The D&D 3rd edition balance blunder
In 2000, Wizards of the Coast published their first edition of the popular role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons — known as 3rd edition…
This is not my usual topic, so if you were expecting some electoral analysis, click on.
In 2000, Wizards of the Coast published their first edition of the popular role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons — known as 3rd edition. They made numerous changes, many of them intended to simplify and regularize the game. They also made spellcasters too powerful, and warriors too weak.
It did not take long before players recognized that combat-oriented “Codzilla” characters (“Cod” was short for “cleric or druid”) could handle the front lines of combat just as capably as a fighter while also having useful magical abilities that a fighter lacked. Often overlooked is that this balance issue was introduced in 3rd edition.
Many of the changes of 3rd edition clearly provided an advantage to spellcasters or a disadvantage to warrior classes. The limitations on spellcasting, the restriction of effective combat training to warriors, and the limited effect of ability scores only slightly above or below average were numbered among the more irritating and quirky 2nd edition rules.
Everybody is a warrior
2nd edition had four major categories of character classes: Priests, rogues, warriors, and wizards. Each of these categories included one core character class — respectively cleric, thief, fighter, and mage — and a variety of optional character classes. Priests had access to divine magic. Wizards had access to arcane magic. Rogues had high levels of specialized skills.
Warriors … fight. The problem with this is that all characters can pick up a weapon and fight. So how could warriors be viable and interesting characters? By fighting better.
In 2nd edition, the warrior classes were harder to kill and downright deadly to monsters, with unique versatility, toughness, and efficacy in the line of battle. In 3rd edition, the lines were more blurred, and there was a lot more overlap between the fighting abilities of warriors and non-warriors — and the non-warriors could do things other than fight.
Hit points
In D&D, hit points are a measure of how much damage a character can take. In 2nd and 3rd edition, hit points were determined by a combination of character class, Constitution score, and luck.
In 3rd edition, class became less important, and Constitution scores became more important. In 2nd edition, only warriors could earn more than two bonus hit points per die, and scores of 7-14 had no bonus or penalty.
In 3rd edition, by contrast, a fighter with a Constitution score of 7 averaged fewer hit points per die than a wizard with a Constitution score of 14. Further, higher level characters had more hit dice affected by ability scores; instead of earning a fixed numbers of hit points per level with no modifiers after 9th or 10th level, characters continued to add new hit dice, adding any applicable modifiers.
Warriors’ large and significant advantage in hit points was mostly washed out by the increased importance of ability scores and luck.
Armor class
In D&D, armor class is affected by Dexterity scores, armor, and various other magical and miscellaneous effects. Heavy armor was still mostly used by warriors in 3rd edition, just as it had been in 2nd edition.
As with hit points, ability score bonuses were more easily available in 3rd edition than 2nd edition — however, those ability score bonuses were capped by the type of armor worn, particularly for heavier armor, so warriors could not take much advantage of this. Heavier armor now also reduced movement speed and applied an armor check penalty to many commonly-used skills.
In the mean time, non-warrior classes gained significant improvements in their ability to use light armor, shields, and Dexterity bonuses to improve armor class. These factors combined to reduce the armor class advantage warrior classes had over non-warrior classes.
Damage output
There are three components to the total damage output of a D&D character using a weapon: The number of times that they attack, the accuracy of their attacks, and the damage they do when they hit.
3rd edition flattened the accuracy curve. Clerics and rogues gained 3 points of accuracy every 4 levels, instead of 2 points per 3 levels or 1 point per 2 levels. Wizards now gained 1 point per 2 levels instead of 1 point per 3 levels.
3rd edition also flattened the rate of attack between the different classes. All classes gained bonus attacks, starting when their attack bonus reached +6. Previously, only warriors gained bonus attacks at higher levels (7th and 13th level in particular).
In 2nd edition, weapon restrictions affected all non-warrior classes very heavily, especially when you consider the fact that weapons did differing amounts of damage against small targets and large targets in 2nd edition; the weapons capable of dealing truly massive damage to large targets (such as a two-handed sword or a heavy lance) were all restricted to warriors.
Non-warrior classes had penalties ranging from -3 to -5 for trying to fight with weapons they were not proficient in, and the best weapons were ones that only warriors could ever become proficient in. (For warriors, the penalty was a more modest -2.)
