A lot of people talk about the martial/caster divide, typically referring to how martials don't get any good utility options, but casters do. However, a CORE tenant of D&D is that your character doesn't fulfill every role in the party. For some reason, it's totally fine for the casters to not get Extra Attack, because they're casters, and they're good at spells, so they don't need to be good at melee. BUT, for some inexplicable reason, the martials NEED utility, because being good at attacking isn't enough. Why is this? Why do martials need to get everything short of being full casters, but casters don't need to be good martials?
Generally speaking, there are two types of utility being referenced here.
The first is in-combat utility. Particularly for more experienced groups, utility spells are vastly more important than damage in combat - you might need to deal damage to ultimately win, but it is not the damage output that is defining combat. Spells that remove an enemy from combat, control their positioning, force them to miss a turn, etc. are all extremely powerful and often are what makes or breaks a well-designed combat.
Here, I am not sure I really think there is too much of a divide. Sure, spell casters get the really nasty things (Hypnotic Pattern, Feeblemind, etc.), but, assuming the DM is adequately taxing resources (and I recognize too many DMs fail to pressure spell slots sufficiently), those become sparse as a dungeon progresses. Martials also get a number of great options on this front - if someone wants to control the battlefield, there’s things like Battlemaster, Cavalier, Monks, Rogues, etc. I think a lot of the issue with the martial-caster divide within combat can boil down to DMs failing to pressure casters and players who choose subclasses that do not really mesh with what they want to do.
Out of combat is where the problems really arise. Outside of skill monkeys like Rogues, a lot of martials have very little utility. They do not get spells like detect thoughts, scrying, detect magic, or any number of other utility options that give mechanics for outside of combat, and are limited to their skills and their roleplay. Some exceptions exist - Samurai Fighters get some charisma bonuses, for example - but those are few and far between, so you are pretty limited.
There are players for which this is not a problem - players that can make do with what they have and their roleplaying skill. But a lot of players are reliant on mechanics, and the lack of mechanics - particularly as compared to the plethora of out of combat tools offered to casters - is a major detriment to their activity in a significant segment of the game. I think saying there is an out-of-combat divide in utility is more than fair.
Personally, I would like to see things like 4e’s Martial Practice system be implemented in 5e. An attempt to bridge this longstanding divide, they were basically rituals martials could get to have some out of combats utility. Little things like that would go a long way to making sure martials were not feeling consistently mechanically outshined whenever in a non-combat situation.
At low levels, sure. The problem is higher level play, particularly after 10th level, where the spellcaster is far better in combat than most any equivalent martial. Getting an extra swipe with a+2 Flametongue is awesome, to be sure - but it doesn't compare to being able to freely manipulate the battlefield with Telekinesis, erase an enemy with a single massive strike via Disintegrate, turning combats off entirely with any number of control spells, sending villains on a one-way trip to the Astral Plane with Plane Shift, the list goes on.
If spells stopped getting better above third-level magic? You'd have a point worth discussing. But I've played a wizard with ninth- level spells for close to a year now, and some of the stuff Mira pulls off regularly makes any martial look like a chump. It's not that the swordslingers can't match my utility - it's that their specialty is entirely unneeded when I can become an adult silver dragon before they get their fourth slash.
For some reason, it's totally fine for the casters to not get Extra Attack, because they're casters, and they're good at spells, so they don't need to be good at melee.
In terms of damage, casters kinda do get Extra Attack.
Cantrips scale at lv5 when the martials get their extra attack; keeping their resource-less damage going strong. Plus when they use spells the effects/damage are going to keep up as they get higher levels.
Plus the casters' "extra attack" works even with multiclassing. Lv5 Ranger / Paladin only gets Extra Attack once. But a lv5 sorcerer / wizard still gets the full scaling of their cantrips because that's based on the character's total level instead of the levels in a class.
At low levels, sure. The problem is higher level play, particularly after 10th level, where the spellcaster is far better in combat than most any equivalent martial. Getting an extra swipe with a+2 Flametongue is awesome, to be sure - but it doesn't compare to being able to freely manipulate the battlefield with Telekinesis, erase an enemy with a single massive strike via Disintegrate, turning combats off entirely with any number of control spells, sending villains on a one-way trip to the Astral Plane with Plane Shift, the list goes on.
