Okay - if you want your martials to jump 400ft then go for it, call for a DC 28 athletics check or something. They don't have to codify something they'll never build an encounter around.
It came up in two separate predesigned encounters when I ran Curse of Strahd -- Yester Hill has monsters buried over an area 1,100' across that will all activate if the PCs do certain things, and there's a causeway of indeterminate length (but several hundred feet according to the larger map) at Van Richten's Tower that werewolves might attack across. The potential combat area at Berez is also quite large but my PCs didn't go there.
You can house rule things out of the game just as easily as others can house rule things into the game.
No, it's not as easy, because one is the GM being the jerk who takes away something the designers wanted you to have, and the other is the GM being generous and giving you something that isn't in the base game. Where possible, the game's default design should support the latter over the former.
It came up in two separate predesigned encounters when I ran Curse of Strahd -- Yester Hill has monsters buried over an area 1,100' across that will all activate if the PCs do certain things, and there's a causeway of indeterminate length (but several hundred feet according to the larger map) at Van Richten's Tower that werewolves might attack across. The potential combat area at Berez is also quite large but my PCs didn't go there.
And is the party expected to Mario Jump and engage all of the monsters in this vast area simultaneously, or is the expectation that they will take some time to arrive at the battlefield (assuming the PCs even stick around)?
And is the party expected to Mario Jump and engage all of the monsters in this vast area simultaneously, or is the expectation that they will take some time to arrive at the battlefield (assuming the PCs even stick around)?
Actually they're both atrociously designed encounters because the monsters don't have particularly good ways of gap closing nor any way to approach the party with cover. Berez is more likely to be a problem the other way around since Baba Lysaga has no-concentration flight and decent range spells.
And is the party expected to Mario Jump and engage all of the monsters in this vast area simultaneously, or is the expectation that they will take some time to arrive at the battlefield (assuming the PCs even stick around)?
Actually they're both atrociously designed encounters because the monsters don't have particularly good ways of gap closing nor any way to approach the party with cover. Berez is more likely to be a problem the other way around since Baba Lysaga has no-concentration flight and decent range spells.
Hm... so having gap closer is not necessary and probably would have just tempted a martial into getting their character killed? Why would a martial jump 400 ft away from the party by themselves into a horde of monsters? That's just asking to be murderized. I really don't understand why anyone would want a 400 ft jump, it seems pretty useless to me. Sure you could jump by yourself across a big river/chasm/whatever but the rest of your party is still stuck on the other side. Sure you could jump into a horde of enemies and get yourself killed by a death of a thousand zombie bites. Sure you could jump and land noisily on the roof of a building you want to break into and thus alerting all the guards that someone just jumped onto the roof.... Honestly, what's the use case here?
Monsters across a 1,100 ft area that all activate at once, sounds like an encounter the players are meant to run away from not one they are meant to fight. And werewolves across a bridge are probably meant to be hiding on the arrival side until the players are within dashing distance then leap out and dash 80-100 ft onto the bridge to ambush the players while they are on it. Both these encounters sound really fun.
Hm... so having gap closer is not necessary and probably would have just tempted a martial into getting their character killed?
It's necessary for the monsters in that case. Someone really didn't think about what they were doing when they designed those encounters. However, "you're completely irrelevant to this fight" is also bad game play.
I would note that, for any genre other than superheroes, comic books, or mythic tales involving demigods, the correct solution is pretty clearly to nerf the hell out of mages. Gandalf's big achievement in the Hobbit was... setting pine cones on fire. In Lord of the Rings most of the things he did with magic would be covered by thaumaturgy. Most sword and sorcery magicians relied on some combination of parlor tricks, summoning or controlling monsters, and hypnotism. The whole concept of wizards as artillery is basically an artifact of D&D coming out of historical wargaming and them needing a replacement for actual artillery.
I don't have a problem with D&D-ish high fantasy. I also don't have a problem with low fantasy. What I have a problem with is when some characters are built for high fantasy and others are built for low fantasy, and they're supposed to be in the same game.
Hm... so having gap closer is not necessary and probably would have just tempted a martial into getting their character killed? Why would a martial jump 400 ft away from the party by themselves into a horde of monsters? That's just asking to be murderized. I really don't understand why anyone would want a 400 ft jump, it seems pretty useless to me. Sure you could jump by yourself across a big river/chasm/whatever but the rest of your party is still stuck on the other side. Sure you could jump into a horde of enemies and get yourself killed by a death of a thousand zombie bites. Sure you could jump and land noisily on the roof of a building you want to break into and thus alerting all the guards that someone just jumped onto the roof.... Honestly, what's the use case here?
