D&D 5E Are Wizards really all that?

[Fanaelialae]

5E:"You don't need magic items."
MM: Half the creatures are resistant to nonmagical attacks.

In fairness, I'm pretty sure the DMG does address that point. I believe it says somewhere that if you have martials, they need a magic weapon. So it's more like "you don't need magic items, except for a magic weapon for each martial character". Which is basically true. But what they don't mention is that running a low magic item campaign gives casters a much more dramatic advantage over martials.

Which is why one of the fighter fixes I've proposed (in other threads) would be to let them pick a magic item as a class feature. But it's gotten a lot of pushback in the past. I guess because it's a form of narrative control (albeit, in the most minimal sense possible).

 

[Fanaelialae]

I assume these very dungeons are where young wizards are trained to use prestidigitation.

"I never thought I'd want a cat familiar, but he just followed me home one day after I finished cleaning his litter-dungeon."

 

[DND_Reborn]

5E:"You don't need magic items."
MM: Half the creatures are resistant to nonmagical attacks.

Resistance you don't really need to worry about--you can still kill them.

It is immunity which can be more problematic... especially for weapons.

 

[Gammadoodler]

5E:"You don't need magic items."
MM: Half the creatures are resistant to nonmagical attacks.

The hell of this is that both the resistance and solution are pure gamist nonsense.
------
"You're weapons are but a trifle to me..(evil laugh)"

" OH yeah..well how about...THIS..(pulls out +1 longsword).."

"You didn't...??"

"I DID!"

"But who told you that my steel-like scales offer no defense against against nonspecific mumbo jumbo"

"No one..it's nonspecific"

"CURSE YOOOUUU..(dies..in several rounds probably)"
------

 

[Reynard]

Which is why one of the fighter fixes I've proposed (in other threads) would be to let them pick a magic item as a class feature. But it's gotten a lot of pushback in the past. I guess because it's a form of narrative control (albeit, in the most minimal sense possible).

Claim the Prize: At 9th level, the fighter may choose a single Rare permanent magic item they can use and add it their equipment list. The item is bound to them and if lost will return to them in 1d4 days. If the item usually requires attunement, this item does not. At 13th level, the fighter chooses a new Very Rare item, and at 17th level the fighter chooses a new Legendary item.

 

[Reynard]

Resistance you don't really need to worry about--you can still kill them.

It is immunity which can be more problematic... especially for weapons.

I don't know off the top of my head how many creatures have immunity to non magical damage. Werewolves, right?

 

[Mort]

It seems I was unclear.

I utterly loathe the "eVeRyThInG lEvElS uP tO mAtCh tHe PaRtY" argument. I am opposed to it in most forms, and find that it is almost exclusively used as a dismissal and thought-terminator rather than something actually containing serious thought.

I cited it because numerous people have specifically used it as a reason why 5e is better than alternative options, because it (allegedly) doesn't do that, because the world is totally indifferent to what the party composition is. That is was supposed to be a huge selling point of 5e.

Bit of a tangent (but it's a long winding thread):

I find the whole concept of rejecting "everything levels up to match the party.." and ridiculing it kind of odd.

I mean, if the challenge is too low level (easy) for the party then it is not a "challenge" it is merely an obstacle or a speed bump. If the challenge is to much (high level) for the party than the actual "challenge" for the party is to either make the challenge beatable or to escape to prevail another day, that or it's not a challenge because it's a setup impossible situation. So in that case the challenge levels up to the party.

That said, I'm firmly in favor of the nature of the challenges changing as the group goes up in level. 15+ level PCs shouldn't be fighting enhanced goblins and rats. They should be taking on fun challenges appropriate to their stature and experience.

Unless the group loves and pursues fighting goblins and rats, who am I to yuck their yum.

 

[bert1001 fka bert1000]

Absolutely. They should have stressed it better than they did. It's still pretty easy to understand, though.

"Assuming typical adventuring conditions and average luck, most adventuring parties can handle about six to eight medium or hard encounters in a day. If the adventure has more easy encounters, the adventurers can get through more. If it has more deadly encounters, they can handle fewer."

That's pretty clear that you need to have 6-8 and if you vary it, to add more encounters if you make the encounters easier or fewer if you make them harder.

That's not the important part for me -- how much a typical party can handle. The important part is that they seemed to hang a huge amount of class balance on expected encounters per long rest and short rest, don't make this explicit and don't talk about ways to change things up if your typical 24 hr adventuring day does not conform to this expectation. There's an optional rule for longer long rests and short rests but it's never tied to this class balance issue.

I think it's bad design but if you go with it, at least put it out there and stress how important it is to class balance. So much so that if you can't get one of the more "in world" alternatives to work for you, you should just probably go full gamist and have a long rest defined as something that happens after every 6-8 encounters and a short rest happens every 2 encounters.

 

[Yaarel]

Claim the Prize: At 9th level, the fighter may choose a single Rare permanent magic item they can use and add it their equipment list. The item is bound to them and if lost will return to them in 1d4 days. If the item usually requires attunement, this item does not. At 13th level, the fighter chooses a new Very Rare item, and at 17th level the fighter chooses a new Legendary item.

Just like a character has a background, this magic item also has its own background, including how the magic item itself "found" the Fighter.

 

[Reynard]

Just like a character has a background, this magic item also has its own background, including how the magic item itself "found" the Fighter.

Yeah, i wouldn't write any of that into the mechanics, though. How it happens is up to the player and GM.