Martials aren't inferior by and large, casters DPR is abysmal compared to martials.
DPR is not the point. The martial vs caster balance issues are not about 'how fast can we kill monsters', they're about "can we effectively do anything other than kill monsters".
Problem the First: every D&D party more or less requires there to be a mix of martial meatheads and casty things.
I 100% disagree. You do not need a mix of martials and casters to play D&D. You don't even need a mix of different classes! I played in an all Bard party and (aside from the fact that nobody had any rope in their starting equipment) it worked just fine and was super fun. I've DMed parties where the only "casters" was a Ranger and an Arcane Trickster Rogue, and another party that was a 5-Ranger+3 Cleric, 8-Wizard, 8-Bard, 5-Arcane Trickster + 2-Div Wizard + 1 Divine Sorcerer and again it worked just fine. One of my current campaigns the party is: 5-Rogue + 5 Warlock, 10-Paladin, 10-Cleric, 10-Bard and we've been playing since level 2 and are totally fine, another campaign I played in was a 6-Paladin, 3-Ranger+3-Hexblade, 6-Glamour Bard, 6-Transmutation Wizard, 6-Starry Druid which again worked totally fine. In a completely different group, we played from level 2-7 with a party of: Monk, Paladin, Eldritch Knight, Artificer, Assassin Rogue and again it was completely fine and super fun.
The Dungeon Dudes even did a whole video about how the strongest party possible in 5e would be a: Twilight Cleric, Moon Druid, Bladesinger, and Hexblade Warlock.
There are players who like complicated and also want to swing a sword. There are players who like simple and also want to cast spells.
Also, 'simple' should not mean 'inferior'.
Sure and there are classes / subclasses for them too. Want to be simple and cast spells? Easy play a Warlock and take all the invocations for your Eldritch Blast. Want to be complicated and swing a sword? Easy play a Bladesinger, Swords Bard, Moon Druid, Tempest Cleric, Paladin, or Hexblade Warlock.
Martials aren't inferior by and large, casters DPR is abysmal compared to martials.
DPR is not the point. The martial vs caster balance issues are not about 'how fast can we kill monsters', they're about "can we effectively do anything other than kill monsters".
In terms of "simple shouldn't mean inferior" that absolutely is the point. Martials are simple and effective, they hit things with a stick and are exceptionally good at doing so. If martials were "inferior" then people wouldn't be arguing that it is "necessary" to have both martials and casters.
In terms of "simple shouldn't mean inferior" that absolutely is the point. Martials are simple and effective, they hit things with a stick and are exceptionally good at doing so. If martials were "inferior" then people wouldn't be arguing that it is "necessary" to have both martials and casters.
You are continuing to miss the point. While there is a broad category of combat encounters where martials are as useful as bumps on a log, in typical combat encounters martial characters are fine. The issue is with non-combat challenges.
Ok here's the run down for some standard non-combat challenges:
Move the heavy thing - could be a door, a chest, a body, a statue, a boulder - STR martial solves this for free with Athletics that doesn't suck. Get thing that is in a precarious location / on a pressure plate - DEX martial solves with with Acrobatics that doesn't suck. Scout ahead - STR or DEX martial solves by climbing a tree / building and looking. Get whole party safely past a trap - STR martial solves by smashing the trap to make it harmless, DEX martial solves it by using Thieves Tools to disarm it. All martials: push through the damage and turn it off from the other side. Get whole party across a river - STR martial solves by throwing people across or tying everyone to themselves and swimming across. Find out BBEG's plans - DEX martial solves by sneaking in and stealing their journal, kidnapping one of the baddie lackeys to interrogate, befriending the thieves and bartering for info, or simply following / spying on them. STR martial solves by challenging a lackey to a drinking contest, knocking out or kidnapping a lackey to interrogate. Break into somewhere - STR martial solves by digging / breaking through an unused grate, DEX martial solves by hiding & picking the locks. Get whole party up a cliff - STR martial solves by carrying weakest allies and climbing with a climbers kit.
Sure casters can spend spell slots to solve all of these problems too, but see the problem is that spellslots are considered cheap so casters happily spend them unnecessarily on things that a martial could do for free. IMO the intended playstyle is when faced with such challenges first the martial rolls a check to try and solve it and if the martial fails then a caster can spend a spellslot to solve it instead. Which is why I advocate for greatly reducing the number of spellslots that casters get to redress the balance. Magic should feel powerful and casters should be able to use it to solve problems but it should never be the go-to solution, it should always be "if we really need it, I could use a spell...".
Get whole party safely past a trap - STR martial solves by smashing the trap to make it harmless, DEX martial solves it by using Thieves Tools to disarm it. All martials: push through the damage and turn it off from the other side.
Or... you just blow it up with fire bolt. Casters don't have a resource-free equivalent to thieves' tools (though nothing stops them from being proficient with thieves' tools), but any problem that can be solved by smashing can be solved by any class.
Find out BBEG's plans - DEX martial solves by sneaking in and stealing their journal, kidnapping one of the baddie lackeys to interrogate, befriending the thieves and bartering for info, or simply following / spying on them. STR martial solves by challenging a lackey to a drinking contest, knocking out or kidnapping a lackey to interrogate.
There's really nothing in there that's special to martial characters, or even that martial characters are particularly good at.
Get whole party up a cliff - STR martial solves by carrying weakest allies and climbing with a climbers kit.
Or you use mage hand or a familiar to send a rope up. If necessary, you expend a second level spell slot (I can tell you're really struggling to find uses for strength).
