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

[doctorbadwolf]

Unwanted behavior is unwanted behavior, and ultimately when said behavior starts being used as anything other than a personal preference you can't really express its undesirability without stepping on toes.

Yes, unwanted behavior like putting down people who don’t share your preferences does need to be responded to.

Turns out it’s trivially easy to do so without insulting anyone or stepping on any toes.

Its kind of like Jimbo taking a dump in the towns water supply. We can argue over whether or not a response goes too far, but at the end of the day Jimbo still left a turd in the well and he's started arguing about why he should be allowed to do so. You can't really emphasize how bad that is and not eventually hurt Jimbos feelings.

Not comparable in the slightest. No one took a dump, some folks just have a preference that you don’t share.

And considering there was no actual Jimbo here I don't think we need to be that concerned with tone policing.

The fact that the target was diffuse doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Insulting half or more of the people who engage in these discussions is inappropriate.

 

[Emberashh]

Turns out it’s trivially easy to do so without insulting anyone or stepping on any toes.

Like when you dismiss the core point I was making as a mere difference of preferences rather than the tug of war between conflicting game designs that it actually is?

Should also be pointed out that such issues can also just be let be rather than becoming entire side arguments that go nowhere and contribute nothing to the discussion. I did try to hook what I was saying back into the discussion, after all.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Less of a catch-22 and more of a double standard.

If folks are unwilling to put forth a reasoning for why magic should work, maybe they could temper their insistence that nonmagic can't work.

I would always want a reason that makes sense in the world, magic or otherwise, but I get what you're saying.

 

[Umbran]

It is bizarre to me that so many are apparently helpless if their character sheet doesn't have a button to press.

Mod Note:
This reads as condescending and insulting.

Because anyone whose not being disingenous ....

And this is, "anyone who disagrees with me is lying," which is also condescending and insulting.

Unwanted behavior is unwanted behavior...

Treating your fellow posters poorly is unwanted behavior.

You'll get one warning here - please treat folks with respect. If you aren't up to that challenge, take a break until you are.

 

[Micah Sweet]

These usually boil down to judgment calls.
Others have raised the point that a lot of high-level spells don't actually do anything truly scope-changing (IIRC a conversation with FormerlyHemlock on another board where the goal was to stop a slow-moving lava-flow from wiping out a town, and the end-realization was that pretty much all of the environment-changing/battlefield-control spells that casters have are woefully insufficient to address anything other than other small groups of skirmish-level combatants). This is true of most spells -- they may have outsized impact on game-typical combat encounters (and perhaps should be adjusted for overall balance), but they don't actually let the casters do new things that everyone else can't*. The exceptions are thing like the aforementioned teleports, plane shifts, resurrections, and the one I see the most (perhaps because it is lower level) -- fly. You can make it concentration-only and limited duration and such; change the fighter to be as folklore-mythic in their climbing or jumping abilities as you want (so long as they can only leap a certain height, as opposed to 'as high as plot demands'); but if the DM puts the lever that lets the party into the next wing of the dungeon across a bottomless pit, or throws in a flying castle 5' above that max jump height, suddenly it is a problem that the caster can solve that the fighter can't**, and for historical reasons people expect it to show up when casters hit level 5.
*a significantly more common scenario is simply the magic way of accomplishing task X is automatic after spending the slot (and lots of groups having trouble making limited spell slots more than a paper-tiger of a constraint after a certain point), the magnitude of the effect outsized, or the limitations not being very limiting.
**natively. Obviously magic items change this.


This, I think, is one of the big issues. AD&D added limitations in terms of spell-fizzling (but some durability bonuses in the form of bracers or armor and some new defensive spells), but otherwise each edition has generally removed or reduced (in consequence) an inconvenience that casters previously had (be that spell fizzling, or atrocious AC/HP, or limits on weapons usable, or the damage you could do with them or the magic abilities you would get with the weapons you were allowed, or for 5e the removing of having to prepare the exact loadout of spells you think you will want to cast in a given day, or so on...). Oftentimes this was done for good reasons (balancing powerful with 'this is really inconvenient' and/or 'but you are utterly worthless when not doing this' both being a form of balance a lot of people didn't really enjoy), but it's interesting that no new limitations were added in their place, nor were the other classes really given any boosts nearly as situation-changing*.
*generally instead little boosts around the edges. No one would say that Action Surge is trivial, but id doesn't open up new avenues of playstyle previous constraints meant for fighters, or the like.

It is extraordinarily difficult to add limits back in, to anything, once you've removed them.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I really don't think it is. Just have mutiple options. What I see is that some/many "mundane" martial fans want a mundane martial AND restrict a mythic martial from existing in the game, even if optional. I have never seen a mythic martial fan say "we must only have a mythic martial in the game or the game is ruined".

AND on top of this, I find that the strictly mundane martial fans seem to be very vocal on what this mythic martial should look like, what mechanics are allowed (no daily use!, no narrative!) when they have no intention of using it in their games!

You put something in the game, particularly in the core book, and players will expect it to available for use, and irritated at the GM if they ban it. Much easier, if deeply unfair, for it to just not exist.

 

[Micah Sweet]

We really have to stop equating spellcasting and magic in these discussions. 5e has, unfortunately, doubled down on specifically using casting spells, verbal, somatic, material components and all, as the only real means of doing magical stuff, and that's probably driving that false equivalency.

