D&D 5E Thoughts on Improving Martials

[Azuresun]

If your group uses fewer than 6-8 encounters per long rest (which is very common, but outside of the game design), then adding these boosts helps to rebalance martials with casters.

Read the DMG. You will see it uses the 6-8 encounter as an example, if the encounters are at a certain threshold of difficulty. 6-8 was never ever presented as holy writ that you must adhere to or you're Doing It Wrong. Every time I read this, I become steadily more convinced that most people never read the relevant section themselves, they just read someone else say that online and accepted it without checking. I believed that too for a while, before I went back and read it for myself.

Seriously, read the DMG.

Hey look! This thread again!

Obviously, the solution is to make every class as complex to play as a fully optimised wizard or sorlockadin. That's what everyone who plays D&D secretly wants.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

Hey look! This thread again!

There is nothing new under the sun. But everything under the sun is new to someone.

 

[Neonchameleon]

If the fighter's player feels like their only option is to stand in melee and hit a target in the face repeatedly THEN THEY SHOULDN'T PLAY A FIGHTER. Or, crazy thought here, play the Battle Master fighter and get powers
If someone hates managing lots of spell slots and reading through dozens of spells every level to pick the best option then they shouldn't play a wizard. The solution isn't to make the wizard simpler and less complex

The solution for the wizard player is to play a warlock - who's both a caster and pretty simple. I see no remote equivalent for fighting types. 4e had the fighter as complex. 3.5 had the Warblade and Crusader (and as far as builds were concerned the Fighter) as complex and the Barbarian as simple. The closest to a complex martial class is the monk.

You can't fix bad players making bad decisions with more rules

And the Shove action is already in the game. You can already do that in place of attacking.
But no one does because dealing damage with the sword is more effective

Which just demonstrates the opportunity cost of shove is too high. You can make players make boring decisions with poor rules.

Then swing on the goddamn chandelier
What's stopping you? The absence of a Chandelier Swing power?

The only rules it has is an acrobatics check or fail and by default it provides no bonuses. D&D 5e feels as if it wants to be a cinematic game - but there's neither rules nor guidance to make cinematic stunts work. Swinging on the chandelier is just penalising yourself with no benefit by the RAW and so if the DM puts them in the players are encouraged by the rules to leave them alone.

If you want more interesting battles the DM needs to PUT IN THE WORK and make interesting battlefields. With cliffs and chandeliers

...

And what does pushing a target 10 feet actually do?
In 4th Ed it worked because creatures could only step 5 feet without taking a reaction. In 5e they'll just circle around the fighter to where they were.
Unless there's a pit or a brazier or a pool of slime, pushing a creature is just shuffling tokens on the board. It's the illusion of doing something cool

In 4e it worked because (a) flanking was a thing and (b) because because forced movement was everywhere 4e DMs were encouraged to use actually interesting terrain. You made a firepit and someone would be put into it. You made a pit trap and someone was going into it. But because 5e was set to use "theatre of the mind" (while having distances designed for battlemaps) they took away the forced movement. With fewer ways of interacting with the background the backgrounds reverted to green screens as putting in the actual work had a lot less point as you couldn't do as much with it. A brazier it's not worth interacting with or a pool of slime people just walk round as if it was a mud pit is the illusion of there being something cool that might as well just be CGI'd in.

 

[Mind of tempest]

They exist
People who like the idea of spellcaters but hate complexity also exist. And people who hate complexity but the party needs a healer
Should we make the wizard and cleric much, much simpler then?

yes ideally.

 

[Steampunkette]

Obviously, the solution is to make every class as complex to play as a fully optimised wizard or sorlockadin. That's what everyone who plays D&D secretly wants.

Big part of why I'm trying to make it a non-optimized non-class-specific not-full-maneuver system and instead just some minor combat options that a player can ignore without "Nerfing" their character class.

Though the real problem for Martials is out of combat and in skills. Because the current skill design of the game has one system trying to uphold two entire pillars and it effectively disadvantages martials twice in it's structure.

