so i havent been able to get to the higher levels of dnd 15 and up. but all iv heard from dnd players is that materials fall off and casters are much stronger late game. how bad is the difference tho? if anyone whos gone high levels or is just good with numbers or something could explain it id highly appreciate it.
That said, to answer. Let's look at a 15th level Fighter vs a 15th level Full Caster. No subclasses, just the base class itself.
A 15th level fighter is gonna have 3 attacks, and 6 ability score improvements. Once per short rest, they can get six attacks in one turn and they can reroll some saving throws.
A 15th level caster(Cleric, Druid, Wizard, Sorcerer or Warlock) has access to 8th level spells and below. These spells can be reality altering at this level.
Why I don't like this as a discussion is that D&D combat is going to end up letting a Fighter shine, and if they don't, that is the DMs fault. Fighters are extremely consistent forms of damage and their purpose is to help protect casters OR go up and do that burst damage when the stars align.
The more powerful you get the harder it is to balance things. Everybody gets more. Fighter types do more damage, divine do more defense and arcane users do more utility.
But while it is easy to boost offense and defense, it is harder to deal with creative utility. Legendary Resistance helps a lot, but there is just so much you can do.
The problem is not math but the absence of math. Anything the math types ADD, the DM can SUBTRACT. But what do you do when your Players use True Polymorph on their minion to give themselves a handy Conclave Dryad that has a no save ability to disrupt all non-artifact magic items.
Ah, the great Martials vs Casters debate. The usual complaint is with summoning spells allowing casters to create a small army to attack with. And fails to take into consideration the acquisition of magic items. I believe it's usually the people who haven't actually played D&D and are just theorycrafting that make these claims. I don't believe you should worry about it and just choose to play what you enjoy playing.
Casters have a high nova potential and strong AoE, but LRs tend to put them off from playing the big cards early against bosses. Now, if you go up against the BBEG as the first encounter since an LR they're still gonna have enough in the tank to do a lot of damage; their biggest weakness is that 6th level and higher slots don't come back until the next LR in most cases, so while they've got some big punches, they have to budget them. Magic weapons are a big equalizer at higher levels too; a Flame Tongue adds 2d6 damage to every attack that hits. Put that on a 15th level Fighter and that's potentially 6d6 extra damage. Every. Single. Round.12d6 when they Action Surge. That'll melt through enemies pretty fast as well, and it doesn't run out.
In the end it's very DM and table dependent, but don't feel like you absolutely shouldn't play the class you want because you'll be miles behind others.
There's definitely a difference, but it's vastly exaggerated online.
A lot of people remember how it was in 2nd and 3rd Edition, when casters were basically demigods once you got into double digit levels while martials were basically cheerleaders. Fifth Edition rolled that back pretty hard so things are not equal but not nearly as bad as it used to be.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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.
A lot of it depends on what the game is about. In a fight against a solo boss monster, martial classes tend to dominate at any level unless the boss lacks area damage and thus can be swarmed with summons, but it terms of raw 'change the world' potential it's not even close.
Casters do easily have the best ways to cause a large scale effect in an area, but skill-wise Rogues easily keep pace with Bards and pull ahead of other casters. Part of it is just demarcation of roles, and casters get a lot of the really flashy stuff. Martials also got shorted on out of combat utility because, you know, martial kinda indicates an emphasis on combat. They're working to add a little more stretch to them in the update, but you're still unlikely to be more than second string on most out of combat stuff as a Fighter, Barbarian, or Monk, and to a certain degree that's just the nature of the game.
They're working to add a little more stretch to them in the update, but you're still unlikely to be more than second string on most out of combat stuff as a Fighter, Barbarian, or Monk, and to a certain degree that's just the nature of the game.
UA actually adds a surprising amount to the first two, though some of the interactions may not be intended.
The UA8 barbarian, when raging (which it can maintain out of combat for ten minutes), can use Strength for Acrobatics, Intimidation, Perception, Stealth, and Survival.. and because it's a strength check, has advantage... and then at level 18 can use indomitable might to never roll less than 20 (22 at level 19, 26 at level 20).
The UA7 battle master fighter can get Ambush (Stealth), Commanding Presence (Intimidate, Presence, Persuasion), or Tactical Assessment (History, Investigation, Insight) to add superiority dice to skill checks, and can also add Tactical Mind dice, and at level 15 gets free superiority dice, and has enough feats to practically take an expertise feat, so a DC 30 check isn't really that hard.
They're working to add a little more stretch to them in the update, but you're still unlikely to be more than second string on most out of combat stuff as a Fighter, Barbarian, or Monk, and to a certain degree that's just the nature of the game.
UA actually adds a surprising amount to the first two, though some of the interactions may not be intended.
The UA8 barbarian, when raging (which it can maintain out of combat for ten minutes), can use Strength for Acrobatics, Intimidation, Perception, Stealth, and Survival.. and because it's a strength check, has advantage... and then at level 18 can use indomitable might to never roll less than 20 (22 at level 19, 26 at level 20).
