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.
Certain poisons could perhaps create an exhaustion effect; many poisons in D&D cause an additional effect while the target is poisoned.
It is also worth noting that if exhaustion is generated in a non-magical manner, then unlike sickening radiance, it will stay until it is properly cured. Remember that any exhaustion from sickening radiance goes away if the spell ends.
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.
To me, it just means combat probably could use a bit of a rework in general. Sometimes I come across the complaint that combat in D&D (or at least 5e) isn't interesting enough, and I have to wonder if that and this issue with martials not having enough to do besides bonk are related.
If it is a general complaint then surely it applies to casters as well. Or IMO it might have just as much to do with the fact that monsters don't get a lot more than their basic bonk.
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.
To me, it just means combat probably could use a bit of a rework in general. Sometimes I come across the complaint that combat in D&D (or at least 5e) isn't interesting enough, and I have to wonder if that and this issue with martials not having enough to do besides bonk are related.
If it is a general complaint then surely it applies to casters as well. Or IMO it might have just as much to do with the fact that monsters don't get a lot more than their basic bonk.
Realistic combat leads to death spirals and “Interesting” combat leads to complexity. Even looking at the new simplified rules for exhaustion they could easily put a character in a death spiral if a creature gave them 2-3 levels of the exhausted condition. Especially if the creature already had a high DC. If we are looking at the 5e version of exhaustion game over beyond 2 levels being imposed in combat. Thankfully no creature that has exhaustion immunity and radiant damage resistance/immunity has sticking radiance. If you DM decides they want a TPK all they have to do is add that to one of the enemy spellcasters while one of the other enemies had those immunities/resistance.
Interesting combats is a good thing to bring up, since a lot of what people want in martials is more options. I think there is something to be said for having features that let you choose A, B, or C each turn the way a caster does with spells. That at least gives you something to do each turn. But you have to be careful designing them so that the choices aren't always foregone conclusions. Similar to how many Clerics begin every fight with the same rotation of spells.
From what I've read about Pathfinder (haven't played it, so feel free to correct me) many people got tired of it when they realized there were optimal feat progressions and they just kept using the same abilities in the same order every turn. On top of being incentivized to just stand still and use all of your actions to attack, even with penalty. It's easy to create options that aren't really options. I even had a player in 5e get bored of it for a similar reason. He was a wargamer first. And he said he knows what the optimal choices are every turn in DnD combat. If he always did them, they weren't choices. If he didn't do them, he felt like he was letting the party down. He felt like he was not roleplaying to his best ability because of these issues.
For me the best combats have always been the ones where I have spent a lot of work as a DM setting up an interesting scenario. Ones where the fight happens in an environment that the characters can interact with. Hazardous terrain, platforms to jump around, lair actions, puzzles to solve during the fight, darkness, etc. That's difficult to do with every combat. Which is one of the reasons people probably prefer a few set piece battles per day over the suggested 6-8 encounters. If every fight takes place in a square room, all of the spells in the world won't make it super fun.
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.
To me, it just means combat probably could use a bit of a rework in general. Sometimes I come across the complaint that combat in D&D (or at least 5e) isn't interesting enough, and I have to wonder if that and this issue with martials not having enough to do besides bonk are related.
If it is a general complaint then surely it applies to casters as well. Or IMO it might have just as much to do with the fact that monsters don't get a lot more than their basic bonk.
Realistic combat leads to death spirals and “Interesting” combat leads to complexity. Even looking at the new simplified rules for exhaustion they could easily put a character in a death spiral if a creature gave them 2-3 levels of the exhausted condition. Especially if the creature already had a high DC. If we are looking at the 5e version of exhaustion game over beyond 2 levels being imposed in combat. Thankfully no creature that has exhaustion immunity and radiant damage resistance/immunity has sticking radiance. If you DM decides they want a TPK all they have to do is add that to one of the enemy spellcasters while one of the other enemies had those immunities/resistance.
Remember that any exhaustion from Sickening Radiance goes away upon the spell ending. You could hit Sickening Radiance with Dispel Magic and any Exhaustion that resulted from it would be removed. So it is not the hardest spell to deal with. Alternatively, focus fire the caster concentrating on sickening radiance.
