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Hi dakka, really glad I found my way over here. I've been introducing my boys (7 and 5 years old) to the concept of role playing and they've taken to it well enough. I just grabbed a little whiteboard and some dice and made up some nonsense about treasure hunting in a goblin cave. At this stage I'm just making up stuff on the fly and they're happy to go along with it.
I've also done a bit of tabletop wargaming with the older one in a similar way. A promising start.

I also downloaded and played the Wizards of the coast kids intro games Heroes of Hesiod which were a hit with the older lad but I'm hoping to take it a bit further. I want to get into character creation and tell our own stories and bring in a little more game structure as things go on without blowing the kid's mind (and mine) and ruining the fun.

Does anyone have any advice on the very most basics I can get away with that will be a solid foundation to build on?

Many companys make "kid versions of their rpgs.

For instance the now defunct eden studios made "Adventure Maximus".

https://www.edenstudios.net/maximus.html



Which you can still get off ebay for about 25 bucks.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Adventure-Maximus-RPG-Core-Rules-Box-Set-NIB-Factory-Sealed-NEW-Eden-Studios-KID/283308025804?epid=1548161296&hash=item41f67967cc:g:-jcAAOSwDFZcGFKR

If you're looking at eventually going into D&D specifically, I'd start with the very basics of that, the D20+Stat resolution mechanics. Let them assign 5 pre-picked numbers (I'd go -1, 0, +1, +1, +2, +4 for a good range) to each of the six Ability Scores as a form of character creation, and play a session or two with just that. No classes, no spells, maybe not even that much combat, just to get them used to rolling Dexterity to be agile or Wisdom to detect things ect. Let them learn what a good or bad stat does for their potential and how they can make the best use of those to roleplay.

After that, rather than introduce the full array of skills, show them the chart and let them pick 3 they like the sound of for their character. Give them a +2 bonus to these rolls, introducing the idea of Proficiency and the next step of complexity (you could also let them pick a weapon instead if they want to be a better fighter). The full array of Skills could be daunting on the sheet, but aside from those you're Proficient in, they're all derived from your Ability Scores anyway so it's what you've already been doing.

Once they're comfortable with that, introduce a more combat-heavy session where you go over the basics of Initiative, hit points, Actions and Bonus Actions, in-combat movement. Nothing too complex, just have them bash some goblins or kobolds and learn the ropes.

With that under their belt, you can probably then introduce classes and the extra features that come with them. Class features are daunting at first and there's a lot of them even at first level for some, but if you already have a solid grip on the core mechanics, it will be much less of a leap and more a natural progression. Perhaps assign them a class based on what they've been doing up to this point, so if one's been really fighty and the other sneaky, give them Fighter and Rogue respectively. That gets around the idea of them wanting to pick something fiddly like a Warlock or Monk when they're not necessarily ready for it.

Hope that's of some use. Obviously, you may find they take really well to one element but struggle on another, but this should give you a decent framework. On the other hand, if you want to introduce them to roleplaying more generally, maybe look up a bunch of one-page RPGs that are all over the place online, they're often really simple so a great compromise between going straight to D&D and making it up as you go.

Thanks Paradigm. I'be still to have a good look at the rules and see what makes sense.

I maybe forgot to say I'm more or less a total noob at this myself. Had a brief into to DnD when I was 13 (the DM was also 13) That was in the 90s! Then I played maybe two sessions of Eberon some 12 years ago and some very patchy RPG experiences since. I'm going to have to learn the ropes myself before I can DM for the kids. That said I can see the boy wanting to DM his own stories.

That said I'm not married to DnD here I could get into a starwars based RPG if the boy was into it but we're reading LOtR these days and he's diggin' the idea of being a Hobbit burgler (Halfling Rogue?) raiding an evil mummy's pyramid (it's all a bit Indiana Jones actually.) anyway... More story less rules is deffinately the way to go so thanks for the pointers.

Any pointers to a good quality source of one page RPGs?

