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

[FrogReaver]

I believe feats/magic items would narrow the gap with casters. Magic Items specifically.

I think feats favor casters. Multiclassing definitely does.

Magic items are a bit iffy. Things like winged boots tend to help martials more. But when it comes to Wands of magic missile and fireball they may actually outdo magic weapons.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Hahaha,

Wizards multiclassing.

Oh mercy...

 

[Scribe]

I think feats favor casters. Multiclassing definitely does.

Magic items are a bit iffy. Things like winged boots tend to help martials more. But when it comes to Wands of magic missile and fireball they may actually outdo magic weapons.

Yeah, I would certainly curtail Magic items, or lean towards just providing them to Martials.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Fun question. If feats, magic items and multiclassing isn’t assumed then does that increase or decrease the martial/caster gap?

From where I sit it increases it.

On balance, probably.

The conventional wisdom was that feats like SS/CBE & GWM/PAM helped bring martials up to the level of damage that would balance them with casters. And, the fighter & rogue get bonus ASIs that can be used for feats. There are also feats that help casters quite a bit. Maybe if Fighters got as many bonus feats as they did in 3e (eleven) it'd clearly be in their favor. I think feats on/off is a wash.

MCing definitely helps casters, they can dip without losing slots (they do suffer painfully from missing top level spells if they can't get to 17 in one class, of course), and cantrips & save DCs scale with character level. MCing for martials can delay or waste Extra Attack.
MCing favors Casters.

Magic items can help non-casters a lot, armor boosts AC, weapons hit enemies you couldn't hurt or hurt as much and increases damage that scales with Extra Attack, other items add abilities non-casters can't acquire in other ways. For casters, magic items give them things they might be able to do with spells, so could save slots or even spell known, depending on when the item is acquired.
On balance, Martials benefit more from items.

 

[FrogReaver]

On balance, probably.

The conventional wisdom was that feats like SS/CBE & GWM/PAM helped bring martials up to the level of damage that would balance them with casters. And, the fighter & rogue get bonus ASIs that can be used for feats. There are also feats that help casters quite a bit. Maybe if Fighters got as many bonus feats as they did in 3e (eleven) it'd clearly be in their favor. I think feats on/off is a wash.

MCing definitely helps casters, they can dip without losing slots (they do suffer painfully from missing top level spells if they can't get to 17 in one class, of course), and cantrips & save DCs scale with character level. MCing for martials can delay or waste Extra Attack.
MCing favors Casters.

Magic items can help non-casters a lot, armor boosts AC, weapons hit enemies you couldn't hurt or hurt as much and increases damage that scales with Extra Attack, other items add abilities non-casters can't acquire in other ways. For casters, magic items give them things they might be able to do with spells, so could save slots or even spell known, depending on when the item is acquired.
On balance, Martials benefit more from items.

Consider this:

Fighter finds a +1 magic weapon, then a +2 magic weapon
Caster finds a wand of magic missile, then a wand of fireball

I agree that the +1 weapon bridges the gap compared to just the wand of magic missiles.
But I would say the wand of fireballs is stronger than a flametongue.

*Some quick back of napkin:
Assuming 30 rounds and 2 attacks per round and 60% chance to hit, flametongue will add 252 damage.
Assuming wand of fireball is used in situations where you can hit 3 targets and each target fails save 60% of the time then you'll do 22.4 damage * 3 for a total of up to 6 fireballs in a day = 403.2 damage. However, we need to subtract out the cantrip we would have been attacking with of -39.6 DPR -> 363.6

But wait there's more! The fighters previous +1 weapon doesn't add anything. Yet the wand of magic missiles is still useful.

Also, the same thing happens again if he ever gets to replace the flametongue.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Consider this:

Fair.

But the wands are "just" giving the wizard things he can already do, they save slots, which don't get me wrong, is powerful.

The swords, likewise don't give the Fighter anything new or different, but do give him moar damage.

But I was thinking of items that give the Fighter a new ability, like flight or whatever, a benefit he can't get on his own.
While the same item, again, just saves the wizard a slot.
So, narrowing the gap.
Never eliminating it, obviously...

 

[M_Natas]

Which is my point- if you make Wizards squishy, you have to build Fighters to defend them. But it really feels like most players don't want to defend anyone, they just want to swing big weapons and do big damage, lol.

I only have anecdotal evidence for this; maybe what's happening at most tables is that enemies just attack the Fighters no matter what they do- maybe it's because they do tons of damage, maybe it's part of a social contract or gentleman's agreement, maybe it's just because that's how things have always been done, maybe it's because the DM is tired of hearing "Shield! Silvery Barbs!"...I dunno.

I just know that good tanking options exist, but since people have a choice between those and the ability to deal more damage and we know that Champions are way more popular than Cavaliers, it sure seems like the player base has chosen.

Or maybe in their game Protection Fighting Style is enough, even though it's 1/turn, I really don't know, because I don't have the data.

But I still think it's telling that something I think would be a baseline Defender ability, like say, "any creature within 5 feet of you that's hostile to you has disadvantage on attack rolls against targets other than you or another character with this feature. An enemy is immune to this effect if it can't see or hear you or if it can't be frightened", is not only one choice out of several, it inexplicably isn't available until 14th level, lol.

The problem is, that defending other player characters (stopping enemies from attacking them) is nearly impossible.

A normal fighter/Barbarian whatever without specialised feats can only stop monsters hurting other characters, if he kills them first or if he is in in 5 foot wide bottleneck and can physically stop them from going trough.