Monsters across a 1,100 ft area that all activate at once, sounds like an encounter the players are meant to run away from not one they are meant to fight. And werewolves across a bridge are probably meant to be hiding on the arrival side until the players are within dashing distance then leap out and dash 80-100 ft onto the bridge to ambush the players while they are on it. Both these encounters sound really fun.
I'm reminded of an adage I once saw, that while the optimization ceiling for a wizard is high, they also have the lowest optimization floor. A fighter might pick the wrong weapon or even stab themselves in the foot, but only the wizard can plane shift themselves over to the Far Realm to be driven insane for eternity. If I'm Caramon or Conan, I'd be pretty happy to not have that.
Hm... so having gap closer is not necessary and probably would have just tempted a martial into getting their character killed?
It's necessary for the monsters in that case. Someone really didn't think about what they were doing when they designed those encounters. However, "you're completely irrelevant to this fight" is also bad game play.
Did you not read to the end of my post? I explained how I think they encounters are meant to go down and neither of them make a melee character useless. Being surrounded by 1000 monsters spread in a 1000 ft area is an encounter a party has to run from not fight. A melee character is no better / worse at running away than anyone else. And a werewolf attack on a bridge is meant to have the players trapped in melee as the werewolves dash into combat from both sides trapping them in a kill box in the middle of a bridge.
And you still haven't answered me about when exactly a 400ft jump would actually be useful.
Hm... so having gap closer is not necessary and probably would have just tempted a martial into getting their character killed?
It's necessary for the monsters in that case. Someone really didn't think about what they were doing when they designed those encounters. However, "you're completely irrelevant to this fight" is also bad game play.
I would note that, for any genre other than superheroes, comic books, or mythic tales involving demigods, the correct solution is pretty clearly to nerf the hell out of mages. Gandalf's big achievement in the Hobbit was... setting pine cones on fire. In Lord of the Rings most of the things he did with magic would be covered by thaumaturgy. Most sword and sorcery magicians relied on some combination of parlor tricks, summoning or controlling monsters, and hypnotism. The whole concept of wizards as artillery is basically an artifact of D&D coming out of historical wargaming and them needing a replacement for actual artillery.
I don't have a problem with D&D-ish high fantasy. I also don't have a problem with low fantasy. What I have a problem with is when some characters are built for high fantasy and others are built for low fantasy, and they're supposed to be in the same game.
He fried a bunch of orcs/goblins with a thunderbolt in that book too. And in LotR, He also soloed a Balrog and warded off a swarm of Nazgul. But that's totally a cantrip + fire seeds you guys
He fried a bunch of orcs/goblins with a thunderbolt in that book too. And in LotR, He also soloed a Balrog and warded off a swarm of Nazgul. But that's totally a cantrip + fire seeds you guys
I don't recall him actually hitting anything with a thunderbolt, just giving things a scare, though I haven't read through it recently so I might have missed it. Against both the Balrog and the Nazgul he was using a sword, though there was also some lightning stuff; it all happened basically offscreen so we can't really judge how significant it was. You can make a credible case for him being able to cast call lightning, but that's the biggest spell he ever used.
And... he was one of the Maiar, and clearly more potent than mortals of the third age.
If you can break the laws of physics with magic you can break it with training. Gutz no magic. Batman no Magic. Every strong person in Fast and furious franchise No Magic. Most 80s action movies no magic
So respectively: anime, normal human + gadgets, normal human + cars, normal human. Got it.
Like which 80s movie or fast and the furious movie had humans jumping 400 ft? Got a clip?
