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

[nevin]

All characters should have a group or society of similar minded people that will be impressed with thier abilities and want to work with them.

Fighters get the shaft because DM's don't want to deal with this in high level games. Aragorn holds up the sword and declares his lineage and Boom huge army. Robert Jordan eye of the world. Lan Morraine's warder. Late in the series he says enough raises his standard and an army of elite border warriors rises in weeks. Conan becomes the King, Dumbledore has more power as head of hogwarts than the head of the ministry of magic, because everyone respects and trusts him, in addition to his incredible magical skill. Clerics speak for Gods, you know those pesky beings that can decide where you go after you die. A high level cleric can start a war with one sentence, excommunicate anyone even the king, deny any other character the healing magic of thier entire religion. But if you only focus on melee combat all that gets lost.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It certainly could be anyone, but there seems to be some fantasy genre convention that martials have temporal power. I forget which edition Basic? 1e? said something like Fighters are more likely to rule nations. Fighters had followers, etc. Why? I don't know given the power of spellcasters but the martial as ruler and spellcaster as advisor (sometimes scheming to be ruler but doesn't often get there) is a common fantasy trope. How that gets incorporated into an rpg is trickier.

It's common in supers as well. The more mundane person (batman, etc) often has wealth and standing in society that they can use effectively against the pure power heroes.

Sure, but there's no plausible way to have that apply to martials and not anyone else. You think the military or the police don't respect Superman and would help him?

 

[nevin]

there is high level play

then there is beating your party with a dragon. The first is fun for the whole party, the second is fun for the DM..

 

[nevin]

Sure, but there's no plausible way to have that apply to martials and not anyone else. You think the military or the police don't respect Superman and would help him?

Absolutely true. But I'd say look at most societies near worship of Powerful martial hero's and it would be easy to say that the fighter would start with larger numbers of follower's who trusted their god granted ability while classes like mages and clerics with thier secretive ways and scary powers wouldn't be as trusted. Especially Mages and evil clerics. Good Clerics at least get to promise you an awesome afterlife.

In High level play warriors start out with the hero worship and it's thiers to use or lose. Other Classes have to work harder to get the same thing. If your assuming people in these settings think like people in the real world. If you study history this is why leaders kill or ruin a lot of military types who don't play ball and say what they want to hear. Hero's can gather power really fast. George Washington? Andrew Jackson and many other famous historical figures weren't even in the running or considered good enough for the positions they took after assuming "HEROIC' status.

 

[Gammadoodler]

If you just don't like useful magic play another game. There are lots of them where your problem and my fun don't exist.

No one has said this. It's not that people don't want magic (and specifically spells) to be useful. It's that they'd like there to be other useful tools as well.

Like..consider the medicine skill in 5e. Logic suggests that this should be useful for healing people..and yet what is this skill used for, stabilization of dying creatures, and even then this is a last resort after all magical healing resources are gone.

 

[nevin]

No one has said this. It's not that people don't want magic (and specifically spells) to be useful. It's that they'd like there to be other useful tools as well.

Like..consider the medicine skill in 5e. Logic suggests that this should be useful for healing people..and yet.

see we did this in 2e and skills made skill monkey's useless because everyone had too many skills. We did this in 3rd edition and no one had a niche because everyone could multiclass or make thier own special classes. Everyone either hated it (most people) or loved it (the minority) .
If a warrior raising an army is not useful then you want low level play. At high level politics, enemies, gods, kings, High clerics and outsiders are all more important than any ability anyone in your party has unless the game is a MMO simulator. If you want an MMO simulator don't play past 10th level for that kind of play it breaks somewhere in the 10 to 14th level range.

 

[HammerMan]

No one has said this. It's not that people don't want magic (and specifically spells) to be useful. It's that they'd like there to be other useful tools as well.

Like..consider the medicine skill in 5e. Logic suggests that this should be useful for healing people..and yet what is this skill used for, stabilization of dying creatures, and even then this is a last resort after all magical healing resources are gone.

Yeah I would love for medicine and an herbal kit to let me heal someone maybe even perform minor surgery.

 

[Remathilis]

I didn’t say it has to. I am saying that the level of challenge is very different. It is still a challenge at 10+ level for a party of fighters. Spells on the other hand can get around it easy.

