One of the ongoing concerns in every edition is the balance of class power, especially at higher levels. There is no way around the fact that a 20th level wizard is simply more powerful than a 20th level fighter.
5E ameliorates this somewhat. But with the “game-changing” 9th level spells, it seems inevitable that there will be a gap, at least not without messing with spell casting tropes. And of course, the gap is only widest at 20th...it starts well before then.
But is this really a problem? It certainly jives conceptually, but also with fantasy tradition. Of course D&D assumes some degree of balance, and the designers want players to feel happy about playing characters that they want to play, not just for munchkinism.
There is some balance in that non-spellcasters tend to be more powerful—or at least less vulnerable—at lower levels. But somewhere between 5th and 15th level, the tables are turned and martial players watch wistfully as wizards stop time and level armies with meteor swarms.
But we WANT to be able to do that. We want super powerful wizards capable of facing ancient dragons or destroying armies. But we also want our martial characters to remain relevant—not just in terms of role-play, but combat.
So I have one idea. I haven’t really thought it out, so don’t know how well it would actually play at the table, which is partially why I’m bringing it to the collective wisdom of ENWorld. It is this: what if spellcasters were unable to use magic items? The basic setting-specific rationale would be that there is a kind of interference or “shorting out.” A spellcaster’s magic comes from within and thus could not augment their own magic with s external items.
So my question: how would that impact balance and game play? Is it over-compensating too much?
An alternate would be that some magic items would still work, but they are rare and there is a cost of some kind. Or maybe a spell-caster could use magic items, but not stacking in any way with their own magic.
Again, I haven’t thought this through in a meaningful way, but wanted to explore the idea a bit.
I have found that there definitely is an issue in terms of capability discrepancy between casters and more martial types at high tiers, even over a full 8-encounter day. However, in general I don't think that the suggested fix will fully address the issue.
Fighters for example are much more dependent upon magic items than Wizards are. Generally the fighter requires magic items just to perform their role at high levels, whereas to the wizard they're a slight power boost, but not at all needed.
The situations that the wizard has much more sheer capability than the fighter are generally outside combat. A fighter may be able to match a wizard in terms of spotlight and party contribution in many combats, but outside combat, in the other two pillars of play, they are outshone almost completely in terms of mechanical options.
It is probably better to simply not make some magic items available rather than outright prevent full casters from using any. The most problematic ones that I've found are staves and wands containing level 3+ spells. - They're not ridiculously powerful on their own - a wand-cast fireball may do less damage than a high-tier fighter's attacks if targets are limited - but each wand charge is an extra spell slot for the wizard to shine in another situation.
Is there any single class caster than can do the amount of single target damage that a fighter can do - even at high level?
For high levels and sustained over a full adventuring day? Probably not.
Full casters have fighters beat for multi-target damage, party support, tactical options, scouting, travel, exploration, social interactions, battlefield control, information gathering, limiting opponents and sheer versatility.
However, when it comes specifically to single target damage over a long adventuring day, some builds of Fighter are the best.
