D&D 5E Spellcaster/Warrior Imbalances Discussion

[Seramus]

I would prefer non-casters to get more utility. I want them to be able to contribute more to the non-combat pillars of an adventure (though the Rogue is already pretty solid). I am fine with an individual having the 'spotlight' during non-combat pillars, but I would prefer it if everyone could contribute something.

There are a few classes that can barely contribute anything outside of combat.

For that reason, I miss 4E Utility Powers.

 

[Dualazi]

It doesn't, because none of them can deal much damage.

The best party (or at least a candidate for the best party) is a sorcerer who uses twin-haste/greater invisibility on 2 sharpshooter fighters, and a cleric 1/divinity wizard who cast's bless and covers any utility.

That’s not even remotely true though. That party composition has really strong damage, and that’s about it. A large portion of the issues people have with comparing the fighter to wizard isn’t about DPR discussions, it’s about how fighter only shines in combat, whereas the wizard is still very valuable in combat and also able to contribute heavily elsewhere.

Fighter can be useful in any part of the game. Spell slot are a precious resources. Using spell is always last resort solution.

What…is your reasoning for this assertion? An 8th level wizard has 12 spells slots per day before even factoring in Arcane Recovery, so that’s between 1.5-2 spells per encounter, assuming the usual 6-8 encounters spiel. Spells are not something you really have to hoard as a caster class in 5e, much less wizards.

Fighter are archetypal leaders. Common folks trust them more than spell caster. It can give good opportunity to role play.

In your campaign, in your setting perhaps. This is in no way the default assumption of the game though, or else I just missed the section on wizard-specific social penalties. This also brings up a point central to the theme of this thread; it’s not very hard for a wizard to curate a list of spells that give them a lot of advantages in social setting that fighters have no means of replicating.

And again we are playing a role playing game. Fighter is a role, If your character is well defined, you will able to have fun and opportunity when others players shine. If you always compare who have done damage, solve problems, you will be sad.

Right. It’s a role-playing game where the roles are ill-defined, to the detriment of balance. Because at the end of the day, fighter is a class, not a role, and their role more often than not (as highlighted by this thread) is that of a damage dealer. However, many of the magical classes, including full casters, are no slouches at dealing hits even if they don’t reach the heights of an optimized fighter. This leads to a problem where said classes are capable enough in combat and over-capable by comparison outside of combat.

If 5e had really embraced the idea of the three pillars of play they espoused early in the design phase, then you should realistically have a class that’s garbage in combat and amazing at exploration and social skills, but this hypothetical class doesn’t exist because there’s no class that can’t contribute meaningfully in combat. The same can’t be said for social and exploration tasks.

The real issue here is skills, in my opinion. They need to be a lot more robust in what they accomplish, and need to really have some system for ascertaining when the player has moved well beyond what normal humans can attain. I’d be a lot less peeved about caster toys if the fighter could pull off superhuman feats of endurance or strength and leverage those in different ways over a campaign.

 

[Zardnaar]

And how many of you have figured out 5E uses a lot of 4Eisms.

If you pace you spells right they are effectively encounter powers you higher level spells are your 4E dailies.

For the martial types instead of 3w or 4W etc you get 2 attacks with extra damage via stacking ability mods.

I also suspect most classes get spells to duplicate 4E powers. I don't think most gamers care about the effect if its magical.

The 4E powers for the most part are built into the core classes. If you want a utility fighter take the skill feats, ritual caster, and magic initiate. You won't suck at combat because the fighter chasis is so good.

Fighters also get more feats. Might be a reason perhaps.

 

[Flamestrike]

What…is your reasoning for this assertion? An 8th level wizard has 12 spells slots per day before even factoring in Arcane Recovery, so that’s between 1.5-2 spells per encounter, assuming the usual 6-8 encounters spiel. Spells are not something you really have to hoard as a caster class in 5e, much less wizards.

How many of them are really going to matter enough to turn the tide of the battle?

One slot will be mage armor. Probably at least 2-3 for shield. Really he has the tools to show off a few times per day.

And an action surging GWM fighter can show off just as many times per long rest, smacking down half a dozen mooks or one big tough critter in a single round.

Im not sold on the 'Fighters cant contribute in non combat' either. Fighters are just as capable of roleplaying as anyone else, and have access to the same social skills as a Wizard does. They dont get charm person, but they do get more feats (so more things like Actor and the like if they wanted to be socially inclined).

I could use my 2 extra feats as a fighter for Skilled (persuasion, deception and insight) to go along with intimidate I get as a fighter, plus take Actor (or persuasive, empathetic etc) as a feat on top. With an appropriate background Im solid as a party face.

Just using fighter class features.

Remember 99 percent of social pillar encounters are resolved via roleplaying (with a social DC usually at the end of it, based on the outcome of that roleplaying). Wizards might be able to charm person their way through the encounter, but the charmed creature knows this afterwards, and this comes with complications of its own.

And charm person only grants you advantage to the social checks. A wizard is still better charming a critter, and then sitting back and letting the (rogue/ bard) doing the heavy lifting.

Same deal with environmental challenges. Most of can be dealt with via a rope and a 10' pole. Athletics also helps with swimming and climbing. If you cant teleport to the dungeon, who cares? If the DM has set the encounter in a dungeon 1000 miles away he's going to provide you with the means to get there via macguffin, or it gets resolved in a montage anyway (after weeks of travel, you arrive at the dungeon entrance..).

If you have a party of fighters and the DM sets the adventure in the 5th plane of Hell, he'll be providing you with the means to get there (a magic gate, an NPC, artifact or other means of getting there via macguffin). Sometimes the macguffin will be a fellow PC (the wizard) who gets to cast plane shift and feel all chuffed about his awesome power (when all he has done is avoid the DM doing it for the party instead).

