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

[TheSword]

That's why martials are so dependent on magic users and magic items in every edition except 4e.

That James Bond. He’s so dependent on engineers and gadgets. It’s the Engineers that are the truly powerful ones in the 007 movies. After all how would he ever get to Rome if they hadn’t built the plane!

 

[CreamCloud0]

Can you summarize the point without me having to watch a thirty minute clip. After two minutes of adverts and intro I lost the will to live.

while extremely fragile at the lower levels having a party of multiple wizards your spellcasting capability eventually vastly outstrip your weaknesses, your wizards can share their level-up spells learnt multiplying everyone's versatility and making shrodingers wizard functionally real, summon spells once you get them eliminate the need for a martial to meatshield and multiple battlefield control spells active at the same time allows you to dominate enemies by simply preventing them from doing anything.

 

[CreamCloud0]

That James Bond. He’s so dependent on engineers and gadgets. It’s the Engineers that are the truly powerful ones in the 007 movies. After all how would he ever get to Rome if they hadn’t built the plane!

i mean isn't that kinda the plot of one of the newer movies that bond is getting outclassed by remote drones and cyberwarfare and tech, that a human spy-agent just can't keep up with all that?

 

[OldSchoolGamerGirl]

Sorry, maybe I misunderstood. Do you give your wizard PC a rough campaign layout when they are first generated?

wizards no, but all players yes. We generally give an over all concept, an idea of what level we are shooting for (not to say we don't tpk first or overshoot sometimes)

Otherwise how does a wizard know what spells to select to beat your future unknown challenges?

they don't have to know... because my problem isn't some theory that you want to argue against... just knock it off.
If you want to talk about some house rule where wizards can't pick any wizard spells leave me out of it
If you want to talk about some perfect player who always knows about the future, leave me out of it.

If you want to talk about the design of casters vs non casters without pretending it is about some crazy time traveling player You can feel free to include me.

I’m more than a little amazed that anyone could put the word artificer into a conversation about relative power.

compared to a wizard they are weak. compared to a fighter they are a god

Any plane any time is like saying my character can decide mid adventure to ride to waterdeep. So what?

so any character can ride to a city in your setting (assuming waterdeep is in your setting) but casters can teleport plane shift ect and do so without error.

If that’s what the party wants to do then great. If your characters don’t feel like playing the adventure you’ve written then I’m sorry it doesn’t matter whether they have plane shift, a horse, 50 gp to book a bunk on a ship or two feet. It’s all gonna end the same way.

please leave me out of your fan fic writing about some game table no one is talking about

 

[OldSchoolGamerGirl]

Without the baggage of D&D? I think I only saw the first one and can't remember well, so correct me if I'm wrong on Wick's abilities but I have a hard time believing someone seeing the 5e Wizard only would say "Hmm. This high level 5e Wizard seems to have more versatility, power, and reliability than any fantasy wizards I've seen. A good match for the high level Martial would be a mundane action movie hero?"

yup... it's a weird strawman where a 20th level wizard can do things no merlin or gandalf or vuldamort could, but lets pair him with a super spy with no powers...

 

[OldSchoolGamerGirl]

He would take everything the Wizard threw at him and the wizard would be dead in seconds. Probably killed by a pencil.

unless the wizard teleports away, or has a contingency up that stops the pencel, or if when he shoots at them he misses cause of the illusion...

A wizards resilience is massively overstated as is their ability to get things done. Usually relying on Shrodinger’s Wizard again.

I can only assume at this point you will only except a wizard with NO SPELLS as an example... can we use cantrips?

 

[OldSchoolGamerGirl]

A wizard and a fighter is better than two wizards or two fighters.

nope... just nope.

2 parties in the same dungeon/adventure

party 1 a champion fighter a thief rouge a life cleric and a invocer wizard
party 2 a blade singer wizard (melee build) a armor artificer (trap detection and melee build) a war cleric (that can be both/either range melee) and a multi class hex blade warlock/ divine soul sorcerer

the party with the fighter is not better off unless you pretend the casters have 0 spells.

 

[OldSchoolGamerGirl]

Idk how young you are, but I’d take that bet.

I don't know everyone in the creator team but I am 26

 

[HammerMan]

I don't know everyone in the creator team but I am 26

I am twice your age and I think we have 20’s maybe early 30’s in the room

 

[bert1001 fka bert1000]

It's still a game were the abilities of Boromir and Faramir are seen a the pinnacle of combat prowess and therefore them needing artifact weapons and artifact armor at level 20 to be as useful as a level 20 wizard. Because D&D is based on pulp fantasy that stopped being the most popular style of fantasy in the mid 80s and beyond.

Almost no fantasy elements that were in peak popular after 1985 are in the core rules nor core martial classes of 5e. Just subclasses.

That's why martials are so dependent on magic users and magic items in every edition except 4e.

Yeah, it's not so much that they went this way for martials but that they blended this with a completely different inspiration for spellcasters. The wizard equivalents in all these fantasy worlds don't compare at all to 20th level D&D wizards. Much more limited in effects, a cost to magic use, can't sling out 2-3+ spells per challenge, etc. Early editions did put some more limitations on casters -- spell disruption, high SR monsters, best saves for martial types, etc. but even those have faded.