are the Mages and Experts not fairly aligned with the Warriors in terms of DPR? Do the mages not exceed the warriors in terms of DPR at some point? Some people argue that they are and do; I don't have any concrete evidence either way, but my anecdotal experience tells me that everyone is roughly even, especially so once you remove the Great Weapon Master and Sharp-Shooter optimisers from the mix.
See this is where I don't get it, because having just finished a campaign at level 17 with a party of a Paladin, Ranger (Sharpshooter), Bard, Cleric, and Rogue (with a Warlock dip) I would say we weren't even close in terms of DPR, in our big climatic ending battles the Paladin had an average DPR ~50, the Rogue ~40, the Ranger ~50, the Cleric ~10, the Bard ~20.
staves, wands, robes, scrolls, Circlets of Intellect, Pearls of Power, Rings of Spell Storing -- they all provide just as much benefit as the + X weapon and armour the martials get. Beneficial Magical Items are hardly unique to the Fighter, and they hardly benefit the Fighter drastically more than the Wizard.
How are they even close to the same? Circlets of Intellect are pointless beyond level 8 b/c the wizard has upped their INT to 20 using ASIs. I've never once seen an INT caster using a Circlet of Intellect b/c they always max their INT as soon as possible. A Pearl of Power for 1 extra 3rd level spell a day is nowhere close to a +2 weapon that gives a boost on average 3 damage per attack, or a Flametongue with it's +7 damage on every hit. Rings of Spell Storing likewise only give a caster 1 extra good spell (level 3+) per day they are usually more powerful when given to a martial than to a caster. The main "power" stat for a caster is their spell DC which (until WotC lost their mind in Tasha's) there was no way to increase with magic items, casters could only get more flexibility from magic items granting them additional castings of different spells but in terms of DPR with their biggest spells magic items to zilch.
Peerless: When you make a check using Strength, Dexterity or Constitution you may spend x amount of Stamina points to treat the skill check as if the die had rolled a 20.
Relentless Endurance: You may spend y amount (or all of your remaining?) Stamina to clear 1 level of exhaustion. (make berserker barbarians great again!)
I can do this all day: You may spend z amount of Stamina to be reduced to 1 hitpoint when you would otherwise fall unconscious.
Shock-Absorbent Skeleton: When you take fall damage, you may spend k amount of Stamina to gain resistance to the fall's damage.
See I stand by my "just give martials tons of feats" design because that would give martials tons of customization for whatever that particular player cares most about, add in a few more 1/day feats for your super-hero options for those who want an anime faux-caster martial while fantastical-realists can take the always-on feats that are more reasonable. TBH I think I'm going to write a HB Anime supplement book for DMsGuild so the wheeboos can get their fix without turning the whole game into over-the-top silliness.
The core problem is that balancing martials vs mages requires either taking a large nerf bat to mages or having superhero level martial characters, you simply can't do it with people who are limited to 'realistic'.
This is more obvious when you consider that Barbarian and Monk are already built like comic-book characters with ridiculous abilities. Unstoppable (yet naked) ragebeasts hulking out to smash things and nimble, wall-running folk in robes using their mystical punch powers...
So I think it could stand to reason that Fighters and Rogues and Rangers (do we include Rangers in all this?) could do just fine with less-mundane anime powers. They could even still be kept "simple" in terms of play, just a little less tied to "gritty" "realism" (which is usually neither gritty nor realistic anyway).
See I stand by my "just give martials tons of feats" design because that would give martials tons of customization for whatever that particular player cares most about, add in a few more 1/day feats for your super-hero options for those who want an anime faux-caster martial while fantastical-realists can take the always-on feats that are more reasonable. TBH I think I'm going to write a HB Anime supplement book for DMsGuild so the wheeboos can get their fix without turning the whole game into over-the-top silliness.
I like your idea, but not the same, "THIS" every 2 levels? no, something in between, that the warriors, monks and barbarians (together with some specific subclass of rogue, ranger and/or paladin.) , have a special trait at level 4: (NOT ACCUMULABLE, as an extra attack.)
Intense Training: Every time you get a Feat, or an EPIC BOON, your character chooses to gain an additional +1 to Strength, Constitution, or Agility, having a maximum of 20.
In this way, being a monoclass, at level 20 considering that he always chose the increase in characteristics, he would raise about 18 points, compared to the 12 that another class will get, thus making it easier for the warrior classes to be able to maximize 2 or 3 characteristics more easily (Thing which for example, the monks need, since he needs to have high multiple stats: agility, construction and wisdom.) , or getting 3 extra feats without slowing down the increase of his stats, allowing him more options and complexity if he wants it.
This, along with other improvements to those classified as warriors, will maintain the possibility of keeping it simple, but it makes it easier to have options and become more complex if the player needs it. You'll also be able to pass this benefit on to other class augments with ease, but it wouldn't be easily exploitable (Because it is at level 4, or higher if it is adopted in some subclasses.) for multiple multiclasses that only take a level or two of various classes just to abuse certain trait combinations.
