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

[bert1001 fka bert1000]

And honestly, I don't want to redesign spellcasters. I've seen all caster parties, they can be a ton of fun. Yes, it means you aren't playing Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings... but I don't WANT to play those, I want to play DnD. A game where a Runt Pit Fiend can adventure with the daughter of an Archangel into a crashed spaceship and use a laser rifle to shoot legally-distinct Cthullu. Something you could do in SECOND EDITION.

[Edit: This turned into a bit of a rant. I do want to say this isn't directly aimed at you Bert, it is just a general frustration]

Didn't take it that way.

To be clear, my preference outside of this thread and assumptions is to take spellcasters down, especially in breadth / versatility but less in power, and bring martials up -- both a class with more complexity, utility and power.

But I would also be pretty ok with spellcasters as the same and adding the mythic martial. Especially with a mythic martial where you can choose options to be interesting but less overtly supernatural from 1-7.

There is so much game play from levels say 1-7 that you could easily have the best of both worlds where you can play more grounded (but still pretty high fantasy given spellcasters) at lower levels and then have this gonzo game at high levels where at least you have martial types that are closer to spellcasters.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I started with 5e, so I don't know 4e or 2e or 1e or 3e or 2.5. I have a little Pathfinder 1e knowladge.

I have however never heard except on this website that 4e was widely panned. So I don't know what made it balanced, but all I am asking for is cool bells and whistles, things I can do with my fighter... I gave an example of a 12th level house ruled warrior.

4e in large part, had a perception problem. The presentation of the mechanics and the story was radically different than anything that came before. Which caused a large amount of pushback.

 

[Chaosmancer]

You are proving my point exactly. You can't even imagine a fighter coming up with an imaginative solution to a problem that doesn't involve the screw.

If the problem is screwing in a screw, turning water to ice isn't a solution.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Didn't take it that way.

To be clear, my preference outside of this thread and assumptions is to take spellcasters down, especially in breadth / versatility but less in power, and bring martials up -- both a class with more complexity, utility and power.

But I would also be pretty ok with spellcasters as the same and adding the mythic martial. Especially with a mythic martial where you can choose options to be interesting but less overtly supernatural from 1-7.

There is so much game play from levels say 1-7 that you could easily have the best of both worlds where you can play more grounded (but still pretty high fantasy given spellcasters) at lower levels and then have this gonzo game at high levels where at least you have martial types that are closer to spellcasters.

Yeah, I have zero interest in a fighter class less complex and varied than Level Up's version, and am fine with supernatural effects as well, provided there's a decent narrative justification (which is already handled).

 

[Emberashh]

Do you expect that nerfing casters would be fun for caster players, or are you only concerned about martial players' fun?

I think it depends on how you approach it, as Ive communicated multiple times in this topic, to the point of laying out explicit examples of me designing mages precisely to my given specification. I have Mages that can literally rain down magical nuclear bombs every single turn and its actually slightly weaker than an equivalent AOE martial, and all 4 class types in my game are equally capable at the utility game, even with protected niches included.

Magic is easy to make fun, cool, and exhilarating, and you do not need to make them mechanically busted to do it. (A statement I have also repeated more than once)

So what?!

Trying to design the "Universal Fighter, but Mythic" is just retrodding the same path the 5e Fighter did. You're not going to be able to design a Universal class thats going to be appealing to all of the people that its meant to appeal to and also specific enough that it actually delivers on what its supposed to deliver.

What genre is a universe spanning, psychically connected array of super-intelligent brains that traveled back in time to save their reality spanning empire from collapse and are taking over reality once again? Is is the same genre where you could easily find a dragon ascending to godhood by connecting its soul to all versions of itself across a multiverse of time and place and read the echoes of time? Maybe it is the same genre where you help the child of a god find his lost cat so he can sleep at night.

DnD covers all of those, so which genre is that? Is it sword and sorcery with its gritty blood in the sand? Nope. Seems like it is something different.

Thats funny, because thats exactly what we're telling you is the problem and why parts of the game aren't cutting it.

At what point does the game no longer work? 5e is hardly perfect, but it works, for most people, right now. Or do you just mean the game doesn't work for you?

I do appreciate how we're circling back to the same arguments over and over, like this isn't the umpteenth time you or someone else have made a nonsensical accusation like that just to try and eek a win in an argument.

