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

[Hayato]

After meticulously read all 97 pages of this topic, I still come to the conclusion that the game would be much better if D&D design team remove all utility and control spells, leaving only the damage and some defensive spells. Thus, any actions out of combat or aimed at utility should be resolved with skill checks.

 

[Clint_L]

I doubt it's true spite or true care for the broader game in many or maybe even most cases.

I suspect that it's often just personal preference combined with apathy toward the group that feels otherwise.

It's not that folks wish suffering on the people that want the mythic martials, it's that they don't like it, and don't care that much if the people who want it are unhappy.

Maybe this is "care for the game as a whole" but a lot if times it just reads as "I want my martials to be Jon Snow..and that's final"

I think that folks who want "mythic martials" want something that is very different from 5e's design, so it should be recognized that this is not feasible for OneD&D. It is just not going to happen. Offer these up as optional rules for a D&D variant game, and I wouldn't even comment. Do what works for you.

And I get frustrated that so much of the argument is predicated upon hyperbolic statements that run contrary to evidence, so that casters are depicted as the greatest at everything and martial classes as basically useless. Or, as above, that basically no one is playing martial classes because they are just so useless. It is hard to have a good faith discussion when there seems to be little distinction between fact and hyperbole.

My experience is that martial classes range from quite good (fighter and barbarian) to decent (rogue) to weak (monk). See all of them chosen regularly by players. I think that fighter and barbarian tend to become more limited not in terms of their core utility in combat but in terms of flexibility, and that sub-class can be particularly relevant here. I am not 100% convinced that this is a flaw, given that some players manifestly prefer a very simple playstyle.

 

[Remathilis]

Now I'm confused. I was just told by @doctorbadwolf that I was being totally unreasonable saying that people were insisting that the base class must never be changed. And, yet, a post or two later, now you're telling me that the base class must never be changed.

Which is it? 'cos, frankly, I'm happy either way. A new class - a Mythic Warrior (or a ... what's another word for someone who is the top of something... of war ... nah...) that is built from 1st level through about, say, 7th, to be pretty much standard fighter, only to have a bunch of stuff come online at the double digit levels? Groovy. Maybe someone who could add status effects to allies and enemies. Limited battlefield control. Then at high levels, be able to do all sorts of stuff that changes the nature of encounters.... If only I had seen a class like that before....

Ok, fair enough. That was overboard. I'm still annoyed that Warlords got consigned to the circular file of history. In any case though, I would be perfectly happy with a completely new class. At least then I might see players actually play a non-caster character once in a while. Would be nice.

Again, it's a mismatch of expectations. Even if you believe a disparity exists, everyone has a different answer to the problem. Some people want a new class or classes. Some want to change the nature of martial ability, and some want to nerf casters. And those are all non-exclusive. Which is why this debate is circular; there aren't two different camps (caster supremacy vs martial equality) there are at least four (status quo, added options, removed options, and complete overhaul). So even if I agree with you on a baseline assumption (fighters need more options) I don't necessarily agree with many of the suggestions given (nerf casters, give fighters supernatural abilities just because).

 

[Chaosmancer]

Cheers for the clarification. That makes more sense about you capsizing four large rowboats rather four ships as you said first. The first is kinda proportional and expected, the second pretty crazy. I’m not sure what you think is crazily out of power whack being able to stop a few rowboats with a 6th level spell.

A 4th level spell. Control water is a 4th level spell.

And, I don't know, let me just do a quick review. Double checking the map, I see 10 enemy vehicles. You can also see I had four party members. I'll give you a summary of the actions they took while I used my action to defeat 1/5 of the encounter and heavily damage another 1/5 of the encounter.

"I dodge"
"I wait"
"I'm waiting"
"Hey can I use that ballista we saw?" / "Sure it will take you three actions to fire it" / "I'm waiting"

Then, on the next turn where I continued to use Control Water?
"I dodge"
"I wait"
"I'm waiting"
"I'm waiting"

Then, when they got within range, the party sprang into action. Two of them began battling with the pirates on one vessel. Taking out two or three of them. The rogue and the barbarian used the cloak of the Montebank to immediately engage the Pirate Lord on the largest ship in a battle...

And I solo'd an entire ship by myself. With one action.

So, in the time it took my party to start fighting some pirates, I took out between 33% and 50% of the encounter BY MYSELF.

As for the rest, as you say you're stretching the implications of spells. The earth turns therefore you can cast wall of fire on moving objects? Come on dude, that’s not cool.

And yet you want to claim that since boats move their decks are not solid surfaces. And then proceed to mock me about it. Totally cool, right?

Mending clothes is difficult so I can get Unseen servant to do other difficult things too that aren’t specified in the spell like search for stuff that you don’t even know is there? Pull the other ones.

I knew the key was there. How? Because people needed to get OUT of the warehouse, so obviously they had a key to do so. Stop acting like opening a door from the inside is somehow some great leap of intellect.

It says fire in the description so it must set things on fire? Give me a break. Does that mean fire shield also sets things ablaze?

Sure, why not.

