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

[CreamCloud0]

i don't really have an issue with unlimited cantrips, mostly cause i advocate for casters getting less slots and having to ration them properly, though i'd be fine with not letting cantrips be as powerful/scale as well as they currently do, being a spellcaster is about having spikes, having produce flame (not fire bolt) as your main damage cantrip leaves you behind the curve than the martial with a warhammer of greatsword but that's made up for when you drop that AoE fireball and fry half a room of enemies.

the wizard being reliant on a crossbow or a dagger feels to me like one of those things that seems like it makes sense because it's always been a thing in DnD and started in editions that were tonally very different from 5e, but when you do think about it and distance yourself from the shadow of DnD tradition it kinda seems weird in 5e imo

"my wizard fires their crossbow"
"your wizard fires their crossbow?"
"yeah, that's right"
"they don't, oh i dunno, use magic or something?"
"nah, they use a weapon"

 

[Vaalingrade]

Your martials can't do that in your games?
I slowly see why you guys think that martials suck.

They can't do that! That's not something your average doughy office worker can do and therefore it's unrealistic and wrecks my versimilitude!

Never mind that he's an immortal elf fighting a weird giant elephant in a war against a tower in need of vizene fought alongside an actual factual angel who already died once this adventure and got better -- it's the cool acrobatics that is wrong and bad!

 

[Neonchameleon]

I was going for visualization, not drama. RPGs are not about drama IMO.

Speak for yourself. Before there was GNS there was GDS; it's a definite subgroup of RPG players.

 

[I'm A Banana]

What do you start the game out with? How are you succeeding in those early adventures without getting killed? I'm really curious, this is an interesting new game.

Background can give you the basics. An assortment of equipment that adds up to roughly an AC of 17 (a shield, an abjuration, a suit of basic armor) or so and 1d8 + ability modifier damage (a bow, a sword, a cantrip) and mmmmmaybe a consumable or two (spell scrolls, potions).

D&D characters have a lot of fobs, so I'd expect the magic to come early and often if you want the party to have a similar number of fobs, but that's also part of the fun in this setup. Every hour or so, the party's uncovering a new free-floating class feature that anyone with the attunement slots or inventory space or whatever can grab.

Some magic in this system would undoubtedly be more powerful than others, and I suspect if you were to design this from the ground up you'd quickly find a few "categories" that you'd want to rotate between regularly.

The real challenge is in selling the players who have fun making builds on this new system. But maybe the ability to respec and optimize the party based on the available items would help that, since they could make new builds every session if they wanted to.

 

[ECMO3]

They can't do that! That's not something your average doughy office worker can do and therefore it's unrealistic and wrecks my versimilitude!

Never mind that he's an immortal elf fighting a weird giant elephant in a war against a tower in need of vizene fought alongside an actual factual angel who already died once this adventure and got better -- it's the cool acrobatics that is wrong and bad!

I don't recall anything that Legolas did in the LOTR movies that is not already doable in 5E RAW.

Moreover the sequence linked took 11 rounds (1 min 6 seconds) from when he jumped on the tusk to when he felled the Elephant. In that time he made 7 attacks total, including a shove, cutting the Gondola in two attacks and the final attack to kill the Oilphant. I think RAW you could accomplish everything he did, using optional rules in 6 rounds (5 rounds with action surge).

If you break this down in 5E using even a pretty strict interpretation of RAW:

Round 1:
movement: jump
Action: grab a tusk (Climb on an animal)
remainder of movement: jump to front leg, jump to second leg

Round 2:
Action: Dash (this assumes Legolas does not have a climb speed)
movement: climb up Elephants back

Round 3:
Action: Attack
Attack 1: Miss
Attack 2: kills an archer

Round 4:
Action: Attack
Attack 1: kill an archer
Attack 2: shove melee enemy attacking him
movement: swing down to side of the Elephant

Round 5:
Action: Attack
Attack 1-cut one rope
Attack 2 - cut other rope
hang on as gondola falls off, letting go when on top of elephant

Round 6:
Action: Attack
Attack 1: Kill the Elephant
movement: walk of Elephant as it dies


So all told Legolas used 11 rounds to accomplish what any 5th level D&D fighter could do in 6 rounds (using optional rules). Of course an Oilphant is not going to die from a single attack, so in 5E it probably would take more than 6 rounds when you consider the enemies hit points. The point is though, if you want to play like Legolas, then play like Legolas and tell your DM that is what you are doing instead of saying you run up to the charging Elephant and slash at him with your sword.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Riding the shield? Stabbing with the arrow, then firing it? Impaling two enemies with one shot? Climbing and shooting a moving foe? Being an elf who is sufferable?

