I had noticed over several adventures that the thief in the party caused far less damage when compared to the other characters. Yesterday, I took out a piece of paper and wanted to calculate how much damage per round each class would average in my world. The results were surprising, although they conformed to our last few sessions. I took an avg AC monster, avg class bonuses to hit and damage, multipliers (such as backstab, crit), and rate of fire and found the product of % chance to hit x avg dmg. I found that the thief will do 33% damage of a warrior class, even assuming they start off with a backstab (not a fair assumption in our world). Unfortunately, this got even worse at high level. I then took it a step further and made an excel spreadsheet and trying out different algorithms until they did 66% damage of a warrior. For us, I think that balanced a very unbalanced class. We are hardly a min/max crew but I knew the discrepancy was discouraging. I talked to my player about his perceptions of his character's combat and non-combat abilities. In his words, "Slythe <the thief's name> contributes way more in "story mode" than some of the other characters. Who else can climb a wall to sneak into a manor and loot it? Maybe that is the price to pay for his lackluster combat abilities? But it is frustrating when I can't drop a single monster while the paladin is knocking the heads off orcs!"
I get the feeling that most people on this forum play by straight up 5th edition rules. Full disclosure, I have read the 5E rules one time so can hardly say whether those rules are more balanced than the set we play by. But if you get the feeling one class is terrible (and without supplemental abilities to compensate) it may be worthwhile to objectively calculate how bad the discrepancy really is. The results may surprise you.
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I am a 40 something year old physician who DMs for a group of 40 something year old doctors. We play a hybrid game, mostly based on 2nd edition rules with some homebrew and 5E components.
Min-max'd multiclass characters put together by a good powergaming theorycrafter can pretty easily do 3x the damage of a "standard" single class character thrown together by a more casual gamer who doesn't know the optimal combinations. That's true no matter what class you're talking about, Rogues could absolutely be on either end of that spectrum depending on the build they are included in.
You are right though that Rogues (and Monks even moreso) are rather weak as straight classes if you aren't multi-classing them. The top nova damage build I've ever seen though starts with 4 Rogue levels (then later includes Cleric, Paladin, Fighter, Sorcerer), so it can absolutely be done if you want to
It's been entirely too long since I played 2nd Edition for me to make comments, or even worry, about class balance. I will state that if you're simply playing D&D as strictly a combat game then there's probably better systems out there for you to use. But assuming you're not then you may want to upgrade to 5th Edition.
In 5th Edition there is no backstab. The rogues get Sneak Attack instead. If the rogue has an ally within 5' of the target and does not have disadvantage, or has advantage even with no ally next to the target, then the rogue gets to do the Sneak Attack damage. Fighters will end up with the most attacks on their turn (Round now being the six seconds each Turn is in) but Rogues start with more skill proficiencies than any other class.
As you learned, 2e isn't even close to balanced in terms of combat effectiveness. Rogues, in particular, are just kind of bad. (And, as I recall, their abilities don't actually make up for it. Last time I played 2e, back when the lava was still cooling, the DM had ripped out and replaced the thief skills subsystem because it was so poor.)
For combat effectiveness, 5e is better. If nobody's trying to actively maximize their murder output, everyone is probably going to feel like they're contributing. Once you start optimizing, some classes outpace others. But most people don't do that, nor should they.
"Balance" is probably not an achievable goal, even in the limited realm of combat. Even if you could tweak all the abilities of all the classes to keep damage output similar, as soon as a real-world group starts playing real-world games, the assumptions of the balancing are going to fall apart.
And that's not even including out-of-combat abilities. Those are too many and varied to even try.
The best one can hope for is:
Does everybody feel like they're contributing, in and out of combat?
Does anybody regularly overshadow anyone else, in or out of combat?
5e does reasonably well on the combat side, and "better than 2e" on the non-combat. (Fighter types still often don't have much to contribute when it's not Stabbing Time. The playtest for next year's revised 5e has tried to improve on that; we shall see how it goes.)
Really depends on the player in 5e, I think. My powergamer consistently reigned supreme in DPS with first a cleric then a rogue build, meanwhile the wizard had the lowest damage output in the game because his spells were almost entirely utility and control.
I don't think I've ever been at a table that didn't have one character outpacing or lagging behind the rest in damage. It usually wasn't too much of an issue unless the weaker PC's player felt discouraged about it. Nothing a bespoke magic item or feat couldn't fix.
Yes, my game is more or less balanced but I play 5e.
I can't comment much on 2e since it is years since I have played it. However, if I recall, class balance wasn't that great (much like 1e) and got worse as levels increased.
If you were playing 5e, then your assessment would be incorrect. Rogue damage is in line with baseline fighter damage for the most part. A rogue doesn't have as many ways to generate extra damage (eg battlemaster maneuvers) but they have several ways to give themselves advantage on the attack roll that also enables sneak attack (no more back stabs or facing for that matter in 5e) which tends to keep their damage ok compared to base characters. It doesn't keep up with characters with great weapon master or sharpshooter but is otherwise ok and will be generally ahead of characters that are not optimized.
Glad this thread got everyone thinking and it is encouraging to know 5E is more balanced. Again, I haven't ever played that edition. I will continue to tweak my table rules to bring the classes more in line. Not being a min/max group we don't need total character equality, just people being in the same ballpark.
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I am a 40 something year old physician who DMs for a group of 40 something year old doctors. We play a hybrid game, mostly based on 2nd edition rules with some homebrew and 5E components.
Balance is always susceptible to all forms of criticism, what is balanced for one group is broken for another not to mention that wether its achieved its design goals or not is not simply a mathmatical formula or some sort of testing analysis but rather a question about design goals themselves. In the best of times, all you can hope for is that there is at least a vocal minority that believes the game is balanced.
2e is a great example as its unclear if any of its design goals were ever to actually be balanced, from the way the game is designed and in particular how the whole kit system was designed I can't imagine balance was one of the targets because even the most inept game designer could see from a two minute browsing of the games design that virtually no effort went into creating a balanced game. It wasn't until 3rd edition after years of criticism of D&D always being completely out of wack were efforts made to actually try to balance things like classes against each other and it would be another decade before anyone came close to success which was with 4th edition.
Suffice it to say 5e I think is probably the most balanced version fo D&D out of the box in particular if your are comparing it to 1e or 2e and its because these designers had nearly 4 decades of game design at the time of its creation on which to base the game. Not to mention a huge amount of 3rd party external contract designers most of which are responsible for designing and publishing OSR games were advisors during the development of the game. So you had years of experience with D&D coming from people that know full well how unbalanced the old editions were and why.
