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

[Micah Sweet]

Gonna quibble a bit. Batman is equal parts training, tech and plot armor. The amount of each he has depends on the media (JLA comic vs his own) but a lot of Batman's "powers" come from tech, and Asimov has previously spoken about sufficiently advanced technology...

Whereas mutant powers are probably closer to sorcerer bloodlines than anything else. Right down to the collars that suppress mutant abilities in Geonosha or the fact their powers don't work in places like the Savage Land. (Anti-magic, er mutant zones). Mutation might not be "magic" according to Marvel, but it's pretty darn close. (So much so, the mutant Magik's mutant power is... To do magic).

Which is all to say that you might be able to make an argument Batman without toys is a high level mundane fighter, but Wolverine is clearly "supernaturally/magically" agumented.

When sorcerers came out in 3e, we all called them, "the mutant menace". My friend even ran a post-apocalypse Marvel game for me on my birthday once.

 

[Gammadoodler]

But the problem is there's no consensus. Heck, how many pages were spent arguing that things that cannot occur naturally in our world isn't really supernatural or magical because anti-magic zone only suppresses certain magic? Some people want the fighter to be able to lift as much as the world dead lift record, run as fast or faster then Usain Bolt, long jump the world record at will. All things that are humanly possible but only under ideal conditions and by world class athletes that do only that one thing. Others want fighters to have mythical powers like removing mountains or changing the course of a river. Why not just expand that out to folk heroes and let them lasso a tornado or carve out something the size of Lake Michigan as a watering hole? Then there are people who want to go really old school and give fighters mercenary companies and kingdoms while the rest of the group ... well I don't know what the rest of the group is supposed to be doing.

There is a place for the supernatural and magic in D&D. I don't want my fighter to have supernatural capabilities unless I pick a specific archetype that implements it. Personally I think they kind of goofed when they made the battle master because they painted themselves into a corner. All fighters should have options to gain at least some maneuvers although perhaps the battle master could have had more or more powerful ones.

But some people look at game changing moments (which as far as I can tell were all supernatural/magic) many of which are combat related and say "the fighter needs those" while others say "it has nothing to do with combat". When it comes to non combat it's not flying or teleport except those are the types of examples we get of casters doing cool things. Is a fighter going to be able to hypnotize someone and modify their memory? I don't see how. But then when someone says "I don't want my fighter flying" the response is "nobody wants that". Except ... that's what the game changing moments are.

I think Tasha's has some good ideas on this with the different fighting styles. I think they should be added to the core list and the fighter should be able to have more fighting styles than they have now. Maybe a "major" fighting style like GWM and a "minor" fighting style like "blind fighting" which is cool but rarely comes up. Instead of getting that minor fighting style they could get expertise in 1 skill.

But that's not going to be nearly enough for the people that want fighters to be comic book super heroes or be able to run 200 feet in a round or be as powerful as Hercules. IMHO if you want to play a fighter with supernatural abilities there are plenty of options, even if WOTC has decided to encode many PC supernatural abilities as spells.

I find it difficult to understand the logic of "I don't want my fighter to have supernatural abilities"...

"I just want them to go out and fight dinosaur-sized flying fire-breathing monsters, the undead, creatures whose entire bodies are literally made of acid or poison or are on fire..always"...

"And at all levels they should fight these creatures with a sharpened bit of metal and pure gumption".

Like what are you getting out of a 20th level fighter that you aren't getting out of a 15th level fighter..hell an 11th level fighter?

 

[Neonchameleon]

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.

It's an optional class feature in Tasha's so this isn't an issue. And monks need fixing because of how flabby their tier 2 is. Besides I don't think I've seen people in actual practice object in favour of their favourite class against a rising low tier class. The objection is to those out in front.

Then the rogues say but if the monks get healing, why can't we have nice things too, so they get healing too.

Since when? This is pure invention.

What rogues are more likely to want is more stuff after level 11 that makes them better rogues. And they've a point. The 4e epic destiny Thief of Legend used to (on a limited use basis) let the thief steal intangibles such as thoughts out of someone's head or the colour of their eyes.

And then the paladins will say "but hey, we were the healers" so their healing must be upgraded.

Nope. Neither Second Wind nor Quickened Healing let the fighter or the monk heal someone else.

By then the clerics will probably join the conversation too.

To do what? Laugh at the paladins who think that self healing makes them less of a healer.

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.

Or not given that none of your chain of logic makes sense.

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 I have mentioned the fighter gets no new abilities from level 12 to level 19 that they could not have taken earlier but rejected. The wizard gets more and more powerful abilities. If it's balanced at level 11 it cannot be balanced at level 19.

 

[HammerMan]

It's intentionally reductionist for a reason. Mythic is magic with an artificial distinction. Much like how people argue till they are blue in the face that psionics is not and never should be classified as magic, even though psionics is a clearly supernatural. To me this feels like the kind of hair-splitting of "don't call my psionics 'magic".

I used to be a 'psionics isn't magic' guy in 2e but I got over that early in 3e... but

Batman is supposedly a peak human with no supernatural abilities. Same thing with Black Widow, iirc. Or Green Arrow. Even in a world of Gods and Monsters, they don't do anything more than a "peak human" can do. This is where I would put the limit of the "nonmagical fighter". They can do what a peak human can. If we're not making the fighter have supernatural abilities, this is my limit.

but is your limit "Something I can show batman doing in a comic/movie/cartoon" or "Something I think a human can do even if world records indicate otherwise"? If it is the former, I can get behind it. if it is the latter I can not (and of course replace batman with any non magical non supernatural/enhanced hero in fiction.)

