D&D General Wizard vs Fighter - the math

[Mort]

Because it makes more money.
And because 5e is futureproofed like unstable explosives.

The entire problem is the encounter assumptions. The designers never intended for other resource paradigms to work. So it's too late to fix it.

It might make more money, or they might expend resources and overall lose money - because the product doesn't sell.

Point is, it's a risk they don't have to take because not only is the fighter proven (by their metrics) it's the MOST proven.

Now, you could make the argument that since the fighter is so popular, any supplement involving it will also be popular and sell well. But it might also faceplant and actually take away from some fighter enjoyment. WoTC has proven pretty conservative and risk-averse on this front. Can't say it's not working for them.

 

[Oofta]

If you consider good or bad to be wholly subjective value judgements, sure, that's a trivially true, if useless, statement.

You could judge an objectively strictly inferior class "good" and a class objectively strictly superior to it "bad."
You have that privilege.

Well thanks so much for giving me permission to state my opinion. Exactly how it's completely useless to base how well a class meets it's goals, or what those goals could possibly be, other than having broad appeal to the people playing the game alludes me.

But you have my permission to explain what other aspects you could measure that are truly objective and not just your personal preference. Without appealing to to some hypothetical majority that cannot be validated of course.

I stand by what I said. In a game with multiple competing options the only objective measurement we can make is what people choose to play. That doesn't mean it's the best fighter that could hypothetically exist, there's always room for improvement. But in comparison to the other classes that actually exist in the game? People choose fighter over the other options.

 

[Scott Christian]

There is a winning for WOTC.

It however requires the designers to insert and focus on optional rules they wont use but others they might never see will use. Which is hard for humans.

That has always been one of the core issues with D&D under both its IP holders: support and investment in things they don't care for but other fans do.

I agree with you. You are correct.

Can I please state one caveat? There are optional rules already in existence. Rules published in the DMG. But since people either: A) Don't read the rulebook, B) Think the optional rule doesn't align with their players' mentality towards the game, or C) Believe they can build a better ruleset to match their table's playstyle, thus adding house rules - there will be a tug-of-war.

I mean, since we are on the discussion for resting, look at the DMG rules for optional rests. They exist, yet everyone wants the default to match their table's playstyle. They may act like it's not there. They may not like any of it. They may disregard the fact that they can house-rule it. But, people don't pay attention to the optional rules for precisely the reason people argue against rule changes - because the norm becomes what is expected at almost every table. Hence, optional rules can work, but most of the time they don't.

 

[Minigiant]

It might make more money, or they might expend resources and overall lose money - because the product doesn't sell.

Point is, it's a risk they don't have to take because not only is the fighter proven (by their metrics) it's the MOST proven.

Now, you could make the argument that since the fighter is so popular, any supplement involving it will also be popular and sell well. But it might also faceplant and actually take away from some fighter enjoyment. WoTC has proven pretty conservative and risk-averse on this front. Can't say it's not working for them.

I don't you understood what I'm saying.

They would have made more money if they first designed 5e for people unlike themselves.

For example design 5e to work with 10, 20, 30, or 50 round days. Or have core variants that let you swap all classes to shorter or longer days. That would make more money.

But they didn't. So there is no money in fixing it now.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Even if you justify it to yourself, the idea that millions of people would do it is ... questionable.

Millions?
Over a billion people smoke, even tho it's killing them.

Millions of people exercising the same bad judgement isn't questionable, unusual or even expected - it's inevitable.

IThe fact that many people enjoy playing fighters when wizards are present DOES disprove that wizards are broken

That really is rising to the level of fallacy there. It's one thing to assert popularity when talking markets or politics, it's another to assert it disproves ideas backed by objective analysis.

... and I still highly challenge the math behind the starting assumptions. Saying you've done THE math ignores that there are inherently hundreds of assumptions being made here

That's true, a simple analysis like that needs to narrow things down a great deal.
It happens those assumptions ignore the vast majority of what a wizard brings to the party to focus instead on the 5e fighter's primary (nearly only) function.