If it is a general complaint then surely it applies to casters as well. Or IMO it might have just as much to do with the fact that monsters don't get a lot more than their basic bonk.
Weren't monsters getting rechargeable abilities to replace crits?
For me the best combats have always been the ones where I have spent a lot of work as a DM setting up an interesting scenario. Ones where the fight happens in an environment that the characters can interact with. Hazardous terrain, platforms to jump around, lair actions, puzzles to solve during the fight, darkness, etc. That's difficult to do with every combat. Which is one of the reasons people probably prefer a few set piece battles per day over the suggested 6-8 encounters. If every fight takes place in a square room, all of the spells in the world won't make it super fun.
100% agree. I've played the occasional dungeon crawl with 6-8 combats per day and I found it incredibly boring. Every combat is in a small square room, where the enemy can reach & hit anyone on every turn, and everyone can get to and hit the enemy every turn. Each combat lasts ~2 rounds so it's barely worth using any abilities on it, and 90% of the enemies just make melee attacks on you. Plus they are just a random set of monsters that do nothing but attack you on sight. The only bits of that dungeon I remember is the fungus-flavoured Roper that the druid Awakened and we then talked to and a selectively-blind jaguar who we used speak with Animals on and caused to have an existential crisis by explaining to it that it was selectively blind. i.e. non-combat was much more interesting than combat...
... Weren't monsters getting rechargeable abilities to replace crits?
The Internet shot down that particular fantastic idea. Which is a shame, because it was a fantastic idea. Giving creatures memorable, juicy, encounter-defining powers they can use at the DM's discretion is a drastically better design choice than Completely Random Quintuple Damage. There's so much cool design space the idea opens up that was trashed just because people were unwilling to look past the five-second dopamine hit that is a random crit. It could have been so much cooler to have the 1DD DMG or Monster Manual give a DM tools to easily upgrade any creature into a 'Boss' version of the creature by applying a template to it that includes giving it a 'Brutal Blow' recharge power emulating a crit, but one the DM can control and use as is best for the encounter instead of Completely Random Quintuple Damage.
I am never not going to be pissed off that the Internet ruined that excellent design experiment. Frankly I have considered a homerule in my games that nobody crits on a 20; 20 still automatically hits but it is not considered a Critical Hit. Instead, a player can choose to spend Inspiration to turn a normal attack (that hits) into a critical hit. I honestly think the rule could play interestingly with the idea of gaining Inspiration from a natural 1, but even if Inspiration rules remain unchanged it'd make critical hits more interesting and decision-oriented rather than random crappy happenstance.
Anyways. Martial/caster disparity. . .. ...yeah, nothing's gonna fix that. Even in this thread, people have stated their preference for martial characters to remain "grounded", i.e. weak and ineffectual next to casters. They don't want martials to have explicitly superhuman abilities, which is the only damn way you get martials to be in the same ballpark as high-level spellcasters. Until people want to fix the martial/caster divide, we're never going to.
... Weren't monsters getting rechargeable abilities to replace crits?
The Internet shot down that particular fantastic idea. Which is a shame, because it was a fantastic idea. Giving creatures memorable, juicy, encounter-defining powers they can use at the DM's discretion is a drastically better design choice than Completely Random Quintuple Damage. There's so much cool design space the idea opens up that was trashed just because people were unwilling to look past the five-second dopamine hit that is a random crit. It could have been so much cooler to have the 1DD DMG or Monster Manual give a DM tools to easily upgrade any creature into a 'Boss' version of the creature by applying a template to it that includes giving it a 'Brutal Blow' recharge power emulating a crit, but one the DM can control and use as is best for the encounter instead of Completely Random Quintuple Damage.
I am never not going to be pissed off that the Internet ruined that excellent design experiment. Frankly I have considered a homerule in my games that nobody crits on a 20; 20 still automatically hits but it is not considered a Critical Hit. Instead, a player can choose to spend Inspiration to turn a normal attack (that hits) into a critical hit. I honestly think the rule could play interestingly with the idea of gaining Inspiration from a natural 1, but even if Inspiration rules remain unchanged it'd make critical hits more interesting and decision-oriented rather than random crappy happenstance.
