D&D (2024) Can A Spell Caster Out Damage a Martial Consistently?

[tetrasodium]

@DinoInDisguise linked the quote. The quote is from my thread here:

Thread 'Fallacious Follies: Oberoni, Stormwind, and Fallacies OH MY!'

Oct 20, 2023

I occasionally discuss my dislike of internet conversations that derail into people arguing about arguing, as opposed to discussing the issue at hand. So, instead of having yet another interjection regarding it, I thought I'd go into detail in a thread about two things that I always find particularly pernicious in conversations about RPGs; first, of course, is when someone brings out the dreaded "informal logical fallacy" into a discussion. Second is the choice to create new logical fallacies in order to pwn one's opponents; which is an issue closely related to the misuse of jargon...

• Snarf Zagyg

• 
• 

You will note that there is absolutely zero discussion from you (and no credible discussion IMO from others) "on the flaws" of what I posted. But that's okay! Look, if you want to believe that labeling something a "fallacy" is productive, that's your business.

Generally, though, the problem with this so-called fallacy is that people aren't discussing actual rules inconsistencies, so much as trying to shut down people who are offering their advice with dealing with specific issues. On a higher level, the Oberoni Fallacy isn't a fallacy, it's simply a statement as to the philosophical approach one takes to gaming...

In other words, the purpose of writing is communicating. When you use the term, you are, in fact, communicating. But what you are communicating is not a logical argument (either formal or informal)- you are communicating your status as part of a group.

Don't get salty, bruh. No cap.

There's no saltiness, just nothing further to discuss simply because one poster in a tangent that had already been getting discussed claims that they personally "have yet to encounter a DM allowing more than 2 short rests per long rest". Absent any willingness to engage in any of the points raised in the last hundred plus posts on the matter. It seems like the options are to loop back many pages and literally rehash points already made but ignored or pointlessly question if his experience is made up.

There is obviously no rules supporting the idea that his anecdotal experience of only two SR being standard and it seems that even he admitted as much. With both 2024 &2024 sticking to some classes being primarily LR based and others primarily SR based the lack of action to meaningfully tighten the resting rules actually to places an even higher bar in the way of a gm counteracting a group of SR class players who feel entitled to a wotc blessed Crowd because "wotc did polls and they know what's fun"∆ & "my class is designed to require those extra rests"∆. If anything, this dog pile insisting we all discuss the merits of an anecdotal experience in more depth shows why 2024 needed so badly to do better on the matter of resting mechanics.

∆ both comments I've had players bring up when their 5mwd monk/warlock/action surging fighter gets blocked at the SR level.

 

[FrogReaver]

Well they can't do it before level 13 or so ans that's iffy.

Exception would be very favorable fireball bait encounters.

Much sooner. But it also depends on the structure of the adventuring day. 1-2 encounter days where you can hit 3-4 enemies with fireball and shatter likely tops martial damage in those encounters by level 5-7.

 

[ECMO3]

Realistically speaking, almost no DM runs 6-8 encounters per long rest frequently. In my case, it is 4-6 encounters most of the time but there are cases for fewer too. Depends on the story, it is not all formulaic and shouldn't be. If you want my opinion, players who are obsessed about balance make BAD players, always whining about items other characters got and think that are stronger than theirs, etc. It is not a strategy game, it is an RPG. Every time I am interviewing someone I don't know who wants to join the table, as soon as I hear the word 'balance', he is out.

Yes, everyone has to be useful, else it's boring for the useless character but useful ≠ balanced. There are cases and cases where different characters are more or less useful and it is the DM's duty to employ them. The DM has to work on the campaign, he can't just sit down and expect the rules to run the table. That doesn't work.

This is really a great point. Although I can't say I have personally experienced the whining, "BAD" players, I have experienced the second part many, many times. Every game I played has exhibited wide imbalance between players and that has never been a problem as all players were useful.

Also although these forums have endless debates about class balance, class balance is almost never the cause of imbalance either. Imbalance from magic items, character creation ability rolls and player mastery of the rules is what I see at the table most often.

For example, our 5e original 2014 pre-TCE Ranger was by far the most powerful PC when I played Descent into Avernus. Why? She had two legendary items - the Shield of Gargoth and the Sword of Zariel and she was the only PC that was any good with them. She was WAY more powerful than the Cleric, Sorcerer or the Bladesinger/Arcane Trickster in the party once she got the shield a (level 5?) and then the gap widened near the end of the game when she got the sword. This is while she was playing what was widely regarded as the 2nd weakest class at the time.

The only way to balance this would have been to not give out the Shield of Gargoth (which would have been ok) and to make the Sword of Zariel not a powerful item, which kind of defeats or circumvents the plot and would have been no fun for anyone.

