D&D 5E [+] Ways to fix the caster / non-caster gap
- Thread starter overgeeked
- Start date
overgeeked
Open-World Sandbox
No, it’s a list of recent fantasy touchstones that the younger fans will recognize far more than almost anything from Appendix N. Spellcasters, martials, settings, style, tropes, etc.
MichaelSomething
Legend
Can we define high level mundane characters? I always thought you stop being mundane once you hit high levels?
I get that & previously read or watched most of your list but.... The shift to pulling from contemporary sources thing started as justification for the state of casters. That was why my earlier list was pretty much exclusively spellcasters of one form or another. A list of more recent stuff that mostly contradicts the reason drawing from more recent stuff was brought up kinda demonstrates the problem of using it to justify gauntlet style spellcasting.
overgeeked
Open-World Sandbox
But it works wonderfully to justify giving non-casters a much needed buff.
FrogReaver
The most respectful and polite poster ever
Depends on what is meant by mundane?
G
Guest 7042500
Guest
Go back to OD&D, that's how to fix it.
Wait, this isn't the "Unpopular Opinions" thread? Sorry...
Wait, this isn't the "Unpopular Opinions" thread? Sorry...
Mecheon
Sacabambaspis
Given how WoW is these days, functionally a properly played spellcaster is effectively on this. Mana loss only comes up on ones who don't have it as their role needing to grab heals when doing a non-healing role. Used to be more of an issue but not nowerdays
The thing is in Warcraft your mage is limited to combat stuff and only very specific combat stuff, so nowhere near D&D's out of combat stuff, and martials in WoW are far more powerful. Sure, your Frost mage can throw out ice spells all day long, but it isn't going to help when you're at the mercy of my fury warrior about to pop Odyn's Fury on you after shattering your ice shield with Shattering Blow, because the crabs and wasp being thrown at me by your teams Beastmastery Hunter are doing little but making the two broadsword wielding dwarf angrier and serving just to refill my health, and your monk just got sapped by my team's rogue
As someone levelling Black Mage in FFXIV, that consists of using Ice spells (which don't cost mana) to build back your mana pool, and then burning it all with Fire spells to do the big damage. Keeping the cycle going between the ice and fire phases long enough also unlocks more powerful spells to drop on people
On the other ones, mana really only comes up as part of the "There is an emergency happening" buttons. I do White Mage as well, a healer class, and that pretty much doesn't run out of mana unless the party has messed up somehow and I am in panic mode stitching everyone back together (and harvesting their pain for the Blood Lily, as you do). Normal operation I can cast forever
Vaalingrade
Legend
If someone can't play Sokka in your game, what are you even doing with your life as a game designer?
Gygax wrote about why. He was, I kid you not, trying to make sure magic-users would be able to keep up with fighting men.
Game Balance. Game balance is why we got Vancian.
1E fighters were more powerful than 1E Magic-Users, even at high level. Magic-Users were gimped at every turn. To start with they needed a minimum Intelligence to even have higher level spells in their book and this was in an era of rolling abilities and not rolling and then deciding where to put the number. Then their 4 spells at 1st level were random and they only added 1 per level up to a predetermined number of maximum spells. Every time they found a scroll or added a spell they needed to roll a check to see if they even could learn that spell. So while there were powerful spells like fireball, there was no guarantee you would get them and you might instead end up with feign death.
Comparing a 18th level 1E Fighter and Magic User 1V1:
Because of the wired rules on casting spells and initiative, if a magic-user is casting a spell and gets attacked, the attack occurs at the time he starts casting the spell if he wins initiative and if it hits then it disrupts the spell. The only way this is mitigated is if they are not within melee range and it would take longer in movement for the opponent to close and attack (assuming they are not attacking the magic-user with a missile weapon). So even if he wins initiative he is still screwed.
In some corner cases could cast something like Power Word Kill that got no save he could beat an 18th level fighter, but other than that he was done for. For example he needs an 18 intelligence (very unlikely in 1E) to even be able to cast 9th level spells, he needs to roll low enough to be able to learn Power Word Kill, he needs to win initiative, he needs to not have his spell broken before complete. If he did all that he could take the fighter down in the first round.
On the other hand the magic user had an extremely bad AC and really low hps (about 35 at 18th level). After weapon specialization came along an optimized fighter would be getting 3.5 attacks a round at 18th level, needs a 2 to hit and if had an 18 strength (to match the MUs 18), he would be doing about 10 hp damage per hit.
To make matters worse against really weak foes that fighter could get 15 attacks a round, so even the Wizard being able to fireball a slew of Goblins was not that impressive when the fighter can down probably as many or more.