That said, since its launch even 5e has been criticized a lot for balance issues with existing and newly introduced content and the tinkering continues endlessly. I wouldn't want to give you the impression that the game is perfectly balanced, but when you compare it to old-school D&D, it's not even remotely a contest. At this stage you can say that 5e is just being hyper-fine-tuned, all the major issues with D&D balance are fixed and when most people argue about something being unbalanced, it's usually something very specific to the micro level. You don't have these big sweeping issues high-level issues, everything that is a problem in 5e is going to be quite isolated to a specific ability or class feature. So its quite good in the balance department.
I had noticed over several adventures that the thief in the party caused far less damage when compared to the other characters. Yesterday, I took out a piece of paper and wanted to calculate how much damage per round each class would average in my world. The results were surprising, although they conformed to our last few sessions. I took an avg AC monster, avg class bonuses to hit and damage, multipliers (such as backstab, crit), and rate of fire and found the product of % chance to hit x avg dmg. I found that the thief will do 33% damage of a warrior class, even assuming they start off with a backstab (not a fair assumption in our world). Unfortunately, this got even worse at high level. I then took it a step further and made an excel spreadsheet and trying out different algorithms until they did 66% damage of a warrior. For us, I think that balanced a very unbalanced class. We are hardly a min/max crew but I knew the discrepancy was discouraging. I talked to my player about his perceptions of his character's combat and non-combat abilities. In his words, "Slythe <the thief's name> contributes way more in "story mode" than some of the other characters. Who else can climb a wall to sneak into a manor and loot it? Maybe that is the price to pay for his lackluster combat abilities? But it is frustrating when I can't drop a single monster while the paladin is knocking the heads off orcs!"
I get the feeling that most people on this forum play by straight up 5th edition rules. Full disclosure, I have read the 5E rules one time so can hardly say whether those rules are more balanced than the set we play by. But if you get the feeling one class is terrible (and without supplemental abilities to compensate) it may be worthwhile to objectively calculate how bad the discrepancy really is. The results may surprise you.
DPR is the last way to talk about PC's. Balance in a game such as D&D cannot be measured that way.
By definition, a Martial is horribly underpowered to a caster when it comes to casting Invisibility or healing. Each class has a niche, or certainly should, that only that class can fill. But thanks to this constant clamour for all PC's to be able to do everything, we now have over 128 subclasses that overlap and step all over each other.
A Rogue is an awesome class, and does not need more firepower.
No game system has ever been balanced perfectly. Yes, 5e tries to bring it in line but I think 4e did its best to be equal across the board. Part of me thinks this is a failed idea, however. Why make the game balanced, to begin with? This is where I most likely am going to separate myself from most people who play 5e. Personally don't like balance. I think the different talents of each class is what makes them unique. The Thief is not as great in combat as a Fighter but the FIghter is not as skilled at climbing or picking locks.
If you want a Thief to hit as well as a Fighter then why play a Thief? You could arguably go through the game and in most cases make the same attack for each class but reskin it with a new name and description. That will balance out the game for the players. The illusion of players all being different yet all equal. Again this was of sorts done in 4e they just gave them all powers and made certain that each power at a level fell in line with the other powers.
To me, it's the skill set of each class that brings them in line not just how hard they hit in combat.
But from a purely combat perspective I understand why players want to be big damage output.
Yes, you want players to feel like equals but the real challenge for them, In my opinion, is they need to feel like they cover each other's weaknesses to help balance out the party.
To help your current Thief player would it behoove you to either give him a special power or feat he can use once in a while? A magic item or two to boost him? Monsters that have varied levels of hit points such as Minions who are easy kills for higher-level PCs?
Just some thoughts.
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I live my life like a West Marches campaign, A swirling vortex of Ambitions and Insecurities.
4e was the most mechanically balanced edition of D&D, but that balance had costs. The big problems with balance are
Balance in an RPG doesn't really mean "characters X and Y do the same amount of damage". It means "characters X and Y get equal amounts of glory". This is very hard to implement because there's so much variance in what games are about; the unstoppable combat machine that feels overpowered in a pure dungeon crawling game may well feel underpowered in an investigation, social, or stealth focused game.
Characters should feel distinct from one another. If you make every character the same, sure, it's balanced, but why would you want to play that?
To the degree AD&D had balance at all, it was designed to be over the lifespan of the character; magic-users put up with being absolutely atrocious at low levels in exchange for being godly at high levels. I don't think that's a great design philosophy; people will put up with being marginal for a session or two, being weak for a dozen sessions not so much.
3e mostly fixed spellcasters being terrible at low levels... but didn't also make them less gods at high level, so it wound up being likely the least balanced edition.
4e wound up with relatively little distinction between classes; balanced but bland.
5e boosted low level casters and toned down high level. It still has a bit of 'linear fighter, quadratic wizard', but it's nothing like it was in AD&D.
A big part of the balance or perhaps better to say structure of AD&D, B/X and BECMI was clear archetypes. A foundational premise that without argument didn't achieve mechanical balance, but it did create a harmonious balance of purpose. Each class had a very clear role in the game. In a lot of ways, it was this foundation that made D&D as popular as it was. Its the basis for the class system, it created a culture of identity in the game and the core of the games narrative structures hinge on this premise.
Its hard to imagine why archetype was abandoned while all the sacred cows that have been kept in D&D over the years like hit points, AC, 3-18 ability scores and alignment remain.
One thing I will say about 4e is that, in that game they achieved balanced by making the classes even which is actually one of the most lifeless ways that you can balance a game and I think in big part why the game was received so poorly.
For me the issue with 5e is that while it achieves some semblance of mechanical balance it is completely broken in terms of balance for purpose. No party needs a Rogue or a Magic-User, you don't need healers or tanks, if a fighter wants to be a master in arcane knowledge, they can be, if a Magic-User wants to be a melee warrior, they can be. There is no structure or orientation in the game nor any commitment to particular constructs or setting, theme or style, its a complete gonzo game and for me personally I can't imagine anything that could possibly be any more boring to play. It's the equivalent of playing Minecraft in creative mode, I know people like it and I'm certainly not suggesting its objectively bad, but its not actually a game anymore. It's more like an activity and it's kind of how I feel when I play 5e. It lacks any sort of spirit or uniqueness as an RPG and while it's not quite as lifeless as 4e, it's completely uninspiring.
For me the issue with 5e is that while it achieves some semblance of mechanical balance it is completely broken in terms of balance for purpose. No party needs a Rogue or a Magic-User.
I'm not sure there's an edition of the game where the all-cleric party didn't work just fine. Would probably struggle with long days in 4e, while they could still probably beat everything the cost in healing surges might be high.
To the degree AD&D had balance at all, it was designed to be over the lifespan of the character; magic-users put up with being absolutely atrocious at low levels in exchange for being godly at high levels. I don't think that's a great design philosophy; people will put up with being marginal for a session or two, being weak for a dozen sessions not so much.
