I wouldn't call the HP difference to be paltry. 3 HP per level is 15 HP after 5 levels, 30 after 10. Ignoring any HP bonuses from Con, at Fighter at 10th level has 64 HP from their class while a wizard has 42, I would say that is a sizable difference. And honestly, whether or not martials end up taking more damage is more dependent on the DM tactics. I've seen plenty of DM's take advantage of the lower HP amounts that casters have by having enemies hit the backrow with ranged attacks or spells.
I feel like the spell slot issue is dependent on the DM as well. In the games my group does, I find myself having to budget my spell slots, even at high levels because my DMs find ways to make me use my slots throughout the day. However, it seems that other DMs fall into a couple large encounters a day that ends up with casters being able to go all out in those couple of encounters. Plus, if we are adding additional options and resources to martials, this resource issue may resolve itself with this addition depending on the potency of the options. Though combat wise, I always felt like martials were not too far from casters; it was more in the out of combat part of the game that casters had an immense edge in.
I am going to answer these two points because it is true that the magical objects depend entirely on the game.
42 HP (plus cons) for a level 10 Wizard is a lot. And you have your magic to defend yourself, avoid getting hit, have more life, etc... That doesn't mean that eventually you can't go to the ground. But if it happens often, you are doing something wrong. Obviously if the DM wants to kill you, he will. He has many ways of doing it. But in a fair fight, you can usually avoid taking too much damage. Generally, as is normal, the frontliners will bear the brunt. That's why it seems to me that the HP difference between martial classes, and casters, should be much higher. In my opinion the D4 they had in previous editions was a better design. But it is a matter of opinions.
Regarding spell slots, a level 10 full caster can cast 15 spells per day. And that's not counting Flexible Casting, Arcane Recovery, Harness Divine Power, or racial spells/feats. Generally, if you use them wisely, you're going to spend 2 or 3 on a fight. Some more if the DM forces your reactions (especially to Sorcerers and Wizards). In my experience most game groups have 3-4 matches between long rests. So it's hard to run out of spell slots. At lower levels it does happen, and very often. But as you progress, it gets more and more complicated. Of course, each full caster is different, and some can spend more or less outside of combat. And it also depends on your build. But in general you will have plenty of spell slots for the whole day. That's hard to balance with a martial class, since magic is so powerful. And it must be. That's why my opinion is, to balance it, the only option is to reduce the spell slots of the full casters. And the skills that allow them to have more.
But to finish I want to say that all this is not a big problem for me either. But if you want to balance casters and martial classes, the only option is to nerf casters IMO. As much as you give more power to the martial classes, they are hardly going to be able to compete with the casters as they are right now.
I don't see how you can't give martials enough power to to match casters unless you are trying to keep martials grounded in someway, which we shouldn't be at higher tiers. You can give martials features to match casters; there isn't a limit to how much you can buff martials other than avoiding to have them surpass casters.
My DM isn't specifically targetting me when I play casters, but from my experience, I do feel the difference in HP between casters and martials quite a bit. I find that even in a fair fight that the HP difference does matter. However my definition of a fair fight may be different from yours, hence why this is probably a matter that is DM dependent.
Same with the spell slots. Even at T3 and T4, my DMs are able to drain my spell slots. My group never ran into the issue of casters having too many spell slots, we always have to carefully budget them, even in T4.
Plus even if martial were made so that they can compete with casters that would mean doubling the number of non-combat encounters to have the game be the same difficulty.
I don't find myself doubling the number of encounters with a party of all casters, so I am not sure why if we gave martials the ability to compete with casters that we would have to double the number of encounters.
I'm sorry, Crawling Chaos, I don't think I got across what I intended very well. I wasn't meaning to compare the two spells directly. My goal was to talk about how you incorporate that power into the martial class balance.
Steel Wind Strike is a fine spell. For anyone that wants that kind of feel to their combats, it's not a bad example of how that could look. What I was trying to ask myself and everyone was -
'If they gave the Fighter an ability like this spell, how does it play into the balance of the classes?'
Replicating it as a Fighter feature is easy enough. We could file the spell serial number off and write a feature like it. Maybe they could use it PBxLongRest, or once per Short Rest, etc. But what effect does it have towards the goal?
With the current class balance, it would have to come online around level 13 or later. But the Wizard could already be doing something similar at level 5. And the Wizard would have a dozen more spells to choose from that give it more variety and utility, while the Fighter would only be adding one. So it doesn't seem like it would make much of a dent into the problem by itself.
Maybe we then add a few more features to help. But the more we do that, the more we are basically making them casters by another name. They might track the 'slots' differently, but the end result is the same. How many spell-like features does a Fighter need to match the Wizard's flexibility, combat options, damage, and utility? That's one of the things that is bothering me about the whole idea of just buffing martials with more features.
I know people sometimes joke about it, but I really do think there is merit to anime being inspiration for martial "powers" that let them keep up the pace with casters at higher levels.
