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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Clint_L" data-source="post: 9138367" data-attributes="member: 7035894">The premise is subjective. Meaning it doesn't really work for a logical syllogism - all it does is lead to endless debate. It's a lousy basis for an argument, and that is why this one just keeps spinning in circles. That won't stop folks creating endless additional threads on fighters v. wizards, though.The best you can do when dealing with subjective problems, such as the relative status of existing classes in D&D, is try to identify broad consensus and then try to narrow that down to identify specific causes, which is exactly what WotC's methodology is designed to do. Given their proposals, and information we have such as the overall popularity of the class, I argue that the following premises are likely correct:1. There is a broad consensus that the existing 5e fighter is a competitive class that is generally balanced against other classes (i.e. no big nerfs or buffs are needed to their overall power). In other words, WotC does not perceive them as a problem class, unlike monks, druids (moon in particular), to a lesser degree warlocks, rogues and rangers, and arguably paladins.2. There is a broad consensus that the existing 5e fighter is a bit simple and could use a few more options.Note that WotC's proposed changes to the fighter address premise 2, particularly the new "tactical mind" option. Weapon mastery being made fairly ubiquitous suggests that WotC also sees premise 2 as an issue for all melee combat oriented classes.There is not much in this playtest to suggest that WotC is seeing a broad consensus that primarily martial-oriented classes are underpowered as compared to primarily spell-oriented classes. For example, we are not seeing broad nerfs to spells, nor broad buffs to combat (though I do think weapon mastery is a stronger indirect buff than most folks realize, and this may eventually become an issue).Anecdotally, I mostly see this issue brought up in the context of very high level play and in discussions by min-maxers, again who focus on very high level play (WotC keeps reminding us that virtually all games are actually played below level 10. Speculation: it may be that WotC does recognize some imbalance at very high levels but doesn't see it as a significant problem because it affects so few players, and those that are affected are expert enough to deal with it. I am reminded of World of Warcraft, which has the opposite design issue: the game is intentionally designed to be tightly balanced only at maximum level.Personally, I rarely play at those levels, though I do watch plenty of actual play shows up to 20th level. I don't see fighters struggling to have an impact; when someone can open a combat by making eight consecutive attacks for well over 100 damage to a BBEG, you tend to remember it.</blockquote>

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