[As a disclaimer, I’m not very familiar with the 2024 rules - from what I’ve seen, they don’t really fix the divide at all, but I don’t know enough on them to speak on it so this post will be about the 2014 rules.]
Maybe it’s just me, but playing martials, especially full martials, always seems to less beneficial than being a full caster. Full casters just have a range of control, damage, and out of combat useage that you can’t really get out of a martial. Even minmaxing, which I do fairly often, will really only get you specializing in one field when a wizard can just do all of them. A level 20 fighter is completely negated by Wall of Force unless you’ve taken some kind of teleport through a feat or Eldritch Knight. It’s a little frustrating, especially when a lot of the capstone features for martial classes just suck. Fighter doesn’t get a ton of abilities and there’s really only so many feats you can take to be useful (a fighter could be completely stumped by a ravine, which any full caster or even some half casters could find a way to fly over), barbarian abilities are really mostly useless past 9th level as a lot of your damage reduction abilities that aren’t rage don’t reduce nearly as much damage plus taking your reaction on top of it, rogue isn’t giving you a lot of damage unless you’re landing crits and even then it’s mostly useful for just skill checks.
Is there any ways that, if yall were to change the classes, would bridge this usefulness gap? I feel like the only way to do it is to completely rework a lot of martial classes but I’m not even sure how to go about that. I just think martial classes deserve better, specifically for out of combat challenges. Their utility is flat out abysmal most of the time. I’m a huge fan of martials and half casters, and I do just wish there was better options for flexibility.
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Magic is too powerful in DnD. A solid wall 30 ft high of stone shouldn't be instantly negated by a 2nd level spell. Not only does it make the game less fun because there is no creativity needed it's becomes just a "push the 'i win' button" game. It also breaks world building, why would anyone build a castle in D&D world? The walls of the castle are utterly useless against even relatively low level bandits/enemies.
Castles do still make sense for a world, even a high-magic one; in a world where bandits have second level spells, a castle would be warded against magic. There’s also not much a few spellcasters can do inside of a castle except try and open a (presumably watched and guarded) gate, not to get too hung up on the example provided.
The issue with spellcasters (in my experience, in 5e) is that they are provided with essentially an all-purpose tool, which is difficult to account for in puzzles and obstacles without going “uh, actually, that spell doesn’t work. Because I said so.” It’s not impossible, though, and a world with magic everywhere would account for it. Your castles don’t need to be clone copies of European shell castle design. They might have spaced walls to trick teleporters, deliberately creaky doors and planked floors to catch the invisible, and no mundane locks - instead, there’s bars on every door, to prevent them being knocked open. The worldbuilding is in the hands of the DM. A published adventure could fail to account for all the ways a spellcaster could get by an obstacle, sure, but then they’ve thought of a way around it, not just gone “I cast spider climb”.
Incidentally, there is plenty of ways you could deal with spider climb. Boiling oil comes to mind, or unmortared bricks that come out in your hands. Not to get too hung up on the example provided.
The issue is less “spellcasters can do too much”, because they can’t; the world should account for its level of magic. It’s that “martials can’t do enough”. Sure 20 strength is literally superhuman - what human can carry three hundred pounds on their back and still swing a maul full force on command without breaking a sweat - but many of the ways you can use that strength comes down to DM fiat. “Can I try and move this boulder? Sure, make an athletics check.” I roll a 12. I cannot move the boulder. Maybe the DM says “Your struggles dug your boot into the wet ground, revealing a ring on the end of a chain that pulls the also buried chocks from under the boulder. Make a dexterity saving throw to dodge out the way as it rolls out of the cave mouth.” Maybe they don’t. The martial is still incapable either way of exercising their superhuman strength without relying on the swinginess of a d20, whereas spellcasters use resources and do things. Martials should also be able to use resources and do things, and they should be able to fight in a way that is materially different from level 1 to a random elf wizard with a decent DEX picking up a longbow. If someone mentions the archery fighting style, I will seriously consider delivering them to their afterlife of choice. +2 to hit is nice, but it is not as cool or fun as an instinctively conjured magical barrier or a blast of thunder that hurls your foe back.
