D&D 5E Truly Understanding the Martials & Casters discussion (+)

[Neonchameleon]

This is the kind of divisive post that sets both sides against each other. Nobody is saying martials can’t have nice things.

I’ve just suggested that splitting an inherently magical world into casters and non-casters, is an arbitrary decision made by the person creating their character.

And I'm telling you that this is complete and utter nonsense. Splitting an inherently magical world into casters and non-casters was an arbitrary decision made by the designers of (non-4e) D&D. And they then emphasised that decision by such methods as separating the spells into their own chapter of the book, giving them distinctive mechanics as spells such as verbal, somatic, and material components and making them interact with other things such as Counterspell in a set way.

When you say it's "an arbitrary decision made by the person creating their character" the arbitrary part of the decision is to play Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition.

The discussion of whether fantastical is magical demonstrates how important it is to keep these abilities as spells where the power mimics a spell.

And now you undermine your own argument. If the decision to split the world into casters and non-casters is an arbitrary one then there is no need to keep the abilities as spells because the distinction is only arbitrary. And the discussion of whether the fantastical is magical demonstrates how important it is to ensure that fantastical abilities aren't spells so the people who want such abilities are actually able to have such abilities.

Otherwise it all descends into judgement calls about when it works and when it doesn’t. I don’t believe fighters should for some reason be able to fly 60 ft in any direction at will, in any circumstance, without concentration checks, or limits, when other classes can’t. That has never been their Schtick.

And this is a pure strawman as far as I can tell. Can you find me someone who's advocating for that?

 

[Fanaelialae]

You may frequently repeat what your idea isn’t.

I’ll openly admit I’m conflating arguments from the endless martial-caster threads. Which can be summarized as why-cant-fighters-have-nice-things/why can’t casters control the narrative but non casters cant. If you’re saying people don’t say this then I’ll link the dozens of places they do say it.

If this isn’t you argument, instead of saying again what it isn’t. Why don’t you say what it is (or link to your post instead of understandably not wanting to repeat yourself)

The point is that it doesn't necessarily have to involve innate magic.

If the fighter were to automatically acquire a few magic items as they level, sure that's technically magic, but it's external to the fighter. It doesn't make the fighter inherently magical.

If the fighter were to automatically acquire a loyal mercenary company as they level, there's no reason to expect that's innately magical whatsoever.

There are plenty of potential upgrades for fighters that aren't innately magical. Some upgrades may be magical, while other exceptional upgrades walk right up to the line but don't step over it.

I mean, come on, most of the Ki abilities that make the monk awesome could be reflavored as explicitly non-magical without any effort. I punch faster. I can punch and dodge. Even something like Stunning Blow can be explained as either pressure points or ringing someone's bell. These are real things in the real world that real martial artists are capable of without magic. No one would think "magic" if you saw an action star like Jackie Chan doing those things in a movie. They think, "he's just that good".

 

[Neonchameleon]

Let’s be honest, a battle masters abilities make the battlemaster better at things they are already good at. They don’t let them fly, turn invisible or teleport. They improve skills, or they improve attacks. There are some corner cases that add codify other powers but again things that a fighter could reasonably already do, like healing.

Let's be honest, there is not one single battlemaster maneuver in the PHB that actually makes the battlemaster better at skills. The only thing they get that adds to their skills is the ability to observe things. I'm glad Tasha's Cauldron of Everything went some way to fixing this.

But let's be equally honest. What is being asked for for the "heroic" fighter is two basic things:

• The ability to be better out of combat than an equal level commoner - which the fighter isn't and the pre-Tasha's battlemaster barely is.
• The ability to do things they can already do but better. To give some examples of pretty high level suggested fighter abilities:
  • Upgrading jumping (which they can already do) to the ability to leap small or even tall buildings in a single bound. And attack flyers in the process.
  • Upgrading the ability to kick down wooden doors or kick through ticky-tacky walls (which they can already do) to kick bank vault doors off their hinges or kick their way through castle walls.

Now these aren't things normal people can do but they are in line with the high level fighter archetype and letting them do things they already do, better. None of them are flying, turning invisible, or teleporting.

It’s just like a rogue’s abilities like sneak attack or cunning action let them do things they already do, better.

So why not let fighters do this?

Now a Battlemaster can also use magic. It’s called magic initiate/multiclassing.

Yes - but unless they do and without Tasha's options they remain a glorified commoner.

 

[Baldurs_Underdark]

[...]

• The ability to do things they can already do but better. To give some examples of pretty high level suggested fighter abilities:
  • Upgrading jumping (which they can already do) to the ability to leap small or even tall buildings in a single bound. And attack flyers in the process.
  • Upgrading the ability to kick down wooden doors or kick through ticky-tacky walls (which they can already do) to kick bank vault doors off their hinges or kick their way through castle walls. [...]

Next thing you get the monks complaining that the fighters can do all the crazy monk stuff, but they cannot heal so now we got to fix the monks too. Then the rogues say but if the monks get healing, why can't we have nice things too, so they get healing too. And then the paladins will say "but hey, we were the healers" so their healing must be upgraded. By then the clerics will probably join the conversation too. But if you improve the clerics too, then the druids need to have a word. By then the sorcs and wizards feel left out and will just ask for upgrades too. And only the barbarians are still raging and forget to join. And rangers. Rangers exist as well.

So, in summary, if you start upgrading one class, the balance of the game gets broken, and you have to rebalance it, which affects all classes.

