D&D General Wizard vs Fighter - the math

[Tony Vargas]

I'm sure it must feel convenient to end every session on a rest, especially a long rest, as it eliminates bookeeping carrying over from a prior session. An enounter-based game... like the last edition of Gamma World came close to being, would also do that, and would be easier to balance.

Back in the day, presumably because I was younger and less responsible, I'd play 6, 8 or more hours at a time. Even when I got back together with members of my old college gaming club, we'd play 8 hour sessions, and the local con wouldn't even take ab RPG proposal of 'only' 4 hrs until 2015. When I played Encounters I was struck by how very short the sessions were meant to be.

Still, a short session time window is no reason not to have a long day in-character.

 

[Oofta]

This isn't just a narrative problem, it's a physical IRL time problem. By level 7, nearly every PC has multiple things to do on every turn. Resolving 5 PCs and 5 Mobs turns can easily take 7 to 10 minutes. So completing even 18 rounds of combat is going to require 2 to 3 hours of IRL time combat. And that's if we're doing things fast.

But things can go really slow. Just look at a Monk burning some ki points.

1. 2 Attacks, each with a Stunning Strike
2. Flurry of blows for two bonus attacks and Way of the Open Hand forcing saves

Resolving such a Monk round requires up to 8 sequential rolls of the d20 (attack/save, attack/save, ...). What's worse, each roll depends on the roll before it. You can't roll your second attack until you know if the Stun worked. Your second Flurry attack may be improved if the target fails, etc.

There's just no way to resolve such a round in an IRL minute. So completing 18 rounds of combat requires hours of combat and sucks up entire sessions.

You can resolve some of the issues, it's just that most players don't. I have matching multicolored dice so if, for example I'm playing a monk I can roll all my dice at once. So for example I have black, blue and white dice set and when it comes to my turn (or when it's obvious what the state of the game is going to be) I roll all the dice at once. The black die is always my primary attack, blue is either the first flurry attack or my bonus action attack. I even have semi-translucent and opaque dice of the same colors so if I have advantage/disadvantage on my turn I can roll those as well.

In any case my turns are typically resolved in a minute or less for the majority of turns no matter what I play. But most people insist on rolling one die at a time.

 

[Oofta]

I'm sure it must feel convenient to end every session on a rest, especially a long rest, as it eliminates bookeeping carrying over from a prior session. An enounter-based game... like the last edition of Gamma World came close to being, would also do that, and would be easier to balance.

Back in the day, presumably because I was younger and less responsible, I'd play 6, 8 or more hours at a time. Even when I got back together with members of my old college gaming club, we'd play 8 hour sessions, and the loca con wouldn't even take a 4 hr RPG proposal until 2015. When I played Encounters I was struck by how very short the sessions were meant to be.

Still, a short session time window is no reason not to have a long day in-character.

Whereas I just expect people to be organized enough that I'll stopped in the middle of combat if I need. If someone can't keep notes between sessions odds are they can't keep notes between encounters either. Little easier now because everyone uses DDB, but it's not hard to jot down a note and I'll provide the sticky note and pen if it's an issue.

 

[FrogReaver]

yes but it’s also more than that. Being adaptable to match workload required is a huge boon.

Maybe it’s best illustrated this way.
The exact pace and nature of encounters in a day has quite a bit of volatility day to day and encounter to encounter. In general fighters give the Same output every encounter. Meaning that approximately 50% of the time they output more than was really needed and 50% less than was really needed. A caster in general can better match what he outputs with the need. Meaning overall the more casters the less the party experiences encounters where they cannot meet the requirement.

Note that this principle applies even if wizards and fighters produced the same daily outputs.

Piggybacking off this. A typical wizard players goal isn’t to maximize his daily resource expenditure, it’s to ensure he brings enough power to bear to meet the required workload at the moment. This has a couple of interesting side effects.

