Looking at the 5th Edition SRD - part 7 - Equivalent Exchanges

    I'm borrowing the term from Fullmetal Alchemist because of something I was wondering.  In general, the fighter gets weapons and the magic user gets spells.  So ideally the two should be about the same, right?  Weapons tend to be less dramatic, lower damage and effects, but freely reusable - while spells are big and flashy but limited.  At least, that's the general theory: but how do they compare to each other?  And also, how do things like attributes compare to each other as well?  So this post is going to be a random grab-bag of numbers looking at some things from behind the curtain.

Weapons
    Let's start with weapons.  The shortest list is for the Sorcerer and Wizard, they are only proficient with the: dagger, dart, sling, quarterstaff, and light crossbow.  Those give d4, d6 and d8 ranges for damage.  Type of damage also matters, since some monsters may be resistant to some damage types.  The Sorc/Wiz weapons are piercing and bludgeoning only (no slashing).
    Taking a step up, let's look at all the simple weapons in general.  Across all of them we get the following damage ranges: d4, d6 and d8.  And there are 8 bludgeoning, 3 slashing and 8 piercing weapons.
    Okay, so if that is the median of the simple weapons, then the martial weapons should all be better, right?  And they should be significantly better: fighters do not gain as many or as spectacular abilities as magic users, on average, so the weapons list should be worthwhile, right?  Well, the martial weapons have the following damage ranges: d6, d8, d10, and d12/2d6.  So two ranges overlap, the d6 and d8, the d10 is only a single step higher - and just how much of a difference is there in 2 potential damage points? - and only the d12/2d6 is a pretty solid step up.  Also remember that hit point inflation will make a small difference less significant as you level up and every monster has more and more hp.  Martial weapons also have 6 bludgeoning, 11 slashing and 12 piercing options - that does expand on the somewhat weak simple weapon slashing options.
    So having proficiency in all weapons is better than only simple or an even smaller list.  But how much better is it?  Not a lot really, at least on average.  Now you also have to take into account that fighters will focus their attributes on the physical ones to get better combat scores while magic users will go mental and that difference in priorities will drive the gap between the two wider.  Still, I just feel like fighters kind of get the short end of the stick - while they are meant to be smaller yet constant benefits, it kind of feels like they are under-powered.  I'd like to see them have a few more options or abilities given that combat and weapon use are their entire concept (magic users at least can do a variety of non-combat stuff).  I don't think it's a huge problem, I wouldn't say the balance was broken, I just think it's a little off for my tastes.
    At least, by the weapon numbers it doesn't look too far off - but there's more to it that that...
   
Cantrips
    You see, magic users get cantrips.  Cantrips are spells that can be used at will, just like a weapon attack.  And while casters only get a few of them, they are pretty darn useful.  Acid Splash only does d6 with a Dex-save, not that much better than a simple weapon really, but not bad and it can hit 2 people if they're within 5 feet of each other.  But then you get Chill Touch, Ray of Frost and Shocking Grasp - all do d8 damage and have some kind of extra effect.  That's at least as good as a martial weapon.  The real balance-breaker though is Fire Bolt.  It has a range of 120 feet, on the low end but a pretty good since it doesn't take a penalty to hit like most ranged weapons.  It uses a "spell attack" which is spellcasting ability modifier + proficiency, so best attribute and proficient means it's just as effective as a fighter attack.  And it does d10 damage, which is a glaive, pike, 2-handed longsword or heavy crossbow (solidly a martial weapon and higher than any simple weapons).  So since a magic user has a ranged martial weapon to use at will, what exactly is the difference between the two again?  Funny, I've heard some people revile 4th Edition D&D for making all the classes the same, but there's a lot of similarity here.  And again, a lot of the cantrips have special effects that plain weapons don't have, so it is debatable that they are superior to using weapons in at least some ways.
    With the addition of offensive cantrips, the fact that magic users can't use the full range of martial weapons isn't really much of a drawback.  Add in that spells allow for non-combat actions and increase in damage and you could say that magic users are a lot more useful than fighters overall.  Sure, they can't soak as much damage (again though, there are defensive spells) - but I would love a party to try making all magic users and see if they couldn't kill things (or charm them, put them to sleep, or otherwise incapacitate them) fast enough to make up for the lack of a tank.  It just reinforces my feeling that fighters are a bit weak.  Or rather, say that fighters don't feel very special.  They don't seem to have that "awesome moment" built into their class.  When your wizard disintegrates the dragon and the cleric banishes the demon, what does the fighter do to feel as useful to the party and story?

Saving Throws
    Thinking about spells, and ranking things, gets me thinking about saving throws.  The 5e SRD has each attribute be a saving throw (unlike the 3.5 SRD that only had 3).  But the value of having a saving throw is in what all it can protect you from: so just how many different effects target each saving throw?
    This is one of those questions I knew I was going to regret asking myself.  Since there are about 130 pages of monsters in the SRD, I decided to limit my madness to just the spells.  So I went over each spell description and tallied up how many of each attribute there were:

37  Wisdom  (33%)
32  Dexterity  (28%)
26  Constitution  (23%)
13  Charisma  (12%)
3  Intelligence  (3%)
2  Strength  (2%)

    Okay, Intelligence is weird.  There are only 3 spells that call for an Int save, but there are 9 illusion spells that call for an Intelligence/ Investigation roll to spot the illusion.  I don't like that, it weakens an already useless save by having a skill check in place of the saving throw.  Strength is also really bad as a saving throw, it's almost never used - and I'd be surprised if that many monsters have Str-based saves (not opposed checks, which are a different kettle of fish).
    So if you want to resist spells, get a high Wis and Dex, and classes that give save proficiencies to both.  I'm glad to see Con has so many effects, it's an attribute that has no skills, and only one application in combat, so at least the abundance of saves makes it more important.  There are a few spells that should have different saves.  Slow should be resisted by Str (which needs more effects to resist), and polymorph should be Con or even Str - and both types are Wis, which makes no sense to me.
    Another reason this matters, no class is proficient in both Wis and Dex saves, if you did give that to a class it would be much better at resisting spells and effects.  Likewise nobody has Int and Str saves, because they would be getting hosed.  Something to keep in mind while creating your own classes.

Damage Resistances
    While looking at spells I also wanted to see how many damage types there were, to see if one type of resistance might be better than the rest.  And there is a clear frontrunner (again, from the spells only, monsters could skew these numbers a little to a lot):

19  Fire
9  Cold, Radiant
8  Lightning
7  Necrotic
6  Acid, Bludgeoning
5  Psychic
4  Force, Thunder
3  Poison
2  Piercing
1  Slashing

    Fire does have twice as many spells as any of the other types, so get it first.  A fairly even spread after that (Radiant did surprise me for being so high, but then it does make since given that should be one of the common types for divine casters).
    This is the one I really need to go over the monster list to  fill out, there are only a few poison spells (which I had thought there would be a few more of for some reason) - I'm sure there are lots of monsters that poison though.  I'm sure I'll sit down and add the monsters to this list someday.


    Okay, so this was a random list of things to look at, and I'm not sure just how much use this has all been, but it was interesting to look behind the scenes a little.