I don't know if this is allowed or anyone else would find this fun. So moderators please delete is it's not a good idea.
I've always wondered is a 20th level moon druid really that powerful as everyone say, or can a 20th level fighter over come a 20th level Barbarian with it's action surges. etc. Now I'm not particularly smart and don't know all the rules, but I think as a collective this could be entertaining. I don't think many combats would go past 3-4 rounds.
Combat ends when 1 character is dead or incapacitated - I'm pretty sure it will be obvious when there is a winner. First we have to determine the rules/arena. I'm thinking
ARENA
-120 feet radius Sphere which nothing can go in or out of. This would stop someone flying or teleporting away or digging more than 120 feet into the ground. Natural Daylight flat soil terrain.
-Starting 30 feet away from each other in the center (or would 60 feet be better, it would give orcs with aggressive, tabaxi with feline agility or ranged attacker etc a little bit more of an advantage).
RULES
-No Wish spell or Cleric Divine Intervention or External Help - A lot of this would be subjective especially if a God got involved. (Familiar, Paladin Steed and Ranger Companion, Steel defender, etc allowed)
-3 Magic items only - no legendary or artifacts.
-No pre buffing or contingency type spells before the combat starts, But Magic items would have been activated already if applicable.
-No starting off hidden for a surprise round
PROCESS
Day 1 and 2- Discuss Character building using 27 point buy and feats, What ASI and features at particular levels until they are 20th. - 2 group chats 1 for each character build.
Day 3 and 4 - Discuss which magic items and equipment would be the most useful.
Day 5 and 6 - Discuss tactics
Day 7 - Fight day, I'm hoping someone/group can host the fight and give the results or even multiple groups host their own battles and give the results. Anyone hosting the fights will be using the same characters built between days 1 and 4. Tactics could vary depending a lot on dice rolls.
Anything else?
Would this be interesting to anyone? Obviously everyone needs to be civil and use their brains instead of emotions. If there is enough interest maybe we can all flesh out the rules and start day 1 on a Sunday which would mean fight day would be Saturday.
This sounds like a fun and entertaining idea. I think it might be a little more engaging to have everyone bring their character built using the established guidelines then battle it out. The discussion on the backend might be just as good if not better doing a postmortem of how the fight went and what assumptions were proven/disproven. Either way it seems fun.
A way to do dice rolling that was in the open, and didn't allow for any fudging would be critical.
Druid casts Reverse Gravity for a full minute on the fighter. Fighter raised 100 feet in the air. if the fighter does not have feather fall or some other magic item to arrest his fall he will mostly be jellied. But to make sure, after the druid releases the spell he casts Call Lightning with a 9th level slot and does 9d10 damage as soon as the first bounce. The fighter would not get a Dex Saving throw as they would be in the process of falling
Yeah the old Linear Fighters, Quadratic Wizards effect is still out in force in 5E tbh.
If you lower the levels down, perhaps starting out at 1-3 and then moving up tier by tier as you progress through battles you might get a semblance of balance but even then, you're just moving the issue around. A good Wizard should almost always beat a similar Fighter in a straight up battle.
I've actually done this as a dueling club, there was established build guidelines and we played on roll 20 for tokens and open rolling.
Our guidelines were as follows with changes for special challenges:
27 point buy, no magic items unless granted from your class, official books only, no divine intervention, wish is only used in its ability to replicate other spells, no banishment or other locking someone out of the fight (it just isn't fun for the other person). You fight until the other person hits 0 and stays down for a round (to allow for certain abilities in the game that trigger on your next turn). The duels were fought 1 on 1, 2 on 2 and battle royale style.
If you are interested in this kind of thing I still have the campaign with arena maps set up.
Drawing the line of "spells that lock people out" seems kinda arbitrary. What about Fiend Patron Warlocks? One of their higher tier abilities is literally that and not being able to use it is just kinda unfair. Everyone has a chance to save already, we have built in mechanics for resisting such things, banning them is bad game play design.
Drawing the line of "spells that lock people out" seems kinda arbitrary. What about Fiend Patron Warlocks? One of their higher tier abilities is literally that and not being able to use it is just kinda unfair. Everyone has a chance to save already, we have built in mechanics for resisting such things, banning them is bad game play design.
Hurl Through Hell lasts one turn and you'd only be able to do it once. You can be banished for a full minute, that isn't fun for the player that gets banished. This is meant to be a test of people's builds and how certain classes hold up, if you roll badly on a save and you're just unable to act is that really fun or representative of things?
