D&D 5E "My X is underpowered compared to Y." So?

[Tony Vargas]

I dunno, the fact their is a reversal potion that can be won/found makes this encounter much more palatable.

Really, it makes it 'balanced,' by the standard of the day. It's not that early D&D didn't strive for class balance or balanced encounters - it just wasn't very successful, and the methods used were often baroque or felt contrived.

 

[Psikerlord#]

Right.

These kinds of arguments are used all of the time, "If I use <special thing A> with my <extra doohicky B> I get <Corner Case "Proof">."

It is utterly meaningless.

It is...somewhat...understandable, given the game's history [at least in regards to multiclassing]. But multiclassing and feats are both OPTIONS to be added to the game. And doing so creates all kinds of "but this doesn't that" and "that doesn't this, then" = "broken/bad design/useless options".

The game is not/can not be based around every corner case eventuality. Citing "put in blender options A does not equal/is better/worse/over-under-powered than blender options B" does not mean anything when looking at how the game is actually designed. Every option you allow/add to the game creates a whole garden full of different eventualities.

You can play with them! Absolutely. They are there for you to use/add as makes things "fun" for your table. But adding them, inherently CHANGES what you are working with. So you can't say, justifiably, "Hey I made Bananas Foster and now my dish no longer tastes like Applesauce! Those bastards!"

Everything can not...and i will continue to maintain til my dice run-eth out, "should not"...be "balanced = equal."

I suppose all I can say is, we use feats but without the -5/+10, and we dont allow multiclassing, and the result is a game without any true strikers. And it's awesome. The core game appears to be balanced in this same manner (ie without MCing and feats, there are no true strikers).

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Indeed, it doesn't matter.

But, I'm surprised you find the concept of class balance strange or new. Gygax went on about it in the 1e DMG, and both versions of AD&D had extensive, even baroque, mechanisms in an attempt to provide some balance among the classes (and races). In retrospect they didn't work very well, but they represented a great deal of thought and effort.

To clarify: what seems new to me, having been away from D&D for a decade and a half, is the obsession with class balance in the moment. AD&D classes were often balanced over lifecycles rather than just in the moment, e.g. fighters had weak saves early but the best saves later on; LFQW; thieves gained levels faster than anyone else for a given amount of XP; druids gained levels quickly up through mid levels and then came to a crashing halt around Hierophant level. This made sense in an TSR-era/AD&D context because you could mix-and-match classes to a certain extent; fighter/mages were popular in part because you got the strong early levels of a fighter without entirely sacrificing the strong late levels of the mage. (Level limits complicated the picture.)

5E is a new game, by WotC not TSR, in which multiclassing works differently: you pick and choose classes as your total character level increases. Lifecycle-oriented balance is something WotC has deliberately eschewed, because they want a fighter 10/wizard 10 to be as much fun to play as a fighter 20 or wizard 20, so the power curve for fighters and wizards is required to be pretty much linear. Nobody can predict when a fighter will turn into a wizard, so the game designers have endeavored to ensure that each and every level of fighter is approximately as fun and useful as a first level in wizard. I think they did a good job at this, but it's not possible to do the job perfectly. Anyway, it's a different kind of "class balance" than TSR-era D&D had.

 

[Riley37]

In other words, DPR obsession is a hyperspecialization which is well-adapted for Internet communication and thrives there even moreso than at the table. That's how it looks to me anyway.

Amen.
What you see on the Internet forums != what matters at the table.

