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

[Emberashh]

And it begs the question, if the subclasses are the real meat... why not just make them into classes.

Why make classes when subclasses are free to be as specific as they like?

Theres really not a meaningful difference in the ideal. A better execution would clear the discrepancy.

And in fact, Id actually peg its the ASI structure thats where the issue is with the discrepancy, as well as the overall class design philosophy of padding out levels with repeats. (Ie, Action Surge can just indicate when it improves. It doesn't need to take 3 other levels worth of space)

If you relegated extra ASIs as subclass specific, and compressed repeated abilities, then youd have a ton of room for all kinds of things, whether its in the subclass or not.

 

[Clint_L]

To defeat the enemies without an enormous expenditure of effort and without taking serious wounds.

You act like a warrior challenging a group of lesser enemies is somehow rare. It isn't. At all.

I did? When? It isn't rare. I showed that the crappy fighter from the example handles the situation no problem. Just like the literal superheroes that you've posted pictures of.

You know, you make a big deal out of this being "solo". I know why. It is because of course a fighter is stronger with a party. And by party, we mean spellcasters to do the heavy lifting. After all...

No, it's because that was the scenario that you laid out.

Oh look, this is an ideal situation for a wizard's strongest trait? Weird. See, the fighter won initiative in both our examples, and it wasn't commented on. But now we have to specifically mention that the wizard is in trouble if they don't win initiative.... because of course, they AREN'T in trouble if they do. And we once again see, large group of enemies? Ideal for the wizard. Single enemy? Ideal for the wizard. Kind of hard to find a combat situation that a wizard can't be ideal for. Wonder if that means anything.

It wasn't commented on because it makes no difference. You can have the orogs win initiative if you want. The fighter still easily wins. Unlike the wizard, he is not vulnerable to being instantly overwhelmed.

Single enemy is not ideal for a wizard, depending on the enemy and the spell selection of the wizard. In general caster single target DPS is weak, and a comparable foe (i.e. just on the edge of a deadly encounter rating) is likely to have some combination of a huge pile of hit points, strong resistances (possibly even legendary), and special attacks. The fighter's offence is more or less the same, though that will change with the new masteries.

The wizard in this situation should be able to take out the orogs faster (i.e. drop some high level fireballs or even a meteor swarm), but if they lose initiative and don't have the right spells to escape, they could also die - the fighter is basically at zero risk. Also...I thought part of the set-up was conserving resources - if the fighter isn't allowed to use action surge or second wind, what are you having the wizard give up?

Also interesting you want to compare the near legendary magical plate armor to the magical equivalent of a shield, an uncommon item if memory serves. Strange that.

+2 AC is +2 AC. What does rarity have to do with the math, when we are doing a thought experiment? Weird objection, but okay.

As for the subclass? Sure, get rid of the wizard's subclass. It actually does not matter.

But, you will declare with sneering confidence, I complained about the fighter using his resources, so surely the wizard can't use spells right? Except, you misunderstand my complaint. My complaint has focused on the AMOUNT of resources, ie ALL OF THEM. A wizard casting a 2nd level at-will spell costs nothing. Them casting a free 3rd level spell is negligible. Just like Batman using a smoke bomb. Sure, it is a resource, but it is such a small, meaningless resource to their overall power that it doesn't really leave them weakened for the next fight.

Okay, so what is the limit you are putting on the caster that is comparable to the limits you are putting on the fighter? I mean, the fighter still wins their battle easily, but if you would define your parameters more clearly it might save us some disagreement.

Honestly, I skimmed your fight. Because I felt and still feel that the hp left at the end proves my point. I original made the example to show that the fighter would lose about 50% of their health, then found it was all of it.

But fine, I went back and looked it back over again. First, I do apoligize, it seems I mismathed at some point and 184 is the correct hp for 16 con.

I am now going to do this without action surge and without second wind. And I'm going to do it twice, once with 22 and once with 23. It should be easy to keep them inline.

Round 1: Fighter kills one Orog. Not sure how you think only eight could attack, since one can throw a javelin. That is 16x10+7 = 167 potential damage, 16 greataxe attacks, and a javeling. 25% to hit ends with the fighter taking 41.75, which I will round to 41. 20% is 33.4 which I will round to 33.