A minute during which the opponent is also unable to harm you further. Sure, they can heal up but presumably, so can you.
Besides, there are other spells with a similar "save or die" mechanical function. Hell, I'd argue that Greater Invisibility is more of a potential gamebreaker. It's just the nature of spells.
You can't heal, you're incapacitated so you're just doing nothing for a minute and possibly losing some buffs or special forms you were in. Meanwhile the other person can heal,set up buffs and get ina tactical position with a readied action to attack you as soon as you come back.
Greater Invisibility just gives you advantage on attacks and disadvantage to being attacked as well as making some spells against you tricky. You can lose concentration on that, there's multiple ways of seeing someone that is invisible, Alert negates advantage from not being seen and you can just stack advantage/disadvantage in other ways to counter. It really isn't the same at all and the other person is still involved during that time.
Good point, there are very few passive heals going around. Tho the buffs they can set up are limited due to Banishment's need for concentration. Assuming a level 4 or lower mindset still, just because the higher we get, the more ridiculous things casters can do that Banishment almost seems to be negligible, Death Ward springs to mind as a notable buff to cast in the mean time.
Advantage on attacks and a complete inability on your opponents part to cast most spells or make attacks because of the necessary component of sight for a majority of such things. Combined with a hide action allowing you to literally be unable to be found, it removes most of the options. And don't give me this Alert crap, feats are an afterthought at best. ASI's are gonna be a huge thing when it comes to PvP where missing out on them can basically cripple you when it comes to needing to hit others.
Banishment's power is a symptom, not a cause of the great gap between casters and non casters. You can treat the symptoms and win or lose but a greater importance is to treat the cause.
Druid casts Reverse Gravity for a full minute on the fighter. Fighter raised 100 feet in the air. if the fighter does not have feather fall or some other magic item to arrest his fall he will mostly be jellied. But to make sure, after the druid releases the spell he casts Call Lightning with a 9th level slot and does 9d10 damage as soon as the first bounce. The fighter would not get a Dex Saving throw as they would be in the process of falling
I suspect that this matchup like most others would go to whichever character goes first. You could just as easily say that the fighter shoots 8 arrows dealing ~150 damage to the druid. The druid is dead.
Good point, there are very few passive heals going around. Tho the buffs they can set up are limited due to Banishment's need for concentration. Assuming a level 4 or lower mindset still, just because the higher we get, the more ridiculous things casters can do that Banishment almost seems to be negligible, Death Ward springs to mind as a notable buff to cast in the mean time.
Advantage on attacks and a complete inability on your opponents part to cast most spells or make attacks because of the necessary component of sight for a majority of such things. Combined with a hide action allowing you to literally be unable to be found, it removes most of the options. And don't give me this Alert crap, feats are an afterthought at best. ASI's are gonna be a huge thing when it comes to PvP where missing out on them can basically cripple you when it comes to needing to hit others.
Banishment's power is a symptom, not a cause of the great gap between casters and non casters. You can treat the symptoms and win or lose but a greater importance is to treat the cause.
Mirror Image, Blink, Flame Shield, anything that grants temp hp and Death Ward. All potent non concentration buffs.
You seem to have ignored that I said there's multiple abilities that make it redundant, so I'll list some: Truesight spell, that one Warlock invocation, Rogue Blindsight. Being invisible isn't an automatic success on a hide check and blasting large areas with aoes is as valid as anything. Invisibility isn't the instant win button you seem to think it is.
What crap? If you think feats are an afterthought in a PvP exercise between powergamers you're very I'll informed. Variant Human and Fighter/Rogue additional ASIs not to mention relatively SAD builds all make feats very viable and the power of feats can be very potent. If you think someone won't burn an ASI for insurance against any darkness/invisibility shenanigans and also get a +5 in a scenario where going first can mean win or lose.
You're talking about a larger issue between casters and no casters that I wasn't talking about. But for the record you can create a nigh unkillable Barbarian that has few counters, so both martials and casters have ridiculous pvp options.
Ngl, running around to find rules for all of this is a surprisingly difficult activity. Hiding, invisibility and the term "heavily obscured" are p much all in different sections.
Anyways, yes, and stackable even, tho the overlap is kinda small.
I think the idea that you'd have to give up something, even as a SAD character whomst could use more CON always to get a feat for the corner case of your opponent possibly both being a wizard and choosing to go invisible is a bit of a joke is all. Alert doesn't even let you know their location, just negates the disadvantage.