In short, spellcasters are not massively overtuned (they look overtuned compared to martials when directly compared, particularly in a PVP context, simply because so many two spell combos instantly obliterate a single enemy) their abilites are balanced around resource expenditure. If the resources aren’t being expended sufficiently - not enough obstacles, combat that is too easy - martials comparatively, are not the stuff. Martials also, comparatively, feel weak regardless because they have very limited unique tactical options in combat, not to rehash an ancient argument. I’d argue the solution to this is to make martials work more like spellcasters - optional complexity. You can make a wizard that just magic missiles all day long. You still get all the out of combat utility you need, when you need it, if you’ve managed your resources well. It doesn’t matter what kind of martial you make. It’s still going to be “I attack that guy. And then that guy. And then that guy.” There needs to be distinction and difference, and martials need baked-in ways to deal with crowd control that isn’t “reroll one saving throw once”. At ninth level.
ncidentally, there is plenty of ways you could deal with spider climb. Boiling oil comes to mind, or unmortared bricks that come out in your hands. Not to get too hung up on the example provided.
LOL, it takes an enemy 6 seconds to scale 60 ft high walls with spider climb, a castle can't have a fire, a vat of oil, and a guard every 5 ft in order to be able to instantly react to a climber, and that's.assuming the climber isn't also invisible (another 2nd level spell). Any force of even moderate size could afford two spellcasters of 3rd level, to send someone inviisible up over the walls to remove the bars and open the door. Magical Protections require much higher level spell casting (e.g. Forbiddance requires a 6th level slot) which means if every castle-owner can afford magical protections then every assaulting army can also afford a similarly powerful spellcaster, and lookie there, Transmute Rock literally melts 40 ft wall into mud for a 5th level slot, whereas Fly (3rd) + Invisibility (2nd) means walls are completely moot again. Not to mention how easily an upcast Shatter can just obliterate any door barred or not.
That's before we even get into how even low level spellcasters break the economy - a 2nd level Transmutation wizard can be an amazing fraudster transmuting all kinds of stuff into silver and then selling it, Conjure Animals to create a load of horses to well, or Creation to just make tons of stuff super fast and super cheap.
Or how they break policing/crime - Alter Self / Disguise Self for impersonating people to commit various forms of fraud, Charming, or Suggesting to people to force them to do things they don't want to do - including making guards look the other way if you get caught. Essentially every city guard person needs a permanent detect magic and something giving them charm immunity to have any hope of stopping crime. If we get into highter level spells Modify Memory literally allows them to prevent witnesses even remembering a crime has been committed, and Mass Suggestion allows the caster to convince a whole platoon of guards to walk away.
“Any force of up to moderate size could afford two casters of third level” is an interesting statement. In your setting, perhaps, this is true. It’s not true in all settings. If your own lore can’t support itself you likely need new lore. On your other points..
You first greatly exaggerate the number of guards required. You would need a guard every twenty feet at most, which is by no means excessive. Boiling oil, due to the required preparation, would primarily aid in sieges or other lengthy assaults. My proposition for unmortared masonry also holds water; particularly if the wall of the hypothetical castle is angled slightly outward, which is perfectly plausibly with bulwark architecture. You next greatly overstate the ease with which someone invisible could get past guards - who would have, in a world where invisibility is commonplace, as you are suggesting yours is, be trained to watch for invisible threats (and may have even heard the bait bricks moving as the wall was climbed).
You then misunderstand my proposition of the barred doors (which is fair - it was not greatly elaborated on). A system of passwords and doors barred from the inside would prevent anyone sneaking in invisibly, if the ramparts/battlements weren’t already self-contained and inaccessible by climbing without literally breaking in, to defend against sight-target spells like crown of madness or just damaging ones like fireball. If transmute rock turns rock to mud, would the walls be made of stone? Do they need to be? They might be earthenworks, which double as a firebreak, or they could be covered by a layer of earth (though this is very labour intensive). They might even be wooden, or made of some other material that can’t be transmuted nearly as easily. Saying “stone walls can be turned to mud! castles are useless!” is the rhetorical equivalent of drawing a circle on the ground in chalk, stepping in it, and saying it’s impossible to leave.
