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

[Minigiant]

The designers made 5e, from the ground up, able to handle a no-magic setting.

The DM controls magic items.

In a setting where magic items are scarce, the DM can − legally − remove magic items from plugged-in official adventure.

Also, a DM can swap magic items around, and add extra magic items.

5e is built to handle DM discretion.

You are incorrect.

The designers made 5e, from the ground up, able to handle a no-magic setting with little modifications.

That modifications are:

• Allowing warriors to silver their weapons by a certain level
• Severely limiting the usage of very supernatural monsters

At no point was it said the DMs wouldn't have to do anything.
If you run a no magic setting, that goes for the monsters and enemies too.

The base game of 5th edition is magical though. If you run that, the game assumes ~1 magic item per 4 levels and a bonus magic item at 14 and 18 as the bare minimum of play per PC. Plus oodles of potions.

 

[Vaalingrade]

The other side seems to consist of:

• fighters are bad, no explanation given
• they should be able to long jump 200 feet or other supernatural feats such as being better than any real world athlete
• I want them to mythical heroes like Hercules
• they can't do the same things wizards do if wizards can cast as many spells as they want
• fighters are bad, no explanation given

I'm allowed to have a preference. I don't want a repeat of 4E. If you want a supernatural fighter type there are plenty of options.

And round and round it goes.
Bob: "I can't get this to work. It's broken"
Joe: "It's not broken for me, maybe if you explain..."
Bob: "I did explain, it's broken"
Joe: "Right, but maybe..."
Bob: "It's broken dammit!"
Joe: "Okay, if you don't want any help..."
Bob: "See! You agree! It's broken, stop with your flimsy excuses!"

It's not anyone's fault of other posters ignore when people explain the issue and what they want even in convenient bulleted lists and just keep saying 'works for me personally, so problem solved, now shut up so I can keep ignoring your issues'.

 

[Minigiant]

I'm allowed to have a preference. I don't want a repeat of 4E. If you want a supernatural fighter type there are plenty of options.

4e didn't have supernatural fighters.

It let Players craft magic items for their PCs without being a spellcaster.

The whole debate is between people who want Fighters to rely on loot drops, people who want Fighters to have guaranteed wish lists or crafting, and people who want Fighters to have the magic items be class features.

You are Team Loot Drop. There are also Team Wish List and Team Class Feature.

 

[Maxperson]

It is true that the DMs Guide recommends magic items, that official adventures reward with many magic items, and some creatures even require a magic item to hit them, but the math doesnt reflect this presence of magic items.

Yep. This is critical, because the first 5e campaign I ran, I gave +1 weapons to all the weapon users and suddenly those creatures were fighting waaaaaay below their CR. That's why I made a house rule that +0 weapons were not sufficient to overcome the damage resistance. That way I could still hand out some cool weapons, because otherwise almost no weapons would be found.

In principle, the DM completely controls the amount of magic items, if any. Giving a magic item to a character, makes the character better than the math expects.

I've become very stingy with handing out items, but they tend to be way cooler than the DMG items. Rather than finding 5 items that do 1 thing over three or four levels, the PC will get 1 item that does 3-5 things, is named, has a history, etc. The players seem to enjoy the much rarer truly wonderous item more more than a bunch of blah items.

 

[Maxperson]

In fact, Wizards are inherently severly limited by finding scrolls or spellbooks but also by the gold cost of scribing spells into their spellbook.

Of course, if you choose to make these a non-issue in your game, you are favorising the wizards, but it's not the inherent design of the game.

This isn't really much of an issue. @HammerMan would have you believe that the wizard is capable of going nova and winning up to 8 encounters a day, but the reality is that if the wizard novas, he's out of spells by the 4th fight. To even make it to 4 fights worth of nova at 20th level, though, means that you've cast all of 0 spells outside of combat. All that versatility is gone. If the wizard does cast spells for other things, he's taking himself down to cantrips for 1 or more additional fights, so it all evens out.

Oh, and unless the DM severely curtails gold, at mid to high levels the amount of gold found means that scribing costs are a non-issue.

 

[Yaarel]

You are incorrect.

The designers made 5e, from the ground up, able to handle a no-magic setting with little modifications.

That modifications are:

• Allowing warriors to silver their weapons by a certain level
• Severely limiting the usage of very supernatural monsters

At no point was it said the DMs wouldn't have to do anything.

I agree the immunity to nonmagical weapons is annoying.

Even a Monk unarmed attack counts as a magic weapon from level 6 up.



Maybe for all characters:

• level 1 is nonmagic
• level 5 counts as if a +1 weapon for purposes of overcoming immunity
• level 9 counts as if +2
• level 13 counts as if +3
• level 17 counts as if +4 (+4 weapons dont happen in my campaigns but is here for hypothetical epic adventures)
• level 21 counts as if +5

etcetera.

If you run a no magic setting, that goes for the monsters and enemies too.

Of course.

 

[Maxperson]

5th edition 1000% assumes that a party of 4 10th level PCs has access to a minimum of TEN permanent magic items for 10 magically effects and collected a minimum of THIRTY consummables to deal with the assumed life of a full time adventurer. And that's on the low side.

No it doesn't. At least not in the monster math. That's how the random tables turn out if the DM decides to use them, but if the DM never gives out a single magic item over 20 levels, the party will be balanced for the fights the entire way. Magic items are 100% bonus goodness.

The Fighter was designed to have either access to 2-3 permanent sources of shenanigans by level 10.

Again, this is wrong, per designer words. They said the game doesn't make the assumption that magic items are used.

 

[Maxperson]

You are incorrect.

The designers made 5e, from the ground up, able to handle a no-magic setting with little modifications.

That modifications are:

• Allowing warriors to silver their weapons by a certain level
• Severely limiting the usage of very supernatural monsters

You'll need to quote that. I remember them saying that the game didn't assume the presence of items. Then I remember people here arguing that you could compensate for items by giving boons and stuff. I don't remember anything saying that the fighters needed to be given stuff for fights anyway.

 

[Yaarel]

It's not anyone's fault of other posters ignore when people explain the issue and what they want even in convenient bulleted lists and just keep saying 'works for me personally, so problem solved, now shut up so I can keep ignoring your issues'.

I feel the prominent contributors in this thread are listening fairly. Oofta for example agrees there are problems with the Fighter contributing to the social and exploration pillars, but disagrees there are problems of balance in the combat pillar. This is my point of view too.

 

[Aldarc]

The other side seems to consist of:

• fighters are bad, no explanation given
• they should be able to long jump 200 feet or other supernatural feats such as being better than any real world athlete
• I want them to mythical heroes like Hercules
• they can't do the same things wizards do if wizards can cast as many spells as they want
• fighters are bad, no explanation given

I'm allowed to have a preference. I don't want a repeat of 4E. If you want a supernatural fighter type there are plenty of options.

And round and round it goes.
Bob: "I can't get this to work. It's broken"
Joe: "It's not broken for me, maybe if you explain..."
Bob: "I did explain, it's broken"
Joe: "Right, but maybe..."
Bob: "It's broken dammit!"
Joe: "Okay, if you don't want any help..."
Bob: "See! You agree! It's broken, stop with your flimsy excuses!"

"Seems" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here in your efforts to depict the arguments of others this thread in as poor of light as possible. It probably "seems" that way because you have zero interest in listening to others nor do you seem particularly invested in presenting any side fairly other than your own. But I know, I know: feel free to retreat to the easily-defendable motte argument that it's "just your opinion/preference" and that you "have the right to have an opinion." Forget that this is less about your opinion or right to have one, but, rather, how your are untruthfully presenting the arguments of other people.