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

[Vaalingrade]

Yeah!! And when he finally got to Rome, how would he kill the tractor trailer sized fire lizard in direct hand to hand combat..

Let's see the engineers do that..

Wait..
what's that??
you're telling me this now??
Never?? Not once?
OK..ok..how about like a just a car sized fire-lizard?..
I don't know mid-sized, like a sedan or something..
..yeah yeah like a tank...
really..only with explosives??
never with his bare hands or like a sharpened stick ..maybe like a hammer..?
Fine..I know. I know. I hear you. I got it..
...
..
Ok..ok..ok..
let's pivot..
John McLane..
No? Ok..
John Rambo..
Really?? Not him either?
Surely John Wick...surel..
Ohh..negative...got it..
...
...
..
Dominic Torreto...???
...
Yes, like a tank or smething..
No, not with his car, just with like his fists or a knife.. you know..a weapon.
..
Nothing???
Awww c'mon man.


...
Hmmmm...
...
Hmmmm..
..
..
You know you could have told all this when I started, and we wouldn't be in this silly mess.
...
..
Wellllll..

We might need to think through this a bit..maybe brainstorm some stuff like a professional dragonfighter might need to be able to do..

..because hooo boy these action movie guys.. useless..

All this and conveniently forget the portfolio of one Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Conan - casually punches out camels and stabs demons to death.

Alan 'Dutch' Schaefer - Took down a Yautja armed with futuristic weapons at least equivalent to a dragon's weaponry with sticks and mud.

Harry Tasker - defeated and commandeered the Modern Dragon: a Harrier Jumpjet

Victor "Mister" Freis - Survived being a villain in a 90's superhero movie, a feat not even the Joker managed to pull off.

Howard Langston: Defeated the most dangerous being on the planet: Sinbad.

 

[TheSword]

Good joke
No it isn't, because of what you are listing down below

Right, everything revolves around dealing with combat. So every wizard knows they have low AC, and therefore they take things to deal with that. The best spells for dealing with that are level 1 spells. Even without finding a single spell scroll (which they can do) they get 8 spells of 1st level.

They only need two to reliably have an AC of 20. That leaves them with plenty of other spells.

And for dealing with combat? That is easy. After all, they get four spells of every level, minimum, and they only need one damage spell and one control spell. Now, wizard's can't forget spells, so that means that by level 11 or so, they have about 8 spells for dealing with combat, either pure damage or control, or sometimes both.

You are correct, a wizard might not have ever solution to every problem ever conceived... but Combat is the one problem they KNOW will be needing dealt with. And so they are very likely to be prepared to kill things or incapacitate them, and can do so better than martials by a WIDE margin.

This again is the fascinating bit that makes me think the person writing it is an ever-DM or never plays wizards in a game setting.

Firstly AC20 is achievable for 1 round and to be honest AC 20 isn’t amazing at anything but low levels. You can expend the next round by using it again but then you’re burning through two slots per round plus the one you used to get the mage armour up. Sure it’s useful for avoiding the occasional hit when you’re at the back somewhere, but wading into combat and soaking damage.I don’t think so. Not to mention that when you do that any ranged attack spells are at disadvantage to hit.

Secondly no wizard goes into combat with 1 damage spell and one control spell memorized. They just don’t. Mainly because most spells are circumstantially useful. Fireball does not work when the room you’re in is full of your own people and disintegrate doesn’t work when you’re fighting many creatures. Etc etc. every spell has its own weaknesses and strengths, often because of damage type. So please don’t suggest that wizards have space for all these utilities because they only cast fireball and Magic missile. If they do, they’re clearly leaving the martials to excel in combat and as I said before combat is a huge part of D&D.

Wizards can have a solution to most problems, just not at once and not on the fly. There’s nothing wrong with that. Magic allows characters to fill gaps in the party, that is a good thing. Don’t forget it comes with an opportunity cost though and that’s the trade off.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Fireball does not work when the room you’re in is full of your own people

If we're going to start accusing people of never playing wizards to try and win the argument, I'm calling sus on anyone who took fireball ever caring about this.

It is their own fault if they can't save and everyone knows this.

 

[Hussar]

Wizards can have a solution to most problems, just not at once and not on the fly. There’s nothing wrong with that. Magic allows characters to fill gaps in the party, that is a good thing. Don’t forget it comes with an opportunity cost though and that’s the trade off.

Look, it's pretty simple.

Can my martial character blind an opponent? Say with a saving throw each round to "clear the eyes"? What would be the check for that? What would be the DC? The fact that a 3rd level caster can do this just shows how far the span is. Would you allow my 3rd level fighter to blind an opponent for multiple rounds? Could my 5th level fighter do it to multiple opponents? Could my 7th level fighter do it to three opponents?