Three decades ago I was a very good college wrestler. I could hit any move on most opponents but daily after practice I stayed and practiced the double leg take down and a single leg hitting two hundred each on a willing teammate. At matches I would tell my opponent exactly which I was about to hit on them and always landed it.
A martial should be the epitome of practice and execution. With one weapon of choice they should be faster, and more precise. They should start with more attacks and a bonus to hit. As they level this should grow too.
so a 1st level martial should start with two attacks with the chosen weapon. At 5th they should get a third attack and at 10th 3rd. A fighter should get this with a melee weapon and a range weapon. This should also come with a bonus to hit… plus 1 at 1st lvl, plus 2 at forth, plus 3 at 8th, plus 4 at 12, plus 5 at 16 and plus 6 at 20. This bonus is the learning over years of where to strike and when.
once per turn, all classes on an attack can role a d6 to trip, knock probe,, hamstring an opponent as long as the maneuver is realistic to that weapon type.
Fighters are successful on a 3,4,5,6. Other martials on a 4,5,6. Full casters are successful only on a 1.
All of these benefits are only for single class characters. It represents the time and practice to be better with a weapon and to hone one’s body to be a weapon of warfare.
These also are just part of the class skills. Feats would still do. What they do.
Spells have drawbacks too though, it's up to the DM to make those matter. Yeah maybe with Mage Hand you can chant loudly and then carry a rope 30ft. up, but if stealth and distance matter I'd probably rather have the martial do it. Yeah Find Familiar is a decent scout if the thing I want to look at is within 100ft of my location, but if it's a mile ahead of us then maybe taking a short rest while the Ranger checks it out and reports back will yield better info. If none of the limitations of spells ever matter then casters will run roughshod over martials that much more easily, yet the designers put those drawbacks in for a reason.
Mage Hand can't tie a rope to anything (have you tried to knot a rope with one hand?), so sure you can drag it across and it will just flop down into the river / crevasse / off the cliff being utterly useless, neither can most familiars.
Firebolt only lights things on fire, lots of traps are not flammable thus not particularly firebolt-able. (or you know the trap is near something else that is flammable and starting a fire would be problematic.
STR martial have better con saves than casters thus more likely to out drink a lackey. Spells cannot be bade non-lethal, and casters need to use levelled spells to do the equivalent of grapple, likewise casters need to use levelled spells to be good a stealth whereas Dex martials are usually great at stealth.
If you're DM rules that 20 STR doesn't mean you can move something that is heavier than what a character with 8 STR can move then that's a problem with your DM not with the rules.
Problem the First: every D&D party more or less requires there to be a mix of martial meatheads and casty things. So if you have a table where everybody is on the "likes to engage with the game, make decisions, and enjoy rich game depth" spectrum? Not everybody gets to do that. Somebody has to play the dumb meathead that can barely remember which end of the mace is the one you hold and which end is the one you swing at the enemy.
Conversely, if you have an entire tableful of people on the "decision-making sucks and I hate having to think or engage with the game at all, I just want to swing whichever end of a mace at whatever's in front of me" end of the spectrum? Not everybody gets to do that. Somebody has to play the casty thing that can solve problems the army of Dumb Meatheads can't, and has to deal with actually engaging with D&D even though they really hate having to do it.
Making it such that there are no options for "complex" martial characters and also no options for "simple" spellcasters means tables that don't have a correct mix of player types have to deal with somebody always being forced to take on a role they don't want to fulfill.
This is false. For one, parties can and are often made up of only Warriors or only casters. Additionally, you will note that I have advocated for the existence of at least one simple spellcaster that is more accessible for newer players or people who just don't like as much complexity. This would make it far easier for everyone to play the type of character they want.
Problem the Second: saying "not everything can appeal to everyone!" is factually true but also a useless statement. It's Wizards' job to give the playerbase as a whole as many options as they can. Giving up on making a class broadly applicable because 'we want to make [X class] for people who love [X class]' is also "we don't care if people who aren't fans of [X class] hate it because they don't matter."
Nobody can realistically go through the game playing nothing but their one single favorite class, they will eventually have to branch out unless they only ever play one game once and then quit. It's one of the reasons I'm so pissed off at the UA Druid; they're making it "for people who love druid" while completely ignoring people who might just maybe want to be a fan of druids but can't stand the fact that the entire class is nothing but a pointless chassis for closet-furry shapeshifter bullshit.
For one, people can and have realistically gone through the same class again and again and still enjoyed it. When I was new, I played the same character at different levels and in different realities a number of times, but I still loved it. So not only can you do this and have a good time, but one of the main roles of simple classes is to help people understand the game and move on to making more complex characters.
If a class is loved and enjoyed by a large portion of the player base, then that class shouldn't be taken away from them and replaced with one that is not nearly as enjoyable. If Wizards wants to appeal to as large an audience as possible, then not changing classes that appeal well to new players so they are far more complex and those players have to switch to a class they do not like as much is not a good idea.
Also, the developers harped on making the Druid more appealing and growing the small number of people who play it. They failed to execute that goal well, but targeting too small an audience and not wanting to grow it was not the problem there.
This idea people have that simplicity is always 100% better than any amount of "complexity" and anyone who disagrees can just shut the **** up and play the stupid wizard is toxic, bad, and counterproductive. Telling somebody to shut up and play the wizard all the time is as uncool as making other tables play Boulder Parchment Shears to see who has to waste a campaign playing the meathead instead of getting to make decisions.
No one I have ever seen has voiced that opinion, and no one has old anyone anything like the quotes you keep shoving down others mouths.
I find the argument that all martials must be simple just because people like the play style bizarre, and I also don't believe that anyone enjoys taking the attack action soooo much that having any other options ruins combat for them.
