D&D 5E (2014) Should martial characters be mundane or supernatural?

[Micah Sweet]

That's not how 5e rolls by default. At least for combat.

It's a bad default, to be honest. Character have (or should have) different strengths.

 

[Micah Sweet]

D'oh! Could have sworn they were immune!

They were immune in most previous editions. Don't know why they aren't in 5e, as it was kinda their thing.

 

[ECMO3]

i think the four martial classes, quite early in their progression, should just gain the ability to bypass nonmagic resistance/immunity with their standard attacks, the monk already gets this at 6th for their unarmed attacks but i think it should be slightly earlier 4th maybe or 5th to match extra attack, all the other classes will all have access to magic damage through their own spells and cantrips.

Well Monks can, but that point aside, I see no reason they need to have magic damage. They should not automatically be able to damage something, the whole point of damage immunity is to force characters to use other options.

There are class options that would enable them to damage even enemies that are completely immune to P/B/S and that is rare. Saying all martials should have this is like saying all wizards should get magic missile for free in case they come across a Devil that is immune to Firebolt and Fireball. If you want magic missile choose it .... likewise, if your fighter, Barbarian or Rogue want to be able to damage creatures immune to weapons without using things like oil or holy water then take the options from those classes that give you that ability.

If we give martials magic damage automatically then I think we should make monsters that are immunt to non-magic P/B/S just be immune to all P/B/S (magic or not).

 

[Tony Vargas]

They were immune in most previous editions. Don't know why they aren't in 5e, as it was kinda their thing.

5e was trying not to assume magic weapon, prolly

If you're writing every character class to bypass magic damage resistance by level 4, why are you putting it on monsters in the first place? There's like 1 story beat that's possible as a result, where a foe is a problem in the level 3-4 range, and then becomes something you can take down. Everywhere else it just becomes wasted text.

Not every character, I'm sure, just whichever pure martial we're whingeing about at the moment...

As it stands, Magic Weapon is a 2nd level spell, so that negation kicks in at 3rd, anyway - it's apparently a Wizard, Paladin, & Artificer spell, + some Domains. Of course, Pally & Artificer get 2nd level spells later.... ... and wizards aren't much concerned with hitting with weapons... but, apparently, negating immunity to non-magical weapons is a 3rd-level-appropriate ability.

 

[Minigiant]

This is false.

Okay 32% are flyers.
Then add in the ground troops that are resistant to nonmagical and teleporters.

It's not a corner case on one side.

 

[Maxperson]

Okay 32% are flyers.
Then add in the ground troops that are resistant to nonmagical and teleporters.

It's not a corner case on one side.

Flying means very little to most flyers, because readied actions interrupt them as they fly by and they get hit anyway. Or they run away. Resistance doesn't make an encounter hard, let alone extremely hard. And even melee fighters can hit well with ranged weapons for those few that are left.

How many teleporters can teleport at will farther than 30 feet? If the enemy is constantly running away by teleporting, how hard is the encounter? Not very.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Flying means very little to most flyers, because readied actions interrupt them as they fly by and they get hit anyway. Or they run away. Resistance doesn't make an encounter hard, let alone extremely hard. And even melee fighters can hit well with ranged weapons for those few that are left.

How many teleporters can teleport at will farther than 30 feet? If the enemy is constantly running away by teleporting, how hard is the encounter? Not very.

That has not been my experience.

This is assuming a strength based fighter (as I've said, Dex based martials don't run up against these issues nearly as often). Typically, you won't invest heavily into Dexterity, due to heavy armor proficiency, so you're probably around a 12 in Dexterity. Thrown weapons have very short ranges, so if you're using them you're probably attacking with disadvantage. If you're attacking with a bow, you're effectively taking a -4 to hit and damage, but generally without disadvantage. Additionally, at T3, a fighter has 3 attacks. But a readied action only allows 1 attack. So if the fighter is forced to ready an action (far less likely with a bow), it effectively reduces their damage output by 66%, before any of the other "penalties" are factored in. That's a huge loss of efficacy.