In tier 4 that may be true because of a few really busted 9th level spells, but in tier 3 pretty much anything that isn't chaff has legendary resistance, so a lot of your examples turn into "You cast your awesome spell and... nothing happens".
At low levels, sure. The problem is higher level play, particularly after 10th level, where the spellcaster is far better in combat than most any equivalent martial. Getting an extra swipe with a+2 Flametongue is awesome, to be sure - but it doesn't compare to being able to freely manipulate the battlefield with Telekinesis, erase an enemy with a single massive strike via Disintegrate, turning combats off entirely with any number of control spells, sending villains on a one-way trip to the Astral Plane with Plane Shift, the list goes on.
In tier 4 that may be true because of a few really busted 9th level spells, but in tier 3 pretty much anything that isn't chaff has legendary resistance, so a lot of your examples turn into "You cast your awesome spell and... nothing happens".
If you don't inflate hit points by giving it max hit points or something, there's a good chance it runs out of hit points before it runs out of LR. Also, you have to cast probably 5 or so (it's going to succeed at some saves without needing LR) spells that are debilitating enough to be worth spending LR against.
A lot of people talk about making encounters harder by doing things like giving critters max hp. This is exactly the wrong way to balance high level D&D, because damage scaling in 5e is actually pretty weak -- most characters have their max damage (relative to their hit points) at level 5 and it's downhill from there.
It mostly falls to Martials being gear dependent/starved and Casters not so much. Some of it is that Martial have varying weapon types that can wildly effect how the character plays.
If a Rogue gets a magic bow suddenly, now the Rogue is going to be a Range Combatant. Now imagine a Fighter, The player wants to play a Spear and Shield with a heavy defense play style, and the official Adventure has no spear or shield, but if the party heads down this one path by blind luck maybe, MAYBE the fighter could get a +1Great sword, a wholly different playstyle.
Meanwhile Casters Typically don't care about weapons.
Next is a Scaling issue By level 7ish if your Martials doesn't have a magic weapon, the Martials is going to have a bad time. While Casters have cantrips that not only scale, but have a variety of damage types/utility.
Lastly every new book has new spells that Casters can easily pop into rotation without(or minimal) DM input. Martials however Need not only the DM to agree that the "+1sword" totally won't break the game, Also to allow the Martials get a basic magic item without paying an amount of gold equal to a Dragon's horde to acquire. Of course that's assuming the DM doesn't pull out a d100 shop chart to generate a shopping list that only contains items from the DMG.
It mostly falls to Martials being gear dependent/starved and Casters not so much. Some of it is that Martial have varying weapon types that can wildly effect how the character plays.
If a Rogue gets a magic bow suddenly, now the Rogue is going to be a Range Combatant. Now imagine a Fighter, The player wants to play a Spear and Shield with a heavy defense play style, and the official Adventure has no spear or shield, but if the party heads down this one path by blind luck maybe, MAYBE the fighter could get a +1Great sword, a wholly different playstyle.
Meanwhile Casters Typically don't care about weapons.
Next is a Scaling issue By level 7ish if your Martials doesn't have a magic weapon, the Martials is going to have a bad time. While Casters have cantrips that not only scale, but have a variety of damage types/utility.
Lastly every new book has new spells that Casters can easily pop into rotation without(or minimal) DM input. Martials however Need not only the DM to agree that the "+1sword" totally won't break the game, Also to allow the Martials get a basic magic item without paying an amount of gold equal to a Dragon's horde to acquire. Of course that's assuming the DM doesn't pull out a d100 shop chart to generate a shopping list that only contains items from the DMG.
It mostly falls to Martials being gear dependent/starved and Casters not so much. Some of it is that Martial have varying weapon types that can wildly effect how the character plays.
If a Rogue gets a magic bow suddenly, now the Rogue is going to be a Range Combatant. Now imagine a Fighter, The player wants to play a Spear and Shield with a heavy defense play style, and the official Adventure has no spear or shield, but if the party heads down this one path by blind luck maybe, MAYBE the fighter could get a +1Great sword, a wholly different playstyle.
