D&D 5E [+] Ways to fix the caster / non-caster gap

[James Gasik]

Non-magical D&D characters are realistically unrealistic.

Magical D&D characters are unrealistically unrealistic.

The solution in the old days was just throw enough magic items at the problem until you couldn't tell the difference anymore. Now we've gone through three editions of:

*Magic items are a method of progression, and need to be monitored carefully.
*Magic items are a minor method of progression, and need to be monitored carefully.
*Magic items: USE AT YOUR OWN RISK.

And no new solution was given.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I'd quibble that it was:

Magic Items are exceedingly powerful and granting them is entirely the DMs prerogative, but, seriously, how much fun would the game be without magic items? - throw in some cursed items, it'll drive your players nuts!
Magic Items are extremely powerful, but ultimately not a lot moreso than spells, and players can make/buy them, within a carefully monitored expected wealth/level.
Magic Items are cool and expected, you should give players items they'd like that fit their character, if you don't they'll just make/buy 'em anyway. Here's a whakidoo 'treasure parcel' system that gives you about the gp/level we use for starting character at higher level. Or forget the whole thing and turn on 'inherent bonuses'
Magic Items are exceedingly powerful and granting them is entirely the DMs prerogative. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK.

 

[James Gasik]

I'd quibble that it was:

Magic Items are exceedingly powerful and granting them is entirely the DMs prerogative, but, seriously, how much fun would the game be without magic items? - throw in some cursed items, it'll drive your players nuts!
Magic Items are extremely powerful, but ultimately not a lot moreso than spells, and players can make/buy them, within a carefully monitored expected wealth/level.
Magic Items are cool and expected, you should give players items they'd like that fit their character, if you don't they'll just make/buy 'em anyway. Here's a whakidoo 'treasure parcel' system that gives you about the gp/level we use for starting character at higher level. Or forget the whole thing and turn on 'inherent bonuses'
Magic Items are exceedingly powerful and granting them is entirely the DMs prerogative. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK.

Close enough, I suppose. Either way, magic items went from being a reward for adventuring and things that could patch holes in class design to what we have today- something DM's are warned about using, and again, nothing really replaced their role in any case.

 

[Pedantic]

Close enough, I suppose. Either way, magic items went from being a reward for adventuring and things that could patch holes in class design to what we have today- something DM's are warned about using, and again, nothing really replaced their role in any case.

You know what would be fun? Some sort of randomly generated hexcrawl that seeds magic items everywhere, and then just hands players a list of them with vague enemy force descriptions upfront. The whole quest/gameplay loop is just a sequencing puzzle for what order you get them in.

 

[Lanefan]

I couldn't disagree more. Players have always and will always continue to scramble for more and more power. Making monsters work like PCs has nothing to do with it. Monsters in 5E have access to any spell or power the referee wants to give them...and yet...the players are still power hungry. 3X is one (well, two) of the editions that explicitly made monster creation based on PC creation and it had absolutely zero effect on players being power hungry. It also happened to be a nightmare to build monsters for.

I'm not talking about non-PC-playable monsters. A DM can pretty much do what she likes with those 'cause there's no PCs to require symmetry against. (this is part of why I don't like so many 'monster' species becoming PC-playable)

I'm talking about NPCs of species and classes* that are also PC playable, and how what's good for the goose has to also be good for the gander. If an NPC Elf can be a Wizard of level x and cast spell y then my same-level PC Elf Wizard should also be able to cast that spell (once I've looted and studied the foe's spellbook!)...and vice versa. If my Fighter can whirlwind attack then an enemy Fighter who meets the pre-reqs should also be able to do so. Morale rules, if used, should apply to PCs and NPCs alike. And so on.

* - I know 3e had NPC classes; those classes should also be PC-playable IMO, but also be so obviously sub-optimal in the field that nobody would ever want to play one for real. As an example, the Commoner class should never gain hit points after 1st level. That said, 3e also went overboard with the idea.

So not only does it not solve the problem you think it does, it explicitly makes running the game even more of a chore.

Not necessarily.

The trick is not to go through every single step to create the NPC, it's to create it by eyeball and then quickly check to make sure it fits within the bounds of what could have been created had you gone about it the long way; and if it doesn't, either fix it or come up with an in-game explanation for the exception.

For example, you're creating a Goliath opponent for the party. You want it to be really strong so you assign it a Strength of 25. Well, in 5e Goliaths cap out at 20 if rolled up as PCs (maybe 22 after ASIs? not sure on that), meaning what you've just made fails the symmetry check; and you've either got to knock its Strength down to what a PC can do or give it a magic item that runs its Strength score up...a magic item you're prepared to allow the PCs to scoop up and use after the fight.

Otherwise, you've just set a binding precedent that Goliaths in your world can go to Strength 25.

 

[Vaalingrade]

So put a chapter in the DMG that tells them to do that, along with several tools for doing so?

1) Open the PH to wizard.
2) Flip all of the pages containing the wizard together.
3) Grasp firmly,
4) Pull at an anger perpendicular to the open book until the pages tear and come away from the book.
5) Repeat with Champion fighter.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I'm talking about NPCs of species and classes* that are also PC playable, and how what's good for the goose has to also be good for the gander.

And bad for the game.

Also, I feel like routine ovarian care wouldn't be good for the gander. That was always a really bad colloquialism.

 

[M_Natas]

Well you can split until you have 100 classes and then you wouldn't be finished anyway.