Spellcasting has a lot of upsides as a method of gating powerful abilities. The nature of the power source is amenable to limited, precise techniques that do exactly what they say they do and no more, and the method of action doesn't require outside conditions beyond the caster's control. You don't need the fictional situation to be any specific way (i.e. there's a boulder perched on the edge of the cliff all the way to "you find a magic sword"), and the effects maintain an internal logic without being flexible. The standard "martials should get cool stuff" model is your Charles Atlas superpowers, just "be very strong" and throw castles at your enemies, swim for days, dash so fast you effectively teleport and so on. The problem is that those abilities don't take well to technique gating. Sufficient strength to throw a castle can't just give you access to a 1-mile wide 40d6 damage ability, it implies a bunch of other powers that you must reasonably have if you're capable of that.

I don't care for that as the basis of martial abilities as a result and I don't think we should be defining martials in direct opposition to doing things that have particle effects or violate the usual order of the skill system. We should find other power-sources and other subsystems than specifically moving your hands precisely and chanting just so to change the universe, but still give them the ability to fly and move to other planes, and ignite the rage inside them so their blood literally starts burning and so on.

There's space for "everyone is doing magical stuff" that isn't "and everyone knows 3 3rd level spells," and that's where we should be looking. 5e's move to give everyone some access to magical abilities, frankly is a pretty solid recognition of how modern fantasy has gone. The mistake is running them all through the legacy spell system with its weird limitations and gimmicks.

But its so much easier to do that rather than come up with a new system that some people may not like and yell at them about. Or worse, not buy their products. WotC has no financial incentive to make any big changes.

 

[James Gasik]

Very Tears of The Kingdom, I like it.

This is IMO more an issue of spells not being skill-based.

In fact some spiders-man are magical.

No.

While I like baked in setting as well, and my game certainly has one, I disagree. D&D takes place in the D&D multiverse, which is a place where the PCs and thier abilities exist.

Really if people would just accept and embrace the anime….

Your master swordsman can cut a spell off as it’s being cast, or deflect or even block it with thier blade, they can move so fast that lesser fighters can’t even see the strike that kills them, etc.

You heavy can shake the earth, throw an enemy into another enemy or through walls, etc.

Your clever sneaky assassin type can disappear out of plain sight, and has a lot of traits in common with the swordmaster wrt to speed and precision, on top of weird weaponry like semi-invisible threads and the like. And hide in and move through shadows, as much as I tend to view that as a specific archetype ability in D&D .

Iron Man is a Hexblade Warlock that doesn’t bother with weapons and just uses Eldritch blast a lot.

But also, if yhe assassin is one-shooting everythy enemy they hit, creating openings in grou

this is grossly false, and needlessly insulting to anyone who disagrees with you.

Most people I know who like playing fighters do so because they recognize that the game isn’t contained within the rules text. They know that they can trip, disarm, etc, by making checks. They know they can exceed jump distances by making a check. They know that anything fighters can do in those other games the 5e D&D fighter can do too, people on forums with too much stock in The Rules just dismissivelycall it “mother may I” and act like that makes it go away, like they aren’t just avoiding actual engagement with it.

The issue though, and why it gets the "mother may i" treatment, is that because the rules aren't clear on these "abilities" the Fighters (and actually, everyone else) potentially have, they don't have them at all tables. If they don't have these "abilities" at all tables, then how can we take them into account?

It's no different than "my Fighter is great in my DM's game, because he has a Flametongue sword, +2 armor, and a Cloak of Displacement!" vs. "After playing for seven months, we finally found a magic item, a magic spoon that creates gruel!".

 

[Emberashh]

If they don't have these "abilities" at all tables, then how can we take them into account?

The thing is, they do have those abilities at all tables. Improvise Action.

Whether or not a DM would grant a particular improvisation is arguably no different than the dice just never rolling a Flametongue or a Cloak of Displacement on a treasure table, and is actually, probably more consistent than a straight loot table roll would be, just because if you're granted the attempt you'll always have that in your pocket.

I think DCCs Mighty Deed though is a good example of how much better integrated Improvise Action could be integrated into the options players have, especially for Martials. There basically is no mother may I and, if you go by ruling on the mechanic, the dice provide a natural and good-feeling boundary to what the improvisation can actually do; no matter what you do with it the direct damage your Deed does cannot exceed what you rolled on your Deed die.

So you couldn't explode a castle using the Deed, but you could do basically everything Doctor described.

 

[OldSchoolGamerGirl]

The thing is, they do have those abilities at all tables. Improvise Action.

every character can improvise. However casters have more base options to base that importation on.

a fighter has 6 stats, 4 skills 2 tool prof and a good attack bonus and good hp along with action surge to impovise with at 3rd or 9th level
a wizard has 6 stats 4 skills 2 tool prof an okay attack and bad hp along with how many built in exception rules?
same with bard same with warlock...

I think DCCs Mighty Deed though is a good example of how much better integrated Improvise Action could be integrated into the options players have, especially for Martials. There basically is no mother may I and, if you go by ruling on the mechanic, the dice provide a natural and good-feeling boundary to what the improvisation can actually do; no matter what you do with it the direct damage your Deed does cannot exceed what you rolled on your Deed die.

So you couldn't explode a castle using the Deed, but you could do basically everything Doctor described.