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

[TheSword]

It’s a 4th level slot, thus 7th level caster. And that’s taken straight from the phb.

And it’s something our fighter flat out can’t do.

And frankly? Give up? What is the wizard giving up here? A single spell slot, of which he has twelve at 7th level. Not exactly a huge sacrifice.

Sacrifice is probably the wrong word. Spend is a better one. Wizards have a larger resource management element to their characters, fighters do their thing at will for the most part.

How can you allow a fighter to spur of the moment blind 3 people at a distance at no cost… and still do all the things fighters do that wizards can’t. Higher AC, higher physical damage, higher Hp, fighting abilities etc.

I don’t think a 4th level slot is a huge sacrifice for a 7th level wizard, but it is their most powerful spell slot for the next 24 hours. Spending it, takes all their other big guns off the table. Incidentally after your Uber wizard has cast mage armour and a few shield spells to stay alive because they don’t have a fighter to protect them, those slots aren’t looking so plentiful.

Incidentally that reminds me… what happens to those blinded creatures in the intervening rounds? The fighter mashes them… that’s what. Synergy again. A fighter benefits far more from a blinded opponent than a wizard does.

 

[TheSword]

My solution make Battlemaster maneuvers available to all characters by spending HD.

 

[Hussar]

Then quote me saying this.

Ok. You said:

Martials have an explicit rule defining how many attacks they get in a turn.

Unless you're saying you're confused by how Extra Attack works, it is in fact a weird question to ask, unless of course you're going out of your way to try and say no to the 11th level Fighter when they want to Pocker Sand the three goblins they stab.

Is there something I wasn't clear about?

 

[Hussar]

Sacrifice is probably the wrong word. Spend is a better one. Wizards have a larger resource management element to their characters, fighters do their thing at will for the most part.

How can you allow a fighter to spur of the moment blind 3 people at a distance at no cost… and still do all the things fighters do that wizards can’t. Higher AC, higher physical damage, higher Hp, fighting abilities etc.

I don’t think a 4th level slot is a huge sacrifice for a 7th level wizard, but it is their most powerful spell slot for the next 24 hours. Spending it, takes all their other big guns off the table. Incidentally after your Uber wizard has cast mage armour and a few shield spells to stay alive because they don’t have a fighter to protect them, those slots aren’t looking so plentiful.

Incidentally that reminds me… what happens to those blinded creatures in the intervening rounds? The fighter mashes them… that’s what. Synergy again. A fighter benefits far more from a blinded opponent than a wizard does.

But why? Why cannot non-magical character have daily powers? We already accept them having encounter level powers - Second Wind, Action Surge, etc.

Casters, by double digit levels, have a fairly lengthy shopping list of encounter ending powers. I hope we can agree there. So, why can't a fighter EVER just kill something? Why can't a high level fighter have a 1/day Death Stroke attack that instantly kills something if it fails its saving throw? We have zero problems with every caster being able to do that. So, it's not a balance issue. But the notion that your fighter can just instantly kill something, or intimidate stuff into running away a la a Fear spell, x times per day? Absolutely not. Must never, ever happen.

Like I've repeatedly said, this argument was lost years ago. It was lost because of counter arguments like yours. Non-casters must never be allowed to even come close to what casters do. I actually tracked it in a couple of different campaigns. The casters were doubling or even tripling the total damage output of the fighter types over time. A fireball doesn't deal 25 points of damage. It deals 25 points of damage to five targets. Something even a high level fighter would struggle to do and is flat out impossible for any fighter with less than 5 attacks.

Fighter types, under 10th level, are dealing about 25 points of damage/round (give or take). Casters? Generally batting about 40 overall. And that's just dealing straight damage. That's not even counting stuff like Banishment or anything like that.

Put it this way. Which group would be more capable, a 15th level group of 4 PC's with two fighters and two rogues (all without spells from subclass) or a 15th level group of 2 clerics and 2 wizards? It's not even close.