Invisibility as stated in the rules, causes the opponent to be unable to see you as if blinded. When resolving this in regards to an attack roll, the player must choose a location they think the enemy is, make the roll with disadvantage and then be told whether they hit or miss. I agree, AoE spamming is a thing, but also subject to the luck that is in play here. As for Truesight, a 6th level spell now necessary to combat a 4th level one, not available to most fighters or any half casters really, it's nearly impossible. As to the Warlock invocation, I'm not sure which one you mean, my familiarity with the Warlock tells me that you can't really get much better than darkvision with invocations.
Yeah, a fighter will get some chances to pick up some feats that will at best, help in this situation but it's not gonna come close still. The illusion of choice presented in the difference between something like Greater Invisibility or Banishment in a 1v1 scenario are fundamentally meaningless when really, it's gonna come down to one guy doing **** all and one guy laughing along their way.
I have no doubt that a Barb would be very strong and near the top in terms of fighters but I think the caster still has the edge.
Ngl, running around to find rules for all of this is a surprisingly difficult activity. Hiding, invisibility and the term "heavily obscured" are p much all in different sections.
Anyways, yes, and stackable even, tho the overlap is kinda small.
I think the idea that you'd have to give up something, even as a SAD character whomst could use more CON always to get a feat for the corner case of your opponent possibly both being a wizard and choosing to go invisible is a bit of a joke is all. Alert doesn't even let you know their location, just negates the disadvantage.
Invisibility as stated in the rules, causes the opponent to be unable to see you as if blinded. When resolving this in regards to an attack roll, the player must choose a location they think the enemy is, make the roll with disadvantage and then be told whether they hit or miss. I agree, AoE spamming is a thing, but also subject to the luck that is in play here. As for Truesight, a 6th level spell now necessary to combat a 4th level one, not available to most fighters or any half casters really, it's nearly impossible. As to the Warlock invocation, I'm not sure which one you mean, my familiarity with the Warlock tells me that you can't really get much better than darkvision with invocations.
Yeah, a fighter will get some chances to pick up some feats that will at best, help in this situation but it's not gonna come close still. The illusion of choice presented in the difference between something like Greater Invisibility or Banishment in a 1v1 scenario are fundamentally meaningless when really, it's gonna come down to one guy doing **** all and one guy laughing along their way.
I have no doubt that a Barb would be very strong and near the top in terms of fighters but I think the caster still has the edge.
They would overlap for atleast 5 rounds I think, which is hardly insignificant in any combat and I think Flame Shield has a long duration but I'm not sure off the top of my head.
It's not really a corner case, Warlocks and Shadow Sorcerer's employing Darkness is also a popular tactic and one that Alert combats. You don't need to know where they are unless they have successfully hidden from you, unless you take the hide ACTION (unless you're a Rogue) people can still attack you just fine they'll just have disadvantage unless they have something to offset it. If Greater Invisibility was really so powerful it wouldn't be 4th level and would commonly cause issues in game, however it is and it doesn't. Again, also a +5 to initiative, catch any character with a nova before they get that chance to do anything and you will immediately put them in the back foot. Since the original OP said magic items and you seem to have an issue with the spell True Sight, the Robe of Eyes and I think maybe the Lantern if Revealing would also put a stop to it. The point was really to illustrate even off the top of my head there's multiple counters (hell, if the other person is a Warlock just cast Darkness). The invocation I was referring to basically means you can see people hidden by spells within 30 feet of you and just so you know Devils Sight is not Darkvision. You can also get X Ray Vision.
You don't really have to give anything up as a Variant Human to grab a feat, it's popular for a reason.
Not top tier up there with Fighters, between interactions with class, subclass and race you can make a Barbarian that would not be able to die until it won, with only a handful of possible ways to counter it all very high level.
I agree obviously there is a power difference between casters and martials, but it is nowhere near as steep as you think and removing things like Banishment are more about player enjoyability than anything else.
Awesome this is some of the conversations I was talking about. It's all good talking and theorizing it. I thought it was good to actually see results.
Seems like there is some interest. How about we do a simple 3 day trial. and a simple 1 vs 1, Wizard vs Fighter 1st level straight off a dndbeyond creation.
Day 1 - Today, talk about character build, 27 points and race, I will create 2 topics, one in the Wizard Thread and one in the Fighter Thread. I would be cooler if you only read one of them so you don't know the opponents build until fight day.
