The normal way literature handles people of dramatically different capabilities coordinating is through sheer coincidence: stuff just happens that coincidentally lets the 'ordinary human' shine. This is something DMs can do, but there's no real metric for how much is appropriate and it's one more thing on the DMs plate. So... what would it do if the mundane characters were entitled to a certain number of favorable coincidences, presumably varying in power as tier increases? It seems like a fair amount of work to actually spell out enough examples of what this means, but maybe it's worth considering even so?
Note the word "typically", and note the word "most". Not every caster has a low armor class and a smaller amount of hit points. However, most casters do - because of the reasons Linklite mentioned and a few others - and stating that is not incorrect.
The article you linked is extremely flawed. For one, it is arguing that all casters are not "squishy" because a select few, extremely min-maxed casters can be relatively strong in that regard. By comparing the top demographic of one group and comparing it to the middle or low demographic of another group, they are already proving that there own claim has a weak footing to stand on.
Secondly, the primary example it uses is also massively flawed. It is pitting one CR 7 monster against each one of the two level 6 adventurers in their example. Not only that, but the spellcaster is extremely optimized, and the martial is not. Also by pitting the adventurers against an encounter that has an amount of adjusted XP in it that is greater than their daily budget, it ensures that they will both survive at a similar rate, which is not very long. This ignores the fact that though they may die in the same round, one may be at -40 hit points when they die, and the other could be at exactly 0. The way they presented it, there wouldn't be difference in terms of how "sturdy" these two adventurers were, even if that were the case.
Thirdly, the article criticizes Barbarian's Rage because it is too resource-limited. Due to this it by and large disqualifies it from their metrics of "sturdiness," despite the fact that it would massively change how they rate that class. Earlier, however, they talk about spells like Shield and Silvery Barbs and how they play a massive role in how strong casters are defensively, despite the fact that those spells, too, are a very limited resource. So this article seems to picking and choosing what metrics they value in order to push their argument.
Fourthly, this article classifies this as a "fallacy", while ignoring the actual definition of the word. An actual fallacy is a mistaken belief based off a weak and unsound argument, but the "Squishy Caster Fallacy" is by no means a fallacy, since the fact that casters typically are less "sturdy" than martials and that they have more limits on raising there armor class and hit points is fully true. Coming from someone who loves researching logical fallacies for fun, you can't say, "Here is my opinion and my somewhat weak support for it, everyone else who disagrees is being illogical and wrong."
TL;DR: One random and somewhat lame article is not enough to convince me that casters are typically just as strong in terms of hit points and armor class when that just really isn't true.
Oh, you're good at climbing? Well the caster's even better with spider climb
Need to get between two buildings on a highwire using your expertise in Acrobatics? Caster uses Fly and waits for you on the other side.
Heavy boulder in the way? You can hope for a decent Athletics check to move it, or the caster can just cast Telekinesis.
Agree on casters having a bigger toolbox, specially on high levels.
But, since is not a competition, Its usually better to cast those spells on the martial or rogue so he can scout ahead or survive an ambush. Reaching first without the rest of the party is useless. I still dont know why people insist that the party plays selfishly all the time.
Telekinesis is a 5th lvl spell. Its a big resource cost.
While casters have a bigger toolbox at higher levels that doesn’t mean they have to ( or should) take a spell for every possibility that they could cover. Yes you could use that fly spell to beat (or ease) the rogue’s high wire act maybe it is wiser to save it for an escape - or to give the ranged ranger so he can rain down arrows from above. Why take spells ( a limited resource even if plentiful) when your other party members have (reliable) skills that will get the job done without using up resources? Better to dig into that toolbox to cover what the rest of the party can’t. So the “bigger toolbox” argument is a bit of a straw argument. As for damage, a L17+ mage casting meteor swarm does an average of 140/70 HP to every foe in a 140’ x 140’ box - 784 5’ squares so a max damage of 784 x 140 = 109,760 HP. I want to see the fighter that comes anywhere near that kind of max damage possible. It’s that sort of comparison that fuels the claim that mages, especially at tier 4, are more powerful than martials of the same level. Of course no individual in that blast takes more than 140 HP so a high level martial will survive and be able to attack the caster. My general take is that martials are generally superior at tier 1 as they have more they can do at lower cost than casters, they have better AC and HP making them more survivable and their weapons of choice generally do more damage - especially compared to cantrips. At tier 4 casters are generally more powerful with spells that, as demonstrated above, can totally blow anything a martial can do out of the water. In tiers 2&3 things transition. Different subclasses and types transition at different rates with the gishes generally doing the best because they are casters as well as martials.