The easy stuff to balance is damage and similar combat capabilities -- plenty of video games manage it. The problem is the weird stuff, which is mostly stuff video games won't even let you do (for example, most things that let you reshape the map, though one reason video games don't let you do it is because it's super hard to implement).
I'm not concerned with how the powers look at this stage. Though I don't personally want the default for every class to be anime/comic style abilities, I do like having the option of both depending on the specific game and character. I'm a big fan of Wuxia and Xianxia fantasy, and that's definitely not 'grounded' haha. I'm just thinking about everyone and every style of game. Once you convert all classes to the same broad theme, you lose the option for some of the others.
But at the moment I'm just concerned about balance. How much of the Wizard's overall power, utility, and flexibility is the Fighter missing? If you were to assign every feature a point value to build balanced classes from the ground up, how much is the Fighter lacking?
Is it about 70% equal to a Wizard? Or is it more like 90%, but most of its points are spent on keeping even with damage, and not enough on utility? How much do we need to add to them to buff them up equal with a Wizard? Do we need to nerf part of the Fighter raw damage and sustainability to give them more utility?
Because they can never match the utility and versatility of a Wizard entirely. If they did, they would be a Wizard. So where do you make exceptions?
And how do you give them these new features? There are only so many game mechanics to manipulate. You can't give them a lot of Expertise, or they become better than the Experts. You can't just give them more damage because it doesn't help where they are lacking. If you pile on specific features, you start basically writing new spells with a different flavor. How many spell-like features would it take to fill that missing percentage?
We can look at the Eldritch Knight as a good example of what the designers thought was equal. That 1/3rd spell progression is about how many spells they thought could fit into a Fighter. And they thought the other subclasses were roughly balanced against that. Those traded the versatility for more power.
If the Eldritch Knight exists as a Fighter with a lot of choices, utility, and versatility, and it isn't enough, then how many more 'spells' (spell-like abilities) would they need? Would they need the spell variety and uses of a half caster? If they got that, they would be better than any Ranger or Paladin. So where is the line? And how do you keep the extra features from just feeling like more spells?
Yes, give all martials maneuvers! And, to close the gap, let the damage scale like cantrips, 2d8 (or d6 for non-Battlemasters and Martials Adepts) at level5, up to 4d8 (6).
The simplest way would just be to accept that martials are already superhuman if they can deal any meaningful damage to a 30ft long armor-scaled lizard with a longsword. Once that is accepted you can give them a bit more out-of-combat utility by increasing Jump distances and carry capacity from high amounts of STR so they can run, jump, climb, swim, etc better baseline than casters. Not to cartoonish levels like Hulk jumps, but more low level superhuman acrobatics like you can expect from Batman or Captain America. STR could also be made to improve a character's movement speed, letting martials run around the map easily without expending spell slots.
Improving grappling baseline would also help a lot. A lot of things you can do with feats I feel should just be baseline something anyone that has a target grappled can do. Meanwhile a grappling feat that lets you grapple creatures a size larger than normal could be added so players can recreate Beowulf vs Grendel or Heracles vs the Nemean Lion would be awesome.
Theoretically casters can benefit from this stuff too, but making STR a more desirable trait in and out of combat would help a lot in making characters who focus heavily on it stand up in contrast to those who dumped it in favor of a casting stat.
I also think bringing back the idea of Exotic Weapons would be cool. Exotic Weapons wouldn't necessarily be stronger than martial ones, but they'd be unique with unique characteristics that add more options in combat. Things like Xena's chakram that can bounce between targets or go around corners or a meteor hammer that can do massive crushing damage to enemies at a distance. Only Warrior classes would have access to them (with other classes maybe needing a feat to get one) which would give them a bit more variance in ways they can handle a combat encounter without overpowering the classic "just hit" tactic they usually employ.
This would let players choose between the typical "only hit" style of fighter (one who carries only their primary weapon) or a more versatile gadgety fighter (who has a couple exotic weapons on stand-by) based on their preferences.
The simplest way would just be to accept that martials are already superhuman if they can deal any meaningful damage to a 30ft long armor-scaled lizard with a longsword. Once that is accepted you can give them a bit more out-of-combat utility by increasing Jump distances and carry capacity from high amounts of STR so they can run, jump, climb, swim, etc better baseline than casters. Not to cartoonish levels like Hulk jumps, but more low level superhuman acrobatics like you can expect from Batman or Captain America. STR could also be made to improve a character's movement speed, letting martials run around the map easily without expending spell slots.
Improving grappling baseline would also help a lot. A lot of things you can do with feats I feel should just be baseline something anyone that has a target grappled can do. Meanwhile a grappling feat that lets you grapple creatures a size larger than normal could be added so players can recreate Beowulf vs Grendel or Heracles vs the Nemean Lion would be awesome.
Theoretically casters can benefit from this stuff too, but making STR a more desirable trait in and out of combat would help a lot in making characters who focus heavily on it stand up in contrast to those who dumped it in favor of a casting stat.