If you want a system that is heavily favoured towards story and less to rules/crunch, then you should check out the FATE systems (FATE core and accelerated). The main rules are available for free from the Evil Hat website

There's multiple licensed properties which use the system (such as Dresden Files and the Atomic Robo webcomic) along with some fun little unique settings, like The Secrets of Cats, which basically has you playing as a cat in our world, but where cats are secretly protecting us, their "burdens", from supernatural threats.

Fate is also really simple on a mechanical level (a test in the system literally boils down to pick which skill is being used for the test, roll 4 D6 where 1-2 is a minus, 3-4 is blank and 5-6 is a plus, each plus improves your skill value by one, each minus reduces it by one, compare resultant skill value to the target value), so making your own setting using its rules is a piece of cake compared to trying to port other rulesets. Just come up with some stunts and powers (you don't even need to make that many as you can make some up during character creation with your players), what skills your world will have and off you go.

Honestly, if I was GMing kids (which I do) make sure to focus on Role-play and not roll-play.

Many times, I don't even give them stats. Just some background about their characters, a map, and some adventure hooks and see what happens. The mechanics are only there to facilitate story-telling.

That's a good point, the kids I play with keep wanting to roll for everything, especially if someone else is trying to accomplish something.

Also to the poster right above me, I have a strange question. Are you the same "Easy E" who was a big part of making all that amazing and in depth Warhammer 40k campaign "Battle for Ammoriss". And all those Aeronautica Imperialis campaigns too? (War Over Zephyrus, Investigation of Bin Mazar, Feud of the Red Clouds, and Cleansing of Grex Silex). Those were really great, I wish I had found them when the global campaign was actually happening.

Yes. That was me.

Glad you enjoyed it.

Yes, I did enjoy it. Good reads, and creatively done. It's cool to meet you, Easy E, I didn't know you were a part of Dakka.

Edit: It's weird not knowing you were on Dakka seeing how many threads you've started. Maybe because I've only been a member for about a year and a half and stay almost exclusively in the painting and modeling section.

possible change to the ranger class then

Hmm I play a ranger in my campaign and haven't felt left out so far, my DM does like to spend some time on travelling and exploring bits though :-)

Jeremy Crawford has denied that the actual class is being changed. He then mentions that what they're going to be testing is essentially 'add-on' features for a few classes, the Ranger included, rather than a revision of the class.
https://twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/status/1141451770377334784
https://twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/status/1141455272939884544

Honestly, the only issue with Ranger as a class is the Beastmaster subclass, which is ironically less useful that being any other class and controlling a pet creature. There's a really easy fix to it as well, change 2 things and you've done a great deal for the subclass:

- Rather than have the Beastmaster swap one of their attacks for their beast's, just let the beast roll its own initiative and act independently, still controlled by the Beastmaster player but without them having to sacrifice part of their turn to get it to do anything.

- Let the beast roll some variation on Hit Dice so that it levels alongside you. I know they get HP equal to the Ranger Level x4 if that's higher than their base HP, but that means at level 10 they have 40HP, and against the sort of stuff a level 10 party might be fighting, that's potentially a total life expectancy of one spell or one big hit.

Favoured Enemy, Favoured Terrain, all the other subclasses, they're all really rather fun and useful if you pick the right ones for your campaign. We have a Gloomstalker in my campaign that does feature a lot of extended travel, and he's very often the MVP when it comes to avoiding some of the nastier denizens of the world. Favoured Terrain, when it does come into play, can be really, really helpful for a game with a lot of travel.

I don't really thing things like favoured terrain or alert are fun as they block out cool storytelling opportunities for the DM (like getting lost or ambushed).

Luckily I'm a hunter ranger so I like killing animals rather than petting them :-p

I think it just means you have to be clever about those things. Sure, the Ranger can't get lost, but find a way to split up the party and suddenly, the rest are vulnerable. The Ranger player can feel cool as they lead the party through dangerous lands, right up until the fog or sandstorm or blizzard rolls in and the paladin and wizard get turned around and wander off, leaving the Ranger equipped to track them down, but creating a great deal of tension as the others get more and more lost and stray closer to danger.

