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

[HammerMan]

Outside of dealing damage in combat, the epic magic warrior still has a range of versatile and powerful spells. What class features do you think the epic-level fighter-type should get to be similarly fun and useful to the party?
Should they be able to match the feats of mythic warriors in legends? Leaping castle walls or cutting/smashing through them? Building them overnight? Predicting an opponent's moves three steps in advance through sheer experience and knowledge of combat? Running a hundred miles non-stop while carrying their horse? Holding their breath for half an hour while fighting sea serpents. Wrestling giants into submission?

all of those are great, diverting rivers to clean out stables is another.

 

[HammerMan]

I have players I have played with for decades that really enjoy the idea of playing explicitly non-magical character concepts. They love the idea that these characters are awesome in and of themselves, in some sense complete & independent without needing the "crutch" of being magical rainbow unicorns to prop them up. They would violently object to anyone trying to change their character concept to say "Martials are magic" and would likely not want to play that character any more, and maybe the game/setting either. It's just not what they want to play. And that should be ok.

Utterly baffling to me, but still, it should be fine for them to choose & prefer this. And the game and the campaign setting should support them.

I agree. I like non magical martial characters, I have two players that really dislike that all the cool things are locked behind magic, and miss the idea of the 4e fighter/rogue/ranger/warlord getting a set of abilities that could change the way the game flowed.

 

[HammerMan]

One thing I believe that harms and depowers the nonmagical characters is that there is no subsystem to shove features into except for magic items, magic spells, feats and boons.

Magic users can shove most of their complexity into spells.

Nonmagical characters in 5e don't have a similiar subsystem to shove complexity into. So they tend to need these features to be spread slowly over multiple levels to make the classes not flooded with class features. With boons being epic level and feats optional and not scaling, these only levels magic items as a method to get many features over a level.

and this is why the battlemaster maneuvers should have been class features now sub class... then sub classes should have worked off them. Maybe set up like the psywarrior, you get Prof number of dice, and can spend them to do these preset things or take these other things that use those dice... useing the later add on maneuvers that add to skills is also a great start.

my perfect world would auto give fighters a parry and an extra damage use of them, and the rogue a boost a skill one and add to initiative one and then ranger some mix (i think skill and damage) then give a list of 50 maneuvers, some having level prereqs of 5th, some 9th, some 13th, and some 17th... you can even make 1 or two magical

 

[HammerMan]

Every spell slot is a new, 1/day class feature that can be used to do anything from the range the caster has memorised.
Many caster classes even allow complete rearrangement of the capabilities of those class abilities after a short rest to allow them to be optimised according to what the group will be doing that day.

this is why the warlock frame is so good.

Take all the fluff out and you have a class that has a choice of a dozen or so at will abilities but can only take 2-4 of them (yeah 1 is way better and has more things that can improve it so that could use some work) then you have asmall set of abilities that you can choose as you level and use 2 of them per short rest (or 1 twice) and they always level with you to level 10. You then have a series of mini feats that you can pick from a list and get either new at will abilites, or enhance that one at will ability, or gain a daily ability. then starting at level 11 you get to pick a big 1/day ability from a list.

All of that before subclass (and your subclass opens new abilities for that 2/short rest as options to pick and new mini feat options)

 

[HammerMan]

That's a different problem. The martial or caster who is not getting an appropriate amount of gold can just point at the wealth by level charts that show how far off the mark they are in other editions when making their case. Wotc failing to provide that or a solid economic foundation within the system is not a good reason to justify nerfing casters & massively buffing martials while ignoring the fact that d&d is a game overflowing with magic items. What you are calling for is a massive rewrite that cuts to the core of what d&d is as a game

oh okay... well the DM can point to the random tables and say "Sorry your sword and board fighter ONLY got a +1 great axe and +2 leather armor, and 16 scrolls/potions"

 

[Gammadoodler]

Perhaps we're now talking at cross-purposes then?
Going back to the OP:


Both of these snippets seem to me to indicate that this isn't a discussion of mechanics, it seems like a question of character concepts and balance issues of magic characters.
What are the specific mechanics you think are the topic here ?

Perhaps I've given you an incorrect impression. I care very much how characters perform in their chosen niche, I'm also an optimizer and can even tip into power-gamer sometimes. I'm not just here for a good yarn
I'm super happy to have a mechanics discussion, I just want things to make sense

I don't understand the point you're trying to make. Of course out of two Arthurs, the one with better gear will perform better. Are you saying that you think that of two Morganas, the one with better gear won't perform better than the other ? Do you think even the most powerful magic items make no difference to the performance level of pure casters ?

The conversation, at least insofar as I've been concerned, has been related to the differences in the capabilities of martials vs. casters. What are the differences in the things they can do?

The abilities are those spelled out within the rules of the book. I can RP a billionaire character all day long, but if I don't have the right amount of gp on my character sheet, I won't be able to spend like a billionaire. Similarly with the ability to fly, break things, etc. A cooperative GM may allow those things to happen, but where they are not explicitly defined, I can't count on my character being able to do those things.

The point is you don't end up with two full Arthurs. You end up with one by the book Arthur, and one significantly weaker wannabe, because one got Excalibur and can do all the King Arthur stuff that Excalubur let's them do, and one didn't get Excalibur, so they can't do that King Arthur stuff.

For your two Morganas, as far as I'm aware there is not an Excalibur equivalent, or if there is, it does not play as large a role in what she can do. So you may wind up with one being more powerful than the other, but they are both Morgana since they both can do all the things Morgana is able to do.

To simplify, taking magic items away from a caster generally makes way less of a difference to their abilities than taking them away from martial.