While it is true that Meteor Swarm is incredibly potent in the right circumstances... it's also important to add the two notes that go with it - it's a 9th level spell, and so can only be cast, at most, once a day, and prevents any other 9th level spell from cast, and it also it's only viable in fairly niche circumstances. You can't double up on blasts, so it's only particularly effective against large armies (in D&D scales). I'm sure that occurs (I've not played tier 5 yet), but it's not something that happens every day. Usually, you're up against a small number of beasties, and so it'd be largely wasted.
Yeah, spellcasters can do a lot at t5, but most of their potency comes from before then. What I can see from looking at t5 stats is that what's really powerful about them is not so much their one hit wonder abilities (that are impressive, no doubt about it), but the sheer number of spell slots. Martials are better at t1, partly because of their stats (which matter more), but also because they can consistently be good. Casters generally can't do much to help, but also their spell slots are so limited that they can't use their spells all that much. Every round, I'm having to judge whether it's worth expending one of my two slots to nudge the fight in our favour, or trust that the martials can handle it, conserve those spells for perhaps a more desperate situation and just use cantrips. Certainly by t3, I have do many slots that I'm more worried about getting as many spells in as I possibly can. Haste, you say? Yes, please!
And I'm wondering if t1 is more fun because of that judiciousness. I'm having to be careful and thoughtful in how I do things, and that engagement is fun.
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And that's why they're generally more popular than casters. They're still just as fun and have other advantages to. That's pretty important to bear in mind.
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For me I am an old school gamer from Fist Edition D&D
My introduction to the game was a 1st edition boxed set my cousin gave me.
For those obsessed about this issue this was before THAC0 was a thing and in 2nd edition THAC0 was a simplification of the to hit rules.
Back then play style was fixed.
The caster was the artillery piece of the party. Spells had casting times from 1 segment to several. Every round had 10 segments and you cast fireball on your initiative (we used d4 for casting spells and added the segments of casting time in this case I think 3. So if your caster rolled a three init was hit between segment three and segment three and segment six he lost the spell. No save, no concentration roll, it just fizzled if the caster took damage at all.
Weapons had speeds as well but rarely did DM's enforce this rule but when we played attacks were d6, d8 etc. based on the type of attack, swinging, missile, thrown etc. It was a house rule I think but I don't remember.
Point is spells were damn powerful and took out the enemy but they were damn hard to get off if you faced a competent enemy and the DM played them smart.
Caster's were weak, easily taken out and the party had to protect them to ensure they were effective while attempting to take out the enemy caster before it wiped everyone out.
The game was like this because it was based off of Chainmail which was a war game.
Overtime the rules changed with the changes mirroring house rules people were playing and many rules coming from DRAGON magazine. The initiative system we used which incorporated multiple attacks of fighters into the roll came from an article in the Dragon Magazine. We photocopied it and gave it to every new player.
By third the idea of a concentration check to keep a spell being cast became part of the rules making it easier for a mage to simply cast spells. Prior to this one fellow would use disguise self in advance to make it appear he was in armor so that the enemy would not target him until after he cast the fireball.
Third leveled up the fighters with more weapons and feats allowing trip, charging, power attack, sundering, spell breaking etc. so that some of the old school attack the caster and stop his spell was still part of the game.
What has happened in 5e is two-fold.
First casters were giving cantrips that equaled a martials weapon strike making every attack similar spellcaster or not and leveled out the to hit taking away the advantage of the fighter to hit more often.
All of this was done I suppose in the name of balance but....
