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

[Minigiant]

Right, but that clout is suggestive of how good the character is at something. Is the Wizard talked about in the countryside around the city. Or is the entire planet aware of this Wizard.

Not really. Aragorn is the best ranger in Middle Earth, known by every kingdom, but in 5e terms is level 6-9.

 

[W'rkncacnter]

but in 5e terms is level 6-9.

Nice.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Mythic fighter needs its own class and subclasses. Being married to WotC's sidekick class is a needless detriment that makes the endeavor a waste of time. Same goes for a mythic rogue.

Not really.

You can’t imagine any mythic traits and capabilities tied to the attack action and individual attacks, thus leverage both the fighter’s many attack action attacks and multiplying the impact of action surge?

You don’t think the suggested replacement of indomitable with a version of legendary saves would contribute strongly to making them mythic?

Does breaking tangible spell effects require a different class? Does allowing special attacks with tactically useful secondaries?*

What about making the fighter able to do things like a special attack that lowers AC until the target does something to fix what they broke, plus all the special actions/attacks in the dmg but the fighter can do them as part of an attack, only losing ability modifier damage on the attack?


And the rogue is full of stuff that can be leveraged to make them more mythic in high level play.

• Uncanny dodge is an attack now, and if it hits, the damage is reduced by an amount equal to the damage you’d deal with a sneak attack with that weapon. Any damage leftover after reducing incoming damage to 0 is taken by the attacker (haven’t done any math on this)
• Make Uncanny Dodge no longer require a reaction
• Let them use Cunning Action any time they are missed or succeed on a Dex or strength saving throw
• Add new Cunning Action uses, depending on what skills look like in 2024
• Let them hide when in plain sight, or at least when only lightly obscured
• Have adv on attacks made with the same action with which you draw your weapon
• Mastery stuff with light and finesse weapons (this would be good at low level, even)
• Disarm spell effects like they’re traps
• Interrupt Spellcasting (could be a feature gated behind a subclass or a secondary choice of 3+ options) and if they roll well enough to do so steal the magic in a gem that can be used to cast a spell, charge a magic item, or boost a spell
• Give them some sort of limited resource like a Backstab or Lethal Strike that has stricter requirements than SA or can only be done x/day and juices up sneak attack
• Maybe fold some Thief stuff into the base class
• Acrobatics or Athletics check to do above Olympic level stunts

For fighters and barbarians especially, but all weapon users can benefit to a degree, give higher level benefits to Weapon Mastery.

Basically give types of weapons and weapon “sets” (like two weapons or sword and shield) short-description features that are similar to pbta Moves.

They would be different from eachother, and make it feel more like what specific weapons you’ve mastered matters.

Barbarian could expand Danger-sense somehow, and eventually gain resistence to magic. No way Bear Totem should be the only way to get generalized resistance to damage. They should also have benefits to intimidation.

At high level, Barbarians should be throwing plate armored horses at people, have a frightening aura while raging that also increases ally damage, absorb energy based damage types and either heal or extend rage or something cooler than that. (Headache, can’t think of cool features)

*special actions and attacks:

 

[doctorbadwolf]

the ones from DMs who...
you've guess it...
are not multiyear year vets of DMing and have not be mastered the elements of dungeon design due to lack of training or advice.

I don’t think it requires advanced DMing skills to not use creatures as enemies in a stronghold that have garbage perception, but if it is, that is another problem that needs for a fix based in writing better player and DM guidance in the books.

 

[Yaarel]

Here is a historical game, Marvel Super Heroes (famous for its "faserip" system).

I modified the image when thinking about smoothing out the curve of magnitude.

D&D 5e characters seem to start out around "Good" (10).

For example,

Marvel Thor has "Unearthly" (100) Fightning, Weather Control, Dimensional Travel, and hammer, and "Shift-X" (150) Fly Speed.

Iron Man has "Amazing" (50) Strength and "Monstrous" (75) Endurance and Force Field.

Captain America has "Amazing" (50) Fighting, "Incredible" (40) Agility, but only "Excellent" (20) Strength, while wielding a "Class 3000" (!) shield.

And so on.


The idea is. If we can approximate these superheroes as 5e characters, then we can use the benchmark correlations to look across the entire superhero genre, to get a sense of what the Fighter class should be able to do at the appropriate level.

 

[Hussar]

Good question! Does anyone have any good homebrew or 3pp to address this issue? Because otherwise, what are you all trying to accomplish?

That would require someone putting their money where their mouth is and designing a solution.

Nearly 70 pages in and we cannot even get people to agree that the problem even exists and you are insisting on seeing the solutions?

I bowed out of this dozens of pages ago and then sauntered back in to see how things had fared since. And, oh look, the same merry-go-round of absolute refusal to accept that the problem is even a problem.

I mean, we had a sidebar about Wish. Never minding that I can simply Simulacrum a copy of myself and have that cast wish until it burns out, then wash/rinse/repeat. All for the low low cost of 1500 gp. Infinite wishes, and since one of those wishes can create money, it literally IS infinite wishes. Now, what can your fighter do that would even REMOTELY come close to that?

