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

[Mannahnin]

Book of 9 Swords, where they made good versions of the martial characters using the template for spells.

Man, that book was amazing. It was straight-up Wuxia stuff, but every class was packed full of neat powers/techniques, and just as badass (or moreso) than full casters. I tried out all of them and had a ton of fun.

Ultimately, to give martials more cool and impactful things to do, shouldn't we lean more into the tactical war-game element? If so, that's a problem since WotC's current trend is not toward more rules complexity or granularity.

And this is where 4th went.

More tactical wargamey, reduced the overall power of casters, brought up the overall power of everyone else to match the casters (although until Martial Practices were introduced, casters still had significantly more utility with Rituals, everyone was pretty on-par in combat), continued development from Book of Nine Swords to make sure the non-casters were basically as chock-full of cool things to do as casters.

 

[Oofta]

How does more encounters fix the lack of cool things to actually do beyond 'I 'it 'em wit me sword... TWICE' and possibly 'I try to trip or other maneuver one in an encounter and fail through the power of bounded accuracy'.

If casters can't nova every encounter their impact is lessened. I've been in multiple games that went up to 20 and yes, under the right circumstances wizards are super powerful once in a while. On the other hand the fighter is in the front lines taking a beating almost every combat and just kind of takes it. Change focus to one of the casters now and then to remind them how squishy they are without the party tank.

If you don't enjoy playing fighters, don't play them. Don't change them into something they're not for those of us that do enjoy playing the action surging, second winding tank that charges headlong at the enemy so the casters can do their thing.

 

[DND_Reborn]

The game works fine now. Just stop at 10.

So we lose half the levels? I don't think so, thank you.

IMO WotC has it right, they just allowed spells of 6th+ too quickly by continuing the every-other-level increase.

Tier 1: Apprentice/Novice
Tier 2: Journeyman/Veteran
Tier 3: Master/Experienced (casters would have 1 6th level spell here)
Tier 4: Superhero begins here, restricting 7th - 9th level spell here. 7th at 17th, 8th at 19th, and 9th at 20th only.
Epic: Continue the superhero to demi-god/god-like status if you want.

 

[DND_Reborn]

So for a table that wants to be "realistic", it makes sense to me, the game can stop at either level 8 (adventurer) or at level 12 (master).

I would go a bit farther, but I have an L12 version which fits your idea well. I'd like a bit more, but it is a start at least for people who want it...

 

[Vaalingrade]

If you don't enjoy playing fighters, don't play them. Don't change them into something they're not for those of us that do enjoy playing the action surging, second winding tank that charges headlong at the enemy so the casters can do their thing.

If the fighter has to stay boring, then give us a martial class that doesn't. That's the core problem. Casters can be anything, but martials are shackled and brainboxed to a single playstyle.

 

[Mannahnin]

I tend to agree re: pulling casters down. I think we could elevate martials a bit, just with some more interesting ability design (without necessarily going "full superhero", just like keeping it in the literary fantasy/action hero zone), but the top end stuff with casters, and really anything above level 5 spells gets so dominant that it can very quickly become the focus of play even in 5E (especially given the sheer number of spells they can cast at that point). So I think slower progression of spell levels and capping spells at like L6 or L7, and just reconsidering every spell above that level. Really direct combat spells weirdly are not the main issue, it's all the rest.

I want my martial characters to be just that, martial characters. I don't want them to be magic users by another name. My solution is to throw so enough encounters at the group that the casters can do awesome things once in a while, martials can do cool things all the time.

It's interesting that we have this tension of wanting non-caster characters to be mundane and grounded in reality, but to contribute equally alongside archwizards, fighting epic dragons and demons. These two desires do seem inherently in conflict.

Of course in literary fantasy a non-wizard protagonist can contribute and be essential through cunningly solving problems, or being important for plot reasons, for example. But while those are also possible in D&D, they're not really answers to the mechanical issue.

One way to resolve the issue is what OD&D did- make high level fighters graduate to temporal power- armies and land and leadership, while wizards get their massive arcane powers on. The two are both badass but they're doing different things.

Another is to embrace anime, or, honestly, mythology and folklore, and accept that epic (note the lower case e, so I'm not just talking about after 20th level) fighting heroes do tend to be or become superhuman. Cuchulainn, the Russian Bogatyr, Arthur's knights of the round table, and many other classic heroes of myth had straight-up magical and superhuman abilities, despite not being wizards or casting spells as such. And that's not even getting into Wuxia or the similar folkloric sources anime originally draws from.

 

[Oofta]

If the fighter has to stay boring, then give us a martial class that doesn't. That's the core problem. Casters can be anything, but martials are shackled and brainboxed to a single playstyle.

You don't get to judge what's boring for everyone else that plays the game. There are plenty of classes to play fighter archetypes that have more options. Fighters and rogues are still quite popular in the games I'm involved with. We don't have great statistics, but in DndBeyond fighters are the class played most often.

 

[Yaarel]

Also, it is easy to slow down advancement.

Require twice as many experience points (or the equivalent method) before reaching the next level.

This prolongs the time that players play "realistic" characters.

 

[HammerMan]

Which is why a lot can be done to correct the imbalance. The real issue is the direction you want to go:

You either decrease the power of casters to bring them down to the martial level, or elevate the martials to bring them up to the casters. Or, try to find a happy medium between the two extremes...

Personally, I am for bringing casters down, many others want to elevate martials.

yeah i want both... if (imagine numbers out of butt) wizards are at 12 and fighters at 7 bring them both to 10...

spellcasters have grown to far and fighters (who started behind) have only grown a bit, and in some ways lost ground.

 

[Yaarel]

You don't get to judge what's boring for everyone else that plays the game. There are plenty of classes to play fighter archetypes that have more options. Fighters and rogues are still quite popular in the games I'm involved with. We don't have great statistics, but in DndBeyond fighters are the class played most often.

Fair enough. Even superheroes tend to only have a handful of powers to choose from. Simple character concepts can be just as fun as complex ones.