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

[Aldarc]

I don’t think anyone would bregrudge someone coming up to our their own homebrew class.

From my point of view, I just don’t think it adds a weight to the idea that there is a Martial - Caster disparity.

One of several criticisms of 4e was that it homogenized all classes into the same kind of style and it didn’t feel materially different playing a wizard or a fighter. I can see that. You seem to see it as a feature though.

One of the things that many people who liked 4e will also tell you is that it gave a number of martial characters (e.g., fighter, rogue, warlord, ranger) more meaningful tactical options than simply declaring a basic attack action or making multiple attacks. It was loads of fun IME of playing a warlord and fighter in 4e. I'm far less interested in playing fighters in 5e than I was in 4e.

 

[ph0rk]

so lets give the Warlock a +1 attack weapon.

Which would free up an invocation for the warlock, at the cost of being to change their bow to a pact weapon.

@Flamestrike also made the point, that we should be debating the classes based on on WOTC designed the game, not how our particular groups like to play them. But if we do that.... then that means no magic weapons and no feats (which are optional rules by the book). So no GWM, and many monsters will now take half damage from the Champion, whereas very few things resist force damage.

And a Warlock's pact weapon counts as magic giving them an edge in that scenario, which is a dumb achilles heel for most fighters, but one they designed into the game. No feats in particular makes the Warlock's at will damage look really, really good.

We have had 30 pages of people basically all stated the same general things in 400 different ways. Is there really anymore to say? I guess the question is....did anyone switch sides after hearing the debates?

The only person that entertained the idea of changing their position was Asisreo.

I'd consider it, myself, but not from an exhibition match. A meta-strudy of hundreds of them, maybe, but I'd want a way to simulate out of combat stuff, too, and the constraint is characters must perform in all three pillars. As much as people complain that different spell lists isn't a fair argument (even though they want spell lists so they can then tailor the scenario for it) they build different fighters for each scenario, too. Hence the need for an aggregate approach.

 

[FrozenNorth]

Almost all class features basically leaves all background/adventure design alone but this feature seems to enforce specific themes and flavors into the world.

Warlocks, druids paladins and clerics say hi! All class features enforce specific themes and flavors in the world.

Plus, you are taking one specific example (created in 30 s) and treating it as a generality. No, a knight and dragons aren’t a generality. You could instead have a technique that is applicable sgainst opponents that are 2 sizes larger, or are prone, etc.

 

[ph0rk]

I think a warlock is far more complext to play than a wizard. The rest mechanic is more complex, upcasting everything of lower level adds complexity and in terms of story design, working the patron into the game with the DM is complex. This last bit makes Warlock overall the most complex character to play.

Hard disagree.

Warlocks are more complex than fighters and barbarians, and, I'd argue, more complex than sorcerers, but the daily prep decisions aren't there, and for the most part, if you go pact of tome, chain, or talisman you can take whatever invocations you want after agonizing blast. Agonizing blast should have been made a class feature, but oh well.

If you go pact of the blade you have to pick invocations more carefully, but it's still less complex than playing, say, a bladesinger.

 

[FrozenNorth]

I think you're kind of describing pathfinder 2e.

Our group has been dabbling recently and thus far, the martials do feel a lot better. I just wish it wasn't so fiddly generally. It works well on the foundry VTT, but seems like it'd be unwieldy otherwise.

This has been my experience with PF2 as well. It gives martials a lot of space to do cool things, but a lot of the rules (that don’t have anything to do with making martials cool) are major turn-offs.

 

[Minigiant]

I don’t think anyone would bregrudge someone coming up to our their own homebrew class.

From my point of view, I just don’t think it adds a weight to the idea that there is a Martial - Caster disparity.

One of several criticisms of 4e was that it homogenized all classes into the same kind of style and it didn’t feel materially different playing a wizard or a fighter. I can see that. You seem to see it as a feature though.

The real issue with 4e is it made the FIGHTER work the same as the WIZARD.

My desire is to play a more complex version of the 4e fighter.

just do not call it a fighter

Combat is a complex sport in real life. Fighting games are VERY VERY complex. I don't get why it MUST be simple in D&D. I'm not even asking for that level of complexity.

 

[FrozenNorth]

One of the things that many people who liked 4e will also tell you is that it gave a number of martial characters (e.g., fighter, rogue, warlord, ranger) more meaningful tactical options than simply declaring a basic attack action or making multiple attacks. It was loads of fun IME of playing a warlord and fighter in 4e. I'm far less interested in playing fighters in 5e than I was in 4e.