In the very beginning of the game the Rogue (who later multiclassed Wizard) was the most powerful, because she started the game with two 18s. Further the Rogue/Wizard character went from the strongest to the weakest in the party for part of the early game right before we found the Shield. We had all our gear taken and she had to fight with no spell components and first with an improvised weapon and 7 strength and then later with a scimitar she was not proficient in. The Scimitar and a piece of lard we found in a kitchen (for the Grease spell) is what she went into the Boss fight with. Once she got her gear back she was the second strongest (since now we had the shield and the Ranger was tops)

Similarly, in SODQ my Kender Paladin was the strongest in the party at games end, mostly because she was the only PC who could use a Lance effectively (Dragonlance!).

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

I've had fairly poor luck with summons due to concentration mechanic.

I'll be playing soon tempted to try a Warlock summoner.

I like them: They provide consistent damage over multiple encounters, they provide additional control by their presence, and they support the rest of the party by being another target and hit point pool to absorb attacks.

They're also useful in comparison threads like these because the damage is easily calculable, doesn't require any discussions as to how likely catching X number of monsters in area Y is, and, like most martial damage, is long-term and consistent. The extra resilience that they grant is a good counterpoint to martials' generally higher toughness as well.

DoT spells are good, that's true. They are actually almost the only damage spells worth taking if you play 5e vanilla (or 5.5). The problem with this kind of spells is that their mechanic is not a full caster's job in general/traditionally. Yes, he can do it, it will work, but there is plenty of other classes that do it too with their skills. DoT spells always existed, they are not new in 5e+ but I think they got buffed while burst damage (which was always a staple for arcane full casters and something no one else could do) got nerfed severely, when it should have been the other way around (or, better still, left as they were).

Hit points are a resource too but how limited are they? Depends on many things, defensive magical items being one of them, number and efficiency of healers being another etc. 5e doesn't really favor defensive builds of warrior classes that much (even looking at the skills, traits etc makes that clear) but if the DM tosses in a few defensive trinkets, things change.

To sum it up, in the end, everything depends on how the campaign is set by the DM. Pacing, number of encounters, tactics of enemies and many many others.

Bear in mind the basis of this thread is consistent damage. We know that casters are better doing control, or support, or nova damage, or utility.
But martials can't do any of those we well as most casters can. So we're comparing the martials' strong point to the casters' weak point because it is one of the only areas that martials get to compete at a similar level. It is also extremely difficult to compare utility, support, control etc. whereas damage comes in nice numerical amounts that can be compared directly against each other.

There's no saltiness, just nothing further to discuss simply because one poster in a tangent that had already been getting discussed claims that they personally "have yet to encounter a DM allowing more than 2 short rests per long rest".

Giving a personal experience isn't a tangent: You started that by (incorrectly) making claims that this was a houserule, and bring in a fallacious fallacy.

Dagon's experience seems to match the majority of those who we have information on, from various polls by youtubers, this site, and comments made by D&D spokespeople. It likely does not match up with yours, but it has already been established that your experience is a little unusual, with the players tending to run roughshod over the DM more than most games I think.

Absent any willingness to engage in any of the points raised in the last hundred plus posts on the matter. It seems like the options are to loop back many pages and literally rehash points already made but ignored or pointlessly question if his experience is made up.

This thread is a necro from several months ago. I do not believe that Dagon was posing in it then, but just commented on the most recent post and the OP.

There is obviously no rules supporting the idea that his anecdotal experience of only two SR being standard and it seems that even he admitted as much. With both 2024 &2024 sticking to some classes being primarily LR based and others primarily SR based the lack of action to meaningfully tighten the resting rules actually to places an even higher bar in the way of a gm counteracting a group of SR class players who feel entitled to a wotc blessed Crowd because "wotc did polls and they know what's fun"∆ & "my class is designed to require those extra rests"∆. If anything, this dog pile insisting we all discuss the merits of an anecdotal experience in more depth shows why 2024 needed so badly to do better on the matter of resting mechanics.

∆ both comments I've had players bring up when their 5mwd monk/warlock/action surging fighter gets blocked at the SR level.

The "dog pile" is is due to people correcting and explaining how and why you are wrong about the fallacy you tried to bring in, and your claims about what Dagon was saying. Even through a lot of people (myself included) don't agree with what Dagon's opinions are, we're not OK with mischaracterisation of their arguments.

 

[ECMO3]

There's no saltiness, just nothing further to discuss simply because one poster in a tangent that had already been getting discussed claims that they personally "have yet to encounter a DM allowing more than 2 short rests per long rest". Absent any willingness to engage in any of the points raised in the last hundred plus posts on the matter. It seems like the options are to loop back many pages and literally rehash points already made but ignored or pointlessly question if his experience is made up.

