How many 9th level spells can a 20th level caster cast?
And have you really read those spells? They are severly toned down from 4e.
You mean 3e. 4e didn't even use the 1-9 spell level system (they made the rational but also radical decision to just say the level of an ability is the level at which you can learn it).
And martials did turn into demigods at higher levels in 4E. Literally, in the case of one martial Epic Destiny.
Eh, they got the name demigod, but nothing in 4e was at the power level of 9th level spells in 5e.
The things that martial characters could do at 20th level in 4E greatly exceeded what they can do in 5E. But 5E lets them use the same technique more than once in a single fight.
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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.
The things that martial characters could do at 20th level in 4E greatly exceeded what they can do in 5E. But 5E lets them use the same technique more than once in a single fight.
4e martial characters were better at area damage by a lot, but in terms of single target damage, 5e fighters are better off, because they have extra attacks. An impressive turn by a 4e fighter might be a 5W power, a stance that does 1W to creatures that start their turn adjacent, an action point, and a 3W power. Assuming a 23 strength and a +5 2d6 weapon, that's 18d6+27 (90), which is certainly not bad... but a level 20 battle master fighter who uses action surge and burns his superiority dice with a +3 2d6 weapon is making 8 attacks for 2d6+9, +6d12 for superiority dice, total 167.
If you do not like waiting for casters then go on without them.
As a full healer centered cleric i found it a little difficult to keep up with healing the martial s in the party. Without a bunch of potions it would have been impossible. My party found out real fast that if all i did was heal them then I stood little chance of supporting them with power spells.
They actually complained to me that healing was all i did and I needed to start doing some of the fighting. So the next day in game time I just memorized all the real good attack spells and left the healing to the potions and a few first level spells. I dropped the bomb on our enemies to such an extent that the martials found it hard to even get into a fight that lasted longer than one swing. Most of the time they didn't even get the chance. And when they complained that I was taking all the kills I told them they should have taken a few ranged weapons just in case.
Even the dm got a little peeved about it and instead of following his original plans to send large waves of enemies at us until we got to the BBG he dropped it down to small groups hoping I would waste spells on the small groups. Nope I just dropped back and let the martials do their thing in happiness thinking I was out of spells. We got to the BBG and I took him down in 4 rounds with two spells alone. Two out of 6 martials went down and would have died if the Dm had not brought in a magic creature to save them.A gift from a God they never worshiped.
Casters created your magic items, your potions and give you healing when needed. Nerf them at your own peril.
This sure sounds like you're making a case in favor of nerfing casters.
The things that martial characters could do at 20th level in 4E greatly exceeded what they can do in 5E. But 5E lets them use the same technique more than once in a single fight.
4e martial characters were better at area damage by a lot, but in terms of single target damage, 5e fighters are better off, because they have extra attacks. An impressive turn by a 4e fighter might be a 5W power, a stance that does 1W to creatures that start their turn adjacent, an action point, and a 3W power. Assuming a 23 strength and a +5 2d6 weapon, that's 18d6+27 (90), which is certainly not bad... but a level 20 battle master fighter who uses action surge and burns his superiority dice with a +3 2d6 weapon is making 8 attacks for 2d6+9, +6d12 for superiority dice, total 167.
In 4E, fighters could also get ability scores well in excess of 20 because there was no upper cap on ability scores, nor was there one on attack bonuses or armor class. The differences in the rules mean that quantifying the differences in a meaningful way are difficult.
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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.
Once again, an absolutely terrible design decision. For 6e, instead of buffing all these martials to superhero status, how about NERFING casters instead. I could solve so many quadratic caster issues in about 15 minutes at a wotc design meeting. It is way easier that buffing martials. But nerfs never sell as many books as buffs......
They tried that. It was called 4th edition, and it was not a notable success. It turns out that people like their broken spells, and if you want to keep martials competitive... turning them into superheroes/demigods is the right solution. If you want to play mundane martial characters, play in tier 1 campaigns.
And martials did turn into demigods at higher levels in 4E. Literally, in the case of one martial Epic Destiny.
So then the logical thing to do is nerf casters. I already in this thread posted 2 simple ways to do it.
