D&D 5E Spellcasters and Balance in 5e: A Poll

[FrogReaver]

A few thoughts:

1. When people say balance what they really mean is “close enough” as opposed to perfectly balanced. Arguing against perfectly balanced which I think we all can agree isn’t realistically achievable doesn’t really address that idea.

2. Fighters are not any better at fighting than other martials (and that’s with their additional feats going toward combat). Many other martials are better out of combat than fighters though.

3. Magic is scaled to go up to mythic/legendary level and martials are not. I think wizards are this way due to tradition. Martials are this way due to popularity. This creates for a strange game in tier 3+ Where you have non-mythic fighters and mythic wizards. The saving grace if 5e is that martials in that tier still do solid damage so aren’t worthless. But it still makes for a very strange dynamic.

there’s plenty of mechanical solutions to this but the problem comes down to what conceptual underpinnings those mechanical solutions Have and the player base being very fragmented on what they want there.

 

[Undrave]

That is not a bad point. Although, it also is going to require quite a bit of time and effort to do something like that, depending on how many classes being compared, and I'll admit I probably don't have the time at the moment for something like that.

However, I would be game to use those breakpoints to look at fighter from those breakpoints and see what they could be capable of. It would at least be a start.

And, as a final note, after looking a bit more in depth, I'm actually wondering if fighter is indeed the "worst" class in my original assertion. Barbarian might actually rank lower once you take subclasses and ASIs into account.

I feel like the Barbarian better fulfills the promise of the Champion. That is to say it is simple and focus on simple single target damage, but does it so well it's not questioned wether the tradeoffs are worth it or not. Its class feature are VERY laser focused on Rage though, to a ridiculous degree.

And nobody plays the Berserker ( ) so they at least get more interesting fluff and the Totem Barbarian even gets a few rituals! But the Berserker is preeeeeetty bad itself.

 

[Manbearcat]

A few thoughts:

1. When people say balance what they really mean is “close enough” as opposed to perfectly balanced. Arguing against perfectly balanced which I think we all can agree isn’t realistically achievable doesn’t really address that idea.

2. Fighters are not any better at fighting than other martials (and that’s with their additional feats going toward combat). Many other martials are better out of combat than fighters though.

3. Magic is scaled to go up to mythic/legendary level and martials are not. I think wizards are this way due to tradition. Martials are this way due to popularity. This creates for a strange game in tier 3+ Where you have non-mythic fighters and mythic wizards. The saving grace if 5e is that martials in that tier still do solid damage so aren’t worthless. But it still makes for a very strange dynamic.

there’s plenty of mechanical solutions to this but the problem comes down to what conceptual underpinnings those mechanical solutions Have and the player base being very fragmented on what they want there.

Good post.

Personally, when I talk about D&D balance, I'm exclusively talking about it from a GMing perspective (which is all I do and all I've ever done). Specifically, these are my concerns:

* When I throw together a combat, my expectations are that the results will be predictable within certain bounds to me. I expect my mental model for the dynamics of the combat and the zoomed-out results of combat to be predictable. If I set up a combat that involves dangerous Artillery Minions who are protected by Terrain Features and Soldiers/Brutes, I expect tactically solving this puzzle to be a thing. If a Solo Leader/Controller interacts with them in ways that punish Team PC, but that Solo also punishes Team PC for engaging them, I expect tactically solving this puzzle to be a thing. If I put features of the combat the incentivize engagement (movement, stunting, protecting NPCs, getting to this area here to do this thing), I expect that to be a thing. If I create a deadly combat, I expect that to manifest in requisite tension and adrenaline (and not fait accompli).

If those things aren't reliably produced (meaning, they aren't predictable to me as the GM)...Houston...we have a problem.

* I want noncombat conflicts to be able to be meaningfully nested within the combat such that (a) the action economy required to engage with these goals is somewhere between "not punished" and incentivized (eg if there is a Portal where mooks are spilling out of it...I want Team PC to be able to orient themselves to the decision-point of "do we shut down this portal" and I want that decision to be a tough one and for it to matter).

* I will NEVER EVER EVER again spend the cognitive overhead required to tailor play to PC tactical niches or to rotate spotlight or to balance a natively unbalanced engine. Won't do it. I'm not going to Arms Race with Spellcasters or impose content upon play so weak PC archetypes can follow my bread-crumbs to Power Fantasy. Its anathema to skilled play and I want to spend all of my cognitive horsepower on creativity and dynamism...I don't want to spend one cent of it on making up for the system's issues that I have to curate out of existence.



