D&D 5E Casters vs Martials: Part 1 - Magic, its most basic components

[Garthanos]

LOL much higher! He had 8 dice just on the sneak attack! Granted, as you can see from my post we had some serious multiclassing going on... We were actually level 20...

Multiclassing can make someone overpowered based on character level and someone else dramatically under powered some of the traps are obvious but others more subtle. It makes me sad because I like it in a story sense and it helps provide flexibility.

 

[Asisreo]

There was more on the table during play test of 5e than in release.

That's because they couldn't figure out how to implement the stuff they had in a well-balanced way within the time frame.

It's well documented that they had maneuvers for all martials, but doubled back when many playtesters disliked that all martials had maneuvers. And alot of them weren't play-ready. So they made the champion in a pinch for the starter set and finished up the PHB's battlemaster. They also made a feat just for anyone that wanted to engage in maneuvers as a different class. Though they didn't finish balancing the feats either.

 

[tetrasodium]

Level up is trying to bolt on a lot of interesting things but they are shooting for heavy backwards compatibility and I can see limits occuring

So far I've run session zero plus session 1&2 with session3 scheduled for tomorrow. I was hoping for less backwards compatibility in some areas but changes I didn't expect to look like they might improve the problem I had with the areas in a few of the higher ranking ones. Yes you can use o5e spells feats & archetypes ion a5e, but a5e has all of those things & you don't need to allow the o5e ones.

I don't know how it will play out over the span of campaign(s), but already without even trying to I've done things like gotten players to do things like excitedly switch to a weapon with a lower damage die & agonize over if switching to armor with more ac is worth it or not because of properties on the one they found so I suspect that I might have more options as a gm. I haven't had a chance to really use the new encounter building guidelines yet but dropping from the 6-8 drindfest to 4ish or less has me interested.

 

[Garthanos]

So far I've run session zero plus session 1&2 with session3 scheduled for tomorrow.

Goodluck.

I was hoping for less backwards compatibility in some areas but changes I didn't expect to look like they might improve the problem I had with the areas in a few of the higher ranking ones.

I keep reading and finding tweak like fixes which hide themselves some having fairly big impacts in spite of that. (some point out additional development that we could see in the future assuming this keeps going well)

Yes you can use o5e spells feats & archetypes ion a5e, but a5e has all of those things & you don't need to allow the o5e ones.

Yeh I wouldn't feel any reason to allow the o5e ones. There are some very subtle fixes sneaked in. I suspect system mastery might be involved where some players will get a lot more mileage out of it and others not. (Adepts get the "option" of additional attack at level 11 for instance. )

I don't know how it will play out over the span of campaign(s), but already without even trying to I've done things like gotten players to do things like excitedly switch to a weapon with a lower damage die & agonize over if switching to armor with more ac is worth it or not because of properties on the one they found so I suspect that I might have more options as a gm.

Level up has more nuances things are not all in advantage and disadvantage.

 

[Vaalingrade]

So they made the champion in a pinch for the starter set and finished up the PHB's battlemaster. They also made a feat just for anyone that wanted to engage in maneuvers as a different class. Though they didn't finish balancing the feats either.

I suddenly know what watching Isuldur fail to throw the One Ring into Mt Doom must have felt like.

 

[Neonchameleon]

First, thanks for the civil response. It is appreciated and I can respect your view point.

True enough. Since I happen to be one of those people, there isn't much I can contribute for people who want it.

I want magic to be magical and mundane to be mundane (even if awesomely heroic!).

And I for one think that mundane stops being practical at about level 5. And if you want a "mundane" character you're going to have to give them a hit point cap because mundane people pushed off tall buildings die pretty reliably.

I have no problem with the idea of wanting low level adventurers. I just have a problem with the idea of pretending that they are in the same league as wizards who can literally permanently turn themselves into dragons.

No, they shouldn't have to be. Some players don't WANT their master swordsman to HAVE to be fantastical. And if they don't want to, they shouldn't have to. The game, the DMs, and the community should respect their wishes to be able to play a character that isn't that.

They should be able to as well, of course, if that's what they want.

And no one is stopping people voluntarily playing low level characters. Or preventing there being tier-locked games.

What needs to end is the pretense that high level characters can be mundane. "Hey, I'm going to jump down the throat of a dragon and be barely singed and I'll be recovered by the next morning - but I'm still a mundane guy, honest". If you want to put a level cap in your games, feel free.