Batman’s strongest feat isn’t him using gadgets. The strength and endurance feats from fast and furious have nothing to do with the cars. I like the way you try to focus only on the 80s movies because you know anime definitely has normal humans jumping that far, but you forgot they were making king fu movies in the 80s as well. I can’t give you an exact 400 foot jump but there were plenty of impossible jumps. Also this is fiction so the only limits are the ones you place. Real people can’t shoot fire from their hands. Yet you are oddly okay with that. Also why did you not address that in Tolkien and many other fantasies Magic takes longer to cast. It requires items and components more often and powerful magic usually can’t be used in rapid succession. May that’s the fix. All spells other than cantrips require focus or material components. When you cast a spell equal to your proficiency bonus or above you can no longer cast spells equal to your proficiency bonus or above without strain until you finish a short rest or long rest. The strain of attempting to cast a spell of those levels without a rest causes you to take levels of exhaustion and risk spell failure. Make a DC 10+ level of the spell constitution check. On a success the spell cast as normal. On a failure you don’t expend the spell slot. Either outcome you take a a number of levels of exhaustion equal to 1+ 1per spell level above your pb.
Oh yes, nerf spells into the ground, that'll go over well.
Anime does provide examples of the "superhuman through training" trope. It also has a wholly different dynamic than the medieval fantasy D&D seeks to emulate. The entire design philosophy around classes like Fighter, Barbarian, Rogue, and to a slightly lesser extent Monk is that by their core class features they could plausibly be regular individuals at the far right of the bell curve until you start crunching some numbers. Fighter and Rogue in particular have a lot of subclasses that don't include any magical features. While in a void going anime is technically a solution to "balance the power scale" between martials and casters, it's not one that fits the D&D design philosophy.
I missed this reply. My nerfs technically would align Dnd Spellcasting more with medieval fantasy Spellcasting. I would prefer buffs over nerfs. But many are pushing back against buffs. Yourself included.
Also Dnd 5e doesn’t fit Dnd 4e, 3e, 2e, or 1e design philosophy. The game is changing. Also 4 element monk and Astral monk are anime inspired. Psi warrior is basically Darth Vader.
Hm... so having gap closer is not necessary and probably would have just tempted a martial into getting their character killed?
It's necessary for the monsters in that case. Someone really didn't think about what they were doing when they designed those encounters. However, "you're completely irrelevant to this fight" is also bad game play.
Did you not read to the end of my post? I explained how I think they encounters are meant to go down and neither of them make a melee character useless. Being surrounded by 1000 monsters spread in a 1000 ft area is an encounter a party has to run from not fight. A melee character is no better / worse at running away than anyone else. And a werewolf attack on a bridge is meant to have the players trapped in melee as the werewolves dash into combat from both sides trapping them in a kill box in the middle of a bridge.
And you still haven't answered me about when exactly a 400ft jump would actually be useful.
Spell casters are far superior at running away. Rogues and monks might give them a good race, but spell casters have options, some better than others. Longstrider, expeditious retreat, misty step, invisibility, fly, polymorph, thunder step, dimension door, teleport, planeshift, Gate. Also they could block anything chasing them with wall spells, fire, ice, stone, force. They have so many options, low level and high.
He fried a bunch of orcs/goblins with a thunderbolt in that book too. And in LotR, He also soloed a Balrog and warded off a swarm of Nazgul. But that's totally a cantrip + fire seeds you guys
I don't recall him actually hitting anything with a thunderbolt, just giving things a scare, though I haven't read through it recently so I might have missed it. Against both the Balrog and the Nazgul he was using a sword, though there was also some lightning stuff; it all happened basically offscreen so we can't really judge how significant it was. You can make a credible case for him being able to cast call lightning, but that's the biggest spell he ever used.
And... he was one of the Maiar, and clearly more potent than mortals of the third age.
1) He didn't "give them a scare," he one-shot them. "when goblins came to grab him, there was a terrific flash like lightning in the cave, a smell like gunpowder, and several of them fell dead." You could argue that was Weird or Phantasmal Force or something rather than Lightning Bolt or something - but either way, not a cantrip.
2) Sure, you can't accurately represent Gandalf via the normal D&D race/class system, hes not actually human. But for starters, you brought him up, and for two, that's not going to stop D&D players or designers from modeling the things he does using the spellcasting system. (Personally, I think Prospero from Shakespeare's The Tempest is a much better representation of a D&D wizard, and he's been around WAY longer than Gandalf.)
I agree that all classes should be at least somewhat useful in all pillars of play. I believe that warriors and other non-spellcasters need more support in this regard. And one of the common complaints I see about martials is that their skill checks pale when spells can easily be used to bypass roles altogether.
However, I'm not sure that an individual character should be useful in most outside-of-combat situations. This could lead to chaos and having too much overlap might make players feel like that they aren't able to do anything special, which would be the opposite of every class being interesting outside of combat.