Meanwhile Casters Typically don't care about weapons.
Next is a Scaling issue By level 7ish if your Martials doesn't have a magic weapon, the Martials is going to have a bad time. While Casters have cantrips that not only scale, but have a variety of damage types/utility.
Lastly every new book has new spells that Casters can easily pop into rotation without(or minimal) DM input. Martials however Need not only the DM to agree that the "+1sword" totally won't break the game, Also to allow the Martials get a basic magic item without paying an amount of gold equal to a Dragon's horde to acquire. Of course that's assuming the DM doesn't pull out a d100 shop chart to generate a shopping list that only contains items from the DMG.
Counterpoint:Casters are EXTREMELY dependent on their foci & component pouches to pull off all of their best moves.
Counter-counterpoint: With the exception of a few spells with specialized costly components, a single focus fits most any spell, whereas martials have a variety of fighting styles that not every weapon is compatible with. It's not really a fair comparison to make. For instance, if you find a magic weapon that doesn't have the Finesse property, a Rogue can't properly utilize it. Compare to ANY ordinary arcane focus that grants a bonus and a Wizard, Sorcerer, Bard, or Warlock could all use it without batting an eye.
It mostly falls to Martials being gear dependent/starved and Casters not so much. Some of it is that Martial have varying weapon types that can wildly effect how the character plays.
If a Rogue gets a magic bow suddenly, now the Rogue is going to be a Range Combatant. Now imagine a Fighter, The player wants to play a Spear and Shield with a heavy defense play style, and the official Adventure has no spear or shield, but if the party heads down this one path by blind luck maybe, MAYBE the fighter could get a +1Great sword, a wholly different playstyle.
Meanwhile Casters Typically don't care about weapons.
Next is a Scaling issue By level 7ish if your Martials doesn't have a magic weapon, the Martials is going to have a bad time. While Casters have cantrips that not only scale, but have a variety of damage types/utility.
Lastly every new book has new spells that Casters can easily pop into rotation without(or minimal) DM input. Martials however Need not only the DM to agree that the "+1sword" totally won't break the game, Also to allow the Martials get a basic magic item without paying an amount of gold equal to a Dragon's horde to acquire. Of course that's assuming the DM doesn't pull out a d100 shop chart to generate a shopping list that only contains items from the DMG.
Counterpoint:Casters are EXTREMELY dependent on their foci & component pouches to pull off all of their best moves.
Counter-counterpoint: With the exception of a few spells with specialized costly components, a single focus fits most any spell, whereas martials have a variety of fighting styles that not every weapon is compatible with. It's not really a fair comparison to make. For instance, if you find a magic weapon that doesn't have the Finesse property, a Rogue can't properly utilize it. Compare to ANY ordinary arcane focus that grants a bonus and a Wizard, Sorcerer, Bard, or Warlock could all use it without batting an eye.
Hence why I dislike the lack of monster tactics RAW.
Any antagonist worth their weight should try & disarm a caster of foci(Arcane, Divine, tools, weapons, shields, armor, component pouches, spellbooks, etc), to limit what casters can do to just verbal & somatic components. It's the easiest way to close the gap without making magic impossible to pull off at all.
This is why I sometimes hope & pray for The Monsters Know What They're Doing to be somehow integrated into Beyond, JUST so DMs have antagonists be that much more antagonizing.
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I thought this discussion ended in AD&D, when did it resurface and morph into a new discussion? Was it when 5e came out 10 years ago?
The first complaints were because spell casters didn't need components and could just cast their spells instantly. Then in AD&D they gave them components and a time frame to cast. The spell took either a few segments or a round or more (for reference a segment is six seconds and a round is one minute). Combat was done in rounds back then. Unlike now, if a caster was hit back then, the spell was interrupted and lost. No saving throw. But since there was no spell damage limits, a Magic User's Fireball and Lightning could exceed 30d6 at 30th level (damage scaled was per level, not spell level).
I think the popularity of video games and anime gave newer people to D&D failed expectations of what melee classes can do or should be able to do.
It mostly falls to Martials being gear dependent/starved and Casters not so much. Some of it is that Martial have varying weapon types that can wildly effect how the character plays.