This extra is limited only to physical characteristics, but any other improvement would not be tied to that restriction, being able to maximize the mental ones, without neglecting the physical ones for this trait.
Martials are Vin Deisel with white T shirts that never get dirty. They can jump from a 75mph vehicle flying through the air and take no damage because they rolled with it (T shirt still perfectly white).
I much prefer things like this that are, shall we say, 'mundanely fantastic' -- not realistically something you or I could do, but something that is almost realistic -- as opposed to being blatantly fantastical, like jumping 400ft, or swinging your non-magical sword so fast it ignites the air, or things of that nature. And even better, the mundanely fantastic things are much easier to implement, too; an idea I have had kicking around in my brain recently was simply giving all martials a way to interact with skill checks, not simply the experts, and before you say it, no this is not going to step on the experts toes.
D&D is already far past mundanely fantastic for its martials its just that people put blinders on. A fighter can take the unarmed fighting style and then proceed to punch a 50 ton armored lizard to death.(as an aside dragons really should have some physical DR and immunity, and maybe have DR/Immunity overcome my player level not magic items, something like immunity 20, if you are level 20 you ignore it, level 15-19 it acts as DR, below 15 it is immune to your attacks) The force required to leap 400 feet is almost certainly less than the force required to punch a dragon and hurt it. But people just pretend its mundane. As a viable strategy you can literally wade through lava to attack a enemy in melee because you didn't want to use your weaker ranged attacks and then take a short one hour nap and be perfectly fine. You can skydive without a parachute multiple times a day. A halfling fighter can roll into a large creatures space and then punch it 15 feet into the air. The list of where the standard mundane fighter is well past mundanely fantastical is long.
And people seem willing to accept sub classes that are clearly magical like rune knight for the fighter, why is it a stretch that there are beyond mundanely fantastic options baked into the class that a player can choose to take or not take.
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?
Ever since this thread started, it has constantly been veering off-topic and has spun into areas that are completely unrelated to its premace.
The problem here is that this thread has been revived so many times, people have no idea of the context of what was happening when it arose. Less than a month before this conversation began, we had started a discussion on the Martial Vs. Caster disparity and how severe people thought it was. That thread was started so that people could better understand the imbalance that needed to be addressed and be on the same page about it.
The constant death and revival of this thread has obscured the fact that, according to data from the linked discussion, most people on these forums talking about this issue seem to think at least one of the following:
Casters are far better in terms of utility.
Casters are usually better at certain tiers of play.
Everything can vary by group, style of play, and Dungeon Master.
People are divided on a lot of the other facts. And just to reiterate, some people only believe some of these statements and not all.
Generally, I have seen people treating Wizards as one of the worst offenders here.
The core problem is that balancing martials vs mages requires either taking a large nerf bat to mages or having superhero level martial characters, you simply can't do it with people who are limited to 'realistic'.
Does it though? As I have stated numerous times, I do not see why martials cannot maintain some level of realism while being powerful.
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Honestly, as I've said before, I don't think martials need this kind of extended "power" spread as a core feature: by definition, a martial class is one that is oriented on physical combat. Trying to give them something approaching caster or expert level utility on top of it is giving them a second slice of the pie.
If casters and experts can do combat (which they can), martial characters should be able to do things other than combat. In any case, pigeonholing characters like that is bad game design -- a character should have a useful role in most scenes, because if they don't, the player is highly likely to tune out until the next scene comes up where they have a role.
Honestly, as I've said before, I don't think martials need this kind of extended "power" spread as a core feature: by definition, a martial class is one that is oriented on physical combat. Trying to give them something approaching caster or expert level utility on top of it is giving them a second slice of the pie.
If casters and experts can do combat (which they can), martial characters should be able to do things other than combat. In any case, pigeonholing characters like that is bad game design -- a character should have a useful role in most scenes, because if they don't, the player is highly likely to tune out until the next scene comes up where they have a role.
Casters and experts can do combat, but they don't perform quite so well in it as martials, that's the point. Fighter, Monk, and Barbarian have a lot more core class features dedicated to supporting combat than others.
And no, a single character should not have a useful role in "most" scenes. The point of having a diverse party is so that everyone's character will shine in different scenes. An expert is supposed to outshine the other party members when it comes to making skill checks, and a caster is supposed to be better at causing large scale changes to the environment. And a martial is supposed to specialize in pounding the enemy's face in. Not saying they can't have any skill boosting or environment altering features, but they are objectively supposed to be a step or two down the ladder from experts and casters in those fields.
Casters and experts can do combat, but they don't perform quite so well in it as martials, that's the point. Fighter, Monk, and Barbarian have a lot more core class features dedicated to supporting combat than others.