Personally, I think the game it pretty well-balanced, and if the spellcasters have it easy and the fighters are feeling a little unnecessary, that's a problem for the DM, not for the rule-books.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Next thing you get the monks complaining that the fighters can do all the crazy monk stuff, but they cannot heal so now we got to fix the monks too. Then the rogues say but if the monks get healing, why can't we have nice things too, so they get healing too. And then the paladins will say "but hey, we were the healers" so their healing must be upgraded. By then the clerics will probably join the conversation too. But if you improve the clerics too, then the druids need to have a word. By then the sorcs and wizards feel left out and will just ask for upgrades too. And only the barbarians are still raging and forget to join. And rangers. Rangers exist as well.

So, in summary, if you start upgrading one class, the balance of the game gets broken, and you have to rebalance it, which affects all classes.

Personally, I think the game it pretty well-balanced, and if the spellcasters have it easy and the fighters are feeling a little unnecessary, that's a problem for the DM, not for the rule-books.

As you stated, you began from the assumption that the game is already well-balanced.

On the other hand, if those of us who believe that it isn't well-balanced are correct, then it's already broken. And therefore ought to be fixed.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Next thing you get the monks complaining that the fighters can do all the crazy monk stuff, but they cannot heal so now we got to fix the monks too. Then the rogues say but if the monks get healing, why can't we have nice things too, so they get healing too. And then the paladins will say "but hey, we were the healers" so their healing must be upgraded. By then the clerics will probably join the conversation too. But if you improve the clerics too, then the druids need to have a word. By then the sorcs and wizards feel left out and will just ask for upgrades too. And only the barbarians are still raging and forget to join. And rangers. Rangers exist as well.

So, in summary, if you start upgrading one class, the balance of the game gets broken, and you have to rebalance it, which affects all classes.

Personally, I think the game it pretty well-balanced, and if the spellcasters have it easy and the fighters are feeling a little unnecessary, that's a problem for the DM, not for the rule-books.

Also, this is the same tired argument that was used against sneak attacking rogues when 3e first came out.

Yet here we are in 5e, and rogues still have sneak attack, and few people (if anyone) are trying to argue that it broke the game.

 

[HammerMan]

How else would you describe things that lie outside the normal rules of nature, other than as magical?

In the context of a fantasy environment, I might go with "fantastic", but that would only be from my perspective as a player. For a dweller in that world, they might describe it as "Tuesday".

in 3e we had extraordinary super natural and magical.

Batman is not real... batman can not be real. Nobody no matter how rich how driven can do what batman does.. he is not super natural or magical.

Cyclops fires punch beems from the punch dimension from his eyes... nightcrawler teleports.... these are not magic (although I would argue supernatural) they are from mutation.

my 4e warlord at level 9 could attack twice, or force an opening for someone else to attack gaining a bonus to damage, or use an encounter (short rest) ability when hit to grant an ally an attack against the person who hit me (if there is another character in melee) could help an ally reroll a skill check they failed, could givve back hit points (remember they are not meat points they have always been skill luck and endurance) and many other things that I am not sure a real drill sargent could do... he wasn't magical or even super natural... he was extraordinary.

my hobgoblin warblade (3.5 Bo9S) was a little of all of them... he had extraordinary abilities like dealing more damage with a high guard stance that left him more vulnerable to attack (punishing stance) and could sometime attack quicker, or disarm better (extraordinary) he could call on the strength of the ground beneath him to deliver a devastating blow that ignored resistance (super natural) how ever (throuh prestige class) he also had 1st and 2nd level spells (maybe cantrips too but I don't remember) (Magical)

Odysisus and Hecktor did things no warrior could really do (Extraordinary) Achilies had unbreakable skin (super natural) and merlin cast spells (magical)

 

[HammerMan]

I think we've finally gotten to the bottom of why non-casters can't have nice things: EVERYTHING in the world they exist in is either Earth standard or 'Magical', so if you're not a magic user, you can't have access to anything the people holding this standard don't think exists on Earth.

Which is a problem because usually we end up with this being limited to the aggressively mundane and not even the physically cool people that exists in our world like Usain Bolt, Jack LaLane, or Jackie Chan.

the funny part is it seems (to me) like that just mean human fighters... because the logic says my eladrin can do supernatural or extraordinary things or my aasimar... but that means not being a fighter.

 

[FrozenNorth]

Personally I don't think the martial classes need magic per se.

What they need is definition. Like I said many times, part of the "problem" is that the fighter and rogue are mishmash blobs of different archetypes with few mechanics to separate the part afterward. So one fan of D&D is seeing X and another is seeing Y.

I’m not sure this is strictly speaking the case: the Wizard is also a mishmash blob of different archetypes, including dread necromancers, cunning illusionists, fey enchanters, etc. The difference is the mentality that the wizard can play all those archetypes as a base, and the subclasses just build on them.

What would that look like for the fighter? A base fighter that could fight using Str or Dex, easily command troops, use combat maneuvers, invoke their reputation, etc. and all the out-of-combat applications that are associated with the above, with subclasses reserved for making them better at different aspects (the way the diviner wizard subclass makes you better at divining) or breaks ground on new archetypes (like the echo knight and the eldritch knight).

 

[HammerMan]

1. Feats like Martial Adept and Sentinel are really, really good (IMO). Fighters already gain extra ability score improvements much faster than other classes, which I figured were meant to enable some of these feats at a lower cost. But I think maybe the cost is still too high, so what if all Fighters (and maybe Barbarians) start right off with one of those two? And maybe they even get the other one (they choose which order) for free at a certain level. That might help.

my armor artificer is a 100% stand in for our fighter (we are all full or half casters) I have the highest con score, so the most hp, and I took Sentinel. I still have spells, but 3/4 the time I don't even do cantrips. I thunder punch twice (I have 2 attacks) and then decide if I want to off hand thunder punch, or grant myself temps with my bonus action. Martial Adept is a big maybe for me,