D&D 5E What is balance to you, and why do you care (or don't)?

[GMforPowergamers]

so I just went back to the 4e book for fighters... and not counting powers...

choose 1 handed or two handed weapons and get +1 to hit with them (humans could do both)

a bonus to opp attacks equal to your wisdom mod
opp attacks stopped movement like the sentinel feat now does.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I've said this before: I don't want martials be balanced via magic items, but if martials are balanced via magic items, then certain base amount of items that are automatically given must be baked in the class progression, just like wizards get certain base amount of spells while they level.

yeah... well said

 

[payn]

I've said this before: I don't want martials be balanced via magic items, but if martials are balanced via magic items, then certain base amount of items that are automatically given must be baked in the class progression, just like wizards get certain base amount of spells while they level.

It simply has to. I cant take another "back in my day we had one magic dagger and pair of boots the party shared. We survived and so will you..." conversations.

 

[tetrasodium]

Hm. Would bounded accuracy be destroyed if Fighters had slightly better attack bonuses? Given the responses to my Bless thread, I'm going to go with "no, not at all". Now maybe doubling would be a bit much, but really, so what if a high level Fighter always hits? I think that's a thing the class could use.

But even if that's frightening somehow, if the system can handle Archery Fighting Style, then it could handle the Fighter having a larger attack bonus. And yes, I know, Archery is probably intended to counter soft cover, but I know when I played an archer, I rarely had an issue with soft cover, so a good chunk of the time, it was just extra attack. The way I see it is, Fighting Styles are not unique to the Fighter, but the Fighter should be allowed to have better versions of them.

Yes. 5e has thew whole wink wink feats & magic items are optional" where they are not considered when building classes & designing the system math but both are basically defacto requirements of the game called d&d and fighters benefit much more than most classes from those "optional" core elements of what makes d&d into d&d. Fighters are already far overbudget because of that.

The other problem with "what if fighters had.." is twofold. First the game is designed around almost certain success on any attack & as a result there really is not good support for many classes to pivot into when that changes. Secondly we know what happens at the high end when you have different classes advancing their tohit rates at different rates till you have monsters that are almost if not entirely impossible for some classes to hit if there is even a (slim) chance that fast progressing hitrate classes could possibly miss.


It could have been done if that was how 5e was designed, but it would take far too many changes to properly support for it to be anything but broken.

 

[James Gasik]

To say nothing of rolled stats. We had a Oath of the Ancients paladin who started with an 18 str/20 cha in my last game. Giving out +5 to saves (and resistance to all magic damage) makes a mockery of bounded accuracy (on the defense side). Though honestly the paladin aura should have been slapped down in playtest.

Though that really just puts things on a smaller clock- you could eventually get to this point through play. Given that "rolling for stats" is the default in the PHB, and not point-buy, as it was in 4e, I often wonder exactly how rigid "bounded accuracy" is in this edition to begin with.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I'm not saying fighters don't suck, they do. However, it is when combat stops which is where they start sucking.

1st I want to say I saw this, and I know we are more or less on the same page here... but slight disagreement

I think you are overselling this a bit. Valor bards, in actual game play, do not fight as well as fighters regardless of the medium armor and 2 attacks (honestly they are fairly lackluster). Fighters, If-And-Only-If the 5 minute workday* is policed, are genuinely better than most others at the one task they've been allowed -- fighting really well. The extra feats, fighitng styles, 3+ attacks at higher level, native proficiency in all weapons and armor, action surge, and of course the archetype choices people so oft leave out when doing these comparisons, really do have an effect. Is a fighter a lot better at fighting with a dagger? No, and that is an interesting design decision on 5e's part; however they may very well be quite a bit better at fighting with two daggers (2wf), or surviving while fighting with a dagger (because they are in armor), or more likely just better at fighting with the greatswords or halberds or longbows that play better to their strengths.
*Which I will again the oft-unread DMG has advice and optional rules and a clear rundown on the consequences of decisions regarding this issue.

Hexblades and Valor/sword bards (and to an extent bladesinger wizards) through 10th level (first half of game but statistically the most common levels) on par with fighters BEFORE adding there spells...

lets take a look at your valor bard...

build 2 characters pick the same race (make it easy and don't do variant human or custum) the same background, then compare at level 10...

bard has 2 attacks medium armore, fighter has 2 attacks heavy armor both have there subclass features.

fighter has action surge 1/short rest Indomitable 1/long rest, second wind 1/short rest and +1 feat over teh bard (or ASI)
the bard has song of rest inspiration dice (on a short rest) jack of all trades, expertise in some skills more skills,

on its base they are pretty balanced WITHOUT giving the bard spells. (the fighter is slightly more combat and the bard is slightly more skilled)

I know this cause in the middle earth role playing game (I have used it twice now as a DM and once as a PC...but never in middle earth) the class is balanced just fine with no spells

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Though that really just puts things on a smaller clock- you could eventually get to this point through play. Given that "rolling for stats" is the default in the PHB, and not point-buy, as it was in 4e, I often wonder exactly how rigid "bounded accuracy" is in this edition to begin with.

