Alignment as some kind of hard coded mechanic, stat or rule has become fairly obsolete, other than a few magic items. I don't think it would be missed much...
...but having said that, I'm old school enough that I still think paladins should have a fairly strict ethos, be it LN, LE, or LG.
I think at this point we get it. Some players want the clock rolled back to another time for the "Next Evolutions of D&D" and some want things to move forward.
Now that that horse has been beaten to death, what kind of things to we actually think will happen?
I think that we might get slightly clearer language on some of the rules. I would also expect alterations to the Classes and Subclasses to deal with the most common complaints.
I really want to see the results from the survey!
If nothing else I want to see what the "community" wants to see changed. I know its not a complete representative example and those of us supernerds are the ones who likely filled it out.....but would be interesting to see what others thought of all the PHB subclasses.
Balance being objective or subjective kind of feels beside the point anyway. I think that balance is, to an extent, subjective because people will have different opinions on how hard an encounter should be, or an encounter may be more or less difficult for a given group due to any number of factors, or a class ability might see little use at one table but come up regularly at another. Even ignoring differences in player skill, just different party compositions can make what's a tough but fair encounter against one party a cakewalk for another.
None of that means balance is above criticism though. For example, from what I've heard Descent into Avernus has an enemy you can easily stumble across with fireball, at a point in the campaign you'll be level 2. I think that's bad design. Sure, a party of tiefling spellcasters with absorb elements or high dex might be fine. Some people may prefer the brutality of that, that the party could find this enemy and with a bit of bad luck, instantly be TPKd. But that doesn't mean it can't be criticized just because, subjectively, some people like it that way. Calling something subjective shouldn't be used as a shield to deflect discussion or criticism.
It's interesting that you are so close to stumbling over the problem, but are still kind of missing shoak111 points about balance.
See in your scenario here is encounter balance right, so you're talking about a monster that is clearly designed for a much higher level group, but certain compositions of character classes could potentially defeat the encounter while other compositions cannot. and this is the concept of "relative or subjective balance", but it's actually an absence of balance, the game is effectively broken.
That should not happen in a balanced ecosystem. Meaning that if a monster designed for say 3rd level party is put up against a group of 1st level characters, regardless of choices, optimizations, class combinations.. Nothing a player can PICK (this part is important) during his character's or groups character-building choices should make it possible for them to defeat this 3rd level monster. The fact that you can.. the fact that you can optimize the characters in certain ways to make it possible, even easy, means the game is not balanced.
What should be possible is first, luck obviously. You could get lucky through die rolls and defeat such an encounter, but more importantly, what should make it possible is smart tactics, clever use of terrain, DM story-infused advantages. Not character optimization. Character optimization is the act of finding unbalanced mechanics and exploiting them in the game, that is what optimization is, its effectively leveraging an un-balanced game system.
Do you see the difference? If a monster is designed for a party of 3rd level characters and the players are 1st level, how they optimize their characters should make no difference. Every choice a player makes should be appropriate for their level and equally good. It should not matter if you choose X or Y class, or Z class option, or D type or A type weapon. Those should all be narrative choices, things you pick to create an image of your character, a part of their story but it should be as effective as any other choice you could make.
5e is not like that. If you pick a Ranger, you are screwed, your character will suck. You might enjoy them narratively which is fine, but they are not a balanced class, you will be at a disadvantage in encounters compared to other classes you could have chosen of the same level. In 5e, optimization makes a HUGE .. like a MASSIVE difference in the power levels of a character and of a group. Hell you are 20% more powerful as group if one of the characters can cast Healing Word. Just that spell alone literally increases your power potential more than adding an entire extra character into the group. Like if I had a choice between another player running a Ranger and a just getting access to Healing Word, I would pick Healing Word because it will contribute sooo much more than a Ranger can/will ever do.
So no 5e is not balanced and yes the balance of 5e is relative.. but its done like that because the designers suck at their job, not because there is some sort of philosophy behind the concept of this "balance is relative" design or because its impossible to get "balance" in an RPG, that is complete BS.
I would add to your points that the most egregious imbalance is in the baseline CR system itself. If you compare two same-type creatures with different CRs, it should make sense why x monster is rated y and the other is rated z. But they are wildly inconsistent. Even worse, the designers dont even follow their own published guidelines for determining CRs. Screwing up the baseline system is the real problem here. And as you said - there is no excuse for that - its just people sucking at their job.
