D&D (2024) Martial vs Caster: Removing the "Magical Dependencies" of high level.

[OldSchoolGamerGirl]

Taken far enough, yes. Some warriors can literally fight for days on end. This implies some sort of temporary hit point ablative system, being able to shrug off exhaustion, etc. A warrior might be able to take a normal sword and split open an iron door into ribbons, then drive the shards into the wall to make stairs. A rogue might instead be able to pick a lock that jams a trap with a crossbow bolt from thirty feet away while dangling upside down.

I didn't watch stargate when it was new (I may not even have been born when movie came out let me check...94, so nope) but I have friends that kept telling me about it and I started watching SG1 then Atlantis (now I am trying to get into universe). There are super human warriors (like stronger faster and can self heal faster but not like crazy comic book) called jaffa. The main team of SG1 has one. I have no idea how to spell his name though. ON atlantis season 2 we meet a super cool but still human runner (played by my future ex husband ) named Ronin. there is a cross over episode where the two spar for hours.
I have friends who are marines, and friends who teach high level martial arts. I promise none of them could non stop fight like they were for an hour or more. These two just did and evenly matched. If that isn't showing Ronin being immune to fatigue I don't know what is.

 

[OldSchoolGamerGirl]

I'm fine with them leaving the sidekick fighter as long as we can also have the mythic fighter. DMs can ban one or the other.

Didn't someone start suggesting breaking the fighter up into multi classes for this reason?

 

[OldSchoolGamerGirl]

I mean look at what the Eldritch Knight gets from their subclass vs. what the Bladesinger gets from theirs. There's a clear design bias here; your caster wants martial abilities? Sure, no problem.

Your martial wants caster abilities? Oh man, I don't know, let's make you a 1/3 caster and restrict what spells you can use.

I think a blade singer is close enough to a fighter for levels 1-10 but also a full caster (see also sword or valor bard and warcleric and hexblade) and this is a problem. by level 11 the fighter pulls ahead with that 3rd attack, but that 3rd attack is NEVER worth a 6th+ level spell.

I had a FLGS game where my buddy was trying to teach new players and 1 picked armor artificer to be "iron man but steam punk" and 1 picked fighter then later took a level or 2 of rogue to be "The best swordsman ever" and the player making the fighter by 8th level just got more and more frustrated.
the artificer isn't even a full caster.

When I told the group "You should see a sword bard that can have that same cantrip AND full casting" the fighter/rogue player almost quit on the spot.

 

[HammerMan]

Didn't someone start suggesting breaking the fighter up into multi classes for this reason?

I think that’s @GMforPowergamers he had a whole thing when the playtest started but he got made fun of and more or less run off. He hasn’t been on in a while if he does he posts like once then runs. I don’t blame him I post here less and less cause of the massive amount of personal attacks allowed.

 

[Eubani]

Didn't someone start suggesting breaking the fighter up into multi classes for this reason?

That would be me. One of the reasons the Fighter suffers is because it tries to be the simple fighter and the complex fighter on the same chassis, and both goals suffer for it.

 

[Emberashh]

The funny thing is is that despite all the canned claims about high level magic being all reality warping and what have you, high level magic isn't actually capable of all that much.

Wish is an exception, but that shouldn't even be a spell to begin with. And meanwhile all the rest can be flashy, but hardly reality warping, especially relative to a world where magic is commonplace. Like sure you can call down a Meteor Storm or conjure a tiny pocket dimension, but whoopdidoo. Itd take weeks for Storm to do the same amount of damage one could do with a barn, an oil lamp, and a cow. Calling that pocket dimension impressive is like looking at a shack in the middle nowhere and marveling at it like its the Taj Mahal.

And every spell is like this across the board. Flashy in the moment but not actually world changingly consequential.

Sometimes I think the simple existence of Wish throws off the bell curve so severely that people greatly overestimate what high level magic is not only capable of but actually does.

 

[Minigiant]

Didn't someone start suggesting breaking the fighter up into multi classes for this reason?

Many people have suggested it. I've suggested splititing fighter into the various martial archetypes of fantasy and myth.

 

[Chaosmancer]

And now we're playing as the Incredible Hulk. Which is fine. In a superhero game. It doesn't feel like fantasy to me. Aragorn didn't need to crush diamonds. Brienne of Tarth doesn't leap mountains. To me those suggestions just seem like another genre.

Aragorn fled in fear from the Balrog, which was basically just a Balor. Balor are CR 19, not exactly something a level 17 to 20 fighter needs to flee in terror from because they don't stand a chance. Aragorn would never have even considered fighting Sauron, who is basically the same type of entity as Zariel (powerful angel corrupted by a more powerful, sinister evil), a foe high level martials are absolutely expected to fight.

Brienne of Tarth lives in a world where a six year old Dragon is a city killer. Even if we are incredibly generous and say that they are Young Adult Red dragons... that's still only CR 10. And Brienne not only didn't fight the Dragons, she COULDN'T have fought the dragons. Against something like Orcus or Mephistopheles? No contest, she is dead.

So, sure, maybe high level DnD is a different genre, but let's stop pretending these low level fighters are the pinnacle of what is expected in DnD. None of them are skilled or powerful enough to be level 20 characters.

 

[Gammadoodler]

The funny thing is is that despite all the canned claims about high level magic being all reality warping and what have you, high level magic isn't actually capable of all that much.

Wish is an exception, but that shouldn't even be a spell to begin with. And meanwhile all the rest can be flashy, but hardly reality warping, especially relative to a world where magic is commonplace. Like sure you can call down a Meteor Storm or conjure a tiny pocket dimension, but whoopdidoo. Itd take weeks for Storm to do the same amount of damage one could do with a barn, an oil lamp, and a cow. Calling that pocket dimension impressive is like looking at a shack in the middle nowhere and marveling at it like its the Taj Mahal.

And every spell is like this across the board. Flashy in the moment but not actually world changingly consequential.

Sometimes I think the simple existence of Wish throws off the bell curve so severely that people greatly overestimate what high level magic is not only capable of but actually does.

I think maybe there needs to be a level set for what bar character powers need to clear to get beyond "whoop-di-doo"

IIRC correctly, when I did some math and some digging in Google maps, the meteor storm spell's area of effect would have hit like 80% of the volume 10-story office building I was in at the time.

This level of impact clears my bar for "reality warping.

Outside that, you have things like Mirage Arcane (a 7th level spell) that can affect a square mile of terrain, with a casting range of "sight". The country of Monaco, in total is less than 1 square mile.

Not to mention things like plane shift, teleportation, resurrection, true polymorph.

I'll grant you, high level casters are, broadly, not able to wink countries out of existence or rewrite the flow of time. But "whoop-di-do" grossly undersells things.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I suspect letting Martials perform rituals solves most of the problems.

The rituals are, almost by definition, noncombat effects. This allows Martials to do more things outside of combat.

Rituals include game changers. Like:

Detect Magic
Beast Sense
Divination
Tiny Hut
Silence
Waterbreathing
Unseen Servant

As a separate design space, the number of rituals (which is kinda few actually) can increase. Thinking about things like religious rituals, can also diversify the list of rituals that Martials can come across.

No, it doesn't.