Can we build the math from the ground up? (And does Vancian help or hurt that?)

[Quertus]

So suppose - say, for 6th edition - people wanted to build the game from the ground up, build the math from the ground up to make all D&D classes "balanced", by which I mean "able to contribute, and occasionally shine", and no more "linear Fighter, quadratic Wizard".

So, let's take… "6th level". The wizard has Fireball, SoL spells like Hold Person, buffs, BFC.

Fighting an army of orcs, Fireball is probably optimal. How many orcs should take how long to dispatch the Wizard? How many orcs should the Wizard have killed before that happens? How can the Fighter contribute "equally"? By killing orcs roughly as quickly? By surviving to finish off the orc army one at a time? By leading their own army?

Fighting a few Ogres, BFC is likely the best option, perhaps followed up with some summons. How can the Fighter contribute "equally"? By greatly outpacing the summons' DPS (perhaps with their own "scales by round" mechanic, like "automatic study: add a d6 of damage to every attack for every consecutive round the Fighter has made an attack on this creature type" or something)? By being their own BFC (3e chain tripper says hi)? By leading their own army?

Fighting a Troll, SoL may be the best bet for the Wizard. If it works, the Wizard gets to shine; if not, they didn't contribute. How do we make the Fighter "balanced" here?

Talking to people, the Wizard has effects like Charm and ESP. Which… have negative reproductions, and, in earlier editions, can drive the Wizard bonkers. How do we make the Fighter "balanced" here?

Dealing with traps, the Wizard could use summons (and scrying for maximum safety). How do we make the Fighter "balanced" here?

And, of course, all this was only considering Schrödinger's Wizard with unlimited spells. Should we keep the Wizard that way? How do we balance those encounters of the Wizard only packed Detect Magic, Alarm, Invisibility, and Sending? How do we make the Fighter "balanced" here?

Also, what if, rather than the microscope of "a single challenge", we look at a larger scenario, like "rescue the Dragon from the evil princess", or "close an underwater extradimensional portal protected by invisible, incorporeal guardians", or "save the NPC writer with massive gambling debts from loan sharks"? What should each class bring to the table in each of these scenarios, and how do we make that "balanced"?

[NigelWalmsley]

Starting from the character abilities is approaching the problem wrong. You need to start with the challenges. Don't ask "what abilities should a 6th level Wizard have", ask "what challenges should a 6th level character be able to overcome". Then, once you've defined what characters need to be able to do, writing a balanced game is as simple as writing classes that can do those things.

[johnbragg]

One rule-of-thumb I used in homebrewing a distant descendant of E6 with some 4E and 5E DNA spliced in and a largely-rewritten spell list is:

The beatstick should always be better at doing direct damage than the spellcaster.
The optimum damage output should be produced by the spellcaster buffing the beatstick.
So Caster STrike << Sword << BigAssAnimeSword.

[Lagtime]

Well, there is an easy fix for the "math" and it's the 0E/1E/2E/BECMI way: Wizards do NOT get automatic free access to every published spell on a whim. Spells are treasure. This also needs the 0E/1E/2E/BECMI way that making magic items...any items, but more so scrolls and wands...is hard and difficult and expensive. So again: magic items are treasure. Not something a character can just make on a whim.

This alone puts fighters and wizards on the same starting base: they must both adventure for things to get more powerful. Also, you might as well throw in feats/class abilities too....make it so a character must either find a trainer or a special location or such. Maybe even add a mechanic, like an experience upgrade that can be earned and then used to get an ability. So the player has to have the character do something in the game to get the experience upgrade, based on the character and the game world.

Downgrading the spells would also be a good thing. Other then reducing damage and effects, a big thing to add is the twist that magic can't effectively do mundane things. Magic can do magic things, but alone can't do mundane things well. The basic idea something like magic can greatly enhance a character that has a skill or ability, but can not give you a skill or ability and gets better depending on the power level of the target.

[NigelWalmsley]

If your solution to the problem "Wizards > Fighters" is "nerf Wizards", it is the wrong solution. Fiction is replete with martial characters who can compete with anything D&D casters can dish out. If your martials are not competitive with your casters, that is a problem with your martials, not your casters.

[JNAProductions]

Well, there is an easy fix for the "math" and it's the 0E/1E/2E/BECMI way: Wizards do NOT get automatic free access to every published spell on a whim. Spells are treasure. This also needs the 0E/1E/2E/BECMI way that making magic items...any items, but more so scrolls and wands...is hard and difficult and expensive. So again: magic items are treasure. Not something a character can just make on a whim.

This alone puts fighters and wizards on the same starting base: they must both adventure for things to get more powerful. Also, you might as well throw in feats/class abilities too....make it so a character must either find a trainer or a special location or such. Maybe even add a mechanic, like an experience upgrade that can be earned and then used to get an ability. So the player has to have the character do something in the game to get the experience upgrade, based on the character and the game world.

Downgrading the spells would also be a good thing. Other then reducing damage and effects, a big thing to add is the twist that magic can't effectively do mundane things. Magic can do magic things, but alone can't do mundane things well. The basic idea something like magic can greatly enhance a character that has a skill or ability, but can not give you a skill or ability and gets better depending on the power level of the target.

Limiting access to broken things does not make the broken things any better-it just means that you only sometimes get to use them.

From a 5E perspective, there are definitely some spells that shouldn't be available to players ordinarily-Simulacrum or Clone, for instance. Those shouldn't be spells in the normal sense at all-they should be something you quest for, or perform mighty rituals, or something like that.

But other things, like Fireball being overtuned? That's as simple as making it deal less damage.

