D&D 5E How to "fix" (or at least help) the fighter/wizard dynamic. (+)

[FrogReaver]

One thing I keep seeing is that fighters are better at damage than wizards. And while that’s certainly true in tier 1, and maybe early tier 2, eventually wizards start to be strong at single target damage. Tashas summoning spells, polymorph, animate objects, crown of stars, foresight. And they already are better at damage in most multi target situations, fireball.

 

[Aldarc]

Let me put it this way. The fighter's dilemma is akin to if wizards lost the ability to automatically add spells of levels 6+ to their spell books. Imagine if for spell levels 6-9, a wizard was entirely dependent on scavenging scrolls and spell books. Maybe they find lots of high level spells. Maybe they find no high level spells. Maybe they find some high level spells, but not the ones they want. What would that do to the efficacy of wizards?

The only difference being that the fighter class can't really lose what it never explicitly had. Despite the fighter "Christmas tree" being an assumption of the game since the earliest days (IIRC, the early treasure tables were even more biased towards rewarding magic items for fighters than they are now).

Wizards in the earlier editions had far less guaranteed access to spells than they do today. Even if you found a spell, you still had to pass a check based on your intelligence to be able to use that spell (off the top of my head, I think an 18 Int only had something like a 65% chance). If you failed, you had to wait until next level to try again (and the time between levels in those days was loooong; also we had to walk uphill both ways over broken glass with no shoes, but that's neither here nor there). Those limitations were removed from wizards in later editions, but a fighter's reliance on randomly distributed magic items has never been directly addressed by the rules.

The ease of spellcasting has been increasingly laxed with little to no expense to either a wizard's versatility or overall power. Rolling back their overall power level in 5e from what it was in 3e is an exceptionally low bar metric of success. In some ways, however, it's far easier to be a wizard in 5e than in 3e D&D: e.g., d6 HD, spontaneous casting of prepared spells, ritual casting, at-will cantrips, arcane recovery, no arcane spell failure for armor, a larger spell list than sorcerers rather than a shared one, etc.

 

[DND_Reborn]

God I hate these threads. People whining about a problem that doesnt exist, or only exists because they allow it to.

There is no problem.

Also inappropriate for a (+) thread. Thank you for nothing. Ignore.

 

[Azzy]

I think that the fighter could be improved by taking some design lessons from 4e.

 

[Staffan]

The problem with encounter-based design, though, is that it blows up any concept of long-term attrition and thus of parties having to make tough choices between pressing on while down or resting for long enough (overnight? a few days?) to also give the enemy time to refortify and recover. Unless, that is, you make the enemies all short-rest based as well, which could lead to a groundhog-day effect if the party and enemy are evenly matched: fight, both sides retreat, both sides short-rest and recover everything, fight again, both sides retreat, both sides short-rest .....

I'm thinking here of a party comprised of all short-rest classes, which I suspect would quickly become the highly-optimal choice were short-rest classes to be enhanced: the party would simply never run out of gas. Bleah.

By the time they get to Captain America superhero level none of this is much of an issue, but what you're suggesting would affect all the levels below that as well and make a gritty-style game very hard to sustain.

I think the design goals of "gritty and attrition-based" and "fighters that get to feel awesome" are fundamentally incompatible. That said, there's at least one daily resource all classes have in common: hit points (and hit dice). Sure, fighters get to recover some once per short rest with Second Wind, but Second Wind scales really poorly.

Also, IME it is rare for the recovery rate of enemies to be relevant. It doesn't matter if the bandits recover their resources on a short or a long rest, because they're dead after the encounter.

 

[Fanaelialae]

The ease of spellcasting has been increasingly laxed with little to no expense to either a wizard's versatility or overall power. Rolling back their overall power level in 5e from what it was in 3e is an exceptionally low bar metric of success. In some ways, however, it's far easier to be a wizard in 5e than in 3e D&D: e.g., d6 HD, spontaneous casting of prepared spells, ritual casting, at-will cantrips, arcane recovery, no arcane spell failure for armor, a larger spell list than sorcerers rather than a shared one, etc.