If a Rogue gets a magic bow suddenly, now the Rogue is going to be a Range Combatant. Now imagine a Fighter, The player wants to play a Spear and Shield with a heavy defense play style, and the official Adventure has no spear or shield, but if the party heads down this one path by blind luck maybe, MAYBE the fighter could get a +1Great sword, a wholly different playstyle.
Meanwhile Casters Typically don't care about weapons.
Next is a Scaling issue By level 7ish if your Martials doesn't have a magic weapon, the Martials is going to have a bad time. While Casters have cantrips that not only scale, but have a variety of damage types/utility.
Lastly every new book has new spells that Casters can easily pop into rotation without(or minimal) DM input. Martials however Need not only the DM to agree that the "+1sword" totally won't break the game, Also to allow the Martials get a basic magic item without paying an amount of gold equal to a Dragon's horde to acquire. Of course that's assuming the DM doesn't pull out a d100 shop chart to generate a shopping list that only contains items from the DMG.
It mostly falls to Martials being gear dependent/starved and Casters not so much. Some of it is that Martial have varying weapon types that can wildly effect how the character plays.
If a Rogue gets a magic bow suddenly, now the Rogue is going to be a Range Combatant. Now imagine a Fighter, The player wants to play a Spear and Shield with a heavy defense play style, and the official Adventure has no spear or shield, but if the party heads down this one path by blind luck maybe, MAYBE the fighter could get a +1Great sword, a wholly different playstyle.
Meanwhile Casters Typically don't care about weapons.
Next is a Scaling issue By level 7ish if your Martials doesn't have a magic weapon, the Martials is going to have a bad time. While Casters have cantrips that not only scale, but have a variety of damage types/utility.
Lastly every new book has new spells that Casters can easily pop into rotation without(or minimal) DM input. Martials however Need not only the DM to agree that the "+1sword" totally won't break the game, Also to allow the Martials get a basic magic item without paying an amount of gold equal to a Dragon's horde to acquire. Of course that's assuming the DM doesn't pull out a d100 shop chart to generate a shopping list that only contains items from the DMG.
No good DM is going to not change the magic items in the adventure if they won't benefit the party, making that point moot.
The application of the "no true scotsman" fallacy doesn't render the point moot. DMs can run adventures purely as written without changing any details and still be good DMs, or at the very least not be bad DMs. This also overlooks styles of play, such as organised play and west marches, where changing elements of an adventure such as loot are non-trivial.
If your argument hinges on DMs falling into a narrow and subjective definition of what you consider a "good DM", it's not a good argument.
It mostly falls to Martials being gear dependent/starved and Casters not so much. Some of it is that Martial have varying weapon types that can wildly effect how the character plays.
If a Rogue gets a magic bow suddenly, now the Rogue is going to be a Range Combatant. Now imagine a Fighter, The player wants to play a Spear and Shield with a heavy defense play style, and the official Adventure has no spear or shield, but if the party heads down this one path by blind luck maybe, MAYBE the fighter could get a +1Great sword, a wholly different playstyle.
Meanwhile Casters Typically don't care about weapons.
Next is a Scaling issue By level 7ish if your Martials doesn't have a magic weapon, the Martials is going to have a bad time. While Casters have cantrips that not only scale, but have a variety of damage types/utility.
Lastly every new book has new spells that Casters can easily pop into rotation without(or minimal) DM input. Martials however Need not only the DM to agree that the "+1sword" totally won't break the game, Also to allow the Martials get a basic magic item without paying an amount of gold equal to a Dragon's horde to acquire. Of course that's assuming the DM doesn't pull out a d100 shop chart to generate a shopping list that only contains items from the DMG.
No good DM is going to not change the magic items in the adventure if they won't benefit the party, making that point moot.
The application of the "no true scotsman" fallacy doesn't render the point moot. DMs can run adventures purely as written without changing any details and still be good DMs, or at the very least not be bad DMs. This also overlooks styles of play, such as organised play and west marches, where changing elements of an adventure such as loot are non-trivial.
If your argument hinges on DMs falling into a narrow and subjective definition of what you consider a "good DM", it's not a good argument.