First their skill options are very limited and have few selections. And second that it often relies on Int/Wis/Cha which Martials don't prioritize because their three-pillar priority is on the Str/Dex/Con axis of stats. Yeah, backgrounds exist and the Skilled feat exists (for those tables that use feats), but that doesn't solve the underlying problems of the system it just adds in an opportunity cost to playing a less skill-centric class.

Skills in general being the Rogue's thing and the Wizard being good at Knowledge skills and the Bard/Sorcerer/Warlock being good Faces leaves Barbarians and Fighters, and to a lesser degree Monks, Paladins, and Rangers largely twiddling their thumbs for skill-use sections of the game. It's a very heavy sacred cow.

In retrospect it probably goes a long way to explain why the Social Aspects of the game are largely meant to be weighted by RP and Arguments with the actual charisma skills largely useless except in expediting that process in games where RP is less important to the players, or when trying to make a swift argument in the middle of a combat sequence, and similar situations.

The more I think about it, the more I feel like Skills in general need a radical overhaul as a design space. Maybe make skills into a "strictly" exploration pillar function with a separate Social System? I've been running over options all night in my head. Minimal sleep.

 

[Composer99]

The solution for the wizard player is to play a warlock - who's both a caster and pretty simple. I see no remote equivalent for fighting types. 4e had the fighter as complex. 3.5 had the Warblade and Crusader (and as far as builds were concerned the Fighter) as complex and the Barbarian as simple. The closest to a complex martial class is the monk.

I don't think the warlock - like the sorcerer - is particularly simple. Not at the same scale as, say, a step or two above champion fighter. Even as early as 3rd level, options and complexity start scaling up (and up).

If you want a dead-simple caster, I think it'd be better to have a class with, say, two combat and two utility cantrips (that the class chooses for you), three "spell-adjacent" abilities that you pay a resource for that refreshes on a long rest (such as healing, buffing, and radiant damage for, say, a simple cleric) - again, that the class chooses for you - and then, over a 20-level path, a handful of actual spells that you get to cast at will (or almost at will) - again, with the options chosen for you. This would be a dead simple caster class, even so, the class would still be more variegated than most baseline 5e martials.

---

On topic, I think having the baseline martials, a full-on manouevre/exploit system (accessible via subclasses and maybe one specialised class), and Steampunkette's proposed adjustment:

Big part of why I'm trying to make it a non-optimized non-class-specific not-full-maneuver system and instead just some minor combat options that a player can ignore without "Nerfing" their character class.

would go a long way to making the things work for any kind of player who wants to play non-magical characters to their desired level of mechanical complexity.

 

[Disgruntled Hobbit]

The solution for the wizard player is to play a warlock - who's both a caster and pretty simple. I see no remote equivalent for fighting types. 4e had the fighter as complex. 3.5 had the Warblade and Crusader (and as far as builds were concerned the Fighter) as complex and the Barbarian as simple. The closest to a complex martial class is the monk.

There's the Eldritch Knight, the Battle Master, and the Paladin. Plus adding feats that grant additional spells or a level dip into a spellcasting class
We don't four or five new classes just to provide every conceivable option with a complex and simple version. We don't need a complex rogue and barbarian as well as a simple cleric and bard

Which just demonstrates the opportunity cost of shove is too high. You can make players make boring decisions with poor rules.

When it's worthwhile shoving people, you do so. But 5e isn't a tactical combat game. Positioning matters less and forced movement adds little
My GM gave my fighter a magic sword that lets them shove 10 feet for free with every attack. I almost never use that property because it just means I need to burn 10 feet of movement

Try it. When your players make an attack and roll a 1 or 2 on a damage die, let them push a creature 10 feet. It makes the 1s and 2s more exciting and adds movement to the game. And it shouldn't break balance because forced movement don't do anything
See how much it gets used

The only rules it has is an acrobatics check or fail and by default it provides no bonuses. D&D 5e feels as if it wants to be a cinematic game - but there's neither rules nor guidance to make cinematic stunts work. Swinging on the chandelier is just penalising yourself with no benefit by the RAW and so if the DM puts them in the players are encouraged by the rules to leave them alone.

