Everyone always makes perfectly rational calculations about the best choices and thus there cannot be a persistent problem here. Nope never not at all.

You are making my argument for me. Players DON'T make their choices based on "which is more powerful" so relative power does not matter. Imbalance has no* negative consequences.


*Well, hardly ever- see Twighlight cleric.

 

[Fanaelialae]

On the whole, I find players don't want to play wizards, but someone gets their arm twisted into playing one. The short straw.

Your experiences are different from mine. I've never seen anyone's arm twisted into playing a caster, unless it was a healer. I've definitely seen folks play a tank simply because the party lacked for a front line.

That doesn't mean that everyone always wants to play a caster, of course. Most of the folks at my table like to change things up regularly, and don't tend to play the same type of character every time. However it's rare that no one wants to play an arcane caster (but when it's happened we just roll with it).

 

[FrozenNorth]

On the whole, I find players don't want to play wizards, but someone gets their arm twisted into playing one. The short straw.

That may be why you don’t see the problem. If you don’t have players excited to play wizards, to the point that you need to force players to play wizards (I mean, why?), it stands to reason that you haven’t seen what I dedicated wizard player can do to upset balance.

 

[Garthanos]

Your experiences are different from mine. I've never seen anyone's arm twisted into playing a caster, unless it was a healer.

Never seen that in game ever either ... it sounds like a fairy tale. (attempts to make cleric more appealing gave us codzilla).

My sons play group is entirely casters (one is a paladin)

I've definitely seen folks play a tank simply because the party lacked for a front line.

I think that "role" is one that suffered the most functionally in 5e ( the high level cavalier seems easier to ignore than a low level 4e fighter). ... if you have someone who likes to dabble in multiple caster roles you can pull it off better by mid tier than the closest functioning martial types so do not expect tank to mean not a caster.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

You are making my argument for me. Players DON'T make their choices based on "which is more powerful" so relative power does not matter. Imbalance has no* negative consequences.


*Well, hardly ever- see Twighlight cleric.

And now you're making my argument for me.

You grant that Twilight is a problem. That cannot be the case if imbalance is irrelevant. So long as at least one example of imbalance mattering exists, you've given me half or more of what I'm arguing: it then becomes incumbent on you to argue that the degree of imbalance isn't a problem most of the time, rather than being able to dismiss all imbalance concerns as "balance doesn't matter."

Plus? The fact that people don't (always) make their choices based on which is more powerful does not mean there are no consequences to imbalance. It actually means there are WORSE consequences for imbalance--because you are punishing players for their preferences, rather than for actually unsound choices.

It has a very strong similarity to addressing out-of-game problems with in-game responses.

People shouldn't be punished simply because they like playing Fighters. Nor should they be rewarded simply because they like playing casters.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

You grant that Twilight is a problem. That cannot be the case if imbalance is irrelevant.

Only the Sith deal in absolutes.

Sometimes, imbalance can have a negative impact, as with the Twighlight domain. Most of the time, it has no effect, or as with wizards, has a positive effect.

you are punishing players for their preferences

No one is "punished" for anything. Because how much fun you have playing D&D is not tied to how powerful your character is. If it was, everyone would play wizards. The fact that they do not indicates they are having fun playing fighters. They do not feel punished.

The point of a punishment is to deter someone from doing something. If they are not deterred, they do not feel punished.