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

[TheSword]

So you're saying it sucks to be the wizard in a fight against manticores.

Goading attack will also allow the fighter to keep the poor wizard and rogue conscious.

As will characters hiding. The rogue has a light crossbow, can hide, and can aim. So the manticore is far more at risk from the rogue and the fighter (the other martial only). The wizard hides behind a tree, or failing that, behind a fighter. Either way they get cover.

 

[tetrasodium]

A longbow and 14 dex does worse damage than a fire bolt with 20 int.

How are you calculating damage? Only one of those two adds an ability mod to damage.. fighter with a longbow Is (1d8+dexmod)*x where x is number of attacks while an equal level caster using firebolt is xd10+nothing. Even a fire sorc is only adding their charisma mod once rather than once per die like the longbow. D8average is 4.5 & d10 is 5.5so even if this is a 1-4 player it's going to be average 6.5 vrs aferage 5.5 and the gap will expand with both attacks as well as Stat increases.

 

[Steven K]

I hear ya--I do. It's just...Wizards with healing, man? Nope. Too old of a coot to let that door open.

But, 5e Wizards do have healing. Specifically, Transmutation Wizards. Panacea, Restore Life, and Restore Youth are just things a level 14 Transmuter can do on a fairly regular basis. Working backwards, it seems absurd that the Transmuter Wizard does not have cure wounds on its spell list, given three of the four Master Transmuter options explicitly deal with healing of one kind or another.

 

[TheSword]

But, 5e Wizards do have healing. Specifically, Transmutation Wizards. Panacea, Restore Life, and Restore Youth are just things a level 14 Transmuter can do on a fairly regular basis. Working backwards, it seems absurd that the Transmuter Wizard does not have cure wounds on its spell list, given three of the four Master Transmuter options explicitly deal with healing of one kind or another.

That’s a pretty specific circumstance, level 14 is capstone for most groups. Divine Soul can have as much healing as they like from level 1. That’s my go to for a white mage.

 

[TheSword]

This is, again, why I think that the Battlemaster is such a popular subclass for Fighters. Its Maneuvers grant access to a far more reliable means to mechanically affect change in the game fiction, even if it's mostly over things like whether an opponent is disarmed, prone, etc.

Beaten by hands down by champion, and closely followed by eldritch Knight.

 

[Steven K]

That’s a pretty specific circumstance, level 14 is capstone for most groups. Divine Soul can have as much healing as they like from level 1. That’s my go to for a white mage.

As I said, it is fairly absurd that the Transmuter does not have access to healing from level 2 onwards, if they want it, given they specialised in the arcane tradition that explicitly deals with modifying and recreating matter itself, even when said matter is organic and directly associated with living beings.

The Illusionist having access to Cure Wounds would be absurd, as would any of the other traditions except possibly Necromancy, but the Transmuter NOT having it? That's patently ridiculous.

 

[Aldarc]

Beaten by hands down by champion, and closely followed by eldritch Knight.

I'm not sure what your point is here or what you are trying to extrapolate from the data. Yes, the D&DBeyond free access/Starter Box Champion is the most popular Fighter subclass. Incidentally the top ones are all from the core PHB. But whether that says anything about the quality or appeal of its design is something else entirely. The Champion, for example, tends to rank low on most Fighter optimization guides.

 

[Minigiant]

So you're saying it sucks to be the wizard in a fight against manticores.

Goading attack will also allow the fighter to keep the poor wizard and rogue conscious.

1) Combat is the fighters thing. The wizard doesn't have to be good. Just helpful.

2) Goading attack is a Battlemaster feature. What if the Fighter isn't a Battlemaster? If the Fighter's ability to do its job is completely dependent on choosing the right subclass then the fighter base class is flawed.

 

[Fanaelialae]

4 attacks with 4 chances to crit + superiority dice used + superiority effect. And at high levels the fighter can have 20 str, 20 dex and a high con. Or if a champion, critting on 18-20 with 4 arrows and a high dex. At low and mid levels the fighter isn't going to be fighting a lot of flying creatures.

This is all true, but doesn't exactly tell the whole story.

A fighter gets 3 attacks at level 11, and improves to 4 at level 20. Meaning that most high level fighters have 3, not 4, attacks.

A fighter can have 20 Str, 20 Dex, and high Con, but only if they use all of their ASIs to boost their stats, meaning that they won't be able to take feats. In a campaign that allows feats, that's a high opportunity cost. Moreover, by spreading your stats out in this way your to hit bonus and damage bonus are going to lag behind for many levels (or you focus on one stat to the detriment of the other, and then raise the other stat when you've capped the first stat). Once again, you're snapshotting a 20th level character, but leaving out the progression, which tells a different story.

Finally, not all fighters get superiority dice, because only one fighter subclass has access to them (unless you take the feat for superiority dice, but then that's one less ASI available).

 

[Azzy]

How are you calculating damage? Only one of those two adds an ability mod to damage.. fighter with a longbow Is (1d10+dexmod)*x where x is number of attacks while an equal level caster using firebolt is xd10+nothing. Even a fire sorc is only adding their charisma mod once rather than once per d10 like the longbow

The longbow is 1d8+Dex Mod.