D&D 5E Casters vs Martials: Part 2 - The Mundane Limit

[Maxperson]

For you.

That is true. I require a more realistic approach to this. Things that are too unrealistic don't work for me.

 

[Azzy]

That is true. I require a more realistic approach to this. Things that are too unrealistic don't work for me.

If a system, like CaGI, that aims to emulate a common trope in action fiction, is too unrealistic for your game of elves and dragons, I don't know what to say other than it seems that you're being contrary for the sake of it.

 

[Gammadoodler]

One thing I'm wondering regarding the casters vs. martials discussion coming into part 2. For martials, are we referring to both ranged and melee characters? Because I feel like those are different discussions.

Specifically that melee characters feel the difference in power more keenly since they are affected more obstacles than a ranged martial would be.

That said, for my purposes, while I would like martials to have more interesting/useful tools in the exploration pillar, my interest in those would primarily be focussed on how well they help a martial serve their "master of combat" role. Breaking through walls, leaping gorges. (I suppose rogues deserve some separate consideration since their role differs quite a bit).

Personally, I don't need martials utility to compete with the versatility that casters have. I just need them to be generally less constrained by mundane obstacles. The fact that walls and pits and the like are near equally effective at limiting martials' movement from level 1 to level 20 is insane to me. Similarly for several of the effects that constrain perception. Should "fog cloud" still be effective at level 20?

But what I would like to see (and one of the easiest things to do thematically) is bake more combat power into the classes, especially melee.

• No melee martial should be struggling to keep up with agonizing eldritch blast damage. Simple fix, bump damage numbers. By level 20, the difference should be somewhere between significant and extreme.
• Martials should get more ability to inflict more and more severe status effects. Like, the fact that martials cannot inflict "blinded" is ridiculous. The same with "stunned", "paralyzed", "restrained", etc. Once this access exists, power level get dialed up or down based on usage constraints, effect duration, save type, DCs, and save frequency, resource costs, etc.
• more options to effectively spread or focus damage. Stuff like "whirlwind strike" where you can be attacking enemies in an area, rather than based on number of attacks, balance using size of the area, uses, damage delivered, allowing a save, etc. Or spend some resource to amp up the damage on a single strike, like smite divorced from spellcasting, balance based on damage delivered, resources expended, etc.

And all of these can easily be flavored as resulting from strength, speed, skill, technique, exertion, or whatever other 'mundane' descriptor needs to be present to avoid setting off people's "that's magic" alarms.

 

[Maxperson]

If a system, like CaGI, that aims to emulate a common trope in action fiction, is too unrealistic for your game of elves and dragons, I don't know what to say other than it seems that you're being contrary for the sake of it.

God I love this non-argument. A game that has elves and dragons just can't have any realism!!!!

 

[Eubani]

If your opinion is that martial characters need to be restricted by Earthly realism then your opinion is just magic supremacy. If you cant loosen the restraints as martial characters move from normal > heroic > legendary > mythic then your opinion should be ignored.

 

[Gammadoodler]

God I love this non-argument. A game that has elves and dragons just can't have any realism!!!!

I believe it's more like this... The setting includes many many many many aspects that are unmoored from conventional human reality. The applicable genre is about things that diverge from conventional human reality.

Using conventional human reality as a basis for determining reasonableness of features, actions, whatever, has no inherent virtue. It's not more consistent or more logical. It's just a thing you can do. Where you allow it to constrain you, it's your own fault.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

The lack of setting in the core rules is showing its inherent limit. GMs are using D&D for very "Medieval Earth" like games (and think recovering fully overnight is silly and wizards are heavily overpowered while martials are fine), low fantasy setting where they think everything is fine except martials might need a boost or wizard a slight notch down, highfantasy settings where casters are fine and they wonder why martials can't whirlwind defeat100 warriors like Cyrano or 1,000 like Samson, while they think casters are fine or even lament their nerfing from 3.5... The game is obviously ideal for a specific power level (what is achievable with skills? what can martials thematically do?) but the designers failed to inform the players about this specific one. It's no wonder there is such a disagreement on the nature of the needed fix to the problem.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

God I love this non-argument. A game that has elves and dragons just can't have any realism!!!!

I believe it's more like this... The setting includes many many many many aspects that are unmoored from conventional human reality. The applicable genre is about things that diverge from conventional human reality.

