D&D General Wizard vs Fighter - the math

[jgsugden]

No.

playing more than one character at a time is a pain for most players

Seriously, tho, claims that a hypothetical or anecdotal player has just as much fun playing a mindless beatstick or healbot as an involved, high-agency character have no bearing on any analysis of what the game actually presents.
Like, this thread is evaluating whether the fighter can deliver as much damage over the course of an adventuring day as a wizard. That it's rather unlikely a player would actually enjoy grinding through the sort of day those calculations imply is actually moot.

Why do we play the game? To exercise our basic math and basic statistics skills? Or to have a fun (or otherwise evocative) experience? When you tell us (seriously) that the enjoyment of players has no bearing on what the game provides to us and is moot ... well ... That is a bit like saying the taste and nutrition of a dinner is irrelevant so long as it looks pretty on the plate. You're putting the superficial over the substantive.

And anecdotal evidence about enjoyment here is not from "a player" - it is from massive numbers of players. We're talking abou the fighter being potentially underpowered when it is one of the most popular character classes in the game (through definitive statistics from D&DBeyond and other sources) - and is well known to have amongst the highest, if not the highest, average DPR when optimized versus a single target (depending upon measuring tools). Heck, I had a 20th level fighter solo an Ancient Red before the Red even had a chance to do anything. 20 attacks at advantage (prone dragon) requiring a 5 to 8 to hit - and dealing 30 to 40 damage per hit ... (surprise round, won initiative, 4 attack multi attack, reaction attack, haste attack, Blessed Storm Giant Girdle, +3 Maul, Battlemaster, Poison (yeah - I know, bludgeoning delivering poison seems weird, but the DM allowed it because the player made a good argument about how devastating his hits were), etc....

Wizards and Fighters fill different roles. If you accept that, and stop trying to say one is inferior because another can do something better, and instead just focus on whether each is fun as it fills their role, then you'll see that all 5E classes - including ranger, monk, and cleric - are well designed.

 

[jgsugden]

Mmm, 'not D&D' gatekeeping. always fun and fresh.

This word may not mean what you think it means. While telling someone they're having fun wrong isn't a good look, it isn't gatekeeping per se. Nobody was denied access to anything. We're overusing this term to the point it is losing focus and impact.

That being said, @NotAYakk's argument misses something key. The argument that without attrition there is no difference between a battle that someone barely won and a walk in the park misses the point of combat - which could be many things, but should not be reduced to a measure of resources spent. Combats need to have a purpose to keep them from becoming boring and repetitive. They need to have variation in environment to make them feel different. If you lack these elements, there is no point to having easy encounters in the game ... but with them, a few 5th level PCs dealing with 6 goblins that are robbing a farm can be an intriguing encounter. If the goal is not merely 'kill using minimum resources', but instead, "stop the goblins from escaping with the farmer's prized pig - which is actually the nobleman that was accidentally true polymorphed - and deal with the torrential rainstorm, mudslide, and chaotic animal stampede" ... it becomes something very different.

D&D is not about the math. It is a role playing game - with characters playing a role in a story. Story is the make or break element of the game. Balance isn't unimportant - it is a game afterall - but I'd much rather play the game with challenged balance (see editions prior to 4E and the success of those editions) - than a game with boring nonstory and repetitive combats. There is a reason why BG3 is a massive success despire having ridiculously overpowered builds.

 

[Vaalingrade]

This word may not mean what you think it means. While telling someone they're having fun wrong isn't a good look, it isn't gatekeeping per se. Nobody was denied access to anything. We're overusing this term to the point it is losing focus and impact.

No, it's correct. 'You're not actually playing D&D because you're not doing it the way I tell you'. Class gatekeeping. He's not saying I'm doing it wrong, he's accusing me of not doing it at all based on his definition as a rhetorical point to dis-include my participation.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Why do we play the game? To exercise our basic math and basic statistics skills?

Ironically, this a thread analyzing the game, not playing it. If you're not interested in that, why are you reading it, let alone posting to it?

l ... That is a bit like saying the taste and nutrition of a dinner is irrelevant so long as it looks pretty on the plate. You're putting the superficial over the substantive.

