D&D 5E Spellcasters vs. Warriors

[ArmoredSaint77]

I note in some discussions these days that some people seem to like the idea of radically simplifying the weapons and armour lists, sometimes even to the point of including only categories of light/medium/heavy armour and using these as catch-alls for all armour types. And we've certainly seen the weapon list considerably stripped down since the old AD&D days.

But one almost never sees a call to radically simplify the spell lists. We still see an enormous chunk of most players' handbooks taken up with spell descriptions for dozens and dozens of tedious pages. I get the feeling that this choice reflects an unconscious favoritism towards spellcasters on the part of the game designers.

I don't think it's fair that half of the book is given over to super-detailed descriptions of the spellcasters' toys, while those of the warriors are kept down to one or two pages. I like having lots and lots of interesting and mechanically distinct choices for my characters' weapons and armours; maybe we don't need all the polearm types AD&D had, but I did like the distinction between, say, the "broadsword" and longsword.

What if we applied the same perspective often taken on the weapons and armour lists to the spell lists? i.e. maybe we can stuff spells into simple, broad categories of deals damage/inflicts status effect/has out-of-combat use, etc. What, after all, is the real difference between the effects of most of these spells in terms of game mechanics other than flavor text?

Alternately, equal space should be given to lavish descriptions of weapons and armour, and numerous rules associated with each individual type, thus equalizing the time, space, and effort that tools and toys of each of the class types. It would be nice if future editions would make such an effort.

 

[bedir than]

players about casters: they should always be allowed to cast a spell
players about martials: track ammo and disarm them

 

[Mind of tempest]

players about casters: they should always be allowed to cast a spell
players about martials: track ammo and disarm them

yeah, what is that? no one really uses ingredients in spell casting so it can't be balanced out that way.

I think the spell list should certainly be tweaked for some more basic niche protection.

 

[Steampunkette]

I note in some discussions these days that some people seem to like the idea of radically simplifying the weapons and armour lists, sometimes even to the point of including only categories of light/medium/heavy armour and using these as catch-alls for all armour types. And we've certainly seen the weapon list considerably stripped down since the old AD&D days.

But one almost never sees a call to radically simplify the spell lists. We still see an enormous chunk of most players' handbooks taken up with spell descriptions for dozens and dozens of tedious pages. I get the feeling that this choice reflects an unconscious favoritism towards spellcasters on the part of the game designers.

I don't think it's fair that half of the book is given over to super-detailed descriptions of the spellcasters' toys, while those of the warriors are kept down to one or two pages. I like having lots and lots of interesting and mechanically distinct choices for my characters' weapons and armours; maybe we don't need all the polearm types AD&D had, but I did like the distinction between, say, the "broadsword" and longsword.

What if we applied the same perspective often taken on the weapons and armour lists to the spell lists? i.e. maybe we can stuff spells into simple, broad categories of deals damage/inflicts status effect/has out-of-combat use, etc. What, after all, is the real difference between the effects of most of these spells in terms of game mechanics other than flavor text?

Alternately, equal space should be given to lavish descriptions of weapons and armour, and numerous rules associated with each individual type, thus equalizing the time, space, and effort that tools and toys of each of the class types. It would be nice if future editions would make such an effort.

I think it's less a subconscious bias toward spellcasters and more a matter of trying to condense what isn't actually -that- important.

It's hard to trim down the spell list because each spell encapsulates it's own idea, or represents a given idea with an increased level of power in some meaningful way.

But whether your 1d8/1d10 longsword has a basket hilt and a single edge or a straight tapered blade edged on both sides is far less important than how it is enchanted and what you can do with it.

Hence the Advanced 5e/LevelUp focus on Combat Maneuvers. Cool things to do with your d8 weapon is more important than designing a dozen finicky little details that separate your d8 weapon from a dozen other weapons that also do 1d8 of damage.

 

[ArmoredSaint77]

It's hard to trim down the spell list because each spell encapsulates it's own idea, or represents a given idea with an increased level of power in some meaningful way.

But whether your 1d8/1d10 longsword has a basket hilt and a single edge or a straight tapered blade edged on both sides is far less important than how it is enchanted and what you can do with it.

Hence the Advanced 5e/LevelUp focus on Combat Maneuvers. Cool things to do with your d8 weapon is more important than designing a dozen finicky little details that separate your d8 weapon from a dozen other weapons that also do 1d8 of damage.

Why couldn't each weapon or armour be represented as encapsulating its own idea or meaningful power increase?

Why can't my sword's basket hilt or edges be represented as providing a some sort of in-game bonus on par with a spell?

Why must cool, interesting features restricted to spells?

In truth, I'd rather see spells scaled down in power and reduced in number rather than see weapons and armour scaled up. But I reject this mindset we seem to have that only spellcasters deserve tons of pages of cool stuff they can do with their toys, while we get only a bare handful.

 

[RangerWickett]

In the old school Talislanta game, there were 12 spells.

Heck, in the original Street Fighter 2, renowned wizard Ryu had three spells. Ken had the exact same spells. I suppose you could add in the special moves the other characters had, you get this list of 6 spells:

Electric Skin (Blanka)
Energy Ball (Dhalsim, Guile, Ken, Ryu, Sagat)
Energy Blast (Dhalsim)
Flight, 1 round (Blanka, Chun-Li, E Honda, Ken, M Bison, Ryu)
Haste (Chun-Li, E Honda)
Jump (Guile, Ken, Ryu, Sagat, Vega, Zangief [though he only ever cast it once he had someone grappled])
Stretch Limbs (Dhalsim)

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

I wouldn't limit spellcasters, but I would encourage creative play and customization with warrior characters. Possibly something like letting every martial character get some of the Battle Master's Maneuvers, and making differences between weapons besides damage type (flails, warpicks, and morningstars are all identical besides damage type, and the easily ignored weight/cost differences). I quite like the optional weapon "actions" that are added in Kobold Press's Midgard Heroes Handbook, which allow for unique actions and bonuses for using different weapons (Greatswords can hit two people at once to deal less damage to each target, rapiers can be used to deflect attacks as reactions, tridents can be used to pin down enemies, etc).

