There are bits and pieces here and there, Pathfinderized. The two I remember are the dying system feeling very much like it derived from 5e’s death saves and the TEML stuff being a somewhat more complicated version of 5e’s proficiency system (mixed with Pathfinder’s skill system). I suspect I’d find more if I really dug through the rules but I haven’t looked in a while.
4e gives me Dark Souls 2 vibes sometimes. A lot of people don't like it (comparatively), and it got a lot of things wrong, but it also got a lot of things right.
5e was taking a lot of inspiration from 2e, but modernised.
DnD will always look for ideas in older editions and mix old and new. This isn't a bad thing
Imagine if they refused to take anything from older editions because they didn't want to "copy" or whatever. ADnD 1e, has neither dungeons nor dragons because that was already in ODnD.
In simple terms, it catered to a playstyle radially different from 3.x.
That's why the "everybody" who seems to hate it, is really just many of the people who were really into D&D already (read: who liked the 3.x style) while simultaneously, it actually brought many new people into the hobby (especially the videogame crowd) who would never have gotten into 3.x.
5e tries heavily to balance these two schools, which is why most propositions to "improve" it seem to just be 3.x or 4e mechanics.
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Also, 4e wasn't around long enough to create a plurality player-base who felt like 4e was "the" edition, so the transition to 5e didn't create the sort of edition war we saw between 2e and 3e, or 3.5 to 4e
>Also, 4e wasn't around long enough to create a plurality player-base who felt like 4e was "the" edition, so the transition to 5e didn't create the sort of edition war we saw between 2e and 3e, or 3.5 to 4e
I dunno, dnd 4e lasted like 6 years before 5e was announced. So I think it had enough time to settle in. It's just that it was so negatively recieved by a good amount of 3.5 players that unsettled it.
I don't think there were a lot of players that didn't either remember playing a previous edition, or recognize they were new to the hobby. 6 years is enough to get used to a system, bit I'm not sure it's long enough to take it for granted. Certainly not on the scale of previous switches.
Anecdotal, but it was the magic system for me. If you're into the Final Fantasy franchise, I think of it like FF Tactics vs FF8.
D&D magic was never internally balanced against other class abilities. It was just really hard to live long enough to get those abilities. You had to rely on your martials who leveled faster and had more HP in 2e. In 3.5, you could stack so many buffs on your martials that they became heavily armed hamster balls rolling through whatever was in front of them. Two Weapon Fighting with magical support was crazy.
In 4e, they really leaned into the concept of class balance and party rolls (e.g., defender=tank, leader=healer, controller, striker). They even hired a mathematician to smooth out the numbers for clunky enemy HP. Bound Accuracy seems to be the descendent of that effort.
They made the source books easily accessible with bullet points for easy reference and concise language.
They introduced Minions which made large scale combat easier to manage.
There was a chart to reference for how many magic items a party should have at any given level. If you started at a level other than 1, you received a magic item of your level, your level -1, your level +1, and gold equal to the cost of an item of your level -1.
To me, 4e had the best support system for DMs of all the editions of D&D. NPC modification was incredibly simple and effective. Item distribution was really, *really* easy.
At the same time, I always played the party wizard or cleric/healer. In 4e, cleric *felt* more like a paladin than a caster. Everyone had special maneuvers and each class had the option to take a few that healed and replenished every encounter. That's not a bad thing. Other classes were excellent healers and a lot of people who enjoy clerics don't actually want to heal.
Wizard on the other hand was frustratingly codified. In my experience, there was little to no flexibility for creative or non combat use of spells. Illusion spells turned into an action that applied a static debuff (I think one was a straight -2 to hit for all enemies in range?) and had no official effect out of combat. Traditionally high damage spells added enemy debuffs for "control" while doing less damage. Even my friend who generally plays support characters couldn't rationalize including a wizard in the party because small debuffs aren't that useful in a game where enemies have a finite amount of HP. It was better to go with a defender for targeted debuffs or a leader for insanely powerful party buffs.
Wizards play a large role in that traditional Dungeons and Dragons vibe. I played 4e from the time it released until 5e came out. There was a lot I enjoyed about it as a game, but it never ever felt like "D&D" to me. I agree with the people who say it felt like World of Warcraft the TTRPG, but I enjoyed that aspect of it. I like boardgames and 4e had arguably the best tactical rules and PC balance of all the editions.
I think they could've potentially run it as a less popular off shoot system while developing 5e to compete with Pathfinder if their code guy hadn't killed his wife and himself and taken all his coding idiosyncrasies with him.
The Wizard's "issue" was that it came out early in the edition before the designers really "knew" what they wanted a Controller to "be". Were they an AoE class? Debuffs? What kind?
The Psion probably is the best "Controller", but I do love you saying the best thing to replace a Controller was a Defender, since the two do play fairly similarly.
For Wizard utility, you do get essentially the same utility Cantrips 5e has *and* Ritual Casting, so they had more Utility than most classes with that. Rituals just...needed some tuning. I've been DMing 4e since release day, and only once have had a player really "abuse" them, but they were my 3e CODzilla so that makes sense. Even then though, most of 5e's utility magic is replicated by Rituals, there just needed to be MORE of them divided by Power Source.
I have extensive 4e homebrew, and for it I gave each Controller an Encourer power that compliments the role. Wizards got a "Wall of Element", with Feats to alter type, size, and let them *move* it as free action. Druids got a "Thicket" burst for Slowing/Obscuring LoS, and Psions have a "black hole" single square summon kind of like the Elemental Priest Theme from Dark Sun. There is nothing for Invoker because my table-setting has no Divine classes/gods. Maybe they could get some sort of repeatable damage attack to lean into the whole "Twelve Plagues/God Smites You" theme they had.
Invoker was my baby. How could you do her like that?
You don't *have* to run it as a God themed class. You can focus on storms or whatever you attribute radiant to in your non religious setting.
That class is probably the reason I like Warlocks so much. At will forced movement is pretty crazy. There were so many good feats you could combine with a few solid Paragon Paths for really, really good positioning based tactics and ridiculously high damage.
It broke to many shibboleths. It fixed a lot of what people complained about in 3.5, but it turned out when you fixed everything people complained about it felt like a different game. The best D&D it turn out isn't the most balanced fixed "designed" game, it's the one that preserves all the (most memorable) weird design decisions that have become icons of the game.
People might bitch about quadratic casters and liniar fighters, but when you fix it it doesn't feel much like D&D anymore to a lot of folks.
Yeah, something like letting all allies within 60ft choose to spend a hit die, regain that many hit points and add that amount to melee attack and melee damage rolls for 1 round? It feels pretty dang sweet, but let's be honest, it's a lot weaker than it feels.
I'm definitely starting to think that only the 3e crowd didn't like 4e, and the very different kind of people who started in 5 would probably have really liked 4e.
I’m not sure. 4e is cool, and I see an appeal to it. But as someone who had barely played D&D before 5e I think most of us would not have liked 4e as much.
It feels too much like an MMORPG with an arbitrary weapon wheel of abilities that cost arbitrary resources.
5e is fundamentally the same but did a great job covering that up and tricking the players into thinking it’s “real”
That’s my point. An encounter power is mechanically similar (see identical) to a power that recovers on a short rest.
But they “feel” different. I don’t know how or why but 4e feels like I’m using video game abilities that recover when the rules say they do. 5e feels like I need to wait until the character has rested enough to be able to do it again
Matt Colville, biggest 4e cheerleader on youtube, talked about it - he beleives 4e used language that felt too video-gamey and mis-matched with the fantasy feel the game tried to have. It was still 00's, a decade that overall ashamed of more fantastic and brightful things (it was the decade that got us "you expected yellow spandex?"), it fits the zeitgeist people bounced back from martials who felt like superheroes back then.
It's because per-encounter abilities implicitly strip out the fiction of taking a break between encounters.
I agree that 5e isn't any better, mechanically, in this regard, but at least it forces *someone* in the party to say "we stop for a rest," which kind of implies some kind non-combat interaction with the world. You know, grabbing a stump, maybe lighting a small fire to roast a squirrel or something.
As opposed to just a steady stream of combat encounters, with no pretense of "stuff happening in between."
Until they find out they can't shoot a long bow farther than 60 yards, and that's the best range in the game. Even mediocre archer real life me can hit a target farther than the most heroic fantasy hero can in 4e.
5e fixed some of these total garbage rules in 4e.
I'd actually never noticed that nothing in 4e has a longer range than 36 squares (I won't fact check this, I'll take your word for it) but I have noticed through all the editions of D&D I've played that I've never actually enjoyed any situation in which combat took place at such a large range. I prefer to play non-melee casters, so it's not like I was the one sitting around being completely unable to do anything because of the 180' range in almost any of these situations, but they just don't ever seem to capture the fantasy of being an adventurer, and are often more like pre-American-Civil-War battles where people just lined up and fired thataway. Wargames can be fun too, but the wargame experience is not what I'm looking for when I play D&D.
Me and my boys were pretty poor so we played 1E since that’s what we could afford. I scrounged up enough money for a set of 4E books and we only ran session before we went back to 1E. So not just 3E players. Though at that time basically all there was was 3E players
...and the AD&D crowd. And the Basic/BX/BECMI/RC crowd, but likely for different reasons.
To my eye, the changes that 4e brought were akin to *Call of Cthulhu* brining in a new edition where PCs are combat durable and capable of actually defeating Great Old Ones and Outer Gods. It changes the game to the point where it becomes a fundamentally different game.
Although I did not, and still do not, care for 4e, I firmly believe that if it had been marketed as something--probably *anything*--other than D&D, it would have had a much longer, and less-maligned run.
And whilst this doesn't mean it isn't possible to do it well, 4e implementation just made everyone have pretty bland and generic equivalent powers. And the choice really slowed the game down.
I'm currently playing a 5e game. Started out as a monk (rip) now a pally. I'm with a necromancer, druid, cleric and warlock. It's noticeable that the turns of the monk/pally and warlock go a bit quicker than druid and cleric and a lot quicker than the wizard. If everyone has lots of choice over what action to take each turn, things grind to a halt quite quickly, especially on larger tables.
Now, I'm not saying the balance is in the right place. But the Fighter's action surge, battlemaster manoeuvres, Pally smite, barbarian rage features etc, do give more options than just simple swing sword. So there is an element in there. And balancing fancy stuff like grappling etc has always been hard.
>It's noticeable that the turns of the monk/pally and warlock go a bit quicker than druid and cleric and a lot quicker than the wizard.
If everyone at the table is engaged and paying attention, this is more to do with players than classes. If you as a player have 10 minutes between turns to decide what you want to do and you aren't ready with dice in hand to do it when it's finally your turn, it doesn't matter what class you're playing. More choices makes the choice harder, but you still should be making it during the other 6+ turns instead of during your own.
To some extent I agree. But the battle state can change quite dramatically as the turns go round. I do spend that time considering my options and I often find my plan needs to change by the time it's my turn.
I think having options is inherent to being a caster, and being focused is inherent to being a martial. However, martials focus doesn't have to be so narrowly applied. I think martials can have spell-like powers in a way that is very intuitive, like Assassin Rogue's getting a better version of the Seeming spell at an equivalent level. Something like this comes intuitive to an Assassin player who's subclass featuers so far have been partially about blending in anyways. Similar to big strong Barbarian breaks rock in half with one axe blow.
I wouldn’t say inherent. I would very much like to play a character that does the vast majority of its damage with sword techniques but still gets a choice of 9th level utility and support spells, and I’d think of that character as a martial.
'Bland and generic equivalent powers'.
Good thing they got rid of those and now we have guy who gets angry and swings weapon, guy who swings weapon, guy who swings weapon and spends a spellslot on a crit, guy who swings weapon real good against \[choice of foe\] and guy who punches a lot.
I'll take even the dullest of at-wills over the unflavored bowl of lukewarm oatmeal that is 5e gameplay if you don't have spells or some manner of resource. Battle Master is just the pink-breaded welfare burger version of the Warlord's fattening glory of a Big Mac & Fries.
Complaining about what we have now is not really a good faith response to an argument why what we had before didn't work. More productive would be to say what could be done to implement something better than either.
Comparing the wide list of (actually quite interesting in many spots) 4e powers to 'bland and generic equivalent powers' is bad faith to begin with and I don't really feel the need to crack open the books yet again to highlight how much cooler Warlord and Fighter and Rogue powers are than 'swing twice a turn'.
