And, we've circled back to the questionable assertion that started this tangent. :sigh:
You seem unwilling to admit that martial archetypes have a certain level of power in literary works that is less than the casters. It fits the fantasy genre. You would be breaking genre archetypes by having martials equal in power to casters.
No, martial archetypes are popular to play because they are popularly heroes in the fantasy genre. LoTR? Aragorn, Boromir, Gimli - technically even Legolas and the hobbits - all martial. One wizard, and he was a warrior in his youth and would draw steel to deal with enemies as often as cast spells.
No. Gandalf was not a warrior in his youth. He did draw steel as often as the others. Discussing Gandalf is pointless. He was not human. He was a Maia, a lesser angel, in the guise of ancient man that men called wizards. The entire reason I switched the discussion to relative power levels is because each book does martials and casters differently. But the common thread is casters are generally the most powerful in the book's universe because magic is more powerful than weapon use.
That popularity carries through to D&D /in spite of/ how badly the game treats those archetypes.
It does not badly handle these archetypes. They are capable of extraordinary fighting feats that fantasy archetypes can accomplish. You are exaggerating their lack of agency and ability to forward your argument. You are attempting to willfully falsify information to promote your agenda.
How can you say that to an onlooker a fighter that cuts down a giant is not powerful? How can you say that a martial that cuts down a horde of orcs is not powerful? How can you not say a martial that destroys a group of demons and their demonic master with his blade or axe is not powerful? To an outsider like a villager or even lower level 2 or 3 soldier, a level 15 to 20 fighter looks like a god in battle. The combat feats he pulls off are every bit as extraordinary and spectacular as a wizard's spells. Most people die when an orc shows up. The high level fighter cuts them down five or more at a time.
And, true to form, close with an ad-hominem suggesting that anyone who isn't willfully blind to the problem is incompetent.
You are engaging in willful deception to forward your argument. You seem to feel that because you feel the way you do, we should all feel that way. When we don't and explain why, you attempt to make it seem as though we are willfully ignorant of a problem only you seem able to perceive as a serious problem with D&D. You can't accept that many people don't agree with you. We don't have the same problem you have due to experience or preference.
The fact that you need to exercise DM fiat to block caster dominance is just further proof of the disparity.
You are confusing DM fiat with designing adventures to fit your party. A barbarian does not do the same as a fighter. A ranger does not do the same as a rogue. A bard does not do the same as a wizard.
Designing adventures not taking differences into account is incompetent DM design no matter what you're doing. I also take into account backgrounds and personalities. Does that make what I'm doing DM fiat? I call it quality adventure design aimed at providing an entertaining experience for a diverse group. Why does this seem so difficult for you to accept? Casters did not dominate because they did not need or try to.
For caster domination to occur you need certain elements in your game besides a biased game system. You need a player that tries to hog the limelight. Still the casters do not get to do everything unless the players and DM let them. The players have to be willing to wait for the caster to prepare. They have to put up the coin to fund all his tactics. They have to stand around while the caster does everything taking no actions of their own. The DM has to willingly allow this to happen running encounters in a fashion that doesn't in anyway take into account the party tactics and capabilities. You need these other factors for the caster domination you speak of to occur.
This doesn't occur in my campaigns because I design encounters to deal with a party. Personally, I had a much harder time dealing with martials dealing 200 points of damage a round than I did with casters. A saving throw could defeat a spell. High spell resistance could defeat a spell. Extrasensory perception could defeat things like
invisibility. Very little could defeat a single round of hits from a high level martial. That's why my experience as a DM differs dramatically from yours. The martials I ran were not in any way lacking in power or agency. Sure, perfect planning by a caster (usually a wizard) on an ideal battlefield to deal with a specific martial usually meant the martial would lose. Same thing happened if the martial got ahold of the caster for a round.
But the way the game is generally played that didn't happen. Usually the group worked as a group to win the day. I planned adventures that required they work as a group. You call that DM fiat. I call that good adventure design. If you're complaining as much as you are about overpowered casters, then you weren't designing adventures the same as I and many others were. If you consider that incompetence, then maybe it is. I do consider myself a highly competent DM having done it for so many years.
