Alright, let's get this done right out the gate. I came into this discussion with an honest desire to calmly, respectfully*, and maturely converse with people both who agreed with my position and those that do not. I figure that little is to be gained by only engaging with those that already share one's beliefs, and that we're all capable of keeping perspective on differences of opinion and experience about an inherently trivial endeavor. That said, there is a certain threshold of basic decency I consider necessary to consider a conversation worthwhile.
okay I will try. I don't have a long history are arguing these points with you, but these points seem to be rehashed a lot especially what I call cherry picking. I am not up to argueing weather an optimized fighter with archery/two handed style and a magic weapon of that type and the -5+10 damage feat of that type and a 20 (or even 18) in that stat can deal 60% more or 120% more damage then an unoptimized wizard with only cantrips... it is crazy.
I have done this though repeatedly with outhers. Yes an optimized for damage fighter (or rogue for that matter) with the right feat can out damage a caster... but they are at that point putting a lot of resources to damage and that is it... the wizard (or worse combat bard/cleric/warlock) may not be able to top the damage but they can stay up at least some level of close AND have all the other options.
meanwhile a fighter (or rogue or barbarian or monk) who doesn't have spells (and I am calling out spells so feel free to go back for rune and echo knights and even psychic subclasses here) can NEVER even if they spend resources plan and optimize for it over damage come CLOSE to the caster versatility.
However those optimized fighters are not even the king of combat (and no neither are the spell casters) if all you want is deal damage and tank damage the Barbarian is king even a only slightly optimized one will deal massive damage and be able to take a beating... and when they do optimize one or both you will find they out fight the fighters... but again even the barbarian being BETTER at combat can not switch over to the versatility of the casters (unless you use the 3rd party half caster barbarian...)
Performative sighs and bizarre* accusations of dishonesty do not meet that threshold.
the dishonesty I acuse you of may be you were mistaken. SO I will try again. If you optimize your non caster build to do something, and DON'T optimize your caster build you are not comparing like to like.
compare optimized to optimized or causal to casual.
If you have disagreements with my points, or believe that I am wrong about my assumptions as to how you can to your position, I encourage you to bring them forward in a reasoned and articulate way.
I did and I showed my math. Now you are takeing the reverse of the opinon I have spend pages argueing against (they said after level 11 fighter get better and by 17 they are as good as casters... my counter argument was if you take everything excapt prof HD/HP from a 20th level fighter and put it on a 10th level fighter (so 4 attacks multi action surges, multi indomitable) it would be close but that as teh casters got 6th 7th and 8th level spells they would still blow the fighter out of the water.
That said, there are significant places where we do agree, and other places where it is clearly different opinions formed by different experiences of play.
yes we all have experiences that differ... the problem is separating "I had fun" from "The system worked"
I have played in games (older editions) where I brought in level 1 characters to 10th level games. I even had fun. That doesn't mean it was balanced or that it was a good idea. I had fun INSPITE of the problem not because of it
Second wind definitely does not scale. Full agree.
I mean it does (technically) go up 1 per fighter level... but that is poor scleing. in home brew stuff I had a friend try to let a fighter get 1d10 per prof when they did it ( a big boost at level 1 to 2d10+1) and another that starting at level 5 they could spend 1 HD ontop of the 1d10+level... so far no real good answers.
I didn't say short swords did d8s, I said they gave you 2x(1d6+3).
okay it was a typo then cause I quoed the 1d8+3... that is what I assumed anyway
You are correct that casters can use 2H weapons or 2wf, but they have to work to get there
yes and no... melee casters are not really that hard to make and if you have a melee centric (or even just back up melee) concept it is not that costly to grab them. (personal pet peeve I joke about yesterday is when a orimary caster who is 9/10 times in back takes hexblade or bladesinger and then 1st time monsters close are as good as the melee line)
dex and str to make decent AC and 2H weapons work
dex is the god stat... there is almost no reason not to have your Dex not be as high as possible.