[Kyutaru]

Ground up developing is a common mistake in game development, at least the way I was taught. It makes sense from a logical perspective and outside the box but when you try it the problems become clear.

City of Heroes was a ground-up developed MMO beginning with very equivalent characters and branching out from there. Theoretically it should allow for balance, right? But that balance is bottom heavy and gets more and more shaky the higher the ladder goes up. You end up with a very balanced low level game and a very broken high level game. The designers went into dev blogs about why that was, explaining as many other RPG makers have learned that players do NOT want balance but controlled imbalance. Perfect balance is actually one of the worst ways to balance a game because people are not machines and do not recognize the value of the mathematically superior formulas. They will go for their own min-max builds that the system is not based around and build into disadvantage. Meanwhile hybrids will never shine because they are perfectly balanced, meaning ineffectual in both roles. Games where hybrids are valuable have them stacked to be superior to others but not quite reaching the level of specialization of pure classes.

The same has happened with roles over time. Tanks used to not deal any damage because they mitigate tons of damage. That's simple balance. But they learned over time that it's better to balance Tanks around doing LESS damage but still reasonably high damage. This leads to a character that is blatantly more powerful than another mathematically but still considered "balanced" because the pure damage role is that much more desired and prioritized.

Even the HEX TCG found that a perfectly balanced card shuffler was not desirable by players, who complained incessantly about getting screwed and calling the shuffler broken or rigged or not like real life when in fact it was real life shuffling that people would weight unfairly by weaving cards to prevent screw. Truly random shuffling would result in many many cases of suboptimal hands by natural distribution. The developers fixed the perception problem of a fake RNG shuffler by making it a fake RNG shuffler and removing many of the outliers that people hated to see from the possible results.

Another game that uses true RNG is XCOM and the amount of complaining about missed 99% shots is legendary. People don't like fair or balanced, they want smart decisions to be rewarded with expected results, even if a chance of failure was always there. It's so bad that some games implemented automatic crit/miss protection such that you if you fail to hit twice in a row your 3rd attack was guaranteed to hit, or that if you crit twice in a row your 3rd attack was guaranteed to be a normal hit, normalizing the struggle between lucky and unlucky strings of random variables that shifted the tide of battle.

Basically balance sucks, mathematically speaking. Ground up balance even more so. People WANT broken messed up logic but don't realize it because developers have had to get good at hiding the cheating in the background. In a tabletop RPG, this means even more DM fudging or rules that are so convoluted that you can't tell if they're balanced or not beyond your subjective play experience with them.

[Pex]

Well, there is an easy fix for the "math" and it's the 0E/1E/2E/BECMI way: Wizards do NOT get automatic free access to every published spell on a whim. Spells are treasure. This also needs the 0E/1E/2E/BECMI way that making magic items...any items, but more so scrolls and wands...is hard and difficult and expensive. So again: magic items are treasure. Not something a character can just make on a whim.

This alone puts fighters and wizards on the same starting base: they must both adventure for things to get more powerful. Also, you might as well throw in feats/class abilities too....make it so a character must either find a trainer or a special location or such. Maybe even add a mechanic, like an experience upgrade that can be earned and then used to get an ability. So the player has to have the character do something in the game to get the experience upgrade, based on the character and the game world.

Downgrading the spells would also be a good thing. Other then reducing damage and effects, a big thing to add is the twist that magic can't effectively do mundane things. Magic can do magic things, but alone can't do mundane things well. The basic idea something like magic can greatly enhance a character that has a skill or ability, but can not give you a skill or ability and gets better depending on the power level of the target.

Training does nothing to fix balance. It's a waste of time, in game and out of game.

[JNAProductions]

Training does nothing to fix balance. It's a waste of time, in game and out of game.

I disagree that it's always a waste of time! Training can be a valuable way to add verisimilitude to your game. I wouldn't have it as a core rule, but as an optional rule to make the game last longer, in-game, it's a good thing.

Though I would definitely have it be "Training takes X amount of time. Halve X if you find and pay a trainer to aid you." I would NOT require you to find a trainer just to level up, since sometimes, you're the biggest, baddest party around, and no one could feasibly train you.

I do agree it does jack all for balance, though.

[johnbragg]

One rule-of-thumb I used in homebrewing a distant descendant of E6 with some 4E and 5E DNA spliced in and a largely-rewritten spell list is:

The beatstick should always be better at doing direct damage than the spellcaster.
The optimum damage output should be produced by the spellcaster buffing the beatstick.
So Caster STrike << Sword << BigAssAnimeSword.

Note for the file:

Something I'm not thrilled with in 5E. There's almost a graviational tendency for one tactic to just be better than the alternatives in almost all cases. For my 4th-5th-6th level cleric, "cast Toll The Dead" for 2d12 ranged damage is almost always a better use of actions and spell slots than making a melee attack or casting an attack spell. (It's foolish to spend spell slots on dealing damage instead of munchkined-out healing-after-combat, and 2d12 average 13 is better than a d8+2 average 6.5.)

In my current-to-next homebrew, I have a mechanic where spells are Exhausted (either for one minute, or until you can take a full-round action to refresh and reset yourself). That means full-casters need to know a lot of spells to get through a four- to five-round combat. It also means that maybe a lot of spells can be reduced in level--you're automatically limited to using them once per fight. (Healing may be an exception, or maybe each spellcasting class gets a spell or two that breaks the usual resource limits in whatever ways.)

[johnbragg]

Well, there is an easy fix for the "math" and it's the 0E/1E/2E/BECMI way: Wizards do NOT get automatic free access to every published spell on a whim. Spells are treasure. This also needs the 0E/1E/2E/BECMI way that making magic items...any items, but more so scrolls and wands...is hard and difficult and expensive. So again: magic items are treasure. Not something a character can just make on a whim.

