D&D (2024) Martial vs Caster: Removing the "Magical Dependencies" of high level.

[Incenjucar]

At least in the basic rules, 5E monster design is remarkably bland. Hopefully the other books are better, but it seems all of the ideas go into the lair abilities, and those are all pretty randomly balanced.

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Also just to note that we used to have damage resistance that was numerical rather than just half or none, which allowed fighters to overcome defenses with sheer raw power, and options to bypass DR. It allowed monsters to be nightmares for low-level characters while still being conquerable by a weaponless fighter with enough power and skill.

 

[Clint_L]

I can't speak for Hussar to provide additional context on the specifics of their claim, but it seems to me that the substance of it is, "if a caster wants to win the damage race, they can"

I don't think this claim has been disproven and if I knew what to do with Yasha's stats, I'd even go so far as to say it's supported (especially considering that all damage numbers in critrole stats include the damage from all the cracked magical weapons the PCs got that amped up damage numbers).

No, they can't "win the damage race" when they want, though that wasn't his claim. Unless it's an AoE situation. Look at all those games from campaign 2 again - Caleb is only the top damage dealer in 15 of 141 episodes, generally when there is a, you guessed it, AoE opportunity. His two biggest spikes by far are in episode 86, when he managed to hit a fireball into a cluster of cultists (this one game is almost 10% of his damage for the entire campaign, largely due to this moment) and in episode 116, where he hits a home-brew AoE spell, "Widogast's Web of Fire" into 4 objects that didn't have saving throws.

Campaign 2 hardly had "cracked magical items," to the contrary, in response to campaign 1, Mercer greatly reduced the availability and power of magic items. At level 17 Yasha has only 18 strength and a "scaldsabre" (basically, a flametongue). For most of the campaign she wields a +1 weapon and has 16 strength.

Hussar's claim is very specific: with regards to overall damage dealt, it was that "I'll bet you dollars to donuts that your casters are number 1. Every time." That is demonstrably untrue, and in my experience is not even close to being true, as critrolestats.com supports. To the contrary, a caster being the number 1 damage dealer is very much the exception, and almost always, as I originally asserted, in situations where there are plenty of targets and the caster has good AoE spells.

Casters are usually not the primary damage dealers. Martial classes are. Which is fine, casters have plentiful other roles to play. All I'm saying is that focusing on damage, like casters have it made in every aspect of the game, is not supported by the facts. If you want to argue that casters have much more flexibility, you'll get no argument from me.

 

[Emberashh]

At least in the basic rules, 5E monster design is remarkably bland. Hopefully the other books are better, but it seems all of the ideas go into the lair abilities, and those are all pretty randomly balanced.

--

Also just to note that we used to have damage resistance that was numerical rather than just half or none, which allowed fighters to overcome defenses with sheer raw power, and options to bypass DR. It allowed monsters to be nightmares for low-level characters while still being conquerable by a weaponless fighter with enough power and skill.

One of my ideas (for my game of course) was to take the idea of lair actions and embrace them as a core mechanic for all mobs; for instance, Forest Goblins might have a Environmental Action that lets them fell a tree across the battlefield, or spring some sort of trap hidden in the ground or trees. Where and how this would happen would be mostly arbitrary (as such to allow non-fixed use of such mobs), and would take minimal set up to run, if not none at all, making it easy to integrate with randomized encounters.

 

[TheSword]

That's completely incorrect. Unless the captain of the city watch is a character adventuring with a group in high tier levels. If a character can't deal with high challenge threats when they are at appropriate levels, then they aren't really at those levels. In old editions of the game, fighters were just worse than other characters at high levels without a ton of magic items. Starting with 3E we have expected some semblance of "balance" which to me means that those characters can participate at the same effectiveness at higher level play. 5E has infamously removed magic items from being a staple of the game, so a fighter can't really rely on them to be effective.

I answer this issue by saying that a high level martial character has supernatural powers because that's what they need to be a player in a high tier game, but that is not something that the designers and a majority of the players want to do.

There are answers to this: 4E answered it but people hated what they did to other characters. Pathfinder 2E does it, but the game is more complex than people like. 5E has done this to some extent by some of the subclasses and multiclassing, but the core fighter chassis doesn't address the issues that the fighter has with demons/devils/fairies and so on.

Without changes that the design team tells us aren't happening, a high level fighter can provide minimal support against high powered challenges where "hit it a lot of times" is not an effective solution.

As an aside, the Knights of Last Call did an excellent deep dive on the fighter in this video. They eventually get into what PF2 does, but the first part of this video talks about the history of the fighter class from OE D&D on and discusses some of these issues. It's really good stuff if you weren't alive to experience this part of the game (and even if you were!)

