D&D 5E The Fighter/Martial Problem (In Depth Ponderings)

[ECMO3]

I’m not sure if even magic items narrow the martial caster/gap.

If previously the wizard was casting fly but now he is using that slot offensively, the net result is that he has more slots.

I don't really agree with this. It presumes he had fly to start with and had it prepared.

When you consider all the awesome 3rd level spells, and then you consider about 80% of Wizards also want to prepare Fireball for some reason, you are left with a distinct minority that actually have fly. When they do have it, it is generally only prepared for a few levels in tier 2 before it is replaced by a higher level spell.

 

[ECMO3]

maybe, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't make it a viable playstyle for anyone who wants to play a defender

It is still a viable playing style though. Especially if you want to defend someone else in melee. You just need to build to it with fighting style and feats geared towards this.

 

[Emberashh]

This topic more than anything just reveals that the root problem is that a comfortable norm has been established in 5e and thus fixing its problems means violating that norm.

Not a problem if you can accept some people will be upset, but it does become one if you fool yourself into believing you can have it both ways and fix the game while not upsetting someone. You need to have a vision and stick with it, and you need to be confident enough in that vision to sell that its all for the sake of better fun, no matter whose toes get stepped on by phantoms.

But anyway, as to the defender role Ive found that tends to be rooted in the fact that 5es combat system doesn't actually feature active defense as a core component.

Its added in after the fact through exceptions, but the only core mode of defense in the core system is passive; AC.

That is the reason from a game design perspective that defenders, both the few classes that try it and just as a general role to play, aren't panning out in 5e.

That isn't to say though that active defense is better than passive, nor that you couldn't do both, but when you're only doing passive, no amount of exceptions is going to build up a desirable playstyle without becoming so dense that it then becomes unplayed anyway just because it has to build up an entire core system in the design space of a Class, or even worse a subclass.

 

[MuhVerisimilitude]

The problem is also two fold. Other methods of preventing damage are better than healing, yes, but healing insid e combat also is useless when you want to retain your damage output.
Characters are as efficient at 100% HP as if they were at 1% of their HP.
But because healing is usually less than the damage a creature makes, it also makes no sense to waste a healing spell on somebody with 1% HP to get him up to 8%, because the next attack will do 10% damage, bringing him to 0 anyway.
So the only useful use of healing in Combat is to bring a character back from 0 HP.

We could bring back the bloody condition or be even more gradual, like:
Bloddy: When you are below 50% HP you have disadvantage on ability checks.
Very Bloddy: When you are below 40% HP, your speed is halved.
Extremley Bloddy: When you are below 30% you have disadvantage on attack rolls and saving throws.
Ultra Bloddy: When you are below 20% you only can take an action or bonus action or reaction per turn.
ULTRA EXTREM BLODDY: When you are below 10% your speed is reduced to 0.

Now it makes sense to heal, because we have several thresholds of worsening conditions.
At the moment the only threshold for any effect is 0 HP.

Of course with such conditions the chance of a death spiral gets higher.

That's a bit tricky to keep track of with all the thresholds.

I propose a different method:

Each time you take damage such that your HP is below 50% you accumulate Obstructions (better name pending). You can have multiple obstructions.

Example: A character with 20 HP takes 11 damage and is at 9 HP and 1 obs. They take another hit and are down to 4 HP and now 2 obs.

Every time a character with an obstruction attempts an attack or casting a spell, the GM may remove an obstruction from the player to force disadvantage on the attack roll for the rest of the turn, or force a spellcaster to roll a concentration check or lose his spell.

 

[M_Natas]

That's a bit tricky to keep track of with all the thresholds.

I propose a different method:

Each time you take damage such that your HP is below 50% you accumulate Obstructions (better name pending). You can have multiple obstructions.

Example: A character with 20 HP takes 11 damage and is at 9 HP and 1 obs. They take another hit and are down to 4 HP and now 2 obs.

Every time a character with an obstruction attempts an attack or casting a spell, the GM may remove an obstruction from the player to force disadvantage on the attack roll for the rest of the turn, or force a spellcaster to roll a concentration check or lose his spell.

That is a less complex solution and more elegant. I like it.

 

[Pedantic]

That's a bit tricky to keep track of with all the thresholds.

I propose a different method:

Each time you take damage such that your HP is below 50% you accumulate Obstructions (better name pending). You can have multiple obstructions.

Example: A character with 20 HP takes 11 damage and is at 9 HP and 1 obs. They take another hit and are down to 4 HP and now 2 obs.

Every time a character with an obstruction attempts an attack or casting a spell, the GM may remove an obstruction from the player to force disadvantage on the attack roll for the rest of the turn, or force a spellcaster to roll a concentration check or lose his spell.

This doesn't necessarily solve the problem the proposal was targeting though. You're now targeting a threshold of 50% to keep HP above, which does give you another reason to provide healing before someone goes down, but you're actually exacerbating the round/max HP inflation problem because you need enough space to make heals efficient relative to incoming actions, and sufficient padding to make them worthwhile.

