fearsomepirate
Hero
Why are you talking to me as though I said casters are underpowered and need to be buffed? I said casters aren't overpowered and don't need to be nerfed. Those aren't equivalent.
D&D 5E Cantrip nerf (house rule brainstorm)
Why are you talking to me as though I said casters are underpowered and need to be buffed? I said casters aren't overpowered and don't need to be nerfed. Those aren't equivalent.
Cap'n Kobold
Hero
That quote is from a discussion about general power, not just at-will and single-target damage.
But while we're on the subject, do you think spellcasters should have equal single-target at-will damage to martial classes, and if not, what sort of ratio feels right to you?
Do you have a link for the source of this please? I'm interested in this as well, and I'd like to see WotC's official figures for evaluating magic and non-magic damage myself.
Yeah. Resistance or immunity to magic weapons usually reduces damage potential of martials considerably, but doesn't usually negate it. Its quite rare that a character has a magic version of the optimal weapon for them, but they often have a magic something by the time they regularly run into resistant opposition. (I have fond memories of my artificer being the MVP of most of a Curse of Strahd campaign simply by providing the right kind of magic weapons when needed.)
Although to add insult to earlier insult, many of the spellcasters that step on the roles of the martial classes in high, sustained single target damage automatically get magic damage as part of their kit. (Warlocks (both bolt and blade), moon druids.)
Do you feel that LFQW is not bad?
Or that spellcasters are currently underpowered compare to pure martials in D&D as a whole?
What would be required to "correct the dial on the other spell design elements"?
I'm not sure what the next bit means. Are you saying that its like the casters saying the martials have to become become casters themselves?
You said that in many cases the power ceiling was lower for spellcasters than it was for martial classes.
That isn't saying that casters need a buff, but it does seem to be saying that casters are generally less powerful than martials.
That isn't a common sentiment, so I was curious, and asked for more details.
jmartkdr2
Hero
You asked what martials can outpace primary casters. I don't think anyone would describe paladins as primary casters.
Ancalagon
Dusty Dragon
I think that can be easily avoided by the suggestion that casting a cantrip is as about as much work as swinging a sword.
Can you you cast it a few dozen times to do a lot of work quickly? sure! But then you're getting mentally exhausted. So mold earth is great for a quick burst of work, but over the course of a day the wizard isn't going to be much more productive than a small crew with shovels. By applying this logic to cantrips, you enable in game use but avoid world building problems - because I 100% agree with you that if you can mold earth all day long, it's a world-building game changer.
I'm also wondering what % of "wizards" in a world are people with the magic adept feat. If you take find familiar, prestidigitation and one other spells (firebolt?), to most people... you're a wizard! (same with priests really)
doctorbadwolf
Heretic of The Seventh Circle
I agree, I think most wizards have a few spells and some rituals. I do assume better irrigation and plumbing and hygiene in my D&D world than we have in pre-modern Earth, due to a variety of low level spells, but I’m not gonna assume magic is so common that commoners don’t need better weapons to overcome better armor or that walls can’t keep most armies out, eventually leading to guns. No, most D&D world just don’t have guns yet, IMO.
But mold earth does still allow a Wizard to do the work of a small crew of people, per day, which makes wizardry a very valuable craft.
fearsomepirate
Hero
Fair enough. If I were to be more thorough, I would say there are likewise many cases where it's higher than martials, particularly when there are large numbers of enemies. But even then, their power ceiling is lower than it used to be. This is fairly important because the old paradigm of the wizard largely twiddling of his thumbs, waiting for the right time to drop a nuke, is no longer in play, due to the nukes themselves being gone. A 6th-level AD&D wizard with nothing but Magic Missile, Melf's Acid Arrow, and Lightning Bolt prepared has, relative to monster HP values, far more power at his fingertips than a 5e wizard, so it's okay for him to twiddle his thumbs (or ineffectively sling stones) while the Fighter and the Cleric do all the face-smashing. A 5E wizard's spells aren't powerful enough to justify rounds of relative inaction. Meaningfully nerfing cantrips means, absent concomitant buffs to spells, knocking the wizard's total power back to well below what it was in the good old days we're citing as necessitating the nerf in the first place. Not meaningfully nerfing them means you're adding book-keeping just for the joy of it.
fearsomepirate
Hero
Yeah, by the same logic, if Mold Earth could be used to change the world, then the Fighter's ability to swing his axe twice every six seconds should radically change the lumber industry.
Lots to answer so I'm going to add some A B C type stuff to your post in hopes of keeping it simple & avoiding confusion
- A it absolutely was yes. However it would be absurd to suggest that at will damage single target damage & resource consuming spike damage are not things that must be taken into account as part of "general power" as it related to a class.
- B Don't care at all. That would be like taking a cargo van loaded with tools equipment & supplies, a terex, and a sportscar to the track expecting them to all get the same times on a drag race.
- CThe "ratio" is a crunchable number that can be used when looking at the other stuff class brings to the table to decide if the sum total of other stuff justifies the damage. Using the track examples:
- The sportscar gets awful gas mileage with great pickup & top speed. AIso it doesn't even have a trunk or back seat so has very little cargo capacity. All of those are things relevant to anyone needing a car & remain relevant to some degree most times they use it.
- The cargo van gets similar but not good gas mileage as the sports car, has tons of cargo capacity, & has mediocre pickup & ok top speed . Like the sportscar all of those are things relevant to anyone needing a car & remain relevant to some degree most times they use it.
