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

[ECMO3]

Depends on the game's assumption. Feats? Number of encounters.

To me, as the game describes, if a party is metering their resources for 6-8 encounters an encounter should end on turn 4. Latest by turn 5. Provided that the encounter isn't a boring white room.

And that only happens (in my experience) if your PCs powergame, the DMs hand out magic items, or the encounters are boring whiteroom solo monster slugfests.

Because vanilla unoptimized PCs built for flavor not roided up by DM help. Woof.

The Hill giant example above and facing a 5th level party of a Rogue, Wizard, Cleric and Fighter will on average die in the third round

This is a party with an 18 in the prime stat. Fighter doing 2 attacks with 1d8+6, Rogue making a 1d8+3d6+4 sneak attack every round without advantage, Wizard casting Firebolt and Cleric casting Word of Radiance.

This includes +7 attacks against an AC13 and for the cleric cantrip a +4 save against DC 16. This includes crits.

The party in this example uses no spell slots, no limited resources, no bonus actions or reactions at all, no subclass or racial abilities and still wins this in 3 rounds.

On average the fighter does 46 of the 105 damage that Hill Giant takes in part of 3 rounds.

 

[ECMO3]

The way 5e is assumed, the fighter is supposed to be the highest damage dealer (as damage is all they have).

This myth is the biggest problem with this discussion. Damage is not all they have. They have 2 skill proficiencies as part of their class and numerous other things available through subclasses and feats. Even a default fighter build with Athletics and a high strength is going to have a ton of resource-free control at their disposal against anything up to one size larger than them.

The fighter subclasses and the fighter feats are part of the fighter class chassis and those need to be included in any reasonable discussion on the fighter as a class. You would not talk about Wizards without including spells in the description, and if you did then Wizards are FAR weaker than fighters.

To put this subclass and damage discussion into context - If we forget about subclass abilities the highest damage melee fighter is a two-weapon fighter. The 5th level two-weapon fighter with an 18 will even keep up with a GWM with a 16. Yet anyone who has extensive experience playing knows that TWF is one of the weakest ways to play a fighter. The reason this is not an ideal or even average way to play a fighter is largely because of the effective subclass abilities you are ignoring and because doing damage is not the only thing a fighter does.

This is before we get to backgrounds and races which are a part of every single PC.

 

[ECMO3]

Whose talking about a one on one fight.

It's a party of 4-5 vs a giant.

I posted data from a party of 4 normal PCs above as well and the fighter was the biggest damage dealer without using any metered resources and without considering any bonus actions, reactions or subclass abilities. The Giant would have died faster in a fight with 4 fighters or in a fight where the fighter actually used limited resources.

And in such a fight in a ~7 encounter day, the damage of a fighter with their resources metered out is low unless you power game or get DM granted Items.

No it isn't. It is high compared to the other characters and it is high without considering anything brought to the table by subclass or limited resources.

In a 7 encounter day with 2 short rest you will have Action Surge and Second Wind in 3 out of those 7 encounters. To those limited resources, over the course of the day you can add in another 9 Battlemaster Maneuvers or 6 Arcane Shots or 3 uses of Giants Might or 6 uses of psionic dice or 4 uses of Unwaivering Mark attack, or a number of uses of Unleash Incarnation equal to your Constitution modifier ........

When a fight is lasting 3 rounds on average you are using those limited resources on A LOT of your tuns.

Now if everyone novas every fight because there are only 1-3 encounters a day with short rests, the average expectation is different.

Actually the longer day favors the fighter because most of their abilities recharge on a short rest where spell slots for the most part dont.

 

[Scribe]

BTW UU Counterspell was a cost problem.

Not even good enough for Vintage or Legacy however, and there are roughly 1382 different Ux 2cmc counter cards, with various conditions.

Its a strong card (UU Counter unconditional) but its not remotely as bad as you seem to imply, nor is the design space of counter magic.

The only issue, is actually that of design space. Its about as good as it could ever be, and Wizards is in the business of selling new cards, forever.

Its played in 1 eternal format.

 

[Voadam]

Stuff like this happens in myth and fairy tale all the time. That's why I use the term. The transmundane has exceeded the limits of mundanity, but it is expressly not "magic," certainly not in the hyper specific form "magic" takes in D&D.

Can you give some specific examples? None are coming to mind.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Stuff like this happens in myth and fairy tale all the time. That's why I use the term. The transmundane has exceeded the limits of mundanity, but it is expressly not "magic," certainly not in the hyper specific form "magic" takes in D&D.