I personally like this target range for the flavor better. Batman and Captain America levels I think could fit with almost any campaign genre without breaking the theme too much. And making Herculean feats require... well, Feats, works nicely. :)
It gives the Fighter a way to choose to reach those levels of superhuman with all of their extra ASIs. I suspect we will see more feats of that kind when we get the 8th level ones. The 4th levels were all rather tame.
And I'm always in favor of giving more benefits to Strength. If only the 1DnD Jump rules weren't so unfun. Even the Athlete feat only lets you get advantage on the roll. If martials could Jump as a bonus action, it would add a lot. I'm not sure how you do anything with climbing and swimming since they seem to be covered in multiple places by just giving a speed equal to your Speed.
Another thing I like about always-on combat options, or one based encounters or short rests, is that they play to the martials strengths of sustainability. It's one thing they have that helps differentiate them from casters. They can keep going all day. A spell might be able to hit 5 enemies at once, but a 5th level Fighter with two weapons can hit 3 every turn, for as many turns as there are.
Unfortunately that's part of their weakness at some tables, depending on the number of encounters a day. That's partially why they don't feel as good to some people. They pay for that sustained power with class budget, but not everyone gets to use it.
The more supernatural a martial gets, the further they move from sustained power into limited use power, and the more they gain in flexibly and utility. A Fighter is on the most extreme side, with Rogues adjacent I would say. Barbarians are nearby but their features start getting daily limits. Then Monks have the most flexibility but are controlled by a pool of Ki points.
After that you get to half casters like Rangers and Paladins, who can do a lot of things in bursts. And at the other extreme are full casters. I just don't know how you can give the Fighter end more versatility without nerfing other parts of their kit, or nerfing casters so that the Fighters have some situations where they might be more useful. Which I guess is where I'm stuck on it.
I'm sorry to keep thinking out loud with so many posts. I'm just hoping to work through it. I would like to say again that I'm not opposed to superhuman martials existing. I love so many of the concepts. Characters like the demigods of mythic epics. Flashy anime moves. Smashing down castle gates. All of it is great. I've just been wondering if that's the only way. If there is no way for a person to play a more mundane fantasy too. No way to play some of the other genres that people like. Maybe there isn't.
I'm also concerned that the flexibility and utility people want have to come at a cost somewhere. Because Fighters and Wizards both have weaknesses and strengths at their extremes. And you can't just buff Fighters without considering those. Oh well, I think I've about exhausted my line of thought on that. If we had some way to calculate the value of every feature, I could put it all in a spreadsheet and it would be easy. But there isn't one, and there are too many variables between tables. Styles of play, genres, party composition, adventures, and just personal preferences. I guess it's time to get some rest tonight before I melt my brain on it hahaha.
Another thing I like about always-on combat options, or one based encounters or short rests, is that they play to the martials strengths of sustainability.
Strike that concept from your brain, it's a key part of the problem. You can't balance resource vs no-resource, it's too campaign-dependent and generally manipulable how many encounters you're dealing with.
Personally, I'm more into keeping baseline martials down-to-earth; not everyone wants anime stuff and superheroics in their gritty realism, myself included. However, there's a lot of leeway in psychological aspect, considering that even hit points are already partly a psychological resource, it's not just vitality, but also willingness to keep going, and luck. I'm not against optional rules or supplements cranking up stuff to 11, letting you cleave 3-feet-thick walls with a knife because you're just that badass. But, say, standing back up when you're at 0 hit points through sheer grit is within realism, given that 0 HP is not death. Inflicting fear condition onto enemies with a show of dominance and brutality is also quite a mundane thing. Inspiring allies for additional hit points or other bonuses also wouldn't break verisimilitude. And as Stegodorkus said, a significant chunk of maneuvers is something that any martial should be capable of doing, like parry and riposte, it's what weapon mastery is all about.
One thing that needs to be clear is that a magic attack is always going to be more powerful than a weapon attack. For example, an area spell, like a fireball, or Sickening Radiance, or whatever, is impossible to match up with weapon attacks. It's going to hit more people, and it's going to do more damage. Same for spells that do a lot of damage to a single target (like disintegrate). And that's not to mention control spells, which are left out of this comparison.
In that aspect, you cannot and should not try to level the casters with the martial classes. Where it can be "leveled" is in the cost of resources. That is, the imbalance is not that a caster can kill 5 enemies with one spell and the warrior cannot. If not, the caster can do that, and then he can continue doing devastating things because he has many resources for it (at medium high level. At low levels it is much more expensive). But, also, even if he runs out of resources, he can always go hand in hand with the warrior with his cantrips.
It is normal for a powerful spell to be the one that saves the day. But if then the Wizard can keep doing it, and the warrior is just a bag of HP, then he feels a little unbalanced.