What wound penalties really do is improve the other end of the healing problem, giving you some answer to "why didn't I damage the enemy instead?" by effectively tacking on an increase to the DPR of the healed party member. That's a bit of a balancing act, but it's probably doable.

 

[MuhVerisimilitude]

This doesn't necessarily solve the problem the proposal was targeting though. You're now targeting a threshold of 50% to keep HP above, which does give you another reason to provide healing before someone goes down, but you're actually exacerbating the round/max HP inflation problem because you need enough space to make heals efficient relative to incoming actions, and sufficient padding to make them worthwhile.

What wound penalties really do is improve the other end of the healing problem, giving you some answer to "why didn't I damage the enemy instead?" by effectively tacking on an increase to the DPR of the healed party member. That's a bit of a balancing act, but it's probably doable.

That's a good point.

You'd need something to incentivise healing more.

 

[jgsugden]

This topic more than anything just reveals that the root problem is that a comfortable norm has been established in 5e and thus fixing its problems means violating that norm...

Slow down and examine why a comfortable norm exists.

If I don't go and touch my thermostat, is it a problem? Likely - no. It is likely because the temperature is actually fine. Perfect? Likely not. But if we're not seeing an overwhelming outreach to fix something - it likely isn't broken. Really - balance is not a point. It is a range. We do not want equality because true equality requires greater uniformity (like we saw in 4E design), and that just isn't D&D. So long as players can enjoy playing fighters and wizards in the same party - we're good. And as proven over and over - we are good.

However, if you go back to AD&D - the fighter / magic-user relative power levels were broken. Wizards were too weak at the start, and too powerful after the early to mid levels. It felt like you were punished at low level as a magic-user so that you could rub it in their faces at high level. That left a lot of players feeling unhappy if a campaign ended early, or if it ran too long.

However, in 5E, my low level wizard doesn't feel outclassed by the fighter at low levels. They both get to do fun and interesting things. Cantrips and a better combat balance make the wizard more competitive. At higher levels, I still maintain that the fighters are typically dealing more damage that wizards to a solo target. People like to shove out their corner case optimized approaches - but those are corner case, and many of them are contingenct upon concentration. Further, they often focus only on offense and not on the defensive capability of the classes - or their endurance levels as wizards taper off and diminish over time while fighters tend to have more endurance, especially with multiple combats per SR and multiple SR per LR actually utilized.

 

[Pedantic]

That's a good point.

You'd need something to incentivise healing more.

You know what, it might be easier to approach the problem backwards. If you didn't want to fuss around with wound penalties, you could add healing as a standard rider alongside buff spells. A lot of the best "healing" spells have historically been buff spells that led to increased HP pools as a secondary measure, think classic Bear's Endurance, or Enhance ability to suddenly increase a character's max HP, while stacking on a saving throw bonus (plus it had better scaling than a lot of other heals you could put in the same slot). Admittedly that wouldn't play great with concentration in 5e, but that probably is an overused mechanic anyway, and a lot of the problems of 1 minute duration buffs fades when you add an incentive to wait for an ally to be injured to use them.

That has the psychological benefit of providing two bonuses instead of alleviating a penalty and lets you eat up the +DPR portion of the action budget spent on healing spells without needing to mess around with total HP numbers. Somewhat philosophically similar to 4e's move to pull healing out of the damage dealing action economy. It does still have the awkwardness of trying to time their use as efficiently as possible though.

 

[Emberashh]

But if we're not seeing an overwhelming outreach to fix something - it likely isn't broken.

Do you not spend a lot of time in tabletop spaces?

One can argue that the internet isn't strictly representative of the greater DND audience, but you also don't have anyway to speak to what the greater DND audience cares about. Not even WOTC truly can, as their best tools for doing so all distort reality in some way (which is just a consequence of what they are).

But what can be held up as a objective measure is that people who go online and talk DND like this are the most passionate parts of the audience, and the most highly tuned to the actual game design underlying these issues.

And these people are constantly arguing about martials vs casters, and while theres seldom a consensus on how to fix martials (why the debate is perrenial), there is one on casters generally being too powerful relative to them.

As a game designer you need to be conscious of (and have) your own vision, so while I personally think magic needs to be nerfed into the ground and casters along with it, that isn't necessarily the approach WOTC should take. But neither is leaving casters and magic alone.

That is the norm I'm referring to, by the way, is the disproportionate amount of power casters wield. And frankly, I don't consider combat magic to be the issue specifically; outside of people underselling how effective Martials are in combat, how Casters fare in combat just isn't an issue in general.

Its all the utility magic thats really causing this problem. All these low cost buttons that only exist to turn off entire game mechanics. Your goodberry and tiny huts and all that.

That crap needs to be nixed and fast, as does the ridiculous things at high level like Wish or Simulacrum.