If we are going to give them supernatural or mythic abilities, you gotta name a source. Wolverine is a mutant, Hulk was blasted with gamma radiation, Cap was infused with super-serum. If you're transcending what a normal mortal can do you gotta say how.

every hero has an origin...

we give wizards more power then gandalf ever showed (let alone ratagast) and he was a god/angel. we give wizards more power then jack vance did. we give wizards more power then merlin who was an immortal ageing backwards half demon...

if you need a 'cool origin' to get supernatural powers, then no one should be able to play wizards.

Dragons are innately "magical" creatures. They can do things fantastical because they are born fantastical. Now, if you want fighters to do fantastical things, they must either be born fantastical or somehow become fantastical.

every hero has an origin.

my buddy plays the same family line all the time... he is a human fighter who is descendent of a silver dragon (becuse way back before I was playing in 91 he played a game where his character married a silver dragon and had a family and he like playing the grand children, great grand children ect) If he was playing a spell caster he can play a sorcerer (silver dragon blood line) and get cool powers. If he wants to play a martial character there is not a class for "My origin for my warrior is that I was born fantastical"

In D&D, neither is particularly hard to do. But you gotta explain why suddenly your swordsman faster than a speeding bullete, more powerful than a lightning rail and able to leap tall towers in a single bound. Give me something.

I'm an elf, and desendent of lolth... I'm an aasimar, I'm a teifling, I'm a dragonborn, I'm a ______.... my great grand dad on my mom's side was a demi god and my great grand ma on my dad's side was directly blood of the legendary king... both powerful blood lines are in me....

I was just a farmer... nothing special, until a rock fell from the sky killing half my family, it glowed green and red and the half that didn't die in impact all got sick... except me, I was always hardy and tough, I took the metal and forged my first chain shirt and sword and went out into the world... I am now destine for greatness.

I am the 7th son of the 7th daughter of the merging of a teifling woman and an aasimar man... I have a strange power...

I fought my way up the mountain and learned my sword techniques from the old man who even though he was human but over 100 years old and still could kick my 18 year old butt...

I'm not asking for a fighter to cast spells, nor do I want him to reign in mediocrity. I just want a little more justification for why he can now do superhero mythic bullocks other than "he's 11th level now."

but it should be up to the table/people what they do and don't need... do you ask for justification for my farmboy wizard to just gain 2 6th level spells known at 11th level?

 

[TheSword]

If I repeatedly assert that your characterization of the argument is inaccurate, regardless of whether I say what my argument is (which only requires a simple search for user in this thread) then what reason would you say that it is my argument as if it were? Why repeat the straw man in good faith? That doesn’t make sense.

Ok, there’s 21 pages of comments. If you don’t want to clarify then cool. But I’m not going to play 20 questions, guessing what your argument is.

 

[Oofta]

Maybe if every thread involving buffing the fighter didn't turn into a neverending debate about whether a problem exists in the first place, there'd be time to have a discussion and reach some compromise or consensus on how to go about it.

There's no consensus on the scope of the problem though. You go all the way from people like me who could see some minor tweaks because nothing is perfect to people that want fighters to have demi-god level powers and mythical heroes along with several tangents.

It's like asking people how to improve a bicycle and some want a better seat or better brakes and others want a BMX bike that really can make a jump you'd need a motorcycle and a ramp to accomplish.

 

[Minigiant]

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).

The wizard is a mishmash but it has a both scaling and variable subsystem in spell that allow customization.

Martial lack these. Feats don't scale. Maneuvers don't scale. Fighting styles don't scale. And none of them come in a a tenth of the amount of spells.

 

[HammerMan]

Can the assassin get it too?

I don't see why not... I mean like 5 classes get dispel magic, like 10 get detect magic... why can't two martial classes share something

That said, I'm against the "at will" for any SoD, magical or mundane. Limit it to x per rest and it's fine. (Or make it a maneuver).

to be honest I would want a limit too... but off hand giving up 3 attacks (at 11+ level fighters have 3) for it is already a cost... but I would (and I am no expert on mechanics) make it X times per day...

 

[HammerMan]

Give a 5E fighter magic instead of tech toys and I think you can get pretty close to Batman.

to make batman (where I am going is at least close to 20th level) he should have fighter rogue and monk level 100% for sure... artificer would not be out of line either. the eaxt mix of them you can debate. off hand if I wanted to get the 'feel of batman' and pre gen cfor an adventure I would do:
Rogue (mastermind) 5/Fighter (battlemaster 5)/Monk (shadow) 5/Artificer 5 (either armor or battlesmith I could go either way but i will go armorer for shock punch gloves)
then I would house rule he can thunder punch in no armor/armor use his monk unarmed attacks and sneak attack all while useing Int or Dex... I would then give him crazy stats (like 14str 20dex 16con 20 int 20 wis 15cha) and reflavor all of the artificer spells as bat utility belt gadgets.

having said that we did have someone play smallville superman/superboy/clark in a 3e game as a psion/psiwarrior and it was glorius (let me know if you want that story)

But it's also a different genre. Depending on version Batman is not only the best martial artist there is, he's also as strong as anyone can humanly be without being explicitly superpowered, a genius while also having invulnerable plot armor. As much as I prefer Batman to, say, Superman he's still a Marty Stue.

yup...

 

[HammerMan]

When sorcerers came out in 3e, we all called them, "the mutant menace". My friend even ran a post-apocalypse Marvel game for me on my birthday once.

we did that too more or less.