And besides, I don't believe that anyone is advocating for all martial characters to have 20 different 'spells' to remember; I know I certainly ain't. I simply think more people would enjoy it if Fighters, the supposed masters of weaponry, could do more than whack people over the head. Why can't we whack with style? Why can't we respond to being whacked with a flair that belies our supreme skill, rather than simply taking it and saying, 'Ouch?'
And besides, Barbarian will always exist for those who want the simple play style, and the simple play style fits in well with its thematics.
No one has made the argument that all Martials or Warriors should be simple. All we said was that the Fighter class should be simple.
I hope Fighters are able to appeal to more types of players. However, implementing that would be hard and risky and could back fire and cause some very negative effects as a result. This is why I think that Fighter should be kept as an option for the people who like simplicity and for those that it has spent years welcoming with open arms.
I know this because I am one of the people who was welcomed in that way. And because I would likely not still be playing D&D and helping dozens - maybe even hundreds - of people out on these very forums if Fighter hadn't been there to welcome me into the game with opens arms.
I 100% disagree. You do not need a mix of martials and casters to play D&D. You don't even need a mix of different classes! I played in an all Bard party and (aside from the fact that nobody had any rope in their starting equipment) it worked just fine and was super fun. I've DMed parties where the only "casters" was a Ranger and an Arcane Trickster Rogue, and another party that was a 5-Ranger+3 Cleric, 8-Wizard, 8-Bard, 5-Arcane Trickster + 2-Div Wizard + 1 Divine Sorcerer and again it worked just fine. One of my current campaigns the party is: 5-Rogue + 5 Warlock, 10-Paladin, 10-Cleric, 10-Bard and we've been playing since level 2 and are totally fine, another campaign I played in was a 6-Paladin, 3-Ranger+3-Hexblade, 6-Glamour Bard, 6-Transmutation Wizard, 6-Starry Druid which again worked totally fine. In a completely different group, we played from level 2-7 with a party of: Monk, Paladin, Eldritch Knight, Artificer, Assassin Rogue and again it was completely fine and super fun.
The Dungeon Dudes even did a whole video about how the strongest party possible in 5e would be a: Twilight Cleric, Moon Druid, Bladesinger, and Hexblade Warlock.
So, the problem I have with this is that for an entirely martial party to be viable, one of the following has to be true:
a) The party must be okay with death being completely permanent b) The DM must both be very generous with health potions and very kind with the opponents they pit the players against in combats c) The party must include a Paladin or a Ranger to provide healing, who some people count as Martials but I would disagree with them on that.
On the other hand, for a full caster party to be viable:
a) Someone in the party plays a martial-esque subclass that grants heavy armour or some other boost to your AC / Defensive capabilities a. 1. The rest of the party nukes everything out of existence while the 'Tank' takes the first few hits
b) The party utilises the tools available to them and take a control spell or two each b. 1. The party nukes everything out of existence while the opponents are stuck in a 'Web' or similar spell
Now, I'm not saying it's impossible for a martial-focused group to work, simply that it is a lot more likely that the caster group will thrive than it is that the martial group will achieve baseline viability without the DM drastically changing their style.
I also think that it says something that the Dungeon Dudes' opinion on the best party comp is one that is entirely casters who took the "I'm pretending to be a martial character" subclass, ie the full spell casters who are better at the martial role than the martial character.
Problem the Second: saying "not everything can appeal to everyone!" is factually true but also a useless statement. It's Wizards' job to give the playerbase as a whole as many options as they can. Giving up on making a class broadly applicable because 'we want to make [X class] for people who love [X class]' is also "we don't care if people who aren't fans of [X class] hate it because they don't matter."
Nobody can realistically go through the game playing nothing but their one single favorite class, they will eventually have to branch out unless they only ever play one game once and then quit. It's one of the reasons I'm so pissed off at the UA Druid; they're making it "for people who love druid" while completely ignoring people who might just maybe want to be a fan of druids but can't stand the fact that the entire class is nothing but a pointless chassis for closet-furry shapeshifter bullshit.
For one, people can and have realistically gone through the same class again and again and still enjoyed it. When I was new, I played the same character at different levels and in different realities a number of times, but I still loved it. So not only can you do this and have a good time, but one of the main roles of simple classes is to help people understand the game and move on to making more complex characters.
If a class is loved and enjoyed by a large portion of the player base, then that class shouldn't be taken away from them and replaced with one that is not nearly as enjoyable. If Wizards wants to appeal to as large an audience as possible, then not changing classes that appeal well to new players so they are far more complex and those players have to switch to a class they do not like as much is not a good idea.
But no one is advocating 'that [Fighters should] be taken away from them and replaced with one that is not nearly as enjoyable. ' We are simply asking for the Fighter, and possibly the Warrior group in general, to have more options. Not to radically change the class, not to take anything away, nor to make them vastly more complex, simply to expand upon what we already have. I think the insistence that newer players will lose all attachment to the game because the fighter gained a new use for their reaction or an optional extra for when they make an attack is absurd.
No one I have ever seen has voiced that opinion, and no one has old anyone anything like the quotes you keep shoving down others mouths
I don't know man, maybe Yurei was a bit exaggerated in their statement, but this entire thread could be summed up with "Martials can't have options to take in combat, because that would make them, like, super-powered-anime-wizard-4e-peope, and you don't want that."
I find the argument that all martials must be simple just because people like the play style bizarre, and I also don't believe that anyone enjoys taking the attack action soooo much that having any other options ruins combat for them.