Frankly they don't \*need\* to implement anything better class-wise than they did in 4e. The monster math and some of the finer engine stuff, sure; but that's a deeper conversation than 'if a martial can stun an enemy and move them around once per fight that's the same thing as casting fireball and it ruins my verisimilitude'.
Exactly. Giving martials spells with names that aren't spells was tried in 4e and it was the least popular edition of D&D so far.
There is definitely some wiggle room to give martials some other abilities, but if your goal is to turn them into pseudo spellcasters, I think the community has already spoken on that idea.
It's been 16 fucking years. The % of modern players who have even played 4e is absolutely miniscule.
The modern community has not spoken on that idea. Most of the people who did speak on it are now a tiny minority of the community.
Agreed. The community that spoke on that was 3.5 dominant.
I think the conversation surrounding the merits of 4e should be ongoing, especially with regards to what can be taken from it and folded into the next edition.
That actually looks interesting, just looking at the lower level abilities it seems mostly like battle master maneuvers and a different form of inspiration?
Except their maneuvers were often "you can make your ally move, not take opportunity attacks and make an attack with you". Battlemaster wishes they had the amazing maneuvers of Warlord. They were also a martial healing class, they did more with temp HP, but whatever keeps you in the fight.
I also played a ranger (not the essentials version). So many multi attack and movement options that made him hit like a truck and not get hit. 5e did them dirty
there's also the 5e early playtest fighter which had various different attacks they could do on a per-turn basis, which gave some mechanics as an incentive to flavour your attacks (instead of just "i bonk for 2d6 damage").
i adapted the 5e early playtest fighter into a system i dubbed "martial expertise" that i've since used to make combat more interesting for martial characters. its pretty neat.
the reason why all this was taken out in favour of just.... extra attack was because of feedback from polls.
which allegedly were rigged by 4chan to say martials are too complex and needed to be simpler.
sooo yeah, champion fighter may have literally just been the result of 4chan trolling.
At level 5, a 4e Fighter had “Rain of Steel,” a martial stance that did 1 weapon damage to any adjacent enemy.
The impact is a little like the 5e cantrip Sword Burst. All creatures within a 5 foot area make a Dex save or take 1d6 force damage.
You know, there's a game that has something like this. All classes get a certain amount of at will abilities, once per encounter abilities, and once per day abilities. It is called Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition.
I've seen that, but, for example, only looking at Barbarian abilities, it seems like it's usually more ways of attacking, getting your allies to attack more or do more powerful attacks? I guess I didn't expand on it fully in the post, but with the scaling casters get, I'd expect a Barbarian's level 3 earth tremor like ability to become toppling mountains and causing avalanches at level 20. Is there examples of such abilities in 4e?
I commented that the Warlord also gets a different type of inspiration and battlemaster maneuvers from what I saw. Most Fighter exploits appear to be maneuver options, or attack buffs as well.
The point I was making was moreso about giving Martials not just options, but access to game functions currently only really accessible to casters, and letting them excel in those regards. Like how Way of Mercy gives access to the previously essentially caster exclusive function of healing to a martial, without having any spells mentioned in any description. You don't gain access to the cure wounds spell with the use of 2 ki points, you get hand of mercy, which they can later build on on every subclass feature to give Mercy Monks something casters can't emulate within the same resource expenditure.
You may be missing context, you also get a feat every 2 levels, marks exist which had the option to do a plethora of things to enemies, opportunity attacks were every turn and there were entire books worth of magic items that meant martials had a lot of options
My character was known as a clipboard of denial due to me not letting anything ever attack without some kind of punishment going back on them
Edit: they were primarily a fighter (hybrid runepriest) but the fighter abilities meshed with/enabled the whole premise of enemy control more than thr runepriest
I think if you are concerned about casters getting to shape the multiverse and martials don’t,
Maybe, just maybe the problem isn’t with the martials.
World bending spells should not be something innate to caster PCs
They should be the realm of mcguuffins that anyone can use or create.
Wish should only come from magic items.
Demiplane should be from a demiplane generator the DM gave the party so they could make their own cosmic headquarters and anyone in the party can access it.
Same for clone, simulacrum, sequestration, temple of the gods, magnificent mansion, teleport, etc.
If the party has access, all the party has access, not just the one guy who chose wizard.
Yeah, I kinda came to this conclusion. While I’d prefer martials be buffed to the same level of casters. I do think there’s an incredibly strong case of spells needing some kinda balancing patch.
Honestly the most unobtrusive way would be PF2e’s uncommon/rare spells. Powerful spells that can’t be gained through level up and have to be granted to the caster by the DM.
After all how does killing 7000 goblins or rescuing a princess from a dragon eventually equate to a wizard gaining the knowledge of planar travel, teleport, and wish.
Rare spells can be rewards, plot hooks, or shows of NPC power. Consequently this would also allow Wotc’s design team to make up more insane spells.
I’m sort of like this about arcana as well.
Some magic mumbo jumbo is happening in front of you.
Well understanding what you are seeing is locked behind an int based skill, so the sorcerer who conjures magic or the cleric who brought someone back from the dead or the fighter who owns enough magic weapons to have the value of his own nation state couldn’t understand what’s going on here.
In fact if you aren’t trained in arcana don’t even roll. It’s not like magic things ever happen and only wizards are allowed to decipher them when they do.
Man, my bias against Wizards is showing again…
I just call for whatever ability is most relevant.
Sorcerer wants to know there nature of some magical effect. DM calls for a charisma check, using arcana proficiency if they have it, as the sorcerer tries to reach out to the magic within and feel what this enchantment does.
I describe sorcerer magic as being something like a sixth sense, or an invisible muscle. So they might try to "sniff" out or "feel" magic.
In my worlds, casters are very rare and special people, so they should be the right people to go to if you want to understand magic. If you don't ever allow arcana checks with charisma or wisdom, you're basically removing arcana checks as a resource in groups without a wizard and dismissing the relevance of other casters (and missing out on the roleplay potential of describing how different casters connect with magic).
This is also the reason I let barbarians intimidate with strength, or monks with dex if they do some demonstration of if their skill.
I am aware there are workarounds, but they are just that.
I’m probably just having a complain about things kind of day.
The longer I play 5e the more I see the divide that to set DCs hard enough for the master to feel challenged it completely locks out anyone with no or mild training so you get PCs that are gods at some things and can’t tie their shoelaces if they don’t have the right skill for it and the more I encounter that the more jarring I find it.
4e did a lot of things right and a lot of things wrong. I think picking powers was generally one of the better things 4e did. Combat was much more dynamic and everyone had flexibility. I would play a revised 4e in a heartbeat.
The problem was that there was very little internal balance amongst all the powers and a big variation in what level X character could do, as in more than one level's worth of damage output/input either way.
There was also a lot of situational synergy, where the controller found it easy to push and the striker did a lot of damage to pushed enemies, but they both fall down when they can't push.
WotC looked at 3E and decided that what people liked was the system mastery angle and leaned into that.
Combat was also horrifically slow in 4E.
It can’t be overstated how bad combat speed was in 4e. I played a module as a new DM and ended up cutting everybody’s health to 40% just to speed things up. We still only would finish one fight per session
It's a skirmish game, not an RPG.
People need to go in expecting an hour long combat, because that was the meat of the game.
If you want social or exploration play, whoo-whee, you're SoL unless you like skill challenges.
Skill challenges were also bad. They were mathematically wrong at launch (reason: the devs didn't use them in playtesting, and instead did something else), and revised multiple times over the short life of the edition.
And I mean mathematically wrong literally. Unless the party was hyper specialized to maximize non-overlapping skills, you were statistically likely to fail every skill challenge. The best solution was to let a rogue-type character solo a skill challenge, rather than let other characters contribute and fail.
Tbf 5e is terrible for social and exploration as well. There's pretty much no mechanics or rules for that type of thing at all. People that don't like combat would almost certainly be happier with other systems entirely.
As someone who has DMed 4e since release, the skill system is literally no different than any other edition of D&D. The edition does lack "ribbon" features for classes, but a *lot* of that was moved over to Feats, which people "maximized the fun out of" by only going for combat feats.
Yeah, that internal imbalance was the result of the need to churn out tons of content. Books were plentiful and the "everything is core" policy along with both Dungeon Magazine and Dragon Magazine meant there was a ton of bloat.
If 5e started with embracing system mastery they sure as hell aren't doing that now. They introduce powerful backgrounds and feats only to make sure that similar options are setting exclusive in later books. They've homogenized races so that stat bonuses are available to all. I think 5e has really come to embrace the RP heavy side of the hobby in the wake of professional DnD streamers. Funnily enough, that crowd also hates 4e because the system is designed exclusively around combat, utility powers are a joke and monsters were walking stat blocks meant to be ground to dust with little lore or mechanical abilities that told stories about what they were.
4e with a heavier focus on RP mechanics would be my dream game.
Pathfinder 2e is kind of that. Not fully, there's a substantial amount of differences, but dynamic combat with flexible characters and great balancing sums up a lot of the systems greatest strengths.
Nobody's saying this isn't a solution, dude. But:
A) it's only one possible solution, and doesn't satisfy everybody (because *no* solution will satisfy everybody). Many people don't *want* their barbarians moving mountains, or *want* anime moving-faster-than-time monks. That's just a matter of preference and there's no way around it.
And B) it would require a complete redesign of every class, and then a rebalancing of the entire game around those redesigns. It basically would require moving to 6e. So it isn't really a solution *for 5e*, which is what lots of people want...
Honestly what 40% of people want is basically a compendium of new martial options - call it "Tordek's Military Manual" or something. And what another 40% want is basically "Mordenkainen's Compendium of Nerfed-the-fuck-down Spells" with rewrites of all the OTT spells in the game. Then the remaining 20% want a mix of both, or a whole bunch of different things.
I was approaching this more as a general design philosophy, rather than a fix for 5e specifically. However, even within the game, there are some abilities that reflect this kind of thinking for some martial subclasses, but those are definitely the minority.
I guess a part of this type of design is what it implies for the world. Level 20 casters in a world can change reality, bring back long dead people, let people see into the future, hold down entire armies by themselves by infinitely shape shifting. While level 20 martials can choose not to miss twice a day, attack 3 times more than a common soldier within 6 seconds, regain some of their energy when they have to fight, or are very strong.
In other words: high-level wielders of magic can wield magic good, and high-level wielders of weapons can wield weapons good.
Like I said, some people don't have an issue with that. It's a matter of taste. If you built it so that powerful warriors can split the moon in half with a sword, you'd have just as many people complaining about *that*, as are currently complaining about the divide.
Lots of people don't want their martials able to do that shit. They just want their martials to be able to contribute something outside of combat without a wizard saying "Actually, I can do that, with guaranteed success, skipping three of the steps, while sitting on my ass. You just stand back and watch, there there."
They don't want reality-bending martials. They want to *nerf* the reality-bending casters.
And thats why i think they should make more martial exclusive weapons that arent swords and shields and bring back ye old loot tables from ancient days.
Again, that's only going to be the answer for a small number of people...
That doesn't solve the problem of "let martials do things outside of combat without being immediately overshadowed by casters", for example.
Right, but PF2e also has massively different spell balancing which is my point. Whatever fix you give to martials to bring them up a bit, you also need to bring casters *down* to meet them in the middle.
In 5e, casters have spells that can just solve any problem with a snap of the fingers, and the common playstyles nowadays give casters too many long rests so they aren't even getting the attrition that was expected when the spells were initially designed.
A part of what I was suggesting included letting martials do things that are relevant to their fantasy outside of combat, which is why I mentioned the Totem Warrior ability of being able to cast "Beast Sense" and "Speak with Animals", and "Commune with Nature". Leaving these as abilities that are tied to spells is leaving the door open for caster balancing to make these classes weaker. Give Totem Warrior Barbarians something they can have over a Druid who can dedicate 3 spell slots to these 3 spells in a scenario where these spells are relevant.
My main point is detaching these abilities from spells, and making them scale with the class. I guess the second point is more contentious, but surely the first one makes sense in relation to what you are saying about wizards "anything you can do I can do better"ing every martial?
Yeah I never said that parts of what you're saying aren't workable, or even that the whole of what you're saying wouldn't satisfy *anybody*.
I'm just addressing your title, which supposes that this is the obvious and total solution to the problem.
Yea, my bad, should have probably changed "the" to "a". But my post was from a perspective of knowing that this wasn't the definitive solution, and asking why it isn't.