And this doesn't mean that "mundane" fighters who are just reliably very fast and very lethal should be impossible - but what we have right now is "level 20" fighters who can barely outrun level 1 fighters".

DMG page 36 breaks the game down into four tiers of play

• Tier 1: Levels 1-4 - Local Heroes
• Tier 2: Levels 5-10 - Heroes of the Realm
• Tier 3: Levels 11-16 - Masters of the Realm
• Tier 4: Levels 17-20 - Masters of the World

Mundane local heroes should be possible, and no one is arguing against this. But the request for a mundane "Master of the world" whose only defined class based abilities involve swinging a sharpened piece of metal at someone hard and fast need a lot of explanation.

My argument is that fighters should be able to be mundane until about level 5. Rogues, because they don't pit their strength directly against the strength of supernaturally strong beings and don't stand there in the front lines trading blows but instead rely on trickery and not being hit should be able to be mundane until about level 11. And if you want to be mundane above that point then the burden of explanation should fall on the person who wants to play that to demonstrate how and why they are so awesome despite not being in any way a supernatural part of the world.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Caster imbalance isn't a problem if you follow the six to eight encounter adventuring day! That makes casters conserve their magic, allowing martial characters time to shine.

In other words caster imbalance isn't a problem if you warp the world round the muggles and force pretty extreme constraints on the DM in adventure and world building, frequently involving depopulating entire towns or ecosystems in days.

Yeah, that's a design failure. It also fails to actually have mundane characters; the benefit martial characters get is that they literally do not get tired in the way real people do.

 

[Minigiant]

no one is stopping people voluntarily playing low level characters. Or preventing there being tier-locked games.

What needs to end is the pretense that high level characters can be mundane. "Hey, I'm going to jump down the throat of a dragon and be barely singed and I'll be recovered by the next morning - but I'm still a mundane guy, honest". If you want to put a level cap in your games, feel free.

Overall I think D&D martials are held back by the desire to be simple and not offer enough choices past level 5. You really only get to alter genre via subclass and those features are often limited spread too thin between levels to see many of them before the campaign collapses.

It woulda been cool for classes to do something like LevelUp or a super up Tasha's where classes at certain levels had a choice of which type of fantasy they were going for.

Like a 9th level fighter could choose between Indomitable (Heroc), Action Party (Cinematic), Super Strength (Mythic/Superhero), and Flash Step (Wuxia/Anime).

 

[DND_Reborn]

And I for one think that mundane stops being practical at about level 5. And if you want a "mundane" character you're going to have to give them a hit point cap because mundane people pushed off tall buildings die pretty reliably.

FWIW, people (a.k.a. commoners) who fall 4 floors (48 feet) actually live 50% of the time, albeit certainly very injured most of the time! I don't know if you consider roughly 50 feet "tall" for a building or not, but I would think it should qualify. shrug

But IMO falling damage is a poor system in D&D and doesn't even come close to modelling real-life statistics, but of course it wasn't meant to...

Anyway, as I said...

I want magic to be magical and mundane to be mundane (even if awesomely heroic!).

(bold added)

Mundane can still be awesomely heroic. Look at the things people do IRL! People survive multiple gun shots, falling from insane heights (the record is 10's of thousands of feet!), getting hit by cars (which ACTUALLY happened to me when I was in 7th grade!), and so on.

But I will concede that IMO 12th level is a good cap for "mundane", but that is also because I consider 6th and higher level spells what I call High Magics in my games. Many of the spells at these levels can drastically alter the course of an encounter, something martials can do (the awesomely heroic), but it is much more difficult and often requires quite a bit of luck.

 

[HammerMan]

The point is that D&D martial classes are designed as if many examples of superheroic martial characters don't exist. To the point where high level D&D martials look, feel, and play different from most nonspellcasting superheroes in most media

Christmas Tree Warriors exist almost exclusively in D&D and D&D inspired media.

yes, EGG designed fighting men to be 'anyone' and later the thief (rogue laterstill) as a more skillful everyman with less fighting then the fighter... either way the system has NEVER done a great job at modeling heroic or epic martial classes... worse still the 3e change over hit the martial classes worse by massivly improving casters... then came 4e to balance it and 5e pushed back closer to 3e then 4e...