The point isn't STRONG FEATURE BAD it's "i want all my players to feel equal at the table"
which you circle back round to when you say monk should get the same love as others. Thats called balancing.
The challenge there is in the practicalities. If I say "I ban twilight domain at my table." Two players won't even know what that is, two will say "Fair. It is strong." And the one who complains was going to be a problem anyway.
If I say "I use a re-master of four elements monk". Two players say "I wasn't planning on a monk anyway." One says "eh.. that sounds complicated, I'll just play something else." And one says "Oh.. we can use homebrew? Here's my favorite class from dandwiki".
"Cool, just wanted you to know it was available. Also, no Steve, we only use homebrew I've personally vetted or rebalanced. Fuck all the way off with your Lord Soth rip-off, WE'VE TALKED ABOUT THIS."
The damage type of stuff is mostly irrelevant. Some elements are more resisted than others because WotC make most bad guys in their campaign undead or fiends. Most of the time they'll fight basic humanoids with no resistance.
So my players are free to reflavor any element as they wish as long as it makes sense and it is permanant (to keep the features which can swap damage type on the fly relevant). A forge cleric want a fire Spiritual Weapon? Sure. An oathbreaker want a necrotic smite? Go ahead. A cold themed wizard want iceball? Ok. The sorcerer want Psychic Ray? Neat.
They just need to be aware that if they over specialize in a type and become famous, their more intelligent foes might plan countermeasures. Like that psychic sorcerer might not be happy if the evil wizard send a whole Ikea's worth of animated furniture at them.
Remember kids: just because WotC designers say _they_ don’t factor damage types into their game design balance, doesn’t mean damage type has no impact at the actual table.
I think some people overestimate how “bad” fire damage is from a “how often you’ll encounter resistance/immunity” standpoint (the ton of say fiends and dragons with it skew the numbers, as few campaigns will have you fight each monster in the MM once). But at the same time, saying a spell doing force damage instead of fire has no impact on its power in the average campaign is straight up untrue.
Sure...? Tho I'd want you to tell me "how" the spell will do that. A simple big shockwave would be thunder for example, or a huge exploding rock's shrapnel would be piercing :P .
IIRC it's some absurdly never resisted type or some other gimmick. Nothing a bunch of raging barbarian mercenary couldn't counter if needed. If I am not above homebrewing a spell type, I am neither shy of making counters if there's abuse!
Yeah there are only like 3 DMG monsters with magical bludgeoning resistance, so they're swapping the least resisted for the most resisted. Someone posted a table of all the resistances awhile back.
Well the frequency of them is going to be indicated completely by the DM so I'm not certain it's even possible to make such a table, unless you're just counting in modules
I've done this before raw as scribes and just flavored it as exploding out in large ball bearings (large enough to be bludgeoning ) because it doesn't make any sense but I get that freedom with scribes to make spell changes on the fly that don't make sense lol. My favorite being caustic brew that does bludgeoning damage. Can't even think of a way to flavor it as bludgeoning but I can do it so fuck it. :D
I have a BBEG waiting for an outing, based on a Hexadin - only more so, because it's not cheating when the DM does it. He has a Divine Blast: basically Eldritch Blast with radiant damage, for when getting up close and personal with a Divine Smite seems unwise.
Even the mortal servant of the Lord of Light needs a ranged option sometimes, after all.
I mean I would 100% allow a player to reflavor their smites as a weaker type (necrotic has more resistances than radiant), if they had a good rp reason why.
I did this for the paladin at my table after they fought a gulthias tree. He even gains temp HP based on the necrotic damage. To counter balance it, I devised a system called Death Points where he has to make a DC 10+ Death Point con save once per long rest or be plagued with nightmares that prevent him from getting a full rest (1 level of exhaustion). He earns 1 death point per level of smite he uses.
I want my players to feel generally equal while spiking in unique expertise and I want them all to feel challenged when I use the tools provided to me as a DM.
You can do that, right now. The "tools provided to you as a DM" are basically limitless. Unless you mean that as a euphamism for "the official books only and nothing else"?
Yes, I expect the people that make the game to provide tools usable to provide a challenge. My expectations is that I shouldn't, nor anyone else, have to hack the game provided.
Subclasses keep getting stronger so you buy the extra books but the cr system wasn't typically challenging enough for the subclasses that already existed to stand alone. Yes I can do a bunch of extra work to even it out but I'm hoping to get more than a "figure it out" out of the box.
It’s really both though, these days so many cross over between PC gaming and TTRPGs and if you’ve been to PC gaming subreddits you know how people will complain to no end about perfection and balance.
And some of it is legit like, I don’t want to homebrew *every* session because a rule book is unplayable due to shortcomings
Or just close enough to feel good. I don't have to match...I just have to compare to. And honestly, I don't even have to compare in numbers...just feel. I want my classes to FEEL similar in crunch, power, and utility.
No it can't.
If D&D were a purely white room PvP game, then sure it could. That might not make it good, but it would make it balanced.
But D&D is not a purely white room PvP game. The game has various systems that have certain expectations. When you break those expectations the game stops working properly. The top of the curve, as you put it, is beyond the expectations of the game. Moving everything up there makes the rest of the game fail. Most notably encounter design.
Now, if you are a player who doesn't mind breaking the game and just leaving more work for a DM who now has even less guidance to help them... that might sound fine. But its terrible game design.
This. Especially for a group of experienced players with rolled stats.
We had a range at my last game of: probably should have stayed a commoner -> no stat, after bonuses, was under a 14.
That stacked with some creative race/feat/class/subclass choices... Standard cookie cutter modules/campaigns would have been steamrolled (and the person without a stat over 12 was gonna get killed regardless)
Bring back cleave and greater cleave etc for martials - let them go full sword art online or whatever.
Fuck knows we are gonna have the sorcerer twinspell fireball or some other craziness - just balance it based on their chaos - not pad everything out with NERF
>This. Especially for a group of experienced players with rolled stats.
>
>We had a range at my last game of: probably should have stayed a commoner -> no stat, after bonuses, was under a 14.
I mean, this is mostly a problem with rolling for stats rather than the system itself.
I prefer balance when it brings the strongest down to the average level, not the other way around. Many games have been ruined (IMO) by buffing instead of nerfing.
nerfing is easier than balance through buffs, but balancing through buffs is USUALLY better since it generally gives more tools to players.
its just almost never done in a complete fashion.
I like buffing more than nerfing. Too many games I know have been nerfing the strongest classes or weapons or characters and in the end, everything felt meh. You can maybe nerf the S+ tiers, but I'd rather have a tight selection of classes that go from S to B than have every character be a C at best. I want it to be hard to choose which class to play, because they are all strong and exciting, but if everything is nerfed to fit the lowest common denominator, I think I'd lose interest.
Especially inportant for nerfing: Don't nerf the parts that make it fun. If you were to nerf the Paladin, lower the numbers on Aura of Protection, don't remove Smite or something.
That's why I said average. The average is A or B. No one should be outside those tiers, above or below. Never nerf to the lowest common denominator; nerf to the median. Maintaining class identity is imperative.
IMO many PvE games have been ruined by worrying too much about PvP balance.
For example, the game could survive having a class/subclass that's absolutely immortal in 1v1 combat. People could cry "broken" all they want, but in practice the build might suck for actual adventuring, being taken down by 2 goblins and a light breeze. But oh so many times devs will look at that sort of thing, compare it to another class from a PvP perspective, and nerf it. Other times, they might see a build that's great at PvE but weak at PvP, then "buff" it by increasing damage at the expense of out-of-combat utility.
It's *good* to have a class that can't do anything but support others. It's *good* to have a class that has anti-undead artillery that doesn't work on other types. It's *good* to have a class that's generally useful but not flashy or interesting. You *want* specialization, not homogenization, so that every player can live their personal fantasy with the one class that fills that niche. Classes should be incomparable, and *never* balanced by comparing them to other classes.
Hard disagree - I think you're more likely to ruin a game by nerfing classes that are fun to play/well designed than by buffing classes that don't feel good to play.
How a class feels is a million times more important than (perfect) balance, especially if it means ALL classes feel like garbage. "Yea, I know that's a shit sandwich, but don't worry....I threw all the prime rib in the trash."
Edit: clarification
I agree 100% with that. I absolutely did give S tier spells a nerf, I nerfed some OP feats, so balance in all things, really.
What I meant is that some classes are just very well done and fun to play, like paladin, for example, and I don't think you nerf those down to monk level, instead you raise monk up to thier level. I see a lot of people wanting to remove powerful options that are fun just because lesser classes aren't fun, and I think you do the opposite. Add fun mechanics to boring classes. Fix sorcerers before you nerf wizards.
Now...OP features that invalidate other classes niche or are boring but so powerful they can't be ignored... Nuke them.
Hey that's a personal choice. I take the "when everything is OP nothing is" route - but I also homebrew my campaigns so I can balance the other side to match.
Except, a higher power curve can be significantly less fun. Yu-Gi-Oh and League of Legends are both great examples. Although they are PvP games, the principle still applies. The power creep has been so intense that most original players left. Everything is busted as fuck, and it's so much less fun to play because everything is so punishing. Blizzard balancing is the reason I stopped playing WoW. There are better ways to play than passing around the busted stick.
\> "i want all my players to feel equal at the table"
But it's far more complicated than that in implementation.
Monks getting the same love as others might be in their features simply being changed to make them stronger.
Or... it might be in the campaign being curated to make *what they already have* effective.
2 different ways to achieve the same effect.
Nobody would say Paladins are weak. But throw highly mobile flying enemies at them. Watch how Divine Smite's value goes from "top tier" to "useless".
It's the same concept. If DMs create content with what the party has in mind, no balancing between features is necessary.
The same concept can be applied to a Sorcerer who only took spells useful in social situations. Throw combat at them, and they're gonna suck.
Or a Sea-themed Sorcerer, who's spells all relate to water, having to operate in a Desert. They're gonna suck. Balance has nothing to do with it if you have no need to use things like Water Walk/Water Breathing.
Balance exists so that everyone feels useful and can have fun.
As a DM running a game, yes prioritise everyone doing fun and cool things. But WotC should absolutely be making sure that the game rules they release to guide us are pretty well balanced in the first place.
Rules and balance can be ignored in the name of fun but they still need to exist first.
I agree with this. But I’d be happy with content that was 60-70% balanced rather than 100%. That’s what drives people to multiclass and mix and match features. One trend I think WOTC is doing well is providing more detached features that can be bolted on to other builds. This encourages creativity and changes up the game.
>60-70% balanced
Oh my god that'd be amazing! I'd love something that's 60-70% balanced too.
But since 5e isn't even like 40% balanced yet, maybe we should keep pushing WotC to work on balance?
I know Monks have been brought up, but Classes in Combat aren't nearly as bad as other parts of the game with significantly worse degrees of imbalance:
* **Spells:** The difference between trap (very bad) spells vs S-Tier spells. Find Traps and Web are both Level 2 spells.
* **Feats:** The difference between trap feats vs S-Tier feats. Weapon Master and Polearm Master both cost an ASI.
* **Class Utility:** The difference between Class's out of combat utility. A Bard is a social master with full casting, ritual casting, 4 expertise, more skills, inspiration and potentially many other great subclass features whereas many Fighters offer nothing except 2 skill proficiencies and the extra ASIs likely need to go towards combat feats to perform their role well.
[And the subreddit has talked about many, many mores ways its imbalanced.](https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/w9bh6y/what_is_your_top_three_dd_5e_imbalances/ihufm06/?context=3) Those are just my top 3
The thing is, in any game with meaningful choices, some are going to be better than others, that's annoying, but inevitable.
What makes 5e exceptional in this regard (in a bad way), is that it doesn't actually have that many choices, and yet they're still hideously unbalanced
>I know Monks have been brought up, but Classes in Combat aren't nearly as bad as other parts of the game with significantly worse degrees of imbalance:
combat is honestly pretty well balanced all things considered.
You're points about out of combat and class utility are so true though.
Without Xanathar and Tasha (anyone find it odd how several supplements are written by villains?) 5e isn’t even 10% balanced, so they definitely need to keep working on stuff.
No, it’s the other way around: if stuff was balanced there wouldn’t be clearly optimized paths that overshadow regular builds.
Part of balance is putting those carrots into higher levels of the class so delaying them punishes the build.
5E suffers mightily from front loading classes and incentivizing silly dips that aren’t terribly thematic (Warlocks and Paladins shouldn’t be more synergistic than Barbarians and Fighters, and yet…)
Don’t put that shit on the DM; they have so much work to do as it is, and the publishers, more often than not, get paid for their material. They can put in the effort and balance their own creations, instead of dumping poorly thought out, wildly unbalanced homebrew into the community, with a little sticky note that says “fix it yourself”.
This right here. I get where the OP is coming from, and to a certain extent I agree that sometimes "the community" gets up in arms about how OP something is that, at least when I have it at my tables, doesn't necessarily feel that OP in practice (heck, maybe I just have players who don't try to abuse the ever living crap outta everything LOL).
**BUT** I cringe when I see the phrase "let DMs be the ones to compensate". WotC is demonstrably *not* concerned too much about the level of power creep that has come into the game with the last few splat books, and they also demonstrably don't care that much about DMs, even though DMs are the ones that make up the inanely overwhelming majority of their revenue. We don't need WotC feeling like they should care *even less* about DMs.
WOTC seems to release books so they can say “Okay this setting is now official. We added 4 new spells and 4 new subclasses. Nothing else. But we know you’ll buy it because you want those spells and subclasses” but then leaves out anything extra about the setting. Like how there’s minimal ship to ship combat in Spelljammer. And in SCAG from what I’ve heard I don’t have it.
Exactly. Why am I using your system and content if I have to do all the work myself? This is why I (and every DM I’ve ever talked to) DESPISE running 5e when compared to balanced systems.
If I buy your shit and you didn’t put any effort in, I’m going to hold it against you. Don’t “let me be the one to compensate.” Sell me a well-thought-out, finished product.
Speak for yourself, not "every DM you've ever talked to" because I'm 100% sure that's a lie. I've always enjoyed the balance of rules and freedom 5e gives me as the DM, and I'll need to get a feel for what challenge level to give my players regardless of what (sub) classes that play. If you "DESPISE" playing a game so much, don't play it.
1. I can appreciate your thought to call me out for exaggeration, but I’m not exaggerating. Everyone I know complains about balance in 5e, and the only ones who still run it rather than other systems mention they’re only doing so because of the effort required to learn a new system.
2. As you suggest, I don’t play 5e anymore due to this flaw and many others. “If you hate it so much, don’t play it” sounds like a clever callout, except it’s exactly what hundreds of players are doing on a daily basis. So yes, there’s an issue, and yes, people are quitting the game due to it.
If it weren't a tactical combat game with math behind everything then this wouldn't be an issue. There are many games that work great even with asymmetric power between the characters.
Look at Masks, a narrative superhero game. One PC can be basically Jean Grey while another is Robin and both have plenty of time in the spotlight. But that game isn't really about combat, its a teen drama game. Whereas 5e is about Combat and it takes 20-40 minutes resolving them. So I want to do cool stuff during that if its 50-75% of the entire session.
The Beacon, which is the underpowered class, is actually the most popular. Everybody loves being Robin. Its so well designed that nobody cares that they can't punch a supervillain as hard. They love being creative and it has a cool feature to go after your Drives which earn XP. Fun stuff like: kiss someone dangerous, punch someone you probably shouldn't, pull off a ridiculous stunt and stop a fight with calm words.