The spellcaster also has to get close enough to the fortification to blow the doors off, which is yet another issue; moats and such would help greatly, as would fortifying on hills and creating limited avenues of attack. You claim fly and invisibility make walls moot and never spared a thought for a ceiling of any kind, or even just wires and bells strung between the walls, like a net, as a crude alarm system. You also claim that if the owner of a castle can afford magical protections then the assaulting army can afford a spellcaster, which are two unconnected statements that have little relation to each other. A peasant’s revolt would not be able to afford a spellcaster. An actual invasion by a standing army might be able to, but it would be strenuous expense on top of feeding, transporting, clothing and equipping the army in the first place, and the castle owner has the benefit of time. War is incredibly expensive and rarely worth it, especially if in your world spellcasters are common enough that someone with magical prowess needs to turn to banditry to feed themselves.
You again state confidently that no individual would account for the existence of magic in their dealings. A one hour hold when selling transmutable material is hardly unrealistic or unreasonable if wizards are everywhere and as criminally inclined as you suggest. Moreover, in your later paragraph, you imply the existence of a unified guard or police force of some kind. Committing magical crime seems a risky prospect in a world such as this, and it sounds like you have again written yourself into a corner. Creation lasts at most a day for vegetable matter and is a 5th level slot; it is not sustainable on a large scale. Also, economies adapt; it is not like magic was not there yesterday and suddenly is there today, the economy would have grown around and incorporated magic. If you have failed to account for that, it is on you and not the 5e rules.
If you are extraordinarily lenient with suggestion, it can indeed “force people to do things they don’t want to do”, but the wording of a suggestion should require quite a lot of thought to be suitably convincing, and using it on a riled-up guard platoon who have just 1) witnessed you commit a crime and 2) have mob psychology on their side is a stretch. If you think your guards need charm immunity and permanent detect magic to stop crime, give your guards charm immunity and permanent detect magic (though I think there are more elegant solutions). Fundamentally, your world is yours, and is not immutable. If the only “solution” you have for spells like spider climb is weakening them (how? making them not work? making you roll checks? Surely that defeats the whole object of having a resource to use in the first place?). If you can’t think of ways to deal with a high magic world make a low magic one. If you can’t think of any way to deal with magic at all make a no magic one - though I wouldn’t expect too many players. Magic is fun. Martials are less so, currently, which was the point of this thread before we derailed it.
I think a really important point you made in your original post Redpelt is that 20 strength should be superhuman. I’ve been thinking about that, and I feel as if martial classes should be built more around the fact that you are superhuman, and that your skills have developed to a point that you’re unnaturally strong. Martials should be like mutants I think, with more of a range like superheroes have. As in, spellcasters are more human (or mortal for the sake of species inclusivity) that rely on resource consumption and magic, while martials become more demi-human with a greater emphasis on consistency, inhuman feats of skill, and stuff like that. I might just have to re-homebrew the entire classes myself lol, I’ll think on it and brainstorm some more.
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If you are extraordinarily lenient with suggestion, it can indeed “force people to do things they don’t want to do”, but the wording of a suggestion should require quite a lot of thought to be suitably convincing, and using it on a riled-up guard platoon who have just 1) witnessed you commit a crime and 2) have mob psychology on their side is a stretch.
One of the examples in the 2024 PHB for what Suggestion can do is to have someone stop fighting you, walk away and never return. Magic is brokenly powerful in D&D.
Classes are not designed around pvp. If you look at damage, the classes are comparable, with martials actually doing higher single turn damage at high levels.
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If you are being disingenuous and rude, consider this your only response.
Martials lose to spellcasters in PVP every time, unless they’re very optimized. Once a spellcaster wins initiative, they can just crowd control you into oblivion because martials have terrible saves and no way to escape. Even outside of that, not in PVP, martials just do a whole lot less in.. everything. Rogue can be a good skill monkey, but knock is a spell you can use, charm spells, overall utility (scrying, plane shift, planar ally, identify, comprehend languages, detect magic, etc) is just not available to martials who just… hit things. And roll decent checks. I can make a martial that beats a spellcaster in PVP and it would require building specifically for initiative, multiclassing, playing a dex build, and dropping as much damage as possible to kill them turn one. A spellcaster doesn’t even need to multiclass to be effective, a 20th level wizard is a challenge for even a gloomstalker/assassin/echo knight or whatever combo you use. And for a 20th level fighter? Impossible.