This alone puts fighters and wizards on the same starting base: they must both adventure for things to get more powerful. Also, you might as well throw in feats/class abilities too....make it so a character must either find a trainer or a special location or such. Maybe even add a mechanic, like an experience upgrade that can be earned and then used to get an ability. So the player has to have the character do something in the game to get the experience upgrade, based on the character and the game world.

I invoke Grod's Law.

Grod's Law: You cannot and should not balance bad mechanics by making them annoying to use

Taking the approach of "it's okay to put these troublesome abilities in the book, because we'll tell the GM (often in a different book) not to let the player have them" is not a great approach.

Downgrading the spells would also be a good thing. Other then reducing damage and effects, a big thing to add is the twist that magic can't effectively do mundane things. Magic can do magic things, but alone can't do mundane things well. The basic idea something like magic can greatly enhance a character that has a skill or ability, but can not give you a skill or ability and gets better depending on the power level of the target.

And anyway, if I remember right in 2E, you automatically added a spell to your spellbook when you levelled up. The results of your research and readings and tinkerings and whatnot. (I could be wrong about this, I haven't played 2E in 25 years and when we did play 2E we ignored whatever rules we damn well felt like, and fiddly non-murderhobo-ey stuff like training-to-level were the first things thrown out the window).

[Ignimortis]

So suppose - say, for 6th edition - people wanted to build the game from the ground up, build the math from the ground up to make all D&D classes "balanced", by which I mean "able to contribute, and occasionally shine", and no more "linear Fighter, quadratic Wizard".

If you want balance, you'll have to take Wizards down a peg or two. You cannot allow a class to have semi-unlimited access to 95% of clearly defined effects in the game and expect it to be balanceable with anything that doesn't boast the same versatility. My proposed solution (which somehow has never been tried, perhaps of subconscious bias towards old archetypes and wizards in particular, as Rob Heinsoo described it) is to make every Wizard choose one favoured schools and two permitted ones, and then they can't access anything outside of those three schools. Ever.

Do something similar to other casters, too - Clerics should really think hard about their domains, and druids should probably just get a Nature Cleric's list if they even want to keep shapeshifting.

After that, a lot of problems are already solved, and the only thing that's needed for martials to shine is a more robust skill system where martials get to roll skills more and better than casters, and also produce tangible and level-appropriate results on a particular roll. Of course, that necessitates skill rolls that advance significantly over the course of 20 levels (perhaps with an average specialist roll of 15 at level 1, 25 at 6, 35 at 11, etc) - unlike 5e. Or skill feats that unlock new skill uses, I dunno.

[NigelWalmsley]

Another game that uses true RNG is XCOM and the amount of complaining about missed 99% shots is legendary.

Complaining from people who've logged hundreds of hours on each of multiple different XCOMs. "That's XCOM, baby" is part of why people play the game, not something you should try to fix.

If you want balance, you'll have to take Wizards down a peg or two. You cannot allow a class to have semi-unlimited access to 95% of clearly defined effects in the game and expect it to be balanceable with anything that doesn't boast the same versatility.

Sure. Which is why there should be more effects in the game. The problem isn't that the Wizard has a variety of abilities and can do something useful in most situations. I mean, seriously, read those words and tell me with a straight face that you're describing a problem. It's that the Fighter doesn't and can't. If you look at the source material, there are plenty of characters who are competitive with mid or high level Wizards at reasonable optimization. This problem is really not nearly as hard as the "nerf Wizards" crowd seems to believe. Read something by Sanderson or Zelazny and you'll quickly discover that it's entirely possible to have both incredibly powerful characters and meaningful stakes.

the only thing that's needed for martials to shine is a more robust skill system where martials get to roll skills more and better than casters

Why not start with that? If we're going to buff martials anyway, why not start with that and see where it gets us? People don't like having their toys taken away, but they do like having new toys. Therefore, it behooves us to try a great deal of the latter before insisting on the former, rather than cramming a bunch of nerfs down the Wizard's throat and giving the Fighter some new toys as an afterthought. Until I can play Kaladin (Stormlight Archive), Thor (Marvel), Karsa Orlong (Malazan), and Ranger (A Practical Guide to Evil) in D&D, I see no reason that we need to do anything to nerf the Wizard.

[Lagtime]

Limiting access to broken things does not make the broken things any better-it just means that you only sometimes get to use them.

Somewhat true. But there will never be a perfect balance: no matter what someone will always find something unbalanced. But limiting things does work: exhibit A is easy as D&D has done it for nearly everything except spells forever. Even all the way up to 5E, the DM gets the final say on what magic items and even mundane items are found in the game. If a DM thinks an item is 'broken', is simply never shows up in the game.

Training does nothing to fix balance. It's a waste of time, in game and out of game.

I guess that is true for a quick 'post byte'. To just dismiss training is a bit unfair though. I'd agree that the traditional "training" found in many RPGs like "ok, so your character goes and trains for like six weeks or whatever and pays 1000 gold...ok, on with the adventure" is lame and does nothing but waist time.

But like I suggested, making getting training something the player and character must do. Simply put making it a "quest". The idea being the character must gain an Experience Badge BEFORE they get a new ability. So characters don't just get stuff for free as they level up.

Taking the approach of "it's okay to put these troublesome abilities in the book, because we'll tell the GM (often in a different book) not to let the player have them" is not a great approach.

It does work though.

And anyway, if I remember right in 2E, you automatically added a spell to your spellbook when you levelled up. The results of your research and readings and tinkerings and whatnot. (I could be wrong about this, I haven't played 2E in 25 years and when we did play 2E we ignored whatever rules we damn well felt like, and fiddly non-murderhobo-ey stuff like training-to-level were the first things thrown out the window).