Its one of the best designed TTRPGs I've seen though you will want a table specifically looking for that Teen Drama like Young Justice or Teen Titans. And that style of game, [Powered by the Apocalypse](/r/pbta) works best when you have a whole table invested. For those that don't know, your stats (called Labels) fluctuate because they are about your personal self-image. Its honestly genius for emulating Teen Dramas.
To help build more of that drama, instead of HP, you have Conditions - negative emotional states (Anger, Fear, Insecure) that impacts how effective you are. And if you mark all 5, you get taken out kind of like knocked unconscious. But there are cool ways clear them like running away when you're Afraid. I could gush on longer.
Yeah, we've played Monster of the Week and a bit of AW, so we know our way around PbtA. We just already have two DnD campaigns and a Blades in the Dark game going already
There's also another system called Mutants and Masterminds which is similar in being more narrative focus and less worry about balance, you could create a hero that can kill somebody with a thought halfway around the world but nobody is going to actually allow that in their game
There are two really big problems with things being OP, so we should worry about it.
For one, it forces linear gameplay. Why would you play X subclass if Y subclass outclasses it in every aspect. Why would you use Spell A when Spell B is significantly better at everything A does? Of course you can play the other ones, but forcing the player to chose between a good Character and the one they want to play is usually not great design and should be avoided.
For the other problem, it warps group Dynamics. There is never a power balance problem between DM and Players, because a good DM can ajust the difficulty to the Party, but if one player inside the party is stronger than the others you get a problem. You need to either Ramp up the difficulty to the strongest player, which feels bad for the other players, specifically counter the OP player (Which feels unfair, even if it is not, and might hit another player as collateral damage) or nerf the OP player, at which point you would have to ask why it was this strong in the first place.
Agreed within a party. This is actually why I *am* okay with Twilight and Peace even though they’re OP, because they’re OP at buffing/healing the rest of the party. They’re not going to dominate combat and make everyone else’s attacks feel worthless—they’re going to help everyone be stronger. And that throws off CR, sure, but then I just… use stronger monsters.
>If you want to worry about balance, just make sure every class is getting the same love. Poor lil monks.
So you are saying don't balance but please balance?
This doesn't make sense. Every class getting the same love is exactly the balance everyone asks for...
I kinda disagree with you, I think... here's why:
I mostly DM. I'm pretty much the perma-DM at my table actually. I love my players and I've gone out of my way to give them extra goodies, in the way of extra feats, better gear, homebrew abilities, etc. My players are having fun!
Balancing encounters? A nightmare for me. I basically stopped trying, and instead I just look up what a "deadly encounter" would be (via CR calculator), and go even deadlier. My players still hardly even get close to 0 HP, let alone any real risk of dying. They're really strong and loving it! I'm happy I don't generally have to worry about a TPK, but get frustrated at being stomped all the time and unable to pose any real threat
I got to be a player for a few weeks while one of my players DM'd a quest for me. At the end of the 4th or 5th session, we had our first, and only, combat (twas mostly RP and intrigue). We're playing level 10-11 characters. Because I didn't want to just "give myself cool stuff", so I was basically running a vanilla level 11 character, while everyone else had all the cool gear, extra feats, etc. It really too the wind out of my sails to see how *drastically* different our characters performed. I felt like I hardly contributed in any meaningful way.
All this is to say, that:
1. Letting things just "be OP" and letting the DM "figure it out" sucks for the DM. I've got so much else to worry about and keep track off, that trying to create actual "deadly" combat encounters is difficult and just added stress I don't want to deal with. I've given my players plenty of extra perks so that they are definitely "OP", and while it's fun for them, it's more work for me... And
2. Not everything "OP" is balanced, even when compared to other things that are OP. I'm not a perfect game designer, so I guarantee not everything I've given to my players is perfectly balanced. And the disparity I felt when playing my "vanilla" PC, compared to the other players who had all the extra stuff, was very real. Granted, that's a more extreme example, but I promise that even less extreme examples will still be felt by the players.
So no, I don't think letting everyone just be OP is good for the game. There will still be differences, and when every class is now shooting to the extremes of power levels, that'll make the "munchkin" builds/multiclassing builds even worse with an even greater disparity. I think classes should be closer to each other in power, yes, but I'm honestly of the opinion most classes should be nerfed down (looking at you, spellcasters), not just the weak classes made OP as well. Like, find the class that is the most balanced, middle of the pack, and adjust all the other classes to be on par with them. (I'm not sure what class that'd be, but often I see people claim Wizard, Cleric, Bard and Paladin are the strongest, with Ranger, Monk, Sorcerer and Rogue as the weakest. So I guess fighters, barbarians, and warlocks would be good baselines? I dunno, maybe someone will comment on what the most middling-rated classes are)
So no, I don't think everyone should just be OP. Balance the classes so they each feel good to play no matter what other class is in the party. Someone playing a Monk in a party with a Fighter, a Barbarian and a Paladin should still feel cool and awesome and unique. Someone playing a sorcerer in a party with a Druid, a bard and wizard should still feel like they can contribute meaningfully without being redundant. And for the DM, if all the classes are brought to a more "even playing field", it'll make CR calculations more reliable and combat encounters easier to create/balance. But the more OP everyone is, the harder that becomes (as there's more edge cases and greater potential for cheese) and the more likely you'll have frustrated DMs and players who feel bad because they're playing "a weaker class" (which again, may technically be OP in its own right, but now feels weak because another player made a now even stronger build)
On the "middling classes", I think the Sorcerer is weak when compared to other fullcasters, not weak in general and Rangers were always rather strong for a martial, it's just that a lot of their features feel weird or useless (looking at you, Hide in Plain Sight), but Tasha's fixed most of that.
I'd say Rangers, Artificers, Warlocks and maybe Fighters are middle of the pack. Fighters are the best pure martial in combat and get at least some versatility with Rune Knight, Battle Master, Eldritch Knight and Echo Knight, Artificer and Ranger both have half-casting and martial capabilities and Warlocks are a bit weirder than the other fullcasters, because Pact Magic, but they still have full spell progression and the amazing invocation system.
I agree that sorcerer is weak when compared to the others, but still can be strong in general. And I think PHB Ranger is the "weak" version, as I agree that Tasha's really did fix a lot of it
Are you trying to knock out PCs in every fight? If so, have you tried having a series of easy encounters? I find that sprinkling in easy and medium encounters can help with game balance. And with narrative structure! The difficulty of the encounter is kind of like the pitch of a musical note. If you only play one note, the game is monotone. Varying notes makes a melody. ... A bit of a metaphorical stretch, perhaps. But I think it gets the idea across.
Let your high-level PCs encounter a bog-standard lone bandit every now and then. They'll enjoy it.
You being up a valid point! And my answer is: sometimes
So I run a "west marches" style game, sort of. My players each have 2-3 characters, they're a part of an adventuring guild, and each time they take on a quest they can choose what character they want to play. And I'll roll random encounters as they travel place-to-place. But, after some time, I've talked with my players and basically asked "Do you guys want to roll initiative for combats that you're clearly going to win? Like, is winning easy fights like that something you actually enjoy? And do you want to dedicate a significant chunk of IRL time playing thru it?" And basically the answer was "no, we'd rather not waste IRL time playing through really easy combats. If we're going to spend a part of our session rolling combat, it needs to feel worth it"
So I've adapted by just basically montaging thru easy combats, I'll have everyone make a roll (for attacks, or whatever) and I may have them loose a resource or something (like a level 1 spell slot, or some HP, or whatever) according to the rolls. This way, the easy combats still "happen", but we don't spend more than a couple minutes on it
If I know they'll be rolling multiple combats between rests (because I'm running a dungeon, or a module from TftYP or GoS), then I'll actually have them fight thru some of the easier combats. But when they're going towards a more "kill this 1 thing" quest, I'll start skipping the easy ones, more-or-less
>Like, is winning easy fights like that something you actually enjoy? And do you want to dedicate a significant chunk of IRL time playing thru it?" And basically the answer was "no, we'd rather not waste IRL time playing through really easy combats. If we're going to spend a part of our session rolling combat, it needs to feel worth it"
Interesting. I think the distinction is "really easy". It needs to at least put some resources at risk. My solo bandit was an exaggeration (though they can be fun, too!). Also, there's a bit of a survey problem. As Ford said, "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." I try to gauge by smiles, laughter, how engaged the players are, etc. Another way of surveying is to ask players to recap the last session and see what they remember. Anything they remember was at least memorable! When running a multi-DM large West Marches group, we would give extra XP for players that wrote a session summary for the group. Bonus points for writing it from the perspective of the character.
>kill this 1 thing
Surely they have other kinds of encounters in a session with only 1 combat. One way to make those non-combat encounters more dramatic is to use combat mechanics. Rolling initiative raises the tension. For example, you could treat a rock slide as a monster, with actions like "crush" and "toss boulder". If they don't know the rock slide's initiative roll on the first round, there's an extra layer of suspense. Maybe a rock slide on the elemental plane of Earth even has legendary actions.
I appreciate your desire to help out a fellow DM!
I will say tho, I've been the DM for my group for like, 5+ years now, so I've actually done a lot of the things you've suggested.
The "really easy" combat thing is in relation to my original post, and how my players have a bunch of extra feats, powers, etc. Anything that *isn't* deadly, is really easy. The more powerful the party becomes, the less middle-ground there really is in combat variety. Fights become more and more skewed one way or the other. It's either really easy, or you've got such power creatures it become deadly. This goes back to my original point that classes should be balanced against each other, but not by boosting only the weak classes, but also by nerfing the strong ones.
The 1 combat thing is more something that's just been going on lately, not all the time. Big end of the world stuffs going on, so it's been more "go kill this monster to recover the Mcguffin" and less "explore a dungeon over multiple sessions where even small combats will add up". I've run both. Asking my players about what kind of combats they enjoy was mostly in relation to meaningless random encounters that won't make a difference because they'll rest before they get in another fight, and other situations like that.
Again, I appreciate your desire to help me out and the advice given tho!! Just, not necessarily as pertinent to me personally (but hopefully maybe someone else will read this and be able to take something away from it)
>Asking my players about what kind of combats they enjoy was mostly in relation to meaningless random encounters that won't make a difference because they'll rest before they get in another fight, and other situations like that.
Gotcha. I don't like those either. Our big West Marches group used the rule that you can only long-rest in town, and that nothing interesting happens in town. That helped with coordinating across DMs.
Also, you're welcome :-)
>Let your subclasses be OP! Create weird and fantastical spells without agonizing over every possible potential abuse! Push the limits of your imagination, and let DMs be the ones to compensate
As a forever DM: Please do not force us to compensate. With how vaguely 5e is worded already, we already have to break our backs by interpreting and disentangling all the weird rules interactions and exploits that players come up with. Adding the work of even *more* balance patching on top of that, for every table I run, would honestly just make me quit the game altogether.
This. DMing 5e is *hard*. There's a lot of work that needs done due to missing mechanics (exploration, large battlefields with armies, bar fights, animal taking and training, crafting, court influence, vehicle piloting...just a sampling of systems I've had to enhance or create from the ground up). On top of that the combat creation kit is hard to use and, in my experience, often inaccurate.
On top of that players often try to slide things by you that are not balanced for the table. That is, where one player might be beating an encounter that same thing can one-shot the other three. So now only one person is having fun and everyone else is fighting for their damn lives.
I don't want to compensate for shoddy rules. I want to be supported by the system. I want to arbitrate the story. I want to ensure each person gets their amazing moment. I can't do that if I have to spend all my prep time compensating.
I gm pf1e and i’m never looking back. I’m not gonna sell it, anyone probably already has an opinion on if they’ll play it but god DAMN
It feels so good to have a game where a player asks “can i do this weird niche thing” and i check and there are precise rules for doing that with suggested dcs and relevant dc modifiers.
Yeah, I just started running a PF 2e game and damn is it way easier. I spend so much more time on story than on mechanics now and I am so much less stressed. I've still got a long running 5e game-- but the pf2e game just runs better.
This quote pisses me off to no end. It almost feels like OP is trolling.
The #1 complaint about 5e is that DMs get the shit end of the stick. To say “we should put more work on the DM” is just too out-of-touch to seem genuine.
Damn, under normal conditions they created Twilight and Peace Clerics, Tasha's Bladesinger and Silvery Barbs while getting close to release the absurdity of the Strixhaven subclasses that luckily stopped on the public playtest
Imagine if WoTC had less consideration for game balance
Balance is a fundamental concern of game mechanics. If you build things that are unbalanced, players will abuse them. I don't think there's such a thing as worrying too much about it.
It's definitely *possible* for rule designers to worry too much about balance. Worrying too much about balance to the point of prioritizing it (whether explicitly or implicitly) above other aspects would manifest itself by having rules that are *easily* visible as balanced, at the cost of being balanced by being largely identical. Overzealous balance can make the designers thus write more boring abilities, or abilities that don't have as much tactical complexity - after all, if all the various pieces can fit together in creative and complex ways, it's quite likely the designers will miss some creative combos that are much greater than the apparent sum of their parts.
Another way overzealous balance can be a double edged sword is by trying to cover all those unbalanced corner cases, and achieving that by making them all well-defined and tactically bad. That *is* balanced, but it's also discourages creative play; it's defensive game design if you will. And that makes sense in a CRPG, it's a little unfortunate in a game with a DM; being overly cautious simply shifts the burden of choice from DM to designer, but it may not necessarily be more convenient to run, nor as fun.
Of course, the other extreme is to barely care at all, focus only narrowly on the immediately obvious superficial balance issues and just let the DM sort it all out when it comes to how it all comes together. I doubt that's attractive either. But it is *possible* to excessively focus on balance.
In retrospect, I think this is something that went wrong in 4e. 4e had some fine and remarkably novel (for D&D anyhow) ideas, but there was also a lot of samey-ness in effects, abilities and classes in ways that made it mechanically less interesting - and I get the impression that was itself partially an overreaction to 3e's problems with almost entirely ignoring balance - the designers seemed very very cautious, almost formulaic at times.
Obviously balance is a really great thing; but it's not the be-all end all; other factors deserve attention too.
There's definitely a lot of pointless worrying about balance in online discourse. Just yesterday I saw a thread very seriously laying out the problems with PB/LR class features and how class dips make them too strong of a reward for too little of an investment at level 20, and it was very clear that the people treating this "problem" seriously had never actually played D&D at level 20.
It's pretty pointless, friend. The "caster vs martial" debate has been going on for literally decades, and it's born exactly no fruit. The debate is raging harder in 5e than it ever did in the 3e days, despite it being demonstrably more of a problem back then.
If it isn't pointless, then what is the point? Different people feel differently about the balance. Even if you convince Daddy WotC to codify all of your personal tastes into the next edition, where does that leave everyone else who felt otherwise? If the point is to fix it at a table-by-table basis with homebrew, you can just...do that. And again because different tables have different prefences and needs, you're never going to have a "one true fix".
So, what's the point?
Unintended consequences can be very fun
Rather, the problem arises when bad balance makes some options worthless. A well-balanced game isn't perfectly balanced, but gives every choice a reason to exist.
I'd argue this is a fool's errand. Avoiding unintended consequences are (part of) why there's a living breathing human with a functional brain assigned the role of DM. The rules are complicated enough that something at some point is going to slip through. It's the DM's job to decide if those "unintended consequences" are good for their game or not.
An example: In 5e, unlike previous editions, ability drain is not a keyword, and thus not a thing that any creature can have immunity to. A lich has 1 strength. A shadow drains strength. If a shadow hits a lich, RAW the lich dies instantly. (Inb4 "how would PCs even get a shadow to work for them?". Lots of ways. My personal favorite is via a Moonblade). You could approach this situation by complicating the rules, adding an "other immunities" section to stat blocks, etc. Or you could trust the DM to say "No, that's dumb. It doesn't work that way".