Players would not accept nerfing magic so many of the same spells remained keeping that power dynamic in the game.
What is going on in 5e whether real or perceived is that it appears casters are on par with martials in round to round damage while maintaining their overall power level of high level of spells. Maybe there is some statistical equivalence that eggheads figured out which evens the overall damage taken and absorbed between the two but if this is true it sure does not seem so.
Part of the problem is when they nerfed all the feats and weapons and took all that crunch away from fighters they removed the one thing fighter types were doing to empower their character - finding unstoppable fight trees.
How to fix this - I am not sure aside from bringing some of the crunch back to the fighter.
Martial classes are just not as useful as spellcasters but they can still be as fun and performant nonetheless.
Most games are played in tier 1, where martial classes are fine to superior; casters don't really gain superiority before late tier 2.
To me what you are saying is tier 1 is fine and tier 2 starts the issue so there is no problem because IYO not many or as many people play at higher tiers. I hope I did not put words in your mouth and I am sorry if I misinterpreted your point.
But to me if a system has issues at higher levels of play then it needs to be fixed unless the system was designed for a specific task, ie a 30-50 hour video game where people have fun for 30 hours then it becomes repetitive and the system becomes an issue so most people quit.
So the question is the same as it has been in the past "Can WotC fix the problem with the system foundations they have in place or change the foundations or shoe horn something into 5e+ or do they just leave it and look to D&D 6?" I myself do not think they can have meaningful change with out changing the games foundation's (combat and classes) but they could simply do damage inflation and push the system into early(er) retirement and provide an opening for another system. I can also say that I hope they can fix the issue and extend the life of the game as I know quite a few people who like it.
Martial classes are just not as useful as spellcasters but they can still be as fun and performant nonetheless.
Most games are played in tier 1, where martial classes are fine to superior; casters don't really gain superiority before late tier 2.
To me what you are saying is tier 1 is fine and tier 2 starts the issue so there is no problem because IYO not many or as many people play at higher tiers. I hope I did not put words in your mouth and I am sorry if I misinterpreted your point.
But to me if a system has issues at higher levels of play then it needs to be fixed unless the system was designed for a specific task, ie a 30-50 hour video game where people have fun for 30 hours then it becomes repetitive and the system becomes an issue so most people quit.
That's only an issue if people feel like they didn't get their money's worth from the game.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I think the idea of spellcasters and martials having a divide is a great thematic device, and have pondered over an idea to run a full caster campaign rooted in this concept.
To me what you are saying is tier 1 is fine and tier 2 starts the issue so there is no problem because IYO not many or as many people play at higher tiers. I hope I did not put words in your mouth and I am sorry if I misinterpreted your point.
My point is "lots of people playing martial characters doesn't mean there isn't a problem".
The original form of the martial/caster divide is "Wizards put up with sucking at low levels to be a god at high levels; Fighters are the reverse." Later editions have toned down this mechanic, but with the exception of 4th edition didn't actually get rid of it. The easy fix is to change the level cap from 20 to, say, 6 (at which point you move to a boon type system, though presumably a different list).
To me what you are saying is tier 1 is fine and tier 2 starts the issue so there is no problem because IYO not many or as many people play at higher tiers. I hope I did not put words in your mouth and I am sorry if I misinterpreted your point.
My point is "lots of people playing martial characters doesn't mean there isn't a problem".
The original form of the martial/caster divide is "Wizards put up with sucking at low levels to be a god at high levels; Fighters are the reverse." Later editions have toned down this mechanic, but with the exception of 4th edition didn't actually get rid of it. The easy fix is to change the level cap from 20 to, say, 6 (at which point you move to a boon type system, though presumably a different list).
Thanks very much for the explanation, yes many people playing martials does not mean there is not a problem and having spell casters being very weak at low levels and gods at higher levels is also an issue. Your play style and house rules can have a huge impact on your opinion on this issue.
