They do have basic guidelines, that's my point. There are rules around using ability scores (which summons have) that are provided to every DM to adjudicate any action you ask of them. And Summon Celestial summons not merely a blank cipher, but a celestial spirit that takes an angelic form. The DM has the agency to determine whether that makes it nothing more than an amanuensis to your needs, or whether you orders of it have a consequence, without such needing to be mandated by the spell itself. Each table gets to decide how to find their fun. That's how it should be.
Everything has ability scores, that's beyond the point. DM can homebrew it all, but what's a new player or a new DM to do? You can interpret the stat blocks and improvise with your decades of experience. Can a newbie do it just as well without guidelines? It's just like backgrounds. Sure, you can come up with a character's backstory, long and nuanced if you want to. You can even do most of the job integrating it with the DM's story and setting. But more often than not, I've seen guys just rolling dice on personality traits tables and occasionally trying to roleplay the flaws and bonds when they mattered. Without those tables to help flesh out the characters, I'm pretty certain they'd not bother and default to being their usual selves plus war crimes.
It's adjudication, not homebrew. The DM has final say over how every creature in the world that's not a PC behaves. And not every summoning spell needs to say "here's how you should make them behave if the PCs lose control."
As for backgrounds, they've been streamlined for a reason. Will we still get Ideals/Traits/Bonds/Flaws? Probably. Will each background have tables and tables of specific ones tied to each? I'm guessing not. The Character Origins UA certainly didn't indicate such, nor have any of the recent backgrounds. Those four things are tools for DMs to opt into, not straitjackets.
Steve Rogers is maybe the closest thing to a model of what martials in 5e should be like. Able to do physical feats that no caster can replicate and take damage at a scale that's unapproachable by the more fragile casters while emitting such an aura of charisma that people will do what he wants as if they're charmed.
I mean ... none of that is true. Steve Rogers jumps and punches real good, but Steven Strange can fly, trap people in infinite falling loops, out wit a demigod, see the future, etc... and Steve Rogers can't even get the Avengers to work together until a shared loss unites them against Loki. Or am I misunderstanding and this was sarcasm?
Was Steve Rogers the "sidekick" of Stephen Strange?
Those are kind of bad examples because I would answer 'yes' to the first two, but there are methods that are used by writers to handle characters of differing power levels, and those methods can be used in an RPG... but they either require a large amount of DM bias, or specialized mechanics.
Why don't you answer "yes" to the last one? In terms of relative power over the world Stephen Strange vs Steve Rogers is a far larger discrepancy than the other two, and even narratively Steve Rogers is equal or less important to the plots of the MCU than Stephen Strange is. Steve Rogers doesn't come up with any plans that actually pay off, he doesn't personally defeat any of the major BBEGs, all he does is assume a leadership role because of his personality not because of any of his powers or abilities. Any character of any class can play the leader of your D&D party, and the DM can choose to incorporate any character's backstory into the main plot to make them the most important character regardless of their mechanics - I just gave a Fighter in a party I'm DMing 12 Revenants loyal to them and dedicated to restoring them to the throne of their country, because narratively it makes sense, not b/c of some pity party or to "redress the power balance" or whatever, but because I decided those Revenants existed as part of the narrative and the PCs could discover them or not, and choose to try to recruit them or not. An RPG is not chiefly about "balance" it is about telling good stories.
Because they usually aren't in the same books at all, and when they do have a crossover the author makes sure that they're presented as equal, even if this requires Doctor Strange suddenly forgetting half his spells.
It's adjudication, not homebrew. The DM has final say over how every creature in the world that's not a PC behaves. And not every summoning spell needs to say "here's how you should make them behave if the PCs lose control."
As for backgrounds, they've been streamlined for a reason. Will we still get Ideals/Traits/Bonds/Flaws? Probably. Will each background have tables and tables of specific ones tied to each? I'm guessing not. The Character Origins UA certainly didn't indicate such, nor have any of the recent backgrounds. Those four things are tools for DMs to opt into, not straitjackets.
