Dungeons and Dragons and Table Top Gaming

[Poobah]

2 hours ago, Werthead said:

fighters had magic-like special abilities

Cool abilities for martial classes is something that's been horribly lacking in 5e. Yes reliably hitting multiple times a round is actually quite strong numerically but ultimately it's boring, and that's not even considering the lack of out of combat utilities.

[Relic]

4 minutes ago, Poobah said:

Cool abilities for martial classes is something that's been horribly lacking in 5e. Yes reliably hitting multiple times a round is actually quite strong numerically but ultimately it's boring, and that's not even considering the lack of out of combat utilities.

Battlemaster, Echo Knight, Arcane Trickster, Ancestral Guardian, Blade Singer, Artificers and Paladins beg to differ. 5e has a ton of options for combat, it's the RP elements that are lacking imho

Edited April 2 by Relic

[Kalbear]

12 minutes ago, Relic said:

Battlemaster, Echo Knight, Arcane Trickster, Ancestral Guardian, Blade Singer, Artificers and Paladins beg to differ. 5e has a ton of options for combat, it's the RP elements that are lacking imho

They can beg to differ but they'd be wrong. Especially as you go up in level when you compare it to the spellcasters. At level 7 a battlemaster gets another technique to use from a list of like 15; a Wizard gets 25 or more different options that they can apply multiple times a day, and pick and choose what they want to do every single day. And those have broad power beyond combat, too. 

And honestly of the above classes the ones that don't suffer like this? Are the ones that are most closely like casters or are actual casters. 

[Relic]

8 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

They can beg to differ but they'd be wrong. Especially as you go up in level when you compare it to the spellcasters. At level 7 a battlemaster gets another technique to use from a list of like 15; a Wizard gets 25 or more different options that they can apply multiple times a day, and pick and choose what they want to do every single day. And those have broad power beyond combat, too. 

And honestly of the above classes the ones that don't suffer like this? Are the ones that are most closely like casters or are actual casters. 

::Shrug

Our table is fine with combat options. I give ayers unique level ups based on their rp, and we homebrew enough magical items to make sure that everyone always has some to do in combat. It's the skill stuff that I find lacking. Ymmv.

I get that casters have more to do in combat at high levels, potentially, but this game is about so much more than that. And a dm should include challenges that enable everyone to do something, combat should almost never just be a "kill all the bads" scenario. That's my take, as someone who has dmed hundreds of hours of dnd since covid, at least.

Edited April 2 by Relic

[Werthead]

2 hours ago, Durckad said:

While I can understand and sympathize with the desire to name 3.5 a cash grab (because some of the push to put it out so early absolutely was) it did clean up and improve quite a bit of the rules at the time. I would happily play 3.5 today if given the chance (though I think I would prefer Core PF1 or PF2 instead) but I'm not so sure about original 3e. 3.5 was definitely a needed release at some point.

The amount of absolute glut of material, either 3rd party or official, during the 3e era was absolutely insane. So many releases that consisted of nothing more than monster books or books full of feats and prestige classes. The market during that time was very thoroughly over-saturated even before 3.5 IMO. Some great stuff, some real dreck, but a lot of pure meh.

Oh yeah, you definitely can but I'm not a big fan of the scanned .pdf copies of older books. The scan quality of some is not great sometimes and I don't find them enjoyable to read beyond being useful for casually referencing. I would much prefer having a physical copy, but of course, YMMV on that.

A revision to 3.0 was needed, but 3.5E was very lacklustre. As Cooke said, they were planning on at least another two years of building up both errata (a lot of which was already homebrewed and disseminated by the internet anyway, like combining Hear and Spot into Sense) as well as developing meatier content to make the "real" 3.5 a more substantial beast with more content and more significant options, like the Player's Option line from 2E (the so-called 2.5E revision, though it wasn't called that at the time) but maybe rolled into revise corebooks.

As it stands, the 3.0-3.5E conversion PDF is less than 5 pages of A4, and half of that is telling people they don't need to go and buy the new rulebooks (so...they didn't, and WotC realised that may have been an error).

DM's Guild has a solid print-on-demand option which works superbly for 3E material on (1-2E stuff is more hit and miss). The only weird thing is that it isn't available on everything and rotates around.

38 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

They can beg to differ but they'd be wrong. Especially as you go up in level when you compare it to the spellcasters. At level 7 a battlemaster gets another technique to use from a list of like 15; a Wizard gets 25 or more different options that they can apply multiple times a day, and pick and choose what they want to do every single day. And those have broad power beyond combat, too. 

