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

[DND_Reborn]

if we are going to talk about time spent testing and writing... why not cut 3/4 the spells that would leave some time for fighters

You'll be happy to know we've reduced Wizards from about 300 spells to only 185 or so.

Here is the revised breakdown:

Now, we don't have all the books so we don't have all the spells... But, yeah, Wizard went from 296 to 185. Only clerics actually have access to more spells.

We also removed most of the overlap of spells between casters. IIRC something like 65% of spells could be cast by more than one class, we reduced it to about 35% or so I think.

 

[Minigiant]

actually... When the fictional character himself makes fun of the comparison in his own novels it's probably a safe bet that it's a bad comparison for this kind of discussion. The novels frequently joke "Harry you are a Wizard not a wizard"* (Others to Harry & Harry to himself at times). The joke tends to be a reference to either harry potter or literal d&d wizards. The magic system in dresden files novels & the Fate based dfrpg is different from d&d magic in ways that would make any d&d wizard drool with envy. Once you look at the hows & whys behind what Harry can do he very much doesn't map very well to d&d.

*I don't remember which is caps & which italicized or if they are consistent

I'm just stating that Harry is one of the few casters in nonD&D media with external learned magic, internal innate magic, and granted pact magic and it being a big deal.

 

[Asisreo]

and unless you can prov you work for hasbro, wotc or did work at TSR you can't speak to any of that any more then I can and you know it.

I don't have to had worked at Hasbro or WoTC to know a small team and a large team has different benefits and setbacks, especially time-related.

okay and in 50 years, or just the last 10... heck just the last 3 1/2... what about the next 2

There was quite some new, big ideas introduced to 5e. For one: bounded accuracy. It was a massive gamble having Player's numbers go up by only +1 or +2 after roughly 4 levels. It is one of 5e's most praised mechanics by its simplicity and elegance, but it's still a bit awkward for old-schoolers. There's also Advantage/Disadvantage being the only form of bonuses beyond rare numerical benefits. It makes it much easier to adjudicate as a DM and it's easy for players to grasp but it doesn't leave much granularity and it tends to lead to nonsensical arbitrations.

lol we can prove they don't do that at wotc...

They outsource. In the PHB, they mention 175,000 fans playtested the game (during the D&DNext era)Era. I also remember somewhere a list of official playtesters WoTC takes into consideration.

okay now prove any of that has EVER been play tested. Show us this magic report

I don't know the policy for posting playtest material in this forum (especially because I don't know if its public), but if you dig deep enough for the August 13 playtest packet, you'll see the spells have been mentioned to be tweaked, as well as mentions of the beta-version of the Concentration mechanic, which was unique to Wizards.

fine then get out of the thread talking about fixing it... don't tell me it isn't worth talking about 19 pages of conversation says otherwise.

I understand you're passionate about the subject but these threads always die the same way: A boiling pit of people thinking WoTC is incompetent yet not coming up with any actionable resolution.

 

[Asisreo]

Actually, as I was looking through some stuff, I found this:

News Archive | Dungeons and Dragons

Read the full archives of Dungeons & Dragons news, Sage Advice, Unearthed Arcana, and D&D Studio Blogs.

dnd.wizards.com

Check out the "Spell-less Ranger" this is an "official" look at how one of the members of the Rules Development team in D&D would structure a pure-martial with utility.

Obviously, it's not official but it also provides guidance on changing your own class.

I would have never expected a Sorcerer to become a spell-less class, but that's also there apparently.

 

[Vaalingrade]

So here's the other problem with martials: they're framed as the 'simple' option, which greatly reduces the design space for such classes.

Either you're stuck with Simple + Mundane where mundane is actually weaker than real world mundanity with very boring implementation, or you get a subclass that staples on magic spells. There simply isn't enough on the fighter chassis to even get useful, flavoful or fun abilities because they're saddled with being Simple and not getting nice things due to not being magic.

Honestly, I'd even prefer D&D be honest with itself and just remove martial as an option because casters, mostly wizards, are Most Important.

 

[Minigiant]

So here's the other problem with martials: they're framed as the 'simple' option, which greatly reduces the design space for such classes.

Either you're stuck with Simple + Mundane where mundane is actually weaker than real world mundanity with very boring implementation, or you get a subclass that staples on magic spells. There simply isn't enough on the fighter chassis to even get useful, flavoful or fun abilities because they're saddled with being Simple and not getting nice things due to not being magic.

Honestly, I'd even prefer D&D be honest with itself and just remove martial as an option because casters, mostly wizards, are Most Important.

I think it is more that D&D design team lack the confidence to add classes.

