D&D 5E Should martial characters be mundane or supernatural?

[Maxperson]

Issue is half the MM becomes extremely hard or near impossible to fight without magic.

This is false.

 

[Fanaelialae]

You seem to be assuming Batmans levels of preparedness for your wizards. If you happen to have a bunch of summoners it's fine. If the fight happens in an area covered by Private Sanctum which stops summoning, they're SOL. If they put the Rakshasha into a forcecage, it just dominates someone or uses uses suggestion to get rid of it. Or any number of other things. It's not that clear cut.

But again, we can come up with edge cases that will never happen. It doesn't matter. Positing an encounter with fighters that have no magical weapons against a creature immune to magic is the equivalent of positing a wizard encounter in an anti-magic zone.

I said that it would be a challenging fight for casters with no magic items, but a winnable one. Not a guaranteed win. Beatable.

Whereas for martials with no magic items, it's pretty much a guaranteed loss without fiat (a conveniently placed cliff for them to shove the creature over, for example).

A fighter without magic weapons is far more likely than an anti magic zone. The DM doesn't give out magic items. Or gives out random items and a weapon never rolls. A thief steals the fighters weapon. The party is defeated, captured, and stripped of their gear.

I'm not trying to say that this is a realistic example. I would hope that any DM that pits martials against a Rakshasa would make sure they first had a magic weapon (or at least an alternate draw condition, such as the Rakshasa doesn't want to fight but instead wants to make a deal).

The point is to illustrate that martials are far more dependent on magic items than casters, and to advocate for the idea that they should either have inherent access to such items via their class, or that the reliance on such be mitigated by making them inherently supernatural/extraordinary/whatever-floats-your-boat-as-long-as-it-reduces-their-reliance-on-finding-the-right-magical-gear.

Much like casters aren't reliant on finding spells to have a fully functional character that can take on level appropriate challenges, I strongly believe that martials shouldn't be reliant on finding gear to take on the same. There are multiple ways to implement it, but I do believe it to be worthy of implementation.

Just for example, let's say that at 11th level the fighter gains the Legendary feature. Tales of your exploits have spread far and wide. The common folks' belief in you imbues you with folk magic, enabling you to accomplish extraordinary feats. When you make a weapon attack, it is treated as magical. When you throw a weapon, double its range.

Would this break the game? Would it ruin your fun?

 

[Oofta]

I said that it would be a challenging fight for casters with no magic items, but a winnable one. Not a guaranteed win. Beatable.

Whereas for martials with no magic items, it's pretty much a guaranteed loss without fiat (a conveniently placed cliff for them to shove the creature over, for example).

A fighter without magic weapons is far more likely than an anti magic zone. The DM doesn't give out magic items. Or gives out random items and a weapon never rolls. A thief steals the fighters weapon. The party is defeated, captured, and stripped of their gear.

I'm not trying to say that this is a realistic example. I would hope that any DM that pits martials against a Rakshasa would make sure they first had a magic weapon (or at least an alternate draw condition, such as the Rakshasa doesn't want to fight but instead wants to make a deal).

The point is to illustrate that martials are far more dependent on magic items than casters, and to advocate for the idea that they should either have inherent access to such items via their class, or that the reliance on such be mitigated by making them inherently supernatural/extraordinary/whatever-floats-your-boat-as-long-as-it-reduces-their-reliance-on-finding-the-right-magical-gear.

Much like casters aren't reliant on finding spells to have a fully functional character that can take on level appropriate challenges, I strongly believe that martials shouldn't be reliant on finding gear to take on the same. There are multiple ways to implement it, but I do believe it to be worthy of implementation.

Just for example, let's say that at 11th level the fighter gains the Legendary feature. Tales of your exploits have spread far and wide. The common folks' belief in you imbues you with folk magic, enabling you to accomplish extraordinary feats. When you make a weapon attack, it is treated as magical. When you throw a weapon, double its range.

Would this break the game? Would it ruin your fun?

Edge cases prove nothing.

 

[Maxperson]

Would this break the game? Would it ruin your fun?

No, but that's not the point here. The point is that the reasons being bandied about right now don't apply. A small handful of corner cases that can be handled in ways other than fighting isn't an issue.

I'd argue for it based on fun. It sounds like that kind of supernatural ability would be fun for martials to earn and use.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Edge cases prove nothing.

This is based on experience. I ran a campaign for a martial party (one of them was a shadow monk). I gave them plenty of magic items, and even some artifacts.

Even with all that, I felt that I needed to add an NPC cleric to the party, because it was really constraining my adventure design. I couldn't put them against a mummy lord, for example, because it would have been a death sentence if they failed that save, unless I added a conveniently placed NPC nearby that could remove curse. The big bad of the campaign was a lich (designed before they rolled up) who could have easily wrecked them without that cleric if I played it's intelligence (and I don't like to hold back).

I believe in letting my players play what they want to play. I believe that classes should be designed to support that, without forcing the DM to lob softballs just because there isn't a caster in the party.

 

[CreamCloud0]

i think the four martial classes, quite early in their progression, should just gain the ability to bypass nonmagic resistance/immunity with their standard attacks, the monk already gets this at 6th for their unarmed attacks but i think it should be slightly earlier 4th maybe or 5th to match extra attack, all the other classes will all have access to magic damage through their own spells and cantrips.

 

[mamba]

I realize that's not your intent, but you're pretty much proving my point. You might not think it means much. I seriously disagree.

It means either a party of martials runs from the fight, or the players beforehand think about a better group composition and add a spellcaster or two. I have yet to see a party that has not done the latter, so it really is not proving all that much.

 

[Scribe]

i think the four martial classes, quite early in their progression, should just gain the ability to bypass nonmagic resistance/immunity with their standard attacks, the monk already gets this at 6th for their unarmed attacks but i think it should be slightly earlier 4th maybe or 5th to match extra attack, all the other classes will all have access to magic damage through their own spells and cantrips.

Exactly, easily managed in a few lines.

 

[Pedantic]

i think the four martial classes, quite early in their progression, should just gain the ability to bypass nonmagic resistance/immunity with their standard attacks, the monk already gets this at 6th for their unarmed attacks but i think it should be slightly earlier 4th maybe or 5th to match extra attack, all the other classes will all have access to magic damage through their own spells and cantrips.

If you're writing every character class to bypass magic damage resistance by level 4, why are you putting it on monsters in the first place? There's like 1 story beat that's possible as a result, where a foe is a problem in the level 3-4 range, and then becomes something you can take down. Everywhere else it just becomes wasted text.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Fighter SUX, lol?

Everybody could. There are no stat or race requirements for entering a class, anymore.

The same rate of level relative to exp, which are both invisible details from the perspective of fiction. So the rate being "the same" makes no difference.

Variability visible only to the player, representing nothing in the fiction. It was a neat idea, but it only contributed needless complexity.

No difference in the fiction. The mechanics matter too.