For tenth time, I'm talking basic guidelines, not strict rules railroading you into a quest each time you cast a spell. You're making a strawman out of a semblance of my argument at this point. No one's talking about straightjackets. Just something to make summons interact with the player and the world. Fiends push you to do terrible things, and like to do terrible things themselves - and a sacrifice of blood reflects that. Celestials might have a strict moral code, so maybe codify that they'll disobey your orders if you make them act against innocents.
We haven't seen the final backgrounds, though my personal take is that they just wanted to give players freedom to make up their own combination of proficiencies instead of having to make new backgrounds in every sourcebook just to try to cover every possible combo and have to make up new personality trait tables and yadda yadda. My bet is that they'll still provide guidelines for writing a backstory in some way, like they did in Tasha's.
When was the last time you saw a player actually use Summon Lesser/Greater Demon?
The spell(s) is bursting with flavor, yes. It's also terrible. It is actively detrimental to the party at almost all times, places, periods and situations to use either spell, because the demons so summoned WILL break free in a matter of a few rounds and invariably turn on the party. Like, what canny, well-played mage character would even choose to learn the spell, knowing that it has a near-guaranteed chance of backfiring on the caster every single time it's cast? Yes, it lets you summon an unusually powerful entity for a third/fourth-level spell. That just means ytour party is even more ****ed when the spell breaks, and by the time you feel confident in being able to handle whatever demon you conjure up? The spell is no longer worth casting because the demon's too weak to help you.
Summon Lesser/Greater Demon is a DM spell, something that lets the DM have evil cultists summon a horrible monster to fight the party. It gives canny players who do their research insight into how the spell works so they can try and pry the cultists' demon away from them, and it gives DMs a way to tempt the party by having the spell in the evil cultist wizard's spellbook. But at no point should a player that knows how to D&D from the mechanical side ever cast either spell. If they do so it'd strictly be a Story Beat, and they would be expecting the spell to backfire on them, at least above the table.
Say what you will about the TC spells - they're at least beneficial for the party to cast, and players can use them without getting yelled at by the rest of the table for making everything worse.
For tenth time, I'm talking basic guidelines, not strict rules railroading you into a quest each time you cast a spell. You're making a strawman out of a semblance of my argument at this point. No one's talking about straightjackets. Just something to make summons interact with the player and the world. Fiends push you to do terrible things, and like to do terrible things themselves - and a sacrifice of blood reflects that. Celestials might have a strict moral code, so maybe codify that they'll disobey your orders if you make them act against innocents.
We haven't seen the final backgrounds, though my personal take is that they just wanted to give players freedom to make up their own combination of proficiencies instead of having to make new backgrounds in every sourcebook just to try to cover every possible combo and have to make up new personality trait tables and yadda yadda. My bet is that they'll still provide guidelines for writing a backstory in some way, like they did in Tasha's.
The Tasha summons don't need to codify any such thing. Rather than forcing every single table to confront that possibility in every single summon, let some exist for the ones who want to deal with it and some for the ones who don't. For the tenth time, both can exist in the same game.
When was the last time you saw a player actually use Summon Lesser/Greater Demon?
The spell(s) is bursting with flavor, yes. It's also terrible. It is actively detrimental to the party at almost all times, places, periods and situations to use either spell, because the demons so summoned WILL break free in a matter of a few rounds and invariably turn on the party. Like, what canny, well-played mage character would even choose to learn the spell, knowing that it has a near-guaranteed chance of backfiring on the caster every single time it's cast? Yes, it lets you summon an unusually powerful entity for a third/fourth-level spell. That just means ytour party is even more ****ed when the spell breaks, and by the time you feel confident in being able to handle whatever demon you conjure up? The spell is no longer worth casting because the demon's too weak to help you.
