D&D General The Crab Bucket Fallacy

[cbwjm]

This is because there are already classes (and other fighter subclasses!) that do this and people still play champions. People go out of their way to defend the champion. So really, why not make a new warlord class? I suspect that WotC has a real reason for it that doesn't involve balance at all. I'd suspect that it's because the abilities the warlord would have move into the realm of the cleric or bard or other supernatural characters. Now I'd argue that there are fighters who've already moved into that realm so I'm truly left at a loss for why WotC doesn't do it.

I actually suspect that the reason they haven't made a warlord is because they've decided to spread the warlord kit around the other classes. There're plenty of warlord pieces found in various subclasses like the totem barbarian's wolf totem, the order cleric, the mastermind, and battlemaster, the banneret, and probably a few others that i haven't thought of. Why have a single class when you can spread those "leader of men" abilities around those classes that already exist.

 

[Minigiant]

Why would you feel bound to the lower end of the power band for the fighter when making a new class?

I’ve never seen complaints about the BM in terms of balance, so I use that as a baseline when I can.

Battlemaster is only 1DPR over Champion in Tier 1 and 2.

That's my point. You are constrained within the Base Class giving 5-10% damage and Subclass giving 1-3 damage.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Battlemaster is only 1DPR over Champion in Tier 1 and 2.

That's my point. You are constrained within the Base Class giving 5-10% damage and Subclass giving 1-3 damage.

Okay? The fighter doesn’t lack DPR so that isn’t a problem.

 

[Minigiant]

Okay? The fighter doesn’t lack DPR so that isn’t a problem.

Sigh

Remember how some people said the fighter class is a 5 in combat a 1 in exploration and a 1 in social?

Now if the Fighter is just 10% the base to be 5 Combat. The Barbarian/Paladin/Ranger is a 4 and the Rogue is a 3.

Let's say you want to make a warlord that is a 3/1/3? A 3 is 4% drop.

What if you want to remake the 3e Duskblade, 4e Warden, or a full class Rune Knight or something new like a Marksman class....

2% Damage and +3 damage from subclass to work with.​

You are almost guaranteed to power creep the fighter and it's 3 core subclasses with a new warrior class or make something as bad as the 2014 Beastmaster or Element Monk.trying to avoid this.

That's the crab bucket. There's no design space between the fighter and any other class until level 11 when it gets a third attack.

 

[MuhVerisimilitude]

There is always an example of someone, somewhere, making an argument. That said, you lead with, and concentrated on, the martial/magic "divide." Here's the OP-

I've been planning on making this thread for a while ever since I binged martial/caster balance discussions over a few weeks and read about 300 pages of discussion on the subject. ...

The entirety of your post (other than a single sentence aside at the end) was devoted to this subject. And as people tell you, the reason for the objection is because ... some people don't want magic in their martials. And some people do. And that's okay. It's fine to have different preferences.

Sorry for replying so late to this. Missed this post when trying to keep up with the thread.

I disagree with that being the reason for the objection, though because as far as I know there was never any talk of adding magic to the class, and as was also mentioned in the original post, the original fighter would still exist even if the new hypothetical warlord class was added. It doesn't matter whether or not there is magic in it in the first place since if you don't want that magic you can just play the normal fighter.

Everything required for a warlord can be perfectly implemented entirely without magic (4E did it, as far as I know).

It's less fine to dress up this difference of opinion as a logical fallacy in order to call people you disagree with as arguing in bad faith, or irrational.

I'm not saying they are are irrational or arguing in bad faith (though I certainly think some people are), but I think they are wrong because they haven't actually seen the problem play out. They assume it does not exist. I mentioned already that it's not a problem that always shows up in every campaign.

As for the issue of balance, people can also say, in good faith, that they don't want everything balanced. Or that they want to use a different set of comparators than you do (for example, they want all the fighter subclasses balanced with each other, but don't see the need to balance monk subclasses perfectly with sorcerer subclasses). Again, this isn't a fallacy of logic (either formal or informal), it's just a difference in how they approach the issue.

Yes I have seen that. There is a particular poster who appears in some of these discussions who has actually stated outright that they want casters to be much stronger than martial classes.

It does not make their opinions valid.

 

[overgeeked]

I'm not saying they are are irrational or arguing in bad faith (though I certainly think some people are), but I think they are wrong because they haven't actually seen the problem play out. They assume it does not exist. I mentioned already that it's not a problem that always shows up in every campaign.