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Even cantrips outperform martials. Prestidigitation, shape water, mage hand, thaumaturgy are all examples of that.
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Martials lose to spellcasters in PVP every time, unless they’re very optimized. Once a spellcaster wins initiative, they can just crowd control you into oblivion because martials have terrible saves and no way to escape. Even outside of that, not in PVP, martials just do a whole lot less in.. everything. Rogue can be a good skill monkey, but knock is a spell you can use, charm spells, overall utility (scrying, plane shift, planar ally, identify, comprehend languages, detect magic, etc) is just not available to martials who just… hit things. And roll decent checks. I can make a martial that beats a spellcaster in PVP and it would require building specifically for initiative, multiclassing, playing a dex build, and dropping as much damage as possible to kill them turn one. A spellcaster doesn’t even need to multiclass to be effective, a 20th level wizard is a challenge for even a gloomstalker/assassin/echo knight or whatever combo you use. And for a 20th level fighter? Impossible.
Are utility and pvp ability the only things that exist. Let me give you a hint: no. As I said, if you crunch the numbers, martials often do more damage.
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If you are being disingenuous and rude, consider this your only response.
Are utility and pvp ability the only things that exist. Let me give you a hint: no. As I said, if you crunch the numbers, martials often do more damage.
That doesn’t make up for their inability to perform outside of combat in the slightest, and the damage martials do is completely dependent on their weapon and gear. Casters can operate in any situation with or without gear, only needing their foci. I’ve crunched the numbers - barbarian damage is terrible, and rogue is mid at best.
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Even cantrips outperform martials. Prestidigitation, shape water, mage hand, thaumaturgy are all examples of that.
Outperform them in situational utility you mean?
It’s not even situational. All of those cantrips can be used in a majority of situations.
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If you are extraordinarily lenient with suggestion, it can indeed “force people to do things they don’t want to do”, but the wording of a suggestion should require quite a lot of thought to be suitably convincing, and using it on a riled-up guard platoon who have just 1) witnessed you commit a crime and 2) have mob psychology on their side is a stretch.
One of the examples in the 2024 PHB for what Suggestion can do is to have someone stop fighting you, walk away and never return. Magic is brokenly powerful in D&D.
This time you didn’t contest any of my other points, reiterated your original premise, and referenced the 2024 rules in a thread about the 2014 ones.
I don’t like the 2024 rules. They went from “some things are better than others, and some spells you must take” to “Wow. What a mess.” Conjure Minor Elementals, Command not stipulating the target can’t do anything harmful, etc. I’d argue the 2024 rules are significantly less balanced and more swingy than 2014, but that isn’t the point of this thread. Incidentally, the example you gave would not work by my interpretation of it with 2014 suggestion, which seems to me to be a strictly out of combat spell.
If you look at damage, the classes are comparable, with martials actually doing higher single turn damage at high levels.
This is blatantly untrue. Martials are 1) entirely reliant on magic items to reach massive damage numbers, 2) restricted to single target damage and 3) lack any kind of consistent crowd control.
The highest single turn damage a 2014 20th level fighter (the highest damage martial) can achieve without magic items is a bugbear echo knight GWM greatsword build, which has terrible initiative and still relies on going first for a significant minority of its damage. (The damage per round, without accounting for to-hit or critical hits and assuming a STR of 20 and a minimum of two uses of echo knight’s extra attack, is 220, for one turn. That drops to 150 for the next turn with second action surge and no bugbear damage).
Let’s take, for comparison, meteor swarm. Against ONE target, meteor swarm does an average of 140 damage, or 70 if they succeed the saving throw. However, it also has a range of a mile and covers a flat, 2-dimensional area of 1004.8 square feet, if my maths is correct. Hitting TWO targets who both fail the save immediately outclasses the fighter burning all their resources, by thirty points of damage. But Redpelt, even though you assumed a GWM fighter with +6 to hit would hit all their attacks to illustrate your point, you’re assuming they’d succeed the save! Also, fire is the most commonly resisted damage type in 5e!
If they both succeed the save, it’s 140 damage overall. But I gave the fighter GWM. So what if the wizard took elemental adept? Resistance is no longer a problem. The wizard also gets a damage increase of 0.16 of damage per d6 of fire damage, which works out to a nice little 3.2. I gave the fighter a subclass, though. What about evocation wizard? Overchannel? How does 245 flat against one target sound?Every little helps. But Redpelt, you only get one ninth level slot a day! You get action surge back on a short rest! This isn’t a fair comparison!