However, the main comparative grievance between casters and warriors is how much fun it is to play one or the other. And here I am obviously being 100% subjective. I love playing with casters, and playing with martial classes bores me. And that's because the martial classes have few decisions to make during combat, while the caster, and especially some builds, have many. So, IMO, the main thing is to give martial classes more options in combat. From there, other points can be discussed. But that is absolutely necessary.
i happen to think the solution to the problem isn't to bring martials into parity with the magicals (or vice versa), but rather make martials better (and more interesting) at what they already do.
for instance, how about a fighter ability or attack bonus based upon intelligence which rewards repeat blows against the same creature. it would represent a sort of hands-on investigation for exploitable weakness in the enemy's guard or by simply bashing at the same spot until a scale falls away. beginning as a bonus to hit, it would evolve as the character grows in subclass levels. eventually they would gain additional benefits like imposing disadvantage, significantly increased chance of critical, reducing target's AC, or bleed damage. i'm thinking back to warriors in old world of warcraft keeping up stacks of Sunder Armor debuff for threat/tanking purposes. does this "fix" the martial/magic divide? no. but, it's something all the fighters could share but customized to whichever subclass. similar things should be done with parry, cleave, and targeting (trip, disarm, etc). similar things could be done for other martials. none of this precludes the dm from having an exploitable chink in some badguy's armor if there's not a sufficiently leveled fighter around.
I'm fine with Casters being more versatile, it's kind of what they do. I do think that some changes could be made, though I don't really want to nerf casters. The limit of what spells you prepare equal the spell slots you have, in 1D&D, will possibly curtail some versatility. You can't load up on a bunch of versatile low level spells and only hand pick a few powerful higher level spells. You get capped on the number of spells of each level by the slots you have. Also, when watching various YouTube videos on spell rankings, you can see which spells the YouTuber considers "must haves", "ok spells", "don't bother" spells. I know there are some spells that are decent, that an optimizer might say isn't that great or doesn't scale well, that actually should probably be the baseline spells. So those "S" tier (or "must have") spells might need to be scaled down some. They already did this with Spiritual Weapon (the damage scales better with Upcasting, but requires concentration when it didn't before). It's one example of adjusting spell balance WotC is trying out in the UA's that may very well close, or at least narrow, the gap.
And maybe there are just too many spells that do too many things or maybe ritual casting should go bye-bye (or at least Wizards needing to prepare the spells they want to ritual cast like the other casters). I like casters, I'm playing a Circle of the Land: Mountain Druid now, and have been for several years, but I am definitely not putting out the damage of some of the martials in my party, but I can help control the battlefield and do other things as well as some damage. And I think that's were casters should be. Let the martials be the kings and queens of damage, and sure, add some versatility. And boost martials so that they don't have to depend on a particular lineup of feats to stay competitive in the damage arena. But I don't think martials need the same amount of versatility that a caster has. And I think casters can have some limits put in place on the vast amount of versatility that they have, as well.
You have mastered the supernatural powers within yourself, enabling you to perform epic feats and insane combos in combat. Choose one of the flavours below, you gain certain spells depending on that flavour at certain levels. You can cast each of these spells once at their lowest level, and regain the ability to cast them when you finish a short or long rest. You casting ability for these spells in Strength and you must use a martial weapon with which you are proficient as your spellcasting focus. When you cast one or use one of these spells that has a casting time of one action it counts as taking the "Attack Action" for you. These spells do not require concentration for you and can be cast during a Barbarian's Rage.
Blade Master
Character Level
Spell
Flavour
1st
Shield
You sweep and flick your sword around you with such speed that it deflects and parries weapons and projectiles aimed at you.
5th
Gust of Wind
You spin your sword at impossibly high speeds and like a fan the blade generates a powerful wind that blasts away creatures in the direction you choose.
9th
Lightning Bolt
You raise your sword like a lightning rod and a bolt of lightning strikes down, you swing the blade down and send the bolt racing towards your enemies.
13th
Dimension Door
You sweep your sword forward and cut a hole in the very fabric of reality and you and a friend leap through appearing in another location.
17th
Steel Wind Strike
You run and jump towards a crowd of enemies striking at each one of them once with your blade.
Another thing I like about always-on combat options, or one based encounters or short rests, is that they play to the martials strengths of sustainability.
Strike that concept from your brain, it's a key part of the problem. You can't balance resource vs no-resource, it's too campaign-dependent and generally manipulable how many encounters you're dealing with.
Yeah that's kind of what I was lamenting in the next paragraph. That their main strength isn't as visible depending on the particular table. But even worse, most of the limiters put into place for casters are based on resources. So they get stronger by comparison the fewer encounters there are. And I see no way to fix that, outside of completely changing all of the rules, without nerfing caster classes in other ways, which is somewhat unpopular.
Personally, I'm more into keeping baseline martials down-to-earth; not everyone wants anime stuff and superheroics in their gritty realism, myself included. However, there's a lot of leeway in psychological aspect, considering that even hit points are already partly a psychological resource, it's not just vitality, but also willingness to keep going, and luck. I'm not against optional rules or supplements cranking up stuff to 11, letting you cleave 3-feet-thick walls with a knife because you're just that badass. But, say, standing back up when you're at 0 hit points through sheer grit is within realism, given that 0 HP is not death. Inflicting fear condition onto enemies with a show of dominance and brutality is also quite a mundane thing. Inspiring allies for additional hit points or other bonuses also wouldn't break verisimilitude. And as Stegodorkus said, a significant chunk of maneuvers is something that any martial should be capable of doing, like parry and riposte, it's what weapon mastery is all about.
