D&D General Wizard vs Fighter - the math

[Crimson Longinus]

Yeah, it is a feature and a bug. Because it puts you again in a binary win/loose state.
The problem with the Long Rest as of today, no matter the normal or the gritty one, is that it regenerates 100% of all of your ressources (Except hit dice, that never get used up anyway) no matter how many ressources you had left at the end of the adventuring day.
That makes going Nova a valid strategy. You don't need to preserve your ressources when you get all of them back no matter what.
But when you only get 10 to 30% of your ressources back during a long rest, first of all, 1 or 2 encounters a day are suddenly enough for ressource attrition to happen and players suddenly need to preserve their ressource. Because when you only get 20% back, it matters if you start your rest with 80% or 5% of your ressources.
A long rest system that only gives back 10 to 30% of your ressources per day also allows for more dynamic campaigns in comparison to the gritty realism rules.
If you are low on ressources, you now have a choice. You can rest some to get a little back to push on. You can rest several days, but risk that the enemy gets more preparation time or ambushes you or doing other proactive stuff.
You add strategic depth to the game.

The biggest Design mistake of D&D 5e is the 100% Ressource Regeneration after a long rest. It is also the most verisimilitude breaking thing in the game, even before fall damage.

Yeah, not really disagreeing with that. Incremental resource recovery would be preferable.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Yeah they do. The point is to stop Nova.

What?

Players have varying types of adventures.

1. Sometimes they have 1 fight the day. When some random monster attacks
2. Sometimes they have 2 fights a day when a friend gets robbed then the gang shows up.
3. Sometimes they have 3 fights a day in a hideout siege
4. Sometimes they have 4 fights a day in a short adventure

Sure.

1. Sometimes they have 6 fights a day
2. in a dungeon
3. Sometimes they have 8 fights a day in a dungeon
4. Sometimes they have 15 fights a day in a mega dungeon

Do they though? For reals? Fifteen fights? Haven't seen it, perhaps someone has.

Only in 5-8 are wizards balance. Maybe 4 if it's all deadly fights

I think it was 3 deadly? I believe someone mathed it earlier. In any case, you can easily go way above deadly too.

Changing rest locks your day into one type of adventure. Only 1-3 likely.

First, I think it is unlikely that same group of players will have massive variance in encounter amount. And even if they did, why would it be a problem? Yes, with two encounters per long rest the wizard would have an advantage and in 15 encounters per rest situation the fighter would have an advantage. But if you have both, it balances out. Just set the rests appropriate for your average amount, but it is fine if you occasionally don't hit that average.

 

[M_Natas]

Yeah they do. The point is to stop Nova.



I don't think you get it.

Players have varying types of adventures.

1. Sometimes they have 1 fight the day. When some random monster attacks
2. Sometimes they have 2 fights a day when a friend gets robbed then the gang shows up.
3. Sometimes they have 3 fights a day in a hideout siege
4. Sometimes they have 4 fights a day in a short adventure
5. Sometimes they have 6 fights a day
6. in a dungeon
7. Sometimes they have 8 fights a day in a dungeon
8. Sometimes they have 15 fights a day in a mega dungeon

Only in 5-8 are wizards balance. Maybe 4 if it's all deadly fights

Changing rest locks your day into one type of adventure. Only 1-3 likely.

Having Gradual rest recovery would fix that. When the party is at a 100%, they can have all the fights a party can have now (lets say maximum of 10 Medium encounters). After they deplete their ressources in this mega dungeon day, they regenerate enough ressources per long rest to get going for two more encounters (on average). If they rest two times, they can fight 4 medium encounters and so one.
A Gradual Long Rest system allows for adventuring days that are 6 to 8 encounters or just one encounter.

When we also give the DM the tools to increase the endurance of the party (like with healing and Mana potions) he can balance harder difficulties with giving out more Healing and Mana potions so a mega dungeon crawl can be sustainable.

My Gradual Gritty Rest system in the other thread as a default regenrates between 15 to 25% of HP at lower levels and at higher levels 20 to 33%. For casters at levels 1 and 2 the spellslots regenerate 50% per long rest, which goes down to 33% at levels 3 to 5 and then down to 20 to 25% at levels 6+. So at higher levels HD regenerates faster than spellslots, making martials better, and boosting casters at levels 1 and 2, where they are at their weakest ...