And honestly of the above classes the ones that don't suffer like this? Are the ones that are most closely like casters or are actual casters. 

That's D&D's inherent "Jedi problem." A Level 1 fighter hits things and a Level 20 one hits things three times in rapid succession, probably with some kind of cool magical weapon and a few nice combat options from a battery of feats.

A Level 1 wizard can fire off a few cantrips at will and pelt something with a magic missile, at Level 20 they can change reality, shapeshift at will, teleport to another dimension, turn someone inside-out or, depending on what edition and rules you're using, straight-up time travel. These are not really the and same and I don't think ever really can be the same.

It's like the Star Wars TTRPGs' attempts to all "balance" Jedi and normies. That's a doomed venture from the start.

I do think the only solution is to do what BG3 did, simply prevent people from getting that powerful and may resetting the power levels to something sane. A Level 10 wizard is powerful but not that powerful, can fire off a few really badass spells (but not imperil causality or damage a god) but will run dry relatively quickly so needs to marshal their resources, whilst a Level 10 fighter is quite tough but can't one-shot a dragon or anything like that.

[IlyaP]

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

A Level 1 wizard can fire off a few cantrips at will and pelt something with a magic missile, at Level 20 they can change reality, shapeshift at will, teleport to another dimension, turn someone inside-out or, depending on what edition and rules you're using, straight-up time travel. These are not really the and same and I don't think ever really can be the same.

From what I've found online, it looks like in 2E, wizard spells topped out at 9th level? But is that the same as being a 9th level wizard? It's been a long hot minute since I've RP'd 2E. 

Edited April 2 by IlyaP

[Relic]

15 minutes ago, IlyaP said:

From what I've found online, it looks like in 2E, wizard spells topped out at 9th level? But is that the same as being a 9th level wizard? It's been a long hot minute since I've RP'd 2E. 

Nope. Spell levels and pc levels are two different things, much to the confusion of new players.

[IlyaP]

10 minutes ago, Relic said:

Nope. Spell levels and pc levels are two different things, much to the confusion of new players.

Which makes me think that maybe the term "level" is overused and that overuse causes unnecessary confusion. (Maybe we could use 'tiers' instead of levels when referring to spells?)

[Poobah]

4 hours ago, Relic said:

Battlemaster, Echo Knight, Arcane Trickster, Ancestral Guardian, Blade Singer, Artificers and Paladins beg to differ. 5e has a ton of options for combat, it's the RP elements that are lacking imho

I did specifically say "and that's not even considering the lack of out of combat utilities" which is yes where the gap is most huge because even if we accept (which I don't) that a smite or manoeuvre is equivalent to whatever your favourite spell is the big huge problem is indeed that out of combat the 20th (or 10th even) level Wizard or Druid or Bard etc. has dozens of options to help the group, even bend reality to their will. Meanwhile a similar level Fighter or Barbarian might well fail a skill check to do something minor like kick in a particularly heavy door or something, when by all rights they should be herculean and capable of incredible physical feats. It's kinda crazy how little the game designers seem to have to offer for the fantasy of the martial figure given how full myth and legend is with mighty and cunning warriors of all types, not to mention more modern fantasy - Lan from wheel of time could defeat a half dozen 20th level fighters simultaneously, The Bloody Nine would make any number of barbarians of any level piss themselves etc. 

[Kalbear]

6 hours ago, Relic said:

::Shrug

Our table is fine with combat options. I give ayers unique level ups based on their rp, and we homebrew enough magical items to make sure that everyone always has some to do in combat. It's the skill stuff that I find lacking. Ymmv.

I get that casters have more to do in combat at high levels, potentially, but this game is about so much more than that. And a dm should include challenges that enable everyone to do something, combat should almost never just be a "kill all the bads" scenario. That's my take, as someone who has dmed hundreds of hours of dnd since covid, at least.

Sure, but you have to go well out of your way to either nerf the wizards or specifically advantage the martials. To be clear it's not that the martials don't have things to do - it's that they don't have nearly the options to do. And that's in combat - outside of combat spellcasters have WAY more options inherent to their abilities. 