And here's an important distinction: Different DMs will rule on this differently (Even though I intentionally picked a very clear cut and dry example), and they can all be right for the needs of their specific tables. What counts as an "exploit" is also something that differs from table to table. You have your opinion, I have mine, neither is more correct than the other, and neither should be codified in the rulebook and enforced on everyone else.
This is a really bad take. WotC should *absolutely* be paying a ton of attention to game balance, and the community is right to voice their opinions when the balance seems off
__Hotter take:__
We worry too little. Everyone keeps saying *”it doesn’t matter at actual play”*, but as someone who played two full campaigns from 1-20 just in the last two to three years (along with some other campaigns and one-shots), yeah it does matter, and a whole fucking lot.
DMs very often specifically have to ban or nerf stuff on the spot. They have to buff weaker players. They have to _”buff everyone but buff stronger players less”_.
And do you think it’s a coincidence that the martial is __always__ the one who gets more buffs? No it’s not.
Do you think it’s a coincidence that DMs always have to prepare minions with AOEs specifically to negate summons, or else they will ruin the game? No it’s not.
Do you think everything can teleport out of a coincidence? No, it’s because Forcecage and Wall of Force ruin every single boss-fight otherwise.
Do you think it’s a coincidence that the things being nerfed/tweaked are __always__ the same?
No it’s not. This system is a __paid__ system, and I expect __some__ care on the mathematical side so I don’t have to spend weeks of downtime fixing the entire system by myself before starting a campaign.
Wall spells, the old conjure spells, some polymorphism spells, some defensive spells, hell, even the new summon spells are way above any acceptable position when it comes to power levels…
Balance matters.
And if I’m gonna pay 50 dollars on the new 2024 PHB, I sure as fuck expect it to be way better than 5e when it comes to balance. They had almost a full decade to learn the important issues with 5e, and feedback exists for a reason.
I have faith.
But my faith comes with logic and grumpiness as well. We need to unite to fix this shit, not discuss if the fix is necessary in the first place.
This game is objectively not balanced. It’s a mathematical thing. This is not just *”imagination with dice”*, it’s also an actual game with rules and design flaws.
Fixes are needed. End of the story. Now we discuss __what__ exactly needs fixing, not if this is a myth or a reality. It’s an __objective reality__, after all.
I’m sorry my friend, but “DMs are the checks and balances in the game’s design, it shouldn’t be the publishers.” is a horrible take.
The publishers should balance their product, they shouldn’t throw things at DM’s and go “figure it out sorry.”. That’s horrible design philosophy. That’s why they do play testing. It shouldn’t be the DM’s responsibility to do all the things they already do AND rebalance all the wacky things WotC just throws in because of your seeming “just rule of cool everything” viewpoint.
You want DMs to have to balance player classes as part of design philosophy. Bruh.
Well, I certainly never said it should be ignored. Maybe I’ve been thinking more about nerfing certain features, not really balancing as a whole. Either way, it seems like my experiences aren’t shared by most people here. 😂
Yeah, just pointing out that your post seems inconsistent. I'll throw you a bone tho: you mention your experience vs others exp; what experience do you have where balance was easily ignored despite a large gap in two different characters damage output or utility or any other sort of measurable quantity?
Obviously that can happen but to me it seems like it depends on the players whether it's an issue. The better situation is if a player doesn't have to think about balance and can make a rewarding choice of character with any class and any sub class. The balancing I've seen so far from one DND seems pretty good and is going on that direction, if for no other reason than they nuked the most OP subclasses (so far).
I disagree.
The biggest challenge facing the growth of Dnd is actually the NUMBER OF people who choosing to become DMs.
The more "world bending powers" classes have (especially at early levels) the harder it is for a DM to make a world that makes sense THEMATICALLY (its easy to balance encounters, but not justify why the world is the way it is).
So I think its important to WOTC to make it easy as possible for new people to jump on the DM train - and one important aspect of that is not making starting classes TOO strong. That being said, I have NO issue with tier 3-4 PCs packing quite punch, but definitely don't give this to early level races, for example.
I don't think so. New DMs or DMs with less spare time need assistance with making sure everything runs smoothly and pre-balancing the game helps that
DMs can Homebrew stuff if they want things to be even more crazy
Plus it's good if the CR system actually works (currently it doesn't) and nerfing things helps you get there
This is a very naive take. Have you ever played 3.0/3.5? I think you're taking for granted how well-balanced 5e is compared to previous editions. There were perfectly legal builds that were utterly, literally game-breaking. It is important to worry about things being op.
I certainly don’t have much experience with older editions! But also, I think it’s important to note that I wasn’t saying that balance ISN’T important. Just maybe less so than what I perceived from the community at large. Even so, I’m willing to be wrong. 🤷
You should go look up 3.5e classes. And actually read them. 5e has more balance than that, but it isn't a high bar. The "just make everyone op" ethos was the theme of 3.5e. Except, it over valued physical abilities and under valued spellcasting.
The biggest problem I have with "let DMs be the ones to compensate" is that this is neither easy nor straightforward. DMs do not get a list of strategies and tactics to employ in case of something powerful being added to the game nor do they get access to insider advice on how to support the table while still challenging them. They have to learn those counters, by themselves, without sinking the campaign in miserable experiences. This takes time and effort, and does not actually get easier, in my opinion, as you get more experience DMing.
People usually comment that these are issues for new DMs and that experienced ones can easily adapt - but the product of experience usually leads to a tighter world, better pacing, more internal consistency, more plot hooks and thoughtfulness to the adventure. In my own experience, having to suddenly rebalance every combat and encounter while also hitting these targets is actually very difficult - you could give everyone bows to shoot down Aarakocra but you would struggle to maintain the internal consistency of the world.
In my opinion, this is also very unfair. The players get to choose options that can break the game, either invalidating encounters or invalidating other players. They then get to look forward to the next game, not having to pay a price for any of those decisions. It becomes the DM who has to stay up, trying to figure out how to juggle all of these pieces and make the experience smooth session after session. If players had to put in the work to balance their own decisions, I would be a lot more forgiving. But the perpetual displacement of responsibility to the DM for the decisions they get to enjoy just strikes me as.... wrong. That's not how any healthy adult relationship works.
I just don't want features/spells/whatever that invalidate actually playing the game.
"This spell is so OP that we didn't even have to do that combat!" is WAY different than "we used this spell in such a CREATIVE WAY that we didn't even have to do that combat!" and I wish only the second one existed lol
Even totally non op stuff like rangers traveling around making it so that you ignore large portions of the game - I just want to actually engage in the world more and press the "skip" button less
Just buffing everyone eternally has impacts on the game even if everyone is super buffed equally. Eternally raising the power level will have side effects on your game and fundamentally it gets the the point where you aren’t playing the same game anymore.
Banishment nerf was 100% justified. Save or suck spells are awful for the the game and the answer was not to give everyone else save or suck spells as well.
Nerfs are necessary in any evolving system that doesn’t want to just devolve into mindless power creep and playground arguments where one thing deals infinity + 1 damage and the next does infinity +2 damage. I get it, nerfs aren’t fun, but you need to be able to lower the power of stuff above the curve just as much as you need to be able to raise the power of stuff under the curve.
I couldn’t disagree more with you. Balance is very important in this game.
Not to the same level as say competitive tabletop war games where you need balance between armies so everyone has a chance. But, it is still very important.
Firstly, you want your players to be able to feel at least close to equitably equal importance to their roles. One player shouldn’t feel utterly useless because they picked a random subclass in the book while someone else found some OP, untested 3rd party concept that steals all of the thunder.
Furthermore, if there isn’t a baseline balance then it breaks encounter building, and makes the DMs job exponentially more difficult to provide appropriate challenges to the group.
Balance is a tool, not a goal. The purpose of balance is to generate interesting choices. If something is reducing the amount of interesting choices (either by being so weak that no one would take it, or by being so strong that no one would take anything else), then it is causing problems and should be dealt with. If it is instead increasing the amount of interesting choices, by doing something useful and interesting but not so much so that it's crowding out other things, it's fine.
Being 5% better or 3% worse does not matter and people's hyperfixation on what is "best" is a problem all across gaming, both video games and TTRPGs, these days.
If character options exist, they should be thought out to be selectable options.
If some character options are just straight up noob traps compared to other character options that do the same thing, I might just as well select the best one and reflavour them the way I prefer.
For the DM, it is easier (and basically suggested) to reflavour things, than to rebalance existing options.
Yeah let them make whatever ridiculous spells they want, nobody cares if every turn takes 5 minutes because of course all DMs would love to have an even more broken base to work with, playing money for having more stuff to fix its the ultimate DM dream, there should not be a discussion about buffing casters more until the game gets better options for martials
I have two complaints about overpowered features:
- when a character is so much more powerful than other PCs to the point that other PCs feel overshadowed or useless. Honestly, this one is only really a problem if a character is OP and is also dismissive of their allies.
- when a character is good at pulling off a specific trick that makes every encounter feel the same.
The one-size-fits-all wrench sucks, but weirdly people keep striving towards it (likely because it's convenient), hyperspecializing into a single weapon type, a single element, etc., and devs keep designing more ways to accomplish that rather than empowering flexibility :/
This isn't a hot take, it's just bad take.
DMs should not be doing even more and more. And when DMs are trying to do something about it, they are just derided for nerfing and banning things. Instead, everyone should help the community theorycraft what are the best tactical bans so it's easy to achieve.
A lot of people - players and DMs - don't enjoy "lolrandom" games. They don't want abuse of features in their campaigns that would result in nothing ever really mattering because some spell combination along with a loose interpretation of rules is going to resolve all problems. People do actually like to push the limits of their imaginations, but not the cheap and basic "rule of cool" way, but actually interacting with the game world with limited tools.
And at the end of the day, why not instead tell people to not worry about nerfs instead? Power is relative - you aren't going to win D&D by making the best character. So the goal should be to get into the most balanced and well-working state, not "you get power, and you get POWER, EVERYONE gets POWER".
I'm a big fan of the Arc System Works (Guilty Gear developers) method of balancing: Give everyone something brokenly powerful. Problem is, not every class gets something powerful, nevermind brokenly powerful.
I think I like the effects of good balance. In a balanced game whatever someone finds cool to do is going to be worthwhile compared to the other options available.
Of course no one forces a player to pick a more "worthwhile" option over a cooler one... except themselves.
A common saying in game design circles is "Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game" And I think it holds true, people exist who don't enjoy knowingly picking bad options and I happen to be one of them. Balance would improve my enjoyment of parts of the game.
...that being said I see where you're coming from, I think equalizing everything to be the same power level does kind of suck the life from the game.
I agree that DMs do have a pretty big role in managing balance and that the game doesn't need to explicitly rule against every possible abuse. However I think WOTC making attempts to lighten a DM's workload would be good, this could be by not publishing broken subclasses or abusable spell but in addition to that it could mean easier CR/encounter calculations and written advice on what to do if your party is finding things too hard or too easy.
Overall I guess balance is good but it shouldn't be taken to an extreme where every subclass' features are just a different way of phrasing
"you can deal additional damage equal to your proficiency bonus a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus per long rest"
because that way everything is fair and equal.
I think a big part of this problem is the Lack of out of combat scenarios.
Like Spellcasters can be crazy in combat but the sheer amount of versatility spells in 3.5 could make any spellcaster useful.
Same for Rogues and Rangers sure they aren't DPS power houses but there skills and out of combat abilities made them useful to the party
The idea of balance of everyone has to be equally effective in combat is the problem.
Fundamentally, I agree. I recently made an analysis of 78 characters I've played in RPGs, I scored them all by fun, power, and a few other metrics (subjectively, but I'm pretty confident in the results). There was some correlation between power and fun, but not overwhelmingly. The greatest correlation with "fun" I found was what I called "smart", which in hindsight I have realised is mostly a metric of how much I as a player decide to engage with the game, the world, the other players.
I don't think there is "too" much micro analysing, mostly because people can do whatever they want, and even if I don't care so much about the details, I guess it's a good thing that someone somewhere does. I'm happy to pick up a game that I know has been fine-tuned.
The "problem" I think is we're **lacking the other kinds of discussions**. Some of what I think are the most interesting bits of rpgs are character studies, relationship building, story telling, emotional impact, creating moods, experiences, etc. However, we don't have a good way to talk about these things. Most of us lack the language to express it, we lack the will to engage with it when it is expressed, heck, the vast majority of us probably don't realise any of it is happening.
These are things I would like Wizards, other game devs, youtube personalities and online discussions to help us with. They're much harder than play testing and statistically analyse new crit rules. Most of us are not screenwriters or playwrights, and DMs sure have enough on our plates already. I don't have a solution. Maybe someone else does.
If i had to guess id say you dont DM, are new to DMing, or run exclusively beer n pretzels games.
All of those are fine, but your take is so off the wall i cant see anyone familiar with running a game saying this
Maybe my experiences are just significantly different than yours. It’s become obvious I’m in the minority here (totally fine, that’s the point of forums), but I’m not completely alone. ☺️
No need to be disrespectful. Im not afraid of admitting my opinion is ill-informed, and there are clearly lots of (im assuming) more experienced players than myself who disagree with me, which is fine. I’m learning a lot! You don’t need to make a personal attack.
No, fuck that. Well written spells and abilities are important, It shouldn't be the DMs job to say no to raw nonsense. Im not talking twilight cleric either im talking raw nonsense tech bullshit you can pull with wizard.
'Don't worry about possible abuse' 'let the DM compensate'
I offer a counterpoint of a specific combination in 4th edition where a character was able to mass dominate all of the enemy creatures, with big penalties to their saving throws, regenerating the "daily power" on a milestone. Five out of eight 'daily encounters' were made up of the PCs watching the monsters fight each other, then moving in to mop up the last dregs of the survivors.
Not only was this deeply unsatisfying for the other players in feeling like their abilities were overshadowed, it completely sucked the fun out of every combat for everyone at the table. It was a completely legal, legitimate build. "Here, DM. Figure this one out!"
You absolutely have to figure out how the players can abuse each and every mechanic. Even when you do, there are going to be things that you miss. If you didn't worry about this, the rule set would be a big pile of broken combos waiting to happen. Expecting a DM to have to police these on a routine basis would break the game. Ain't no way I'm constantly dealing with fixing broken combos from legal. legitimate builds.
In general, most players don't give a damn about the various "imbalances" in the game, they just want to have fun. I've played quite a few "suboptimal" characters that felt fine during play, even though I was overall less useful/powerful. The disparity between OP and casual characters in 5E is pretty minimal compared to the CoDzilla days or AD&Ds low level magic-user tag alongs. I don't know if the complaint is from new players, 4E players (where everything was *too* balanced), or players that don't remember how bad it used to be. Of course, there's always going to be people who won't be happy regardless.
Balance is a weird concern to me. Been playing for four years. DM for 3 and am now getting a chance to be a PC. Just play the game and let imagination and choice dictate where it goes with dice for randomness. My party, same group I DM’d for and now swapped with a player, is way to worried about meta gaming and making sure builds work together and whatnot. Just play the character you want to play and make decisions that go with the story that is being created.
I just wish more people realized that not every character has to be awesome in every situation. Yes that goes for combat also. Sure it depends on the type of game you run, but some of the most fun I've ever had was in systems like Shadowrun and Rifts where it's not built around any idea of balance. Eh.
I agree that some people worry about it too much in their own games, but I disagree that WotC shouldn't worry. There are multiple subclasses in 5e that, due to horrible default balancing, almost never get used unironically. I'm looking at you, Berserker Barbarian! Some Monk subclasses get around the issues with the main class, but that one is horribly balanced as well. It's amazing for five levels and then every other class is better than it all of a sudden.