And besides, I don't believe that anyone is advocating for all martial characters to have 20 different 'spells' to remember; I know I certainly ain't. I simply think more people would enjoy it if Fighters, the supposed masters of weaponry, could do more than whack people over the head. Why can't we whack with style? Why can't we respond to being whacked with a flair that belies our supreme skill, rather than simply taking it and saying, 'Ouch?'
And besides, Barbarian will always exist for those who want the simple play style, and the simple play style fits in well with its thematics.
No one has made the argument that all Martials or Warriors should be simple. All we said was that the Fighter class should be simple.
I hope Fighters are able to appeal to more types of players. However, implementing that would be hard and risky and could back fire and cause some very negative effects as a result. This is why I think that Fighter should be kept as an option for the people who like simplicity and for those that it has spent years welcoming with open arms.
I know this because I am one of the people who was welcomed in that way. And because I would likely not still be playing D&D and helping dozens - maybe even hundreds - of people out on these very forums if Fighter hadn't been there to welcome me into the game with opens arms.
And I don't understand why you think Fighter should be the simple class. I'll let the official description of Fighters speak for me:
"...as fighters, they all share an unparalleled mastery with weapons and armor, and a thorough knowledge of the skills of combat." PHB, page 70 (bolded for emphasis)
Fighters do not currently display an unparalleled mastery with weapons or armor, nor any exceptional skills in combat. Fighters currently have the same options everyone else does, but with the added benefit of being able to whack slightly faster than everyone else, and sometimes they can whack even faster, but they have to have a nap afterwards. To live up to that fantasy, they need some more options. The simple 'Attack until I can't Attack any more' play style is most definitely better suited to the Barbarian class.
As to it being hard or risky to implement, is that not why we are currently play-testing new content? And I still don't understand these 'very negative effects.' I understand that someone has to speak on behalf of the new players, but I think we need to give new players more credit that they currently get.
And finally, although those graphs you provided were cool, they don't support your point in any meaningful way. The top subclass for every single class, with the exception of druid because they split the 'land' subclass into sub-sub-classes, is the subclass provided in the basic rules. All that suggests to me is that more people on here don't own the books than do. Furthermore, if you scroll down to the chart from the previous year, (The article was published in 2020, so the charts from 2019, before Phandelver + starter set were free on DDB, iirc) the most popular subclass is actually the Battlemaster.
The point is not to make them unusable. The point is to make them actually good (well, Fighter is a decent class at what it does, it just needs to be worth something in more than one of the three pillars of play. Champion is just mechanically terrible).
Nobody can realistically go through the game playing nothing but their one single favorite class, they will eventually have to branch out unless they only ever play one game once and then quit. It's one of the reasons I'm so pissed off at the UA Druid; they're making it "for people who love druid" while completely ignoring people who might just maybe want to be a fan of druids but can't stand the fact that the entire class is nothing but a pointless chassis for closet-furry shapeshifter bullshit.
It's been an honor knowing you. I will lament your untimely demise, but forever remember your bravery.
I agree with the first part but not the second. The latter gives the DM yet another thing to adjudicate when they likely already have their hands full. The biggest benefit to the new Tasha summons is that the DM doesn't have to worry about what creatures are in the area, whether they will wreck the balance of the encounter they spent hours planning, and what will happen if they run amok to their own devices; the summon is easy for even newer players to control, easy for the DM to plan around, and if the spell is disrupted they leave. They're varied enough to be fun for the player but straightforward enough to keep the DM's already hard job from being any harder, and that's a great thing for both sides.
The point is not to make them unusable. The point is to make them actually good (well, Fighter is a decent class at what it does, it just needs to be worth something in more than one of the three pillars of play. Champion is just mechanically terrible).
I'm fine with buffing Champion. I think an easy way to do that without sacrificing its niche as the "simplest Fighter" is for it to get another ASI instead of the weak/silly "you crit 5% more often, isn't that exciting?"
Why should they have to? The summoner concept works fine without giving the DM more work.
How's it different from handling the rest of campaign-breaking shenanigans that players do all the time? Streamlining is good, but only to a degree. IMO, the new summoning spells are overly homogenized, flavorless, and basically taken from a videogame. Summoning a celestial with them is no different from summoning an aberration or a fiend. I prefer the good ol' Infernal Calling, with sacrifices and consequences, it basically introduces a whole new character to the story that can influence the events if the DM and players choose to.
I'd just rather have casters think about what they do, rather than just cast Solve Problem and be done with the scenario in five spells.
I 100% disagree. You do not need a mix of martials and casters to play D&D. You don't even need a mix of different classes! I played in an all Bard party and (aside from the fact that nobody had any rope in their starting equipment) it worked just fine and was super fun. I've DMed parties where the only "casters" was a Ranger and an Arcane Trickster Rogue, and another party that was a 5-Ranger+3 Cleric, 8-Wizard, 8-Bard, 5-Arcane Trickster + 2-Div Wizard + 1 Divine Sorcerer and again it worked just fine. One of my current campaigns the party is: 5-Rogue + 5 Warlock, 10-Paladin, 10-Cleric, 10-Bard and we've been playing since level 2 and are totally fine, another campaign I played in was a 6-Paladin, 3-Ranger+3-Hexblade, 6-Glamour Bard, 6-Transmutation Wizard, 6-Starry Druid which again worked totally fine. In a completely different group, we played from level 2-7 with a party of: Monk, Paladin, Eldritch Knight, Artificer, Assassin Rogue and again it was completely fine and super fun.
The Dungeon Dudes even did a whole video about how the strongest party possible in 5e would be a: Twilight Cleric, Moon Druid, Bladesinger, and Hexblade Warlock.