I'm not convinced that wasn't a post-facto justification. It certainly doesn't make sense as a plan.
There was also the other class-balancing mechanism of 1/2e: This class is more powerful, so you have to roll lucky to play it.
Meanwhile, the not-very-strongly-differentiated races were balanced by slapping them with harsh limits on leveling.
Pre-3e D&D wasn't balanced at all. To be fair, they were making it up as they went, and figuring out how an entirely new genre of game is going to play in practice is hard. The problem was that, between white box and 2e, they never re-examined the design.
3e mostly fixed spellcasters being terrible at low levels... but didn't also make them less gods at high level, so it wound up being likely the least balanced edition.
I played very little 3e, but I thought the real fix for low-level casters (give them something effective to do when they run out of spells) came with 4th.
I played very little 3e, but I thought the real fix for low-level casters (give them something effective to do when they run out of spells) came with 4th.
A 3.x caster could go a lot longer without running out of spells, even at very low levels. A level 1 AD&D wizard has one spell per day. A level 1 3.x wizard generally got two or three (depending on specialization) first level spells, and three cantrip slots.
A big part of the balance or perhaps better to say structure of AD&D, B/X and BECMI was clear archetypes. A foundational premise that without argument didn't achieve mechanical balance, but it did create a harmonious balance of purpose. Each class had a very clear role in the game. In a lot of ways, it was this foundation that made D&D as popular as it was. Its the basis for the class system, it created a culture of identity in the game and the core of the games narrative structures hinge on this premise.....
The lack of character specialization is one reason of several why I have not bought into 5E. Again, I have only read the rules once and never played, but from what I understand, and what the authors above have written, anyone can do anything. I really like that in my world skill sets only come with certain classes. You must take the good with the bad. In the case of a thief, you are the MVP in a subterranean dungeon or an old castle because traps and locked doors will eat your lunch. No other class can contribute that. The other classes have other unique abilities that are required to succeed. It builds comradery and a team atmosphere when every PC has a moment to shine. I also understand that equal damage per round is not the only way to measure equality, but a huge disparity in a major part of the game (combat) as I described is hardly a fun, balanced game for my players. I re-wrote the thief combat abilities bringing him up to 65% damage compared to a fighter which in our (the player and my) opinion, is fair given a thief's other abilities and a fighter's lack thereof.
I also understand what someone said about taking a long time to perfect and balance the game. These ideas were very novel 40-50 years ago and have taken a while to come to fruition. That being said, I hope I can incorporate some of your suggestions and ideas and balance my own game.
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I am a 40 something year old physician who DMs for a group of 40 something year old doctors. We play a hybrid game, mostly based on 2nd edition rules with some homebrew and 5E components.
The lack of character specialization is one reason of several why I have not bought into 5E. Again, I have only read the rules once and never played, but from what I understand, and what the authors above have written, anyone can do anything.
While many will argue, you can't take such arguments seriously given the mechanics, the above is objective truth. Classes in the 5e sense, are effectively "alternative methods to kill monsters", it has nothing to do with archetypes, roles, intention, design or philosophy of the work on which they are based. In 5e you have characters, anyone can do anything, it's just a question of "build". 5e is about as far removed from D&D as you can possibly be, but the modern generation has redefined what it means to be D&D and proclaimed that definition as if they invented it, something akin to culture appropriation. Anyone who disagrees with the argument is gatekeeping so it's a lose-lose argument in which the one suggesting such an argument has had the path to it made politically incorrect and any logical avenue in the discussion has been permanently closed.
In essence to suggest that 5e is not adhering to the principles of D&D, just makes you a troll. It's in a sense a perfectly executed culture war designed to destroy the D&D culture itself and replace it with this new alternative version. 5e is a game and fantasy depiction based on works, the game itself doesn't believe, trust in or even like. It's a bit like basing a movie on Star Wars because you hate everything about Star Wars but want to capture the emotional connection it provided for its past audience for a new audience that is ignorant of and/or made to hate the original. It's actually kind of twisted, but quite common in various media from music, movies, books and art for cultures to sort of kill each other this way. Over extended time these things come to light but in the moment, the mob rules all.
Those few who try to point out this very obvious flaw in the games direction and warn of the problems it creates are considered to be old relics who don't understand D&D which is kind of throwing salt in the wound given that these old relics have been playing D&D since before the majority of people who are abandoning D&D culture and traditions were in still in liquid form.
I really like that in my world skill sets only come with certain classes. You must take the good with the bad. In the case of a thief, you are the MVP in a subterranean dungeon or an old castle because traps and locked doors will eat your lunch. No other class can contribute that.
This is part of it, but the archetype served a greater purpose. It aligned the motivations of the players, so choosing a class was not just a matter of filling a role, but defining your approach and style to the game. A Thief player and a Magic-User player had a definitively different style of play that co-existed in the game because they needed and relied on each other to succeed. It was very much a team effort, their were no narcissistic "my character's story is important" attitudes. A D&D troupe was a group of friends that fought for their success together as a team and each player on that team was an important member with an important job to do.
The role of a class was once a paramount concept, the mechanics of the game protected it through exclusivity and while there were workarounds like multi-classing, any such workaround came with stiff consequences and hardships. This premise was abandoned because modern gamers decided that "fairness" which is often falsely referred to as balance was more important than the construct of the game which game designers have been foolishly buying into for years. It is effectively when D&D stopped being a role-playing game and became a something more like a board game disguised as a roleplaying game. The permutation being that because people "act in character" and do "do funny voices" they are having fun in "their own way" and this constitutes "role-playing". A sufficient logic which I would not argue too much, but it is what it is.
I have no objections to the way its done today, but for me personally, it's a bit like a golf mulligan. It's not a service to the game to pretend like we are playing a real game and then we fake it, by re-writing the rules. No one would argue that a golfer taking a mulligan is cheating, except the pro-players, yet it's such a common practice it may as well be an actual rule.
I also understand what someone said about taking a long time to perfect and balance the game.
The only reason why its taken 50 years to balance the game is that we keep re-inventing it. Had designers actually continued to improve the original design, the problem of D&D being unbalanced would have been solved a long time ago.
D&D isn't one game that has been continually worked on, it's five different games that have been re-created with a similar theme based on five different philosophies and design concepts. The question now is whether we are about to add a sixth game to the pot and I think the answer is objectively, no. Modern 6e is a continuation of a product and I see that as a positive step forward, for better or worse at least it's consistent. The last thing we need now as a community is another edition war/debate where we determine if 5th edition or 6th edition is the better game. That road I assure you leads nowhere good.
