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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 6585528" data-attributes="member: 996">Like classic D&D, yes.  That's pretty nearly unanimous, I think.  Nod.  It's a very old-school dynamic.  At low level, non/demi-humans, with infravision (yeah, I know) and the ability to multi-class were dominant.  Once magic leveled the vision playing field and level limits came into play, humans pulled ahead.  Not as pronounced in 5e, where it's just the vision, and magic items are optional, but still reminiscent.  The optional ones, yes, very much so.  Which is nice, because that's when humans stopped sucking at low level... Agreed. Can't agree.  It's a weak point, IMHO, very inconsistent results.  Better to go by feel, than use the guidelines, I find.  YMMV. Not as pronounced as in 4e, but nice, yes.  And, it's much easier to get that much out of monsters than it was in 3.x, when you were expected to build them in as much detail as PCs if you wanted to make them more interesting. I think balance does need to trump genre conventions, if magic is going to be a usable player resource, rather than just a DM-arbitrated McGuffin or setting-establishing color.  At bottom, that's really why EGG went with Vancian (and saving throws), because the more typical genre depictions of magic wouldn't have been up to snuff for a functional PC at the skirmish-level scope of D&D combat.  Long rituals, stellar alignments, prophecies, automatic folkloric counters, devastating 'prices' and consequences to wielding the dark arts, all the stuff that makes it almost incongruously easy for the barbarian to cut the evil sorcerer in half at the climax of the story, just wouldn't cut it. It would have made a playable mage impossible.  It went too far the other way at higher (much over 6th, really) levels, but it was necessary for a playable game.  The game's wobbled around since then trying to balance casters and keep them playable.  5e's done better than most, so far (though that's not very far, the slow pace of publication augurs well, the longer the game avoids bloat, the less potential problems).  Casters aren't as heavily limited as in classic D&D, nor so wildly overpowered as in 3.x, so seem to be mostly playable.  That such a large majority of player options cast is also a little contrary to genre, though I don't see how that ties into playability - maybe it's just that so many caster classes were introduced over the decades? Advantage has minimal impact when a poor save is targeted, so I can see the need.  Also reminiscent of the classic game.  Sometimes you need to pick just the right spell (or other resource/tactic) vs the monster you're facing. DCs seem to pull ahead, though.  A caster's always going to max his caster stat and have proficiency.  The best a target can hope for is to match that.  The worst gets really grim.  One of the smarter things they did at the last minute was to take the DC down to 8 base, instead of 10.  It partially offset that virtually-automatic maximization on the caster side.  Basing save DCs on slot level, as in 3.5, might have worked better, though. Try playing a non-magic-using archetype (Berserker, Champion, Battlemaster, Theif or Assassin) for 15 levels, see if you have any more fun than you did with your Wizard in ToD.</blockquote>

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