So, the problem I have with this is that for an entirely martial party to be viable, one of the following has to be true:
a) The party must be okay with death being completely permanent b) The DM must both be very generous with health potions and very kind with the opponents they pit the players against in combats c) The party must include a Paladin or a Ranger to provide healing, who some people count as Martials but I would disagree with them on that.
On the other hand, for a full caster party to be viable:
a) Someone in the party plays a martial-esque subclass that grants heavy armour or some other boost to your AC / Defensive capabilities a. 1. The rest of the party nukes everything out of existence while the 'Tank' takes the first few hits
b) The party utilises the tools available to them and take a control spell or two each b. 1. The party nukes everything out of existence while the opponents are stuck in a 'Web' or similar spell
Now, I'm not saying it's impossible for a martial-focused group to work, simply that it is a lot more likely that the caster group will thrive than it is that the martial group will achieve baseline viability without the DM drastically changing their style.
I also think that it says something that the Dungeon Dudes' opinion on the best party comp is one that is entirely casters who took the "I'm pretending to be a martial character" subclass, ie the full spell casters who are better at the martial role than the martial character.
I'm confused... Do you play in an empty world with no NPCs with any competence in them? Death is never permanent in 5e b/c you can just take the body to a temple and have a cleric resurrect them. Or the DM can choose to have a God / Otherworldly being offer to resurrect them in exchange for some favour or service which in all honesty is infinitely more interesting and fun than a cleric just revivifying a dead character. Letting players either craft or buy potions is not really a significant hardship, TBH even in games where we had huge amounts of healing spells our DMs generally had healing potions available in every major settlement. Just look at the Dungeon Dudes first campaign, they had a party of 3 with 0 healing spells or character abilities and yet they played from level 2-12 with 0 player deaths.
I don't see what you think you're alluding to w.r.t. entire caster party being the most powerful party. It seems obvious to me that experienced players that love strategic complex play would prefer an all caster party. That's why all the gish subclasses have been added - so that people who like to swing a sword & have complex strategic play can choose those subclasses to fulfill their "complex martial" needs.
Regarding what is said about the fact that there are players who prefer the simple game, and others who prefer it complicated, I think that here we are deflecting the shot. Actually, what I was proposing is that the martial classes have decisions to make beyond hitting with the weapon and some other specific decision. And, for that, you don't have to make them terribly complicated. We have examples in some fighter subclasses such as the battlemaster or the rune knight These subclasses have options to choose from, and decisions to make during combat. And I don't think anyone is going to blow a fuse for playing one of these subclasses. It's giving that kind of options to all warriors, nothing more than that. And if a person does not want to use them, nothing happens. He can always just swing his stick and roll dice like a brainless man.
Also comment that, in my experience, most players prefer to have options and make decisions. I've only come across players who prefer to play simple with newbies (and not all). When a player has already played a campaign or two, what he wants is more options. And that's when martial classes start to be multiclassed, choosing races (or species) with traits, playing subclasses with more options, etc... I've never come across a veteran player playing a singleclass champion. I'm not saying that there isn't a veteran player who prefers to play a champion because it's simpler, but honestly I've never come across that. What I generally find is the opposite, that veteran players look for options (be it by race, subclass, feats, multiclasses, etc...) to have decisions to make during combat. And it is logical that this is the case, because making decisions is the main source of fun in combat.
There is a certain subset of players, IG, who espouse that "forcing" someone to make decisions in their game of decisions and consequences is a heinous crime. That all players inherently deserve the right to fiddle on their phone and check out of the game until initiative is rolled, clock back in just long enough to punch whatever monster the rest of the party found, and then check right back out the very microinstant that initiative and combat is done. Asking a player to get invested in their game, to care enough to pay attention? Straight-up gatekeeping heresy.
Streamlining is good, but only to a degree. IMO, the new summoning spells are overly homogenized, flavorless, and basically taken from a videogame.
You can construct varied, fun, and most importantly effective/high-DPR-and-utile builds around the Tasha's summons, and they're a lot less disruptive at the table than summoning 16 wolves or whatever - which on top of being a pain in the posterior every time that player's turn rolls around, completely shatter bounded accuracy into smithereens. Trust me, the new summoning designs are here to stay.
There is a certain subset of players, IG, who espouse that "forcing" someone to make decisions in their game of decisions and consequences is a heinous crime. That all players inherently deserve the right to fiddle on their phone and check out of the game until initiative is rolled, clock back in just long enough to punch whatever monster the rest of the party found, and then check right back out the very microinstant that initiative and combat is done. Asking a player to get invested in their game, to care enough to pay attention? Straight-up gatekeeping heresy.
I genuinely think there's room for both. Some people truly are new to the concepts of rolling dice, getting into the mindset of a foreign avatar that they're responsible for piloting, and imagining an entirely conceptual space where those actions occur based on the narration of another person sitting across the table from them. And this is compounded by tables that opt for Theater of the Mind. The existence of a (sub)class without a lot of tactical depth geared at those new players is a good thing, and even for experienced players these (sub)classes can represent a "challenge mode" of sorts for those who want to self-impose limitations, or play down to a less optimized party. (So long as those options aren't too undertuned, anyway.)
Having said all that, the current slate of "simple martials" - Champion, Berserker, Thief, Open Hand, and to a lesser extent Devotion and Hunter - are indeed all undertuned. But their popularity in spite of that suggests to me that there is still something players find appealing about them. I see this as a fixable problem without removing that appealing simplicity entirely.
