D&D 5E Too much arcane in the party?

[Tony Vargas]

Having a party with no magic at all (given the high number of divine magic users) would be astonishing. You would have the barbarian, 2/3 of the fighter archetypes, 1/3 monks, 2/3 rogues and... that's it.

Ki is explicitly magical in 5e, so even the open-hand Monk is out.

Could make an interesting party - 1 barbarian, 1 fighter, 1 monk, 1 rogue. Lots of butt-kicking

All the non-magic-using sub-classes are DPR types. Raging barbarian, sneak-attacking rogues, multi-attacking fighters.

It is true that there are a lot of options with magic but players will still tend towards what they like as opposed to taking options simply because they exist. It's hard to make a non-magical wizard as an archetype and it's easy to make a magic using fighter so I think that illustrates why there would be more magical options than non-magical, at least at a basic level.

The world has produced a plethora of wizards, witches, sorcerers, priests, shamans, psychics & c, all in a universe where magic doesn't even exist, so it's not exactly hard to come up with the archetypes, just hard to present them as something viable in the context of D&D, where magic has mostly been required (if not through class features for every PC, then through magic items, or cooperation between magical and no-magical PCs) for success.

But, as far as number of presented options go, it speaks to how close you can get to a desired concept. The more options, the more likely you can pick an option that's near to what you had envisioned. If you can't play anything close the non-caster concept you really wanted, but can get very close to a caster concept you were also considering, you might well decide to play the latter. The more so if the closest non-caster PC choice fall short of whatever inspired you, while the closes caster choice exceeds the range of abilities that evoked that concept.

 

[Ashrym]

I played in a campaign where the allowed options were barbarians, fighters, monks, rangers, and rogues for a while. That was what was considered "low magic" by the DM. I don't agree that magic is required for success unless the DM forces that requirement.

There's no actual direct correlation to the number of choices offered and which choices are taken, or how the DM populates the campaign.

I think the sheer number of choices for spell casters have more to do with traditional game elements for familiarity of the past editions than actual need, but a person can still stick with the basic rules version that only had 1 wizard, 1 cleric, 1 fighter, and 1 rogue to play a game. The evoker, healer, champion, and thief works for a simple game and demonstrates that all those magical options are just options instead of showing a requirement.