My impression is, there are many ways to improve the effectiveness of combat, for players who play martial characters.
But the ability to improve spellcasting is rarer and less effective, for players who play mages.
For example, even the revision of Bardic inspiration in Tashas is unable to add the d6 to a spellcasting DC, parallel to the way the d6 can add to a sword attack roll.
I don’t think it’s an imbalance at all. Spells are inherently more powerful than martial/melee weapons because they also confer other effects or force other things. While melee/ranged classes can have abilities that cause effects, by and large the damage on melee/ranged martial classes is going to be less than 15 a hit(assuming no GWM/Sharpshooter/Smite/Hex/Hunters Mark/Sneak Attack etc). You also want your fighter to be able to hit that often because its basically their shtick. Fighters and Rogues are balanced around hitting more often than not, whereas spellcasters are balanced around being creative with their spells.
A level 1 Cleric with 16 Wisdom, more often than not is going to succeed on its spells against a class that isn’t Wisdom Proficient on spells such as Toll the Dead, or Dex proficient for Sacred Flame in the same way that a Fighter is going to succeed more often on a Melee Attack. The change of course comes that a a 16 STR fighter at level 1 is hitting at a +5, meaning at a 10 their attack roll is a 15 vs a Spellcaster being Spell Save 13, mainly because the fighter is in more danger than the Cleric in this instance.
If the DCs were in line with how a to hit bonus worked for martial classes, Spell Save 15 at level 1 means characters are succeeding/failing(depending on the spell being cast) more than 60% of the time, to include enemy spell casters.
The argument right now in most circles is that Spell Casters already dominate the field at later levels anyway, this would cause them to dominate at much earlier levels and cause martial classes to just become unplayable.
I agree that spell casters are more powerful, I think the main reason for this is that classes were balanced based on 6-8 encounters a day (with a couple of short rests) while this might happen during a dungeon crawl at other times there will only be one or 2 encounters a day so the spell casters are able to use a high level spell every turn in combat.
Umm.... I hate to be the one to tell you this, but....
There is an entire class who’s entire shtick is to enhance their Spellcasting on the fly. It’s basically the only class feature they get. They’re called Sorcerers.
Every Wizard Subclass that specializes one of the 8 schools of Magic gets enhancements to spells they cast from their school.
Every Cleric Subclass gets a feature at 8th level that enhances their main combat aspect. Half of them get bonuses to weapon attacks, the other half get a bonus to their Cantrips.
Even the Eldritch Knight subclass for Fighters gets Eldritch Strike.
Besides class/subclass features, there are feats available to all characters that can enhance their Spellcasting in various ways:
Spell Sniper can increase range on some spells.
War Caster can improve concentration and reduce the need for free hands and components.
There are new feats coming out in Tasha’s too.
There are other examples like that as well, but I’ll just skip ahead, every single PC, NPC, and Monster with the Spellcasting feature has two built-in mechanisms to enhance their spells.
They can upcast their spells at higher level with spell slots.
They get access to more spells, and each additional known/prepared spell adds further versatility to their Spellcasting.
In fact, that’s probably the single most significant point I could make: each and every spell itself is another different way to enhance their spell casting. The entire spell list is a massive list of ways for characters to increase the effectiveness of what they can do.
Martial Characters only really get one thing to do, Attack. That’s their “spell,” they mostly only cast “attack” for every action, and no matter how you describe it, it really only ever does the same thing. They can honestly use as many different ways as possible to make the Attack action as interesting as possible.
My impression is, there are many ways to improve the effectiveness of combat, for players who play martial characters.
But the ability to improve spellcasting is rarer and less effective, for players who play mages.
For example, even the revision of Bardic inspiration in Tashas is unable to add the d6 to a spellcasting DC, parallel to the way the d6 can add to a sword attack roll.
It seems to be an imbalance.
Your thoughts?
he / him
I don’t think it’s an imbalance at all. Spells are inherently more powerful than martial/melee weapons because they also confer other effects or force other things. While melee/ranged classes can have abilities that cause effects, by and large the damage on melee/ranged martial classes is going to be less than 15 a hit(assuming no GWM/Sharpshooter/Smite/Hex/Hunters Mark/Sneak Attack etc). You also want your fighter to be able to hit that often because its basically their shtick. Fighters and Rogues are balanced around hitting more often than not, whereas spellcasters are balanced around being creative with their spells.
A level 1 Cleric with 16 Wisdom, more often than not is going to succeed on its spells against a class that isn’t Wisdom Proficient on spells such as Toll the Dead, or Dex proficient for Sacred Flame in the same way that a Fighter is going to succeed more often on a Melee Attack. The change of course comes that a a 16 STR fighter at level 1 is hitting at a +5, meaning at a 10 their attack roll is a 15 vs a Spellcaster being Spell Save 13, mainly because the fighter is in more danger than the Cleric in this instance.
If the DCs were in line with how a to hit bonus worked for martial classes, Spell Save 15 at level 1 means characters are succeeding/failing(depending on the spell being cast) more than 60% of the time, to include enemy spell casters.
The argument right now in most circles is that Spell Casters already dominate the field at later levels anyway, this would cause them to dominate at much earlier levels and cause martial classes to just become unplayable.
I agree that spell casters are more powerful, I think the main reason for this is that classes were balanced based on 6-8 encounters a day (with a couple of short rests) while this might happen during a dungeon crawl at other times there will only be one or 2 encounters a day so the spell casters are able to use a high level spell every turn in combat.
Umm.... I hate to be the one to tell you this, but....
Besides class/subclass features, there are feats available to all characters that can enhance their Spellcasting in various ways:
There are other examples like that as well, but I’ll just skip ahead, every single PC, NPC, and Monster with the Spellcasting feature has two built-in mechanisms to enhance their spells.
In fact, that’s probably the single most significant point I could make: each and every spell itself is another different way to enhance their spell casting. The entire spell list is a massive list of ways for characters to increase the effectiveness of what they can do.
Martial Characters only really get one thing to do, Attack. That’s their “spell,” they mostly only cast “attack” for every action, and no matter how you describe it, it really only ever does the same thing. They can honestly use as many different ways as possible to make the Attack action as interesting as possible.
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