D&D 5E The Magical Martial

[Gammadoodler]

I Wizard is pretty reliant on having a spellbook and components or a focus.

I'm assuming this is a joke?

Spellbooks, focuses/component pouches are in the Wizard's starting equipment in the PHB.

Like, yeah wizards need them, but there's no reliance on the DM for these..

 

[Bluenose]

I Wizard is pretty reliant on having a spellbook and components or a focus.

If we're assuming mundane equipment might be a problem, I think a Fighter with no weapons or armour might be just a teensy bit at a disadvantage too.

 

[W'rkncacnter]

Looking over the rest of it, I'm struck that doubling movement speed for a check is very extreme. IT essentially allows for a free dash action. I do want melee fighters to be faster, but this might be too much. The other uses in jumping or lifting will likely take actions or bonus actions (jumping is tricky) but the movement speed increase would be useless if it did. IT might be better to have the first movement increase be by 1.5 then 2 then 2.5 or 15/30/45. This makes the top speed 75 or 150 with dash, but that is with a base of 30 ft.

I'm not against the more impressive top-speed, I'm more looking at the value of the dash action. It is already a very under-utilized action unless you can use it as a bonus action, and I'm worried that an easy doubling of movement speed would kill it entirely, except for those classes like the rogue or monk. Which, by the way, hit monumental speeds with even a bit of tweaking.

i've considered, for whenever i get to run next, a house rule for martials to let them replace attacks with additional types of actions - namely dashing, disengaging, using an object, or escaping a grapple (the last of which my group was effectively already doing since by the time we figured out that was always a full action, we'd decided we didn't care).

that way martials would have not only more mobility, but more flexible mobility. a barbarian can dash 80 feet and cave your skull in with an axe on the same turn. a level 11 fighter can turn away from the guy he's fighting, sprint over to the wizard in trouble, and dropkick the muscle harassing him. a monk can...oh god, a monk can be scary.

i have no idea how it'd actually play...but it's a thought. rogues might need another cunning action to keep up, though.

 

[ezo]

I disagree with it being a design flaw from WoTC. In a game that features combat, Stealth and counter-stealth are just immediately, obviously useful.

I'll post later with more considering the rest of your response, but for now I'm just going to discuss the point above.

Skill balance is something that players have to consider carefully as it is very limited (typically 4 as you said). Stealth is something only one or maybe two PCs need (the scout or point-man and the back-up). Those positions often need the Perception to go along with the job. The other 2-3 or so PCs don't require either.

It isn't often that the entire party needs to stealth pass something or such. Even in such cases, group checks should be used, so PCs with good modifiers can pick up the slack for those without.

Well, have to run. After work I'll be able to respond in more detail.

 

[nevin]

I Wizard is pretty reliant on having a spellbook and components or a focus.

and DM giving them spells as they progress, whether that's letting them buy them or finding them. otherwise they tend to not have what they need when they need it.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

and DM giving them spells as they progress, whether that's letting them buy them or finding them. otherwise they tend to not have what they need when they need it.

Two spells a level, every level, is a pretty good amount. Of course more would be better, but it isn't necessary for the class to work.

 

[Gammadoodler]

and DM giving them spells as they progress, whether that's letting them buy them or finding them. otherwise they tend to not have what they need when they need it.

True-ish. There is no guarantee that they get access to all of the (over 300) spells available to them.

But..they do get 2 new spells of the player's choice guaranteed per level. I'm not sure at what point the toolbox is "full", but there is a PHB mechanism in place to fill it with tools the player thinks they are going to need.

The worst case at level 20, if I'm mathing correctly, is 44 leveled spells to choose from in daily preparations and 5 cantrips.

Edit: ninja'd

 

[Micah Sweet]

True-ish. There is no guarantee that they get access to all of the (over 300) spells available to them.

But..they do get 2 new spells of the player's choice guaranteed per level. I'm not sure at what point the toolbox is "full", but there is a PHB mechanism in place to fill it with tools the player thinks they are going to need.

The worst case at level 20, if I'm mathing correctly, is 44 leveled spells to choose from in daily preparations and 5 cantrips.

Edit: ninja'd

I never really liked that rule. Make stuff available through treasure, trade and purchase, but the new spells of the players choice per level thing is too lenient for me. I'd rather it were random, or nonexistent.

 

[Chaosmancer]

i've considered, for whenever i get to run next, a house rule for martials to let them replace attacks with additional types of actions - namely dashing, disengaging, using an object, or escaping a grapple (the last of which my group was effectively already doing since by the time we figured out that was always a full action, we'd decided we didn't care).

that way martials would have not only more mobility, but more flexible mobility. a barbarian can dash 80 feet and cave your skull in with an axe on the same turn. a level 11 fighter can turn away from the guy he's fighting, sprint over to the wizard in trouble, and dropkick the muscle harassing him. a monk can...oh god, a monk can be scary.

i have no idea how it'd actually play...but it's a thought. rogues might need another cunning action to keep up, though.

Thinking of the new Monk design, they can already dash and disengage with a bonus action. The Monk's bonus action attack should absolutely not be allowed to be swapped, because then their level 1 feature invalidates their level 2 feature.

That should be a decent enough solution to keep relative balance, make it "when you activate your Extra attack feature, you can swap an attack for [Blank]" This limits monk shenanigans, and keeps everyone else chugging along. IT also helps because I doubt you were planning on allowing dual-wielding to activate this, as then everyone can disengage and dash simply by drawing two daggers and "attacking".

I kind of like this, the more I think about it.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I'll post later with more considering the rest of your response, but for now I'm just going to discuss the point above.

Skill balance is something that players have to consider carefully as it is very limited (typically 4 as you said). Stealth is something only one or maybe two PCs need (the scout or point-man and the back-up). Those positions often need the Perception to go along with the job. The other 2-3 or so PCs don't require either.

It isn't often that the entire party needs to stealth pass something or such. Even in such cases, group checks should be used, so PCs with good modifiers can pick up the slack for those without.

Well, have to run. After work I'll be able to respond in more detail.

Group checks are the tricky bit, because it depends entirely on the DM. Some DMs just look for an average value, others will penalize the entire group for one low roll.

I have just noticed a consistent frustration that even when working to avoid them, those two skills are just too consistently useful for everyone, compared to many other skills.

Edit: But again, the point is more I don't consider this a poor design decision from WoTC as much as it is just a natural outgrowth of the culture of the game. It is the same as everyone being effective in combat. A PC who couldn't contribute in combat would just be bored for long-stretches of the game.