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DPR is not the point. The martial vs caster balance issues are not about 'how fast can we kill monsters', they're about "can we effectively do anything other than kill monsters".
I 100% disagree. You do not need a mix of martials and casters to play D&D. You don't even need a mix of different classes! I played in an all Bard party and (aside from the fact that nobody had any rope in their starting equipment) it worked just fine and was super fun. I've DMed parties where the only "casters" was a Ranger and an Arcane Trickster Rogue, and another party that was a 5-Ranger+3 Cleric, 8-Wizard, 8-Bard, 5-Arcane Trickster + 2-Div Wizard + 1 Divine Sorcerer and again it worked just fine. One of my current campaigns the party is: 5-Rogue + 5 Warlock, 10-Paladin, 10-Cleric, 10-Bard and we've been playing since level 2 and are totally fine, another campaign I played in was a 6-Paladin, 3-Ranger+3-Hexblade, 6-Glamour Bard, 6-Transmutation Wizard, 6-Starry Druid which again worked totally fine. In a completely different group, we played from level 2-7 with a party of: Monk, Paladin, Eldritch Knight, Artificer, Assassin Rogue and again it was completely fine and super fun.
The Dungeon Dudes even did a whole video about how the strongest party possible in 5e would be a: Twilight Cleric, Moon Druid, Bladesinger, and Hexblade Warlock.
Sure and there are classes / subclasses for them too. Want to be simple and cast spells? Easy play a Warlock and take all the invocations for your Eldritch Blast. Want to be complicated and swing a sword? Easy play a Bladesinger, Swords Bard, Moon Druid, Tempest Cleric, Paladin, or Hexblade Warlock.
In terms of "simple shouldn't mean inferior" that absolutely is the point. Martials are simple and effective, they hit things with a stick and are exceptionally good at doing so. If martials were "inferior" then people wouldn't be arguing that it is "necessary" to have both martials and casters.
You are continuing to miss the point. While there is a broad category of combat encounters where martials are as useful as bumps on a log, in typical combat encounters martial characters are fine. The issue is with non-combat challenges.
Ok here's the run down for some standard non-combat challenges:
Move the heavy thing - could be a door, a chest, a body, a statue, a boulder - STR martial solves this for free with Athletics that doesn't suck.
Get thing that is in a precarious location / on a pressure plate - DEX martial solves with with Acrobatics that doesn't suck.
Scout ahead - STR or DEX martial solves by climbing a tree / building and looking.
Get whole party safely past a trap - STR martial solves by smashing the trap to make it harmless, DEX martial solves it by using Thieves Tools to disarm it. All martials: push through the damage and turn it off from the other side.
Get whole party across a river - STR martial solves by throwing people across or tying everyone to themselves and swimming across.
Find out BBEG's plans - DEX martial solves by sneaking in and stealing their journal, kidnapping one of the baddie lackeys to interrogate, befriending the thieves and bartering for info, or simply following / spying on them. STR martial solves by challenging a lackey to a drinking contest, knocking out or kidnapping a lackey to interrogate.
Break into somewhere - STR martial solves by digging / breaking through an unused grate, DEX martial solves by hiding & picking the locks.
Get whole party up a cliff - STR martial solves by carrying weakest allies and climbing with a climbers kit.
Sure casters can spend spell slots to solve all of these problems too, but see the problem is that spellslots are considered cheap so casters happily spend them unnecessarily on things that a martial could do for free. IMO the intended playstyle is when faced with such challenges first the martial rolls a check to try and solve it and if the martial fails then a caster can spend a spellslot to solve it instead. Which is why I advocate for greatly reducing the number of spellslots that casters get to redress the balance. Magic should feel powerful and casters should be able to use it to solve problems but it should never be the go-to solution, it should always be "if we really need it, I could use a spell...".
90% of heavy things are either so heavy that no PC can move them, or light enough that everyone can move them, it just takes slightly longer.
Mage Hand is a straight-up better solution most of the time.
Find Familiar is a straight up better solution most of the time.
Or... you just blow it up with fire bolt. Casters don't have a resource-free equivalent to thieves' tools (though nothing stops them from being proficient with thieves' tools), but any problem that can be solved by smashing can be solved by any class.
Or you use mage hand or a familiar to carry a rope across.
There's really nothing in there that's special to martial characters, or even that martial characters are particularly good at.
Or you use mage hand or a familiar to send a rope up. If necessary, you expend a second level spell slot (I can tell you're really struggling to find uses for strength).
Three decades ago I was a very good college wrestler. I could hit any move on most opponents but daily after practice I stayed and practiced the double leg take down and a single leg hitting two hundred each on a willing teammate. At matches I would tell my opponent exactly which I was about to hit on them and always landed it.
A martial should be the epitome of practice and execution. With one weapon of choice they should be faster, and more precise. They should start with more attacks and a bonus to hit. As they level this should grow too.
so a 1st level martial should start with two attacks with the chosen weapon. At 5th they should get a third attack and at 10th 3rd. A fighter should get this with a melee weapon and a range weapon. This should also come with a bonus to hit… plus 1 at 1st lvl, plus 2 at forth, plus 3 at 8th, plus 4 at 12, plus 5 at 16 and plus 6 at 20. This bonus is the learning over years of where to strike and when.
once per turn, all classes on an attack can role a d6 to trip, knock probe,, hamstring an opponent as long as the maneuver is realistic to that weapon type.
Fighters are successful on a 3,4,5,6. Other martials on a 4,5,6. Full casters are successful only on a 1.
All of these benefits are only for single class characters. It represents the time and practice to be better with a weapon and to hone one’s body to be a weapon of warfare.
