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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8312364" data-attributes="member: 6790260">I...don't really see those as fundamentally different arguments. Both are saying there is a fundamentally Wrong Way To Play. I...guess you could argue that the former is "forbid wrong-way"-ism while the latter is "one true way"-ism, but functionally the two reach the same place for essentially the same reason.Does their number matter when they have an outsized influence on the network? Genuine question. Does it matter if only 1% of the fanbase raises a stink, if by doing so that 1% influences the designers, the playerbase at large, or both?Heck, if it were only one single person doing that, would it matter that that person were singular, if they still had a significant observable effect on the game at large?Exactly. Like, I totally appreciate where [USER=7030292]@Sithlord[/USER] is coming from on this, in that abnegation is a totally valid aesthetic of play (even if it's a little hard to properly square with the active/dynamic RP participation expected by most D&D games). But it would be really quite nice if the "man I just want to chill out" options didn't tend to be subpar unless you work to make them good. Not strictly bad, since 5e is generally better-balanced than the edition it's most clearly based on. But...yeah, it's actually pretty hard for a Champion to keep up with a Battlemaster unless you use the expected number of (combat) encounters each day. (I ran the numbers some time back; it actually works out within highly reasonable bounds IF the Champion gets about seven four-round combats a day; fewer but longer combats or more  numerous but shorter combats can also work. The problem, of course, being that almost no one does this in practice.)Well, I mean, not actually having the ability to heal real hit points hurts, literally and figuratively. (And we have actual tweets, from Mearls himself during the playtest, where he said martial healing was perfectly fine and if players didn't like it they could simply exclude that class from their games, so that argument can be laid to rest.)Conceptually, something like a Warlord exists, I'll grant you that. But because it's shackled to the Fighter chassis--which is all about self-improvement/personal damage output/survival, and has multiple features geared toward that baked into the class itself--it's just not allowed to deliver a good Warlord experience. We even have a nice, simple comparison here: Eldritch Knight and Wizard. The Eldritch Knight meets your definition of "conceptually, a <class> exists," except swapping out Warlord for Wizard.Do you think people who are fans of Wizards would have been satisfied if the Wizard flat-out didn't exist, and anyone asking for a Wizard was told, "Look, you can play an Eldritch Knight, that's basically a Wizard, just wear robes and fight with simple weapons, and if you want more of a caster-like experience, play Bard, Sorcerer, or certain Cleric subclasses." Or, "Wizards are just Eldritch Knights who <s>shout hands back on</s> are even more nerdy than usual." Or, "We see the Wizard as being like a cross between the Eldritch Knight and an unarmored Cleric."I disagree vehemently with that last bit. There is not only "good and a little bit better." There's sub-par, adequate, good, and stellar. And guess which category has no super-simple classes in it?It'd be nice if you didn't call me lazy. Especially since I've actually tutored math at the vector calculus level. I'm not, even slightly, lazy about mathematics (rather the opposite, I torture my friends discuss neat math topics with my friends almost constantly.) I vehemently dislike THAC0, and have always found it difficult to work with, despite having ample ability and desire to do calculation work when it comes to games.For the people I was specifically referring to, it DID go away though. The cumbersome process of translating things into and out of "low is good" math was the whole point of it, because it excluded people who weren't of sufficient intelligence (or zeal, given your preferences for calling people who struggled with THAC0 lazy.)As others have said, but I feel should be reiterated: "Magic" is a subset of "supernatural." There may be things that are not "magic" at all, but which are intensely, inevitably supernatural. We are saying that it should be possible for so-called "mundane" skill to become supernatural, by existing in a world where the supernatural is an ever-present part of existence (as opposed to our world, where even those who openly believe in the supernatural admit that it is restricted or difficult to locate.)Well, it's an opinion that Mike Mearls himself backed up, seeing as how he admitted a few years ago now that the lack of flavor in the Fighter class was one of his regrets about 5e's core design.And...okay, but what the frigg else is the Champion doing? Like, it's fine to say "there's more to the game than doing damage," but that's literally what 75% of the Champion's subclass features are ABOUT. The only things that AREN'T exclusively and explicitly about that are Remarkable Athlete (which is hilariously weak, other than giving half proficiency to Initiative, since it doesn't stack with Proficiency) and Survivor (which...is only useful if you're taking damage...which almost always means you're in a fight). You can't even hide behind the shield of "but but but Action Surge," because that's not a Champion feature, it's a Fighter feature--any Fighter would get it.False and false. Asymmetrical balance is completely achievable in RPGs and other genres besides.* Numerous other games have done it, not just 4e--there was a lovely list earlier in the thread, for example. D&D is, in fact, pretty stand-out in the RPG crowd for having issues of this kind (the only non-D&D game I know of that has similar issues is Shadowrun....which itself has roots in D&D.)Balance is achievable. Full stop. It has actually happened in real games, and not just in 4e. Dungeon World, for example, is extremely well-balanced in my experience. 13th Age, which takes cues from both 4e and 3e, is a balanced game--in fact, a game that introduced an outright brilliant new tool for improving the balance of games, the Escalation Die. (It also genuinely solved the "3e Druid problem," aka the "<a href="https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0346.html" target="_blank">I have special abilities that are more powerful than your entire class!</a>" problem.)*FFXIV is exemplary in the MMO sphere, for instance. Its developers rarely get everything right on the first try. For example, my favorite job is Summoner, and it is almost always underpowered each time a new expansion drops. But it has always been fixed within six months, sometimes less. WoW fans made similar arguments to yours, that effective balance is a pipe dream, and the best you can expect is swatting down each new bug as it arises; FFXIV puts those arguments thoroughly to bed in the MMO sphere, and the aforementioned TTRPGs do the same in their sphere.</blockquote>

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