Summon Lesser/Greater Demon is a DM spell, something that lets the DM have evil cultists summon a horrible monster to fight the party. It gives canny players who do their research insight into how the spell works so they can try and pry the cultists' demon away from them, and it gives DMs a way to tempt the party by having the spell in the evil cultist wizard's spellbook. But at no point should a player that knows how to D&D from the mechanical side ever cast either spell. If they do so it'd strictly be a Story Beat, and they would be expecting the spell to backfire on them, at least above the table.
Say what you will about the TC spells - they're at least beneficial for the party to cast, and players can use them without getting yelled at by the rest of the table for making everything worse.
But don't you see? Those players should just embrace the flavor and ignore all the bad design and table arguments that will result! Do you want to be a (gasp) filthy videogamer? 🙄
Summon Lesser/Greater Demon is a DM spell, something that lets the DM have evil cultists summon a horrible monster to fight the party. It gives canny players who do their research insight into how the spell works so they can try and pry the cultists' demon away from them, and it gives DMs a way to tempt the party by having the spell in the evil cultist wizard's spellbook. But at no point should a player that knows how to D&D from the mechanical side ever cast either spell.
Summon Greater Demon has uses, they're just rarely relevant to PCs because they require you to be fine with a demon running around trying to kill whatever is nearest it (the use is: don't bother trying to control it, just let it kill stuff, and exploit the fact it lasts for 1d6 rounds after you lose concentration to summon lots of them).
I think the UA proposal that would allow martials to specialize in particular weapons is a partial solution to this. Having different effects with different weapons (like reducing effective AC of the target or chance to knock target prone) is both thematic and tactically useful. Swinging with a flail should feel different than using a warhammer for something more than just damage type, for example. A weapons-based increase to complexity is also totally optional based on what the player is ready for. Don't want to deal with complexity of a rider on top of weapon damage? Just don't specialize in using a particular weapon.
Obviously, first we will have to see how this materializes in the UA. However, for me that is not enough. Don't get me wrong, it's an idea I like and I hope to see it in the final design of the warriors. Even so, that doesn't solve the main problem that warriors have, in my opinion, which is the lack of options in combat and, therefore, the limited decisions that they will have to make. That, IMO, is what makes warriors boring in combat.
On the other hand, if the decisions that a warrior can make are going to be based on changing weapons (that is, since each weapon will have a property, when changing from a mace to a spear, you would add a different effect), then I don't like the design. Yes, you will be able to make decisions, which is what I was asking for. But that design is lazy and not very immersive (except for some subclass whose flavour is precisely that of having the right weapon for each situation). But having warriors generally switch weapons as needed is, narratively, weird to say the least. For that it is much better to give them maneuvers, which is much more immersive. And then leave the effect for his specialist weapon.
Maneuvers really aren't as interesting as they look on paper. Most Battlemasters I've played with or DMed end up using only one or two of them. It's like the Smite spells, lots of options there that nobody uses.
Maneuvers really aren't as interesting as they look on paper. Most Battlemasters I've played with or DMed end up using only one or two of them. It's like the Smite spells, lots of options there that nobody uses.
But that's up to the player, right? I mean, there are also wizards who just shoot fireballs.
In any case, the maneuvers have to be designed to be useful. Then, if the player decides that he's only going to use one because it works best with his playstyle, great. He is already making that decision.
I have never played a battlemaster, but in my games I have DM one and it did different things depending on the situation. He would throw it to the ground so that another player would use Tasha's whip and have to lose a turn getting up. He would scare a monster so that he couldn't get out of a damaged area (with Sickening Radiance, for example). Taunt enemies to protect his companions. Etc... That fighter felt like a caster. The same player, in another game, played a Rune Knight, and he also felt like a caster. Instead, I played with another player whose battlemaster was all he did was the precise hit. That is up to the player and how he wants to play. You don't have to go into that, everyone plays as they want. But WoTC should give you options to use if you want, IMO.
