D&D General Wizard vs Fighter - the math

[Tony Vargas]

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

A lot goes into marketing and commercial success.

Properties like D&D that have mainstream name recognition but very low adoption and a highly opinionated fan base with some extremely vocal/strident members need to walk a tightrope between apealing to the mainstream and appeasing the most extreme fans, because that fringe of the fan base becomes, for the newb exploring the IP's internet rabbit hole, the face of the fandom and thus, the property.

Yes, any such project could be much more successful if tuned to mainstream sensibilities. As long as the fandom remains complacent and welcoming. If even a sliver of the base turn toxic, the entire fandom, and franchise becomes much less appealing to the mainstream.

Star Trek and the MCU are examples of franchises doing that very successfully. Transformers had a rougher time of it.

D&D went through that, and while accidents of timing and industry politics and less publicly known considerations likely had a lot to do with it, 5e did walk that tightrope successfully.

 

[Minigiant]

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?

I, Minigiant, have always said the latter.

If I want to make a master of weapons and armor, there is only one class for it.
If I want to be a robe wearing spellcaster who masters spells, there are 5 classes to choose. No, 6.

 

[payn]

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.

While I do lament the lack of modularity that was left out during NEXT, I'm not sure how exactly you are making this conclusion.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

There is no winning for WotC here.

Yes, there is.

Believe it or not, there are games out there, general games, which embrace a wide variety of play styles and methods, where the optimal choice is to do what the rules were designed to do. Where the smart choice is, in fact, in keeping with the intended choice.

These excuses simply let WotC continue to coast on "well that problem is totally insoluble so we just have to accept it." No, we don't. We do not have to accept such shoddy game design. It can be better. There are many alternatives. It simply is not true that the only ways are "uselessly broken because the rules expect you to do things that are frustrating and self-limiting without reason beyond 'it makes the game better, pinky swear'" and "absolutely no choices whatsoever, if you don't play this one very specific way nothing works."

I find it so funny how when an argument is based on theory, folks are told "white room, white room," get that theory out of here, we gotta talk about REAL games with REAL players. But when you bring in actual real data? "Those are just rare exceptions. If people would just follow the rules, and almost everyone does, everythig would be perfect."

It's a beautiful "heads I win, tails you lose" argument. Theory is unrealistic and therefore can be dismissed. Actual demonstrations are too specific and can therefore be dismissed. Comments directly from the designers are somehow misinterpreted or misdirected or mistaken or whatever, and can therefore be dismissed.

The position is unassailable because no argument is allowed to be discussed or examined. Theory is dismissed for being evidence-free. Practice is dismissed with evidence-free appeals to a silent majority. Actual data collected and stared by the devs themselves is dismissed because...I'm not even sure why.

It's absolutely infuriating. And folk wonder why I say it is impossible to criticize 5e.

 

[Oofta]

Yes, there is.

Believe it or not, there are games out there, general games, which embrace a wide variety of play styles and methods, where the optimal choice is to do what the rules were designed to do. Where the smart choice is, in fact, in keeping with the intended choice.

These excuses simply let WotC continue to coast on "well that problem is totally insoluble so we just have to accept it." No, we don't. We do not have to accept such shoddy game design. It can be better. There are many alternatives. It simply is not true that the only ways are "uselessly broken because the rules expect you to do things that are frustrating and self-limiting without reason beyond 'it makes the game better, pinky swear'" and "absolutely no choices whatsoever, if you don't play this one very specific way nothing works."

I find it so funny how when an argument is based on theory, folks are told "white room, white room," get that theory out of here, we gotta talk about REAL games with REAL players. But when you bring in actual real data? "Those are just rare exceptions. If people would just follow the rules, and almost everyone does, everythig would be perfect."

It's a beautiful "heads I win, tails you lose" argument. Theory is unrealistic and therefore can be dismissed. Actual demonstrations are too specific and can therefore be dismissed. Comments directly from the designers are somehow misinterpreted or misdirected or mistaken or whatever, and can therefore be dismissed.