I'd be fine with martial characters having, say, 75% of the utility of casters and experts, mirroring the moderate reduction in combat capability of those classes... but martial classes are nowhere near 75%.
And no, a single character should not have a useful role in "most" scenes. The point of having a diverse party is so that everyone's character will shine in different scenes.
'Useful' does not mean 'starring'. It means 'the party is meaningfully better off with this character actively involved'.
'Useful' does not mean 'starring'. It means 'the party is meaningfully better off with this character actively involved'.
Personally, from my experience D&D doesn't lend itself to big collaborative stuff you're indicating that often. If a skill check is called for, you have the person with the highest modifier roll for it. Possibly someone uses Help, but that's subject to DM regulation. If a spell is called for, whoever has the spell does their thing. Now, there's still roleplay and such to consider, but that's at least as much outside the scope of class features as within.
The party is "meaningfully better off" with a Martial character specifically when it comes to combat and breaking stuff. It's literally what "Martial/Warrior" indicates. Trying to turn them into a full-fledged superhero on top of that is pushing pretty far, imo.
No, but you answered. The core problem is that balancing martials vs mages requires either taking a large nerf bat to mages or having superhero level martial characters, you simply can't do it with people who are limited to 'realistic'.
No - the core problem is that nobody can agree on what the core problem even is, much less how to fix it. What exactly does "balancing martials vs. mages" even mean to you? Should they be capable of exactly the same things? Should you be able to swing your sword and raise the dead, or summon a demon, or possess the king, or create a demiplane? How do you justify that in-fiction?
Why, you can dimension door for 400 feet, why shouldn't someone have the ability to leap that far twice a short rest like a warlock can dimension door twice a short rest. You want a magic infused martial you take the great leap, you don't want a magic infused martial you don't.
Dimension Door is fueled by spell slots, jumping isn't. If you want every single class in the game to have spell slots, 4th edition still exists.
No, but you answered. The core problem is that balancing martials vs mages requires either taking a large nerf bat to mages or having superhero level martial characters, you simply can't do it with people who are limited to 'realistic'.
No - the core problem is that nobody can agree on what the core problem even is, much less how to fix it. What exactly does "balancing martials vs. mages" even mean to you? Should they be capable of exactly the same things? Should you be able to swing your sword and raise the dead, or summon a demon, or possess the king, or create a demiplane? How do you justify that in-fiction?
Why, you can dimension door for 400 feet, why shouldn't someone have the ability to leap that far twice a short rest like a warlock can dimension door twice a short rest. You want a magic infused martial you take the great leap, you don't want a magic infused martial you don't.
Dimension Door is fueled by spell slots, jumping isn't. If you want every single class in the game to have spell slots, 4th edition still exists.
You should expand you fiction. I constantly watch things were characters say they barely noticed or couldn’t see a person’s move because how fast they were. In action movies normal people have achieved jumps that are impossible. It’s all fiction, it’s all cartoonish. It’s only explaination is that it is fiction.
No, but you answered. The core problem is that balancing martials vs mages requires either taking a large nerf bat to mages or having superhero level martial characters, you simply can't do it with people who are limited to 'realistic'.
No - the core problem is that nobody can agree on what the core problem even is, much less how to fix it. What exactly does "balancing martials vs. mages" even mean to you? Should they be capable of exactly the same things? Should you be able to swing your sword and raise the dead, or summon a demon, or possess the king, or create a demiplane? How do you justify that in-fiction?
Why, you can dimension door for 400 feet, why shouldn't someone have the ability to leap that far twice a short rest like a warlock can dimension door twice a short rest. You want a magic infused martial you take the great leap, you don't want a magic infused martial you don't.
Dimension Door is fueled by spell slots, jumping isn't. If you want every single class in the game to have spell slots, 4th edition still exists.
You should expand you fiction. I constantly watch things were characters say they barely noticed or couldn’t see a person’s move because how fast they were. In action movies normal people have achieved jumps that are impossible. It’s all fiction, it’s all cartoonish. It’s only explaination is that it is fiction.
We're already pushing the limits of a real human in 5e. Even if you set aside the way everyone tanks damage until it kills them, there's a lot of the other baseline physical stuff. You ever tried hauling around over 100 lbs of anything for an extended period of time? It ain't easy. And a baseline STR character can haul half again that much all day every day. And deadlifting is twice carrying capacity. That's 300 lbs. on that baseline character. Your average 16 STR starting martial can deadlift 480 lbs. It does drop your speed to 5 ft, but still. The idea that martials aren't already doing ridiculous feats compared to reality is simply wrong.
That said, we don't need to make martials into DBZ characters, leaping 100's of feat in a single bound and shattering boulders effortlessly. This circles back to the issue of them cutting in too much on the action of casters, gross manipulation of the environment. And I believe "in-fiction" meant "in-universe", not "in the entirety of fiction".