Anyways. Martial/caster disparity. . .. ...yeah, nothing's gonna fix that. Even in this thread, people have stated their preference for martial characters to remain "grounded", i.e. weak and ineffectual next to casters. They don't want martials to have explicitly superhuman abilities, which is the only damn way you get martials to be in the same ballpark as high-level spellcasters. Until people want to fix the martial/caster divide, we're never going to.
I completely agree that the knee-jerk reaction against monsters not being able to crit might have ruined a really good thing. I never understood why any DM would be so attached to their own crits. The monsters aren't my 'team' when I DM. I don't get excited about their crits. If anything, they can sometimes makes me worry the encounter just got way more dangerous. I would prefer control with cool abilities over crits any day. But that's just me.
I don't think grounded martials negates the ability to balance them with casters. At least from my perspective, I don't want ALL martials to be grounded. I definitely want things like Rune Knights and such to exist. And even more wild options. I just want a few options left for a grounded martial that can still compete. A space for people to play different genres and character types. Like a noir detective or a tavern brawler from the slums. Those types can exist in a genre where magic is a strange occult practice that only a few access. But they can't exist if every martial becomes a demigod after level 5.
I think there is room for it. Nerfing casters to some degree is one of the best ways in my opinion, but I know that's not a popular one. A different option is just more damage. HP is so abstract that there is no reason a Fighter couldn't do 8d6 damage without magic. And there are lots of mundane ways they could flavor different maneuvers and conditions. I only want to avoid making them look so much like spells that everyone basically has the same toolkit with different flavor text.
I don't think grounded martials negates the ability to balance them with casters.
You need martials to do things that are as world-altering as spells, and 'I hit it with a sword' will never accomplish that. There are ways to do that with a different feel than spells, but it's still likely to involve things like mythic levels of strength.
Frankly I have considered a homerule in my games that nobody crits on a 20; 20 still automatically hits but it is not considered a Critical Hit. Instead, a player can choose to spend Inspiration to turn a normal attack (that hits) into a critical hit.
That is an awesome house rules that I now really really want to use in my games.
I don't think grounded martials negates the ability to balance them with casters.
You need martials to do things that are as world-altering as spells, and 'I hit it with a sword' will never accomplish that. There are ways to do that with a different feel than spells, but it's still likely to involve things like mythic levels of strength.
I don't need them to do things as world altering as spells. AD&D gave them that power with strongholds and armies. They became queens and kings. But we don't play that kind of game anymore.
I just want them to be as useful to the party as spells are. The party changes the world by working together to defeat evil. As long as each individual in the party contributes to its overall strength in meaningful ways that feel fun to play, that's what matters to me.
Unfortunately spells aren't just for big explosions, blessings, and teleportation. They have gobbled up nearly every utility role that can be accomplished through skills, tools, and mundane human ability too. Who cares about being proficient in a Disguise kit if any 1st level character can just cast Disguise Self with a snap of the fingers? That's the problem.
Frankly I have considered a homerule in my games that nobody crits on a 20; 20 still automatically hits but it is not considered a Critical Hit. Instead, a player can choose to spend Inspiration to turn a normal attack (that hits) into a critical hit.
That is an awesome house rules that I now really really want to use in my games.
I dunno about this. Inspiration would become a billion times more valuable than it is at the moment, and everybody would just save it for their Banishing Smite+Divine Smite+GWF+whatnot super-combo (or just inflict wounds).
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Look at what you've done. You spoiled it. You have nobody to blame but yourself. Go sit and think about your actions.
Don't be mean. Rudeness is a vicious cycle, and it has to stop somewhere. Exceptions for things that are funny. Go to the current Competition of the Finest 'Brews! It's a cool place where cool people make cool things.
How I'm posting based on text formatting: Mod Hat Off - Mod Hat Also Off (I'm not a mod)
I don't need them to do things as world altering as spells. AD&D gave them that power with strongholds and armies. They became queens and kings. But we don't play that kind of game anymore.
I just want them to be as useful to the party as spells are.
