Micah Sweet
Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
You're right, of course. Most people probably don't. That's why I always sponsor 3pp and alternative games for those like me who aren't getting what they want from WotC.
D&D General Wizard vs Fighter - the math
- Thread starter M_Natas
- Start date
The changes people want aren't dramatic.
BUT
They would affect backwards compatibility
That's the issue.
Giving Fighters, Monks, and Barbarians the ability to Nova and have OOC power, Warlocks more spells, and Bard and Sorcerers more uniqueness is easy and simple.
It however makes books older than MOTM not compatible and... dun dun dun.... require errata.
Your definition of dramatic changes and mine are quite different.
Crimson Longinus
Legend
Whilst having diegetic explanation of varying rest rules is clever, and destroying enemy altars is a fun idea, I am not sure how these rules actually address the issue.
Giving arcane recovery to all casters is a big buff for them. As that presumably doesn't cost HD, it is probably better than recovering short rest features via HD. Granted, if long rests are frequent enough HD cease to be a reasonable limiter, and especially at higher level such features become effectively at-will. How useful this is depends on the class, some have more powerful short rest features than others. I'd suspect this would skew martial class balance in favour of the fighter, as Action Surge is so much better than anything the other classes get.
To me the rest system would seem mostly favour casters. In a city with access to a temple or other thing with epic rest they could spam their utility spells with utter impunity. Biggest limit to casters seem to be some areas using gritty rests, which was my suggestion to begin with and you rejected it.
The thing that favours martials is the guns, though that obviously favours shooting over melee, and I'm not sure the game needs any encouragement to dump strength in favour of dex.
How does this play in practice? How many encounters there are between rests? Or is the intent that the characters effectively never run out of resources and can nova constantly?
(EDIT: edited to add some more thoughts.)
Last edited:
Aldarc
Legend
One limitation that I would potentially playtest would be with changing the rules for spell memorization. As is, wizards have a number of spells prepared equal to their level plus Intelligence modifier. So presumably a level 20 Wizard can prepare 25 spells (20 + 5 Mod). It doesn’t matter what level the spell is; it takes up one prepared spell. But what if the spell level mattered? What if preparing a level 5 spell takes up 5 of those 25 prepared slots?
The point is that there can be variable amount of encounters.
The party can be in the city with a very high LML temple and fight once, long rest, fight once, long rest, fight once, long rest, fight once, long rest. Because people in cities tend to not have fights everyday. A scuffle at the bar. Mugging in an alley. Haggling with important folk. Chasing a thief.
In smaller towns,they might group to 4-5 encounters dealing with a criminal gang, some raiding bandits, a wandering necromancer.
In the wilds outside towns and in dungeons, it goes back to normal LML and has 6-8 encounters per long rest unless they find a sanctuary or shrine.
In the distant wilds, Underdark, hostile planes, or megadungeons, the party can has went up to 30 encounters before getting rest. Shadowfell was a doozy. They had to make friends with the shadar-kai to get heals and scrolls.
Crimson Longinus
Legend
Yes, but I don't see how the first or the last are desirable state of affairs. I also don't understand how this avoids the players just being overtly cautious in low LML areas like you said happened with the gritty rests. Now it just is easier for them to do so, as they can withdraw to higher LMW area to quick-rest.
The first and last are natural states.
It's about being natural.
People in urban areas don't fight every day. They can rest after every fight they usually have. So urban areas are giving high or very high LML to match the fight Rest fight Rest state found in safe areas.
Whereas megadungeons and wilderness treks are supposed to match longer grittier adventures where getting to civilization is hard and finding shelter is a boon. So those areas are low magic level with pockets of higher magic level under control of potential allies.
Epic Heroism makes sense in cities.
Gritty Realism makes sense in the frontier and megadungeons.
Regular Rest make sense in normal size dungeons.
So that's the rule.
When you're in the city you have epic heroism rest.
When you're in the dungeon you have normal rest.
When you in the frontier you have gritty realism rest.