Sure, we could all play 3.5 'E6' and freeze casters at 6th level while letting martials continue to accumulate feats - it would be nice, though, if we could just get all the archetypes on a more or less even keel, so they'd all be equally accessible and players could just play what they wanted, without having to count on DM interventions for relevance.
Or you could put the time in to design adventures that provide opportunities for everyone to do something fun and useful. I could design an adventure where the casters were nearly useless. I could do this over and over again. Then I'd hear someone complaining how unfair it is that martials are so much more powerful than casters. How they do so much more in adventures. The usual tripe thrown out in these arguments.
Why would I do that? I know how this works. The entire game has always been reliant on the DM tailoring adventures to fit the party. There are all kinds of disparities even between martials. The 3E/Pathfinder barbarian was stronger than the fighter. The paladin was stronger than the fighter. The rogue and fighter were two of the weakest classes in the 3E/Pathfinder game as far as overall options and capabilities compared to other martials, much less casters. If one of my players wanted to play a rogue or fighter, I built the adventure to make them feel like a strong hero.
Why? Because there has never been perfect balance in D&D. There never will be. D&D is...and should be...about building appropriate archetypes rather than balanced archetypes. As a DM I take what a player wants to do and create an adventure that allows them to accomplish it. If they wanted to play a sneaky rogue that backstabs but isn't that great at frontal combat with a giant or a dragon, I create situations that allow them to sneak around, backstab, steal, scout, and feel like a productive part of the group. If some guy makes a fighter with minimal non-combat stuff, I create moments in an adventure for him to shine in battle whether a single combat that has an effect on the adventure or an enemy that can only be defeated by his mighty fighting skills.
That is my job as a DM. It is to know what each character can do and create moments for them to do it well. I am doing my job poorly if I throw the party into an adventure and hope they can all look great in a game with so many options that the game designers can't possibly balance them all. I figured most people accepted this reality since the perfectly balanced game had not yet been created. I always understood the DM's job is to make an adventure fun for a diverse group usually meaning tailoring parts of it to allow a player to shine using his favorite capabilities be that swinging an axe or casting a spell.
Calling that DM fiat is willfully deceptive and agenda driven. Tailoring adventures is a necessary component of the game because no DM should ever expect all classes to be equally competent at all aspects of the game whether they want to talk of three pillars or combat and non-combat. They should feel it part of their job to make sure no class build dominates no matter what choices the players make. Even if it were a party of fighters with half the party using optimal fighter builds and the other half not, it would still be your job to make sure they all had fun in the same adventure by tailoring it to the party the players have created. You should do that every time you run something.
I admit the game designers fail at balance quite often to the point it damages the game. Your pretense that they do so solely for casters is ridiculous. There are a plethora of imbalanced nightmare options for martial characters in previous editions of D&D that allow a particular class build to dominate the group in a way that is damaging to the playability of the game. I've had more imbalance problems from martial builds than caster builds because it is impossible to build enemies that can withstand insane damage, whereas it is fairly easy to build enemies to be resistant to magic (at least for me).
Yet when dealing with insane martial damage or crazy caster problems, I still manage to tailor adventures so everyone has fun. That is my goal as a DM. I meet that goal more often than not, though I did recently give up trying to run mythic characters. The number inflation for martial damage in
Mythic Adventures was too hard to keep up with. It became an exercise in creating bigger and bigger hit point sponges to deal with the massive martial damage from crits. It wasn't fun as a DM.
To sum it up, I don't want perfect or close to perfect balance amongst the archetypes. I don't think it should be a goal of game designers. I think they should focus on appropriate abilities for the various archetypes that fit what a player expects each archetype to do. That means using weapons very well for fighters. Using powerful and varied magic for wizards. They should leave it up to DMs to make sure everyone has fun doing what they do well within the game world. You need to take a look in the mirror when you're calling that viewpoint willfully blind and claiming ad hominem attacks. It is a different viewpoint based on a different experience with the game and a different idea of what a fantasy game should be like.