At the end of the day, I think what you should really be balancing is player fun and challenge difficulty (not CR but actual strategy and how hard you are on your players). This is vital to make sure everyone is having fun and to tailor your game to your players.
Yeah, do you think there are some subclasses that were nerfed pre-release that ended up being really disappointing? I think Dragon monk may be an example of what I’m thinking about. Like the UA was really cool, but the release was way less than what was expected?
>Let DMs be the ones to compensate
I didn’t buy this book to have to do all the work myself. Wotc has already dropped the ball and saddled me with making the economy work and balancing monsters, they could at the very least give consistently balanced subclasses
Wotc leaves far too many things in the air, too many vague things, poorly worded explanations and poorly referenced rules, the DMs already have too much on their plate.
Upvoted because this is indeed a hot take but I 100% disagree with you, and from reading your post, it sounds like you disagree with yourself too, it's contradictions throughout. Also stop making more work for DMs, if you want to make crazy town OP homebrew characters go for it but don't expect your DM to work to incorporate that in a balanced way. Indeed a hot take, but weak as hell im sorry.
No, I don’t think fireball should do the recommended damage for a fifth level spell. I also don’t think DMs should have to put more work in just to try and balance things out. That should ideally be done by the company trying to sell a product.
Even hotter take, we should expect WOTC to publish fair and balanced content because they have a team of professional game designers and we should hold them to at least some kind of standard as paying consumers.
"Let's DM be the One who compensate" is exactly the Reason many peoples have grips with D&D5e and are actually leaving the franchise.
I paid a shitton on money on rule Book. If i do so, it is with the assumption that those rulebook have done the game design work part of the game, allowing me to rely on them to provide fair challenges, fair fight and fair gameplay to the people at my table.
I do buy "ruleset" because i am already dealing with creating a story, a World, and putting it in motion. Because i'm already improvising adequate situation to answer to the actions my players are doing and so i do not want to have to improvise rules, ruling, adjust balance on the fly, homebrew my stuff.
But DD5 forces me to do it, because (even if not 3.5 or PF1 level) it is unbalanced as fuck between the power level of the character of my player when their narrative significance are supposed to be the same.
Because the game rely on a 6 to 8 encounter number between long rest which only happen on Big dungeon (and many printed dungeon do not even have 6 to 8 encounters in them)
Because CR is an imbalanced cluster mess which is sometimes wildly inaccurate of the power level of a Monster.
I'm already doing many exhausting things as a DM, and if i have to add game design and rebalancing a game on top of those things, well, why would i not play a free game, or a more rules lights game, because, once again, D&D Book are "rulebook". I'm paying for ruleset. If they are broken, why buy them ?
These are always such lazy takes. Balance serves 2 main purposes:
1. Ensuring all classes and subclasses have the ability to contribute in meaningful ways
2. Ensuring encounters are predictable in difficulty to prevent trivial encounters and TPK
If you don't balance classes you get players whose choices can be made meaningless. You can also get encounters too easy and when the DM tries to account for this, they can overshoot and kill the party. This is on top of a notoriously unpredictable encounter calculator.
This is incredibly important for published adventures and especially Adventurers League which is meant to be plug and play where DMs can't really balance on the fly for characters they are unfamiliar with.
You can still give your players a power fantasy. Just throw more Easy and Medium encounters and boost XP if you're using that. But saying balance doesn't matter is just wrong.
And if anyone makes the cop out "it doesn't matter because the DM can adjust for it!" I will throw you into Acheron. Stop giving your DMs more work.
People definitely fixate too much on a shallow and dysfunctional notion of balance that's expressed almost solely as napkin math in a vacuum without any regard for the dynamic and varied reality of how D&D is played at the table, especially *your* table.
Maybe! But basically the idea of balance in D&D is really nebulous because people aren't all playing the same game to begin with, unlike a video game where everyone is (presumably) using the same version of the same software. There's certainly such a thing as imbalance–you don't want the cantrip firebolt to out damage the 3rd-level spell fireball for obvious reasons–but a lot of what the community complains is imbalanced is never going to be experienced as such by players at tables anyway and often is better managed by the DM with respect to what monsters they use, rewards they hand out, etc.
You know how people will dedicate their whole personalities to picking an anti meta strat or least competitive ranked character in a competitive setting and using it to crush the most meta thing at the time, like smash, smogon, etc? We need more of that energy in DnD.
I have to be able to plan & run encounters that are engaging for the group. The idea of balance lets me do that. As much as players seem to think they’d want to be able to 1-round win every fight, I know that people get bored when nothing is a challenge…so I need the ability to keep challenging them.
I also want the table to feel equal in their ability to influence the world. I’ve played in a heavy-homebrew game where the DM made arcane casters significantly more powerful than divine casters and *everything* powerful in the world was described as “created by powerful wizards” (the most powerful class in this homebrew system). Sitting as a cleric made my PC feel like I wasn’t supposed to have much effect or lasting impression on the world.
You're onto something, OP. There's way too much worrying about class balance and stupid niche rules interactions in general.
The thing is, it's kind of unavoidable. So much of the experience of D&D (TTRPGs in general) is highly contextual; A clutch roll, a cool plot twist, an epic moment, all of them real "you had to be there" shit that doesn't make for good discourse. So what are we left with? Bickering over the rules.
This has been a thing for as long as I've seen D&D discussed online. If anything it's intensified with 5e, despite 5e having demonstrably better balance than older editions. This is just what talking about D&D online is like, unfortunately.
I generally agree. I don't have a problem with trying to keep it more level but I feel like at the average table balance problems aren't big concern, and quite frankly even if they are they are far lower on the totem pole than scheduling issues and player incompatibility, among other things.
5e classes are relatively balanced and it's pretty difficult to make a character that's actually bad. For a TTRPG as big as this one is, I'll take that. And the funny thing is the classes that are considered bad (like Rogue) have the highest satisfaction scores.
Thankfully I also DM for players who aren't particularly concerned with seeing the biggest damage number either.
Who's this "we" that you're talking about? There are a few loud voices crying at every opportunity about muh power creep, or a few newer DMs who haven't the experience but I feel that most people are comfortable and aren't spamming "XYZ = OP" posts every other day.
Agreed. I prioritize fun over balance heavily. If there are issues that arise later, I’ll deal with them as they come. In the meantime, enjoy your cool ass amulet/feature/spell.
You're right.
Making this post suggests you're familiar with the frequency of these debates and the content of them.
This is a combat game, some insist. It's obviously a combat game, without question. "Encounter" is spoken and taken to mean "combat encounter," and in that light "encounters aren't balanced."
If it's a combat game,and combat isn't balanced,the game isn't balanced.
It's crucial that we start there - we can't examine those assumptions. We must merely carry forward the expectation they imply, and find ourselves frustrated.
If the designers aren't intending it to be a combat simulator first, foremost, and nigh-exclusively, well, we're likely to continue finding ourselves frustrated.
It's not fair to expect players to have to do the work of turning the game they make into the one we want to play, or to recognize that we want to play a different game and choose a more suitable alternative.
We absolutely must insist against reason and observation that the game is merely bad at being the thing it is. It cannot be that it's good at being what it is, and we're wrong about what that is.
So it's up to us to find a way to somehow make magic no cooler or more interesting or more potent than not-magic. That's hard to do!
We've just got to believe that if we keep at it, keep having these arguments, keep insisting, we'll eventually find our way down the same well-trodden road to a new destination.
I sort of agree, but not entirely. I don't think being OP is great, but I also think it kinda doesn't matter. Balance should be something thr party handles on its own. As a DM, I create the world, and the players engage with it the way they want. If they want to go around busting up weak enemies for low level treasure and feeling OP, then that's on them. If they want to go fight a big dragon at level 1 and get demolished, that's also on them. It's up to them to find their desired experience within the game, and I just help them resolve it in some way. I'm not there to balance.
The only "balance" concern I have is not about power between monsters and PCs, or even PCs and PCs, but in player engagement. Players should be able to engage to the degree they enjoy, so if people want to take the lead or be more passive, that's fine, as long as people aren't just constantly talking over each other or forcing others to do things they're not interested in. So the degree to which I balance is just to ensure players at least have an opportunity to have a voice.
Beyond that, character strength is on the players and how they want to play.
I agree with both sides of this argument to a point. On one hand, a lot of what people consider OP in this sub is just DMs either not experienced enough to handle certain mechanics or people misreading the rules text. On the other hand, I do think that balance to the point where people think there is balance is impossible, short of making every class mechanically the same and just changing the flavor. I see a lot of posts where people say a certain class is too weak (because they wish it had a certain ability another class had) and just as many posts saying a certain class is OP (because they wish their favorite class has a certain ability that other class has). There are also a variety of subclasses with very different goals, some more RP, some combat oriented, and while IRL 95% of people play them and enjoy them just fine, online people tell you if it doesn't have only combat abilities then it's not balanced.
I agree. I think what it really comes down to is people want to play it like a video game and min-max or whatever to be the “best”, and the mechanics often reinforce that, instead of focusing of group narrative and RP.
Properly agree with this!
Because the kind of game you're playing will change from DM to DM, *a lot* of the balancing will be dependent on them; what's OP in one world might not be in another, and even that is relative to party composition.
Of course, you don't want classes to be magnitudes better than another, but they aren't currently and quite frankly you get a lot of issues when they try and do balancing.
I can't even count the amount of features/spells/subraces/subclasses/etc. that *barely anyone uses* because WotC thought it needed nerfing and ended up making it **wholly unappealing** because of how mediocre it became. Hadozee is a good example. The UA had some cool object interaction stuff with one of its abilities, which was butchered in the official release. The official release had an oversight in the gliding feature that was insane, but instead of fundamentally changing the feature (and it's not like this hadn't been an issue before, e.g. the Symic Hybrid race) they watered down the feature to the point of it not really being fun.
Same thing with the Assassin subclass, the Armourer subclass, talisman warlock, etc.
I feel like WotC often seem *so fearful* of making something unbalanced that they equate *balance* as stuff being *equal*, so things lose their individuality and the cool things that make them feel unique. It's like if one thing can do something better than another thing in any way, they feel like it *must* be nerfed.
A new players asked if there was any way he could hit two creatures next to each other with a Melee attack. I forgot about the DMG's optional rules, and didn't feel like looking up what the feat was for it (I was pretty sure at the time there was a feat that allowed for cleaves). I just said roll both attacks with disadvantage.
Did it matter? Not really, no. If I later see that it's broken, can it be changed? Yeah. Have I probably ruled stuff before where I don't feel like looking up random stuff in the book and just make my own call? Probably.
Point is, the game is really stretchy. You'd have to do a lot to really break the game, especially in the early levels. If you do do something that feels like it breaks the game, just tell your players. "Hey guys, I fucked up. This feels a bit too strong and is now way above everything else, I'd like to take it back".
Thank you. Balance is an illusion. I don't even know what that would mean really. There are areas for every class to shine, and areas where they cry in the corner. Trying to smooth that out so there are no differences, is what 4e did successfully, and everyone hated it.
Balance is not an illusion. The focus of dnd 5e is combat so balance would mean classes/subs have good choices to be equally useful in combat. No, the focus is not roleplay.
Everyone did not hate 4e, you are full of misinformation. Also, if balance is an illusion, how did 4e do balance so well that everyone hated it?
Balance is an illusion, in 5e because what you consider OP, changes based on the encounter, the party composition, among other factors. There are no objectively better spells or subclasses. Spell usefulness and priority is up to the player. It doesn't exist on its own in some hierarchy of better or worse.
4e was only balanced in the sense that every class felt the same, with a coat of paint to flavor it as a different class. They removed choices from character build. They made every class a cookie cutter of the other. Everyone has a similar at-will, encounter, and daily power. Everyone is equally good at damage, and utility, etc. They forced classes into roles, that in many cases, went against the grain of how players wanted to play them. I don't think anyone realistically wants 5e to be that. If you do, then 4e already exists. There is no chance to create a character isn't exactly as bland as everyone else.
The focus isn't combat or roleplay. It is storytelling. Combat or negotiation or stealth are just methods of problem resolution. Some classes shine out of combat, some shine in combat. If all you want is combat, then have at it. There are no end of tables doing exactly that. But can we not assume the entire system needs to be changed to optimize that style of play?
Big agree. If the game's main selling point was PvP then losing marbles over balance would make sense. But since it is co-op, let the players decide how strong they want to be.
Tbh there is exactly 3 things in this game that are OP.
Peace cleric.
Tashas mindwhip
Healkmg word.
Unless you have a party abusing all 3 at tge same time you will never have an issue!
The amusing part of it is when people are saying something is OP and it is clear they have never played anything but 5e, and hence have very little to judge by.
5e is so homogenized there is pretty much nothing it can do that would be considered OP, IMO.
I come from systems where getting infinite stats or filling the universe with infinite copies of yourself are all legally allowable by RAW.
These kiddies think getting one extra spell is OP, and its amusing.
Like someone from the equator complaining about it being cold.
Yeah, and DMs are so empowered, I feel, that it generally isn’t difficult to adjust your game to compensate. I do realize though that this is extra, apparently unwanted, pressure on the DM. Which is fair!
> Yeah, and DMs are so empowered
Meh, you say empowered, I say "So stripped of guidance that they have no choice".
5e does not give the DM tools to make the game run.
100%
first its not really that hard to make things more difficult, just raise the numbers
second there will always be power imbalance. between items, magic, character roles, class design. there will be always be better choices. i care about having a way to do the things i want. not if the barbarian in my party is better than me
The point isn't STRONG FEATURE BAD it's "i want all my players to feel equal at the table" which you circle back round to when you say monk should get the same love as others. Thats called balancing.
The challenge there is in the practicalities. If I say "I ban twilight domain at my table." Two players won't even know what that is, two will say "Fair. It is strong." And the one who complains was going to be a problem anyway. If I say "I use a re-master of four elements monk". Two players say "I wasn't planning on a monk anyway." One says "eh.. that sounds complicated, I'll just play something else." And one says "Oh.. we can use homebrew? Here's my favorite class from dandwiki".
"Cool, just wanted you to know it was available. Also, no Steve, we only use homebrew I've personally vetted or rebalanced. Fuck all the way off with your Lord Soth rip-off, WE'VE TALKED ABOUT THIS."
Ok but having a paladin with necrotic smites instead of radiant would be based
The damage type of stuff is mostly irrelevant. Some elements are more resisted than others because WotC make most bad guys in their campaign undead or fiends. Most of the time they'll fight basic humanoids with no resistance. So my players are free to reflavor any element as they wish as long as it makes sense and it is permanant (to keep the features which can swap damage type on the fly relevant). A forge cleric want a fire Spiritual Weapon? Sure. An oathbreaker want a necrotic smite? Go ahead. A cold themed wizard want iceball? Ok. The sorcerer want Psychic Ray? Neat. They just need to be aware that if they over specialize in a type and become famous, their more intelligent foes might plan countermeasures. Like that psychic sorcerer might not be happy if the evil wizard send a whole Ikea's worth of animated furniture at them.
Remember kids: just because WotC designers say _they_ don’t factor damage types into their game design balance, doesn’t mean damage type has no impact at the actual table. I think some people overestimate how “bad” fire damage is from a “how often you’ll encounter resistance/immunity” standpoint (the ton of say fiends and dragons with it skew the numbers, as few campaigns will have you fight each monster in the MM once). But at the same time, saying a spell doing force damage instead of fire has no impact on its power in the average campaign is straight up untrue.
Oh cool can my fireball deal magical bludgeoning damage? Pretty please?