And the DM is given 2 tools to adjust the regeneration rate: resting conditions and Potions. The Resting conditions adjust the regeneration rate to be slower or faster. In Squalid conditions the long rest only regenerates 8% to 20% of HD, in wretched conditions it can even stop regeneration for Characters with low Constituion modifiers. Comfortable or better conditions quicken the regeneration of class ressources, so if you rest like a aristocrat, you can replenish 50 to 100% of your ressources.

So a Gradual system that gives the DM tools to adjust can handle every amount of encounters per day (if you go crazy with healing and Mana potions you can have dozens, hundreds of encounters! per day!)

 

[M_Natas]

Well, if I may, let me give what I remember of two skill challenges I played in one of my favorite 4e campaigns.

For the first, the party had infiltrated an ancient, long-sealed underwater research base from an extinct civilization.

Spoiler: Skill Challenge 1

That research base was under attack by gigantic kaiju creatures from the outside, and we needed to figure out a way to save the base, while also reviving someone in the party who had died. So we split up; my character went off with a friend to lead the base's soldiers (he was of the same species, but recovered from a stasis box on a different planet, so the soldiers recognized him as "leader"), while the shaman dronesmith and wizard/cleric worked with the ancient healing machines to revive our bard cyber-augmented commando.

The Wizard/Cleric succeeded at reviving our augmented friend, after almost telling the machine to reformat her instead (used a reflavored Deva's past-life memories power to improve the roll.) Now she could help out.
The Dronesmith attempted to reactivate the external defenses of the base, but failed; this meant she had drawn power away from the structural integrity fields, meaning future damage would be more severe (accelerating the end of the challenge.)
I attempted to activate mobility controls to try to escape (because the upper parts of the base could detach and move), but these controls were foreign to me. This drew the kaiju attacks to critical system areas.
I don't remember what specifically commando lady tried to do, but that also failed--which meant we failed the skill challenge. The base was destroyed...

...and as a result, we woke up INSIDE a kaiju that had eaten us! We then had to fight our way out against a gaggle of enemy agents whose ship had been swallowed whole; we eventually defeated them, stole their awesome ship, and then began the next phase of the campaign.

For the second skill challenge, we started off by trying to negotiate with a businessman to come with us, over the objections of his security staff.

Spoiler: Skill Challenge 2

Our dronesmith presented technological secrets (without full explanations, just the tantalizing intro) which we only knew because of where we'd gone, which impressed him enough to keep paying attention. He knew we weren't whistling Dixie--this was real, but was it safe?
I then squarely looked at him, and vowed that our offer was exclusively (a) because we truly had something worthy of his attention, and (b) trying to be in his best interest, to the best of our knowledge. I presented this with sufficient earnestness that the DM gave an automatic success--no need to roll Diplomacy. (It pays to be a straight shooter sometimes!)
At this point, he is on board with joining us--but now his own security detail turns against him, and the skill challenge blended in combat-like elements (meaning, we had to consider safety). Our cyber-commando, having been a bit of a poster girl for her former employer, is a dab hand at dangerous rescues (they make great PR material), so she coordinated our escape.
The Dronesmith tried to set up a distraction, but her drones were too obvious popping in from phase space, so the enemy knew they weren't the correct target--allowing them to move toward our intended exit.
Finally, our Barbarian (who had replaced the Ranger that dropped out) boldly struck out ahead of the group, causing our opponents to trigger their trap early, before they were fully ready, allowing us to slip through the opening albeit with a bit of damage taken (successful roll, but had to spend a healing surge.)

This meant we got out of the restaurant area with our businessman intact, respecting us, and having very good reasons not to want to leave our protection until he was certain it would be safe. Unlike the previous, we not only succeeded, but did so with only a single failed roll.

The big thing with both of these SCs is that each roll, success or fail, contributes something to the future state of play. The simplest example of this is the stereotypical "street chase scene" SC: each successful or failed roll leads to some specific development in the chase, losing ground, suffering a setback, having to re-locate the enemy, etc.

The second major thing is, don't just make the results a hard binary pass/fail. The overall ultimate goal can still be binary (e.g. you catch the bad guy or you don't; you protect the base or you don't; you persuade/protect the CEO or you don't), but the nature of the success/failure can be flexible. With the chase scene example, you might fail to catch the person, but if you only barely fail (e.g. you nearly get enough successes to pass), you now know where their secret hideout is--or, at least, what building it's in. Conversely, if you succeed but only by the skin of your teeth, maybe you do catch the person, but they were able to pass a message to their superiors.