Round 2: Fighter kills one Orog, eight left. 16 attacks, 160 potential damage. leaves us with 40 and 32
Three: Fighter kills one Orog, seven left. 14 attacks, 140 potential damage. 35 and 28
Four : Fighter kills one Orog, six left. 12 attacks, 120 potential damage. 30 and 24
Five: Fighter kills one Orog, five left. 10 attack, 100 potential damage. 25 and 20
Six: Fighter kills one Orog, four left. 8 attacks, 80 potential damage. 20 and 16
Seven: Fighter kills one Orog, three left. 6 attacks, 60 potential damage. 15 and 12
Eight : Fighter kills one Orog, two left. 4 attacks 40 potential damage. 10 and 8
Nine: Fighter kills one Orog, One left. 2 attacks 20 potential damage. 5 and 4
Ten: Last Orog dead

Total for the 22 AC fighter is 221 damage. At 184 hp, that is death.
Total for the 23 AC fighter is 177. At 184 hp that is 7 hp left. Not 56.

So, without action surge and second wind, the fighter is one bad roll away from death, if they are a champion or have a 23 AC. Because, remembere, we aren't talking maximum damage. We've been ignoring Crits this entire time. A single crit and your champion is dead. Aha! But the champion didn't crit! Okay, and? Sure, the champion will crit 15% of the time, but we also assume the champion never missed a single attack. 15% of the time will be crits, which will count as a little extra damage (+4.5 per crit) but somewhere around 30% of the time the champion will miss, correct? Even if we give them a magical +3 sword that only means their miss rate equals their crit rate, and a missed hit subtracts more than a crit gives.

So, actually, if we account for missing the enemy, then... doesn't the 23 AC fighter die too?

No, the fighter, being a champion, starts healing at below half health, which you have not accounted for.

Or if you want to go with the cavalier, he takes less damage due to deflecting some attacks and kills the orogs a bit quicker but there are a lot more variables.

I will grant you that the purple dragon knight does die if they don't use their special abilities, since their sub-class features only benefit their allies. Same for arcane archer, because obviously.

Echo knight annihilates the orogs. Eldritch knight, same; barely takes a scratch. Psi warrior doesn't chew through them quite as fast as the echo knight but still has no problem. Rune knight tanks it easily with Hill Rune alone, setting aside finishing a bit quicker as well. Samurai does about the same as the champion.

Are you seeing the pattern? Even the more powerful fighter subclasses aren't really changing this. Sure, they can survive, but it is through spending more and more resources, often daily resources they can't get back on a short rest.

Seeing the pattern that your initial claim, that the fighter would die, disproven, so you keep shifting goalposts to claim that the fighter won't win easily enough, according to non-defined parameters? That pattern?

I believe him too, because most parties have wizards to shift the balance dramatically in the parties favor. So it certainly seems like the Fighter isn't going to struggle. Until you take away that powerful tool they were relying on.

No, I showed that the fighter handles trash mobs very capably by themselves.

I'm sorry, unless they use their what? Magic. Actually, that is kind of the entire point.

80% would be good. I was going to settle for 70%

26 AC? So that's legendary +3 plate mail, and a +3 shield, along with a +3 weapon. Let's math it out then

No, my fighter is a champion, so that's still the original +2 plate mail you stipulated. I added the weapon and shield. Wasn't your challenge to see how well they could do with magic? Are you walking that back, now, and nickel and diming the magic I chose? Like, if you're going to do that, then don't frame it as an open challenge - just state your parameters up front.

4d8+40 or an average of 58, actually only three attacks kills an Orog. 26 AC is only hittable with a crit, so 5% but all that damage would be doubled. I'll count the attacks and then do the damage after.

R1: Kills 1.25 orogs, suffers 17 attacks
R2: Kills 2.50 orogs, 16 attacks

R3: Kills 3.75 orogs, 14 attack
R4: Kills 5 orogs, 10 attacks
R5: 6.25 orogs, 8 attacks
R6: 7.50 orogs, 6 attacks
R7: 8.75 orogs. 4 attacks
R8: 10 orogs dead

That is 75 attacks, which is about 3 to 4 crits (3.75 actually.) Which would be between 60 and 80 damage. Leaving them with... 68% to 57% of their hit points.

An Orog critical hits for 16 damage (weapon damage x2+4), so the exact number is 60.

Huh... wonder why you said 81%, were you perhaps using some action surges or assuming more extra damage from an outside source?

No, I forgot that each hit would automatically be a critical, leaving the fighter with 68% health. But, since you challenged me to use whatever magic I want, run it again with a cloak of displacement, or any of a bazillion other combinations of gear that you typically see on level 20 characters.