That's more like what you're doing. Analysis of the elements making up the game that are actually quantitative is substantive, unexamined experiences subjectively claimed to be 'fun' are superficial. It's like judging the dish on plating & flavor, not on nutrition or safety. You may enjoy that improperly-prepared fugu, but it might kill you.

Wizards and Fighters fill different roles. If you accept that, and stop trying to say one is inferior because another can do something better, and instead just focus on whether each is fun as it fills their role, then you'll see that all 5E classes - including ranger, monk, and cleric - are well designed.

5e had famously done away with roles.

We're talking abou the fighter being potentially underpowered when it is one of the most popular character classes in the game

it is a game afterall - but I'd much rather play the game with challenged balance (see editions prior to 4E and the success of those editions)

I'm sorry, but now, as it was when philosophers first coined argumentum ad populum, popularity does prove quality, or even advisability. Smoking has been extremely popular, for instance. The most popular brand of cigarettes will still give you lung cancer.

I'd much rather play the game with challenged balance - than a game with boring nonstory and repetitive combats

And that is a false dichotomy. Better balance in no way leads to "boring nonstory" nor repetitive combats. Imbalance is more likely to, as it reduces the viable choices available on the player side.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

So, after all the Fighter vs Wizard Discussions, I wanted to see, if it is really true that a Fighter is worse than a wizard.

So I did the math.
View attachment 306337
(Blue - the wizard is stronger by at least 20%. Red - the wizard is weaker by at least 20%, yellow is between 10-20 discrepancy, green is under 10%).

I compared the average damage output per Round in Combat for the Fighter and the Wizard for several scenarios.

First I looked at the number of battle rounds a party can have. A battle can take up 1 to 7 rounds and a party could encounter 1 (2x deadly) to 12 (easy) battles per adventuring day, if we go by the adventuring day rules. So a party could encounter between 2 long rests 1 round of battle or 84. That's a big range of battle rounds. The DMG advices between 3 and 6 battles.
So, I picked some examples:

• 3 Rounds - the typical 5 Minute adventure day
• 9 rounds - I would say on my tables probably the most common number of battle rounds between two long rests.
• 18 rounds - if you follow the DMG an adventuring party should encounter this many battle rounds on average between long rests
• 36 rounds - 12 easy encounters a 3 rounds (I hope nobody does that) or 6 hard encounters taking 6 rounds.
• 72 rounds - 12 easy encounters taking 6 rounds each - if you hate yourself and your players, do that.

Than I looked at at the number of enemies, because the effectiveness of the Wizard depends strongly on AoE spells.
I checked vs. Single Creature, vs 2 Creatures (average AoE Damage x 1,5) and more than 3 creatures (AoE Damage x2).
Fighter and Wizard get a +1, +2 and +3 magic items at levels 5, 10 and 15.

So these are my expectations.

I build a champion fighter and a plain Wizard without subclass features. The wizard takes always the spell that will do the most damage for a certain spell level, he uses up the highest spells first, if he runs out of spells, he will take cantrips. The Fighter damage is accounted for the use of Action Surge and Critical damage.

So, what does my math say?

When there are only 3 battle rounds per long rest, the Wizard will always be better than the fighter by at least 20% except at low levels vs 1 creature. But only at levels 5 and 6 will the fighter be ever stronger vs 1. Creature. The more enemies you have, the bigger the advantage of the wizard.
With 3 or more enemies creatures the wizard usually does more than double the damage of the fighter.
Over all lvls the Wizard will do

• vs 1. Creature on average 137% of the fighter damage,
• vs 2 Creatures 166%
• and vs 3 or more creatures 195% of the fighter damage.

If you have 9 battle rounds inbetween Long Rests, vs. 1 Creature, the Fighter and a wizard are pretty close in damage output. Vs 2 or more Monsters the Wizard will outperform the Fighter.
Over all lvls. the Wizard will do

• vs 1. Creature 98% of the Fighter damage.
• vs 2 creatures 122% of the Fighters Damage
• Vs. 3 creatures 146% of the fighter damage

If you have 18 Battlerounds, the Fighter will outperform the Wizard vs. 1 and 2 creatures while it is pretty close against 3 or more creatures.
Over all the levels, our wizard does

• vs 1 creature 70% of the fighter damage
• vs 2 creatures 86% of fighter damage
• vs 3+ creatures 102% of Fighter damage.