Making those two tweaks to the Skill Challenge process turns them from potentially very dry, dull affairs to things that genuinely feel tense and dramatic. It also means that who goes when matters a lot more--it might be the case that a later complication would have been easier to address for a character that has already participated.

I mean, both things sound exciting - but while reading it it didn't read like a skill challenges, but just as some things that happen simultaneously at the table where you influenced the environment and did things that where "guarded" behind skill checks.
The chase example is.more straight forward - but is that, mechanically speaking, all that there is to a skill challenge?
Several skill checks to achieve one goal, where each skillcheck leads to a partial success or setback?
And the bigger scenes you described are just several skill checks entangled, that the party needs to solve simultaneously?

 

[Minigiant]

What

The whole imbalance is wizards can Nova in small encounters days.
Fighters can't.

Do they though? For reals? Fifteen fights? Haven't seen it, perhaps someone has

I just escaped like a 20 fight dungeon a few weeks ago. Granted level 12 and guzzling potions.

First, I think it is unlikely that same group of players will have massive variance in encounter amount. And even if they did, why would it be a problem? Yes, with two encounters per long rest the wizard would have an advantage and in 15 encounters per rest situation the fighter would have an advantage. But if you have both, it balances out. Just set the rests appropriate for your average amount, but it is fine if you occasionally don't hit that average

You need to meet my baby cousin and his friends.

AKA "Screw your adventure unless women, shines, racism, or puppies." team.

1 fight Rest 4 fights Rest 2 fights Naw we good Rest.WHAT YOU CALL ME! 30 Fights Rest

 

[Crimson Longinus]

The whole imbalance is wizards can Nova in small encounters days.
Fighters can't.

Yes, but it is about the number of combat rounds, and harder encounters tend to take more rounds.

I just escaped like a 20 fight dungeon a few weeks ago. Granted level 12 and guzzling potions.

Sounds terrible.

You need to meet my baby cousin and his friends.

AKA "Screw your adventure unless women, shines, racism, or puppies." team.

1 fight Rest 4 fights Rest 2 fights Naw we good Rest.WHAT YOU CALL ME! 30 Fights Rest

I literally have no idea what you're talking about anymore.

 

[Minigiant]

I literally have no idea what you're talking about anymore

Sometimes you dungeon for 2 sessions. Sometimes no dungeons for 5 sessions.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Sometimes you dungeon for 2 sessions. Sometimes no dungeons for 5 sessions.

Sure. I did a two session dungeon in my campaign just recently. It had two fights on the first session, then a short rest, then tree more fights on the second session. There were also some traps on which they spent resources. But I don't understand these 15 or 20 fight dungeons. That would take bloody forever.

 

[M_Natas]

Sure. I did a two session dungeon in my campaign just recently. It had two fights on the first session, then a short rest, then tree more fights on the second session. There were also some traps on which they spent resources. But I don't understand these 15 or 20 fight dungeons. That would take bloody forever.

If you do wave encounters and count every wave as a fight that could go that high. But yeah, 15 to 20 fights a 3 rounds would feel very punishing. But if there are some one round fights in it go up tom20 to 25 battlerounds which is fine again.

 

[Oofta]

The issue is that '6-8 encounters a day' generally means a dungeon bash. Now I love a good dungeon bash. But particularly as you get to higher levels lots of sessions feature other things, like travel, diplomacy, mystery solving, and so on. So a lot of adventuring days might only feature one or two fights, but they are likely to be bigger ones with large groups of enemies or important plot points. The battle of attrition that 5e is balanced against doesn't come up and play more closely resembles a fantasy novel or movie.

So my thoughts on this are fairly simple. If you only have 1 or 2 fights per day? Of course casters are going to go nova on a regular basis. Whether I like this aspect of D&D or not, a 5 minute work day has pretty much always been a mistake regardless of edition. With 4E they sort of fixed that, but in a way that doesn't apply to 5E or other editions.

