D&D (2024) So Class Complexity...

[Charlaquin]

The idea that Barbarian is designed to be average complexity is just a little mind-boggling to me.

To me, the base barbarian should be a low complexity class.

Yeah, this is crazy to me too. Barbarians are easily the lowest complexity class in the game. The only build decisions they have to make are subclass and feats, and only one resource to manage in rage uses. The revision adds weapon mastery, but every other martial class also gets that. Fighter is easily more complex, with its second wind (especially now that they have a pool of them and multiple things to spend them on), and action surge - even a very basic champion fighter has to make the “who do I attack?” decision more times per round than a Barbarian does. Plus they have several subclasses that add even more resources to manage, like battle mastery maneuvers, psi dice, and runes. Fighters are easily more complex than barbarians.

 

[Charlaquin]

It's literally just resource management.

Once you have to track a major resource after battle outside of HO, a portion of the community believes that is no longer a simple level of complexity.

Then fighter should be average too, since they have more resources to manage than barbarians do.

 

[Sulicius]

Yesss, another thread about this table. I bet this is gonna come back over and over and over again for the entire run of this PHB.

Have fun with discussing!

 

[Charlaquin]

Interesting. I tend to think of complexity in terms of "how hard is it for a total beginner to learn?" because that's my context for D&D Club.

In my experience, at low levels it would be:
Artificer: High
Barbarian: Low ("I would like to Rage.")
Bard: High
Cleric: Average
Druid: High
Fighter: Low
Monk: Average
Ranger: Average
Rogue: Average
Sorcerer: Very High
Warlock: High
Wizard: Average

Sub-class choice will obviously have an effect whenever those come online. A champion remains low difficulty, but a battle master is high.

What typically makes a class harder for beginners is having to learn multiple systems. So even though I tend to think of, say, a warlock as. simple class, evocations are actually very hard for a new player to choose and understand because they have no context. They don't even know that Eldritch Blast will be their bread and butter spell unless I tell them. And sorcery points are the bane of my existence with most new players who pick sorcerer.

I agree with all of this, except Warlock, which I would still put at average. In my experience, new players find choosing Invocations no more or less complex than choosing feats or spells. Yes it’s one more thing to choose at level up, but in my experience if they can handle choosing one thing from a list of options, they can handle choosing another. But crucially, in my experience new players find warlock spell slots vastly more intuitive than other casters spell slots. No separation between spell level and slot level, no need to track multiple slots of different levels or choose what slot level to cast a spell at. You just get X slots, one spell per slot, they come back when you take a rest of any kind,and your spells all get stronger as you level up. Easy peasy.

 

[Charlaquin]

Barbarian
Likes… Yelling
Dislikes… Anger management
Complexity: “Hulk smash!”

Bard
Likes… Guitar riffs
Dislikes… Selling out
Complexity: Side gig

Spoiler: And So On

Cleric
Likes… Divine power
Dislikes… Pretending to like gods
Complexity: Agnostic

Druid
Likes… Baby animals
Dislikes… Global warming
Complexity: Granola

Fighter
Likes… Fighting (duh)
Dislikes… Quadratic wizards
Complexity: Linear

Monk
Likes… Punching things
Dislikes… Any monastery that isn’t a Shaolin monastery
Complexity: Zen

Paladin
Likes… Defense? No, smiting things!
Dislikes… Diplomacy, as opposed to smiting things!
Complexity: Lawful stupid

Ranger
Likes… Spellcasting
Dislikes… Fans of non-spellcasting rangers
Complexity: As much as you want, as long as it involves spellcasting

Rogue
Likes… Sneak attack
Dislik— “SNEAK ATTACK!”

Sorcerer
Likes… Long walks on the beach
Dislikes… Letting go of spell components
Complexity: High maintenance

Warlock
Likes… Brooding
Dislikes… Having any meaningful obligation to a warlock patron
Complexity: No one understands me

Wizard
Likes… Book clubs
Dislikes… J.K. Rowling
Complexity: YA

Edit: Put the end of my attempt at humor in a spoiler block so it wouldn't hog anyone's screen.

Unsure whether to give a “haha” or a “love.” A+ post!

 

[Scribe]

And for the longest I believe that there really should have been a low complexity caster class that heavily focused on cantrips.

"I cast Eldritch Blast at..the darkness."

 

[Maxperson]

I point rather to the fact that this is flat out admission that they think it's good design to sacrifice whole classes and archetypes to 'low complexity' and that the Vancian class that needs to play a guessing game with the DM every in-game day with the entire product line as it's list of choices is 'average' complexity, and 'has one button to push that recharges daily' is not low complexity points to being catastrophically bad at judging things.

It is a good idea. A good chunk of players wants low complexity classes to play. The problem is that both are non-caster base classes. There should be one low complexity caster and one low complexity non-caster.

 

[Minigiant]

"I cast Eldritch Blast at..the darkness."

The Warlock is opposite of low complexity.

You can make them simple but it's a lot of moving parts to get there and few options for it.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Barbarians are easily the lowest complexity class in the game. The only build decisions they have to make are subclass and feats, and only one resource to manage in rage uses. The revision adds weapon mastery, but every other martial class also gets that. Fighter is easily more complex, with its second wind (especially now that they have a pool of them and multiple things to spend them on), and action surge - even a very basic champion fighter has to make the “who do I attack?” decision more times per round than a Barbarian does.

I agree with Barb as Medium complexity, due mostly to how fiddly the modifiers for Rage can be. Remembering exactly what your passive buff does on and off your turn is a pretty big mental load. Also, knowing how to optimize things like Reckless Attack plays into the complexity.

A Fighter's per-short-rest abilities are really just "use them whenever you want." No tracking, no real tradeoffs, just there if you need 'em.

 

[Minigiant]

I agree with Barb as Medium complexity, due mostly to how fiddly the modifiers for Rage can be. Remembering exactly what your passive buff does on and off your turn is a pretty big mental load. Also, knowing how to optimize things like Reckless Attack plays into the complexity.

A Fighter's per-short-rest abilities are really just "use them whenever you want." No tracking, no real tradeoffs, just there if you need 'em.

It's less fiddly now since the rage modifier is almost always on and affects thrown attacks, unarmed attacks, and opportunity attacks.

So you only need to know if you are in rage or not.

Also optimizing Reckless attack doesn't come into play until the high levels.

For 50% of playing a Barbarian, it's automatically the simplest class. Then it might or might not be after then depending on the players choices.

They even made managing rages easier as you get one of them back every short rest.

It its the beginner class. I feel some people just don't want to say that because they want fighter to be whether it is or not.