Also, the Internet forums get revenue from ads for potions to increase your damage output. Amaze and delight your wife - I mean, your DM - with Meleegra!
"You swallow the bottle of pills. Your weapon shimmers briefly and becomes engorged. You acquire an effect: Engorged Weapon (duration: 5 Adventures)"
http://kol.coldfront.net/thekolwiki/index.php/La_Farmacia_de_Sueños

 

[Celtavian]

When discussing rules, I always assume we're discussing core rules and their effect on the game. The damage output of individual classes and the roles they play in a group are important to me as a DM. I consider the fun of players highly important. That means tracking class ability. I don't do this just because I want this perfectly balanced game. I do it because I want players to be able to choose options for given roles that are relatively balanced in terms of effectiveness. I weight a lot of different factors when doing so. Some of the factors I weight:

1. General Versatility: This is of first importance to me when measuring comparative DPR. If a class can fill multiple roles or excel in multiple aspects of the game (social, exploration, combat...the pillars), I tend to not focus on damage quite as a much. I like to see how a class works during actual play before I judge it, to as high a level as possible. Some classes don't shine at low level, but shine really bright at high level. This is usually the case with casters like wizards which tend to have a non-linear sort of advancement gaining access to more and more powerful effects that no class but a caster can match. 5E wizards aren't as potent as previous editions, but they're pretty damn potent being able to attack the weaknesses of any creature due to six saves and spell versatility. I don't worry about them as far as pure damage output goes. To sum it up, versatility is important to analyze before you concern yourself with pure damage.

2. Combat Versatility: This is extremely important to measure before you rate DPR. How well can the class heal himself? This is a big one. You don't want a class outputting insane DPR if he can heal himself of a large amount of damage. You will have serious balance issues if this happens. That's why I understand keeping a tight cap on cleric DPR. You don't want that headache of them turning into the ultimate, indestructible combat machine. Paladins are fairly close right now to being out of whack. The main thing that keeps them somewhat balanced is they have to enter melee to smite. If they could smite at range, the paladin would be ridiculously overpowered. AoE damage versus single target. How many different effects can they do in combat. How many weaknesses can they attack. Ranged versus melee effectiveness. A lot of little factors to take into account when measuring the combat capabilities of a class beyond DPR.

The sorcerer is a tricky class. If you build a pure sorcerer blaster, he can be quite weak, especially with the new Twinned Spell clarification. But if you built an effect caster with Heighten Spell, the view might be quite different. Or the Sorlock and his nearly endless ability to cast Eldritch Blast with Quicken converting warlock slots to sorcery points. Not much is immune to force damage. You can make a very tough Sorlock blaster that can for all intents and purposes can double Eldritch Blast with hex all day. A Sorlock can even twin spell his hex providing disadvantage on an ability check to two targets while a party cast a restraining spell and lets the Sorlock nuke them to death. I believe the Twin Spell clarification was to stop the Sorlock, not the scorching ray combo. As has been stated, scorching ray and magic missile are nothing compared to Twinned eldritch blast.

To sum it up, DPR is an important factor in balancing classes. It isn't the sole factor, but definitely a major factor, especially when you have classes that fill a similar role in a group like a monk and a rogue. You want the player to be able to choose either class and be equally effective in combat, while hopefully being able to fill a similar or at least equally valuable non-combat role. You don't want the player pick a class that makes them feel like a second wheel, while everyone around them is doing something outstanding be it DPR, scouting, battlefield control, social skills, party buffing, or some other aspect of the game. It isn't fun when classes are imbalanced to the point where choosing to play it makes you feel weaker than others due to inherent flaws in the class mechanics, including DPR if the class is one that should shine bright when doing damage in combat.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I believe the Twin Spell clarification was to stop the Sorlock, not the scorching ray combo. As has been stated, scorching ray and magic missile are nothing compared to Twinned eldritch blast.

Empowered Eldritch Blast/Scorching Ray just got better though.

 

[Tony Vargas]

To clarify: what seems new to me, having been away from D&D for a decade and a half, is the obsession with class balance in the moment. AD&D classes were often balanced over lifecycles rather than just in the moment

You're right, that is (or was, it didn't last long) quite new. In classic D&D, classes and races might 'balance' over the expected life of a campaign, with non-/demi- humans and fighters doing well at low levels, and humans and caster dominating at higher levels. What they discovered when designing 3e, though, was that campaign rarely went that whole life-cycle, they often topped out around 10th. So 3e made some attempt at balance for the first 10 levels, and prettymuch let it go after that. It wasn't really successful in that attempt, but there's a 3.5 variant called 'E6' in which most PC abilities stop advancing at 6th level, that works a bit better.

