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

[Micah Sweet]

People interpreted what they said wrong.

They said the game math doesn't assume magic items.
The game still assumes the fighter is stacked with magic items or friendly magic buffs.
They also made it easy to play without the items or buffs. But you can't use most of the middle and high CR monsters if you do that.

It's like being a Vegan at the burger joint. You can eat there but there's only one vegan option.

If the game doesn't assume magic items, but it does assume them for fighters, how is that a misinterpretation? Or even make sense? Why are magic items necessary ("stacked" in your words) if you don't need them for the math? If resistance to non-magical is a problem for a particular fight, you have a spellcaster PC or an NPC cast magic weapon for that fight. Boom! Bob's your uncle!

 

[nevin]

I haven't read Xanathars I've been arguing vs what I read. There are a lot of monsters that can be fought without magic. I'd say most DM's never use more than 15% in a 20 or 30 year span. But I would agree that they stretched the truth to try to make everyone happy.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I've shown evidence

p38 of the DMG
The treasure tables
p136 of XGTE


I didn't say they are lying. I said the info was hidden.
It wasn't outright said until XGTE

"Magic items can go from nice to necessary in the rare group that has no spellcasters, no monk, and no NPCs capable of casting magic weapon. Having no magic weapon makes it extremely difficult to overcome the monsters that have resistance or immunity to nonnmagical weapons. In such a game, you'll want to be generous with magic weapons or else aviod using such monsters."

5e was designed that the fighter either has magical equipment or the spellcasters are buffing them.

They upfront say years after the DMG that if you don't want magic items and your casters don't want to be buff-bots, you shouldn't use many of the supernatural monsters that they printed.

5e was designed as Christmas Tree Fighters as the default and make it easy to edit this assumption. But that's how they designed the game.

So, explicitly not what you claimed upthread, and indeed what I said instead. Got it.

 

[Lanefan]

But no magic items would theoretically include scrolls, right? So wizards would be limited in the spells that they know to the two they learn when they level. That can significantly limit the options they have.

Depends. I know magic items aren't buyable/sellable according to 5e RAW, but what about spells? Does 5e make any provision for a caster going to a guild or equivalent and buying access to someone's spellbook in order to copy a spell? Or, and this is more common IME, meeting other Wizards and trading spells?

 

[nevin]

So, a whole lot of DM fiat going on here I think...

First, they're using a helm of teleportation, which is fine, but they are basically using a magic item (rare at that) to mimic what your party's wizard (also 12th level I am guessing?) doesn't even have the spell to do and isn't even a high enough level to do it.

One of the issues in this thread would be for the barbarian to do this without the helm. Now, if they Hulked the siege engine and threw it up to hit an airship and take it out, that would be different.

Second, not sure from how you wrote it but you can't teleport a PC with an object, it is or; you and up to eight creatures OR an object. If the barbarian did, in fact, just send the object, how did the DM determine your placement was optimal enough to do what happened? If the barbarian went with it, how did you survive the fall?

Third, how big is this siege engine? If they are the Large Object variety, how big was the airship? I would think rather small if a large object was enough to explode its cargo of bombs, especially if there were enough bombs to also talk about another airship behind it.

Anyway, I'm not saying what happened wasn't probably cool as sh!t, but for the purpose of the issues brought up in the thread, the narrative really shows what some people don't w

nope you can teleport with what you can carry. Girdle of strength enlarge spell and boom the barbarian can pick up almost 4000 pounds. Siege engine weighed 2500 I think DM said. I understand it show what some people want. But I'd argue more people do want that stuff.
Don't ask for someone to lock down the rules so I can't do what you don't want too. Just put your own limits on your own game.

Though to be honest I'd just ignore your rules anyway. And I'll predict that when and if D&D ever comes up with a rule set that perfectly balances everything it will be about as popular as PF 2e.

 

[Cadence]

Depends. I know magic items aren't buyable/sellable according to 5e RAW, but what about spells? Does 5e make any provision for a caster going to a guild or equivalent and buying access to someone's spellbook in order to copy a spell? Or, and this is more common IME, meeting other Wizards and trading spells?

For Wizards, you start with six 1st level spells of your choice in your book. Each time you level you can add two spells of your choice to your spellbook for free. You need to find the others. It takes 2 hours and 50gp per level to copy them over. If you lose your spell book you can put the ones you prepared into a new spell book for 1 hour and 10gp per level.

 

[Lanefan]

But really what the fighter needs, is to not be treated as the baseline.

Then which class becomes the baseline?

Somebody has to be the baseline, otherwise all comparisons become meaningless. If not the Fighter, then who?