Rerolling 1s and 2s definitely isn't the best advantage.
yes it is that great weapon reroll is the best upp to damage average
is the second best and since (Most) are not optimized for range and melee you will find these 2 are the go to optimizations.
This is clearly a huge deal for you. I do not dispute that it is an interesting choice for them to make getting martial weapons as easy as it is at the same time they made everyone have the same basic to-hit bonus at the same level.
this is 1/2 of my entire thesis really so yeah a big deal.
in 2e (I don't remember if you played back then) you took prof in weapons and your choice was limited (but even then elves and some clerics broke said limts) and as such even if in theory a fighter and a wizard both had a 20 Thac0 (to hit) the fighter could just have better weapons... now it wasn't perfect becuse some weapons were much better then half or more of the list so you saw ALOT of duplicate builds.
Inspiration and song of rest and jack of all trades aren't valor-specific.
no just like action surge, fighting style, second wind and extra attack are not subclass specific, BUT if we are compareing melee fighter to melee bard we still have those features.
Combat inspiration is, and it's... fine I guess.
I mean I wouldn't call it a huge game changer. It isn't as good as a 2nd or 3rd level spell, and no where near on par witha 9th level spell. but neither is second wind
Kind of akin to the bonus damage from a battlemaster's maneuvers, just without the riders that are the primary draw.
yeah if you want that as a bard you have to pop a feat or background or go to 1 handed light d6 weapons for sword bard (also really good in melee and can fill in for a fighter)
But my point again is that the bard that chooses valor is choosing that instead of, say, Lore
yes. when comparing a melee bard to a melee fighter we take a melee subclass. However you will find no equivalent to the lore bard in the fighter... where is the master of knowledge skilled/intelligent learned subclass that is highly rated for them?
so even here you show the problem. 2 players sit down and start at level 1, one a bard one a fighter. both make it to 3rd level and get to pick a subclass the fighter can choose what type of melee warrior (or I think there are 2 archer subclasses) you are and how you deal your damage... the Bard can choose to be a melee warrior (not quite as good but pretty close and have the back up versatility) or the knowledge base or the blaster base...
take both players and rewind and say they are the same person. they think "I want to play an interesting melee character" but they don't know what others are playing or what the campaign will have. They can play the bard and take sword or valor at 3rd level and be melee centric deal good if not great damage, and be super verstile... or they can at 3rd level switch up to how the character grows and the party needs... or they can lock in today as a fighter.
Yep. Missed that. Was thinking the bards and bladesinger. Mea cupla there. As for cantrips, we're clearly not going to agree. By 5th level, the difference between what a fighter with a few ASIs into their attribute and a relevant feat will be doing compared to 2dX cantrps is going to be significant.
okay.
I did this before for the guy arguing over 11 they are better but I will do this again.
1st 1d8 (4.5) 1d10 (5.5) compared to 1d8+3 (7.5) 1d10+3 (8.5) 2d6+3 (10)
5th 2d8 (9) 2d10 (11) compared to 2d8+8 (17) 2d10+8 (19) 4d6+8 (22)
as you can see the only one that doubles is 2 handed... and even then remember the fighter ONLY has this at will the caster has 3-5 at wills and spell slots.
Imo, these are multiple topics, not one. Caster v. noncaster is not the same as caster vs. martial*, wizard vs. fighter, or magic vs. non-magic. If we lump rune knight (or heck also monks, since ki) over on the same side as wizards and druids and have only champions, samurai, cavaliers and a few of the barbarian archetypes on the other side of the scale, then it is a very different comparison. Maybe I missed it, but I don't think anyone else was having that conversation.
this is the only conversation I have been having for6ish years... a dozen (or so) builds that don't use magic at all, and at best 20 builds that don't have spells (so now counting magic non spells) compared to the rest of the game of spell casters.
