D&D (2024) Martial vs Caster: Removing the "Magical Dependencies" of high level.
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James Gasik
We don't talk about Pun-Pun
Sure, but you have to be careful or you end up having to change the game so much you've basically created your own. As someone who used to make extensive houserules, I can assure you that can easily occur. Spells are ingrained into D&D; many problems and challenges exist in the game, starting from the very early levels, that only magic can solve.
The DM can make NPC spellcasters or workarounds exist, but by default, this isn't the case, because the game assumes someone is going to be able to cast the spell eventually. Players will get petrified, polymorphed, cursed, etc. etc.. There will be magical barriers and monsters with vulnerabilities non-casters simply can't exploit.
There will be enemies that the designer said to himself "this thing would be hard for a Fighter to deal with, but hey, it's not like he won't have a caster buddy to give him flight/water breathing/whatever".
WotC claims that you don't need casters to play D&D, but the reality is, that's only half true; the DM has to step in and either avoid magical challenges or give their players ways to overcome them in the form of magic items, consumables, boons, NPC's, or other such MacGuffins ("the saliva of a basilisk can be used to create a salve that undoes petrification").
So to remove the dependency of magic for high level play, you may need to redefine what high level play is, then hard code alternate ways to deal with all of these contingencies so that casters aren't necessary.
I haven't even gotten into the other things we rely on magic for, like crowd control and buffs. Obviously, martials would have to be redesigned to be able to perform as well as a spell can; right now, Battlemaster maneuvers and the like are far too conservative to do the job, likely to keep the warriors feeling "grounded" since, as has been noted many times, people like their warriors non-magical in nature.
And as for Improvise Action, you would have to put in actual guidelines for the DM to consider so as to make it a viable option. I'm sure most everyone has a DM story about a player who wanted to do something cool and, after being told to make several difficult checks, ended up with a worse result than if they had just attacked twice- this isn't bad or crummy DMing, it's a DM who, upon being surprised by the player, doesn't want to upset game balance or set precedent for something that can warp the game. I know I've been there ("oh you want to be able to make a called shot to blind the dragon? Yeah that's cool, roll with disadvantage"....three sessions later, every attack is a called shot) and I've seen it dozens of times ("you want to shoot the ropes on the ship to drop the sail on the bad guys? Uh, ok, so, it's your action, you need to make two attack rolls against fine targets....call it AC 25....then you have to make a Wisdom check at....DC 20 sounds good..."; and then the end result is two bad guys get knocked prone for a turn and are totally obscured until they escape the sails which they can totally do with their remaining movement).
Honestly, the simplest solution would just be to return magic items to the game full force, I'm talking AD&D style, characters can have scores of items for both offense, defense, and utility, none of this attunement nonsense.
I'm fairly convinced that the way 5e treats magic items is the reason players have to lean on magic use as much as they do, since WotC made them optional, but did nothing to replace what they did for the game in high level play (outside of some optional rewards in the DMG like boons just in case your DM thinks magic items are horrible, horrible things, lol). Actually it's worse than that- they made them optional and then didn't explain why one would want to add them to the game, so I'm sure there's many DM's who don't, and more that are very conservative about when they do.
Personally, I think every character should have the following by high levels:
*Magical weapon to harm foes (unless caster).
*Defensive items to boost saving throws and provide resistance/immunities.
*Items that provide the ability to fly, function underwater, scale difficult surfaces quickly, short range teleportation, improved stealth (invisibility, blending, chameleon power, cloak + boots of elvenkind), ability to survive without food/air/water, ability to see in darkness/fog/smoke, some way to safely rest in hostile terrain (Daern's Instant Fortress, Dimensional Knife, what have you).
But of course, 5e has taken almost every source of these things away from characters, leaving high level play almost completely reliant on either spellcasters or DM fiat.
The DM can make NPC spellcasters or workarounds exist, but by default, this isn't the case, because the game assumes someone is going to be able to cast the spell eventually. Players will get petrified, polymorphed, cursed, etc. etc.. There will be magical barriers and monsters with vulnerabilities non-casters simply can't exploit.
There will be enemies that the designer said to himself "this thing would be hard for a Fighter to deal with, but hey, it's not like he won't have a caster buddy to give him flight/water breathing/whatever".
WotC claims that you don't need casters to play D&D, but the reality is, that's only half true; the DM has to step in and either avoid magical challenges or give their players ways to overcome them in the form of magic items, consumables, boons, NPC's, or other such MacGuffins ("the saliva of a basilisk can be used to create a salve that undoes petrification").
So to remove the dependency of magic for high level play, you may need to redefine what high level play is, then hard code alternate ways to deal with all of these contingencies so that casters aren't necessary.
I haven't even gotten into the other things we rely on magic for, like crowd control and buffs. Obviously, martials would have to be redesigned to be able to perform as well as a spell can; right now, Battlemaster maneuvers and the like are far too conservative to do the job, likely to keep the warriors feeling "grounded" since, as has been noted many times, people like their warriors non-magical in nature.