One of my groups has just finished running the Oracle of War Eberron adventure that was written for Adventures League and it had exactly this problem, by level 20 and played as written we were still scrapping together enough money to make sure the two martials had +1 armour and +1 weapons and the adventure was neither providing weapons or money in the quantities that the DMG suggests. Doesn't mke my DM a bad DM and I'm sure it worked great at organised play events although it was frustrating for my Rogue and the Fighter
I will say in defense of Adventurer's League that I believe there's more flexibility in terms of magic items because it uses a currency/downtime system to "purchase" items, but I could be wrong. And that would only be AL and I couldn't speak for other forms of organised play such as Adventurer's in Greyhawk or other con-play events.
The issue is most dms don't give enough encounters per day, This gives casters an unfair advantage since the fewer encounters the more you can burst an encounter. Warlocks are particularly bad because of their short rest addiction. The consistent class can't shine when it's time to shine is when the spell slots run out. As much as I love at will cantrips they also contribute to this problem in older editions magic users didn't have an unlimited fire bolt dispenser.
Early game was designed to original be hard for casters but easy for marshals and end game vice versa. However modern gaming has made early life significantly easier casters but not done much for martials at the end game. What do marshals have that competes with wall of force, dimension door, teleport, Even tiny hut or scrying. Hell they don't even have things like whirlwind anymore.
No good DM is going to not change the magic items in the adventure if they won't benefit the party, making that point moot.
The application of the "no true scotsman" fallacy doesn't render the point moot. DMs can run adventures purely as written without changing any details and still be good DMs, or at the very least not be bad DMs. This also overlooks styles of play, such as organised play and west marches, where changing elements of an adventure such as loot are non-trivial.
If your argument hinges on DMs falling into a narrow and subjective definition of what you consider a "good DM", it's not a good argument.
In addition to being a “no true Scotsman” situation, I think OP is also ignoring a fundamental contributing factor to the perceived martial-caster divide raised by the point above. Gear is a huge contributing factor to powe level of Martials in a way that it is not for Casters. Cast spells are balanced mostly around small accuracy bonuses - an additional point to the attack or save.
Compare to martials. Martial damaging power, particularly at high levels, is defined by gear. Not only does it require the same accuracy boosts, it is really dependent on having things like Dragon Slayer weapons with high additional damage per hit. Their utility power also comes substantially from items, making up for the utility lacking in base class design.
Loot balance is hard, and something even very good DMs struggle with. Even if you are not running the loot out of the book and are curating it, it is really easy to make mistakes and give someone something underpowered.
This is particularly true because a lot of the items that help bridge the caster-martial divide… are not fun. Anyone who has ever seen a Monk or Fighter who is using a tattoo and magical weapon to get additional damage dice on every hit knows that’s what they need to keep up at very high level play… and also knows that the entire table will be sitting around while they roll a thousand dice for their 4+ attacks (more when they action surge!). And, at the end of the day, a lot of that is still just going to be damage, not game warping abilities that change the foundational nature of the combat.
It isn't quite that simple. Even multiple encounters per day easily leave spellcasters with available spell slots. Let's not forget that in previous editions it was common for fights to last dozens of rounds. Then 5e made changes that reduces almost all fights to 10 rounds, but 5e24 upped everyone's damage potential so that now fights only last 3 rounds.
5e also made cantrips an unexhaustable, scaling damage source and the new 'bread and butter' for spellcasters. Such that spell casters don't even need to cast levelled spells in most fights, they can just use cantrips. In 5e24 they can even double up (such as Witch Bolt + any other non-concentration spell after the first round).
To be honest 5e only needed a couple of minor tweaks to make it more balanced, but instead they fed muscle milk to every class (nerfed one - that needed it), and made the problem worse in the process. Even if a DM maxes out monster HP, no monster in a level appropriate encounter lives more than 3 rounds. Fights are over before the main villain can even use all of their legendary resistances (they don't use them if the original roll succeeds or the threat isn't enough to justify it).
5e24 also eliminated the need for magic weapons. No monster now requires a magic weapon to hurt them, even silver weapons are now pointless. The extra + to hit is likewise not needed (level appropriate encounters are based on no magic items). Characters already have the needed plus to hit to be able to fight monsters appropriate for their level.
