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

[Maxperson]

Yeah, there's no non-player characters the DM is supposed to create.

And the MM was explicitly a player-facing book in 3e.

And this was entirely the point of what I was saying about 'now shut up' content and not you arguing just to argue.

It doesn't say NPCs, though. It says characters. But there are also the rules for playing monsters in the 3e DMG if the DM wants to use them. From day 1, monster PCs, including the half-dragon, were playable as PCs. You just had to talk your DM into allowing it, just like any race from any other book released.

I hated level adjustment, so I didn't use it. Either I was okay with you playing the race in question with the power that came with it and said yes, or I wasn't and said no. The powers of most races was big at low levels, but trivial at high levels, but the level adjustment penalty was huge at high levels. What I did was put in a standing rule that the players could pick any race that was +1 or 0. They still had to run it by me in the rare event that the race itself would be a disruption to the campaign, but that almost never happened. If they wanted to play a race of +2 or higher, I said yes or no on a case by case basis.

 

[FrogReaver]

As I already mentioned, 3 spells to use out of combat doesn't allow them to be good at another pillar unless they get extremely lucky and can use all of them. What is far more likely to happen is that those 3 spells never get used. The limited situations that those spells are used for probably doesn't happen, but if one does, yes the Wizard is good at that instance for what is probably a very short time.

What happened to the vast majority of campaigns ending at level 7 or lower? You're now in territory that according to the flawed studies, only a few percent of people ever reach.

At level 10, many of your spell slots are worthless. You rarely cast 1st level spells, either in or out of combat, unless you have Shield or are healing trivial amounts of damage with them. Second level slots also don't have a lot of value, but at least there are a few limited out of combat uses, if you get lucky enough. Blowing 12 spells in combat pretty much means you've used up all of you 3-5th level spells and probably all of your 2nd level spells. You still aren't doing much out of combat. And the monsters are much harder, so you need to be casting those spells or you aren't pulling your weight.

Yeah. They would probably actually be good at another pillar if they did that. They wouldn't be pulling their weight in combat, though.

I think you are selling the Wizard far to short. It's not so much that he can do everything all at once or even all day, it's that he can do something impactful when it's really needed.

Level 1 and 2 spells are some of the most useful spells the wizard has for combat as that's where most defensive options and some of the better non-concentration spells reside (grease, blindness/deafness, magic missile). It's also where a number of very useful rituals can be found (find familiar, unseen servant, comprehend languages).

 

[FrogReaver]

I don't really care if you like it. That was just one particular approach to the problem, there were a bunch of others in the same post

I'm just sick of people saying the Fighter can't have Fighter appropriate social abilities and then complaining that there are no examples of such abilites. The Fighter can, and examples have been given.

Repeatedly.

I think part of the problem is - people keep insisting their must be a solution and that they have it, only for a significant portion of the community to always explain why that solution doesn't actually work for the game as it is. Said people then start the 'so your saying fighters/martials can't have anything nice' rant.

Okay, rant is probably too unkind, but I think I've illustrated the point.

IMO. If you want to get down to the core issue - it's that Fighter represents too many different concepts. But the Fighter Class is iconic and isn't going away - so on some level we just have to make the best of it. Essentially it means that everything else has to be balanced around this kind of Fighter Class to some extent - which causes issues up and down the design space.

I think the better question we should be asking isn't how to fix the fighter, it's how can we improve the fighter. I think there's some simple changes to make that while they wouldn't fix everything might help. Like what would adding expertise to the fighter do for the fighter and to class balance/design as a whole. Would that minor change be acceptable and would it help solve some of the complaints?

 

[Undrave]

I think you are selling the Wizard far to short. It's not so much that he can do everything all at once or even all day, it's that he can do something impactful when it's really needed.

Level 1 and 2 spells are some of the most useful spells the wizard has for combat as that's where most defensive options and some of the better non-concentration spells reside (grease, blindness/deafness, magic missile). It's also where a number of very useful rituals can be found (find familiar, unseen servant, comprehend languages).

