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

[Minigiant]

No one wants to 'change the game' we just want a new friggin' class or some new class features.

Indeed.
There are more than 13 classes in fantasy!

5+ years in, old school WOTC woulda created 7 new classes by now.

 

[FrozenNorth]

No bypassing the encounter is fine. Just don’t write an adventure where it’s raison d’etre hinges on that one encounter. Is that not obvious?

No, it was not obvious. In the initial post, you referred to “situations”. I understood this to mean encounters, not adventures.

From your latest post, I understand that you do not see a problem with one character bypassing encounters with a single spell. In the example I gave, this was a spell that was not the highest level a character could cast, and of which the character had 4 more castings.

To me, one character that can regularly bypass encounters using a single spell is an issue. Here’s why:

• Fairness: It just doesn’t feel fair that the spellcaster gets to shut down a CR 15 encounter by themself with a single spell while the others can’t do anything equivalent. This is also a spotlight issue. It’s just easier for that one character to get the spotlight;
• Skilled Play: I am all for characters who use clever solutions to bypass encounters! But very often, casting a spell to do the thing the spell does is not clever play. It is using the spell for its intended purpose, and kind of devalues really interesting plans characters come up with;
• Creating encounters: having to take these spells into account when designing encounters makes the process longer and harder than it otherwise should be. I start with a cool idea. Then I have to stress test that idea against the spells the characters know. Sometimes, this makes the ultimate idea better, but often, you end up putting arbitrary conditions on a cool idea, or just abandoning it altogether;
• Won’t someone think of the Newbie DMs? This is especially hard on newbie DMs, who might not realize that the “awesome” non-combat climb encounter they designed, with enemies that attack halfway up, levels of failure for the climbing checks, can be bypassed by a 2nd level levitate spell;
• Also, it takes time to come up with those encounters. Every encounter bypassed is an extra encounter the DM has to create between sessions. Sometimes this isn’t a problem, but often, the DM is spending extra time creating the encounter and setting it up on a VTT;
• Goodwill: in a perfect world, players understand it when a spell that should work doesn’t because you want to give another player some time to shine. In reality, the DM coming up with reasons why the wizard’s spells don’t work can make the wizard feel like the DM is stealth nerfing his class;
• Balance: once again, in an ideal world, the DM achieves that balance between allowing casters to shine in certain occasions, but preventing spells from steamrolling encounters. In practice, it’s a tough line to tread, and DMs and players will disagree about where to draw the line. Does allowing the Pact of the Chain familiar scout the entire dungeon invalidate the rogue? How about the wizard’s familiar giving advantage on one attack each turn?
• Verisimilitude: once again, this is a subjective issue, but adventure (or encounter) constraints on magic can strain verisimilude HARD. Dungeons that you cannot bypass using conjuration magic, random dispel magics and anti-magic shells get old fast.

But let’s return to Scotland for a moment...No TRUE adventure writer creates an adventure that can be bypassed by speak with dead, hypnotic pattern, invisibilty, augury, etc. But this is a hobby where 90% of the adventure writers are amateurs. Every DM not running a pre-existing module is an adventure writer and YES, ABSOLUTELY, many of them are creating adventures that can be bypassed and trivialized by a 2nd or 3rd level spell.

 

[Asisreo]

So your response is change the way I run the encounter?

Yes. I assume the intention is for it to be challenging.

Also, the way it was presented would be equally unfair and breaks versimilitude.

Think about the case where the Purple Worm happens to get a 19 in initiative and the rest of the party gets >19. Congrats, the worm gets to go first. If it targets the wizard, even with a +5 Con, the wizard takes enough damage to be outright unconscious and eaten.

Its important to be consistent because most rules are there for the sake of fairness.

 

[Gammadoodler]

At the risk of flogging a dead horse, forcing it water, making it drink and then sending it to the glue factory.

If you’re going to use quotations, quote the words. Don’t misquote them.

My quote refers to the ‘thing that can be done’... the end result. Not the action to achieve it. Which I make clear takes more time and effort.

The spell is action. You don’t mimic the spell. You mimic the end result. They are not equivalent.

So ignoring that, in common English, actions are "things that you do", and results are not, we'll press forward, because you've acknowledged that the results are equivalent.

If the results of the actions are equivalent, what is the mechanical need for this more precisely defined adjudication guidance?

Why would the designers constrain casters to only 100 pages and counting of available mechanical options to achieve these same results, when a simple non-exhaustive list and bespoke DM rulings would have sufficed to cover any possible result they were seeking?

 

[Mort]

No, it was not obvious. In the initial post, you referred to “situations”. I understood this to mean encounters, not adventures.

From your latest post, I understand that you do not see a problem with one character bypassing encounters with a single spell. In the example I gave, this was a spell that was not the highest level a character could cast, and of which the character had 4 more castings.