Its such a shame too. Making a balanced CR baseline and feat list is one of the easiest things the designers were tasked with. Its mostly math and only a little in the way of judgement. It's far more difficult to design balanced spells and classes. A good rule of thumb is that if you are gonna fail, at least dont fail on the easy stuff....
If you are concerned about the balance of the combat system that is something I can agree with as I feel that CR is not a really great metric for encounter balance (it is if you actually use the guidelines but you are correct that they themselves do not)
Also how crazy casters get in T3 and T4 compared to martials....its not even close balance wise.
Alignment as some kind of hard coded mechanic, stat or rule has become fairly obsolete, other than a few magic items. I don't think it would be missed much...
...but having said that, I'm old school enough that I still think paladins should have a fairly strict ethos, be it LN, LE, or LG.
I kind of like the way the different oaths have their own tenets, with different philosophies and goals. Helps give something more interesting to theme their expected behaviors after rather than a vague concept like 'lawful good' etc. While still leaving room for that with say, your oath of devotion or crowns type, but allowing other takes like ancients, vengeance, conquest etc.
Alignment as some kind of hard coded mechanic, stat or rule has become fairly obsolete, other than a few magic items. I don't think it would be missed much...
...but having said that, I'm old school enough that I still think paladins should have a fairly strict ethos, be it LN, LE, or LG.
I kind of like the way the different oaths have their own tenets, with different philosophies and goals. Helps give something more interesting to theme their expected behaviors after rather than a vague concept like 'lawful good' etc. While still leaving room for that with say, your oath of devotion or crowns type, but allowing other takes like ancients, vengeance, conquest etc.
I'd like to see some kind of approach that mixes the two: the more abstract idea of alignment along with the more immediate path of a particular oath.
The paladin class is one which I think really calls for/benefits from thought-out role-playing. They should feel very different from fighters or rangers, and not just in class abilities.
Balance being objective or subjective kind of feels beside the point anyway. I think that balance is, to an extent, subjective because people will have different opinions on how hard an encounter should be, or an encounter may be more or less difficult for a given group due to any number of factors, or a class ability might see little use at one table but come up regularly at another. Even ignoring differences in player skill, just different party compositions can make what's a tough but fair encounter against one party a cakewalk for another.
None of that means balance is above criticism though. For example, from what I've heard Descent into Avernus has an enemy you can easily stumble across with fireball, at a point in the campaign you'll be level 2. I think that's bad design. Sure, a party of tiefling spellcasters with absorb elements or high dex might be fine. Some people may prefer the brutality of that, that the party could find this enemy and with a bit of bad luck, instantly be TPKd. But that doesn't mean it can't be criticized just because, subjectively, some people like it that way. Calling something subjective shouldn't be used as a shield to deflect discussion or criticism.
It's interesting that you are so close to stumbling over the problem, but are still kind of missing shoak111 points about balance.
See in your scenario here is encounter balance right, so you're talking about a monster that is clearly designed for a much higher level group, but certain compositions of character classes could potentially defeat the encounter while other compositions cannot. and this is the concept of "relative or subjective balance", but it's actually an absence of balance, the game is effectively broken.
That should not happen in a balanced ecosystem. Meaning that if a monster designed for say 3rd level party is put up against a group of 1st level characters, regardless of choices, optimizations, class combinations.. Nothing a player can PICK (this part is important) during his character's or groups character-building choices should make it possible for them to defeat this 3rd level monster. The fact that you can.. the fact that you can optimize the characters in certain ways to make it possible, even easy, means the game is not balanced.
What should be possible is first, luck obviously. You could get lucky through die rolls and defeat such an encounter, but more importantly, what should make it possible is smart tactics, clever use of terrain, DM story-infused advantages. Not character optimization. Character optimization is the act of finding unbalanced mechanics and exploiting them in the game, that is what optimization is, its effectively leveraging an un-balanced game system.