Your statements contradict one another. It is relatively easy to handle the balance of damage between martials and casters. It probably requires giving martial characters area damage and/or triggered attacks that don't cost your reaction, but it's not inherently all that hard. The problem is in the utility space.
I dunno about this. Inspiration would become a billion times more valuable than it is at the moment, and everybody would just save it for their Banishing Smite+Divine Smite+GWF+whatnot super-combo (or just inflict wounds).
This was a source of discussion on my table's game Discord. The gist is that crits are handled very differently in general. A crit is worth one extra damage die, maximized, for the specific damage source. I.e. a longsword crit is 1d8+8+mod. Crits don't double class-feature damage like Divine Smite or Snek Attack. Spells that can crit get the same treatment - one extra damage die, maximized, rather than an entire second spell slot's worth of damage. Example: Inflict Wounds crits, deals 3d10+10 necrotic damage rather than 6d10 necrotic damage. It renders crits roughly as valuable to everybody who uses them, and the main function of the d20 rolling a 20 is to generate Inspiration. Players cannot pass Inspiration off to other players, and they can still only have one instance of Inspiration at a time.
If all you want is to Crit Moar, you can choose to use the Inspiration as soon as you gain it to crit on the attack, or you can choose to save the Inspiration to try and reroll a failed attack or un-whiff a crucial save. Depends on the fight, and on your needs. We haven't playtested it yet, rule's going into place in some upcoming games after we hammer out the basics, but the hope is that Inspiration becomes a powerful and valuable resource with multiple desireable yet mutually exclusive uses, and figuring out what to use it on becomes an Interesting Decision of the sort that is usually sadly lacking in many D&D combats.
I don't need them to do things as world altering as spells. AD&D gave them that power with strongholds and armies. They became queens and kings. But we don't play that kind of game anymore.
I just want them to be as useful to the party as spells are.
Your statements contradict one another. It is relatively easy to handle the balance of damage between martials and casters. It probably requires giving martial characters area damage and/or triggered attacks that don't cost your reaction, but it's not inherently all that hard. The problem is in the utility space.
I'm not sure I understand how I'm contradicting myself... Genuinely, I'm not sure where the communication lines are crossing. I'm probably just being stupid. XD
I agree that damage is easy to balance, and that utility is the problem. That's what I was trying to say later in that post, and in an earlier one about damage. I think we're on the same page with that part.
When you said 'world altering' I assumed you meant the high level spells like Wish. Things that changed the face of the planet. Which is why I compared that level of utility with the old days of running a kingdom. Both the Fighter with an army, and the Wizard with Wish, were able to have enormous impact on the history of a game world. The Wizard's got to keep their Wishes, but the Fighters lost their armies.
Maybe you meant world altering in the smaller sense. Just the fact that spells bend reality, even cantrips. That's true too. And what I was saying in the last paragraph was that was the problem. Spells can do anything that normal skills can do, but better and easier.
I guess my point was that no amount of skill expertise and tool kits can match the lowest level spells in utility. Which is honestly a big shame. It's a problem with the whole game mechanics surrounding both the limits of mundane skills, and the power of spells. And I just personally think the best way to balance that is to nerf spells a little and make skills and mundane features better. Otherwise let's do away with skills and tools altogether.
If the majority of players won't accept even small nerfs to spells (like drawbacks that don't make them superior in every situation), then you're right. The only way to let martials match them is to make martials have spell-like powers. To make them superhuman in hundreds of ways. And at some point we might as well just list all the spells in one big pool, give everyone access to them, and let them flavor them any way they want. Because that's all it will be if we don't take some of the utility monopoly away from casters.
If that's the concensus on what we need, then the whole divide is easy to fix. Everyone can get the same effect from a Disguise Kit as the Disguise Self spell. Everyone can do 8d6 fire damage at level 5 in a 20' radius. This guy does it with magic hand gestures, that one does it by setting a bomb trap, and that one does it by teleporting all over the place with a flaming sword. But it takes a toll on your magic brain limit, or the traps are hard to build, or doing crazy sword tricks are exhausting. So they all can each only do it twice a day. We can get rid of classes altogether because they're all the same thing.
