Barbarians already resist magical PSB damage when raging. Rogues can already Hide as a Bonus Action, and that's really all they need. WotC seem to agree on Paladins and Rangers, they're getting cantrips in 1D&D, or at least they got them in the UA. Doubling prof bonus to attacks would be broken under 5e's system, and Monks and Fighters already make the most attack rolls a round so they're unlikely to waste a full round on misses.
Just make becoming full casters harder for those classes.
Either by higher stat requirements Or by a different experience scale for each class. This is how classes were originally equalized somewhat. Or you could limit the highest level a character can gain in a class by their primary stats for that class. If your a fighter with a 13 in strength why do you think you should be able to reach level 20 in that class?
Well, regarding the Fighter example, because DEX Fighters are a thing, for one. Plus implementing restrictions or handicaps like that just makes the game as whole more of a headache and less engaging.
1. The base issue is magic lets you do magic things, and full casters have more magic than other classes. You can have all the +hit you want, I have Wish.
2. The magic item rules mandate that a GM run thier game a specific way, and multiclassing laughs in your face.
I still support making all classes have power or abilities similar to what was available in 4th edition. The three biggest concerns are relatively easy to address with the current level of support D&D has:
Power creep. Just get a more unified front on leveled abilities. Difficult but fewer books means greater focus on those released
Uniformity of everyone having Powers makes each class seem like cardboard copies with mix and match abilities. Much more difficult to resolve I admit, but certainly passives should help (rogues sneak attack, paladins smite, fighters greater number of attacks). I’m sure a large group of developers could use prior experience to resolve it.
Too many abilities spread over a large selection of books makes tracking, organizing, and creating characters a pain. This was a major gripe for me in 4e. The solution here is D&D beyond and other resources which compile all the options in a much more superior way, and also the simply superior tools and software we now have. The big loser I must admit would be the physical copy owners, but they certainly have advantages of their own. I always wondered about physical copies have a code attached to allow access to options within the character creator but I remember being told how that wouldn’t work even if I can’t remember why.
I got into this discussion very late. Just to chime in, I think a good start might be to reduce the amount of subclasses that suddenly allow non-spellcaster classes to cast magic. It demeans the real caster classes. When everyone has the magic is the magic special? I also think doing things like increasing the damage to Monk attacks and giving Fighters additional attacks would help shrink the divide. I think brining in the video game inspired kewl powerz from 4th would be a bad move. We don't need to turn it up to 11 but cranked it up from 2 to 5 might be nice. Luckily I am an armchair quarterback here. I am using the D&D One surveys to suggest tweaks and adjustments. And hopefully we can get the Two Weapon Fighting feature (not the feat) finally changed to Off Hand Attack (or something) to reduce confusion. 😆👍
The problem is that( assuming the martial caster divide is real - and most of us do to one extent or another) how do you shrink or eliminate that divide - preferably without doing another 4e? To try and keep things able to coexist with 5e your options are limited. The UA did a lot to shrink the divide at least for the half casters ( and I include sorcerors there as they are still known casters but with more k own spells in the UA) . The real problem with the divide as I see it are A) AOE spells - martials have nothing like this and no way short of magic to really get it. B) wish - realistically nothing really compares to its potential power. Its only limits are the DM’s ability to “corrupt” the wish and the chance of losing wish permanently if you abuse it. There are things I think would help selected classes or subclasses to both be better generally and to help bridge the gap by giving it the ability to deal with different situations. Example: ranger hunter (PHB) - each of the features requires you to select one of several features permanently. Instead allow the hunter to select which to use round by round - each feature is situational so old style they only get to use it part of the time new way they have something that improves their ability every round even if the situation changes. The UA was bad as it not only still forced a single option but worse as it made that option a spell from their limited spell slots. Generally the closest martials can come to AOE attacks would be with something like “cleave” where if they kill a foe with an attack they get an extra attack at another foe within reach of their weapon.
Rather than buffing the martial classes, I'd prefer to see the caster classes sharply debuffed.
Not everyone wants to play D&D as DBZ; I prefer a lower-level, lower-magic, grittier style of play. While I understand that the game needs to try its best to cover both extremes of play, I feel like buffing the martial classes, especially at lower levels, risks destroying the game's ability to capture that low-fantasy, gritty feel that I loved in the early days of 1e.
Caster classes are already super weak, especially compared to every edition prior. I see no reason to play one except for utility. It’s a major failing of 5e
Rather than buffing the martial classes, I'd prefer to see the caster classes sharply debuffed.