No, but you answered. The core problem is that balancing martials vs mages requires either taking a large nerf bat to mages or having superhero level martial characters, you simply can't do it with people who are limited to 'realistic'.
No - the core problem is that nobody can agree on what the core problem even is, much less how to fix it. What exactly does "balancing martials vs. mages" even mean to you? Should they be capable of exactly the same things? Should you be able to swing your sword and raise the dead, or summon a demon, or possess the king, or create a demiplane? How do you justify that in-fiction?
Why, you can dimension door for 400 feet, why shouldn't someone have the ability to leap that far twice a short rest like a warlock can dimension door twice a short rest. You want a magic infused martial you take the great leap, you don't want a magic infused martial you don't.
Dimension Door is fueled by spell slots, jumping isn't. If you want every single class in the game to have spell slots, 4th edition still exists.
You should expand you fiction. I constantly watch things were characters say they barely noticed or couldn’t see a person’s move because how fast they were. In action movies normal people have achieved jumps that are impossible. It’s all fiction, it’s all cartoonish. It’s only explaination is that it is fiction.
We're already pushing the limits of a real human in 5e. Even if you set aside the way everyone tanks damage until it kills them, there's a lot of the other baseline physical stuff. You ever tried hauling around over 100 lbs of anything for an extended period of time? It ain't easy. And a baseline STR character can haul half again that much all day every day. And deadlifting is twice carrying capacity. That's 300 lbs. on that baseline character. Your average 16 STR starting martial can deadlift 480 lbs. It does drop your speed to 5 ft, but still. The idea that martials aren't already doing ridiculous feats compared to reality is simply wrong.
That said, we don't need to make martials into DBZ characters, leaping 100's of feat in a single bound and shattering boulders effortlessly. This circles back to the issue of them cutting in too much on the action of casters, gross manipulation of the environment. And I believe "in-fiction" meant "in-universe", not "in the entirety of fiction".
Notice everything you named a spellcaster does as well as a martial. So what you want is a heavy nerf to casters to create any semblance of balance. Got it.
Honestly, as I've said before, I don't think martials need this kind of extended "power" spread as a core feature: by definition, a martial class is one that is oriented on physical combat. Trying to give them something approaching caster or expert level utility on top of it is giving them a second slice of the pie.
If casters and experts can do combat (which they can), martial characters should be able to do things other than combat. In any case, pigeonholing characters like that is bad game design -- a character should have a useful role in most scenes, because if they don't, the player is highly likely to tune out until the next scene comes up where they have a role.
What are you talking about? In a conversation with an NPC it is impractical to have all 6 players talking at the same time, it is just much smoother if one person takes the lead as "the face". But that doesn't mean the other players aren't engaged, usually they are taking notes to the party can refer back to the conversation later, they are also listening or checking their old notes to put together what is going on and may jump in to HELP "the face" if they piece together the motivation of the NPC before the main speaker does.
In a puzzle scene everyone is thinking about the puzzle / environmental challenge and trying to think of possible solutions even if that solution is suggesting to another character to use one of their abilities to solve it, or they are trying different thinks to figure out what the challenge even is. Just because you aren't the one rolling the dice or spending the spellslot doesn't mean you weren't involved in creating the solution. I mean... do you guys seriously just sit there and wait for a spellcaster in the party to solve all your problems? What if the spellcaster doesn't want to spend the spellslot to do so or didn't prepare the right spell, do you just sit there indefinitely stuck?
IME there are only 2 instances where players tune out: (1) shopping scenes while one player spend 30 minutes asking about 12 different items and debating what to buy. (2) scouting scenes where a familiar spends 20 minutes slowly mapping out the entire enemy base one room at a time. Both of these are easily solvable by DMs, by (1) moving this to a between-session activity, (2) just giving players the whole map without forcing them to play through it / killing or blocking the familiar.
For that matter... in your games do you really totally rely on mechanics in every scene? Because that has not been my experience of D&D, in lots of scenes we might roll a die maybe 2 or 3 times but most of the scene is just us RPing with each other, planning, or exploring / asking questions, and the DM is more likely to provide a key detail if we specify a particular thing we do or ask the right question (e.g. "look under the drawers to check for a hidden key") than if we "Look around for clues" and roll a couple of points higher on an Investigation check.
Why, you can dimension door for 400 feet, why shouldn't someone have the ability to leap that far twice a short rest like a warlock can dimension door twice a short rest. You want a magic infused martial you take the great leap, you don't want a magic infused martial you don't.
Dimension Door is fueled by spell slots, jumping isn't. If you want every single class in the game to have spell slots, 4th edition still exists.