Do you see the difference? If a monster is designed for a party of 3rd level characters and the players are 1st level, how they optimize their characters should make no difference. Every choice a player makes should be appropriate for their level and equally good. It should not matter if you choose X or Y class, or Z class option, or D type or A type weapon. Those should all be narrative choices, things you pick to create an image of your character, a part of their story but it should be as effective as any other choice you could make.
5e is not like that. If you pick a Ranger, you are screwed, your character will suck. You might enjoy them narratively which is fine, but they are not a balanced class, you will be at a disadvantage in encounters compared to other classes you could have chosen of the same level. In 5e, optimization makes a HUGE .. like a MASSIVE difference in the power levels of a character and of a group. Hell you are 20% more powerful as group if one of the characters can cast Healing Word. Just that spell alone literally increases your power potential more than adding an entire extra character into the group. Like if I had a choice between another player running a Ranger and a just getting access to Healing Word, I would pick Healing Word because it will contribute sooo much more than a Ranger can/will ever do.
So no 5e is not balanced and yes the balance of 5e is relative.. but its done like that because the designers suck at their job, not because there is some sort of philosophy behind the concept of this "balance is relative" design or because its impossible to get "balance" in an RPG, that is complete BS.
That probably wasn't the best example, but I'm also largely agreeing. While I think that there is wiggle room accounting for the abilities of a specific party versus another, and how difficult a given player might think the game should be in terms of difficulty tuning, I don't think the game is flawless or above criticism because of those subjective elements.
Like you say, ranger was largely derided as being weaker than other classes. You have some subclasses within classes that are clearly just better than others. Healing word having both range and bonus action on healing is VERY POWERFUL for a first level spell to the point I'd be hard pressed to ever play a class with access to it and NOT take it.
However, I think there is still a good degree of variability even when accounting for outliers. Having a paladin with an aura to boost saving throws and prevent the fear condition for example, is going to make dealing with a dragon with its aoe breath and frightful presence more managable. Having a sorcerer that can suble spell counterspell a powerful enemy spellcaster has saved my rogue's party's bacon more than once. Or a divination wizard etc.
The more diverse and interesting useful options are, the harder it is to fine tune balance for all situations. Ideally there wouldn't be any trap options, or options so much better than anything else you'd be a fool not to take it such as healing word.
On the flip side, you do want these choices to MATTER. And for them to matter they need to be varied and still potent, which in turn makes that balancing for all scenarios harder. Again that's not to say they haven't made mistakes, or that things shouldn't be criticized. But it is something to consider, you don't want to swing the other way and have things too homogenized for the sake of better balance.
I can't speak for the balance of past editions vs 5E, haven't played them. But haven't they also had issues of their own, like the old problem of casters starting off weaker than fighters but ending up far surpassing them in the late game? (This is a legit question, haven't played the past editions, so I'm curious if this was as much of an issue as I've heard or not.)
Also, in 1E, a high level magic-user will wipe the floor with a high level fighter. Magic-users were not very impactful at 1st or 2nd level, but once the party reached 5th level, their value goes up and never comes down.
Magic-Users are powerful as members of a party that is defending them as part of a group game and group tactics. Their role is as I mentioned earlier, is as the great equalizer of what are usually fights completely stacked against the group and ultimately a part of the core balance of the game.
That's the thing though. A high-level party with a Magic-User they can protect vs a same-level same-size party without Magic-User is typically at an advantage in combat. Is that an imbalance or not? Depends on how you define balance. In small parties some classes tend to work out better than others. In any party specialization pays dividends if the party primarily goes up against what they're specialized in dealing with, but the flip side of the coin is that in any party having complementing roles beats out being specialized if you're facing a variety of challenges.
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Also, in 1E, a high level magic-user will wipe the floor with a high level fighter. Magic-users were not very impactful at 1st or 2nd level, but once the party reached 5th level, their value goes up and never comes down.
In 1e combat, spells go off at the end of the round after everyone has completed their attacks, but spell casting must be declared at the start of the round and if the magic-user is hit, they lose their spells. A 1st level fighter can easily kill a 20th level magic-user in a one on one fight, its not even a contest.
I know the point you're trying to make, but Im just pointing out how modern assumptions about old-school D&D are usually wrong.
Magic-Users are powerful as members of a party that is defending them as part of a group game and group tactics. Their role is as I mentioned earlier, is as the great equalizer of what are usually fights completely stacked against the group and ultimately a part of the core balance of the game.