Im on the side that doesn't think the problem is very severe, remember? Trying to accuse me of thinking 5e doesn't work when theres countless pages of me arguing otherwise is just, wow.

And as for when the game stops working, Ive yet again repetitively pointed out that all-caster parties are extremely difficult to DM for and that doubling down on that happening all of the time is not going to result in a better experience for anybody, least of all DMs that already get the short stick as is.

 

[Chaosmancer]

They're the same topic. You can't divest the genre question from mechanics anymore than vice versa.

Ive said it already in this topic, unless you're willing to abandon what DND is supposed to be and will explicitly embrace a different genre altogether (Like 4th Edition did), you cannot continue to violate the genre and result in a game that'll actually work.

If I take Brindlewood Bay and start cramming in a bunch of tank combat, its the same issue and I can't sit there and act like I can, somehow, balance rigorous tank combat with little old ladies solving mysteries.

If we have had 40 years of tank combat, maybe the game isn't really about old ladies solving mysteries despite what people keep insisting.

 

[Vaalingrade]

So you don't allow for newer WotC books that contradict older books? You don't allow third party supplements? You don't allow houserules?

I'm trying to understand where this line of questioning is going.

I'm observing a problem in the game's underlying philosophy and design and being told that's somehow the DM's fault.

Even assuming we assume I'm not seeing the 5e philosophy of 'ask your DM' as not a design flaw and bad philosophy for actual game design, the fact remains that the tools, design and anything to build on to create a martial character that is something more than an attack spammer isn't actually there.

The closest they come is the Battlemaster, which locks you out of any other subclass and has too few superiority die (soon to be nerfed to proficiency bonus per day, I'm sure) to actually fulfil the role. The game actively discourages a deep martial (I'm abandoning the term mythic martial as this thread has muddied and diluted that term too far to be useful anymore).

 

[Emberashh]

I will stop circling after this.

I don't know what Brindlewood is but I think the situation would be:

Brindle now has a bunch of tank combat (Wizards).

I know you don't like that and want to return to the Brindle without tank combat (if it ever existed).

That is a fine conversation to have. I even agree with you that Brindle would be better without tanks. That is not the conversation we are having though. Let's have that conversation on another thread.

We are assuming that Brindle will have tanks for the foreseeable future in our posts. Given that, some people really want armored APC carriers as well in Brindle. We already have tanks so it's hard to see how having APCs will violate anything more than is already violated. And the people who really like APCs over tanks will get their thing. They will be happier ad the people that don't want tanks or APCs at all will be at the same level of unhappiness.

I know you don't want either tanks or APCs in, but saying that in retort to assuming tanks remain is not really engaging in the same exercise.

You should engage the rest of what I said in that part of my post.

With respect, it can be an instruction problem as well as a system problem.

Well sure. Improvise Action is a super clear example of that. But those specifics can be identified and addressed; theres no need to call everything a system problem when thats not actually the case.

Ive mentioned before that, when it comes to homebrew, you can't go too hogwild on changing large swaths of the system all at once, as you'll end up with consequences predictable and unpredictable. Game design is fundamentally no different.

Accurately identifying where problems come from and addressing them before you add more variables is a better and more sustainable approach.

I can easily forsee the disaster that would come from chasing martials up the bad design tree; but thats just what I can predict. What I can't predict would be problems you could only sus out with extensive playtesting, and you'd find solutions there too, many of which are going to trend towards simplifying than they are complicating.

 

[bert1001 fka bert1000]

Im on the side that doesn't think the problem is very severe, remember? Trying to accuse me of thinking 5e doesn't work when theres countless pages of me arguing otherwise is just, wow.

And as for when the game stops working, Ive yet again repetitively pointed out that all-caster parties are extremely difficult to DM for and that doubling down on that happening all of the time is not going to result in a better experience for anybody, least of all DMs that already get the short stick as is.

There's a disconnect for me. You don't think the problem is very severe. But going from a 20th level 3 Fighter 1 Wizard party to a 20th level 1 Druid, 1 Cleric, 2 Wizard Party makes the game much more difficult to handle?

That's part of the severity.

 

[Micah Sweet]

If we have had 40 years of tank combat, maybe the game isn't really about old ladies solving mysteries despite what people keep insisting.

At least, not the current game. Old ladies can still solve mysteries in the older version just fine, but new players come with new assumptions. This is a lesson I recently learned the hard way.