Why do all classes have to be balanced?

[Neonchameleon]

Your DM may allow you to Mage Hand a door open but the description of the spell tells what it can do. The spell can lift and move objects that weighs a certain amount. It says nothing about opening doors.

If my DM allows me to Mage Hand a door when I am casting Open/Close at it and quoting the relevant part of the Open/Close text, I wonder why he's looking at the wrong spell. And if my DM doesn't allow me to open a door with the Open/Close spell I wonder what the point of that spell existing is.

And this is a serious problem with wizards. There is an entire kitchen sink full of spells and what one spell can't do another probably can.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Creative interpretation is fine home games but you can't use it when discussing the credibility of RAW game rules.

But I thought combat-as-war was a positive feature of previous editions!!?

 

[Hussar]

And yet that was how 4E was balanced and what many people seems to want/like.
That in combat no class is better than the other.

I disagree.

This is how you interpret 4e balance. That's pretty obvious. But, could you please clarify how YOU define class balance so that we can move this conversation forward. What do you consider to be the elements that are required for two classes to be balanced in play?

 

[Hussar]

I'd also point out on the door tangent, that if your doors require more than thirty or so pounds of pressure to open, that's a seriously stuck door.

Look, even without going all splat book, you can pretty much eliminate the rogue fairly easily. A 5th level wizard needs 5000 xp to go to 6th level. Lets say he takes craft wand (a bonus feat) and gives up 10% of his xp for the level - 500 xp. 500 xp worth of crafting is 25000 gp worth of crafted wands (50k gp at full market price). IOW, it's enough to make about 20 1st and 2nd level wands. It will take him about three weeks to do this. Not exactly a huge time expenditure. Most campaigns do allow you to take a couple of weeks between adventures.

With 20 wands, the group now has 2 cure light wands per PC and 10 or 12 more wands to cover all the more common utility spells. That means that the whole Vancian limits goes straight out the window.

At 6th level, he gives up 500 more xp and crafts scrolls. Yup, he'll be lagging a bit behind, but, never a full level - only a bit. He'll certainly level up before anyone else levels another level. This gives him about 100 scrolls of 1st -3rd level. Again, enough scrolls that any spell he could possibly want to cast (including any cleric spell since we'd obviously have the characters work together) is readily available.

From that point on, he adds a bit here and there, higher level scrolls and whatnot and replacing used scrolls.

This doesn't require anything from any splat book. It doesn't require a single magic mart. It only requires a single feat from the PHB.

So all the verbiage about magic marts, and limiting splats, and the DM "reining things in" is ludicrous. It's a single feat. It is a minor expense. And it makes the caster characters into pretty much At Will casters with none of the limitations of Vancian casting.

 

[Hussar]

ExploderWizard:

Yup. 1E doesn't have this problem. 3E is boned at the core.

Well, 1e has a barrel full of its own issues. Class balance is a joke. The high level casters still completely crush the low level casters. Heck, if you need proof, you only have to look at the high level AD&D modules. In high level AD&D modules, the fighter types typically lose 2 "plusses" from their items. The casters have a three page list of nerfs stripping their spell lists.

Never mind the other side where the wizard player is sitting in the corner twiddling his thumbs for three levels before he actually gets to contribute to the game regularly.

Yes, 3e has issues, but, 1e has issues equally as serious and pernicious.

 

[billd91]

Never mind the other side where the wizard player is sitting in the corner twiddling his thumbs for three levels before he actually gets to contribute to the game regularly.

Yes, 3e has issues, but, 1e has issues equally as serious and pernicious.

Back in 1e, wizards may have blown their magic fast, but that was a far cry from being unable to contribute in the game regularly. If that was your experience, then I feel sorry for you but you chose to be useless.

 

[Bluenose]

Back in 1e, wizards may have blown their magic fast, but that was a far cry from being unable to contribute in the game regularly. If that was your experience, then I feel sorry for you but you chose to be useless.

This is interesting, because there are people in the "Fighter Design" thread saying that if the Wizard blows all their spells and the Fighter can just shrug them off, that's bad design and not what they want. Are they choosing to be useless?

 

[billd91]

This is interesting, because there are people in the "Fighter Design" thread saying that if the Wizard blows all their spells and the Fighter can just shrug them off, that's bad design and not what they want. Are they choosing to be useless?

Clearly not since they don't want their spells to simply be shrugged off. Based on that, I don't think the question you're asking is really the question you want to be asking.

That said, even if the fighter was ultimately shrugging the spells off, presumably he's not completely unhampered (which would be bad design). So even in that sense they aren't being useless. Again, this makes me wonder if you're really asking the question you want to be asking in the passage above.

 

[Bluenose]

Clearly not since they don't want their spells to simply be shrugged off. Based on that, I don't think the question you're asking is really the question you want to be asking.

That said, even if the fighter was ultimately shrugging the spells off, presumably he's not completely unhampered (which would be bad design). So even in that sense they aren't being useless. Again, this makes me wonder if you're really asking the question you want to be asking in the passage above.

If the wizard is unable to achieve, with their spells, the things they want to achieve, can people complain about this or will they be told that they're choosing to be useless? In the 1e case, where this is true for a 1st-level wizard who only has one spell each day, once they've used it you claim quite explicitly that if they feel they can't contribute then that is their own fault. In the D&DN case, people are saying that if a wizard throws all their spells at a fighter and seen them shrugged off leaves them ineffective. Are they in fact also choosing to be useless? Does having a mechanical means to contribute to a situation matter at all? This divide is going to be one of the fundamental philosophical aspects of D&DN design, and how the designers approach it is going to say a lot about what the edition will play as.

 

[billd91]

If the wizard is unable to achieve, with their spells, the things they want to achieve, can people complain about this or will they be told that they're choosing to be useless? In the 1e case, where this is true for a 1st-level wizard who only has one spell each day, once they've used it you claim quite explicitly that if they feel they can't contribute then that is their own fault. In the D&DN case, people are saying that if a wizard throws all their spells at a fighter and seen them shrugged off leaves them ineffective. Are they in fact also choosing to be useless? Does having a mechanical means to contribute to a situation matter at all? This divide is going to be one of the fundamental philosophical aspects of D&DN design, and how the designers approach it is going to say a lot about what the edition will play as.

I think there's a question of whether or not the wizard's spells are actually ineffective because they can't be effective, partially effective but not decisive, or could be effective but via bad luck didn't happen to be effective. If the wizard knew he was going to be utterly ineffective by those castings and chose to cast them anyway, then yes, he's choosing to be fairly useless... at least, unless there's another end he's pursuing.

That said, I'm not sure there always needs to be an obvious or direct mechanical means to contribute to a situation or that a character's primary abilities need to always be an effective option. In fact, I think the game's better if the primary abilities have to get side-lined from time to time and force the players to approach challenges in alternate ways beyond their primary methods and find ways to contribute.