I played 1E for many years. I'm not talking about theoretically.
IF that fighter gets within melee range of the magic-user, then the caster could be in trouble...if they don't have any wands, rods or staves they can use.
Also, in terms of initiative, 1E's initiative is famously kluged, and there were many ways of determining when things happened. Regardless, if a 20th level magic-user is able to unleash multiple lightning bolts, disintegration spells, and fireballs on the fighter, the latter won't stand a chance.
I really hope they call it Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 5e.
Or 5e 2e.
An advanced version adding optional rules to flesh out things 5E left underdeveloped could be interesting.
For the name, I'd love it if they did a final fantasy thing and called it Dungeons & Dragons 5-2. Actually no, that doesn't look as good since they don't do roman numerals it won't be as interesting looking as Final Fantasy X-2 was to see the first time around.
Those wanting an advanced version of 5E might want to look into Enworld's Level Up project. I believe it's in playtest mode right now.
Actually, it's kickstarter is starting in about a week. I'm pretty sure they're done with playtesting (they have at least the whole Monster Manual done).
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Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
BL, I agree on your larger points (mostly) but again strongly disagree about your blanket statements about the ranger.
Re: the unbalanced nature of 5E classes: there are two very easy ways to help right the ship. Feats and multiclassing are presented as OPTIONAL; if the DM decides that both are off the table, that goes a long way to reduce the unbalance created by optimizers.
Everyone has magic powers - Magic is simply not special in D&D anymore, everyone has it, hell most of the classes make better Magic-Users than the Wizard. In a sense because everyone has magic in D&D, D&D no longer has magic.
Everyone heals - I know its easy to house rule, so at least its modular in that way, but man does the fact that everyone can heal themselves or has healing effects take away so much of the challenge in the game.
Your first bullet is likely one of my biggest criticisms of 5E. With the exception of a handful of subclasses (Fighter and Rogue), EVERYONE has magical or spellcasting abilities.
As someone who grew up playing 1E, realizing that magic items were utterly superfluous in 5E was quite a shock.
Making healing something not everyone can do is a mistake IMO.
It means you have to go back to the idea that every party needs a heal-bot and that someone has to fill that role. For me that is one great thing 5e did (and I wish PF2e followed) was that you can heal given time.
You can remove hit-dice pretty easily if you want to make the game more challenging...or limit how many you get back on a long rest if you don't want to nuke it completely.
As for magic for everyone....man the caster/martial divide is huge and the little amount of magic that martials get is pretty much needed to justify the crazy high level stuff casters get.
The sweet spot is levels 5-11 IMO as thats when the groups are about equal....T3 is where casters start to get nutty but at least at level 11 most martials can keep up for a level or two.
This is why I say 1e was actually very balanced while 5e is very much unbalanced. Yes Magic-Users at 15th level could be very powerful, much more powerful than a fighter at the same level. but ALL Magic-Users at 15th level are going to be equally powerful at that level.
Then this illustrates it's a matter of how you define balance. All three WotC editions have, with various degrees of success, tried to find a closer balance between the different classes relative to each other (4E did, without a doubt, the best job of that but again by making some design decisions that a lot of the player base couldn't stomach). That's a much more nebulous form of balance - how do you compare the values of being resilient, of doing damage, of exerting control, of providing expertise? It's practically impossible to do so in a non-subjective manner - and so how well it turned out (or didn't) was and is always going to be up for debate, but it is a form of balance too, and one 1E paid little or no mind in comparison. WotC chose to approach balance from a top down perspective: there's an upper limit no characters are supposed to go over, but falling short is perfectly acceptable. I'm not saying they succeeded there, certainly not with 3E's rules exploits (though subsequent attempts have been made to push for RAI to be considered to be on the same level as RAW to address that), but it was a deliberate choice - not failing to do things the same way they were before.
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Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Making healing something not everyone can do is a mistake IMO.
It means you have to go back to the idea that every party needs a heal-bot and that someone has to fill that role. For me that is one great thing 5e did (and I wish PF2e followed) was that you can heal given time.
You can remove hit-dice pretty easily if you want to make the game more challenging...or limit how many you get back on a long rest if you don't want to nuke it completely.
