A few years ago, I wrote an titled “The D&D 3rd edition balance blunder.” Lately, I’ve been thinking about Dungeons & Dragons, game design, and and Wizards of the Coast again, because a new edition of Dungeons & Dragons is in the works, currently branded as “One D&D.” Since the current edition of D&D (5th edition) is at present the most popular tabletop role-playing game, this means that a lot of dungeon masters (DMs) and players will be looking at changing systems soon, and it’s a good time to revisit the good (and bad) of design in different versions of D&D.
I was in the process of revisiting that when the Open Gaming License flap hit, so I wrote an article on that instead. But with D&D and versions fresh in my mind, this one will focus on the basic problem of how to balance fighter characters against other character classes, what Wizards of the Coast has tried to do, and how well those attempts succeeded.
Review and recap of the 3rd edition balance blunder
To be brief and recap my old article on the 3rd edition balance blunder, when Wizards of the Coast created 3rd edition, they did four things that fundamentally altered the balance of power between warrior and non-warrior classes. First, they made non-warriors much better at dealing damage in all circumstances.
This is especially true for thieves (rogues), who were originally introduced by a group playing in California as a non-combat-oriented class. When Gygax introduced the class to the wider D&D world in his newsletter, this is how he described the thief:
This class is different from any of the others. Thieves are generally not meant to fight, although they are able to employ magic swords and daggers (but none of the other magical weaponry), and the only armor they can wear is leathern. They have no spells such as magic-users and clerics are able to employ, but they do have certain unique abilities:
In 2nd edition, thieves would be classified as a type of rogue, and in 3rd edition, Wizards of the Coast decided that rogues would be high-damage fighters that applied sneak attack damage regularly. In 4th edition, they explicitly described rogues as “striker” (damage application specialist) characters.
When I wrote my original 3rd edition balance blunder article, I showed the graph without sneak attack or weapon specialization in order to steelman my argument (technically, sneak attack damage is not guaranteed and not all fighters specialize in weapons), and using typical weapons, rather than the correct weapon for the job. Here’s a version with weapon specialization and sneak attacks factored in:
The story is basically the same: The gap between fighters and non-warriors is much larger in 2nd edition when you factor in weapon specialization. Once you factor in sneak attack damage, 3rd edition rogues can deal as much damage as 3rd edition fighters.
Second, they made warriors worse at resisting special effects at high levels compared to non-warriors. This is a subtle change, but one that had a major effect on higher-level balance issues. In 2nd edition, warriors had the worst saving throws at low levels, but the best saving throws at higher levels. In 3rd edition, warriors just had bad saving throws.
Third, they made non-warriors a lot better at resisting damage in normal combat. This is very evident if you compare hit point totals across the two editions - hit point totals for warriors and non-warrior classes did not overlap much in 2nd edition, but in 3rd edition, it’s not unusual for a non-warrior character to have more hit points than a warrior character. 3rd edition also distributed armor class a lot more evenly across characters in different character classes.
Overall, non-warriors just fight a lot better in 3rd edition even if they don’t use any of their special abilities. One measure of that is how well a character could pretend to be a fighter if you handed them a club and told them to go fight naked in a gladiatorial arena. In my original 3rd edition balance blunder, I used that as the basis for “effective fighter level,” showing how non-warrior classes improved their basic fighting abilities by 50-80% relative to fighters.
Fourth, they made other classes’ core capabilities much easier, more reliable, and more convenient. Thieves’ abilities were rolled into a new skill system with higher chances of success on normal difficulty tasks… although enemies’ chances to detect thieves trying to pull off something sneaky also increased.
Spellcasting became much more convenient and easier, especially in combat; in 2nd edition, a wizard struck with a weapon automatically failed to get their spell off, while in 3rd edition, they could roll a Concentration check to succeed. In 2nd edition, the difficulty of a saving throw didn’t increase as the wizard’s level or intelligence increased, meaning that at high levels, most opponents succeeded most saving throws against spells; but in 3rd edition, wizards’ spells became more difficult to resist as they became more powerful.
In 2nd edition, cantrip was a single first level spell, and a first level wizard only could cast one of those per day; in 3rd edition, wizards could cast multiple cantrips per day, which were also made more potent. Spell repertoires were more heavily rationed in 2nd edition. Memorizing spells took 10 minutes per spell level in 2nd edition, but 1 hour for any number of spells in 3rd edition - meaning that in 2nd edition, a higher-level wizard would have to spend multiple days with their nose in their spellbook to refill all their spell slots.
Feats and fighters
The major mechanical addition to 3rd edition were the skill and feat systems. Fighters in particular gained regular bonus feats in order to compensate for their lack of other special abilities. Of course, these feats weren’t restricted by class; anyone could take the same feats, just not quite as many of them. These corresponded roughly with the weapon and non-weapon proficiencies in 2nd edition.
So, why didn’t fighter bonus feats fix the problem?