The 'I'm not sure that an individual character should be useful in most outside-of-combat situations' is exactly the angle many people are taking when they call for spell nerfs. As the game stands currently all classes get access to the full list of skills. Then on top of those options casters get a whole separate layer of options that martials don't have and that layer can not only cover every missing skill it can exceed the potential results available via skill use. That leaves no niche that martials can claim for themselves that cannot be done equally well or better by someone wielding spells.
1) He didn't "give them a scare," he one-shot them. "when goblins came to grab him, there was a terrific flash like lightning in the cave, a smell like gunpowder, and several of them fell dead." You could argue that was Weird or Phantasmal Force or something rather than Lightning Bolt or something - but either way, not a cantrip.
Oh, I remember that now. No precise equivalent in 5e, but thunderwave is an adequate replacement. I didn't say everything he did was a cantrip, but he's certainly not high level in D&D terms, fifth level is plenty.
There's a reason people invented E6 (max level changes from 20 to 6; further progression is just feats) back in the 3.5 era, and is does work in 5e, though it does mean an awful lot of stuff ceases to have purpose.
I agree that all classes should be at least somewhat useful in all pillars of play. I believe that warriors and other non-spellcasters need more support in this regard. And one of the common complaints I see about martials is that their skill checks pale when spells can easily be used to bypass roles altogether.
However, I'm not sure that an individual character should be useful in most outside-of-combat situations. This could lead to chaos and having too much overlap might make players feel like that they aren't able to do anything special, which would be the opposite of every class being interesting outside of combat.
The 'I'm not sure that an individual character should be useful in most outside-of-combat situations' is exactly the angle many people are taking when they call for spell nerfs. As the game stands currently all classes get access to the full list of skills. Then on top of those options casters get a whole separate layer of options that martials don't have and that layer can not only cover every missing skill it can exceed the potential results available via skill use. That leaves no niche that martials can claim for themselves that cannot be done equally well or better by someone wielding spells.
I disagree, because there are areas where casters have a hard time succeeding in, especially at lower levels. (For instance, the social interaction spells they have then really aren't that useful.) Additionally, certain elements of the spellcaster can be debuffed while other areas are increased. This would allow for the class to be interesting without being nerfed.
Warriors can have their outside-of-combat utility and power increased so that they can thrive in some situations, and not do so well in others, depending on the class and way this improvement is made and utilized.
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They clearly have less utility than casters. Which none of you have argue against.Your only arguments have been don’t fix martials because I like realism in a game of make believe were people throw lightning bolts and fly.
Why it is a problem that they have "less" utility than casters? Martials are better at killing things than casters, and casters are better at getting the party to the things that need killing than martials. These are two distinct roles that gives both character types a niche to fulfill. If a barbarian could scream and teleport the entire party to another plane, or a fighter could punch the ground so hard they made a whole fortress appear for them and 1000 refugees to sleep in, then we might as well eliminate casters entirely because martials would be equal or better at everything than casters.
Martials don't need "fixing" because: 1) Martials have a niche that they are the best at and it's killing stuff. 2) Right now under the current ruleset you can build martials that are awesome at some utility tasks just by picking the right feats, races, and/or backgrounds. 3) Everyone can take the "Help" action to participate in every scene even if they aren't the best at the relevant skills. 4) Everyone can be involved in planning & debate to solve problems which doesn't involve any mechanics. 5) Spellcasters have limited resources which means a martial solving a problem without expending resources is always better than a spellcaster solving it even if the martial solution isn't guaranteed success.
The way to solve the "martial caster divide" is simply to reduce the number of spellslots casters get so that using a spell to solve a problem is a significant cost.
Why it is a problem that they have "less" utility than casters? Martials are better at killing things than casters.
No they aren't. Martials are better at killing single boss monsters than casters, but casters are much better at killing swarms of weenies, so overall it comes out pretty even.
Why it is a problem that they have "less" utility than casters? Martials are better at killing things than casters.
No they aren't. Martials are better at killing single boss monsters than casters, but casters are much better at killing swarms of weenies, so overall it comes out pretty even.
That's a rather absolute dichotomy. It would probably be more accurate to say that in general, martials are better equipped to sustain a high consistent DPR, while casters are better at burst and AoE. You throw a few waves at a party and the casters are gonna start flagging on DPR while the martials will hold fairly steady.