 

[Clint_L]

But why? Why cannot non-magical character have daily powers? We already accept them having encounter level powers - Second Wind, Action Surge, etc.

Casters, by double digit levels, have a fairly lengthy shopping list of encounter ending powers. I hope we can agree there. So, why can't a fighter EVER just kill something? Why can't a high level fighter have a 1/day Death Stroke attack that instantly kills something if it fails its saving throw? We have zero problems with every caster being able to do that. So, it's not a balance issue. But the notion that your fighter can just instantly kill something, or intimidate stuff into running away a la a Fear spell, x times per day? Absolutely not. Must never, ever happen.

A fighter can do a ton of damage against which there is no save multiple times in every turn just by attacking with their weapon. Often, this is enough to kill an opponent. In terms of average damage/round, which is the most efficient way to kill enemies, few if any classes can match the fighter - paladins and barbarians are likely the runners up. I've been running D&D campaigns for decades, and in my experience martial classes have far and away more killing blows than casters - the only time casters do better is if it is against a ton of weak opponents and the caster has suitable AoE prepared.

So I'm not even sure what you are comparing fighters to, here. What is the comparable death-dealing power that "every caster" has? What spell do they have, castable round after round, that does comparable damage and kills? And what does "high level" mean?

Like I've repeatedly said, this argument was lost years ago. It was lost because of counter arguments like yours. Non-casters must never be allowed to even come close to what casters do. I actually tracked it in a couple of different campaigns. The casters were doubling or even tripling the total damage output of the fighter types over time. A fireball doesn't deal 25 points of damage. It deals 25 points of damage to five targets. Something even a high level fighter would struggle to do and is flat out impossible for any fighter with less than 5 attacks.

Fireball is an exceptionally good spell against multiple opponents, probably too much so. Even so, it's terrible against a single opponent. So let's say the opponent is the BBEG - kind of an important fight! Suddenly your fighter and other martial types are going to be doing most of the damage. Where is the caster that can maintain damage output like a fighter can, round after round, all day long if needed?

Fighter types, under 10th level, are dealing about 25 points of damage/round (give or take). Casters? Generally batting about 40 overall. And that's just dealing straight damage. That's not even counting stuff like Banishment or anything like that.

Really? Your wizard, bard, sorcerer, cleric, warlock, or druid is averaging 40 damage per round at levels 1-10? Round after round? Against any number of enemies? Because the fighter types are maintaining their damage all day long against any number of foes.

DPR is not a good metric to base this argument around, because martial classes win that comparison hands down, fighters in particular. They are the DPR S-tier class. Martial classes lose out on flexibility, not damage dealing.

Put it this way. Which group would be more capable, a 15th level group of 4 PC's with two fighters and two rogues (all without spells from subclass) or a 15th level group of 2 clerics and 2 wizards? It's not even close.

What are their sub-classes? What are they fighting? Why aren't they allowed to have spells from their sub-classes? Are they fighting a dragon? Fighters and rogues!

But if you were asking me to build an optimal party of 4, with the most capability for handling a variety of foes, it would not be either of those combinations! It would be a fighter or paladin, a cleric, a wizard or sorcerer, and...hmmm...rogue/bard/or ranger, maybe. Though a recent campaign had a cleric, wizard, fighter, and barbarian, and that double tank combo was a huge pain in my butt to deal with, especially with cleric support.

 

[TheSword]

But why? Why cannot non-magical character have daily powers? We already accept them having encounter level powers - Second Wind, Action Surge, etc.

Casters, by double digit levels, have a fairly lengthy shopping list of encounter ending powers. I hope we can agree there. So, why can't a fighter EVER just kill something? Why can't a high level fighter have a 1/day Death Stroke attack that instantly kills something if it fails its saving throw? We have zero problems with every caster being able to do that. So, it's not a balance issue. But the notion that your fighter can just instantly kill something, or intimidate stuff into running away a la a Fear spell, x times per day? Absolutely not. Must never, ever happen.