Right now, almost every class/subclass in the game does too much damage, fights don't last long enough to require the use of resources, and as long as those resouces aren't needed to win the fight - there will be unbalance between those that have those resources and those that don't. Why would a caster even use a spell that lasts 10 rounds knowing that the fight will be over in 3?
A lot of people talk about the martial/caster divide, typically referring to how martials don't get any good utility options, but casters do. However, a CORE tenant of D&D is that your character doesn't fulfill every role in the party. For some reason, it's totally fine for the casters to not get Extra Attack, because they're casters, and they're good at spells, so they don't need to be good at melee. BUT, for some inexplicable reason, the martials NEED utility, because being good at attacking isn't enough. Why is this? Why do martials need to get everything short of being full casters, but casters don't need to be good martials?
Generally speaking, there are two types of utility being referenced here.
The first is in-combat utility. Particularly for more experienced groups, utility spells are vastly more important than damage in combat - you might need to deal damage to ultimately win, but it is not the damage output that is defining combat. Spells that remove an enemy from combat, control their positioning, force them to miss a turn, etc. are all extremely powerful and often are what makes or breaks a well-designed combat.
Here, I am not sure I really think there is too much of a divide. Sure, spell casters get the really nasty things (Hypnotic Pattern, Feeblemind, etc.), but, assuming the DM is adequately taxing resources (and I recognize too many DMs fail to pressure spell slots sufficiently), those become sparse as a dungeon progresses. Martials also get a number of great options on this front - if someone wants to control the battlefield, there’s things like Battlemaster, Cavalier, Monks, Rogues, etc. I think a lot of the issue with the martial-caster divide within combat can boil down to DMs failing to pressure casters and players who choose subclasses that do not really mesh with what they want to do.
Out of combat is where the problems really arise. Outside of skill monkeys like Rogues, a lot of martials have very little utility. They do not get spells like detect thoughts, scrying, detect magic, or any number of other utility options that give mechanics for outside of combat, and are limited to their skills and their roleplay. Some exceptions exist - Samurai Fighters get some charisma bonuses, for example - but those are few and far between, so you are pretty limited.
There are players for which this is not a problem - players that can make do with what they have and their roleplaying skill. But a lot of players are reliant on mechanics, and the lack of mechanics - particularly as compared to the plethora of out of combat tools offered to casters - is a major detriment to their activity in a significant segment of the game. I think saying there is an out-of-combat divide in utility is more than fair.
Personally, I would like to see things like 4e’s Martial Practice system be implemented in 5e. An attempt to bridge this longstanding divide, they were basically rituals martials could get to have some out of combats utility. Little things like that would go a long way to making sure martials were not feeling consistently mechanically outshined whenever in a non-combat situation.
At low levels, sure. The problem is higher level play, particularly after 10th level, where the spellcaster is far better in combat than most any equivalent martial. Getting an extra swipe with a+2 Flametongue is awesome, to be sure - but it doesn't compare to being able to freely manipulate the battlefield with Telekinesis, erase an enemy with a single massive strike via Disintegrate, turning combats off entirely with any number of control spells, sending villains on a one-way trip to the Astral Plane with Plane Shift, the list goes on.
If spells stopped getting better above third-level magic? You'd have a point worth discussing. But I've played a wizard with ninth- level spells for close to a year now, and some of the stuff Mira pulls off regularly makes any martial look like a chump. It's not that the swordslingers can't match my utility - it's that their specialty is entirely unneeded when I can become an adult silver dragon before they get their fourth slash.
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In terms of damage, casters kinda do get Extra Attack.
Cantrips scale at lv5 when the martials get their extra attack; keeping their resource-less damage going strong. Plus when they use spells the effects/damage are going to keep up as they get higher levels.
Plus the casters' "extra attack" works even with multiclassing. Lv5 Ranger / Paladin only gets Extra Attack once. But a lv5 sorcerer / wizard still gets the full scaling of their cantrips because that's based on the character's total level instead of the levels in a class.
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In tier 4 that may be true because of a few really busted 9th level spells, but in tier 3 pretty much anything that isn't chaff has legendary resistance, so a lot of your examples turn into "You cast your awesome spell and... nothing happens".