I think the "linear martials, quadratic casters" observation has merit, but the underlying problem is the way the game starts to break down at higher levels generally. It's very difficult to meaningfully challenge a high-level party in combat, but D&D is mostly a game about getting in fights. So past the threshold where everybody is as good at fights as they'll ever need to be, what's left? For casters, they'll get the ability to create something from nothing, alter time and perception, even completely rewrite reality (once). For martials... Rogues can ignore their dice sometimes. Monks never get old. Fighters can attack 33% more times. Barbarians. It's not bad, it's just more of the same.
Fundamentally I think it's a power overflow problem; if high level content were hard enough that the difference between making 3 attacks in a turn or 4 felt like the difference between life and death, people wouldn't complain so much about linear martials. But it's not, so they do. I don't know how to fix this, and I tend not to worry about it too much since my games overwhelmingly don't go higher than 12th level.
Fundamentally I think it's a power overflow problem; if high level content were hard enough that the difference between making 3 attacks in a turn or 4 felt like the difference between life and death, people wouldn't complain so much about linear martials. But it's not, so they do. I don't know how to fix this, and I tend not to worry about it too much since my games overwhelmingly don't go higher than 12th level.
Honestly, the problem is that people reject both "limit what magic can do" and "toss realism out the window for martials", and a fix has to do at least one of those two things.
Traditionally, campaigns start going political at higher level. Or fold. There is less direct combat in favour of figuring out where to move armies and/or how to keep them from all mobilizing in the first place.
Sure, but I think that happens because of the way combat starts to become unsatisfying somewhere between 10th and 15th levels. And when that kind of shift occurs, casters are much better equipped to deal with it than martials are.
Honestly, the problem is that people reject both "limit what magic can do" and "toss realism out the window for martials", and a fix has to do at least one of those two things.
Also very true. For what it's worth I'm fully on team "throw out realism", but I expect them to continue making the non-choice to paper over the issue with magic items. (Which are allegedly optional)
If they are nothing but a pure grunt, sure, but that is true in real life, too. Being the toughest kid on the playground might get you by when you are still a kid, only having to keep relatively low numbers in check on a playground. As an adult, that raw personal one on one power means less and less with each passing year, especially in your later years when your body can no longer keep up with the demands of your chosen lifestyle.
However, not all martials are pure grunts. Rogues, in theory, have street connections, if not guild connections from day one. Not the leveling of cities style power of casters, but surgical strike kind of power on a much wider scale. They are no longer merely taking orders but giving them, too. Not everything is easily spotted with magic, not when you are searching for needles in the proverbial haystack of the entire world. For that, you need manpower. Trained, trustworthy manpower. Plus, when you level cities, then you have no more cities. Boots on the ground are still very much a thing.
And so are the more savvy fighters, those with functioning brain cells and at least a bit of charisma to work with.
Monks have their monasteries and heck, a DM can build an entire campaign around such an organization just as surely as they could around any rogues' guild, mages' guild or holy temple.
There is, actually, more to existence than raw firepower.
Agreed! But, to be clear, we're talking about 5e here. Except for maybe the Rogues (if your Expertises are allocated towards interpersonal skills) none of these multi-talented martials are inherently supported by the mechanics of the game; they're just doing side things that anyone can do equally well. There's nothing about Being a Fighter that makes you better at leading an army than any given Wizard*. Rogues don't get criminal underground contacts for free, and Monks don't actually get Monasteries for free either! Those things are available via background features (for now), but casters have backgrounds, too. Martials aren't better at any of the things you mentioned than casters are. So we inadvertently arrive back at my original point: martials, as classes, are designed to Fight Good. Once you get past the point where Fighting Good is a given for everyone, there's nothing martials can do that casters can't do just as well; but casters also get the power to Wish their martial counterparts out of existence (once).
*Unless you're a Battle Master, but Battle Master is literally so much better designed than any other subclass in the game that it can be safely discarded as an outlier.
*Unless you're a Battle Master, but Battle Master is literally so much better designed than any other subclass in the game that it can be safely discarded as an outlier.
Rune Knights have some skill monkey tools as well, though they're pretty limited in scope. It would help if Expertise were (a) less dippable (make it a class level-based bonus instead of 2xPB), and (b) removed from bards (bards have spells, they don't need expertise). Then add skill bonuses of some sort to fighter and barbarian (UA has done this to some degree, but it should probably be more significant).
Another alternative would be changing how attunement slots work. Say, reduce the base number to 2, and barbarian/fighter/rogue get +1 per 5 levels, paladin/ranger get +1 per 10 levels. At fifteenth level, wizards having 2 slots and fighters having 5 would actually be fairly relevant.
