D&D 5E Martials v Casters...I still don't *get* it.

[Crimson Longinus]

6 encounters/ 2 short rests per long rest using the Adventuring day XP chart in the DMG isnt 'extreme'. That's the median.

If its not the median, the fault (class imbalance) lies with the DM.

Doesnt happen in my games because I use doom clocks, or simple 'nopes' to stop the 5MWD.

But I agree (and its obvious) - a long rest resource based class (Paladin, Casters, Barbarians) are going to dominate in single encounter adventuring days. Short rest based classes (Fighters, Warlocks, Monks) will dominate in longer days, featuring more encounters and more short rests.

Rogues are the outlier, in that they're rest neutral (barring HP) with most of their abilities at will or simply requiring set up.

Caster supremacy only exists when they're free to blat high level spells with no consequence. When they run out, they suck bad.

And THATS the reality. Martial/ Caster disparity only exists depending on the encounter and rest frequency meta of your campaign. If wizards are dominating, force them into longer adventuring days. If the inverse is true, do the reverse.

People totally ignore this context and it shits me to tears when it happens.

Partly true. Though I strongly feel that WotC made a colossal mistake by balancing things around utterly insane amount of encounters per day. Most people simply do not play like that.

 

[Mort]

But if they're giving this benefit of the doubt to Casters but not Martials, is the problem not the DM who has this inherent favoritism?

It's not 1 DM it's quite pervasive. Because "magic" seems to be, well, a magic word for people.

But even taking that out - You still have the Martials are good at combat, sometimes at exploration and sometimes at social - but really only guaranteed good at combat unless the player built well.

Casters are good at all three pillars and even if the player made a few mistakes on the build, those can be controlled for. For the caster to be challenged on pillars, the DM has to be good at setting the pace and ensuring resource depletion. That's not as common a DM skill as you'd think.

I want to show exactly how spells interact with a regular encounter scenario without any DM fiat and show that my point is:

Casters get these utility options and breadth of combat options for the exchange that they have a more manual experience in the campaign.

They must be careful adjudicators of their resources because every spell used incorrectly is a spell slot of the day gone and an action wasted. Which isn't conducive to be "fine in combat" unless you are good at the system as a whole.

The problem is Taking away options to "limit DM fiat" is itself serious DM Fiat!

And if your limiting casters the way you are - well martials get hosed too. A high level fighter with no magic weapons is going to have some serious issues with high CR monsters.

 

[tetrasodium]

Yes but at those levels, your 1st through 5th level spells no longer factor into combat encounters. So all the lower slots can be converted to OOC just like 2e and 3e.

What kind of sessions do you run where one spell slot obliviates the need for all the lower ones? Clearly you did not actually check the way spell slots gains progress before saying that. Just for something to compare to & since you mentioned them,

Spoiler: here's how they used to scale

From eyballing page 43 of the 2e phb where wizard spell slot progression is listed it looks the same.

That doesn't mean that is some gold standard or anything, but it shows sme important differences. Before getting into the 5e version, notice how all levels but 9th pretty much scale 1 2 2 3 3 3 444444 once that level slot is obtained?... that's the important difference

Spoiler: "the 5e spell slot gain progression

Right out of the gate things start slowing with second level spells capping at 3 rather than 4slots. Then with 5th level slots rather than 2 levels with 2x of that slot it slows to nine of them before jumping to 3 at level 19. Finally 6h 7th 8h & 9th level slots effectively or literally never go past 1 slot. The dominating "power" people are claiming exists could exist if spell slot gains were not strangled in the crib with those high level slots... but that's not the game we have & fixing it could be difficult. This all translates to a massive reduction in spell slots ranging from 1 less at level 9 to 11 less at level 20.

Meanwhile magic weapons that were once created to balance out LFQW are still going into the hands of martial characters . With such a reduction placed alongside the removal of -5/-10/-15/etc on second/third/etc attacks you'd expect spells to be notably more powerful, but the inverse is true with those spells generally being weaker in almost every meaningful way they could be

 

[FrozenNorth]

IME - when cleaving to the 6ish encounter/ 2 short rest AD using the AD guidelines in the DMG that is not the case.

I agree with this. And I also agree that 5e has done a better job (4e excepted) of reducing the disparity between spellcasters and non-spellcasters.

That being said...

• As long as DMG guidelines are followed, this can be somewhat enforced. BUT, gaming time being what it is, the party is likely to have more 1- and 2- encounter days than 8- or 10- encounter days, favoring spellcasters overall;
• Non-combat encounters also tend to favor spellcasters, as there are quite a few spells that allow them to participate, while apart from rogues, non-spellcasters tend to have fewer options outside of combat;
• While non-spellcasters can shine in combat, spellcasters can also do well in combat, and adding extra opponents tends to favor spellcasters over non-spellcasters.
• The options that spellcasters have during downtime also tends to overshadow the options that non-spellcasters have;
• Though not universal, DMs tend to be more willing to interpret spells broadly, while limiting non-spellcasters to “realistic” ac
• Overall, the DM has to play a more active role to rein in casters. This can be tiring for a DM, or, if the DM focusses on other aspects of the game, can lead to casters overshadowing non-casters.

A DM who is running a political/military “Game of Thrones” campaign (lots of Humanoid enemies), can have the entire game wreaked by a wizard with Hypnotic Pattern and a bunch of enchantment spells.