I used this a couple of times recently. The way I see it, it's not so much about foiling the DM but more about creating an opportunity for a Ranger to really feel like they're having a cool moment. In the same way that a magic-based puzzle is a chance for the Sorcerer or Wizard to shine, a big duel or melee is the Fighter or Paladin's showcase, leading the party through dangerous, hostile terrain they've explicitly chosen a feature to be able to overcome is that chance in the spotlight for a Ranger. In a brawl they're outclassed by the straight combat classes, as casters they're outclassed by most, but when it comes to navigating the wilderness and avoiding its dangers, they're in their element.

Sure, you lose out on the opportunity to pull a sudden ambush or whatever, but the tradeoff is that you get to reward the Ranger player with something only they can do. And if you have a plot point that desperately requires an ambush, you can just hang onto it until the terrain changes! Unless your campaign has only two biomes, there's going to be plenty of times where it's not in play.


Though I admit Alert can be a pain in the backside. I had a real powergamer in an old campaign that took his Passive Perception up to 28 at level 5 through Alert, Sentinel Shield and Wis20. That was obnoxious, but it was really a player issue rather than a rules one.

The issue with the Ranger's class features is that they're completely hit or miss. IF you are in your favored terrain, for example, great, you're awesome. But the rest of the time your class feature does absolutely nothing. It's the same for favored enemies. That's great if your campaign is centered around fighting a particular race, but then all the other times, that level might as well be blank. The player also tends to have basically no control over those elements also; those things are in the hands of the DM.

I mean, imagine trying to play something like Waterdeep: Dragon Heist as a ranger. The whole thing takes place in an urban environment, where favored terrain will NEVER apply. (Dungeon of the Mad Mage at least would have Underdark apply, but it perfectly highlights the "all-or-none" issue of the class feature.)

Some fair points, I didn't think about it that way.

One of my companions seems to think that when I'm in favoured terrain I will immediately know the way to a place I've never been before. That's not correct right? I've certainly been resisting that being the case as it doesn't make sense to me and isn't covered by the 'doesn't get lost' clause imo.

Kroem wrote:Some fair points, I didn't think about it that way.

One of my companions seems to think that when I'm in favoured terrain I will immediately know the way to a place I've never been before. That's not correct right? I've certainly been resisting that being the case as it doesn't make sense to me and isn't covered by the 'doesn't get lost' clause imo.

Yeah, it's not a GPS or sat-nav. If you're trying to reach the other side of the forest, it means you won't get turned around and end up coming out the same side you went in. f you're trying to reach a location you're not familiar with, I'd say this part of the rule is most relevant:

'When you make an Intelligence or Wisdom check related to your favored terrain, your proficiency bonus is doubled if you are using a skill that you’re proficient in.'

So the Survival check to navigate and follow your map or the directions you were given will receive a fairly significant boost, but it doesn't mean you just magically find your way there. The part about difficult terrain not slowing your travel also means you'll reach it faster than otherwise, and you'll be far more precise in tracking other creatures in that terrain. I concede it's somewhat situational, but it can still be very powerful.

streamdragon wrote:The issue with the Ranger's class features is that they're completely hit or miss. IF you are in your favored terrain, for example, great, you're awesome. But the rest of the time your class feature does absolutely nothing. It's the same for favored enemies. That's great if your campaign is centered around fighting a particular race, but then all the other times, that level might as well be blank. The player also tends to have basically no control over those elements also; those things are in the hands of the DM.

I mean, imagine trying to play something like Waterdeep: Dragon Heist as a ranger. The whole thing takes place in an urban environment, where favored terrain will NEVER apply. (Dungeon of the Mad Mage at least would have Underdark apply, but it perfectly highlights the "all-or-none" issue of the class feature.)

