D&D 5E A simple houserule for martial/caster balance.

[dave2008]

I would roll it into concentration. Any spell that needs longer than a round would mean your caster is basically concentrating on that spell and if they lose concentration due to damage, then the spell fizzles out. But I wouldn't put it on every spell, especially not at lower level. Would help keep certain spells to non-combat situations become they become too risky to cast in combat.

That is a good idea. I don't mind taking some spells out of combat. However, I agree it shouldn't be every spell. I could also see cantrips, which are supposed to be very well understood, being one action. I would probably limit them some other way (prof. uses per day or something; separate them into cantrips (utility) and jinxs (damage/comabt), etc.)

 

[James Gasik]

They're already a bad class that the ancient fighter fans insist on keeping crappy. The same people who claim to not care about balance, spotlight or agency shouldn't mind if yet one more class is ahead of them on the power curve.

Fighter is already a joke compared to paladin or valor bard.

I know that, but you are never going to convince some people to accept a superhuman Fighter. It's not the fiction they want.

 

[dave2008]

That just makes the one PC caster even more the most specialest boy in the universe, and the world isnt set up to challenge them. Some people love being wand caddies, grogs, and second fiddles.

Not generally, just for my game. The concept is setting independent and can work in a magic everywhere setting as well. In fact, I already explained that. I am starting to get the sense that you aren't really reading my post and just have your own agenda not really related to what I am writing.

I don't. It's OK for your fighter to be a chump. I don't want that for mine.

First, I said this was for my theoretical game, not yours. Second, in my theoretical game the fighter becomes stronger, not a chump. I am talking about increasing the fighter abilities over the base 5e abilities, not lessoning them. Not sure how you ever thought that.

We really need a mythic martial so the grognards can have their town guards +1. My experience says low magic D&D doesnt work. Because there IS no low magic D&D when one character is flinging risk free magic in every encounter.

Low magic D&D does work. We have been playing it that way for almost 8 years with 5e. I understand it doesn't work for everyone, I mean everyone has different tastes. However, 5e absolutely works in a low magic or no magic campaign.

I am sorry your experience has taught you otherwise, but your experience is not the one-true-way. People play D&D, and 5e D&D in particular, many different ways and it works for them. You need to accept that your experience is not the limits of what the game can be/do.

You can play a game where one character is a great wyrm gold dragon and everyone else is a commoner with staight 6's for stats. You might have fun! But I wouldnt say it's appropriate for the game as a generalization.

I've never played in such a game, but I agree it doesn't sound fun. Just curious, are you talking about D&D 5e or some other game/edition? There is nothing like that type of dichotomy in 5e IME.

 

[dave2008]

Fighter is a joke compared to paladin or valor bard. It's a bad class that the ancient fighter fans insist on keeping crappy. The same people who claim to not care about balance, spotlight or agency shouldn't mind if yet one more class is ahead of them on the power curve.

Also, if it's more popular, that should be taken as a good thing to WOTC. Given the younger demographics D&D is skewing, maybe recognize that people want to play a character more in line with anime, supers, and heroic tales, as that is where their caster "peers" already are. The demo that wants to play a 15th level dirt farmer is aging and makes a smaller and smaller part of their audience than it did in 4E when the great grognard revolt took place for daring to give fighters nice things.

PS have you tried the A5e fighter?

 

[Undrave]

That is a good idea. I don't mind taking some spells out of combat. However, I agree it shouldn't be every spell. I could also see cantrips, which are supposed to be very well understood, being one action. I would probably limit them some other way (prof. uses per day or something; separate them into cantrips (utility) and jinxs (damage/comabt), etc.)

I think the simpler spells could be a single action easily, it's when you go into more complicated effects, like any transmutation or complex invocations (like a summon) that an extra turn would be needed. A Cure Wound or a simple blast would be one action, for exemple.

I could also see spells who's casting time is just 'until the end of the round' where you basically resolve the spell at the end of the initiative order, but I can see how fiddly it could get.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

PS have you tried the A5e fighter?