What this ignores, is that in D&D 5e, hit it a lot of times IS and looks to always be a very effective solution to a substantial chunk of challenges. Fighters excel at this (and absorbing the large amounts of damage that get thrown around at high levels).

Teleporting 500 miles is not a very effective challenge. On account of it being highly dependent on what the PCs have access to.

Even if it is the challenge. There’s nothing wrong with having multiple characters with different abilities that help each other out.

This debate also ignores the fact that the best person the wizard can cast their concentration fly or haste spell on is the fighter.

 

[Incenjucar]

One of my ideas (for my game of course) was to take the idea of lair actions and embrace them as a core mechanic for all mobs; for instance, Forest Goblins might have a Environmental Action that lets them fell a tree across the battlefield, or spring some sort of trap hidden in the ground or trees. Where and how this would happen would be mostly arbitrary (as such to allow non-fixed use of such mobs), and would take minimal set up to run, if not none at all, making it easy to integrate with randomized encounters.

Works for PCs, too! Honestly character-specific camp setup should be a tidy little set of micro-features that players get, akin to rituals, as class or subclass features.

 

[TheSword]

I think we need to realigned this thread on his original goal :
Provide solutions to the martial-caster case. Ok, I agree I didnt help much in that way.


I would give a try to a skill system where there is no ability modifier and use instead the PB bonus or a fixed bonus Like +3 or +4. Expertise would still be used as now. that would make all classes on a flat level in term of skills bonus.

One solution is to have investigation and influence systems that become a far more important part of the game. Instead of skills being a nice little bonus to the characters main abilities they should be crucial and highly used.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Quoting as this post is quite relevant to something I've been thinking about after reading this thread.

Say you're DMing a solo campaign from 1st level to 20th level for a basic (non-variant) human Champion fighter PC, with the following constraints:

• No feats
• No magic items

1. What would be your overall campaign arc? What would be your mini-arc for each tier of play?
2. Which monsters and non-combat challenges would you use? Which would you use sparingly or avoid?

Wondering if it's worthwhile starting a new thread on this.

Edit: Added race restriction. Let's avoid any fantastic origins or influences.

Hmmm...

With no feats, the ASI's would apply, and that would mean they would at least be able to use a bow and a melee weapon with some degree of effectiveness.

Tier 1 likely looks much the same, no real reason to change it. With the caveat that solo play offers a lot of challenges, which I usually off-set with NPC allies. Woof, it would probably actually be best if I just skipped most of tier 1 thinking more. A group of three goblins could easily be a TPK unless they had surprise, might need to start at level 3. The action economy is just brutal. I'd likely start with a "defend the small village" and have a fight or two every session.

Tier 2... I might at that point be able to start including the occasional trap. They have enough health for some extended things, delving a dungeon ruin for example. Social challenges would have to be relatively easy and fail-forward.

As for arcs... I honestly don't know. The biggest threat I could see might be some sort of Giant King? Everything would have to stay fairly localized to a single region, so politics and such would be involved, but the player would need to have advisors, or I'd just not call for social rolls a lot of the time. If they were primarily an archer I might have them try and fight an adult dragon, but that fight would be REAL bad for them no matter what.

And I'm kind of stumped about tier 3. Between solo play and the lack of progression... I don't know what it looks like. I'd probably have them mainly face other martial styled creatures, rarely having to deal with magic except from bosses.

I'm running something like this, only with feats and magic items, and the initial premise of the work (it is more of a story than a game) is that the MC loses... a lot. I think in the seven or eight fights they have had to date, they have only one three times, and every time they barely scraped by and needed healing to keep going.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Okay. But now count up what proportion of those flying creatures have a ranged attack better than a typical bow shot. We have dragon of course. Not many others. A manticores tail spikes do a mighty green 1d8+3 damage.

You’re also forgetting the structure of most adventures. The PCs set the agenda. The PCs can leave an area, come back, sneak, retreat to a room only 10’ high. Or any number of things that the flying creatures can’t really do anything about. Flying creatures are a good and interesting tactical question but they’re not some giant win button against fighters.

Um... you realize how bad a match-up a manticore is for a fighter, right?

Sure, they only deal 1d8+3 damage from a tail spike attack... but they make three of them. And their attack is as good as the fighter's attack. So your 5th level fighter against a CR 3 monster is making two attacks for their three. At an average of 21 damage per turn, that fighter could be heavily wrecked by that. Especially if they aren't a dex fighter who normally uses a bow.

And sure, the PC can run, but "they can run away" doesn't inspire confidence in the design.

 

[Micah Sweet]

At least in the basic rules, 5E monster design is remarkably bland. Hopefully the other books are better, but it seems all of the ideas go into the lair abilities, and those are all pretty randomly balanced.