Traditionally, these are all the purview of the DM to facilitate. The only difference in 5e over earlier editions is not spelling these things out blatantly outright, but there is nothing forbidding or discouraging DM's from going that direction.
I would disagree that there's nothing discouraging DMs from going in that direction: DMs are generally expected to be neutral, and "giving character X free stuff" isn't. It's true that sufficient quantities of DM bias can overcome any mechanical disadvantage, but the point of a rule system is to make life easier for the DM, not to add to their workload.
Even if you set that aside, merely the fact that there's nothing recommending or encouraging going in that direction will cause many DMs to not to do for the simple reason that they don't even consider it.
Again, it isn't 'free stuff' when it comes naturally as part of a plot leading up to it. If it were otherwise, then all campaign rewards, including xps, would be merely 'free stuff.'
If you are giving opportunities to one PC, and not giving similar opportunities to another PC, you're being biased.
This does not mean 'deep, detailed rules', it just means some sort of mechanical support to indicate that this is the expected way for the game to progress, though D&D seems to be trying to cut down on super-vague rules like divine intervention.
You seem to be objecting to (3) because it gives martials something that casters do not get, even though the entire context of the discussion is casters getting too much at higher levels and thus being unbalanced.
Incorrect. My point is that, whichever of those things you do, it should be in the rules; the DM should not need to fix problems with the game.
i do think there was an alternate rule in the deep past that allowed someone to gain followers according to their level and charisma score. One follower for each bonus.
Followers were defined as an NPC who would follow you orders and do your bidding. Normally because of friendship or fame. They take low pay as long as their expenses were paid and they gained recognition for their work. They could only be turned against their leader by magic or deception. Follower were also of a class similar to their leaders class but not necessarily so. Each Follower would be agreed upon by both the DM and leading character. This way a martial could gain a caster as a follower or vice a versa. Followers could be replaced if lost(dead), but not dismissed(fired) and then replaced.
Bastions sort of covers some of this now.
A feat could be created to double or triple this ability for those characters who want to gain large amounts of followers in order to build a kingdom.
As for the Martial caster divide you have to define what type of power you want. Real political power and your own kingdom or combat fighting power. One creates history in the world and the other creates fame locally in the world. Are you trying to be the Emperor of Rome or the Gladiator who fights for him?
From most of the posters I have seen in this thread they want their martial character to be as powerful as a caster seems to them. And it really is a just seems problem. A caster can use all of their slots inside of a minute or two. And then needs a good rest to get even a few back, A fighter never runs out of slots or power. They can always fight. A martials minimum damage if way higher than any casters minimum damage. stop trying to compare maximum damage to maximum damage and start to compare minimums against each other.
I never played 3e, but the only thing I remember of demigod like characters were the Epic ones. I never heard any such thing when it came to 2e, since it put in restrictions on damage levels from spell casters from 1e. Who had both unlimited damage and unlimited levels. 1e actually was responsible for adding the material component because people from the White Box were whining about how powerful the casters were back then.
The other restrictions in 1e and 2e were that the spells would either go off at the end of the round or the beginning of the next round. I can't remember which since it's been so long ago. Now spells go off as an action unless otherwise specified.
It seems like the game does favor spell casters. Sword and Sorcery or maybe Sword vs Sorcery?
Vampire lore is just that. It was created from many sources. For the most part what we think of today has come about in the last 100 years.
They do not have to be evil.
But remember what you would have to do to make them non evil. You would have to change the whole of the world and fit them into its history. How would they eat sleep and travel? Would there be cities of them with herds of cattle that they just go out and drink from every day. Or would they keep their own large dogs for this? Would they live longer than other humans? This could be a point of jealousy in that they could become the king or very rich and never die. Would they have other special powers like the ability to charm normal humans. Another point of jealousy. Can they go out in the day light or would they have to do all their business at night? Can they only be killed in a special way?
Uneducated people are very superstitions and would not like anyone who looks or acts differently than they do? Most peasants are not as enlightened as we are today. Something many of todays players do not like and just hand wave everyone in their worlds as being just like people are today. Educated healthy.and not superstitious. Something that requires a lot of education over generations.
Vampire lore is just that. It was created from many sources. For the most part what we think of today has come about in the last 100 years.
