D&D General Wizard vs Fighter - the math

[KoolMoDaddy-O]

Having played a fighter and a wizard back-to-back this largely jibes with my experience and why I regard the so-called "disparity" with a good deal of side-eye. As a fighter at around level 10 I was dealing at least 50+ hp of damage to an enemy even with unlucky damage rolls whereas with a wizard I'm dealing 24-28 against a single target, less if they make their save. The difference is the wizard can deal that same damage to multiple targets at once. The disparity exists but it's conditional on whether you're fighting a single boss or a crowd of mooks.

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.

 

[overgeeked]

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.

That was in older editions of D&D. It's not new with the OSR.

 

[Tony Vargas]

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.

It's not like it's hasn't been done in most other editions. TSR era, the fighter got one attack per level, vs less than 1 HD enemies - that was pretty trivial, really, but it was like an AE, in that you could kill just as many of 'em as you could reach. 3e had Great Cleave (by 4th) and WWA (6th or 8th), the former was predicated on hitting every time, and neither let you move in the middle of it, but the latter was an AE in all but name (and could even be read as qualifying to do full damage to swarms), which could be combined with Reach weapons for a larger AE. 4e gave fighters, and martials in general, some AEs, mostly close burst 1 (every adjacent enemy, reach doesn't help) or close blasts(with a ranged weapon, but only 15 or 25' out), what kept it interesting was they were encounter or daily martial exploits, so you didn't just refuse to move and full attack for your great cleave or WWA every round, there was some thought & interest to what you did each round. 5e weirdly locked up WWA as a Tier 3 Ranger thang, and might bring back Cleave (no Great) as a weapon mastery - that's pretty sad.

 

[OB1]

Once I get thru my first playthru of BG3, I plan to try an all wizard party just to see if I can make it to 3rd level.

 

[Tonguez]

It's not like it's hasn't been done in most other editions. TSR era, the fighter got one attack per level, vs less than 1 HD enemies - that was pretty trivial, really, but it was like an AE, in that you could kill just as many of 'em as you could reach. 3e had Great Cleave (by 4th) and WWA (6th or 8th), the former was predicated on hitting every time, and neither let you move in the middle of it, but the latter was an AE in all but name (and could even be read as qualifying to do full damage to swarms), which could be combined with Reach weapons for a larger AE. 4e gave fighters, and martials in general, some AEs, mostly close burst 1 (every adjacent enemy, reach doesn't help) or close blasts(with a ranged weapon, but only 15 or 25' out), what kept it interesting was they were encounter or daily martial exploits, so you didn't just refuse to move and full attack for your great cleave or WWA every round, there was some thought & interest to what you did each round. 5e weirdly locked up WWA as a Tier 3 Ranger thang, and might bring back Cleave (no Great) as a weapon mastery - that's pretty sad.

Okay what is WWA?

 

[Tony Vargas]

Sorry, "Whirlwind Attack!"

(ya gotta picture the fighter yelling that as he attacks everyone in reach, like he's in some cheesy anime or something)

 

[NotAYakk]

Still pretty terrible unless we get real combat healing.

Why do you need "real combat healing" or what it has to do with things here?

In-combat healing is completely irrelevant to using gritty-style rests or not in my opinion.

I like that healing is difficult in combat in 5e. It makes how many HP you have matter. (and if you are talking about whack-a-mole healing, once you hit 0 you are at the mercy of the DM; whack-a-mole being a viable strategy is just a function of the DM deciding to pull punches at 0 HP and not before).

The point of the "gritty rest" description is that you can get 90+ combat turns in a natural way.

So long as "long rest" resources are considered "per adventuring chapter" resources. As a wizard, those are your spells until the adventuring chapter is done. You'll solve some problem, the game world will change, and THEN you'll have a chance to get your spells back during downtime.

If you decide to go off and do downtime in the middle of an adventure, well, you miss the adventure. The world moves on, and whatever problem you are working on resolves itself. It is as if you responded to a murder mystery by "I leave town" - it is an option, you are opting out of the adventure.

With short rests being overnight, again, saying "I recover by going to bed" is a reasonable response to a stressful situation. If there is some set of tied events -- the crown jewels have been stolen and the burglar is escaping, or you just killed the guards at the cult's back door -- taking a night's rest will have obvious in-world consequences.

OTOH, healing up makes lots of sense.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Why do you need "real combat healing" or what it has to do with things here?

In-combat healing is completely irrelevant to using gritty-style rests or not in my opinion.

Because if you take away short rests during the day, you don't get actual healing and it just makes everything a slog through dwindling HP.

I like that healing is difficult in combat in 5e. It makes how many HP you have matter. (and if you are talking about whack-a-mole healing, once you hit 0 you are at the mercy of the DM; whack-a-mole being a viable strategy is just a function of the DM deciding to pull punches at 0 HP and not before).

Yeah, I don't want players 'at my mercy'. I want a fair, non-adversarial game. I don't need HP to 'matter'. I don't need attrition. I need HP to serve their purpose as a dramatic counter for how long a character can keep up a given fight.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Hit points absolutely do matter (unless the enemy has some nasty SoDs, oh, or ability damage in 3e). In-combat healing being as bad as it is in 5e just means healers only matter for whack-a-mole purposes, and if you determine that's a bad strategy, it's the lives of the melee types that don't matter (you could always conjuration/summoning some more with those slots you saved by not pointlessly healing them).
Being able to use a limited resource to keep allies up and fighting does not make their hp stop mattering, the fewer their hp, the more of those resources you'll go through.

 

[jgsugden]

Doesn't all of this just get washed out by 1 simple question: Can players have fun playing each and every class in D&D? From personal experience, I can confirm the answer is Yes.

Further, I can confirm that a PC of every class can have moments to shine, and can do interesting and evocative things in the game. I can also confirm that there are multiple ways to build and play each class.

All in all, regardless of the DPR calculations, the control capabilities - they all work. We have people that absolutely love their PC in each of these classes. They've all been played in really ramped up difficulty games, and they've all been played in story heavy games. The only flubs I see that are things that I think should be addressed:

1.) The nonmagical classes ned more augmented abilities to use out of combat.
2.) We need psions/pswychic warriors.
3.) I'd like to see a science/steampunk driven official class.