Part of the problem is that many who have not personally experienced the caster gap simply cannot accept that it can still exist for others and that others’ experiences with the gap are valid. They seemingly honestly believe that their experiences are all that matter and represent the sum total of all possible experiences. It’s not a problem for them, therefore it cannot possibly be a problem for anyone else ever.

For others, myself included, the caster gap is such an obvious and constant problem that it might as well be a massive blinking neon sign you can see from space.

 

[Oofta]

Part of the problem is that many who have not personally experienced the caster gap simply cannot accept that it can still exist for others and that others’ experiences with the gap are valid. They seemingly honestly believe that their experiences are all that matter and represent the sum total of all possible experiences. It’s not a problem for them, therefore it cannot possibly be a problem for anyone else ever.

For others, myself included, the caster gap is such an obvious and constant problem that it might as well be a massive blinking neon sign you can see from space.

What people are sayingis that it's not automatically an issue in games, that there are plenty of solutions. In addition, people tend to focus on things like the QB in a football game or a wizard going nova now while ignoring the roles the other members of the team are providing. Some people suffer from confirmation bias. Others are ignoring the downsides of magic like charm person, which is a really great way of ensuring you have plenty of long term enemies in exchange for achieving short term goals.

I understand that some people have an issue. With a game with interactions and assumptions as complex as D&D, I don't see how you can make it work 100% of the time for everyone. Like all games, D&D is far from perfect. There absolutely should be, and hopefully there will be in the 2024 edition, more advice on how to handle this stuff. Until then, it's not going to change so either we can discuss options to fix it or we can just complain incessantly about something that's not going to change because it actually works out okay for most people. I prefer the former option.

 

[overgeeked]

What people are sayingis that it's not automatically an issue in games, that there are plenty of solutions. In addition, people tend to focus on things like the QB in a football game or a wizard going nova now while ignoring the roles the other members of the team are providing.

The quarterback in an American football game? You mean the player who’s paid the most, gets most of the accolades, the best retirement package, the most press, etc? The literal star of the team. Yes, that is a perfect comparison for the wizard. The QB regularly and constantly outshines literally everyone else on the team. Good thing D&D isn’t a sport. It’s a game. Asking players to be okay with playing clearly and obviously second-string characters is terrible design.

Some people suffer from confirmation bias.

Yes. Mostly in the form of not being able to accept that other people can actually have a problem they don’t personally encounter.

Others are ignoring the downsides of magic like charm person, which is a really great way of ensuring you have plenty of long term enemies in exchange for achieving short term goals.

Yes, that’s cool and all, but it does nothing to actually solve the problem.

I understand that some people have an issue. With a game with interactions and assumptions as complex as D&D, I don't see how you can make it work 100% of the time for everyone. Like all games, D&D is far from perfect. There absolutely should be, and hopefully there will be in the 2024 edition, more advice on how to handle this stuff. Until then, it's not going to change so either we can discuss options to fix it or we can just complain incessantly about something that's not going to change because it actually works out okay for most people. I prefer the former option.

It’s not possible to have a discussion about solving a problem with people who deny the problem even exists.

 

[Oofta]

The quarterback in an American football game? You mean the player who’s paid the most, gets most of the accolades, the best retirement package, the most press, etc? The literal star of the team. Yes, that is a perfect comparison for the wizard. The QB regularly and constantly outshines literally everyone else on the team. Good thing D&D isn’t a sport. It’s a game. Asking players to be okay with playing clearly and obviously second-string characters is terrible design.

Yes. Mostly in the form of not being able to accept that other people can actually have a problem they don’t personally encounter.

Yes, that’s cool and all, but it does nothing to actually solve the problem.

It’s not possible to have a discussion about solving a problem with people who deny the problem even exists.

A QB without the rest of the team is pointless. A wizard has never been particularly important over the course of the game than any other PC in any 5E game I've ever played.

But since you're ignoring the fact that I acknowledge that you seem to have an issue and want to focus instead on why and how to fix it instead of complaining on every thread that dares discuss fighters even obliquely I don't have anything to add.

 

[overgeeked]

A QB without the rest of the team is pointless.

Yes, and? A party of casters would still be effective. This is where the analogy fails you.

A wizard has never been particularly important over the course of the game than any other PC in any 5E game I've ever played.

Cool. They have in mine.

But since you're ignoring the fact that I acknowledge that you seem to have an issue and want to focus instead on why and how to fix it instead of complaining on every thread that dares discuss fighters even obliquely I don't have anything to add.

Again, it's impossible to discuss fixing the problem when you have to constantly discuss whether the problem even exists.