Not everyone wants to play D&D as DBZ; I prefer a lower-level, lower-magic, grittier style of play. While I understand that the game needs to try its best to cover both extremes of play, I feel like buffing the martial classes, especially at lower levels, risks destroying the game's ability to capture that low-fantasy, gritty feel that I loved in the early days of 1e.
Why not play a homebrew version of 1E then, if that is closer to your desired end state? 5E is 99% reprints of older material, so if you're not a fan of the 5E mechanics, you're not missing much by staying with 1st or 3rd edition, IMO.
Casters and martials are need best balanced in tier 1. But as you move thru tier 2 and into tiers 3&4 casters start to outreach martials because of the number of spell slots, range of spells and power of individual spells as well as the ability to damage groups of folks severely with AOEs that martials have no equivalent of.
Remove Blood Hunter as a class entirely and just make it a 3rd level choice for Fighter. All their subclass choices? Just mashed together in one to actually make the class worth playing! ( In my opinion )
You realize Blood Hunter isn't even official D&D stuff, right? It's CR material. There's no way they're gonna mash a core class together with 3rd party material.
It's 3rd party material made official material by Mercer partnering with WoTc. But that's neither here nor there. The fact it sucks still remains and needs to be reworked from the ground up!
You realize Blood Hunter isn't even official D&D stuff, right? It's CR material. There's no way they're gonna mash a core class together with 3rd party material.
You got the wrong idea. These are homebrew rules I would use to run my games. The intention was to see if they were balanced/fun, and if people would suggest better solutions.
The biggest thing that could be done to bridge the martial/caster divide is to simply give the martial classes more out-of-combat utility.
Which is the Expert's bag. Honestly I'd say go the other way and double up on their in-combat utility more, which is happening with weapon masteries. By definition, Warriors/Martials are specialized in combat. If you personally don't want to play a Martial because you want more out-of-combat utility, that's a reasonable take, but saying they need to be more like casters or experts isn't improving martials, it's making them something else. Honestly, I think Weapon Masteries already help, especially for Fighters. Does at lot to improve and diversify their effect on the battlefield, especially after level 7.
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Since One DnD didn't do it, I will try to do it myself. Please tell me what you think and maybe your ideas on how to solve the divide :D.
Changes on classes:
I would buff every class, so all of them get something and nobody feels left behind. Obviously, some buffs will be better than others:
Magic Items:
The world would be like in Adventure Time, where you can go on the local magic shop buy some magic items.
Weapons and armor
The price will scale so they can have cheap +1 wepon at lvl 3, good +1 at level 5, +2 at level 8, +3 at 12 and legendary at like 17th level.
Calculate the pricing for your magic weapon or armor by:
Uncommon: 5 times the price of the weapon
Rare: 25 times the price of the weapon
Very Rare: 125 times the weapon's price
Legendary: 625 times the weapon’s price
For example: Longsword costs 15GP. A +2 longsword is rare, so it would be (15 + 5)*25 = 500GP.
Proficiency with magic weapons and armor:
Spell Scrolls (so casters don't feel bad):
Potions:
The expected amount of gold players should have on each level:
Fighters would have a like 23 AC and a +20 on attack rolls at 15th level ish, if that cannot compete with spells I don't know what does lol.
Barbarians already resist magical PSB damage when raging. Rogues can already Hide as a Bonus Action, and that's really all they need. WotC seem to agree on Paladins and Rangers, they're getting cantrips in 1D&D, or at least they got them in the UA. Doubling prof bonus to attacks would be broken under 5e's system, and Monks and Fighters already make the most attack rolls a round so they're unlikely to waste a full round on misses.
Just make becoming full casters harder for those classes.
Either by higher stat requirements
Or by a different experience scale for each class. This is how classes were originally equalized somewhat.
Or you could limit the highest level a character can gain in a class by their primary stats for that class. If your a fighter with a 13 in strength why do you think you should be able to reach level 20 in that class?
Well, regarding the Fighter example, because DEX Fighters are a thing, for one. Plus implementing restrictions or handicaps like that just makes the game as whole more of a headache and less engaging.
All the possible solutions to this supposed problem are just as complex and wild.
Either give something to someone or take something away from someone. In the end the complexity is the same and the final result is almost identical.
Giving people something makes them feel netter but taking something away makes them feel bad.
Giving everyone something is just a back handed way of giving someone a real bonus and giving someone else something that just feels nice.