--

Also just to note that we used to have damage resistance that was numerical rather than just half or none, which allowed fighters to overcome defenses with sheer raw power, and options to bypass DR. It allowed monsters to be nightmares for low-level characters while still being conquerable by a weaponless fighter with enough power and skill.

I deeply miss 3e DR.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Yes they get less benefit. If I have a car and drive it every day to work and you drive it once a month to go to the office because you usually work from home I get more benefit from the car than you do.

No, you use your car more than me. We get the same benefit, getting to work.

This is a question of primary abilities and secondary abilities. A fighters primary abilities - attacking with weapons and absorbing damage are both increased substantially by magic weapons. A casters primary abilities aren’t. At best magic items are giving more but similar and mutually exclusive primary abilities to casters (a staff of fire) but not improving the ones they have already. That wizard can’t do more with the actions they take but a fighter can (unless you’re giving out staffs of fire below 6th level in which case I have no sympathy for you).

A fighter isn't doing more with their action, what are you talking about? A +3 weapon doesn't give more attacks or more abilities on those attacks, it just increases the numbers.

And sure, a wizard with a staff of fire is not, on a turn by turn analysis, doing better. But on an adventuring day analysis, they are essentially getting, what? Three more spells per day? That is very good, because remember, the entire supposed conceit is that the wizard's spells are better than the fighter's actions, but the wizard has a limited number of spells. Giving them three more spells per day means they are getting three more actions better than anything the fighter could possibly do, meaning the fighter (with their limited hp) would need to fight more battles to catch up. It also, by giving spells you don't need to prepare, assists in the whole "always prepared" trope. A wizard who doesn't need to prepare fireball because it is in their staff now has a free slot to prepare something else to solve a situation fireball couldn't have.

The wizard is not benefiting from the Armour class +2 because +2 to the AC of a wizard makes very little difference to whether they get hit. Whereas +2 to an already good AC is a much bigger benefit. I’m sure there will be a thread here comparing how the probability changes going from AC 15 to AC 17 and going from AC 20 to AC 22.

You’re argument for saying wizards can benefit seems to be that a tiny subset of wizards can attempt to emulate fighters. But even those wizards will occasionally be using spells in combat… if they aren’t then they aren’t really casters for the purpose of this discussion and they’re the exception that proves the rule.

Interesting. So, you realize the wizard is going to 22, right? Just because you have a +2 cloak doesn't mean you don't have shield. You seriously underestimate how easily a wizard can get high AC. Heck, the bladesinger? They can have 19 AC and jump to 24 when they are actually attacked.

And even if it is just a subset of wizards, they are still a group of wizards who can do the fighter's job, and you are completely ignoring the clerics, the druids, and the bards as well.

Well I’m not interested in white room theorizing but how the game is actually played in reality. Perhaps a lot of characters do increase ASI but fighters can do that and pick some pretty specific combat enhancing powers. By level 8 they can have 4 feats. Enough to do both at the core levels the game is usually played at, but this continues into higher levels too.

And by level 8 the wizard can have three feats. Do you really think that a single feat is enough to off-set all the advantages of spellcasting we've laid out?

Oh, and "how the game is played in reality"? According to WoTC their data (which should be pretty good and accurate data) is that 50% of games are featless. So... in reality, a significant number of people are playing as the game was designed.

And, again, you seem to be ignoring things. If you have sharpshooter, how does Sentinel increase your combat ability? Or Polearm master? Or Shield Master? They don't. Again, once a fighter picks a path... that's generally it. There are only an incredibly small number of combat feats that synergize.

A fighter can benefit from spell like abilities as much as anyone else. But let’s say they don’t. Getting an extra 3 spells in your spellbook and being able to cast a spell for free once a day doesn’t make a wizard more powerful in any given round. The question isn’t whether the feat is exclusive to fighters. It’s whether the fighter benefits the most from it: which means you need to take their action choices into account.

Name me a feat that gives a wizard an extra thing they can do in a round that they couldn’t already and I’ll then name you a ton for a fighter.

I’m genuinely surprised. I thought at this point it was generally accepted that fighters benefited more from feats and magic items.

Right, you are looking round per round, but power isn't only generated round per round. A wizard who can cast three more spells, and have a 30% increase in their spells known is more capable of solving more problems, longer. And you don't seem to understand that spellcaster feats tend to stack. A spellcaster with Warcaster, Spell Sniper, Elemental Adept, and Fey-Touched can benefit from all four of those in a single combat without losing any effiency. A fighter with Sharp-shooter, Great Weapon Master, Shield Master and Tavern Brawler... can't. Those are all exclusive abilities that don't stack.