To me, one character that can regularly bypass encounters using a single spell is an issue. Here’s why:

• Fairness: It just doesn’t feel fair that the spellcaster gets to shut down a CR 15 encounter by themself with a single spell while the others can’t do anything equivalent. This is also a spotlight issue. It’s just easier for that one character to get the spotlight;
• Skilled Play: I am all for characters who use clever solutions to bypass encounters! But very often, casting a spell to do the thing the spell does is not clever play. It is using the spell for its intended purpose, and kind of devalues really interesting plans characters come up with;
• Creating encounters: having to take these spells into account when designing encounters makes the process longer and harder than it otherwise should be. I start with a cool idea. Then I have to stress test that idea against the spells the characters know. Sometimes, this makes the ultimate idea better, but often, you end up putting arbitrary conditions on a cool idea, or just abandoning it altogether;
• Won’t someone think of the Newbie DMs? This is especially hard on newbie DMs, who might not realize that the “awesome” non-combat climb encounter they designed, with enemies that attack halfway up, levels of failure for the climbing checks, can be bypassed by a 2nd level levitate spell;
• Also, it takes time to come up with those encounters. Every encounter bypassed is an extra encounter the DM has to create between sessions. Sometimes this isn’t a problem, but often, the DM is spending extra time creating the encounter and setting it up on a VTT;
• Goodwill: in a perfect world, players understand it when a spell that should work doesn’t because you want to give another player some time to shine. In reality, the DM coming up with reasons why the wizard’s spells don’t work can make the wizard feel like the DM is stealth nerfing his class;
• Balance: once again, in an ideal world, the DM achieves that balance between allowing casters to shine in certain occasions, but preventing spells from steamrolling encounters. In practice, it’s a tough line to tread, and DMs and players will disagree about where to draw the line. Does allowing the Pact of the Chain familiar scout the entire dungeon invalidate the rogue? How about the wizard’s familiar giving advantage on one attack each turn?
• Verisimilitude: once again, this is a subjective issue, but adventure (or encounter) constraints on magic can strain verisimilude HARD. Dungeons that you cannot bypass using conjuration magic, random dispel magics and anti-magic shells get old fast.

But let’s return to Scotland for a moment...No TRUE adventure writer creates an adventure that can be bypassed by speak with dead, hypnotic pattern, invisibilty, augury, etc. But this is a hobby where 90% of the adventure writers are amateurs. Every DM not running a pre-existing module is an adventure writer and YES, ABSOLUTELY, many of them are creating adventures that can be bypassed and trivialized by a 2nd or 3rd level spell.

I just can't quite comprehend the idea put forth that spells don't actually change anything they're just short cuts. But for them to be "just shortcuts" the adventure has to be designed in such a way for them to only be just shortcuts, otherwise the claim is it's bad adventure design. So it's completely circular logic really.

It just seems obvious to me that spells (and therefore casters) can change/define the play loop.

Take an encounter with an alien race. They try to communicate with the party - no one in the party knows the alien language.

Without a caster in the party (or a caster without access to the right spells) - they have to get really creative to try and communicate - it's a scenario in and of itself.

But with a caster - 1 comprehend languages coming right up (it's not even a resource drain, since it's a ritual). Now comprehend languages is an interesting spell and only imparts the absolute literal meaning of the words (like using google translate or worse) so all sorts of funky situations could ensue. But it's quite different than not understanding period. You just can't say the spell doesn't change the approach to the encounter.

And that's assuming low level. 5+ level has access to tongues which is more a star trek style universal translator. Much less prone to weirdness (could still exist of course) and again, changes the nature of the encounter dramatically.

 

[Zubatcarteira]

I find that martials vs casters discussions often just default to Fighter vs Wizard arguments, so I'd like to share my experience playing a Barbarian then a Druid in the same campaign and how they contributed to the party.

My first character in D&D was a Half-Orc Totem Warrior Barbarian, who went with the Bear Totems, grabbed GWM with a Greataxe, and rolled well enough to have 20 STR straight from level 1, along with decent DEX and CON. For how he was useful, he had:

• Tankiness: Between the d12 hit die, the Half-Orc's Relentless Endurance, and being resistant to pretty much everything, he could take a lot of damage before going down. Our Sorcerer would sometimes Fireball enemies with him in the middle since it wouldn't hurt much anyway.
• Damage: With GWM and Reckless Attack, he did a lot of damage, especially at the lower levels, which allowed him to stay as a threat and not let enemies just ignore him while attacking everyone else. Although, since Rage damage scales very poorly and Barbarians don't really get good high-level damage abilities, his damage just kinda peaked early on and got less impressive as time went by.
• Yeet: The DM allowed using STR to grapple enemies and yeet them 30 feet away, which was always nice and allowed him to control enemy positions at the cost of not really attacking for a turn. Throwing a cultist inside a blood elemental was a high point.
• Carrying and breaking stuff: Bear Totem helps a lot with this, so he could carry loot and unconscious allies, or break stuff without wasting a Rage.
• Spells: The Speak With Animals that the subclass gives came in handy a few times to interrogate beasts for info. Beast Sense didn't help as much.
• Poisons: His 6 INT was enough to grab some Crawler Mucus and sleep gas, so he could throw some hard CC if he really had to.