Day 2 - Talk about tactics and choice of spells, etc
Day 3 - Fight Day, participants read both the final character builds in both threads and have a battle, do it by yourself, do it with friends, do it with a ref/dm even. post a summary of the results.
Hope this test works out, it should be fun. and would even be nice to see a win/lose ratio if there is enough people doing it.
I don't think a pvp scenario can answer which character or class is most powerful regardless of linear/quadratic issues. Given characters optimized for pvp, is there a situation where the character going first doesn't win?
I don't think a pvp scenario can answer which character is most powerful regardless if linear/quadratic issues. Given characters optimized for pvp, is there a situation where the character going first doesn't win?
Bad dice rolls? :) Perhaps after a few rounds it might be obvious. I think it might be different as the levels get higher, example would be if someone was fighting an orc or a goliath. They might not be able to kill them in the first round even going first.
edit: not orc, but I can't remember, some race or class has an ability to put their hp to 1 if they reach 0.
I don't think a pvp scenario can answer which character is most powerful regardless if linear/quadratic issues. Given characters optimized for pvp, is there a situation where the character going first doesn't win?
Bad dice rolls? :) Perhaps after a few rounds it might be obvious. I think it might be different as the levels get higher, example would be if someone was fighting an orc or a goliath. They might not be able to kill them in the first round even going first.
edit: not orc, but I can't remember, some race or class has an ability to put their hp to 1 if they reach 0.
I think, per the op, we're talking about level 20.
Half-orc gets that ability. I think generally even a half-orc going second is going to lose, e.g. the wizard casts force cage. Now I'm trying to think of counter examples though. Half-orc is definitely a strong choice for this type of combat.
I don't think a pvp scenario can answer which character is most powerful regardless if linear/quadratic issues. Given characters optimized for pvp, is there a situation where the character going first doesn't win?
Bad dice rolls? :) Perhaps after a few rounds it might be obvious. I think it might be different as the levels get higher, example would be if someone was fighting an orc or a goliath. They might not be able to kill them in the first round even going first.
edit: not orc, but I can't remember, some race or class has an ability to put their hp to 1 if they reach 0.
I think, per the op, we're talking about level 20.
Half-orc gets that ability. I think generally even a half-orc going second is going to lose, e.g. the wizard casts force cage. Now I'm trying to think of counter examples though. Half-orc is definitely a strong choice for this type of combat.
I was thinking just a trial at 1st level first to see how it goes or how many people are interested. Not much point if only 1 or 2 where going to participate :) Even first level I think there are lots of variables especially with Relentless Endurance, Stone's Endurance, Yuan ti's magic resistance, etc.
If you're looking to actually run such a thing, you might try the pbp forum. I'm not really interested in actually playing in a pvp arena, but I do enjoy the theorycrafting aspect. If the idea is to keep builds and tactics secret then here's my idea.
For level 1 starting character with no magic items, I propose a half-orc draconic sorcerer with sleep, a few pairs of manacles, a dagger, a gag and a blindfold. That should beat almost everything almost all the time at that level. If you go second, AC 15 with no need for armor only lets you get hit ~50% of the time. With 10 hp, <50% of those hits are even able to reduce you to zero. If you are reduced to zero relentless endurance gets you back up again. If the opponent has an off-hand attack, again it's only ~50% chance to hit. That's only a ~10% chance to die if the enemy goes first. On your turn you cast sleep. Average of 5d8 is 21.5. That will take down any non-elf level 1 character. Then you attach multiple pairs of manacles, gag, and blindfold during your 1 minute. Then stab to death. Alternatively take mold earth and bury the enemy under a bunch of dirt.
If the opponent is an elf, then you have a trickier problem. It certainly evens the odds, but I don't think that makes it unlikely for you to win, just difficult to predict.
This combo probably still wins at level 2 against all the same stuff with the exception of moon druids who might have too many hp (34). If they go first and transform into a [creature]brown bear[/creature] they likely kill you on round 2. If you go first you still win. Probably also less effective against barbarians (~25 hp).
Are you wanting to battle every level until 20, is the plan is to level those characters all the way to 20? I think that's too much. Why does it matter what levels you get particular feats/abilities at if the goal as stated is to battle at level 20? Your opening post isn't too clear about this.
I don't know if this is allowed or anyone else would find this fun. So moderators please delete is it's not a good idea.