So yes you can magic across that was the pont.

So we have 2 non magic here the tabaxi and the A bird race. So 2 races 0 classes can do it easy so tho it magic.

I am sure you are too but I’m also sure few of any will be non magic

If you have magic or are one of two races but not trivial to a human fighter dwarven rogue and half elf (wood) barbarian.
See that’s the problem. It’s trival with magic and a challenge without. That is the whole point of this thread you just made it perfectly.

Yes. There is a race or two and lots of magic but if you don’t have the race or the magic it is a challenge.

Well if your party is nothing but human fighters, then yes. The absolute odds that someone on the party cannot climb, fly or teleport over the gap with a rope and tie it off on the other side is microscopic. Hell, a barbarian can throw a halfling as an improvised weapon up to 60 ft!

My point is that D&D doesn't consider that a meaningful challenge. Which is why you can circumvent it in so many different ways without using a spell slot. And that leads back to the problem with "nonmagical" answers. A human fighter considers this a challenge. An eladrin or aarakroca fighter does not. Is the problem with the fighter or the human now? What if your human fighter is an echo knight, eldritch knight or psi warrior? Is the problem with the fighter or with the subclasses like champion?

I ask because I feel the conversation is aimed to a specific point: it's not that the fighter cannot cross the pit, it's that he cannot do it effortlessly and NONMAGICALLY. The latter is the key. It's not that the fighter cannot get access to magical means of crossing the gap via species, subclass or feats, it's that the human champion fighter cannot do it nonmagically.

To that I say: tough.

In D&D, magic is technology. If you eschew all magic, you get left behind. I would expect the Roman legions would be mowed down by a battalion of WW2 machine gunners. Advance or die. You don't get to say the Roman legionnaires get special bulletproof shields because it's not fair, you give them freaking firearms. If the fighter is left behind because it's non magical then make. him. magical.

The issue isn't with the fighter. The issue is with nonmagical. The fix is easy after that.

 

[Pedantic]

I think part of the problem is the assumption that a 25 ft gap should be an obstacle that involves multiple checks.

Let's take a 3rd level party. Low level right? How many ways can I cross 25 ft? Plenty. I can cast levitate, misty step, or jump. You can be an eladrin or shadar-kai and teleport. You can be a tabaxi and climb, or a dhampir and spider climb. You can be a druid and wild shape. You can be a fairy or aarakroca and fly. You can be a vhuman with fey-touched and misty step. And I'm SURE I'm missing plenty of options in subclasses and other features. Moral of the story is the game has intentionally made a 25 ft gap trivial. They have done the same for swimming, darkness, and even hunger and thirst.

I think it's even bigger than that. If character abilities are going to align with magical utility, then the conception of "challenge" needs to change over time and levels. It's not just "a pit is no longer a meaningful obstacle by 5th level" it's the scope of what an obstacle is. The scope of play needs to zoom out from getting from point A to point B inside a dungeon, to getting from point A to point B across the whole of the world, to getting from point A to point B throughout all of space/time, to distance no longer being considered in challenges.

That, and anything that amounts to "the players roll a skill check" isn't a challenge and should never be considered that way in adventure design. It's an incremental step in dealing with whatever the challenge is. We shouldn't think of "challenges being obviated by a spell" we should think of the player spending a resource in the pursuit of whatever their actual goal is. If a challenge can be completely circumvented by the available utility magic at the level you present it, then the issue was in conceiving of it as a challenge.

Which is not to say I wouldn't prefer a slightly redistributed and more uniform access to specific game changing utility effects. We should probably get a better handle on who can fly and when, and I'd love a set of DM advice that puts specific kinds of adventure in to clear level ranges where they are appropriate.

 

[HammerMan]

I ask because I feel the conversation is aimed to a specific point: it's not that the fighter cannot cross the pit, it's that he cannot do it effortlessly and NONMAGICALLY. The latter is the key. It's not that the fighter cannot get access to magical means of crossing the gap via species, subclass or feats, it's that the human champion fighter cannot do it nonmagically.

Do you not realize the thread you are in is not one about fighters or wizards those are just examples. It is about removing magical dependency. That is the name of what we are in talking. So yes I am talking about removing magic depending things.