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

[Gammadoodler]

I believe so, a given set of rules compel players to put on the back bench old buddies because they choose to play fighter. That is easy manipulation.

It's pretty simple.

Imagine I give you a cookbook and tell you "Here is how you make 12 kinds of omelettes". You follow the recipes perfectly, but 4 of them don't include eggs.

The 4 eggless omelettes don't turn out as good as the ones with eggs.

You can say..
"duh, who follows bad instructions in a recipe, obviously the person using it should just change it"

You can say..
"What fool doesn't love an eggless omelette?"

Or you can say..
"How the heck do you make an omelette cookbook and forget to include eggs as an ingredient in some of your recipes"

It seems you prefer the first option, and anyone with enough experience with cooking omelettes would probably make that call.

But..not everyone has that experience.
Annnnnddd..
It is the job of the people who put the recipes in the cookbook to give the users all the information they need to prepare the meals in the table of contents of that cookbook.

To summarize this tortured analogy..

Expecting the rules to produce a good play experience is not unreasonable or indicative of any kind of character flaw.

 

[Minigiant]

No. Nope. That’s neither harsh nor a truth, it’s literally just an idea you had,

Yes Yup.

The Random Magic Items Tables and Adventre Hoards were 100% designed to spit out tons of Warrior items and stat enhancers.
The 1e through 3e fighter was designed to have magic armor, several magic weapons, magic gloves or belt of giant strength. and a magic cape, hat, or boots, .

In older editions, the nonwarriors had inability or limited ability for many magic and thus most of the stat boosters went to the warriors.

The backlash came from DMs and payers not wanting to feel forced by the game if you played it as written.

 

[Minigiant]

Bolded text to single it out. Depends on what you mean by supernatural. Is breaking a force effect, cutting through the link between summoner and summoned, or throwing a dagger or shooting an arrow to interrupt a fireball and it go off early, supernatural?

In a fantasy world I would say no. If it is, then yes they should become supernatural

Supernatural's second definition is

"departing from what is usual or normal especially so as to appear to transcend the laws of nature"

Since D&D is the game, the laws of nature is the rules.

Supernatural is this breaking the rules.

If wall of force lacks HP or hardness, it breaks the rules. This breaking a rules breaker is itself s rules break. That makes breaking a Wall of Force supernatural.

If wall of force has HP or hardness, it does not break the rules. This means breaking a Wall of Force not itself a supernatural event. It could be if the breakage now requires something a character could not do one their own.

And this is were the martials come in. If the martials are the classes where "you don't have to learn additional rules" they are bound to reality. But not the real worlds reality but the game's.

AKA if you make the Jumping rules allow a normal human PC jump 50 feet straight up without something saying it is supernatural or magical, then by the rules it is not an supernatural event.

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

Since D&D is the game, the laws of nature is the rules.

No. The rules are just rules for playing the game. The laws of nature are what the DM and players think they are, which for a game like D&D is usually going to be fairly close to what they think the laws are in real life, plus some magic.

Game rules can attempt (or not) to model the laws of nature, they can be successful (or not) at this, but they are not laws of nature unless the game says that they are.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Yes Yup.

The Random Magic Items Tables and Adventre Hoards were 100% designed to spit out tons of Warrior items and stat enhancers.
The 1e through 3e fighter was designed to have magic armor, several magic weapons, magic gloves or belt of giant strength. and a magic cape, hat, or boots, .

In older editions, the nonwarriors had inability or limited ability for many magic and thus most of the stat boosters went to the warriors.

The backlash came from DMs and payers not wanting to feel forced by the game if you played it as written.

I was replying specifically to the last part of what I quoted.

 

[Minigiant]

No. The rules are just rules for playing the game. The laws of nature are what the DM and players think they are, which for a game like D&D is usually going to be fairly close to what they think the laws are in real life, plus some magic.

Game rules can attempt (or not) to model the laws of nature, they can be successful (or not) at this, but they are not laws of nature unless the game says that they are.

That's my point.

Because game rules are not meticulously designed to mimic nature or reality than the rules are both the rules of nature or the laws of supernature until something says otherwise.