Overall, really fun and useful for the party, even if a lot of the times all he could do was stand in front of the enemy, stab and pray things work out.

So, after he died in a road tax dispute at around level 7, his sister joined the group as a Human Circle of the Land (Coast) Druid. Got Resilient feat and high con to keep concentration and also managed to cap Wisdom since she joined at level 6. For what she contributes until level 9 where we took a hiatus:

• Water Breathing: An always prepared spell that the subclass gives, you can cast it every day as a ritual and the whole team gets to breathe underwater. One time with the Barb our team didn't have this, so we had to infect ourselves with Aboleth Mucus on purpose just to reach an underwater lair, which not everyone failed the save against, so we had to go there with less people and things went absolutely terribly.
• Pass Without Trace: Gives the whole party a +10 to stealth while you walk together, really strong to help the heavy armor fellows. With a stealthy teammate she can wildshape into a small animal and hide in their pocket while they run around with a +18 or something.
• Healing: Always good to have, can throw in a Healing Word every once in a while to get allies back up, and Aura of Vitality is 20d6 healing for one spell. Revivify also got added to their list with Tasha's.
• Goodberry: Rations weren't really an issue, but this alone makes sure they'll never be, and has a nice bonus that you don't have to worry about getting your food poisoned by those people from the road tax dispute.
• Conjure Animals: If your DM lets you choose the animals, this is just crazy strong. Throwing a few bears into a fight helps a lot with the action economy and just adds a lot of meat shields to divert attention from your allies. Out of combat she just called Giant Eagles to fly us out of a cursed battlefield instead of having to sneak or fight our way out, saved a lot of effort.
• Divinations: She has Augury for a quick check to see if they should do something or not, Divination to ask god about the future, Commune with Nature to get info on a very large area (Barb would also get this at level 10) and Scrying to find enemies and lost allies.
• Wildshape: Small animals and PWT give you a stealth that even a Rogue can't really match, imo. And when you get flying forms at level 8 you just get a lot of freedom. One time when the party was in a city resting she just said "Hey guys, I'll be gone for today, cya", turned into a Giant Eagle, flew to a temple dozens of miles away, did what she had to do, then flew back before evening, much faster and safer than walking.

It's just a level of versatility that a Barb and even other martials can't compete with. And I don't think martials necessarily need to have as many options, it's fine for magic to have the fancy stuff and keep other classes simpler, but Barbs specially don't get much to compensate, especially at higher levels.

At level 9 a Barb gets to add a single extra d12 to a crit, the Druid at the same level gets Scrying, Commune with Nature, Cone of Cold, Conjure Elemental, Planar Binding and Wall of Stone.

At level 13 they get a whole another d12 on a crit, the Druid getting Plane Shift, Mirage Arcane and Reverse Gravity.

At level 17 they finally get their third extra d12 on a crit, while the Druid gets True Resurrection, Shapechange and Foresight.

He gets to be a tanky boi all the way through, but damage really slows down after GWM and then he relies entirely on getting some strong magic weapons. Casters just progress naturally even if their main class features are weak, and they just keep getting stronger with new books full of spells being released.

 

[ph0rk]

My comment about mimicking the mundane was not about power, it was about narrative control, and how most spells don’t offer more narrative control than the party already creates.

Having wall of stone would not have given the seven samurai more narrative control. They still would have erected defenses to protect the village and then manned them. Wall of stone would just have made them more substantial.

We disagree. Being able to close off a corridor with a stone wall in mere minutes is a great deal more narrative control when time is a factor.

In your example either the players have teleport... in which case the DM knows this and has placed the restrictions of time and distance in place, knowing this is the case.

Again, this is the DM being forced to have their thumb on the scales to prevent casters from having more narrative control than others. It's right there in your sentence.

And, of course, as has been mentioned a few times in the thread - illusion spells offer fantastic narrative control that non casters cannot easily replicate.

 

[Stalker0]

At this point, I don't really see how both groups can be happy with the same game.

I still think the key is consistency vs scope.

Casters get "scope"....ability to do things that martials can only dream of. This is the "utility" concept many discuss.

Martials get consistency. While there effects are weaker....they simply work. No saving throws no risks....if I want X to happen, by gum X will happen.


