D&D 5E Are there too darn many spellcasters?

Spellcasters! They are everywhere.

Unless you run a straight barbarian and never multiclass you will get the option to become some degree of spellchucker in 5th edition. One thing I liked about 3.x was that an non-spellcaster had to chose some pretty specific things and develop in a specific way to join a prestige class (at the DMs approval) to become a spellcaster.

Now everyone can chose a class option and become a spellcaster and even the barbarian if he wants to can take the Mage Initiate feat and gain a some magic to throw around.

It is certainly not game breaking by any means but it is telling that every single new class that has been added since DnD was created way back when is some sort of spellcaster. Maybe it is just the easy way out compared to developing interesting and effective non-spell abilities in sufficient quantities for more non-magic classes.

Oh and to be fair I am a bit of a hypocrite. I loved 3.x psionics and wish they would hurry up and implement it properly in 5e.

You know what is even worse? It is IMPOSSIBLE to play a character who can't make weapon attacks. Boo!

Hate to break it to you, but Totem Warriors and Ancestral Guardians can cast spells too.

Yes.

At very least, there should have been more alternive types of casting. Like warlock.
Sorcerer's should have spell points for instance.


That said. I'd rather have more spellcasters, with interesting abilities, than more weapon users who simply say "I attack" every round.

I mean, 5 different classes get multi-attack, 3 classes have multi-attack as an option, rogues who still say "i attack" every turn, and clerics can get bonus weapon damage.
Only sorcerer's don't have a weapon option. Though there was at least one UA that had it.

The way I see it, why not allow it? It's easy enough to disallow something like Arcane Trickster if running a low magic game (or ban all of the primary casters and only allow magic via subclasses). But it makes it so that someone who wants a bit of magic for their rogue can do so without multiclassing, without the DM having to Homebrew an option.

IMO, D&D has never been a low magic game out of the box. Off the top of my head, I believe 6 of the 8 classes in the 2e PHB (not counting specialist wizards) had access to magic. 7 of 8 if you count the thief's ability to use scrolls.

I do not feel there are too many caster OPTIONS for players to CHOOSE from in campaigns where the GM PERMITS them.

That said i think it makes sense in a base ruleset for high fantasy to have a lot of different flavors of casters and i wish there were more differentiation in them. However i would not tend to want to make thst differing core tracking spells as much as i would like core process to be the same and diversity coming from spelllists and class features.

Now one thing about "too many" questions is it can vary campaign. The factof number of classes available has ittle to do with numbers seen in play.

I myself tend to take cues from the players choices. If they went caster heavy that sets the stage and if they went caster light, that sets another.

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Yes, there are too many, especially since we've been told magic is rare and special. Magic shops are discouraged and magic items have been reduced in number. Yes, I know players are not the majority, but the classes in your game tell you something important about the default assumptions of your game. Reading 5e classes make me think of a highly magical place like "Arabian Nights", but the rest of the fluff is more typical European style quest kind of fantasy. There's even a comment about commoners going through their entire lives never encountering magic. I don't think so, as enchantment is lying pretty thick on the ground.

If you want the GM to decide, then you need to make lots of classes, with a more equitable distribution between casters and non-casters. The GM can then prune to match his world, without drastically reducing player choice. Or DnD should just go with the high magic, and quit pretending otherwise. This would mean magic shops make perfect sense, and commoners are not going to be particularly awed by a wizard strolling through town. Lots of non- adventurers could have access to cantrip style magic too, and magic would be used like technology.

I find it ironic that Faerun is WOTC' s default setting. Faerun, has traditionally embraced the idea of magic as common, with shops and wizard colleges and magic duels. Yet in 5e, this kind of outlook is discouraged. I have no problem with the philosophy behind magic in 5e. It is in fact, my preference, but shouldn't the feel of the game match this choice, and maybe not pick the highly magical world of Faerun as your default setting?

Fighters, Rogues, Monks and Barbarians do not, by default, have spells. Yes, they all have subclasses where you can elect to have spells or spell-like magic powers, but inherently they do not. Do you remember the D&D Beyond statistics for race and class combinations amongst PCs made in their system during the preview era? Three of the four most popular classes were fighter, rogue and barbarian (monk was relatively unpopular). And, as feats were not there for a good portion of this period, those classes were likely underrepresented in the survey as they tend to want to have feats in their builds and people were discouraged from putting PCs into the system when they could not be fully implemented.

Simply put: A good portion of the PCs out there do not use spells.

Further, if we're being honest, there are not too many non-magic character concepts out there that are not already in the rules. What are we missing? There is the 4E Warlord concept that could be built, either as a class or a subclass of fighter (or barbarian) - but the battlemaster kind of fulfills this hole. You might do a ninja, but that is also likely best a subclass of rogue (and might be magical) - and can be built with existing classes (and perhaps multiclassing with monk). You could build a ranged focused class like a gunner or archer, but again those are likely best done as fighter subclasses - and we already have archer concepts that work with existing subclasses. You might do an alchemist or technology based PC, but those are ripe with problems and are typically pseudo magical. I can do a version of all of those concepts in 5E with existing rules, although they could be rewritten into something new. It just isn't needed.

With so many casting classes/subclasses, you'd think the baddies would have made counterspell wands a pretty common magic item. Hmmm......