Hate to share from the site we definitely don’t think about anymore, but I think this is too interesting to miss. If true, it’s a big insight into the design of the game. All credit to that OP of course.
Summary is that WotC’s balancing decisions seem to make sense if they balance the classes like they balance monsters, using max damage output over a three-round fight. Basically they overvalue that, especially for certain nova classes (the OP suggests those classes are Fighter/Wizard/Sorcerer) and undervalue utility.
TLDR. WoTC seems to value Single Target Guaranteed DPR in a Nova over 3 rounds, and balances the game around that not too dissimilar to how they calculate the power of CR. And that seems to reflect every design decision and choice they have made when viewed this way, and what they gauge class power around. The core resource management of the game is about novaing now or later, and how can classes recover their novas.
Based on the way they’ve reigned in nova damage with 1D&D but have left utility spells basically untouched, I think the theory has merit.
It’s a valid assumption as far as combat goes, more or less, sure. But of course the game is about much more than just killing enemies. 5E Druid and Cleric are ridiculously good classes, but they look “fine” because they’re not the top damage dealers, so WotC thinks they need to be compensated.
I think even if the OP isn’t quite right in their guess here, it’s still pretty apparent that WotC doesn’t try very hard to balance the utility power between classes. Compare, like, Bard vs Monk or something.
The deficiency is in the monster building rules in the DMG. They haven’t been updated in almost ten years and it shows. For example, like you say, Druids and Clerics are ridiculously good classes, but they look “fine” because they’re not top damage dealers.
Those rules haven’t been updated for us since 2014. Meanwhile, WotC devs say that they’ve been regularly updating the tools they use to create new monsters and now, for example, take crowd control effects into account by translating the value of a CC into “effective damage” under the theory that “1 damage out” is roughly the equivalent to “1 damage in”.
…we didn’t get any of those improvements over the last 10 years. We’re still using rules set down in 2014 to make monsters.
For sure. Utility, out of combat and exploration aren’t numerical determined or balanced. It’s all combat comparisons
Which is an insane way to balance the game, right? And I could understand in 2014, but it seems like they’re sticking with it in 2023. They nerfed stuff like GWM/SS but I don’t think any utility spells really got touched.
I think it’s a fine way to balance combat. Utility outside of combat should be, I think, considered entirely separately. Even if you can be the most useful, active character in the party in an RP scenario, being ineffective in combat just straight-up sucks. So I don’t think out-of-combat utility is something that should be considered when balancing classes.
That’s not to say that I think the out-of-combat utility balance should be ignored, just that it should be considered distinct.
Well, I don’t entirely disagree, but if you’re making classes equal in combat (roughly), you’ll need to make them equal out of combat as well (roughly), or else the classes with the best out of combat utility will just be the best overall too, right? And that’s pretty difficult, and really not something they seem to be trying to do.
I do agree all classes should be able to contribute to all the general pillars of the game at least somewhat, but also some specialization is inevitable and necessary or else classes would feel too samey. There is always going to end up being one class that’s the best at social encounters or exploration, so they need to trade off in other areas for it to be fair.
That’s fine since the utility spells were pretty good especially if damage is tuned down
I’m making the case that the utility powers of casters are too good. Tuning down the damage of martials puts the classes on even footing damage-wise, but when they have even damage but casters have much better utility features to fall back on, they’re not equal.