So those are always my chief concerns when I engage on these subjects (and those 3 concerns were what informed my dogged effort to get 5e balanced around the Encounter/Scene rather than the Adventuring Day)

 

[Maxperson]

* When I throw together a combat, my expectations are that the results will be predictable within certain bounds to me. I expect my mental model for the dynamics of the combat and the zoomed-out results of combat to be predictable. If I set up a combat that involves dangerous Artillery Minions who are protected by Terrain Features and Soldiers/Brutes, I expect tactically solving this puzzle to be a thing. If a Solo Leader/Controller interacts with them in ways that punish Team PC, but that Solo also punishes Team PC for engaging them, I expect tactically solving this puzzle to be a thing. If I put features of the combat the incentivize engagement (movement, stunting, protecting NPCs, getting to this area here to do this thing), I expect that to be a thing. If I create a deadly combat, I expect that to manifest in requisite tension and adrenaline (and not fait accompli).

Well, Solo does have Chewbacca, which means you can expect things to get really hairy.

You can blame the caffeine that hasn't kicked in yet.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

Do I understand that in 2021 some players take personal that another character can planeshift the party while his can’t and get frustrated?
Mommy I want to do that too!

They want to matter to the story and impact the world more than begging the DM to make a skill check, that the caster can do. And if, Gygax forbid they get some narrative powers, then the caster supremacist brigade will show up and begin yowling about how it impacts THEIR fun, because their precious v-tude can't handle it.

Other's lack of imagination is not the martial player's fault or problem. Frankly, it strains my mind that the moons are always in alignment for player wizards to cast any spell they know.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

Every class has a life outside of whatever it is that they do. Why are Fighters as good at being a skill monkey as a Bard? If you give Fighters more, you have to give ,more to every class that only gets 2 skills. All of them have lives outside of whatever they do. Then Bards, being better than the others have to get 4, and then Rogues who are the ultimate have to go up to 5. You throw everything off by giving Fighters extra based on what every other class also has going for it.

That assumes fighters are remotely balanced. They arent. Why does the bard, a full 9 level caster, get extra skills, expertise, and in what is normally deemed their weakest subclass, most of a fighter's weapon/armor proficiencies and a 2nd attack? Are fighters just so stupid that it takes most of their training to learn the stuff other classes get in addition to full casting?

And as we know that most games end under 10, fighters don't even get to attack more outside of action surge!

 

[FrogReaver]

They want to matter to the story and impact the world more than begging the DM to make a skill check, that the caster can do. And if, Gygax forbid they get some narrative powers, then the caster supremacist brigade will show up and begin yowling about how it impacts THEIR fun, because their precious v-tude can't handle it.

This sounds like a proxy war. Narrative mechanics without in-fiction causality are a controversial topic (yes 5e already has some). But Solutions overly relying on them will not work for a significant portion of the player base. Which is why I call this a proxy war. It’s not about finding a solution but proposing a preferred solution with significant baggage and telling everyone else to ‘shove it’.

Other's lack of imagination is not the martial player's fault or problem. Frankly, it strains my mind that the moons are always in alignment for player wizards to cast any spell they know.

Magic is pure fantasy and works any way we fictionally describe.

 

[FrogReaver]

I think it’s worth considering that in approaching 5e as the big tent compromise edition that the issues we perceive with martial/caster balance may be irreconcilable without removing important comprises that were made to support the big tent.

 

[Maxperson]

That assumes fighters are remotely balanced. They arent. Why does the bard, a full 9 level caster, get extra skills, expertise, and in what is normally deemed their weakest subclass, most of a fighter's weapon/armor proficiencies and a 2nd attack? Are fighters just so stupid that it takes most of their training to learn the stuff other classes get in addition to full casting?

And as we know that most games end under 10, fighters don't even get to attack more outside of action surge!

And yet they do close enough DPR to be in contention and still do great outside of combat due to bounded accuracy. I'm not saying that there isn't room for improvement, but they are balanced with the rest of the classes if balance is a range.

 

[FrogReaver]

And yet they do close enough DPR to be in contention and still do great outside of combat due to bounded accuracy. I'm not saying that there isn't room for improvement, but they are balanced with the rest of the classes if balance is a range.

IMO focusing solely on single target DPR and bounded accuracy effects isn’t the best way show ‘close enough balance’.