D&D 5E Being strong and skilled is a magic of its own or, how I learned to stop worrying and love anime fightin' magic

[GMforPowergamers]

So people who don't cast spells dont get plot armor?

There's a word for those types of characters. That word is not "hero".

Bruce Campable can yell "SIDE KICK!" at them maybe if they are lucky

You can make it not overshadow non-casters by giving non-casters an equal amount of narrative control.

or you can take away most of the hold type spells, and remove all 6th+ level damage spells and give wizards back d4's for HD... but that STILL wont really fix caster supremacy when bards clerics and warlocks can still get 2nd attach

 

[DND_Reborn]

Bruce Campable can yell "SIDE KICK!" at them maybe if they are lucky

Love the reference!

 

[Haplo781]

I suggest you look again. Many of the features of those classes are magical without being spells.

Like the paladin? Explicitly granted by some god or wibbly-wobbly divine energy derived from an oath.

Look, you can keep insisting these abilities aren't spells, but they absolutely do not drive from martial prowess, which is my metric.

 

[Celebrim]

You can make it not overshadow non-casters by giving non-casters an equal amount of narrative control.

I don't think you can. You can't give Steve Rogers as much narrative control as Wanda Maximoff just by the nature of their schtick. You can however make Steve Rogers cool.

 

[Haplo781]

Bruce Campable can yell "SIDE KICK!" at them maybe if they are lucky

or you can take away most of the hold type spells, and remove all 6th+ level damage spells and give wizards back d4's for HD... but that STILL wont really fix caster supremacy when bards clerics and warlocks can still get 2nd attach

Take away cantrips and cut back spell slots to the point where a level 1 wizard gets a single magic missile per day and then has to start chucking darts.

 

[TwoSix]

I think you underestimate the fans/D&D gamers. I don't know a single person who plays casters that think it is a good thing that this disparity exists or want to keep martials down 'so they can feel special' (honestly, the people most avid at keeping martials constrained seem to be people who want to play very mundane martials). Instead I think it is a fundamental issue that caster stock rose when their limitations* disappeared, martials did not get a commensurate boost at that time, and most things that have been put forth to boost martials** violate someone's sense of what a fighter is.

While I don't know anyone who wants to keep martials down to "feel special", I absolutely do know people who think that casters should be better at higher levels simply because "magic is supposed to be stronger". More of a verisimilitude issue for them, it seems to me.

 

[TwoSix]

I suggest you look again. Many of the features of those classes are magical without being spells.

Oh, those type of abilities definitely exist, but they're better demonstrated in subclasses like Echo Knight Fighter and Phantom Rogue.

 

[Celebrim]

Sure, and to my mind the easiest solution is that the person who can raise the dead is still going to get their ass kicked by Saitama. They shouldn't be able to take down bad guys just as easily AND raise the dead.

Although I'd probably use different wording than that, in a nutshell this is the problem. Designers have insisted on at minimum parity of all classes in combat while carrying nothing about balance out of combat. The result is that at best spellcasters are never out shown in anything by non-casters, and often in the worst case have better solutions to all problems than non-casters.

 

[Haplo781]

I don't think you can. You can't give Steve Rogers as much narrative control as Wanda Maximoff just by the nature of their schtick. You can however make Steve Rogers cool.

Except that the media you're referencing also has a guy who can create a shockwave by clapping his hands, demolish a building with a headbutt, and leap hundreds of feet into the air from a standing start. And a guy who can stick to walls and precognitively sense danger. And a guy who can outrun bullets.

I am saying, give me a fighter and a rogue with comparable abilities. And let them do it without drawing on arcane, divine, or primal magic.

 

[Celebrim]

While I don't know anyone who wants to keep martials down to "feel special", I absolutely do know people who think that casters should be better at higher levels simply because "magic is supposed to be stronger". More of a verisimilitude issue for them, it seems to me.

The issue is people who aesthetically love the idea of the everyman hero who succeeds in the face of everything despite no supernatural power and so don't want a martial class to ever have any ability that isn't within the range of peak human athletic ability. Their aesthetics get ruined if by 12th level, a fighter can jump over a haycart and chase down a man on a horse. They then say, "But that would require magic!"

But then again, so does reliably surviving a fall from a 10 story building. It's selective blindness in my opinion.