D&D General Compelling and Differentiated Gameplay For Spellcasters and Martial Classes

[5ekyu]

So the fantasy of the Ancestral Guardian is that when you rage the spirits of your ancestors come to aid you, harassing your enemies and protecting your allies. Instead of existing purely as fluff why not make them feel like active parts of the battle field? As your connections to these spirits deepen they become more powerful and can do different things on your command. Managing positioning of the spirits and choosing different actions, bonus action activities and reactions that you had to choose between to actively rather than passively defend your allies could involve a great deal of player skill and also help you live out the fantasy more fully.

So, currently, youAncestral barbarian has...

Choose who to have te spirits disadvantage by making anattack.

Choose who to have your spirits protect, by spendiga reaction.

Choose to use your spirits as a spy or as a portent - clairvoyance or augury

And then boost te second with return damae when they protect.

These seem ike engaging choices to me but thats me.

It also seems like say clairvoyance can be quite impactful outside of combat, but again, thats me.

But you ewould rather see this made into another variant of "pet" class with summoned warriors or more positional play to make it a bit harder, more player skil dependent, more room to fail and succeed?

Ok, that is clearer i think.

BTW in my games, we do alot of fluff eabled stuff. One on y players character has spirit guardians,who are named and there is even banter and disagreement from time to time. Its always fun toshow off they were doing oter things when summoned - for instance.

Its more to make the fluff and fiction engaging tho, than to turn it into a summon spell that he has to manage spot by spot,spirit by spirit, action by action but it adds fun.

BTW, if you wanted to play a pet PC type, why not beastmaster ranger from barbarian tribe? Should every martial get a pet sub-class? Maybe rogue rat-master?

 

[FrogReaver]

According to DndBeyond, fighter is the most popular class.

So yes, I do know the figures. Your turn.

Now, as far as the OP:


I'm just stating my opinion. The fighter isn't broke, don't expect anyone to fix it. I like playing a mundane* fighter.

If you want a more complex option maybe a different game is for you because not every game works for everyone. If you want to continue to play D&D check out the DmsGuild, I'd be surprised if there weren't several options. If you have specific custom classes feel free to post them for feedback.

* given that D&D is basically action-movie reality.

A few points:
Most of us agree fighter is poor outside combat
The fighter is strong in combat
No one dislikes likes the fighter fantasy
Combat is often weighted as more important than the other pillars

Thus, it makes perfect sense to me that the fighter can be poor outside combat - and I would argue unreasonably poor - while still being very popular because of the other 3 things I listed below.

 

[5ekyu]

A few points:
Most of us agree fighter is poor outside combat
The fighter is strong in combat
No one dislikes likes the fighter fantasy
Combat is often weighted as more important than the other pillars

Thus, it makes perfect sense to me that the fighter can be poor outside combat - and I would argue unreasonably poor - while still being very popular because of the other 3 things I listed below.

Slight change in topic...

Do you see value in having some sub-class and class options be less player-skill specific?

The devs for instance made a point of stating that they valued this, as a way for newer players and casuals to have a more straight-forward play option, while others have more player-skill complexity baked in.

I mean, frankly, in terms of combat play, the barbarians are really not obviously the most complex options, even among the martials. But that seems to not be ok to have in the game for some?

 

[FrogReaver]

Within a context of role playing game design it is absolutely possible. You discard two of the central conceits that have been with us since Third Edition. The first is that at will abilities cannot be awesome and daily and encounter rationing is needed to balance anything that is more involved than I attack with my sword. The second is the idea that spell casters should be doing the same things other characters do, but better.

I'm not sure you can have awesome at-will abilities. The moment you put one in then everything at-will that's not as awesome as it is instantly relegated as not worth using. Thus, at-will abilities cannot be awesome.

That said, there can be highly situational abilities that are resource free that can be much more awesome than the normal at-will abilities. I don't think such abilities are enough to fix anything.

As for caster's rationing spells - that can work. See the warlock for an example. It's just you must really limit the number

You make martial characters the undisputed masters of single target personal combat with access to techniques that match what a character with their level of skill should be capable of. You then provide a niche for spell casters that is different from the niche of martial characters and skill users. This does generally require defining what skills and martial techniques can actually do.