When you said 'world altering' I assumed you meant the high level spells like Wish. Things that changed the face of the planet.
Wish probably shouldn't be a spell at all (make it a magic item only), but I was just referring to stuff that lets you do changes on an impractical scale for labor -- even stuff like Stone Shape qualifies.
If that's the concensus on what we need, then the whole divide is easy to fix. Everyone can get the same effect from a Disguise Kit as the Disguise Self spell. Everyone can do 8d6 fire damage at level 5 in a 20' radius. This guy does it with magic hand gestures, that one does it by setting a bomb trap, and that one does it by teleporting all over the place with a flaming sword. But it takes a toll on your magic brain limit, or the traps are hard to build, or doing crazy sword tricks are exhausting. So they all can each only do it twice a day. We can get rid of classes altogether because they're all the same thing.
i think you just invented 4E :D
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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: providefeedback!
If that's the concensus on what we need, then the whole divide is easy to fix. Everyone can get the same effect from a Disguise Kit as the Disguise Self spell. Everyone can do 8d6 fire damage at level 5 in a 20' radius. This guy does it with magic hand gestures, that one does it by setting a bomb trap, and that one does it by teleporting all over the place with a flaming sword. But it takes a toll on your magic brain limit, or the traps are hard to build, or doing crazy sword tricks are exhausting. So they all can each only do it twice a day. We can get rid of classes altogether because they're all the same thing.
Well, this gets into the other problem with spellcasters: flexibility. It should be possible to have a party of five wizards where each wizard actually plays distinctly from one another... and it isn't, because everyone gets access to all the spells.
Anyway, both the scaling of martial characters and the scaling of spellcasters can make a perfectly viable game, they just don't fit in the same game.
I wonder if anyone has tried to play a high-level campaign with just Rogues, Barbarians, Fighters and/or Monks. And they don't cheat by picking spellcasting subclasses like Eldritch Knight or multiclassing into a spellcasting class.
I expect it would work better than standard -- monster capabilities are generally on the same scale as martial capabilities.
Martials, as base classes, I think can stay fairly grounded. Monks are part of the warrior group and have some mysticism/magical like abilities, but they are a unique case. But Fighters, as a base, can stay grounded and Subclasses, like now, give them any magical abilities. And I do think Fighters need more than what they have and hopefully the Warrior UA will have more of what some of us are looking for. But not every class needs to be slinging spells or spell-like abilities, at least at the base class level.
As far as Utility, I think some can be given to martials, but they don't necessarily have to be magical. And they don't have to have as much utility as casters do. Monks can stun (which may be changed to the new Dazed condition), Battlemasters can use maneuvers to do more than just add more damage. Casters should have more utility, in my opinion, but I agree that they have way to much and can pretty much circumvent many issues facing a party. And I can see some of those being limited or removed. And I can see damage of spells being reduced. Let the martials be the big damage dealers with some utility and casters be the big utility dealers with some damage. Maybe not that extreme, but something along those lines.
Weren't monsters getting rechargeable abilities to replace crits?
I don't think they ever said monsters were getting recharge abilities to replace crits. They said monster recharge abilities were a "built in crit-like mechanic" in this video at approx. 54:55. Unless they said elsewhere, outside of that video, that they were adding recharge abilities to monsters, I think they were just referring to the monsters that already have those. I put that in my survey response that if they got rid of monster crits then most, if not all, monsters need recharge abilities. And even if they keep monster crits I still think they should add recharge abilities to monsters.
Certain poisons could perhaps create an exhaustion effect; many poisons in D&D cause an additional effect while the target is poisoned.
It is also worth noting that if exhaustion is generated in a non-magical manner, then unlike sickening radiance, it will stay until it is properly cured. Remember that any exhaustion from sickening radiance goes away if the spell ends.
If it is a general complaint then surely it applies to casters as well. Or IMO it might have just as much to do with the fact that monsters don't get a lot more than their basic bonk.