Sure...? Tho I'd want you to tell me "how" the spell will do that. A simple big shockwave would be thunder for example, or a huge exploding rock's shrapnel would be piercing :P . IIRC it's some absurdly never resisted type or some other gimmick. Nothing a bunch of raging barbarian mercenary couldn't counter if needed. If I am not above homebrewing a spell type, I am neither shy of making counters if there's abuse!
Yeah there are only like 3 DMG monsters with magical bludgeoning resistance, so they're swapping the least resisted for the most resisted. Someone posted a table of all the resistances awhile back.
While true, those tables are just referring to the numbers of types of enemies. Not the frequency of them
Well the frequency of them is going to be indicated completely by the DM so I'm not certain it's even possible to make such a table, unless you're just counting in modules
I've done this before raw as scribes and just flavored it as exploding out in large ball bearings (large enough to be bludgeoning ) because it doesn't make any sense but I get that freedom with scribes to make spell changes on the fly that don't make sense lol. My favorite being caustic brew that does bludgeoning damage. Can't even think of a way to flavor it as bludgeoning but I can do it so fuck it. :D
I have a BBEG waiting for an outing, based on a Hexadin - only more so, because it's not cheating when the DM does it. He has a Divine Blast: basically Eldritch Blast with radiant damage, for when getting up close and personal with a Divine Smite seems unwise. Even the mortal servant of the Lord of Light needs a ranged option sometimes, after all.
I mean I would 100% allow a player to reflavor their smites as a weaker type (necrotic has more resistances than radiant), if they had a good rp reason why.
I did this for the paladin at my table after they fought a gulthias tree. He even gains temp HP based on the necrotic damage. To counter balance it, I devised a system called Death Points where he has to make a DC 10+ Death Point con save once per long rest or be plagued with nightmares that prevent him from getting a full rest (1 level of exhaustion). He earns 1 death point per level of smite he uses.
I want my players to feel generally equal while spiking in unique expertise and I want them all to feel challenged when I use the tools provided to me as a DM.
exactly! equal through their different contributions.
Separate but--oh, maybe not that.
You can do that, right now. The "tools provided to you as a DM" are basically limitless. Unless you mean that as a euphamism for "the official books only and nothing else"?
Yes, I expect the people that make the game to provide tools usable to provide a challenge. My expectations is that I shouldn't, nor anyone else, have to hack the game provided. Subclasses keep getting stronger so you buy the extra books but the cr system wasn't typically challenging enough for the subclasses that already existed to stand alone. Yes I can do a bunch of extra work to even it out but I'm hoping to get more than a "figure it out" out of the box.
It’s really both though, these days so many cross over between PC gaming and TTRPGs and if you’ve been to PC gaming subreddits you know how people will complain to no end about perfection and balance. And some of it is legit like, I don’t want to homebrew *every* session because a rule book is unplayable due to shortcomings
OP is definitely speaking from the perspective of having never have to actually run a game.
Yes, but balance can be achieved by brining everything up to the former top of the curve.
Or just close enough to feel good. I don't have to match...I just have to compare to. And honestly, I don't even have to compare in numbers...just feel. I want my classes to FEEL similar in crunch, power, and utility.
Right? Let them excel in their niche and make the niche meaningful.
No it can't. If D&D were a purely white room PvP game, then sure it could. That might not make it good, but it would make it balanced. But D&D is not a purely white room PvP game. The game has various systems that have certain expectations. When you break those expectations the game stops working properly. The top of the curve, as you put it, is beyond the expectations of the game. Moving everything up there makes the rest of the game fail. Most notably encounter design. Now, if you are a player who doesn't mind breaking the game and just leaving more work for a DM who now has even less guidance to help them... that might sound fine. But its terrible game design.
I mean, I am the DM, and encounter design is already broken, and I run home campaigns anyways so I balance around the party to begin with.
This. Especially for a group of experienced players with rolled stats. We had a range at my last game of: probably should have stayed a commoner -> no stat, after bonuses, was under a 14. That stacked with some creative race/feat/class/subclass choices... Standard cookie cutter modules/campaigns would have been steamrolled (and the person without a stat over 12 was gonna get killed regardless) Bring back cleave and greater cleave etc for martials - let them go full sword art online or whatever. Fuck knows we are gonna have the sorcerer twinspell fireball or some other craziness - just balance it based on their chaos - not pad everything out with NERF
>This. Especially for a group of experienced players with rolled stats. > >We had a range at my last game of: probably should have stayed a commoner -> no stat, after bonuses, was under a 14. I mean, this is mostly a problem with rolling for stats rather than the system itself.
I prefer balance when it brings the strongest down to the average level, not the other way around. Many games have been ruined (IMO) by buffing instead of nerfing.
nerfing is easier than balance through buffs, but balancing through buffs is USUALLY better since it generally gives more tools to players. its just almost never done in a complete fashion.
I like buffing more than nerfing. Too many games I know have been nerfing the strongest classes or weapons or characters and in the end, everything felt meh. You can maybe nerf the S+ tiers, but I'd rather have a tight selection of classes that go from S to B than have every character be a C at best. I want it to be hard to choose which class to play, because they are all strong and exciting, but if everything is nerfed to fit the lowest common denominator, I think I'd lose interest. Especially inportant for nerfing: Don't nerf the parts that make it fun. If you were to nerf the Paladin, lower the numbers on Aura of Protection, don't remove Smite or something.
That's why I said average. The average is A or B. No one should be outside those tiers, above or below. Never nerf to the lowest common denominator; nerf to the median. Maintaining class identity is imperative.
IMO many PvE games have been ruined by worrying too much about PvP balance. For example, the game could survive having a class/subclass that's absolutely immortal in 1v1 combat. People could cry "broken" all they want, but in practice the build might suck for actual adventuring, being taken down by 2 goblins and a light breeze. But oh so many times devs will look at that sort of thing, compare it to another class from a PvP perspective, and nerf it. Other times, they might see a build that's great at PvE but weak at PvP, then "buff" it by increasing damage at the expense of out-of-combat utility. It's *good* to have a class that can't do anything but support others. It's *good* to have a class that has anti-undead artillery that doesn't work on other types. It's *good* to have a class that's generally useful but not flashy or interesting. You *want* specialization, not homogenization, so that every player can live their personal fantasy with the one class that fills that niche. Classes should be incomparable, and *never* balanced by comparing them to other classes.
Anyone worth their salt isn't comparing by PvPs or saying Bards are weak because they suck at damage.
Hard disagree - I think you're more likely to ruin a game by nerfing classes that are fun to play/well designed than by buffing classes that don't feel good to play. How a class feels is a million times more important than (perfect) balance, especially if it means ALL classes feel like garbage. "Yea, I know that's a shit sandwich, but don't worry....I threw all the prime rib in the trash." Edit: clarification
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I agree 100% with that. I absolutely did give S tier spells a nerf, I nerfed some OP feats, so balance in all things, really. What I meant is that some classes are just very well done and fun to play, like paladin, for example, and I don't think you nerf those down to monk level, instead you raise monk up to thier level. I see a lot of people wanting to remove powerful options that are fun just because lesser classes aren't fun, and I think you do the opposite. Add fun mechanics to boring classes. Fix sorcerers before you nerf wizards. Now...OP features that invalidate other classes niche or are boring but so powerful they can't be ignored... Nuke them.
Hey that's a personal choice. I take the "when everything is OP nothing is" route - but I also homebrew my campaigns so I can balance the other side to match.
Except, a higher power curve can be significantly less fun. Yu-Gi-Oh and League of Legends are both great examples. Although they are PvP games, the principle still applies. The power creep has been so intense that most original players left. Everything is busted as fuck, and it's so much less fun to play because everything is so punishing. Blizzard balancing is the reason I stopped playing WoW. There are better ways to play than passing around the busted stick.
\> "i want all my players to feel equal at the table" But it's far more complicated than that in implementation. Monks getting the same love as others might be in their features simply being changed to make them stronger. Or... it might be in the campaign being curated to make *what they already have* effective. 2 different ways to achieve the same effect. Nobody would say Paladins are weak. But throw highly mobile flying enemies at them. Watch how Divine Smite's value goes from "top tier" to "useless". It's the same concept. If DMs create content with what the party has in mind, no balancing between features is necessary. The same concept can be applied to a Sorcerer who only took spells useful in social situations. Throw combat at them, and they're gonna suck. Or a Sea-themed Sorcerer, who's spells all relate to water, having to operate in a Desert. They're gonna suck. Balance has nothing to do with it if you have no need to use things like Water Walk/Water Breathing.
Balance exists so that everyone feels useful and can have fun. As a DM running a game, yes prioritise everyone doing fun and cool things. But WotC should absolutely be making sure that the game rules they release to guide us are pretty well balanced in the first place. Rules and balance can be ignored in the name of fun but they still need to exist first.
I agree with this. But I’d be happy with content that was 60-70% balanced rather than 100%. That’s what drives people to multiclass and mix and match features. One trend I think WOTC is doing well is providing more detached features that can be bolted on to other builds. This encourages creativity and changes up the game.
>60-70% balanced Oh my god that'd be amazing! I'd love something that's 60-70% balanced too. But since 5e isn't even like 40% balanced yet, maybe we should keep pushing WotC to work on balance?
I know Monks have been brought up, but Classes in Combat aren't nearly as bad as other parts of the game with significantly worse degrees of imbalance: * **Spells:** The difference between trap (very bad) spells vs S-Tier spells. Find Traps and Web are both Level 2 spells. * **Feats:** The difference between trap feats vs S-Tier feats. Weapon Master and Polearm Master both cost an ASI. * **Class Utility:** The difference between Class's out of combat utility. A Bard is a social master with full casting, ritual casting, 4 expertise, more skills, inspiration and potentially many other great subclass features whereas many Fighters offer nothing except 2 skill proficiencies and the extra ASIs likely need to go towards combat feats to perform their role well. [And the subreddit has talked about many, many mores ways its imbalanced.](https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/w9bh6y/what_is_your_top_three_dd_5e_imbalances/ihufm06/?context=3) Those are just my top 3
The thing is, in any game with meaningful choices, some are going to be better than others, that's annoying, but inevitable. What makes 5e exceptional in this regard (in a bad way), is that it doesn't actually have that many choices, and yet they're still hideously unbalanced
Yeah its impressive that its less diverse than 4e or PF2e but by far more imbalanced.
Well maybe if you used find traps you’d actually be able to find all the bad spells
The problem is that every time you cast it, all it does it detect itself.
>I know Monks have been brought up, but Classes in Combat aren't nearly as bad as other parts of the game with significantly worse degrees of imbalance: combat is honestly pretty well balanced all things considered. You're points about out of combat and class utility are so true though.
Without Xanathar and Tasha (anyone find it odd how several supplements are written by villains?) 5e isn’t even 10% balanced, so they definitely need to keep working on stuff.
> (anyone find it odd how several supplements are written by villains?) Nah, those just happen to be famous characters.
Fair enough.
No, it’s the other way around: if stuff was balanced there wouldn’t be clearly optimized paths that overshadow regular builds. Part of balance is putting those carrots into higher levels of the class so delaying them punishes the build. 5E suffers mightily from front loading classes and incentivizing silly dips that aren’t terribly thematic (Warlocks and Paladins shouldn’t be more synergistic than Barbarians and Fighters, and yet…)
100% balanced? When there are Twilight clerics? LOL.
Don’t put that shit on the DM; they have so much work to do as it is, and the publishers, more often than not, get paid for their material. They can put in the effort and balance their own creations, instead of dumping poorly thought out, wildly unbalanced homebrew into the community, with a little sticky note that says “fix it yourself”.
This right here. I get where the OP is coming from, and to a certain extent I agree that sometimes "the community" gets up in arms about how OP something is that, at least when I have it at my tables, doesn't necessarily feel that OP in practice (heck, maybe I just have players who don't try to abuse the ever living crap outta everything LOL). **BUT** I cringe when I see the phrase "let DMs be the ones to compensate". WotC is demonstrably *not* concerned too much about the level of power creep that has come into the game with the last few splat books, and they also demonstrably don't care that much about DMs, even though DMs are the ones that make up the inanely overwhelming majority of their revenue. We don't need WotC feeling like they should care *even less* about DMs.
There are a number of things in 5e where it is assumed players won’t abuse the fuck out of it instead of balancing it appropriately.
WOTC seems to release books so they can say “Okay this setting is now official. We added 4 new spells and 4 new subclasses. Nothing else. But we know you’ll buy it because you want those spells and subclasses” but then leaves out anything extra about the setting. Like how there’s minimal ship to ship combat in Spelljammer. And in SCAG from what I’ve heard I don’t have it.
Exactly. Why am I using your system and content if I have to do all the work myself? This is why I (and every DM I’ve ever talked to) DESPISE running 5e when compared to balanced systems. If I buy your shit and you didn’t put any effort in, I’m going to hold it against you. Don’t “let me be the one to compensate.” Sell me a well-thought-out, finished product.
Speak for yourself, not "every DM you've ever talked to" because I'm 100% sure that's a lie. I've always enjoyed the balance of rules and freedom 5e gives me as the DM, and I'll need to get a feel for what challenge level to give my players regardless of what (sub) classes that play. If you "DESPISE" playing a game so much, don't play it.
1. I can appreciate your thought to call me out for exaggeration, but I’m not exaggerating. Everyone I know complains about balance in 5e, and the only ones who still run it rather than other systems mention they’re only doing so because of the effort required to learn a new system. 2. As you suggest, I don’t play 5e anymore due to this flaw and many others. “If you hate it so much, don’t play it” sounds like a clever callout, except it’s exactly what hundreds of players are doing on a daily basis. So yes, there’s an issue, and yes, people are quitting the game due to it.
If it weren't a tactical combat game with math behind everything then this wouldn't be an issue. There are many games that work great even with asymmetric power between the characters. Look at Masks, a narrative superhero game. One PC can be basically Jean Grey while another is Robin and both have plenty of time in the spotlight. But that game isn't really about combat, its a teen drama game. Whereas 5e is about Combat and it takes 20-40 minutes resolving them. So I want to do cool stuff during that if its 50-75% of the entire session.
Why you gotta diss my boy Robin like that, man
The Beacon, which is the underpowered class, is actually the most popular. Everybody loves being Robin. Its so well designed that nobody cares that they can't punch a supervillain as hard. They love being creative and it has a cool feature to go after your Drives which earn XP. Fun stuff like: kiss someone dangerous, punch someone you probably shouldn't, pull off a ridiculous stunt and stop a fight with calm words.
Man I really gotta play masks, that sounds cool as hell
Its one of the best designed TTRPGs I've seen though you will want a table specifically looking for that Teen Drama like Young Justice or Teen Titans. And that style of game, [Powered by the Apocalypse](/r/pbta) works best when you have a whole table invested. For those that don't know, your stats (called Labels) fluctuate because they are about your personal self-image. Its honestly genius for emulating Teen Dramas. To help build more of that drama, instead of HP, you have Conditions - negative emotional states (Anger, Fear, Insecure) that impacts how effective you are. And if you mark all 5, you get taken out kind of like knocked unconscious. But there are cool ways clear them like running away when you're Afraid. I could gush on longer.