4th edition had many issues and normalization was one of them. That is it tried to make classes equal across many fronts and for me broke the system. Your opinion may vary and 4th may work well for your play style. But again for me and quite a few people I know it had serious issues that became more apparent to many of them the longer they played the game. To me it would be fine for a 30-40 hour video game and maybe a an expansion as story can hide a lot of game rule issues.
4th edition had many issues and normalization was one of them. That is it tried to make classes equal across many fronts and for me broke the system. Your opinion may vary and 4th may work well for your play style.
I was mostly trying to be accurate; there are an awful lot of things you can say about D&D where you have include a caveat 'except 4e', because 4e was so very different.
4th edition had many issues and normalization was one of them. That is it tried to make classes equal across many fronts and for me broke the system. Your opinion may vary and 4th may work well for your play style.
I was mostly trying to be accurate; there are an awful lot of things you can say about D&D where you have include a caveat 'except 4e', because 4e was so very different.
Agreed, 4E stepped so far away from the rules of every other edition of the game that it's easier to simply exclude it by default and only include it by explicitly mentioning it rather than say "except 4E" after every sentence when comparing editions.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Honestly, I feel like Martials get the short end of the stick, usually. If OneD&D's any sign, then at least one particular Martial class is only gonna get a shorter stick, unless something's done about the rather hefty nerf to Sneak Attack. My personal solution is simply to give martials a bit more utility, or something, especially in the case of the Rogue.
One concept I had for buffing Rogue is by taking the concept of Battle Master, and adding it as a main-class feature to Rogue, in the form of Subterfuge. Basically, Rogue gets various techniques that allow him to disrupt the battlefield, whether the Rogue's throwing sand in someone's eyes mid-battle, setting up traps pre-battle (which can apply his Sneak Attack bonus, once triggered), tripping enemies, stealing their weapons, and/or simply utilizing below-the-belt tactics, via a swift kick to the D20s. That way, even if Rogue's Sneak Attack is no longer all that great of a damage source, the utility of throwing his enemies off their game via constant disruptions can more than make up for it, if implemented properly.
Not too sure about how to buff Monk, other than giving him a way to easily recharge Ki points. Barbarian's alright, for what it is, and Fighter's pretty much top-tier, for Martials. Still, no saying we can't sprinkle a bit of utility into those classes as well. At the very least, for the love of Bahamut, someone fix the Tyr-danged Monk.
D&D 4th ed: I agree that 4th is different just like 1st is and 3 books are very different from 3rd. But I have known people who have liked or loved all of them/parts of them at some point in their gaming journey. And when I think of some styles of game play some styles work better for some "adventures" then others or even at times it is easier to ignore rules then follow them. Which is why I think it is important to let players know the GM's styles and home/house rules as well as what they expect from players and the game.
I am not going to list the ideas on how I think WotC might change the system but I can say that I often hear that martial type PC's should have more to balance them vs spell casters. The WotC design team can figure out what options they have to change or what new things they need to create to make things more equal.
Note: one definition of equal is numerical ie fighters need to do the same amount of damage vs rogues but another is weighing all of the other things a class does and use that to roughly balance the classes. That last idea is much harder then just saying class Y does XXX damage at level 15 so all other classes need to do XXX-25 damage at level 15.
My suspicion is that WOtC is trying ( how successfully remains to be seen) to move the the concepts from 5es caster vs martials divide back towards say 1/2e’s multi role split so you have experts, martials, arcanists and clerical each with their own strengths and weaknesses balancing them against each other and at least one from each grou0 really needed for a solid party. We haven’t seen anything beyond the backgrounds, experts and cleric yet so it’s hard to tell, but given that backgrounds and races seem to be fairly balanced and the experts are, if anything too balanced and losing flavor that may be their intention - making it a 3/4 way argument again.
My suspicion is that WOtC is trying ( how successfully remains to be seen) to move the the concepts from 5es caster vs martials divide back towards say 1/2e’s multi role split so you have experts, martials, arcanists and clerical each with their own strengths and weaknesses balancing them against each other and at least one from each grou0 really needed for a solid party. We haven’t seen anything beyond the backgrounds, experts and cleric yet so it’s hard to tell, but given that backgrounds and races seem to be fairly balanced and the experts are, if anything too balanced and losing flavor that may be their intention - making it a 3/4 way argument again.