And we're talking about something as basic as "throw sand in the eyes". Yet, there is no mechanical guidance for doing that. TEN YEARS and we have zero guidance for how a fighter can do something so basic.

THAT'S the problem.

 

[Incenjucar]

And on the non-combat side of things, why is warping the fabric of reality more reliable than working within it?

 

[Emberashh]

Yet, there is no mechanical guidance for doing that. TEN YEARS and we have zero guidance for how a fighter can do something so basic.

Improvise Action.

 

[Incenjucar]

"I use improvise action to behead the dragon"

 

[Emberashh]

"I use improvise action to behead the dragon"

Nope, because I as DM don't deem that to be a reasonable thing you can just do.

Or may be I do. Roll a nat 20 right now and you'll take its head.

Like it or not the game is designed around rulings over rules, and IA follows that design intent.

The game really isn't that serious and whether we pick some complex pocket sand mechanics or just improvise a check on the fly or just skip the mechanical rigmarole altogether and just give the player the cool thing is entirely immaterial.

The player wants to do a cool thing, it isn't really an egregious ask, stop overthinking ways to say no.

 

[Hussar]

Nope, because I as DM don't deem that to be a reasonable thing you can just do.

Or may be I do. Roll a nat 20 right now and you'll take its head.

Like it or not the game is designed around rulings over rules, and IA follows that design intent.

The game really isn't that serious and whether we pick some complex pocket sand mechanics or just improvise a check on the fly or just skip the mechanical rigmarole altogether and just give the player the cool thing is entirely immaterial.

The player wants to do a cool thing, it isn't really an egregious ask, stop overthinking ways to say no.

So, ok, let's hear your ruling. My 7th level fighter wants to blind three opponents by throwing sand in their eyes. They are all within, say, 10 feet of the fighter. Not too far. A reasonable distance.

What skill do I roll? What is the DC? What saving throw do I use? Can I "attack" three opponents in a single action? What is the duration of the blindness?

Let's be perfectly honest here. At 99.99% of tables out there, the answer would be a simple, "nope, you can't do that." At best, you might be able to blind 2 because you have two attacks, but, even if it was allowed, it would work for one round, if you succeed.

So, a 7th level fighter more or less cannot do what a 7th level caster can do reliably. Because there are absolutely no rules or even rule guidance for doing something like that. Ten years and a new rules revision and we cannot even have something as simple as a 2nd level spell effect for a fighter. Why is it that casters don't follow "rulings over rules"? We have hundreds of pages of rules for how spells work.

We have a couple of paragraphs for how everything else works.

And, as far as I'm concerned, the worst part is, people actually LIKE it this way. Casters get all the love and non-casters might as well not even exist.

 

[Emberashh]

What skill do I roll? What is the DC? What saving throw do I use? Can I "attack" three opponents in a single action? What is the duration of the blindness?

No skill check, if your regular attack connects the pocket sand connects too. Roll 1d6 to determine duration. No saving throw.

And you can attack 3 times if you have 3 attacks. Thats a weird question to jam into that.

At 99.99% of tables out there, the answer would be a simple, "nope, you can't do that."

Which just loops us back to the game not properly teaching DMs which has already been litigated to death as an issue.

I've said it before, but yet again its important to note this is why its so crucial to accurately identify what the actual problem is.

Having pocket sand mechanics isn't going to change anything about the game fostering crappy DMs who don't understand their role in the game.

Because there are absolutely no rules or even rule guidance for doing something like that.

Improvise Action.

Why is it that casters don't follow "rulings over rules"?

Because DND is inconsisently designed and the two meta character types weren't written to be symetrically designed.

Though its also that magic by nature of what it is is much more liable to make the game fall apart if its all just improv.

One can very easily recognize that just willing the beheading of a dragon into the game with no meaningful effort or cost required isn't really all that good of an idea. It doesn't follow because while dragons don't exist, its intuitive for us real people to logic that a mostly mundane person can't just behead a creature multiple times their size on a whim.

It is not very easy to recognize that magic wouldn't have such a capability.

As such, magic by its nature has to be defined, period, whether thats by repetitive and bloated spellbooks or by establishing strong rules is immaterial (though one is better than the other).

To plug my own game again, the latter option is direction Ive taken magic design. Improv is built in and is where you can get most of your typical utility uses for magic, and its balanced out not just by its relative unreliability but also an inherent hazardous nature, tempering the desire to try to spam your way out of the system.

And for combat writing your own spells is the intended start of the gameplay loop. Calvinball is avoided in both cases as I structured in the limitations of magic rather than trusting the user's intuition.

(And yes, I also designed martials along the same lines and did not just leave it to rulings over rules. Do i need to repeat that my position is not about denying theres a problem and that people need to stop assuming that just because Im not fully agreeing with their complaints?)