D&D General Requesting permission to have something cool

[FrozenNorth]

I guess people could be worried that third party stuff is not balanced, but then again WotC published both four elements monk and twilight cleric so how much worse could it get?

Well, it can always get worse.

 

[Minigiant]

How about just the stuff that interests you and/or is presented to you by players?

In 5e or 4e it is not so bad.

In 3e, it could easily be too much seeing how stuff was so spread around. Especially with feats.

 

[jgsugden]

Lots of vital ally spell casting to make it work feels like some spotlight sharing to me - especially when it all works as planned.

Not in the moment. The group drew up battle plans. They all had their parts waiting to unfold. The therecwas a deflation in the room as people realized the DM was indicating he'd die before my turn ended.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Even in 4e there were more magic classes ... of the 4 main power sources, 74% were magic. 80% if you include Psionic.
For a game where people say "oh I like gritty fantasy" "I like low magic" and "I don't want magic items everywhere", WOTC keeps pumping out magic that gets bought up constantly in books.
---
That's what I don't get.

That's always been true, all the way back to Men & Magic, you had 1 non-caster and two casters.

Why don't people who say "I want non-supernatural martials" complain about lack of non-supernatural player, monster, and dungeon support from WOTC, Paizo, and other 3PP who keep grinding out magic magic magic magic magic?

D&D started as an idea for a medieval wargame, when Chainmail was published, it had a fantasy option tacked on. Wargames run large scale combats in a necessarily abstract way, and D&D (even when it dropped chainmail as it's combat ruleset) did, too. But, with EGG settling on Vancian, each spell was more detailed and less abstract. There was just more design space for magic and casters. And after 25 years of D&D staying basically the same under TSR, the sheer inertia has made opening up design space on the martial side fraught.

 

[Oofta]

This is true. It is what I do as well. But you (and I mean this as a compliment) are not shy about trumpeting your preferences and explaining why you support them. Same for those who want more versatile and competitive fighters.

5e generally does a poor job supporting martials and fighters in particular. My homebrew fixes this in games that I DM.

But:

• a lot of people complaining online may move the needle for WotC in 2024;
• these posts serve as a warning to new DMs that they need to pay attention to martial/caster balance;
• I don’t expect a DM I play with to adopt my system, so it might be nice to be able to play a martial character and not worry about being overshadowed by casters.

Finally, for the claims that « WotC doesn’t check these boards so complaining about fighters is just spitting in the wind », it seems to me that the loudest voices for keeping the fighter as it is wouldn’t be posting so loudly UNLESS they were worried that WotC might change the fighter substantially to deal with low satisfaction. After all, Tasha’s already contained a rebalancing of short rest to long rest rest abilities.

So basically if you like the fighter as is you should just shut up and let people trash something you personally enjoy? That people can't just say they like something because they like it so there has to be some ulterior deep seated fear of change?

That's certainly an interesting depiction and not-so-subtle slam on people who happen to disagree.

I would say instead that if you see an issue in your game (I don't) it would be nice if you could come to this forum and get some ideas and options on how to fix it. Perhaps that means looking more into 3PP or gritty rest rules along with more encounters, maybe some custom magic items or just a slightly different approach to play. Maybe it's banning or modifying the handful of problematic spells, ideas on how to switch up tactics and approaches to combat encounters.

But nope. People just want to complain even if they have solutions that work for them and if people push back and try to explain that fighters work just fine in all of their groups and if you care here's what I do they're just lashing out in fear that the rules might change.

 

[Micah Sweet]

3e had lots of material for both the DM and the players to like. You had your campaign setting books (Forgotten Realms, Eberron, etc.) and their various accessories. You had the Complete books which provided new Prestige classes and material for pre-existing classes and new classes. You had more material for the Player Character races. So much to go through and like.

5e otoh isn't bloated like 3e was, which is a good thing. But it would be nice to have an edition that has a Goldilocks amount of information. Not too much as 3e did, not too little as 5e has right now, but just right.

I still don't see a problem with having more material than you need. Just...don't use what you don't want. People praising a slow release or calling for fewer products seem to me like they're actively working against others desires for no significant benefit to themselves. I really don't get it.

 

[mamba]

Because there's only 12* of you. But because you all congregate in the same threads it makes it seem like "everyone" in those threads agrees the game needs less magic and more "gritty martial fighting". But you are only 12* people out of 400,000... most of whom don't care about the issue in the least.

out of the 400k, how many post at all? 50 tops? 12 out of 50 is a quarter already… out of those 50, how many post in these threads, 25?

 

[Raiztt]

D&D started as an idea for a medieval wargame, when Chainmail was published, it had a fantasy option tacked on. Wargames run large scale combats in a necessarily abstract way, and D&D (even when it dropped chainmail as it's combat ruleset) did, too. But, with EGG settling on Vancian, each spell was more detailed and less abstract. There was just more design space for magic and casters. And after 25 years of D&D staying basically the same under TSR, the sheer inertia has made opening up design space on the martial side fraught.

Can I get an example of something you'd like? Like can you spit ball a specific feature/ability that fighter should have?

 

[Tony Vargas]

So basically if you like the fighter as is you should just shut up and let people trash something you personally enjoy?

Trash? No! Balance? Why not? What'd it hurt if the non-casters were the equal of casters and got more options or better modeled genre?

Can I get an example of something you'd like?

A Warlord that fills it's expected role as well as, and is as contributing as, the classes in 5e that currently do so - the Cleric, Paladin, Druid, and Bard. For the 5e fighter, more BM maneuvers including new, better choices opening up as you level, multiple Reactions (per Extra Attack) for use with OAs & feats that use 'em, oh, and meaningful out of combat scaling would be nice to have, too. A 4e 'martial controller' would've been nice in that edition, heck, something as simple as longbow that (realistically, even) used STR for RBAs'd've been nice. A higher-skill, fewer-dead-levels 3e fighter. Viable options along the lines of skills/feats/maneuvers for Fighters in 1e AD&D.

 

[Raiztt]

A Warlord that fills it's expected role as well as, and is as contributing as, the classes in 5e that currently do so - the Cleric, Paladin, Druid, and Bard. For the 5e fighter, more BM maneuvers including new, better choices opening up as you level, multiple Reactions (per Extra Attack) for use with OAs & feats that use 'em, oh, and meaningful out of combat scaling would be nice to have, too. A 4e 'martial controller' would've been nice in that edition, heck, something as simple as longbow that (realistically, even) used STR for RBAs'd've been nice. A higher-skill, fewer-dead-levels 3e fighter. Viable options along the lines of skills/feats/maneuvers for Fighters in 1e AD&D.

Can you give me like an actual/concrete example of an ability, I get the broad categories you want to improve.

Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but it wasn't until 2e that anything resembling skills/feats/maneuvers as we know them today appeared.