I feel that is the way to give casters their "magic" while allowing Martials the equivalent feeling of power with various abilities.

 

[TheSword]

No, it was not obvious. In the initial post, you referred to “situations”. I understood this to mean encounters, not adventures.

From your latest post, I understand that you do not see a problem with one character bypassing encounters with a single spell. In the example I gave, this was a spell that was not the highest level a character could cast, and of which the character had 4 more castings.

To me, one character that can regularly bypass encounters using a single spell is an issue. Here’s why:

• Fairness: It just doesn’t feel fair that the spellcaster gets to shut down a CR 15 encounter by themself with a single spell while the others can’t do anything equivalent. This is also a spotlight issue. It’s just easier for that one character to get the spotlight;
• Skilled Play: I am all for characters who use clever solutions to bypass encounters! But very often, casting a spell to do the thing the spell does is not clever play. It is using the spell for its intended purpose, and kind of devalues really interesting plans characters come up with;
• Creating encounters: having to take these spells into account when designing encounters makes the process longer and harder than it otherwise should be. I start with a cool idea. Then I have to stress test that idea against the spells the characters know. Sometimes, this makes the ultimate idea better, but often, you end up putting arbitrary conditions on a cool idea, or just abandoning it altogether;
• Won’t someone think of the Newbie DMs? This is especially hard on newbie DMs, who might not realize that the “awesome” non-combat climb encounter they designed, with enemies that attack halfway up, levels of failure for the climbing checks, can be bypassed by a 2nd level levitate spell;
• Also, it takes time to come up with those encounters. Every encounter bypassed is an extra encounter the DM has to create between sessions. Sometimes this isn’t a problem, but often, the DM is spending extra time creating the encounter and setting it up on a VTT;
• Goodwill: in a perfect world, players understand it when a spell that should work doesn’t because you want to give another player some time to shine. In reality, the DM coming up with reasons why the wizard’s spells don’t work can make the wizard feel like the DM is stealth nerfing his class;
• Balance: once again, in an ideal world, the DM achieves that balance between allowing casters to shine in certain occasions, but preventing spells from steamrolling encounters. In practice, it’s a tough line to tread, and DMs and players will disagree about where to draw the line. Does allowing the Pact of the Chain familiar scout the entire dungeon invalidate the rogue? How about the wizard’s familiar giving advantage on one attack each turn?
• Verisimilitude: once again, this is a subjective issue, but adventure (or encounter) constraints on magic can strain verisimilude HARD. Dungeons that you cannot bypass using conjuration magic, random dispel magics and anti-magic shells get old fast.

But let’s return to Scotland for a moment...No TRUE adventure writer creates an adventure that can be bypassed by speak with dead, hypnotic pattern, invisibilty, augury, etc. But this is a hobby where 90% of the adventure writers are amateurs. Every DM not running a pre-existing module is an adventure writer and YES, ABSOLUTELY, many of them are creating adventures that can be bypassed and trivialized by a 2nd or 3rd level spell.

If you can’t handle magic. Then play in a low magic campaign. I don’t know what else to say to you if you really struggle that much dealing with magic.

 

[TheSword]

I just can't quite comprehend the idea put forth that spells don't actually change anything they're just short cuts. But for them to be "just shortcuts" the adventure has to be designed in such a way for them to only be just shortcuts, otherwise the claim is it's bad adventure design. So it's completely circular logic really.

It just seems obvious to me that spells (and therefore casters) can change/define the play loop.

Take an encounter with an alien race. They try to communicate with the party - no one in the party knows the alien language.

Without a caster in the party (or a caster without access to the right spells) - they have to get really creative to try and communicate - it's a scenario in and of itself.

But with a caster - 1 comprehend languages coming right up (it's not even a resource drain, since it's a ritual). Now comprehend languages is an interesting spell and only imparts the absolute literal meaning of the words (like using google translate or worse) so all sorts of funky situations could ensue. But it's quite different than not understanding period. You just can't say the spell doesn't change the approach to the encounter.

And that's assuming low level. 5+ level has access to tongues which is more a star trek style universal translator. Much less prone to weirdness (could still exist of course) and again, changes the nature of the encounter dramatically.

So you have a caster and comprehend languages makes sure the alien race is understood. The caster feels useful.

You don’t have as caster and the martial uses hand gestures and miming to communicate. The alien race is communicated with and the martial feels useful.

In both situation a character solved a problem. If the caster didn’t have comprehend languages... quite possible. Then they use hand gestures too. Though if they do the caster gets slightly more info or it takes a little less time. Either way the encounter is enjoyable. If the mimes and hand gestures aren’t enough then the DM shouldn’t have picked an enouncter that wasn’t solvable without a very specific spell. That’s bad adventure design.