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

[Pedantic]

The wizard can hit someone with a dagger thus a fighter cannot.

The snarkiness of this back and forth aside, this is the problem with the Charles Atlas fighter. If your abilities are entirely a product of mundane training and great strength, and you have several systems in the game that represent mundane training and great strength that exist across classes, it's difficult to write class specific features that hold up to scrutiny. Having an archetype specific kind of phlebotinum, like a Barbarian's "having magically intense emotions" makes it much easier to limit the effects to specific techniques.

 

[Incenjucar]

You can even have something like an exalted subclass, where you start feeding on belief the same way that deities do, and your power literally grows because your fame does.

--

Edit: The mythic warrior explicitly does not need to worry about stepping on niche partitions because it exists to be a more equitable version of something that exists. Throwing heavy things is also not the niche, I was just showing an example of low level to high level progression.

 

[Pedantic]

You can even take it a step further. How does a bloodline become mythical? How does "The Blood of Kings" gain power?

One explanation I have seen in fantasy works is that the person achieving these feats becomes something of a living legend. We even have an example of this in the Glory Paladin, the idea that your legend fuels you, you gain a mystical weight and power because the power of belief and words, of thousands of people and hundreds of bard's songs have lent you a strength.

We know words have power in DnD, because Bard's exist. We know faith has power because of how the Gods are described, we even have gods who have explicitly risen to power because they were local heroes and the faith of the people they saved thrust them into godhood.

And as for "why don't casters get this power"... they do. How else do you explain that the descendant of a famous wizard becomes a powerful sorcerer? How else do you explain that a wizard who mere weeks ago could only cast mildly impressive spells now has the might to take on Demon Lords? They simply channel this power of legends in a different way. Clerics and Paladins? Portions of their might come and go from their gods or their patrons. They are leaning on the power of those beings to empower themselves.

Running on legendariness, either by generating your own growing story, or specifically emulating some existing legend and so on, is a perfectly respectable archetypal power-source, and if we wanted to make experience points into a universal mystical empowerment currency ala Earthdawn, that's a great approach. The key is to actually pick a power source, like that one, and commit to it as the justification for a class's abilities. The fighter is historically defined by explicitly not doing that, and you can't have it both ways.

 

[Gammadoodler]

How do you get on par with flight, teleporting, shapechanging, invisibility, raise dead, scrying, or wish all while doing it nonmagically? You don't. THATS what I mean. You want the power of a machine gun with the appearance and benefits of a spear (and none of the hassle of tracking bullets).

You want classes on part with full spellcasters? Fine. Explain where their supernatural power is coming from and you can have it. That's apparently a bridge too far for you. So Here I sit again noting you could convince me (and probably a lot like me) to create martial classes that can do those things IF ONLY you justify it with some supernatural bullpucky, but the fact we have to keep playing in this "superhero but not supernatural" border region is why these discussions are circular.

Even if I accept that this is a valid example of your strawman (which is pretty spurious), is one example what "most of the posts in this" looks like to you

 

[Incenjucar]

What page has the "can't have it both ways" rule?

 

[Chaosmancer]

How are the orogs all able to get their attacks on the fighter in those early rounds?

The fighter needs to get in melee, and the orogs have Aggressive allowing a bonus action dash.

Did the fighter use their action surges or second wind? And what sub-class is the fighter? Didn't take toughness? Why only 165 HP - since they are a tanky fighter (plate and shield) you'd think they'd have at least gotten their constitution to 18. But okay, we'll make it only con 16 for some reason, which, using fixed HP, gives them 184 HP. Honestly, this fighter is making some bad choices, but whatever; I guess the exercise is to see how well a poorly planned fighter does.

Using Action Surge and Second wind on a trash mob fight? 10 Orogs is an easy encounter for a party of 20th level characters. I was told such a fight shouldn't even challenge the fighter. @nevin specifically said "I've never seen a fighter struggle to clear what I call trash mobs. EVER. Unless you equate more rounds as struggle that doesn't even make sense."

Now, immediately, we need to have used their special abilities, need their subclass, they should have raised their con above 16, and they needed to have taken the toughness feat, and really they've made some bad choices....

For a group of CR 2 enemies. A fight that should have stopped being a serious challenge ten levels ago. Doesn't all this sudden panic over the precise build... exactly illustrate my point? These enemies are so weak they drop in a single turn against the fighter, and yet... that's not enough to keep them alive, let alone for them to conquer without struggle.

Okay, just to give the benefit of the doubt, let's assume the orogs surround the fighter - so this is a worst case scenario where the fighter has done zero tactics. Also, we'll make the fighter a champion, the most vanilla of the sub-classes. So the AC will be 23, since they would obviously take defense to go with dueling.