Your use of conventional human reality as a basis for determining reasonableness of features, actions, whatever, has no inherent virtue. It's not more consistent or more logical. It's just a thing you can do. Where you allow it to constrain you, it's your own fault.

Yeah, basically this.

The game cannot be realistic because, quite literally, it isn't real. It's openly not conforming to the restrictions of reality. Bringing up those restrictions in some places and happily ignoring them in others just feels arbitrary and capricious.

Fictional things, regardless of their level of realism, can still be grounded however. That's what differentiates most "hard" sci-fi from "soft" sci-fi, for example, even though both things are usually unrealistic. Gundam Wing is not striving for realism, because in reality there are no giant-mech pilots and it would be both extremely difficult and mostly pointless to construct such things. By introducing something unrealistic--Minovsky particles--however, the author was able to make a grounded and justified world that still managed to include things as unrealistic as Gundams. This is usually seen as being worthy of praise, as the Minovsky particles are a very minimal and narrowly-defined form of breaking from known reality, while still enabling all the fundamental story elements the author desired. The limits and applications of the particles are clear, and can't just be defied whenever one likes--they're not a free pass to do whatever you want. Similarly, stuff like Eezo and its titular Mass Effect are a very small change--just one exotic material, and even tying it into current ideas in theoretical physics e.g. dark energy--but that enables all the classic sci-fi concepts (FTL communications and travel, "shields," levitation, fancy material construction, even psionics). Such conservation of detail while remaining grounded is well-appreciated.

The thing with groundedness is, all it requires is some effort. Most things can become grounded; that's the reason we praise stuff like the above, where you employ minimal changes and don't break or ad-hoc modify the rules once they've been established. So the thing to look for, at least from where I'm sitting, is not "stuff that ought to be nerfed because it's unrealistic," but rather "stuff that I want explained because I don't see what grounds it."

 

[Vaalingrade]

Like I said before, some years ago someone taught mage players the word 'verisimilitude' without explaining that it is about consistency relative to the in-universe story and they've been using it as a sword to destroy every non-magic thing that's not Earth Standard (from their understanding).

 

[Scribe]

Essence Manipulation - The decrease of hitpoints is an easy one, the martials bread and butter. The notion of "death strikes" that can insta kill creatures already exists, and could be expanded. We can also use the concept of bleeds and "wounds" to represent ongoing damage and "unhealable" damage (aka max hp loss ala life drain).

In terms of hitpoint recovery, we already have second wind and the champion ability to regain personal hitpoints. The notion of "instant stamina recovery" is a common martial trope, and so we could push on this area as hard as we wanted to. It gets trickier with hitpoint recovery for OTHER creatures. However, we already have a link between "inspiring" and temporary hitpoints, and temp hp are nebulous enough that allowing for martials to grant temp hp seems well within flavor.

Essence D/C - Raising the dead is likely outside mundane scope, that is a pretty hard physical limit to break. We could allow for very high level medicine checks or abilities to do the equivalent of revivify (after all, CPR gives us that power in the modern world).

We can do a bit more on the destruction side. There is no reason why a martial couldn't break a wall of force if powerful enough, or perhaps be so strong they could destroy magic (ala dispel magic) with a swing of their sword.

Knowledge Manipulation - Subtle manipulation is an area that would be fine for martials. EX: Starting a rumor that changes an entire towns belief in a topic.

So I was going to come back to this as but honestly for the most part its all good.

There are ways to justify/hand wave/fluff out, so many abilities, that its fine for 'martials' to do some magical things, or play in the field with magic users.

My issues have always been.

1. Things that are clearly just not happening, Flight, for example if you dont have wings.
2. Healing, or Evocation (Fireballs), or things of that nature. Its just never going to work for me beyond MAYBE Temp HP. Shouting someone back to life is just..no, unless you are some kind of mystic.

That said, I also have zero problem with Martials being able to make better use of Magical Armour/Weapons, and have specific kinds of strikes or abilities that can leverage magic weapons better than others.

The concept of the Cleric/Wizard, buffing the Fighter who naturally by virtue of their class swings weapons better, simply has never been a problem.

Unfortunately, 5e gets rid of a lot of what pushed the Fighter types well beyond Clerics, in terms of swinging a weapon, and the lack of Feats and Maneuvers just exaggerates it further so Fighters lose what they have in other systems.