I do think it's kind of on the DM to provide some information to a Ranger player when making these picks. Oftentimes, it'll be obvious if a certain type of enemy or terrain is going to feature heavily or not just based on the way the world is set up, so I don't think there's anything wrong with the DM nudging the player towards, say, picking Undead if they represent a major force in the world. or showing them the map and what terrain types are going to come up a lot. I guess a lot of that depends to some extent on the nature of the campaign. If it's a big old sandbox featuring everything somewhere then obviously it's going to be harder to keep it useful, but in a smaller or more focused campaign or world I think it can be fairly easy, between player and DM, to make sure the choices mean something.

If I was running an all-urban campaign, I would certainly offer Urban as a Favoured Terrain option.

 Paradigm wrote:

I do think it's kind of on the DM to provide some information to a Ranger player when making these picks. Oftentimes, it'll be obvious if a certain type of enemy or terrain is going to feature heavily or not just based on the way the world is set up, so I don't think there's anything wrong with the DM nudging the player towards, say, picking Undead if they represent a major force in the world. or showing them the map and what terrain types are going to come up a lot. I guess a lot of that depends to some extent on the nature of the campaign. If it's a big old sandbox featuring everything somewhere then obviously it's going to be harder to keep it useful, but in a smaller or more focused campaign or world I think it can be fairly easy, between player and DM, to make sure the choices mean something.

If I was running an all-urban campaign, I would certainly offer Urban as a Favoured Terrain option.

I agree that a session 0 can alleviate some of the issues of selecting favored enemies or terrain, but it doesn't solve the underlying issues of those features: their all or nothing nature. Similarly House-Ruling something generally means that thing is broken in the first place; it's one thing to house-rule something for flavor or to make it better fit your world. It's another thing to House-Rule something just to make it work. I'm not saying you shouldn't allow Urban as a terrain type, if anything I'm saying that it probably should have been in the list the whole time. Or even better, redesign or replace the rule instead of holding onto something that didn't really work in it's original edition either.

I would say Ranger is definitely the most poorly designed class. Beastmaster is obviously borked, I do not know why the design is so inconsistent between beastmaster and a familiar for example. Allowing the beast to act separately with some boosts to HP and attacks I think works out fine and it is no longer a lame subclass.

The other stuff I am in two minds about. On the one hand, exploration and survival are two of my favourite things in Dungeons and Dragons, and I dislike anything that just removes those elements from gameplay. But if you work to make your terrain pretty varied, then it will not be a problem. Like my Ranger PC has Underground and Hills as his favoured terrains. Underground has been super useful (I run a house rule that says if you do not get a comfortable night's sleep you do not recover Hit Dice, and Favoured Terrain allows the Ranger to make everyone comfortable). Hills is useful in a few regions that they have passed through a couple of times. The rest of the time, the Ranger is pretty useless at navigation because the PC did not take Survival as one of his proficiencies.

But I think favoured terrain is poor design. Something like Advantage on all survival checks, or doubled proficiency in Survival or some other "always on but not automatic success" feature would be better design in my view.

My Ranger PC is the most disatisfied with his character of all of my players. Part of that is personality, but a big part is that he is kinda at the whims of the group with regard to his special abilities. Definitely the worst designed of the 5e classes, and most of them are pretty awesome.

Ranger is probably just a stupid idea for a class. A fighter with high wisdom and proficiency in survival would be able to fill the same "fictional" role.

I've had two rangers in groups so far, and both seemed to suffer from their class perks being useless at times. I'm not sure why favored terrain, or enemy, needs to be so limited. Why not let the Ranger spend a rest "researching" their terrain, or an enemy to get better knowledge of them and get stacking bonuses as the adventure goes on that increases their value and flexibility to the group, rather than a limited bonus that's great "when it matters" but is useless at all other times?

I saw this when first reading through the rules and avoided Ranger because of it. I avoided Wild Magic sorcerer for the same reason, cause I saw "when the DM calls for it" on mechanics and thought why? I do have a Wild Sorcerer in one of my games, and the DM has been remembering to call on him to make use of his mechanics, but it seems like a hassle compared to simply building the mechanic to function without the DM remembering to call for it.

