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

[Minigiant]

Well I'm not arguing for or against the Warlord.

I am just stating that Fighter class in 5th edition is a bad vehicle for a smart noble adventure, a wise general, or a charismatic questing knight.

As all 3 are common tropes in adventuring fantasy, I may use this as a knock against the 5e Fighter and may claim it as a hinderace to balancing martials and spellcasters

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

In which case why are you starting with a full caster base?

Because although the bard conceptually doesn't fit (it uses magic), thematically (leader that can fight but main strength lies in improving others) and mechanically (abilities boost companions in a number of ways) it is a match for the warlord.

Unlike the fighter, the power of a warlord does not lie in their personal damage potential, but by how they improve their companion's power. Thus the abilities rather than attack rolls are the focus of the class - just like a full caster.

You can't do what you want without making the Warlord flat out OP compared to Fighters. It's a terrible starting point for a balanced homebrew class.

Why compared with a Fighter? Its a closer match to the Bard. In fact, why not compare to all the classes rather than just one?

You asked why both can't exist. Let me try to explain.

Under the current classes, if my concept is elite warrior that is a great leader I pick Fighter/Battlemaster and pick the appropriate manuevers and I'm both a top tier warrior and a top tier leader. Now suppose we created a warlord class with much better leader mechanics and minimal warrior mechanics. I no longer can play a class that is an elite warrior and a great leader. I must choose elite warrior and average leader or great leader and average warrior.

Because you're not "both a top tier warrior and a top tier leader". You're a top-tier warrior: 5 out of 5 certainly.
However Battlemasters are hardly "top tier leaders". They're 2/5, maybe 3 if they're willing to drop their warriorness tier.
Wizards are probably 3/5, clerics a 4, and the top-tier leader class would be bards at 5/5.

Hence the wish for a martial Warrior 2 or 3 and Leader 4 or 5, which cannot currently be achieved.

Do it ina new game or with a total class rewrite. You can’t do it with a single new class or you ruin the balance the game does have.

As long as the class is less powerful than the most powerful other choices, its not breaking any balance.

IMO. If the Warlord is a Martial Class it should be comparable to the other Martial Classes.

That would depend on where you view the upper bounds of what leadership is capable of. I like leadership abilities but I'm not sure that full leader in most settings should be a competitive option vs full warrior or full mage.

I get that but whatever you produce should still be roughly balanced with the fighter/barbarian/paladin/rogue/monk/ranger. So it's not like you are actually free from such 'flaws' even in this case.

A new class should be less powerful than the most powerful class, and ideally around the mid-point of all the D&D classes. There is no particular reason to try to aim at the mid-point of a rather arbitrary subdivision. Particularly when thematically the class does not fit into that division.

You're describing combat ability, though, not exploration and social ability.

Is there a particular reason that, having established that Fighters and Rogues are extraordinary, we should start demanding "But only in combat".

 

[Vaalingrade]

I seem to gather from your posts that you seem to hate the basic design principles of the edition. Most people don't think there is some huge problem, some minor flaws at most. Perhaps it would be the best to just accept that you don't like the game and play something that is better suited to your tastes? Like that's perfectly fine, there are a lot of games I don't like.

Isn't it traditional on this board for people to go ballistic when someone suggests they play another game?

 

[bert1001 fka bert1000]

We can't really have a meaningful discussion with this disconnect. Forget mechanics.

FrogReaver's Warlord (and others) concept is not the concept of someone who is an ok warrior but adds value to a small group of fantasy adventurers primarly because of their leadership ability (no mechanics talk here). Maybe I shouldn't have reffered to this as Leader first/Warlord Prime because it is an entirely different concept than FrogReaver's Warlord. Thats the point! This concept is shared by at least 4-5 people on this thread and maybe more out in the world. Let's call it "Nate" for now until we come up with something better.

Posts that both argue that Nate is somehow the same as a Warlord AND that argue options and pros and cons for fixing the implementation of the Warlord in reponse to people talking about how to implement Nate are pointless!

I think I'm done as well.

Free Nate!

IMO concepts don’t come in degrees. Either you are a warrior or you are not. Either you are a leader or you are not.

You are right that there is an impossible gap, but it’s not at the location you place it.

Your ‘Nate’ is a warrior that leads. That’s what a warlord is. Thus, Your ‘Nate’ is a warlord. My Fighter that leads is also a warlord.they are conceptually the same thing.

Better leader/lesser warrior and lesser leader/greater warrior are simply different mechanical implementations of the same concept.

This final point is the most important. Our imagination along with the relative constraints of the game system itself defines what makes a great leader or lesser leader in that game. So long as there’s a single implementation for a single concept then that implementation can be used for better warrior/lesser leader and lesser warrior/better leader and even better warrior/better leader (just not in the same campaign at the same time).

So I’m not denying the existence of ‘Nate’. I’m claiming we already have a ‘Nate’.