 

[Tony Vargas]

I don't recall anything that Legolas did in the LOTR movies that is not already doable in 5E RAW.

Technically, 5e RAW lets a player declare any action and the DM can just let it succeed.

"I jump to the moon."
"OK, what do you do on the moon?"

by the same token, the DM can, instead, narrate failure for any action.

"I charge across the tavern and attack the half-orc!"
"You trip on an overturned cuspidor. You take 4 damage and are prone."

So, yes, in that sense, doable in 5e raw.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

It all depends how powerful you want the Magic to be in your setting. If magic is not powerful and mundane people without supernatural abilities can match magic, why have magic in the first place?

Why not make the Hulk weaker, so Hawkeye doesn't feel so useless and him being in this big battles making no real sense?

In my book, if you want Non-Magical Characters compete at high levels with magical characters, the Nonmagical Characters need on of the following three:

• supernatural Bodymodification (One Piece, Cpt. America, Hulk)
• Magical Items
• Technology (like renaissance Iron Men or renaissance James Bond gadgets).

What I could get behind as game mechanic, to make if have sense that a fighter and wizard are still adventuring together at high levels is actually time.
Like, have high level spells take time to take effect. Time in which the caster needs to be protected.
If a fireball needs two rounds to be cast, suddenly it is super important that the wizard gets protected and not interrupted. If the enemy caster is casting fireball, a martial trying to stop him works.

With this, you can have high impact magic, that I like for higher levels, but in combat have it more balanced, because of the time frame.

Like, if a Wizard can prepare in advance, he should be nearly impossible to beat, but if you can surprise him, he should be easy to take down.

So, low magic effects should be like they are now, costing an action, medium magic effects 2 actions and high level effects even longer.

That way you can balance the.combqt part pretty well between martials and magic users.

One thing you’d have to add, and this is a good add anyway so I’m for it, is the ability to intercept enemies as they move toward your allies more than once a round.

 

[I'm A Banana]

the wizard being reliant on a crossbow or a dagger feels to me like one of those things that seems like it makes sense because it's always been a thing in DnD and started in editions that were tonally very different from 5e, but when you do think about it and distance yourself from the shadow of DnD tradition it kinda seems weird in 5e imo

"my wizard fires their crossbow"
"your wizard fires their crossbow?"
"yeah, that's right"
"they don't, oh i dunno, use magic or something?"
"nah, they use a weapon"

This is part of why my solution just nukes the idea of class.

Class is archetype, identity. Every time you take an action or roll a dice, you should be somehow declaring who you are with that. The essence of a role-playing game, after all, is playing the role. Whenever your wizard fires a crossbow, they're not Being A Wizard. Rogues get to sneak attack almost all the time for a very similar reason.

If you define yourself as a wizard before the first die is rolled, then you're going to want the rules to tell you how to be a wizard when you roll your dice. Class comes first, and you perform your class.

So, flip the script. You want to be a wizard? Okay, that's a goal, now. Do wizard-y things. Help out libraries, seek tomes of lore, learn ancient scripts, all of these things that could be magical powers. Magical powers to do what? Well, maybe just enchant weapons and get spooky sometimes and maybe shoot a magic missile, if the game is more on the BMX Bandit side of things. In that game, that is what a wizard does - sometimes fire a crossbow (in a library). And in a more Angel Summoner kind of game, your wizard can stop time...and the knight of the realm has the spirits of ancestors rising to his shield's standard, as well.

 

[Neonchameleon]

This is part of why my solution just nukes the idea of class.

There are plenty of classless games out there. But they lack the variety of effective playstyles that being able to silo abilities by class allows.