These also are just part of the class skills. Feats would still do. What they do.
Spells have drawbacks too though, it's up to the DM to make those matter. Yeah maybe with Mage Hand you can chant loudly and then carry a rope 30ft. up, but if stealth and distance matter I'd probably rather have the martial do it. Yeah Find Familiar is a decent scout if the thing I want to look at is within 100ft of my location, but if it's a mile ahead of us then maybe taking a short rest while the Ranger checks it out and reports back will yield better info. If none of the limitations of spells ever matter then casters will run roughshod over martials that much more easily, yet the designers put those drawbacks in for a reason.
Mage Hand can't tie a rope to anything (have you tried to knot a rope with one hand?), so sure you can drag it across and it will just flop down into the river / crevasse / off the cliff being utterly useless, neither can most familiars.
Firebolt only lights things on fire, lots of traps are not flammable thus not particularly firebolt-able. (or you know the trap is near something else that is flammable and starting a fire would be problematic.
STR martial have better con saves than casters thus more likely to out drink a lackey. Spells cannot be bade non-lethal, and casters need to use levelled spells to do the equivalent of grapple, likewise casters need to use levelled spells to be good a stealth whereas Dex martials are usually great at stealth.
If you're DM rules that 20 STR doesn't mean you can move something that is heavier than what a character with 8 STR can move then that's a problem with your DM not with the rules.
This is false. For one, parties can and are often made up of only Warriors or only casters. Additionally, you will note that I have advocated for the existence of at least one simple spellcaster that is more accessible for newer players or people who just don't like as much complexity. This would make it far easier for everyone to play the type of character they want.
For one, people can and have realistically gone through the same class again and again and still enjoyed it. When I was new, I played the same character at different levels and in different realities a number of times, but I still loved it. So not only can you do this and have a good time, but one of the main roles of simple classes is to help people understand the game and move on to making more complex characters.
If a class is loved and enjoyed by a large portion of the player base, then that class shouldn't be taken away from them and replaced with one that is not nearly as enjoyable. If Wizards wants to appeal to as large an audience as possible, then not changing classes that appeal well to new players so they are far more complex and those players have to switch to a class they do not like as much is not a good idea.
Also, the developers harped on making the Druid more appealing and growing the small number of people who play it. They failed to execute that goal well, but targeting too small an audience and not wanting to grow it was not the problem there.
No one I have ever seen has voiced that opinion, and no one has old anyone anything like the quotes you keep shoving down others mouths.
No one has made the argument that all Martials or Warriors should be simple. All we said was that the Fighter class should be simple.
I hope Fighters are able to appeal to more types of players. However, implementing that would be hard and risky and could back fire and cause some very negative effects as a result. This is why I think that Fighter should be kept as an option for the people who like simplicity and for those that it has spent years welcoming with open arms.
I know this because I am one of the people who was welcomed in that way. And because I would likely not still be playing D&D and helping dozens - maybe even hundreds - of people out on these very forums if Fighter hadn't been there to welcome me into the game with opens arms.
Champion and Fighter are popular and loved. Let's show some empathy and do our best not take that away from the people who it matters to.
BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
He/him pronouns. Call me Bard. PROUD NERD!
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HERE.So, the problem I have with this is that for an entirely martial party to be viable, one of the following has to be true:
a) The party must be okay with death being completely permanent
b) The DM must both be very generous with health potions and very kind with the opponents they pit the players against in combats
c) The party must include a Paladin or a Ranger to provide healing, who some people count as Martials but I would disagree with them on that.
On the other hand, for a full caster party to be viable:
a) Someone in the party plays a martial-esque subclass that grants heavy armour or some other boost to your AC / Defensive capabilities
a. 1. The rest of the party nukes everything out of existence while the 'Tank' takes the first few hits
b) The party utilises the tools available to them and take a control spell or two each
b. 1. The party nukes everything out of existence while the opponents are stuck in a 'Web' or similar spell
Now, I'm not saying it's impossible for a martial-focused group to work, simply that it is a lot more likely that the caster group will thrive than it is that the martial group will achieve baseline viability without the DM drastically changing their style.
I also think that it says something that the Dungeon Dudes' opinion on the best party comp is one that is entirely casters who took the "I'm pretending to be a martial character" subclass, ie the full spell casters who are better at the martial role than the martial character.
But no one is advocating 'that [Fighters should] be taken away from them and replaced with one that is not nearly as enjoyable. ' We are simply asking for the Fighter, and possibly the Warrior group in general, to have more options. Not to radically change the class, not to take anything away, nor to make them vastly more complex, simply to expand upon what we already have. I think the insistence that newer players will lose all attachment to the game because the fighter gained a new use for their reaction or an optional extra for when they make an attack is absurd.
I don't know man, maybe Yurei was a bit exaggerated in their statement, but this entire thread could be summed up with "Martials can't have options to take in combat, because that would make them, like, super-powered-anime-wizard-4e-peope, and you don't want that."
And I don't understand why you think Fighter should be the simple class. I'll let the official description of Fighters speak for me:
"...as fighters, they all share an unparalleled mastery with weapons and armor, and a thorough knowledge of the skills of combat." PHB, page 70 (bolded for emphasis)
Fighters do not currently display an unparalleled mastery with weapons or armor, nor any exceptional skills in combat. Fighters currently have the same options everyone else does, but with the added benefit of being able to whack slightly faster than everyone else, and sometimes they can whack even faster, but they have to have a nap afterwards. To live up to that fantasy, they need some more options. The simple 'Attack until I can't Attack any more' play style is most definitely better suited to the Barbarian class.