With 36 rounds the fighter is always better.
Over all levels the wizard will do

• vs. 1 Creature 53% of Fighter damage
• vs. 2 creatures 61%
• vs. 3+ creatures 69%

And with 72 rounds, it is the same.
Wizard/fighter

• 1 creature: 45%
• 2 creatures: 49%
• 3+ creatures 53%.

If we look at the extremes (3 rounds vs 32 or 72 battlerounds) the effectiveness in Combat gets reversed. In 3 rounds vs multiple creatures the Wizard does double the damage of a fighter while in 32 rounds vs 1 creature the fighter does double the damage of the wizard.

What can we learn from this?

First of all, what everybody is always already saying is: the 5 minute workday is utterly broken for spellcasters. If you have less than 9 rounds of combat inbetween rests, even at lvl 1 the wizard will outperform the Fighter and latest at level 5 will have spell slots to spare for non Combat situations, paving the way for Spellcaster domination in all aspects of the game from that level on.

How to Fix that as a DM: if you only want to have one battle, make the battle longer and vs. one strong enemy. Give the creature more hitpoints to last longer (at least for 6 rounds, better 9). You have to adjust the damage output of the creature, because the damage is usually balanced around 3 rounds of survival, so in 9 rounds it can do way more damage to your party than the CR would tell you.

For 9 rounds, it depends on the number of enemies. If you as the DM always use one appropriate monster to challenge the party, the Fighter and wizard will be equal (98% similar damage output). but the Wizard will from level 5 on have spell slots to spare for other situations. Vs. 2 or more creatures, the Wizard will outdamage the fighter, and he will have spell slots to spare.
So if you want to have few battles and not a lot of combat rounds (not a lot defined as 9) in one day, use single monsters to challenge the party and give the Fighter a chance to shine.

18 battle rounds between long rests seems to be the sweet spot between fighter and wizard.
The fighter will outperform the Wizard vs 1 and 2 creatures and will be equally good vs 3 or more creatures and the Wizard will have to use up to level 12 all his Spellslots to keep up with the fighter. So now the wizard needs to decide, if he spares some ressources and be less effective in Combat or blast everything in Combat and doesn't have utility outside of combat.
18 battle rounds could be 6 fights a 3 rounds or 3 fights a 6 rounds or a big boss fight with 9 rounds and 3 smaller fights a 3 rounds.
But what we see here, is, that the Adventure Day guidlines in the DMG work as intended. 6 encounters a 3 rounds is the balanced sweet spot between long rest ressources (spellslots) and at will powers (fighter).

36 battlerounds and above

This is fighter land. Wizards don't need to apply.
But having a lot of battlerounds - I realistically can only see that working, if the Gritty Realism Rest rules are used. Than you can stretch out the battles over several ingame days.

Conclusions without rules changes

So, if you are DMing a game and feel like, that the martial classes are underwhelming at your table and the casters are overpowered and dominating every aspect of the game, without rules changes to the classes themselves, you can do the following things:

• Increase the number of battlerounds either by having more battles or making battles longer (more hitpoints for the monster) - the sweetspot is 18 Battlerounds per long rest, as low as 9 can be fine, when you ...
• use single creatures to reduce the effectiveness of AoE spells.
• use gritty realism rest rules

Conclusions for rules changes

It seems that the number of battles (and battlerounds) in a day is at the modern gaming table drastically lower than what the makers of D&D expected.
That has several reasons:

• 6 battles a day doesn't fit most modern narratives - dungeon crawling is not the standard mode of play anymore
• players optimising the fun out of the game and being risk adverse by taking every long rest they can (from a mechanical standpoint, long resting after every battle is the optimal strategy).