Yes but there is one method of doing that which works and one that doesn't. Pure at-will fighters doing more damage than casters do with any spell just relegates casters to either a support or non-combat class. I don't find that a good way to design a game. Instead martial and caster classes both need resources they can spend to do more than they can do at will.

This is the way a number of games that are not Dungeons and Dragons have balanced spell casters and more martially inclined characters for years. In practice this largely matches my experience with Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Second Edition without the fun techniques for martials. It's how RuneQuest, Legend of the Five Rings, Vampire, Exalted, Shadowrun, and Pathfinder Second Edition work. Spellcasters have to marshal resources just to keep up with martials in their areas of expertise, but are more capable in other areas like area damage, divination, protective spells, and plot device level magic like teleportation. Their spells are also less certain.

You listed an example where casters were better at everything except single target damage and could spend spells to keep up with single target damage. If you are championing that kind of design as a path forward then you're way out in left field. That kind of design has already been tried and found lacking.

I agree these structural changes will not work with Fifth Edition as designed. I do think you could keep the existing structures in place and layer on subclasses that got more interesting at will abilities as they level up that might require some setup or perhaps use attacks as a resource so a Fighter with say the Tactician subclass might be able to use 2 attacks to strike an enemy and apply a powerful debuff. You could feed this into Action Surge as well. I really like this idea. I might start drafting something up.

Abilities to set up attacks worth rather poorly in theatre of the mind and even on a grid it takes to many statuses or conditions to appropriately track. It just doesn't work well.

 

[FrogReaver]

Slight change in topic...

Do you see value in having some sub-class and class options be less player-skill specific?

The devs for instance made a point of stating that they valued this, as a way for newer players and casuals to have a more straight-forward play option, while others have more player-skill complexity baked in.

I mean, frankly, in terms of combat play, the barbarians are really not obviously the most complex options, even among the martials. But that seems to not be ok to have in the game for some?

Let me preface this with, I think there's 2 kinds of complexity. In game complexity and character building complexity. A lot of what gets touted as complexity is complexity in character building. You get a wall of options and must read and understand most of them to decide what to pick. Then in play you have resources that have options attached to them that you must decide when and how to use. I think new players are fine at the in game complexity but the character building complexity is the issue.

But to answer your question, let's look at classes first. Are there low skill and high skill classes? YES. Extremely so. Full casters have a much higher skill cap than non-full casters.

So, I think due to the nature of magic you must have high skill and low skill options for classes. But subclasses?

I think subclasses should first evoke the concept they are named for first and there will be a little bit of differenes in skill mastery based on the mechanics required for that.

You mentioned barbarians - they actually have one of the more interesting mechanics in reckless attack. A straight up at will trade of offense for defense. That's a great example of an ability that evokes in game complexity but no character building complexity.

So, I think it's needed to have different classes and subclasses for different skill levels - but do realize games become more imbalnced the more of that you add.

 

[FrogReaver]

As I have said before the issue is not one of power it is one of agency.

Agency is just the method to deliver the power. It's still about power.

 

[5ekyu]

Let me preface this with, I think there's 2 kinds of complexity. In game complexity and character building complexity. A lot of what gets touted as complexity is complexity in character building. You get a wall of options and must read and understand most of them to decide what to pick. Then in play you have resources that have options attached to them that you must decide when and how to use. I think new players are fine at the in game complexity but the character building complexity is the issue.

But to answer your question, let's look at classes first. Are there low skill and high skill classes? YES. Extremely so. Full casters have a much higher skill cap than non-full casters.

So, I think due to the nature of magic you must have high skill and low skill options for classes. But subclasses?

I think subclasses should first evoke the concept they are named for first and there will be a little bit of differenes in skill mastery based on the mechanics required for that.

You mentioned barbarians - they actually have one of the more interesting mechanics in reckless attack. A straight up at will trade of offense for defense. That's a great example of an ability that evokes in game complexity but no character building complexity.

So, I think it's needed to have different classes and subclasses for different skill levels - but do realize games become more imbalnced the more of that you add.

BTW personally i agree with you about barbarians having built in interesting choices that can spotlight player skill and i found ancestral sub-class to enable a wider array of story, non-combat and combat choices that again depend on skill to a noticeable degree - but that was one of the selected examples for one that needs some improvements - turned into a pet class for example.