Without entirely rewriting the fighter, I'd do the following:

Action Surge becomes Heroic Effort. You gain 1 legendary action (not in name, but it would work the same) per attack you can make as part of the attack action, per short rest/a number derived from your proficiency bonus and the aforementioned number. 5e style mechanics means that this would be spelled out on the class table or something, what number of Heroic Actions you have per day at a given level, and your limit per round would simply be the number of attacks you can make with an attack action.

Indomitable keeps it's name, but becomes the same as legendary saves. X/day, you can turn a failed save into a success.

Add a feature to gain a new proficiency at levels 5, 11, 15, 17, and you learn languages and tools in half the time it normally takes.

Finally, before level 7, you gain a feature which allows you to turn a failed ability check into a success, and when you succeed at an ability check, you can Help another creature that can see and hear you in making the same check, without using any actions. These two abilities would use the same pool of uses, limited to PB/day.

The third idea above - extra proficiencies etc. - is excellent.

The second and fourth ideas - each involving turning failures into successes - are way too meta for me.

 

[Remathilis]

If the game doesn't assume magic items, but it does assume them for fighters, how is that a misinterpretation? Or even make sense? Why are magic items necessary ("stacked" in your words) if you don't need them for the math? If resistance to non-magical is a problem for a particular fight, you have a spellcaster PC or an NPC cast magic weapon for that fight. Boom! Bob's your uncle!

The game doesn't assume specific magical items to make the math work, but assumes the existence of items to exist.

In 3.0, high level monsters had DR that would only break by certain plussed weapons. For example, if you had a +2 flaming burst greatsword and you attacked a demon, you would be subject to it's 20/+4 DR because your sword wasn't a true +4 weapon (even if it had the same cost of a +4 weapon).

In 4e, it was assumed every 4 levels or so, you would upgrade your weapon/implement (to hit and damage) armor (AC) and amulet/cloak (saves) or your math would fall behind. That meant everyone had those three items regardless of class and you always found a new and better one every 4 levels.

5e fixed both problems. It doesn't assume you need ANY SPECIFIC magical item, but does assume you'll find something. You don't need to keep finding new higher plussed items, any magic weapon (even those without a plus) is sufficient. You may never find a magic suit of armor and your AC won't suffer for it, but you might find boots of speed or a quiver of Elhonna instead. Xanathar calls out the only time you need to explicitly give a specific type of magic item (in games where the group doesn't have access to reliable methods of breaking magic DR, you need to give them something to deal with those monsters).

This is a far cry from "a DM doesn't have to give out a single magic item ever and the heroes can fight Tiamat at level 20 and win."

 

[DND_Reborn]

nope you can teleport with what you can carry. Girdle of strength enlarge spell and boom the barbarian can pick up almost 4000 pounds. Siege engine weighed 2500 I think DM said. I understand it show what some people want. But I'd argue more people do want that stuff.
Don't ask for someone to lock down the rules so I can't do what you don't want too. Just put your own limits on your own game.

Though to be honest I'd just ignore your rules anyway. And I'll predict that when and if D&D ever comes up with a rule set that perfectly balances everything it will be about as popular as PF 2e.

Wait.. in addition to the Helm of Teleportation, the barbarian had a Belt of Giant Strength and someone also cast enlarge on them?

In that case, check your math or at least your item descriptions. A Belt of Giant Strength just gives you the Strength score 21 - 29, it doesn't make you a Large or Huge creature. Assuming a STR 25 (a very rare item, BTW) x 30 = 750 lbs. as your max lift, and the enlarge spell doubles that to 1500 lbs. and, "boom" the barbarian can't pick up 4000 lbs., let alone the 2500 lbs. the DM said. What? now I suppose the barbarian was some race with Powerful Build as well? Unless you know of some errata or SA I don't know of, maybe???

So now instead of just one piece of magic, the scenario employs two magic items (rare ones at least) and a spell... None of which is needed if you just teleported the Large Object siege equipment by itself and wouldn't work the way you described anyway. If your DM is ruling differently, that's cool, but it is even more DM fiat than I originally thought.

Again, no one is arguing you can't do cool shenanigan type things with magic items, the point was some people want them without magic items. They want their character to have the ability, not be dependent on one (or more ) items.

Otherwise, play how you want, I'm not telling you how to play, just how the rules work. But your example isn't an example that satisfies the purpose of the those issues. If you don't like my response, ignore me, it's fine with me.

 

[Vaalingrade]

They made a huge hoopla about not having to include magic items when they were originally pandering to the old school crowd at the start of the edition. That's why there were initially not prices or rules for creation. This was able to slip by because those same people they were trying to appeal to would also appreciate the increased lethality not providing magic items creates coupled with the invulnerability to criticism the game started out with due to no one wanting edition wars crapping up their online space.