in 4e we had pairity. a 7th level warlord was not the same thing as a 7th level cleric or bard, but without magic they could fill the same role and have roughly the same number of choices. a 7th level fighter was not the same as a 7th level paladin or a 7th level swordmage but they could fill the same role and have roughly the same number of choices. a party did best when all roles were covered and it was hard to cover multi roles. SO a fighter and a wizard was better then 2 wizards, or 2 warlocks.
now this was not perfect by anymeans. and it did get better and more inclusive later (adding knight and slayer as simple fighters) but 5e seems like a HUGE step back.
there is no class no sublcass no option for a nonmagic character that is as complex or as powerful as a full caster. there are options to give non casters 1/3 caster subclasses though (makeing it even more casters)
Okay. Here we have the different experiences I mentioned. I've seen them all played as less-squishy caster options. I've have absolutely also seen them played in the attempt to make them be full on fighter-leaders, and the results were... again, fine. They certainly still were good playable characters, but the martial madness did not live up to the hopes. Combat buffs took too much time to cast (spending the first round or two casting means less time fighting in the relatively short combats), or went down to easily (excepting when people had war caster and resilient:con, in which case their casting/combat stats/feats were delayed).
again, the fighter has benfits... compared to a hexblade/bard/cleric they have 1 hp per level action surge and second wind and at level 11 and 17 extra attacks.
the trade off (pre 11th level) is upt to 5th level verstility options called spells, after 11th with 6th+ level spells it just gets worse. those are game changing world shaking options... and going to be compared to that 3rd and 4th attack and an extra action surge per short rest and 2 extra indomitables.
if the fighter is a non variant human non custum liniage and so is the other (or if both are) the fighter is also +1 asi/feat at 10th and +2 by 18th.
High-elf Tempest clerics with booming blade who thought they would be warhammer-spamming melee machines ended up doing the same SG/SW wombo-combo the life cleric did. At tier 2 the valor bard did enjoy shooting bows for 2x(1d8+3) instead of 2d4 vicious mockeries on rounds where they didn't instead cast a levelled spell, but it certainly didn't rank close to what the half-elven battlemaster with EA, XBE, SS, archery fighting style and Precision Attack, Menacing Attack, and Tripping Attack was able to do. I should mention that I was playing the valor bard. Valor bards are one of my favorite options. They are great. I just disagree that they outperform a fighter at doing the one thing a fighter is allowed to do.
they CAN outperform the fighter, they don't always... but at the very least they can stay a close second and on TOP of staying close (or in some cases out performing) the caster ALSO has spells.
Here's on thing I didn't think to mention. Multiclassing makes hash of everything,
yes... and the #1 way I see fighter used is a 2 or 3 (sometimes 5) level dip.
and I have no doubt that there are a huge number of X 1-3 + Y 1-2 + z 1-15 builds that outperform many-to-most 1-20 builds*.
yup... in my own case around level 13ish I realized that baring a bad ending my warlock was going to make it to 20 and beyond...and 18 19 and 20 don't give much to warlock, so I started multi classing in divine soul sorcerer... I by far out performed a20th level warlock in every way.
If you can get a huge chunk of what makes a battlemaster fighter great by taking 3 levels of it on top of other-class X, that changes things dramatically**.
yeah, it gets worse when you have feat/backgrounds giving those manuvers... and TBH the only reason I see to take fighter is those manuvers or action surge.
I've not found full Hexblades to live up to the promise (in no small part because of that long stretch from 2-10 with only two spell slots that hampers all warlocks), but hexblade1/paladinX-1) builds?
I don't even want to go there hexblade paliden might be the best multi class in the game by a mile... I don't compare it to a fighter I compare it to a fighter and a cleric working togather and the hexaden may still come out on top with half the actions
And, most importantly, IMO, when the party runs into a lever across a pit to wide to jump, or behind a wall too thick to break through, or a cliff too slick to climb, the casters have options that the fighters (or even rogues) can't match.
that is the most direct issue... I can make a caster that can fill the fighter roll just slightly worse and still have those options (and again an optimized melee caster may even surpase a fighter)