And ultimately anything that doesn't favor kill all the baddies favors spellcasters even more. Want to restrain a flying dragon? Want to capture prisoners? Want to charm the enemy, or make them think they're facing three kobolds in a trenchcoat? Martial classes are most favored when facing a single target that is on the ground, and they're trying to actively kill it; anything that deviates from that and you have to bring in random things to help the others feel needed.

And that's not entirely that hard - things like antimagic things or playing enemies smart and having them go directly after casters always, no matter what - but it still requires that level of balance. 

[Kalbear]

5 hours ago, Werthead said:

That's D&D's inherent "Jedi problem." A Level 1 fighter hits things and a Level 20 one hits things three times in rapid succession, probably with some kind of cool magical weapon and a few nice combat options from a battery of feats.

A Level 1 wizard can fire off a few cantrips at will and pelt something with a magic missile, at Level 20 they can change reality, shapeshift at will, teleport to another dimension, turn someone inside-out or, depending on what edition and rules you're using, straight-up time travel. These are not really the and same and I don't think ever really can be the same.

It's like the Star Wars TTRPGs' attempts to all "balance" Jedi and normies. That's a doomed venture from the start.

I do think the only solution is to do what BG3 did, simply prevent people from getting that powerful and may resetting the power levels to something sane. A Level 10 wizard is powerful but not that powerful, can fire off a few really badass spells (but not imperil causality or damage a god) but will run dry relatively quickly so needs to marshal their resources, whilst a Level 10 fighter is quite tough but can't one-shot a dragon or anything like that.

Another way to do it that I've been thinking about is also similar to the BG3 solution - make it closer to parity by making the overwhelming majority of magic items favor martial users, and give a whole lot of them regularly. You might need to incorporate crafting, or incorporate more precise drops, but I suspect you could give the martials a bit more synergies and power that aligns with power levels of casters in combat. You can also heavily enforce material components, but honestly that will just make casters powerful and not fun.

I think out of combat that's going to be hosed regardless and always favor casters. 

That said, the next D&D iteration is giving more martials more ability to use some of their things out of combat in interesting ways. And with the bastions thing, that might help too. 

[Mentat]

8 hours ago, Relic said:

It's the skill stuff that I find lacking.

I agree Skills is one of 5e's problems. Skills suck. There is no Skill in the game that can't be outclassed by a low level spell, and that makes any class ability related to Skills (Expertise, Extra proficiencies...) suck too. There should be a rule that allowed characters who were great at Skills to produce Spell-like effects through sheer heroic competence by passing a high Difficulty Check.

7 hours ago, Werthead said:

A Level 1 wizard can fire off a few cantrips at will and pelt something with a magic missile, at Level 20 they can change reality, shapeshift at will, teleport to another dimension, turn someone inside-out or, depending on what edition and rules you're using, straight-up time travel. These are not really the and same and I don't think ever really can be the same.

I think 5e did two very good things to limit spellcaster power compared to previous editions: it limited the amount of spell-slots per day casters have (a Wizard won't get his second 6th level spell slot until level 19!), and it introduced the Concentration mechanic, which limits the amount of buffs and/or debuffs a Spell-caster can have active at the same time (this became ludicrous in 3E and Pathfinder 1E). The martial/caster divide still exists, but limit the amount of spells with a casting time of a reaction/bonus action, make concentration checks harder (or limit access to Constitution save proficiency for casters and advantage on concentration checks), move some of the more egregious utility spells to higher levels (Invisibility, Fly, Teleport), and give martial characters more useful/powerful abilities at the mid/high levels and you're almost there.

[Relic]

12 hours ago, Kalbear said:

 

And ultimately anything that doesn't favor kill all the baddies favors spellcasters even more. Want to restrain a flying dragon? Want to capture prisoners? Want to charm the enemy, or make them think they're facing three kobolds in a trenchcoat? Martial classes are most favored when facing a single target that is on the ground, and they're trying to actively kill it; anything that deviates from that and you have to bring in random things to help the others feel needed.

 

Those are some options, but not quite what I meant. I do a lot of secondary objective stuff in combat that requires skill rolls, positioning, defensive strategy,moving from point a to point b, extraction, survive 8 rounds, and blah blah. My Eberron world has hacking , as well, with its own card based mini game and stuff that comes into play in many combats. I've never had a martial complain about lack of combat options. That said, we don't play lvl 15+ stuff, but I remember it from older editions where spellcasters were incredibly op.

