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

[ECMO3]

Rogue Sneak Attack damage keeps up reasonably well with basic Fighter damage of Extra Attack + Fighting Style.


That has never been in dispute.
The Fighter however pays a much higher opportunity cost to do so, and will severely degrade their combat ability, without their non-combat ability ever catching up to the classes that don't pay that opportunity cost.

To start with there is more to combat than damage. The Rogues AC in specific severly limits their combat potential unless you invest in options to get medium armor and if you do this you need hamper stealth or invest in feats to counter it. You also need to invest in strength to overcome the weight, meaning you have to pump both strength and dexterity. Both of these will reduce investment in other areas and make the Rogue weaker in other things "typical" Rogue's excel at. This point aside, at a basic level Rogue SA does not keep up with fighter extra attack in pure damage for a variety of reasons:

1. Action surge is 1 entire extra action (with 2 or 3 attacks), nominally 3 times per day. After 17th level it is 3 or 4 extra attacks nominally 6 times a day.

2. Most of the fighter subclasses also bring extra damage to the table, either directly through more damage, more attacks or easier hits. The battlemaster with maneuvers, the champion with crits on a 19 (and aside from the extra damage dice this means a 19 also always hits the target) and additional fighter styles. Samaurai, Rune knight, Echo knight, Cavalier, psi knight all have comparable abilities that are going to substantially boost weapon damage output. The subclasses that don't are the exception for the fighter.

Some Rogue subclasses like Assasin, Phantom and Scout do this too, but their uses are far more conditionally limited or come later in the game.


3. SA is not automatic and requires specific conditions. No Rogue is going to SA every single turn and depending on the type of Rogue you are playing, your environment and the DM it is going to be anywhere between 50% and 90%. The first turn of combat in particular can be difficult to get SA if the Rogue wins initiative and is not hidden or is not an assassin.

You can metagame a Rogue to keep up with a fighter who does not similarly optimize but it takes a specific focus on combat to the detriment of other class abilities and uses.

 

[Undrave]

To start with there is more to combat than damage. The Rogue AC in specific severly limits their combat potential unless you invest in options to get medium armor and if you do this you need hamper stealth or invest in feats to counter it. You also need to invest in strength to overcome the weight, meaning you have to pump both strength and dexterity. Both of these will reduce investment in other areas and make the Rogue weaker in other things normal Rogue's excel at. This point aside, at a basic level Rogue SA does not keep up with fighter extra attack in pure damage for a variety of reasons:

1. Action surge is 1 entire extra action (with 2 or 3 attacks), nominally 3 times per day. After 17th level it is 3 or 4 extra attacks nominally 6 times a day.

2. Most of the fighter subclasses also bring extra damage to the table, either directly through more damage, more attacks or easier hits. The battlemaster with maneuvers, the champion with crits on a 19 (and aside from the extra damage dice this means a 19 also always hits the target) and additional fighter styles. Samaurai, Rune knight, Echo knight, Cavalier, psi knight all have comparable abilities that are going to substantially boost weapon damage output. The subclasses that don't are the exception for the fighter.

Some Rogue subclasses like Assasin, Phantom and Scout do this too, but their uses are far more conditionally limited or come later in the game.


3. SA is not automatic and requires specific conditions. No Rogue is going to SA every single turn and depending on the type of Rogue you are playing, your environment and the DM it is going to be anywhere between 50% and 90%. The first turn of combat in particular can be difficult to get SA if the Rogue wins initiative and is not hidden or is not an assassin.

You can metagame a Rogue to keep up with a fighter who does not similarly optimize but it takes a specific focus on combat to the detriment of other class abilities and uses.

Rogues are designed to Sneak Attack every single turn. It’s super easy in 5e to do, unless your DM is a jerk who thinks it’s only for special occasions.

 

[ECMO3]

An assassin could be an awesome noble because the rogue is less penalized for taking INT or CHA or both as a secondary stat.

A Rogue is penalized just as much as a fighter for pumping INT or CHA. You have to pull those stats from somewhere.