If we build a defender fighter. Let's take a v.human fighter, level 1, that takes the sentinel feat and the protecting fighting style, now if he is in 10feet wide bottleneck, he can stop one monster with the sentinel feat from passing him and going to his allies.
That doesn't help against a Goblin horde or anything. And single boss Monsters would probably attack the fighter first anyway.

If you want a defender that can really protect other characters, with thencurrent rules, he needs more reactions for the sentinel feat or protecting fighting style to do any good.
And even if a "sentinel" class would have several reaction to stop several monsters from going trough, that still only works in bottlenecks or they just go around him.

 

[James Gasik]

The problem is, that defending other player characters (stopping enemies from attacking them) is nearly impossible.

A normal fighter/Barbarian whatever without specialised feats can only stop monsters hurting other characters, if he kills them first or if he is in in 5 foot wide bottleneck and can physically stop them from going trough.

If we build a defender fighter. Let's take a v.human fighter, level 1, that takes the sentinel feat and the protecting fighting style, now if he is in 10feet wide bottleneck, he can stop one monster with the sentinel feat from passing him and going to his allies.
That doesn't help against a Goblin horde or anything. And single boss Monsters would probably attack the fighter first anyway.

If you want a defender that can really protect other characters, with thencurrent rules, he needs more reactions for the sentinel feat or protecting fighting style to do any good.
And even if a "sentinel" class would have several reaction to stop several monsters from going trough, that still only works in bottlenecks or they just go around him.

I've brought this up in another thread- you can't go back to making casters require martials to protect them. First, you'd have to give all of them the tools to do so. But worse than that, most martial players don't want to. For instance, the best "defender" subclass for Fighter, Cavalier, is very rarely taken, for example. I submit that most 5e Fighter players are more interested in being damage dealers and wouldn't be happy with being "forced" to take the Defender role (a notable criticism of 4e design).

So putting the genie back in the bottle, and making Wizards "squishy" again, would just result in a bunch of dead Wizards lol. Modern design ensures anyone can have strong defenses, because you can't rely on anyone else to save your behind by default.

 

[M_Natas]

I've brought this up in another thread- you can't go back to making casters require martials to protect them. First, you'd have to give all of them the tools to do so. But worse than that, most martial players don't want to. For instance, the best "defender" subclass for Fighter, Cavalier, is very rarely taken, for example. I submit that most 5e Fighter players are more interested in being damage dealers and wouldn't be happy with being "forced" to take the Defender role (a notable criticism of 4e design).

So putting the genie back in the bottle, and making Wizards "squishy" again, would just result in a bunch of dead Wizards lol. Modern design ensures anyone can have strong defenses, because you can't rely on anyone else to save your behind by default.

You would need mechanics that make protecting work.
Like- a tower shield that you can put between you and your wizard buddy and Ranged attackers. You would also need mechanics to stop a bunch of attackers from getting past like a ...
"Wall of Slashes" (working title)
"As an action you brace your self to stop the incoming swarm of enemies - until the beginning of your next turn, you get reactions equal to (1+?)proficiency bonus.
When a creature enters or leaves your melee attack range, you can use one of your reactions to make a melee attack against that creature. When you hit the target its speed gets reduced to 0.

So you have two chances to stop a creature, when it enters your range and when it leaves it.
At level 1 you can stop up to three creatures, at level 5 up to four and so on.

It is quite strong (a lot of attacks) but also situational enough that that could work. Alternatively let it scale with extra attack.

 

[strawbellebelle]

The problem is, that defending other player characters (stopping enemies from attacking them) is nearly impossible.

A normal fighter/Barbarian whatever without specialised feats can only stop monsters hurting other characters, if he kills them first or if he is in in 5 foot wide bottleneck and can physically stop them from going trough.

If we build a defender fighter. Let's take a v.human fighter, level 1, that takes the sentinel feat and the protecting fighting style, now if he is in 10feet wide bottleneck, he can stop one monster with the sentinel feat from passing him and going to his allies.
That doesn't help against a Goblin horde or anything. And single boss Monsters would probably attack the fighter first anyway.

If you want a defender that can really protect other characters, with thencurrent rules, he needs more reactions for the sentinel feat or protecting fighting style to do any good.
And even if a "sentinel" class would have several reaction to stop several monsters from going trough, that still only works in bottlenecks or they just go around him.

This is the sort of thing that has to balanced out by the DM, because creating explicit "this creature can only attack [x]" abilities can easily be abused, or be too narrow in scope to truly be effective. You don't want to design the game in a way that encounters can be cheesed by forcing most if not all of the enemies to attack your toughest party member while your more vulnerable but harder-hitting party members are risk-free. At the same time, you still want a player who wants to build their character as a tank to be able to tank, and there are abilities that facilitate this, and this is something the DM should acknowledge and respect. Enemies are not omniscient like the DM and thus should be vulnerable to tactics like a tanky character drawing aggro, but at the same time the players have to thoughtfully position and maneuver so they don't draw most of that aggro their way.

One of my friends in my usual circle loves playing Cavalier, and I feel that subclass is actually a great way to test a person's merits as a DM—because the class fantasy is both about goading enemies to attack you and punishing enemies that attempt to harm your allies. It's a great subclass to demonstrate how well a DM can balance "enemies drawn to the PC who wants their attention" and "enemies still paying attention to other threats".