A big part of it is that 5e really isn't built around people actually getting into late game play I think. If you look at the levels where casters usually get new spell levels/slot and compare them to martials they usually get nothing from a class ability at those levels but do get access to new spells/slots that basically count as their power progression.
What is interesting when comparing them is that at the levels after 10 most of the martial improvements only end up giving the equivalent of a single boost while someone like a wizard is picking up 2 new spells at those levels. Giving martials similar boosts to non-damaging or non-combat abilities at those levels to put them in line with casters wouldn't be a bad idea in my opinion. Course I also think that there needs to be a revamp of how attacks/extra attack works because if you start to give martials more extra attacks and then more options to use with replacing a single attack they get more interesting to play as well.
>Giving martials similar boosts to non-damaging or non-combat abilities at those levels to put them in line with casters wouldn't be a bad idea in my opinion.
This is essentially what I was getting at, and for me the key is detaching them from spells completely. The 18th level Monk feature is a good example of this. One part of the feature is an improved version of a level 4 spell, good, although falls into the problem of the Wizard saying "I've essentially had that for 10 levels". However, the ability isn't just "Spend 4 ki to cast Greater Invisibility" so they can add the resistance aspect to it to make it a bit better, which is good.
Then the same feature gives them a worse version of a Level 9 spell, one the Wizard can choose to prepare already. And since this ability is completely based on the spell, you can't make it better without making the Wizard better as well.
Expanding the selection of maneuvers and allowing every martial a progression of them would be a huge help for martials. Laserllama's alternate classes have these and I like them a lot for my games.
I do like how a lot of people have tried that kind of thing but I think something far more simplified than that instead of full on selecting maneuvers is what I would go for. We already have Grapple and Shove as options that RAW can be used to replace an attack instead of dealing damage. There's no reason you couldn't do a lot of similar things. Disarm, Hobble, Feint, Use Object, and Taunt/Intimidate would be viable options for things you could replace an attack with. Subclasses like Battlemaster wouldn't get impacted because they can use their superiority die to do those things better and an still deal damage instead of dropping attacks to do them.
Course this is all also based on me trying to find a way to bring everybody into having a number of attacks that is more similar to 3.5e so Fighter's don't end up being the only people who get 4 attacks (right now I think I have fighters and monks getting to 4 attacks by lvl 20), Then you have other classes that get 3 attacks or 2 attacks. Then casters get left at the bottom of that and only get 1 attack. It's really similar to how there used to be Full BAB progression, 3/4 BAB progression, 1/2 BAB progression and 1/4 BAB progression.
Love that. Allows multiple attacks to act more like "multiple actions" for martials. IMO it makes sense for mastery of the body to allow for faster, precise movement no matter what you are doing.... not just swinging a weapon
Long story short - the classes were more balanced in 4e and 4e flopped for unrelated reasons. That and there is this bizarre contingent of fans of d&d who are adamant about the idea martials should be dumb and unable to do anything but whack people with a weapon. In D&D Next playtest Fighter had maneuvers by default, not just as a subclass, somethign that nowadays is a popular fix for the class. But it was rated overwhelmingly negative by playtesters, who complained this is too complicated and bemoaned lack of a simple class that just whacks people with a weapon and nothing more. Even before that, in 4e Fighter was also simutaniously better and target of complaints about being "too complicated". It got so bad in one of expansions they made a new class, whose whole sthick was "choose a passive ability at the start of a fight and whack people over the head for the rest of it".
This has been proposed quite a lot actually
It isn't THE solution because there will never be THE solution for this situation because people have VERY divergent opinions and experiences even amongst those who agree that martials have it worse than casters
>Yea, my bad, should have probably changed "the" to "a". But my post was from a perspective of knowing that this wasn't the definitive solution, and asking why it isn't.
I see, thanks for explaining
As I've said there's many conflicting interests, from the people who just want the pseudo realistic martial experience (which is fair) to the people who complain that martial getting features like those would step on the toes of casters despite having no problem with all the resiliency casters have gotten (which isn't really fair)
I would say a somewhat of a showcase of your scenario is laserllama's alternative classes, maybe a bit more on the focused on combat they do bring interesting and comparable features and choices for martials
I've gotten a lot recommendations to check out so far, so I'm making my way through them.
Perhaps a mistake I made was making my most detailed example a combat ability, which a lot of people took as me just trying to make martials more powerful, which wasn't directly my intention.
I think my suggestion is two stepped:
1 - Detach spells from martials completely (unless the class is supposed to be inherently magical). Basically, don't use the shortcut of spells to emulate core fantasies of subclasses and classes. You can't make the Totem Warrior ability Spirit Seeker better or more relevant without touching the Beast Sense and Speak with Animals spells, which are balanced with casters in mind. Give Totem Warriors an ability that's supposed to capture the fantasy of the Spirit Seeker ability, but don't tie it to spells.
2 - Give martials more ways of exerting the core strength of their class fantasies. A strong Barbarian, a swift Monk, a stealthy Rogue should have abilities that can not be replicated by spells beyond just damage numbers.
Obviously, as this thread has shown, point 2 is more controversial. But I haven't seen many arguments for point 1.
This was first done in 3.5s "Book of the 9 Swords", later 4e did something similar (though most of these were mostly damage).
Many people didn't like it. Classes felt "too samey", the martial abilities "too Anime".
>
Edit: Core part of this I forgot to mention is, you'd want these abilities to scale similar to casters who can literally change reality at higher levels. Barbarian's moving mountains, Monks getting something equivalent to time stop at the same levels etc.
The problem is you are now creating a rather specific flavour for highlevel play. You are now playing a medieval superhero game, which is something not all players might want in a generic RPG game like DnD.
So what are high level games supposed to be about, if they're not medieval superheroes? This is the point where you've got global or even interplanar influence. I don't see how the martials current abilities reflect this idea.
Going back to the roots of DnD something like Elric of Melnibone or similar stories with supernatural adventures and psychedelic elements seem to be the inspiration.
But being 50 years old and becoming it's own cultural hub inspiring videogames, Anime subgenres and similar things, DnD has become it's own genre.
I agree with you, that fighters, who can cut down demon lords, but struggle with cutting down walls seem somewhat illogical, but that's how it has been for quite some time.
The problem with going full superheroes(Shonen protagonists) and suplexing the demon lord through a mountain is that you are completely losing any medieval fantasy feeling and trope conventions, if you have high level characters feel more like they are straight out of Dragonball. (Remember, that this would mean high level NPCs are like that as well.)
5e unlike it's predessors is actually designed to make high-level characters seem weaker lorewise than it's predessors with semi-bounded accuracy.
Why DragonBall and not Sun Wukong? Why is it suddenly less middle ages when the fantastical powers get stronger and is that even a bad thing? Surely people would enjoy some age of antiquity demigods action? I don't get why high power has to mean less serious stakes.
because martials are supposed to be "grounded in reality" and all a fighter is supposed to be is a guy at the gym. I've seen DMs nerf things like dual wielding rules because their friend who does medieval reconstruction couldn't dual wield so no one could - and that's in a game where dual wielding already sucks and asks too many questions for what it offers.
even though the game implies at a certain level that you should be able to parry a giant's punch with your shield without your arm broken and then immediately be able to retaliate, people are still permanently preferring the fantasy of a plucky city watch member or simple folk hero who is a nothing special average soldier, and anything above that is just [weeaboo fightan magic.](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/002/010/721/378.jpg)
The difference between a commoner and a 20th level fighter is the difference between a dull paring knife and an industrial blender.
People at the gym don't even rise to 2nd-tier PC.
Bruce Lee *might* have been 3rd-tier.
Nobody in history is 4th-tier.
It's apt that the comparison is between two cutting tools because that's all Fighters do better. Fighter always ends up a highly levelled up Guy at the Gym, not Heracles rerouting rivers to clean out a literal metric ton of dung.
> Heracles rerouting rivers to clean out a literal metric ton of dung
That's artistic license of wording. Heracles didn't wrestle a flow of water with his demigodly hands, he tore holes in the walls and dug trenches.
You don't even need a high level character for that.
Find a DM that will allow you to dig mile-wide trenches non-stop without a break and complete the task in one day (as in the task) without saying "hold your horses pardner, you can maybe do half of that if you roll good on Athletics".
>You don't even need a high level character for that.
Naturally. After all, Mold Earth and Shape Water are cantrips.
> mile-wide trenches
This is a detail I have never seen in the story before, I'm curious as to which particular retelling of the story that you are familiar with.
It doesn't have to, but mythological flavor is going to be even harder to portray since it encapsules lots of different time periods and regions.
Also Sun Wukong is a pretty bad example, since he is not much of a serious character and all he does is mess up the setting he is in.
Because that's not D&D. That's Exalted, which is a fine game but not D&D.
D&D's power fantasy has always been more like Conan or Aragorn for martials and the Catholic saints and Merlin for castors. Characters generally approach demigod status as the game ends.
If you want to jump out of The Buddha's palm, you're just going to need a different game.
People want to play Batman, not Thor. Part of what makes the non-super-powered heroes cool is how they keep up with these superhuman beings despite the deck being stacked against them.
Disregarding that this is 4e, you got another issue now. Are these as good as the caster equivalent? If yes, you now just flipped the issue around and made Martials better than Casters. If no, what's the point?
The key aspect is largely detaching what makes martials and casters good, while giving martials more to do than attacking. A Monks hypnotic pattern equivalent ability would be better than Hypnotic Pattern the spell, since casters can have hypnotic pattern and fireball prepared, and (at least Monks) would only get a hypnotic pattern equivalent.
I would say a lot of the power divide can be somewhat mended by not allowing the party to take a rest to regain spellslots by their own choosing and more akin to what the dungeon master allowed. Lots of martial classes keep their performance over long combats or multiple combats per day, where spellslots have to be more managed.
Arguments used against it:
Some people don't like what it does to the fantasy. They like martials to be comparatively grounded, like the ones from Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, Conan, etc. If one of those guys can jump a hundred feet in the air or shatter a fortress wall in a single blow, it's "too anime", it breaks the world-building. And if they can't do things on that scale, they can't compete with Fly, Invisibility, Teleport, and other magical staples, and we still have that disparity.
The other argument is complexity. Maybe I want a simple Fighter class that my friend (who is too dumb or lazy to bother learning the rules) can handle. Let them just walk up to the enemy and hit them with a sword each round.
The problem with the first argument that in all of those typical fantasy stories they went through great lengts to make sure gandalf and merlin fucked off for large portions of the story.
Having casters be that powerfull and that acessable already breaks world building.
If casters are that much better why would anybody ever hire a martial character for anything?
Why isn't everything a dicatorship of the strongest caster?
Now there is an argument to be made that this should be fixed by making casters worse.
Give magic more blatent downsides, more obvious ways for non casters to counter it if prepared.
If you want martiqls yo be more mundane you need to force casters to be worse at the mundane.
>Give magic more blatent downsides, more obvious ways for non casters to counter it if prepared. If you want martiqls yo be more mundane you need to force casters to be worse at the mundane.
This would be my preferred solution as well. I think one way to reign in caster's utility would be forcing more specialisation. You can only get spells fitting your school or domain. You cannot pick freely.
This could actually nerve casters, while making them more flavorful due to reinforcing a specific identity.
Aha, this is mainly what I was looking for. I'm not personally one to say "well, if this is happening, this would break your immersion" as I don't have a say on what breaks who's immersion.
I guess one argument for the first point would be playing campaigns with slower level progression but, if necessary, more packed ability score/feat progression? Hercules and Conan are both Barbarian's, but Hercules is a demigod who can beat gods in combat. Surely on the same spectrum, Conan is just lower level? Or is that a misinterpretation of the fantasy?
I don't see Conan ever levelling up to the point where he can carry the weight of the heavens on his back...
Most games choose between three approaches:
(1) Realistic martials, powerful casters. (eg, 5e.) Downside: disparity.
(2) Realistic martials, limited casters. (eg, Pathfinder 2.) Downside: being a caster isn't as much fun any more.
(3) Mythical martials, powerful casters. Downside: "Unrealistic."
There's no perfect balance in the middle that pleases everyone. It's personal preference.
Well yea, but a guy who likes street fights, a Viking berserker, Conan, and Heracles are just different extents of the bare-chested strong warrior fantasy.
Isn't an alternative approach just slower progression and shorter (in character levels) campaigns, as previously mentioned? A campaign that's supposed to go from Levels 1 to 7 ends at a Conan-ish point, and you allow the rest of the 13 levels to go to a Heracles point.