These are great examples of powers that don't have to feel magic. Anything an action hero could conceivably do if we suspend a little disbelief. While still leaving more superhuman options available through subclasses, feats, etc.
One thing that needs to be clear is that a magic attack is always going to be more powerful than a weapon attack. For example, an area spell, like a fireball, or Sickening Radiance, or whatever, is impossible to match up with weapon attacks.
It's funny you mention sickening radiance because that's one of the few effects in the game that directly weaponize exhaustion. And it's still dealing damage (radiant damage at that, one of the least resisted damage types in the game) in an area of effect on top of that.
How is a martial supposed to impose exhaustion of all things?
At least fireball can be replicated by stuff like bombs or other mundane explosives.
I think the exhaustion rules offer a lot of opportunities, especially the new ones. Using the bomb example, a poison gas in one could cause exhaustion. I use exhaustion for dropping to 0 to show the effects of lingering injuries. Something like a cut to a tendon could have a similar result. Though these features might need to be limited a bit only because tracking all of the penalties could become a pain if everything hands them out.
A fairly simple mechanism I just thought of is to give martials a bonus d6 each round of combat (2d6 at level 6, 3d6 at level 11, 4d6 at level 17).
That d6 can be used for anything, limit of one die per roll. Added to a "to hit roll", added to a damage roll, added to a saving throw. It can also be used for a kind of AoE attack, rolling all the die together to hit every enemy within 10/15 foot radius against a dexterity (?) saving throw (half damage on save). On the plus side hitting a lot of targets, on the downside blowing your entire dice pool (for the turn) on one shot.
One thing that needs to be clear is that a magic attack is always going to be more powerful than a weapon attack. For example, an area spell, like a fireball, or Sickening Radiance, or whatever, is impossible to match up with weapon attacks.
It's funny you mention sickening radiance because that's one of the few effects in the game that directly weaponize exhaustion. And it's still dealing damage (radiant damage at that, one of the least resisted damage types in the game) in an area of effect on top of that.
How is a martial supposed to impose exhaustion of all things?
At least fireball can be replicated by stuff like bombs or other mundane explosives.
I've actually been thinking about the exhaustion thing for a bit now, as something about it niggled at me. In what little martial art training I received in real life, there were several situations where my instructors were able to make me *feel* exhausted temporarily by knocking my breath out (or at worst, giving me a concussion. :) ). Sleeper holds, choking, nerve strikes, striking the windpipe so you have difficulty breathing, etc. for unarmed things, and for melee weapon combat there are various disabling strikes you can do.
Yeah, you can't do that as a AoE as a martial, but to an individual opponent there should be combat tricks you can pull to give the *equivalent* to exhaustion condition levels. But then again, D&D tries to model all that through Hit Points, so I'm not sure how you would apply it in D&D specifically.
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I don't see how you can't give martials enough power to to match casters unless you are trying to keep martials grounded in someway, which we shouldn't be at higher tiers. You can give martials features to match casters; there isn't a limit to how much you can buff martials other than avoiding to have them surpass casters.
My DM isn't specifically targetting me when I play casters, but from my experience, I do feel the difference in HP between casters and martials quite a bit. I find that even in a fair fight that the HP difference does matter. However my definition of a fair fight may be different from yours, hence why this is probably a matter that is DM dependent.
Same with the spell slots. Even at T3 and T4, my DMs are able to drain my spell slots. My group never ran into the issue of casters having too many spell slots, we always have to carefully budget them, even in T4.
I don't find myself doubling the number of encounters with a party of all casters, so I am not sure why if we gave martials the ability to compete with casters that we would have to double the number of encounters.
I'm sorry, Crawling Chaos, I don't think I got across what I intended very well. I wasn't meaning to compare the two spells directly. My goal was to talk about how you incorporate that power into the martial class balance.
Steel Wind Strike is a fine spell. For anyone that wants that kind of feel to their combats, it's not a bad example of how that could look. What I was trying to ask myself and everyone was -
'If they gave the Fighter an ability like this spell, how does it play into the balance of the classes?'
Replicating it as a Fighter feature is easy enough. We could file the spell serial number off and write a feature like it. Maybe they could use it PBxLongRest, or once per Short Rest, etc. But what effect does it have towards the goal?
With the current class balance, it would have to come online around level 13 or later. But the Wizard could already be doing something similar at level 5. And the Wizard would have a dozen more spells to choose from that give it more variety and utility, while the Fighter would only be adding one. So it doesn't seem like it would make much of a dent into the problem by itself.
