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

[FrogReaver]

new 1st time players can totally grab a warlock as easy as a fighter, but still have meaningful and flavorful choices

Complexity doesn’t equal difficulty.

warlocks make substantial choices at level 1 - what spells and cantrips and subclass. At level 2, what invocations, at level 3 what pact. And all the while they are choosing spells to learn or replace as well.

the pro with warlocks is that their good choices are obvious and/or equal power and that’s not always the case for other classes.

compare to fighters who pick a fighting style and a subclass.

 

[FrogReaver]

Warlock, strip out all the spell casting, replace with more invocations.

Mage Hand Press's Warmage fits the bill pretty well.

That’s actually a pretty solid start. I’m assuming you keep cantrips?

 

[HammerMan]

Thought about this a bit. All I can say is I wouldn’t start with the sorcerer for a simple wizard. I’d design from the ground up. Hard to say what that would end up looking like exactly.

your welcome to try your hand and I’d be happy to evaluate how complex I think it is.

Warlock, strip out all the spell casting, replace with more invocations.

Mage Hand Press's Warmage fits the bill pretty well.

yhea warlock of the tome is a good simple caster... spend most of your time with some at wills, (pick invocations thaat give you more, and teh pact does too) so you have choice but still at will you spells are just big things you want to do and they always keep pace... and you can do rituals if you want to.

 

[Minigiant]

yhea warlock of the tome is a good simple caster... spend most of your time with some at wills, (pick invocations thaat give you more, and teh pact does too) so you have choice but still at will you spells are just big things you want to do and they always keep pace... and you can do rituals if you want to.

That's still hyper complex compared to the simple fighter.

 

[HammerMan]

That's still hyper complex compared to the simple fighter.

eldritch blast go pew pew
better?

 

[TwoSix]

That’s actually a pretty solid start. I’m assuming you keep cantrips?

I would, yea.

 

[Micah Sweet]

No one's supported homebrew on this forum over the years more than me (seriously, look at my post history). But do you think that's going to stop people from arguing for their preferred vision? I mean, WotC has to cater to someone; it may as well be to me.

I'm sorry, but it sounds like you really want to nerf casters. I don't think WotC is going to go your way.

 

[Minigiant]

eldritch blast go pew pew
better?

Level	Cantrips	Feature
1st	4	Cantrip, Cantrip Style Dark One's Blessing
2nd	4	Action Surge
3rd	4	Subclass-Scrouge- Potent Cantrips
4th	5	ASI
5th	5	Extra Cantrip
6th	5	ASI
7th	5	Subclass-Scrouge- Distant Cantrip
8th	5	ASI
9th	5	Indomitable
10th	6

Cantrip Styles

• Astral Fire: +2 to damage rolls with cantrips that deal fire and radiant damage
• Burning Blizzard: +2 to damage with cantrips that deal acid and cold damage
• Dark Fury: +2 to damage rolls with cantrips that deal necrotic or psychic damage
• Jagged Force: +2 to damage rolls with cantrips that deal force or posion damage
• Raging Storm: +2 to damage rolls with cantrips that deal lightning or thunder damage

 

[tetrasodium]

You're not claiming that a melee focused fighter will ALSO have a ranged fighting style, ranged feats for support AND as good a weapon as he uses for melee, are you? Because that's really, really unlikely.

Or are you saying the fighter will get to use his melee skills soon enough and that has to factor? That's much better, but the wizard has cool things he can do outside of firebolt too!

But let's talk about the actual point I've been making since early in the thread. Even if you concede that fighters are fine, even excel in combat (which I actually did early on just for convenience):

1. The other classes excel too, maybe in different ways, but no class is a slouch in combat. The game is designed that way.

2. They get very, very little support out of combat for the other 2 pillars. And the support they can get (feats, ASIs etc.) is often sacrificed so they can be the beast in combat everyone expects them to be. And IMO - that's an issue.

I encourage you to look back into how those suggestions came up. The process went something like this:

• a monster cold hover 20 feet up
• Yes it could & risking that weakness is why you should use one of the many options available to you as a fighter if you encounter a monster that hits your weakness. Some of them are even quite strong alongside cantrips & they don't even cause difficulties carrying or affording them given carrying capacities & low cost
• but I don't want to use a bow as a strength based fighter
• well that tradeoff was something you chose when you went all in on a strength fighter, probably for something like gwm & higher damage 2h weapons. There are strength based ranged weapons like these
• but I don't want to use those because they don't let me use all of my attacks
• well if you are concerned about that you could take these to avoid that weakness
• but I don't want to take those
• So pick some other option to fall back on should you find yourself in that disadvantageous situation, the longbow ids still pretty good as a fallback
• but that's not acceptable because a longbow with 14 strength does less damage than firebolt with 20 int so I don't want to
  • uhh.. firebolt doesn't add int to damage while the bow adds dex & because extra attack multiplies both damage dice as well as ability & weapon mods unlike firebolt that will always be the case
• but the bow is terrible
• it's more than firebolt and the specializedfighter does amazing when they are not in a situation that hits their weakness. If you don't want that weakness here is how you could be amazing with the longbow instead
• and now we are back to square one restarting the whole cycle with but I can't take everything & would have weaknesses, I don't want weaknesses... d&d choices involve tradeoffs because best in class at all things with no weaknesses would be broken to a hilarious degree.

Morts maths was right.

More importantly though, why are you arguing against positions no one actually took? That isn’t helpful to good discussion. It’s the kind of thing that tends to derail good discussions.

Mathematically accurate and statistically misleading are not a one or the other situation. I said it earlier & made it fairly explicit here, I'm not against improvements to fighter but how much to improve & what tradeoffs are made is important because they do have very strong strengths already. Best in class at all things with no weaknesses that go so far as dropping to somewhat above average like the longbow without feats/fighting styles would be broken to a silly degree & the only evidence put forward for where/how much to improve fighter seems to be little more than an ever shifting "I don't want that" alongside an ever shifting whiteroom with a quantum fighter who is always constructed to be weakest at any given situation.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Well, It took a while to catch up...

I get the desire to have grounded fighter, I get the desire to have mythic heroes. I restate what I've said before: the key is to recognise and emphasise the tiers of play. Just accept that beyond level ten(ish), no D&D character is truly mundane. It is a magical world and even high level fighters are part of it. So keep the earlier levels more grounded, but do not be afraid to veer into some super heroism on the higher levels.

But what I absolutely do not want is class bloat. There are already too many classes. And I don't want level 20 town guard or level one superheroes. I want a town guard that over long career of adventuring might eventually become a superheroic mythic champion.

And we also must recognise that a class based game cannot, nor should it ever attempt to, produce every conceivable iteration of every possible concept. It seems that a lot of people seem to want there to be a new class every time someone can think up a slightly different way of doing an existing concept. Such desires are better served by a more freeform, classless game, and I doubt D&D will ever be that.

As for nerfing casters, I feel some spells should be restricted. Things that have serious adventure bypassing properties (such many teleport type spells) maybe shouldn't be just freely choosable. Perhaps some more influential spells could be siloed into a restricted category, and would be only accessible if the GM hands them out like magic items?