D&D 5E Spellcasters and Balance in 5e: A Poll

[Yaarel]

Sure, but the majority of your skill list didn't really apply. You listed cooking, but armies had specific cooks to feed the men. Almost none had the ability to cook proficiently. You listed medicine/first aid, but armies had special non-combat medics to take care of the wounded. The common soldiers didn't know enough to be proficient. And so on. Not a lot of non-combat skills are Fighter centric, which is why I'm grateful for backgrounds. I can get my Fighter any skill I want that way.

Those military cooks are Fighers too. Same with the medics.

The point of skills, is to let players pick which skills apply to their character concept.

 

[Maxperson]

Surely though, having these abilities implies the existence of, y'know, other things that come with it? Hence all the examples I gave earlier, of being highly observant, creatively exploiting opportunities, enduring things one shouldn't be able to endure, etc.

Like...you are demonstrating exactly the thinking that leads to Fighters getting shortchanged. It is not "let's give this a class," which often produces interesting and worthwhile mechanics (consider that the Bard and Paladin could have just been rolled into other classes, but instead they are both flavorful and very strong in 5e.) Instead, it's "but all they do is fight, so fighting is all they should get." Both parts of that principle are false; their prodigious skill manifests most clearly in fighting, but it is the skill that matters, not the fighting produced by it. And, as I've argued, it's just bad design to have classes that simply don't contribute to certain pillars of the game, if "pillar" is supposed to mean something important for play. Doubly so when it's...pretty much only Fighters (and to a lesser extent Barbarians) denied such; every other class, even some that have design that leaves things to be desired, actually participates SOMEWHAT in every pillar.

We have a fundamental disagreement here. I feel(and I know you feel differently) that subclass is where this should be addressed. There's plenty of room there to give a few good non-combat abilities without hurting the main class. The subclass is also where most of the flavor of the class comes from.

Like...it's one thing to argue "every class should have at least one area they're incapable of contributing to, so they have to depend on others to do that." It's quite another to argue that 5e actually does that, because every caster class (without exception) can have tools to address all three pillars simultaneously. Those tools might not always be useful in absolutely all situations, but they definitely are useful for obvious and relatively common situations: fireball, invisibility, enhance ability, etc. And it only takes one or two spells per pillar to be really quite good at that pillar. And some of these are so generally-applicable (such as enhance ability) that having them pretty much guarantees having something Very Useful to do at any time....particularly when short rests are uncommon (avg about 1-2 a day, rather than 2-3 a day*) and long rests happen much more frequently than intended (about every 3-5 encounters, rather than every 6-8*), as the designers have explicitly said.

Spells are really overrated in 5e. You can't cast many out of combat without gimping yourself in fights. Slots in 5e are really limited. And they are pretty short lived and often come with drawbacks(some very serious). A spellcaster has the ability to be good at all three, but not in the same day.

 

[Maxperson]

Those military cooks are Fighers too. Same with the medics.

Not very good ones. You didn't put your cooks and medics into battle. And they're clearly the ones that used some of their feats and backgrounds to get those skills. Those skills did not come from class or subclass, other than through ASI's.

That's not an argument not to give Fighter's something, but just that most of your skill list isn't attached to class or subclass.

 

[Mort]

They need to jettison "reality" for martials after 7th level and just accept that they become mythic figures/demigods. It's absurd that the 10th level fighter is making a jump check to get over 30' gaps. Give martials a different proficiency bonus, unlimited attuned items (and guaranteed gear that is magic just because it is used by a warrior of renown), significantly more stats (and uncap their maximum). Fighters, Monks, and Barbarians should get expertise as well, and then a third tier at 10th level that unlocks superhuman stunts. Swim up a waterfall, punch through stone, kill with a glance, lasso a tornado, tumble between reality with your acrobatics to teleport your movement, or pickpocket someone's skill. If we can devote half the book to spells, we can add some pages for each skill to outline mythic usage.

And this is where things tend to break down.
People seem to be perfectly comfortable allowing mages reality bending powers because MAGIC (even if they argue with the specifics etc. magic is accepted).

Give fighters abilities beyond the norm and suddenly people are arguing about reality, about physics , about "how is that possible.." etc. Sadly "because mythic" doesn't have near the weight of "because magic..."

Bottom line there is no consensus on what the fighter is supposed to be - so arguments are rampant.

 

[Minigiant]

Those military cooks are Fighers too. Same with the medics.

The point of skills, is to let players pick which skills apply to their character concept.

In Orc Village, everybody fights

Cook fights.
Blacksmith fights.
Herder fights.
Nanny fights.
Even orc who plants flowers to make village pretty fights.

 

[Yaarel]

In Orc Village, everybody fights

Cook fights.
Blacksmith fights.
Herder fights.
Nanny fights.
Even orc who plants flowers to make village pretty fights.

Probably they all have levels in Fighter or Barbarian.