2E has a lot of froggoten rules that really balanced wizards and other spellcasters:

1.No free spells when you level up. Even more so you could not just grab any random book and then say your character had a spell from the book: as the DM could always say "No."

2.A wizard had to Learn each spell....and there was a chance that they could fail and not be able to learn, cast or use the said spell.

3.The number of spells a wizard could know and cast per level was set. Once a spell is learned, it cannot be unlearned. It remains part of that character'srepertoire forever. Thus, a character cannot choose to "forget" a spell so as to replace itwith another.

4.Lots of spells had built in cost and drawbacks.

5.Spells were not the free for all in later editions where a player could pick and published spell. Many spells were unique and only know to some, so player characters could not pick them.

Also 2E had the idea that spells had a rating: Common, Uncommon, Rare, Very Rare and Unique. Only Common ones would often be found at a magic shop or such.

In addition, from back in d20 times....the Monte Cook players handbook had the idea that spells be Simple, Complex and Exotic. So simple spells were just 'point and cast", Complex need advanced intelligence and Exotic were very weird and strange.

A simple chart making 'broken' spells both Rare and Exotic would keep them out of common every day hands in a game world. And work very well.

Again, you will never have a perfectly balanced system....but if the system has safeguards in place, the "broken" stuff won't be an issue.

[johnbragg]

Sure. Which is why there should be more effects in the game. The problem isn't that the Wizard has a variety of abilities and can do something useful in most situations. I mean, seriously, read those words and tell me with a straight face that you're describing a problem. It's that the Fighter doesn't and can't. If you look at the source material, there are plenty of characters who are competitive with mid or high level Wizards at reasonable optimization. This problem is really not nearly as hard as the "nerf Wizards" crowd seems to believe. Read something by Sanderson or Zelazny and you'll quickly discover that it's entirely possible to have both incredibly powerful characters and meaningful stakes.

The martials pretty much need an Author twisting the plot in their favor though.

Why not start with [improved skills for martials]?

Because we've played 3X, and we've seen what rogues with +30 to skills can do compared to what casters can do with a few 1st-3rd level spell slots?

If we're going to buff martials anyway, why not start with that and see where it gets us? People don't like having their toys taken away, but they do like having new toys. Therefore, it behooves us to try a great deal of the latter before insisting on the former, rather than cramming a bunch of nerfs down the Wizard's throat and giving the Fighter some new toys as an afterthought.

I dunno, it worked out okay for 5th edition. It may not be your game, but it supplanted 4th Edition and Pathfinder as the market-dominant least-common-denominator game.

Until I can play Kaladin (Stormlight Archive), Thor (Marvel), Karsa Orlong (Malazan), and Ranger (A Practical Guide to Evil) in D&D, I see no reason that we need to do anything to nerf the Wizard.

Thor shoots lightning out of his hands. Kaladin is a Surgebinder and a Windrunner and a Stormlight and has healing powers and can turn his weapon into a shardblade and can fly (from a quick reading of a fan wiki). I don't know what most of that means, but it sounds magic.

So if you want to play those guys in 3X, I think Cleric is the way to go, and rewrite the spell lists to match whatever you're trying to do. You can't do that stuff and still be Conan.

Part of the issue is, you can't have a game where Conan and Dr Manhattan are anything like equally contributing party members. If you're playing a game with Conan, you have to limit the casters accordingly. If you're playing Elric Stormbringer or Kaladin or Thor, your big beatstick guys need to do magic.

[JNAProductions]

There's a difference between "Your character works, and the DM controls what additional goodies you get," and "Your character has limited access to their defining abilities."

In 5E, yes, magic items are in the purview of the DM, excepting an Artificer for some items. But no class NEEDS magic items to function-the most an ordinary Fighter or Barbarian needs is a weapon that counts as magical, if they're commonly fighting foes who resist/are immune to non-magical weapon damage. But you could run a game from 1-20 without any magic items, and provided you're careful with enemy selection, have no issues.

Now, try running that 1-20 game, only Wizards only get their initial 6 spells. They can upcast them with new slots, but they don't get any higher level spells or even any newer low level spells. You'll find that no one wants to play a Wizard. That's because getting new spells is the CORE FUNCTIONALITY of the Wizard class-they have other features, but a Wizard without their appropriate spells is a bad PC.

It'd be much, much better to simply make it so the spells are relatively well-balanced. Sure, remove some like Wish or whatnot, but being able to pick from a big list is a good thing. It's fun, for the type of player that likes Wizards-and this is a game that's supposed to be fun.

[Quertus]

I'm not sure I really got my intentions across in the OP. I may need to address that. In the meantime…

Starting from the character abilities is approaching the problem wrong. You need to start with the challenges. Don't ask "what abilities should a 6th level Wizard have", ask "what challenges should a 6th level character be able to overcome". Then, once you've defined what characters need to be able to do, writing a balanced game is as simple as writing classes that can do those things.

Two seemingly contradictory responses:

1) and that differs from what i did how?

2) and what would be wrong with designing the character first, then defining the challenges each level, then deciding which abilities the class gets at each level based on the expected challenges?

Back to #1… I can see that my examples were more… finely tuned… for level 6 combat challenges. A Troll, a few Ogres, an Orc army. Perhaps a level 6 social challenge might be… broker a treaty between two tribes, have two SO's accept each other, not be humiliated by unfriendly nobles.

Traps are probably a whole 'nother can of worms. However, perhaps we could generally say, when the Wizard's Simmons trivialize traps, the Cleric's Divinations, Rogue's skills, and Fighter's… something… should also trivialize those same traps.