It remains to be seen if 6th edition can compete with the likes of DC20, MCDM RPG, PF2e and Critical Roles new game just to name a few. I think D&D players are becoming wiser, they are starting to see through the cracks and I think the appeal of "official D&D" is losing its clout. Anyone who has looked at any of these games knows they are objectively better designs. Modern D&D is outclassed by these games in every measurable way, it survives exclusively on brand loyalty today. That may or may not be enough, we'll see.
While many will argue, you can't take such arguments seriously given the mechanics, the above is objective truth. Classes in the 5e sense, are effectively "alternative methods to kill monsters", it has nothing to do with archetypes, roles, intention, design or philosophy of the work on which they are based. In 5e you have characters, anyone can do..........
This was a very cogent post with many good points. Since I somewhat fell off the wagon as a kid and never got back on, I don't have the insight into the other versions as you do. One of the most perplexing ideas to me is the increased appeal of fantasy games in general since I was a kid. Role playing was certainly not a common pastime in the 1980s and 1990s. While it is not as mainstream as playing golf or watching spectator sports today, it certainly has garnered a much larger audience over the years. The idea that half a dozen companies are now competing in this space is surprising. The only other game I remember from back in the day was Middle Earth Role Playing which certainly did not have a wide readership. Maybe I was out of touch then as well.
Again, thanks for the insightful posts.
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I am a 40 something year old physician who DMs for a group of 40 something year old doctors. We play a hybrid game, mostly based on 2nd edition rules with some homebrew and 5E components.
So, I made up a matrix in Excel that I could input a character's spell options, action and bonus action attacks. I developed a weighting system that took into account the variance of the dice, took into account the number of spell slots and the like. That left me with an idea of the Average damage per round of each character taking into account the potential chances to miss an enemy with an AC of 18. I then ran those figures against a calculation to determine survivability against hits and damage. The results of both numbers were utilised to come up with a pair of numbers. I determined that a Damage score usually swings within the +/- 5 points were 'balanced' anything beyond that was considered to be problematic and therefore in need of addressing. For one party the results on the damage scores were average damage potential per round of: 19.53, 14.4, 10.68, 20.025, 17.44. As you can see even if we chose the 14.4 as the representative average damage for a level 10 character as these were: either the 10.68 or the 20.025 were under/overpowered compared with the rest of the party. In this case, the underpowered character was the druid with their average score of 10.68. However, this was balanced out with their survivability due to Wildshape. These characters all were restircted to only PHB content however.
The picture got more problematic when looking at the party with free reign of content from PHB, XGtE, and TCoE. In that group their level 12 characters came in with average damage scores of: 11.945, 17.793, 20.958, 5.908, 9.960. It's not difficult to see that there is an horrid level of variance in these score. This variance was only amplified by the consideration of the survivability scores.
I was also fortunate that I could conduct a similar look at eight level 10 characters restricted to PHB and XGtE. That group came in with scores of 19.214, 17.395, 21.555, 19.592, 14.189, 16.113, 12.437, 18.192. These players were restricted to ASIs only, no feats...and they were given very few magic items but all were from DMG and tended to be level appropriate. Survivability scores tended to skew largely dependant on their items. Any items conferring bonus Stats increases or AC boosts made the big differences.
Here are a couple of glimpses at some of those excel sheets. I can explain the particular formulas I used to weight spells and calculate damage but suffice to say there's a lot of formula usage you can't see from this.
From these workings out I was trying to see if my games were balanced. Was anyone significantly lagging behind in damage? Was any particular source granting power creep? The conclusions I came to about game balance are below. They are solely my opinions and I'm sure other DMs will have found different experiences.
Wildfire Druid was WAY more powerful than everyone else. Closely followed by Twilight Cleric.
All classes and subclasses represented from Tasha's (Battle Smith Artificer, Path of Beast Barbarian, Wildfire Druid, Abberant Mind Sorcerer) were significantly more strong than those found in PHB or XGtE.
Multi-class characters had significant drawbacks that often resulted in trade offs between damage dealt and ability to take a hit/damage unless a TCoE or XGtE subclass was involved (or a feat). Taking a single level in a second class really is to be discouraged as it does weaken said character.
Feats make a difference. The right feat can significantly alter the damage and survivability of a PC.
Magic items are the single things that make the most difference however. Magic items are the biggest identifiable variable in the mix, especially those granting stat boosts or additional AC.
The average damage likely during a round is wildly different from the maximum average damage per round. What I mean to say here is that some character builds have an ability to deal out incredible damage in bursts, but as an average over time they quickly weaken. For others their average damage relies on concentration and that can also mean they are a little surgey. If a DM likes to throw loads of encounters between long rests...players are better off chosing martial characters...which is no real surprise.
Frankly, I think the game when played with little to no homebrew is well balanced until around level 12. At that point the game designers kinda just gave up is the feeling I get. I've updated my sheets since and the imbalance beyond level 12 is amplified for the issues I highlight. I know for some DMs it doesn't feel like it but TCoE content is extremely swingy...it is to my mind way too chaotic in terms of both over and underpowered options.
Here's the problem though - that only deals with combat. I have played a LOT of different TTRPGs and to be clear I come from a place where I prefer games like Blades in the Dark, FATE, Misspent Youth, or even Fiasco, to D&D. I love the collaborative story-telling process. And sadly, 5e as a system tends to fall a little flat for me where there's no combat. If we go with the supposed core pillars of D&D 5e...it's pretty good at combat in favour of the players and mediocre (at best) for the other pillars. So on that dimension 5e is not balanced. Youtubers like D&D Shorts really do not help with this either. There's a willful misdirection in that Youtuber's presentation that misses the fact that each table will rule things different ways, will allow different sources, or houserule certain interactions (there are several DMs I know who won't allow a reaction to a reaction - i.e. no counterspell of counterspells because of spiral of chaos). On the other hand personalities like Ginny Di does more work to support both players and DMs than WotC have done over the last 10 years from their free content alone.
To me there is a real beauty to AD&D and it's like. Given that the pre-dated an age of widespread internet adoption, the books had to contain as much as possible and leave everything else to the GM/DM. I grew up in a world where the internet was developing and being adopted. An 80's kid means that I understand something that many seem to either not realise or not understand - what is printed in your book is it. There are no updates. Sage Advice wasn't a thing for most who played. The upshot is that the GM had to adjudicate more things and there was no additional content that would follow to enhance or correct what was gotten wrong in the books. It's why I hate and reject sage advice as a whole. Sorry Crawford, but if you didn't put it in the book then nothing you say after the fact is valid. I get to adjudicate it. Not you, not WotC, and not the D&D Community. My players and I will discuss the wording of the books and make a judgement based on that. I fear that the modern writers have kinda allowed a door to be opened to laziness because they can try and fix things through the internet. What this means is that I hear far less of DMs and players at a game shop, or other communities hearing the cool stories of how they fixed the inconsistency - instead more divisions get created as a result of lacklustre writing by people who don't seem to be able to proof read and QA their work prior to print. Basically, the 'internet consensus' or Sage Advice is quoted as a justification to reject or somehow make wrong that you and I might run versions of the same edition differently at our tables.
