D&D General Chris just said why I hate wizard/fighter dynamic

[Mort]

I had two new players join in the 5e era. First one played a bard and the second a warlock. I got nothing against a simpler fighter option, but I would still like the champion to have a little more meat to it. B

I always chafe a bit at calling the fighter "simple" vs the caster "complicated."

In reality, especially in the beginning generation stage, the fighter's player is faced with much more complex and difficult choices than the caster's player - and they have much broader ramifications going forward.

Let's start with stat generation:

The wizard puts his highest stat in INT (unless there's a roleplaying reason he doesn't want to, but that's outside this scope) - boom done - the rest is preference and window dressing. INT will allow the wizard to be the best wizard he can be.

The fighter has to FIRST decide: Best stat in STR or DEX - this will have ramifications for the rest of the build.

If DEX then do you dump STR? you can, but Athletics is the fighters most obvious way to interact with many exploration challenges, so that's tricky. If STR, dumping DEX has serious consequences too (you can't supplement weaknesses with spells like the wizard can). And unlike the wizard, you have to concern yourself dumping WIS and CHA too because stats are the easiest way you get bonuses in a pillar other than combat. And god forbid you don't prioritize CON, low CON for a martial is dangerous (more so than for a caster, even with concentration).

Then the fighter has to make the choice of melee or ranged. Very difficult to be fully competent at both, even with a DEX build. Again choices matter here and will have ramifications for the long haul. The wizard doesn't really have to worry about this choice.

Then skills. The fighter has to pick carefully as they can't supplement without help. Pick a "fun" skill - it's at the expense of something else. Sure the wizard has this problem, but they can supplement with magic (need to descend a cliff and are lousy at athletics - you probably have room for feather fall on your list).

And it goes on.. and that's just to 1st level!

Further if the fighter picks poorly, he's stuck unless the DM is kind and lets him redo (there are now SOME options to swap out styles and maneuvers, but it's still a wait). The mage may be stuck with some subpar spells, but they can fix at every level and I've never been in a campaign where the DM has been all that stingy with spell acquisition (I'm sure they exist, but I haven't see it!)

So I'd say, in many of the ways that matter, the "simple" fighter is actually more complex than the wizard.

 

[FrozenNorth]

So, is anyone actually interesting in trying to find a solution for the people who have an issue with the shenanigan disparity or is it time to stop watching the thread?

Call me eternally optimistic, but I am always hoping people will actually want to work to build something to make the game better for everyone, but alas it never seems to happen.

The more I play, the more it seems to me that the best solutions to these sorts of issues is to clarify, early on, what is the focus of the campaign. To me, this goes beyond session zero.

One thing I’ve been toying with is before even proposing a campaign to my players, is to jot down 5-7 “simple truths” about the campaign. These are non- mechanical, though they can have mechanical impacts. If I know ahead of time what the campaign is about, then it is easier to identify potential pitfalls (an urban campaign may run into the issue that enchantment spells are overpowered, or a survival campaign could be derailed by goodberry and LTH).

This approach only works because I propose 5-7 different campaigns with different truths, and I take the players’ character proposals into consideration.

More than that, it seems that the issue is really that the fighter and barbarian are underpowered as martials and wizards are overpowered among the casters (though I have had very few clerics or druids in my games).

Personally, I do a couple of things for fighters. One, I try to remind myself that they are not just a guy at the gym. If they want to try something awesome, I will let them have that chance. Get from point A to point B by punching through walls, sure.

Also, skills are broad. You CAN roll an Athletics check instead of Persuasion if you want to butter up someone who is gambling on gladiatorial games. Most important, the character is an individual. A knight in shining armor will different opportunities than the swashbuckler than the barbarian hero than the tactition.

On the wizard/caster side of things, I have a different mantra. Magic is a difference in degree, not in kind. Anything created by magic can be attacked and destroyed, whether walls of force, mage hands, spiritual weapons or unseen servants. Invisibility only makes you invisible if you succeed your Stealth check, otherwise, your outline is clearly visible (though still grants disadvantage on attacks against you and advantage on your attacks). Also applies to Scrying and Arcane Eye. No disease or curse can only be cured by magic. An Arcana check is a substitute for Detect Magic (though Detect Magic is a guaranteed success).

 

[FrozenNorth]

Also, exploit backgrounds. The Soldier background means that in a city, you probably don’t have to pay for drinks. Maybe you can leverage this to get information. Maybe the city guard lets a disturbing the peace complaint slide. You don’t roll Investigation, you just know a veteran on the guard who is willing to compare notes.

 

[Mort]

Also, exploit backgrounds. The Soldier background means that in a city, you probably don’t have to pay for drinks. Maybe you can leverage this to get information. Maybe the city guard lets a disturbing the peace complaint slide. You don’t roll Investigation, you just know a veteran on the guard who is willing to compare notes.

Backgrounds have A LOT of cool benefits that often go unnoticed. I had a Paladin with the Urchin Background that completely threw the DM for a loop once. He thought he'd given his villain plenty of time to escape but he didn't count city secrets allowing me to cut the villain off (since I knew where she was going).

 

[Willie the Duck]

One of the biggest regrets I think I have from the next playtest was moving superiority dice to a single subclass. I get they wanted the "roll to hit" champion fighter to be the training wheels class, but I think modern audiences can handle a fighter that got dice and maneuvers as core.