 

[Asisreo]

Casters are good at all three pillars and even if the player made a few mistakes on the build, those can be controlled for. For the caster to be challenged on pillars, the DM has to be good at setting the pace and ensuring resource depletion. That's not as common a DM skill as you'd think.

But my point is that I don't think casters can hold up quite as well as martials in a combat encounter when we take a more isolated look.

With my original challenge, I gave the wizard as many non-fiat options they could want at all times, capable of completely tailoring their spell list to this specific encounter. Yet, most people seem to be somewhat upset that the restriction of "no component costs" is there, but a challenge where the fighter has something like the Boon of Invulnerability or the Blessings of Valhalla might make things just as trivial.

Plain Magic Items have guidance for DMs to distribute them, but no such guidance comes close to existing for Spell Components with a cost, making it even more reliant on the DM's personal judgement.

 

[FrozenNorth]

Both characters can handle the encounter. The Fighter uses Short rest resources (action surge x2, Second wind, arcane shot options, hit dice to heal after) but the Wizard is forced to use several long rest resources (including high level spell slots, of which he has few).

The question isnt whether they can handle it; the question is how many of those encounters, punctuated by short rests, can they handle in between long rests.

The post that prompted the Planetar encounter though, was @Asisreo suggesting that even on a single encounter, a martial would likely be stronger because the wizard could end up wasting spell slots attempting to target an enemy’s weakness.

See below:

This actually makes it more of an issue. If there is only 1 fight in an adventuring day and it takes 5-6 rounds to complete, the wizard has only 6 rounds to cast spells which mean they have only 6 chances to "get it right." Remember, a wizard cannot cast all their spells all at once. They take it turn-by-turn and if they're casting high-level spells, the amount of spells they can cast with an accurate guess dwindle in number and power.

Casting the 9th-level Wish for Forcecage only to have the creature pass a teleport save means that the Wizard can't attempt to True Polymorph in the encounter anymore.

And these series of guesses must continue, because actions are limited and truly strong spell slots aren't exactly the easiest to come by.

 

[tetrasodium]

But my point is that I don't think casters can hold up quite as well as martials in a combat encounter when we take a more isolated look.

With my original challenge, I gave the wizard as many non-fiat options they could want at all times, capable of completely tailoring their spell list to this specific encounter. Yet, most people seem to be somewhat upset that the restriction of "no component costs" is there, but a challenge where the fighter has something like the Boon of Invulnerability or the Blessings of Valhalla.

Plain Magic Items have guidance for DMs to distribute them, but no such guidance comes close to existing for Spell Components with a cost, making it even more reliant on the DM's personal judgement.

As you note, wotc provides loooots of guidance on magic items & magic weapons especially. It's extremely notable in this context that the guidance itself is to provide a low bar if any at all for those magic weapons Spells, scrolls, & components are virtually unmentioned when it comes to guidance

 

[Mort]

But my point is that I don't think casters can hold up quite as well as martials in a combat encounter when we take a more isolated look.

And my point is, without casters present - martials won't hold up as well either. Upthread, I gave several examples of how casters aid the fight significantly without doing a point of damage.

Casters contribute differently, not worse.

With my original challenge, I gave the wizard as many non-fiat options they could want at all times, capable of completely tailoring their spell list to this specific encounter. Yet, most people seem to be somewhat upset that the restriction of "no component costs" is there, but a challenge where the fighter has something like the Boon of Invulnerability or the Blessings of Valhalla might make things just as trivial.

But your "non fiat" is itself pretty big DM fiat. More importantly, the conditions and posting restrictions are enough to render the challenge meaningless.

Plain Magic Items have guidance for DMs to distribute them, but no such guidance comes close to existing for Spell Components with a cost, making it even more reliant on the DM's personal judgement.

True, but DMs tend to error on the side of letting the caster have those items - at least much of the time.

Most campaigns, by mid-high levels the PCs are swimming in enough cash to afford costly components.

 

[Mort]

As you note, wotc provides loooots of guidance on magic items & magic weapons especially. It's extremely notable in this context that the guidance itself is to provide a low bar if any at all for those magic weapons Spells, scrolls, & components are virtually unmentioned when it comes to guidance

5e, IMO wrongly, errs on the side of full DMs choice on these items. Likely to correct for the massive overabundance of scrolls etc. in 3e.
But by doing so, they leave way too much up to the DM having to figure things out - a lot more guidance would have been very helpful!

 

[Shadowedeyes]

But my point is that I don't think casters can hold up quite as well as martials in a combat encounter when we take a more isolated look.

With my original challenge, I gave the wizard as many non-fiat options they could want at all times, capable of completely tailoring their spell list to this specific encounter. Yet, most people seem to be somewhat upset that the restriction of "no component costs" is there, but a challenge where the fighter has something like the Boon of Invulnerability or the Blessings of Valhalla might make things just as trivial.

Plain Magic Items have guidance for DMs to distribute them, but no such guidance comes close to existing for Spell Components with a cost, making it even more reliant on the DM's personal judgement.

I think the pushback is because magic items/boons are very campaign dependent on how much control the player compared to a wizard being able to select a spell with their level up choices. While it could be a similar situation with the costly component for said spell, for a lot of people it makes sense that it is still easier to get a costly gem(for example) than a specific costly item. Even the downtime rules push towards that.

In addition, the spell feels like a part of the wizard class, while magic items don't do similar for the fighter. So when you get comparisons between classes, most people don't include the idea of magic items for the fighter.