 

[Steampunkette]

Why couldn't each weapon or armour be represented as encapsulating its own idea or meaningful power increase?

Why can't my sword's basket hilt or edges be represented as providing a some sort of in-game bonus on par with a spell?

Why must cool, interesting features restricted to spells?

In truth, I'd rather see spells scaled down in power and reduced in number rather than see weapons and armour scaled up. But I reject this mindset we seem to have that only spellcasters deserve tons of pages of cool stuff they can do with their toys, while we get only a bare handful.

... I literally directly referenced Combat Maneuvers as cool and interesting features.

Anyway. A Basket Hilt may protect your hand... but what would you have that -do- in the current weapon system? Allow the person to use the weapon to make an unarmed strike for less damage? Why would anyone bother? Further, players can already strike to subdue, and so could simply -describe- clobbering someone over the head with a basket hilt, or a pommel, or the flat of their blade if they don't understand how swords work.

And why would we make that basket hilt on par with a big flashy effect that a spellcaster can do a limited number of times per day? Or does the basket hilt fall off the sword after 3 uses and require a long rest to repair?

No. By far, the better direction to go is to change how a person uses a weapon through Combat Maneuvers that function in a spell-like fashion. Limited uses, like spells, a recovery system, and interesting effects.

Far better to leave the weapons flexible in description and function rather than going all Cheese Shop on it.

136 It's Not a Gaming Session Until Someone Quotes Monty Python - Giant in the Playground Games

www.giantitp.com

 

[FrogReaver]

Why can't my sword's basket hilt or edges be represented as providing a some sort of in-game bonus on par with a spell?

It could, but any such bonus is going to be pretty boring. It's either something your almost always going to use, almost never going to use, or the game becomes so fiddly that very few like it.

Manuevers would be the martial equivalent of spells. One could give each weapon a specific manuever that the character can expend a 'manuever resource' to perform. That would give different weapons different baked in flavor beyond the handful of properities in 5e. It would require all martial characters get some manuever resources. One could make a pretty cool system where martials learn combat manuevers, where each martial class was differentiated by a large degree to what manuevers it has access to. That said, this concept is fast approaching 4e. Though maybe a 5e caster/4e martial style game would be pretty successful, my gut is that one would really have to work on the number of manuevers, the magnitude of them and their number of uses to get the right feel.

 

[Blue]

I note in some discussions these days that some people seem to like the idea of radically simplifying the weapons and armour lists, sometimes even to the point of including only categories of light/medium/heavy armour and using these as catch-alls for all armour types. And we've certainly seen the weapon list considerably stripped down since the old AD&D days.

Which, to put in context, is effectively already only a very few option because players really only play best in class. When was the last time you've seen a character who was primarily about weapons wielding a trident unless it was something special? My guess would be "never" for most tables, because it's one of the also-rans. Most of the simple weapon list is also the same.

So the idea is to expand the narrative of what weapon wielders can do by having categories and allowing reskinning. So it opens up the possibility of the character wielding any weapon they want to, within the categories, because they are all the same. As opposed to only wielding a few, best in class weapons and mechanically penalizing characters who want to use other weapon types.

But one almost never sees a call to radically simplify the spell lists. We still see an enormous chunk of most players' handbooks taken up with spell descriptions for dozens and dozens of tedious pages.

Every time we've gone to a new edition, we've cut down the spell lists.

But these aren't apples to apples. Weapons are by and far primarily used mechanically in a single pillar of play, combat. Spell on the other hand are more applicable to different pillars of play, so need to have more because they are applicable in so many more situations.

Also we have different styles of casters with limited overlap in the types of spells they have. It's like if we had classes "bluntmaster", "pokielord" and "slashhacker" that each needed there own full spread of weapons. However, we've seen from 3.x that over-specializing characters on specific weapons was harmful to play, requiring DMs to customize magical items very specifically to the character. It's something they have intentionally gone away from in 5e.

Finally, one of the sacred cows of D&D is spell levels. So we need to populate each level. The idea of spells that natively can be upcast using higher level slots for more effect is new to 5e (though it was back in the old d20 Wheel of Time RPG), I expect that by the next edition that may cut down, but picture if the weapon list needed to have nine levels worth of weapons, accessible as the characters leveled up. That would need a lot more weapons to cover the niches.

Basically, once you get beyond the most superficial simularities that they are both lists, it becomes apparent that they aren't really comparable in this way.

What if we applied the same perspective often taken on the weapons and armour lists to the spell lists? i.e. maybe we can stuff spells into simple, broad categories of deals damage/inflicts status effect/has out-of-combat use, etc. What, after all, is the real difference between the effects of most of these spells in terms of game mechanics other than flavor text?

We've already gone through about how the spells differ, so I won't repeat that.

If you want to bloat the game with weapon lists that only certain classes can use, and then break them up that you don't get access to them until certain levels, and then make that they all have varied non-combat uses. This one is good for diplomacy, this one is good for transportation, then it's compatible.

But, when you put it like that, it's already done. The list of magic items has pages and pages of unique weapons, with interesting powers that sometimes are about other pillars of play. Add those onto your weapon lists in your head.