Does that mean you don’t need the party to search for treasure any more, or traps you can just tell the unseen servant to find them?

I have used unseen servant to trigger traps before, and if it was within a room with treasure and I told it to gather all the valuables, I would expect it to be able to do so. Again, why not? "Gather up all the treasure in this room" is something I would expect a human servant to be capable of, so the spell should be capable of it. Because, again, it LITERALLY says it can do anything a human servant can do.

Do you let Magic missile break through doors too?

Break through them like pierce them and hit something on the other side? No. Break through them like damage the door? Sure, why not. That doesn't even make the spell more powerful, and it would largely be seen as a waste of a spell slot, but it could be a cool moment.

You can cast wall of fire on moving objects because the earth turns? That deserves its own paragraph in the DMs guide.

For all those wondering why there is a number of players and DMs that still dispute that magic is as disruptive/essential for the game, then this is why. Let’s have some advice columns for DMs adjudicating spells rather than claiming the system is broken and needs a radical overhaul. Because I guarantee the solutions you’re proposing aren’t solving the problems being described here.

Yeah, the snide mockery REALLY sells that you are a serious person that I should listen to. After all, me and every DM I've ever had for the last ten years MUST be playing incorrectly/poorly, unlike you who would never do such things. And therefore we should all be held up as an example of why this problem seen by OTHER people isn't real.

 

[Pedantic]

After meticulously read all 97 pages of this topic, I still come to the conclusion that the game would be much better if D&D design team remove all utility and control spells, leaving only the damage and some defensive spells. Thus, any actions out of combat or aimed at utility should be resolved with skill checks.

This is the worst solution from where I'm sitting, and incomplete because we can't even settle on what precisely the skill system is or does. Declarative techniques with specific effects are more fun and interesting to deploy than rolling dice and hoping for high numbers; the issue isn't that Knock and Invisibility and Stoneshape exist, it's that the level of utility they provide isn't universally accessible.

I'd be more open to an argument that they're too concentrated in one place. The class ability that's the source of Feather Fall doesn't really need to be the source of Hold Portal as well. Spreading utility wider and more variably between classes is a good idea and would require players work harder to leverage those resources.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

You can cast wall of fire on moving objects because the earth turns? That deserves its own paragraph in the DMs guide.

I think there is Sage Advice or something that the deck of a ship counts as a solid surface, not a moving object, for stuff like this.

The more time I find to be here and in general on the internet the more I feel that it is pretty split between spite and careing.

I’d need to see some really strong evidence to even take seriously the idea that more than a small minority of it is spite.

People, at worst, want the official game to be built the way they prefer and don’t look beyond that to actually taken other e experiences seriously.

And that certainly isn’t an exclusive trait of the folks who don’t want the game to change, in this discussion.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Honest question: What exact situation does this game put you in as a DM that needs to be fixed?

The fact that, consistently, martial characters feel like they cannot participate. Even when I specifically design encounters to highlight their strengths... the casters dominate.

I once had a puzzle I set up for my players, they were repairing a massive arcane engine. I had a barbarian, so I made absolutely certain to include big heavy things that needed moved. The barbarian realized it was a puzzle, said "Oh, no combat? Well, nothing I can do to help then" and even with me all but saying "pick up and move the pieces!" and forcing him to participate, he felt there was not a single thing he could do that was worth even attempting. Because the magic-users had it covered.

Blame me for poor encounter design. Blame the players for being bad players. But what I find strange about all this "but it is the DMs fault!" "But that is the players fault!" is that it happens to multiple different unconnected players, it happens with multiple unconnected DMs... and in fact the only common denominator is the game. That game we are told CANNOT be at fault. The game that we are told would run perfectly fine and never have this issue if we just had Good DMs who played the right way.

Heck, another example? I'm playing a solo game as a monk Sheriff. We made up the town, and set things up so my character would have things to do... and immediately we had to adjust things, because we absolutely needed a cleric who could cast healing magic. And when my sheriff encountered an undead who challenged them to a do or die... my character called for the cleric, because it was an undead and other than playing the game the undead was designed to win, I had no options. And going forward with my character... I still am going to have no options. I have one tool other than punching things, and that's because I'm a tiefling and have magic.

And please, stop twisting my words. I never said anything like the hyperbolic statement you gave. I stated that at this point in the game's development, the DM has more control over balance issues than the rulebook. Adult communication between the people at the table have more fixes to the system than anything a rulebook can come up with.

The hyperbolic statement was a statement of the feel I get from these arguments. Because it is always the same question, "Don't you trust your DM?"

If you answer yes, "Then, there is no problem."

If you answer no, "Then why are you playing with them? Find a better DM so you can answer yes."

I'm all for adult communication between player and DM, but I also don't think it is fair for every single DM to have to homebrew solutions to fundamental flaws in the rules. They may be able to do so, legally, but it is an undue burden. And I'm trying to fix that burden. Heck, I even made an entire series of posts that I linked in this thread with solutions, as demanded by the people in this thread who called for people to stop just whining and actually do something. So I did. And yet... interesting how very few people seemed interested in looking at those solutions, how instead they just want to claim there is no possible problem, that the REAL problem is bad DMs playing the game badly.