Nobody plays entirely by RAW
Even adventurer's league encourages their GMs to adjudicate for fun
The book can't include 60 pages of interacting with every conceivable bit of terrain

If your GM is so inept that they can't think of a bonus to grant when a player spends their action swinging on a chandelier then find a new GM

In 4e it worked because (a) flanking was a thing and (b) because because forced movement was everywhere 4e DMs were encouraged to use actually interesting terrain. You made a firepit and someone would be put into it. You made a pit trap and someone was going into it.

And because the 5e DMG doesn't encourage you to use interesting terrain you can't do so?
Fire pits don't exist in 5e because there's no RAW?

But because 5e was set to use "theatre of the mind" (while having distances designed for battlemaps) they took away the forced movement. With fewer ways of interacting with the background the backgrounds reverted to green screens as putting in the actual work had a lot less point as you couldn't do as much with it. A brazier it's not worth interacting with or a pool of slime people just walk round as if it was a mud pit is the illusion of there being something cool that might as well just be CGI'd in.

Theater of the mind is just the default
You can still use minis with braziers and slime pools if you want

 

[Neonchameleon]

I don't think the warlock - like the sorcerer - is particularly simple. Not at the same scale as, say, a step or two above champion fighter. Even as early as 3rd level, options and complexity start scaling up (and up).

If you want a dead-simple caster, I think it'd be better to have a class with, say, two combat and two utility cantrips (that the class chooses for you), three "spell-adjacent" abilities that you pay a resource for that refreshes on a long rest (such as healing, buffing, and radiant damage for, say, a simple cleric) - again, that the class chooses for you - and then, over a 20-level path, a handful of actual spells that you get to cast at will (or almost at will) - again, with the options chosen for you. This would be a dead simple caster class, even so, the class would still be more variegated than most baseline 5e martials.

The warlock chassis I'd call only a step or two above the fighter chassis - but there are no actively and aggressively simple subclasses, and character creation (as opposed to play experience) is harder. I really must put out some version of my Arsonist...

Fundamentally just as the Warlock is capable of saying "I hit it" in combat with everything pre-calculated so they don't have to worry too much about other in-combat actions. Unlike e.g. the sorcerer they don't have to worry about things like slots and spell levels; they have two slots and that is it and their spells are always max level so you recalculate at level up. And only one spell per level, something that only grows slowly.

 

[Vaalingrade]

@Steampunkette : If you wanted actual constructive discussion on this issue, you probably should have made it a (+) thread. Otherwise you're going to get a lot of 'martials should continue to eat garbage and be grateful posts.

 

[Neonchameleon]

There's the Eldritch Knight, the Battle Master, and the Paladin.

Two of the three of which are only complex because they are casters and you need to juggle spell slots and spell levels. Can you not see how irritating it is to reply to "there aren't complex martial characters" by giving casters as your examples of complexity. And I'd hardly call the Battlemaster complex; with the right choices it's easier to remember the things it does than the Champion is.

Plus adding feats that grant additional spells or a level dip into a spellcasting class

Once more you are offering casters. You are making people choose between concept and execution.

Someone who understands and engages within the details of their environment such as the unevenness of the floor and minor distractions should be more complex than someone who merely opens their pre-canned magical effects.

We don't four or five new classes just to provide every conceivable option with a complex and simple version. We don't need a complex rogue and barbarian as well as a simple cleric and bard

"All martial characters" aren't "every conceivable option". An actual martial expert is not obscure.

If your GM is so inept that they can't think of a bonus to grant when a player spends their action swinging on a chandelier then find a new GM

And I trust you will follow your own advice and find a new DM because your DM can't think of a bonus to grant when you throw someone ten feet across the room?

Spending an entire action to swing on a chandelier is in most cases daft. You're not actively stabbing. And it's an extremely stingy DM who wouldn't just take your move action and object interaction.

And because the 5e DMG doesn't encourage you to use interesting terrain you can't do so?
Fire pits don't exist in 5e because there's no RAW?

Apparently they don't in your game. You were after all complaining that your magic sword that pushes people ten feet isn't worth using.

But there's a feedback loop going on. Almost no one has forced movement therefore interactive terrain isn't really worth spending the effort to use. And because interactive terrain isn't worth spending the effort to use DMs like yours don't so forced movement becomes almost worthless