Still, I suspect that the two - challenges and characters - should be tuned together, regardless of their initial creation order.

The beatstick should always be better at doing direct damage than the spellcaster.
The optimum damage output should be produced by the spellcaster buffing the beatstick.

That's… one way. And, for some purposes, it's good; for others, it's made of fail. Lemme explain.

Suppose the *only* thing your caster can do is deal damage. In D&D, the Fighter has more HP, better AC, and more staying power. Even if you make the spells all usable at will, it should be obvious that the Fighter that can deal more damage is OP compared to the damage-dealing Wizard.

So I firmly disagree with your principle.

And it sounds like how the math fails in what little I've heard about Pathfinder 2e.

For a generalist Wizard, though, it may be worth discussing.

If the Fighter has a better chassis, *and* can contribute to an equal number of challenges, then the Wizard must contribute *more* with their spells to make up for the weaker chassis.

If the Fighter has a stronger chassis, but the Fighter can contribute to *fewer* scenarios than the Wizard, then, yes, the Wizard's contribution could be the same or lower than the Fighter's to balance their chassis differences.

Or you could give the Fighter an equal or weaker chassis than the Wizard. Although I'm not sure how you'd do that and still hit D&D's expectations.

So, for which combination of chassis, which distribution of contribution, and which version of spells (Vancian, at will, etc) would you see this working?

Downgrading the spells would also be a good thing. Other then reducing damage and effects,

Same question as above: for which chassis of Wizard, which distribution of contribution, and which paradigm of spells do you recommend this?

Well, there is an easy fix for the "math" and it's the 0E/1E/2E/BECMI way: Wizards do NOT get automatic free access to every published spell on a whim. Spells are treasure. This also needs the 0E/1E/2E/BECMI way that making magic items...any items, but more so scrolls and wands...is hard and difficult and expensive. So again: magic items are treasure. Not something a character can just make on a whim.

This alone puts fighters and wizards on the same starting base: they must both adventure for things to get more powerful.

Limiting access to broken things does not make the broken things any better-it just means that you only sometimes get to use them.

My experiences matches @JNAProductions here. Don't get me wrong - I love 2e, and i think it's the best (ie, the most fun) RPG. But random treasure and random spells guarantees imbalance. And I think that's great. But I don't see how it could lead to better balance. Except that it makes *combining* powers much harder, meaning you almost never get Force Cage plus Cloudkill, or (if they were items) Leap Attack plus Shock Trooper.

@Lagtime, care to explain your reasoning? Because I'd love if ideas from my favorite game were demonstrably beneficial for game balance.

a big thing to add is the twist that magic can't effectively do mundane things. Magic can do magic things, but alone can't do mundane things well. The basic idea something like magic can greatly enhance a character that has a skill or ability, but can not give you a skill or ability and gets better depending on the power level of the target.

Hmmm… this is a huge topic all by itself.

If "skill" can get you up to, say, a +20, and "buffs" can give you up to +5, then the best at, say, stealth, is the character with +20 skill who can give themselves a +5 buff. It means everyone is skilled, and everyone is a mage, or else they're suboptimal.

It also brings up "stacking" issues - he who can stack the most buffs, wins. Which, if the system limits how many of those buffs you can learn or maintain, favors numbers, the same way that action economy does. Is that a good thing?

If your solution to the problem "Wizards > Fighters" is "nerf Wizards", it is the wrong solution. Fiction is replete with martial characters who can compete with anything D&D casters can dish out. If your martials are not competitive with your casters, that is a problem with your martials, not your casters.

I'll not lie - I tend to be on this side of the equation. Of course, that's largely because when I ask, "how do you want muggles to contribute", the answers are usually "uh, they can't?". So, in that scenario (ie, the one I usually find myself in), I strongly agree.

However, the point of this thread seems like it should eliminate that scenario. Or so i hope.

From a 5E perspective, there are definitely some spells that shouldn't be available to players ordinarily-Simulacrum or Clone, for instance. Those shouldn't be spells in the normal sense at all-they should be something you quest for, or perform mighty rituals, or something like that.

Costs. Years. XP. Gold. Time. Or Pathfinder's "only 1". None of these, IME, actually work as a true balancing agent. Worse, most favor NPCs over PCs.

But other things, like Fireball being overtuned? That's as simple as making it deal less damage.

I can't say as I'm accustomed to hearing people talking about fireball being OP - at least, not since y2k.

Really, my fireball question was, "assuming fireball kills fodder in droves, how does one create a balanced Fighter?" Granted, I *suppose* a valid answer could be, "the Fighter isn't supposed to be good at combat", or "yeah, that's the Wizard's chance to shine".

2e had "sweep", and 3e had "great cleave" as answers to this question.

[johnbragg]

I guess that is true for a quick 'post byte'. To just dismiss training is a bit unfair though. I'd agree that the traditional "training" found in many RPGs like "ok, so your character goes and trains for like six weeks or whatever and pays 1000 gold...ok, on with the adventure" is lame and does nothing but waist time.

But like I suggested, making getting training something the player and character must do. Simply put making it a "quest". The idea being the character must gain an Experience Badge BEFORE they get a new ability. So characters don't just get stuff for free as they level up.

One thing that worked very well in a 3.0 campaign was, the DM mandated that you train for your next level DURING your current level. So, during downtime, my 3rd or 4th level fighter took classes at the local magic academy, and when he leveled up he took Wizard 1 and started casting shield before fights. (All that character wanted was to be a beatstick, but he was smart enough to figure out that in a 3X world the best way to beatstick is to cast combat buffs)

2E has a lot of froggoten rules that really balanced wizards and other spellcasters:

1.No free spells when you level up. Even more so you could not just grab any random book and then say your character had a spell from the book: as the DM could always say "No."