Maneuvers really aren't as interesting as they look on paper. Most Battlemasters I've played with or DMed end up using only one or two of them. It's like the Smite spells, lots of options there that nobody uses.
The actual flexibility of maneuvers can be overrated, but a lot of the problem is that many of the maneuvers are either redundant or garbage. Still, the list of maneuvers that seem potentially useful to me is probably
When was the last time you saw a player actually use Summon Lesser/Greater Demon?
The spell(s) is bursting with flavor, yes. It's also terrible. It is actively detrimental to the party at almost all times, places, periods and situations to use either spell, because the demons so summoned WILL break free in a matter of a few rounds and invariably turn on the party. Like, what canny, well-played mage character would even choose to learn the spell, knowing that it has a near-guaranteed chance of backfiring on the caster every single time it's cast? Yes, it lets you summon an unusually powerful entity for a third/fourth-level spell. That just means ytour party is even more ****ed when the spell breaks, and by the time you feel confident in being able to handle whatever demon you conjure up? The spell is no longer worth casting because the demon's too weak to help you.
Used it myself on my warlock. You come in, kill the first guy, use his blood to summon the demon into the crowd or next to the most annoying enemy, then run away, close the door, and wait until the screaming stops and you see a stream of blood flowing from under the door. 'twas fun. Not a bread-and butter daily use spell, but it was effective, and damn did I feel like an actual warlock.
Maneuvers really aren't as interesting as they look on paper. Most Battlemasters I've played with or DMed end up using only one or two of them. It's like the Smite spells, lots of options there that nobody uses.
The actual flexibility of maneuvers can be overrated, but a lot of the problem is that many of the maneuvers are either redundant or garbage. Still, the list of maneuvers that seem potentially useful to me is probably
Ambush
Brace
Commanding Presence
Grappling Attack
Menacing Attack
Quick Toss
Tactical Assessment
Trip
Pushing Attack lets you move an enemy around pretty effectively without sacrificing damage. Invaluable wherever there's traps, fire, pits and cliffs.
Riposte lets you get a whole attack in for the price of one superiority die, a musthave. It's even more useful than Brace.
How about people stay on topic instead of continuosly veering off to talk about specific subclasses or spells?
Isn't the point of this thread to discuss actual ways to rebalance Martials in contrast to Spellcasters?
I think it would help to better refine what we mean by "Spellcaster" as well. For instance, are particular classes of Spellcaster far "better" than Martials? Is it every Spellcaster? And in what ways are the imbalances in design most blatant?
How about people stay on topic instead of continuosly veering off to talk about specific subclasses or spells?
Isn't the point of this thread to discuss actual ways to rebalance Martials in contrast to Spellcasters?
It's difficult to discuss the merits of a maneuver system without discussing the only official maneuver system we have, which is tied to a specific subclass.
I think it would help to better refine what we mean by "Spellcaster" as well. For instance, are particular classes of Spellcaster far "better" than Martials? Is it every Spellcaster? And in what ways are the imbalances in design most blatant?
I'd say most people are thinking of full (9th-level) casters when they use that term. Technically a Four Elements Monk is a spellcaster too, but I don't think most people are worried about their power level being too high.
How about people stay on topic instead of continuosly veering off to talk about specific subclasses or spells?
Isn't the point of this thread to discuss actual ways to rebalance Martials in contrast to Spellcasters?
It's difficult to discuss the merits of a maneuver system without discussing the only official maneuver system we have, which is tied to a specific subclass.
I think it would help to better refine what we mean by "Spellcaster" as well. For instance, are particular classes of Spellcaster far "better" than Martials? Is it every Spellcaster? And in what ways are the imbalances in design most blatant?
I'd say most people are thinking of full (9th-level) casters when they use that term. Technically a Four Elements Monk is a spellcaster too, but I don't think most people are worried about their power level being too high.