There is obviously no rules supporting the idea that his anecdotal experience of only two SR being standard and it seems that even he admitted as much. With both 2024 &2024 sticking to some classes being primarily LR based and others primarily SR based the lack of action to meaningfully tighten the resting rules actually to places an even higher bar in the way of a gm counteracting a group of SR class players who feel entitled to a wotc blessed Crowd because "wotc did polls and they know what's fun"∆ & "my class is designed to require those extra rests"∆. If anything, this dog pile insisting we all discuss the merits of an anecdotal experience in more depth shows why 2024 needed so badly to do better on the matter of resting mechanics.

∆ both comments I've had players bring up when their 5mwd monk/warlock/action surging fighter gets blocked at the SR level.

I for one am pretty glad WOTC did not come out with more strict rules on resting.

Some classes do better with short rests, some classes do better with long rests. I don't see why that is a problem, and any attempt to "fix" that would not really fix any problems I am seeing while putting in needless rules that get in the way of immersion.

I've been in games where we had no short rests and in games where we could pretty much rest at will. Anecdotally those have not been a problem and I hardly think rules to stop that would have helped.

One thing I hated about 4E was all the balancing mechanics. I felt it broke immersion to a degree.

 

[ECMO3]

They're also useful in comparison threads like these because the damage is easily calculable, doesn't require any discussions as to how likely catching X number of monsters in area Y is, and, like most martial damage, is long-term and consistent.

I generally do not find them long term and consistent at all. Most last 1 hour at most and usually less than that if there is a difficult fight. They are weak in two respects, first the concentration the casters must maintain and second the summons themselves.

I have seen players build to make concentration last longer, mostly by getting resilient Constitution and a ton of other defenses to take less damage and make concentration checks easier, but these PCs are giving up other things for those abilities.

Most don't have enough AC or enough hit points not to be killed quickly if targeted themselves. Mirthful Fey are probably the most survivable because of their charm effect, but even they get taken down quick if you start mixing it up with multiple bad guys. I have seen players use summons surgically so the summons don't get stomped on themselves, but that limits their effectiveness in terms of boosting damage.

That is not to say they are not useful. They are a nice damage boost while they are alive and if the summons are killed they do generally take damage off of the party, but they are not long-lived and consistent boost IMO.

 

[tetrasodium]

I for one am pretty glad WOTC did not come out with strict rules on resting.

Some classes do better with short rests, some classes do better with long rests. I don't see why that is a problem, and any attempt to "fix" that would not really fix any problems I am seeing while putting in needless rules that get in the way of immersion.

I've been in games where we had no short rests and in games where we could pretty much rest at will. Anecdotally those have not been a problem and I hardly think rules to stop that would have helped.

One thing I hated about 4E was all the balancing mechanics. I felt it broke immersion to a degree.

I think that they would need to start with rules that have A bar before we could talk about the pros and cons of ones with a high bar. You only need to go back a couple posts to see an example of how far below ground the bar has been set with a post pushing to rehash a hundred plus posts worth of discussion tabula rasa because the poster who brought up a quibble wasn't participating before the thread was necro'd. Unfortunately by setting a bar so low that it requires a shovel to find it is the gm who faces that high bar and the expectation to relitigate from square one each and every time a player tries for 5mwd loops implied as RAI gameplay by their class.

 

[ECMO3]

I think that they would need to start with rules that have A bar before we could talk about the pros and cons of ones with a high bar. You only need to go back a couple posts to see an example of how far below ground the bar has been set with a post pushing to rehash a hundred plus posts worth of discussion tabula rasa because the poster who brought up a quibble wasn't participating before the thread was necro'd. Unfortunately by setting a bar so low that it requires a shovel to find it is the gm who faces that high bar and the expectation to relitigate from square one each and every time a player tries for 5mwd loops implied as RAI gameplay by their class.

I really don't see a need for a bar on number of short rests a day and don't see anything good coming from it. I don't see what it would solve in games I play and interfere into the story and the DMs game building.

 

[Zardnaar]

Much sooner. But it also depends on the structure of the adventuring day. 1-2 encounter days where you can hit 3-4 enemies with fireball and shatter likely tops martial damage in those encounters by level 5-7.

It's not consistent though. It can happen occasionally. And fireballs kinda mediocre.

On paper you might get a really good one off dealing 180 damage or whatever but the martial doing say half tgat on a single target killing it is better.

Death is still the best debuff.

5E to has many HP on monsters and blasting kinda crap most of the time.

 

[Zardnaar]

Well I don't think a blaster can do it.

My next theory craft build at the table will be a Wchain pact warlock using summon undead/aberration and go from there.

As previously mentioned I had awful luck in CoS using summons. Ate my concentration slot and kept having it broken even with war caster.

Players don't see to bother touch with them.

I suspect a Warlock might be the class to o it outside of very high level or a sorlock.