You’re right. A really fair comparison would be comparing the application of spells like, I don’t know, Slow. Hypnotic Pattern is mentioned fairly often. The wizard doesn’t need to do damage. They can end the fight before it even starts, with the really good crowd control they get as default. And that’s before you account for other subclasses, like illusionist, who at high levels with massive-area illusions and their subclass capstone essentially turn into localised deities.
To be clear, I don’t think spellcasters need to be hamstrung. I think martials need a leg up or three, and maybe a few of the worst offenders - sickening radiance comes to mind - should be reworked to be more balanced.
If you look at damage, the classes are comparable, with martials actually doing higher single turn damage at high levels.
This is blatantly untrue. Martials are 1) entirely reliant on magic items to reach massive damage numbers, 2) restricted to single target damage and 3) lack any kind of consistent crowd control.
The highest single turn damage a 2014 20th level fighter (the highest damage martial) can achieve without magic items is a bugbear echo knight GWM greatsword build, which has terrible initiative and still relies on going first for a significant minority of its damage. (The damage per round, without accounting for to-hit or critical hits and assuming a STR of 20 and a minimum of two uses of echo knight’s extra attack, is 220, for one turn. That drops to 150 for the next turn with second action surge and no bugbear damage).
Let’s take, for comparison, meteor swarm. Against ONE target, meteor swarm does an average of 140 damage, or 70 if they succeed the saving throw. However, it also has a range of a mile and covers a flat, 2-dimensional area of 1004.8 square feet, if my maths is correct. Hitting TWO targets who both fail the save immediately outclasses the fighter burning all their resources, by thirty points of damage. But Redpelt, even though you assumed a GWM fighter with +6 to hit would hit all their attacks to illustrate your point, you’re assuming they’d succeed the save! Also, fire is the most commonly resisted damage type in 5e!
If they both succeed the save, it’s 140 damage overall. But I gave the fighter GWM. So what if the wizard took elemental adept? Resistance is no longer a problem. The wizard also gets a damage increase of 0.16 of damage per d6 of fire damage, which works out to a nice little 3.2. I gave the fighter a subclass, though. What about evocation wizard? Overchannel? How does 245 flat against one target sound?Every little helps. But Redpelt, you only get one ninth level slot a day! You get action surge back on a short rest! This isn’t a fair comparison!
You’re right. A really fair comparison would be comparing the application of spells like, I don’t know, Slow. Hypnotic Pattern is mentioned fairly often. The wizard doesn’t need to do damage. They can end the fight before it even starts, with the really good crowd control they get as default. And that’s before you account for other subclasses, like illusionist, who at high levels with massive-area illusions and their subclass capstone essentially turn into localised deities.
To be clear, I don’t think spellcasters need to be hamstrung. I think martials need a leg up or three, and maybe a few of the worst offenders - sickening radiance comes to mind - should be reworked to be more balanced.
Your answer to martials doing more single target damage is that spellcasters do more multi target damage? Also, that fighter will stay at 150 damage, but the wizard's 8th level spells will be doing even less damage.
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If you are being disingenuous and rude, consider this your only response.
I'll make sure to use shape water in my next combat encounter.
A five foot tall ice wall to provide cover seems useful. Twenty five square feet of ice to cause your opponent to slip. More used as well, but I suppose that requires more creativity than “I hit you with my sword”. Are you arguing that there is no martial caster divide? I’m confused.
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Your answer to martials doing more single target damage is that spellcasters do more multi target damage? Also, that fighter will stay at 150 damage, but the wizard's 8th level spells will be doing even less damage.
Redpelt is saying that a fully optimized fighter does the same damage as one meteor swarm, and only against a single target. Meteor swarm not only does the amount of damage a fighter does to one target, but also multiple targets. And no, Redpelt’s math is incorporating echo knight attacks. Which has a limited pool of uses. Your consistent damage (with a +6 to hit I may add, so you’re likely not hitting anything at all) would be around 84. Half casters deal more than this and have more utility.