Here is a claim: Each table is different. Your problems are not another table's problems. They have their own issues because the game has a bazillion combinations of races, classes, powers, spells, settings, monsters, players, DMs, dice rolling, and chemistry.

So when your table does find a problem (like the martial class isn't as shiny as the wizard), and you see other tables having the same problem, but you also see many tables that are not, then do exactly what you are doing. Try to find solutions. But try to do it without discounting the opinions of others that do not see the problem. Do not simply think they aren't as experienced as you or don't have your knowledge of game design. They do. It's just their combinations at their tables don't have the same holes.

So at what point is the reverse true? At what point is there an actual game design problem that needs addressed, like Moon Druid Wildshape to just randomly come up with one. Or Warlock Pact Magic on a Short rest, that the designers need to actually address. And what if someone says that due to their combinations don't see that problem, do we keep the status quo that that table has, and tell the everyone else that nothing should be fixed?

Or can we accept that this problem, which has existed for years and years and years, which gets brought up time and time and time and time again, might move beyond a simple table issue? That maybe upwards of 50% of tables run into this at some point. That seeing patterns in the questions commonly asked points to this being a problem. After all, you know what I see all the time looking at Reddit threads and such? People asking how to handle high level casters. People saying "I reached X level, and now the casters in my game can do X,Y,Z and I don't know what to do." You know what I never see? Not even once? "The fighter in our party hit X level and now they are so powerful, what do I do?"

Maybe, just maybe, there is an actual hole here. Maybe, just maybe, we have legitimate concerns and would like legitimate consideration.

 

[Yaarel]

There are a number of noncombat spells that are akin to autowin skill checks.

Such as:

Invisibility ≈ autowin Stealth
Knock ≈ autowin Slight of Hand / Thieves Tools
Alter Self ≈ autowin Performance / Disguise Kit
Jump ≈ autowin Athletics

etcetera.

Rather than the spell autowin, in many cases I would rather it grant the possibility of skill proficiency where a spellcaster might not have this proficiency.

For example:

Suppose, the Charisma (Persuasion) Check inflicts the Charmed condition at a high DC.

The Charm spell doesnt inflict the Charmed condition. Instead, the spell grants a Persuasion proficiency to the Charisma Check. Maybe it grants Expertise if the character is already proficient in Persuasion, or maybe grants advantage to the check, or maybe reduces the DC of the check.

The bottom line is, the spells still require an Ability Check, when creating the effect of an Ability Check.


This in turn means, a player can optimize a Fighter with a high Charisma for Persuasion, in order to inflict the Charmed Condition.


And so on, for Frightened Condition, long jump, breaking a door down, and so on.

 

[bert1001 fka bert1000]

I should have been clearer, sorry.

I really meant adding a mythic martial class that bloats the system. I was responding to making the fighter class more powerful. Some would see that the same way some people here see the wizard being too powerful. I mean, there have been lesser reasons why people leave a game. Balance is just one. So adding a class that appears to make all the other martials look not as good, that could be a tipping point for some.

Adding one more class, particularly a non spellcaster class, which we don't have many of, would bloat the system?

I don't get the 2nd position at all. So we have this hypothetical person who thinks Wizards are too powerful and there IS a disparity. Adding a martial class that is closer in power to the Wizard would be problematic because, although this person doesn't like it, they can live with Wizards being crazy powerful (currently plays 5e) but not an additional martial class that is at most as powerful? THAT would make them leave the game?

I mean, I get the fact that some people want spellcasting completely redesigned and want to consider martials in that new framework but that isn't happening any time soon. Why deny a mythic martial under the current framework though?

As I mentioned, people can play all caster parties at high level now anyway so the game would not be more broken with the mythic martial addition. It would just add something that would appeal to a group of people that want to participate in high level in a different way. The martial "purists" can still play their champions.

This walk away POV makes no sense other than people wanting to deny others their form of fun. It's 5 year old "I'm taking my ball and going home" nonsense.

 

[Yaarel]

They might all be supernatural forces that don’t exist on earth but that doesn’t make them all magic,

does counterspell or antimagic affect a ki powered stunning strike or the fighter's second wind? No?

In 5e, all spells are magic. But not all magic is spells.

Magic can:
• produce a spell effect (including any innate spells of a species)
• produce a magical effect that isnt a spell (examples, Dragonborn breath weapon, and certain Psi Warrior features)
• produce an effect that isnt magic (example, the Create Water spell magically makes water that is itself nonmagical)

An antimagic zone suppresses any active magic, including a ki effect.

Then there is merit in distinguishing between these separate forces and identifying them for what each one of them is because they are different, stubbornly insisting it’s all just magic and lumping them together doesn’t help the discussion and causes confusion, they are different things and should be treated as such, let there be nuance.

When I want nuance, then I talk about different kinds of magic.
• Arcane versus Primal
• Enchantment versus Evocation
• Innate versus component

To have "Martial" contra Arcane, Divine, Primal, and Psionic, is distinctive.