The battlemaster fighter has per short rest maneuvers, those aren't spells. My point is you can have per rest maneuvers handle things like this. Like I said copy the mechanics behind the warlock. There is a reason a lot of people think of the warlock as really a magic archer class. Its mechanics line up fairly solidly with how a martial can work. Base line solid attack. Enhancements to that attack. Powerful per short rest maneuvers, end game high end once per day maneuvers. If the 5e the warlock did not exist and they had re-flavored it as the fighter no one would question it being martial or a spell any more than they do the battle master maneuvers.
Why, you can dimension door for 400 feet, why shouldn't someone have the ability to leap that far twice a short rest like a warlock can dimension door twice a short rest. You want a magic infused martial you take the great leap, you don't want a magic infused martial you don't.
Dimension Door is fueled by spell slots, jumping isn't. If you want every single class in the game to have spell slots, 4th edition still exists.
The battlemaster fighter has per short rest maneuvers, those aren't spells. My point is you can have per rest maneuvers handle things like this. Like I said copy the mechanics behind the warlock. There is a reason a lot of people think of the warlock as really a magic archer class. Its mechanics line up fairly solidly with how a martial can work. Base line solid attack. Enhancements to that attack. Powerful per short rest maneuvers, end game high end once per day maneuvers. If when 5e the warlock did not exist and they had re-flavored it as the fighter no one would question it being martial or a spell any more than they do the battle master maneuvers.
Battlemaster maneuvers are markedly less powerful than spells. Warlocks, on the other hand, get access to the full repertoire of spellcasting capabilities. People would absolutely be calling this hypothetical "martial" class out if it had access to the equivalents of 9th level spells. And, again, this hypothetical parity ignores the effects a lot of magic items can have on martials that have no parallels for casters.
Why, you can dimension door for 400 feet, why shouldn't someone have the ability to leap that far twice a short rest like a warlock can dimension door twice a short rest. You want a magic infused martial you take the great leap, you don't want a magic infused martial you don't.
Dimension Door is fueled by spell slots, jumping isn't. If you want every single class in the game to have spell slots, 4th edition still exists.
The battlemaster fighter has per short rest maneuvers, those aren't spells. My point is you can have per rest maneuvers handle things like this. Like I said copy the mechanics behind the warlock. There is a reason a lot of people think of the warlock as really a magic archer class. Its mechanics line up fairly solidly with how a martial can work. Base line solid attack. Enhancements to that attack. Powerful per short rest maneuvers, end game high end once per day maneuvers. If when 5e the warlock did not exist and they had re-flavored it as the fighter no one would question it being martial or a spell any more than they do the battle master maneuvers.
Battlemaster maneuvers are markedly less powerful than spells. Warlocks, on the other hand, get access to the full repertoire of spellcasting capabilities. People would absolutely be calling this hypothetical "martial" class out if it had access to the equivalents of 9th level spells. And, again, this hypothetical parity ignores the effects a lot of magic items can have on martials that have no parallels for casters.
Yes, battlemaster maneuvers are less powerful and without heavy weapon mastery etc that would be a issue. But if they were getting their power here and not from feats the maneuvers could be upscaled quite a bit. And if the 9th level effect was shape change, or something else really hard to reflavor into a martial maneuver sure. If the powerful effect was power word kill or foresight, not likely. And assuming you were designing classes to be balanced without magic items you should be designing the magic items in a way that was balanced as well and not as a patch for poorly designed classes.
I agree that all classes should be at least somewhat useful in all pillars of play. I believe that warriors and other non-spellcasters need more support in this regard. And one of the common complaints I see about martials is that their skill checks pale when spells can easily be used to bypass roles altogether.
However, I'm not sure that an individual character should be useful in most outside-of-combat situations. This could lead to chaos and having too much overlap might make players feel like that they aren't able to do anything special, which would be the opposite of every class being interesting outside of combat.
Why, you can dimension door for 400 feet, why shouldn't someone have the ability to leap that far twice a short rest like a warlock can dimension door twice a short rest. You want a magic infused martial you take the great leap, you don't want a magic infused martial you don't.
Dimension Door is fueled by spell slots, jumping isn't. If you want every single class in the game to have spell slots, 4th edition still exists.
The battlemaster fighter has per short rest maneuvers, those aren't spells. My point is you can have per rest maneuvers handle things like this. Like I said copy the mechanics behind the warlock. There is a reason a lot of people think of the warlock as really a magic archer class. Its mechanics line up fairly solidly with how a martial can work. Base line solid attack. Enhancements to that attack. Powerful per short rest maneuvers, end game high end once per day maneuvers. If when 5e the warlock did not exist and they had re-flavored it as the fighter no one would question it being martial or a spell any more than they do the battle master maneuvers.
Battlemaster maneuvers are markedly less powerful than spells. Warlocks, on the other hand, get access to the full repertoire of spellcasting capabilities. People would absolutely be calling this hypothetical "martial" class out if it had access to the equivalents of 9th level spells. And, again, this hypothetical parity ignores the effects a lot of magic items can have on martials that have no parallels for casters.