2E was also from an age where splatbooks were barely a thing. You had the PHB, maybe a couple of setting books, maybe somebody had a Dragon magazine subscription. But probably not.

2.A wizard had to Learn each spell....and there was a chance that they could fail and not be able to learn, cast or use the said spell.

3.The number of spells a wizard could know and cast per level was set. Once a spell is learned, it cannot be unlearned. It remains part of that character'srepertoire forever. Thus, a character cannot choose to "forget" a spell so as to replace itwith another.

Limits on spells known were a big limitation. (Until you munchkined yourself into a 19 INT and escaped those limits)

Also 2E had the idea that spells had a rating: Common, Uncommon, Rare, Very Rare and Unique. Only Common ones would often be found at a magic shop or such.

Magic shops? Heh, you were lucky.
--The Four Yorkshiremen Play D&D

In addition, from back in d20 times....the Monte Cook players handbook had the idea that spells be Simple, Complex and Exotic. So simple spells were just 'point and cast", Complex need advanced intelligence and Exotic were very weird and strange.

A simple chart making 'broken' spells both Rare and Exotic would keep them out of common every day hands in a game world. And work very well.

Again, you will never have a perfectly balanced system....but if the system has safeguards in place, the "broken" stuff won't be an issue.

I ... don't really understand the logic of going through the effort of identifying the "broken", troublesome spells, and then....keeping them, in a box labeled "Do not open this box."

If you're putting in the work to identify the troublesome spells, ban and / or replace them.

[Kaptin Keen]

What I'd do is depressingly simple: I'd make characters (casters, but everyone else too) specialise.

Bam. You make a 'Destruction' mage, you get the big badaboom aoe spells - but you don't get anything else. You pick a 'Demonologist' mage, you get all the fancy summons - but you don't get anything else.

If you play a 'Berserker' you get a great big 2-hander and possibly the highest damage in the game - but you get nothing else. Pick a 'Knight' you get sword-and-board, and the ability to tank forever - but you don't get anything else.

The problem is versatility. The solution is specialisation.

Oh, and obviously 2-dimensional characters would be boring. So maybe the 'Berserker' has his 2-hander, and some sort of nice gimmick in combat (in my games, Rage can break Charm and Hold effects, and so on), and then on top he gets a nice pallette of out-of-combat abilities. Maybe out-of-combat abilities are free-for-all, so any character can be charming, or diplomatic, or a juggler, or a musician.

[JNAProductions]

Fireball, in 5E, just does more damage than spells of its level should.

It doesn't break anything, but it's a niggling little badness for legacy reasons.

[Xuc Xac]

If your solution to the problem "Wizards > Fighters" is "nerf Wizards", it is the wrong solution. Fiction is replete with martial characters who can compete with anything D&D casters can dish out. If your martials are not competitive with your casters, that is a problem with your martials, not your casters.

It should be both. Wizards shouldn't have access to all the magic. "Magic can do anything and wizards can do magic, therefore wizards can do anything" is like saying "Every Olympic gold medalist is an athlete, therefore every athlete can get a gold medal in every event".

Martial characters need a lot more stuff, even supernatural stuff like "shoot arrows around corners" or "cut boulders in half by swinging a sword in their direction". And wizards need more severe limits like "access to spells over 3rd level require increasingly specific degrees of specialization".

"Why do we need to hire a ship when we've got a Wizard? Can't you just Teleport us there?"
"I wish I could, but I did my dissertation on 'Phlogistical Exacerbation of Ferrous Materials in a Pyrokinetic Field Array'. If you need anything burned or melted, I'm the guy to ask but I don't know much about folding space. If I dig out my old apprenticeship notes, I can cast a spell to bump you about 7 feet in a random direction. That's good if you're locked in a small room, but not much use in this situation."

[johnbragg]

That's… one way. And, for some purposes, it's good; for others, it's made of fail. Lemme explain.

Suppose the *only* thing your caster can do is deal damage.

Wut? Let me google up the meme of the car with the engine on fire.
"Well that's your problem right there."

If the player really just wants to play a blaster-caster, then that's a corner case I can handle. Use a half-caster gish chassis, like a weapon-based warlock or a Durkon cleric, let them cast "Bigass Anime Sword" on their weapon and go smashing doodz. The math works out the same, except for some action economy effects.

But you want to strongly advise a player against building a character that, mechanically, can only do damage.

In D&D, the Fighter has more HP, better AC, and more staying power. Even if you make the spells all usable at will, it should be obvious that the Fighter that can deal more damage is OP compared to the damage-dealing Wizard.

Let's roll out some quick math I've been using, at 1st level to keep the numbers down.
Sword-and-board fighter is rolling a d8 for damage.
1st level blasting spell does d6 damage.
1st level buff spell elemental weapon bumps d8 to 2d6 (d6 element, d6 weapon).

So Wally Wizard casts elemental weapon on Fred Fighter, and everyone's happy. (2 actions)
Perry the Pyromaniac can play a gish, cast elemental weapon on his weapon (he can have a soul-weapon if it makes him happy--nobody ever, ever said the Soulknife was overpowered). It still takes him two actions, spread over two rounds. In a level or two when Perry unlocks the ability to cast-and-strike in one round, Wally the Wizard has better spells to buff Fred's attacks with.

Basically, Perry the Pyromaniac is what the 3X cleric was supposed to be. But the big difference is, the Wizard is incentivized to cast spells that buff Fred (or the entire party including Fred) rather than casting spells that defeat enemies directly.

