D&D General Which (non 4e) edition of D&D had the best class balance?

[Blue]

5e is the most balanced because everything does the same damage, super duper boring.

Give rangers +50 damage per attack. Eliminate that cause of boredom for you. Woo, solved!

 

[EzekielRaiden]

If I were more familiar with it, I might say BECM. But, absent that, I probably would have to say 1e.

...with one huge caveat: you had to play it as intended.

The problem with 1e is, for its intended purpose, it's got a lot of very good design explained unbelievably poorly. If you learned from a master, you were initiated into the Way, and you would see the purpose for which the disorganized, hodgepodge pile of rules was made. You would learn intuitively, even if you couldn't put it into words, that heavy armor was an experience penalty in exchange for survivability. (To this day, the cleverness of that design choice still impresses me--doubly so given how early this was.)

5e? 5e is not meaningfully balanced in comparison. It has, more or less, opted to make merely a high abstraction of balance, a very loose idea predicated on assumptions that are wildly out of whack with how people actually play it. The assumption being, "You're the DM, you figure it out." The rickety CR mechanic that becomes progressively less useful (it is not as useless as 3e CR was, but it's very unreliable), the issues with short-rest vs long-rest vs whatever-rest classes, the problems with alpha-striking and crit-fishing and feat taxes...yeah. It's all still there. They've just blunted some of it. It's not that 5e is a particularly smooth surface, they've just made sure it doesn't have any sharp points or edges. It still has points and edges, but they're blunt.

 

[overgeeked]

Basically, quadratic wizard linear fighter outweighs any other balance mismatch between the classes in terms of scale. As long as you are talking over all levels, then the answer can't be anything but 5e as the best balance - the range from the most powerful classes to the least powerful classes at high levels was wider in every other edition. Remember CoDzilla? Remember AD&D with potion-bottle 1st level magic-users with a single spell (and no cantrips) a day as very weak, and 20th level godlike casters outdoing martial classes?

Just such a wide gap between full casters and non-casters at high levels in earlier editions that it dwarfed other class balance mismatches.

This is more than a bit exaggerated. Yes, quadratic wizards were a thing, but only if the DM let it happen. The power of wizards was kept in check by low hit points, hit point caps, terrible AC, fire and forget spells, spells spoiling on a hit, rolling to learn spells, and DM-fiat to even get spells. So if a DM had a quadratic wizard to contend with, it was mostly the DM's mistakes that put them in that position. While 5E wizards are tamped down ever so slightly with concentration, the wizard simply gets to pick whatever spells they want to automatically learn, and has access to an infinite supply of damaging cantrips. A 10th-level AD&D wizard compared to a 10th-level 5E wizard...forget about it. The 5E wizard would destroy their AD&D counterpart. And let's not pretend that quadratic wizard, linear fighter isn't also present in 5E. It very much is. I mean, wish 1/day as an action vs 4 whole attacks per round. Yeah, it's still a thing.

 

[the Jester]

5e is far better balanced at high levels. Martials have more stuff and casters are reigned in.

The real winner was 4e by a mile, though.

 

[payn]

5e is far better balanced at high levels. Martials have more stuff and casters are reigned in.

Yeap, I agree with that.

The real winner was 4e by a mile, though.

I think PF2 is actually even better than 4E from a balance perspective. Though, folks might not accept it as D&D.

 

[Hex08]

AD&D 1e had the best balance because it introduced the Thief-Acrobat.

 

[the Jester]

I think PF2 is actually even better than 4E from a balance perspective. Though, folks might not accept it as D&D.

This is one of the things I have heard- I haven't played it, but PF2 reminds me a lot of 4e (from what I hear).

 

[Blue]

This is more than a bit exaggerated. Yes, quadratic wizards were a thing, but only if the DM let it happen.

This is true, but "what the rules allowed but the DM does not" is a per-table variable that really has nothing to do with the balance within an edition. That needs be judged on the rules of the edition itself.

So, for discussion of an edition, please refrain from "what a DM would do" - we are looking what is written in the PHB.

The power of wizards was kept in check by low hit points, hit point caps, terrible AC, fire and forget spells, spells spoiling on a hit, rolling to learn spells, and DM-fiat to even get spells. So if a DM had a quadratic wizard to contend with, it was mostly the DM's mistakes that put them in that position.

It sounds like you are claiming LFQW didn't exist, or if they did it was the "DM's fault" and not part of the system. I offer as a counterexample the entire weight of the D&D playing internet.

This is a commonly accepted point about the history of our game. Sorry, I can not accept that it didn't exist except as a DM's mistake. And even if I did, if the rules allowed it then it still must be considered as true for the edition.

While 5E wizards are tamped down ever so slightly with concentration, the wizard simply gets to pick whatever spells they want to automatically learn, and has access to an infinite supply of damaging cantrips. A 10th-level AD&D wizard compared to a 10th-level 5E wizard...forget about it. The 5E wizard would destroy their AD&D counterpart. And let's not pretend that quadratic wizard, linear fighter isn't also present in 5E. It very much is. I mean, wish 1/day as an action vs 4 whole attacks per round. Yeah, it's still a thing.

One of the biggest examples in 3rd ed just using the PHB was CoDzilla - basically cleric or druid could lay so many long lasting buffs on themselves to be better than the other classes at their own specialties. Concentration is an absolute barrier to rampant self-buffing where one might have a dozen self-cast concurrent buffs up during the day.

An attempt to say a 5e caster would destroy their AD&D counterpart needs to normalize the HPs, defenses and such between them. Look at an AD&D ogre and a 5e ogre - the 5e ogre is vastly more powerful than the AD&D one and would "destroy" it. But that's meaningless. They are both the appropriate challenge of ogre for their edition. We can not pretend that all numbers and terms are edition agnostic. We can't say that D&D 3.5 characters with +20 to hit from being 20th level are more powerful than +6 to hit from being 20th level in 5e - the numbers are are not normalized between editions.

And yes, I didn't say that 5e does not have powerful casters. But it is commonly accepted that they have brought them closer to martials in rate of power gains.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

OD&D.

Because it’s not one of the options. And because Bard wasn’t an official class- appendix or no.

Nobody puts Snarf in the corner!

 

[overgeeked]

This is true, but "what the rules allowed but the DM does not" is a per-table variable that really has nothing to do with the balance within an edition. That needs be judged on the rules of the edition itself.

Right. Quadratic wizards were most often a symptom of the DM ignoring the rules of the game, not following them. So judging the edition on its rules means throwing out quadratic wizards.

Rolling to learn spells is RAW, but DMs ignored it.

The DM determining starting spells is RAW, but DMs ignored it.

The DM determining spells during play is RAW, but DMs ignored it.

DMs ignoring RAW is what caused quadratic wizards.

AD&D DMG, p39 has the relevant info.