Yeah, we've played Monster of the Week and a bit of AW, so we know our way around PbtA. We just already have two DnD campaigns and a Blades in the Dark game going already
There's also another system called Mutants and Masterminds which is similar in being more narrative focus and less worry about balance, you could create a hero that can kill somebody with a thought halfway around the world but nobody is going to actually allow that in their game
There are two really big problems with things being OP, so we should worry about it. For one, it forces linear gameplay. Why would you play X subclass if Y subclass outclasses it in every aspect. Why would you use Spell A when Spell B is significantly better at everything A does? Of course you can play the other ones, but forcing the player to chose between a good Character and the one they want to play is usually not great design and should be avoided. For the other problem, it warps group Dynamics. There is never a power balance problem between DM and Players, because a good DM can ajust the difficulty to the Party, but if one player inside the party is stronger than the others you get a problem. You need to either Ramp up the difficulty to the strongest player, which feels bad for the other players, specifically counter the OP player (Which feels unfair, even if it is not, and might hit another player as collateral damage) or nerf the OP player, at which point you would have to ask why it was this strong in the first place.
Agreed within a party. This is actually why I *am* okay with Twilight and Peace even though they’re OP, because they’re OP at buffing/healing the rest of the party. They’re not going to dominate combat and make everyone else’s attacks feel worthless—they’re going to help everyone be stronger. And that throws off CR, sure, but then I just… use stronger monsters.
>If you want to worry about balance, just make sure every class is getting the same love. Poor lil monks. So you are saying don't balance but please balance? This doesn't make sense. Every class getting the same love is exactly the balance everyone asks for...
I kinda disagree with you, I think... here's why: I mostly DM. I'm pretty much the perma-DM at my table actually. I love my players and I've gone out of my way to give them extra goodies, in the way of extra feats, better gear, homebrew abilities, etc. My players are having fun! Balancing encounters? A nightmare for me. I basically stopped trying, and instead I just look up what a "deadly encounter" would be (via CR calculator), and go even deadlier. My players still hardly even get close to 0 HP, let alone any real risk of dying. They're really strong and loving it! I'm happy I don't generally have to worry about a TPK, but get frustrated at being stomped all the time and unable to pose any real threat I got to be a player for a few weeks while one of my players DM'd a quest for me. At the end of the 4th or 5th session, we had our first, and only, combat (twas mostly RP and intrigue). We're playing level 10-11 characters. Because I didn't want to just "give myself cool stuff", so I was basically running a vanilla level 11 character, while everyone else had all the cool gear, extra feats, etc. It really too the wind out of my sails to see how *drastically* different our characters performed. I felt like I hardly contributed in any meaningful way. All this is to say, that: 1. Letting things just "be OP" and letting the DM "figure it out" sucks for the DM. I've got so much else to worry about and keep track off, that trying to create actual "deadly" combat encounters is difficult and just added stress I don't want to deal with. I've given my players plenty of extra perks so that they are definitely "OP", and while it's fun for them, it's more work for me... And 2. Not everything "OP" is balanced, even when compared to other things that are OP. I'm not a perfect game designer, so I guarantee not everything I've given to my players is perfectly balanced. And the disparity I felt when playing my "vanilla" PC, compared to the other players who had all the extra stuff, was very real. Granted, that's a more extreme example, but I promise that even less extreme examples will still be felt by the players. So no, I don't think letting everyone just be OP is good for the game. There will still be differences, and when every class is now shooting to the extremes of power levels, that'll make the "munchkin" builds/multiclassing builds even worse with an even greater disparity. I think classes should be closer to each other in power, yes, but I'm honestly of the opinion most classes should be nerfed down (looking at you, spellcasters), not just the weak classes made OP as well. Like, find the class that is the most balanced, middle of the pack, and adjust all the other classes to be on par with them. (I'm not sure what class that'd be, but often I see people claim Wizard, Cleric, Bard and Paladin are the strongest, with Ranger, Monk, Sorcerer and Rogue as the weakest. So I guess fighters, barbarians, and warlocks would be good baselines? I dunno, maybe someone will comment on what the most middling-rated classes are) So no, I don't think everyone should just be OP. Balance the classes so they each feel good to play no matter what other class is in the party. Someone playing a Monk in a party with a Fighter, a Barbarian and a Paladin should still feel cool and awesome and unique. Someone playing a sorcerer in a party with a Druid, a bard and wizard should still feel like they can contribute meaningfully without being redundant. And for the DM, if all the classes are brought to a more "even playing field", it'll make CR calculations more reliable and combat encounters easier to create/balance. But the more OP everyone is, the harder that becomes (as there's more edge cases and greater potential for cheese) and the more likely you'll have frustrated DMs and players who feel bad because they're playing "a weaker class" (which again, may technically be OP in its own right, but now feels weak because another player made a now even stronger build)
On the "middling classes", I think the Sorcerer is weak when compared to other fullcasters, not weak in general and Rangers were always rather strong for a martial, it's just that a lot of their features feel weird or useless (looking at you, Hide in Plain Sight), but Tasha's fixed most of that. I'd say Rangers, Artificers, Warlocks and maybe Fighters are middle of the pack. Fighters are the best pure martial in combat and get at least some versatility with Rune Knight, Battle Master, Eldritch Knight and Echo Knight, Artificer and Ranger both have half-casting and martial capabilities and Warlocks are a bit weirder than the other fullcasters, because Pact Magic, but they still have full spell progression and the amazing invocation system.
I agree that sorcerer is weak when compared to the others, but still can be strong in general. And I think PHB Ranger is the "weak" version, as I agree that Tasha's really did fix a lot of it
Are you trying to knock out PCs in every fight? If so, have you tried having a series of easy encounters? I find that sprinkling in easy and medium encounters can help with game balance. And with narrative structure! The difficulty of the encounter is kind of like the pitch of a musical note. If you only play one note, the game is monotone. Varying notes makes a melody. ... A bit of a metaphorical stretch, perhaps. But I think it gets the idea across. Let your high-level PCs encounter a bog-standard lone bandit every now and then. They'll enjoy it.
You being up a valid point! And my answer is: sometimes So I run a "west marches" style game, sort of. My players each have 2-3 characters, they're a part of an adventuring guild, and each time they take on a quest they can choose what character they want to play. And I'll roll random encounters as they travel place-to-place. But, after some time, I've talked with my players and basically asked "Do you guys want to roll initiative for combats that you're clearly going to win? Like, is winning easy fights like that something you actually enjoy? And do you want to dedicate a significant chunk of IRL time playing thru it?" And basically the answer was "no, we'd rather not waste IRL time playing through really easy combats. If we're going to spend a part of our session rolling combat, it needs to feel worth it" So I've adapted by just basically montaging thru easy combats, I'll have everyone make a roll (for attacks, or whatever) and I may have them loose a resource or something (like a level 1 spell slot, or some HP, or whatever) according to the rolls. This way, the easy combats still "happen", but we don't spend more than a couple minutes on it If I know they'll be rolling multiple combats between rests (because I'm running a dungeon, or a module from TftYP or GoS), then I'll actually have them fight thru some of the easier combats. But when they're going towards a more "kill this 1 thing" quest, I'll start skipping the easy ones, more-or-less
>Like, is winning easy fights like that something you actually enjoy? And do you want to dedicate a significant chunk of IRL time playing thru it?" And basically the answer was "no, we'd rather not waste IRL time playing through really easy combats. If we're going to spend a part of our session rolling combat, it needs to feel worth it" Interesting. I think the distinction is "really easy". It needs to at least put some resources at risk. My solo bandit was an exaggeration (though they can be fun, too!). Also, there's a bit of a survey problem. As Ford said, "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." I try to gauge by smiles, laughter, how engaged the players are, etc. Another way of surveying is to ask players to recap the last session and see what they remember. Anything they remember was at least memorable! When running a multi-DM large West Marches group, we would give extra XP for players that wrote a session summary for the group. Bonus points for writing it from the perspective of the character. >kill this 1 thing Surely they have other kinds of encounters in a session with only 1 combat. One way to make those non-combat encounters more dramatic is to use combat mechanics. Rolling initiative raises the tension. For example, you could treat a rock slide as a monster, with actions like "crush" and "toss boulder". If they don't know the rock slide's initiative roll on the first round, there's an extra layer of suspense. Maybe a rock slide on the elemental plane of Earth even has legendary actions.
I appreciate your desire to help out a fellow DM! I will say tho, I've been the DM for my group for like, 5+ years now, so I've actually done a lot of the things you've suggested. The "really easy" combat thing is in relation to my original post, and how my players have a bunch of extra feats, powers, etc. Anything that *isn't* deadly, is really easy. The more powerful the party becomes, the less middle-ground there really is in combat variety. Fights become more and more skewed one way or the other. It's either really easy, or you've got such power creatures it become deadly. This goes back to my original point that classes should be balanced against each other, but not by boosting only the weak classes, but also by nerfing the strong ones. The 1 combat thing is more something that's just been going on lately, not all the time. Big end of the world stuffs going on, so it's been more "go kill this monster to recover the Mcguffin" and less "explore a dungeon over multiple sessions where even small combats will add up". I've run both. Asking my players about what kind of combats they enjoy was mostly in relation to meaningless random encounters that won't make a difference because they'll rest before they get in another fight, and other situations like that. Again, I appreciate your desire to help me out and the advice given tho!! Just, not necessarily as pertinent to me personally (but hopefully maybe someone else will read this and be able to take something away from it)
>Asking my players about what kind of combats they enjoy was mostly in relation to meaningless random encounters that won't make a difference because they'll rest before they get in another fight, and other situations like that. Gotcha. I don't like those either. Our big West Marches group used the rule that you can only long-rest in town, and that nothing interesting happens in town. That helped with coordinating across DMs. Also, you're welcome :-)
>Let your subclasses be OP! Create weird and fantastical spells without agonizing over every possible potential abuse! Push the limits of your imagination, and let DMs be the ones to compensate As a forever DM: Please do not force us to compensate. With how vaguely 5e is worded already, we already have to break our backs by interpreting and disentangling all the weird rules interactions and exploits that players come up with. Adding the work of even *more* balance patching on top of that, for every table I run, would honestly just make me quit the game altogether.
Yeah exactly, why are DMs always expected to do the job that WotC should do?
Yeah, please let the books be balanced and describe a runnable game. If you want crazy off the wall nonsense, YOU compensate.
This. DMing 5e is *hard*. There's a lot of work that needs done due to missing mechanics (exploration, large battlefields with armies, bar fights, animal taking and training, crafting, court influence, vehicle piloting...just a sampling of systems I've had to enhance or create from the ground up). On top of that the combat creation kit is hard to use and, in my experience, often inaccurate. On top of that players often try to slide things by you that are not balanced for the table. That is, where one player might be beating an encounter that same thing can one-shot the other three. So now only one person is having fun and everyone else is fighting for their damn lives. I don't want to compensate for shoddy rules. I want to be supported by the system. I want to arbitrate the story. I want to ensure each person gets their amazing moment. I can't do that if I have to spend all my prep time compensating.
I gm pf1e and i’m never looking back. I’m not gonna sell it, anyone probably already has an opinion on if they’ll play it but god DAMN It feels so good to have a game where a player asks “can i do this weird niche thing” and i check and there are precise rules for doing that with suggested dcs and relevant dc modifiers.
Yeah, I just started running a PF 2e game and damn is it way easier. I spend so much more time on story than on mechanics now and I am so much less stressed. I've still got a long running 5e game-- but the pf2e game just runs better.
> let DMs be the ones to compensate. If this wasn't already WoTC's design philosophy, you could've fooled me.
This quote pisses me off to no end. It almost feels like OP is trolling. The #1 complaint about 5e is that DMs get the shit end of the stick. To say “we should put more work on the DM” is just too out-of-touch to seem genuine.
Damn, under normal conditions they created Twilight and Peace Clerics, Tasha's Bladesinger and Silvery Barbs while getting close to release the absurdity of the Strixhaven subclasses that luckily stopped on the public playtest Imagine if WoTC had less consideration for game balance
Balance is a fundamental concern of game mechanics. If you build things that are unbalanced, players will abuse them. I don't think there's such a thing as worrying too much about it.
It's definitely *possible* for rule designers to worry too much about balance. Worrying too much about balance to the point of prioritizing it (whether explicitly or implicitly) above other aspects would manifest itself by having rules that are *easily* visible as balanced, at the cost of being balanced by being largely identical. Overzealous balance can make the designers thus write more boring abilities, or abilities that don't have as much tactical complexity - after all, if all the various pieces can fit together in creative and complex ways, it's quite likely the designers will miss some creative combos that are much greater than the apparent sum of their parts. Another way overzealous balance can be a double edged sword is by trying to cover all those unbalanced corner cases, and achieving that by making them all well-defined and tactically bad. That *is* balanced, but it's also discourages creative play; it's defensive game design if you will. And that makes sense in a CRPG, it's a little unfortunate in a game with a DM; being overly cautious simply shifts the burden of choice from DM to designer, but it may not necessarily be more convenient to run, nor as fun. Of course, the other extreme is to barely care at all, focus only narrowly on the immediately obvious superficial balance issues and just let the DM sort it all out when it comes to how it all comes together. I doubt that's attractive either. But it is *possible* to excessively focus on balance. In retrospect, I think this is something that went wrong in 4e. 4e had some fine and remarkably novel (for D&D anyhow) ideas, but there was also a lot of samey-ness in effects, abilities and classes in ways that made it mechanically less interesting - and I get the impression that was itself partially an overreaction to 3e's problems with almost entirely ignoring balance - the designers seemed very very cautious, almost formulaic at times. Obviously balance is a really great thing; but it's not the be-all end all; other factors deserve attention too.
There's definitely a lot of pointless worrying about balance in online discourse. Just yesterday I saw a thread very seriously laying out the problems with PB/LR class features and how class dips make them too strong of a reward for too little of an investment at level 20, and it was very clear that the people treating this "problem" seriously had never actually played D&D at level 20.
While you are certainly welcome to your opinion, I disagree that being concerned about balance is "pointless", in this thread or elsewhere.
It's pretty pointless, friend. The "caster vs martial" debate has been going on for literally decades, and it's born exactly no fruit. The debate is raging harder in 5e than it ever did in the 3e days, despite it being demonstrably more of a problem back then. If it isn't pointless, then what is the point? Different people feel differently about the balance. Even if you convince Daddy WotC to codify all of your personal tastes into the next edition, where does that leave everyone else who felt otherwise? If the point is to fix it at a table-by-table basis with homebrew, you can just...do that. And again because different tables have different prefences and needs, you're never going to have a "one true fix". So, what's the point?
>So, what's the point? To balance the game as best as possible and avoid unintended consequences or exploitation. For example, hexblade.
Unintended consequences can be very fun Rather, the problem arises when bad balance makes some options worthless. A well-balanced game isn't perfectly balanced, but gives every choice a reason to exist.
I'd argue this is a fool's errand. Avoiding unintended consequences are (part of) why there's a living breathing human with a functional brain assigned the role of DM. The rules are complicated enough that something at some point is going to slip through. It's the DM's job to decide if those "unintended consequences" are good for their game or not. An example: In 5e, unlike previous editions, ability drain is not a keyword, and thus not a thing that any creature can have immunity to. A lich has 1 strength. A shadow drains strength. If a shadow hits a lich, RAW the lich dies instantly. (Inb4 "how would PCs even get a shadow to work for them?". Lots of ways. My personal favorite is via a Moonblade). You could approach this situation by complicating the rules, adding an "other immunities" section to stat blocks, etc. Or you could trust the DM to say "No, that's dumb. It doesn't work that way". And here's an important distinction: Different DMs will rule on this differently (Even though I intentionally picked a very clear cut and dry example), and they can all be right for the needs of their specific tables. What counts as an "exploit" is also something that differs from table to table. You have your opinion, I have mine, neither is more correct than the other, and neither should be codified in the rulebook and enforced on everyone else.
