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

[OldSchoolGamerGirl]

Are we really going to do the dumb 'nothing is universal' thing? Really?

We already got 'badwrongfun'. Are we doing terrible argumentation bingo?

if you don't have a scientific survey of all or at least 88% or more of all D&D players alive and dead that has been tipple cross checked in peer review you can't put your opinion's up... unless they agree with mine, then mine count as facts.

 

[Emberashh]

Are we really going to do the dumb 'nothing is universal' thing? Really?

We already got 'badwrongfun'. Are we doing terrible argumentation bingo?

I would say its more tic-tac-toe. Clearly fighters are not being universally experienced in the same way and its valuable to examine why.

If one can deliver a satisfying experience without having to jack up the actual math to do it, thats pretty invaluable from a game design perspective. Finding ways to extend that out so its more universal would be a good way to approach this I think.

And indeed, not to keep plugging my game but that is part of the general philosophy of it, especially the parts that existed prior to me setting out to write it. I think what makes Martials fun for many is that they mechanically feel good to play from turn to turn in a way that casters may or may not be accomplishing. Hence, a lot of how I designed my game is based around finding, first and foremost, ways to make the mechanics just feel good to be played, even if you completely stripped the game out of them.

Heck, thats why we settled on 2d20 and 2d10 just because they physically felt the best to roll.

 

[Storyteller Hero]

A possibly unpopular opinion: Martials SHOULD be magical at the highest levels. They should be able to cut through steel. They should be able to move at blazing speeds. They should be able to leap great distances. They should be able to stand their ground against punches from giants and tail slaps from dragons. They should be able to run into a large group of minions and strike them all down like chained lightning or a big explosion.

 

[Emberashh]

A possibly unpopular opinion: Martials SHOULD be magical at the highest levels. They should be able to cut through steel. They should be able to move at blazing speeds. They should be able to leap great distances. They should be able to stand their ground against punches from giants and tail slaps from dragons. They should be able to run into a large group of minions and strike them all down like chained lightning or a big explosion.

Don't need to be magical to do all that; especially that last one.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

we playtested full on making fighter/rouge 1 class... you got everything from both core class but you only got 1 subclass and we still found with few exceptions casters played better... when we added both subclasses it got close.

There is something extremely unusual about your game, then. Maybe the DM runs it in a strange way, maybe it’s something else, idk, but that is so wildly, shockingly, different from any other play reports I’ve ever seen in the last decade, or games I’ve been in or watched, that somewhere in there I can’t help but think we are essentially playing different games.

 

[Pedantic]

We're veering back into "what even is magic?" again. The ship has distinctly sailed for D&D, but I wish we could have a universal model of power acquisition with different applications being the primary difference between classes. Something like Earthdawn, or wuxia/xinxia settings, where precisely what you're doing with power and how it expresses might be very different (and might take a martial/physically focused form) or not, but there's no question about everyone doing something to exceed the mortal baseline.

 

[OldSchoolGamerGirl]

There is something extremely unusual about your game, then. Maybe the DM runs it in a strange way, maybe it’s something else, idk, but that is so wildly, shockingly, different from any other play reports I’ve ever seen in the last decade, or games I’ve been in or watched, that somewhere in there I can’t help but think we are essentially playing different games.

that's funny because I see play reports here all the time that says the same. the idea came from someone else here actually

 

[doctorbadwolf]

that's funny because I see play reports here all the time that says the same. the idea came from someone else here actually

Hey it may be someone I have on ignore, I find several people on these forums egregiously annoying and detrimental to this being a relatively nice place to come and chat.

But even if every people I have on ignore has posted the same things, and I’ve never seen any as extreme as how you describe your experience, they’re wildly outnumbered by the people I’ve interacted with on twitter and Reddit, in person, or watched on twitch.

Most of us don’t find that martials are so underpowered that casters are “always the correct answer”, as you’ve claimed previously. Most of us don’t have much issue playing a mundane fighter or rogue in 5e and not feeling like a sidekick or whatever.

 

[Emberashh]

In a fantasy world, the dividing line between the mundane and the magical needs to be considered alongside how deep one wants power progression to actually go.

OSR games tend to do well keeping it grounded because thats often paired with comparitively little power progression

In a game like Pathfinder, what counts as mundane has to shift given how expected it is for power to keep escalating across the board.

My own game not only takes things from 0-30, but also puts substantive progression at every single level. The mundane in LNO would very much not be mundane, even in 5e.

This all points to one of the problems with 5e being that high level play was never really deliberately designed, nevermind supported after the fact.

Many, if not most, tables stop playing around 11th level or so and start over.

Many, if not most, of the issues we see pointed out in this topic don't really get all that severe until after this level. You do have your outliers, especially if an optimizer is at the table, but generally speaking the game equalizes from 7-11 and then quickly spirals out of control without DM intervention.

There's a lot of intersecting issues here, but as Ive posited, a lot of it has more to do with things exacerbating the issues with underbaked martials than it does with the martials being underbaked.

 

[Storyteller Hero]

Don't need to be magical to do all that; especially that last one.

I can tell you (not really) from real life experience that magical energy is needed to exceed human limits of martial prowess. The last time space aliens invaded my home town, I had to use a lot of it to deal with their giant monsters.