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

[Flamestrike]

How is the GM in charge of when the campaign ends?

DM stops, campaign ends.

Player stops, no big deal. You need all or most of them to, and to be unable to find a replacement.

 

[Flamestrike]

Correct. It is Calvinballing.

How on earth is a game with defined set parameters (using all published material and RAW) anything like that?

Dude, I know we're well past the point of debating in good faith. For pages now I've had 'feats are optional and 'games dont get that high' and 'HP are not what RAW say they are' and now 'Im making the rules up as I go along'?

It's crazy. Everytime I point out RAW or show how the game can make things happen the goal posts get moved.

 

[Undrave]

Calm down, please.

Ah yes... Sorry, I've had time to calm down now.

The space of what the fighter can represent shrinks as you add more classes that do things he could do better than he does.

I see it more as the space of what the GAME can represent becoming wider. The Fighter's space is the same, it's only it's % of the overall space of the game that gets smaller.

 

[Manbearcat]

How on earth is a game with defined set parameters (using all published material and RAW) anything like that?

Dude, I know we're well past the point of debating in good faith. For pages now I've had 'feats are optional and 'games dont get that high' and 'HP are not what RAW say they are' and now 'Im making the rules up as I go along'?

It's crazy. Everytime I point out RAW or show how the game can make things happen the goal posts get moved.

You need to read my whole post. A typical AD&D or BECMI/RC or 3.x or 5e workday outside of a mapped and keyed dungeon or outside of an extremely granularly keyed hexcrawl has significant areas of play that are profoundly vulnerable (in framing scenes, in sequencing encounters, in building encounters, in initiating - or not - blocks, in setting DCs, in framing consequences, and in leveraging secret backstory and offscreen/unestablished setting components against Team PC - read Wizard) to Calvinballing or GM Force (in all of the ways that I mentioned in that post...I'm not going to repeat them here, you can refer back to them).

HOWEVER...at least in that environment, there are some inherent constraints based on the content and continuity of the shared fiction that has accreted over the course of 5/10/20/50 sessions of play.

Your proposal actually removes all of those constraining features so all of the Calvinballing and GM Force that this sort of play is vulnerable to? Its amplified by the removal of the constraints based on the content and continuity of the shared fiction that has accreted over the course of 5/10/20/50 sessions of play.

GMs in your scenario can put their thumbs on the scales of play in a dozen different ways that profoundly impact the trajectory of intraparty balance and Team PC to Team Monster balance.

I get it that you're vexed and that you think "its crazy." But trust me...I'm equally vexed that somehow you can miss intractable reality of Classic/OSR D&D play that goes outside the tight confines of map/keyed dungeon play or granular hexcrawl play (that is undergirded and constrained by all the play that came before it). I can QC any given configuration of a "in-a-vacuum workday proposal" that you can conceive to test your "the game is balanced" hypothesis and find probably a dozen or more ways where it is fraught.

 

[Minigiant]

I have no doubt you could build a Fighter class that could do Warlord stuff well... I just don't think the CURRENT Fighter we got can. If we were to talk about a new edition, I wouldn't be opposed to folding the Fighter and Warlord together, provided you got enough customization to make it work... but if we want to add more Warlords 5e, I think a new class is more likely to work out. The Battlemaster and Banneret are just multi-class subclass in my mind.

A heroic Battlemaster is Fighter5Warlord 2.

A heroic Banneret is Warlord5Fighter2.

 

[FrogReaver]

Ah yes... Sorry, I've had time to calm down now.

I see it more as the space of what the GAME can represent becoming wider. The Fighter's space is the same, it's only it's % of the overall space of the game that gets smaller.

I don’t disagree with that concept. I would just add that Identity is more about ones relationship to the world than the mechanical realities of ones existence.

a 6ft tall person is a giant beside a people that are normally 4ft tall.

a Battlemaster is a great warlord when viewed next to a champion fighter.

it’s only when a Battlemaster is viewed against the 4e warlord that his warlordness falls short.

by adding in a 4e style warlord you’ve removed that portion of the Battlemaster fighters identity - because the rest of the world matters.

 

[Undrave]

A heroic Battlemaster is Fighter5Warlord 2.

A heroic Banneret is Warlord5Fighter2.

That's being VERY generous and selling the Warlord short if you ask me. I'd say the Battlemaster is better at it than the Banneret.

 

[Fenris-77]

Also, some people find no need for a Warlord. Not that other people shouldn't like them, but I, for one, really don't think it needs to be an separate class in 5E (or 6e).

 

[Mind of tempest]

Also, some people find no need for a Warlord. Not that other people shouldn't like them, but I, for one, really don't think it needs to be an separate class in 5E (or 6e).

do you want it to work at all? look in 6e who knows but it can't work as a fighter subclass in 5e because of basic class structure, it would be like making the cleric a fighter.

 

[Fenris-77]

do you want it to work at all? look in 6e who knows but it can't work as a fighter subclass in 5e because of basic class structure, it would be like making the cleric a fighter.

Honestly, I don't really care either way. It is a cool concept, but it's not high on my wishlist. If it can be managed without bloat then I'm all for it of course, but it would need to different enough to warrant being a seperate class.