Mechanically, there are several solutions:

• Alternative Rest rules to stretch out the time between long rests or make long rests less effective (like giving back as much spellslots ad you have Prof. Bonus)
• reducing the number of spell slots available per day (more akin to warlock)
• strengthing the fighter - in order to keep up with the wizard in a 5 Minute workday day environment, the Fighter needs 40% more damage against single targets and he needs to get AoE Damage capabilities that increase his damageoutput against multiple targets by at least 100% to make them as good as Wizards. So increase that even more, so the fighter is best at fighting while the Wizard can keep his utility abilities. Make the stronger abilities daily powers so that if their is suddenly an increase in battle rounds that the fighter will not overwhelm everything (like the wizard does right now with few battlerounds).

I think that maybe giving the fighter more benefits when they use Action Surge would fill that “daily” spot. Even just adding damage per attack if you take an action surge would work, and adding to the end of the feature “when you use this ability you gain an additional reaction that you can use before the start of your next turn” would help too.

But probably you want more than that, maybe after level 5 AS gives you advantage on attacks or crits are bigger or something.

Or go for it and make action surge give add modifier to damage and give advantage on all attacks until the end of your next turn. (From level 5 on) or do something more creative, or have different effects based on fighting style, whatever? But AS is the key I think.

 

[Oofta]

Why is DPR a good measuring stick of performance in this instance? We know that Wizards aren't damage machines in the traditional sense* and there are people who think that their non-damaging spells are the problem.

*Even in a target-rich environment, a Wizard not only needs to be able to accurately target 3+ foes for something like Fireball to be worth casting, but they also need to avoid friendly fire (or be Evocation Wizards) and even then, your 28 damage save for half might seem like a lot of damage, but it hasn't actually felled many foes so it's not reducing much incoming damage on the turn it occurs, the way a group of Fighters who can focus fire on a single target will.

I would think it's far better to try and Slow up to 6 guys, severely blunting their damage and making them easier for said Fighters to kill off quickly, and no need to worry about hitting a friendly, but it's really difficult to compare a tactic like that to damage, it's literally apples and oranges.

It's perhaps not too dissimilar to something like American Football- when judging a team's merits, you have to look at offense, defense, special teams, leadership, and "intangibles" that are difficult to judge in a vacuum- is home field advantage going to be a thing? How about the weather? The condition of the turf? Win/Loss ratios in the past?

Put another way, it's like trying to decide which class is better and what DM advice should go into comparing Fighters to Rogues and only looking at Skill Proficiency between both classes- it's one facet of a complex scenario.

The Fighter is strong when it comes to damage output, the Wizard, less so. We have math that shows this much, and while that's useful data, it doesn't paint a complete picture.

And to those who think Fighters are fine and have never had any problem with them whatsoever, nor apparently can conceive of a scenario where Fighters might fall short in a campaign- you have the answers you require.

Through some combination of player preference and DM playstyles, by accident or design you've avoided the scenarios that might cause problems. Congratulations! So what's the answer for those who do see these problems?

Are they playing the game wrong? Are their DM's completely inept? Are they lying to further some agenda?

And what agenda would that be, beyond "nerf casters plz" or "buff Fighters"? And if, through some miracle, WotC actually deigns to pay attention and nerfs casters and/or buffs Fighters, what difference does that make?

Fighters are already popular, so the only result I can foresee is that people play casters less often than they already do. Which seems like it would settle the debate once and for all. The people who want balance get it, and the people who like Fighters continue playing them. Huzzah!

But instead we get bogged down in the weeds somewhere, because the issue isn't balance at all- the issue seems to be, quite often "will my Fighter feel like some posthuman superbeing if they get improved?".

Because somehow, the option of still playing the "just fine" Fighter regardless is apparently off the table. Which I don't get. If an omnipresent demiurge swooped in and replaced the Fighter in the PHB with a, I don't know, "Myrmidon" who can throw shields, leap 50' into the air, and dodge arrows while being relatively immune to spells, it occurs to me that the people who reject that concept on it's merits will just...not use them.

DM's will say "banned in my games", as is their prerogative. Players who don't like that class fantasy will gravitate towards tables that still allow them to play Fighters.