While I will argue that spells are spells and there is no need to nerf them there are some spells that are good examples of how to write up a good high power once per long rest Martial maneuver. Steel Wind Strike- is a decent example. Instead of force damage it does weapon damage and uses weapon attacks. The range should be your movement speed.
Flash Step Strikes- Range- movement speed. As an action with a burst of adrenaline you move around the battle field with near undetectable speed delivering strikes that are unavoidable. Make a melee weapon attack against each target of your choice with in range every creature hit takes weapon damage + 2x (Str or Dex) any creature missed with the attack roll takes half the damage. You may only target a creature or object once. You end this attack in the same place you started or next to a target you hit with the attack roll (your choice). If you end this attack in the air or on a surface that can not support you then you fall or sink unless you have an ability not to.
Maybe instead of making it once per long rest, it’s once for free per long rest. If you choose to do it again roll a d4 after the attack and gain a number of levels of exhaustion equal the roll. This only works with the one dnd version of exhaustion. This would be terrible with the current exhaustion rules, or rather it would be a literal last resort.
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See this is where I don't get it, because having just finished a campaign at level 17 with a party of a Paladin, Ranger (Sharpshooter), Bard, Cleric, and Rogue (with a Warlock dip) I would say we weren't even close in terms of DPR, in our big climatic ending battles the Paladin had an average DPR ~50, the Rogue ~40, the Ranger ~50, the Cleric ~10, the Bard ~20.
How are they even close to the same? Circlets of Intellect are pointless beyond level 8 b/c the wizard has upped their INT to 20 using ASIs. I've never once seen an INT caster using a Circlet of Intellect b/c they always max their INT as soon as possible. A Pearl of Power for 1 extra 3rd level spell a day is nowhere close to a +2 weapon that gives a boost on average 3 damage per attack, or a Flametongue with it's +7 damage on every hit. Rings of Spell Storing likewise only give a caster 1 extra good spell (level 3+) per day they are usually more powerful when given to a martial than to a caster. The main "power" stat for a caster is their spell DC which (until WotC lost their mind in Tasha's) there was no way to increase with magic items, casters could only get more flexibility from magic items granting them additional castings of different spells but in terms of DPR with their biggest spells magic items to zilch.
See I stand by my "just give martials tons of feats" design because that would give martials tons of customization for whatever that particular player cares most about, add in a few more 1/day feats for your super-hero options for those who want an anime faux-caster martial while fantastical-realists can take the always-on feats that are more reasonable. TBH I think I'm going to write a HB Anime supplement book for DMsGuild so the wheeboos can get their fix without turning the whole game into over-the-top silliness.
This is more obvious when you consider that Barbarian and Monk are already built like comic-book characters with ridiculous abilities. Unstoppable (yet naked) ragebeasts hulking out to smash things and nimble, wall-running folk in robes using their mystical punch powers...
So I think it could stand to reason that Fighters and Rogues and Rangers (do we include Rangers in all this?) could do just fine with less-mundane anime powers. They could even still be kept "simple" in terms of play, just a little less tied to "gritty" "realism" (which is usually neither gritty nor realistic anyway).
I like your idea, but not the same, "THIS" every 2 levels? no, something in between, that the warriors, monks and barbarians (together with some specific subclass of rogue, ranger and/or paladin.) , have a special trait at level 4: (NOT ACCUMULABLE, as an extra attack.)
Intense Training: Every time you get a Feat, or an EPIC BOON, your character chooses to gain an additional +1 to Strength, Constitution, or Agility, having a maximum of 20.
In this way, being a monoclass, at level 20 considering that he always chose the increase in characteristics, he would raise about 18 points, compared to the 12 that another class will get, thus making it easier for the warrior classes to be able to maximize 2 or 3 characteristics more easily (Thing which for example, the monks need, since he needs to have high multiple stats: agility, construction and wisdom.) , or getting 3 extra feats without slowing down the increase of his stats, allowing him more options and complexity if he wants it.
This, along with other improvements to those classified as warriors, will maintain the possibility of keeping it simple, but it makes it easier to have options and become more complex if the player needs it. You'll also be able to pass this benefit on to other class augments with ease, but it wouldn't be easily exploitable (Because it is at level 4, or higher if it is adopted in some subclasses.) for multiple multiclasses that only take a level or two of various classes just to abuse certain trait combinations.
This extra is limited only to physical characteristics, but any other improvement would not be tied to that restriction, being able to maximize the mental ones, without neglecting the physical ones for this trait.