99 percent of the game is killing stuff and taking their things. Its where the advancement (XP) of the game lies, and its why the third book of the three CRB is dedicated to monsters (and not to social encounters or environmental puzzles). All abilities are framed in combat jargon (on your round you can do X as an action etc).

 

[CapnZapp]

Hi everyone. I'd like to discuss the perceived imbalances between spellcasters and warriors. In this case, spellcasters includes the classes which gain 9th level spells, so the warriors include paladins and rangers even though they have spells.

I have not had the chance yet to play in a high level game. I've played in high level 3E and 4E games, but no 5E yet. So my knowledge is very limited. I've seen wizards cut a force of monsters in half with a well-timed fireball, but I've also seen a raging barbarian tear through what I thought was going to be a tough fight in one round.

But, spellcasters can do far more with their spells than just deal damage. If they could only deal damage with their spells, then I don't think we'd ever have a discussion about any imbalances (or at least they'd be easier to iron out). 4E was theoretically more balanced because each class had access to very similar toys. 5E is back to the classics.

Now, for this discussion, balance has as much to do with numerical balance as it does with spotlight balance. From my own experience, balance at the table only matters in three places:

1) Spotlight Balance: it's important that the game offers spotlight time to each of the players. For some, this means giving their combat focused fighter something worthwhile to fight, since that's what the player designed their character to do. Other times, it's giving the cleric undead to deal with or giving the Sorcerer fire-vulnerable enemies to roast. Still, sometimes it means giving the social rogue player a tense diplomatic encounter.

2) Balance of Choices: This is where I believe the numbers come in most importantly. If Option A is objectively more powerful than Option B, then Option B is chosen less. After some time, system savvy players feel like their options are limited by this. Other times, this can be noticed late when a player feels like they aren't contributing because they chose a weak option (like in my first 3E game when the ranger's player felt weak next to the barbarian character).

3) Known Balance: The DM needs to be able to know, with some contained margin of error, where the balance point in the game is. This can be both within combat (not making climactic encounters too weak or roadblock encounters too hard) and across a greater span of time (balancing spotlight time). The better balanced a system is, the easier time the DM has putting it all together.

I think 5E did a pretty good job at balancing things. It's not 4E's perfect balance, which some found too constraining, but spellcasters did get reined in (not having bonus spell slots really did a lot). At the levels I've played, when using the full DMG's daily xp target guidelines, I feel like combat Balance is in a good place; but I haven't gone above level seven yet. I know certain spells have been identified as having issues (wish/similucrum keeps getting mentioned).

Where I stand right now is that I want each class to offer something non-combative to it's player. I feel like only the Fighter is really lacking here.

What balance points really stand out to you? What are your stories of when balance issues affected your games? What elements of the game stand out as being in need of rebalancing. Or, what do you find especially well balanced in 5th Edition D&D?

Thanks


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I have quite crunchy players that love combat and minmaxed characters.

And yet they keep choosing martial characters.

My conclusion is that the warrior spellcaster imbalance has been fixed.

Zapp

PS. That the "Fighter" is lacking in non combat ability is a) not true and b) even if it is true, it's kind of the point of a class with that name.

a) With the Background system any character can pick up Persuasion or any other skill. And the game certainly isn't harder than that the Fighter can afford to pick up a decent Charisma score. So I would like to argue that even a Fighter can pick one out of combat area where she too can play at; especially if all the other players avoid upstaging her in that arena.

b) I really feel it is not a bug that you have a class which is all about fighting. If you want to pick locks or dupe merchants or hurl Fireballs, how about not picking that one class, eh?

 

[ExploderWizard]

I have quite crunchy players that love combat and minmaxed characters.

Hmm. I have not gnawed on my players so I wouldn't know if they are crunchy. What do they taste like?

 

[Li Shenron]

What balance points really stand out to you? What are your stories of when balance issues affected your games? What elements of the game stand out as being in need of rebalancing. Or, what do you find especially well balanced in 5th Edition D&D?

Full spellcasters can prepare as many spells per day as their level plus their bonus in the spellcasting ability score, and can then cast roughly the same amount of spells per day. Clerics and Druids know a lot more spells than they can prepare, but on a given day they are stuck with their selection. These aren't huge numbers, so even with a selection of spells targetted at being versatile, I don't think there should be a horrible spotlight disparity.

If there is anything that could potentially break this, is Wizards with a lot of rituals known, because Wizard don't need to prepare them, so such Wizard might have a lot of tricks available on every adventuring day. But I am not even sure there are that many rituals to create a problem here. And anyway I haven't played high level enough...

 

[Imaro]

If you want a utility fighter take the skill feats, ritual caster, and magic initiate. You won't suck at combat because the fighter chasis is so good.

Fighters also get more feats. Might be a reason perhaps.

This right here (as well as feats like Dungeon Delver, Actor, Keen Mind, and a few others that expand non-combat utility) is why I don't give much credence to those who claim the Fighter can't contribute to non-combat situations. The real problem is that the fighter gets a choice and most players, at least IMO, tend to choose combat optimization over non-combat utility... even though the fighter is pretty optimized for combat as a baseline. That's not a game issue that's the player creating the character they want to play.

 

[Eubani]

BUT Fighters can take non combat feats......lets be honest the non combat feats are mostly crap.

 

[FrogReaver]

Casters have both combat options and non combat options available simultaneously.

Fighters must choose whether he will be good at combat or good at non-combat. He doesn't get the power of simultaneous options that casters get.