D&D displayed a simple caster (warlock) and complex martial (warblade) in 3.5e then ditched it. They tried to hint it in the playest in the playtest sorcerer and the fighter with core maneuvers.

They wont do it because they wont make new classes.

 

[Garthanos]

So here's the other problem with martials: they're framed as the 'simple' option, which greatly reduces the design space for such classes.

well that much is not the case in Level Up

 

[bert1001 fka bert1000]

Hopefully I've never portrayed that, myself!

I'll freely admit I don't want the superhero martial to be the norm, but that is because my own game design philosophy is start with the baseline and then add to it. When a player gets to a point were they are happy, they can leave any additional stuff alone.

The tiers, I think, were really suppose to be about this. The issue is, again, spells kept getting more powerful, but the features of many martial classes didn't keep pace enough with magic. Personally, I don't think they are far off, but that is also because I like the trope of magic is very powerful and dangerous, but also rare. Casters get the big bang, martials get the series of cannon volleys.

So, to answer your question: why do they feel threatened? Because if you changed the default current features for more powerful, it takes away the more mundane/heroic game we currently have.

Ideally, I would LOVE to see a D&D which offered three "branches of advancement" for all classes. Mundane/ Heroic/ Superheroic for ALL levels 1-20, instead of doing mundane = low levels, heroic = mid levels, superheroic = high levels.

Nope, I don't see you as a blocker at all but you also don't really seem to feel this gap as accutely as many folks as you mentioned above. So you are also not the same kind of supporter if that makes sense.

The mythic hero folks don't seem to be advocating for this design to be the only base but rather that is is part of the base line options so that it gets the same kind of design attention and actually turns out well.

So perhaps your branches of advancement would satisfy many folks. But it's a real design challenge if classes from each of those paths could adventure together. But it would be a great modular system if done well!

The Superheroic Martials with Heroic Wizards campaign could be a fun change of pace!

 

[bert1001 fka bert1000]

well that much is not the case in Level Up

It's definetly a strength of this kind of martial chasis. You could easily add 6-9th level manuvers or just write entirely new manuvers with a different power spread and plug them into 1-5th level for a more mythic take.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

"Very limited in use". At high level they can spam spells like Harry Potter. This is why I focus on the permanent ones like Wall of Stone (which becomes permanent after ten minutes) and True Polymorph (which becomes permanent after an hour). That's not "very limited in use".

20th level wizards have 27 spell slots to spend over 6 to 8 fights and adventuring challenges. With fight at this level tending to be short, maybe 4 rounds average, that's enough to exhaust them (24 to 32 rounds). Sure, they can curbstomp the first three fights with 5th-9th level spells, but the other half/two third of the adventuring day is them being level 20 and casting 1st to 4th level spells -- at this point they are better off casting cantrips, I guess. At this level, it is expected that save-or-die spells just fail because of Legendary resistances that are a mainstream of fights at these high levels.

The more one tend to shorter days than intended, the more casters are overshadowing everything because they don't need to conserve resources. The more you go over this limit, the less it is balanced as intended. Truth is, I guess, most tables do less than intended length of adventuring day, and the intended balancing is totally theoretical. Even on the longest day, the number of 8 must be seldom crossed before a rest is "forced" by the casters upon the group (and it's common sense for other players to accomodate it). Or just because a medium challenge for a group at this level is a CR 20 dragon, and meeting 8 of them in an adventuring day is stretching credibility. So the situation, which I think is intended and seen ony in CRPG, where the caster goes to bed with several of his most powerful abilities intact because he was saving them for a tougher encounter, never happens to help martials get their moment to shine when they have to carry the group.

And if you look at actual fictional demigods, as mentioned, Circe needed to literally poison people to polymorph them. That's far more limited than a D&D wizard. And she's one of the textbook demigod casters. Meanwhile there was the credible case that Gandalf was a fifth level wizard.

Err, Circé could True Polymorph without poisoning according to Ovid: when she turns Scylla into a monstrous beast, she pours the material components on the floor of Scylla's house when she isn't there (my guess is she drew a 9th level Glyph of Warding to store the True Polymorph, so two 9th level spells in a row, triggering to Scylla's presence). In the case where she created the red woodpecker species out of King Picus, she doesn't seem to do anything more than VSM (it is mentionned she "touches" the victims, so maybe it requires a ranged touch attack but it can be cast several time in a row, since she turned his guards to beast a few moments after (so no long rest). Sure, she made people drink potions of True Polymorph when dealing with 22 of Ulysses companions, but being able to cast 22 9th level spells in a row and keeping concentration over all of them would put a 20th level D&D wizard to shame. While I can accept your general point, I think your specific Circé example doesn't fly.