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Zeuel
2014-07-30, 06:52 PM
I've read the playtest documents including the most recent one, but my eye for optimization can be pretty bad at times outside of the basic make-sure-you-don't-put-your-stats-in-dumb-places. Was there any subclasses that seemed like a trap or otherwise just way too weak compared to other PCs? I don't want to build a Necromancer or Conjurer only to find out that controlling monsters is weak in this edition or found out after building an Eldritch Knight or Arcane Tri that one Rogue subclass with the name I don't like that it's done much better by multiclassing Fighter/Wizard or Rogue/Wizard.

I don't want to maximize DPR or anything of that nature but I want to make sure I end up firmly outside of BMX Bandit territory and I don't want to have my character be a victim to that my-character-is-way-stronger-than-all-of-yours-so-you-have-to-be-my-minions-now-or-I-will-murder-all-of-you type of PC.

archaeo
2014-07-30, 08:10 PM
I'm confused. Do you mean "Are the playtest classes balanced against one another?" If so, I think it's safe to answer in the negative; Mearls himself suggested that most of the math balancing would happen after the public playtest, and I imagine very little effort went into the micromanagement of numerical balance across the classes. YMMV on whether or not that was a great idea, but it's what they did. Don't build a character using the playtest materials, because you'll end up doing twice the work to bring them up to snuff when the actual PHB arrives.

Or do you mean "Are 5e classes balanced against one another?" If so, there's already a dozen threads on the board where people are arguing about that to little effect. This question is basically the front line of the edition wars right now, as far as I can tell, and any response you're likely to receive to this question will be more likely to be informed by ideology than actual evidence from at-the-table play.

You could, of course, ask "Are 5e Basic classes balanced against one another?" The answer to that question is another question: "What kind of balance do you mean?" If you mean mechanical complexity, of course not; the Basic Wizard and Fighter are miles away from one another in terms of complexity. If you mean in-combat effectiveness, well, that too remains to be seen, since we don't have a world of monsters and traps to compare them against yet, but I've also not seen much good evidence of seriously broken situations where the dumb person who selected Fighter fumes in the background while the Wizard accomplishes every goal.

The only thing I think it's safe to say is that the 5e designers have purposefully avoided 4e's methods for between-class balance, so if you were a big fan of that method of keeping the PCs roughly equal, then you are out of luck. Otherwise, you'll do well to wait for the PHB to come out and then give the community a week or two to tear it apart; the "trap" options, if they exist, won't stay hidden for long.

Zeuel
2014-07-30, 09:50 PM
I was kind of hoping that some of the optimizers went through the alpha playtest and found classes that were worth keeping an eye on whether for them being trap options or being incredibly good. I'm mostly asking for predictions about how the balance is in 5e going off of the info we have from alpha. Of course the Champion is going to be far off the Wizard, but I understand certain subclasses were put in there to appease the people who didn't care that they were bad as long as they were simple.

archaeo
2014-07-30, 10:59 PM
I was kind of hoping that some of the optimizers went through the alpha playtest and found classes that were worth keeping an eye on whether for them being trap options or being incredibly good. I'm mostly asking for predictions about how the balance is in 5e going off of the info we have from alpha. Of course the Champion is going to be far off the Wizard, but I understand certain subclasses were put in there to appease the people who didn't care that they were bad as long as they were simple.

That "alpha playtest" is the alpha version of the PHB, supplied to people in the closed playtest that happened after the open playtest. It is available online because it was leaked by someone, presumably breaking his or her NDA, and I rather think people on the GitP 5e subform are uneasy about discussing it publicly, or even really admitting to downloading it. The websites hosting the alpha materials are also unlikely to seem like safe places to browse for many people, which has also contributed to general ignorance about its contents. And, of course, several people participating in the closed playtest have claimed that the alpha version online has numerous things that changed even during that playtest, and its materials need to be taken with a big grain of salt. e: Actually, the word I see around the Internet is that the alpha materials are likely to be "months" old, which suggests that there may be major changes. While huge swaths of it will be accurate, there are probably quite a few critical differences.

Which is all to say that I haven't seen any serious discussions about optimization based on the alpha or playtest materials. Most of the discussion here re: balance has focused on high-level discussions about "casters vs. mundanes" or "how do DCs work with Bounded Accuracy." I think most people are waiting to see the final PHB before they launch into creating a new tier system.

But if you find someplace that's discussing the alpha with impunity, maybe you'll find that kind of discussion. It just isn't happening here, and it isn't happening anywhere else I read.

1of3
2014-07-31, 04:02 AM
There is one thing, we can say for certain: There are two types of rest, short and long, and different classes use these rests in different ways. Rogues pretty much don't care about short rest and even long rests are only required for healing. Wizards love their good nights sleep. Fighters thrive on short rests. So depending on the pace of your play, different classes will behave quite differently.

Also there are no hard rules on the availability of magic items. And again different items will work for different classes. So depending on your campaign, different characters will get different benefits.

Inspiration can be a very powerful thing. But it only grants advantage. If you do not use Inspiration very much, character features that grant advantage in other ways are more useful. If you throw Inspiration like candy, they are less so.

Casters can do amazing things, kinda close to earlier editions, but if you compare it to 3.x they are quite limited in how often they can do it. Buffing is very limited with Concentration. And high level spell slots are rare. If you have a high powered campaign and the adventure expects the Wizard to cast Teleport, one of the most powerful spell slots is just gone for the day (Teleport is spell level 7).

So compared to 4e, the game is much more open. You kinda need to find your own balance.