They do not have to be evil.
But remember what you would have to do to make them non evil. You would have to change the whole of the world and fit them into its history. How would they eat sleep and travel? Would there be cities of them with herds of cattle that they just go out and drink from every day. Or would they keep their own large dogs for this? Would they live longer than other humans? This could be a point of jealousy in that they could become the king or very rich and never die. Would they have other special powers like the ability to charm normal humans. Another point of jealousy. Can they go out in the day light or would they have to do all their business at night? Can they only be killed in a special way?
Uneducated people are very superstitions and would not like anyone who looks or acts differently than they do? Most peasants are not as enlightened as we are today. Something many of todays players do not like and just hand wave everyone in their worlds as being just like people are today. Educated healthy.and not superstitious. Something that requires a lot of education over generations.
I think you posted this in the wrong thread.
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How many 9th level spells can a 20th level caster cast?
And have you really read those spells? They are severly toned down from 4e.
You mean 3e. 4e didn't even use the 1-9 spell level system (they made the rational but also radical decision to just say the level of an ability is the level at which you can learn it).
Sorry
The things that martial characters could do at 20th level in 4E greatly exceeded what they can do in 5E. But 5E lets them use the same technique more than once in a single fight.
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.
4e martial characters were better at area damage by a lot, but in terms of single target damage, 5e fighters are better off, because they have extra attacks. An impressive turn by a 4e fighter might be a 5W power, a stance that does 1W to creatures that start their turn adjacent, an action point, and a 3W power. Assuming a 23 strength and a +5 2d6 weapon, that's 18d6+27 (90), which is certainly not bad... but a level 20 battle master fighter who uses action surge and burns his superiority dice with a +3 2d6 weapon is making 8 attacks for 2d6+9, +6d12 for superiority dice, total 167.
This sure sounds like you're making a case in favor of nerfing casters.
In 4E, fighters could also get ability scores well in excess of 20 because there was no upper cap on ability scores, nor was there one on attack bonuses or armor class. The differences in the rules mean that quantifying the differences in a meaningful way are difficult.
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.
So then the logical thing to do is nerf casters. I already in this thread posted 2 simple ways to do it.
I think the "linear martials, quadratic casters" observation has merit, but the underlying problem is the way the game starts to break down at higher levels generally. It's very difficult to meaningfully challenge a high-level party in combat, but D&D is mostly a game about getting in fights. So past the threshold where everybody is as good at fights as they'll ever need to be, what's left? For casters, they'll get the ability to create something from nothing, alter time and perception, even completely rewrite reality (once). For martials... Rogues can ignore their dice sometimes. Monks never get old. Fighters can attack 33% more times. Barbarians. It's not bad, it's just more of the same.
Fundamentally I think it's a power overflow problem; if high level content were hard enough that the difference between making 3 attacks in a turn or 4 felt like the difference between life and death, people wouldn't complain so much about linear martials. But it's not, so they do. I don't know how to fix this, and I tend not to worry about it too much since my games overwhelmingly don't go higher than 12th level.
Honestly, the problem is that people reject both "limit what magic can do" and "toss realism out the window for martials", and a fix has to do at least one of those two things.
Sure, but I think that happens because of the way combat starts to become unsatisfying somewhere between 10th and 15th levels. And when that kind of shift occurs, casters are much better equipped to deal with it than martials are.
Also very true. For what it's worth I'm fully on team "throw out realism", but I expect them to continue making the non-choice to paper over the issue with magic items. (Which are allegedly optional)
Agreed! But, to be clear, we're talking about 5e here. Except for maybe the Rogues (if your Expertises are allocated towards interpersonal skills) none of these multi-talented martials are inherently supported by the mechanics of the game; they're just doing side things that anyone can do equally well. There's nothing about Being a Fighter that makes you better at leading an army than any given Wizard*. Rogues don't get criminal underground contacts for free, and Monks don't actually get Monasteries for free either! Those things are available via background features (for now), but casters have backgrounds, too. Martials aren't better at any of the things you mentioned than casters are. So we inadvertently arrive back at my original point: martials, as classes, are designed to Fight Good. Once you get past the point where Fighting Good is a given for everyone, there's nothing martials can do that casters can't do just as well; but casters also get the power to Wish their martial counterparts out of existence (once).
*Unless you're a Battle Master, but Battle Master is literally so much better designed than any other subclass in the game that it can be safely discarded as an outlier.