- You've probably never seen or even heard of a terex, I once saw one loaded with a beached whale (like the whole whale & not one of those little whales). It gets something like 5 gallons per mile for gas mileage (not a typo, as in 0.2mpg). Finally it almost certainly a pickup & top speed less than an elderly mall walker. None of those are relevant useful or desired by most drivers
- Getting back to the ratio.... Damage is one of those things like pickup top speed & mileage that is going to be of significant value in the vast majority of sessions & more is almost always going to be better. How much one is likely to be able to carry might come up, but not often & there is going to quickly be a point of diminishing returns where the value of raising carrying capacity is close to zero if not zero. Everything the terex can do is useful to someone and it all comes with significant downsides, but if applied to character classes casters have a lot of these kinds of things. You could also look at mmo's for another example, nobody really cares if the healer or crowd controller does much if any damage because the value of keeping everyone standing & doing crowd control is huge while a character that focuses more on buffing & debuffing needs to bring a little more to the table cause it's not so simple. The damage combined with the meaningful relevant bits of a class toolbox needs to combine into some meaningful level of worth but if at will+spike damage are bad to generally unimpressive the value of everything else(lets call it their toolbox) needs to reliably be huge in the vast majority of sessions.
A barbarian can include things like their carrying capacity in their toolbox & a fighter can include the ability to choose from multiple weapons that are largely mechanically identical in their toolbox but none of those things are all that useful in the vast majority of sessions so should have very little if any weight in holding their class design back in areas the class cares about. Relentless rage comes for a barbarian at level 11 so shouldn't have much impact on levels 1-10 even if it is a great ability that has significant weight from level 11 on. Also at level 11 quite a few casters can cast true seeing, it's useful... occasionally... if you stop to prepare it but unlike relentless rage that spell is going to very rarely provide any sort of meaningful contribution at the table so it should have very little if any weight on the rest of the class. There is no easy answer and some reasonable amount of subjectivity is always going to be needed.
- D: This is where the subjectivity I talked about in C is important but I've provided a few in this very thread. Back on page1(here) I talked about how cantrip damage tacks up against weapon damage & in that post included a link to detailed mathy stuff including the spreadsheet. Back on page5(here) I provided 4 different datapoints from 3 different wotc sources (dmg xge & alpg) showing strong evidence for why the faulty whiteroom of no magic weapons being available should have little if any merit worth even considering due to how wotc strongly ties to push making magic weapons "generously" available and even provides a rather low bar to purchasing them(one set of platemail costs about the same as enough magic weapons for most of the average group so not a high bar at all). That page 5 post also includes an example of the sort of asymmetrical monster design in the form of a monster's resist/immune lines alongside an uncommon ~100-500gp +1 wand & +1 weapon where every single energy resist listed will always remain relevant while the resistant to nonmagical B/P/S is completely ignored. I could add to that magic resistance & magic resistance alongside all of the weights already stacked up in this point alone. The damage disparity certainly doesn't justify al of these weights and the nondamage buff/debuff/control/etc spells tend to be written in ways that feel held back as if they need to compensate for LFQW even though it doesn't exist in 5e
- E: The nonoptimal magic weapon choice is less of a factor than people make it out to be. If you looked at the post I mentioned in D & the data in it you would have seen than a shield and dagger fighter stacks up well against a d12 cantrip & only even falls behind if their +prime stat is falling behind the generally expected. Mind you that I'm not talking about an artifact or even a +1 dagger, it was literally the useless dagger included in some starting packages in the hands of a fighter with no extra coming from fighting styles feats or what have you beyond extra attack. The damage disparity is extreme well past what could be called an "almost unbelievable degree." Those crazy illusionist bracers from GGTR everyone thought crazy OP bring firebolt about even with a longsword & shield in the hands of that same fighter as another example... "bob needs a glaive or longsword instead of his preferred greataxe" is still extremely far ahead of cantrips
- F: as serious as it seems, D should not be ignored & it largely dismisses this whole CoS thing. It goes one step further though because after you leave ravenloft & get magic weapons or even vsit castle ravenloft & get magic weapons that artificer & every other caster is still largely pegged against conditions that are unlikely to ever return.
- G: LFQW is absolutely bad yes QFLW is worse. When so many aspects of casters beyond damage is individually trying to make sure it alone is the shield defending against rampant unchecked LFQW through various means including a wide array of spells that deliberately & obviously miss the mark to jut be almost good or worse. Introducing some level of LFQW with a small dial shift under those conditions is more fixing a problem of bad weighting against a whiteroom D clearly shows should never have been used than introducing a problem
- H: Casters are fine as long as both martials & casters are in that same whiteroom with nonmagical weapons, but D details how flimsy & not at all recommended that the whiteroom itself is & there is no easy solution for towing casters out of that whiteroom once martials get n uncommon magic weapon with a 100-500gp msrp when wotc suggests the gm "be generous with magic weapons"
- I In a lot of cases spells are held back with petty red tape & strings, overleveled for the effect, needlessly saddled with short duration limited targets with no way of shifting targets and concentration then topped off by granting a free save to end every round to targets that are only affected because they failed the initial save to ignore. Unfortunately it is as much of a mess to fix because it would take both rewriting a huge percentage of the spells and doing testing/sanity checking to avoid true LFQW/punpun type "oops". The problem is entirely wotc's deliberate creation & there is no easy solution one could charitably say was just "significant houserules"
- J I think this is directed at another poster & have no idea what your asking about if not.
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Because we are talking about cantrips. When it comes to magic damage, a +1 wand would add +1 to hit ONLY, vs a +1 sword that would do +1 to both to hit and damage.
If we are going to get rid of spam cantrips, we should get rid of spam sneak attack too. How about sneak attack once per battle or maybe 3 times per short rest? Then we should also put limits on combat feats like sharpshooter, GWM, sentinel, CBE, mobile ..... have them also function twice per short rest.
That should balance out pretty well.
That should balance out pretty well.
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