I've always wondered is a 20th level moon druid really that powerful as everyone say, or can a 20th level fighter over come a 20th level Barbarian with it's action surges. etc. Now I'm not particularly smart and don't know all the rules, but I think as a collective this could be entertaining. I don't think many combats would go past 3-4 rounds.
Combat ends when 1 character is dead or incapacitated - I'm pretty sure it will be obvious when there is a winner. First we have to determine the rules/arena. I'm thinking
ARENA
-120 feet radius Sphere which nothing can go in or out of. This would stop someone flying or teleporting away or digging more than 120 feet into the ground. Natural Daylight flat soil terrain.
-Starting 30 feet away from each other in the center (or would 60 feet be better, it would give orcs with aggressive, tabaxi with feline agility or ranged attacker etc a little bit more of an advantage).
RULES
-No Wish spell or Cleric Divine Intervention or External Help - A lot of this would be subjective especially if a God got involved. (Familiar, Paladin Steed and Ranger Companion, Steel defender, etc allowed)
-3 Magic items only - no legendary or artifacts.
-No pre buffing or contingency type spells before the combat starts, But Magic items would have been activated already if applicable.
-No starting off hidden for a surprise round
PROCESS
Day 1 and 2- Discuss Character building using 27 point buy and feats, What ASI and features at particular levels until they are 20th. - 2 group chats 1 for each character build.
Day 3 and 4 - Discuss which magic items and equipment would be the most useful.
Day 5 and 6 - Discuss tactics
Day 7 - Fight day, I'm hoping someone/group can host the fight and give the results or even multiple groups host their own battles and give the results. Anyone hosting the fights will be using the same characters built between days 1 and 4. Tactics could vary depending a lot on dice rolls.
Anything else?
Would this be interesting to anyone? Obviously everyone needs to be civil and use their brains instead of emotions. If there is enough interest maybe we can all flesh out the rules and start day 1 on a Sunday which would mean fight day would be Saturday.
This sounds like a fun and entertaining idea. I think it might be a little more engaging to have everyone bring their character built using the established guidelines then battle it out. The discussion on the backend might be just as good if not better doing a postmortem of how the fight went and what assumptions were proven/disproven. Either way it seems fun.
A way to do dice rolling that was in the open, and didn't allow for any fudging would be critical.
Druid casts Reverse Gravity for a full minute on the fighter. Fighter raised 100 feet in the air. if the fighter does not have feather fall or some other magic item to arrest his fall he will mostly be jellied. But to make sure, after the druid releases the spell he casts Call Lightning with a 9th level slot and does 9d10 damage as soon as the first bounce. The fighter would not get a Dex Saving throw as they would be in the process of falling
Yeah the old Linear Fighters, Quadratic Wizards effect is still out in force in 5E tbh.
If you lower the levels down, perhaps starting out at 1-3 and then moving up tier by tier as you progress through battles you might get a semblance of balance but even then, you're just moving the issue around. A good Wizard should almost always beat a similar Fighter in a straight up battle.
I've actually done this as a dueling club, there was established build guidelines and we played on roll 20 for tokens and open rolling.
Our guidelines were as follows with changes for special challenges:
27 point buy, no magic items unless granted from your class, official books only, no divine intervention, wish is only used in its ability to replicate other spells, no banishment or other locking someone out of the fight (it just isn't fun for the other person). You fight until the other person hits 0 and stays down for a round (to allow for certain abilities in the game that trigger on your next turn). The duels were fought 1 on 1, 2 on 2 and battle royale style.
If you are interested in this kind of thing I still have the campaign with arena maps set up.
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Drawing the line of "spells that lock people out" seems kinda arbitrary. What about Fiend Patron Warlocks? One of their higher tier abilities is literally that and not being able to use it is just kinda unfair. Everyone has a chance to save already, we have built in mechanics for resisting such things, banning them is bad game play design.
Hurl Through Hell lasts one turn and you'd only be able to do it once. You can be banished for a full minute, that isn't fun for the player that gets banished. This is meant to be a test of people's builds and how certain classes hold up, if you roll badly on a save and you're just unable to act is that really fun or representative of things?
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A minute during which the opponent is also unable to harm you further. Sure, they can heal up but presumably, so can you.
Besides, there are other spells with a similar "save or die" mechanical function. Hell, I'd argue that Greater Invisibility is more of a potential gamebreaker. It's just the nature of spells.