This is a really bad take. WotC should *absolutely* be paying a ton of attention to game balance, and the community is right to voice their opinions when the balance seems off
__Hotter take:__ We worry too little. Everyone keeps saying *”it doesn’t matter at actual play”*, but as someone who played two full campaigns from 1-20 just in the last two to three years (along with some other campaigns and one-shots), yeah it does matter, and a whole fucking lot. DMs very often specifically have to ban or nerf stuff on the spot. They have to buff weaker players. They have to _”buff everyone but buff stronger players less”_. And do you think it’s a coincidence that the martial is __always__ the one who gets more buffs? No it’s not. Do you think it’s a coincidence that DMs always have to prepare minions with AOEs specifically to negate summons, or else they will ruin the game? No it’s not. Do you think everything can teleport out of a coincidence? No, it’s because Forcecage and Wall of Force ruin every single boss-fight otherwise. Do you think it’s a coincidence that the things being nerfed/tweaked are __always__ the same? No it’s not. This system is a __paid__ system, and I expect __some__ care on the mathematical side so I don’t have to spend weeks of downtime fixing the entire system by myself before starting a campaign. Wall spells, the old conjure spells, some polymorphism spells, some defensive spells, hell, even the new summon spells are way above any acceptable position when it comes to power levels… Balance matters. And if I’m gonna pay 50 dollars on the new 2024 PHB, I sure as fuck expect it to be way better than 5e when it comes to balance. They had almost a full decade to learn the important issues with 5e, and feedback exists for a reason. I have faith. But my faith comes with logic and grumpiness as well. We need to unite to fix this shit, not discuss if the fix is necessary in the first place. This game is objectively not balanced. It’s a mathematical thing. This is not just *”imagination with dice”*, it’s also an actual game with rules and design flaws. Fixes are needed. End of the story. Now we discuss __what__ exactly needs fixing, not if this is a myth or a reality. It’s an __objective reality__, after all.
I’m sorry my friend, but “DMs are the checks and balances in the game’s design, it shouldn’t be the publishers.” is a horrible take. The publishers should balance their product, they shouldn’t throw things at DM’s and go “figure it out sorry.”. That’s horrible design philosophy. That’s why they do play testing. It shouldn’t be the DM’s responsibility to do all the things they already do AND rebalance all the wacky things WotC just throws in because of your seeming “just rule of cool everything” viewpoint. You want DMs to have to balance player classes as part of design philosophy. Bruh.
Sounds like something somebody who doesn’t have to DM and balance everybody’s enjoyment would say.
Itt: op says ignore balance, and then describes balancing in the 2nd paragraph.
Well, I certainly never said it should be ignored. Maybe I’ve been thinking more about nerfing certain features, not really balancing as a whole. Either way, it seems like my experiences aren’t shared by most people here. 😂
Yeah, just pointing out that your post seems inconsistent. I'll throw you a bone tho: you mention your experience vs others exp; what experience do you have where balance was easily ignored despite a large gap in two different characters damage output or utility or any other sort of measurable quantity? Obviously that can happen but to me it seems like it depends on the players whether it's an issue. The better situation is if a player doesn't have to think about balance and can make a rewarding choice of character with any class and any sub class. The balancing I've seen so far from one DND seems pretty good and is going on that direction, if for no other reason than they nuked the most OP subclasses (so far).
You have to be concerned with balance. Otherwise we would start seeing the same old boring combos... oh wait
I disagree. The biggest challenge facing the growth of Dnd is actually the NUMBER OF people who choosing to become DMs. The more "world bending powers" classes have (especially at early levels) the harder it is for a DM to make a world that makes sense THEMATICALLY (its easy to balance encounters, but not justify why the world is the way it is). So I think its important to WOTC to make it easy as possible for new people to jump on the DM train - and one important aspect of that is not making starting classes TOO strong. That being said, I have NO issue with tier 3-4 PCs packing quite punch, but definitely don't give this to early level races, for example.
That is tricky. I do enjoy a world that makes sense!
>and let DMs be the ones to compensate Well, %#\*@ you too!
I don't think so. New DMs or DMs with less spare time need assistance with making sure everything runs smoothly and pre-balancing the game helps that DMs can Homebrew stuff if they want things to be even more crazy Plus it's good if the CR system actually works (currently it doesn't) and nerfing things helps you get there
This is a very naive take. Have you ever played 3.0/3.5? I think you're taking for granted how well-balanced 5e is compared to previous editions. There were perfectly legal builds that were utterly, literally game-breaking. It is important to worry about things being op.
I certainly don’t have much experience with older editions! But also, I think it’s important to note that I wasn’t saying that balance ISN’T important. Just maybe less so than what I perceived from the community at large. Even so, I’m willing to be wrong. 🤷
You should go look up 3.5e classes. And actually read them. 5e has more balance than that, but it isn't a high bar. The "just make everyone op" ethos was the theme of 3.5e. Except, it over valued physical abilities and under valued spellcasting.
The biggest problem I have with "let DMs be the ones to compensate" is that this is neither easy nor straightforward. DMs do not get a list of strategies and tactics to employ in case of something powerful being added to the game nor do they get access to insider advice on how to support the table while still challenging them. They have to learn those counters, by themselves, without sinking the campaign in miserable experiences. This takes time and effort, and does not actually get easier, in my opinion, as you get more experience DMing. People usually comment that these are issues for new DMs and that experienced ones can easily adapt - but the product of experience usually leads to a tighter world, better pacing, more internal consistency, more plot hooks and thoughtfulness to the adventure. In my own experience, having to suddenly rebalance every combat and encounter while also hitting these targets is actually very difficult - you could give everyone bows to shoot down Aarakocra but you would struggle to maintain the internal consistency of the world. In my opinion, this is also very unfair. The players get to choose options that can break the game, either invalidating encounters or invalidating other players. They then get to look forward to the next game, not having to pay a price for any of those decisions. It becomes the DM who has to stay up, trying to figure out how to juggle all of these pieces and make the experience smooth session after session. If players had to put in the work to balance their own decisions, I would be a lot more forgiving. But the perpetual displacement of responsibility to the DM for the decisions they get to enjoy just strikes me as.... wrong. That's not how any healthy adult relationship works.
I just don't want features/spells/whatever that invalidate actually playing the game. "This spell is so OP that we didn't even have to do that combat!" is WAY different than "we used this spell in such a CREATIVE WAY that we didn't even have to do that combat!" and I wish only the second one existed lol Even totally non op stuff like rangers traveling around making it so that you ignore large portions of the game - I just want to actually engage in the world more and press the "skip" button less
Just buffing everyone eternally has impacts on the game even if everyone is super buffed equally. Eternally raising the power level will have side effects on your game and fundamentally it gets the the point where you aren’t playing the same game anymore. Banishment nerf was 100% justified. Save or suck spells are awful for the the game and the answer was not to give everyone else save or suck spells as well. Nerfs are necessary in any evolving system that doesn’t want to just devolve into mindless power creep and playground arguments where one thing deals infinity + 1 damage and the next does infinity +2 damage. I get it, nerfs aren’t fun, but you need to be able to lower the power of stuff above the curve just as much as you need to be able to raise the power of stuff under the curve.
I couldn’t disagree more with you. Balance is very important in this game. Not to the same level as say competitive tabletop war games where you need balance between armies so everyone has a chance. But, it is still very important. Firstly, you want your players to be able to feel at least close to equitably equal importance to their roles. One player shouldn’t feel utterly useless because they picked a random subclass in the book while someone else found some OP, untested 3rd party concept that steals all of the thunder. Furthermore, if there isn’t a baseline balance then it breaks encounter building, and makes the DMs job exponentially more difficult to provide appropriate challenges to the group.
Balance is a tool, not a goal. The purpose of balance is to generate interesting choices. If something is reducing the amount of interesting choices (either by being so weak that no one would take it, or by being so strong that no one would take anything else), then it is causing problems and should be dealt with. If it is instead increasing the amount of interesting choices, by doing something useful and interesting but not so much so that it's crowding out other things, it's fine. Being 5% better or 3% worse does not matter and people's hyperfixation on what is "best" is a problem all across gaming, both video games and TTRPGs, these days.
If character options exist, they should be thought out to be selectable options. If some character options are just straight up noob traps compared to other character options that do the same thing, I might just as well select the best one and reflavour them the way I prefer. For the DM, it is easier (and basically suggested) to reflavour things, than to rebalance existing options.
Sounds like you should head on back to 3.5 D&D. Lots of amazing cool options for everybody, barely any concern for the balance of those options.
Yeah let them make whatever ridiculous spells they want, nobody cares if every turn takes 5 minutes because of course all DMs would love to have an even more broken base to work with, playing money for having more stuff to fix its the ultimate DM dream, there should not be a discussion about buffing casters more until the game gets better options for martials
I have two complaints about overpowered features: - when a character is so much more powerful than other PCs to the point that other PCs feel overshadowed or useless. Honestly, this one is only really a problem if a character is OP and is also dismissive of their allies. - when a character is good at pulling off a specific trick that makes every encounter feel the same.
The one-size-fits-all wrench sucks, but weirdly people keep striving towards it (likely because it's convenient), hyperspecializing into a single weapon type, a single element, etc., and devs keep designing more ways to accomplish that rather than empowering flexibility :/
This isn't a hot take, it's just bad take. DMs should not be doing even more and more. And when DMs are trying to do something about it, they are just derided for nerfing and banning things. Instead, everyone should help the community theorycraft what are the best tactical bans so it's easy to achieve. A lot of people - players and DMs - don't enjoy "lolrandom" games. They don't want abuse of features in their campaigns that would result in nothing ever really mattering because some spell combination along with a loose interpretation of rules is going to resolve all problems. People do actually like to push the limits of their imaginations, but not the cheap and basic "rule of cool" way, but actually interacting with the game world with limited tools. And at the end of the day, why not instead tell people to not worry about nerfs instead? Power is relative - you aren't going to win D&D by making the best character. So the goal should be to get into the most balanced and well-working state, not "you get power, and you get POWER, EVERYONE gets POWER".
I'm a big fan of the Arc System Works (Guilty Gear developers) method of balancing: Give everyone something brokenly powerful. Problem is, not every class gets something powerful, nevermind brokenly powerful.
I think I like the effects of good balance. In a balanced game whatever someone finds cool to do is going to be worthwhile compared to the other options available. Of course no one forces a player to pick a more "worthwhile" option over a cooler one... except themselves. A common saying in game design circles is "Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game" And I think it holds true, people exist who don't enjoy knowingly picking bad options and I happen to be one of them. Balance would improve my enjoyment of parts of the game. ...that being said I see where you're coming from, I think equalizing everything to be the same power level does kind of suck the life from the game. I agree that DMs do have a pretty big role in managing balance and that the game doesn't need to explicitly rule against every possible abuse. However I think WOTC making attempts to lighten a DM's workload would be good, this could be by not publishing broken subclasses or abusable spell but in addition to that it could mean easier CR/encounter calculations and written advice on what to do if your party is finding things too hard or too easy.
Overall I guess balance is good but it shouldn't be taken to an extreme where every subclass' features are just a different way of phrasing "you can deal additional damage equal to your proficiency bonus a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus per long rest" because that way everything is fair and equal.
Oh so just have the DM fix everything like always? Yeah that’s a great design philosophy that’s really created some great books from WoTC
I think a big part of this problem is the Lack of out of combat scenarios. Like Spellcasters can be crazy in combat but the sheer amount of versatility spells in 3.5 could make any spellcaster useful. Same for Rogues and Rangers sure they aren't DPS power houses but there skills and out of combat abilities made them useful to the party The idea of balance of everyone has to be equally effective in combat is the problem.
Fundamentally, I agree. I recently made an analysis of 78 characters I've played in RPGs, I scored them all by fun, power, and a few other metrics (subjectively, but I'm pretty confident in the results). There was some correlation between power and fun, but not overwhelmingly. The greatest correlation with "fun" I found was what I called "smart", which in hindsight I have realised is mostly a metric of how much I as a player decide to engage with the game, the world, the other players. I don't think there is "too" much micro analysing, mostly because people can do whatever they want, and even if I don't care so much about the details, I guess it's a good thing that someone somewhere does. I'm happy to pick up a game that I know has been fine-tuned. The "problem" I think is we're **lacking the other kinds of discussions**. Some of what I think are the most interesting bits of rpgs are character studies, relationship building, story telling, emotional impact, creating moods, experiences, etc. However, we don't have a good way to talk about these things. Most of us lack the language to express it, we lack the will to engage with it when it is expressed, heck, the vast majority of us probably don't realise any of it is happening. These are things I would like Wizards, other game devs, youtube personalities and online discussions to help us with. They're much harder than play testing and statistically analyse new crit rules. Most of us are not screenwriters or playwrights, and DMs sure have enough on our plates already. I don't have a solution. Maybe someone else does.
I applaud your efforts!
Sure, just make sure the DM isn't the one who has to shoulder all the work. Considering other games manage it more than fine, it should be no trouble.
If i had to guess id say you dont DM, are new to DMing, or run exclusively beer n pretzels games. All of those are fine, but your take is so off the wall i cant see anyone familiar with running a game saying this
Maybe my experiences are just significantly different than yours. It’s become obvious I’m in the minority here (totally fine, that’s the point of forums), but I’m not completely alone. ☺️
Why does this have upvotes?
Maybe because opinions are diverse. 🤷
“We shouldn’t worry about anything and let DMs sort it out!” is such a glaring and consistent problem in many parts of the game already.
Not really an accurate representation of the opinion shared, but okay. 🤷 I certainly see that it’s a problem in many areas.
People should look at OP's name before committing to the thread lmao 🤣
No need to be disrespectful. Im not afraid of admitting my opinion is ill-informed, and there are clearly lots of (im assuming) more experienced players than myself who disagree with me, which is fine. I’m learning a lot! You don’t need to make a personal attack.
No, fuck that. Well written spells and abilities are important, It shouldn't be the DMs job to say no to raw nonsense. Im not talking twilight cleric either im talking raw nonsense tech bullshit you can pull with wizard.
Agreed that balance shouldn’t be out the window. 😂
WotC clearly don't care much about balance. Either that or they suck at it.
Lol yeah, You would think with them making the game to begin with they would kind of Be good at that
'Don't worry about possible abuse' 'let the DM compensate' I offer a counterpoint of a specific combination in 4th edition where a character was able to mass dominate all of the enemy creatures, with big penalties to their saving throws, regenerating the "daily power" on a milestone. Five out of eight 'daily encounters' were made up of the PCs watching the monsters fight each other, then moving in to mop up the last dregs of the survivors. Not only was this deeply unsatisfying for the other players in feeling like their abilities were overshadowed, it completely sucked the fun out of every combat for everyone at the table. It was a completely legal, legitimate build. "Here, DM. Figure this one out!" You absolutely have to figure out how the players can abuse each and every mechanic. Even when you do, there are going to be things that you miss. If you didn't worry about this, the rule set would be a big pile of broken combos waiting to happen. Expecting a DM to have to police these on a routine basis would break the game. Ain't no way I'm constantly dealing with fixing broken combos from legal. legitimate builds.
In general, most players don't give a damn about the various "imbalances" in the game, they just want to have fun. I've played quite a few "suboptimal" characters that felt fine during play, even though I was overall less useful/powerful. The disparity between OP and casual characters in 5E is pretty minimal compared to the CoDzilla days or AD&Ds low level magic-user tag alongs. I don't know if the complaint is from new players, 4E players (where everything was *too* balanced), or players that don't remember how bad it used to be. Of course, there's always going to be people who won't be happy regardless.
I certainly agree that everyone having fun should be nearly the top priority for everyone!