[Kalbear]

11 minutes ago, Relic said:

Those are some options, but not quite what I meant. I do a lot of secondary objective stuff in combat that requires skill rolls, positioning, defensive strategy,moving from point a to point b, extraction, survive 8 rounds, and blah blah. My Eberron world has hacking , as well, with its own card based mini game and stuff that comes into play in many combats. I've never had a martial complain about lack of combat options. That said, we don't play lvl 15+ stuff, but I remember it from older editions where spellcasters were incredibly op.

That sounds like a lot of fun! But most of that sounds either like a spellcaster would be emphatically better at it than a martial would be under almost every circumstances (defensive movement, extraction, setting up barriers to movement and chokepoints are all things that casters often have multiple spells to simply take care of it) or you've introduced an entirely different game mechanic to make it better for non-casters - which was the original point, that as written casters have crazy advantages. 

To be clear I think martials have quite a few combat options - at least some of them do - and those can be sufficient. But they're not balanced, at least not compared to what a spellcaster can do. I also think early on things are relatively reasonable and the power levels from around 1-5 are perfectly good and even might favor martials. 

Level 7 is, IMO, where the real imbalance comes in. That's where pure spellcasters get level 4 spells as well as a lot more level 3 spells, and most martials get just a bit more of what they were already doing. As an example at level 5 martials almost all get an extra attack and a proficiency bump, making their attacks hit more and getting more of them. This compares reasonably favorably to level 3 spells in terms of power. In order for martials to get a similar power boost to level 4 spells they'd need to likely get another attack at level 7, or a sufficiently powerful ability at level 7 that would make up for that. And what do they get?

• Barbarians get advantage on initiative
• Fighters can jump further. (among other things, but that was the funniest)
• Monks can evade area attacks fully instead of taking half damage.
• Rangers get a few things, including avoiding being attacked by multiple foes a bit
• Paladins get a small boost to their oath that is usually situational (like making everyone resistant to charm)

I'm not saying these are bad, but they're all highly situational and not particularly powerful. Compare them to, say, one spell - Greater Invisibility - and it's hard to see how they remotely measure up. And that's just one spell! You also have Banishment, or Ice Storm, or Polymorph, or summon spells - and as a wizard you can pick and choose between them! Not only do you get these crazy powerful abilities, you aren't even locked into them for your lifetime - you're locked into them for a long rest. 

Been thinking about this more, and another design way I'd do this is by modeling basically everyone after spell progressions. I don't know that I'd give everyone spells the way previous additions do, but I think you have to at least say 'is this as good as what a wizard can do with a spell slot at that level x times a day' and figure out how to balance it from there. Maybe give them more abilities that recharge after short rests or can be done at will (like extra attack or spirit points) but that spell slot needs to be basically the minimum bar for power. 

Edited April 3 by Kalbear

[baxus]

10 hours ago, Mentat said:

I agree Skills is one of 5e's problems. Skills suck. There is no Skill in the game that can't be outclassed by a low level spell, and that makes any class ability related to Skills (Expertise, Extra proficiencies...) suck too. There should be a rule that allowed characters who were great at Skills to produce Spell-like effects through sheer heroic competence by passing a high Difficulty Check.

Skills were horrible in 3e. So powered up. For example, I loved playing rogue maxed out skill ranks and skill synergies, quite a few skill checks would almost become a mere formality. Combine with high Dexterity and you can sneak around, pick pockets and do stuff like that without breaking a sweat. At level 5 you'd basically need to roll a 1 in order to risk failing a check.

[Werthead]

18 hours ago, IlyaP said:

Which makes me think that maybe the term "level" is overused and that overuse causes unnecessary confusion. (Maybe we could use 'tiers' instead of levels when referring to spells?)

Welcome to Dragon Magazine letters pages, circa 1978

12 hours ago, Mentat said:

I agree Skills is one of 5e's problems. Skills suck. There is no Skill in the game that can't be outclassed by a low level spell, and that makes any class ability related to Skills (Expertise, Extra proficiencies...) suck too. There should be a rule that allowed characters who were great at Skills to produce Spell-like effects through sheer heroic competence by passing a high Difficulty Check.

I think 5e did two very good things to limit spellcaster power compared to previous editions: it limited the amount of spell-slots per day casters have (a Wizard won't get his second 6th level spell slot until level 19!), and it introduced the Concentration mechanic, which limits the amount of buffs and/or debuffs a Spell-caster can have active at the same time (this became ludicrous in 3E and Pathfinder 1E). The martial/caster divide still exists, but limit the amount of spells with a casting time of a reaction/bonus action, make concentration checks harder (or limit access to Constitution save proficiency for casters and advantage on concentration checks), move some of the more egregious utility spells to higher levels (Invisibility, Fly, Teleport), and give martial characters more useful/powerful abilities at the mid/high levels and you're almost there.