For example:
You give the fighter double bonuses and just hand the casters an extra cantrip for utility. I bet he is real happy abut that.
1. The base issue is magic lets you do magic things, and full casters have more magic than other classes. You can have all the +hit you want, I have Wish.
2. The magic item rules mandate that a GM run thier game a specific way, and multiclassing laughs in your face.
I still support making all classes have power or abilities similar to what was available in 4th edition. The three biggest concerns are relatively easy to address with the current level of support D&D has:
I got into this discussion very late. Just to chime in, I think a good start might be to reduce the amount of subclasses that suddenly allow non-spellcaster classes to cast magic. It demeans the real caster classes. When everyone has the magic is the magic special? I also think doing things like increasing the damage to Monk attacks and giving Fighters additional attacks would help shrink the divide. I think brining in the video game inspired kewl powerz from 4th would be a bad move. We don't need to turn it up to 11 but cranked it up from 2 to 5 might be nice. Luckily I am an armchair quarterback here. I am using the D&D One surveys to suggest tweaks and adjustments. And hopefully we can get the Two Weapon Fighting feature (not the feat) finally changed to Off Hand Attack (or something) to reduce confusion. 😆👍
The problem is that( assuming the martial caster divide is real - and most of us do to one extent or another) how do you shrink or eliminate that divide - preferably without doing another 4e? To try and keep things able to coexist with 5e your options are limited. The UA did a lot to shrink the divide at least for the half casters ( and I include sorcerors there as they are still known casters but with more k own spells in the UA) . The real problem with the divide as I see it are A) AOE spells - martials have nothing like this and no way short of magic to really get it. B) wish - realistically nothing really compares to its potential power. Its only limits are the DM’s ability to “corrupt” the wish and the chance of losing wish permanently if you abuse it. There are things I think would help selected classes or subclasses to both be better generally and to help bridge the gap by giving it the ability to deal with different situations. Example: ranger hunter (PHB) - each of the features requires you to select one of several features permanently. Instead allow the hunter to select which to use round by round - each feature is situational so old style they only get to use it part of the time new way they have something that improves their ability every round even if the situation changes. The UA was bad as it not only still forced a single option but worse as it made that option a spell from their limited spell slots. Generally the closest martials can come to AOE attacks would be with something like “cleave” where if they kill a foe with an attack they get an extra attack at another foe within reach of their weapon.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
Rather than buffing the martial classes, I'd prefer to see the caster classes sharply debuffed.
Not everyone wants to play D&D as DBZ; I prefer a lower-level, lower-magic, grittier style of play. While I understand that the game needs to try its best to cover both extremes of play, I feel like buffing the martial classes, especially at lower levels, risks destroying the game's ability to capture that low-fantasy, gritty feel that I loved in the early days of 1e.
Caster classes are already super weak, especially compared to every edition prior. I see no reason to play one except for utility. It’s a major failing of 5e
Why not play a homebrew version of 1E then, if that is closer to your desired end state? 5E is 99% reprints of older material, so if you're not a fan of the 5E mechanics, you're not missing much by staying with 1st or 3rd edition, IMO.
Casters and martials are need best balanced in tier 1. But as you move thru tier 2 and into tiers 3&4 casters start to outreach martials because of the number of spell slots, range of spells and power of individual spells as well as the ability to damage groups of folks severely with AOEs that martials have no equivalent of.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
Remove Blood Hunter as a class entirely and just make it a 3rd level choice for Fighter. All their subclass choices? Just mashed together in one to actually make the class worth playing! ( In my opinion )
You realize Blood Hunter isn't even official D&D stuff, right? It's CR material. There's no way they're gonna mash a core class together with 3rd party material.
The biggest thing that could be done to bridge the martial/caster divide is to simply give the martial classes more out-of-combat utility.
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.
It's 3rd party material made official material by Mercer partnering with WoTc. But that's neither here nor there. The fact it sucks still remains and needs to be reworked from the ground up!
You got the wrong idea. These are homebrew rules I would use to run my games. The intention was to see if they were balanced/fun, and if people would suggest better solutions.
Which is the Expert's bag. Honestly I'd say go the other way and double up on their in-combat utility more, which is happening with weapon masteries. By definition, Warriors/Martials are specialized in combat. If you personally don't want to play a Martial because you want more out-of-combat utility, that's a reasonable take, but saying they need to be more like casters or experts isn't improving martials, it's making them something else. Honestly, I think Weapon Masteries already help, especially for Fighters. Does at lot to improve and diversify their effect on the battlefield, especially after level 7.