Fred the Fighter has more HP, probably better AC, better BAB, more combat features. Perry can cast spells that let him match Fred's un-buffed combat output, but the optimum is Buffed Fred.

So I firmly disagree with your principle.

And it sounds like how the math fails in what little I've heard about Pathfinder 2e.

Pathfinder 2E just seems like such a slog.

For a generalist Wizard, though, it may be worth discussing.

My operating principle for thematic full-casters is that half of their spells should be thematic, and half from the basic Casters-R-Us list.

If the Fighter has a better chassis, *and* can contribute to an equal number of challenges, then the Wizard must contribute *more* with their spells to make up for the weaker chassis.

Take into account *how* they're contributing though. If Wally the Wizard casts Flaming Sword on Fred the Fighter's sword, and Fred does 15 damage and kills the bugbear, Wally's player feels like some of that damage is his. Which is good table play, in my opinion.

If the Fighter has a stronger chassis, but the Fighter can contribute to *fewer* scenarios than the Wizard, then, yes, the Wizard's contribution could be the same or lower than the Fighter's to balance their chassis differences.

I think that, unless the game is seriously crimped to only-combat scenarios, it's almost inevitable that spellcasters will contribute more than non-spellcasters. Fred and Wally killed the orc, but they have to run to escape from the ogre. That's a situation that having some magic is a huge help--cast Create Pit or an illusion or mass Expeditious Retreat.

Or you could give the Fighter an equal or weaker chassis than the Wizard. Although I'm not sure how you'd do that and still hit D&D's expectations.

So, for which combination of chassis, which distribution of contribution, and which version of spells (Vancian, at will, etc) would you see this working?

What I'm noodling is a 5-level structure, with Warriors (Barbarian chassis), Half-Casters (Cleric/Rogue chassis), Tricksters (Rogue chassis), and Fullcasters (Sorcerer/Wizard).

There are 4 levels of spells, 0 1 2 and 3.

Concentration and Exhaustion (only use a spell once per encounter) is a big limitation, so a lot of spells can be lower-level than they have been. And, if you reduce the numbers, a lot more spells can have lower level versions--a 1st level Wall of Fire maybe takes up 2 squares or hexes, does 2d6 damage if you bull your way through it.

A few things I munched:

"Fireball is over-tuned" I don't know that this means that "Fireball is OP", it means "If Fireball is OP you can fix that with math." As opposed to say illusions or charm spells.

"How do you balance the fact that casters are more useful out of combat than martials?" By having martials really shine in combat, personally.

[Pex]

Two seemingly contradictory responses:

1) and that differs from what i did how?

2) and what would be wrong with designing the character first, then defining the challenges each level, then deciding which abilities the class gets at each level based on the expected challenges?

Back to #1… I can see that my examples were more… finely tuned… for level 6 combat challenges. A Troll, a few Ogres, an Orc army. Perhaps a level 6 social challenge might be… broker a treaty between two tribes, have two SO's accept each other, not be humiliated by unfriendly nobles.

Traps are probably a whole 'nother can of worms. However, perhaps we could generally say, when the Wizard's Simmons trivialize traps, the Cleric's Divinations, Rogue's skills, and Fighter's… something… should also trivialize those same traps.

Still, I suspect that the two - challenges and characters - should be tuned together, regardless of their initial creation order.

I'm not sure that's a fun way to balance. It would sound samey if everyone can do everything just in a different way. I could be wrong if the mechanics are significantly different. It's easier to see the point in high magic. The fighter doesn't need to be able to teleport just because the wizard can, no punching a hole in the multiverse. What he needs is to get something as awesome for him as the wizard likes teleporting when the wizard gets it, and the wizard cannot do that awesome thing too. What that awesome thing is is the conundrum, but I'm sure just bigger combat damage numbers is not it.

[NigelWalmsley]

But like I suggested, making getting training something the player and character must do. Simply put making it a "quest". The idea being the character must gain an Experience Badge BEFORE they get a new ability. So characters don't just get stuff for free as they level up.

You do understand that people gain levels by going on adventures, right? You don't level up for free to begin with.

Because we've played 3X, and we've seen what rogues with +30 to skills can do compared to what casters can do with a few 1st-3rd level spell slots?

Be roughly competitive? That's actually substantially better than what a Rogue gets at those levels to begin with, and against the likes of Knock or Charm Person the fact that skills are at will is enough to make them meaningfully competitive. You can throw plenty of shade at 3e, but the fact is that it works very well at low levels.

I dunno, it worked out okay for 5th edition. It may not be your game, but it supplanted 4th Edition and Pathfinder as the market-dominant least-common-denominator game.

Every edition of D&D (except possibly 4e) has been the market-dominating game in its time. If you want to make the case that some design decision or other is correct, you need an example of a game that isn't synonymous with "TTRPG" to the general public doing it. Otherwise, we can just go around in circles pointing out that the various editions of D&D that didn't do that were successful in their own time.

Thor shoots lightning out of his hands. Kaladin is a Surgebinder and a Windrunner and a Stormlight and has healing powers and can turn his weapon into a shardblade and can fly (from a quick reading of a fan wiki). I don't know what most of that means, but it sounds magic.

Yes, exactly! In the source material, martial characters use magic. The idea that there are people who use magic and get to have cool abilities and other people (who are nominally co-equal with them) that do not is entirely a fabrication of D&D. The idea that you need to write a Wizard who is competitive with a guy who is "pretty strong" is one that exists only because grognards insist on it, and the game would be better mechanically and more accurately represent the fantasy stories people care about if it was discarded.

and that differs from what i did how?