Maybe we then add a few more features to help. But the more we do that, the more we are basically making them casters by another name. They might track the 'slots' differently, but the end result is the same. How many spell-like features does a Fighter need to match the Wizard's flexibility, combat options, damage, and utility? That's one of the things that is bothering me about the whole idea of just buffing martials with more features.
The easy stuff to balance is damage and similar combat capabilities -- plenty of video games manage it. The problem is the weird stuff, which is mostly stuff video games won't even let you do (for example, most things that let you reshape the map, though one reason video games don't let you do it is because it's super hard to implement).
I'm not concerned with how the powers look at this stage. Though I don't personally want the default for every class to be anime/comic style abilities, I do like having the option of both depending on the specific game and character. I'm a big fan of Wuxia and Xianxia fantasy, and that's definitely not 'grounded' haha. I'm just thinking about everyone and every style of game. Once you convert all classes to the same broad theme, you lose the option for some of the others.
But at the moment I'm just concerned about balance. How much of the Wizard's overall power, utility, and flexibility is the Fighter missing? If you were to assign every feature a point value to build balanced classes from the ground up, how much is the Fighter lacking?
Is it about 70% equal to a Wizard? Or is it more like 90%, but most of its points are spent on keeping even with damage, and not enough on utility? How much do we need to add to them to buff them up equal with a Wizard? Do we need to nerf part of the Fighter raw damage and sustainability to give them more utility?
Because they can never match the utility and versatility of a Wizard entirely. If they did, they would be a Wizard. So where do you make exceptions?
And how do you give them these new features? There are only so many game mechanics to manipulate. You can't give them a lot of Expertise, or they become better than the Experts. You can't just give them more damage because it doesn't help where they are lacking. If you pile on specific features, you start basically writing new spells with a different flavor. How many spell-like features would it take to fill that missing percentage?
We can look at the Eldritch Knight as a good example of what the designers thought was equal. That 1/3rd spell progression is about how many spells they thought could fit into a Fighter. And they thought the other subclasses were roughly balanced against that. Those traded the versatility for more power.
If the Eldritch Knight exists as a Fighter with a lot of choices, utility, and versatility, and it isn't enough, then how many more 'spells' (spell-like abilities) would they need? Would they need the spell variety and uses of a half caster? If they got that, they would be better than any Ranger or Paladin. So where is the line? And how do you keep the extra features from just feeling like more spells?
Yes, give all martials maneuvers! And, to close the gap, let the damage scale like cantrips, 2d8 (or d6 for non-Battlemasters and Martials Adepts) at level5, up to 4d8 (6).
The simplest way would just be to accept that martials are already superhuman if they can deal any meaningful damage to a 30ft long armor-scaled lizard with a longsword. Once that is accepted you can give them a bit more out-of-combat utility by increasing Jump distances and carry capacity from high amounts of STR so they can run, jump, climb, swim, etc better baseline than casters. Not to cartoonish levels like Hulk jumps, but more low level superhuman acrobatics like you can expect from Batman or Captain America. STR could also be made to improve a character's movement speed, letting martials run around the map easily without expending spell slots.
Improving grappling baseline would also help a lot. A lot of things you can do with feats I feel should just be baseline something anyone that has a target grappled can do. Meanwhile a grappling feat that lets you grapple creatures a size larger than normal could be added so players can recreate Beowulf vs Grendel or Heracles vs the Nemean Lion would be awesome.
Theoretically casters can benefit from this stuff too, but making STR a more desirable trait in and out of combat would help a lot in making characters who focus heavily on it stand up in contrast to those who dumped it in favor of a casting stat.
I also think bringing back the idea of Exotic Weapons would be cool. Exotic Weapons wouldn't necessarily be stronger than martial ones, but they'd be unique with unique characteristics that add more options in combat. Things like Xena's chakram that can bounce between targets or go around corners or a meteor hammer that can do massive crushing damage to enemies at a distance. Only Warrior classes would have access to them (with other classes maybe needing a feat to get one) which would give them a bit more variance in ways they can handle a combat encounter without overpowering the classic "just hit" tactic they usually employ.
This would let players choose between the typical "only hit" style of fighter (one who carries only their primary weapon) or a more versatile gadgety fighter (who has a couple exotic weapons on stand-by) based on their preferences.
I personally like this target range for the flavor better. Batman and Captain America levels I think could fit with almost any campaign genre without breaking the theme too much. And making Herculean feats require... well, Feats, works nicely. :)
It gives the Fighter a way to choose to reach those levels of superhuman with all of their extra ASIs. I suspect we will see more feats of that kind when we get the 8th level ones. The 4th levels were all rather tame.
And I'm always in favor of giving more benefits to Strength. If only the 1DnD Jump rules weren't so unfun. Even the Athlete feat only lets you get advantage on the roll. If martials could Jump as a bonus action, it would add a lot. I'm not sure how you do anything with climbing and swimming since they seem to be covered in multiple places by just giving a speed equal to your Speed.