Like I've repeatedly said, this argument was lost years ago. It was lost because of counter arguments like yours. Non-casters must never be allowed to even come close to what casters do. I actually tracked it in a couple of different campaigns. The casters were doubling or even tripling the total damage output of the fighter types over time. A fireball doesn't deal 25 points of damage. It deals 25 points of damage to five targets. Something even a high level fighter would struggle to do and is flat out impossible for any fighter with less than 5 attacks.

Fighter types, under 10th level, are dealing about 25 points of damage/round (give or take). Casters? Generally batting about 40 overall. And that's just dealing straight damage. That's not even counting stuff like Banishment or anything like that.

Put it this way. Which group would be more capable, a 15th level group of 4 PC's with two fighters and two rogues (all without spells from subclass) or a 15th level group of 2 clerics and 2 wizards? It's not even close.

The maths has been done on wizards vs fighter in terms of damage output time and time again. Wizards can do more vs groups but are much less than fighters vs individual creatures. Fighters aren’t poweful enough at what they do is certainly not the reason.

Fighters have an ability to slay creatures once per round… it’s called hit it several times with a sword. Instead of making a saving through it balanced damage dealt.

Even IF the mixed group of clerics and wizards are more powerful. Which I think is highly circumstantial. Then it still isn’t a good reason to make all characters the same. It is ok for characters to be asymmetric in the impact in varying situations.

 

[Incenjucar]

"All Day Long" is not a thing that comes up often. It's a red herring. In any case, we don't need to gaslight each other about our experiences. If you have different experiences, just state so.

 

[Hussar]

So I'm not even sure what you are comparing fighters to, here. What is the comparable death-dealing power that "every caster" has? What spell do they have, castable round after round, that does comparable damage and kills? And what does "high level" mean?

Double digit level. Even 11th. And no, I do not buy that fighters are dealing that much damage. There's just no way they can. At best, the absolute best, a fighter can do would be a 2d6 weapon, with something like GWF and a 20 Strength. That's as good as it gets. That's 27 damage per hit. Oh, wait, sorry, add another d8 for Battlemaster maneuvers. So, 35 damage on a hit is the absolute top.

At the absolute top end, there's 5 attacks for 175 points of damage. 350 if he action surges. So, that is the absolute best damage a fighter can do.

A wizard can do that at 5th level. Fireball hits 10 targets for 35 points each. Poof. The absolute pinacle of damage that a fighter can do is equal to what a wizard can do at 5th level.

It doesn't have to be "round after round". There's only a limited number of rounds in an adventuring day because the baddies die.

Again, as I said earlier. Track it. Actually do the math. Track your next 20 rounds of combat. Area attacks deal total damage, not single, so, it's not fair to compare a single target - you have to talk about total damage. I'll bet you dollars to donuts that your casters are number 1. Every time.

 

[Hussar]

/edit - sorry, reading failure on my part.

 

[Hussar]

The maths has been done on wizards vs fighter in terms of damage output time and time again. Wizards can do more vs groups but are much less than fighters vs individual creatures. Fighters aren’t poweful enough at what they do is certainly not the reason.

Fighters have an ability to slay creatures once per round… it’s called hit it several times with a sword. Instead of making a saving through it balanced damage dealt.

Even IF the mixed group of clerics and wizards are more powerful. Which I think is highly circumstantial. Then it still isn’t a good reason to make all characters the same. It is ok for characters to be asymmetric in the impact in varying situations.

But, that's the point. Against individual creatures, why would I bother dealing area damage? I have a plethora of encounter ending spells (or at least locking down spells)- Banishment, Hold, various charms, Fear, etc - that why would I waste time with area spells? It's not like I have to memorize spells beforehand. I just have my list of whatever and cast as needed.

And, fighters absolutely do not have the ability to slay creatures once per round. After about CR 3, a fighter absolutely cannot kill a monster in a single round. They just don't deal enough damage.