Fantastic example!

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I am just stating that Fighter class in 5th edition is a bad vehicle for a smart noble adventure

'Smart noble' is a background and ability, not a class.

a wise general,

Wise general might be somewhere leading armies, not delving dungeons with three other people. But a general probably would be a professional soldier that has seen a lot of combat, so they probably would be some sort of not-low-level fighter.

or a charismatic questing knight.

Paladin is literally that. Though if you want a non-magical version (and I sympathise with that, I dislike how heavily knights are conflated with explicitly magical paladins in D&D) you can easily make them a fighter. And a historical knight most definitely would be a fighter, they're well-trained professional soldiers.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Isn't it traditional on this board for people to go ballistic when someone suggests they play another game?

I don't know, is it?

But D&D's popularity is sort of a problem in a sense that a lot of people appear to see RPGs=D&D and then expect D&D to be able to do everything, and it really can't. It's not my favourite game and I wouldn't use it for many things.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I seem to gather from your posts that you seem to hate the basic design principles of the edition. Most people don't think there is some huge problem, some minor flaws at most. Perhaps it would be the best to just accept that you don't like the game and play something that is better suited to your tastes? Like that's perfectly fine, there are a lot of games I don't like.

In any event, I am one who believes that things can be fixed in basically any game. That's what additions, updates and errata are for.

However, D&D has a unique problem in that it's legacy fanbase actively reinforces bad design choices and punishes attempts to improve them.

It is very difficult to improve martial characters (rogue not withstanding because it has become Tradition that rogue be basically always the best balanced class) have to be inherently lesser than casters because the fandom skews toward letting the casters do whatever while martials have to be realistic and for some reason, realistic has to be strictly inferior to casters.

Even when they pretend to make a class with options (Battlemasters) it has lesser effects, lesser options, and heavy restrictions. And then even the suggestion of a martial class not connected to the other martial classes that might be as interesting and useful as a caster--even a lesser caster--is slapped down just because martials are 'supposed' to be lesser.

 

[FrogReaver]

In any event, I am one who believes that things can be fixed in basically any game. That's what additions, updates and errata are for.

However, D&D has a unique problem in that it's legacy fanbase actively reinforces bad design choices and punishes attempts to improve them.

It is very difficult to improve martial characters (rogue not withstanding because it has become Tradition that rogue be basically always the best balanced class) have to be inherently lesser than casters because the fandom skews toward letting the casters do whatever while martials have to be realistic and for some reason, realistic has to be strictly inferior to casters.

Even when they pretend to make a class with options (Battlemasters) it has lesser effects, lesser options, and heavy restrictions. And then even the suggestion of a martial class not connected to the other martial classes that might be as interesting and useful as a caster--even a lesser caster--is slapped down just because martials are 'supposed' to be lesser.

It’s not that they have to be lesser than casters because people want caster supremacy. That’s just a side effect. It’s that casters are set up at an impossible level for non-super powered / non-magical martials to reach (that’s because of fiction). Couple that with people wanting their non-superpowered fighters. And that’s D&D. The one time that changed in 4e there was much weeping and gnashing of teeth. We already know how bringing martials up and casters down and having them meet in the middle works out. Terribly!

 

[Vaalingrade]

So like I said, it's the fandom that prevents progress.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

IMO concepts don’t come in degrees. Either you are a warrior or you are not. Either you are a leader or you are not.

You are right that there is an impossible gap, but it’s not at the location you place it.

Your ‘Nate’ is a warrior that leads. That’s what a warlord is. Thus, Your ‘Nate’ is a warlord. My Fighter that leads is also a warlord.they are conceptually the same thing.

Better leader/lesser warrior and lesser leader/greater warrior are simply different mechanical implementations of the same concept.

This final point is the most important. Our imagination along with the relative constraints of the game system itself defines what makes a great leader or lesser leader in that game. So long as there’s a single implementation for a single concept then that implementation can be used for better warrior/lesser leader and lesser warrior/better leader and even better warrior/better leader (just not in the same campaign at the same time).

So I’m not denying the existence of ‘Nate’. I’m claiming we already have a ‘Nate’.

Then an EK fills the role of a wizard. Better wizard/lesser wizard. It don't matter. You got some spells right? No one forces you to wear armor, and even Gandalf used his sword/staff more than his spells.

The street goes two ways. Only blind hypocrisy or some pavlovian response to anything from 4E sullying 5E would lead to thinking the analogues aren't exactly the same.

You can’t fix a fundamental problem with the game like that by tuning a single class much higher than the other classes most similar to it. It’s terrible and game breaking design to even suggest to do so.

You certainly don't fix it by not fixing it. They aren't going to errata fighter, so it will remain the sucky kid brother class. So it's time for a grownup fighter/warlord class. And that can be superior to the others. The fighter will still be there for all those claiming that balance doesn't matter.