Reading the books as they are, and discussing as a group without input from anyone outside the game group I honestly believe comes up with better solutions to balance than quotes from Crawford's twitter, or posts on D&D Beyond, or Youtubers like D&D Shorts. At least that's my opinion. And if people disagree, that's amazing because it means that this system allows for exactly what I'm advocating for here - balance through differences that work on a group by group level. Nothing solves balance problems for your game group better than your game group itself.
So, I made up a matrix in Excel that I could input a character's spell options, action and bonus action attacks. I developed a weighting system that took into account the variance of the dice, took into account the number of spell slots and the like. That left me with an idea of the Average damage per round of.....
Another very interesting post. Your spreadsheet is much more complete than mine but your characters are more complex than mine as well. This campaign's characters have few spells and almost no offensive spells.
Also an interesting idea that there is never ending editing of an internet based game. My late stepmother was a journalist and she decried the same problem in reporting-there is no deadline or final story in the age of the internet. The story is continually edited and revised minute by minute. Likewise, in electronic medical charts, there is no final version of a daily progress note now. Docs (and mid levels) constantly update and tweak it so you are left with a shifting document that is not a snapshot of what you thought at any particular moment, very different from when we wrote notes on paper and once you rounded you did not look at that chart again until the next day.
I obviously agree with your idea that DMs and players need to revise and adjudicate rules as they go. For better or worse I revise rules for every game that I play, even Risk or Monopoly!
One thing I wonder after all these posts: Is there a better platform out there for a fantasy based role playing game than the hodge-podge of rules that I have amalgamated into my table's game over the years? I guess I need to check out some of the other options.
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Velstitzen
I am a 40 something year old physician who DMs for a group of 40 something year old doctors. We play a hybrid game, mostly based on 2nd edition rules with some homebrew and 5E components.
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Hello fellow DMs.
I had noticed over several adventures that the thief in the party caused far less damage when compared to the other characters. Yesterday, I took out a piece of paper and wanted to calculate how much damage per round each class would average in my world. The results were surprising, although they conformed to our last few sessions. I took an avg AC monster, avg class bonuses to hit and damage, multipliers (such as backstab, crit), and rate of fire and found the product of % chance to hit x avg dmg. I found that the thief will do 33% damage of a warrior class, even assuming they start off with a backstab (not a fair assumption in our world). Unfortunately, this got even worse at high level. I then took it a step further and made an excel spreadsheet and trying out different algorithms until they did 66% damage of a warrior. For us, I think that balanced a very unbalanced class. We are hardly a min/max crew but I knew the discrepancy was discouraging. I talked to my player about his perceptions of his character's combat and non-combat abilities. In his words, "Slythe <the thief's name> contributes way more in "story mode" than some of the other characters. Who else can climb a wall to sneak into a manor and loot it? Maybe that is the price to pay for his lackluster combat abilities? But it is frustrating when I can't drop a single monster while the paladin is knocking the heads off orcs!"
I get the feeling that most people on this forum play by straight up 5th edition rules. Full disclosure, I have read the 5E rules one time so can hardly say whether those rules are more balanced than the set we play by. But if you get the feeling one class is terrible (and without supplemental abilities to compensate) it may be worthwhile to objectively calculate how bad the discrepancy really is. The results may surprise you.
Velstitzen
I am a 40 something year old physician who DMs for a group of 40 something year old doctors. We play a hybrid game, mostly based on 2nd edition rules with some homebrew and 5E components.
Min-max'd multiclass characters put together by a good powergaming theorycrafter can pretty easily do 3x the damage of a "standard" single class character thrown together by a more casual gamer who doesn't know the optimal combinations. That's true no matter what class you're talking about, Rogues could absolutely be on either end of that spectrum depending on the build they are included in.
You are right though that Rogues (and Monks even moreso) are rather weak as straight classes if you aren't multi-classing them. The top nova damage build I've ever seen though starts with 4 Rogue levels (then later includes Cleric, Paladin, Fighter, Sorcerer), so it can absolutely be done if you want to
It's been entirely too long since I played 2nd Edition for me to make comments, or even worry, about class balance. I will state that if you're simply playing D&D as strictly a combat game then there's probably better systems out there for you to use. But assuming you're not then you may want to upgrade to 5th Edition.
In 5th Edition there is no backstab. The rogues get Sneak Attack instead. If the rogue has an ally within 5' of the target and does not have disadvantage, or has advantage even with no ally next to the target, then the rogue gets to do the Sneak Attack damage. Fighters will end up with the most attacks on their turn (Round now being the six seconds each Turn is in) but Rogues start with more skill proficiencies than any other class.
As you learned, 2e isn't even close to balanced in terms of combat effectiveness. Rogues, in particular, are just kind of bad. (And, as I recall, their abilities don't actually make up for it. Last time I played 2e, back when the lava was still cooling, the DM had ripped out and replaced the thief skills subsystem because it was so poor.)
For combat effectiveness, 5e is better. If nobody's trying to actively maximize their murder output, everyone is probably going to feel like they're contributing. Once you start optimizing, some classes outpace others. But most people don't do that, nor should they.
"Balance" is probably not an achievable goal, even in the limited realm of combat. Even if you could tweak all the abilities of all the classes to keep damage output similar, as soon as a real-world group starts playing real-world games, the assumptions of the balancing are going to fall apart.
And that's not even including out-of-combat abilities. Those are too many and varied to even try.
The best one can hope for is:
5e does reasonably well on the combat side, and "better than 2e" on the non-combat. (Fighter types still often don't have much to contribute when it's not Stabbing Time. The playtest for next year's revised 5e has tried to improve on that; we shall see how it goes.)
Really depends on the player in 5e, I think. My powergamer consistently reigned supreme in DPS with first a cleric then a rogue build, meanwhile the wizard had the lowest damage output in the game because his spells were almost entirely utility and control.
I don't think I've ever been at a table that didn't have one character outpacing or lagging behind the rest in damage. It usually wasn't too much of an issue unless the weaker PC's player felt discouraged about it. Nothing a bespoke magic item or feat couldn't fix.
Yes, my game is more or less balanced but I play 5e.
I can't comment much on 2e since it is years since I have played it. However, if I recall, class balance wasn't that great (much like 1e) and got worse as levels increased.