Still, for an encounter most wizards would yawn through, if we equip the fighter with the absolute best gear, they might pull through with almost three-quarters of their health. Maybe.

Would most wizards yawn through that? I think most wizards would be on a knife edge depending on what spells they took and how the initiative roll went?

Clearly there is no power disparity between the classes right?

Are we no longer discussing how well fighters can handle trash mobs? There is obviously power disparity between all classes, at all levels.

Why is being able to fight 10 CR 2 monsters without using significant resources unrealisitic? I mean, at the top of this post I showed five instances of martial characters in basically this same or worse situation.

You showed five superheroes. Can I win points by showing a cartoon of Batman facing a bunch of mooks and barely surviving? Because there are tons of examples. Or Conan, if you prefer. What are we arguing about here - D&D? Comic books?

 

[Minigiant]

And in fact, Id actually peg its the ASI structure thats where the issue is with the discrepancy, as well as the overall class design philosophy of padding out levels with repeats. (Ie, Action Surge can just indicate when it improves. It doesn't need to take 3 other levels worth of space)

If you relegated extra ASIs as subclass specific, and compressed repeated abilities, then youd have a ton of room for all kinds of things, whether its in the subclass or not.

This is 100%. And the cause of this is the same cause of this 100 topic.

Grognard appeal.

Not that grognard are bad people. It's just to me that after the first few levels, almost every D&D RPG does the repeating class feature garbage that causes the disparity. And it seems to be due to wanting to appeal to grognards who desire a simpler game.

But in the effort to appeal to grognards who don't even want to play high level D&D and rarely do, the game designers. made high level wonky for the rest of us.

Why does the Fighter get an extra ASI/feat at level 6 and 14?
Why does the Rogue get a bonus ASI at level 10?
Why not actual class feature when at the cusp of Tiers 2, 3, and 4?

 

[bert1001 fka bert1000]

You showed five superheroes. Can I win points by showing a cartoon of Batman facing a bunch of mooks and barely surviving? Because there are tons of examples. Or Conan, if you prefer. What are we arguing about here - D&D? Comic books?

Where are all the fantasy examples of D&D like Wizards? No one ever comes up with a good list. D&D spellcasters are self-referential and only resemble D&D. There are few examples of D&D high level Wizards in fiction because the power set makes for bad narratives. Even the D&D fiction I've read doesn't depict them like the game.

Funny enough, comic books seem to reflect them better -- ala Dr. Strange.

 

[Emberashh]

This is 100%. And the cause of this is the same cause of this 100 topic.

Grognard appeal.

Not that grognard are bad people. It's just to me that after the first few levels, almost every D&D RPG does the repeating class feature garbage that causes the disparity. And it seems to be due to wanting to appeal to grognards who desire a simpler game.

But in the effort to appeal to grognards who don't even want to play high level D&D and rarely do, the game designers. made high level wonky for the rest of us.

Why does the Fighter get an extra ASI/feat at level 6 and 14?
Why does the Rogue get a bonus ASI at level 10?
Why not actual class feature when at the cusp of Tiers 2, 3, and 4?

To give an idea of my ideal:

And I wouldn't say grognards have an issue with high level play so much as the gonzo; but even that isn't a universal opinion. DCC is a hell of a lot wilder than 5e is and its well beloved.

Plus, do any grognards even care what mainline DND is doing anymore?

The OSR has perhaps slowed over the yeard, but I think that strain of DND fan has long since segregrated themselves into their own games.

The only ones I can think of that might would be those coming back to the hobby after so long, but they eventually find their way to the OSR from what Ive seen.

 

[Minigiant]

And I wouldn't say grognards have an issue with high level play so much as the gonzo; but even that isn't a universal opinion. DCC is a hell of a lot wilder than 5e is and its well beloved.

Plus, do any grognards even care what mainline DND is doing anymore?

It's not the grognards that made 5e's high levels get wonky.

It's more WOTC appealing heavily to or oversampling grognards in its initial design that did it. In their apology for other editions, WOTC put slightly nerfed version of overpowered magic back into the 1-20 level mindset while stripping away or paring back most other defined effects and rules.

Because Forcecage has to be in the PHB. You might not play long enough to used it in the game as a PC. Your campaign might die before the wizard casts Forcecage. But it has to be in the PHB and Basic Rules!

 

[bert1001 fka bert1000]

Because Forcecage has to be in the PHB. You might not play long enough to used it in the game as a PC. Your campaign might die before the wizard casts Forcecage. But it has to be in the PHB and Basic Rules!