5E is a new game, by WotC not TSR, in which multiclassing works differently: you pick and choose classes as your total character level increases.

That was a 3e innovation that 5e has adopted, yes.

Lifecycle-oriented balance is something WotC has deliberately eschewed, because they want a fighter 10/wizard 10 to be as much fun to play as a fighter 20 or wizard 20, so the power curve for fighters and wizards is required to be pretty much linear.

That's a good theory. I'm not sure if it holds up, or if 5e uses the 3e model of attempted balance, instead.

5e's immediate predecessor was neatly balanced at all levels, but it didn't use the 3e-style multi-classing or classic Vancian casting that 5e has returned to. If you're seeing a concern for 'balance in the moment,' it's left over from debates and opinions within the community in the 15 years between 2e and 5e. There's little in 5e's design to suggest that it is greatly concerned with balance among classes, either in the moment, or over a life cycle. Rather, if anything, it seeks a roving sort of 'spotlight balance' in which each class is so differentiated and differently specialized that it will, in a well-managed campaign, have moments when it's the star of the show, because it has just the right spell, high skill check, DPR throughput, or whatever to outshine the rest of the party in that given moment.

So it's more differently imbalanced in the moment.

Yeah, this. I get the feeling that DPR obsession is mostly a thing for Internet posters.

Yes. It's easy to calculate, it's reasonably objective.

At the table, it can be fun to be the guy who obtains vital information through spying, or who persuades a key NPC to become an ally, but none of those things can be talked about on the Internet easily because they're all context-dependent. ...

In other words, DPR obsession is a hyperspecialization which is well-adapted for Internet communication and thrives there even moreso than at the table. That's how it looks to me anyway.

DPR optimization has it's place at the table, as well. Since D&D uses a damage-tracking system of hps in which the performance of a figure is not degraded by hp damage until it is dropped/killed, focusing damage on one enemy at a time is the most obvious/basic/effective combat tactic, in general. By choosing a DPR-only class and optimizing it for offense, a player can eschew more complex tactical decisions and non-combat contributions, while still having a character that pulls his own weight and contributes consistently.

 

[pemerton]

Is it possible (in any given game system, not just D&D) for a character to deviate in practice from the expectations that a player has when they create that character in such a way as to harm that player's enjoyment of the game?

If so, is this something that is governed at least in part by the rules?

My answer to those two questions is yes.

This depends very heavily on the game system.

Some systems are mechanically quite transparent - Runequest and Rolemaster are two examples of this, I think, from the "trad" stable of RPGs. If you try and build a PC who has big numbers in the combat skills, you'll get a PC who is relatively effective in combat. (You might come unstuck because of damage mechanics, but that won't be due to a lack of system mastery.)

I think RPGs like Dungeon World and Fate are examples of pretty transparent systems from the "modern" stable.

 

[pemerton]

I've been playing and involved in RPGs since 1980, and while people did talk about damage comparisons back in the day, there was nothing like the current obsession with DPS in RPGs.

I'm puzzled by the emphasis on damage output and the complaints about one class or another being underpowered in comparison to others. It's not the kind of thing I've heard before.

Back in the late 70s, Don Turnbull published a system for ranking monsters by power, which took as its base input expected damage per round.

The issue of class balance, or lack thereof, was widely discussed in the pages of White Dwarf and Dragon Magazine in the early through mid-80s at least. One stand-out example is Roger Moore's article in Dragon 69.

Also, in Googing to find which number of Dragon that article was published in, I found this interesting discussion of it on the Grognardia blog: http://grognardia.blogspot.com.au/2011/11/articles-of-dragon-charting-classes.html

 

[Celtavian]

I suppose all I can say is, we use feats but without the -5/+10, and we dont allow multiclassing, and the result is a game without any true strikers. And it's awesome. The core game appears to be balanced in this same manner (ie without MCing and feats, there are no true strikers).

I can see this. Damage is extremely balanced absent the -5/+10 feats.