If you were playing 5e, then your assessment would be incorrect. Rogue damage is in line with baseline fighter damage for the most part. A rogue doesn't have as many ways to generate extra damage (eg battlemaster maneuvers) but they have several ways to give themselves advantage on the attack roll that also enables sneak attack (no more back stabs or facing for that matter in 5e) which tends to keep their damage ok compared to base characters. It doesn't keep up with characters with great weapon master or sharpshooter but is otherwise ok and will be generally ahead of characters that are not optimized.
Glad this thread got everyone thinking and it is encouraging to know 5E is more balanced. Again, I haven't ever played that edition. I will continue to tweak my table rules to bring the classes more in line. Not being a min/max group we don't need total character equality, just people being in the same ballpark.
Velstitzen
I am a 40 something year old physician who DMs for a group of 40 something year old doctors. We play a hybrid game, mostly based on 2nd edition rules with some homebrew and 5E components.
Balance is always susceptible to all forms of criticism, what is balanced for one group is broken for another not to mention that wether its achieved its design goals or not is not simply a mathmatical formula or some sort of testing analysis but rather a question about design goals themselves. In the best of times, all you can hope for is that there is at least a vocal minority that believes the game is balanced.
2e is a great example as its unclear if any of its design goals were ever to actually be balanced, from the way the game is designed and in particular how the whole kit system was designed I can't imagine balance was one of the targets because even the most inept game designer could see from a two minute browsing of the games design that virtually no effort went into creating a balanced game. It wasn't until 3rd edition after years of criticism of D&D always being completely out of wack were efforts made to actually try to balance things like classes against each other and it would be another decade before anyone came close to success which was with 4th edition.
Suffice it to say 5e I think is probably the most balanced version fo D&D out of the box in particular if your are comparing it to 1e or 2e and its because these designers had nearly 4 decades of game design at the time of its creation on which to base the game. Not to mention a huge amount of 3rd party external contract designers most of which are responsible for designing and publishing OSR games were advisors during the development of the game. So you had years of experience with D&D coming from people that know full well how unbalanced the old editions were and why.
That said, since its launch even 5e has been criticized a lot for balance issues with existing and newly introduced content and the tinkering continues endlessly. I wouldn't want to give you the impression that the game is perfectly balanced, but when you compare it to old-school D&D, it's not even remotely a contest. At this stage you can say that 5e is just being hyper-fine-tuned, all the major issues with D&D balance are fixed and when most people argue about something being unbalanced, it's usually something very specific to the micro level. You don't have these big sweeping issues high-level issues, everything that is a problem in 5e is going to be quite isolated to a specific ability or class feature. So its quite good in the balance department.
DPR is the last way to talk about PC's. Balance in a game such as D&D cannot be measured that way.
By definition, a Martial is horribly underpowered to a caster when it comes to casting Invisibility or healing. Each class has a niche, or certainly should, that only that class can fill. But thanks to this constant clamour for all PC's to be able to do everything, we now have over 128 subclasses that overlap and step all over each other.
A Rogue is an awesome class, and does not need more firepower.
No game system has ever been balanced perfectly. Yes, 5e tries to bring it in line but I think 4e did its best to be equal across the board. Part of me thinks this is a failed idea, however. Why make the game balanced, to begin with? This is where I most likely am going to separate myself from most people who play 5e. Personally don't like balance. I think the different talents of each class is what makes them unique. The Thief is not as great in combat as a Fighter but the FIghter is not as skilled at climbing or picking locks.
If you want a Thief to hit as well as a Fighter then why play a Thief? You could arguably go through the game and in most cases make the same attack for each class but reskin it with a new name and description. That will balance out the game for the players. The illusion of players all being different yet all equal. Again this was of sorts done in 4e they just gave them all powers and made certain that each power at a level fell in line with the other powers.
To me, it's the skill set of each class that brings them in line not just how hard they hit in combat.
But from a purely combat perspective I understand why players want to be big damage output.
Yes, you want players to feel like equals but the real challenge for them, In my opinion, is they need to feel like they cover each other's weaknesses to help balance out the party.
To help your current Thief player would it behoove you to either give him a special power or feat he can use once in a while? A magic item or two to boost him? Monsters that have varied levels of hit points such as Minions who are easy kills for higher-level PCs?
Just some thoughts.
I live my life like a West Marches campaign, A swirling vortex of Ambitions and Insecurities.
4e was the most mechanically balanced edition of D&D, but that balance had costs. The big problems with balance are
To the degree AD&D had balance at all, it was designed to be over the lifespan of the character; magic-users put up with being absolutely atrocious at low levels in exchange for being godly at high levels. I don't think that's a great design philosophy; people will put up with being marginal for a session or two, being weak for a dozen sessions not so much.
3e mostly fixed spellcasters being terrible at low levels... but didn't also make them less gods at high level, so it wound up being likely the least balanced edition.
4e wound up with relatively little distinction between classes; balanced but bland.
5e boosted low level casters and toned down high level. It still has a bit of 'linear fighter, quadratic wizard', but it's nothing like it was in AD&D.
A big part of the balance or perhaps better to say structure of AD&D, B/X and BECMI was clear archetypes. A foundational premise that without argument didn't achieve mechanical balance, but it did create a harmonious balance of purpose. Each class had a very clear role in the game. In a lot of ways, it was this foundation that made D&D as popular as it was. Its the basis for the class system, it created a culture of identity in the game and the core of the games narrative structures hinge on this premise.
Its hard to imagine why archetype was abandoned while all the sacred cows that have been kept in D&D over the years like hit points, AC, 3-18 ability scores and alignment remain.
One thing I will say about 4e is that, in that game they achieved balanced by making the classes even which is actually one of the most lifeless ways that you can balance a game and I think in big part why the game was received so poorly.
For me the issue with 5e is that while it achieves some semblance of mechanical balance it is completely broken in terms of balance for purpose. No party needs a Rogue or a Magic-User, you don't need healers or tanks, if a fighter wants to be a master in arcane knowledge, they can be, if a Magic-User wants to be a melee warrior, they can be. There is no structure or orientation in the game nor any commitment to particular constructs or setting, theme or style, its a complete gonzo game and for me personally I can't imagine anything that could possibly be any more boring to play. It's the equivalent of playing Minecraft in creative mode, I know people like it and I'm certainly not suggesting its objectively bad, but its not actually a game anymore. It's more like an activity and it's kind of how I feel when I play 5e. It lacks any sort of spirit or uniqueness as an RPG and while it's not quite as lifeless as 4e, it's completely uninspiring.
I'm not sure there's an edition of the game where the all-cleric party didn't work just fine. Would probably struggle with long days in 4e, while they could still probably beat everything the cost in healing surges might be high.