Don’t forget skill powers! Even as a fighter, you had a choice of interesting non-combat options.

Which goes back to table variance. A game where there are fewer combats and more non-combat encounters, barbarians, fighters and (sometimes) monks are going to feel like they contribute less.

 

[Oofta]

Again though with 4e it was more a presentation issue than actual play. On paper a fighter and wizard had "the same stuff".

In actuality, Fighters had strong encounter powers and decent at-wills....but wizard dailies were game changers. I ran a campaign from 3 all the way to 20th with both a fighter and a wizard...and believe me they didn't look anything alike in actual play.

It was still wizards can do some decent stuff at will, better stuff per encounter but their best stuff was daily. Fighters can do some decent stuff at will, better stuff per encounter but their best stuff was daily. Wizards had flashier powers, but the effects in my experience had similar impact depending on the situation. YMMV of course.

That and many of the things fighters could do felt supernatural to a lot of people: things like come and get it working against any type of creature simply doesn't make sense. You don't have to agree with me. You could, in theory, avoid those bits (maybe, I never really tried and of course essentials changed things). But the base structure simply didn't "work" for a lot of people as a representation of a mundane fighter.

For my "mundane" fighter I had an entire page that I simply listed all of the powers from my class and items that I had and what they did categorized by at-will, daily, healing, teleportation and so on. The details of what was on the sheet doesn't really matter - it's that I had to have a page of reminders to tell me what my "simple fighter" PC could do. In 5E if I want simple I can have it. If I want complex, I can do that as well. Are the most complex builds fighters? No. But there are still options if complexity is what you want.

TLDR: I don't think the solution to "boring" fighters is to mechanically turn them into wizards.

 

[Oofta]

Well, the true goal was never for anyone to switch sides, at least not this thread. The goal was to simply question, listen, and understand.

The reason its hard to switch sides in this discussion as-is is simply because its all talk but no real experience. There isn't a "how many wizards get every component" list or "how do all DMs actually handle martials" statistic.

Its kinda why I'm set on using examples, experiments, challenges, and adventures to truly witness if everything being said about Casters/Martials are true.

I think very few people have played high level D&D here, and I think even less have done it with a DM with experience in running them. My theory is that the way the adventure is set up and prepared is much more important to overall class balance, even if we were to take the situation of a "no slog" 1-combat mini adventure.

This is why I've been working on the high-level D&D mini-adventure, because I want to witness this all for myself. I'm still very much willing to run it and hopefully, it will help one side demonstrate their frustrations to another in a visual aspect.

One thing I don't understand about 6 encounters being a "slog" ... if they are then isn't the entire game a slog? I mean, presumably for each level, you have more than 6 encounters (after 1st), right? For every level you have between 6 and 16 encounters if you leveled based on XP according to this site.

So it's not that the PCs aren't going to have the encounters, it's the number of long rests between encounters that you get. On the other hand if by "slog" people mean "casters can't go nova and use all of their most powerful spells every encounter" then the problem is that you expect casters to go nova every encounter.

 

[Undrave]

Again though with 4e it was more a presentation issue than actual play. On paper a fighter and wizard had "the same stuff".

In actuality, Fighters had strong encounter powers and decent at-wills....but wizard dailies were game changers. I ran a campaign from 3 all the way to 20th with both a fighter and a wizard...and believe me they didn't look anything alike in actual play.

Yeah, the different roles also played strikingly different. Heck, I played two Strikers (Warlock and Avenger) and they played differently

Add in how the DM makes their rulings as another critical factor.

So maybe at the end of the day, the only thing we could REALLY debate, would have how does the balance look in Adventurer's League....as that is a common baseline we all could in theory work from. But yeah...its clear that many of us just have vastly different gaming experiences from each other...so of course are opinions about various aspect of the game are going to be radically different.

My experience in AL was Ravenloft and THAT was NOT martial friendly at all! When we ended up a party with a Fighter, a Rogue and a Ranger we ended up having to pass along a silvered Dagger around to keep a single werewolf that kept missing us (thank you Protection Style) from winning... the DM just GAVE UP after a while and gave us the win!

I disagree. Eldritch Blast. Agonizing Blast. Nothing else is necessary to make a competent ranged attacker. You have exactly 2 spell slots, which refresh per short rest, so you aren’t really tracking spell slots like other casters. And you aren’t a prepared caster, so you don’t have to choose your spells each morning, and you don’t even need to learn how other spells work.

You can optimize to get more out of the class, but you don’t HAVE to.

Yeah, you can just grab utility spells for the rest like Spider Climb, Invisibility, Fly, and just be a magic gunman in combat.