First, feats allowed other character classes to access significant improvements in their fighting abilities by accessing weapons and armor previously strictly forbidden to them. Other character classes could gain more from a single martial feat than a fighter could with a bonus fighter feat.
For example, a cleric could gain as much as 3 points of armor class by getting the Heavy Armor Proficiency feat, while a fighter could gain 1 point of armor class by getting Dodge as a feat. A wizard becoming proficient in a greatsword increased their melee damage by an average of 3.5 points per hit, while a fighter gaining weapon specialization increased their melee damage by 2 points per hit. The best martial feats were ones already built into the fighter class - and in many ways, non-martial feats were, overall, better.
Second, many feats introduced in 3rd edition were designed to address difficulties that 3rd edition imposed on characters engaging in mundane combat.
A 3rd edition fighter with the Two Weapon Fighting feat had worse penalties than a 2nd edition fighter using two weapons without any special training.
A 3rd edition fighter who spent two feats on Weapon Focus and Weapon Specialization, which they couldn’t do until reaching 4th level, gained fewer benefits than a 2nd edition fighter who spent one weapon proficiency slot specializing in a weapon at 1st level.
A mounted 3rd edition fighter with Ride-By Attack simply unlocked the ability to freely move before and after an attack - a capability that any mounted 2nd edition fighter already had.
Since fighters were usually the main characters trying to do these kinds of things, the decision to “gate” advanced combat abilities behind feats meant that feats barely allowed 3rd edition fighters to operate as well as 2nd edition fighters. By contrast, feats to enhance spellcasting, like the Still Spell feat, usually added new capabilities not present in 2nd edition.
Third, many of the better martial feats had prerequisites and restrictions. For example, Spring Attack, which let an unmounted fighter move before and after an attack, required both the Dodge feat and the Mobility feat, and could not be used with heavy armor. This was the case with many of the more interesting combat maneuver feats.
Balancing on a combat grid
Here’s where we get into major points of controversy surrounding the design philosophy of older versions of D&D as opposed to the versions designed by Wizards of the Coast. I’ll put this bluntly and simply:
Wizards of the Coast designed a more combat-oriented game.
3rd edition was designed and balanced around the assumption that the game revolved primarily around combat on a rectangular grid. What, you say? Wasn’t D&D originally derived from miniatures wargames? True. Doesn’t “TSR,” the name of the company that published D&D before Wizards of the Coast, stand for “Tactical Studies Rules?” Also true! Didn’t many classic D&D dungeons feature grids? Yes!
However, the original D&D game was not designed to be a combat game. It grew out of combat miniatures game, but the defining moment of the new tabletop RPG genre was when players went off the rails in a wargame and didn’t fight the battle the game designer expected them to. Moving past a purely combat-oriented game is what distinguished D&D from its predecessors.
In older editions of D&D, fighters are specialized in combat. Other classes aren’t supposed to contribute equally in combat, and for the most part, they don’t. As I mentioned above, the original description of thieves in D&D said that “[t]hieves are generally not meant to fight.”
Wizards of the Coast disagreed. Fundamentally, the design process for 3rd edition was more combat-oriented than the design processes for older editions, with every class of character expected to contribute comparable combat value on a strict tactical grid at low levels.
This meant rogues’ combat abilities had to be brought up to those of fighters overall, with a focus on damage and mobility (striking) over durability and area control (tanking). It meant that the extreme fragility of wizards was a critical problem. It meant that priests needed more reliably combat-oriented spells that were more impactful than bless, chant, and prayer - and more powerful healing magic to recover hit points between repeated combat encounters.
In 2nd edition, fighters had a niche to themselves due to powerful and consistent combat ability, with the ability to deal large amounts of damage consistently and to survive both conventional and unconventional attacks.
In 3rd edition, Wizards of the Coast’s adjustments to the combat balance between character classes were extensive enough that they completely eliminated fighters’ distinct niche. A rogue might easily outfight a fighter while having a dazzling array of non-combat skills. A cleric or druid could, all by themselves, fight better than a fighter once they enhanced themselves with magic - and had healing magic and special abilities on top of that. Fighters weren’t even very good at fighting, and they didn’t have anything else.
The fundamental dilemma
The “fighting man” (or fighter, as it’s put in modern D&D) is a basic heroic archetype in fantasy. This is a type of character that is common in fantasy fiction, and it’s a type of character that many people want to play in both high and low fantasy settings. And in those settings, the common fighter often emerges triumphant through force of will and skill at arms, even against magical opponents.
The fundamental issue of a fighter character class is that the fighter only has combat in his bag of tricks. He’s not supernatural. He doesn’t break the rules of reality. He isn’t defined by scholarly knowledge, craftsman-like skill, or the ability to creep up a wall as silent as a cat. If everyone else fights just as well as the fighter, what does the fighter have left?
The old-school answer is that nobody should fight quite as well as a fighter - but that fighting shouldn’t be the answer to every problem, even for the fighter.