The position is unassailable because no argument is allowed to be discussed or examined. Theory is dismissed for being evidence-free. Practice is dismissed with evidence-free appeals to a silent majority. Actual data collected and stared by the devs themselves is dismissed because...I'm not even sure why.

It's absolutely infuriating. And folk wonder why I say it is impossible to criticize 5e.

You do nothing but criticize 5E, so obviously it's quite possible. Expecting everyone to just automatically agree with you? On what planet will that ever be the case?

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Yes, and this is about what the designers expect to see based on their playtesting: 6-8 combat encounters lasting 2-3 rounds, breaking a bell curve from 12 to 32

Frankly, I don’t even believe that’s actually true. They outright stated when the 6-8 encounters convo first became significant in online circles that not all of those encounters should be combat encounters. I think, but can’t recall with certainty, that they also indicated that half that many much more difficult encounters will also be just as balanced, and the 6-8 thing is a math guideline much like damage by spell level. Damage by spell level is likewise not something they actually stick to or feel beholden to or strictly balance the game around.

It’s a math guidepost that gives them (and homebrewers) a good starting point to work from when designing monsters, encounters, and PC options.

Unlike 3E, in 5E the fighters in every game I've ever played the fighters have never felt pointless.

Yeah 3e was bad with that if caster players optimized at all. In 5e the difference between optimized and casual/average is just not that great, and every class, even the weaker ones, performs great as long as the player doesn’t have a DPR-tracking, “I can’t do that so clearly my PC is useless” kind of mindset.

If a wizard doesn't optimise his damage output, encounters will be harder.

But I agree that the fighter needs a boost. Especially in the AoE Department. That's his combat weak spot.

I think that wizards contribute just fine with damage or control, but control IME contributes to a teamwork mindset more, because often control needs someone else to murder the enemy while it’s controlled.

Right. And the wizard used doesn't even have a subclass. It's hilarious. An optimized fighter still does less damage than a suboptimal wizard. The wizard has no business focusing on damage because their non-damaging spells are where the majority of their game breaking shenanigans come from...and the wizard still out damages the fighter. LOL. As said earlier in this thread and in others, even with mathematical proof, some people will still just shut their eyes, put their fingers in their ears, and refuse to accept it.

The numbers show that fighters do more damage under some circumstances while wizards do more under the opposite circumstances.

Your insulting characterization of fellow forumers is wildly off-base.

Yes, it is Class neutral. If you push the Encoutners as suggested, you will see even-keel results.

Meh, you’ll see even-keeled results as long as your adventuring days have roughly the same amount of encounter XP as 6-8 easy-moderate encounters.

The answer IMO is to give fighters area attacks. One idea I like from OSR is to give fighters bonus attacks against enemies below a certain Hit Dice threshold, which rises as the fighter levels up. Allows fighters to play into cinematic choreography of a warrior taking out three chumps with a single swing.

Probably best do either use saving throws, or compare one attack roll against all affected enemies’ AC, but yeah I think that’s a very important component of making the fighter stand alongside the wizard (or more powerful full casters, which is most of them) without making them supernatural.

 

[Oofta]

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.

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.

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.

So doubling down on "people who play fighters are just dumb because they don't agree with me"?

No hubris here, nosiree.

 

[Tony Vargas]

There is no winning for WotC here.

WotC:

 

[Crimson Longinus]

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.

True. Making gritty rests the default would fix most of that though.

 

[soviet]

I suggest that most people who choose to play fighters (in any edition) do so because fighters as an archetype are cool. It's not because they've made a cost-benefit analysis of the mechanics you get and decided 'this will be an effective and fun packet of abilities with which to engage the game'.

I have made that analysis (superficially) and I still play a fighter because fighters as an archetype are cool. However, now that we are at level 16, the gulf between my fighter and my friend's cleric is becoming unignorable.

I further suggest that a lot of campaigns i) don't really follow the rules super closely and ii) never progress to double digit levels where the issues with fighters become more apparent.