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[As a disclaimer, I’m not very familiar with the 2024 rules - from what I’ve seen, they don’t really fix the divide at all, but I don’t know enough on them to speak on it so this post will be about the 2014 rules.]
Maybe it’s just me, but playing martials, especially full martials, always seems to less beneficial than being a full caster. Full casters just have a range of control, damage, and out of combat useage that you can’t really get out of a martial. Even minmaxing, which I do fairly often, will really only get you specializing in one field when a wizard can just do all of them. A level 20 fighter is completely negated by Wall of Force unless you’ve taken some kind of teleport through a feat or Eldritch Knight. It’s a little frustrating, especially when a lot of the capstone features for martial classes just suck. Fighter doesn’t get a ton of abilities and there’s really only so many feats you can take to be useful (a fighter could be completely stumped by a ravine, which any full caster or even some half casters could find a way to fly over), barbarian abilities are really mostly useless past 9th level as a lot of your damage reduction abilities that aren’t rage don’t reduce nearly as much damage plus taking your reaction on top of it, rogue isn’t giving you a lot of damage unless you’re landing crits and even then it’s mostly useful for just skill checks.
Is there any ways that, if yall were to change the classes, would bridge this usefulness gap? I feel like the only way to do it is to completely rework a lot of martial classes but I’m not even sure how to go about that. I just think martial classes deserve better, specifically for out of combat challenges. Their utility is flat out abysmal most of the time. I’m a huge fan of martials and half casters, and I do just wish there was better options for flexibility.
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Magic is too powerful in DnD. A solid wall 30 ft high of stone shouldn't be instantly negated by a 2nd level spell. Not only does it make the game less fun because there is no creativity needed it's becomes just a "push the 'i win' button" game. It also breaks world building, why would anyone build a castle in D&D world? The walls of the castle are utterly useless against even relatively low level bandits/enemies.
Castles do still make sense for a world, even a high-magic one; in a world where bandits have second level spells, a castle would be warded against magic. There’s also not much a few spellcasters can do inside of a castle except try and open a (presumably watched and guarded) gate, not to get too hung up on the example provided.
The issue with spellcasters (in my experience, in 5e) is that they are provided with essentially an all-purpose tool, which is difficult to account for in puzzles and obstacles without going “uh, actually, that spell doesn’t work. Because I said so.” It’s not impossible, though, and a world with magic everywhere would account for it. Your castles don’t need to be clone copies of European shell castle design. They might have spaced walls to trick teleporters, deliberately creaky doors and planked floors to catch the invisible, and no mundane locks - instead, there’s bars on every door, to prevent them being knocked open. The worldbuilding is in the hands of the DM. A published adventure could fail to account for all the ways a spellcaster could get by an obstacle, sure, but then they’ve thought of a way around it, not just gone “I cast spider climb”.
Incidentally, there is plenty of ways you could deal with spider climb. Boiling oil comes to mind, or unmortared bricks that come out in your hands. Not to get too hung up on the example provided.
The issue is less “spellcasters can do too much”, because they can’t; the world should account for its level of magic. It’s that “martials can’t do enough”. Sure 20 strength is literally superhuman - what human can carry three hundred pounds on their back and still swing a maul full force on command without breaking a sweat - but many of the ways you can use that strength comes down to DM fiat. “Can I try and move this boulder? Sure, make an athletics check.” I roll a 12. I cannot move the boulder. Maybe the DM says “Your struggles dug your boot into the wet ground, revealing a ring on the end of a chain that pulls the also buried chocks from under the boulder. Make a dexterity saving throw to dodge out the way as it rolls out of the cave mouth.” Maybe they don’t. The martial is still incapable either way of exercising their superhuman strength without relying on the swinginess of a d20, whereas spellcasters use resources and do things. Martials should also be able to use resources and do things, and they should be able to fight in a way that is materially different from level 1 to a random elf wizard with a decent DEX picking up a longbow. If someone mentions the archery fighting style, I will seriously consider delivering them to their afterlife of choice. +2 to hit is nice, but it is not as cool or fun as an instinctively conjured magical barrier or a blast of thunder that hurls your foe back.