So what's the problem then? That it could turn out players actually would prefer the Myrmidon over the Fighter?

The issue with your "myrmidion" is that there doesn't seem to be any demand for it. In addition what you're saying doesn't make a lot of sense. If you got rid of fighters and replaced them by myrmidions, how would people new to the game know about fighters? You'd change core aspects of the game, only to split the player base as an experiment? It's a nonsensical suggestion; replace the most popular class because you personally want something else.

How about this instead. Create a myrmidian class and publish it to DmsGuild. Heck, give it away for free. If there's really a demand for such a thing, people will give you positive review and download it. If it's really what people want it will explode in popularity and WOTC will take a look at how popular it is and consider replacing the fighter. Big benefit? It's something you could do right now. So what's the problem with doing that?

 

[FrozenNorth]

Not a 6-8 average, 6-8 is maximum capacity. And yes, any group of over 5 characters is unstoppable.

For WotC, then players steamroller Monsters is not necessarily a problem. But the balance point is a Dungeon with 6-8 Wncounters on a timeline with 4 or 5 PCs. Any more PCs, or any less Encointers, will be a cakewalk. Any more Encointers or less than 4 PCs can be a big problem.

So the balance point, where wizards and fighters are roughly equal in combat, is 6-8 encounters per day (per the OP)? Since the combat pillar is supposed to be where the fighter shines (and he is giving up a lot of design space on the social and exploration pillars), isn’t this a problem?

 

[overgeeked]

Wizards and Fighters fill different roles. If you accept that, and stop trying to say one is inferior because another can do something better, and instead just focus on whether each is fun as it fills their role, then you'll see that all 5E classes - including ranger, monk, and cleric - are well designed.

Yep. Trouble is the wizard can fill the wizard’s role…and the fighter’s role…and the rogue’s role. So there’s a problem with the wizard. As shown in the OP and several other threads. The wizard matches or outclasses the fighter in damage. The fighter’s role is damage dealing. The wizard’s role is not. And this is a wizard without subclass features. Imagine how much worse the imbalance would be with an evoker. Add in a no-brainer class of spells like monster summoning and you do even more damage than the fighter…who’s niche is damage dealing. It doesn’t take math skills to see it’s problematic.

 

[overgeeked]

So the balance point, where wizards and fighters are roughly equal in combat, is 6-8 encounters per day (per the OP)? Since the combat pillar is supposed to be where the fighter shines (and he is giving up a lot of design space on the social and exploration pillars), isn’t this a problem?

As long as you force 6-8 encounters per day all against solo monsters then it will be fine. That's a huge constraint that most referees do not conform to, hence why so many people have a problem with the balance of 5E. Because they don't play the way the game was designed. If you only have one encounter per day, it's effectively meaningless and casters will nova, aka 5MWD. If you have multiple monsters per encounter the casters will utterly dominate with their AoE spells. And unless you have those 6-8 encounters per day the casters will be sitting on a pile of spell slots that they can use to trample all over the other class's role or niche. Why bother with stealth when the wizard can cast invisibility? Why bother with persuasion when the wizard can charm?

D&D needs to bring back niche protection. And the do everything casters need to be reined in.

ETA: Part of the problem is the typical response. “Well, the X class can do it all day and the wizard can’t.” While yes, that’s very true, it also utterly fails at understanding the problem. There is no situation where the non-caster will ever have to “do it all day.” You will never have the all-day sneak or the all-day charm or the all-day combat. You’ll only ever have small, self-contained snippets of situations where those things are relevant. So the caster can drop a spell and be done with it.

 

[Parmandur]

So the balance point, where wizards and fighters are roughly equal in combat, is 6-8 encounters per day (per the OP)? Since the combat pillar is supposed to be where the fighter shines (and he is giving up a lot of design space on the social and exploration pillars), isn’t this a problem?

No, not in practice thst I've ever seen. The DMG describes how to set up a full dungeon thst will push a party. If anything less is done, things get a little wacky but will still work just fine. But if a table feels there is a caster/fighter imbalance, that is a symptom of the party needing to be pushed harder. Simple as.