I'm not convinced that wasn't a post-facto justification. It certainly doesn't make sense as a plan.
There was also the other class-balancing mechanism of 1/2e: This class is more powerful, so you have to roll lucky to play it.
Meanwhile, the not-very-strongly-differentiated races were balanced by slapping them with harsh limits on leveling.
Pre-3e D&D wasn't balanced at all. To be fair, they were making it up as they went, and figuring out how an entirely new genre of game is going to play in practice is hard. The problem was that, between white box and 2e, they never re-examined the design.
I played very little 3e, but I thought the real fix for low-level casters (give them something effective to do when they run out of spells) came with 4th.
A 3.x caster could go a lot longer without running out of spells, even at very low levels. A level 1 AD&D wizard has one spell per day. A level 1 3.x wizard generally got two or three (depending on specialization) first level spells, and three cantrip slots.
The lack of character specialization is one reason of several why I have not bought into 5E. Again, I have only read the rules once and never played, but from what I understand, and what the authors above have written, anyone can do anything. I really like that in my world skill sets only come with certain classes. You must take the good with the bad. In the case of a thief, you are the MVP in a subterranean dungeon or an old castle because traps and locked doors will eat your lunch. No other class can contribute that. The other classes have other unique abilities that are required to succeed. It builds comradery and a team atmosphere when every PC has a moment to shine. I also understand that equal damage per round is not the only way to measure equality, but a huge disparity in a major part of the game (combat) as I described is hardly a fun, balanced game for my players. I re-wrote the thief combat abilities bringing him up to 65% damage compared to a fighter which in our (the player and my) opinion, is fair given a thief's other abilities and a fighter's lack thereof.
I also understand what someone said about taking a long time to perfect and balance the game. These ideas were very novel 40-50 years ago and have taken a while to come to fruition. That being said, I hope I can incorporate some of your suggestions and ideas and balance my own game.
Velstitzen
I am a 40 something year old physician who DMs for a group of 40 something year old doctors. We play a hybrid game, mostly based on 2nd edition rules with some homebrew and 5E components.
While many will argue, you can't take such arguments seriously given the mechanics, the above is objective truth. Classes in the 5e sense, are effectively "alternative methods to kill monsters", it has nothing to do with archetypes, roles, intention, design or philosophy of the work on which they are based. In 5e you have characters, anyone can do anything, it's just a question of "build". 5e is about as far removed from D&D as you can possibly be, but the modern generation has redefined what it means to be D&D and proclaimed that definition as if they invented it, something akin to culture appropriation. Anyone who disagrees with the argument is gatekeeping so it's a lose-lose argument in which the one suggesting such an argument has had the path to it made politically incorrect and any logical avenue in the discussion has been permanently closed.
In essence to suggest that 5e is not adhering to the principles of D&D, just makes you a troll. It's in a sense a perfectly executed culture war designed to destroy the D&D culture itself and replace it with this new alternative version. 5e is a game and fantasy depiction based on works, the game itself doesn't believe, trust in or even like. It's a bit like basing a movie on Star Wars because you hate everything about Star Wars but want to capture the emotional connection it provided for its past audience for a new audience that is ignorant of and/or made to hate the original. It's actually kind of twisted, but quite common in various media from music, movies, books and art for cultures to sort of kill each other this way. Over extended time these things come to light but in the moment, the mob rules all.
Those few who try to point out this very obvious flaw in the games direction and warn of the problems it creates are considered to be old relics who don't understand D&D which is kind of throwing salt in the wound given that these old relics have been playing D&D since before the majority of people who are abandoning D&D culture and traditions were in still in liquid form.
This is part of it, but the archetype served a greater purpose. It aligned the motivations of the players, so choosing a class was not just a matter of filling a role, but defining your approach and style to the game. A Thief player and a Magic-User player had a definitively different style of play that co-existed in the game because they needed and relied on each other to succeed. It was very much a team effort, their were no narcissistic "my character's story is important" attitudes. A D&D troupe was a group of friends that fought for their success together as a team and each player on that team was an important member with an important job to do.
The role of a class was once a paramount concept, the mechanics of the game protected it through exclusivity and while there were workarounds like multi-classing, any such workaround came with stiff consequences and hardships. This premise was abandoned because modern gamers decided that "fairness" which is often falsely referred to as balance was more important than the construct of the game which game designers have been foolishly buying into for years. It is effectively when D&D stopped being a role-playing game and became a something more like a board game disguised as a roleplaying game. The permutation being that because people "act in character" and do "do funny voices" they are having fun in "their own way" and this constitutes "role-playing". A sufficient logic which I would not argue too much, but it is what it is.
I have no objections to the way its done today, but for me personally, it's a bit like a golf mulligan. It's not a service to the game to pretend like we are playing a real game and then we fake it, by re-writing the rules. No one would argue that a golfer taking a mulligan is cheating, except the pro-players, yet it's such a common practice it may as well be an actual rule.
The only reason why its taken 50 years to balance the game is that we keep re-inventing it. Had designers actually continued to improve the original design, the problem of D&D being unbalanced would have been solved a long time ago.
D&D isn't one game that has been continually worked on, it's five different games that have been re-created with a similar theme based on five different philosophies and design concepts. The question now is whether we are about to add a sixth game to the pot and I think the answer is objectively, no. Modern 6e is a continuation of a product and I see that as a positive step forward, for better or worse at least it's consistent. The last thing we need now as a community is another edition war/debate where we determine if 5th edition or 6th edition is the better game. That road I assure you leads nowhere good.
It remains to be seen if 6th edition can compete with the likes of DC20, MCDM RPG, PF2e and Critical Roles new game just to name a few. I think D&D players are becoming wiser, they are starting to see through the cracks and I think the appeal of "official D&D" is losing its clout. Anyone who has looked at any of these games knows they are objectively better designs. Modern D&D is outclassed by these games in every measurable way, it survives exclusively on brand loyalty today. That may or may not be enough, we'll see.
While many will argue, you can't take such arguments seriously given the mechanics, the above is objective truth. Classes in the 5e sense, are effectively "alternative methods to kill monsters", it has nothing to do with archetypes, roles, intention, design or philosophy of the work on which they are based. In 5e you have characters, anyone can do..........
This was a very cogent post with many good points. Since I somewhat fell off the wagon as a kid and never got back on, I don't have the insight into the other versions as you do. One of the most perplexing ideas to me is the increased appeal of fantasy games in general since I was a kid. Role playing was certainly not a common pastime in the 1980s and 1990s. While it is not as mainstream as playing golf or watching spectator sports today, it certainly has garnered a much larger audience over the years. The idea that half a dozen companies are now competing in this space is surprising. The only other game I remember from back in the day was Middle Earth Role Playing which certainly did not have a wide readership. Maybe I was out of touch then as well.