Rune Knights have some skill monkey tools as well, though they're pretty limited in scope. It would help if Expertise were (a) less dippable (make it a class level-based bonus instead of 2xPB), and (b) removed from bards (bards have spells, they don't need expertise). Then add skill bonuses of some sort to fighter and barbarian (UA has done this to some degree, but it should probably be more significant).
Another alternative would be changing how attunement slots work. Say, reduce the base number to 2, and barbarian/fighter/rogue get +1 per 5 levels, paladin/ranger get +1 per 10 levels. At fifteenth level, wizards having 2 slots and fighters having 5 would actually be fairly relevant.
I would disagree that there's nothing discouraging DMs from going in that direction: DMs are generally expected to be neutral, and "giving character X free stuff" isn't. It's true that sufficient quantities of DM bias can overcome any mechanical disadvantage, but the point of a rule system is to make life easier for the DM, not to add to their workload.
Even if you set that aside, merely the fact that there's nothing recommending or encouraging going in that direction will cause many DMs to not to do for the simple reason that they don't even consider it.
If you are giving opportunities to one PC, and not giving similar opportunities to another PC, you're being biased.
This does not mean 'deep, detailed rules', it just means some sort of mechanical support to indicate that this is the expected way for the game to progress, though D&D seems to be trying to cut down on super-vague rules like divine intervention.
Incorrect. My point is that, whichever of those things you do, it should be in the rules; the DM should not need to fix problems with the game.
i do think there was an alternate rule in the deep past that allowed someone to gain followers according to their level and charisma score. One follower for each bonus.
Followers were defined as an NPC who would follow you orders and do your bidding. Normally because of friendship or fame. They take low pay as long as their expenses were paid and they gained recognition for their work. They could only be turned against their leader by magic or deception.
Follower were also of a class similar to their leaders class but not necessarily so. Each Follower would be agreed upon by both the DM and leading character. This way a martial could gain a caster as a follower or vice a versa.
Followers could be replaced if lost(dead), but not dismissed(fired) and then replaced.
Bastions sort of covers some of this now.
A feat could be created to double or triple this ability for those characters who want to gain large amounts of followers in order to build a kingdom.
As for the Martial caster divide you have to define what type of power you want. Real political power and your own kingdom or combat fighting power. One creates history in the world and the other creates fame locally in the world. Are you trying to be the Emperor of Rome or the Gladiator who fights for him?
From most of the posters I have seen in this thread they want their martial character to be as powerful as a caster seems to them. And it really is a just seems problem.
A caster can use all of their slots inside of a minute or two. And then needs a good rest to get even a few back, A fighter never runs out of slots or power. They can always fight. A martials minimum damage if way higher than any casters minimum damage.
stop trying to compare maximum damage to maximum damage and start to compare minimums against each other.
I never played 3e, but the only thing I remember of demigod like characters were the Epic ones. I never heard any such thing when it came to 2e, since it put in restrictions on damage levels from spell casters from 1e. Who had both unlimited damage and unlimited levels. 1e actually was responsible for adding the material component because people from the White Box were whining about how powerful the casters were back then.
The other restrictions in 1e and 2e were that the spells would either go off at the end of the round or the beginning of the next round. I can't remember which since it's been so long ago. Now spells go off as an action unless otherwise specified.
It seems like the game does favor spell casters. Sword and Sorcery or maybe Sword vs Sorcery?
Vampire lore is just that. It was created from many sources. For the most part what we think of today has come about in the last 100 years.
They do not have to be evil.
But remember what you would have to do to make them non evil.
You would have to change the whole of the world and fit them into its history.
How would they eat sleep and travel? Would there be cities of them with herds of cattle that they just go out and drink from every day. Or would they keep their own large dogs for this?
Would they live longer than other humans? This could be a point of jealousy in that they could become the king or very rich and never die.
Would they have other special powers like the ability to charm normal humans. Another point of jealousy.
Can they go out in the day light or would they have to do all their business at night?
Can they only be killed in a special way?
Uneducated people are very superstitions and would not like anyone who looks or acts differently than they do? Most peasants are not as enlightened as we are today. Something many of todays players do not like and just hand wave everyone in their worlds as being just like people are today. Educated healthy.and not superstitious. Something that requires a lot of education over generations.
I think you posted this in the wrong thread.