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

[Crimson Longinus]

That's all the flavor it needed.

Look at all the Battlemaster Builds in TCOE. There is a universe where each in built into their own classes. Maybe not 12 like TCOE but the fighter could easily be broken up into 3-6 parts. Each one focusing on the theme of the class and using mechanics made for the theme.

Stupidly narrow classes are a bad idea. Even more so when that narrowness is just build around some boring mechanical niche.

Part of the spellcaster and martial balance issues is that D&D tries to put a dozen warrior concepts into one class and can only round the square pegs with MOAR DAMaGE and MOAR HP. So then the fighter becomes narrowly focused on damage and HP when spellcasters aren't. Thuse there are only 2 levels to judge combat effetiveness one since a major archetype only has access to one angle of it.

Yes, there are too many caster classes compared to martial classes. But that's because there simple are too many caster classes; I don't want similar thematic dilution and confusion for martial classes.

 

[Manbearcat]

Thematic...yet, customizable. Like, say...a Revenant Avenger who was slain with the rest of his monastery but was brought back by their deity to uncover the treacherous act and exact divine retribution? I ran 2 * 4e games from 1-30 and 3 more games 1-10. This was a game I ran via the Neverwinter rules of truncating the entire arc of 1-30 into 10 levels. This was 8 years before Ghost of Tsushima was released and it was very similar in touchstones (the story of the Mongol invasion of Japan being one of the most interesting stories in history to me...similar to Thermopylae).

This character was not bland.

This game was as thematically driven, potent, and focused as a D&D (and derivative or loveletter) game could ever be.

With Damning Secret they could see through foes or terrorize them with a stone-faced glare (routinely winning Social Skill Challenges or, particularly with the help of their partner PC - a Warlord - letting them reroll Intimidate 1/encounter, forcing a Bloodied Elite Brute/Soldier to surrender at a 60+ % clip) and Deliverance of Faith to make them extra beefy.

I feel badly for anyone who didn't, or couldn't (due to a mental model that couldn't pivot or whatever), experience 4e in its well-run glory. I ran two feudal Japan games in 4e (the other being Sengoku era). This one was particularly awesome.

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Race: Revenant
Background: Vengeance
Class: Avenger
Theme: Sohei

BACKGROUND: VENGEANCE
In the final moments before you died, you witnessed a terrible act—an experience so profound that death could not claim you. Who wronged you and why? Were you murdered? Was a loved one harmed to get at you? How will you achieve the vengeance you desire? What will happen once you get it?
Associated Skills: Endurance, Intimidate

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THEME: SOHEI
A sohei, sometimes called a yamabushi (“mountain warrior”) due to the usual site of farflung monasteries and shrines, is a monastic soldier trained as a temple guardian. Rather than focusing on intense religious instruction, a sohei receives training in meditation, body control, and martial techniques. Although devoted clergy of the same religion or sect might practice pacifism, a sohei warrior-monk does not.
The difference between a sohei and a fellow priest is type of duty. The warrior-monk looks out for the safety of the temple, allowing other priests to fulfill duties that are more spiritual. A sohei can also serve as the face of a religious order, going out into the world to spread the faith, strike against the temple's enemies, and seek objects and people important to the religion.
A sohei's superiors are figures higher in his or her religious hierarchy. Every sohei is a devoted combatant with mastery over preferred weapons, and each serves those higher in the hierarchy with obedience. As part of their service to the religion, they also learn to wield magical power. Often divine in nature, this power is a blessing of the sohei's commitment to a deity. However, legendary sohei—even those from the same religious sect—wield varying mystical capabilities.
A sohei can come from any walk of life. Children given into the service of a temple, whether orphans or nobles, can become sohei. Older initiates might be anything from outlaws to ronin. Requirements for becoming a militant priest include strength and willpower, as well as an abundance of energy and ambition that compels the individual to abandon the wholly meditative life.
An adventuring sohei frequently takes on a quest for his or her religious order. A few sohei go into the world to experience its mysteries, using worldly knowledge as part of a path to enlightenment. Other sohei, such as ronin, have been expelled from or have lost their temples. These wanderers search for a new purpose as much as any ronin does.

