D&D 5E Martial, Magic or Mundane? What can X do in 5e

[Aldarc]

It's not required to give mundanes "magic" to make them competitive with the mages. Just give them more tools to deal with a world of magic (e.g. saves, magic resist, etc.). Increase their survival versus magic.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

It's not required to give mundanes "magic" to make them competitive with the mages. Just give them more tools to deal with a world of magic (e.g. saves, magic resist, etc.). Increase their survival versus magic.

I hear this a lot, but the problem is it doesn't at all address the agency that casters have. Even at level 1 your wizard can drop 4 enemies instantly with no save, make someone instantly into a friend, unerringly shoot a lethal (to normal people and most at-level monsters at least) bolt of magic, etc. Now, at that level the fighter could do things IN COMBAT that are at least as useful, but out of combat what could he do? Nothing the wizard couldn't do just as well, except take damage, which is nice but not much. That's the BEST you get, and it goes downhill from there.

It is a mistake for people to think that equality means "equally useful in a fight", that's only scratching the surface.

Finally I don't really get the whole concept that somehow the 4e fighter or other martial classes were all that 'magical' in any sense. Read through the fighter level 29 capstone daily powers. Sorry, nothing in there looks very magical to me. You could do some fairly amazing stuff with skill checks, but so could everyone else and they weren't THAT off the wall, even at 30th level it was only a bit crazy (maybe jump 60' or something, which is impossible for a normal human, but at least easily imaginable).

Neither did 4e fighters REALLY solve the 'agency' issue. They sort of worked around it a bit, and you could mix in some 'magic' with your peanut butter, but the wizard still has you beat in a lot of situations. You really have to rely on PP and ED stuff to get close. I'm OK with that, it isn't perfect, but you do get to be a real combat god and in general they got close enough to make both martial and magical classes fun enough to feel equally interesting in play. Maybe I can't teleport 1000 miles, but I'm at least not in a different weight class like in higher level pre-4e.

 

[Greg K]

or dial back magic to a point many would find somewhat dull given the tradition of how the game has worked.

Lanefan

I want magic toned back. If sticking with spell levels, I want spells like sleep moved to another level for balance. I want spell damage toned down. I want slower spell acquisition similar to a bards so that clerics, druids, wizards, etc. are getting their 6th level spells around 18th level.

 

[Aldarc]

I hear this a lot, but the problem is it doesn't at all address the agency that casters have. Even at level 1 your wizard can drop 4 enemies instantly with no save, make someone instantly into a friend, unerringly shoot a lethal (to normal people and most at-level monsters at least) bolt of magic, etc. Now, at that level the fighter could do things IN COMBAT that are at least as useful, but out of combat what could he do? Nothing the wizard couldn't do just as well, except take damage, which is nice but not much. That's the BEST you get, and it goes downhill from there.

It is a mistake for people to think that equality means "equally useful in a fight", that's only scratching the surface.

It's certainly not everything that's required to repair the parity, but it would help in recreating some of the epic feeling of warriors and thieves.

 

[Lanefan]

I want magic toned back. If sticking with spell levels, I want spells like sleep moved to another level for balance. I want spell damage toned down. I want slower spell acquisition similar to a bards so that clerics, druids, wizards, etc. are getting their 6th level spells around 18th level.

That's one way to do it, to be sure.

Another is to have the game only go to about 12th level, with the higher stuff left as the realm of NPCs and enemies. Again this isn't for everyone, but the rise of E6 (and various versions thereof) can't be ignored.

Personally, I don't mind the game being open-ended as to level but I'd rather see it designed such that levels above about 10th are really difficult to achieve as a PC - easily enough done by slowing the advancement rate at that point to an absolute crawl. If you get to 12th, you've done something. 13th? Wow!

Lan-"10th level now, probably 10th level forever"-efan

 

[pemerton]

Eh, Elminster, Gandalf, and Merlin are the arcane analogs of Heracles and the like.

<snip>

I think D&D gets way more out of being a balanced, cooperative, and social game focused on teamwork and shared narrative than it does from any "realism" about how special spell-casters are vs. everyone else.

Great post.

I hear this a lot, but the problem is it doesn't at all address the agency that casters have.

<snip<

It is a mistake for people to think that equality means "equally useful in a fight", that's only scratching the surface.

Likewise.

I think the point about agency really leads into a bigger playstyle issue. For some playstyles, agency is more important than others. For example, for those players whose plessure in the game comes from "being there", immersed in the world and events created by the GM, then the low agency of being a fighter may not matter as much - and the GM of such a game has probably worked out techniques (mechanical, social, formal, informal) for preventing the player of the wizard exercising as much agency at the table as his/her character sheet would seem to suggest in the abstract.