Can they throw a cow? At what point can they jump 30+ feet? When do they get to select a class based method to fly or will their blades to light on fire? Can they reflect ray attacks with their shield?

I don't want the existing trash class with a few more ribbons. Magic items aren't a fix unless they are baked into the chassis or fighter types explicitly use them better, because everyone can get magic items.

 

[dave2008]

Can they throw a cow? At what point can they jump 30+ feet? When do they get to select a class based method to fly or will their blades to light on fire? Can they reflect ray attacks with their shield?

I don't want the existing trash class with a few more ribbons. Magic items aren't a fix unless they are baked into the chassis or fighter types explicitly use them better, because everyone can get magic items.

OK, so your talking about a completely different game. So why are you ranting here in a 5e forum? There are general forums for that. Have you tried Exalted? That sounds like it would be more your thing.

Alternately, if your stuck with 5e like many people are, simply add those to your game. There is already a model for it after all: 4e. 4e gave those type of abilities to martials and the concept would be pretty easy to implement in 5e. Like 4e, just re-fluff spells to be martial exploits. I have seen some 3PP products that did this for 5e already (convert 4e martial powers to 5e).

However, you could do those things in the theoretical game I have been talking about and for some reason you seem to want to trash the idea despite it aligning somewhat with your sensibilities.

 

[Gammadoodler]

I know that, but you are never going to convince some people to accept a superhuman Fighter. It's not the fiction they want.

I do not think this is true. In fact, I'd be willing to make a wager. Let's say you did something like modified the Remarkable athlete ability such that you could jump up to say 5 or 10 times your strength mod and made it limited use (instead of functionally useless). Do you really think anyone would even blink at the change?

If you added a battlemaster ability that allowed them to make a door sized opening in a wall or obstruction using their physical might/skill at arms, do you think that legions of fighter lovers would come down from the hills with torches and pitchforks?

I submit that they would not. I think what you'd see instead is that people would just use the abilities the rules give them, just like they do with every other class.

They'd go "oh that's cool" and move on with their lives.

 

[James Gasik]

OK, so your talking about a completely different game. So why are you ranting here in a 5e forum? There are general forums for that. Have you tried Exalted? That sounds like it would be more your thing.

Alternately, if your stuck with 5e like many people are, simply add those to your game. There is already a model for it after all: 4e. 4e gave those type of abilities to martials and the concept would be pretty easy to implement in 5e. Like 4e, just re-fluff spells to be martial exploits. I have seen some 3PP products that did this for 5e already (convert 4e martial powers to 5e).

However, you could do those things in the theoretical game I have been talking about and for some reason you seem to want to trash the idea despite it aligning somewhat with your sensibilities.

It just comes down to balance issues, like this very thread. People see the disparity between martials and casters, because they aren't blind. There are two solutions. Try to nerf casters, which the system really isn't mean to do (there are issues inherent to the system that casters are apparently designed to solve- there's a sidebar in Xanathar's that discusses this point when it comes to resistance to non-magical b/p/s damage), or to do work on the back end to make sure your caster light/no caster party doesn't encounter these, or have other ways to deal with them.

Or to take the limiters off the martials and allow them to have "supernatural" abilities of their own. There is a bias on the part of the game designers- they look at a subclass and say "ok well, they are magic, so they can have any kind of cool ability", then look at another and say "oh this guy can't have magic. better give him...uh, I don't know, advantage on an ability check or something".

I understand the desire to have a narrative of the "ordinary man in an extraordinary situation" but even 4e ran into problems here. Any power source other than Martial could, for example, get a power to teleport. And the Ranger actually got such a power because they had a slice of the Primal power source.

So there was this entire design space that the majority of the other classes could have, that was locked off from the Martial classes because "that's too magical". By contrast, there was nothing unique to Martials that other power sources couldn't have.

You see this continue in 5e- Bards and even fugging WIZARDS can get extra attack!

So for the health of the game, the narrative should change, because otherwise, in order to have the desired narrative, you have to spend a lot of time and energy undoing what the developers have done to the game.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Can they throw a cow? At what point can they jump 30+ feet?

Good news! There's a subclass that can roll twice to fail at doing that!