But other people see more value in one option that can be bent to different flavors without having to rewrite multiple times. It depends on how strong you like the ties between concepts and mechanics. Just saying this because there are people here all year long suggesting the opposite i.e. merge into less classes. After all a long time ago there was only Wizard and it didn't prevent people to picture their wizards as sorcerers, witches/warlocks, shamans, alienists, mystics...

I would rather proceed in this way: does a class mechanics really prevents a concept*? Then design a new mechanic that clearly enforces the concept. Is the mechanic small to be a feat? If not, is it still small enough to be a subclass? Only if not, make a new class.

*In the warlock case IMO only the "pact-breaker" does not have a mechanical representation. But does it really need one? Notice that WotC purposefully avoided any mechanic that make you lose abilities based on narrative: Clerics don't lose spells if they piss off their deity, Paladins not even if they murder babies, and alignment is not a thing (the only single outlier is Druid using metal armor, a single design mistake). Do you really want to go down the rabbit hole of codifying into a rule how a warlock should be roleplayed not to lose spells? The main effect will be to have all warlocks of the pact type roleplayed the same way so as not to break the rule.

My problem is more, that the Classes by itself are quite arbitrary.
They are not really divided by party role (Tank, Support, Melee or even just Magic, Support, Martial), nor by origin of power (innate power, loaend power, learned power).
Like, you have some classes, that are clearly designed by origin of power (Sorcerer, Cleric, maybe Wizard, Barbarian), some by party role (fighter, bard) and some that are muddled, like the Warlock or ill defined like the Paladin, who's got his powers by being charismatic? But it is not learned magic like the Bard, nor innate magic like the Sorcerer nor given magic like a cleric.

Design wise the 5e classes are ... not very well organised. There is no real concept behind the organisation. It is 90% nostalgia filled up with playtest feedback, where you end up with a lot of classes that take up a similar design space and where some options are just traps.

Which leads to discussions like here where people even can't really define, what a class should be able to do and what not.

 

[M_Natas]

It seems to me that the critical part M Natas is referring to is that the source of the power is somehow external to the biological nature of the hero whatever that source is.

And there are a few issues with it.

1. There's an underlying assumption about the baseline characteristics of D&D folk (i.e. Earth human) that has no basis beyond personal preference. Heck..a great many PC adventurers are explicitly not human in the first place
2. There are examples of "mundane" characters who do supernatural stuff. For "One Punch Man" to be an effective parody, it must be parodying something.
3. There is a temptation to apply exactly as much rigor as is needed to prove the point, to go looking for the foreign material that "makes" the superpower even if is completely internal to the biology of the character as they experience it (e.g. demigods and mutants)
4. It assumes that the fundamental nature of the character can't and shouldn't change over the course of leveling. This is silly when you consider what D&D adventurers do to gain that experience. Past a certain level they're basically hanging out in radiation labs, drinking super serums, and consorting with gods, fiends, and faeries a few times a month, yet none of this is expected to have any impact on the PC in any fundamental way. If they started out as a guard before they portaled into Hell, ate some souls for sustenance and slayed an archdevil, when they get out of Hell, they should still be just a guard.

Like..in any other media, D&D adventures would be superheroic origin stories. It's kinda headscratching really.

Like, I didn't start with the insistence that martials need to be mundane. I don't have any problem with super heroic characters if you have some sort of supernatural explanation on how they got that powers.

 

[overgeeked]

I'm not talking about non-PC-playable monsters. A DM can pretty much do what she likes with those 'cause there's no PCs to require symmetry against. (this is part of why I don't like so many 'monster' species becoming PC-playable)

I'm talking about NPCs of species and classes* that are also PC playable, and how what's good for the goose has to also be good for the gander. If an NPC Elf can be a Wizard of level x and cast spell y then my same-level PC Elf Wizard should also be able to cast that spell (once I've looted and studied the foe's spellbook!)...and vice versa. If my Fighter can whirlwind attack then an enemy Fighter who meets the pre-reqs should also be able to do so. Morale rules, if used, should apply to PCs and NPCs alike. And so on.

* - I know 3e had NPC classes; those classes should also be PC-playable IMO, but also be so obviously sub-optimal in the field that nobody would ever want to play one for real. As an example, the Commoner class should never gain hit points after 1st level. That said, 3e also went overboard with the idea.

Not necessarily.

The trick is not to go through every single step to create the NPC, it's to create it by eyeball and then quickly check to make sure it fits within the bounds of what could have been created had you gone about it the long way; and if it doesn't, either fix it or come up with an in-game explanation for the exception.

For example, you're creating a Goliath opponent for the party. You want it to be really strong so you assign it a Strength of 25. Well, in 5e Goliaths cap out at 20 if rolled up as PCs (maybe 22 after ASIs? not sure on that), meaning what you've just made fails the symmetry check; and you've either got to knock its Strength down to what a PC can do or give it a magic item that runs its Strength score up...a magic item you're prepared to allow the PCs to scoop up and use after the fight.

Otherwise, you've just set a binding precedent that Goliaths in your world can go to Strength 25.

Which is exactly why you do not build NPCs with the PC rules. The problem you create for yourself by insisting on making NPCs using the PC rules is entirely an own goal. And is completely avoided by not doing that in the first place. But you have to? No, you don’t. But you should? No, you shouldn’t. Clearly. Gooses and ganders? No. The referee is not bound in any way by the PC rules when creating NPCs. Full stop.