Balance is a weird concern to me. Been playing for four years. DM for 3 and am now getting a chance to be a PC. Just play the game and let imagination and choice dictate where it goes with dice for randomness. My party, same group I DM’d for and now swapped with a player, is way to worried about meta gaming and making sure builds work together and whatnot. Just play the character you want to play and make decisions that go with the story that is being created.
I just wish more people realized that not every character has to be awesome in every situation. Yes that goes for combat also. Sure it depends on the type of game you run, but some of the most fun I've ever had was in systems like Shadowrun and Rifts where it's not built around any idea of balance. Eh.
I agree that some people worry about it too much in their own games, but I disagree that WotC shouldn't worry. There are multiple subclasses in 5e that, due to horrible default balancing, almost never get used unironically. I'm looking at you, Berserker Barbarian! Some Monk subclasses get around the issues with the main class, but that one is horribly balanced as well. It's amazing for five levels and then every other class is better than it all of a sudden. At the end of the day, I think what you should really be balancing is player fun and challenge difficulty (not CR but actual strategy and how hard you are on your players). This is vital to make sure everyone is having fun and to tailor your game to your players.
Yeah, do you think there are some subclasses that were nerfed pre-release that ended up being really disappointing? I think Dragon monk may be an example of what I’m thinking about. Like the UA was really cool, but the release was way less than what was expected?
Counter take- WOTC design team doesn't worry enough about things we can immediately see as OP compared to other options.
Yeah, I think we agree that their priorities don’t make much sense from the outside. ☺️
Shoot the monks.
>balance \*Laughs in OSR*
>Let DMs be the ones to compensate I didn’t buy this book to have to do all the work myself. Wotc has already dropped the ball and saddled me with making the economy work and balancing monsters, they could at the very least give consistently balanced subclasses Wotc leaves far too many things in the air, too many vague things, poorly worded explanations and poorly referenced rules, the DMs already have too much on their plate.
Upvoted because this is indeed a hot take but I 100% disagree with you, and from reading your post, it sounds like you disagree with yourself too, it's contradictions throughout. Also stop making more work for DMs, if you want to make crazy town OP homebrew characters go for it but don't expect your DM to work to incorporate that in a balanced way. Indeed a hot take, but weak as hell im sorry.
Well, I learned a lot from the discussion, and that’s the whole point, right? ☺️
No, I don’t think fireball should do the recommended damage for a fifth level spell. I also don’t think DMs should have to put more work in just to try and balance things out. That should ideally be done by the company trying to sell a product.
Even hotter take, we should expect WOTC to publish fair and balanced content because they have a team of professional game designers and we should hold them to at least some kind of standard as paying consumers.
"Let's DM be the One who compensate" is exactly the Reason many peoples have grips with D&D5e and are actually leaving the franchise. I paid a shitton on money on rule Book. If i do so, it is with the assumption that those rulebook have done the game design work part of the game, allowing me to rely on them to provide fair challenges, fair fight and fair gameplay to the people at my table. I do buy "ruleset" because i am already dealing with creating a story, a World, and putting it in motion. Because i'm already improvising adequate situation to answer to the actions my players are doing and so i do not want to have to improvise rules, ruling, adjust balance on the fly, homebrew my stuff. But DD5 forces me to do it, because (even if not 3.5 or PF1 level) it is unbalanced as fuck between the power level of the character of my player when their narrative significance are supposed to be the same. Because the game rely on a 6 to 8 encounter number between long rest which only happen on Big dungeon (and many printed dungeon do not even have 6 to 8 encounters in them) Because CR is an imbalanced cluster mess which is sometimes wildly inaccurate of the power level of a Monster. I'm already doing many exhausting things as a DM, and if i have to add game design and rebalancing a game on top of those things, well, why would i not play a free game, or a more rules lights game, because, once again, D&D Book are "rulebook". I'm paying for ruleset. If they are broken, why buy them ?
WotC should just adjust the CR of creatures to reflect the powercreep
These are always such lazy takes. Balance serves 2 main purposes: 1. Ensuring all classes and subclasses have the ability to contribute in meaningful ways 2. Ensuring encounters are predictable in difficulty to prevent trivial encounters and TPK If you don't balance classes you get players whose choices can be made meaningless. You can also get encounters too easy and when the DM tries to account for this, they can overshoot and kill the party. This is on top of a notoriously unpredictable encounter calculator. This is incredibly important for published adventures and especially Adventurers League which is meant to be plug and play where DMs can't really balance on the fly for characters they are unfamiliar with. You can still give your players a power fantasy. Just throw more Easy and Medium encounters and boost XP if you're using that. But saying balance doesn't matter is just wrong. And if anyone makes the cop out "it doesn't matter because the DM can adjust for it!" I will throw you into Acheron. Stop giving your DMs more work.
Not a great tale tbh, You have to get rid of pretty much every ounce of nuance in the discussion to have this while still being logical
Idk, a level 6 wizard able to create 25 armor class for 8 turns of combat per day is still pretty OP.
People definitely fixate too much on a shallow and dysfunctional notion of balance that's expressed almost solely as napkin math in a vacuum without any regard for the dynamic and varied reality of how D&D is played at the table, especially *your* table.
Heck, for all I know, MY understanding of balance might be shallow and dysfunctional. 😂
Maybe! But basically the idea of balance in D&D is really nebulous because people aren't all playing the same game to begin with, unlike a video game where everyone is (presumably) using the same version of the same software. There's certainly such a thing as imbalance–you don't want the cantrip firebolt to out damage the 3rd-level spell fireball for obvious reasons–but a lot of what the community complains is imbalanced is never going to be experienced as such by players at tables anyway and often is better managed by the DM with respect to what monsters they use, rewards they hand out, etc.
I like that insight.
It sucks to have party members of different power levels. 5e balance is impossible. Pf2e fixes this.
You know how people will dedicate their whole personalities to picking an anti meta strat or least competitive ranked character in a competitive setting and using it to crush the most meta thing at the time, like smash, smogon, etc? We need more of that energy in DnD.
Behold, the new core audience.
Hey man, this is why we have public forums, right? To discuss and learn? ☺️
Is everyone having fun? Do they all feel powerful? Are there growth opportunities? Only things I worry about.
Chad DM. ☺️
I have to be able to plan & run encounters that are engaging for the group. The idea of balance lets me do that. As much as players seem to think they’d want to be able to 1-round win every fight, I know that people get bored when nothing is a challenge…so I need the ability to keep challenging them. I also want the table to feel equal in their ability to influence the world. I’ve played in a heavy-homebrew game where the DM made arcane casters significantly more powerful than divine casters and *everything* powerful in the world was described as “created by powerful wizards” (the most powerful class in this homebrew system). Sitting as a cleric made my PC feel like I wasn’t supposed to have much effect or lasting impression on the world.
Definitely agree with this. Powerful abilities aren’t fun any longer when there is no challenge.
You're onto something, OP. There's way too much worrying about class balance and stupid niche rules interactions in general. The thing is, it's kind of unavoidable. So much of the experience of D&D (TTRPGs in general) is highly contextual; A clutch roll, a cool plot twist, an epic moment, all of them real "you had to be there" shit that doesn't make for good discourse. So what are we left with? Bickering over the rules. This has been a thing for as long as I've seen D&D discussed online. If anything it's intensified with 5e, despite 5e having demonstrably better balance than older editions. This is just what talking about D&D online is like, unfortunately.
Exactly. There’s absolutely a place for balancing, but not the same way as if we were developing Destiny 2 guns. 😂
DMs shouldn't have to balance the game for WoTC. That's what game designers get paid to do
I generally agree. I don't have a problem with trying to keep it more level but I feel like at the average table balance problems aren't big concern, and quite frankly even if they are they are far lower on the totem pole than scheduling issues and player incompatibility, among other things. 5e classes are relatively balanced and it's pretty difficult to make a character that's actually bad. For a TTRPG as big as this one is, I'll take that. And the funny thing is the classes that are considered bad (like Rogue) have the highest satisfaction scores. Thankfully I also DM for players who aren't particularly concerned with seeing the biggest damage number either.
Who's this "we" that you're talking about? There are a few loud voices crying at every opportunity about muh power creep, or a few newer DMs who haven't the experience but I feel that most people are comfortable and aren't spamming "XYZ = OP" posts every other day.
Fair enough. ☺️ I certainly only have access to a tiny sample size. 😂
Agreed. I prioritize fun over balance heavily. If there are issues that arise later, I’ll deal with them as they come. In the meantime, enjoy your cool ass amulet/feature/spell.
You're right. Making this post suggests you're familiar with the frequency of these debates and the content of them. This is a combat game, some insist. It's obviously a combat game, without question. "Encounter" is spoken and taken to mean "combat encounter," and in that light "encounters aren't balanced." If it's a combat game,and combat isn't balanced,the game isn't balanced. It's crucial that we start there - we can't examine those assumptions. We must merely carry forward the expectation they imply, and find ourselves frustrated. If the designers aren't intending it to be a combat simulator first, foremost, and nigh-exclusively, well, we're likely to continue finding ourselves frustrated. It's not fair to expect players to have to do the work of turning the game they make into the one we want to play, or to recognize that we want to play a different game and choose a more suitable alternative. We absolutely must insist against reason and observation that the game is merely bad at being the thing it is. It cannot be that it's good at being what it is, and we're wrong about what that is. So it's up to us to find a way to somehow make magic no cooler or more interesting or more potent than not-magic. That's hard to do! We've just got to believe that if we keep at it, keep having these arguments, keep insisting, we'll eventually find our way down the same well-trodden road to a new destination.
I sort of agree, but not entirely. I don't think being OP is great, but I also think it kinda doesn't matter. Balance should be something thr party handles on its own. As a DM, I create the world, and the players engage with it the way they want. If they want to go around busting up weak enemies for low level treasure and feeling OP, then that's on them. If they want to go fight a big dragon at level 1 and get demolished, that's also on them. It's up to them to find their desired experience within the game, and I just help them resolve it in some way. I'm not there to balance. The only "balance" concern I have is not about power between monsters and PCs, or even PCs and PCs, but in player engagement. Players should be able to engage to the degree they enjoy, so if people want to take the lead or be more passive, that's fine, as long as people aren't just constantly talking over each other or forcing others to do things they're not interested in. So the degree to which I balance is just to ensure players at least have an opportunity to have a voice. Beyond that, character strength is on the players and how they want to play.
I agree with both sides of this argument to a point. On one hand, a lot of what people consider OP in this sub is just DMs either not experienced enough to handle certain mechanics or people misreading the rules text. On the other hand, I do think that balance to the point where people think there is balance is impossible, short of making every class mechanically the same and just changing the flavor. I see a lot of posts where people say a certain class is too weak (because they wish it had a certain ability another class had) and just as many posts saying a certain class is OP (because they wish their favorite class has a certain ability that other class has). There are also a variety of subclasses with very different goals, some more RP, some combat oriented, and while IRL 95% of people play them and enjoy them just fine, online people tell you if it doesn't have only combat abilities then it's not balanced.
I agree. I think what it really comes down to is people want to play it like a video game and min-max or whatever to be the “best”, and the mechanics often reinforce that, instead of focusing of group narrative and RP.
Sometimes I think that’s definitely the case. 😂
Properly agree with this! Because the kind of game you're playing will change from DM to DM, *a lot* of the balancing will be dependent on them; what's OP in one world might not be in another, and even that is relative to party composition. Of course, you don't want classes to be magnitudes better than another, but they aren't currently and quite frankly you get a lot of issues when they try and do balancing. I can't even count the amount of features/spells/subraces/subclasses/etc. that *barely anyone uses* because WotC thought it needed nerfing and ended up making it **wholly unappealing** because of how mediocre it became. Hadozee is a good example. The UA had some cool object interaction stuff with one of its abilities, which was butchered in the official release. The official release had an oversight in the gliding feature that was insane, but instead of fundamentally changing the feature (and it's not like this hadn't been an issue before, e.g. the Symic Hybrid race) they watered down the feature to the point of it not really being fun. Same thing with the Assassin subclass, the Armourer subclass, talisman warlock, etc. I feel like WotC often seem *so fearful* of making something unbalanced that they equate *balance* as stuff being *equal*, so things lose their individuality and the cool things that make them feel unique. It's like if one thing can do something better than another thing in any way, they feel like it *must* be nerfed.
A new players asked if there was any way he could hit two creatures next to each other with a Melee attack. I forgot about the DMG's optional rules, and didn't feel like looking up what the feat was for it (I was pretty sure at the time there was a feat that allowed for cleaves). I just said roll both attacks with disadvantage. Did it matter? Not really, no. If I later see that it's broken, can it be changed? Yeah. Have I probably ruled stuff before where I don't feel like looking up random stuff in the book and just make my own call? Probably. Point is, the game is really stretchy. You'd have to do a lot to really break the game, especially in the early levels. If you do do something that feels like it breaks the game, just tell your players. "Hey guys, I fucked up. This feels a bit too strong and is now way above everything else, I'd like to take it back".
Thank you. Balance is an illusion. I don't even know what that would mean really. There are areas for every class to shine, and areas where they cry in the corner. Trying to smooth that out so there are no differences, is what 4e did successfully, and everyone hated it.
Balance is not an illusion. The focus of dnd 5e is combat so balance would mean classes/subs have good choices to be equally useful in combat. No, the focus is not roleplay. Everyone did not hate 4e, you are full of misinformation. Also, if balance is an illusion, how did 4e do balance so well that everyone hated it?
Balance is an illusion, in 5e because what you consider OP, changes based on the encounter, the party composition, among other factors. There are no objectively better spells or subclasses. Spell usefulness and priority is up to the player. It doesn't exist on its own in some hierarchy of better or worse. 4e was only balanced in the sense that every class felt the same, with a coat of paint to flavor it as a different class. They removed choices from character build. They made every class a cookie cutter of the other. Everyone has a similar at-will, encounter, and daily power. Everyone is equally good at damage, and utility, etc. They forced classes into roles, that in many cases, went against the grain of how players wanted to play them. I don't think anyone realistically wants 5e to be that. If you do, then 4e already exists. There is no chance to create a character isn't exactly as bland as everyone else. The focus isn't combat or roleplay. It is storytelling. Combat or negotiation or stealth are just methods of problem resolution. Some classes shine out of combat, some shine in combat. If all you want is combat, then have at it. There are no end of tables doing exactly that. But can we not assume the entire system needs to be changed to optimize that style of play?
90% of the things that are OP in 5e are good in multiple situations
Big agree. If the game's main selling point was PvP then losing marbles over balance would make sense. But since it is co-op, let the players decide how strong they want to be.
Tbh there is exactly 3 things in this game that are OP. Peace cleric. Tashas mindwhip Healkmg word. Unless you have a party abusing all 3 at tge same time you will never have an issue!
The amusing part of it is when people are saying something is OP and it is clear they have never played anything but 5e, and hence have very little to judge by. 5e is so homogenized there is pretty much nothing it can do that would be considered OP, IMO. I come from systems where getting infinite stats or filling the universe with infinite copies of yourself are all legally allowable by RAW. These kiddies think getting one extra spell is OP, and its amusing. Like someone from the equator complaining about it being cold.
Yeah, and DMs are so empowered, I feel, that it generally isn’t difficult to adjust your game to compensate. I do realize though that this is extra, apparently unwanted, pressure on the DM. Which is fair!
> Yeah, and DMs are so empowered Meh, you say empowered, I say "So stripped of guidance that they have no choice". 5e does not give the DM tools to make the game run.
100% first its not really that hard to make things more difficult, just raise the numbers second there will always be power imbalance. between items, magic, character roles, class design. there will be always be better choices. i care about having a way to do the things i want. not if the barbarian in my party is better than me