When you say "9th level," do you mean 9th level spell slots for full spellcasters? Does a Warlock count for your definition of a full caster?
Whether or not the Battlemaster subclass is relevant depends first on defining the "problem" that we are trying to resolve, assuming that one exists. Without first defining the problem in concrete terms, what hope is there in coming to any kind of agreement? Or are we just here to argue with one another for the sake of arguing?
When you say "9th level," do you mean 9th level spell slots for full spellcasters? Does a Warlock count for your definition of a full caster?
Whether or not the Battlemaster subclass is relevant depends first on defining the "problem" that we are trying to resolve, assuming that one exists. Without first defining the problem in concrete terms, what hope is there in coming to any kind of agreement? Or are we just here to argue with one another for the sake of arguing?
1) Yes - I know that Mystic Arcanum are not spell slots in the strictest sense, but they're close enough for Warlocks to be considered a fullcaster in my eyes (and I would wager, most other people's.)
2) Also yes 😛 but less facetiously, I agree that the "problem" is ill-defined.
I think it would help to better refine what we mean by "Spellcaster" as well. For instance, are particular classes of Spellcaster far "better" than Martials? Is it every Spellcaster? And in what ways are the imbalances in design most blatant?
The major offenders in 5e are bard, cleric, druid, and wizard, but One D&D, with its unified lists and making everyone into prepared spellcasters, is moving in the wrong direction, because the big issue is flexibility; it's not so much that any one spell is overpowered, it's that they have such a massive toolkit of options.
I think it would help to better refine what we mean by "Spellcaster" as well. For instance, are particular classes of Spellcaster far "better" than Martials? Is it every Spellcaster? And in what ways are the imbalances in design most blatant?
The major offenders in 5e are bard, cleric, druid, and wizard, but One D&D, with its unified lists and making everyone into prepared spellcasters, is moving in the wrong direction, because the big issue is flexibility; it's not so much that any one spell is overpowered, it's that they have such a massive toolkit of options.
If it is purely flexibility that is the issue, wouldn't just giving all martials a feat /ASI every 2 levels instead of every 4 levels essentially solve this? Players can then choose whether they want to say simple and just max out their stats and pick passive feats, or if they want tons of combat options, or if they want tons of utility options.
It's adjudication, not homebrew. The DM has final say over how every creature in the world that's not a PC behaves. And not every summoning spell needs to say "here's how you should make them behave if the PCs lose control."
As for backgrounds, they've been streamlined for a reason. Will we still get Ideals/Traits/Bonds/Flaws? Probably. Will each background have tables and tables of specific ones tied to each? I'm guessing not. The Character Origins UA certainly didn't indicate such, nor have any of the recent backgrounds. Those four things are tools for DMs to opt into, not straitjackets.
I mean ... none of that is true. Steve Rogers jumps and punches real good, but Steven Strange can fly, trap people in infinite falling loops, out wit a demigod, see the future, etc... and Steve Rogers can't even get the Avengers to work together until a shared loss unites them against Loki. Or am I misunderstanding and this was sarcasm?
Why don't you answer "yes" to the last one? In terms of relative power over the world Stephen Strange vs Steve Rogers is a far larger discrepancy than the other two, and even narratively Steve Rogers is equal or less important to the plots of the MCU than Stephen Strange is. Steve Rogers doesn't come up with any plans that actually pay off, he doesn't personally defeat any of the major BBEGs, all he does is assume a leadership role because of his personality not because of any of his powers or abilities. Any character of any class can play the leader of your D&D party, and the DM can choose to incorporate any character's backstory into the main plot to make them the most important character regardless of their mechanics - I just gave a Fighter in a party I'm DMing 12 Revenants loyal to them and dedicated to restoring them to the throne of their country, because narratively it makes sense, not b/c of some pity party or to "redress the power balance" or whatever, but because I decided those Revenants existed as part of the narrative and the PCs could discover them or not, and choose to try to recruit them or not. An RPG is not chiefly about "balance" it is about telling good stories.