Realistic combat leads to death spirals and “Interesting” combat leads to complexity. Even looking at the new simplified rules for exhaustion they could easily put a character in a death spiral if a creature gave them 2-3 levels of the exhausted condition. Especially if the creature already had a high DC. If we are looking at the 5e version of exhaustion game over beyond 2 levels being imposed in combat. Thankfully no creature that has exhaustion immunity and radiant damage resistance/immunity has sticking radiance. If you DM decides they want a TPK all they have to do is add that to one of the enemy spellcasters while one of the other enemies had those immunities/resistance.
Interesting combats is a good thing to bring up, since a lot of what people want in martials is more options. I think there is something to be said for having features that let you choose A, B, or C each turn the way a caster does with spells. That at least gives you something to do each turn. But you have to be careful designing them so that the choices aren't always foregone conclusions. Similar to how many Clerics begin every fight with the same rotation of spells.
From what I've read about Pathfinder (haven't played it, so feel free to correct me) many people got tired of it when they realized there were optimal feat progressions and they just kept using the same abilities in the same order every turn. On top of being incentivized to just stand still and use all of your actions to attack, even with penalty. It's easy to create options that aren't really options. I even had a player in 5e get bored of it for a similar reason. He was a wargamer first. And he said he knows what the optimal choices are every turn in DnD combat. If he always did them, they weren't choices. If he didn't do them, he felt like he was letting the party down. He felt like he was not roleplaying to his best ability because of these issues.
For me the best combats have always been the ones where I have spent a lot of work as a DM setting up an interesting scenario. Ones where the fight happens in an environment that the characters can interact with. Hazardous terrain, platforms to jump around, lair actions, puzzles to solve during the fight, darkness, etc. That's difficult to do with every combat. Which is one of the reasons people probably prefer a few set piece battles per day over the suggested 6-8 encounters. If every fight takes place in a square room, all of the spells in the world won't make it super fun.
Remember that any exhaustion from Sickening Radiance goes away upon the spell ending. You could hit Sickening Radiance with Dispel Magic and any Exhaustion that resulted from it would be removed. So it is not the hardest spell to deal with. Alternatively, focus fire the caster concentrating on sickening radiance.
Weren't monsters getting rechargeable abilities to replace crits?
100% agree. I've played the occasional dungeon crawl with 6-8 combats per day and I found it incredibly boring. Every combat is in a small square room, where the enemy can reach & hit anyone on every turn, and everyone can get to and hit the enemy every turn. Each combat lasts ~2 rounds so it's barely worth using any abilities on it, and 90% of the enemies just make melee attacks on you. Plus they are just a random set of monsters that do nothing but attack you on sight. The only bits of that dungeon I remember is the fungus-flavoured Roper that the druid Awakened and we then talked to and a selectively-blind jaguar who we used speak with Animals on and caused to have an existential crisis by explaining to it that it was selectively blind. i.e. non-combat was much more interesting than combat...
The Internet shot down that particular fantastic idea. Which is a shame, because it was a fantastic idea. Giving creatures memorable, juicy, encounter-defining powers they can use at the DM's discretion is a drastically better design choice than Completely Random Quintuple Damage. There's so much cool design space the idea opens up that was trashed just because people were unwilling to look past the five-second dopamine hit that is a random crit. It could have been so much cooler to have the 1DD DMG or Monster Manual give a DM tools to easily upgrade any creature into a 'Boss' version of the creature by applying a template to it that includes giving it a 'Brutal Blow' recharge power emulating a crit, but one the DM can control and use as is best for the encounter instead of Completely Random Quintuple Damage.
I am never not going to be pissed off that the Internet ruined that excellent design experiment. Frankly I have considered a homerule in my games that nobody crits on a 20; 20 still automatically hits but it is not considered a Critical Hit. Instead, a player can choose to spend Inspiration to turn a normal attack (that hits) into a critical hit. I honestly think the rule could play interestingly with the idea of gaining Inspiration from a natural 1, but even if Inspiration rules remain unchanged it'd make critical hits more interesting and decision-oriented rather than random crappy happenstance.
Anyways. Martial/caster disparity.
.
..
...yeah, nothing's gonna fix that. Even in this thread, people have stated their preference for martial characters to remain "grounded", i.e. weak and ineffectual next to casters. They don't want martials to have explicitly superhuman abilities, which is the only damn way you get martials to be in the same ballpark as high-level spellcasters. Until people want to fix the martial/caster divide, we're never going to.