In short, spellcasters are not massively overtuned (they look overtuned compared to martials when directly compared, particularly in a PVP context, simply because so many two spell combos instantly obliterate a single enemy) their abilites are balanced around resource expenditure. If the resources aren’t being expended sufficiently - not enough obstacles, combat that is too easy - martials comparatively, are not the stuff. Martials also, comparatively, feel weak regardless because they have very limited unique tactical options in combat, not to rehash an ancient argument. I’d argue the solution to this is to make martials work more like spellcasters - optional complexity. You can make a wizard that just magic missiles all day long. You still get all the out of combat utility you need, when you need it, if you’ve managed your resources well. It doesn’t matter what kind of martial you make. It’s still going to be “I attack that guy. And then that guy. And then that guy.” There needs to be distinction and difference, and martials need baked-in ways to deal with crowd control that isn’t “reroll one saving throw once”. At ninth level.
I can’t remember what’s supposed to go here.
LOL, it takes an enemy 6 seconds to scale 60 ft high walls with spider climb, a castle can't have a fire, a vat of oil, and a guard every 5 ft in order to be able to instantly react to a climber, and that's.assuming the climber isn't also invisible (another 2nd level spell). Any force of even moderate size could afford two spellcasters of 3rd level, to send someone inviisible up over the walls to remove the bars and open the door. Magical Protections require much higher level spell casting (e.g. Forbiddance requires a 6th level slot) which means if every castle-owner can afford magical protections then every assaulting army can also afford a similarly powerful spellcaster, and lookie there, Transmute Rock literally melts 40 ft wall into mud for a 5th level slot, whereas Fly (3rd) + Invisibility (2nd) means walls are completely moot again. Not to mention how easily an upcast Shatter can just obliterate any door barred or not.
That's before we even get into how even low level spellcasters break the economy - a 2nd level Transmutation wizard can be an amazing fraudster transmuting all kinds of stuff into silver and then selling it, Conjure Animals to create a load of horses to well, or Creation to just make tons of stuff super fast and super cheap.
Or how they break policing/crime - Alter Self / Disguise Self for impersonating people to commit various forms of fraud, Charming, or Suggesting to people to force them to do things they don't want to do - including making guards look the other way if you get caught. Essentially every city guard person needs a permanent detect magic and something giving them charm immunity to have any hope of stopping crime. If we get into highter level spells Modify Memory literally allows them to prevent witnesses even remembering a crime has been committed, and Mass Suggestion allows the caster to convince a whole platoon of guards to walk away.
I can’t remember what’s supposed to go here.
I think a really important point you made in your original post Redpelt is that 20 strength should be superhuman. I’ve been thinking about that, and I feel as if martial classes should be built more around the fact that you are superhuman, and that your skills have developed to a point that you’re unnaturally strong. Martials should be like mutants I think, with more of a range like superheroes have. As in, spellcasters are more human (or mortal for the sake of species inclusivity) that rely on resource consumption and magic, while martials become more demi-human with a greater emphasis on consistency, inhuman feats of skill, and stuff like that. I might just have to re-homebrew the entire classes myself lol, I’ll think on it and brainstorm some more.
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One of the examples in the 2024 PHB for what Suggestion can do is to have someone stop fighting you, walk away and never return. Magic is brokenly powerful in D&D.
Classes are not designed around pvp. If you look at damage, the classes are comparable, with martials actually doing higher single turn damage at high levels.
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Martials lose to spellcasters in PVP every time, unless they’re very optimized. Once a spellcaster wins initiative, they can just crowd control you into oblivion because martials have terrible saves and no way to escape. Even outside of that, not in PVP, martials just do a whole lot less in.. everything. Rogue can be a good skill monkey, but knock is a spell you can use, charm spells, overall utility (scrying, plane shift, planar ally, identify, comprehend languages, detect magic, etc) is just not available to martials who just… hit things. And roll decent checks. I can make a martial that beats a spellcaster in PVP and it would require building specifically for initiative, multiclassing, playing a dex build, and dropping as much damage as possible to kill them turn one. A spellcaster doesn’t even need to multiclass to be effective, a 20th level wizard is a challenge for even a gloomstalker/assassin/echo knight or whatever combo you use. And for a 20th level fighter? Impossible.
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Even cantrips outperform martials. Prestidigitation, shape water, mage hand, thaumaturgy are all examples of that.