So I use the gritty rest rules, a short rest is overnight a long rest is a week or more. Further, long rests require actual downtime in someplace you can actually rest and relax. Even before I started doing that (and I do a lot of non-combat stuff in my game) I figured out how to have, shall we say, interesting days. Or even a couple of days with constant harassments.

That doesn't mean you need 6-8 encounters, but even at higher levels I try to have at least 4.

Our last adventuring day featured two encounters (we're at level 16 travelling through the Cairn Hills)

1. A battle against 25 sword wraiths, which was won by the casters spamming area effect spells and turn effects. My fighter did use a wand of lightning bolts to do some damage but I didn't get into melee at all - by the time they were close enough there were so few left that the casters could mop them up with cantrips and there was no benefit to me providing them with a melee target.

The setup:

• Sword Wraiths are CR 3 monsters with a sword or longbow attacks, they can make 2 attacks with advantage because of Martial Fury.
• I'm assuming the monsters closed for combat because turn undead was used which only has a range of 30 feet.
• Your fighter has no effective ranged attacks other than the wand of lightning bolt which is 100 feet.

Issues:

• The sword wraiths are not taking advantage of ranged attack. With martial fury they can attack with no penalty from 600 feet. Very few spells have that kind of range.
• As far as I can tell they were all approaching in a clump that enabled AOEs. Those kind of attacks are going to be incredibly effective against very low level opponents.
• The cleric has turn undead which at their level with destroy CR 3 undead if they're within 30 feet. Again, why are they getting within 30 feet?

Instead

• Have the sword wraiths show up in waves, approaching from all around.
• The first clump should have been using ranged attacks, from as far away as possible.
• Set up a situation where several are attacking the group from range, have other sword wraiths hiding under total cover to attack from multiple directions as the group closed in.
• Imagine this fight if some of the undead had attacked from a high position 600 feet away and lured the group into a position where they were flanked and attacked from all sides as they got close? Again, relying primarily on ranged attacks where possible only closing to melee when necessary.
• Not sure what the environment was but how are you having multiple rounds to spam AOEs? Have the fight take place in a forest, hilly terrain, ruins, anything other than a flat open field.
• As much as the numbers seem to indicate a tough fight, I rarely use monsters significantly lower in number unless I can set up a situation where the environment is set up to favor the monsters.
• The undead should have at least had a sword wraith commander leading them and strategizing.
• If this happened in the dark and you wanted them to use melee, darkvision only has a range of 60 feet. Have the sword wraiths move and dash to get within melee range of the party. Use their bonus action to attack at the end of their turn. Unless the casters are evokers, you are now completely surrounded by a mob and can't target the majority of them without also hitting allies. I'd still have several out at 60 feet pelting the group with arrows through the crowd.

1. An ambush from a house by a bunch of crossbow-wielding hobgoblins and two ettins. My fighter get into melee against the ettins, but a lot more damage was done by firestorms, blade barriers, and so on from the casters.

Hobgoblins are CR 1/2. Against level 16 PCs, they aren't much of a threat no matter how many you throw. Ettins? CR 4, also not much of a threat especially since there are only 2. How is this supposed to be a tough fight? Much of the same advice applies. Hobgoblins still have longbows, they should have been popping out of cover and firing only to move back out of line of sight and effect on their turn. Again, attack from all directions, etc.. The ettins? They have speed of 40 and should have just charged into the group and started pounding the casters.

The issues here are not specific to 5E. In any edition of D&D, casters and PCs with good ranged attacks would have dominated these fight. It has nothing to do with 5E. Especially if you have a 5MWD.

The only house rule I have that would have modified this? Longbows are versatile in my game so the strength based fighter types have a decent ranged attack option. Other than that it's an issue of 1-2 fights per day, setting up enemies to be decimated at a distance by AOEs, and using really, really low level monsters compared to the PCs.

I think I could have made either fight difficult through use of decent tactics and environment, but I rarely use D&D as a mass combat simulator, especially at higher levels.

Even with a minimum of 4 fights, my fights are more difficult. A typical randomly selected fight against my 6 person level 16 group had a Storm Giant Quintessent (CR 16 legendary) and 3 Fire Giants (CR 9). I set it up so the fight started in relatively close quarters so the fire giants could chuck boulders (60 foot range) while closing the first round. The cloud giant was legendary but I left off the lair actions, it was a tough enough fight as it was.

Your DM needs to upgrade tactics and/or start using high level monsters.