Because they usually aren't in the same books at all, and when they do have a crossover the author makes sure that they're presented as equal, even if this requires Doctor Strange suddenly forgetting half his spells.
For tenth time, I'm talking basic guidelines, not strict rules railroading you into a quest each time you cast a spell. You're making a strawman out of a semblance of my argument at this point. No one's talking about straightjackets. Just something to make summons interact with the player and the world. Fiends push you to do terrible things, and like to do terrible things themselves - and a sacrifice of blood reflects that. Celestials might have a strict moral code, so maybe codify that they'll disobey your orders if you make them act against innocents.
We haven't seen the final backgrounds, though my personal take is that they just wanted to give players freedom to make up their own combination of proficiencies instead of having to make new backgrounds in every sourcebook just to try to cover every possible combo and have to make up new personality trait tables and yadda yadda. My bet is that they'll still provide guidelines for writing a backstory in some way, like they did in Tasha's.
Question, Kam.
When was the last time you saw a player actually use Summon Lesser/Greater Demon?
The spell(s) is bursting with flavor, yes. It's also terrible. It is actively detrimental to the party at almost all times, places, periods and situations to use either spell, because the demons so summoned WILL break free in a matter of a few rounds and invariably turn on the party. Like, what canny, well-played mage character would even choose to learn the spell, knowing that it has a near-guaranteed chance of backfiring on the caster every single time it's cast? Yes, it lets you summon an unusually powerful entity for a third/fourth-level spell. That just means ytour party is even more ****ed when the spell breaks, and by the time you feel confident in being able to handle whatever demon you conjure up? The spell is no longer worth casting because the demon's too weak to help you.
Summon Lesser/Greater Demon is a DM spell, something that lets the DM have evil cultists summon a horrible monster to fight the party. It gives canny players who do their research insight into how the spell works so they can try and pry the cultists' demon away from them, and it gives DMs a way to tempt the party by having the spell in the evil cultist wizard's spellbook. But at no point should a player that knows how to D&D from the mechanical side ever cast either spell. If they do so it'd strictly be a Story Beat, and they would be expecting the spell to backfire on them, at least above the table.
Say what you will about the TC spells - they're at least beneficial for the party to cast, and players can use them without getting yelled at by the rest of the table for making everything worse.
Please do not contact or message me.
The Tasha summons don't need to codify any such thing. Rather than forcing every single table to confront that possibility in every single summon, let some exist for the ones who want to deal with it and some for the ones who don't. For the tenth time, both can exist in the same game.
But don't you see? Those players should just embrace the flavor and ignore all the bad design and table arguments that will result! Do you want to be a (gasp) filthy videogamer? 🙄
Summon Greater Demon has uses, they're just rarely relevant to PCs because they require you to be fine with a demon running around trying to kill whatever is nearest it (the use is: don't bother trying to control it, just let it kill stuff, and exploit the fact it lasts for 1d6 rounds after you lose concentration to summon lots of them).
Obviously, first we will have to see how this materializes in the UA. However, for me that is not enough. Don't get me wrong, it's an idea I like and I hope to see it in the final design of the warriors. Even so, that doesn't solve the main problem that warriors have, in my opinion, which is the lack of options in combat and, therefore, the limited decisions that they will have to make. That, IMO, is what makes warriors boring in combat.
On the other hand, if the decisions that a warrior can make are going to be based on changing weapons (that is, since each weapon will have a property, when changing from a mace to a spear, you would add a different effect), then I don't like the design. Yes, you will be able to make decisions, which is what I was asking for. But that design is lazy and not very immersive (except for some subclass whose flavour is precisely that of having the right weapon for each situation). But having warriors generally switch weapons as needed is, narratively, weird to say the least. For that it is much better to give them maneuvers, which is much more immersive. And then leave the effect for his specialist weapon.