IE there is no ways to say a rule is supernatural until the game or individual group decides it is. Not the community.

 

[Hussar]

Yes Yup.

The Random Magic Items Tables and Adventre Hoards were 100% designed to spit out tons of Warrior items and stat enhancers.
The 1e through 3e fighter was designed to have magic armor, several magic weapons, magic gloves or belt of giant strength. and a magic cape, hat, or boots, .

In older editions, the nonwarriors had inability or limited ability for many magic and thus most of the stat boosters went to the warriors.

The backlash came from DMs and payers not wanting to feel forced by the game if you played it as written.

I certainly can't argue against that.

40% of the randomly generated magic item treasure was Shields, armor or weapons (with swords getting a whopping 10% all on their own). So, yeah, that is a point to remember. D&D, in the early days, had fighters (and characters in general) that were absolutely dripping with magic items. Paladins were limited to 10 items. Which meant that everyone else was expected to have more.

The larger issue became in 3e when players were allowed to create bespoke magic item loadouts. So, you effectively got the Christmas Tree effect where everyone had the same items because those items were just better than any other option. Thus, 4e went the other way and just built the items right into progression. Then 5e tried to pretend that magic items don't really exist at all, but, still tried to keep to 3e and 4e levels of balance.

It really is a big mess.

 

[OldSchoolGamerGirl]

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

This entire mind set needs to be done away with.

It comes down to "I disagree and I feel I am in the majority"

nobody (I doubt even WotC) has enough data to truely say who is and who is not in the majority. You started by calling out how odd my game is, I pointed out it wasn't THAT odd cause I have gotten the house rule idea here.
I am on Twitter and Tic TOk and Reddit, I go to stores and cons for gaming. I don't know if my groups view is the majority, but is sure as heck isn't as unheard of as you think.

 

[OldSchoolGamerGirl]

Trade 'magical' for 'fantastic' and I'm on board.

yup I want supernatural but not magic back... heck we can take a hint from marvel
ordinary
Amazing
Astonishing
uncanny
supernatural
Totally Awesome

okay that may be a step too far.

While 'Fantastic' is, to me, descriptive of the feats they can achieve, whatever the power source. In which case, let's go nuts.. it's a fantasy rpg after all.

 

[OldSchoolGamerGirl]

I'm guessing from the strange jumping of that block of text you are responding to someone who blocked me, so apologies if I slightly miss the mark. However, I'm actually not in agreement that casters need nerfed per se.

yes and thank you for noticing I was not saying this as my OG thoughts but as a responce.

There are about five or six incredibly "broken" spells that I tend to find need to be limited. Usually by limiting access. If I had to make it into a list...

I think that starting at 1st level all the way up there are spells that need to be adjusted

Limited Access (needs to be gotten as part of a quest): Clone, Simulacrum, Wish -> These spells represent a level of power and agency over the world that they really need to be carefully handled, not just given out for free. I sometimes put things like soul Jar into this as well.

those 3 spells I would say need to be not spells... they need to be part of a new subsystem of rituals, and have them be as you point out rare... more like a reward then a spell

Needs altered -> Wall of Force -> This spell not only shuts down far too many fights, but it also ignores the fantasy associated with it. It needs to have some ability to be broken by large enough damage. Perfect barriers only work on the weak, not the strong.

Just got rid of -> Prismatic Wall -> This thing is just the must stupid thing ever. Unless you just hand a player the spell description, they are never going to be able to break it, and therefore it feels unfair to have the bad guys be able to break it. So it ends up being way more powerful than I feel like it should. I know it is a classic, but I find it badly designed.

both great examples

But once those are out of the way... then I tend to find casters are sitting in a very good spot. In an all-caster team, the threats feel about right, and the power feels about right, and I don't see a need to actually nerf anything. It all feels good.... unless you have a primary martial, who then can start feeling overwhelmed and less useful. So, to me, the obvious solution is powering up martials, not nerfing casters.

here is the thing, the response was to someone telling me the exact opposite (although by rules I can not resay exactly) that martials only need a very slight increase if we take casters down by half or more.

MY personal thought is closer to you... hit some spells with a nerf bat and raise all the other classes to equal full casters