With a bow, they probably don't need to ready unless they're trying to avoid disadvantage, but due to their lower Dex they still suffer somewhere in the ballpark of a 50% reduction in damage output due to their lower Dexterity, and that's assuming their bow has the same pluses as their primary weapon (admittedly, this assumes that the -4 penalty is meaningful and they don't have a 95% chance to hit after factoring in the penalty).

In the martial campaign I mentioned, one of the artifacts I gave the party was a magical harpoon named Ahab. Among it's many abilities, the primary one was being able to use the harpoon to make an attack that would either pull the creature to the wielder, or pull the wielder to the creature. The harpoon had an huge thrown range, and I added it specifically because that melee oriented party had a lot of trouble with flying (or otherwise highly mobile) enemies, when I played them intelligently (and as I've said, i don't like pulling my punches when DMing, because i feel it cheapens the experience). It was a very effective weapon and saw a lot of use in that campaign, despite none of the characters being built around using a harpoon.

As for resistance, that's half damage. While my PCs rarely run up against this past T1, because I make sure the martial PCs have magic weapons, I often allow them to recruit henchmen, who aren't guaranteed magic weapons (a significant portion of loot IMCs is randomly generated). The current party of 6 PCs has 3 henchmen (2 fighters and a barbarian IIRC). Let me tell you, when those henchmen don't have magic weapons and they're fighting a monster with resistance, the difference is noticable from behind the screen (I'm speaking metaphorically; I haven't used an actual DM screen in a long time). That's (over, due to rounding down) a 50% reduction in damage output. It's very noticable. When that's the case, those henchmen generally do very little to alter the trajectory of the encounter. It's certainly better than nothing, but in a lot of cases the tiny amount of damage they contribute means the monster would have gone down at the exact same time anyway (because the rogue or the warlock completely overkills the creature, rendering the henchman's damage contribution moot).

And if you have a creature that has both flight AND resistance (admittedly, fairly rare) in T3, such that you have to use a readied action to attack, you're potentially looking at dealing around 16% of your normal damage output, which I think we can all agree is crap. Fighters do deal good damage under optimal conditions, but not so much that 16% of their damage can be considered good, by any metric.

I'll freely admit though that that latter one can be considered an edge case. Even so, a 50% to 66% damage loss is a very significant reduction in damage output. Yeah, you can still technically contribute to the encounter, but you're probably not pulling your weight under those circumstances.

 

[Leatherhead]

It doesn't matter what label you affix to high level Martials; Psionic, Supernatural, Mundane, Gazorniplat, or any other made up tag you can append on them to say "But this totally isn't magic!" They will never be balanced until they receive a degree of narrative control. And by receiving such narrative control, they will stop being able to fulfill the "Regular People" role that some people desperately want them to fill.

Sometimes, you just have to pull the bandage off and let the wound heal.

 

[Oofta]

Okay 32% are flyers.
Then add in the ground troops that are resistant to nonmagical and teleporters.

It's not a corner case on one side.

It's more like 22%, about a third of those are dragons. But it's not like casters have the corner on ranged attacks. Resistant to magic is largely meaningless (also around 20%) and I don't see how teleportation is relevant one way or another.

I do agree that strength based PCs need better ranged attacks, it's why I make longbow versatile. But even without that, the situations they are nerfed are about as common as casters getting nerfed.

 

[CreamCloud0]

In the martial campaign I mentioned, one of the artifacts I gave the party was a magical harpoon named Ahab. Among it's many abilities, the primary one was being able to use the harpoon to make an attack that would either pull the creature to the wielder, or pull the wielder to the creature. The harpoon had an huge thrown range, and I added it specifically because that melee oriented party had a lot of trouble with flying (or otherwise highly mobile) enemies, when I played them intelligently (and as I've said, i don't like pulling my punches when DMing, because i feel it cheapens the experience). It was a very effective weapon and saw a lot of use in that campaign, despite none of the characters being built around using a harpoon.

Ooh! Sounds cool, honestly i think the weapon table really needs a better array of weapons that fit playstyle niches and are actually decent weapons, thrown, finesse, reach, up until onednd the only martial thrown weapon afaik was the trident which was exactly as powerful as it’s simple weapon counterpart the spear (im aware its now got a die size buff)