Maneuvers really aren't as interesting as they look on paper. Most Battlemasters I've played with or DMed end up using only one or two of them. It's like the Smite spells, lots of options there that nobody uses.
But that's up to the player, right? I mean, there are also wizards who just shoot fireballs.
In any case, the maneuvers have to be designed to be useful. Then, if the player decides that he's only going to use one because it works best with his playstyle, great. He is already making that decision.
I have never played a battlemaster, but in my games I have DM one and it did different things depending on the situation. He would throw it to the ground so that another player would use Tasha's whip and have to lose a turn getting up. He would scare a monster so that he couldn't get out of a damaged area (with Sickening Radiance, for example). Taunt enemies to protect his companions. Etc... That fighter felt like a caster. The same player, in another game, played a Rune Knight, and he also felt like a caster. Instead, I played with another player whose battlemaster was all he did was the precise hit. That is up to the player and how he wants to play. You don't have to go into that, everyone plays as they want. But WoTC should give you options to use if you want, IMO.
The actual flexibility of maneuvers can be overrated, but a lot of the problem is that many of the maneuvers are either redundant or garbage. Still, the list of maneuvers that seem potentially useful to me is probably
Used it myself on my warlock. You come in, kill the first guy, use his blood to summon the demon into the crowd or next to the most annoying enemy, then run away, close the door, and wait until the screaming stops and you see a stream of blood flowing from under the door. 'twas fun. Not a bread-and butter daily use spell, but it was effective, and damn did I feel like an actual warlock.
How about people stay on topic instead of continuosly veering off to talk about specific subclasses or spells?
Isn't the point of this thread to discuss actual ways to rebalance Martials in contrast to Spellcasters?
I think it would help to better refine what we mean by "Spellcaster" as well. For instance, are particular classes of Spellcaster far "better" than Martials? Is it every Spellcaster? And in what ways are the imbalances in design most blatant?
It's difficult to discuss the merits of a maneuver system without discussing the only official maneuver system we have, which is tied to a specific subclass.
I'd say most people are thinking of full (9th-level) casters when they use that term. Technically a Four Elements Monk is a spellcaster too, but I don't think most people are worried about their power level being too high.
When you say "9th level," do you mean 9th level spell slots for full spellcasters? Does a Warlock count for your definition of a full caster?
Whether or not the Battlemaster subclass is relevant depends first on defining the "problem" that we are trying to resolve, assuming that one exists. Without first defining the problem in concrete terms, what hope is there in coming to any kind of agreement? Or are we just here to argue with one another for the sake of arguing?
1) Yes - I know that Mystic Arcanum are not spell slots in the strictest sense, but they're close enough for Warlocks to be considered a fullcaster in my eyes (and I would wager, most other people's.)
2) Also yes 😛 but less facetiously, I agree that the "problem" is ill-defined.
The major offenders in 5e are bard, cleric, druid, and wizard, but One D&D, with its unified lists and making everyone into prepared spellcasters, is moving in the wrong direction, because the big issue is flexibility; it's not so much that any one spell is overpowered, it's that they have such a massive toolkit of options.
If it is purely flexibility that is the issue, wouldn't just giving all martials a feat /ASI every 2 levels instead of every 4 levels essentially solve this? Players can then choose whether they want to say simple and just max out their stats and pick passive feats, or if they want tons of combat options, or if they want tons of utility options.
E.g.
Social Martial: Fey Touched (Charm Person + Misty Step), Shadow Touched (Disguise Self + Invisibility), Actor, Linguist, Skill Expert
Utility Martial: Magic Initiate (Find Familiar, Mage Hand, Minor Illusion), Ritual Caster, Telepathic, Skulker, Shadow Touched (Silent Image + Invisibility)
Battlefield Control Martial: Skill Expert (Athletics), Shield Master, Crusher, Sentinel, Martial Adept, Fighting Initiate (superiority dice fighting style).