Another thing I like about always-on combat options, or one based encounters or short rests, is that they play to the martials strengths of sustainability. It's one thing they have that helps differentiate them from casters. They can keep going all day. A spell might be able to hit 5 enemies at once, but a 5th level Fighter with two weapons can hit 3 every turn, for as many turns as there are.
Unfortunately that's part of their weakness at some tables, depending on the number of encounters a day. That's partially why they don't feel as good to some people. They pay for that sustained power with class budget, but not everyone gets to use it.
The more supernatural a martial gets, the further they move from sustained power into limited use power, and the more they gain in flexibly and utility. A Fighter is on the most extreme side, with Rogues adjacent I would say. Barbarians are nearby but their features start getting daily limits. Then Monks have the most flexibility but are controlled by a pool of Ki points.
After that you get to half casters like Rangers and Paladins, who can do a lot of things in bursts. And at the other extreme are full casters. I just don't know how you can give the Fighter end more versatility without nerfing other parts of their kit, or nerfing casters so that the Fighters have some situations where they might be more useful. Which I guess is where I'm stuck on it.
I'm sorry to keep thinking out loud with so many posts. I'm just hoping to work through it. I would like to say again that I'm not opposed to superhuman martials existing. I love so many of the concepts. Characters like the demigods of mythic epics. Flashy anime moves. Smashing down castle gates. All of it is great. I've just been wondering if that's the only way. If there is no way for a person to play a more mundane fantasy too. No way to play some of the other genres that people like. Maybe there isn't.
I'm also concerned that the flexibility and utility people want have to come at a cost somewhere. Because Fighters and Wizards both have weaknesses and strengths at their extremes. And you can't just buff Fighters without considering those. Oh well, I think I've about exhausted my line of thought on that. If we had some way to calculate the value of every feature, I could put it all in a spreadsheet and it would be easy. But there isn't one, and there are too many variables between tables. Styles of play, genres, party composition, adventures, and just personal preferences. I guess it's time to get some rest tonight before I melt my brain on it hahaha.
Strike that concept from your brain, it's a key part of the problem. You can't balance resource vs no-resource, it's too campaign-dependent and generally manipulable how many encounters you're dealing with.
Personally, I'm more into keeping baseline martials down-to-earth; not everyone wants anime stuff and superheroics in their gritty realism, myself included. However, there's a lot of leeway in psychological aspect, considering that even hit points are already partly a psychological resource, it's not just vitality, but also willingness to keep going, and luck. I'm not against optional rules or supplements cranking up stuff to 11, letting you cleave 3-feet-thick walls with a knife because you're just that badass. But, say, standing back up when you're at 0 hit points through sheer grit is within realism, given that 0 HP is not death. Inflicting fear condition onto enemies with a show of dominance and brutality is also quite a mundane thing. Inspiring allies for additional hit points or other bonuses also wouldn't break verisimilitude. And as Stegodorkus said, a significant chunk of maneuvers is something that any martial should be capable of doing, like parry and riposte, it's what weapon mastery is all about.
One thing that needs to be clear is that a magic attack is always going to be more powerful than a weapon attack. For example, an area spell, like a fireball, or Sickening Radiance, or whatever, is impossible to match up with weapon attacks. It's going to hit more people, and it's going to do more damage. Same for spells that do a lot of damage to a single target (like disintegrate). And that's not to mention control spells, which are left out of this comparison.
In that aspect, you cannot and should not try to level the casters with the martial classes. Where it can be "leveled" is in the cost of resources. That is, the imbalance is not that a caster can kill 5 enemies with one spell and the warrior cannot. If not, the caster can do that, and then he can continue doing devastating things because he has many resources for it (at medium high level. At low levels it is much more expensive). But, also, even if he runs out of resources, he can always go hand in hand with the warrior with his cantrips.
It is normal for a powerful spell to be the one that saves the day. But if then the Wizard can keep doing it, and the warrior is just a bag of HP, then he feels a little unbalanced.
However, the main comparative grievance between casters and warriors is how much fun it is to play one or the other. And here I am obviously being 100% subjective. I love playing with casters, and playing with martial classes bores me. And that's because the martial classes have few decisions to make during combat, while the caster, and especially some builds, have many. So, IMO, the main thing is to give martial classes more options in combat. From there, other points can be discussed. But that is absolutely necessary.
i happen to think the solution to the problem isn't to bring martials into parity with the magicals (or vice versa), but rather make martials better (and more interesting) at what they already do.
for instance, how about a fighter ability or attack bonus based upon intelligence which rewards repeat blows against the same creature. it would represent a sort of hands-on investigation for exploitable weakness in the enemy's guard or by simply bashing at the same spot until a scale falls away. beginning as a bonus to hit, it would evolve as the character grows in subclass levels. eventually they would gain additional benefits like imposing disadvantage, significantly increased chance of critical, reducing target's AC, or bleed damage. i'm thinking back to warriors in old world of warcraft keeping up stacks of Sunder Armor debuff for threat/tanking purposes. does this "fix" the martial/magic divide? no. but, it's something all the fighters could share but customized to whichever subclass. similar things should be done with parry, cleave, and targeting (trip, disarm, etc). similar things could be done for other martials. none of this precludes the dm from having an exploitable chink in some badguy's armor if there's not a sufficiently leveled fighter around.
unhappy at the way in which we lost individual purchases for one-off subclasses, magic items, and monsters?
tell them you don't like features disappeared quietly in the night: provide feedback!
