D&D (2024) Martial vs Caster: Removing the "Magical Dependencies" of high level.

[James Gasik]

How can people think there are no examples of high level fighters in literature when this fine specimen exists!

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I love Brock, but to be fair, there are enemies even the Swedish Death Machine cannot take out, like in the last season when he fought Think Tank and his best threat was "then you'll drown in my blood!".

 

[James Gasik]

It would be fantastic if we could have that "presuming we agree" part. Only problem is, we keep getting derailed every few pages by people insisting that the problem doesn't exist, or that the problem is being caused by ANY other problem than a problem with how high level warriors are presented.

I'd absolutely love to have a conversation about "presuming we agee that there is a disparity... level?" That's a fantastic conversation and one that's absolutely useful.

Like I said, we got to start making these plus threads.

 

[Scott Christian]

Did you miss the part about an adult?

I did not. Like I said, I am really just an observer in the whole process. If I am asked about a rule, I tell them. Most of the time, they don't ask. (Actually, most of the time they don't ask, and instead, use the wrong rule, interpret the rule incorrectly, or make up their own rule. But those things are inevitable, and again, don't happen too often.)

 

[TheSword]

I love Brock, but to be fair, there are enemies even the Swedish Death Machine cannot take out, like in the last season when he fought Think Tank and his best threat was "then you'll drown in my blood!".

Lol. He still survived though and got him in the end, with a little help from Warriana.

 

[James Gasik]

Ha ha. A bit like keepy-up with a balloon. I definitely had a love hate relationship with Pathfinder and 3e in general.

You had a kind DM either way. I would have just had the 10’ square repelled section of the hull break away unable to bear the weight of a 500 tonne ship. Punching a hole and probably sinking anyway but much slower. Would still sink but without the gravity defying physics.

There were a few ways it could go, I was actually thinking he'd rule based on the "fixed objects larger than 3 feet in diameter" clause and have the spell fail outright, but I figured it was worth a try. My actual plan was to take out the rudder with warp wood, but I had repel prepared so I figured, what the hey, give it a shot and see what happens.

 

[bert1001 fka bert1000]

Like I said, we got to start making these plus threads.

And state all your assumptions up front.

Because even in the plus thread "assuming a disparity exists..." you will have a bunch of conflicting/separate conversations around

-- can we nerf spellcasters as part of the solution?
-- what kinds of mechanics are fair game?
-- how "fantastical" can we get?

I remember one where there was still a bunch of people trying to limit the solution -- mostly people that didn't really agree with the premise to begin but still wanted a say! But also those that agreed with the premise but didn't want more than "peak human" or some such...

 

[Scott Christian]

I mean, I had a lot of fun playing Rifts in the day. Doesn't mean it was good design. The fun was in spite of the system in this case.

Is it hard to imagine that a system can produce fun, but if designed better could produce more fun? Or fun for a wider audience?

Are you telling me that adding a mythic martial class to the D&D core book or optional splat book would have derailed all that high school fun?

The fact you had fun playing Rifts tells you that fun is not just dependent on a "balanced" system.

It is not hard to imagine that some systems produce more fun for some people. But, as I pointed out earlier, D&D is about give and take. At this point in the game's creation, the DM has more to do with balance than the rulebook. At this point in the game's creation, the disparity is completely player and table driven, it is not the rulebook.

And adding another martial class? Sure, go ahead. Odds are, it won't mean anything to the high school students or to the tables I play on. But insisting that it takes it to a wider audience says you are not thinking of the players lost in the process. Like character creation itself, there is a give and take. Keep giving, and that takes away from someone else's fun.

I do not doubt that it is a tricky line to balance on. But for nine years they have expanded the game way beyond anyone's expectations, so they must have been on to something when 5e first came out.

 

[Emberashh]

Those are the very same people that if a mythic martial existed as an option would have no problems playing it

The issue isn't whether or not it exists, but whether it and its counterparts represent something the game should have more of.

If you're in the camp that sees Casters as fundamentally flawed game design, having Martials chase them up the bad game design tree isn't how you address that.

Unless we just don't care about whether or not its bad design, at which point I can only throw my hands up and say have at the resulting mess.

Generally speaking if you took martials and jacked them up to the Casters level, or worse made them even more broken as some have said they want, then the game just breaks down further because it fundamentally can't support the weight of what even a moderately sized party could bring to bear.

With Martials as they are now, the game already strains when you approach 5+ players. Martials chasing Casters is going to put that strain at 3+ easily.

You would have to completely upend the games entire design philosophy to avoid this issue, and not to mention you'd also need a dearth of content to support people so they know how to actually run the game, because old adventures ain't gonna cut it.

Like, keep in mind, most everyone says the game breaks down at level 10+, and pretty much any DM will tell you playing pass that level is very difficult to run. Throwing jacked up Martials into that mix is not going to result in improved experiences.

You may not have to be jealous of your Caster buddies anymore, but now you have a nonfunctional game thats incapable of supporting the weight of extremely poorly designed classes.

And mind this is something I had to deal with with 5e in making high level play worthwhile to stick around for. Even Martials at T4 as they are now take effort to run a game for, and nevermind the casters. Theres a reason why in 5e I can run a Dragon, 9 Arch Mages, and thousands of Orcs (6 Dragons if we want to skip the homebrew involved in that, as thats the vanilla equivalent) all as one big encounter, and its generally because you have to.

And to bring up my game again, thats all part of philosophy Im designing it with, because despite the effort to make it work, high level 5e was still a lot of fun and the sheer chaos that results is something I wanted to capture in a package that makes far more mechanical sense.

Thats how my game ended up incorporating a gradual shift from dungeon crawler to high octane wargame. The kinds of crazy chaotic nonsense my Classes can get up to by level 30 literally can't function outside of a wargame without some serious Monster design work that would only ever make sense for bosses, not your random mobs. Hence, the use of bespoke Horde rules to make the game work and bridge the gaps so its seamless, mechanically and in the fiction, to go from taking on an entire armies as a 6-person party to fight 6v1 with a big bad.

Its the same bandaid I use to put 1000s of orcs on the field in 5e without turning it into a nightmare, but now its built in and integrated with everything as a unified design direction.

 

[Alzrius]

We had the player's guide, and yes, they would have gotten a save if our archer Fighter hadn't taken them out already, firing from our crow's nest as the enemy ship was maneuvering to board us. Our DM was going by the ruling that Clustered Shots adds up all the damage of your shots to determine if you have to make a save vs. massive damage and they rolled a 1.

I'd forgotten that optional rule (i.e. massive damage) was even still there. My group elected not to use that option, as they'd never cared for it.

 

[Yaarel]

I'd like to respectfully ask you not to as it's muddling the conversation unnecessarily.

Psionics is magic. Ki is magic. Martial magic is magic. Superheroes are magic.