Making Melee damage more even with Spellcasting

Quote from FoxMulder >>

@Pent That was a mouthful. I can't say I understood all of that. LOL. I feel the need to type LOL now. LOL. Thank you for pointing that out. Again, I get that PWK isn't the most powerful level 9 spell. I don't think we were discussing a specific build though. Anything can be optimized to do crazy damage. I never mentioned feats or magic weapons, initially, in terms of adding damage. Also, spellcasters get a level 9 spell at level 17. Fighters get their last extra attack at 20.

I don't think any of the spells you listed are direct damage spells. I couldn't read the entire spell and I'm too lazy to type them in and look them up. LOL.

 My example was at level 17, level 20 is around 160. I didn't list any damage spells because none of the best level 9 spells are damaging, though both meteor swarm and psychic scream are easily superior to PWK in most situations.

Quote from FoxMulder >>

@caerwyn_Glyndwr "A high level fighter properly equipped can easily deal more than 100 damage with their turn." You mean on a turn where Action Surge is used. Let's take a Great Axe. 7 average damage per attack. If you hit every rime, that's 63 over nine attacks. Add 45 for your modifier, if you have a 20 in STR. 108 total. "Properly equipped". A +3 weapon adds 27 more for a total of 135. You might want to check your players dice for air bubbles. They might be weighted toward better rolls. I AM NOT accusing your players of cheating. LOL.
Why did I pick 60 years old? Maybe, I'm over 60. We've had a tradition for some time. Older generations have called youngsters kids. I'm so sorry that I triggered you. You must be under 60. I should have put LOL after that horrifying passive aggression. Sarcasm.
My experience as a DM who hasn't run multiple high-level campaigns. I usually just sit there in awe. Maybe yell out things when a Fighter stands 5 feet from an ancient dragon or demon and attacks. Go get 'em.. Awesome. Crush them into the ground.
I think you are the one who gets bored.

See, it is hard to take you seriously when you admit you have not run high level campaigns, then assert so strongly “evidence” to back up your claims that shows your lack of experience.

There is a reason I said a “properly equipped” character.  At high levels, a properly equipped character is going to have more than the +3 weapon you assumed - they are going to have weapons that deal significant additional damage per hit.  They are going to have feats and other abilities that stack damage. Subclass nonsense.  All the things you ignore in your math that do not even require a particularly broken set of optimization combinations.

As a general rule, when you don’t know what you are talking about - as your post clearly admits - your best course of action is to listen, not continue to confidently assert false competency in a subject.  

Quote from Caerwyn_Glyndwr >>

In an actual game, where the DM knows what they are doing with encounter design, resource taxing, and loot, this works out extremely well. 

In my experience playing with a lot of different online groups, the average DM is not great at those things. Especially not resourcing taxing, as they offer PCs far too many opportunities to recover between encounters. So does it really make sense to balance things around good DMs (or at least ones good at this particular thing) rather than typical DMs?

Quote from Frachese >>

Quote from Caerwyn_Glyndwr >>

In an actual game, where the DM knows what they are doing with encounter design, resource taxing, and loot, this works out extremely well. 

 

In my experience playing with a lot of different online groups, the average DM is not great at those things. Especially not resourcing taxing, as they offer PCs far too many opportunities to recover between encounters. So does it really make sense to balance things around good DMs (or at least ones good at this particular thing) rather than typical DMs?

I think if one were starting a new edition from scratch, that might be feasible - but it is not something that would work well a decade into an existing system.  Shifting the balance point of an “adventuring day” fundamentally requires changes to how all classes function, as you still want classes to feel an opportunity cost for burning high level, limited resources.  Changing recovery also has drastic implications on entire gameplay staples - Dungeon Crawls, for example, which are the most generally resource racing of gameplay elements, would have to become shorter or otherwise more liberal with rests to offset a game balanced around more regular recovery.

That said. I think Wizards already took some of this into account with the 2024 update, giving more short rest or repeatable recovery to martial classes, while keeping spellcasters more limited in what they can do on a short rest.  In the “average” group, this means martials can be more liberal with their powerful abilities, while Spellcasters still need to restrain themselves, creating a slight facsimile of the balance the game was actually designed around.  All of these 5.5e changes do a pretty decent job helping what you call the “average” DM close the gap, without fundamentally requiring a rebalance of the whole system.

I think the real failing though is one of education.  Wizards focuses a lot on how one should run a game, but very little on the considerations one should be running through as one prepares for sessions.  Every iteration of D&D is also notoriously terrible at teaching how D&D changes over a game, and the different metrics a DM should use at different levels of play.  I think every portion of D&D kind of trusts DMs with the basics and expects them to learn the rest, when a “so you’re at higher levels, here’s what you need to know” section might be helpful.

Frankly, I think the clickbait is also part of the problem.  A DM with a modicum amount of self reflection might ask themselves “huh, something is not right, maybe I should look into this?” Instead of finding the helpful resources that exist on running high level games, those folks are going to find content pushing things like a “martial caster divide” either by folks who should know better, but have a financial incentive to make rage bait due to how the algorithms are designed, or folks like OP, who admit they are not experienced yet are trying to push a narrative regardless.

This also is why Wizards should try to help educate folks on their platform with their content - social media companies have acknowledged they adjust their algorithm to promote bad takes and anger, as those have higher levels of monetization than informative content. Wizards should be doing more to inform players who might have legitimate questions, and, finding no official answers, might seek them out in a system with financial incentives to push bad information. 

Quote from Caerwyn_Glyndwr >>

That said. I think Wizards already took some of this into account with the 2024 update, giving more short rest or repeatable recovery to martial classes, while keeping spellcasters more limited in what they can do on a short rest.  In the “average” group, this means martials can be more liberal with their powerful abilities, while Spellcasters still need to restrain themselves, creating a slight facsimile of the balance the game was actually designed around.  All of these 5.5e changes do a pretty decent job helping what you call the “average” DM close the gap, without fundamentally requiring a rebalance of the whole system.

 The biggest thing 2024 did to help with balance was to move a bunch of martial resources to a long rest basis; any time one class is mostly short rest or at will and the other is mostly long rest you're going to see relative power vary depending on the number of short rests during a day.

That said, it doesn't require a wholescale rebalance to deal with a lot of the problems, because a lot of it isn't fundamental to the system, it's just a handful of significantly outperforming spells that could really use some attention.