I see a lot of people on this board who complain about martials in general and fighters in specific not being fun to play or not being powerful enough.
I don't really agree with this, but I thought of two ways to increase relative power of martials in the game without changing the classes or core rules:
1. drive up average ability scores for everyone. This increases character power across the board, but it helps non-casters because it helps them more than casters as it increases damage on attacks (something that typically does not happen with spells) and it makes them better at non-combat roles, a deficiency casters typicall solve with spells.
To really make this effective though you need to buff abilities substantially. One method is to roll using a variant of the 1E unearthed arcana method:
Choose 1 stat and roll 9 dice for that stat and drop 6, Choose a second stat roll 8 dice and drop 5, ...... your final stat you roll 4 dice and drop 1.
This is going to give an average (mode) array of: 18 16 15 14 13 11 before racial bonuses.
2. Another way is to use a different point buy method: 31 for martials, 27 for half casters, 24 for full casters. If you multiclass at any point in the game into a class with a lower point buy you must lower your abilities to that new level.
Either of these methods will increase the relative power of non casters without mucking up the rules of the game itself once you start playing. I would not want to play in the second example but if you can't find people to play martials in your game it is one option.
I don't really agree with this, but I thought of two ways to increase relative power of martials in the game without changing the classes or core rules:
1. drive up average ability scores for everyone. This increases character power across the board, but it helps non-casters because it helps them more than casters as it increases damage on attacks (something that typically does not happen with spells) and it makes them better at non-combat roles, a deficiency casters typicall solve with spells.
To really make this effective though you need to buff abilities substantially. One method is to roll using a variant of the 1E unearthed arcana method:
Choose 1 stat and roll 9 dice for that stat and drop 6, Choose a second stat roll 8 dice and drop 5, ...... your final stat you roll 4 dice and drop 1.
This is going to give an average (mode) array of: 18 16 15 14 13 11 before racial bonuses.
2. Another way is to use a different point buy method: 31 for martials, 27 for half casters, 24 for full casters. If you multiclass at any point in the game into a class with a lower point buy you must lower your abilities to that new level.
Either of these methods will increase the relative power of non casters without mucking up the rules of the game itself once you start playing. I would not want to play in the second example but if you can't find people to play martials in your game it is one option.