I agree, 5e in general blurred the lines a lot (My opinion) between classes on purpose and it works up until a point where you ask the system to do more and then IMHO it becomes a potential problem. I would again say that 5e is a great simple system and has many benefits just like some more complex systems do what they do very well. So the question to me is how to allow for more complexity and keep it fairly simple at the same time? Or is that even possible given the foundational rules of the 5e game?
I also think there are some external forces in play, those being streaming games and talking heads. Steaming games can generate revenue and advertise D&D and IMHO are a more directed style of gaming vs the random die determines the action in most home games. Why? Well the stream game often requires a more controlled story and a limit on randomness to preserve audience excitement, so they are more like TV shows, movies and plays. The talking heads also generate revenue and advertise D&D by talking about options, interesting builds, setting rules and other stuff. So if a system does not have some of those things or limits some of those things it can make it harder for the talking heads to produce interesting content.
IMHO the talking heads would benefit from a more D&D 3.x system (but with more control on content vs the publish or perish style that 3.x had) and the streaming games often would benefit from a system that is more Theater of the Minds Eye type game.
Again those are just my opinion looking in from the outside and not consuming any stream or talking head content on D&D.
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The normal way literature handles people of dramatically different capabilities coordinating is through sheer coincidence: stuff just happens that coincidentally lets the 'ordinary human' shine. This is something DMs can do, but there's no real metric for how much is appropriate and it's one more thing on the DMs plate. So... what would it do if the mundane characters were entitled to a certain number of favorable coincidences, presumably varying in power as tier increases? It seems like a fair amount of work to actually spell out enough examples of what this means, but maybe it's worth considering even so?
Note the word "typically", and note the word "most". Not every caster has a low armor class and a smaller amount of hit points. However, most casters do - because of the reasons Linklite mentioned and a few others - and stating that is not incorrect.
The article you linked is extremely flawed. For one, it is arguing that all casters are not "squishy" because a select few, extremely min-maxed casters can be relatively strong in that regard. By comparing the top demographic of one group and comparing it to the middle or low demographic of another group, they are already proving that there own claim has a weak footing to stand on.
Secondly, the primary example it uses is also massively flawed. It is pitting one CR 7 monster against each one of the two level 6 adventurers in their example. Not only that, but the spellcaster is extremely optimized, and the martial is not. Also by pitting the adventurers against an encounter that has an amount of adjusted XP in it that is greater than their daily budget, it ensures that they will both survive at a similar rate, which is not very long. This ignores the fact that though they may die in the same round, one may be at -40 hit points when they die, and the other could be at exactly 0. The way they presented it, there wouldn't be difference in terms of how "sturdy" these two adventurers were, even if that were the case.
Thirdly, the article criticizes Barbarian's Rage because it is too resource-limited. Due to this it by and large disqualifies it from their metrics of "sturdiness," despite the fact that it would massively change how they rate that class. Earlier, however, they talk about spells like Shield and Silvery Barbs and how they play a massive role in how strong casters are defensively, despite the fact that those spells, too, are a very limited resource. So this article seems to picking and choosing what metrics they value in order to push their argument.
Fourthly, this article classifies this as a "fallacy", while ignoring the actual definition of the word. An actual fallacy is a mistaken belief based off a weak and unsound argument, but the "Squishy Caster Fallacy" is by no means a fallacy, since the fact that casters typically are less "sturdy" than martials and that they have more limits on raising there armor class and hit points is fully true. Coming from someone who loves researching logical fallacies for fun, you can't say, "Here is my opinion and my somewhat weak support for it, everyone else who disagrees is being illogical and wrong."
TL;DR: One random and somewhat lame article is not enough to convince me that casters are typically just as strong in terms of hit points and armor class when that just really isn't true.
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HERE.Agree on casters having a bigger toolbox, specially on high levels.