True, there is a some of the "must have the iconic spells in the game". Which btw around 100 spells are iconic.

But they did nerf some spells a little vs. 3e so there is no reason they couldn't have put in: "If you have a Str score of at least 20, you can break through a wall of force by doing X damage. If you crit while attacking the wall, the entire wall is dispelled."

It goes back to either the high level is just ignored and not really thought about much at all, or they like this disparity.

 

[Remathilis]

There is nothing in the existing fighter narrative which implies 'limited to earth-standard capabilities'.

There is nothing in it that implies superhuman ones either!

Spoiler: Fighter PHB

Fighters learn the basics of all combat styles. Every fighter can swing an axe, fence with a rapier, wield a longsword or a greatsword, use a bow, and even trap foes in a net with some degree of skill. Likewise, a fighter is adept with shields and every form of armor. Beyond that basic degree of familiarity, each fighter specializes in a certain style of combat. Some concentrate on archery, some on fighting with two weapons at once, and some on augmenting their martial skills with magic. This combination of broad general ability and extensive specialization makes fighters superior combatants on battlefields and in dungeons alike.
...
Not every member of the city watch, the village militia, or the queen's army is a fighter. Most of these troops are relatively untrained soldiers with only the most basic combat knowledge. Veteran soldiers, military officers, trained bodyguards, dedicated knights, and similar figures are fighters.

Some fighters feel drawn to use their training as adventurers. The dungeon delving, monster slaying, and other dangerous work common among adventurers is second nature for a fighter, not all that different from the life he or she left behind. There are greater risks, perhaps, but also much greater rewards—few fighters in the city watch have the opportunity to discover a magic flame tongue sword, for example.

Honestly? Kinda boring. You're some kind of professional combatant. You know all fighting styles but specialize in a certain one. Hell, the description even talks about finding a magic weapon!

So I'm with you. We can make this fighter mythic. Interesting. Exciting. And the first step is to chuck this boring oatmeal of a class description in the dumpster and give him something worthy of being a class.

"Fighters* aren't your typical soldiers or guard. They have a destiny. Some gain this destiny at birth as the scions of dragon, giants or gods. Others forge their own destiny mastering esoteric forces like psionics, rune magic or spirit. As a fighter travels in the world, they unlock more of their destiny, making them capable of supernatural feats that bards sing of. Eventually, their master the source of their destiny and unlock powers to rival the mightiest magic.

While a fighter's destiny is often discovered early, it does not mean their fate is foretold. The battlefields of history are littered with fighters who were unable to fulfill their destiny, and some of the greatest villains in history are those who discovered their destiny was far different than they believed. Ultimately a fighter's story is not written in stone, they merely have the tools necessary to carve it out."

*Even the name is boring. Paragon, Warrior, something.

That has sizzle! What's your destiny? Dragon samurai? Rune knight? Psi-warrior? Titan-born? What's your powers? Flying and breathing fire? Enchanting your weapons, armor and body with mystic runes? Telekinesis and psychometabolics? The raw strength and stamina of the Gods? There are plenty of options for expansion too: echo knights and durnamancy, inheritors and legacy weapons, Incarnates and chakras, the possibilities are endless.

And you only what this will cost? The Champion. The boring, nonmagical fighter who is defined by a fighting style and some hit points. No powers, no origin, no destiny. Slightly more interesting than an NPC. That's what you lose: the everyman. But you're already comfortable with killing him: at 10th+ level you already want him doing things beyond mortal limitations. And so do I. I just want him doing them a.) Sooner than 10th and b.) With a narrative reason.

We both want more interesting fighters. We're arguing lore justification. You could convince me and Micah with one compromise. Isn't that worth it?

 

[Minigiant]

It goes back to either the high level is just ignored and not really thought about much at all, or they like this disparity.

It was ignored.

It had to be in the game but no one on the design team was paying attention to it.

Like Gnomes. And Monks.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Oh well, it's just that, the Weave requires a deity to maintain. See Karsus's Folly or the Spellplague for what happens if that isn't the case. Dark Sun doesn't have gods, and while magic functions differently there, as typical spells tap the lifeforce of living creatures (unless you're a Preserver), it still functions in a fairly stable way.

Unless the Weave has been retconned to make it work, I guess.

Also, even if the Weave is the default, other sources of magic, like Shar's Shadow Weave still exist, right?

Yeah, I don't understand how the Weave supposedly works everywhere either. I've always assumed lazy writing was the answer.