D&D 5E (2014) Should martial characters be mundane or supernatural?

[Minigiant]

I'm not sure what this thing about flying enemies is. Bring a bow. And longbow has far longer range than most (any?) damage spells.

I get that if you're Str-based, you'd rather attack wit it, but it is not like the bow will be completely useless.

Though the point made earlier about the ranges of throwing weapons was excellent, and a higher strength should increase their range. There also could be feats or class features that increased it further.

HP bloat in 3e, 4e, and. 5e means a martial lacks to feats and ASI to be good at both.

Fighters should have 12+ ASI/Feats with today's HP bloat. Other martials 8 or more.

 

[Minigiant]

Okay. I disagree with all of that.

30 feet per turn is not very fast.

Many historic martial classes/castes were good at ranged and melee.

 

[Oofta]

What were those enemies, that the high level wizard was ill equipped to deal with, exactly? Did the wizard have to face them regularly? Might they be an edge case?

There are plenty of creatures in the higher CRs with flight, and/or abilities that can only be countered by magic.

The wizard focused on fire based spells, all the monsters eere immune is one example. Monsters that have anti-magic of course also apply. For that matter an enemy that hides and ambushes because a readied spell is lost if not triggered. Anything with counterspell. I could come up with a few more if I cared.

I can't think of a single monster that can only be countered by magic other than a handful of curses or similar.

 

[Oofta]

30 feet per turn is not very fast.

Many historic martial classes/castes were good at ranged and melee.

I disagree that it matters or is a flaw.

 

[Micah Sweet]

HP bloat in 3e, 4e, and. 5e means a martial lacks to feats and ASI to be good at both.

Fighters should have 12+ ASI/Feats with today's HP bloat. Other martials 8 or more.

Reduction of hp across the board, on both sides (along with damage obviously) would go a long toward helping martials.

 

[Remathilis]

It doesn't matter what label you affix to high level Martials; Psionic, Supernatural, Mundane, Gazorniplat, or any other made up tag you can append on them to say "But this totally isn't magic!" They will never be balanced until they receive a degree of narrative control. And by receiving such narrative control, they will stop being able to fulfill the "Regular People" role that some people desperately want them to fill.

Sometimes, you just have to pull the bandage off and let the wound heal.

Which is my point entirely.

There is no way that we dial back magic in D&D to a level that would allow a totally mundane character to equal them. Magic is too prevalent, beloved and interesting to walk back. If you could somehow eliminate the vast majority of casters, half-casters, supernatural or pseudo-magical classes and subclasses so that nonmagical characters are a majority, you could do it. But pure mundane characters are a minority, relegated to two classes and a handful subs for those two classes. The sheer number of classes that have access to magical and near magical abilities is staggering, and that doesn't begin to address how magical species and feats have become, let alone magical items and monsters.

So we're fighting to preserve a sliver of the game that has become more and more irrelevant as time has gone on. It's time for D&D to fully embrace the superhero trope it's danced around for years and make all classes capable of overt supernatural abilities. Maybe we'll finally see this fighter/wizard discrepancy fade when both classes can access similar tools without jumping though narrative hoops.

 

[Corinnguard]

Fighters should have 12+ ASI/Feats with today's HP bloat.

So 12 ASI/Feats spread across 20 levels? The Fighter in PF1 could have as many as 22 feats by the time they reach 20th level. 11 Combat feats at 1st and every even level after 2nd level + 10 general feats at every odd level +1 if the fighter in question was human. I don't think anyone here wants to bring back a feat bloat.

As for ASIs, most players will put their highest ability scores into STR, DEX and CON. Since 5e has put a cap on how any ability score can go, it wouldn't take very long before the Fighter maxes out on those three ability scores.

 

[Minigiant]

I disagree that it matters or is a flaw.

This thread wouldn't exist if it didn't matter.

 

[Fanaelialae]

The wizard focused on fire based spells, all the monsters eere immune is one example. Monsters that have anti-magic of course also apply. For that matter an enemy that hides and ambushes because a readied spell is lost if not triggered. Anything with counterspell. I could come up with a few more if I cared.

I can't think of a single monster that can only be countered by magic other than a handful of curses or similar.

The wizard focusing exclusively on fire spells is a super edge case. Wizards get plenty of spells, and t is not hard for a high level wizard to slot in one spell of a differing damage type (or even a control spell, which tend to be stronger anyway) so that if you encounter something fire immune you can still function.

Very few monsters have legitimate anti-magic. Many have magic resistance, but that only helps if the spell targets a strong save. If you have to save against a DC 18 but only have a +1 and advantage, odds are pretty good you will fail that save. Edge case.

As for hiding/ambushing, you just set the ready action to trigger as soon as you see the creature. What, the creature going to hide for over a minute? The casters' allies couldn't find it with 10 rounds of searching? Massive edge case; I've never even seen this in several decades of gaming. Hide and attack next round? Sure. Hide until a readied spell expires? Never.

Counterspell is why basically every wizard I've seen prepares Counterspell. NPC tries to counter your spell? Counter their Counterspell. So it really only works if you have more NPCs that can Counterspell than PCs, in which case you've arguably crafted that encounter specifically to counter the caster(s). I too can craft an encounter to foil any character. That proves nothing.

All of these are edge cases.

 

[Oofta]

This thread wouldn't exist if it didn't matter.

I just see no reason repeat the same things endlessly. I don't have an issue with martial characters, I do not and never have had a problem with casters dominating the game.

Not sure how else I can say that I don't want all fighters to be supernatural, there are plenty of options for supernatural characters.