D&D 5E [poll] Niche protection, yea or nay?

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And yet, 50+ people so far thought they could understand it well enough to answer as well as many others who have commented.

Just because 50 people responded does not mean that 50 people read the question the same way.

50 people read your question, decided on their own what "niche protection" means, and then answered the question accordingly. They must have done so because your question doesn't adequately define what niche protection is. The problem with that is that it means that the responses to your poll can't meaningfully be compared at all. If your answers can't be compared, how can we draw conclusions from the responses.

Look at the responses:

In d&d? I like niche protection. I like strong thematic classes.

"Niche Protection" is attaching a mechanic to a skill or ability so that only X class can effectively do it. It is not simply being better than everyone else at something.

I don't like niche protection but I'm happy to have some classes be better overall in 1 or 2 pillars but have options (like subclasses) that can change their focus.

I wouldn't split it up by pillar but I do think niche protection is very important.

Niche protection is important.

[...]

To me this means protecting niche abilities rather than dividing among the pillars.

I do *not* want all classes equally skilled at each pillar.

I do *not* want any one class to be the only one best at any one pillar.

All these people felt that it was important to define what niche protection was to them. That means they're all talking about slightly different things. They did that because there's not a consensus on the definition of niche protection.

Now, I can do the same thing. I feel like in order to discuss this topic I'd have to define what a "niche" is, what it means to "protect" that niche. I could just give you an answer based on what I think a "niche" is for class design, and what or how I think a "niche" can, has been, should be, or is being "protected". But without all that context, we're not really going to be discussing the same things. The fact that reading through this thread I see people saying "yes" or "no" and then the rest of their thread seems to directly contradict their yes or no answer tells me that they and I don't have a shared definition of "niche protection".

And more than one person found the exact same problem that I did with the question.

I also find it pretty funny that you're basically saying "I don't understand what you're asking, but I disagree with it." If it doesn't make sense and you don't understand it, then how could you disagree with it? Can't have it both ways.

That's because I didn't say that. I said two things:

First:

Your question is meaningless because you don't provided neither a concrete nor a consistent definition of "niche protection". I completely understand the question. I just find that the manner it was asked is too flawed to be meaningful. Since you don't define your own terms very well, it's inherently subjective. There is a lot of nuance to what niche protection is, and without describing exactly what you think is and is not niche protection (preferrably with examples) it's not going to result in particularly worthwhile discussion because nobody is on the same page. The fact that this thread is also a poll is just worse because now people answer yes and no responding to just the subject. Who knows if anybody agrees on what "niche protection" is?

Second:

The claim that older editions had niche protection and newer editions do not is not supported. You just assert that it is true and don't support your position. Even if I assume your descriptions of niche protection are comprehensive, I still arrive at the conclusion that it's an unsupported claim. It looks that way to casual inspection, but that's primarily because older editions had fewer actual classes.

For example, Fighter, Ranger, and Paladin really do fill the exact same role in 1e AD&D. However, almost everybody looks at Ranger and Paladin in 1e AD&D as subclasses of Fighter because that's exactly how the rules described them. The fact that Ranger and Paladin have been recategorized in 5e as distinct classes doesn't really change what roles those classes were designed to fill. If 6E comes out and it's identical except Battlemaster and Champion are separate full classes rather than archetypes, that does not make it meaningful to say that 5e protected class niches but 6e doesn't. The options exist in both; they just changed semantics.

Furthermore, there just aren't that many roles. There's only 4-5 combat roles and 4-6 non-combat roles. This fact is why you have to decide what it means to "protect a niche" because there are too many classes not to have some shared duty anywhere in any edition of the game unless we're talking about white box D&D.