1. In practice, even in short adventuring days wizards don’t burn all their highest level resources as fast as possible. The implication being that looking at daily outputs on short adventuring days is very flawed. Wizards rarely use their spells that way. In short, fighters stay alot closer in power to wizards in practice than the typical naive analysis shows.

2. Instead of rationing spell slots to last arbitrarily long adventure days - the wizard uses what’s needed for the workload in front of him and then evaluated after the combat whether he feels comfortable with the risk of continuing on or whether he should rest to mitigate that risk. Wizard players feel most comfortable ending the day with at least 1/3 of their slots left and so that behavior brings the daily wizard output on down as well.

All this provides explanation for why wizards seem more powerful in typical analysis but so many reports show this isn’t necessarily the case in practice.

 

[M_Natas]

Piggybacking off this. A typical wizard players goal isn’t to maximize his daily resource expenditure, it’s to ensure he brings enough power to bear to meet the required workload at the moment. This has a couple of interesting side effects.

1. In practice, even in short adventuring days wizards don’t burn all their highest level resources as fast as possible. The implication being that looking at daily outputs on short adventuring days is very flawed. Wizards rarely use their spells that way. In short, fighters stay alot closer in power to wizards in practice than the typical naive analysis shows.

2. Instead of rationing spell slots to last arbitrarily long adventure days - the wizard uses what’s needed for the workload in front of him and then evaluated after the combat whether he feels comfortable with the risk of continuing on or whether he should rest to mitigate that risk. Wizard players feel most comfortable ending the day with at least 1/3 of their slots left and so that behavior brings the daily wizard output on down as well.

All this provides explanation for why wizards seem more powerful in typical analysis but so many reports show this isn’t necessarily the case in practice.

That is true. In the campaign I'm a player in, I play a (order of scribe) Wizard. So my ideal damage output looks a lot like my calculations in the first post, because I don't get damage bonuses from my subclass.
Yesterday we continued our dungeon delve. I already used up 2 of my 4 spellslots, with which I can cast Fireball in sessions before. We were now jumping into a portal and falling and falling ... our Cleric had jumped first after a Fishman told her to do it, a portal opened and we didn't wanna leave her alone ... so we jumped after. When she landed, she got 40 damage from falling (it was 1 minute fall), nearly killed her (we are 7th Level) ... now we all were falling. So we as player knew what was coming for our characters at the end of the fall.
I didn't had feather fall. I had three Ideas to slow my fall. Slow me down with mage hand (my character is a halfing, so she is quite light), using my cloak as a makeshift parachute and using alter self to make me even lighter. So I used the mage Hand and the cloak, had to do a strength check (with my -1 in strength ...) and slowed down - I didn't use alter self, because the DM remembered that it had somatic components and I was holding on with my dear life onto the Cloak-Parachute.
Our Warlock who was behind me used fly to overtake me and save our rogue from falling to his death, so we ended up with minimal damage (only like 12 and 15).
So I as a wizard didn't had any spell that would have helped me 100% (Fly, Feather Fall, Polymorph), the only other spell that could have helped me maybe 50% was alter self, which says I can reduce my weight ... but it needed a somatic component, so I would have to let go of my makeshift parachute ...

So in the reality of the game table, my Wizard didn't had the right spells to ace this Non-Combat-Encounter and had to improvise.
And even If I would have feather fall, I probably wouldn't have it prepared, because this is a city campaign in a city with not a lot of high buildings. Falling from things is not a priority and I already have trouble to prepare all the spells I want to prepare, and feather fall wouldn't have been high on my priority list. What saved my wizard from getting 40 fall damage was, that she was a lightfoot halfling and had a cloak, mage hand and a DM who allowed my desperate plan to work after a 14 on strength check.

 

[M_Natas]

and here we are. The consequences argument of the world go's on around the PC's when they stop in thier magical hut has now turned into a DM attacking 1st level characters with a Red Dragon. Or armies appearing out of thin air.

But I guess that making up your own argument is easier than addressing the ones made.