Concentration was introduced in 3E, but it worked slightly differently, and I believe the 5E application was a 3E homebrew rule that was popular in some quarters.

[Mentat]

2 hours ago, baxus said:

Skills were horrible in 3e. So powered up. For example, I loved playing rogue maxed out skill ranks and skill synergies, quite a few skill checks would almost become a mere formality. Combine with high Dexterity and you can sneak around, pick pockets and do stuff like that without breaking a sweat. At level 5 you'd basically need to roll a 1 in order to risk failing a check.

I'm not saying you couldn't, but succeeding at those skill checks wouldn't normally be all that impactful in the game unless the DM was leaning very heavily into it, and a 5th level wizard could probably do all those things better with a less intense character build investment (turn invisible to avoid being detected, charm a humanoid to "lend" them whatever was in their pockets, etc).

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

Concentration was introduced in 3E, but it worked slightly differently, and I believe the 5E application was a 3E homebrew rule that was popular in some quarters.

If I remember my 3E correctly, you could interrupt a wizard by damaging them while they were casting a spell (thus, readying an action to attack the wizard as they were casting was a common strategy), but once the spell went off, it lasted for its duration. The limit of one spell that requires concentration at a time is pure 5E. In 3E, you could have a flying invisible wizard with stoneskin casting stinking clouds, or whatever.

[Durckad]

12 hours ago, Mentat said:

I agree Skills is one of 5e's problems. Skills suck. There is no Skill in the game that can't be outclassed by a low level spell, and that makes any class ability related to Skills (Expertise, Extra proficiencies...) suck too. There should be a rule that allowed characters who were great at Skills to produce Spell-like effects through sheer heroic competence by passing a high Difficulty Check.

I think the skill problem is more a D&D problem honestly. Every edition has had some disparity in power between casters and martials and tried to solve it in different ways and none has really succeeded in doing so in a way that satisfies anybody.

1e/2e, wizards were horrible to play at low levels (no cantrips, 1-4 hp at level 1, and one spell, then rely on your crossbow with terrible to hit rating until you get to sleep and recover... maybe if the DM lets you), they leveled much slower than anyone else, but got to play with all of the big guns near the end. I'm not super familiar with high level 2e and 1e so I'm not sure how vast the gulf really was but also I think the idea of balance back then was just very different than it is now so the game was clearly aiming for a very different target than 3e and onwards.

3e was honestly the worst at this, because not only were wizards demigods at mid to high levels, but druids, sorcerers, and clerics too now. Any one of them could buff up and make a non-magic class obsolete. PF did a decent job at trying to fix this, but it did this by just adding more and more numbers and bonuses until you need a program to run your character at high levels.

4e, honestly, may have been the best at this, but it did this by essentially stripping out much of the uniqueness of casters (IMO of course). Again not super familiar with 4e, but out of everything I've heard, it is very, very well-balanced in this respect.

And 5e, by rejecting much of 4e, just simply reintroduced many of the problems that cropped up during 3e. However, Concentration does seriously mitigate many of those issues. Also the fact that spells no longer auto-scale. Unfortunately, making feats much rarer than in 3e removed

Quote

I think 5e did two very good things to limit spellcaster power compared to previous editions: it limited the amount of spell-slots per day casters have (a Wizard won't get his second 6th level spell slot until level 19!), and it introduced the Concentration mechanic, which limits the amount of buffs and/or debuffs a Spell-caster can have active at the same time (this became ludicrous in 3E and Pathfinder 1E). The martial/caster divide still exists, but limit the amount of spells with a casting time of a reaction/bonus action, make concentration checks harder (or limit access to Constitution save proficiency for casters and advantage on concentration checks), move some of the more egregious utility spells to higher levels (Invisibility, Fly, Teleport), and give martial characters more useful/powerful abilities at the mid/high levels and you're almost there.

Very much agreed.

6 hours ago, Mentat said:

I'm not saying you couldn't, but succeeding at those skill checks wouldn't normally be all that impactful in the game unless the DM was leaning very heavily into it, and a 5th level wizard could probably do all those things better with a less intense character build investment (turn invisible to avoid being detected, charm a humanoid to "lend" them whatever was in their pockets, etc).