D&D is already far past mundanely fantastic for its martials its just that people put blinders on. A fighter can take the unarmed fighting style and then proceed to punch a 50 ton armored lizard to death.(as an aside dragons really should have some physical DR and immunity, and maybe have DR/Immunity overcome my player level not magic items, something like immunity 20, if you are level 20 you ignore it, level 15-19 it acts as DR, below 15 it is immune to your attacks) The force required to leap 400 feet is almost certainly less than the force required to punch a dragon and hurt it. But people just pretend its mundane. As a viable strategy you can literally wade through lava to attack a enemy in melee because you didn't want to use your weaker ranged attacks and then take a short one hour nap and be perfectly fine. You can skydive without a parachute multiple times a day. A halfling fighter can roll into a large creatures space and then punch it 15 feet into the air. The list of where the standard mundane fighter is well past mundanely fantastical is long.
And people seem willing to accept sub classes that are clearly magical like rune knight for the fighter, why is it a stretch that there are beyond mundanely fantastic options baked into the class that a player can choose to take or not take.
Ever since this thread started, it has constantly been veering off-topic and has spun into areas that are completely unrelated to its premace.
The problem here is that this thread has been revived so many times, people have no idea of the context of what was happening when it arose. Less than a month before this conversation began, we had started a discussion on the Martial Vs. Caster disparity and how severe people thought it was. That thread was started so that people could better understand the imbalance that needed to be addressed and be on the same page about it.
The constant death and revival of this thread has obscured the fact that, according to data from the linked discussion, most people on these forums talking about this issue seem to think at least one of the following:
Generally, I have seen people treating Wizards as one of the worst offenders here.
Does it though? As I have stated numerous times, I do not see why martials cannot maintain some level of realism while being powerful.
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HERE.If casters and experts can do combat (which they can), martial characters should be able to do things other than combat. In any case, pigeonholing characters like that is bad game design -- a character should have a useful role in most scenes, because if they don't, the player is highly likely to tune out until the next scene comes up where they have a role.
Casters and experts can do combat, but they don't perform quite so well in it as martials, that's the point. Fighter, Monk, and Barbarian have a lot more core class features dedicated to supporting combat than others.
And no, a single character should not have a useful role in "most" scenes. The point of having a diverse party is so that everyone's character will shine in different scenes. An expert is supposed to outshine the other party members when it comes to making skill checks, and a caster is supposed to be better at causing large scale changes to the environment. And a martial is supposed to specialize in pounding the enemy's face in. Not saying they can't have any skill boosting or environment altering features, but they are objectively supposed to be a step or two down the ladder from experts and casters in those fields.
I'd be fine with martial characters having, say, 75% of the utility of casters and experts, mirroring the moderate reduction in combat capability of those classes... but martial classes are nowhere near 75%.
'Useful' does not mean 'starring'. It means 'the party is meaningfully better off with this character actively involved'.
Personally, from my experience D&D doesn't lend itself to big collaborative stuff you're indicating that often. If a skill check is called for, you have the person with the highest modifier roll for it. Possibly someone uses Help, but that's subject to DM regulation. If a spell is called for, whoever has the spell does their thing. Now, there's still roleplay and such to consider, but that's at least as much outside the scope of class features as within.
The party is "meaningfully better off" with a Martial character specifically when it comes to combat and breaking stuff. It's literally what "Martial/Warrior" indicates. Trying to turn them into a full-fledged superhero on top of that is pushing pretty far, imo.
No - the core problem is that nobody can agree on what the core problem even is, much less how to fix it. What exactly does "balancing martials vs. mages" even mean to you? Should they be capable of exactly the same things? Should you be able to swing your sword and raise the dead, or summon a demon, or possess the king, or create a demiplane? How do you justify that in-fiction?
1) I'm not opposed to martials throwing fireballs. Eldritch Knight and 4E Monk can both do that after all.
2) Fireball from a spell is pretty clearly explained in-fiction.
Dimension Door is fueled by spell slots, jumping isn't. If you want every single class in the game to have spell slots, 4th edition still exists.
You should expand you fiction. I constantly watch things were characters say they barely noticed or couldn’t see a person’s move because how fast they were. In action movies normal people have achieved jumps that are impossible. It’s all fiction, it’s all cartoonish. It’s only explaination is that it is fiction.
We're already pushing the limits of a real human in 5e. Even if you set aside the way everyone tanks damage until it kills them, there's a lot of the other baseline physical stuff. You ever tried hauling around over 100 lbs of anything for an extended period of time? It ain't easy. And a baseline STR character can haul half again that much all day every day. And deadlifting is twice carrying capacity. That's 300 lbs. on that baseline character. Your average 16 STR starting martial can deadlift 480 lbs. It does drop your speed to 5 ft, but still. The idea that martials aren't already doing ridiculous feats compared to reality is simply wrong.
That said, we don't need to make martials into DBZ characters, leaping 100's of feat in a single bound and shattering boulders effortlessly. This circles back to the issue of them cutting in too much on the action of casters, gross manipulation of the environment. And I believe "in-fiction" meant "in-universe", not "in the entirety of fiction".