Crimson Longinus
Legend
This doesn't make much sense to me game-wise. To balance thing it should be exactly the reverse. Areas with less encounters should have fewer rests, not more and vice versa. You have created a system that intentionally exacerbates imbalance. Which would be fine, except it is weird as you seem to be super concerned about balance...
M_Natas
Hero
The 35 rounds of offense seems quite a lot. Based on my calculations in the first Post in this thread, at 18 rounds a Fighter and Wizard are somewhat equal. With 36 rounds, the fighter will do twice the damage a wizard will do, if the wizard would use all his Spell slots to do use the highest single round damaging spells.
Like, on Level 1 a Wizard has 2 (with arcane recovery) 3 attacks in between Long Rest where he will do on average more damage than a fighter in a round of offense. After that he is reduced to his cantrips and the fighter will out damage him.
On Level 5 a Wizard has will do even with his highest spellslots on average less single target damage than a fighter. Only with AOE Spells will he do more damage to multiple Targets than a fighter could (on average).
On Level 10 a Wizard can do more single target damage with his two highest spell slot categories, so 6 Spell (3 level 5 and 3 level 4 spells) than a Fighter (on average). After that he is behind on single target damage.
At Level 15, his level 7, 6 and 5 Spellslots will do more single target damage. That are 5 Spellslots. After that he will be again behind the single target damage of the Fighter.
At Level 20, only his Level 8 and 9 Spell slots (2 Slots) will out damage on average the fighter on single target damage. After that he will fall behind.
Thats what also my Post shows with which I started this thread:
With a single Target, Fighter and Wizard are equally good even with only 9 Battle Rounds. And with multiple enemies in one battle, you are good with 18 battle rounds.
Because for battle, actually only the highest spell slots count for dealing damage, or they get ineffective.
At the higher Levels (11+), Cantrips replace Level 1 (and from Level 17 on) Level 2 spells as Damage dealing spells.
So a Wizard has actually only 3 to 6 Spellslots with which he can do more damage than a fighter on any levels. If we account for arcane recovery, he has 1 to 2 more spellslots that will out damage a fighter.
_______________________________________________________________
But I agree on one thing:
Changing just the duration of how long it takes to get the benefits of a long rest will not change much, if you just get 100% resource recovery.
The big problem is the 100% recovery, no matter the amount of resources you had before the rest.
Because it really doesn't matter if you have an all fighter or all wizard party: When they just rest after every fight and get a 100% HP and Spellslots after each rest, the encounter math breaks down. You would need at least double deadly encounters according to the DMG to be a meaningful challenge.
The next big issue is, that against a single target, Wizard and Fighter are very well-balanced unless you really go down to one fight (three battle rounds) between long rests.
But except for creatures with legendary actions and lair actions, fights against a single monster are not the norm.
I think 4e did that better. They assumed a standard fight would be 1 Character vs. 1 Monster and balanced accordingly.
5e is balance 4 vs. 1 and breaks quickly down when you have 4 vs. 2 or 4 vs. 4, especially when you follow the DMG guidelines and making 4 vs. 4 fights even easier.
My whole caculations of Fighter vs. Wizard started, because I'm building my own Monster Creator, that I tried to based on a 1 vs 1. Thats why I calculated the Fighter and Wizard damage Output in the first place (and use the average between these two as a basis for my Monster Creator).
And I think it works okay so far. When I put in that I want 1 Monster vs 4 Characters (Boss Monster) I come close to the DMG 5e Quick Monster Stats for Creating Monsters.
It also tells me more about these quick stat assumptions.
Like according to the DMG, a CR 1 Monster has between 71 and 85 HP, 13 AC, +3 to attack and deals on average 9 to 14 damage on a hit.
In order to get that stats in with my monster creator, I had to wiggle a litte. According to my creater, such a monster would be a hard encounter. It would on average take 4 characters 4 rounds to defeat that monster and the damage output of 9 would be hard, of 14 would be more than deadly.
What I found, if I go by CR = one creature of that Level vs a Party of 4 of that Level, that at the first levels, the battle will be around 4 rounds and hard to deadly, at higher levels it will be easy and two rounds of battle if I follow the DMG Creature Creation Guidelines.
Similar Threads