Again, thanks for the insightful posts.
Velstitzen
I am a 40 something year old physician who DMs for a group of 40 something year old doctors. We play a hybrid game, mostly based on 2nd edition rules with some homebrew and 5E components.
So, I made up a matrix in Excel that I could input a character's spell options, action and bonus action attacks. I developed a weighting system that took into account the variance of the dice, took into account the number of spell slots and the like. That left me with an idea of the Average damage per round of each character taking into account the potential chances to miss an enemy with an AC of 18. I then ran those figures against a calculation to determine survivability against hits and damage. The results of both numbers were utilised to come up with a pair of numbers. I determined that a Damage score usually swings within the +/- 5 points were 'balanced' anything beyond that was considered to be problematic and therefore in need of addressing. For one party the results on the damage scores were average damage potential per round of: 19.53, 14.4, 10.68, 20.025, 17.44. As you can see even if we chose the 14.4 as the representative average damage for a level 10 character as these were: either the 10.68 or the 20.025 were under/overpowered compared with the rest of the party. In this case, the underpowered character was the druid with their average score of 10.68. However, this was balanced out with their survivability due to Wildshape. These characters all were restircted to only PHB content however.
The picture got more problematic when looking at the party with free reign of content from PHB, XGtE, and TCoE. In that group their level 12 characters came in with average damage scores of: 11.945, 17.793, 20.958, 5.908, 9.960. It's not difficult to see that there is an horrid level of variance in these score. This variance was only amplified by the consideration of the survivability scores.
I was also fortunate that I could conduct a similar look at eight level 10 characters restricted to PHB and XGtE. That group came in with scores of 19.214, 17.395, 21.555, 19.592, 14.189, 16.113, 12.437, 18.192. These players were restricted to ASIs only, no feats...and they were given very few magic items but all were from DMG and tended to be level appropriate. Survivability scores tended to skew largely dependant on their items. Any items conferring bonus Stats increases or AC boosts made the big differences.
Here are a couple of glimpses at some of those excel sheets. I can explain the particular formulas I used to weight spells and calculate damage but suffice to say there's a lot of formula usage you can't see from this.
From these workings out I was trying to see if my games were balanced. Was anyone significantly lagging behind in damage? Was any particular source granting power creep? The conclusions I came to about game balance are below. They are solely my opinions and I'm sure other DMs will have found different experiences.
Frankly, I think the game when played with little to no homebrew is well balanced until around level 12. At that point the game designers kinda just gave up is the feeling I get. I've updated my sheets since and the imbalance beyond level 12 is amplified for the issues I highlight. I know for some DMs it doesn't feel like it but TCoE content is extremely swingy...it is to my mind way too chaotic in terms of both over and underpowered options.
Here's the problem though - that only deals with combat. I have played a LOT of different TTRPGs and to be clear I come from a place where I prefer games like Blades in the Dark, FATE, Misspent Youth, or even Fiasco, to D&D. I love the collaborative story-telling process. And sadly, 5e as a system tends to fall a little flat for me where there's no combat. If we go with the supposed core pillars of D&D 5e...it's pretty good at combat in favour of the players and mediocre (at best) for the other pillars. So on that dimension 5e is not balanced. Youtubers like D&D Shorts really do not help with this either. There's a willful misdirection in that Youtuber's presentation that misses the fact that each table will rule things different ways, will allow different sources, or houserule certain interactions (there are several DMs I know who won't allow a reaction to a reaction - i.e. no counterspell of counterspells because of spiral of chaos). On the other hand personalities like Ginny Di does more work to support both players and DMs than WotC have done over the last 10 years from their free content alone.
To me there is a real beauty to AD&D and it's like. Given that the pre-dated an age of widespread internet adoption, the books had to contain as much as possible and leave everything else to the GM/DM. I grew up in a world where the internet was developing and being adopted. An 80's kid means that I understand something that many seem to either not realise or not understand - what is printed in your book is it. There are no updates. Sage Advice wasn't a thing for most who played. The upshot is that the GM had to adjudicate more things and there was no additional content that would follow to enhance or correct what was gotten wrong in the books. It's why I hate and reject sage advice as a whole. Sorry Crawford, but if you didn't put it in the book then nothing you say after the fact is valid. I get to adjudicate it. Not you, not WotC, and not the D&D Community. My players and I will discuss the wording of the books and make a judgement based on that. I fear that the modern writers have kinda allowed a door to be opened to laziness because they can try and fix things through the internet. What this means is that I hear far less of DMs and players at a game shop, or other communities hearing the cool stories of how they fixed the inconsistency - instead more divisions get created as a result of lacklustre writing by people who don't seem to be able to proof read and QA their work prior to print. Basically, the 'internet consensus' or Sage Advice is quoted as a justification to reject or somehow make wrong that you and I might run versions of the same edition differently at our tables.
Reading the books as they are, and discussing as a group without input from anyone outside the game group I honestly believe comes up with better solutions to balance than quotes from Crawford's twitter, or posts on D&D Beyond, or Youtubers like D&D Shorts. At least that's my opinion. And if people disagree, that's amazing because it means that this system allows for exactly what I'm advocating for here - balance through differences that work on a group by group level. Nothing solves balance problems for your game group better than your game group itself.
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Actor, Writer, Director & Teacher by day - GM/DM in my off hours.
So, I made up a matrix in Excel that I could input a character's spell options, action and bonus action attacks. I developed a weighting system that took into account the variance of the dice, took into account the number of spell slots and the like. That left me with an idea of the Average damage per round of.....
Another very interesting post. Your spreadsheet is much more complete than mine but your characters are more complex than mine as well. This campaign's characters have few spells and almost no offensive spells.
Also an interesting idea that there is never ending editing of an internet based game. My late stepmother was a journalist and she decried the same problem in reporting-there is no deadline or final story in the age of the internet. The story is continually edited and revised minute by minute. Likewise, in electronic medical charts, there is no final version of a daily progress note now. Docs (and mid levels) constantly update and tweak it so you are left with a shifting document that is not a snapshot of what you thought at any particular moment, very different from when we wrote notes on paper and once you rounded you did not look at that chart again until the next day.
I obviously agree with your idea that DMs and players need to revise and adjudicate rules as they go. For better or worse I revise rules for every game that I play, even Risk or Monopoly!
One thing I wonder after all these posts: Is there a better platform out there for a fantasy based role playing game than the hodge-podge of rules that I have amalgamated into my table's game over the years? I guess I need to check out some of the other options.
Velstitzen
I am a 40 something year old physician who DMs for a group of 40 something year old doctors. We play a hybrid game, mostly based on 2nd edition rules with some homebrew and 5E components.