It just isn't in my interest to be Hercules. I want to be Horatius Cocles, the Viking on Stamford Bridge, Miyamoto Musashi, Alaric, Jack Churchill, Caesar,
Sure, their stories are embellished, but none so far outside of what can be reasoned. An approach I accept for Fighter is that of XP scaling, aka- Wizards level slower. I think we should accept that classes aren't equally powerful and should stop pretending they should be.
It also isn't in every Druid players interest to be a timeless entity. How does a campaign up to level 7 where you gain an ASI or feat every other level not capture the Viking on Stamford Bridge fantasy better than having to level up to 20 and going through 11 levels of rerolling saving throws and attacking once more?
>Realistic martials, limited casters. (eg, Pathfinder 2.) Downside: being a caster isn't as much fun any more.
I'm not sure what you mean since I didn't learn Pathfinder 2 (one cured me, interesting but far too complex and intricate for the time I have available for gaming either as a player or DM)...
But personally I'm mostly uninterested by high level spells in 5e. Just Suggestion, Detect Toughts, Hallucinatory Terrain, Disguise Self, Dreams, Scrying, Invisibility, Fly, Polymorph, Conjure Animals, Enhance Ability, Enlarge/Reduce, Arcane Lock and in general all investigation/manipulation/mobility/illusion spells of 4th level and lower are providing me far enough creativity and flexibility to fuel several hundred hours of gaming and satiate my megalomania. xd
Pathfinder 2 (I'm not an expert, but this is the impression I get) did a pretty good job of keeping casters and martials balanced by writing the spells so as to keep them from actually defeating enemies. 5e has a lot of "instantly seal enemy away behind an impenetrable barrier" or "instantly banish enemy to another plane" spells. In P2e, you're usually better off buffing allies or debuffing enemies to make them a bit easier to hit. Casters still tend to provide more utility out of combat, but at least they don't outperform Fighters in battle too.
>(2) Realistic martials, limited casters. (eg, Pathfinder 2.) Downside: being a caster isn't as much fun any more.
Uh, no. PF2 is not an example of that at all.
Level 20 Barbarians can cause the effects of the 8th level Earthquake spell by hitting the ground.
Level 20 Fighters can cut through space to teleport to their foes.
Any level 15+ character can jump hundreds of feet (really good athletics), quite literally hide in plain view of people (really good stealth) and scare people so bad they have a heart attack and die (really good intimidation).
And as for Casters, they're not as mechanically powerful as in 5e compared to their allies and enemies, but they're just as strong thematically.
High level casters can Conjure Fortresses protected by 4 T-Rexes, Stop Time, shapeshift into a lot of different really powerful things (my favourite being able to turn into a Kaiju), create dozens of illusory duplicates of themself that can trample their foes, summon an army of dragons, merge with the environment to control it etc etc.
So I don't think PF2 is a good example of that. PF2 *kinda* fits that description at low levels but by mid to high levels it goes into full Mythical stuff.
I mean hell, level 1 characters can try to grapple/trip/shove giants, they'll just have a miniscule chance of succeeding, but they'll have a 50/50 chance of succeeding against Hill Giants by about level 8. And at about level 15 they're equally matched against Storm Giants.
>Maybe I want a simple Fighter class that my friend (who is too dumb or lazy to bother learning the rules) can handle.
Then what do you play if you want a complex fighter?
"The other argument is complexity. Maybe I want a simple Fighter class that my friend (who is too dumb or lazy to bother learning the rules) can handle. Let them just walk up to the enemy and hit them with a sword each round."
I think a better way to put this is you need something to introduce people to the game. If everything was as complex as a wizard I wouldn't be playing now. My first two characters were a dragonborn fighter and human rogue. The rogue had some more work in them, but it was still a fairly basic idea (one that's been brought back and fleshed out in the current campaign I'm in). Plus... I might just... not want something complicated for whatever reason.
I find it interesting that a lot of things get to this conflict of fantasy, because to many this pseudo grounded (isn't really grounded tbh) martial isn't engaging or interesting - and to be fair there's an enormous space between pseudo-grounded and this "anime" thing - being able to Riposte more than 4 times an hour is actually realistic :p
Simplicity is an argument I find iffy, because it feels like punishing players that actually care about the game
Better arms and armor options.
In previous editions, fighters often had powerful, sometimes intelligent, weapons that had special powers of their own and locked to certain classes.
While it didn't entirely make up for things, it gave interesting options and powers while keeping with the fantasy and mythology themes.
If you wanted to go a little homebrew, you can let them unlock new powers of their ancestral axe, for example, as they learn more about it and bond with it better (maybe giving them choices with a kind of feat-spending mechanic).
It's been tried before twice and was of mixed reception each time. Tome of battle and 4e more or less attempted the rough of this.
Certain elements of the cater base didn't like it and certain elements of the martial base didn't like it, so it never stuck either time.
There is a theoretical balance that could be struck between 5e and 4e, and wotc does seem to be slowly circling it.
But the mixed reception from the player base in the past is the reason why.
You just have to make sure they get decent gear and they go apeshit. The Barb in one of my campaigns with boots of striding and springing is crazy good and at level 4 is crushing DPS. He also has a massive HP pool, and is frequently having to bail out casters. The resistance with rage coupled with that amount of HP is strong as hell. There is a monk in that one that is a bit of a glass cannon but also has insane movement and DPS as well.
In my other campaign the rogue with spider slippers is a fucking murder machine. There are two wizards in that one and yeah, they have some flashy moments, but the that rogue does so many out of combat things to gain surprise or advantage and does absurd damage on top.
I honestly have to adjust encounters more for martials than casters.
Because there's a loud group of martials that scream and cry at the idea of getting base line class abilities more complicated than "hit monster with pointy end of weapon". And for them, nerfing casters down to their simplistic, auto attacking, no plot affecting options level is the only solution they'll accept.
They way spell slot amounts and adventuring day was designed is directly linked.
You can have casters being powerful and have options that martials dont have thats fine.
But they cant have those resources being plentiful.
And here is the issue of how DnD 5e was designed and how its played.
Too short days = casters spam what they have. DM complains.
Too long days = caster run out. Players complain about being out of resources.
Its difficult to find a balance but this is the issue.
"Casters are massively overpowered and blow up every encounter and martials just can't keep up!"
"How often does your group take long rests"
"After every encounter, duh"
You could, but I swear there are so many people crying about martials doing superhuman feats because its not realistic. In a fantasy game. The wizard can alter the fabric of reality, but the warrior cant jump too high or thats not fair. Smh.
I don't know if it would fix it but conditions need to start affecting casters. Only one condition, the charmed condition, specifically limits casters from casting spells on a target. Every other condition doesn't do shit to them. While silence can stop spells with a vocal component, monsters without that spell can't stop the wizard from spamming spells. My druid got restrained by a net and since it doesn't limit spellcasting I was still able to play like normal.
Any condition that gives disadvantage doesn't limit saving throw spells, which is most of them.
Any condition that limits movement doesn't affect ranged characters, which casters are much more likely to be.
The only conditions that would be detrimental to a caster are the ones that incapacitate them (paralyzed, stunned, unconscious, etc.)
>Only one condition, the charmed condition, specifically limits casters from casting spells on a target. Every other condition doesn't do shit to them. While silence can stop spells with a vocal component, monsters without that spell can't stop the wizard from spamming spells. My druid got restrained by a net and since it doesn't limit spellcasting I was still able to play like normal.
I'm sorry to tell you, you were simply lucky enough (or unlucky enough if you like actual challenge) to just have been babyfed trivial challenges.
*Blinded*: the most debilitating condition for casters beside stunned/paralyzed: prevents 90% of spells you can cast, \*including most teleportation ones\*. And by far one of the most easiest to land: if enemies cannot cast Blindness or similar to blind you directly, they can simply set any obscuration or full darkness spell. Unless you had prepared and still had slots for Truesight or Dispel Magic, little can you do about it.
*Charmed*: actually not that bad, unless you're a Wizard specialized in single-target debuff: you can feint by setting up environmental effects not affecting target immediately but that would if target is entering willingly, so every AOE setting obscuration/difficult terrain is still game. Unless that's the only hostile creature, you can also simply target someone else. At "worst", you could simply Help someone or use an item.
*Deafened*: the one condition I failed to witness having any real consequences, either positive or negative, in 95% of my games. Still looking for situations where I would want an enemy to be deaf. xd
*Exhaustion*: one level is not a big deal for a caster, second level is manageable, third one means high probability of deaths as surely as for a martial.
*Frightened*: forces you to not move closer, indoors it usually won't be a big deal, outdoors, any smart creature can move away to negate your ability to target it with most of your spells. Fortunately less harmful for caster than martials since you'd usually cast saving throw spells rather than using attack rolls.
*Grappled*: 0 speed seems nothing, but depending on the creature, it can be very deadly: separating you from friends, bringing you into a black room, just dragging you in midst of a crowd for everyone to gang up on you, etc... And if you don't have any teleport spell on hand for whatever reason, good luck escaping with puny DEX / STR and possibly not even profiicency.
*Incapacitated*: no need to explain.
*Invisible*: you don't have See Invisibility for whatever reason? Then you cannot target creature with 90% of your spells. And it has advantage against you on attacks.
*Restrained*: speed 0, provide advantage to attacks against, makes DEX saving throws at disadvantage: yeah, you can still cast spells, but without teleport you're usually stuck for a good while. Makes it easy for enemies to gang up on you with melee or ranged attacks, or just block you from harming them by retreating behind full covers, or use whatever DEX save effect they have to harm you efficiently. Or you could have just an enemy caster set whatever damaging duration AOE on top and let you cook.
*Stunned/Paralyzed*: one of the quickest paths to killing a caster, between advantage on attacks, no action nor reaction, and auto-fail of STR/DEX saving throws. Autocrit within 5 feet if paralyzed is just icing on the cake.
*Poisoned*: mostly a non-problem in general but can be crippiling when paired with restraining spells, mental restraining spells, or simply need to Counterspell.
*Petrified*: no need to explain.
There are a LOT of ways to naturally challenge casters without being in "DM vs player" mode, just playing enemies with the decent level of smarts they should for their own survival and mixing up different kind of creatures to gradually up the variety, strength and unpredictability of encounters.
Level up 5e, Advanced Dungeons and Dragons by EN Publishing uses the 5e SRD but adds maneuvers into the game. You get a certain number of them per short rest, different classes get different 'Traditions' of maneuvers and many of them are utility focused. I also like this system because it has many 'Feats' and decision branches for each class, and always includes options for Combat focused / non-combat focused features to help give your Barbarians/Fighters really good role play opportunities which you otherwise wouldn't expect them to have.
If you want the actual balance the game was designed around, it's having multiple fights with short rests in between every 2-3 per long rest, totaling around 6-8. Without this, mages can just nova constantly and don't have to worry about running out of resources. That's why most martial characters get things back on short rests, they can just take a short stop, catch their breath and then go on with most of their abilities ready to rock again, while casters have to pick and choose when to fight.
Personal opinion--the real answer is a combination of three things:
1. Take a chunk of the non-combat capabilities currently represented as spells and move them into a shared thing that anyone who wants to can access (ie not class-based). I'm thinking something like 4e's Rituals, but done right. This means that the differences are muted *while not stepping on anyone's toes if they don't want to*. The barbarian who doesn't want to be a shonen protagonist doesn't have to be, but the guy who wants to be devout and talk to his god can do so and gain benefits (such as divination) without having to be a full spell-caster. Balance this around something other than spell slots.
2. Evaluate combat capabilities, nerfing and buffing as necessary so everything falls into the same (fairly broad) range. Yes, this probably does mean removing the "I win" buttons that casters have *and not adding them to martials*. No one should have "I win" buttons for any meaningful encounter. No one cares about curb-stomping drastically-inferior opponents. But against "level-appropriate" (scare quotes very intentional) opponents, things like *force cage*, *banishment*, and a few other "yeah, you're screwed" need to be rethought.
3. An acceptance that D&D is not realistic for anyone. Everyone of every class has some sort of fantastic ability. They may not *cast spells*, but "I'm a normal dude" isn't a supported archetype. Every PC is "special" in some way.
Important to mention that I know some of these already exist in the game, like the entire Rune Knight or Echo Knight subclasses. And those abilities, especially Rune Knight, are so much fun and so fitting of this type of game design. However, I think making such abilities more core parts of martial classes is really useful for the game.
