D&D 5E 3/4 Caster: Its Absence and Design Space in 5E

[Minigiant]

5e was designed with 6-9th level spells being the broken spells . The 1/2 caster isn't supposed to get them.

Adding a 3/4th caster requires defining the difference between 6th and 7th level spells and 8th and 9th level spells outside of power.

 

[CleverNickName]

I would say probably because it's an awkward design space.

It's not that you couldn't do it. However, it's close to the power of a full caster, without being as good as a full caster. That means you need to fill the power budget with something, but it can't be too big a something. Ideally, whatever you do add should probably have good internal synergy with other parts of the class, else you'll just end up with a class that's overall significantly weaker than other classes. Which limits what you can do in terms of design.

I think this is a good observation. Making a 3/4 caster implies that you would need to fill the remaining 1/4 with skills and martial abilities, and nobody can agree on what that would look like. Only light armor and shields? Simple weapons only, one martial weapon, all martial weapons? Medium armor but not shields? Two extra skills and a martial weapon, but no armor?

I don't see how this could produce anything but a Hexblade 2.0.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

I think this is a good observation. Making a 3/4 caster implies that you would need to fill the remaining 1/4 with skills and martial abilities, and nobody can agree on what that would look like. Only light armor and shields? Simple weapons only, one martial weapon, all martial weapons? Medium armor but not shields? Two extra skills and a martial weapon, but no armor?

Even then, would you sacrifice 1/4 of your spellcasting for proficiency in medium armor or a few skills, given that there's already fullcasters with access to medium, if not heavy armor and martial weapons? Some even have the possibility to gain Extra attack at 6th level (5th level for the warlock)!

No, the more I think about it, the more the idea of a 3/4 spellcasting base class would be too hard to design.

Archetypes that boosts the spellcasting side of the 1/2 casters is a great idea though. Make a Paladin who uses its spells more than for smiting, or who can smite with its cantrips!

 

[Fanaelialae]

I think this is a good observation. Making a 3/4 caster implies that you would need to fill the remaining 1/4 with skills and martial abilities, and nobody can agree on what that would look like. Only light armor and shields? Simple weapons only, one martial weapon, all martial weapons? Medium armor but not shields? Two extra skills and a martial weapon, but no armor?

I don't see how this could produce anything but a Hexblade 2.0.

It wouldn't necessarily have to be martial abilities. You could do magical features along the lines of what the artificer gets, albeit less powerful.

That said, whether it's 2/3 or 3/4, it's a fairly narrow range, because they top out at 7th or 8th level spells respectively. That's still committing the bulk of the character's power to casting, but leaving a gap that needs to be filled with something that bridges the gap of slower spell progression and losing the top spells.

Whereas 1/2 casting is additive on top of a chassis that largely stands on its own. It isn't negligible per se, but take away spellcasting from a paladin, ranger, or even artificer, and they can still be effective. The same cannot be said for full casters, and likely not for 2/3 or 3/4 casters either. Which is why I think it's so awkward to design for. The best approach might be something that modifies their spellcasting to make it better, since that's their primary focus, but finding the sweet spot wouldn't necessarily be easy.

 

[CleverNickName]

It wouldn't necessarily have to be martial abilities. You could do magical features along the lines of what the artificer gets, albeit less powerful.

I suppose that's true. But still, I worry it would just end up being a reskinned Invocation ability, and we'd be right back at Hexblade 2.0 again.

Maybe that's not a bad thing, though. You could get a lot of mileage out of that idea just by allowing the warlock to choose their spells from any spell list. (That decision is made at 1st level, and cannot be changed. Different patrons could have different spell lists...Archfey is an obvious choice for druid, for example.) Hexblade 2.0 could be awesome.

 

[Aldarc]

It wouldn't necessarily have to be martial abilities. You could do magical features along the lines of what the artificer gets, albeit less powerful.

That said, whether it's 2/3 or 3/4, it's a fairly narrow range, because they top out at 7th or 8th level spells respectively. That's still committing the bulk of the character's power to casting, but leaving a gap that needs to be filled with something that bridges the gap of slower spell progression and losing the top spells.

Whereas 1/2 casting is additive on top of a chassis that largely stands on its own. It isn't negligible per se, but take away spellcasting from a paladin, ranger, or even artificer, and they can still be effective. The same cannot be said for full casters, and likely not for 2/3 or 3/4 casters either. Which is why I think it's so awkward to design for. The best approach might be something that modifies their spellcasting to make it better, since that's their primary focus, but finding the sweet spot wouldn't necessarily be easy.

The Artificer hypothetically could have existed in this space. The 3.5e Artificer, for example, was the only 2/3 caster that was put in Tier 1 class rankings on account of its hyper-versatility.

 

[Fanaelialae]

The Artificer hypothetically could have existed in this space. The 3.5e Artificer, for example, was the only 2/3 caster that was put in Tier 1 class rankings on account of its hyper-versatility.

Anything is hypothetically possible. Part of the awkwardness that I've previously referred to is that, because casting would dominate the kit of a majority caster (> half caster), it would be challenging to get the balance just right. I think it could be easy for it to end up top tier just because the features overcompensate for the small loss in casting ability and make the class overpowered (alternately, it would also be easy to undershoot and end up with a bottom tier class). The real challenge would be landing it in the Goldilocks Zone, which for these types of casters would be rather narrow, IMO. That said, 3.5 and 5e are fundamentally quite different beasts.

 

[Umbran]

Currently, 5e D&D has full casters (i.e., wizard, bard, druid, cleric, sorcerer), half-casters (i.e., artificer, paladin, ranger), and even 1/3 or one-third (e.g., Eldritch Knight, Arcane Trickster, etc.). Absent within this quarter-based schema is a 3/4 or three-quarters caster. Is there a reason that 5e either chose not to design a 3/4 caster and is there room in the game for such a progression? Furthermore, would any of the existing classes have been better off as 3/4 casters than their current spell progressions?

I don't really think of the 1/3 caster as a "caster" in the design space. It comes across to me as more a way for a character to have a handful of customizable class abilities that use a scaling we already recognize.

I think the basic design for the game doesn't give us reliable power resolution to support a 3/4 caster. I think the actual effective power differences between 1/2 and 3/4 (or 3/4 and full) are going to get washed out in adventure design, encounter timing, and typical rest-structure of the game, which are not solidly in the game designer's hands.

 

[Vael]

With the uniform Spell Progression ... there isn't that a meaningful difference between a 3/4 caster and a full caster.

What I do wish is that half-casters had a slightly faster access to higher level spells and just filled out their higher levels with additional spell slots. Artificers in particular would have been better served by having a non-standard spell progression where they got to 5th level spells more quickly and then just gained more spell slots rather than just following the standard 1/2 caster progression.

 

[Undrave]

But here's the catch: A level 7 Cleric spell, or level 5 Bard spell, is the same level of power as 9th level Wizard spells.

Ya... nope. I vehemently opposed to this idea. Otherwise spell level are completely meaningless and just add fiddliness and wordiness for no reason and no gain. Might as well just go back to 4e style powers that are unique to each class.