That's true, but what I think is central to this discussion is how wizards and fighters were originally both at the mercy of the DM. Wizards for spells, and fighters for magic items. (Granted, wizards were also at the DM's mercy for magic items, but I would argue that as long as they had the right spells, magic items were more a luxury than a necessity for them.) Starting in 3e, wizards gained the ability to choose at least some of their spells, and were therefore no longer dependent on the DM, whereas fighters remained so.

Here's a relevant excerpt from the 2e PHB (I can't seem to locate my 1e PHB at the moment):
PHB 2e, Chapter 7, Page 81, Learning Spells
Whatever the case, your character begins play with a spell book containing up to a few 1st level spells. Your DM will tell you the exact number of spells and which spells they are. As your character adventures, he will have the opportunity to add more spells to his collection.
When your character attains a new level, he may or may not receive new spells. This is up to your DM... How he gets his spells is one of the things your DM decides.
In all cases, before he can add a new spell to his spell book, you will have to check if your character learns that spell.

As you can see, in 2e (and earlier editions) gaining spells was handled pretty much the same way as magic items. The player had no control over what spells they found, or how many, unless the DM was feeling generous. Heck, even if the DM felt generous, you might flub your roll to learn the spell and be SOL until at least next level (when you could try again). Later editions removed those limitations for spells but not for magic items.

4e went the furthest in addressing this imbalance, by giving fighters powerful class abilities at higher levels. If you consider residuum and the optional inherent bonus rules, it effectively solved the issue. However, it's no secret that there were folks that really disliked 4e. That said, just because that implementation didn't work for them, doesn't imply that there is no such implementation that could work for them, except for those that simply hate the idea of potent fighters who aren't reliant on being given magic items by the DM.

Edit:
I will say that the one place I think that 4e fell short, in terms of fighters and magic items, was limiting the scope of magic items. Magic items in 4e could add the depth that fighters needed, allowing them to damage monsters with resistance and keeping their numbers where they ought to in order to be effective. However, they were somewhat limited in adding breadth. In other words, new and interesting abilities that enabled the fighter to do things that would otherwise be completely outside their typical purview. Unfortunately, fighter class powers were also fairly constrained in this respect, with epic destinies being the one area where the designers seemed to relax those restrictions.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I think the design goals of "gritty and attrition-based" and "fighters that get to feel awesome" are fundamentally incompatible.

I don't agree at all. I don't think "feel awesome" should mean "gamey and consequence free."

 

[Oofta]

Funny how when people say there isn't a problem they get a response that it's a "+" thread. When people just complain about fighters being broken without offering any suggestions, crickets.

Just an observation.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Funny how when people say there is a problem they get a response that it's a "+" thread. When people just complain about fighters being broken without offering any suggestions, crickets.

Just an observation.

First, I think you meant "isn't"?

Second, it IS a (+) thread, so if you don't think there is an issue, don't post. There are plenty of threads I don't post in because it doesn't matter to me. Also, I started this thread due to the other thread having over 1000 posts arguing if there is an issue or not, and it was suggested that it is time to move on to trying to find a fix for the player who do have an issue. If you don't, don't post. Pretty simple really.

Now, I included the poll option to also find out how many don't feel there is an issue, but that is less than half, so maybe there is something there--even if not for you, personally?

Third, not crickets. The OP alone specifies methods for tackling the issue. Others suggest options like in A5E, changes to casters (as you just posted in the other thread) to bring them down a bit, working with atunement, a draft of a Super Strength class, using BM maneuvers, and more.

 

[Oofta]

First, I think you meant "isn't"?

Second, it IS a (+) thread, so if you don't think there is an issue, don't post. There are plenty of threads I don't post in because it doesn't matter to me. Also, I started this thread due to the other thread having over 1000 posts arguing if there is an issue or not, and it was suggested that it is time to move on to trying to find a fix for the player who do have an issue. If you don't, don't post. Pretty simple really.

Now, I included the poll option to also find out how many don't feel there is an issue, but that is less than half, so maybe there is something there--even if not for you, personally?

Third, not crickets. The OP alone specifies methods for tackling the issue. Others suggest options like in A5E, changes to casters (as you just posted in the other thread) to bring them down a bit, working with atunement, a draft of a Super Strength class, using BM maneuvers, and more.

Don't worry, I gave my suggestion early on, I'll go back to ignoring this thread again. It was just an observation.