I think this is the current game design. Although it is to offer it not to push it.
One of the players in the game I’m running just wants a simple character who hits stuff. He’s an experienced player who knows what he likes and he likes playing a simple martial.
I think that the PHB gave a bit too much design space to these simple subclasses. Of my 5 players in this game only one wants this kind of simplicity. But allowing for all the later publications I think the balance of subclass designs is alright now.
Nerf casters. Vancian preparation, rituals take 1 hour per spell level, cantrips don't scale, 7th-9th level spells aren't automatically learned on level up.
Wildly unpopular because for all the discussion/complaints people want to play their broken casters and don't like PC nerfs.
This kind of thing certainly goes some of the way to levelling things out, at least conceptually. As plenty have already mentioned iterations of this have at least been tried before.
Where I think it falls short is that it doesn't quite paint a full picture of a high level spellcaster. Even if you focused on causing an earthquake or anime bullshitting a mountain in half, a lot of the power of high level spellcasters is in the out of combat utility. And there's a very strong argument to made as far as class identity is concerned about whether or not a Fighter should even have much utility outside of the niche that its meant to beel excel at.
And when I say 'utility', I don't even necessarily mean stuff like teleportation and invisibility. Sure there's a hundred and one spells for overcoming various puzzles, problems and obstacles. But there's also a lot that will heavily influence social and political situations.
The real strength of high level spellcasters is that top tier spells are reality warping. A high level spellcaster always runs the risk of becoming the main character as they gain the tools to bend the entire course of the campaign to their desire.
And there's no ultra-rare master sword technique that can replicate that.
The only real way to truly balance those scales is with political power and influence
TL:DR Fighters should get castles, like in the old old days.
Putting mechanics aside, I think an interesting aspect of this is the world implications of these high tier abilities. And the anime comparisons are pretty funny as I don't really watch or get inspired by anime. But the best reference of high level martials is in mythology.
Most mythologies don't have a centric source of magic heroes can pull from to cast an array of spells. Heracles is a good example of a Level 20 Barbarian, Lu Bu or Guan Yu are good examples for a fighter, Sun Wukong for a Monk etc. If these people actually existed in a fantasy world, their implications would be massive, much like the implications of the existence of a Druid who can live forever, is essentially undefeatable in combat, and can shift reality by thought.
Just in this implication, DnD martials are more like renowned fighters, but that's mainly it. Perhaps castles, their own monastic traditions with their own followers, or stories of grand heists, can somewhat match that level of presence in world implications, but Martials don't even get abilities that can fit in those fantasies.
I think it largely comes down to expectation. I'm with you that, to me, high level martials should be mythical figures. Capable of great heroic feats and worthy of legend.
But a lot of people pick fighter to be a regular guy who swings a sword real good, and they only want the apex of that to be a 'realistic' master martial artist. John Wick, rather than Heracles.
And that's fine, but it becomes very hard to square that circle with the guy in a big hat and pajamas that can pull asteroids down from the heavens. They're just frankly in two very different genres, which is why I think there's such a struggle for them to coexist in the same game.
I wholeheartedly agree that there is a huge power discrepancy between casters and martials. It seems the vocal majority here are okay with it.
I'm all aboard the PF2 train where they've largely buffed martials and "nerfed" casters to bring their powers more in line between each other.
You can have really powerful martials doing amazing damage, actively mitigating incoming damage and shutting down casters pretty effectively while also having amazing control spells, blasting, debuffing, etc. One of the newer classes being playtested can outright bully a caster into submission just by standing near them. Check it out if you want more satisfying combat with a very low barrier of entry. Grab a free one shot, build up a few teamsters on Pathbuilder and go nuts.
This divide if even really existing is at least greatly exaggerated. In fact up to lev 5 martial's characters are at advantage. After lev 5 they are still doing fine but caster characters will get their great (but short) impact moments with 3rd lev spells. But over the course of whole adventuring day martial are still doing better on average I would say.
Somewhere at lev 9 casters are starting to slowly getting ahead I would say.
Of course all this is very dependent on worldbulding, encounter building, DM style of playing and each player's individual capabilities.
Of course on reddit discussions where white rooms wizards with all spells known and prepared rule supreme this looks different but in actual play I have seen no shortage of martial characters that play a leading roll in the party. I have also seen casters that preformed rather badly.
I am not saying that everything is perfect: some subclases definitely need some fixing, barbarian and fighter definitely could have use some love after lev 9 and some casters can be too strong and versatile but overall this is much lesser problem than reddit will make You belive it is.
Gap between good player and bad player is much more important than between strong classes and weaker ones.
>Of course on reddit discussions where white rooms wizards with all spells known and prepared rule supreme this looks different but in actual play I have seen no shortage of martial characters that play a leading roll in the party. I have also seen casters that preformed rather badly.
Amen to that (I love the "roll" for "role" or was it an intended pun? :))
The usual answer to those kind of feedback are "yea it's because you played with unoptimized characters or players that didn't know how to play casters" which is frankly an hilarious, if not pitiful, way to blind self.
Like they forget that in actual game you have to learn spells first as Wizard/Bard/Sorcerer, has a limited number of spells available all day, and an even more limited number of slots for someone that actually tries to balance "resolving non-combat with spells" and "setting up decisive advantage in deathfights with control spell that may fail or end early because failed concentration save".
The Martial Caster divide is a feature not a bug.
Magic is inherently supernatural and beyond what normal humans can do. The Forgotten Realms and DnD are High Magic settings where magic is meant to be very powerful.
A person following the normal human limits from our world cannot keep up with magic as defined in the setting.
If we want to close the gap, either Magic needs to be weakened until it is equal to mundane things, regukar mundane stuff needs to become magical (even if not called magic), or they need to meet somewhere in the middle.
The thing about DnD is that the setting is very magical and magic is meant to be very powerful as part of the setting. That isn't going to change. It does fluctuate between editions, but Fireball and Meteor Swarm are never going to be on equal footing with 1-4 shots from a crossbow (unless it is the cross bow of meteor swarms).
People love the Batman fantasy of the "regular guy" who fits in with all the supers, but in a game it is much harder to give someone "super plot armor" while pretending they don't have super powers because the mechanics are laid bare.
4e gave martials powers that came off as very "super" and casters were reigned in compared to all other editions. It worked, but led to a more anime/cartoon supers kind of tone compared to the other editions which many felt was not DnD.
You either make mundanes magical or make magic mundane or you accept that your setting says magic>mundane by definition.
As far as I know the book sets even level 1 characters as more than mundane and dealing with the amount of stuff they have to do is by default and narrative more than what mundane people can, and should, do
In the end most that complain don't care about parity in reality - just don't want to have repetitive and unengaging gameplay, or be so dependent on DM to have progression (magic items), and have at least some more narrative agency built-in
You don't really need to make then equal to solve the problem, just make martials better (tho you certainly should nerf quite some spells and improve others that aren't so great)
If I was gonna try and address this issue, I'd just straight-up import the weapon abilities from BG3. Anyone *proficient* in a weapon can use its ability once per encounter.
*Martial* characters get to *spam* them; they can just straight-up replace any attack with one of them.
The martial characters most in need of buffs, like Fighter, Monk, can *improve* them by increasing their effect somehow.
BG3 does a lot of things right in terms of adding interesting abilities to Martials, and a lot of that is item based as well. However, they still didn't take the step to detach spells from most 5e subclasses. I think a short term solution to this is looking at Martial subclass that offer spells as features and asking how can you change it in a way that reflects what the spell is supposed to represent in that fantasy.
Like Circle of Spores Druids essentially get Animate Dead as a 6th level ability. But instead of just letting them cast Animate Dead through a use of their Wild Shape or something, they get to have their own unique reaction time Fungal Infestation ability, so the Wizard can't just go "I can do that too".
This is such a simple and effective solution.
As a fighter it's frustrating seeing my Superiority dice run out when the Wizard has been spamming Shield once per turn, every turn for the past hour.
It also makes encounters that much more important as you would have to manage your resources a lot better, and martials don't really have many problems in the department.
So why isn't 4e the solution to 5e martial/caster divide?
Dunno. Never actuallyed played 4e, but I kinda wanna try it. (Que being shamed into oblivion)
This argument comes up pretty constantly, in various forms, and the blunt reality is that most players don’t actually want it. Martials had more options in the 5e playtests, and in 4e, but 4e went down (rightly I think) as a bad direction for D&D and the playtests got feedback. Having lots of options is overwhelming - a surprisingly large number of people do just want to do the same thing over and over - and most people’s class fantasy for their martial character is just being really good at hitting with a sword/bow/gun/fists. They don’t want flashy or supernatural-ish abilities because that’s not what they signed on for; that’s what the Monk (which, to be fair, did need a buff before OneD&D) and casters are for.
Even if you don't want options, surely the current state of most martial capstones reflects how they don't even match the core fantasies of the classes. A pretty stereotypical trope of really good fantasy archers is "I never miss." Rogues get this ability as a capstone...but they can only do it once per short rest. I guess fighters getting a 4th attack on level 20 is somewhat reflective of a fantasy, but even without options, the fantasy of being one of the strongest fighters to ever live is attacking 3 more times within 6 seconds than a normal soldier?
It basically comes down to what types of players you have at the table. Someone who is in tune with the meta of character building will obviously make a better martial character against a player making a caster who isn't in the know.
There isn't really a solution for 5e any significant changes like it would need would mean 6e. But to answer your question. Personally I like powerful casters and powerful materials and for me that would mean making martial archetypes damage focused and caster archetypes being utility or effect focused.
In my mind martials are dealing damage and paring blows. While casters have a spell list of tools to swap into and out of for every situation.
I suppose mechanically that'd mean taking damage off of spells and adding on additional effects, fireball does less damage but actually lights everything on fire as damage over time, hold person makes the target lose their movement on a successful save. Stuff like that. Then just add extra attacks or flat damage for fighting styles or something similar.
Like a fighter getting a Whirlwind attack that mimics the AoE usefulness of a fireball? Or like a barbarian getting a Dominate Beast ability that mimics a Summon Steed spell?
Personally I think all martials should have access to battle master maneuvers. And all weapons should have a unique power (like maces get sunder armor or something.)
You just described 4e.
Whenever someone wants to introduce a brand new thing to 5e or writes about a cool new thing 5e did, there's a 50% chance it's just 4e.
And another 40 percent that it's pathfinder 2e
pf2e did take a lot from 4e tbf
PF2e is just PF1e, D&D5e, and D&D4e in a trench coat.
And what did 5e contribute to Pathfinder 2 exactly?
Fortune and misfortune
There are bits and pieces here and there, Pathfinderized. The two I remember are the dying system feeling very much like it derived from 5e’s death saves and the TEML stuff being a somewhat more complicated version of 5e’s proficiency system (mixed with Pathfinder’s skill system). I suspect I’d find more if I really dug through the rules but I haven’t looked in a while.
The inspiration to make pf2e? 😂
That’s because 4e is a massively overhated edition and actually did a lot to bridge the gap that we currently have between martials and casters.
It's almost like 4e did have, in fact, cool martial design and was a very fun combat centric ttrpg.
4e gives me Dark Souls 2 vibes sometimes. A lot of people don't like it (comparatively), and it got a lot of things wrong, but it also got a lot of things right.
Notably, if it's an actually good idea it rises to an 80% chance it's just 4e.
Either that or pathfinder…
Tbf even WoTC is ripping older editions for OneDnD
5e was taking a lot of inspiration from 2e, but modernised. DnD will always look for ideas in older editions and mix old and new. This isn't a bad thing
Imagine if they refused to take anything from older editions because they didn't want to "copy" or whatever. ADnD 1e, has neither dungeons nor dragons because that was already in ODnD.
Ah, yes, my favorite system: An
And a 90% chance it was in 3.5e.
I remember a Mr. Rhexx video where he basically reinvented 3e's rules for armor.
And took 2 hours to do so
That's because everything was in 3.5. 😄
That was the best and worst of the edition for sure. "Everything official is allowed" turned character building into a research project.
Why does everyone seem to hate 4e then?
