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

[DammitVictor]

I want high-level martials to be legendary and, yes, magical. I want them to have mythical, supernatural abilities.

I do not want them to cast spells, just like I do not want mythical, supernatural monsters to cast spells.

 

[Krachek]

I think we need to realigned this thread on his original goal :
Provide solutions to the martial-caster case. Ok, I agree I didnt help much in that way.


I would give a try to a skill system where there is no ability modifier and use instead the PB bonus or a fixed bonus Like +3 or +4. Expertise would still be used as now. that would make all classes on a flat level in term of skills bonus.

 

[Emberashh]

That was always the problem.

D&D fans want to kill powerful demons devils fairies and undead who fly teleport and cast spell with the captain of the City Watch.

Do they? Or is this just a vent for contempt?

 

[Minigiant]

Do they? Or is this just a vent for contempt?

They all kinda to fly/teleport and cast spells after a point.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Weirdly, fey follow the Digimon rule where thy become more humanoid as they increase and power and actually stop flying.

Fiends could use a redesign though.

I feel we could use way fewer undead or a moratorium on undead without an interesting shtick past level 3.

 

[Emberashh]

They all kinda to fly/teleport and cast spells after a point.

Which is a problem centered in cruddy monster design that overuses those traits (and underuses a great deal more), inducing disparities.

You can address that with a healthier variety of monsters to fight.

 

[Gammadoodler]

I feel we could use way fewer undead or a moratorium on undead without an interesting shtick past level 3.

It would have to be a moratorium. Mortuariums have historically proven ineffective.

 

[SteveC]

That was always the problem.

D&D fans want to kill powerful demons devils fairies and undead who fly teleport and cast spell with the captain of the City Watch.

That's completely incorrect. Unless the captain of the city watch is a character adventuring with a group in high tier levels. If a character can't deal with high challenge threats when they are at appropriate levels, then they aren't really at those levels. In old editions of the game, fighters were just worse than other characters at high levels without a ton of magic items. Starting with 3E we have expected some semblance of "balance" which to me means that those characters can participate at the same effectiveness at higher level play. 5E has infamously removed magic items from being a staple of the game, so a fighter can't really rely on them to be effective.

I answer this issue by saying that a high level martial character has supernatural powers because that's what they need to be a player in a high tier game, but that is not something that the designers and a majority of the players want to do.

There are answers to this: 4E answered it but people hated what they did to other characters. Pathfinder 2E does it, but the game is more complex than people like. 5E has done this to some extent by some of the subclasses and multiclassing, but the core fighter chassis doesn't address the issues that the fighter has with demons/devils/fairies and so on.

Without changes that the design team tells us aren't happening, a high level fighter can provide minimal support against high powered challenges where "hit it a lot of times" is not an effective solution.

As an aside, the Knights of Last Call did an excellent deep dive on the fighter in this video. They eventually get into what PF2 does, but the first part of this video talks about the history of the fighter class from OE D&D on and discusses some of these issues. It's really good stuff if you weren't alive to experience this part of the game (and even if you were!)

 

[TheSword]

except several of those items give them more spells when the excuse is they have limited use.
If the excuse to allow a 5th level wizard to throw a fireball twice is "He can only do it twice" and at 9th level she can "only do it 3 or 4 times" getting a staff or wand that lets them do that 5 times more per day or the more likely do it 5 times and use the 3rd level spells for something else... that is still casting spells and is a HUGE power increase.

unless you are a melee build full caster, then the magic armor is equal to all of you. Cleric is your worst example, they have heavy armor and martial weapons.

but the abality to use green flame blade or booming blade and make a 2nd attack puts them at will on par with an 11th level+ fighter AND they can choose to spend those spells slots to shoot past them, or do lots of things fighters can not dream of.

nope

and again the problem is that non casters are just worse then casters

by level 11, that most people never see, you have 1 extra ASI/feat, by level 20 it's 2. in exchange for giving up a feat or 2 you can get 5th level or 9th level spells

Wait wait wait. I’ve been told here repeatedly that wizards have plenty of spell slots and don’t need them all. So do wizards need the spell slots from their staff or not? You can’t have it both ways. I guarantee a staff of fire is less ubiquitous than a magic weapon or armour.

Its not green flame blade that makes a bladesinger good. The spell is probably adding an average of 6-10 damage if you get it off successfully and the foe isn’t resistant or immune. If your argument for why casters being so good is that they try to emulate martials then I say good for casters. Being martial is fun

Same goes for fireballs. I really don’t see any argument that ’casters are awesome because they could cast five fireballs in a day’ holds up. It’s so circumstantial.

 

[TheSword]

I think most people are pretty darn happy with fighters at the lower levels, certainly through like 6th level and I think up until 8th (I think once you hit 9th with 5th level spells is when the caster's real "plot" dominance starts to take over.

And those are the levels that the vast majority of players play at. So their popularity is not odd, or even anathema to this discussion.

I don't think most people are really worried about changing fighters at the lower levels (some are of course, but I don't think that the focus of the discussion). The argument is around that 10th+ level, which IS a minority of games. Effectively we are talking about major changes to a minority of the dnd experience.

Sure. It’s also heavily influenced by the way adventures are written. Most high level adventures are homebrew, so we have no baseline to measure against. I do think this is highly DM dependent which probably explains why some people are so vehemently sure that fighters are Kak. Either because they write adventures that make it so, or their DM writes adventures that make it so.