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

[James Gasik]

"Because dragons fly" is not an answer, I'm afraid. The statement I keep getting is that some players want their world to make sense, and be grounded in some kind of reality before adding magical elements. Yes, dragons fly, but there are real world animals as well- not everything is magical, nor needs to be. The existence of Worgs and Winter Wolves hasn't made regular wolves die out, after all.

If everything in the D&D world was magical, so be it, but not everything is, nor needs to be, and they like the mental image of the gritty hero who gets by on nothing more than skill and wits. Conan is often pointed to as an example, even though, by any metric, Conan is no normal character, since the guy has high stats in just about everything, including Intelligence.

Also he beat Wolverine that one time!

 

[Gammadoodler]

"Because dragons fly" is not an answer, I'm afraid. The statement I keep getting is that some players want their world to make sense, and be grounded in some kind of reality before adding magical elements. Yes, dragons fly, but there are real world animals as well- not everything is magical, nor needs to be. The existence of Worgs and Winter Wolves hasn't made regular wolves die out, after all.

If everything in the D&D world was magical, so be it, but not everything is, nor needs to be, and they like the mental image of the gritty hero who gets by on nothing more than skill and wits. Conan is often pointed to as an example, even though, by any metric, Conan is no normal character, since the guy has high stats in just about everything, including Intelligence.

Also he beat Wolverine that one time!

That's just it. The world is such that extraordinary things exist. Hell some of these things are commonplace. And the PCs exist along side them.

A character's flavor text can reflect that they get by on wits and brawn, and the abilities they get can allow them to achieve "by wits and brawn" things that would be impossible on earth. Such a character is not automatically an absurdity in a fantasy setting because they can do this impossible thing. They are simply a character in a world where there is a broader range of possibility than exists in our world.

 

[James Gasik]

Again, that's not the narrative some people want. They don't want to be a magician, a half God, or a Saiyan. They just want to be Joe Mercenary, tough as nails and too old for this excrement.

 

[Gammadoodler]

Again, that's not the narrative some people want. They don't want to be a magician, a half God, or a Saiyan. They just want to be Joe Mercenary, tough as nails and too old for this excrement.

Sure I suppose. But I expect they prefer Joe Mercenary to be more useful than Town Guard Greg.

Though, to be honest, I'd be curious to meet the folks who see something cool and slightly impossible in Joe Mercenary's abilities and go...

"now waitaminute..no way can my guy do that, an explosion with that level of force would cause severe brain injury as I walk away with my sunglasses on"

instead of

"whoa...cool"

 

[dave2008]

Ok, if anyone is interested I posted my "balanced" martial class for @ehren37 .

I give you the Warrior!

PS - This is just a quick proof of concept. I hope to refine it in the future.

 

[TheOneGargoyle]

Ok, if anyone is interested I posted my "balanced" martial class for @ehren37 .

I give you the Warrior!

PS - This is just a quick proof of concept. I hope to refine it in the future.

I love that you're doing this.

One question : if we're balancing it with casters, why give it the equivalent of two free half feats (one full feat?) for medium armour proficiency + shields at level 1?

 

[dave2008]

I love that you're doing this.

One question : if we're balancing it with casters, why give it the equivalent of two free half feats (one full feat?) for medium armour proficiency + shields at level 1?

I am not sure if this balances that or not, but it doesn't have the ritual caster feature. Which can be a big thing or not. I still want it to be a martial character so there will be some give an take. It is a work and progress and will evolve. I could see removing the shield proficiency and leaving that for the Martial Tradition "Iron Defense." That would probably balance it better.

I would also like to get it to a d8 hit dice, so will have to balance that somehow too. I need to review the difference between the cleric and wizard to figure that out.

PS - I would prefer to not clutter FrogReaver's thread, so if you could post your questions in the Warrior thread that would be great!

 

[TheOneGargoyle]

PS - I would prefer to not clutter FrogReaver's thread, so if you could post your questions in the Warrior thread that would be great!

Roger that

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

The existence of Worgs and Winter Wolves hasn't made regular wolves die out, after all.

Fun thing. Yesterday, while watching a longplay of Horizon: Forbidden West, I though that in a world with so much magic as base D&D, ''normal'' animals should be gone, leaving place to animals adapted to a world dripping with magic.

So I started a list of non-normal beast to replace common fauna. Worg, winter wolf, blink dog, death dog, candle stag, flying spiders, spinning tortoise, cloud whale and all their friends!

 

[Micah Sweet]

Ah to be clear then, you were trying to prove that the premise that anything goes in fantasy taken to its logical conclusion yields "absurd" results..The fighter flapping his arms to fly.

Fortunately, one of the ways to disprove a reductio is to prove that result is not absurd.

I contend that your arm-flapping flying warrior is not absurd, or at least no moreso than the mumbling sign linguist who can fly

..or the charming banjo player who can fly
..or the dirty hippie who can turn into a bird(!) and fly
..or the giant talking elemental lizards who can fly
..or the giant talking eyeball with smaller eyeball appendages who can fly
..or the skinny folk who live a thousand years just being pretty most of the time
..or the short folk who live hundreds of years and build entire cultures underground
..or modrons,
..or mimics,
..or mind flayers
..pseudodragons and quasits and gelatinous cubes..etc.. etc...etc...

Why it is that some people feel a non-magical warrior must clear some bar of absurdity, when little else in the setting has to is a mystery to me.

You really don't understand why magic has greater flexibility in people's minds than not-magic?