Epic levels are where we should expect myth and fairy tale to be how the world works, no?

No. Not necessarily, for all characters.

To me, that’s a different game from D&D. D&D does modern fantasy, not really myth and folklore.

The Thief of Legends ED in 4e was cool as hell, but I would never want all rogues or even all thief rogues to get that flavor just because they chose that class/subclass.

Where that might live though, is in epic boons and very high level feats. The game I’m writing based on the SRD has a Legacy feature at level 20 that might drop to level 16 that is thematically similar to epic destinies, with most being class, species, shared class feature, or other trait, locked. Others are more general.

 

[Pedantic]

Stuff like this happens in myth and fairy tale all the time. That's why I use the term. The transmundane has exceeded the limits of mundanity, but it is expressly not "magic," certainly not in the hyper specific form "magic" takes in D&D.

Epic levels are where we should expect myth and fairy tale to be how the world works, no?

... except with actual rules, instead of appropriate story beats. Games result in repeatable magical techniques and systems, less the tragedy of Bellaraphon and more "I can drop rocks with my flying horse, the chimera can't even reach me."

 

[Alzrius]

Stuff like this happens in myth and fairy tale all the time. That's why I use the term. The transmundane has exceeded the limits of mundanity, but it is expressly not "magic," certainly not in the hyper specific form "magic" takes in D&D.

Epic levels are where we should expect myth and fairy tale to be how the world works, no?

I agree, and I like "transmundane" as an idea, but for me I'd want to know what the in-character cause is that results in this effect. Why and how are certain characters able to transcend the mundane, as those characters understand it? It doesn't have to be the same cause for everyone, there can be many different ways of exceeding mortal limits, but what are those ways (and, to extend the idea, how will people try to exploit them)?

 

[ECMO3]

Some are fine with saying they are adventuring around with 80 vials of chemical throwing weapons in addition to their armor and sword for an extra 80 pounds of gear.

Others would say even this Pathfinder alchemist with 16(?) vials showing is pretty ridiculous.

80 vials is about 3 cases of beer in weight and less than that in bulk if you optimize the shape of the bottle, and while I have never walked around all day with 3 cases of beer the standard rules are pretty clear that adventurers in d&d world can carry 15 times their strength score before being slowed down at all.

I think carrying around the equivalent of 3 cases of beer is a lot less ridiculous than some of what people want martials to be able to do, or for that matter what they already can do RAW. Because with my IRL average strength I can carry 3 cases of beer. I can't do a lot of things fighters can do.

 

[Minigiant]

I rarely see this "crippling overspecialization" that you're talking about. Most people playing a fighter pick a fighting style and stick with it. I would agree that 3E had an issue with this, there were certain feats you absolutely had to take. I think I've seen 1 GWM and 1 PAM in public games, I have yet to see them in my home game. I have seen a few players with SS for archers, but that's a pretty OP feat.

I've seen almost ever weapon user who isn't a rogue have PAM, GWM, or SS by level 10. Even the warlocks. Even the "noobs".

If I r the DM doesn't adjust feats, these feats are always picked at tables I've been at or heard of.

Your claims of how dangerous a hill giant are is greatly exaggerated, my challenge calculator puts this at an easy encounter. A pair of hill giants that focused fire could possibly take out one PC, but would still be fairly easily defeated.

Your claim of requiring over specialization and requiring magic weapons simply doesn't add up.

I didn't claim the hill giant is dangerous. Just that it has too many HP too low of a level and martials' damage doesn't increase as fast as monster defenses without powergaming and magic items.

The Hill giant example above and facing a 5th level party of a Rogue, Wizard, Cleric and Fighter will on average die in the third round

This is a party with an 18 in the prime stat. Fighter doing 2 attacks with 1d8+6, Rogue making a 1d8+3d6+4 sneak attack every round without advantage, Wizard casting Firebolt and Cleric casting Word of Radiance.

This includes +7 attacks against an AC13 and for the cleric cantrip a +4 save against DC 16. This includes crits.

The party in this example uses no spell slots, no limited resources, no bonus actions or reactions at all, no subclass or racial abilities and still wins this in 3 rounds.

On average the fighter does 46 of the 105 damage that Hill Giant takes in part of 3 rounds.

18 prime stat?
But everyone a few dozen pages back said you don't have to powergame on a martial.