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You can house rule things out of the game just as easily as others can house rule things into the game.
It came up in two separate predesigned encounters when I ran Curse of Strahd -- Yester Hill has monsters buried over an area 1,100' across that will all activate if the PCs do certain things, and there's a causeway of indeterminate length (but several hundred feet according to the larger map) at Van Richten's Tower that werewolves might attack across. The potential combat area at Berez is also quite large but my PCs didn't go there.
No, it's not as easy, because one is the GM being the jerk who takes away something the designers wanted you to have, and the other is the GM being generous and giving you something that isn't in the base game. Where possible, the game's default design should support the latter over the former.
And is the party expected to Mario Jump and engage all of the monsters in this vast area simultaneously, or is the expectation that they will take some time to arrive at the battlefield (assuming the PCs even stick around)?
Actually they're both atrociously designed encounters because the monsters don't have particularly good ways of gap closing nor any way to approach the party with cover. Berez is more likely to be a problem the other way around since Baba Lysaga has no-concentration flight and decent range spells.
Hm... so having gap closer is not necessary and probably would have just tempted a martial into getting their character killed? Why would a martial jump 400 ft away from the party by themselves into a horde of monsters? That's just asking to be murderized. I really don't understand why anyone would want a 400 ft jump, it seems pretty useless to me. Sure you could jump by yourself across a big river/chasm/whatever but the rest of your party is still stuck on the other side. Sure you could jump into a horde of enemies and get yourself killed by a death of a thousand zombie bites. Sure you could jump and land noisily on the roof of a building you want to break into and thus alerting all the guards that someone just jumped onto the roof.... Honestly, what's the use case here?
Monsters across a 1,100 ft area that all activate at once, sounds like an encounter the players are meant to run away from not one they are meant to fight. And werewolves across a bridge are probably meant to be hiding on the arrival side until the players are within dashing distance then leap out and dash 80-100 ft onto the bridge to ambush the players while they are on it. Both these encounters sound really fun.
It's necessary for the monsters in that case. Someone really didn't think about what they were doing when they designed those encounters. However, "you're completely irrelevant to this fight" is also bad game play.
I would note that, for any genre other than superheroes, comic books, or mythic tales involving demigods, the correct solution is pretty clearly to nerf the hell out of mages. Gandalf's big achievement in the Hobbit was... setting pine cones on fire. In Lord of the Rings most of the things he did with magic would be covered by thaumaturgy. Most sword and sorcery magicians relied on some combination of parlor tricks, summoning or controlling monsters, and hypnotism. The whole concept of wizards as artillery is basically an artifact of D&D coming out of historical wargaming and them needing a replacement for actual artillery.
I don't have a problem with D&D-ish high fantasy. I also don't have a problem with low fantasy. What I have a problem with is when some characters are built for high fantasy and others are built for low fantasy, and they're supposed to be in the same game.
I'm reminded of an adage I once saw, that while the optimization ceiling for a wizard is high, they also have the lowest optimization floor. A fighter might pick the wrong weapon or even stab themselves in the foot, but only the wizard can plane shift themselves over to the Far Realm to be driven insane for eternity. If I'm Caramon or Conan, I'd be pretty happy to not have that.
Did you not read to the end of my post? I explained how I think they encounters are meant to go down and neither of them make a melee character useless. Being surrounded by 1000 monsters spread in a 1000 ft area is an encounter a party has to run from not fight. A melee character is no better / worse at running away than anyone else. And a werewolf attack on a bridge is meant to have the players trapped in melee as the werewolves dash into combat from both sides trapping them in a kill box in the middle of a bridge.
And you still haven't answered me about when exactly a 400ft jump would actually be useful.
He fried a bunch of orcs/goblins with a thunderbolt in that book too. And in LotR, He also soloed a Balrog and warded off a swarm of Nazgul. But that's totally a cantrip + fire seeds you guys
I don't recall him actually hitting anything with a thunderbolt, just giving things a scare, though I haven't read through it recently so I might have missed it. Against both the Balrog and the Nazgul he was using a sword, though there was also some lightning stuff; it all happened basically offscreen so we can't really judge how significant it was. You can make a credible case for him being able to cast call lightning, but that's the biggest spell he ever used.
And... he was one of the Maiar, and clearly more potent than mortals of the third age.