That's why you waste its LR first.
If you don't inflate hit points by giving it max hit points or something, there's a good chance it runs out of hit points before it runs out of LR. Also, you have to cast probably 5 or so (it's going to succeed at some saves without needing LR) spells that are debilitating enough to be worth spending LR against.
A lot of people talk about making encounters harder by doing things like giving critters max hp. This is exactly the wrong way to balance high level D&D, because damage scaling in 5e is actually pretty weak -- most characters have their max damage (relative to their hit points) at level 5 and it's downhill from there.
The "divide" is only a thing within certain(valid)play styles.
Most people don't think outside of theirs, hence why it's assumed as universal.
That's why I tend not to buy into these kinds of things.
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DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
It mostly falls to Martials being gear dependent/starved and Casters not so much.
Some of it is that Martial have varying weapon types that can wildly effect how the character plays.
If a Rogue gets a magic bow suddenly, now the Rogue is going to be a Range Combatant.
Now imagine a Fighter, The player wants to play a Spear and Shield with a heavy defense play style, and the official Adventure has no spear or shield, but if the party heads down this one path by blind luck maybe, MAYBE the fighter could get a +1Great sword, a wholly different playstyle.
Meanwhile Casters Typically don't care about weapons.
Next is a Scaling issue By level 7ish if your Martials doesn't have a magic weapon, the Martials is going to have a bad time.
While Casters have cantrips that not only scale, but have a variety of damage types/utility.
Lastly every new book has new spells that Casters can easily pop into rotation without(or minimal) DM input.
Martials however Need not only the DM to agree that the "+1sword" totally won't break the game, Also to allow the Martials get a basic magic item without paying an amount of gold equal to a Dragon's horde to acquire. Of course that's assuming the DM doesn't pull out a d100 shop chart to generate a shopping list that only contains items from the DMG.
TLDR: if you're running a published adventure give your Monk Wraps of Unarmed Power
Counterpoint:Casters are EXTREMELY dependent on their foci & component pouches to pull off all of their best moves.
DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
Counter-counterpoint: With the exception of a few spells with specialized costly components, a single focus fits most any spell, whereas martials have a variety of fighting styles that not every weapon is compatible with. It's not really a fair comparison to make. For instance, if you find a magic weapon that doesn't have the Finesse property, a Rogue can't properly utilize it. Compare to ANY ordinary arcane focus that grants a bonus and a Wizard, Sorcerer, Bard, or Warlock could all use it without batting an eye.
Hence why I dislike the lack of monster tactics RAW.
Any antagonist worth their weight should try & disarm a caster of foci(Arcane, Divine, tools, weapons, shields, armor, component pouches, spellbooks, etc), to limit what casters can do to just verbal & somatic components. It's the easiest way to close the gap without making magic impossible to pull off at all.
This is why I sometimes hope & pray for The Monsters Know What They're Doing to be somehow integrated into Beyond, JUST so DMs have antagonists be that much more antagonizing.
DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
I thought this discussion ended in AD&D, when did it resurface and morph into a new discussion? Was it when 5e came out 10 years ago?
The first complaints were because spell casters didn't need components and could just cast their spells instantly. Then in AD&D they gave them components and a time frame to cast. The spell took either a few segments or a round or more (for reference a segment is six seconds and a round is one minute). Combat was done in rounds back then. Unlike now, if a caster was hit back then, the spell was interrupted and lost. No saving throw. But since there was no spell damage limits, a Magic User's Fireball and Lightning could exceed 30d6 at 30th level (damage scaled was per level, not spell level).
I think the popularity of video games and anime gave newer people to D&D failed expectations of what melee classes can do or should be able to do.
No good DM is going to not change the magic items in the adventure if they won't benefit the party, making that point moot.
The application of the "no true scotsman" fallacy doesn't render the point moot. DMs can run adventures purely as written without changing any details and still be good DMs, or at the very least not be bad DMs. This also overlooks styles of play, such as organised play and west marches, where changing elements of an adventure such as loot are non-trivial.
If your argument hinges on DMs falling into a narrow and subjective definition of what you consider a "good DM", it's not a good argument.