But I love who you skipped the part when I said the noble class would be is own class. A full on skill user tilted to exotic and advanced training over skullduggery.

I don't think it should be and I covered this. You said the Noble should be its own class because the cleric is even though we have the accolyte. Your argument is not valid because a cleric is not an accolyte and the cleric class has nothing to do with the accolyte background.

But the fighter cannot get a decent INT/CHA/WIS score without severely harming their combat ability.

Niether can a Rogue.

rolling proficincy with a +1 from ability score is a crapshoot. It is often bettern and less harmful for the casters or the rogue to handle INT/WIS /CHA rolls. This leads to the best way to play a fighter is as a big violent ball of stupid.

Nonsense. At first level someone with Proficiency and a +1 is as good as someone with a 16 (which is the absolute most a character from a normal race can have). By 5th level they have completely passed the character without proficiency unless they are taking ASIs in that trait as well.

If the fighter wasn't 90% fighting this wouldn't be a problem.

Then don't stick your fighter on the front line fighting 90% of the time. That is a choice. Action surge ca be used for any action, it does not have to be swinging a sword.

What part of "skill training without matching high ability scores is weak" are you not getting.

It is not true, that is what I am not getting.

Your fighter with 12 Cha and Persuasion proficiency has a very low bonus to their roll. This harms the whole "I'm a noble" concept because your fighter will fail most of their checks.

RAW at 5th level such a fighter will pass every single very easy check he makes, 75% of the easy checks, and 50% of the medium checks.

Those are most of the checks he will make and he will pass well over half of them.

So to correct your statement at 5th level and above the fighter will PASS most of the checks he makes in a skill he is proficient in with a mere 12 in the ability score.

Take skill expert or prodigy at 4th level because you really want to lean into playing a noble and now at 5th level you will you will pass every single very easy check, 90% of the easy checks and 65% of the medium checks.

That is without using any dice to boost it, without any subclass features and without using the position of privilege feature that came with your background. Use any of those and it boosts it even more.

Tell that to all the people here saying "fighters are leaders" and "we don't need warlords, scholars, or aristocrats becuase those are fighters"

I think I did in my post. Fighters are a class. As a class they are experts in using weapons and armor and can heal themselves several times a day. At higher levels they can break action economy and have extraordinary resilience.

Beyond that framework you can make them whatever you want. They can be leaders, scholars, aristocrats, scoundrels, bandits, kings, religious zealots, literally anything you want.

And taking Superior Technique at level 1 for skill manuevers is argeeing to nerf oneself hard. No one would ever do that.

Yes you are nerfing one pillar to be better in another. That is the whole idea of choices.

 

[Don Durito]

Being given a sword isn't an ability man. Not even a little bit. An ability is something they can do. Like magically being able to turn your arm into a sword. Why not just add in that DM can just give them even more magic items to "fix" the issue?

Obviously the abiltiy is reputational and could be implemented without a sword.

But you knew that of course. (Assuming you actually read it?)

And obviously the point is not Fighters should get this, but Fighters should get somethng like this.

 

[ECMO3]

Rogues are designed to Sneak Attack every single turn. It’s super easy in 5e to do, unless your DM is a jerk who thinks it’s only for special occasions.

No they aren't If they were there would not be conditions for it. They could just say a Rogue does extra 1d6 damage once a tunr, with another 1d6 at every odd level. That is what they do with other such abilities like for the Ranger subclass damage bonuses like fey wanderer or swarmkeeper for example.

The PHB lays out specifically when you can and can not get sneak attack and if those conditions are not met you do not get it. For example:

1. Fight an invisible stalker and the Rogue is almost never getting sneak attack unless he does something to cancel the disadvantage.

2. Fight ghasts and he starts within 10 feet of one and fails his constitution save - bye bye sneak attack for that turn.

3. Rogue is scouting ahead, fails stealth and gets in a fight, the party is 2 turns behind so he has no allies to give position for SA and he needs to retreat.

4. The Rogue WINS initiative due to his high dexterity but is not hidden and must move to attack.

This kind of stuff happens in every campaign.