At the same time, regardless of what 'modern audiences can handle,' I think there is a market for having an option that is simple to play, mechanically. If not for beginners, for the 'I don't care about your silly expendable resource mechanics, I want to shoot things with my bow, hit them with my sword, and describe what I do otherwise and let the DM adjudicate what happens.' crow

I had two new players join in the 5e era. First one played a bard and the second a warlock. I got nothing against a simpler fighter option, but I would still like the champion to have a little more meat to it. B

I think the champion is a fine concept, the execution just is underwhelming. It should be the perfect athlete that becomes a mythic superathlete in higher levels. It's the subclass for mighty feats of strength and other epic athletic accomplishments.

What I think really needed to happen was to divorce the Champion concept from the fighter class entirely (thus freeing up the fighter to have more complexity in the core class). Just make a Champion (or other name) side class, declare that it is there specifically for those who want a straightforward class, mechanically, and go as straight down the line with it --no action surge, no second wind, just higher numbers and on/off abilities (like getting proficiency in another save, like a samurai). I don't know what you'd have to give it -- probably d12 hd, most saves, plenty of skills, etc.-- to make it competitive, but I think that would have done a better job of filling that given void than to force the entire Fighter class to be bone simple.

 

[Jer]

What I think really needed to happen was to divorce the Champion concept from the fighter class entirely (thus freeing up the fighter to have more complexity in the core class). Just make a Champion (or other name) side class, declare that it is there specifically for those who want a straightforward class, mechanically, and go as straight down the line with it --no action surge, no second wind, just higher numbers and on/off abilities (like getting proficiency in another save, like a samurai). I don't know what you'd have to give it -- probably d12 hd, most saves, plenty of skills, etc.-- to make it competitive, but I think that would have done a better job of filling that given void than to force the entire Fighter class to be bone simple.

This exists now - it's the Warrior sidekick class from Tasha's.

Bonus points is that there's now a simple caster class available in the Spellcaster sidekick as well, which as I said elsewhere is what always irked me about the Champion. Not that it exists, but there's no equivalent "simple" spellcaster subclass and no one even thought it might be necessary. Meanwhile the kids who want to play the game IME want to play a wizard as often (or more often) than they want to play a fighter. Harry Potter has definitely changed the perception of what fantasy is.

 

[Willie the Duck]

This exists now - it's the Warrior sidekick class from Tasha's.

Well yes, after the fact. If that had been put out with the new edition, such that Fighter could have been made more complex, I think it would have gone a long way to helping the primary topic.

 

[nevin]

spitball.....

Ok give martials more SR items. Get rid of Attunement for martials. (rationale to players only Casters have to worry about how the magic messes with reality around them. ) Give them Con/STr Items that help them feel powerful. Also things like 7 league boots, helms of teleporting, artifacts etc. All high level martials should have High level allies, organizations even kingdoms that will support them. Even the people that like mages don't trust those reality bending nut jobs. Play that up. If your martials get high enough then powers that are happy with what they do should bless them, or help them by setting them on the path to some great power or item that will grant power. If they've helped them enough they'll be watched constantly or sent Celestial, or infernal followers who will have abilites. Remember that even the Gods will not be trusting of powerful mage's who keeps altering the reality they shepard.

Institute a mage (white wolf) style effects dynamic where the more the mage messes with reality the more likely it slaps back. Some spells just cause so much change to reality the mage gets slightly out of attunement with reality. Eventually this causes the mage to suffer the consequences of altering reality. Perhaps in the most egregious cases something like the Greek Furies but immune to magic are loosed upon the mage.

Be very very much a stickler on defensive casting rules. IMO that's one of the places they messed up with wizards. It should be very very hard to cast a spell if you are being hit (stoneskin or not) or being knocked down. Make the mages need those pesky martials to let them do what they do. People forget that in 1e 1pt of damage before your initiative and you lost the spell. The closer the rules get back to that the better in IMO.

I have yet to have a High level party that felt like the mage overshadowed them.

 

[nevin]

One of the problems is that there's a chicken and the egg problem with D&D. There's not a lot of mod support for high level games because according to WOTC most people don't play past 10th level. We have no idea how many people don't play past 10th level because there aren't high level mods. Add in that there aren't many high level monsters and they are almost always spellcasters which are more difficult to run and the problem compounds. High level spells don't take a lot of thought, they're mostly inherited from previous editions. Abilities for high level fighters is more difficult.

I think a mythic heroes version of the game could be fun, I'm just not sure there's much demand for it. But don't wait until higher tiers to give people mythic abilities, they start out that way. Maybe.

any monster can be given more spell resistance, more hitpoints, and higher saves. boom high level monster. I think the current trend of people wanting rules to fix everything and GM to just be a referee kill GM creativity.

 

[Lyxen]

I have yet to have a High level party that felt like the mage overshadowed them.

Same things here. There are so many factors influencing what's happening around the table, from the situations and monsters chosen by the DM to the way characters are played to what the party finds as treasure (Wizards need gold for their Spellbooks for example) that theoretical considerations about balance have very little value in practice. I think that was one of the realisations of 4e, by creating something extremely formal, they thought to solve the problem of balance, and they did, but in a way that stifled the game. Some people with high creativity went around the limitations, but it's clear that the 5e design aimed at reinstating the DM's control that allows full creativity for all as well as giving him the tools to balance things.

Moreover, in the end, it's not a question of power or possibilities, it's simply a question of fun, which might be linked to neither of the two points before, depending on player preferences in particular. And there, the DM has all the tools at his disposal for the cases where the players, as mature players, don't actually regulate themselves like the players at our tables do, with casters buffing martials and people being conscious that spotlight hogging is not the right way to play a collaborative game.