This is yet another challenge the "unity" designers have to face, if they're going to make a system that caters to all playstyles.

 

[Greg K]

Personally, I don't mind the game being open-ended as to level but I'd rather see it designed such that levels above about 10th are really difficult to achieve as a PC - easily enough done by slowing the advancement rate at that point to an absolute crawl. If you get to 12th, you've done something. 13th? Wow!

Yeah, when I run 3e, I start using the slow leveling variant at 5th and increase the multiplier again at 10th. I would do it again at 15th and 20th.

 

[Bobbum Man]

I think that D&D needs to get away from the idea that martial characters are somehow "mundane", at least in the real world sense.

Joe Fighter might start out as Dirt McDirt, dirty peasant dirt farmer from dirt town, defending his dirt crops from kobolds with a rusty garden spade...but if he survives to see high levels then he is on par with the likes of Hercules, Cuchullain, or John Carter (on Mars) and punching gods out. This power curve is an inevitable function of having character levels and vertical advancement, and pretty much guaranties that high-level characters are superheroes.

See, everything in the D&D universe is magical. Everything. In this imaginary world, which is imaginary, and thus not bound to the physical laws of our own world, magic is a primal, omnipresent force of nature like neutrons and electrons are to us. Who's to say that one couldn't hone their body to the point where they can sprint at the speed of a coked up cheetah and lift houses? How can we truly know what the limits of human (mortal) potential is in a world that operates under different physical laws?

Also, we have to learn to accept that some things in D&D are an abstraction, and not meant to model reality in a way that stands up to scrutiny. People like this. There's a reason that more people play D&D than games with hit locations and armor as damage reduction. Take Hit Points for example: How many full-on axe blows does it take to kill a high-level fighter in D&D? I haven't done the math, but it takes more than it would any of us. This is because hit points don't represent physical damage. This is not a 4E invention either...this is straight from Gygax himself.

So if we accept that Hit Points are actually an abstract amalgam of mental and physical endurance, then things like martial healing suddenly make more sense. The Warlord yells at his injured companion, who finds the will to get up and keep fighting. Anyone who's ever had a personal trainer should be able to wrap their brains around that concept.

Yeah...some of you want to keep martial types relegated more to Conan levels than Hercules. But D&D needs Hercules if it is going to keep the game interesting for sword guy at all levels. Don't like that? Then cap character advancement at level 10 or so in your own games, rather than conforming the game as a whole solely to the sword and sorcery genre. Afterall, some of us want to be playing balls-out wuxia fantasy superheroes at level 20 and beyond.

D&D Fighters need to be magical. Hell, they already ARE magical. Their magic is merely internalized, whereas arcane magic-users shape the forces around them, espers manipulate sympathetic connections with objects and other beings, and divine casters act as material conduits for otherworldly powers.

 

[Aldarc]

Yeah...some of you want to keep martial types relegated more to Conan levels than Hercules. But D&D needs Hercules if it is going to keep the game interesting for sword guy at all levels. Don't like that? Then cap character advancement at level 10 or so in your own games, rather than conforming the game as a whole solely to the sword and sorcery genre. Afterall, some of us want to be playing balls-out wuxia fantasy superheroes at level 20 and beyond.

Or wait for the inevitable clamoring for "Grim Tales Next."

 

[Number48]

There is a danger in D&D that has been around since pretty much that beginning and that is the tendency to draw upon history for our ideals of martial characters and fantasy for everything else. You simply cannot run a historic knight in D&D, but a fantasy knight works just fine.

Ever see a kung-fu movie? The good guy gets the crap beat out of him until he can barely move, then he steels himself up and come back with a vengeance in the same fight. That is a second wind and how I see it for every class.

For just a second, I want to talk about that sharp line people seem to draw between martial and magic. I picture that if I put my medieval fighter in a setting that had firearms, he might be curious about them and pick one up. To have the DM or the game itself tell me that, no, firearms are only for the rifleman class and you can't use it, even poorly is clamping down on possibilities for no gameplay or story benefit. So, would it be so bad if one player wants to describe some of his fighter's abilities as outright magic? I wouldn't force him to or not to do it, but that fluff doesn't hurt the game. So let the fighter describe things as magic if it's only a description.

As for worrying about how far people jump or how fast they run, these are concerns when they take you out of the game because of suspension of disbelief or bad game mechanics. The movement system in EVERY edition of D&D works fine at the table. Nobody says, "Whoa that guy moved 8 squares and that is too fast for a mortal man. This game is too unbelievable." If it only becomes a problem if you torture the rule system, then it isn't a problem. It works at the game table and that's that.

I play pathfinder mostly now, and I have a hard time thinking of anything a martial class does that cannot be reasonable or even expected in a fantasy (not historical) setting.