And as for Improvise Action, you would have to put in actual guidelines for the DM to consider so as to make it a viable option. I'm sure most everyone has a DM story about a player who wanted to do something cool and, after being told to make several difficult checks, ended up with a worse result than if they had just attacked twice- this isn't bad or crummy DMing, it's a DM who, upon being surprised by the player, doesn't want to upset game balance or set precedent for something that can warp the game. I know I've been there ("oh you want to be able to make a called shot to blind the dragon? Yeah that's cool, roll with disadvantage"....three sessions later, every attack is a called shot) and I've seen it dozens of times ("you want to shoot the ropes on the ship to drop the sail on the bad guys? Uh, ok, so, it's your action, you need to make two attack rolls against fine targets....call it AC 25....then you have to make a Wisdom check at....DC 20 sounds good..."; and then the end result is two bad guys get knocked prone for a turn and are totally obscured until they escape the sails which they can totally do with their remaining movement).
Honestly, the simplest solution would just be to return magic items to the game full force, I'm talking AD&D style, characters can have scores of items for both offense, defense, and utility, none of this attunement nonsense.
I'm fairly convinced that the way 5e treats magic items is the reason players have to lean on magic use as much as they do, since WotC made them optional, but did nothing to replace what they did for the game in high level play (outside of some optional rewards in the DMG like boons just in case your DM thinks magic items are horrible, horrible things, lol). Actually it's worse than that- they made them optional and then didn't explain why one would want to add them to the game, so I'm sure there's many DM's who don't, and more that are very conservative about when they do.
Personally, I think every character should have the following by high levels:
*Magical weapon to harm foes (unless caster).
*Defensive items to boost saving throws and provide resistance/immunities.
*Items that provide the ability to fly, function underwater, scale difficult surfaces quickly, short range teleportation, improved stealth (invisibility, blending, chameleon power, cloak + boots of elvenkind), ability to survive without food/air/water, ability to see in darkness/fog/smoke, some way to safely rest in hostile terrain (Daern's Instant Fortress, Dimensional Knife, what have you).
But of course, 5e has taken almost every source of these things away from characters, leaving high level play almost completely reliant on either spellcasters or DM fiat.
CreamCloud0
Hero
Okay, we insert half a line of fluff in the fighter’s description about how they passively harness ki to go beyond the limits of ordinary folk and empower their techniques, can the fighter now have an ability that makes ordinary weapons bypass nonmagic resistance while in their hands?
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No.
I'm saying its a lot of work or takes a ton of DM experience.
More work than most publishers are willing to do.
This are a bunch of busted magic stuff in the PHB and MM and the DMG doesn't help you remove the magic from the other 2 books.
It should be done.. It's just not a cakewalk and WOTC wont do.... ever
Gammadoodler
Hero
I do kind of want note, that I think magic items are fun, and it feels good to get them.
I find them significantly less compelling though when they are baked into the power budget for the game. I think this is one of the weaknesses of PF2e for example.
I think I could be persuaded that there is a version that I'd like, but anything predicated on some synthetic need for magic would be a nonstarter for me.
I find them significantly less compelling though when they are baked into the power budget for the game. I think this is one of the weaknesses of PF2e for example.
I think I could be persuaded that there is a version that I'd like, but anything predicated on some synthetic need for magic would be a nonstarter for me.
Incenjucar
Legend
In my 4E game, I made it so that everyone automatically made objects they wielded the equivalent of the appropriate magic weapon for their level, including improvised weapons, so they could, as I put it, defeat a dragon with a turkey leg.
6 years, 30 levels, 0 problems.
6 years, 30 levels, 0 problems.
James Gasik
We don't talk about Pun-Pun
Well baking them into the budget does solve a problem. That being, letting the DM know when the players will need items, and thus they know when they should make them available (so that even if they don't to, they know they should adjust for that) and on the flipside, letting the DM know when they're at risk of adding too much (ie, "Monty Haul" games).
What 3e and Pathfinder messed up on, was taking a lot of the more esoteric and multifunction items and basing their "price tag" based on something other than their impact on the game.
Take Bracers of Armor. These provide an Armor bonus to AC equal to physical armor everyone can wear, so they really only exist for people who can't wear magical armor (or have reasons not to). Yet, they were costed to be the same as a magical bonus to AC- as a result, you're paying almost as much for Bracers that give you the protection of normal leather armor as you would for leather armor +2. Sure, there are advantages to wearing Bracers over armor, but nobody who can wear full plate +4 is going to be super enthused about Bracers of Armor +8, lol.
In a similar vein, most magical staves and rods are now ridiculously expensive, to the point you won't see them until very high level, or if you do, they are meant to comprise the majority of a character's power. The Rod of Lordly Might weighing at 70,000 gp is a travesty.
What I would prefer is a chart that says "a character of X level should be able to do Y" and leave it up to the DM to figure out how they want to make that happen (with examples, of course, be it the Boon of Free Action or specialized training to let you swim up a waterfall like a salmon).
I think there was something called inherent bonus. I don’t remember if it added the magic bonus or only counted as it but we did it for a bit in 5e too
James Gasik
We don't talk about Pun-Pun
Inherent bonuses are perfectly fine, as long as you're ok with the flavor. I personally hate magic items that have a numerical bonus, and would prefer them to have special powers, so when I last ran Pathfinder 1e, I used both inherent bonuses and magic weapons with special powers.
Yes this is what I meant to say. So if you picked up a defender at 3rd level it would become a +1 defender but that same sword at 20th is a +5 (or 3 in 5e) defender.
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