Aside from these obvious cases, intelligent monsters should absolutely make it difficult for characters to use their abilities and it is possible to deny Rogue an SA fairly easily. It is not free, but it is not difficult to do either. If the Rogue is kiting in and landing SA every turn intelligent enemies should try to counter that through ready action, grapple, dodge etc. None of that is free and depending on the situation it may not be advisable, but a DM is not a jerk because he fights intelligent enemies intelligently and takes an action to cut a player's damage by 70%.

For example, your 5th level party is fighting an Orc Warchief and 8 Orcs. The Rogue is coming in and out and using the chief as a pincushion and taking disengage to avoid AOOs from the enemeoes. Two of the Orcs come up between the Rogue and the cheiftan and ready action. When the Rogue tries to walk past in one grapples and one helps. Once the Rogue is grappled said Orc drags him into a corner and takes the dodge action every turn. You basically have eliminated an Orc from the fight and the Rogue will not land SA again until he uses an action to break the grapple or one of his allies kills the Orc. It is a heavy price to pay. You lose two attacks for one turn and take another Orc out of the whole battle, but it eleminates 3d6 damage every single turn. There are other variations using shove, positioning, blocking, caltrops, cover (which does not disable SA but will make them harder to land). It is not being a jerk to do these things.

Most of the charaters I play are Rogues and I play for several different DMs and I never had a Rogue who got SA every single time he attacked. I don't think I had one who got it 80% of the times he attacks.

 

[Minigiant]

A Rogue is penalized just as much as a fighter for pumping INT or CHA. You have to pull those stats from somewhere.

No. A Rogue only needs Dex. There is no expection of needing anthing else as they are not designed to stay in melee, use heavy armor, or roll ability checks outside of Dex.

Fighters are combat machines and are intended to have their prmary and secondary be a combination of STR/DEX/CON unless they are EKs or AA then your prmary and secondary is INT.

I don't think it should be and I covered this. You said the Noble should be its own class because the cleric is even though we have the accolyte. Your argument is not valid because a cleric is not an accolyte and the cleric class has nothing to do with the accolyte background.

Not what I said.

I said that background and class are both expressions of the same concept and if you think noble is good enough, then the acolyte is good enough as well.

If holywarrior can be 10% or 50% of your character concept, then aristocratic adventurer should be as well.

RAW at 5th level such a fighter will pass every single very easy check he makes, 75% of the easy checks, and 50% of the medium checks.

Those are most of the checks he will make and he will pass well over half of them.

So to correct your statement at 5th level and above the fighter will PASS most of the checks he makes in a skill he is proficient in with a mere 12 in the ability score.

Take skill expert or prodigy at 4th level because you really want to lean into playing a noble and now at 5th level you will you will pass every single very easy check, 90% of the easy checks and 65% of the medium checks.

That is without using any dice to boost it, without any subclass features and without using the position of privilege feature that came with your background. Use any of those and it boosts it even more.

Easy Checks?
That's you problem right there.
Medium DC is 15.
Major game changing checks are not supposed to be easy.

Your DM is running Easy Mode. That's why you think noble fighters are fine.

DC 10 as the most common DC? WHAT? I must have miss something in the book.
If you are mostly rolling Easy check, your game is easy.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

I agree with this, but I don't think they have an oversized influence on the game. If the Wizard fans had their way there would be no Warlock or Sorcerer at all. Further look in terms of volume of the number of sorcerer or warlock threads on this board compared to wizard threads.

Wizards are generally reckoned to be the most powerful class, but I don't believe any single class has an oversized influence on the game.
As a group, however I do think that full casters do have excessive influence in terms of capability and power expected of a group.

This is not true. To start with virtually any class can get any skill by trading their racial skill, and if they pick a rare race without a skill they can still get it through background, so this is not really significant. There is no skill a fighter has that a wizard can't get or vice versa.

That said if we are strictly comparing only class skills, the fighter has athletics, acrobatics and perception which are three of the top four skills in the game (with stealth being the fourth). They also have intimidation which is another pretty good one.