The last part, not so much. The first part seemed like it was running through a list of caster abilities and going "what do martials need to solve the problem this solves".

and what would be wrong with designing the character first, then defining the challenges each level, then deciding which abilities the class gets at each level based on the expected challenges?

That's how you get the Monk.

It should be both. Wizards shouldn't have access to all the magic.

Wizards don't have access to all the magic. A Wizard can't just wake up in the morning and say "today, I would like to cast Raise Dead" or "today, I would like to bind Amon" or "today, I would like to bind the Incarnate Avatar to my Soul chakra". There's lots of magic Wizards don't have. In fact, they don't have most of the magic there is out there for the having. They may have the best magic, but that seems like it is at worst just as much a problem of the classes that aren't Wizard as the one that is.

"Why do we need to hire a ship when we've got a Wizard? Can't you just Teleport us there?"

"No, I've never seen our destination before."
"No, we're trying to land an army there and Teleport takes like ten people max."
"No, we're searching for the lost Isle of Gold, we don't know where 'there' is yet."
"No, we're supposed to patrol the shipping lane for pirates, what 'there' am I supposed to Teleport us to."

People bring up Teleport a lot in these discussions, but the more they do they less I believe they've actually read what the spell does.

[ExLibrisMortis]

Basically balance sucks, mathematically speaking. Ground up balance even more so. People WANT broken messed up logic [...]

I think this is the crux.

(As usual for me, 3.5 bias incoming.)

"Mathematical" balance doesn't portray a world, or makes for an interesting setting. In a realistic setting, some things just work better. One way a rules-heavy RPG like D&D has an interesting meta is that you can figure out what works in the world you're given. As such, caster-martial disparity is not where D&D fails at all--it is a feature of the world. You can play a campaign with mundane characters, and experience the grind and misery of being nonmagical in a positively magic-saturated world, or you can play a campaign with magical characters, and you'll be the epic heroes who dine with the gods, because in this setting, that is what magic lets you do. (Eventually. If you survive.)

Now, that doesn't mean D&D gets it all right, either. D&D fails to explain correctly that there is an imbalance, what that means for the world, what sort of characters you can build under a system that is inherently imbalanced, how it allows for different power levels and optimization levels to live together in one party, and so on. Essentially, the problem is that WotC never leant in to the imbalance and made it part of the meta, and instead kept insisting the game was "balanced", as if that was ever the goal.

If a chess metaphor might be tolerated here: you can't improve chess by making all the pieces "balanced". Pawns are just ****, queens are amazing. That's what makes it interesting. No need to tell me pawns are very important, honest. And no need to remind me about go and checkers. I know they're interesting.

As an extention of this metaphor, clearly the way to balance D&D is to let everyone play eight fighters, two rogues, two paladins, two rangers, a wizard, and a cleric.

[Kyutaru]

As an extention of this metaphor, clearly the way to balance D&D is to let everyone play eight fighters, two rogues, two paladins, two rangers, a wizard, and a cleric.

And that's precisely how the war tabletop games D&D was based on are balanced. :D

Modern stuff like Warhammer 40k is too. The game breaks when you try to put gun-toting Soldiers on the same level as daemon-summoning Psykers. One just costs more points to field because it's better.

[JNAProductions]

So why should someone who wants to play a Fighter be necessarily worse than someone who wants to play a Wizard?

Why is their game fantasy less valid than the magic one?

[johnbragg]

So why should someone who wants to play a Fighter be necessarily worse than someone who wants to play a Wizard?

Why is their game fantasy less valid than the magic one?

If the Fighter they want to play is Thor who can shoot lightning and fly and tear apart castles, or Iron Man who can solve problems with technobabble, then they can play in a high-fantasy campaign along with Loki.

If the Fighter they want to play is Conan, then they're not going to have much to do in a campaign built around the Loki power level. You have to be quite careful deciding what abilities Merlin can and cannot have if he's going to team up with King ARthur as anything close to a partnership.

EDIT: There is definitely room on the shelf for both games. But not at the same table at the same time.

[NigelWalmsley]

So why should someone who wants to play a Fighter be necessarily worse than someone who wants to play a Wizard?

Pretty much. It's true that some things are better than other things. But we have a mechanism to represent that: level. If "mundane sword guy" is worse than "archmage", you can simply set up your level system so that the former is a 2nd level character and the latter a 15th level one. The whole notion that we need imbalance to represent a rich and detailed world is just false.

If the Fighter they want to play is Conan, then they're not going to have much to do in a campaign built around the Loki power level. You have to be quite careful deciding what abilities Merlin can and cannot have if he's going to team up with King ARthur as anything close to a partnership.

Well, sure, but that goes the other way too. If the Wizard is Merlin, the Barbarian can't be Thor. "Low level characters worse than high level characters" is not really a super meaningful argument about what the system as a whole should be doing.

[johnbragg]

Pretty much. It's true that some things are better than other things. But we have a mechanism to represent that: level. If "mundane sword guy" is worse than "archmage", you can simply set up your level system so that the former is a 2nd level character and the latter a 15th level one. The whole notion that we need imbalance to represent a rich and detailed world is just false.

Early editions kinda sorta did this. After 9th level, you stopped getting Hit Dice and HP for Constitution and just added +1 to +3 based on your class. Before 2nd edition and THAC0, I believe your attacks stopped getting better. I think saving throw progression was also capped.

So the model wasn't even Linear Fighter, Quadratic Wizard. The Fighter's improvement slows down drastically at Name Level, because he's supposed to be growing in power by building a castle with an army. Meanwhile the Magic-User (and Cleric and Druid, and I suppose Bard)is continuing to grow in personal power, as he gets access to higher level spells.