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

[Scott Christian]

Do you trust your DM to provide a good adventure for all players?

This. This all day!

No.

Because they haven't been given the tools to do so without bending over backward and doing way more work than they should be asked to.

Tools? What more do you want them to have?
(On a side note, listening to your table and how it's run the past couple of years, it must be maddening for you. Everything is always unbalanced. If everyone is not always min-maxed the entire party is liable to have a TPK. And DMs can't run an adventure that even remotely guides the players. That said, I can assure you most do not have that experience.)

This.

No DM should be required to be notably good to run an adventure. A DM should be able to run a decent game while still learning the ropes, and then get better from there.

Why? Everyone has to start somewhere, and if you are going to build a game that requires the person running it to have read a 300 page rulebook, a 300 page guidebook, and a 300 page monster manual, why should they be able to run a decent game? The truth is, we all started either with someone that knew what they were doing, or we fumbled through it with friends that showed a lot of grace.

I swear, it seems like sometimes people forget that this is a game - a game that requires the person running to have impromptu skills, to know the rules, to be able to make logical decisions for their realm on the fly and keep them consistent, and then read the room and make sure everyone feels included and that their PCs have a bit of limelight.

But sure, someone running the game the first time should be able to do all those things decently.

 

[Scott Christian]

So if the system is the hurdle and you need to work around the hurdle it’s your fault of the hurdle gets in your way?!?

I think he is implying DMs put in the work. This in turn, makes games run smoothly.

And the kicker - the DM likes the work.

 

[Krachek]

You know... most of those martial tropes are low level characters, right? Like, we have this discussion every single time.

Jack Sparrow, John Snow, Katniss, Brienne, Arya, Holga, Aragorn... they are all around level 5 at best. Holga is literally level 5.

You think Lancelot is accurately represented in DnD 5e? Lancelot once hit Gawain so hard that the horse Gawain was riding was flipped onto its back. He snapped the neck of two dragons. He was so fast he defeated 12 knights before they could even draw their weapons. He killed four men with a single thrust of his lance, and defeated one of the great enemies of the kingdom half-armored, with a hand literally tied behind his back. He struck such fear into an army that they fled from him alone.

None of this is possible in DnD for a martial character.

Look, I know all of these characters inspire us to want to make and play fighters and other warriors, but DnD fighters are supposed to scale FAR higher than what these characters are usually capable of. There should be more mid-level fighters like Lancelot, but even he wouldn't have been able to slay a multiversal dragon that ate a god. And a 20th level fighter IS.

It would take a rule set per novel or movie!
Then to realize that the source is full of contradictions and the only sure rule is that the power and flaw of the characters fit perfectly the narrative.

 

[Incenjucar]

Why? Everyone has to start somewhere, and if you are going to build a game that requires the person running it to have read a 300 page rulebook, a 300 page guidebook, and a 300 page monster manual, why should they be able to run a decent game? The truth is, we all started either with someone that knew what they were doing, or we fumbled through it with friends that showed a lot of grace.

I swear, it seems like sometimes people forget that this is a game - a game that requires the person running to have impromptu skills, to know the rules, to be able to make logical decisions for their realm on the fly and keep them consistent, and then read the room and make sure everyone feels included and that their PCs have a bit of limelight.

But sure, someone running the game the first time should be able to do all those things decently.

It's a game targeted at middle school children. They deserve to have a good experience with it without needing to drag adults or the horrors of the internet into it.

 

[Vaalingrade]

(On a side note, listening to your table and how it's run the past couple of years

I assure you you have not.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Then what is your fun or intent for following this thread?

Being asked weird questions that have nothing to do with the discussion. Clearly.

 

[TheSword]

I used the Flood effect.
"If you choose an area in a large body of water, you instead create a 20-foot tall wave that travels from one side of the area to the other and then crashes down. Any Huge or smaller vehicles in the wave's path are carried with it to the other side. Any Huge or smaller vehicles struck by the wave have a 25 percent chance of capsizing.

The water level remains elevated until the spell ends or you choose a different effect. If this effect produced a wave, the wave repeats on the start of your next turn while the flood effect lasts."

Not only do the ships have a 25% chance of capsizing just on their own, but they were forced into each other and crashed. Remember, you are moving a 100 ft cube of water, while two boats are coming in to dock, getting them to smash into each other isn't hard.

Then I created a whirlpool. I don't remember if that took out a ship or not, but I hopefully don't have to explain that whirlpools are bad for ships.



By catching it on fire? I don't know if you have looked at many DnD ships, but the ship in the DMG on page 314 is only about 70 ft long. Wall of Fire is 60 ft and 20 ft high. So I literally caught the vast majority of the ship on fire. And, again, do I need to explain how catching a wooden vessel on fire is bad for that vessel? It caused everyone on board to leap off the ship too, meaning they weren't attacking the town.



No, the key wasn't in sight of the window. Unseen servant can do tasks a servant can do, such as fetching things, sewing clothes. It is perfectly capable of grabbing a key and unlocking a door, without the key needing to be in plain sight.

And my druid didn't need to save a spell slot. I can't remember if I had unseen servant because of the feat or the gestalt thing all the characters were doing, but it is a ritual spell. It just took a ritual. And even if it DID take a spell slot (I might have done that to save time), it isn't like I wasn't swimming in spell slots. A single first level spell isn't going to make a difference when I have multiple 5th, 4th and 3rd level spells.