Sohei Starting Feature (1st level): You gain the sohei flurry power.
Sohei Level 5 Feature (5th level): You gain a +2 power bonus to Insight checks and Perception checks.
Sohei Level 10 Feature (10th level): You gain a +1 power bonus to saving throws against fear effects and effects that render you dazed, dominated, or stunned.

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Damning Secret Insight Utility 2​

Picking up on tiny tell-tale signs, you divine a critical weakness in your foe's determination.

Encounter
Standard Action Ranged 10

Trigger: You would make an Intimidate check against a target

Target: One creature that shares a language with you

Effect: You make an Insight check in place of an Intimidate check. The target gains the standard bonuses to its Will defense against Intimidate (+5 bonus if the target is unfriendly to the character, or +10 if the target is hostile).

Deliverance of Faith Religion Utility 6​

You give of yourself in the belief that somewhere, something will give a little back.

Encounter
Minor Action Personal

Effect: You spend a healing surge but regain no hit points. You gain temporary hit points equal to your healing surge value.

 

[ECMO3]

Paladins are a gish build (caster/fighter) and yes, quite strong.

But they don't have near the versatility of a full caster. It's not all about DPR, it's about efficiently winning combats - casters have lots of options to do that.

Monks do and stunning strike isn't nothing. But wizards, for example, get spells starting from level one that completely change the pace of combat. Again it's about efficiently winning combats.

Efficiently winning combat and being good in combat are two different things. The mastermind that can use help as a bonus action from 30 feet every turn is going to be hell good in efficiently supporting the party in combat, especially if you have an assassin with poisioner or a Champion-Paladin multiclass in the party. But the mastermind is not very good at combat himself, and worse than many/most other Rogue builds.

5E wizards do have a lot of options and rituals in particular are awesome, but that is non-combat. Wizards are also hands down the most powerful spellcasters in terms of what they can do with their spells, getting more options than any other class, and having more prepared.

That said, even for wizards I don't see a lot of reliable game changers until they are at high level. Most of their spells get saves every turn, or worse enemies can free other enemies. This means they will knock a few enemies out for a turn or two, but often with no damage and often enemies are resistant or immune to them or get advantage on saves because of magic resistance or both. Wizards either cause low amounts of damage to large numbers of enemies with spells like fireball or they help the party beat them on action economy with spells like sleep at low levels or hypnotic pattern at mid levels. But these are not game changers in the games I have played. They are difficult to employ due to allies in the area of effect, and even when you have a clean shot the damaging ones don't typically do enough damage to kill opponents or and the disabling ones don't disable them for more than a round or two. Now don't get me wrong, disabling an enemy for a round or two helps a lot, and causing 4 orcs to all lose 20hps in a turn helps a lot as well, but this pales in comparison to what martials can do all day long

I think stunning strike is a more effective game changer than most wizard spells of 4th-level and below. The reason is a Monk can do it more times per day and more times per turn. It is also not magic so magic resistance does not work against it and almost no enemies are immune to stun.

You're discounting the vast options wizards had by mid levels.

In 2e a wizard would just cast stoneskin, to completely shut down enemies damaging him before he got a chance to do his thing (at 7th level stoneskin world completely negate the damage from 4-7 attacks giving the Wizard more then enough room to act). And it wasn't alone. Again after mid-high level wizards ran away with the game.

I don't remember all the combat rules from 2E, but in 1E a wizard would typically not be able to cast stoneskin in melee.

At high levels in 1E there were a two good magic-user spells - maze and wish. These were good because they got no saves but even these faced magic resistance. Nothing else would work worth a darn on anything of roughly equal level. Sure like 5E they were good at buffing their allies or debuffing enemies.