As for magic for everyone....man the caster/martial divide is huge and the little amount of magic that martials get is pretty much needed to justify the crazy high level stuff casters get.
The sweet spot is levels 5-11 IMO as thats when the groups are about equal....T3 is where casters start to get nutty but at least at level 11 most martials can keep up for a level or two.
As BigLizard noted, the universal healing abilities are easier to houserule/adjust. I was actually speaking more of how many damn subclasses are essentially heal-bots/clerics by another name. There's a real dilution of what makes each class and subclass unique there.
Magic for everyone: well, in earlier editions, this what magic items helped address. And the "crazy stuff" casters get at high levels is offset at being really squishy in terms of hit points (and having to maintain concentration when taking damage). Any monster or monsters who deal a lot of damage can seriously jeopardize even a high level non-healing caster pretty quickly.
I was actually speaking more of how many damn subclasses are essentially heal-bots/clerics by another name. There's a real dilution of what makes each class and subclass unique there.
Clerics aren't unique enough vs bards, druids, paladins or even Divine Soul sorcerers? They're all too similar to each other because they can heal? Is that the essential argument here?
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Alignment as some kind of hard coded mechanic, stat or rule has become fairly obsolete, other than a few magic items. I don't think it would be missed much...
...but having said that, I'm old school enough that I still think paladins should have a fairly strict ethos, be it LN, LE, or LG.
That would be really awesome to see.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
If you are concerned about the balance of the combat system that is something I can agree with as I feel that CR is not a really great metric for encounter balance (it is if you actually use the guidelines but you are correct that they themselves do not)
Also how crazy casters get in T3 and T4 compared to martials....its not even close balance wise.
I kind of like the way the different oaths have their own tenets, with different philosophies and goals. Helps give something more interesting to theme their expected behaviors after rather than a vague concept like 'lawful good' etc. While still leaving room for that with say, your oath of devotion or crowns type, but allowing other takes like ancients, vengeance, conquest etc.
I'd like to see some kind of approach that mixes the two: the more abstract idea of alignment along with the more immediate path of a particular oath.
The paladin class is one which I think really calls for/benefits from thought-out role-playing. They should feel very different from fighters or rangers, and not just in class abilities.
That probably wasn't the best example, but I'm also largely agreeing. While I think that there is wiggle room accounting for the abilities of a specific party versus another, and how difficult a given player might think the game should be in terms of difficulty tuning, I don't think the game is flawless or above criticism because of those subjective elements.
Like you say, ranger was largely derided as being weaker than other classes. You have some subclasses within classes that are clearly just better than others. Healing word having both range and bonus action on healing is VERY POWERFUL for a first level spell to the point I'd be hard pressed to ever play a class with access to it and NOT take it.
However, I think there is still a good degree of variability even when accounting for outliers. Having a paladin with an aura to boost saving throws and prevent the fear condition for example, is going to make dealing with a dragon with its aoe breath and frightful presence more managable. Having a sorcerer that can suble spell counterspell a powerful enemy spellcaster has saved my rogue's party's bacon more than once. Or a divination wizard etc.
The more diverse and interesting useful options are, the harder it is to fine tune balance for all situations. Ideally there wouldn't be any trap options, or options so much better than anything else you'd be a fool not to take it such as healing word.
On the flip side, you do want these choices to MATTER. And for them to matter they need to be varied and still potent, which in turn makes that balancing for all scenarios harder. Again that's not to say they haven't made mistakes, or that things shouldn't be criticized. But it is something to consider, you don't want to swing the other way and have things too homogenized for the sake of better balance.
I can't speak for the balance of past editions vs 5E, haven't played them. But haven't they also had issues of their own, like the old problem of casters starting off weaker than fighters but ending up far surpassing them in the late game? (This is a legit question, haven't played the past editions, so I'm curious if this was as much of an issue as I've heard or not.)
Also, in 1E, a high level magic-user will wipe the floor with a high level fighter. Magic-users were not very impactful at 1st or 2nd level, but once the party reached 5th level, their value goes up and never comes down.