But, since is not a competition, Its usually better to cast those spells on the martial or rogue so he can scout ahead or survive an ambush. Reaching first without the rest of the party is useless. I still dont know why people insist that the party plays selfishly all the time.
Telekinesis is a 5th lvl spell. Its a big resource cost.
While casters have a bigger toolbox at higher levels that doesn’t mean they have to ( or should) take a spell for every possibility that they could cover. Yes you could use that fly spell to beat (or ease) the rogue’s high wire act maybe it is wiser to save it for an escape - or to give the ranged ranger so he can rain down arrows from above. Why take spells ( a limited resource even if plentiful) when your other party members have (reliable) skills that will get the job done without using up resources? Better to dig into that toolbox to cover what the rest of the party can’t. So the “bigger toolbox” argument is a bit of a straw argument. As for damage, a L17+ mage casting meteor swarm does an average of 140/70 HP to every foe in a 140’ x 140’ box - 784 5’ squares so a max damage of 784 x 140 = 109,760 HP. I want to see the fighter that comes anywhere near that kind of max damage possible. It’s that sort of comparison that fuels the claim that mages, especially at tier 4, are more powerful than martials of the same level. Of course no individual in that blast takes more than 140 HP so a high level martial will survive and be able to attack the caster.
My general take is that martials are generally superior at tier 1 as they have more they can do at lower cost than casters, they have better AC and HP making them more survivable and their weapons of choice generally do more damage - especially compared to cantrips. At tier 4 casters are generally more powerful with spells that, as demonstrated above, can totally blow anything a martial can do out of the water. In tiers 2&3 things transition. Different subclasses and types transition at different rates with the gishes generally doing the best because they are casters as well as martials.
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While it is true that Meteor Swarm is incredibly potent in the right circumstances... it's also important to add the two notes that go with it - it's a 9th level spell, and so can only be cast, at most, once a day, and prevents any other 9th level spell from cast, and it also it's only viable in fairly niche circumstances. You can't double up on blasts, so it's only particularly effective against large armies (in D&D scales). I'm sure that occurs (I've not played tier 5 yet), but it's not something that happens every day. Usually, you're up against a small number of beasties, and so it'd be largely wasted.
Yeah, spellcasters can do a lot at t5, but most of their potency comes from before then. What I can see from looking at t5 stats is that what's really powerful about them is not so much their one hit wonder abilities (that are impressive, no doubt about it), but the sheer number of spell slots. Martials are better at t1, partly because of their stats (which matter more), but also because they can consistently be good. Casters generally can't do much to help, but also their spell slots are so limited that they can't use their spells all that much. Every round, I'm having to judge whether it's worth expending one of my two slots to nudge the fight in our favour, or trust that the martials can handle it, conserve those spells for perhaps a more desperate situation and just use cantrips. Certainly by t3, I have do many slots that I'm more worried about getting as many spells in as I possibly can. Haste, you say? Yes, please!
And I'm wondering if t1 is more fun because of that judiciousness. I'm having to be careful and thoughtful in how I do things, and that engagement is fun.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Martial classes are just not as useful as spellcasters but they can still be as fun and performant nonetheless.
And that's why they're generally more popular than casters. They're still just as fun and have other advantages to. That's pretty important to bear in mind.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
For me I am an old school gamer from Fist Edition D&D
My introduction to the game was a 1st edition boxed set my cousin gave me.
For those obsessed about this issue this was before THAC0 was a thing and in 2nd edition THAC0 was a simplification of the to hit rules.
Back then play style was fixed.
The caster was the artillery piece of the party. Spells had casting times from 1 segment to several. Every round had 10 segments and you cast fireball on your initiative (we used d4 for casting spells and added the segments of casting time in this case I think 3. So if your caster rolled a three init was hit between segment three and segment three and segment six he lost the spell. No save, no concentration roll, it just fizzled if the caster took damage at all.
Weapons had speeds as well but rarely did DM's enforce this rule but when we played attacks were d6, d8 etc. based on the type of attack, swinging, missile, thrown etc. It was a house rule I think but I don't remember.
Point is spells were damn powerful and took out the enemy but they were damn hard to get off if you faced a competent enemy and the DM played them smart.
