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

[MichaelSomething]

If you think a good DM is one that invents plot contrivances that let the characters to succeed, then I guess. To me that just seems like a type of railroading though.

They are many things a DM can do to balance the martial caster divide. Altering the plot is just one option. Restrict rests, give out powerful magic weapons, generous use of anti magic zones, and ruling in favor of Fighters more often are just a few I'm listing for examples.

 

[Vaalingrade]

They are many things a DM can do to balance the martial caster divide. Altering the plot is just one option. Restrict rests, give out powerful magic weapons, generous use of anti magic zones, and ruling in favor of Fighters more often are just a few I'm listing for examples.

That just puts us back to making the game less fun for others to somehow 'get even'.

How does the party not getting to rest make the game more fun for the martial players?

How does being in an antimagic field? Especially right after getting that powerful magic weapon?

 

[MichaelSomething]

The only solution I have at this point is to drag individuals to separate threads and custom make a series of rules that will solve the martial caster divide according to their specific desires.

If you quoted me in this thread, expect to be mentioned in the near future! I will get to you all eventually!!

 

[mamba]

Like I said, I can offer a dozen different solutions, but if everyone is just shooting down each other's ideas, what's the point?

finding one that isn't being shot down?

If you think you find a solution everyone likes, talk to WotC, they know better... so if you have one that you think some people will like, don't hold back

Personally I will go with adding more / strong combat maneuvers on the martial side, tweaking some spells and most of all require rolls for spells, just like for weapon attacks, unlike weapon attacks I will probably separate them into critical failure, extraordinary failure, ordinary failure, ordinary success, and extraordinary success (no critical success).

Don't want to go all out DCC and have individual effects for every single spell, so will see what I can do to keep it generic. Right now I lean towards extraordinary success / ordinary failure being the equivalent of upcasting / downcasting by two spell levels, worse failures probably need individual options, or at least a system that determines the detrimental effect in some generic way

 

[James Gasik]

That just puts us back to making the game less fun for others to somehow 'get even'.

How does the party not getting to rest make the game more fun for the martial players?

How does being in an antimagic field? Especially right after getting that powerful magic weapon?

Yeah, anti-magic is just as terrible as anti-martial. There can certainly be situations where one character can perform better than another, but telling someone "yeah, uh, your entire character class does nothing right now. Maybe you can be a healing potion caddy in this encounter"? Expletive that.

 

[M_Natas]

Backwards. Sorcerer is the base class concept. Wizard is a sorcerer who dig into the nature of magic and learned how it works and why yell “grew le!” While brandishing bat poop causes a fireball.

No!
Wizard and Sorcerer are distinct. All magical classes should be divided by the origin of power: Learned (Wizard), given (Cleric), innate (Sorcerer) and all other Caster classes shall be subclasses of those three.
Bards are cultural study Wizards, warlocks a emo goth clerics.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

No!
Wizard and Sorcerer are distinct. All magical classes should be divided by the origin of power: Learned (Wizard), given (Cleric), innate (Sorcerer) and all other Caster classes shall be subclasses of those three.
Bards are cultural study Wizards, warlocks a emo goth clerics.

Terrible.

 

[tetrasodium]

That just puts us back to making the game less fun for others to somehow 'get even'.

How does the party not getting to rest make the game more fun for the martial players?

How does being in an antimagic field? Especially right after getting that powerful magic weapon?

Since the tangent started partly about how 5e tried to basically remove magic items from the gm's toolbox without replacing them with something else, you are hitting on another area where 5e stripped away the gm's tools and called it good as if the gm were an enemy to be contained for everyone's safety.

Those areas went both ways though... in no particular order...

• Magic item churn and slot/bonus type conflicts would help cycle old magic items out rather than just endlessly accumulating. 5e got rid of both
• Consumable magic items would go away on their own with use so the gm could be more liberal in awarding then.. 5e changed that to make most of them self recharging and permanent as a result.
• Spell resistance encouraged a shift in what kinds of spells a caster felt were optimal that tended to lean towards buff/debuff/battlefield control spells that were both efficient and extremely effective at cranking the group as a whole up to eleven.
• With vancian prep and fewer save types it was easy for some monsters to be meaningfully strong against specific staple spells in ways that encouraged some other spell choices.
• Because of vancian prep and the last two points a caster needed to give more thought to spell prep and use than just loading up all their A+ & S tier spells then allocating slots for maximum efficacy in any govt situation. It wasn't uncommon to cast a less optimal spell just because the more optimal one was either used up or being held in reserve for a situation that needed the better spell enough to really need playing that card
• Monsters who could target touch ac made PCs with invulnerable ac values pretty easily hit. (Dex builds fared better but had others opportunity costs that are secondary to the point
• Antimagic was not the only tool, it was the big club that came out for the brick dropping shock not an average encounter. If the gm needed to call down the bloodcurdling wrath of an angry vengeful god using a tool like disjunction or 2e flamestrike did that in hint of possibility alone.
• There was much more I'm forgetting

 

[mamba]

So a good DM then???

not sure I'd call that good, but a DM that bends the rules quite a bit to help the players, yes. Sounds rather railroady to me

 

[M_Natas]

Do they? They tend to have the highest hp, no?

As well, it's only an issue if the hp cost is too high; the math would have to be done to make sure it's reasonable. I am sure that's possible, though. It would also put the decision in the hands of the player: it might be fun to burn some hp to go for this big maneuver, or I could play it safe and do a vanilla attack.

Finally, it would address the issue of the adventurer who is just as effective at 1 hp as they are at full. Under this system, "No, you're not" because you no longer have the energy to pull off the maneuvers that make you a badass.

So I finally got to page 6 or so, and saw that @Fanaelialae mentioned something similar regarding adrenaline. It's basically what I am saying except we would be using a pre-existing resource.

In another thread I proposed something that is the opposite of that: charging the characters during combat so that the cool abilities are used at the end of combat and not at the beginning.
Like, for every vanilla attack action you make, you get a charge. Then you have cool abilities, that can only be used when you have enough charges.
It would change D&D battles from being front loaded to being backloaded. At the moment if a fight is longer than two or three rounds, fights end usually with "I make the attack action. I use a cantrip", because the optimal strategy for like every D&D fight is to use you biggest powers first to end the battle quickly (especially with a 5 Minute work day).
Which leads to casters using big spells, being very effective.

In comparison, Fighters or Rogues without ressources to use up, who just do consistent damage, feel underwhelming.
Like mathematically a fighter and a wizard do roughly the same amount of damage. But the Wizard has spikes of damage with a low base damage while fighters and rogues do consistent medium damage throughout.

Now, you could give fighters also front loaded abilities that use up resources like a wizard or we could try to implement charging abilities, so that in general fighters and wizards do their base damage at the beginning ofnthe battle and only use big abilities at the end to end the fight.