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One of my groups has just finished running the Oracle of War Eberron adventure that was written for Adventures League and it had exactly this problem, by level 20 and played as written we were still scrapping together enough money to make sure the two martials had +1 armour and +1 weapons and the adventure was neither providing weapons or money in the quantities that the DMG suggests. Doesn't mke my DM a bad DM and I'm sure it worked great at organised play events although it was frustrating for my Rogue and the Fighter
I will say in defense of Adventurer's League that I believe there's more flexibility in terms of magic items because it uses a currency/downtime system to "purchase" items, but I could be wrong. And that would only be AL and I couldn't speak for other forms of organised play such as Adventurer's in Greyhawk or other con-play events.
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The issue is most dms don't give enough encounters per day, This gives casters an unfair advantage since the fewer encounters the more you can burst an encounter. Warlocks are particularly bad because of their short rest addiction. The consistent class can't shine when it's time to shine is when the spell slots run out. As much as I love at will cantrips they also contribute to this problem in older editions magic users didn't have an unlimited fire bolt dispenser.
Early game was designed to original be hard for casters but easy for marshals and end game vice versa. However modern gaming has made early life significantly easier casters but not done much for martials at the end game. What do marshals have that competes with wall of force, dimension door, teleport, Even tiny hut or scrying. Hell they don't even have things like whirlwind anymore.
In addition to being a “no true Scotsman” situation, I think OP is also ignoring a fundamental contributing factor to the perceived martial-caster divide raised by the point above. Gear is a huge contributing factor to powe level of Martials in a way that it is not for Casters. Cast spells are balanced mostly around small accuracy bonuses - an additional point to the attack or save.
Compare to martials. Martial damaging power, particularly at high levels, is defined by gear. Not only does it require the same accuracy boosts, it is really dependent on having things like Dragon Slayer weapons with high additional damage per hit. Their utility power also comes substantially from items, making up for the utility lacking in base class design.
Loot balance is hard, and something even very good DMs struggle with. Even if you are not running the loot out of the book and are curating it, it is really easy to make mistakes and give someone something underpowered.
This is particularly true because a lot of the items that help bridge the caster-martial divide… are not fun. Anyone who has ever seen a Monk or Fighter who is using a tattoo and magical weapon to get additional damage dice on every hit knows that’s what they need to keep up at very high level play… and also knows that the entire table will be sitting around while they roll a thousand dice for their 4+ attacks (more when they action surge!). And, at the end of the day, a lot of that is still just going to be damage, not game warping abilities that change the foundational nature of the combat.
It isn't quite that simple. Even multiple encounters per day easily leave spellcasters with available spell slots. Let's not forget that in previous editions it was common for fights to last dozens of rounds. Then 5e made changes that reduces almost all fights to 10 rounds, but 5e24 upped everyone's damage potential so that now fights only last 3 rounds.
5e also made cantrips an unexhaustable, scaling damage source and the new 'bread and butter' for spellcasters. Such that spell casters don't even need to cast levelled spells in most fights, they can just use cantrips. In 5e24 they can even double up (such as Witch Bolt + any other non-concentration spell after the first round).
To be honest 5e only needed a couple of minor tweaks to make it more balanced, but instead they fed muscle milk to every class (nerfed one - that needed it), and made the problem worse in the process. Even if a DM maxes out monster HP, no monster in a level appropriate encounter lives more than 3 rounds. Fights are over before the main villain can even use all of their legendary resistances (they don't use them if the original roll succeeds or the threat isn't enough to justify it).
5e24 also eliminated the need for magic weapons. No monster now requires a magic weapon to hurt them, even silver weapons are now pointless. The extra + to hit is likewise not needed (level appropriate encounters are based on no magic items). Characters already have the needed plus to hit to be able to fight monsters appropriate for their level.
Right now, almost every class/subclass in the game does too much damage, fights don't last long enough to require the use of resources, and as long as those resouces aren't needed to win the fight - there will be unbalance between those that have those resources and those that don't. Why would a caster even use a spell that lasts 10 rounds knowing that the fight will be over in 3?
Playing D&D since 1982
Have played every version of the game since Basic (original Red Box Set), except that abomination sometimes called 4e.