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

And how does any of that match what a wizard or cleric can do? For the most part you're just talking damage there, which fighters already have. I thought you wanted cool abilities that could match a spellcaster.
Perfect is the enemy of good.
Fast climbing isn't a generic fighter type ability. It's a rogue or ranger type ability.
Fighters have athletics as a main skill. It's frankly bizarre that they gain no benefits to mobility as they level up so a level 1 fighter is mechanically about as good at climbing as a level 20 one. Not faster. Same with all movement types.
What do you mean by reliable taunting? Making the enemy angry? Taunting might be able to do that. Making the enemy rush and attack you? That would take supernatural mind control. Words can't make people attack stupidly on a reliable basis without being some sort of mind control.
This has already been discussed in another thread and I think it was shown you can obviously manipulate the minds of people without using magic.
At the end of the day if you move that list of stuff to the general fighter, you still have a fighter who isn't close to a spellcaster for utility and who can't reliably fight things at range unless specialized that way with feats. All the same complaints we are seeing would still be there.
Again: Perfect is the enemy of good.
 

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All martials can do most of these already:
You only looked at half the list.

Almost all these things under actions and battlefield communications are already doable in 5E with RAW. Out of the whole list above I have 3 you can't do on a current martial in 5E and even on those I am not sure what exactly you mean and could probably come up with rules that cover it if I did.
Many of the things you claim as doable aren't as you cannot talk do a Tier 2 or better foe in one blow in 5e.

5e is a "Death by a Thousand Cut" system not a OHKO or TKO system like real life.
Then there's the whole half of the list ignored.

5e doesn't cover most realistic martial action. And it definitely doesn't cover most fantastical martial non-supernatural actions.

Which is fine.

However once that decision is made, one has to admit that they are banning certain types of characters or making martials mostly supernatural.
 

I find this the hardest part of keeping up with this debate. Even if we accept that martials are not pulling their weight against magic (lets treat that as given for this example) there is no real consensus on a.) in what capacities and b.) what should be done to correct the imbalance.

So, martials aren't pulling their weight compared to magic. Fine. How? Is it that fighters don't have enough levers to pull during play? They don't kill things fast/reliably enough? They can't match magic's "I win" cards? Are they too dependent on outside forces like magical items and DM fiat? Ask twenty people on this board and you'll get twenty different answers. And that's the problem. We don't agree on what the fighter's weaknesses are, just that they are there. Since we don't agree, we can't even remotely begin to fix them.
It is absolutely true that you can't get people to agree. However, I see two major complaints among the batch. 1) martials don't have much/any utility and casters have a lot, 2) casters have the ability to bend reality, but martials don't.

Those are the major complaints that I see with the rest being minor.
Which leads to the second problem. The fighter should be able to match the wizard's reality-bending abilities but do so in a way that doesn't appear to bend reality itself. That is, we can't use "magic" to fight magic. For example, if the problem is that a caster can cast passwall to bypass a trap by walking through the wall but the fighter cannot, the obvious answer would be to give the fighter some supernatural ability to bypass the trap too. But that would be "magic" so we create weird contrivances (like the fighter having the reality altering ability to "discover" there was really a secret door that bypasses the trap by playing some type of metacurrency that overrides the DM's map) or superhuman, but not supernatural, abilities (a fighter's fists are so hard that he can punch a hole in the wall and walk through it. No, we're not explaining how. No, it's not magic.)
This is the problem. If a fighter can punch a hole in a stone wall with his fists, it's not mundane whether it is explained or not. It may not be magic, but it is going to be supernatural(beyond the mundane). If he can jump over a 40' tree, it's not mundane whether you explain it or not. If he can swing a sword and hit a flying creature 30 feet away, it's not mundane whether it's explained or not.
And so, we dance in this twilight realm of plausible deniability where the fighter gets to do cool magical things completely nonmagically. We never can define why or how it works, because it's all a metagame concept used to spackle over the idea that casters get cool reality-affecting toys and noncasters don't. We tie ourselves in knots to use "action movie logic" or "superhero tech" to avoid Asimov's conclusion about "sufficiently advanced technology" all to avoid using the "M" word.

Rip the bandaid off. Give all the classes "magic".

Let them all gain the ability to fly. To Heal. To teleport in shadows. To channel primal spirits into rage. To deliver a half-dozen attacks in a round. To breathe fire. To charm with a gaze. To summon weapons to their hands. To pick a lock from 50 ft away. To freeze an enemy in place. To toss boulders like basketballs. To be Mighty. Give them magic, supernatural abilities, and supernatural origins.

Or accept the mightiest warrior is second-rate to his magical equal.
My opinion is that things roughly stay the same. We need mundane classes and subclasses for those who want to be mundane, or God help me, play in a completely non-magical world. Bleh!

That means that you can't change a whole lot for fighters other than give some magical/supernatural subclasses to mitigate the perceived disparity. My opinion is that the base fighter needs some utility enhancement, but that can be done through mundane means.
 

Perfect is the enemy of good.