 

[Vaalingrade]

This is from the 3.5 MM.

"Level Adjustment
This line is included in the entries of creatures suitable for use as player characters or as cohorts (usually creatures with Intelligence scores of at least 3 and possessing opposable thumbs). Add this number to the creature’s total Hit Dice, including class levels, to get the creature’s effective character level (ECL). A character’s ECL affects the experience the character earns, the amount of experience the character must have before gaining a new level, and the character’s starting equipment. See pages 172, 199, and 209 of the Dungeon Master’s Guide for more information."

Half-dragons were intended for use as PCs from day 1.

3.5, not 3e. That's what I was saying.

3.5 was not day 1.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Archetypes can be expressed as background and class.

Entertainer Bard.
Criminal Rogue.
Outlander Ranger.
Artisan Artificer.

These are mostly wrong. For example bard is not just some entertainer, they're a practitioner of powerful magical tradition, nor is a rogue necessarily a criminal.

So a general's intuition and insight cannot help him or his allies in combat?

I'm sure they do. That's represented by their battlemaster manoeuvres.

But that's my point

The fighter knight is a big ball of violent stupid.

No, they aren't. Or the can be, but they don't need to.

The main way to make a knight with brainpower is to indoctrinate him with religious fervor.

No, that's not brainpower, that's being a divine champion.

And too me, that's a falling of D&D because it locks fighters out of being in aspects of noncombat if literally anyone but the barbarian wants to do it

Simply not true. Seriously, take skills, take feats for noncombat stuff, use your feats and skills. It is getting really tiresome when people just keep pretending that half of the existing mechanics in the game do not exist.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

We have a fundamental disagreement here. I feel(and I know you feel differently) that subclass is where this should be addressed. There's plenty of room there to give a few good non-combat abilities without hurting the main class. The subclass is also where most of the flavor of the class comes from.

Then yeah, we maybe just don't have anything further to say to one another. I have much higher standards for what I expect of classes and find subclasses mostly inadequate to address the underlying gaps in the class itself.

It is worth noting, though, that at the very least you're specifically saying that the first two levels should thus leave Fighters and Rogues completely high and dry, since (unlike all full-casters except Bard) they have to wait for 3rd level to get their subclass.

Spells are really overrated in 5e. You can't cast many out of combat without gimping yourself in fights. Slots in 5e are really limited. And they are pretty short lived and often come with drawbacks(some very serious). A spellcaster has the ability to be good at all three, but not in the same day.

Even if you're averaging 6 combats a day (which, again, most groups express that that would be an impractical pace), that only means 6 combat spells are needed. Every full caster can do that (and, admittedly, little more) by 3rd level, aka the moment a Fighter or Rogue get their subclass. By 5th level, when casters are getting access to things like fireball, the caster has enough mojo to drop a spell every combat and still have three left over. It only gets worse from there. And, yes, you can certainly argue that 1st-level spells become less valuable for combat (for example), but they usually do not become less valuable for utility--meaning the Wizard can dedicate most of her high-level slots to combat while still offering extremely strong utility. (And that doesn't even count ritual casting, which blows the whole "spell slots are precious" thing out of the water.)

If you're like a more typical group, where you do roughly 4 combats a day (give or take one) and get 1-2 short rests between them, the full-caster can quite easily have about as many spell slots as the Battle Master has total expertise dice that day. 5th level Wizard who forgets she has Arcane Recovery: 9 spells. 5th-level Fighter getting two short rests a day: 12 superiority dice. Are spell slots really that precious? (Spell-recovery features, such as Arcane/Natural Recovery and Harness Divine Power, can potentially let you exceed the number of expertise dice a BM gets.)

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Simply not true. Seriously, take skills, take feats for noncombat stuff, use your feats and skills. It is getting really tiresome when people just keep pretending that half of the existing mechanics in the game do not exist.

What part of this is something a full-caster cannot also do? None.

Does the full-caster pay a higher opportunity cost for such tools? Generally, no. In fact, theirs may be lower.*

General mechanics that give everyone an opportunity never have fixed the problem, and never will. It's that simple. It's getting really tiresome when people keep pretending that half the existing mechanics somehow benefit Fighters more than all the other classes that can take them.

*Casters can be--and, indeed, usually are--single-attribute dependent so by 8th level they can take whatever feats they like, while Fighters almost certainly need most of their ASIs purely because they're inherently MAD. Casters benefit far less from combat feats than Fighters do, with only a couple feats making much impact at all (mostly Concentration bonuses and, if mono-element blasting, Elemental Adept). Yes, Fighters get 2 more ASIs/feats than casters, but because those feats aren't front-loaded, they must wait for them. Further, the Fighter is only 1 feat ahead starting at level 6, and only gets that second feat at level 14. A Variant Human caster is actually ahead of a non-VH FIghter until level 6, and doesn't actually fall behind until 14.