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

[Lanefan]

If we're going to get into the "rebuild the class list around the most popular tropes" game, then Cleric is the class that really needs to be chopped up, and have its concepts spread among Paladins, Druids, and some combination of Warlocks and Sorcerers.

If you're willing to make Warlocks and-or Sorcerers divine rather than arcane, sure; but I'm not sure that'll fly.

The hard-line division in magic between arcane and divine (i.e. studied or spontaneous vs divinely granted) isn't something I'd ever want to lose; and IMO the only way for someone to be able to do both at once has to be via the multi-class route.

 

[Vaalingrade]

The fighter ISN’T defined in opposition to a power source.

The fighter class is a catch-all: it includes all characters that are good at fighting and don’t fall into the categories rogue, barb, ranger or monk.

Except the ones that are better at fighting like the warlock and the bladesinger.

 

[Quickleaf]

Here's an exercise.

We all know why a lord might be scared of an enemy 20th level wizard coming to attack his castle.
It's a flying teleporting monster with infinite 1st and 2nd level spells and has 6-9th spells which can blast away his men-at-arms, instakill a stationed knight, and bypass most of them.

What if you changed classes.

If Lord Fartloroy angered Sir Andrew and he is 20th level and heading to Castle Fartloroy to kill the lord. Why is Lord Fortloroy pooping his pants?

What can Sir Andrew do that the lord's money and men cannot stop?

Is he a rolling ball of violence, murdering several dozens of men at a time and crashing threw doors? And walls?
Is he using his swordsmanship to cut the strands of reality to gate into the lord's courthouse?
Is he flying a pegasus over ther castle walls and their archers to land with his +3 longsword of hellfire?

What if it is Red Rodney the Rake, the level 20 rogue. What can he do?
Does he roll stealth and say, well I'm in his bedroom and slit his throat as he sleeps?
Does he fully and instantly replace a guard walk in, guess all the internal info, stab the lord, then backflip off the castle walls?
Does he sneak attack the lord from 1000 feet away the next time he steps out the castle?

I love this thought experiment and the questions you pose. It's exactly the right thing to ask.

Conversations of comparison and balance, while important, are a dime-a-dozen. Those are the constraints - we can always come back to those later.

But actually getting into the essence of the high-level martial character and what that fantasy looks like? Without comparing or being concerned with balance (yet)? Just the pure creative essence behind it, I think D&D really needs that.

 

[Mecheon]

it may be the easiest, but it does not get me far enough. Most WotC adventures go to level 12, give or take one, so that is my internal cut off, I might drop all higher levels altogether, or I keep them in their scaled down version, not sure yet.

If I stick to the half-caster baseline, they can stay, if spell progression moves past that, I cut off at level 12. In either case the max spell level will remain the same in my progression, only the number of spells per level will vary.

As a first draft I will use the half-caster, will see what happens after that

It’s funny, I was looking forward to the 2024 version, and now I’d rather roll my own take than go down its path.

That's the point, though. We keep having the 'how do we fix the gap' and the two ways to fix it being either nerf magic casters (which makes the magic crew upset) or make the fighter supernatural, which makes the folks who want it to be purely mundane upset. So we meet it both ways by going "Cool. This is the level where mundanity stops"

They can have all the mundane fighters they want, just as long as they're aware that, D&D as designed isn't, and hasn't, ever really supported a purely mundane fighter as a max level thing

 

[Pedantic]

The fighter ISN’T defined in opposition to a power source.

The fighter class is a catch-all: it includes all characters that are good at fighting and don’t fall into the categories rogue, barb, ranger or monk.

If the fighter WERE defined in opposition to a power source, half of the 5e subclasses wouldn’t exist. No Eldritch Knights, no Rune Giants, no Echo Knights, no Arcane Archers, no Psi Warriors.

It feels like you personally don’t like certain types of fighters, so you are using a definition that excludes them… and also excludes half of the existing published subclasses.

I've been discussing this at the level of the base class. I think it's been covered elsewhere pretty well that subclasses simply don't have the ability budget to drag up the rest of the fighter chassis. Fundamentally I don't see a problem with "Rune Knight" or "Arcane Archer" as a concept. If that was the base class, you'd have sufficient conceptual space to hang abilities on without offending anyone's understanding of mundanity. If anything, the fact that power sources are optional add-ins that exist onl in the Fighter's subclasses is evidence the basic concept is defined by their lack.

 

[Vaalingrade]

That's the point, though. We keep having the 'how do we fix the gap' and the two ways to fix it being either nerf magic casters (which makes the magic crew upset) or make the fighter supernatural, which makes the folks who want it to be purely mundane upset.

Or the third option people keep ignoring that is 'let mundane be fun and interesting by not making unreasonable demands of realism on a fantasy character.

 

[Gammadoodler]

Who says we don't care?

Near as I could tell the poster I was replying to, kinda directly.. in the statement I altered.

 

[Lanefan]

That's the point, though. We keep having the 'how do we fix the gap' and the two ways to fix it being either nerf magic casters (which makes the magic crew upset) or make the fighter supernatural, which makes the folks who want it to be purely mundane upset. So we meet it both ways by going "Cool. This is the level where mundanity stops"

They can have all the mundane fighters they want, just as long as they're aware that, D&D as designed isn't, and hasn't, ever really supported a purely mundane fighter as a max level thing

This raises another point: for most people, max level exists only as a theoretical as their games just never get near it in practice.

Which means, discussing what to do to fix the gap as it appears at max level is of quite limited use except to theorycrafters. Instead, I'd say it'd be more productive to discuss fixing the somewhat-lesser gap that exists through the levels where the game is most commonly played in the wild, i.e. about 14th and less.

 

[Pedantic]

If we don't care about where magical supernatural abilities come from, why should we care about where nonmagical supernatural abilities come from?

That's an actual oxymoron. Magical and supernatural are synonymous.

 

[Lanefan]

That's an actual oxymoron. Magical and supernatural are synonymous.

In real life, perhaps. In D&D, not so much.