You can't heal, you're incapacitated so you're just doing nothing for a minute and possibly losing some buffs or special forms you were in. Meanwhile the other person can heal,set up buffs and get ina tactical position with a readied action to attack you as soon as you come back.
Greater Invisibility just gives you advantage on attacks and disadvantage to being attacked as well as making some spells against you tricky. You can lose concentration on that, there's multiple ways of seeing someone that is invisible, Alert negates advantage from not being seen and you can just stack advantage/disadvantage in other ways to counter. It really isn't the same at all and the other person is still involved during that time.
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Good point, there are very few passive heals going around. Tho the buffs they can set up are limited due to Banishment's need for concentration. Assuming a level 4 or lower mindset still, just because the higher we get, the more ridiculous things casters can do that Banishment almost seems to be negligible, Death Ward springs to mind as a notable buff to cast in the mean time.
Advantage on attacks and a complete inability on your opponents part to cast most spells or make attacks because of the necessary component of sight for a majority of such things. Combined with a hide action allowing you to literally be unable to be found, it removes most of the options. And don't give me this Alert crap, feats are an afterthought at best. ASI's are gonna be a huge thing when it comes to PvP where missing out on them can basically cripple you when it comes to needing to hit others.
Banishment's power is a symptom, not a cause of the great gap between casters and non casters. You can treat the symptoms and win or lose but a greater importance is to treat the cause.
I suspect that this matchup like most others would go to whichever character goes first. You could just as easily say that the fighter shoots 8 arrows dealing ~150 damage to the druid. The druid is dead.
Mirror Image, Blink, Flame Shield, anything that grants temp hp and Death Ward. All potent non concentration buffs.
You seem to have ignored that I said there's multiple abilities that make it redundant, so I'll list some: Truesight spell, that one Warlock invocation, Rogue Blindsight. Being invisible isn't an automatic success on a hide check and blasting large areas with aoes is as valid as anything. Invisibility isn't the instant win button you seem to think it is.
What crap? If you think feats are an afterthought in a PvP exercise between powergamers you're very I'll informed. Variant Human and Fighter/Rogue additional ASIs not to mention relatively SAD builds all make feats very viable and the power of feats can be very potent. If you think someone won't burn an ASI for insurance against any darkness/invisibility shenanigans and also get a +5 in a scenario where going first can mean win or lose.
You're talking about a larger issue between casters and no casters that I wasn't talking about. But for the record you can create a nigh unkillable Barbarian that has few counters, so both martials and casters have ridiculous pvp options.
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Ngl, running around to find rules for all of this is a surprisingly difficult activity. Hiding, invisibility and the term "heavily obscured" are p much all in different sections.
Anyways, yes, and stackable even, tho the overlap is kinda small.
I think the idea that you'd have to give up something, even as a SAD character whomst could use more CON always to get a feat for the corner case of your opponent possibly both being a wizard and choosing to go invisible is a bit of a joke is all. Alert doesn't even let you know their location, just negates the disadvantage.
Invisibility as stated in the rules, causes the opponent to be unable to see you as if blinded. When resolving this in regards to an attack roll, the player must choose a location they think the enemy is, make the roll with disadvantage and then be told whether they hit or miss. I agree, AoE spamming is a thing, but also subject to the luck that is in play here. As for Truesight, a 6th level spell now necessary to combat a 4th level one, not available to most fighters or any half casters really, it's nearly impossible. As to the Warlock invocation, I'm not sure which one you mean, my familiarity with the Warlock tells me that you can't really get much better than darkvision with invocations.
Yeah, a fighter will get some chances to pick up some feats that will at best, help in this situation but it's not gonna come close still. The illusion of choice presented in the difference between something like Greater Invisibility or Banishment in a 1v1 scenario are fundamentally meaningless when really, it's gonna come down to one guy doing **** all and one guy laughing along their way.
I have no doubt that a Barb would be very strong and near the top in terms of fighters but I think the caster still has the edge.
They would overlap for atleast 5 rounds I think, which is hardly insignificant in any combat and I think Flame Shield has a long duration but I'm not sure off the top of my head.
