D&D (2024) Youre All Wrong. Its Not A Martial vs Caster Situation

[Willie the Duck]

Was this a problem in AD&D though? I don't ever recall it being an issue, but then again I have never felt much issue (if any) with the martial vs. caster disparity.

There certainly was variation in how powerful casters were based on how easy the DM made it for the party to exit the dungeon and rest up/recharge their spells (making it campaign dependent). It's worthwhile to note that, for AD&D (in particular and in comparison to some in the basic-classic line), spells didn't recharge 'daily' so much a 'daily, plus whatever free time and safe situation necessary to sit and recover spells at a rate of 10 minutes per spell level recovered,' making the whole proposition or 'resting to recover spells' a lot more of a logistic challenge (and thus potentially part of the fun and engaging portion of the adventuring process). So it really starts to get apples to oranges with AD&D specifically.

However and regardless, broadly speaking it is specific game changes between the TSR and WotC era that facilitated this. In particular, the muting of Vancian limits and thus being able to bring most spells to bear in any given encounter.

• 3E had full* Vancian casting, but easy and ubiquitous scroll and wand magic item making/buying rules means you could have the wand of cure light wounds to heal up after fights and scrolls of knock or passwall for those hyper-specific dungeon-crawling scenarios that came up, leaving your daily memorization loadout for reliable encounter-addressing spells. *yes, yes, there are subtle differences between the way things work in Vance's novels and how it does in D&D. You know what I mean.
• 4E had the AEDU system, ritual magic, and purchasable magic items. The specifics are different from 3e, but this too results in generally entering encounters with spells at the ready (or even encouraged to be used, in the case of those that recharge every encounter) appropriate for the situation.
• 5E has the quasi/post-vancian system where you have an overall limit, but still get to swap out sleeps for magic missiles for detect magics (if not cast the latter via ritual).

So it is generally a lot easier in the WotC era for having all your spell slots prepped and unused to be a decided tactical advantage, and thus being able to leverage it as often as possible something that would 1) plausibly happen, and 2) advantage the casters.

Now how often actual gameplay meets that theoretical outcome is just as unclear as it was in the AD&D era.

 

[GrimCo]

Desacrate+animate dead (or create and greater create undead) in combination with prestige classes from Libris mortis. Raise enough meat shields for easy buffing time. Or just send them out and mop up after they are done.

There were enough of buffing and spell layering in 3.5 and it was quite common in game back in 3.x days. And most of the people i knew didn't even visit forums for specific char op builds. They just learned system, did math and made killer combos.

To add, in this 10 years of playing and running 5e, we never had more than 3-4 encounters per session. 4 encounters would be combat heavy session in my group. Dungeon crawls are also almost non existent, unless it's specific one shot h&s beer and pretzel dungeon crawl session. We regularly have 1-2 sessions back to back with no combat encounters at all in our main campaign.

 

[ezo]

My group's overall percentage is probably a little less than 20%.

Mine is probably around 80%.

We did the occasional dungeon crawl, but we're also a group that tended to employ diplomacy where-ever possible, which can really cut down on the amount of combat you actually engage in.

A diplomatic solution to an encounter would still be an encounter in my book. YMMV, of course.

 

[TwoSix]

Mine is probably around 80%.

Makes sense. Those are the sort of playstyle distinctions that would allow one group to not experience issues with casters, while the other one would.

The interesting question, to me, is if a class design and rules structure around attrition and recharge is even feasible that both "feels like D&D" and supports both the "all dungeon crawls" and "all outside exploration/hexcrawl" playstyles equally.

 

[ezo]

The interesting question, to me, is if a class design and rules structure around attrition and recharge is even feasible that both "feels like D&D" and supports both the "all dungeon crawls" and "all outside exploration/hexcrawl" playstyles equally.

Probably not, but according to what some people have said 4E's AEDU was the closest.

 

[BrokenTwin]

A diplomatic solution to an encounter would still be an encounter in my book. YMMV, of course.

From a GM standpoint, I would agree, but from an "expends resources around which at-will and resource-based classes are balanced" design standpoint, I find it hard to.

 

[ezo]

From a GM standpoint, I would agree, but from an "expends resources around which at-will and resource-based classes are balanced" design standpoint, I find it hard to.

Fair enough.

 

[Zardnaar]

As someone who ran and played in multiple 3.5 games that went into the teen levels, it absolutely happened quite a bit.

I didn't say it didn't happen but I suspect then as now most didn't play into high levels. So your experience isn't representative of the player base. Neither is mine I have 50 or 60 3E books. That's not typical either.

 

[Zardnaar]

Desacrate+animate dead (or create and greater create undead) in combination with prestige classes from Libris mortis. Raise enough meat shields for easy buffing time. Or just send them out and mop up after they are done.

There were enough of buffing and spell layering in 3.5 and it was quite common in game back in 3.x days. And most of the people i knew didn't even visit forums for specific char op builds. They just learned system, did math and made killer combos.

To add, in this 10 years of playing and running 5e, we never had more than 3-4 encounters per session. 4 encounters would be combat heavy session in my group. Dungeon crawls are also almost non existent, unless it's specific one shot h&s beer and pretzel dungeon crawl session. We regularly have 1-2 sessions back to back with no combat encounters at all in our main campaign.

That was more OP in games than a lot of theory craft builds. Druids with summoning feats that applied templates was another one.

 

[TwoSix]

I didn't say it didn't happen but I suspect then as now most didn't play into high levels. So your experience isn't representative of the player base. Neither is mine I have 50 or 60 3E books. That's not typical either.

It probably didn't happen to a lot of groups. But those occurrences don't have to be in the majority, or even particularly common, to still be a "feature" of the system.

The fact that most people didn't play till high levels doesn't change that caster nova battles featuring extensive amounts of buffing and debuffing were something that occurred at high levels precisely because of the design conceits of the 3e engine.