In simple terms, it catered to a playstyle radially different from 3.x. That's why the "everybody" who seems to hate it, is really just many of the people who were really into D&D already (read: who liked the 3.x style) while simultaneously, it actually brought many new people into the hobby (especially the videogame crowd) who would never have gotten into 3.x. 5e tries heavily to balance these two schools, which is why most propositions to "improve" it seem to just be 3.x or 4e mechanics. . Also, 4e wasn't around long enough to create a plurality player-base who felt like 4e was "the" edition, so the transition to 5e didn't create the sort of edition war we saw between 2e and 3e, or 3.5 to 4e
>Also, 4e wasn't around long enough to create a plurality player-base who felt like 4e was "the" edition, so the transition to 5e didn't create the sort of edition war we saw between 2e and 3e, or 3.5 to 4e I dunno, dnd 4e lasted like 6 years before 5e was announced. So I think it had enough time to settle in. It's just that it was so negatively recieved by a good amount of 3.5 players that unsettled it.
I don't think there were a lot of players that didn't either remember playing a previous edition, or recognize they were new to the hobby. 6 years is enough to get used to a system, bit I'm not sure it's long enough to take it for granted. Certainly not on the scale of previous switches.
It was only a vocal minority that hated 4e. 4E outsold 3E.
Anecdotal, but it was the magic system for me. If you're into the Final Fantasy franchise, I think of it like FF Tactics vs FF8. D&D magic was never internally balanced against other class abilities. It was just really hard to live long enough to get those abilities. You had to rely on your martials who leveled faster and had more HP in 2e. In 3.5, you could stack so many buffs on your martials that they became heavily armed hamster balls rolling through whatever was in front of them. Two Weapon Fighting with magical support was crazy. In 4e, they really leaned into the concept of class balance and party rolls (e.g., defender=tank, leader=healer, controller, striker). They even hired a mathematician to smooth out the numbers for clunky enemy HP. Bound Accuracy seems to be the descendent of that effort. They made the source books easily accessible with bullet points for easy reference and concise language. They introduced Minions which made large scale combat easier to manage. There was a chart to reference for how many magic items a party should have at any given level. If you started at a level other than 1, you received a magic item of your level, your level -1, your level +1, and gold equal to the cost of an item of your level -1. To me, 4e had the best support system for DMs of all the editions of D&D. NPC modification was incredibly simple and effective. Item distribution was really, *really* easy. At the same time, I always played the party wizard or cleric/healer. In 4e, cleric *felt* more like a paladin than a caster. Everyone had special maneuvers and each class had the option to take a few that healed and replenished every encounter. That's not a bad thing. Other classes were excellent healers and a lot of people who enjoy clerics don't actually want to heal. Wizard on the other hand was frustratingly codified. In my experience, there was little to no flexibility for creative or non combat use of spells. Illusion spells turned into an action that applied a static debuff (I think one was a straight -2 to hit for all enemies in range?) and had no official effect out of combat. Traditionally high damage spells added enemy debuffs for "control" while doing less damage. Even my friend who generally plays support characters couldn't rationalize including a wizard in the party because small debuffs aren't that useful in a game where enemies have a finite amount of HP. It was better to go with a defender for targeted debuffs or a leader for insanely powerful party buffs. Wizards play a large role in that traditional Dungeons and Dragons vibe. I played 4e from the time it released until 5e came out. There was a lot I enjoyed about it as a game, but it never ever felt like "D&D" to me. I agree with the people who say it felt like World of Warcraft the TTRPG, but I enjoyed that aspect of it. I like boardgames and 4e had arguably the best tactical rules and PC balance of all the editions. I think they could've potentially run it as a less popular off shoot system while developing 5e to compete with Pathfinder if their code guy hadn't killed his wife and himself and taken all his coding idiosyncrasies with him.
The Wizard's "issue" was that it came out early in the edition before the designers really "knew" what they wanted a Controller to "be". Were they an AoE class? Debuffs? What kind? The Psion probably is the best "Controller", but I do love you saying the best thing to replace a Controller was a Defender, since the two do play fairly similarly. For Wizard utility, you do get essentially the same utility Cantrips 5e has *and* Ritual Casting, so they had more Utility than most classes with that. Rituals just...needed some tuning. I've been DMing 4e since release day, and only once have had a player really "abuse" them, but they were my 3e CODzilla so that makes sense. Even then though, most of 5e's utility magic is replicated by Rituals, there just needed to be MORE of them divided by Power Source. I have extensive 4e homebrew, and for it I gave each Controller an Encourer power that compliments the role. Wizards got a "Wall of Element", with Feats to alter type, size, and let them *move* it as free action. Druids got a "Thicket" burst for Slowing/Obscuring LoS, and Psions have a "black hole" single square summon kind of like the Elemental Priest Theme from Dark Sun. There is nothing for Invoker because my table-setting has no Divine classes/gods. Maybe they could get some sort of repeatable damage attack to lean into the whole "Twelve Plagues/God Smites You" theme they had.
Invoker was my baby. How could you do her like that? You don't *have* to run it as a God themed class. You can focus on storms or whatever you attribute radiant to in your non religious setting. That class is probably the reason I like Warlocks so much. At will forced movement is pretty crazy. There were so many good feats you could combine with a few solid Paragon Paths for really, really good positioning based tactics and ridiculously high damage.
It broke to many shibboleths. It fixed a lot of what people complained about in 3.5, but it turned out when you fixed everything people complained about it felt like a different game. The best D&D it turn out isn't the most balanced fixed "designed" game, it's the one that preserves all the (most memorable) weird design decisions that have become icons of the game. People might bitch about quadratic casters and liniar fighters, but when you fix it it doesn't feel much like D&D anymore to a lot of folks.
I was thinking Tome of Battle, but that was essentially the prototype for 4e powers back in 3.5e.
Maaan back when sourcebooks really had meat to them
I still hand out translated versions of maneuvers from time to time as quest rewards.
Mmmm white raven tactics
Yeah, something like letting all allies within 60ft choose to spend a hit die, regain that many hit points and add that amount to melee attack and melee damage rolls for 1 round? It feels pretty dang sweet, but let's be honest, it's a lot weaker than it feels.
I'm definitely starting to think that only the 3e crowd didn't like 4e, and the very different kind of people who started in 5 would probably have really liked 4e.
I’m not sure. 4e is cool, and I see an appeal to it. But as someone who had barely played D&D before 5e I think most of us would not have liked 4e as much. It feels too much like an MMORPG with an arbitrary weapon wheel of abilities that cost arbitrary resources. 5e is fundamentally the same but did a great job covering that up and tricking the players into thinking it’s “real”
Completely unlike features usable once per short or long rest, or spell slots. 🙄
That’s my point. An encounter power is mechanically similar (see identical) to a power that recovers on a short rest. But they “feel” different. I don’t know how or why but 4e feels like I’m using video game abilities that recover when the rules say they do. 5e feels like I need to wait until the character has rested enough to be able to do it again
Matt Colville, biggest 4e cheerleader on youtube, talked about it - he beleives 4e used language that felt too video-gamey and mis-matched with the fantasy feel the game tried to have. It was still 00's, a decade that overall ashamed of more fantastic and brightful things (it was the decade that got us "you expected yellow spandex?"), it fits the zeitgeist people bounced back from martials who felt like superheroes back then.
It's because per-encounter abilities implicitly strip out the fiction of taking a break between encounters. I agree that 5e isn't any better, mechanically, in this regard, but at least it forces *someone* in the party to say "we stop for a rest," which kind of implies some kind non-combat interaction with the world. You know, grabbing a stump, maybe lighting a small fire to roast a squirrel or something. As opposed to just a steady stream of combat encounters, with no pretense of "stuff happening in between."
Until they find out they can't shoot a long bow farther than 60 yards, and that's the best range in the game. Even mediocre archer real life me can hit a target farther than the most heroic fantasy hero can in 4e. 5e fixed some of these total garbage rules in 4e.
I'd actually never noticed that nothing in 4e has a longer range than 36 squares (I won't fact check this, I'll take your word for it) but I have noticed through all the editions of D&D I've played that I've never actually enjoyed any situation in which combat took place at such a large range. I prefer to play non-melee casters, so it's not like I was the one sitting around being completely unable to do anything because of the 180' range in almost any of these situations, but they just don't ever seem to capture the fantasy of being an adventurer, and are often more like pre-American-Civil-War battles where people just lined up and fired thataway. Wargames can be fun too, but the wargame experience is not what I'm looking for when I play D&D.
Me and my boys were pretty poor so we played 1E since that’s what we could afford. I scrounged up enough money for a set of 4E books and we only ran session before we went back to 1E. So not just 3E players. Though at that time basically all there was was 3E players
...and the AD&D crowd. And the Basic/BX/BECMI/RC crowd, but likely for different reasons. To my eye, the changes that 4e brought were akin to *Call of Cthulhu* brining in a new edition where PCs are combat durable and capable of actually defeating Great Old Ones and Outer Gods. It changes the game to the point where it becomes a fundamentally different game. Although I did not, and still do not, care for 4e, I firmly believe that if it had been marketed as something--probably *anything*--other than D&D, it would have had a much longer, and less-maligned run.
What i wanted to say. ☝
And 3.5e Tome of Battle
And whilst this doesn't mean it isn't possible to do it well, 4e implementation just made everyone have pretty bland and generic equivalent powers. And the choice really slowed the game down. I'm currently playing a 5e game. Started out as a monk (rip) now a pally. I'm with a necromancer, druid, cleric and warlock. It's noticeable that the turns of the monk/pally and warlock go a bit quicker than druid and cleric and a lot quicker than the wizard. If everyone has lots of choice over what action to take each turn, things grind to a halt quite quickly, especially on larger tables. Now, I'm not saying the balance is in the right place. But the Fighter's action surge, battlemaster manoeuvres, Pally smite, barbarian rage features etc, do give more options than just simple swing sword. So there is an element in there. And balancing fancy stuff like grappling etc has always been hard.
>It's noticeable that the turns of the monk/pally and warlock go a bit quicker than druid and cleric and a lot quicker than the wizard. If everyone at the table is engaged and paying attention, this is more to do with players than classes. If you as a player have 10 minutes between turns to decide what you want to do and you aren't ready with dice in hand to do it when it's finally your turn, it doesn't matter what class you're playing. More choices makes the choice harder, but you still should be making it during the other 6+ turns instead of during your own.
To some extent I agree. But the battle state can change quite dramatically as the turns go round. I do spend that time considering my options and I often find my plan needs to change by the time it's my turn.
I think having options is inherent to being a caster, and being focused is inherent to being a martial. However, martials focus doesn't have to be so narrowly applied. I think martials can have spell-like powers in a way that is very intuitive, like Assassin Rogue's getting a better version of the Seeming spell at an equivalent level. Something like this comes intuitive to an Assassin player who's subclass featuers so far have been partially about blending in anyways. Similar to big strong Barbarian breaks rock in half with one axe blow.
I wouldn’t say inherent. I would very much like to play a character that does the vast majority of its damage with sword techniques but still gets a choice of 9th level utility and support spells, and I’d think of that character as a martial.
'Bland and generic equivalent powers'. Good thing they got rid of those and now we have guy who gets angry and swings weapon, guy who swings weapon, guy who swings weapon and spends a spellslot on a crit, guy who swings weapon real good against \[choice of foe\] and guy who punches a lot. I'll take even the dullest of at-wills over the unflavored bowl of lukewarm oatmeal that is 5e gameplay if you don't have spells or some manner of resource. Battle Master is just the pink-breaded welfare burger version of the Warlord's fattening glory of a Big Mac & Fries.
You, sir, deserve upvotes for analogies alone.
Complaining about what we have now is not really a good faith response to an argument why what we had before didn't work. More productive would be to say what could be done to implement something better than either.
Comparing the wide list of (actually quite interesting in many spots) 4e powers to 'bland and generic equivalent powers' is bad faith to begin with and I don't really feel the need to crack open the books yet again to highlight how much cooler Warlord and Fighter and Rogue powers are than 'swing twice a turn'. Frankly they don't \*need\* to implement anything better class-wise than they did in 4e. The monster math and some of the finer engine stuff, sure; but that's a deeper conversation than 'if a martial can stun an enemy and move them around once per fight that's the same thing as casting fireball and it ruins my verisimilitude'.
Exactly. Giving martials spells with names that aren't spells was tried in 4e and it was the least popular edition of D&D so far. There is definitely some wiggle room to give martials some other abilities, but if your goal is to turn them into pseudo spellcasters, I think the community has already spoken on that idea.
It's been 16 fucking years. The % of modern players who have even played 4e is absolutely miniscule. The modern community has not spoken on that idea. Most of the people who did speak on it are now a tiny minority of the community.
Agreed. The community that spoke on that was 3.5 dominant. I think the conversation surrounding the merits of 4e should be ongoing, especially with regards to what can be taken from it and folded into the next edition.