Compare that to a high level fighter who with good magic items could take out Lolth in a single round or even Tiamat if he won initiative.

 

[Minigiant]

Stupidly narrow classes are a bad idea. Even more so when that narrowness is just build around some boring mechanical niche.

Again your working backward.

You could have a defensive knight class that could encompass Hoplites, Legionaires,, Jaguars, Axemen, and Swordsman as they focus on nobleweapons.

And for the warrior who just slays big game, they just use big weapons and big damage.

Yes, there are too many caster classes compared to martial classes. But that's because there simple are too many caster classes; I don't want similar thematic dilution and confusion for martial classes.

Well you don't want to fix the problem.
We already have thematic dilution because every warrior is forced in the same class without the same variety that spells allow to distinguish them.

So we have an issue where casters are only gauged by how well martials deal damage.

 

[Asisreo]

This is always true though, because frankly even beyond system mastery there is "play mastery".

Even if the rules only have standard mechanics for "you attack with a sword", DMs and creative players will come up with called shots, swings on the chandeler, grapples, etc etc.

I am fine that if a person wants to make a dirt simple character that does the same thing all the time, that they should be reasonably effective. But in no circumstance will that person ever be equal to the creative person willing to look at many possibilities, whether they are in the rules or not. That's just how it is, and no rules system will change that.

We can mitigate the disparity between veteran and newbie by raising the skill floor and lower the skill ceiling, though.

Its very discouraging when the player that took 8 years to essentially study the system does 6x the damage you do at the same expense because he pored through all the books while you're not nearly as loose with your time or just not as committed to D&D as them. You'd just want to give up.

Now, if that same thing could be said but there's only, like, a 1.3x damage difference, then most players can understand that the other person put in time and effort yet the newbie still gets to meaningfully contribute.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Again your working backward.

You could have a defensive knight class that could encompass Hoplites, Legionaires,, Jaguars, Axemen, and Swordsman as they focus on nobleweapons.

And for the warrior who just slays big game, they just use big weapons and big damage.

No, you're working backward. You begin with what they do mechanically instead of what they are thematically. We are not gonna agree on this. It isn't even right or wrong issue, it is a preference issue and we have completely opposite preferences.

Well you don't want to fix the problem.
We already have thematic dilution because every warrior is forced in the same class without the same variety that spells allow to distinguish them.

So we have an issue where casters are only gauged by how well martials deal damage.

Giving martials more ways to affect the game doesn't require creating dozens of mechanically siloed classes, it requires giving martials more ways to affect the game!

 

[Vaalingrade]

We should probably pull back a bit on the edition warring.

The main point is, one big solution to martial/caster balance is the give martials actual abilities they can use like a reasonable amount both in and out of combat. Martials need to be elevated more than casters need to be knocked down (though casters can stand to lose some 'I win' weight).

 

[Crimson Longinus]

We should probably pull back a bit on the edition warring.

The main point is, one big solution to martial/caster balance is the give martials actual abilities they can use like a reasonable amount both in and out of combat. Martials need to be elevated more than casters need to be knocked down (though casters can stand to lose some 'I win' weight).

Yes, completely agreed. One concrete example is that battlemaster should get new, more powerful manoeuvres at higher levels. That they just choose from the same pool at all levels is silly. It's like if casters just got more level one spells at higher levels.

 

[Yaarel]

At the moment, about 65% of survey responders feel that spellcasters should be as competent in combat or even more competent.

 

[Stalker0]

Its very discouraging when the player that took 8 years to essentially study the system does 6x the damage you do at the same expense because he pored through all the books while you're not nearly as loose with your time or just not as committed to D&D as them. You'd just want to give up.

Now, if that same thing could be said but there's only, like, a 1.3x damage difference, then most players can understand that the other person put in time and effort yet the newbie still gets to meaningfully contribute.

See to me its already more the latter than the former.

I have not seen any 5e builds other than super cheesy ones that most DMs would not allow pump out that kind of damage disparity.