Caster's were weak, easily taken out and the party had to protect them to ensure they were effective while attempting to take out the enemy caster before it wiped everyone out.
The game was like this because it was based off of Chainmail which was a war game.
Overtime the rules changed with the changes mirroring house rules people were playing and many rules coming from DRAGON magazine. The initiative system we used which incorporated multiple attacks of fighters into the roll came from an article in the Dragon Magazine. We photocopied it and gave it to every new player.
By third the idea of a concentration check to keep a spell being cast became part of the rules making it easier for a mage to simply cast spells. Prior to this one fellow would use disguise self in advance to make it appear he was in armor so that the enemy would not target him until after he cast the fireball.
Third leveled up the fighters with more weapons and feats allowing trip, charging, power attack, sundering, spell breaking etc. so that some of the old school attack the caster and stop his spell was still part of the game.
What has happened in 5e is two-fold.
First casters were giving cantrips that equaled a martials weapon strike making every attack similar spellcaster or not and leveled out the to hit taking away the advantage of the fighter to hit more often.
All of this was done I suppose in the name of balance but....
Players would not accept nerfing magic so many of the same spells remained keeping that power dynamic in the game.
What is going on in 5e whether real or perceived is that it appears casters are on par with martials in round to round damage while maintaining their overall power level of high level of spells. Maybe there is some statistical equivalence that eggheads figured out which evens the overall damage taken and absorbed between the two but if this is true it sure does not seem so.
Part of the problem is when they nerfed all the feats and weapons and took all that crunch away from fighters they removed the one thing fighter types were doing to empower their character - finding unstoppable fight trees.
How to fix this - I am not sure aside from bringing some of the crunch back to the fighter.
Most games are played in tier 1, where martial classes are fine to superior; casters don't really gain superiority before late tier 2.
To me what you are saying is tier 1 is fine and tier 2 starts the issue so there is no problem because IYO not many or as many people play at higher tiers. I hope I did not put words in your mouth and I am sorry if I misinterpreted your point.
But to me if a system has issues at higher levels of play then it needs to be fixed unless the system was designed for a specific task, ie a 30-50 hour video game where people have fun for 30 hours then it becomes repetitive and the system becomes an issue so most people quit.
So the question is the same as it has been in the past "Can WotC fix the problem with the system foundations they have in place or change the foundations or shoe horn something into 5e+ or do they just leave it and look to D&D 6?" I myself do not think they can have meaningful change with out changing the games foundation's (combat and classes) but they could simply do damage inflation and push the system into early(er) retirement and provide an opening for another system. I can also say that I hope they can fix the issue and extend the life of the game as I know quite a few people who like it.
That's only an issue if people feel like they didn't get their money's worth from the game.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I think the idea of spellcasters and martials having a divide is a great thematic device, and have pondered over an idea to run a full caster campaign rooted in this concept.
My point is "lots of people playing martial characters doesn't mean there isn't a problem".
The original form of the martial/caster divide is "Wizards put up with sucking at low levels to be a god at high levels; Fighters are the reverse." Later editions have toned down this mechanic, but with the exception of 4th edition didn't actually get rid of it. The easy fix is to change the level cap from 20 to, say, 6 (at which point you move to a boon type system, though presumably a different list).
Thanks very much for the explanation, yes many people playing martials does not mean there is not a problem and having spell casters being very weak at low levels and gods at higher levels is also an issue. Your play style and house rules can have a huge impact on your opinion on this issue.
4th edition had many issues and normalization was one of them. That is it tried to make classes equal across many fronts and for me broke the system. Your opinion may vary and 4th may work well for your play style. But again for me and quite a few people I know it had serious issues that became more apparent to many of them the longer they played the game. To me it would be fine for a 30-40 hour video game and maybe a an expansion as story can hide a lot of game rule issues.
Thanks again for the explanation.
I was mostly trying to be accurate; there are an awful lot of things you can say about D&D where you have include a caveat 'except 4e', because 4e was so very different.