From what I remember, this was a pretty common complaint of skills in 3e. Well, not so much skills, because they were still pretty useful, but that so many skills could be rendered obsolete with a simple spell. So yeah, the more things change...

Quote

If I remember my 3E correctly, you could interrupt a wizard by damaging them while they were casting a spell (thus, readying an action to attack the wizard as they were casting was a common strategy), but once the spell went off, it lasted for its duration. The limit of one spell that requires concentration at a time is pure 5E. In 3E, you could have a flying invisible wizard with stoneskin casting stinking clouds, or whatever.

This is correct. Concentration in 3e and Concentration in 5e are only kinda, vaguely similar. 3e does not limit the number of spells you can have cast at a time, 5e does. 5e measures whether you can keep the spell active while taking damage or being interrupted while the spell is up. 3e measures your ability to successfully cast defensively or while taking damage or being distracted. I've honestly never heard of 5e Concentration being a home rule during 3e but I guess it's possible...

Honestly, the Concentration skill in 3e is one of the weaknesses of the skill system. Every spellcaster takes Concentration. It's such an incredibly important skill for spellcasters that it's almost mandatory. It's a skill point dump. If a skill is mandatory, then just make it not dependent on being a skill, make it a class feature for spellcasters or something. There is no reason for it to be a skill.

10 hours ago, Kalbear said:

Been thinking about this more, and another design way I'd do this is by modeling basically everyone after spell progressions. I don't know that I'd give everyone spells the way previous additions do, but I think you have to at least say 'is this as good as what a wizard can do with a spell slot at that level x times a day' and figure out how to balance it from there. Maybe give them more abilities that recharge after short rests or can be done at will (like extra attack or spirit points) but that spell slot needs to be basically the minimum bar for power. 

Congratulations! You've just invented 4e.

[baxus]

20 hours ago, Mentat said:

I'm not saying you couldn't, but succeeding at those skill checks wouldn't normally be all that impactful in the game unless the DM was leaning very heavily into it, and a 5th level wizard could probably do all those things better with a less intense character build investment (turn invisible to avoid being detected, charm a humanoid to "lend" them whatever was in their pockets, etc).

Sure, but invisibility doesn't mean you move silently, and there's limits to what you can ask from a charmed humanoid even if the humanoid in question fails their save. Also, how many invisibility or charm person can a 5th level wizard cast per day? 5th level rogue with carefully selected skills could try to hide and move silently dozens if not hundreds of times per day, and do it at +10 (8 ranks for 5th level +2 for some skill synergy) + Dex mod. (which is rarely below +3, at least).

That's not to say that casters are not powerful in their own right, but when we are talking about skills then rogue is THE character class.

20 hours ago, Mentat said:

If I remember my 3E correctly, you could interrupt a wizard by damaging them while they were casting a spell (thus, readying an action to attack the wizard as they were casting was a common strategy), but once the spell went off, it lasted for its duration. The limit of one spell that requires concentration at a time is pure 5E. In 3E, you could have a flying invisible wizard with stoneskin casting stinking clouds, or whatever.

Yes, you could interrupt a wizard (or any other caster) by damaging them while they were casting a spell, but they would be allowed a concentration skill check to see if they resist the interruption. If I remember correctly, DC was 10+damage dealt. Again, with skills being what they are in 3e, wizard would very quickly get to the point where they would be unlikely to fail that check.

[Kalbear]

13 hours ago, Durckad said:

Congratulations! You've just invented 4e.

I mean, kinda? I'm saying less about having spell slots and everyone having spells or even the same kind of mechanics, and more looking at it as: is this ability in general as power as the standard spells you can get at that slot and with the amount of things that you can use? And again you need to balance it with how many times it comes up, how powerful it is in and out of combat, flavor parts, etc - but that should be how you balance it. 

As an example, comparing champion level 7 (more jumping!) with 4th level spells shows an obvious imbalance, even if you can jump every single turn. If you want wizards to be the master of versatility but having to plan for and make tough choices, and want other classes to have more niche abilities that are less flexible that's fine too - but you need to balance that with increasing that power level too. Ultimately I think D&D suffers greatly from not having a clear idea of what each class is really good at and what they're not good at, and then balancing around that behavior; it is clearly missing intentionality. Which is weird, because WotC owns it and they're absolutely stellar at that sort of thing with MtG.