jake_ericVery interesting post I think is worth sharing
dumplesThe CR calculation in the DMG specifies that you totalize damage over 3 rounds and then average it. You are suppose to use the largest damage dealer for and any recharge ability in this. So this makes sense for player abilities.
From my play experience this is a valid assumption. I rarely have monsters live more than 3 rounds unless we're specifically doing a large combat with multiple waves of enemies
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.
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.
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.
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.