Why do all classes have to be balanced?

[eamon]

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[...]

In my experience, people are quite reluctant to pay XP costs. Also, that's just one level; you'll want to do it more often eventually.

Not that I'm really disagreeing that wands are a good idea - but usually people would rather pay the extra factor 2 in gold rather than the XP cost. Not to mention the fact that that much gold is huge at those levels. 25k in gold? That's a little more than the full wealth-by-level loot a 12th level character can expect to find.

Also, if you want to find traps+disable them+open locks+sneak/scout, you're looking at quite a few spells, and not just from one class. You'll be paying a lot to really replace the rogue's skills.

I think the problem here isn't the caster so much as the rogue. Just like most people don't want to play "just" a healer, a rogue-as-gizmo-engineer isn't that exciting in play. And it's a little tricky at the table anyhow because it's often not a group activity. Basically, the rogue is screwed because he forces the DM to choose between making only him happy or making everyone else happy. And so naturally the kind of stories that emerge from D&D's traditional cooperative storytelling don't favor the rogue.

In 5e, I'd hope that skills are a recognizable feature of the rogue, but not an exclusively defining one. It just doesn't work well. And if skill advantages are broad enough and flexible enough, then a duplicating ritual or spell isn't so bad; particularly not if there are some downsides like duration, cost and (for knock) the noise.

 

[pemerton]

[MENTION=3400]billd91[/MENTION], I think you are misunderstanding [MENTION=49017]Bluenose[/MENTION].

You (billd91) said that a player who feels his/her low-level wizard PC can do nothing when out of spells is choosing to be useless.

Bluenose is saying: OK, by that standard a player who feels that his/her high level wizard will be able to contribute nothing if the fighter is just able to shrug of his/her spells is also presumably choosing to be useless.

Or, to put it another way: if your "choosing to be useless" claim is true, it follows that utility, for a wizard, is not a function of being able to use spells to achieve things. And Bluenose is pointing out that many players feel otherwise - not just Hussar, but all those complaining about a design in which high level fighters can shrug off a high level wizard's magic.

 

[pemerton]

That was never the intention to start with. The intention was to give rogueless parties a chance to at least open doors

And how does a party without a wizard fly? Or deploy artillery? How does a party without a cleric heal?

I've never understood why thieves and fighters should be substitutable by spellcasters, but not vice versa. Or to flip it around - if spell casters are essential, why not non-spell casters also?

 

[WarlockLord]

And how does a party without a wizard fly? Or deploy artillery? How does a party without a cleric heal?

I've never understood why thieves and fighters should be substitutable by spellcasters, but not vice versa. Or to flip it around - if spell casters are essential, why not non-spell casters also?

The fighter jumps super high like a final fantasy dragoon. And the warlord inspires everyone. Any more questions?

 

[MichaelSomething]

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.

True, but if primary abilities are rendered constantly side-lined by the rules, the game is unbalanced.

 

[Shemeska]

They don't. As long as a class is fun to play and isn't rendered useless by another class, I don't see what the obsessive fuss is about that makes "balance" a central design goal to the point that it hurts other aspects of the game.

There's a certain amount of balance fetishism that suddenly appeared circa 2008 that I didn't see before and that I really don't understand.

 

[ren1999]

But, why do all classes in a RPG be able to +do everything as well as all the others?

Every class needs to have something that another class doesn't have.

A wizard type can't have as many hit points as a fighter type or nobody would play a fighter. But because a wizard type doesn't have many hit points, you've got to give the wizard type something, that's where burst damage comes in.

That's why we shouldn't allow wizards to have healing spells, so that people will see the benefits of having a cleric type. Clerics can wear armor but they shouldn't be able to wear the heaviest armor just like a fighter.

Only a rogue type should be allowed to try to pick locks.

This is why I oppose allowing each class to have a balanced number of skills in addition to their spells. Why have a rogue class at all if a wizard was once a thief and can pick locks just as well. Now if the wizard wants to give up studying some spells, then perhaps multi-class would be o.k.

All of these balancing ideas were with the game from the beginning. They got kind of muddled with feats and skills in later editions. Feats and skills are fine but they should be grouped with martial, spells and prayers and characters should have to expend some level-up intelligence+modifier+2 or more points to get them or increase ranks.

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[Bluenose]

They don't. As long as a class is fun to play and isn't rendered useless by another class, I don't see what the obsessive fuss is about that makes "balance" a central design goal to the point that it hurts other aspects of the game.

There's a certain amount of balance fetishism that suddenly appeared circa 2008 that I didn't see before and that I really don't understand.

The problem being, that if you want to make sure that a class isn't "rendered useless" by another class, then you have to give some consideration to balance. I'd go further, and suggest that if a class can be replaced by a different class, and the group would then be more effective at overcoming almost all challenges over a normal array of the activities that D&D groups get involved in, then that is a sign that something is wrong with the design of one of those classes.

Please note, E Gary Gygax quite explicitly calls this out in the AD&D 1st edition PHB and DMG, saying that classes have been modified so they should not overshadow each other. You could also read some Dragon magazine editorials or examine the letters pages for further examples from the 1970s and 1980s. You could even look back at some of the comments about 3rd edition that appeared in 2000, where you will find a significant number of complaints about the new system and how some classes are too powerful. So the idea that balance fetishism was a new idea in 2008 is one that is not supported by the history of D&D. People have been talking about blanace longer than I have been playing the game, and I started before any AD&D books came out.

 

[eamon]

Every class needs to have something that another class doesn't have.

No - every class should be useful to a party. He doesn't need an exclusive shtick (which incidentally would be almost impossible with so many classes).

Only a rogue type should be allowed to try to pick locks.

Lockpicking is a poor class focus because it's not party friendly; so even if you succeed in keeping it exclusive (unlikely), you'll either end up with campaigns without locks or with less inclusive gameplay whereby players essentially solo different bits of the game.

The problem here is the rogue, not the caster: it was never good design to have a class that works best without a party. Being a skill-monkey is a good start as a rogue, but there needs to be more to the class because any individual skill will be duplicated by some other PC if necessary. And as soon as the class is generally useful enough, you'll find that "replacing" iconic abilities like lockpicking via spellcasting becomes less attractive simply because it comes at significant opportunity cost - and if a rogue is generally strong enough, you might as well let him do the lockpicking.

Take 4e as an example: there the rogue is a very effective skirmisher too.

 

[pemerton]

The fighter jumps super high like a final fantasy dragoon. And the warlord inspires everyone. Any more questions?

My impression is that most of those who are defending the Knock spell as a rogue subsitute are not big fans of superheroic martial abilities, nor of martial healing. Nor of turning the rogue into a "striker" whose functional contribution is defined not in terms of skills-first but skirmisher-first.