You see, Wild Magic Sorcerer, there's your competition for the worst designed class in the game!

I do think gearing the Ranger more towards a 'know your enemy' sort of thing with a focus on research, finding weaknesses, that sort of thing might be a cool idea. Give them an almost Witcher-esque ability to study and track creatures, craft antidotes and healing stuff, focus their abilities around preparedness rather than specialisation on a handful of things. It'd need a complete rework of the class, but it could be interesting.

Hell, maybe even something like a 'floating proficiency' where over a rest you can choose to focus on Nature, Survival or Medicine, for instance. Freeing up a proficiency slot for something else at character creation and allowing you to specialise on the fly, and if you choose something you're already proficient in, you get Expertise instead.

Floating proficiency sounds really cool (and really useful).

It's probably going into subjective territory, but Ranger as a class fantasy, as to me always been about being that one person in the party who is ready. The person whose been out in the wilderness and had to adapt to survive.

Specialization itself seems antithetical to this image for me.

Ranger is riding a bunch of horses. You are Aragorn, leading the party through the wilderness and performing almost supernatural feats of tracking.
You are Jon Snow or Fitzchivallry Farseer, with a wolf at your side that you have a supernatural bond with.
You are Drizzt or Legolas, a two weapon or archery specialist.
You are the Nature Paladin to Druid's Natjure Cleric.
You are Van Helsing, the monster hunting specialist who targets one hated foe above all others.

It is pretty incoherant, and does not really do any of the fantasies justice because of this. And I am pretty sure the designers know that, and have known it for years.

Wild Magic sorcerer is pretty weaksauce, but to me it is obviously supposed to be "wacky" rather than powerful. I just assign the responsibility to a dice roll after every spellcast to take my judgement out of it, but it is definitely poor from a design point of view. A shame, because 5e managed to make Sorcerer feel different to Wizard much better than previous editions.

 Da Boss wrote:
I would say Ranger is definitely the most poorly designed class. Beastmaster is obviously borked, I do not know why the design is so inconsistent between beastmaster and a familiar for example. Allowing the beast to act separately with some boosts to HP and attacks I think works out fine and it is no longer a lame subclass.

The other stuff I am in two minds about. On the one hand, exploration and survival are two of my favourite things in Dungeons and Dragons, and I dislike anything that just removes those elements from gameplay. But if you work to make your terrain pretty varied, then it will not be a problem. Like my Ranger PC has Underground and Hills as his favoured terrains. Underground has been super useful (I run a house rule that says if you do not get a comfortable night's sleep you do not recover Hit Dice, and Favoured Terrain allows the Ranger to make everyone comfortable). Hills is useful in a few regions that they have passed through a couple of times. The rest of the time, the Ranger is pretty useless at navigation because the PC did not take Survival as one of his proficiencies.

But I think favoured terrain is poor design. Something like Advantage on all survival checks, or doubled proficiency in Survival or some other "always on but not automatic success" feature would be better design in my view.

My Ranger PC is the most disatisfied with his character of all of my players. Part of that is personality, but a big part is that he is kinda at the whims of the group with regard to his special abilities. Definitely the worst designed of the 5e classes, and most of them are pretty awesome.

Ranger is probably just a stupid idea for a class. A fighter with high wisdom and proficiency in survival would be able to fill the same "fictional" role.

I definitely agree about it being the worst designed class. In a game with the actually well designed Warlock and even a pretty good Fighter, how the Ranger made it through playtest and QC remains a mystery to me.