The only really good skill the wizard gets as part of his class is investigation and this is not as good as the "big three" available to a fighter.

Outside of possibly Perception, all skills seem to be pretty well even for out of combat use as far as I've found.
To explain my statement more fully however, before this goes too far down a different tangent: the total skill bonuses of a Wizard are easier to get higher without reducing the character's capability to contribute to the party than the fighter.

A Wizard can base all 4 of the standard character's skills on their Primary score. The Fighter cannot, so they have to either pick skills based on ability scores that are lower, or max out a score other than their primary score, which will reduce their effectiveness , and thus ability to contribute to the group. Likewise Clerics.

As for the second part, i don't see where the fighter's skills can be easily replicated with a spell. You can use spider climb instead of athletics, to climb, but that does not really replicate the full breath of the athletics skill. Trueseeing will substitute for perception in a lot of instances, but that is extremely high in cost. I don't see the rest of them, especially the most useful ones.

The Intelligence-based skills at which the Wizard excels generally do not have spells that are easily capable of replicating or enabling.
The physical skills such as Athletics cover many tasks that can be enabled by spells.

 

[Don Durito]

One of the things with being a skill specialist in games usually is being able to say "It's ok, I've got this". This doesn't mean that you don't ever fail, but failure should be generally unusual.

Now there are always issues with this when rolling a D20, but 5e compounds this by having bonuses overwhelmed by the range of the die. If you want to be able to say "It's ok I've got this" you really do need expertise.

I think this gets overlooked a lot. If you have a concept of a Fighter (or most classes) who for some reason is really good at History (you imagine they were brought up as a scholar and left to see the world) than mere proficiency is not really enough to establish that concept as something realised through play. If you have a 16 Int and Proficiency you have a 50% chance of passing a Moderate DC.

So it's important to realise what proficiency means. It doesn't mean "I've got this", it means "Maybe I can do this".

 

[Sithlord]

One of the things with being a skill specialist in games usually is being able to say "It's ok, I've got this". This doesn't mean that you don't ever fail, but failure should be generally unusual.

Now there are always issues with this when rolling a D20, but 5e compounds this by having bonuses overwhelmed by the range of the die. If you want to be able to say "It's ok I've got this" you really do need expertise.

I think this gets overlooked a lot. If you have a concept of a Fighter (or most classes) who for some reason is really good at History (you imagine they were brought up as a scholar and left to see the world) than mere proficiency is not really enough to establish that concept as something realised through play. If you have a 16 Int and Proficiency you have a 50% chance of passing a Moderate DC.

So it's important to realise what proficiency means. It doesn't mean "I've got this", it means "Maybe I can do this".

I very much agree with this and would like the DC of most skill checks lowered by 5. I would really like expertise left where it is. But one or the other needs to happen. I don’t care which at this point, choose one. I’m games I run. I use much lower DC’s, but that doesn’t fix the problem unless I am DMing and you are my player.

 

[Minigiant]

One of the things with being a skill specialist in games usually is being able to say "It's ok, I've got this". This doesn't mean that you don't ever fail, but failure should be generally unusual.

Now there are always issues with this when rolling a D20, but 5e compounds this by having bonuses overwhelmed by the range of the die. If you want to be able to say "It's ok I've got this" you really do need expertise.

I think this gets overlooked a lot. If you have a concept of a Fighter (or most classes) who for some reason is really good at History (you imagine they were brought up as a scholar and left to see the world) than mere proficiency is not really enough to establish that concept as something realised through play. If you have a 16 Int and Proficiency you have a 50% chance of passing a Moderate DC.

So it's important to realise what proficiency means. It doesn't mean "I've got this", it means "Maybe I can do this".

Well until you get proficiency +4 at level 9.

Which is the problem: WOTC screwed up the Math.

And instead of admitting that they screwed up the math, they patched it as a feat. But

The other problem: WOTC screwed up the Feats.

And you don't get a feat until level 4 and it is very harmful to combat prowess to not take an ASI at level 4. And a fighter needs 2 feats to expand AND get expertise.