Heck, if you really want to go super cheesy, simply have your Simulacrum cast Simulacrum. Get about ten copies of yourself - true, they don't have many HP by then, but, they've still got your full casting ability. They are 100% under control, and add a full suite of actions to every round. Your fighter gets eight or ten or even more attacks per round once per short rest? That's cute. I've got 10 9th level spells in a single round. Beat that.

One of the problems I aim my design at in my SRD project is that casters have far too many spell slots at mid to high levels.

Wow, FINALLY someone actually admits that there is a problem. I'd LOVE to see casters get stripped down. But, in core D&D? That's never going to happen. For exactly the same reasons we see in this thread - You'll never get enough people to even agree that the problem exists in the first place.

At the end of the day, I actually kinda agree with @Clint_L. This could, and actually probably should, be resolved through subclass. The problem is, if you go that direction, then these new subclasses would be substantially more powerful than existing ones. Which would garner such a huge backlash, again, because we cannot even get people to agree that the problem exists, that any such subclasses would never, ever see print.

Imagine it this way. A subclass - which means only this class of fighter (or whatever) gets these abilties which grants, say, special movement (limited fly/swim/climb speed, something like that) at 9th level, area of effect damage similar to a ranger's Volley ability at 11th, the ability to dispel/disrupt magic effects at, say, 13th, and then other goodies later on. There's absolutely no way you'd get that into print.

Like I've said all the way along, this conversation is futile. The decision has been made. Fighters absolutely will never come anywhere near what casters can do at higher levels. 5e D&D is Potterverse where virtually everyone is a caster except for Hagrid, who is kept along because, well, he's a fun character and who wouldn't want to play Hagrid?

 

[Yaarel]

Not really. Aragorn is the best ranger in Middle Earth, known by every kingdom, but in 5e terms is level 6-9.

Middlearth is literally using fire signals to communicate long distance. Entire populations are not talking about Aragorn. It doesnt matter if he has a few political contacts elsewhere.

Maybe entire populations are talking about Gandalf?

In any case, I agree the Professional tier (5−8) is suitable for Tolkien flavor, and the Master tier (9−12) is its cap.

Except, Gandalf as a superhuman angel functioning as an NPC might be Legend tier (17−20) Paladin.

 

[Hussar]

There are numerous way to describe a 20th level character,
a kind of super hero that watch over the world,
a agent or knight at the service of a powerful kingdom,
or a trash character that sometime have problem to pay for a beer in a inn.

I'm not really sure 20th level actually applies to those last two. For one, a knight of a powerful kingdom? At 20th level? That's bit overkill dontcha think? I mean, we're talking about a more or less unique individual here. There's very likely only one 20th level character of this class on the entire planet. I'm thinking that the actions of that character getting to 20th level has likely superseded the concerns of a single kingdom.

And a trash character that can't buy beer? Again, how? How could you possibly advance to 20th level and not be sitting on a mountain of gold in D&D?

 

[Minigiant]

I don’t think it requires advanced DMing skills to not use creatures as enemies in a stronghold that have garbage perception, but if it is, that is another problem that needs for a fix based in writing better player and DM guidance in the books.

Oh the stuff is basic DMing.

But if you don't know, you don't know.

Middlearth is literally using fire signals to communicate long distance. Entire populations are not talking about Aragorn. It doesnt matter if he has a few political contacts elsewhere.

Maybe entire populations are talking about Gandalf?

In any case, I agree the Professional tier (5−8) is suitable for Tolkien flavor, and the Master tier (9−12) is its cap.

Except, Gandalf as a superhuman angel functioning as an NPC might be Legend tier (17−20) Paladin.

The Kings and upper nobility knew who Aragorn was.

But you are right.

The problem is that many fans want to cap their party at level 10 but still have 37 Archmages roaming around.

 

[Hussar]

Middlearth is literally using fire signals to communicate long distance. Entire populations are not talking about Aragorn. It doesnt matter if he has a few political contacts elsewhere.

Maybe entire populations are talking about Gandalf?

In any case, I agree the Professional tier (5−8) is suitable for Tolkien flavor, and the Master tier (9−12) is its cap.

Except, Gandalf as a superhuman angel functioning as an NPC might be Legend tier (17−20) Paladin.

I mean, sure, fair enough. LotR Middle Earth is NOT what a 20th level campaign looks like.

And that's the other side of the problem.

We have so few actual examples of what a Tier 4 or Tier 5 campaign should look like. I mean, Tier 1-4? We've got scads of examples, from Against the Giants or any of the 5e Adventure Paths. In genre fiction, most of the big names are pretty square in there too - A Song of Fire and Ice, Lord of the Rings, Tad William's Dragonbone Chair, etc. Even Harry Potter, really, is mostly Tier 1-4, although a much higher magic level of course.

When you get into Tier 4 and 5, there really aren't a lot of good examples in genre fiction or in the game. Which rolls back around to the problem of what to do with non-casters at that point. There's all sorts of parts contributing to the problem.