Chaosmancer
Legend
But isn't that the issue.
Arcane spells from Mages are designed to be encounter enders. Since 1e.
Divine spells from Priests were designed to be encounter savers and niche encounter enders (destory the undead, banish the fiends.)
Martial attacks from Warriors are designed to be cumulative effects that help end encounters.
This is why the game breaks at high levels.
Because if the Encounters are not greater than the Encounter Enders, the Warriors can't get the cumulative attacks out.
This forces the designs to adjust the attacks needed for the get to the cumulative sum.
If they go damage, the warriors do all the damage if they can hit and it slogs if they can't.
If they go control without still remaining simple, slog.
It comes down to on thing, the D&D designers wanting martials to be both simple and complex, magical and nonmagical under the same class.
Just make new classes.
The Fighter cannot successfully encompass 50 archetypes.
I am utterly confused by your point. We were working on a class design before this video thru us off track, and you began stating that weapon masteries were bad. And that somehow this was because it made fighter's better at low tiers and broke the game.
I really think this "slog" issue is MASSIVELY overblown. At level 5 the fighter is going to maybe force two saves a turn, if they have the correct weapon mastery, if they hit, and if they choose to activate it. Meanwhile a Cleric who has Spirit Guardians and casts toll of the dead can force 4 saves per turn, which is the exact same dice.
And in terms of slog... a Warlock, Wizard, Cleric, Druid party can all force multiple saves from multiple targets, multiple times a round. And this is not something that we attempt to fix because it will slow the game too much. The minuscule change in how fast a fighter player will take their turn is not a problem. Especially since, personally, I have noticed that taking a fast turn as a martial? It feels cheap. It feels like I'm clearly not doing anything impactful, because my turn is over in five seconds and everyone else is taking four times as long. Call it strange psychology, but being the only person whose job is to be simple and do little so the fight progresses quickly is... bad. It feels bad, and it feels like bad game design.