The UA7 battle master fighter can get Ambush (Stealth), Commanding Presence (Intimidate, Presence, Persuasion), or Tactical Assessment (History, Investigation, Insight) to add superiority dice to skill checks, and can also add Tactical Mind dice, and at level 15 gets free superiority dice, and has enough feats to practically take an expertise feat, so a DC 30 check isn't really that hard.
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're working to add a little more stretch to them in the update, but you're still unlikely to be more than second string on most out of combat stuff as a Fighter, Barbarian, or Monk, and to a certain degree that's just the nature of the game.
UA actually adds a surprising amount to the first two, though some of the interactions may not be intended.
The UA8 barbarian, when raging (which it can maintain out of combat for ten minutes), can use Strength for Acrobatics, Intimidation, Perception, Stealth, and Survival.. and because it's a strength check, has advantage... and then at level 18 can use indomitable might to never roll less than 20 (22 at level 19, 26 at level 20).
The UA7 battle master fighter can get Ambush (Stealth), Commanding Presence (Intimidate, Presence, Persuasion), or Tactical Assessment (History, Investigation, Insight) to add superiority dice to skill checks, and can also add Tactical Mind dice, and at level 15 gets free superiority dice, and has enough feats to practically take an expertise feat, so a DC 30 check isn't really that hard.
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......
If you are nerfing casters at higher level, then you have the opposite problem, with casters ending up pointless at higher level.
It really does not help though that they have been stupidly conservative on top end magic items in this edition.
Nerfing casters does indeed counter the quadratic effects.
Two things to cool them off:
1. Cantrips don't scale to double/triple/quadruple initial levels (sorry Warlocks, but banning Warlocks as a class is always a good thing to do). Once a caster hits level 5, that caster already has a plethora of options.
2. 15 minutes/spell slot/level of time required to memorize/commune/whatever, after a long rest, to get back any EXPENDED spell slots.Getting back three 1st level spell slots is 45 minutes, and trivial, and likely handwaved. Getting back two 5th's and a 6th level spell slots expended the previous day, that takes 2 x 5 x 15 + 6 x 15 = 240 minutes, and NOT trivial, as the party waits for the Wizard/Cleric/whatever to sit there and just think. But given how many players have told me it is "no fun" to track ammo and rations, I can only imagine the pushback on doing the math to calculate how much downtime a caster has, as well as a caster now having to treat spell slots as a very valuable resource.
They're working to add a little more stretch to them in the update, but you're still unlikely to be more than second string on most out of combat stuff as a Fighter, Barbarian, or Monk, and to a certain degree that's just the nature of the game.
UA actually adds a surprising amount to the first two, though some of the interactions may not be intended.
The UA8 barbarian, when raging (which it can maintain out of combat for ten minutes), can use Strength for Acrobatics, Intimidation, Perception, Stealth, and Survival.. and because it's a strength check, has advantage... and then at level 18 can use indomitable might to never roll less than 20 (22 at level 19, 26 at level 20).
The UA7 battle master fighter can get Ambush (Stealth), Commanding Presence (Intimidate, Presence, Persuasion), or Tactical Assessment (History, Investigation, Insight) to add superiority dice to skill checks, and can also add Tactical Mind dice, and at level 15 gets free superiority dice, and has enough feats to practically take an expertise feat, so a DC 30 check isn't really that hard.
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......
If you are nerfing casters at higher level, then you have the opposite problem, with casters ending up pointless at higher level.
It really does not help though that they have been stupidly conservative on top end magic items in this edition.
Not to mention that nerfs are really hard to do on a balanced and fun way. Adding buffs to the weakest characters is substantially easier to pull off.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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.
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.
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 casters 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.
you make it sound like casters have it all lol good damage martials cant hope to keep up with and good support too lol
And it is limited by slots. Unlike 99% of a martials abilities,
But when I made that change I out paced my party members and finished things far faster then they were used to out of me. Eventually they might have changed their tactics and learned to work together but not then.
I changed my tactics so fast that the Dm didn't have much if any chance to change his plans. He had little idea my character could do such things. He was fairly new and casters were not played well in any game he was part of.
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.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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 i havent been able to get to the higher levels of dnd 15 and up. but all iv heard from dnd players is that materials fall off and casters are much stronger late game. how bad is the difference tho? if anyone whos gone high levels or is just good with numbers or something could explain it id highly appreciate it.
As always, this is table and DM dependent.
That said, to answer. Let's look at a 15th level Fighter vs a 15th level Full Caster. No subclasses, just the base class itself.
A 15th level fighter is gonna have 3 attacks, and 6 ability score improvements. Once per short rest, they can get six attacks in one turn and they can reroll some saving throws.
A 15th level caster(Cleric, Druid, Wizard, Sorcerer or Warlock) has access to 8th level spells and below. These spells can be reality altering at this level.
Why I don't like this as a discussion is that D&D combat is going to end up letting a Fighter shine, and if they don't, that is the DMs fault. Fighters are extremely consistent forms of damage and their purpose is to help protect casters OR go up and do that burst damage when the stars align.
The more powerful you get the harder it is to balance things. Everybody gets more. Fighter types do more damage, divine do more defense and arcane users do more utility.