Beast Master is an interesting conundrum to me. I think at least part of the disconnect is designer intent and player expectations (mine included). I see Beast Master ranger and think something along the lines of Rexxar from World of Warcraft or at the very least Dar from The Beastmaster; the designers, it seems, did not. They thought "guy who takes his dog hunting", because that's about all the Beast Master archetype does. I can see why they would split from the Familiar rules, because Familiars cannot attack and I assume an Animal Companion should be doing that. I can also understand not allowing an Animal Companion to deliver touch-spells like a Familiar, since the bond isn't arcane as with a Familiar. But none of that makes the Animal Companion rules good. The 7th level feature of "bonus action to command" should have been baseline, but even then it runs into the issue of forcing a Beast Master Ranger away from Two Weapon Fighting (which requires your Bonus Action for your off-hand attack). It's absolutely mind numbingly dumb that you can command an Animal Companion where to move for no action, but cannot command it to do so safely (i.e., take the Disengage or Dodge actions) without spending an entire Action on it.
"Move over there"? No time at all.
"Move over there and don't get hit"? "Move WAY over there"? (i.e. Dash) Your whole turn? It's so bad I would have fired the designer almost on the spot.

Help as a bonus action? Sure. It's an action for most PCs, but why not let the Animal Companion do it for a Bonus instead. Sacrificing an Animal Companion's (almost certainly lackluster) attack to make sure the actual PC hits? Sounds great. Sounds like what an Animal Companion should be doing at the VERY least.

I get that the designers wanted to make sure that the Animal Companion didn't completely overshadow the actual Player Character. That makes sense. I can also see the argument on making sure that the Beast Master Ranger doesn't essentially become two characters. Although in a game where casters are still summoning demons and devils and angels and celestial badgers, is it really an issue? Probably not.

As to favored terrain, keep in mind that it does basically work the way you suggest in that it gives double proficiency with all INT and WIS based skills (including Survival, Perception, Nature, Arcana, etc.) when in your favored terrain. So if your player had taken Survival they would still be better than a Fighter with Survival and an equal Wisdom modifier. And it does give the Ranger some utility over the Fighter in various bullet point forms (not slowed by Difficult Terrain, bonus tracking information, etc.) but it still has that all or nothing issue. I can't think of another class feature that basically just "turns on and off" like that. Favored Enemy, at the VERY least, gives the Ranger a language spoken by the target (if any). Sure, if you Beasts, Oozes, or Plants you're probably not getting much, but it's at least usable outside of your actual Favored Enemy.

I've honestly lost where I was going with most of this post beyond, "yeah, the Ranger just seems really poorly designed in general". I think one of the issues is the designers trying desperately to hold onto a template that didn't really work in its original format, and tacking on features that didn't work either. They should have started fresh from the ground up. I can honestly understand why they kept the Ranger in the PHB. If they had cut the Ranger or turned it into a Fighter archetype people would have crapped their pants in rage. I honestly think it would have been fine as a Fighter archetype, sort of like a Divine version of the Eldritch Knight, but I have 0 issues with them keeping it as a full class. Well, I guess I have 1 issue, which is their actual implementation of said class.

Yeah, that's true, Ranger is trying to be a lot of different things. On the other hand though, stuff like Fighter or Cleric are amazingly versatile classes that can support a whole bunch of different archetypes, so it's clearly not impossible. Honestly, the Ranger subclasses (Beastmaster aside) do a decent job of catering to those roles, it's just the core class features that can be a little bit lacklustre in the wrong circumstances.

On the other hand though, I remember the Revised Ranger Unearthed Arcana being just as far the other way, it was ridiculously good as I remember it (I didn't actually allow it in my game, just reading through it was enough to set the alarm bells off). I wonder if the trick isn't so much about power level as it is about how well it represents the ideal of the class. The core class features need to represent what's iconic, and as you point out, the sheer variety in what people think when they see Ranger means the subclasses do so much of the heavy lifting. Any type of Fighter is going to get use out of Second Wind and Action Surge, any kind of Sorcerer will make use of Metamagic, but I'm not sure specialisation on specific terrain/enemy types does the same for Rangers...


