D&D 5E [+] Ways to fix the caster / non-caster gap

[overgeeked]

Brother, it takes more than one person to argue.

Yes. So stop being the +1. There’s no argument if you don’t engage. So, don’t engage.

 

[Raiztt]

Yes. So stop being the +1. There’s no argument if you don’t engage. So, don’t engage.

If people wanna argue, who am I to deny them?

 

[overgeeked]

If people wanna argue, who am I to deny them?

So you want to argue instead of talk about the actual topic…just like you were complaining about others doing just a few posts ago. Sure. Makes perfect sense.

 

[Laurefindel]

I'm not saying "because (only)dragons". I'm saying because:

• A character can reliably survive extreme falls repeatedly, no chance of death whatsoever. No broken bones. Nothing.
• A walk in lava causes no permanent damage.
• Giants, oozes, all the weird and impossible monsters.
• Some creatures are inherently and non-magically immune to some spells by means of legendary resistance.
• All the magic.
• All the weird playable races with barely no regard for movement speed vs size.

The person I was replying to was asserting that the setting attempts to be realistic. It isn't.

Fair and true,

D&D settings (and the game in general) aren’t realistic and in some cases, un-relatable (e.g.: falls and lava).

I still think this is attributable to a system that loosely calculates health without taking wounds into consideration, but doing so consistently with all situations that could result injuries would change the game significantly, and not necessarily for the better. I see those two cases as outliers rather than foundation to formulate an argument in favour of super-humanism, but I don’t think that was your intention either.

Otherwise, D&D humans are fantasy-humans; that’s a definite. But fantasy humans don’t need to be intrinsically different from real-life-humans, and we could assume that was is true for real-life-humans is also true for fantasy-humans. We could also assume otherwise, but I’d expect the game to tell me in which way.

 

[Raiztt]

So you want to argue instead of talk about the actual topic…just like you were complaining about others doing just a few posts ago. Sure. Makes perfect sense.

I was critiquing other people and their objectives, not 'complaining' - bothers me not one whit that they continue to not find solutions to the problem.

I was saying "You people who complain fighters are too weak aren't proposing realistic or implementable solutions, or discussing ways that you, at your own tables, can solve this problem".

 

[Tony Vargas]

It's fun when people use this as an excuse for Calvinball with themselves as Calvin.

excuse?

I am not disagreeing with that at all, I am disagreeing with them being Superman / Ironman / Dr Strange and settle for Captain America / Batman

Heracles shouldered Atlas's burden for a time, that's superman level strength, and he wore the skin of the Nimean lion, which made him invulnerable, he was only down the flight (which superman didn't initially have) and the X-ray vision (which, is just as well, I hate to think how a Son of Zeus would've perved out with that one).

Would it be considered not in the spirit of the thread to say that the way to fix the gap, which exists, is for martials to not exist? Then there won't be a gap anymore.

Not at all, IMHO. Earlier I suggested, to more or less deafening silence, that the issue could be resolved by admitting D&D is not a game meant for anyone who wants to play a traditional knight-in-shinning-armor/Robin-Hood/Odysseus/Strider/etc type Hero in a Fantasy Story nor a Heracles/Beowulf/Cuchulain from Myth, but is rather meant for the power fantasies of those who want to play Gandalf (with all the stops pulled out, like in the prior Age or with no Sauron to cramp his style) or Dr Strange or Harry Potter or whatever.
Specifically, I suggested making the non-full-caster classes NPC-only, in the spirit of 3.5 Aristocrats & Experts. A player who really wanted to, for RP or masochistic reasons, could opt to play one, if the DM allowed and the rest of the party was OK with him pulling less than his full weight.

Outright banning is also reasonable. So is outright banning full casters.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I... I'm not going to touch the implications of that suggestion, but wow.

 

[overgeeked]

I was critiquing other people and their objectives, not 'complaining' - bothers me not one whit that they continue to not find solutions to the problem.

I was saying "You people who complain fighters are too weak aren't proposing realistic or implementable solutions, or discussing ways that you, at your own tables, can solve this problem".

Then, respectfully, you’re not actually reading the thread. There have been a lot of solutions offered up. Some of them quite good.

 

[Raiztt]

Not at all, IMHO. Earlier I suggested, to more or less deafening silence, that the issue could be resolved by admitting D&D is not a game meant for anyone who wants to play a traditional knight-in-shinning-armor/Robin-Hood/Odysseus/Strider/etc type Hero in a Fantasy Story

If that's the case, then D&D has a PR problem because their genre and their mechanics don't jive. For what it's worth, I have zero problem with them making that re-adjustment if that's what they did, hypothetically.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Brother, it takes more than one person to argue.

But you only have control over one. And that's enough.