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Are utility and pvp ability the only things that exist. Let me give you a hint: no. As I said, if you crunch the numbers, martials often do more damage.
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Outperform them in situational utility you mean?
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That doesn’t make up for their inability to perform outside of combat in the slightest, and the damage martials do is completely dependent on their weapon and gear. Casters can operate in any situation with or without gear, only needing their foci. I’ve crunched the numbers - barbarian damage is terrible, and rogue is mid at best.
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It’s not even situational. All of those cantrips can be used in a majority of situations.
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This time you didn’t contest any of my other points, reiterated your original premise, and referenced the 2024 rules in a thread about the 2014 ones.
I don’t like the 2024 rules. They went from “some things are better than others, and some spells you must take” to “Wow. What a mess.” Conjure Minor Elementals, Command not stipulating the target can’t do anything harmful, etc. I’d argue the 2024 rules are significantly less balanced and more swingy than 2014, but that isn’t the point of this thread. Incidentally, the example you gave would not work by my interpretation of it with 2014 suggestion, which seems to me to be a strictly out of combat spell.
I can’t remember what’s supposed to go here.
This is blatantly untrue. Martials are 1) entirely reliant on magic items to reach massive damage numbers, 2) restricted to single target damage and 3) lack any kind of consistent crowd control.
The highest single turn damage a 2014 20th level fighter (the highest damage martial) can achieve without magic items is a bugbear echo knight GWM greatsword build, which has terrible initiative and still relies on going first for a significant minority of its damage. (The damage per round, without accounting for to-hit or critical hits and assuming a STR of 20 and a minimum of two uses of echo knight’s extra attack, is 220, for one turn. That drops to 150 for the next turn with second action surge and no bugbear damage).
Let’s take, for comparison, meteor swarm. Against ONE target, meteor swarm does an average of 140 damage, or 70 if they succeed the saving throw. However, it also has a range of a mile and covers a flat, 2-dimensional area of 1004.8 square feet, if my maths is correct. Hitting TWO targets who both fail the save immediately outclasses the fighter burning all their resources, by thirty points of damage. But Redpelt, even though you assumed a GWM fighter with +6 to hit would hit all their attacks to illustrate your point, you’re assuming they’d succeed the save! Also, fire is the most commonly resisted damage type in 5e!
If they both succeed the save, it’s 140 damage overall. But I gave the fighter GWM. So what if the wizard took elemental adept? Resistance is no longer a problem. The wizard also gets a damage increase of 0.16 of damage per d6 of fire damage, which works out to a nice little 3.2. I gave the fighter a subclass, though. What about evocation wizard? Overchannel? How does 245 flat against one target sound?Every little helps. But Redpelt, you only get one ninth level slot a day! You get action surge back on a short rest! This isn’t a fair comparison!
You’re right. A really fair comparison would be comparing the application of spells like, I don’t know, Slow. Hypnotic Pattern is mentioned fairly often. The wizard doesn’t need to do damage. They can end the fight before it even starts, with the really good crowd control they get as default. And that’s before you account for other subclasses, like illusionist, who at high levels with massive-area illusions and their subclass capstone essentially turn into localised deities.
To be clear, I don’t think spellcasters need to be hamstrung. I think martials need a leg up or three, and maybe a few of the worst offenders - sickening radiance comes to mind - should be reworked to be more balanced.
I can’t remember what’s supposed to go here.
Your answer to martials doing more single target damage is that spellcasters do more multi target damage? Also, that fighter will stay at 150 damage, but the wizard's 8th level spells will be doing even less damage.
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I'll make sure to use shape water in my next combat encounter.
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A five foot tall ice wall to provide cover seems useful. Twenty five square feet of ice to cause your opponent to slip. More used as well, but I suppose that requires more creativity than “I hit you with my sword”. Are you arguing that there is no martial caster divide? I’m confused.
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Redpelt is saying that a fully optimized fighter does the same damage as one meteor swarm, and only against a single target. Meteor swarm not only does the amount of damage a fighter does to one target, but also multiple targets. And no, Redpelt’s math is incorporating echo knight attacks. Which has a limited pool of uses. Your consistent damage (with a +6 to hit I may add, so you’re likely not hitting anything at all) would be around 84. Half casters deal more than this and have more utility.
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