It's not really a corner case, Warlocks and Shadow Sorcerer's employing Darkness is also a popular tactic and one that Alert combats. You don't need to know where they are unless they have successfully hidden from you, unless you take the hide ACTION (unless you're a Rogue) people can still attack you just fine they'll just have disadvantage unless they have something to offset it. If Greater Invisibility was really so powerful it wouldn't be 4th level and would commonly cause issues in game, however it is and it doesn't. Again, also a +5 to initiative, catch any character with a nova before they get that chance to do anything and you will immediately put them in the back foot. Since the original OP said magic items and you seem to have an issue with the spell True Sight, the Robe of Eyes and I think maybe the Lantern if Revealing would also put a stop to it. The point was really to illustrate even off the top of my head there's multiple counters (hell, if the other person is a Warlock just cast Darkness). The invocation I was referring to basically means you can see people hidden by spells within 30 feet of you and just so you know Devils Sight is not Darkvision. You can also get X Ray Vision.
You don't really have to give anything up as a Variant Human to grab a feat, it's popular for a reason.
Not top tier up there with Fighters, between interactions with class, subclass and race you can make a Barbarian that would not be able to die until it won, with only a handful of possible ways to counter it all very high level.
I agree obviously there is a power difference between casters and martials, but it is nowhere near as steep as you think and removing things like Banishment are more about player enjoyability than anything else.
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Awesome this is some of the conversations I was talking about. It's all good talking and theorizing it. I thought it was good to actually see results.
Seems like there is some interest. How about we do a simple 3 day trial. and a simple 1 vs 1, Wizard vs Fighter 1st level straight off a dndbeyond creation.
Day 1 - Today, talk about character build, 27 points and race, I will create 2 topics, one in the Wizard Thread and one in the Fighter Thread. I would be cooler if you only read one of them so you don't know the opponents build until fight day.
Day 2 - Talk about tactics and choice of spells, etc
Day 3 - Fight Day, participants read both the final character builds in both threads and have a battle, do it by yourself, do it with friends, do it with a ref/dm even. post a summary of the results.
Hope this test works out, it should be fun. and would even be nice to see a win/lose ratio if there is enough people doing it.
I don't think a pvp scenario can answer which character or class is most powerful regardless of linear/quadratic issues. Given characters optimized for pvp, is there a situation where the character going first doesn't win?
Bad dice rolls? :) Perhaps after a few rounds it might be obvious. I think it might be different as the levels get higher, example would be if someone was fighting an orc or a goliath. They might not be able to kill them in the first round even going first.
edit: not orc, but I can't remember, some race or class has an ability to put their hp to 1 if they reach 0.
I think, per the op, we're talking about level 20.
Half-orc gets that ability. I think generally even a half-orc going second is going to lose, e.g. the wizard casts force cage. Now I'm trying to think of counter examples though. Half-orc is definitely a strong choice for this type of combat.
I was thinking just a trial at 1st level first to see how it goes or how many people are interested. Not much point if only 1 or 2 where going to participate :) Even first level I think there are lots of variables especially with Relentless Endurance, Stone's Endurance, Yuan ti's magic resistance, etc.
If you're looking to actually run such a thing, you might try the pbp forum. I'm not really interested in actually playing in a pvp arena, but I do enjoy the theorycrafting aspect. If the idea is to keep builds and tactics secret then here's my idea.
For level 1 starting character with no magic items, I propose a half-orc draconic sorcerer with sleep, a few pairs of manacles, a dagger, a gag and a blindfold. That should beat almost everything almost all the time at that level. If you go second, AC 15 with no need for armor only lets you get hit ~50% of the time. With 10 hp, <50% of those hits are even able to reduce you to zero. If you are reduced to zero relentless endurance gets you back up again. If the opponent has an off-hand attack, again it's only ~50% chance to hit. That's only a ~10% chance to die if the enemy goes first. On your turn you cast sleep. Average of 5d8 is 21.5. That will take down any non-elf level 1 character. Then you attach multiple pairs of manacles, gag, and blindfold during your 1 minute. Then stab to death. Alternatively take mold earth and bury the enemy under a bunch of dirt.
If the opponent is an elf, then you have a trickier problem. It certainly evens the odds, but I don't think that makes it unlikely for you to win, just difficult to predict.
This combo probably still wins at level 2 against all the same stuff with the exception of moon druids who might have too many hp (34). If they go first and transform into a [creature]brown bear[/creature] they likely kill you on round 2. If you go first you still win. Probably also less effective against barbarians (~25 hp).
Are you wanting to battle every level until 20, is the plan is to level those characters all the way to 20? I think that's too much. Why does it matter what levels you get particular feats/abilities at if the goal as stated is to battle at level 20? Your opening post isn't too clear about this.