Agreed, 4E stepped so far away from the rules of every other edition of the game that it's easier to simply exclude it by default and only include it by explicitly mentioning it rather than say "except 4E" after every sentence when comparing editions.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Honestly, I feel like Martials get the short end of the stick, usually. If OneD&D's any sign, then at least one particular Martial class is only gonna get a shorter stick, unless something's done about the rather hefty nerf to Sneak Attack. My personal solution is simply to give martials a bit more utility, or something, especially in the case of the Rogue.
One concept I had for buffing Rogue is by taking the concept of Battle Master, and adding it as a main-class feature to Rogue, in the form of Subterfuge. Basically, Rogue gets various techniques that allow him to disrupt the battlefield, whether the Rogue's throwing sand in someone's eyes mid-battle, setting up traps pre-battle (which can apply his Sneak Attack bonus, once triggered), tripping enemies, stealing their weapons, and/or simply utilizing below-the-belt tactics, via a swift kick to the D20s. That way, even if Rogue's Sneak Attack is no longer all that great of a damage source, the utility of throwing his enemies off their game via constant disruptions can more than make up for it, if implemented properly.
Not too sure about how to buff Monk, other than giving him a way to easily recharge Ki points. Barbarian's alright, for what it is, and Fighter's pretty much top-tier, for Martials. Still, no saying we can't sprinkle a bit of utility into those classes as well. At the very least, for the love of Bahamut, someone fix the Tyr-danged Monk.
D&D 4th ed: I agree that 4th is different just like 1st is and 3 books are very different from 3rd. But I have known people who have liked or loved all of them/parts of them at some point in their gaming journey. And when I think of some styles of game play some styles work better for some "adventures" then others or even at times it is easier to ignore rules then follow them. Which is why I think it is important to let players know the GM's styles and home/house rules as well as what they expect from players and the game.
I am not going to list the ideas on how I think WotC might change the system but I can say that I often hear that martial type PC's should have more to balance them vs spell casters. The WotC design team can figure out what options they have to change or what new things they need to create to make things more equal.
Note: one definition of equal is numerical ie fighters need to do the same amount of damage vs rogues but another is weighing all of the other things a class does and use that to roughly balance the classes. That last idea is much harder then just saying class Y does XXX damage at level 15 so all other classes need to do XXX-25 damage at level 15.
I wish WotC good luck on the task at hand.
My suspicion is that WOtC is trying ( how successfully remains to be seen) to move the the concepts from 5es caster vs martials divide back towards say 1/2e’s multi role split so you have experts, martials, arcanists and clerical each with their own strengths and weaknesses balancing them against each other and at least one from each grou0 really needed for a solid party. We haven’t seen anything beyond the backgrounds, experts and cleric yet so it’s hard to tell, but given that backgrounds and races seem to be fairly balanced and the experts are, if anything too balanced and losing flavor that may be their intention - making it a 3/4 way argument again.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
I agree, 5e in general blurred the lines a lot (My opinion) between classes on purpose and it works up until a point where you ask the system to do more and then IMHO it becomes a potential problem. I would again say that 5e is a great simple system and has many benefits just like some more complex systems do what they do very well. So the question to me is how to allow for more complexity and keep it fairly simple at the same time? Or is that even possible given the foundational rules of the 5e game?
I also think there are some external forces in play, those being streaming games and talking heads. Steaming games can generate revenue and advertise D&D and IMHO are a more directed style of gaming vs the random die determines the action in most home games. Why? Well the stream game often requires a more controlled story and a limit on randomness to preserve audience excitement, so they are more like TV shows, movies and plays. The talking heads also generate revenue and advertise D&D by talking about options, interesting builds, setting rules and other stuff. So if a system does not have some of those things or limits some of those things it can make it harder for the talking heads to produce interesting content.
IMHO the talking heads would benefit from a more D&D 3.x system (but with more control on content vs the publish or perish style that 3.x had) and the streaming games often would benefit from a system that is more Theater of the Minds Eye type game.
Again those are just my opinion looking in from the outside and not consuming any stream or talking head content on D&D.