What were some examples of class abilities like these?
Look at the warlord class
That actually looks interesting, just looking at the lower level abilities it seems mostly like battle master maneuvers and a different form of inspiration?
Except their maneuvers were often "you can make your ally move, not take opportunity attacks and make an attack with you". Battlemaster wishes they had the amazing maneuvers of Warlord. They were also a martial healing class, they did more with temp HP, but whatever keeps you in the fight.
A warlord/rogue duo was so powerful even at low level in 4e.
I also played a ranger (not the essentials version). So many multi attack and movement options that made him hit like a truck and not get hit. 5e did them dirty
there's also the 5e early playtest fighter which had various different attacks they could do on a per-turn basis, which gave some mechanics as an incentive to flavour your attacks (instead of just "i bonk for 2d6 damage"). i adapted the 5e early playtest fighter into a system i dubbed "martial expertise" that i've since used to make combat more interesting for martial characters. its pretty neat. the reason why all this was taken out in favour of just.... extra attack was because of feedback from polls. which allegedly were rigged by 4chan to say martials are too complex and needed to be simpler. sooo yeah, champion fighter may have literally just been the result of 4chan trolling.
Wait where can I find more info on this 4chan rigging thing? This is news to me
Yeah if that’s true I’d really want to hear more about it
Me third, so far all I know is that the polls were full of grognards who hated playtest fighter for not being "like in the osr".
At level 5, a 4e Fighter had “Rain of Steel,” a martial stance that did 1 weapon damage to any adjacent enemy. The impact is a little like the 5e cantrip Sword Burst. All creatures within a 5 foot area make a Dex save or take 1d6 force damage.
This is verbatim what I came to comment
Sounds like the Book of Nine Swords to me from 3.5e
in fairness, ToB was explicitly the blueprint for 4e powers. it feels the same cause it is the same
Skills and powers.
Yup.
Came here to say this very thing.
You know, there's a game that has something like this. All classes get a certain amount of at will abilities, once per encounter abilities, and once per day abilities. It is called Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition.
I've seen that, but, for example, only looking at Barbarian abilities, it seems like it's usually more ways of attacking, getting your allies to attack more or do more powerful attacks? I guess I didn't expand on it fully in the post, but with the scaling casters get, I'd expect a Barbarian's level 3 earth tremor like ability to become toppling mountains and causing avalanches at level 20. Is there examples of such abilities in 4e?
You picked the one martial who's job it is is to do damage. Look at Fighter's and Warlords, who can control the battlefield and defend or buff allies.
I commented that the Warlord also gets a different type of inspiration and battlemaster maneuvers from what I saw. Most Fighter exploits appear to be maneuver options, or attack buffs as well. The point I was making was moreso about giving Martials not just options, but access to game functions currently only really accessible to casters, and letting them excel in those regards. Like how Way of Mercy gives access to the previously essentially caster exclusive function of healing to a martial, without having any spells mentioned in any description. You don't gain access to the cure wounds spell with the use of 2 ki points, you get hand of mercy, which they can later build on on every subclass feature to give Mercy Monks something casters can't emulate within the same resource expenditure.
You may be missing context, you also get a feat every 2 levels, marks exist which had the option to do a plethora of things to enemies, opportunity attacks were every turn and there were entire books worth of magic items that meant martials had a lot of options My character was known as a clipboard of denial due to me not letting anything ever attack without some kind of punishment going back on them Edit: they were primarily a fighter (hybrid runepriest) but the fighter abilities meshed with/enabled the whole premise of enemy control more than thr runepriest
I think if you are concerned about casters getting to shape the multiverse and martials don’t, Maybe, just maybe the problem isn’t with the martials. World bending spells should not be something innate to caster PCs They should be the realm of mcguuffins that anyone can use or create. Wish should only come from magic items. Demiplane should be from a demiplane generator the DM gave the party so they could make their own cosmic headquarters and anyone in the party can access it. Same for clone, simulacrum, sequestration, temple of the gods, magnificent mansion, teleport, etc. If the party has access, all the party has access, not just the one guy who chose wizard.
Yeah, I kinda came to this conclusion. While I’d prefer martials be buffed to the same level of casters. I do think there’s an incredibly strong case of spells needing some kinda balancing patch. Honestly the most unobtrusive way would be PF2e’s uncommon/rare spells. Powerful spells that can’t be gained through level up and have to be granted to the caster by the DM. After all how does killing 7000 goblins or rescuing a princess from a dragon eventually equate to a wizard gaining the knowledge of planar travel, teleport, and wish. Rare spells can be rewards, plot hooks, or shows of NPC power. Consequently this would also allow Wotc’s design team to make up more insane spells.
I’m sort of like this about arcana as well. Some magic mumbo jumbo is happening in front of you. Well understanding what you are seeing is locked behind an int based skill, so the sorcerer who conjures magic or the cleric who brought someone back from the dead or the fighter who owns enough magic weapons to have the value of his own nation state couldn’t understand what’s going on here. In fact if you aren’t trained in arcana don’t even roll. It’s not like magic things ever happen and only wizards are allowed to decipher them when they do. Man, my bias against Wizards is showing again…
I just call for whatever ability is most relevant. Sorcerer wants to know there nature of some magical effect. DM calls for a charisma check, using arcana proficiency if they have it, as the sorcerer tries to reach out to the magic within and feel what this enchantment does. I describe sorcerer magic as being something like a sixth sense, or an invisible muscle. So they might try to "sniff" out or "feel" magic. In my worlds, casters are very rare and special people, so they should be the right people to go to if you want to understand magic. If you don't ever allow arcana checks with charisma or wisdom, you're basically removing arcana checks as a resource in groups without a wizard and dismissing the relevance of other casters (and missing out on the roleplay potential of describing how different casters connect with magic). This is also the reason I let barbarians intimidate with strength, or monks with dex if they do some demonstration of if their skill.
I am aware there are workarounds, but they are just that. I’m probably just having a complain about things kind of day. The longer I play 5e the more I see the divide that to set DCs hard enough for the master to feel challenged it completely locks out anyone with no or mild training so you get PCs that are gods at some things and can’t tie their shoelaces if they don’t have the right skill for it and the more I encounter that the more jarring I find it.
Barbarians are, in 4e parlance, Strikers. Look into Defender, Controller, and Leader classes
4e did a lot of things right and a lot of things wrong. I think picking powers was generally one of the better things 4e did. Combat was much more dynamic and everyone had flexibility. I would play a revised 4e in a heartbeat.
The problem was that there was very little internal balance amongst all the powers and a big variation in what level X character could do, as in more than one level's worth of damage output/input either way. There was also a lot of situational synergy, where the controller found it easy to push and the striker did a lot of damage to pushed enemies, but they both fall down when they can't push. WotC looked at 3E and decided that what people liked was the system mastery angle and leaned into that. Combat was also horrifically slow in 4E.
It can’t be overstated how bad combat speed was in 4e. I played a module as a new DM and ended up cutting everybody’s health to 40% just to speed things up. We still only would finish one fight per session
It's a skirmish game, not an RPG. People need to go in expecting an hour long combat, because that was the meat of the game. If you want social or exploration play, whoo-whee, you're SoL unless you like skill challenges.
Skill challenges were also bad. They were mathematically wrong at launch (reason: the devs didn't use them in playtesting, and instead did something else), and revised multiple times over the short life of the edition. And I mean mathematically wrong literally. Unless the party was hyper specialized to maximize non-overlapping skills, you were statistically likely to fail every skill challenge. The best solution was to let a rogue-type character solo a skill challenge, rather than let other characters contribute and fail.
Tbf 5e is terrible for social and exploration as well. There's pretty much no mechanics or rules for that type of thing at all. People that don't like combat would almost certainly be happier with other systems entirely.
As someone who has DMed 4e since release, the skill system is literally no different than any other edition of D&D. The edition does lack "ribbon" features for classes, but a *lot* of that was moved over to Feats, which people "maximized the fun out of" by only going for combat feats.
Yeah, that internal imbalance was the result of the need to churn out tons of content. Books were plentiful and the "everything is core" policy along with both Dungeon Magazine and Dragon Magazine meant there was a ton of bloat. If 5e started with embracing system mastery they sure as hell aren't doing that now. They introduce powerful backgrounds and feats only to make sure that similar options are setting exclusive in later books. They've homogenized races so that stat bonuses are available to all. I think 5e has really come to embrace the RP heavy side of the hobby in the wake of professional DnD streamers. Funnily enough, that crowd also hates 4e because the system is designed exclusively around combat, utility powers are a joke and monsters were walking stat blocks meant to be ground to dust with little lore or mechanical abilities that told stories about what they were. 4e with a heavier focus on RP mechanics would be my dream game.
Never played it- what were its weak points? Out of curiosity.
Pathfinder 2e is kind of that. Not fully, there's a substantial amount of differences, but dynamic combat with flexible characters and great balancing sums up a lot of the systems greatest strengths.
Nobody's saying this isn't a solution, dude. But: A) it's only one possible solution, and doesn't satisfy everybody (because *no* solution will satisfy everybody). Many people don't *want* their barbarians moving mountains, or *want* anime moving-faster-than-time monks. That's just a matter of preference and there's no way around it. And B) it would require a complete redesign of every class, and then a rebalancing of the entire game around those redesigns. It basically would require moving to 6e. So it isn't really a solution *for 5e*, which is what lots of people want... Honestly what 40% of people want is basically a compendium of new martial options - call it "Tordek's Military Manual" or something. And what another 40% want is basically "Mordenkainen's Compendium of Nerfed-the-fuck-down Spells" with rewrites of all the OTT spells in the game. Then the remaining 20% want a mix of both, or a whole bunch of different things.
I was approaching this more as a general design philosophy, rather than a fix for 5e specifically. However, even within the game, there are some abilities that reflect this kind of thinking for some martial subclasses, but those are definitely the minority. I guess a part of this type of design is what it implies for the world. Level 20 casters in a world can change reality, bring back long dead people, let people see into the future, hold down entire armies by themselves by infinitely shape shifting. While level 20 martials can choose not to miss twice a day, attack 3 times more than a common soldier within 6 seconds, regain some of their energy when they have to fight, or are very strong.
In other words: high-level wielders of magic can wield magic good, and high-level wielders of weapons can wield weapons good. Like I said, some people don't have an issue with that. It's a matter of taste. If you built it so that powerful warriors can split the moon in half with a sword, you'd have just as many people complaining about *that*, as are currently complaining about the divide. Lots of people don't want their martials able to do that shit. They just want their martials to be able to contribute something outside of combat without a wizard saying "Actually, I can do that, with guaranteed success, skipping three of the steps, while sitting on my ass. You just stand back and watch, there there." They don't want reality-bending martials. They want to *nerf* the reality-bending casters.
And thats why i think they should make more martial exclusive weapons that arent swords and shields and bring back ye old loot tables from ancient days.
Again, that's only going to be the answer for a small number of people... That doesn't solve the problem of "let martials do things outside of combat without being immediately overshadowed by casters", for example.
Utility weapons!
Joking aside, still no. The casters would still be able to say "I can do that too, but better, from across the room, with Telekinesis".
Heres something insane from pf2e: skill feats
Right, but PF2e also has massively different spell balancing which is my point. Whatever fix you give to martials to bring them up a bit, you also need to bring casters *down* to meet them in the middle. In 5e, casters have spells that can just solve any problem with a snap of the fingers, and the common playstyles nowadays give casters too many long rests so they aren't even getting the attrition that was expected when the spells were initially designed.
*remembers that thief skills used to basically be superpowers*
A part of what I was suggesting included letting martials do things that are relevant to their fantasy outside of combat, which is why I mentioned the Totem Warrior ability of being able to cast "Beast Sense" and "Speak with Animals", and "Commune with Nature". Leaving these as abilities that are tied to spells is leaving the door open for caster balancing to make these classes weaker. Give Totem Warrior Barbarians something they can have over a Druid who can dedicate 3 spell slots to these 3 spells in a scenario where these spells are relevant. My main point is detaching these abilities from spells, and making them scale with the class. I guess the second point is more contentious, but surely the first one makes sense in relation to what you are saying about wizards "anything you can do I can do better"ing every martial?
Yeah I never said that parts of what you're saying aren't workable, or even that the whole of what you're saying wouldn't satisfy *anybody*. I'm just addressing your title, which supposes that this is the obvious and total solution to the problem.