Please do not contact or message me.
I completely agree that the knee-jerk reaction against monsters not being able to crit might have ruined a really good thing. I never understood why any DM would be so attached to their own crits. The monsters aren't my 'team' when I DM. I don't get excited about their crits. If anything, they can sometimes makes me worry the encounter just got way more dangerous. I would prefer control with cool abilities over crits any day. But that's just me.
I don't think grounded martials negates the ability to balance them with casters. At least from my perspective, I don't want ALL martials to be grounded. I definitely want things like Rune Knights and such to exist. And even more wild options. I just want a few options left for a grounded martial that can still compete. A space for people to play different genres and character types. Like a noir detective or a tavern brawler from the slums. Those types can exist in a genre where magic is a strange occult practice that only a few access. But they can't exist if every martial becomes a demigod after level 5.
I think there is room for it. Nerfing casters to some degree is one of the best ways in my opinion, but I know that's not a popular one. A different option is just more damage. HP is so abstract that there is no reason a Fighter couldn't do 8d6 damage without magic. And there are lots of mundane ways they could flavor different maneuvers and conditions. I only want to avoid making them look so much like spells that everyone basically has the same toolkit with different flavor text.
You need martials to do things that are as world-altering as spells, and 'I hit it with a sword' will never accomplish that. There are ways to do that with a different feel than spells, but it's still likely to involve things like mythic levels of strength.
That is an awesome house rules that I now really really want to use in my games.
I don't need them to do things as world altering as spells. AD&D gave them that power with strongholds and armies. They became queens and kings. But we don't play that kind of game anymore.
I just want them to be as useful to the party as spells are. The party changes the world by working together to defeat evil. As long as each individual in the party contributes to its overall strength in meaningful ways that feel fun to play, that's what matters to me.
Unfortunately spells aren't just for big explosions, blessings, and teleportation. They have gobbled up nearly every utility role that can be accomplished through skills, tools, and mundane human ability too. Who cares about being proficient in a Disguise kit if any 1st level character can just cast Disguise Self with a snap of the fingers? That's the problem.
I dunno about this. Inspiration would become a billion times more valuable than it is at the moment, and everybody would just save it for their Banishing Smite+Divine Smite+GWF+whatnot super-combo (or just inflict wounds).
Look at what you've done. You spoiled it. You have nobody to blame but yourself. Go sit and think about your actions.
Don't be mean. Rudeness is a vicious cycle, and it has to stop somewhere. Exceptions for things that are funny.
Go to the current Competition of the Finest 'Brews! It's a cool place where cool people make cool things.
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Your statements contradict one another. It is relatively easy to handle the balance of damage between martials and casters. It probably requires giving martial characters area damage and/or triggered attacks that don't cost your reaction, but it's not inherently all that hard. The problem is in the utility space.
This was a source of discussion on my table's game Discord. The gist is that crits are handled very differently in general. A crit is worth one extra damage die, maximized, for the specific damage source. I.e. a longsword crit is 1d8+8+mod. Crits don't double class-feature damage like Divine Smite or Snek Attack. Spells that can crit get the same treatment - one extra damage die, maximized, rather than an entire second spell slot's worth of damage. Example: Inflict Wounds crits, deals 3d10+10 necrotic damage rather than 6d10 necrotic damage. It renders crits roughly as valuable to everybody who uses them, and the main function of the d20 rolling a 20 is to generate Inspiration. Players cannot pass Inspiration off to other players, and they can still only have one instance of Inspiration at a time.
If all you want is to Crit Moar, you can choose to use the Inspiration as soon as you gain it to crit on the attack, or you can choose to save the Inspiration to try and reroll a failed attack or un-whiff a crucial save. Depends on the fight, and on your needs. We haven't playtested it yet, rule's going into place in some upcoming games after we hammer out the basics, but the hope is that Inspiration becomes a powerful and valuable resource with multiple desireable yet mutually exclusive uses, and figuring out what to use it on becomes an Interesting Decision of the sort that is usually sadly lacking in many D&D combats.