Plus, the Wizard has the flexibility to just switch what they're good at from day to day. If they want to go hardcore all combat one day because they're in a dungeon, they can do that. But if they don't expect a lot of combat they can just load up on utility spells. And if you're a Cleric or a Druid you don't even need to have found those spells at all.

It's not like a Fighter can just switch out his Polearm Mastery feat for the Skilled feat after a good night sleep or something.

That's a pretty huge difference in opportunity cost right there.

 

[Undrave]

IMO. If you want to get down to the core issue - it's that Fighter represents too many different concepts. But the Fighter Class is iconic and isn't going away - so on some level we just have to make the best of it. Essentially it means that everything else has to be balanced around this kind of Fighter Class to some extent - which causes issues up and down the design space.

I think it's possible that desingers underestimate how hard it is to balance the Fighter with the casters. Like "He just hits things with a weapon, how hard can it be to design?" and then don't invest as much time into it. It's easy to get the core thing of the Fighter right, the meat around that bone however is much harder I think.

 

[Maxperson]

Plus, the Wizard has the flexibility to just switch what they're good at from day to day. If they want to go hardcore all combat one day because they're in a dungeon, they can do that. But if they don't expect a lot of combat they can just load up on utility spells. And if you're a Cleric or a Druid you don't even need to have found those spells at all.

It's not like a Fighter can just switch out his Polearm Mastery feat for the Skilled feat after a good night sleep or something.

That's a pretty huge difference in opportunity cost right there.

Provided that they have the spells in the first place. They get 6 at level 1 and then 2 per level after that. Whenever they hit a new spell level, at least 1 spell has to be combat or they suffer a huge loss of combat ability. Unless they find a lot of spells that they don't get by level, they aren't going to have a large number of utility spells to switch out for, and while the party is spending a day waiting for the Wizard to swap into the spell needed, the non-magical classes will have often already accomplished the goal.

 

[FrogReaver]

Provided that they have the spells in the first place. They get 6 at level 1 and then 2 per level after that. Whenever they hit a new spell level, at least 1 spell has to be combat or they suffer a huge loss of combat ability. Unless they find a lot of spells that they don't get by level, they aren't going to have a large number of utility spells to switch out for, and while the party is spending a day waiting for the Wizard to swap into the spell needed, the non-magical classes will have often already accomplished the goal.

Tons no, enough though IMO.

 

[Campbell]

The bigger issue for out of combat stuff is that while bounded accuracy is mostly fine in combat due to hit point and damage inflation combining bounded accuracy and objective DCs outside of combat means a 15 level character cannot meaningfully achieve on a regular basis anything that was impossible for their first level self. It's at odds with suitably impressive high level martial. That includes Rogues by the way.

 

[Mind of tempest]

The bigger issue for out of combat stuff is that while bounded accuracy is mostly fine in combat due to hit point and damage inflation combining bounded accuracy and objective DCs outside of combat means a 15 level character cannot meaningfully achieve on a regular basis anything that was impossible for their first level self. It's at odds with suitably impressive high level martial. That includes Rogues by the way.

perhaps something should be done about it?

 

[ECMO3]

Because caster fans, particularly Wizard fans, have a demonstrably outsized influence on the direction of the hobby. It goes all the way up to the designers themselves. I linked an interview with Rob Heinsoo earlier--the lead designer of 4e--where he explicitly said he had to keep adjusting the Wizard back down again because members of the design team kept trying to make it the strongest class.

Or, to put it a bit cynically: They don't call it Wizards of the Coast for nothing.

I don't think this is true, at least in 5E. Wizard is gimped significantly because Intelligence is not the best statistic and doesn't play well with any other class except artificer (and that has only been an official class for about 9 months).

If any caster class has an outsized infulence it is Warlock and Sorcerer.