A Red Dragon appearing for 1st Level Party is of course not a consequence. It is a bad DM.
I already brought my own examples from actual play for a living breathing world and I'm all for consequences for player actions.

 

[Oofta]

A Red Dragon appearing for 1st Level Party is of course not a consequence. It is a bad DM.
I already brought my own examples from actual play for a living breathing world and I'm all for consequences for player actions.

I had a DM for a while that loved to throw random encounters at us while we were travelling from point A to point B. He claimed that he rolled randomly, but practically every time it was a red dragon. He was "kind" in that he always (yes, always, this happened on a regular basis) let us use our horses as a distraction. I had to explain to another group after that why I named my horse "Dragon Bait" out of habit.

 

[M_Natas]

In terms of American pop culture it always felt like Germany was a good 20 years or so behind. Maybe table top rpgs are similar.

Nah, it is also a different taste ...
Like ... Star Trek - the most popular The Next Generation Character in Germany was Data. In the USA it was Picard I think (read the polls to that some time ago).
In the US Kirk is more popular than Spock (in TOS, don't know the popularity for new Trek), in Germany Spock is more popular.

Germany doesn't have a Wild West Tradition of the Lone Gun Man solving problems with violence.
So I think it makes sense that in the US with their history, the fighter archetype is more popular, while in Germany other archetypes are more popular.

I'm looking at the Poll I made in the biggest german D&D facebook group - now with nearly 500 votes:
The most popular class is the Cleric with 51 Votes (12%), the second most popular one is the Warlock with 46 (11%).
The Result so far (I removed some added options like Multiclasses, that were together 12 votes and the blood hunter with 3 votes):

		Germany	US
Cleric	51	11,78%	8%
Warlock	46	10,62%	9%
Rogue	40	9,24%	11%
Bard	40	9,24%	7%
Druid	39	9,01%	6%
Paladin	38	8,78%	7%
Fighter	36	8,31%	13%
Forever DM	36 (took them out of the Calculations)	0,00%
Monk	31	7,16%	7%
Barbarian	31	7,16%	8%
Ranger	27	6,24%	7%
Wizard	26	6,00%	8%
Sorcerer	15	3,46%	7%
Artificer	13	3,00%	1%

Fighter is in the middle. The popularity of clerics surprises me., but I have seen them a lot at the tables. The comparison data is from the 2020 D&D Beyond Poll.
The low popularity of the sorcerer is surprising. On average you will find more than double the amount of sorcerers in an US party than in a German party and 50% more fighter in the US party compared to the German party.
The most likely 4-character US Party is a Fighter, Rogue, Warlock and than either a Cleric, Wizard or Barbarian.
The most likely 4- Character-Germany-Party is Cleric, Warlock, Rogue, Bard, which is funny, because my current Party I'm the player in is a Cleric, Warlock/Bard, Rogue and me, a Wizard, so the 4 most popular classes are currently at the table and then my character .
In the US the two most popular base classes are non-magical, in Germany they are magical.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I may be imagining a pattern...

The top two are classes that get their abilities from a higher power, a deity or patron. The next two are social capable, the Rogue notoriously urban, the Bard notoriously charismatic and an entertainer. The Druid & Paladin are, again, getting power from something greater than themselves - Nature and, again, a deity.

The lower half could be viewed as gaining power on an individual level, the Artificer is the classic mad scientist or inventor, the Sorcerer has inborn power, the Wizard studies to gain personal power, the Ranger (tho it does presumably also derive power from Nature like a Druid) could be seen as operating alone a great deal, the Barbarian is the stereotypical uncivilized embodiment of rage and violence, even the Monk while it could be from an organized monastery could also be a reclusive cultivator setting itself apart from worldly concerns and seeking a personal path to enlightenment.

 

[pemerton]

Except when he doesn't limit player agency it is still balanced.

<snip>

A DM balancing the game is in the job description. The is why they are careful about choosing antagonists, environments, and even roleplay objectives.

If the GM is choosing antagonists, and roleplay objectives, and the environment, where are the players exercising agency?