As I thought. You have an extremely permissive DM. Yet you think it’s the spell that makes things unbalanced.

Firstly the easy one. Unseen servant is mindless and you can’t command it to search a room. That requires intelligence and it’s limited to simple tasks. What stat did your DM make your mindless unseen servant test against for a search test? Lift a key of a peg you can see ok. Search a room, nah! Even ignoring that you took 10 minutes to stand at an open window of the house you were breaking into to cast unseen servant to make it search a room that your permissive DM was generous to let you do… rather than let the rogue take a round to pick the lock? You think the problem is with the spell?

Secondly control water. Anything much bigger than a big 15 foot row boat isn’t affected by the flood effect at all. The ship goes up the wave and over it and isn’t moved. The spell specifically says only huge or smaller boats are affected which in D&D terms is a large rowboat. That 70 ft ship you mentioned is gargantuan. So not moved. Even if it did move (which they don’t) why would the ships colliding destroy the ships? Ships might bump particularly when travelling in the same direction why on earth would you expect that to do catastrophic hull damage? Even a full blown intentional ram at full speed with a ship designed for ramming in 5e wouldn’t destroy a ship with 300 hp. You got that effect from a wave? It also wouldn’t be affected by the whirlpool… firstly the ship is bigger than the whirlpool which is 50ft wide at the top. Sure it does bludgeoning damage to objects. But the ship has a damage soak of 15 so unless you need to get a really really good roll on 2d6 to damage that ship. What is it about the spell that makes you assume the effect would drag a gargantuan ship underwater and sink it? It doesn’t even do that to medium sized people let alone immense objects, creatures just spin around the vortex they don’t even drown. Even the enormous 500 foot whirlpool in Pirates of the Caribbean didnt why would you think your 50 ft whirlpool would too? In this example you and the DM just got the spell wrong.

Finally, Wall of Fire cracks me up. Wall of Fire doesn’t damage objects in the first instance. It damages creatures. It literally says that in the spell. So the ship isn’t set on fire at all. Secondly it is a perfect circle or a line - you can’t make it boat shaped. So unless your ship was circular there would have been a safe space at the front or the back. But let’s say the crew jumped over board - they would have been burnig
If I’m the radius so it makes sense. Why didn’t they just swim back to the absolutely-not-on-fire ship? Of course it’s not possible to cast wall of Fire on the deck of a ship either way because it has to be a solid surface. Ships move… that’s literally what they’re intended to do. So that ships deck isn’t there a second later? Or do you think wall of Fire can fly now? First time I’ve ever seen someone advocate for moving walls of fire.

So in all three cases your adding effects to spells that they simply don’t do. You’re implying consequences far in excess of what the magic allows and then you wonder why they’re powerful. Let’s be clear - magic only does expressly what it says it does. You can’t smash doors with magic missile - you can’t search an area with unseen servant. You can’t set ships on fire with wall of fire and you can’t sink ship longer than 15 feet with control water.

Just like you claimed you one shotted a 14th level rogue with Whirlwind despite the fact that it would only deal 5d6 damage to the rogue - none on a Dex save! (they have Evasion) and the damage is only dealt once, not every turn.

I think maybe if I was your DM you would have a more balanced view of magic. I don’t have a problem with players making mistakes with spells. I also don’t have a problem with generous DMs. I do have a problem with folks claim it’s the systems fault.

 

[Vaalingrade]

The whole thing about "Gary hated mages" is very much overblown. From what I can tell, it seems to come from an assertion made by Tim Kask that seems to have to do with a debate over whether or not magic missile automatically hit or required that a roll be made (Gary wanted the latter, while Kask campaigned for the former, which was how it eventually turned out).

The so-called "anti-magic-user bias" strikes me as Gary simply putting more controls on the power of magic spells in an effort to avoid unbalancing the game (much like what's being discussed in this thread).

I mean, what's being discussed in this thread when it comes to magi pretty much just boils down to punishing them for the devs not uplifting martials the way they did mages in the 2e to 3e interim.

Making a class suck or be even more obnoxious to play when they're prep classes already for being 'too powerful' is still a punishment.

 

[Alzrius]

I mean, what's being discussed in this thread when it comes to magi pretty much just boils down to punishing them for the devs not uplifting martials the way they did mages in the 2e to 3e interim.

Making a class suck or be even more obnoxious to play when they're prep classes already for being 'too powerful' is still a punishment.

I think it's more fair to characterize the entire thread as a discussion around the question of "presuming we agree that there is a disparity in favor of spellcasters, do we lower them to the level of martials, or raise martials up to their level?"

Different people have different answers to that question, and that's okay.

 

[Scott Christian]

You think Lancelot is accurately represented in DnD 5e? Lancelot once hit Gawain so hard that the horse Gawain was riding was flipped onto its back. He snapped the neck of two dragons. He was so fast he defeated 12 knights before they could even draw their weapons. He killed four men with a single thrust of his lance, and defeated one of the great enemies of the kingdom half-armored, with a hand literally tied behind his back. He struck such fear into an army that they fled from him alone.

Please note I said cinema.