D&D General The Crab Bucket Fallacy

[Mort]

A few random thoughts on this. First, I have no problems with people playing fighters and wizards up to 20th level. Yes, the wizard can go nova, but the fighter is the energizer bunny that just keeps going and going hacking and slashing. I played a way of mercy monk in one of my previous campaigns and now another player wants to play a monk and my wife is planning on playing one in the campaign I run because they were so effective.

I've done campaigns to 20th level - in multiple editions.

First - yes, technically the fighter can "go all day..." while the caster is reliant on limited spell slots. But, in practice, the fighter tends to run low/out of HP as or more quickly as the casters run out of spells - especially as levels increase.

Second - In my experience, in a "typical" campaign, fighters need A LOT more attention given to special items (swords, armor, belts etc.) to stay even close to par with the casters - who certainly LIKE cool items, but they have spells and don't really need them.

Third - D&D, as a default, is a game that relies on attrition. If the DM doesn't pay attention to that and doesn't have enough to drain caster resources (in whatever manner) they will dominate. I'm in 2 campaigns right now where 1 DM is paying some attention and the other is paying 0 attention to this. The one where the DM is paying 0 attention is a REALLY fun campaign the DM is great, BUT the casters are utterly dominating in nearly every situation because 90% of the time they have their full resources to devote to any given encounter.

 

[Oofta]

I've done campaigns to 20th level - in multiple editions.

First - yes, technically the fighter can "go all day..." while the caster is reliant on limited spell slots. But, in practice, the fighter tends to run low/out of HP as or more quickly as the casters run out of spells - especially as levels increase.

Fighters never run out of HP in my games. They may run out of GP because they have to buy healing potions by the pallet, but running out of HP? Nah. Never seen it.

Second - In my experience, in a "typical" campaign, fighters need A LOT more attention given to special items (swords, armor, belts etc.) to stay even close to par with the casters - who certainly LIKE cool items, but they have spells and don't really need them.

I have a semi-open magic mart for that. But my campaigns tend to be relatively low magic. At 20th level the fighter had an custom legendary weapon, but everyone had a legendary item at that point. A couple of very rare items (belt and armor) and the group had a flying carpet he sometimes rode into battle. That was pretty much it. Meanwhile the wizard had just about as much stuff including a staff of power and a wand of lightning bolts.

Third - D&D, as a default, is a game that relies on attrition. If the DM doesn't pay attention to that and doesn't have enough to drain caster resources (in whatever manner) they will dominate. I'm in 2 campaigns right now where 1 DM is paying some attention and the other is paying 0 attention to this. The one where the DM is paying 0 attention is a REALLY fun campaign the DM is great, BUT the casters are utterly dominating in nearly every situation because 90% of the time they have their full resources to devote to any given encounter.

This is only an issue if the PCs can get a long rest after every encounter. If that doesn't happen, the issue goes away in my experience. There's no such thing as a perfect system and there is far too much variability from one table to the next to ever achieve perfect (or even close to perfect) balance for every single table.

 

[Azzy]

What if you want to just kick a&* on your own, with no desire to be a leader of men? What class should you play?

Assuming the proposed fighter has a choice of features from which to select, you choose the ones that don't focus on leadership.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Second - In my experience, in a "typical" campaign, fighters need A LOT more attention given to special items (swords, armor, belts etc.) to stay even close to par with the casters - who certainly LIKE cool items, but they have spells and don't really need them.

Back in the day, this was intentional. EGG spelled it out for us in the 1e DMG that those crazy random-magic-item tables were weighted to deliver more items useable by those who needed them, in the interest of game balance.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Assuming the proposed fighter has a choice of features from which to select, you choose the ones that don't focus on leadership.

Since when has WotC offered non-spellcasters a choice of features to select (beyond subclass)?

 

[Tony Vargas]

Since when has WotC offered non-spellcasters a choice of features to select (beyond subclass)?

Since 3.0 - the 3.0 fighter, for instance, was, like, all bonus feats. Rogues weren't as made of choices, but they still got a number of feature choices (and 8 skill points if you grant skills are features, which is not a huge a stretch).
4e, everyone got their choices of feats, "powers" (maneuvers exploits/spells/prayers/etc), skills, and alternative Class features, Background/Theme/ParagonPath/EpicDestiny (which, like is comparable to background/sub-class, sorta).
5e, most classes have at leasts one sub-class with choices, and everyone can choose a Background & skills ... of those sub-classes that don't offer spells, OK, there's less, but the Battlemaster does stand out as having 18 (iirc, in the PH) exploits maneuvers to choose from, 3 at third level, and more - sadly from the same list of 3rd-level-approporiate maneuvers - as levels are gained. (Maybe the Barbarians is completely left out? - I'm not familiar with it's post-PH sub-classes)

 

[Azzy]

Since when has WotC offered non-spellcasters a choice of features to select (beyond subclass)?

You mean with UngeheuerLich's hypothetical Fighter with good hypothetical features? What's one more hypothetical to top that off?

Besides, there was this whole edition prior to 5e where all classes had a choice of features... But we can't talk about that edition, so I I suppose we'll just go with existing 5e subclasses like the Battlemaster, the Arcane Archer, and the Rune Knight.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

TBF, I doubt any hypothetical Warlord has ever peen proposed that would have "all the same abilities as a Wizard"
rather,

In this case, he's even suggesting that the Warlord get spells (tho, y'know, a Fighter sub-class in the PH does get spells, already), just "powerful cool abilities" - they might be maneuvers, like a souped up BM, they might be something else, entirely.

Personally, I think Cleric or Bard would be a better point of comparison, but it's a hopeless case, the Warlord, in 5e. It's design space has generally been colonized, or razed & salted.

Whether it's a fallacy or not, I think the basic issue the OP is getting at is just the entrenchment of the Martial/Caster Gap (npi). People are able to claim, with a straight face, that the Fighter (or Rogue or Barbarian) is equal to the Wizard (or Cleric, Druid, etc), but, when it comes to introducing a new martial class that even approaches the utility of a full caster, it's deemed "OP"
That judgement can't come from comparison to the yet-more-powerful full casters, it can only come from comparison to the benighted non-casters.

That's a double standard. (Which does not seem to be a named fallacy that I could quickly find, formal or informal, so there's that)

To be fair, often those proposed warlords are full warriors with full caster level manuever systems and other features.

 

[Tony Vargas]

To be fair, often those proposed warlords are full warriors with full caster level manuever systems and other features.

I'd be interested to see a full-caster-level maneuver system...
I'm a tad skeptical it's even possible, with spells being what they are in 5e.

That's the kind of thing I meant about the fighter chassis not working... 3 Extra Attacks? Nobody with anything comparable to the support casting of a cleric or bard, gets 3 Extra Attacks. An Extra attack, sure...

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I'd be interested to see a full-caster-level maneuver system...
I'm a tad skeptical it's even possible, with spells being what they are in 5e.

That's the kind of thing I meant about the fighter chassis not working... 3 Extra Attacks? Nobody with anything comparable to the support casting of a cleric or bard, gets 3 Extra Attacks. An Extra attack, sure...

Right, but when I try to make a warlord based on a half caster, I always get at least one person telling me that it has to have high level abilities comparable to high level spells.

Of course I also have come to dislike the idea of making it a support class as such. IMO it’s better to find the broader archetype in the concept and make support at least somewhat optional.