I have been doing non rolling so long I forget this all the time.

 

[James Gasik]

I'm seeing a lot of discussion in this thread about how martials need a boost and casters need a nerf. Martials (at least as presented in 5th Ed) do suffer some endemic problems that I've yet to see discussed in this thread, but I am surprised that nobody has brought up the harm that the de-emphasis of money, magic items, and crafting has done. I could vomit forth an essay on the subject, but I'll make it brief.

Money was supposed to be the ambrosia that allowed some degree of parity between classes. In concept, martials didn't need a bunch of class features, because they were "supposed to" accumulate (either by finding, buying or crafting) an expansive arsenal of useful items that casters either didn't particularly need or couldn't really use. Winged Boots, for instance, could of course be a boon to a Wizard, but they would really expand the options available to a Paladin, and only the latter could effectively use armor with the Reflecting property. Heck, being able to shop around for an array of potions meant that a Barbarian could have access to spells like Invisibility, Haste, and Tongues.

Similarly, the loss of Use Magic Device is just plain insulting to Rogues. The option for a sufficiently rich or lucky Rogue to unexpectedly pull out a Meteor Swarm or Time Stop when the situation seemed dicey is now absent, save for one archetype that can't do it reliably anyways. Even using wands and low-level scrolls to play a budget version of Inspector Gadget is gone. Can't have another class stepping on the toes of that sad, oppressed Wizard, I guess.

No, it wasn't perfect. Yes, 5th Edition has a list of magic items and rules for buying them tucked away in some splatbook or another. But between the "you don't need magic items, wink wink" design philosophy, absence of crafting, and no reliable rules for shopping around in the core system (not to mention the ludicrous prices!), how the heck is a Fighter supposed to stay stocked up on the good stuff that would actually keep them relevant at level seventeen?

You are one hundred percent correct. From the very beginning, magic items were a patch to keep higher level non-casters relevant. The intelligent magic sword with it's host of abilities was presented as exactly such a boon for a Fighter. And with more ASI's, I would think it's obvious that Feats are a patch for them as well.

It comes down to people who felt that making magic items player facing "forced" DM's to use them when they didn't want to, or worse, let players have the exact items they desired, and that's not how they wanted to play. So WotC said "hey look, the game runs with out them, wink, wink!". And even if you use them, you can also optionally limit how many someone can have!

And did the same thing with Feats, since old school gamers never cared for them, even though other things to do with weapon proficiencies was in 2e from the Fighter's Handbook on. Because maybe they didn't want the plethora of Feats.

And look at what WotC has done since. They've still made barely any Feats, but make tons of spells, because nobody demanded spells be optional, and in fact, some of the loudest voices raised against 4e were people saying the Wizard didn't feel magical anymore!

 

[GMforPowergamers]

It comes down to people who felt that making magic items player facing "forced" DM's to use them when they didn't want to, or worse, let players have the exact items they desired, and that's not how they wanted to play. So WotC said "hey look, the game runs with out them, wink, wink!". And even if you use them, you can also optionally limit how many someone can have!

my first home brew 4e game (I started running the H1-3 P1-3 and e1-3 fir the first campaign but I like making my own worlds) i asked everyone to give me a list of at least 5 magic items spread over at least 3 levels but no more then 3 per level and none above 11th level. No one was sure how to 'ask' for magic items... but once they started finding that I was picking 2/3 from my own mind or homebrew and 1/3 from there lists they started to get it... to this day I think those lists are some of the best DM advice (even if you don't give the 'frost sword' knowing they want a cold themed weapon can help you home brew one)

(However for every good there is a bad and one guy gave me a list of 33 items...3 of each level 1-11 and not even duplicating (so no not a +1 x and a +2 x) and that didn't really help me and when I put one of the items in form his list he didn;t remember why he wrote that other then to fill the 3 per level grid)

 

[GMforPowergamers]

make tons of spells, because nobody demanded spells be optional,

could yo imagine... being a full castr means you CAN learn spells butt you have to find them as treasure form the DM