Notice everything you named a spellcaster does as well as a martial. So what you want is a heavy nerf to casters to create any semblance of balance. Got it.
What are you talking about? In a conversation with an NPC it is impractical to have all 6 players talking at the same time, it is just much smoother if one person takes the lead as "the face". But that doesn't mean the other players aren't engaged, usually they are taking notes to the party can refer back to the conversation later, they are also listening or checking their old notes to put together what is going on and may jump in to HELP "the face" if they piece together the motivation of the NPC before the main speaker does.
In a puzzle scene everyone is thinking about the puzzle / environmental challenge and trying to think of possible solutions even if that solution is suggesting to another character to use one of their abilities to solve it, or they are trying different thinks to figure out what the challenge even is. Just because you aren't the one rolling the dice or spending the spellslot doesn't mean you weren't involved in creating the solution. I mean... do you guys seriously just sit there and wait for a spellcaster in the party to solve all your problems? What if the spellcaster doesn't want to spend the spellslot to do so or didn't prepare the right spell, do you just sit there indefinitely stuck?
IME there are only 2 instances where players tune out: (1) shopping scenes while one player spend 30 minutes asking about 12 different items and debating what to buy. (2) scouting scenes where a familiar spends 20 minutes slowly mapping out the entire enemy base one room at a time. Both of these are easily solvable by DMs, by (1) moving this to a between-session activity, (2) just giving players the whole map without forcing them to play through it / killing or blocking the familiar.
For that matter... in your games do you really totally rely on mechanics in every scene? Because that has not been my experience of D&D, in lots of scenes we might roll a die maybe 2 or 3 times but most of the scene is just us RPing with each other, planning, or exploring / asking questions, and the DM is more likely to provide a key detail if we specify a particular thing we do or ask the right question (e.g. "look under the drawers to check for a hidden key") than if we "Look around for clues" and roll a couple of points higher on an Investigation check.
The battlemaster fighter has per short rest maneuvers, those aren't spells. My point is you can have per rest maneuvers handle things like this. Like I said copy the mechanics behind the warlock. There is a reason a lot of people think of the warlock as really a magic archer class. Its mechanics line up fairly solidly with how a martial can work. Base line solid attack. Enhancements to that attack. Powerful per short rest maneuvers, end game high end once per day maneuvers. If the 5e the warlock did not exist and they had re-flavored it as the fighter no one would question it being martial or a spell any more than they do the battle master maneuvers.
Battlemaster maneuvers are markedly less powerful than spells. Warlocks, on the other hand, get access to the full repertoire of spellcasting capabilities. People would absolutely be calling this hypothetical "martial" class out if it had access to the equivalents of 9th level spells. And, again, this hypothetical parity ignores the effects a lot of magic items can have on martials that have no parallels for casters.
Yes, battlemaster maneuvers are less powerful and without heavy weapon mastery etc that would be a issue. But if they were getting their power here and not from feats the maneuvers could be upscaled quite a bit. And if the 9th level effect was shape change, or something else really hard to reflavor into a martial maneuver sure. If the powerful effect was power word kill or foresight, not likely. And assuming you were designing classes to be balanced without magic items you should be designing the magic items in a way that was balanced as well and not as a patch for poorly designed classes.
I agree that all classes should be at least somewhat useful in all pillars of play. I believe that warriors and other non-spellcasters need more support in this regard. And one of the common complaints I see about martials is that their skill checks pale when spells can easily be used to bypass roles altogether.
However, I'm not sure that an individual character should be useful in most outside-of-combat situations. This could lead to chaos and having too much overlap might make players feel like that they aren't able to do anything special, which would be the opposite of every class being interesting outside of combat.
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HERE.While I will argue that spells are spells and there is no need to nerf them there are some spells that are good examples of how to write up a good high power once per long rest Martial maneuver.
Steel Wind Strike- is a decent example. Instead of force damage it does weapon damage and uses weapon attacks. The range should be your movement speed.
Flash Step Strikes- Range- movement speed. As an action with a burst of adrenaline you move around the battle field with near undetectable speed delivering strikes that are unavoidable. Make a melee weapon attack against each target of your choice with in range every creature hit takes weapon damage + 2x (Str or Dex) any creature missed with the attack roll takes half the damage. You may only target a creature or object once. You end this attack in the same place you started or next to a target you hit with the attack roll (your choice). If you end this attack in the air or on a surface that can not support you then you fall or sink unless you have an ability not to.
Maybe instead of making it once per long rest, it’s once for free per long rest. If you choose to do it again roll a d4 after the attack and gain a number of levels of exhaustion equal the roll. This only works with the one dnd version of exhaustion. This would be terrible with the current exhaustion rules, or rather it would be a literal last resort.