I am tending to agree with some posters who may feel this is a very amorphous eye-of-the-beholder type of things.

 

[Sacrosanct]

In my experience (both in person and from online discussions), 99% of complaints about balance re mundane vs casters is the result of the person(s) ignoring important parts of game design that are meant to mitigate the power of casters. Almost always including at least one of the below (depending on edition):

Always having the caster succeed at learning a found spell without even checking for failure
Ignoring spell interruption rules
Ignoring material components
Not following tenets of their deity but still casting all of their spells
Conveniently always having the right spell memorized no matter what (mostly in white room discussions. I.e, arguments if “well, the caster can always cast X in that situation” while ignoring in actual gameplay that a caster with six spell slots won’t have the eight perfect spells memorized for a trek through the jungle, especially if they don’t know what to expect exactly. See the old ToA thread for what I’m referring to in regards to how the jungle dangers are moot to the party)
Always seem to have full resources at the start of every encounter. This is the big one. Of course a caster can nova better than a fighter. But they can only do it a very limited amount while the fighter goes literally all day. That’s the point of their design. So if you let casters rest between every encounter, no wonder why you think it’s not balanced.


TL;DR: almost every balance issue I’ve heard of comes down to a playstyle that benefits casters in spite of the rules

 

[FrogReaver]

Your sarcasm is cute and if it is not sarcasm I apologize, but to be honest I do not have an exact answer at the moment. At any rate I have not asked for a reduction in the agency of spellcasters, just an improvement in the agency of martial characters. Well maybe I suppose you could say in asking for more effort to be put into the agency of martial characters instead of just creating more spells I am kind of asking for that.

At any rate can anyone honestly say spell slots being a limited resource has done anything of note to increase the agency of martial characters or has it just affect the adventuring day? Between cantrips, rituals and spell casting items the average spellcaster is rarely caught short on means to have agency.

Wasn't sarcasm. Consider the warlock. I don't know of anyone that has major issues with the balance and agency differences between warlocks and fighters. Why is that? Because warlocks only get 2 spells known per day and a few static at will abilities. The point is that the warlock style caster is much closer to the the agency and power balance point - but everyone believes warlocks are underpowered compared with full casters.

My belief is that in order to bring warlocks or fighters up to full casters in terms of agency that the player must be given too much control of the fiction. The player would need to be able to conjure new elements into the scene that the weren't present in the DM's scene. For example - there's a large canyon separating you. Wizard casts fly, no giant eagles are present - player uses ability that makes giant eagle present and fighter uses his athleticism to jump and grab onto it to ride across the canyon.

But the fighter's player just creating a giant eagle in the right place at the right time while fully non-supernatural in the fiction - feels bad, like you stopped being your character just to godlike set up a scene for him. That playstyle isn't something most want IMO.

So the solution is - either limit casters to warlock level or lower. Or make fighters king of the combat pillar and have casters be all 3 pillar style characters that do quite a bit less in combat.

 

[FrogReaver]

In my experience (both in person and from online discussions), 99% of complaints about balance re mundane vs casters is the result of the person(s) ignoring important parts of game design that are meant to mitigate the power of casters. Almost always including at least one of the below (depending on edition):

Always having the caster succeed at learning a found spell without even checking for failure
Ignoring spell interruption rules
Ignoring material components
Not following tenets of their deity but still casting all of their spells
Conveniently always having the right spell memorized no matter what (mostly in white room discussions. I.e, arguments if “well, the caster can always cast X in that situation” while ignoring in actual gameplay that a caster with six spell slots won’t have the eight perfect spells memorized for a trek through the jungle, especially if they don’t know what to expect exactly. See the old ToA thread for what I’m referring to in regards to how the jungle dangers are moot to the party)
Always seem to have full resources at the start of every encounter. This is the big one. Of course a caster can nova better than a fighter. But they can only do it a very limited amount while the fighter goes literally all day. That’s the point of their design. So if you let casters rest between every encounter, no wonder why you think it’s not balanced.


TL;DR: almost every balance issue I’ve heard of comes down to a playstyle that benefits casters in spite of the rules

I'm not saying those aren't true, but I don't think that even following them perfectly that it doesn't fix the problem being talked about here.