I missed this reply. My nerfs technically would align Dnd Spellcasting more with medieval fantasy Spellcasting. I would prefer buffs over nerfs. But many are pushing back against buffs. Yourself included.
Also Dnd 5e doesn’t fit Dnd 4e, 3e, 2e, or 1e design philosophy. The game is changing. Also 4 element monk and Astral monk are anime inspired. Psi warrior is basically Darth Vader.
Spell casters are far superior at running away. Rogues and monks might give them a good race, but spell casters have options, some better than others. Longstrider, expeditious retreat, misty step, invisibility, fly, polymorph, thunder step, dimension door, teleport, planeshift, Gate. Also they could block anything chasing them with wall spells, fire, ice, stone, force. They have so many options, low level and high.
1) He didn't "give them a scare," he one-shot them. "when goblins came to grab him, there was a terrific flash like lightning in the cave, a smell like gunpowder, and several of them fell dead." You could argue that was Weird or Phantasmal Force or something rather than Lightning Bolt or something - but either way, not a cantrip.
2) Sure, you can't accurately represent Gandalf via the normal D&D race/class system, hes not actually human. But for starters, you brought him up, and for two, that's not going to stop D&D players or designers from modeling the things he does using the spellcasting system. (Personally, I think Prospero from Shakespeare's The Tempest is a much better representation of a D&D wizard, and he's been around WAY longer than Gandalf.)
The 'I'm not sure that an individual character should be useful in most outside-of-combat situations' is exactly the angle many people are taking when they call for spell nerfs. As the game stands currently all classes get access to the full list of skills. Then on top of those options casters get a whole separate layer of options that martials don't have and that layer can not only cover every missing skill it can exceed the potential results available via skill use. That leaves no niche that martials can claim for themselves that cannot be done equally well or better by someone wielding spells.
Oh, I remember that now. No precise equivalent in 5e, but thunderwave is an adequate replacement. I didn't say everything he did was a cantrip, but he's certainly not high level in D&D terms, fifth level is plenty.
There's a reason people invented E6 (max level changes from 20 to 6; further progression is just feats) back in the 3.5 era, and is does work in 5e, though it does mean an awful lot of stuff ceases to have purpose.
I disagree, because there are areas where casters have a hard time succeeding in, especially at lower levels. (For instance, the social interaction spells they have then really aren't that useful.) Additionally, certain elements of the spellcaster can be debuffed while other areas are increased. This would allow for the class to be interesting without being nerfed.
Warriors can have their outside-of-combat utility and power increased so that they can thrive in some situations, and not do so well in others, depending on the class and way this improvement is made and utilized.
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!
Ever wanted to talk about your parties' worst mistakes? Do so HERE. What's your favorite class, why? Share & explain
HERE.I think most people in this thread (whether or not they think a problem exists at any level) would agree that lower levels aren't really a problem.
Why it is a problem that they have "less" utility than casters? Martials are better at killing things than casters, and casters are better at getting the party to the things that need killing than martials. These are two distinct roles that gives both character types a niche to fulfill. If a barbarian could scream and teleport the entire party to another plane, or a fighter could punch the ground so hard they made a whole fortress appear for them and 1000 refugees to sleep in, then we might as well eliminate casters entirely because martials would be equal or better at everything than casters.
Martials don't need "fixing" because:
1) Martials have a niche that they are the best at and it's killing stuff.
2) Right now under the current ruleset you can build martials that are awesome at some utility tasks just by picking the right feats, races, and/or backgrounds.
3) Everyone can take the "Help" action to participate in every scene even if they aren't the best at the relevant skills.
4) Everyone can be involved in planning & debate to solve problems which doesn't involve any mechanics.
5) Spellcasters have limited resources which means a martial solving a problem without expending resources is always better than a spellcaster solving it even if the martial solution isn't guaranteed success.
The way to solve the "martial caster divide" is simply to reduce the number of spellslots casters get so that using a spell to solve a problem is a significant cost.
No they aren't. Martials are better at killing single boss monsters than casters, but casters are much better at killing swarms of weenies, so overall it comes out pretty even.
That's a rather absolute dichotomy. It would probably be more accurate to say that in general, martials are better equipped to sustain a high consistent DPR, while casters are better at burst and AoE. You throw a few waves at a party and the casters are gonna start flagging on DPR while the martials will hold fairly steady.