Quote Originally Posted by Snails View Post
I am not so much interested in rehashing the power level of Counterspell, Shield, Absorb Elements -- for purposes of this discussion I accept that the Wizard get great stuff at the cost of a slot is okay by some reasonable definition of okay. That said, I do think there is a serious Action Economy misbalance here. Casting two spells in a round is casting two spells in a round, and that is super powerful.
The thing is that this whole issue boils down to "they screwed up Shield and opportunity attacks".

If you look at the classes that get direct access to Counterspell and Shield in core, they're collectively the classes with the worst default passive defenses. They have tiny HD, no real armor proficiencies, and can't just slam their Dexterity to the maximum to compensate like a Rogue can. It seems pretty clear to me that the intent is that Sorcerers and Wizards feel squishy because they have to spend spell slots and their reaction on defending themselves against a concerted attack. Meanwhile, the Fighter's got good HP and AC pretty much by default, and can spend their reaction to punish anyone who tries to move away from them and towards the squishy guys. Feels nice and fair, right?

Then they made it trivial to pick up armor proficiency through the "optional" feat subsystem, and made opportunity attacks deal such a pathetic amount of damage that no-one's going to be terribly bothered if they get hit by one. Oops! I definitely agree that martial classes should get more features that buff opportunity attacks and/or broaden the number of situations where you can make them, because "don't ignore the fight-y guy with a weapon" is definitely something that 5e is missing. I kinda like the idea of making it so opportunity attacks auto-crit at around the point where Extra Attack comes online — threatening someone with 2d10+Str damage is going to be scary longer than 1d10+Str, it does fun stuff with Crusher/Piercer/Slasher, and it would mean that the tanky frontliner classes (read: Barbarian and Paladin) would have some nasty opportunity attacks (Paladins could smite, and Barbarians would actually have a good use-case for Brutal Critical...).

...

Personally, I think the big gap that I'd like to see filled is damage types and the different saves. Namely, it's kinda lame that spellcasters have such a pseudo-monopoly on targeting alternate saving throws or exploiting damage vulnerabilities. I don't have a good solution to this.