 

[Garthanos]

all of those are great, diverting rivers to clean out stables is another.

That was intended to demonstrate intelligence, he was engaged in engineering and the Greeks loved Smart and Strong in combo.

 

[Garthanos]

The point is you don't end up with two full Arthurs. You end up with one by the book Arthur, and one significantly weaker wannabe, because one got Excalibur and can do all the King Arthur stuff that Excalubur let's them do, and one didn't get Excalibur, so they can't do that King Arthur stuff.

Characters having epic destinies can help that ... one guy picks Fated Wielder (and he picks up his Excalibur)

Herakles picks his Demigod the incarnation of Strength" or whatever.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

Well.... The game allows them to max their Cha & Int, and they can roleplay how they wish, so Genius, Philanthropist & Playboy are all well within their grasp. And Billionaire sounds like a background choice, so you might need your DM on board for that one, but I would want to be consulting my DM for any background of influence like Noble and so on to make sure it fits into their campaign setting.
Soooo.... Yes?

So, the argument requires a martial to max out two abilities that none of their class abilities work with (presumably having to dump their primary and secondary ability scores to do so), and a DM that allows a character to have hundreds of thousands of gold from a Background choice?
Am I understanding that correctly?
Now, in many games, while that much gold does not translate to magic items, it would still be effective for many out-of-combat challenges. I do have reservations as to how well such a character would actually perform on most games however.

But I would like to say that there is an unreasonably high standard set for martials that must be met for any of their abilities to be seen as useful. The game has various mechanics but unless your martial has an insta-win ability for any given noncombat challenge, it's seen as worthless.

Citation needed.
That some class abilities are very limited in scope and/or application, simply means that better abilities would be an improvement. Unless I've got someone here on ignore, you are the first person to claim anyone is talking about "unless your martial has an insta-win ability for any given noncombat challenge, it's seen as worthless."

Do you accept that there could be a middle ground between "one or two limited or hard to use abilities" and "dozens of auto-win abilities"?

Perhaps I've given you an incorrect impression. I care very much how characters perform in their chosen niche, I'm also an optimizer and can even tip into power-gamer sometimes. I'm not just here for a good yarn
I'm super happy to have a mechanics discussion, I just want things to make sense

I think that impression came from when you took the discussion of the mechanics difference between casters and martials using the King Arthur example as just being about the story.
Twice.

I don't understand the point you're trying to make. Of course out of two Arthurs, the one with better gear will perform better. Are you saying that you think that of two Morganas, the one with better gear won't perform better than the other ? Do you think even the most powerful magic items make no difference to the performance level of pure casters ?

No, the point that both GammaDoodler and myself were trying to explain to you is that the Fighter needs Excalibur and the rulership of England (both of which can only be granted by a generous DM) to be considered King Arthur - equivalent and at the same capability as Morgana is without the DM generosity.
We're not claiming that "Morgana, wielder of the Staff of Power" is at the same power level as Morgana with just class features. We're pointing out that in general, King Arthur needs the DM to grant them the trappings in order to operate at the same level as Morgana without special treatment, and a fighter without the DM granting them special benefits is very much less capable and fun.

DM generosity is always nice, but it shouldn't be required for specific classes.

 

[Asisreo]

But Out-of-Combat abilities don't actually matter, do they?

Like, actually matter? Unless your understanding of fun is to do something unexpected to the DM and possibly surprising them, what do Out-of-combat abilities really do?

Let's take 2 commonly magical Out-of-combat abilities: Flying and teleportation.

Both are a means of transportation, going from one place to another. But we can agree it would be wasteful to use those abilities in an open grassland with no time limit because the cost of walking is nothing and the cost of spellcasting is something. So their purpose is to bypass an obstacle. There's 2 types of obstacles: required obstacles and nonrequired obstacles. Required obstacles mean the game cannot progress unless its overcome. It could be a combat, a locked door, etc. Nonrequired obstacles mean that there's some way to continue the game without overcoming the obstacles.

Required obstacles have to be something that can be overcome by any configuration of party. Why? Because you can't accurately predict the party composition. Even if you made the encounter after the party was formed, a player may abruptly decide he wants to change character or she might die midway through unexpectedly. So if your Required obstacle involves a Flying enemy, you must have a bow in the room. If the required obstacle involves fitting through a hole, there must be a way to shrink.

Nonrequired obstacles can really be anything. A giant spike pit trap, an ancient red dragon, even the BBEG could be a nonrequired obstacle depending on the goals.

Flying and Teleportation can only bypass nonrequired obstacles. If the party confronts an obstacle that must be handled by these two abilities and they don't have access to them, the game should still have a means to progress.

So, while fancy, magic in out-of-combat scenarios are using up resources to increase the odds of your ideal situation. But any given ability for out-of-combat stuff is not required to progress the game.

Okay, you may like the idea of "increasing your odds of your ideal situation," but that's still DM fiat. You might be able to charm the shopkeeper to have a good chance of getting a good haggle...but the DM might just secretly get annoyed that you're charming an NPC and improvises the fact that the shopkeep is too poor to even try haggling and they'd have to say no even to their best friend. "Increasing your odds" implies that the result is random, but it isn't.

So really, in the case above, casting Charm Person didn't really do anything. And you might think this is abuse of DM power, but the DM might have felt that if that behavior was permitted, all interactions will start with a Charm Person spell. Although, the reason why a DM would do it doesn't matter. They have the authority to say "because I said so."

So I don't see explicit abilities that more important. Anything in the game can be vetoed, RAW. So the sense of empowerment spells bring is an illusion, and so is any "disparity" between casters and martials.