As to it being hard or risky to implement, is that not why we are currently play-testing new content? And I still don't understand these 'very negative effects.' I understand that someone has to speak on behalf of the new players, but I think we need to give new players more credit that they currently get.
And finally, although those graphs you provided were cool, they don't support your point in any meaningful way. The top subclass for every single class, with the exception of druid because they split the 'land' subclass into sub-sub-classes, is the subclass provided in the basic rules. All that suggests to me is that more people on here don't own the books than do. Furthermore, if you scroll down to the chart from the previous year, (The article was published in 2020, so the charts from 2019, before Phandelver + starter set were free on DDB, iirc) the most popular subclass is actually the Battlemaster.
The point is not to make them unusable. The point is to make them actually good (well, Fighter is a decent class at what it does, it just needs to be worth something in more than one of the three pillars of play. Champion is just mechanically terrible).
It's been an honor knowing you. I will lament your untimely demise, but forever remember your bravery.
What's the worth of a DM that cannot improvise?
I'm fine with buffing Champion. I think an easy way to do that without sacrificing its niche as the "simplest Fighter" is for it to get another ASI instead of the weak/silly "you crit 5% more often, isn't that exciting?"
Why should they have to? The summoner concept works fine without giving the DM more work.
How's it different from handling the rest of campaign-breaking shenanigans that players do all the time? Streamlining is good, but only to a degree. IMO, the new summoning spells are overly homogenized, flavorless, and basically taken from a videogame. Summoning a celestial with them is no different from summoning an aberration or a fiend. I prefer the good ol' Infernal Calling, with sacrifices and consequences, it basically introduces a whole new character to the story that can influence the events if the DM and players choose to.
I'd just rather have casters think about what they do, rather than just cast Solve Problem and be done with the scenario in five spells.
I'm confused... Do you play in an empty world with no NPCs with any competence in them? Death is never permanent in 5e b/c you can just take the body to a temple and have a cleric resurrect them. Or the DM can choose to have a God / Otherworldly being offer to resurrect them in exchange for some favour or service which in all honesty is infinitely more interesting and fun than a cleric just revivifying a dead character. Letting players either craft or buy potions is not really a significant hardship, TBH even in games where we had huge amounts of healing spells our DMs generally had healing potions available in every major settlement. Just look at the Dungeon Dudes first campaign, they had a party of 3 with 0 healing spells or character abilities and yet they played from level 2-12 with 0 player deaths.
I don't see what you think you're alluding to w.r.t. entire caster party being the most powerful party. It seems obvious to me that experienced players that love strategic complex play would prefer an all caster party. That's why all the gish subclasses have been added - so that people who like to swing a sword & have complex strategic play can choose those subclasses to fulfill their "complex martial" needs.
Regarding what is said about the fact that there are players who prefer the simple game, and others who prefer it complicated, I think that here we are deflecting the shot. Actually, what I was proposing is that the martial classes have decisions to make beyond hitting with the weapon and some other specific decision. And, for that, you don't have to make them terribly complicated. We have examples in some fighter subclasses such as the battlemaster or the rune knight These subclasses have options to choose from, and decisions to make during combat. And I don't think anyone is going to blow a fuse for playing one of these subclasses. It's giving that kind of options to all warriors, nothing more than that. And if a person does not want to use them, nothing happens. He can always just swing his stick and roll dice like a brainless man.
Also comment that, in my experience, most players prefer to have options and make decisions. I've only come across players who prefer to play simple with newbies (and not all). When a player has already played a campaign or two, what he wants is more options. And that's when martial classes start to be multiclassed, choosing races (or species) with traits, playing subclasses with more options, etc... I've never come across a veteran player playing a singleclass champion. I'm not saying that there isn't a veteran player who prefers to play a champion because it's simpler, but honestly I've never come across that. What I generally find is the opposite, that veteran players look for options (be it by race, subclass, feats, multiclasses, etc...) to have decisions to make during combat. And it is logical that this is the case, because making decisions is the main source of fun in combat.
There is a certain subset of players, IG, who espouse that "forcing" someone to make decisions in their game of decisions and consequences is a heinous crime. That all players inherently deserve the right to fiddle on their phone and check out of the game until initiative is rolled, clock back in just long enough to punch whatever monster the rest of the party found, and then check right back out the very microinstant that initiative and combat is done. Asking a player to get invested in their game, to care enough to pay attention? Straight-up gatekeeping heresy.
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You can construct varied, fun, and most importantly effective/high-DPR-and-utile builds around the Tasha's summons, and they're a lot less disruptive at the table than summoning 16 wolves or whatever - which on top of being a pain in the posterior every time that player's turn rolls around, completely shatter bounded accuracy into smithereens. Trust me, the new summoning designs are here to stay.
I genuinely think there's room for both. Some people truly are new to the concepts of rolling dice, getting into the mindset of a foreign avatar that they're responsible for piloting, and imagining an entirely conceptual space where those actions occur based on the narration of another person sitting across the table from them. And this is compounded by tables that opt for Theater of the Mind. The existence of a (sub)class without a lot of tactical depth geared at those new players is a good thing, and even for experienced players these (sub)classes can represent a "challenge mode" of sorts for those who want to self-impose limitations, or play down to a less optimized party. (So long as those options aren't too undertuned, anyway.)
Having said all that, the current slate of "simple martials" - Champion, Berserker, Thief, Open Hand, and to a lesser extent Devotion and Hunter - are indeed all undertuned. But their popularity in spite of that suggests to me that there is still something players find appealing about them. I see this as a fixable problem without removing that appealing simplicity entirely.