But while it is easy to boost offense and defense, it is harder to deal with creative utility. Legendary Resistance helps a lot, but there is just so much you can do.
The problem is not math but the absence of math. Anything the math types ADD, the DM can SUBTRACT. But what do you do when your Players use True Polymorph on their minion to give themselves a handy Conclave Dryad that has a no save ability to disrupt all non-artifact magic items.
Ah, the great Martials vs Casters debate. The usual complaint is with summoning spells allowing casters to create a small army to attack with. And fails to take into consideration the acquisition of magic items. I believe it's usually the people who haven't actually played D&D and are just theorycrafting that make these claims. I don't believe you should worry about it and just choose to play what you enjoy playing.
Casters have a high nova potential and strong AoE, but LRs tend to put them off from playing the big cards early against bosses. Now, if you go up against the BBEG as the first encounter since an LR they're still gonna have enough in the tank to do a lot of damage; their biggest weakness is that 6th level and higher slots don't come back until the next LR in most cases, so while they've got some big punches, they have to budget them. Magic weapons are a big equalizer at higher levels too; a Flame Tongue adds 2d6 damage to every attack that hits. Put that on a 15th level Fighter and that's potentially 6d6 extra damage. Every. Single. Round.12d6 when they Action Surge. That'll melt through enemies pretty fast as well, and it doesn't run out.
In the end it's very DM and table dependent, but don't feel like you absolutely shouldn't play the class you want because you'll be miles behind others.
There's definitely a difference, but it's vastly exaggerated online.
A lot of people remember how it was in 2nd and 3rd Edition, when casters were basically demigods once you got into double digit levels while martials were basically cheerleaders. Fifth Edition rolled that back pretty hard so things are not equal but not nearly as bad as it used to be.
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.
A lot of it depends on what the game is about. In a fight against a solo boss monster, martial classes tend to dominate at any level unless the boss lacks area damage and thus can be swarmed with summons, but it terms of raw 'change the world' potential it's not even close.
Casters do easily have the best ways to cause a large scale effect in an area, but skill-wise Rogues easily keep pace with Bards and pull ahead of other casters. Part of it is just demarcation of roles, and casters get a lot of the really flashy stuff. Martials also got shorted on out of combat utility because, you know, martial kinda indicates an emphasis on combat. They're working to add a little more stretch to them in the update, but you're still unlikely to be more than second string on most out of combat stuff as a Fighter, Barbarian, or Monk, and to a certain degree that's just the nature of the game.
UA actually adds a surprising amount to the first two, though some of the interactions may not be intended.
The UA8 barbarian, when raging (which it can maintain out of combat for ten minutes), can use Strength for Acrobatics, Intimidation, Perception, Stealth, and Survival.. and because it's a strength check, has advantage... and then at level 18 can use indomitable might to never roll less than 20 (22 at level 19, 26 at level 20).
The UA7 battle master fighter can get Ambush (Stealth), Commanding Presence (Intimidate, Presence, Persuasion), or Tactical Assessment (History, Investigation, Insight) to add superiority dice to skill checks, and can also add Tactical Mind dice, and at level 15 gets free superiority dice, and has enough feats to practically take an expertise feat, so a DC 30 check isn't really that hard.
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......
Wow, just 15 minutes; with that kind of brilliance you ought to be able to make your own system and take the industry by storm.
Nerfing casters does indeed counter the quadratic effects.
Two things to cool them off:
1. Cantrips don't scale to double/triple/quadruple initial levels (sorry Warlocks, but banning Warlocks as a class is always a good thing to do). Once a caster hits level 5, that caster already has a plethora of options.
2. 15 minutes/spell slot/level of time required to memorize/commune/whatever, after a long rest, to get back any EXPENDED spell slots.Getting back three 1st level spell slots is 45 minutes, and trivial, and likely handwaved. Getting back two 5th's and a 6th level spell slots expended the previous day, that takes 2 x 5 x 15 + 6 x 15 = 240 minutes, and NOT trivial, as the party waits for the Wizard/Cleric/whatever to sit there and just think. But given how many players have told me it is "no fun" to track ammo and rations, I can only imagine the pushback on doing the math to calculate how much downtime a caster has, as well as a caster now having to treat spell slots as a very valuable resource.
Not to mention that nerfs are really hard to do on a balanced and fun way. Adding buffs to the weakest characters is substantially easier to pull off.
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.
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.
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.
you make it sound like casters have it all lol good damage martials cant hope to keep up with and good support too lol
Not everything at all times.
And it is limited by slots. Unlike 99% of a martials abilities,
But when I made that change I out paced my party members and finished things far faster then they were used to out of me. Eventually they might have changed their tactics and learned to work together but not then.
I changed my tactics so fast that the Dm didn't have much if any chance to change his plans. He had little idea my character could do such things. He was fairly new and casters were not played well in any game he was part of.
And martials did turn into demigods at higher levels in 4E. Literally, in the case of one martial Epic Destiny.
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.
Eh, they got the name demigod, but nothing in 4e was at the power level of 9th level spells in 5e.