Round 1: Fighter action surges and kills two in the first round, which is fine because only eight could have attacked them anyway. Those 8 do 16 attacks, hitting 20% of the time against AC 23, so that's 32 damage. Fighter is at 152 HP.

Round 2: Fighter action surges again to kill two more and then pops second wind, healing 26, so is at 178 HP. Orogs do 24. Fighter is at 154 HP.

Round 3: Fighter kills one more leaving 5. Orogs do 20. 134.

Round 4: Four Orogs, left, to do 16 damage. Fighter is at 118.

Round 3: Three Orogs, 12 damage. Fighter 106 HP.

Round 4: Two Orogs, who really should be running away. 8 Damage. Fighter 98 HP.

Round 5: Last Orog. Fighter 94 HP.

Round 6: no more Orogs. They managed to get the fighter down to about 50% health. Honestly, though if they ever managed to get the fighter below half health and they would have been healing 8 HP/round, even with their pitiful constitution. And if the fighter was able to get any kind of cover, such as fighting from a doorway, they could basically tank infinite orogs.

So the only way those orogs are taking down a level 20 champion is basically if there is an army of them and the fighter is completely surrounded with no where to go. Even then it will take them awhile and a lot of dead Orogs.

Which seems about right, frankly.

I see, so you see "not even a struggle" as losing 50% of your health and activating all of your special abilities. Of course, I note that with no action surge, no second wind, and at 50% of their health, the fighter sure would struggle if the enemy had them fight something more deadly for the second encounter. Or does the fighter get tot take a short rest after every fight and has infinite healing surges too?

Like, I don't even need to argue your encounter. Sure, we'll use your version. It highlights my point just as well.

 

[Mistwell]

But I think you are hinting at something really important here.

Casters are shining brightest during the climax of the campaign. During the big final battle. Fighters are best... for the encounters no one cares about.

In the final adventure of Vox Machina, everyone talked about Scanlan's counterspell, it was a huge moment with tons of emotion and it hit even harder after the fight. Does anyone rememeber the trash mobs they fought before reaching Vecna? Does anyone care?

So, even if what you are talking about it 100% true and fighters and martials are better than casters in all the basic, samey fights that we all get through... isn't that terrible? Those aren't the fights anyone remembers, those aren't the fights that matter. And I'm not even convinced your argument is true, because cleaning up trash mobs is something a caster can do with ease and a fighter is in dire straits to attempt.

The idea that nobody cares about MOST combat encounters they play in D&D is...a weird position to take from my perspective. If all I cared about were the boss fights, I wouldn't play D&D. They're not "samey" fights nor "trash mobs", they're just not the boss fight, and of course they matter. This isn't Critical Role or a video game...we're playing a role playing game my man. They play IS the purpose.

And given most groups have more than one non-caster in it, did you really think those players were not having fun with their non-casters?

 

[Chaosmancer]

Running on legendariness, either by generating your own growing story, or specifically emulating some existing legend and so on, is a perfectly respectable archetypal power-source, and if we wanted to make experience points into a universal mystical empowerment currency ala Earthdawn, that's a great approach. The key is to actually pick a power source, like that one, and commit to it as the justification for a class's abilities. The fighter is historically defined by explicitly not doing that, and you can't have it both ways.

Great, throw the historical fighter in the trash bin where it belongs and we will use a power source that actually allows us to have high level martial characters acting like they should.

 

[bert1001 fka bert1000]

How bout this:

Origin: Bloodline of the First Men, which were like Gods walking among us and reportedly could do any manner of fantastic feats. This manifests itself in various abilities that no mere mundane member of your race could ever hope to do

Permissions: theoretically anything magic or Gods can do
Class features: some stuff and a large list of level based fantastical abilities martial in nature that you can mix and match to get the kind of hero you want.

Subclass: You don't rely only on your Bloodline to survive. You have also picked up other skills and talents along your journeys.

Swordman of Zansibar
Captain of Gurt

OR
Subclass: You are particularly strong in blood of a First Men champion. Pick one:
Agatha the Cruel
Horin the WIse

 

[Chaosmancer]

The idea that nobody cares about MOST combat encounters they play in D&D is...a weird position to take from my perspective. If all I cared about were the boss fights, I wouldn't play D&D. They're not "samey" fights nor "trash mobs", they're just not the boss fight, and of course they matter. This isn't Critical Role or a video game...we're playing a role playing game my man. They play IS the purpose.

If every fight is equally important, why do climaxes matter?