I'm fine with Casters being more versatile, it's kind of what they do. I do think that some changes could be made, though I don't really want to nerf casters. The limit of what spells you prepare equal the spell slots you have, in 1D&D, will possibly curtail some versatility. You can't load up on a bunch of versatile low level spells and only hand pick a few powerful higher level spells. You get capped on the number of spells of each level by the slots you have. Also, when watching various YouTube videos on spell rankings, you can see which spells the YouTuber considers "must haves", "ok spells", "don't bother" spells. I know there are some spells that are decent, that an optimizer might say isn't that great or doesn't scale well, that actually should probably be the baseline spells. So those "S" tier (or "must have") spells might need to be scaled down some. They already did this with Spiritual Weapon (the damage scales better with Upcasting, but requires concentration when it didn't before). It's one example of adjusting spell balance WotC is trying out in the UA's that may very well close, or at least narrow, the gap.
And maybe there are just too many spells that do too many things or maybe ritual casting should go bye-bye (or at least Wizards needing to prepare the spells they want to ritual cast like the other casters). I like casters, I'm playing a Circle of the Land: Mountain Druid now, and have been for several years, but I am definitely not putting out the damage of some of the martials in my party, but I can help control the battlefield and do other things as well as some damage. And I think that's were casters should be. Let the martials be the kings and queens of damage, and sure, add some versatility. And boost martials so that they don't have to depend on a particular lineup of feats to stay competitive in the damage arena. But I don't think martials need the same amount of versatility that a caster has. And I think casters can have some limits put in place on the vast amount of versatility that they have, as well.
EZD6 by DM Scotty
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/397599/EZD6-Core-Rulebook?
I would like to see martials obtain more options than just attack or extra attack. See manuvers.
I would like to see a version of power attack given to just warrior group classes. To keep them competitive.
They need more features or their feature need alittle more polish.
Out of combat utility … stuff they can just do like feats of strength or agility that isn’t tied to magic.
How about something like this:
You have mastered the supernatural powers within yourself, enabling you to perform epic feats and insane combos in combat. Choose one of the flavours below, you gain certain spells depending on that flavour at certain levels. You can cast each of these spells once at their lowest level, and regain the ability to cast them when you finish a short or long rest. You casting ability for these spells in Strength and you must use a martial weapon with which you are proficient as your spellcasting focus. When you cast one or use one of these spells that has a casting time of one action it counts as taking the "Attack Action" for you. These spells do not require concentration for you and can be cast during a Barbarian's Rage.
Blade Master
Yeah that's kind of what I was lamenting in the next paragraph. That their main strength isn't as visible depending on the particular table. But even worse, most of the limiters put into place for casters are based on resources. So they get stronger by comparison the fewer encounters there are. And I see no way to fix that, outside of completely changing all of the rules, without nerfing caster classes in other ways, which is somewhat unpopular.
These are great examples of powers that don't have to feel magic. Anything an action hero could conceivably do if we suspend a little disbelief. While still leaving more superhuman options available through subclasses, feats, etc.
I think the exhaustion rules offer a lot of opportunities, especially the new ones. Using the bomb example, a poison gas in one could cause exhaustion. I use exhaustion for dropping to 0 to show the effects of lingering injuries. Something like a cut to a tendon could have a similar result. Though these features might need to be limited a bit only because tracking all of the penalties could become a pain if everything hands them out.
A fairly simple mechanism I just thought of is to give martials a bonus d6 each round of combat (2d6 at level 6, 3d6 at level 11, 4d6 at level 17).
That d6 can be used for anything, limit of one die per roll. Added to a "to hit roll", added to a damage roll, added to a saving throw. It can also be used for a kind of AoE attack, rolling all the die together to hit every enemy within 10/15 foot radius against a dexterity (?) saving throw (half damage on save). On the plus side hitting a lot of targets, on the downside blowing your entire dice pool (for the turn) on one shot.
I've actually been thinking about the exhaustion thing for a bit now, as something about it niggled at me. In what little martial art training I received in real life, there were several situations where my instructors were able to make me *feel* exhausted temporarily by knocking my breath out (or at worst, giving me a concussion. :) ). Sleeper holds, choking, nerve strikes, striking the windpipe so you have difficulty breathing, etc. for unarmed things, and for melee weapon combat there are various disabling strikes you can do.
Yeah, you can't do that as a AoE as a martial, but to an individual opponent there should be combat tricks you can pull to give the *equivalent* to exhaustion condition levels. But then again, D&D tries to model all that through Hit Points, so I'm not sure how you would apply it in D&D specifically.