Again, as with the case of hit points and AC, the effect of ability scores on offensive output over the effect of base class abilities was much lower in 2nd edition, particularly for non-warriors.
A non-warrior with 18 scores in both Strength and Dexterity — the maximum for a human character — would still only get +1 to hit in melee, +2 to hit with ranged weapons, and +2 to most damage rolls.
There are higher possible Strength damage bonuses in 2nd edition — but working within the core rules, “exceptional” strength scores were for warriors only. In 3rd edition, by contrast, a character with an 18 score in Strength got +4 to both hit and damage, whether a warrior or a non-warrior.
These effects on accuracy, rate of attack, and damage all combined to erase what had been a very large difference in total damage output. In 2nd edition, warriors, even warriors with low strength scores, were much better at killing monsters than non-warriors, especially after they hit 7th level. In 3rd edition, however, the average damage curves overlap signifciantly, even at high levels.
Spellcasting became easier
Spellcasting became easier in many ways. Characters no longer had to forfeit their movement to cast spells. They kept Dexterity bonuses to armor class. They only needed one hand free, instead of both — this made it easier for a spellcaster to use a shield in combat. Wizards could now wear armor while casting spells, in exchange for a modest chance of spell failure.
This meant that it became a lot harder to hit a spellcaster in order to interrupt their spellcasting.
Furthermore, 3rd edition added the ability to sustain a spellcasting effort through the disruption of being hit. Instead of automatically losing their spell when hit, a spellcaster could pass a Concentration check to continue casting the spell. As a final note, higher-level spells no longer had slower speed modifiers affecting initiative, meaning that it was as easy to get off a high-level spell during combat as a low-level spell.
In addition to making combat spellcasting a much easier process, 3rd edition removed many other difficulties associated with spellcasting. The quirky and difficulty aspects of magic were removed as irritating.
Wizards no longer had limited repertoires and a chance to fail to learn a desired spell. Divine spell failure was eliminated. The GM was no longer directed to dictate priests’ spells or remove priests’ spells for minor infractions against their religious codes. Spell preparation time was reduced to one hour a day; previously, a 20th level archmage who had used up all of their prepared spells would need 27 hours to prepare a new set of spells.
Saving throws
There’s also another subtle difference that significantly affected spellcasting as a combat tool. In 2nd edition, saving throws and magic resistance were determined entirely defensively. More powerful opponents — large monsters, high-level characters — were more likely to simply shrug off the effect of a spell.
3rd edition introduced a new feature: More powerful spellcasters imposed harder saving throws on their targets (tied to spell level and attributes) and were better at breaking through magic resistance (tied to caster level). This meant that high-level targets were more likely to suffer the full effect of a spell in 3rd edition.
Saving throws were also based on class. While warriors started out with bad saving throws in 2nd edition, their saving throws improved rapidly, and high-level warriors had the best saving throws in the game. Unless otherwise indicated, monsters used the warrior saving throw table, meaning that tough monsters invariably had very good saving throws.
In 3rd edition, warriors simply had lackluster saving throws throughout — neither exceptionally poor at low levels nor exceptionally good at high levels.
In the big picture, these changes meant that in 2nd edition, a spellcaster flinging a spell at a high level fighter or monster was unlikely to succeed; in 3rd edition, a spellcaster flinging a spell at a high level fighter or monster was likely to succeed.
Summary
On the big picture, we can draw together four factors that all contributed to a major shift in warrior / spellcaster balance from 2nd to 3rd. The distinctive features of the warrior classes were diluted; ability scores became considerably more important in determining a character’s combat capabilities; and spellcasting became both easier and more reliable.
The features that made warriors skilled combatants included additional attacks per round, skill with weapons, and the ability to effectively use armor and shields for protection. For example, a 20th level wizard, without using magic or having exceptional ability scores, could fight like a 9th level fighter instead of a 5th level fighter.
When this smaller gap is combined with the increased importance of ability scores, it becomes easy for a non-warrior with superior ability scores to out-fight a warrior in ordinary mundane combat — and if that non-warrior was also a spellcaster, they could easily cast the occasional spell mid-battle without missing a stride, either to enhance their own abilities or to attack opponents.