 

[Minigiant]

I agree with you. You are correct.

Can I please state one caveat? There are optional rules already in existence. Rules published in the DMG. But since people either: A) Don't read the rulebook, B) Think the optional rule doesn't align with their players' mentality towards the game, or C) Believe they can build a better ruleset to match their table's playstyle, thus adding house rules - there will be a tug-of-war.

I mean, since we are on the discussion for resting, look at the DMG rules for optional rests. They exist, yet everyone wants the default to match their table's playstyle. They may act like it's not there. They may not like any of it. They may disregard the fact that they can house-rule it. But, people don't pay attention to the optional rules for precisely the reason people argue against rule changes - because the norm becomes what is expected at almost every table. Hence, optional rules can work, but most of the time they don't.

The optional rules for rests are BAD because they still use the same ratios between short and long rest in the class design.

There should have been rules to:

1. turn short rest classes into long rest classes
2. turn long rests classes into short rest classes
3. turn all classes into very long rest classes (megadungeon mode)

So for tables that have X encounters a day, the DM converts all the classes to have their resources to their style.

WOTC recognized this and their to make the default all classes long rest base in a playtest. It flopped.
Because
A the classes were designed for their original 2014 rest type.
B People enjoyed having access to the 2014 rest type classes
C There still are no rules to do 1, 2, or 3.

 

[Sacrosanct]

The popularity argument loses to the lack of options.

Fighters have a monopoly of a popular archetype and many sub-archetypes.

If I want to play a master swordsman, there is only one class that provides that. Even if the fighter had no class features, it would be the only class I could choose to play that character.

Wait. I’ve been hearing over and over how fighters suck because there’s nothing they can do that every other class can. And now you’re saying people choose fighters because they are the only ones to do certain archetypes?

Which is it?

 

[Mort]

I don't you understood what I'm saying.

They would have made more money if they first designed 5e for people unlike themselves.

For example design 5e to work with 10, 20, 30, or 50 round days. Or have core variants that let you swap all classes to shorter or longer days. That would make more money.

But they didn't. So there is no money in fixing it now.

5e has made more money than any edition of D&D ever, it's still making gobs of money. Saying they would have made EVEN MORE money if they'd just done X (which happens to align with "my" tastes) is pure unsupportable hubris.

There is a reason they abandoned modular design (which is essentially what you are advocating for) - and the decision (though I personally am sad about it) seems to be working quite well for them.

 

[Minigiant]

5e has made more money than any edition of D&D ever, it's still making gobs of money. Saying they would have made EVEN MORE money if they'd just done X (which happens to align with "my" tastes) is pure unsupportable hubris.

There is a reason they abandoned modular design (which is essentially what you are advocating for) - and the decision (though I personally am sad about it) seems to be working quite well for them.

Hubris nothing.

If the DMG has a Long rest optional version of the Fighter, Monk, and Warlock, it sells more copies.

They didn't think of it. Likely because the DMG was rushed and the designers themselves had no need for a long rest version for those classes.

 

[overgeeked]

The core issue is that 5e was designed around having ~25-35 rounds of combat per long rest. 5e was designed around long dungeon crawls.

A huge chunk, maybe even a majority of tables, don't do that many rounds pr LR regularly nor average around that. Heck the SR pr LR numbers are all over the place.

So the math assumptions when designing the game was off.

Exactly. People can still have fun playing against the assumed math of the game. Hell, I’d argue that’s one reason it is so popular. The PCs just win so damned always they have a blast. Which is fine. But it still sucks playing classes that are constantly outshined in what is supposed to be their area if expertise.

The devs can win. Make it even more explicit how the game was designed and where the balance point of the math is.

The devs can also win by changing the balance point of the game. Switch from per day balance to per encounter balance. Or explicitly buff the martials and rein in the casters somewhat.