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

[Aldarc]

Anime, manga, and light novels say hello.

Right. What I'm saying is that video games are not the main driver of the genre. Anime, manga, light novels drive the genre more. Modern fantasy like Brandon Sanderson drive the genre more. Urban fantasy like the Harry Dresden books drive the genre more. Harry Potter drive the genre more.

I'm not sure that anime is the main driver. Video games are massive. IME, not everyone watches the popular anime there when compared to the number of people who play video games. Video games have a fairly large influence on anime and other media as well.

FWIW, more players either come to me (or whoever else is the GM) with characters inspired by video games than by anime, and I'm from a generation that grew up on anime.

 

[Li Shenron]

So the question is: what specifically can D&D 5E do to fix this problem?

The two obvious broad solutions are varying degrees of nerf the casters and buff the non-casters.

Cool. But how?

If I ever had this problem, I would look into some less popular remedies such as:

- enforce material components directly: not allow a pouch or focus to cover for any components but instead require the caster to purchase, carry and properly handle them in details (does the Bane spell says one drop of blood? cut yourself or someone else if you can, while I count the rounds it takes you)

- disavow that stupid rule on free object interactions and require any spell with somatic components to really require a free hand (works best on Clerics)

- for Wizards, all spells learned must come from copying scrolls, which are rare and randomly rolled

- use Sanity/Madness rules from the DMG and require a check every time a spell is cast

Or maybe I'd just cut it short and play BECMI, starting at level 1 of course.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Of course, we can't ever admit any inspiration from videogame lest the fandom get up in arms over mentioning D&D's ex-girlfriend that it still drunk dials on the regular.

God, have you seen the reviews for the VTT? There's barely any talk about whether the thing is good or not for all the complaining about how its 'like a videogame' and we hate videogames, amirite, fellow kids?

 

[James Gasik]

Sometimes, but That's like saying science fiction involves FTL space ships & a handful of tropes from star wars or star trek. There's only so many times the standard "whoah I'm reincarnated" tropes can get rehashed & keep a reader/viewer's interest once anime started whipping that dead horse into paste. A lot of the time in modern stuff it's little more than an excuse to start the story with some degree of en media res & leave room to backfill some background experience that might be hard to swing otherwise. Ascendance of a bookworm overlord & mushoku tensei are in a lot of ways mold breaking in that they use it in new & interesting ways.

Having read all of the books I agree with @overgeeked about john carter though. Yes technically by definition they are an isekai story about a regretful confederate soldier(officer?), but they are so much else it does the series a disservice by trying to distil them down to a single genre that didn't really gain traction for about a century. The trouble with putting the John Carter books in a single specific box is that they were almost rule of cool kitchen sink stories so far back that almost everything* modern seems derived on one or more levels

* Multiple comic book characters may as well be crossover spinoffs, airships, the drow & so so sooooo much more. everything looks inspired by it on some level at this point

It didn't occur to me, but perhaps that does do the Jeddak of Jeddaks, Warlord of Mars a disservice to put him in the same category as "I was hit by a truck and got reincarnated as the most overpowered loser ever!". I also had the privilege of reading all the books in my youth, and no anime harem waifu can compare to the most beautiful woman on two worlds, Dejah Thoris.

 

[Zardnaar]

I don't think you can fix it at least at a price people are willing to pay eg. Eg fireball is now a level 5-7 soel or it deals 4d6 damage or whatever and fireball isn't the worst offender.

It's been a problem since 3.0 and unified xp tables. You xant balance tgat with magic unless you rewrote all the spells which us vaginally what you gave to do. Then you're going to run into questions like "is this D&D". You xan also buff martial but once again short of superpowers one can't do that.

So can you fix it yes. Should you fix it and do it and have a version of D&D people want to play is the problem.

I would go as far as saying the 5E saving throw system made the problem worse.

So there's several options most of them involve a drastic rewrite the how magic works or creating new problems.

 

[Lanefan]

Guess what level 5e breaks down at.

And, oddly enough, 3e and 1e also kinda collapse around the same level (12th-ish), for different reasons; assuming one plays 1e beyond name level.

Someone else can confirm or deny whether the same is true of 2e and-or 4e.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I could go on, but people have this idea that D&D Wizards have mutated into this cartoonish level of magic use not seen in traditional fantasy, but for decades, Wizards in fantasy have long since left D&D Wizards in the dust with their quaint notion of limited spells per day.

Vance was very nearly the only one to give his magicians the weird "memorization" limitation. He gave them very flambouyant spells, tho, which I guess is something, too.

Gandalf, we're told, has many and vast powers, like "hundreds of spells of opening" (ie a password dictionary), but he conveniently rarely displays them, and even then, keeps it restrained, because Sauron would catch on. He does kill a Balrog, a large, scarry, reputedly uberpowerful being... offscreen. Tolkien did an interesting job evoking and using magic, without letting it overshadow his plot or themes.

Magic in fiction, like magic IRL, is often talked up quite a bit, and has ready, if not necessarily all that plausible, excuses for not delivering (not derailing the plot in fiction).
Magic in D&D, is hard-coded mechanics, like player-agency grenades, that get more potent and varied as you level, and that you get more of as you level (actually the grenade analogy is out of date, since slots can be anything until you pull the pin). It's almost the point of D&D magic to derail any plot that might otherwise have arisen in play.

Cartoonish? No, cartoons don't have the time to establish a dozen different spells a magic-user might have and how many times he can use them. Like everything else in cartoons, magic does whatever's funny in the moment.

 

[Minigiant]

And, oddly enough, 3e and 1e also kinda collapse around the same level (12th-ish), for different reasons; assuming one plays 1e beyond name level.

Someone else can conrifm or deny whether the same is true of 2e and-or 4e.

Not in 4e. I can tell you that. 4e runs into HP bloat in the mid teens but isn't breaking down but a quick official math fix.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

You need especially Battlefields that you can controll. With narrow passage you can Block, with bottlenecks, with height differences. And they need to be bigger.
If you have a wide open field without Cover, even in 5e Raw intelligent enemies with range attacks should attack the guy who looks like he can throw fireballs first.

I think what would get it done is almost an offensive line in football dynamic, but with elements of defense trying to stop a runner. Basically, a defender would need to be able to move, able to push and resist being pushed, and to intercept someone trying to circle around them even in an open field.

One element of that is simply to let PCs use movement throughout thier turn, especially with thier reaction abilities, at no extra action economy cost.

So for the nimble classes that means you can move whenever you pass a Dex or strength save, maybe also when an attack misses you. For tank builds, that means you can use movement to get into position to use your Protection Fighting Style reaction, or other similar abilities. A healer might be able to use movement when an ally fails a save or gets hit.

Basically you can use movement on your turn or any time you are doing something off your turn, even if that’s just defending against something.

Let some classes get abilities that slow enemies within 10-15ft of them while in a protective stance, gain extra movement any time they move in response to an ally being targeted by something, etc

Just some ideas

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Gandalf

Also uses a “Dweomer” to bar a door to slow the Balrog down, in the flight from Moria before the bridge, and mentions knowing many such spells.