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I'm not sure I understand how I'm contradicting myself... Genuinely, I'm not sure where the communication lines are crossing. I'm probably just being stupid. XD
I agree that damage is easy to balance, and that utility is the problem. That's what I was trying to say later in that post, and in an earlier one about damage. I think we're on the same page with that part.
When you said 'world altering' I assumed you meant the high level spells like Wish. Things that changed the face of the planet. Which is why I compared that level of utility with the old days of running a kingdom. Both the Fighter with an army, and the Wizard with Wish, were able to have enormous impact on the history of a game world. The Wizard's got to keep their Wishes, but the Fighters lost their armies.
Maybe you meant world altering in the smaller sense. Just the fact that spells bend reality, even cantrips. That's true too. And what I was saying in the last paragraph was that was the problem. Spells can do anything that normal skills can do, but better and easier.
I guess my point was that no amount of skill expertise and tool kits can match the lowest level spells in utility. Which is honestly a big shame. It's a problem with the whole game mechanics surrounding both the limits of mundane skills, and the power of spells. And I just personally think the best way to balance that is to nerf spells a little and make skills and mundane features better. Otherwise let's do away with skills and tools altogether.
If the majority of players won't accept even small nerfs to spells (like drawbacks that don't make them superior in every situation), then you're right. The only way to let martials match them is to make martials have spell-like powers. To make them superhuman in hundreds of ways. And at some point we might as well just list all the spells in one big pool, give everyone access to them, and let them flavor them any way they want. Because that's all it will be if we don't take some of the utility monopoly away from casters.
If that's the concensus on what we need, then the whole divide is easy to fix. Everyone can get the same effect from a Disguise Kit as the Disguise Self spell. Everyone can do 8d6 fire damage at level 5 in a 20' radius. This guy does it with magic hand gestures, that one does it by setting a bomb trap, and that one does it by teleporting all over the place with a flaming sword. But it takes a toll on your magic brain limit, or the traps are hard to build, or doing crazy sword tricks are exhausting. So they all can each only do it twice a day. We can get rid of classes altogether because they're all the same thing.
Wish probably shouldn't be a spell at all (make it a magic item only), but I was just referring to stuff that lets you do changes on an impractical scale for labor -- even stuff like Stone Shape qualifies.
i think you just invented 4E :D
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!
Well, this gets into the other problem with spellcasters: flexibility. It should be possible to have a party of five wizards where each wizard actually plays distinctly from one another... and it isn't, because everyone gets access to all the spells.
Anyway, both the scaling of martial characters and the scaling of spellcasters can make a perfectly viable game, they just don't fit in the same game.
I expect it would work better than standard -- monster capabilities are generally on the same scale as martial capabilities.
Martials, as base classes, I think can stay fairly grounded. Monks are part of the warrior group and have some mysticism/magical like abilities, but they are a unique case. But Fighters, as a base, can stay grounded and Subclasses, like now, give them any magical abilities. And I do think Fighters need more than what they have and hopefully the Warrior UA will have more of what some of us are looking for. But not every class needs to be slinging spells or spell-like abilities, at least at the base class level.
As far as Utility, I think some can be given to martials, but they don't necessarily have to be magical. And they don't have to have as much utility as casters do. Monks can stun (which may be changed to the new Dazed condition), Battlemasters can use maneuvers to do more than just add more damage. Casters should have more utility, in my opinion, but I agree that they have way to much and can pretty much circumvent many issues facing a party. And I can see some of those being limited or removed. And I can see damage of spells being reduced. Let the martials be the big damage dealers with some utility and casters be the big utility dealers with some damage. Maybe not that extreme, but something along those lines.
I don't think they ever said monsters were getting recharge abilities to replace crits. They said monster recharge abilities were a "built in crit-like mechanic" in this video at approx. 54:55. Unless they said elsewhere, outside of that video, that they were adding recharge abilities to monsters, I think they were just referring to the monsters that already have those. I put that in my survey response that if they got rid of monster crits then most, if not all, monsters need recharge abilities. And even if they keep monster crits I still think they should add recharge abilities to monsters.
EZD6 by DM Scotty
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/397599/EZD6-Core-Rulebook?