That's the thing though. A high-level party with a Magic-User they can protect vs a same-level same-size party without Magic-User is typically at an advantage in combat. Is that an imbalance or not? Depends on how you define balance. In small parties some classes tend to work out better than others. In any party specialization pays dividends if the party primarily goes up against what they're specialized in dealing with, but the flip side of the coin is that in any party having complementing roles beats out being specialized if you're facing a variety of challenges.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
I played 1E for many years. I'm not talking about theoretically.
IF that fighter gets within melee range of the magic-user, then the caster could be in trouble...if they don't have any wands, rods or staves they can use.
Also, in terms of initiative, 1E's initiative is famously kluged, and there were many ways of determining when things happened. Regardless, if a 20th level magic-user is able to unleash multiple lightning bolts, disintegration spells, and fireballs on the fighter, the latter won't stand a chance.
I really hope they call it Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 5e.
Or 5e 2e.
"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."
― Oscar Wilde.
An advanced version adding optional rules to flesh out things 5E left underdeveloped could be interesting.
For the name, I'd love it if they did a final fantasy thing and called it Dungeons & Dragons 5-2. Actually no, that doesn't look as good since they don't do roman numerals it won't be as interesting looking as Final Fantasy X-2 was to see the first time around.
Those wanting an advanced version of 5E might want to look into Enworld's Level Up project. I believe it's in playtest mode right now.
Actually, it's kickstarter is starting in about a week. I'm pretty sure they're done with playtesting (they have at least the whole Monster Manual done).
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
I suspect it will be called Anniversary or Gold Edition coming out for the 50th anniversary.
BL, I agree on your larger points (mostly) but again strongly disagree about your blanket statements about the ranger.
Re: the unbalanced nature of 5E classes: there are two very easy ways to help right the ship. Feats and multiclassing are presented as OPTIONAL; if the DM decides that both are off the table, that goes a long way to reduce the unbalance created by optimizers.
Your first bullet is likely one of my biggest criticisms of 5E. With the exception of a handful of subclasses (Fighter and Rogue), EVERYONE has magical or spellcasting abilities.
As someone who grew up playing 1E, realizing that magic items were utterly superfluous in 5E was quite a shock.
Making healing something not everyone can do is a mistake IMO.
It means you have to go back to the idea that every party needs a heal-bot and that someone has to fill that role. For me that is one great thing 5e did (and I wish PF2e followed) was that you can heal given time.
You can remove hit-dice pretty easily if you want to make the game more challenging...or limit how many you get back on a long rest if you don't want to nuke it completely.
As for magic for everyone....man the caster/martial divide is huge and the little amount of magic that martials get is pretty much needed to justify the crazy high level stuff casters get.
The sweet spot is levels 5-11 IMO as thats when the groups are about equal....T3 is where casters start to get nutty but at least at level 11 most martials can keep up for a level or two.
Then this illustrates it's a matter of how you define balance. All three WotC editions have, with various degrees of success, tried to find a closer balance between the different classes relative to each other (4E did, without a doubt, the best job of that but again by making some design decisions that a lot of the player base couldn't stomach). That's a much more nebulous form of balance - how do you compare the values of being resilient, of doing damage, of exerting control, of providing expertise? It's practically impossible to do so in a non-subjective manner - and so how well it turned out (or didn't) was and is always going to be up for debate, but it is a form of balance too, and one 1E paid little or no mind in comparison. WotC chose to approach balance from a top down perspective: there's an upper limit no characters are supposed to go over, but falling short is perfectly acceptable. I'm not saying they succeeded there, certainly not with 3E's rules exploits (though subsequent attempts have been made to push for RAI to be considered to be on the same level as RAW to address that), but it was a deliberate choice - not failing to do things the same way they were before.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
As BigLizard noted, the universal healing abilities are easier to houserule/adjust. I was actually speaking more of how many damn subclasses are essentially heal-bots/clerics by another name. There's a real dilution of what makes each class and subclass unique there.
Magic for everyone: well, in earlier editions, this what magic items helped address. And the "crazy stuff" casters get at high levels is offset at being really squishy in terms of hit points (and having to maintain concentration when taking damage). Any monster or monsters who deal a lot of damage can seriously jeopardize even a high level non-healing caster pretty quickly.
Clerics aren't unique enough vs bards, druids, paladins or even Divine Soul sorcerers? They're all too similar to each other because they can heal? Is that the essential argument here?
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].