Fighters have athletics as a main skill. It's frankly bizarre that they gain no benefits to mobility as they level up so a level 1 fighter is mechanically about as good at climbing as a level 20 one. Not faster. Same with all movement types.
Again, climbing doesn't strike me as a fighter thing. Give them longer jumps. Give them faster movement rates, perhaps bursts of speed X times a day. Give them the ability to move through battle without provoking OAs. I agree that they should be better at movement, but climbing shouldn't be one of them.
This has already been discussed in another thread and I think it was shown you can obviously manipulate the minds of people without using magic.
Not reliably, especially in under 6 seconds.
Again: Perfect is the enemy of good.
You keep saying that, but I didn't say or imply that perfection was required. You can't even hit good with regard to the mind control you are requesting without it being supernatural or extremely unreliable.
 

My opinion is that things roughly stay the same. We need mundane classes and subclasses for those who want to be mundane, or God help me, play in a completely non-magical world. Bleh!

That means that you can't change a whole lot for fighters other than give some magical/supernatural subclasses to mitigate the perceived disparity. My opinion is that the base fighter needs some utility enhancement, but that can be done through mundane means.
My opinion as well.

I just think there are too many with a "Screw you. I got mine" opinion when it comes to adding anything to D&D, even when it's aligned to their preferences.
 


And how does any of that match what a wizard or cleric can do? For the most part you're just talking damage there, which fighters already have. I thought you wanted cool abilities that could match a spellcaster.

Fast climbing isn't a generic fighter type ability. It's a rogue or ranger type ability.

What do you mean by reliable taunting? Making the enemy angry? Taunting might be able to do that. Making the enemy rush and attack you? That would take supernatural mind control. Words can't make people attack stupidly on a reliable basis without being some sort of mind control.

At the end of the day if you move that list of stuff to the general fighter, you still have a fighter who isn't close to a spellcaster for utility and who can't reliably fight things at range unless specialized that way with feats. All the same complaints we are seeing would still be there.
I agree about the taunting, certainly.
 


And how does any of that match what a wizard or cleric can do? For the most part you're just talking damage there, which fighters already have. I thought you wanted cool abilities that could match a spellcaster.

Fast climbing isn't a generic fighter type ability. It's a rogue or ranger type ability.

What do you mean by reliable taunting? Making the enemy angry? Taunting might be able to do that. Making the enemy rush and attack you? That would take supernatural mind control. Words can't make people attack stupidly on a reliable basis without being some sort of mind control.

At the end of the day if you move that list of stuff to the general fighter, you still have a fighter who isn't close to a spellcaster for utility and who can't reliably fight things at range unless specialized that way with feats. All the same complaints we are seeing would still be there.
okay, so the base argument was about the capabilities of fighters and how they don't keep up at high levels without relying on supernatural workarounds right? but then you immediately deny the fighter the mere capability to reliably climb things? wow! i wonder why they're not keeping up?

i wasn't getting at anything about matching the utility of a wizard or a cleric per-se, just the point you claimed that any high level abilities of the fighter would inherently become supernatural, i was getting at that the fighter doesn't need magic razor wind to match a fireball when they can launch an entire volley of arrows or throwing axes by themselves, personally i see combat as the main point of a fighter so maybe i was focusing a little more on damage then utility, because i expect a fighter to outclass casters in combat.

people don't consider goading strike supernatural at all, marking an opponent, but it's basically a taunt for all intents, mechanics and purposes, just give them more capability to do that, and against multiple opponents at once, goading strike is the 1st level spell of a martial's capabilities, only they never get higher level spell slots to 'cast it with' they're stuck with that 1st level spell capabilities their entire campaign, sure the BM maneuvre die goes up but that's only really comparable to a caster increasing their casting stat, what does the 5th level casting of goading strike look like, what does the 9th level casting of it look like? if it was charm person a 9th level goading strike would be able to target 9 enemies, inflicting all with disadvantage when targeting other players if they failed their saves.

i think alot of the failings of martial abilities are tied to the fact that well, they need more access to the middleground abilities between the rules for the basic capabilities of adventurers and the 'magic solution', take jumping, the jumping rules are naff, but the only alternatives are the Jump spell, magic items or abilities specific to certain classes/creatures, if you gave all the martials the inherent properties of Jump they'd still feel pretty mundane, cause even if they#re leaping 20ft into the air jumping is mundane and in these kinds of fantasy world we expect some exaggeration of capabilities, then all the other classes have the standard jumping rules but the Jump spell also exists for them, which is the point of it, to make the characters who aren't good at jumping good at it.

like i said before, the components for reliable and capable high teir mundane martials exist in the game, you just need to stop all this niche protection and bring them all together so all the martials can be competent, having the same mechanics but in different quantities and manifestations to let them still feel like their respective themes.
 
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Which leads to the second problem. The fighter should be able to match the wizard's reality-bending abilities but do so in a way that doesn't appear to bend reality itself. That is, we can't use "magic" to fight magic. For example, if the problem is that a caster can cast passwall to bypass a trap by walking through the wall but the fighter cannot, the obvious answer would be to give the fighter some supernatural ability to bypass the trap too. But that would be "magic" so we create weird contrivances (like the fighter having the reality altering ability to "discover" there was really a secret door that bypasses the trap by playing some type of metacurrency that overrides the DM's map) or superhuman, but not supernatural, abilities (a fighter's fists are so hard that he can punch a hole in the wall and walk through it. No, we're not explaining how. No, it's not magic.)
Amazingly a fighter doesn't have to punch through solid stone with their bare hands, there are these magical things called, no wait hang on...There are these entirely NON-magical things called pickaxes, hammers and chisels that they can use to punch through solid stone.

a fighter doesn't NEED to be magic to bend the reality around them given the apropriate tools.
 

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