My issue with Wild Magic isn't it's power level, it is the 'wackiness' of it. I try and run very serious games, and that just seems incompatible with the subclass. I've only ever played with one once, and it ended a very dark and heavy oneshot on a completely mistimed comedic note as, on killing the last monster, all the Sorcerer's hair fell out... Now you could just say 'don't use the Wild Magic table at dramatic moments', but then you end up taking features away from the class and inherently disadvantaging that player. I'm honestly fine with the idea of generating unpredictable effects based on magic use, but I just wish it wasn't all such stupid effects that sit completely at odds with a non-comedy game.

Aye, I saw that, was that the one with the stack of bonuses if they attacked first?
I think the 5e designers overall did a great job, and stuff like Bard, Rogue and Paladin are in their best ever version in any Dungeons and Dragons game, as well as stuff like Fighter. That they did this while keeping the game mechanically simple and accessible is a great achievement. At the same time they got a reasonable balance between casters and non casters. That one of the classes is a bit lacklustre is not a big issue to me - in 3e, Bard and Rogue and Ranger were all three pretty cruddy, and Fighter and Paladin pretty quickly fell behind the full caster classes (Cleric or Druidzilla was a common complaint!).

Good point on the inherent comedy in Wild Mage. It is a shame they did not give a third archetype for Sorc in the PHB. You can be a dragon or a weirdo, that is all it seems.

Yeah, it basically made them better assassins than actual Assassin Rogues, plus a whole bunch of other stuff. Initiative bonuses, major buffs to attacking stuff that hadn't gone yet, a version of Favoured Enemy that was really quite ludicrous in the bonuses it handed out. There's a reason it's not resurfaced since (though I believe there was mention recently of a second attempt in UA, much like the Artificer just had).

Sorcerers really do benefit from Xanathar's, more than most other classes. Divine Soul, Storm Sorcery and Shadow Magic are really flavourful, interesting subclasses. I'm playing a Divine Soul Sorcerer at the minute, and it's really rather neat to have access to a whole bunch of Cleric spells and be a really rather decent healer in a pinch (especially in a party lacking a Cleric and getting most of their healing from a Druid when I'm not there).

Sorcerers in general I find so much more fun in game than Wizards, even though conceptually Wizards are much more my cup of tea. I find the Wizard subclasses really lacklustre for the most part, they're fine power-wise but they're just not that interesting beyond making you better at a specific kind of magic.

I've played Druid, Warlock, and Sorcerer and I have to say Sorcerer is truly so much freaking fun.

Divine Soul seems more than a little overpowered to me mechanically. I mean, let's take the Sorcerer, who is foremost balanced by a limited spell list, and give them Cleric spells... Well at least it's fething fun! My favorite character right now is an insane Tiefling who thinks everyone else is a figment of her imagination and all she does and buff and debuff her "meat shields" while laughing manically and coming up with ways to try and abuse the persuasion mechanic.

Balance I suppose is kind of secondary to fun factor for me here, and sorcerer just has so much flavor. I think its my favorite class and I haven't even played most of the classes yet. It's just too attractive to me, it's hard to think about breaking out and trying the others.

I DM waaaay more than I play, so balance is important to me. 5e is mostly my favourite edition, with out of the PHB 3.5 being my second favourite (just don't add too much splat!).

I have never played 1e though. But I feel like I am not missing too much with that.

For me as DM, the key thing with balance is that it's relative among the people playing. So it's not so much about classes as it is about the whole melting pot of classes, stats, magic items and such and whether that leaves everyone able to do their thing.

I have no problem running for with powerful PCs so long as no one's lagging behind and thus feeling left out. All 3 PCs in the game I'm currently running can punch way above their weight (for reference, they're a Fighter, Paladin/Fighter and Ranger), and that's not an issue for me at all because I can just hit them harder. If a PC ends up falling behind or there's a big imbalance and I sense it's annoying the player, that's when I start tweaking stuff. That tends to be a scale of meddling from 'give them a new magic item' to 'fiddle with a class feature' to 'would you just like some stat boosts' depending on how severe the issue seems to be.