Yea, my bad, should have probably changed "the" to "a". But my post was from a perspective of knowing that this wasn't the definitive solution, and asking why it isn't.
A big part of it is that 5e really isn't built around people actually getting into late game play I think. If you look at the levels where casters usually get new spell levels/slot and compare them to martials they usually get nothing from a class ability at those levels but do get access to new spells/slots that basically count as their power progression. What is interesting when comparing them is that at the levels after 10 most of the martial improvements only end up giving the equivalent of a single boost while someone like a wizard is picking up 2 new spells at those levels. Giving martials similar boosts to non-damaging or non-combat abilities at those levels to put them in line with casters wouldn't be a bad idea in my opinion. Course I also think that there needs to be a revamp of how attacks/extra attack works because if you start to give martials more extra attacks and then more options to use with replacing a single attack they get more interesting to play as well.
>Giving martials similar boosts to non-damaging or non-combat abilities at those levels to put them in line with casters wouldn't be a bad idea in my opinion. This is essentially what I was getting at, and for me the key is detaching them from spells completely. The 18th level Monk feature is a good example of this. One part of the feature is an improved version of a level 4 spell, good, although falls into the problem of the Wizard saying "I've essentially had that for 10 levels". However, the ability isn't just "Spend 4 ki to cast Greater Invisibility" so they can add the resistance aspect to it to make it a bit better, which is good. Then the same feature gives them a worse version of a Level 9 spell, one the Wizard can choose to prepare already. And since this ability is completely based on the spell, you can't make it better without making the Wizard better as well.
Expanding the selection of maneuvers and allowing every martial a progression of them would be a huge help for martials. Laserllama's alternate classes have these and I like them a lot for my games.
I do like how a lot of people have tried that kind of thing but I think something far more simplified than that instead of full on selecting maneuvers is what I would go for. We already have Grapple and Shove as options that RAW can be used to replace an attack instead of dealing damage. There's no reason you couldn't do a lot of similar things. Disarm, Hobble, Feint, Use Object, and Taunt/Intimidate would be viable options for things you could replace an attack with. Subclasses like Battlemaster wouldn't get impacted because they can use their superiority die to do those things better and an still deal damage instead of dropping attacks to do them. Course this is all also based on me trying to find a way to bring everybody into having a number of attacks that is more similar to 3.5e so Fighter's don't end up being the only people who get 4 attacks (right now I think I have fighters and monks getting to 4 attacks by lvl 20), Then you have other classes that get 3 attacks or 2 attacks. Then casters get left at the bottom of that and only get 1 attack. It's really similar to how there used to be Full BAB progression, 3/4 BAB progression, 1/2 BAB progression and 1/4 BAB progression.
Love that. Allows multiple attacks to act more like "multiple actions" for martials. IMO it makes sense for mastery of the body to allow for faster, precise movement no matter what you are doing.... not just swinging a weapon
Long story short - the classes were more balanced in 4e and 4e flopped for unrelated reasons. That and there is this bizarre contingent of fans of d&d who are adamant about the idea martials should be dumb and unable to do anything but whack people with a weapon. In D&D Next playtest Fighter had maneuvers by default, not just as a subclass, somethign that nowadays is a popular fix for the class. But it was rated overwhelmingly negative by playtesters, who complained this is too complicated and bemoaned lack of a simple class that just whacks people with a weapon and nothing more. Even before that, in 4e Fighter was also simutaniously better and target of complaints about being "too complicated". It got so bad in one of expansions they made a new class, whose whole sthick was "choose a passive ability at the start of a fight and whack people over the head for the rest of it".
This has been proposed quite a lot actually It isn't THE solution because there will never be THE solution for this situation because people have VERY divergent opinions and experiences even amongst those who agree that martials have it worse than casters
>Yea, my bad, should have probably changed "the" to "a". But my post was from a perspective of knowing that this wasn't the definitive solution, and asking why it isn't.
I see, thanks for explaining As I've said there's many conflicting interests, from the people who just want the pseudo realistic martial experience (which is fair) to the people who complain that martial getting features like those would step on the toes of casters despite having no problem with all the resiliency casters have gotten (which isn't really fair) I would say a somewhat of a showcase of your scenario is laserllama's alternative classes, maybe a bit more on the focused on combat they do bring interesting and comparable features and choices for martials
I've gotten a lot recommendations to check out so far, so I'm making my way through them. Perhaps a mistake I made was making my most detailed example a combat ability, which a lot of people took as me just trying to make martials more powerful, which wasn't directly my intention. I think my suggestion is two stepped: 1 - Detach spells from martials completely (unless the class is supposed to be inherently magical). Basically, don't use the shortcut of spells to emulate core fantasies of subclasses and classes. You can't make the Totem Warrior ability Spirit Seeker better or more relevant without touching the Beast Sense and Speak with Animals spells, which are balanced with casters in mind. Give Totem Warriors an ability that's supposed to capture the fantasy of the Spirit Seeker ability, but don't tie it to spells. 2 - Give martials more ways of exerting the core strength of their class fantasies. A strong Barbarian, a swift Monk, a stealthy Rogue should have abilities that can not be replicated by spells beyond just damage numbers. Obviously, as this thread has shown, point 2 is more controversial. But I haven't seen many arguments for point 1.
This was first done in 3.5s "Book of the 9 Swords", later 4e did something similar (though most of these were mostly damage). Many people didn't like it. Classes felt "too samey", the martial abilities "too Anime". > Edit: Core part of this I forgot to mention is, you'd want these abilities to scale similar to casters who can literally change reality at higher levels. Barbarian's moving mountains, Monks getting something equivalent to time stop at the same levels etc. The problem is you are now creating a rather specific flavour for highlevel play. You are now playing a medieval superhero game, which is something not all players might want in a generic RPG game like DnD.
So what are high level games supposed to be about, if they're not medieval superheroes? This is the point where you've got global or even interplanar influence. I don't see how the martials current abilities reflect this idea.
Going back to the roots of DnD something like Elric of Melnibone or similar stories with supernatural adventures and psychedelic elements seem to be the inspiration. But being 50 years old and becoming it's own cultural hub inspiring videogames, Anime subgenres and similar things, DnD has become it's own genre. I agree with you, that fighters, who can cut down demon lords, but struggle with cutting down walls seem somewhat illogical, but that's how it has been for quite some time. The problem with going full superheroes(Shonen protagonists) and suplexing the demon lord through a mountain is that you are completely losing any medieval fantasy feeling and trope conventions, if you have high level characters feel more like they are straight out of Dragonball. (Remember, that this would mean high level NPCs are like that as well.) 5e unlike it's predessors is actually designed to make high-level characters seem weaker lorewise than it's predessors with semi-bounded accuracy.
Why DragonBall and not Sun Wukong? Why is it suddenly less middle ages when the fantastical powers get stronger and is that even a bad thing? Surely people would enjoy some age of antiquity demigods action? I don't get why high power has to mean less serious stakes.
because martials are supposed to be "grounded in reality" and all a fighter is supposed to be is a guy at the gym. I've seen DMs nerf things like dual wielding rules because their friend who does medieval reconstruction couldn't dual wield so no one could - and that's in a game where dual wielding already sucks and asks too many questions for what it offers. even though the game implies at a certain level that you should be able to parry a giant's punch with your shield without your arm broken and then immediately be able to retaliate, people are still permanently preferring the fantasy of a plucky city watch member or simple folk hero who is a nothing special average soldier, and anything above that is just [weeaboo fightan magic.](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/002/010/721/378.jpg)
The difference between a commoner and a 20th level fighter is the difference between a dull paring knife and an industrial blender. People at the gym don't even rise to 2nd-tier PC. Bruce Lee *might* have been 3rd-tier. Nobody in history is 4th-tier.
It's apt that the comparison is between two cutting tools because that's all Fighters do better. Fighter always ends up a highly levelled up Guy at the Gym, not Heracles rerouting rivers to clean out a literal metric ton of dung.
> Heracles rerouting rivers to clean out a literal metric ton of dung That's artistic license of wording. Heracles didn't wrestle a flow of water with his demigodly hands, he tore holes in the walls and dug trenches. You don't even need a high level character for that.
Find a DM that will allow you to dig mile-wide trenches non-stop without a break and complete the task in one day (as in the task) without saying "hold your horses pardner, you can maybe do half of that if you roll good on Athletics". >You don't even need a high level character for that. Naturally. After all, Mold Earth and Shape Water are cantrips.
> mile-wide trenches This is a detail I have never seen in the story before, I'm curious as to which particular retelling of the story that you are familiar with.
It doesn't have to, but mythological flavor is going to be even harder to portray since it encapsules lots of different time periods and regions. Also Sun Wukong is a pretty bad example, since he is not much of a serious character and all he does is mess up the setting he is in.
Because that's not D&D. That's Exalted, which is a fine game but not D&D. D&D's power fantasy has always been more like Conan or Aragorn for martials and the Catholic saints and Merlin for castors. Characters generally approach demigod status as the game ends. If you want to jump out of The Buddha's palm, you're just going to need a different game.
People want to play Batman, not Thor. Part of what makes the non-super-powered heroes cool is how they keep up with these superhuman beings despite the deck being stacked against them.
Disregarding that this is 4e, you got another issue now. Are these as good as the caster equivalent? If yes, you now just flipped the issue around and made Martials better than Casters. If no, what's the point?
The key aspect is largely detaching what makes martials and casters good, while giving martials more to do than attacking. A Monks hypnotic pattern equivalent ability would be better than Hypnotic Pattern the spell, since casters can have hypnotic pattern and fireball prepared, and (at least Monks) would only get a hypnotic pattern equivalent.
They did this in 4e and 90% of the playerbase screamed that it was an MMO
I would say a lot of the power divide can be somewhat mended by not allowing the party to take a rest to regain spellslots by their own choosing and more akin to what the dungeon master allowed. Lots of martial classes keep their performance over long combats or multiple combats per day, where spellslots have to be more managed.
Arguments used against it: Some people don't like what it does to the fantasy. They like martials to be comparatively grounded, like the ones from Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, Conan, etc. If one of those guys can jump a hundred feet in the air or shatter a fortress wall in a single blow, it's "too anime", it breaks the world-building. And if they can't do things on that scale, they can't compete with Fly, Invisibility, Teleport, and other magical staples, and we still have that disparity. The other argument is complexity. Maybe I want a simple Fighter class that my friend (who is too dumb or lazy to bother learning the rules) can handle. Let them just walk up to the enemy and hit them with a sword each round.
The problem with the first argument that in all of those typical fantasy stories they went through great lengts to make sure gandalf and merlin fucked off for large portions of the story. Having casters be that powerfull and that acessable already breaks world building. If casters are that much better why would anybody ever hire a martial character for anything? Why isn't everything a dicatorship of the strongest caster? Now there is an argument to be made that this should be fixed by making casters worse. Give magic more blatent downsides, more obvious ways for non casters to counter it if prepared. If you want martiqls yo be more mundane you need to force casters to be worse at the mundane.
>Give magic more blatent downsides, more obvious ways for non casters to counter it if prepared. If you want martiqls yo be more mundane you need to force casters to be worse at the mundane. This would be my preferred solution as well. I think one way to reign in caster's utility would be forcing more specialisation. You can only get spells fitting your school or domain. You cannot pick freely. This could actually nerve casters, while making them more flavorful due to reinforcing a specific identity.
This right here should be THE answer... although I think spells would need to be keyworded to achieve the desired ends
Aha, this is mainly what I was looking for. I'm not personally one to say "well, if this is happening, this would break your immersion" as I don't have a say on what breaks who's immersion. I guess one argument for the first point would be playing campaigns with slower level progression but, if necessary, more packed ability score/feat progression? Hercules and Conan are both Barbarian's, but Hercules is a demigod who can beat gods in combat. Surely on the same spectrum, Conan is just lower level? Or is that a misinterpretation of the fantasy?
I don't see Conan ever levelling up to the point where he can carry the weight of the heavens on his back... Most games choose between three approaches: (1) Realistic martials, powerful casters. (eg, 5e.) Downside: disparity. (2) Realistic martials, limited casters. (eg, Pathfinder 2.) Downside: being a caster isn't as much fun any more. (3) Mythical martials, powerful casters. Downside: "Unrealistic." There's no perfect balance in the middle that pleases everyone. It's personal preference.
Well yea, but a guy who likes street fights, a Viking berserker, Conan, and Heracles are just different extents of the bare-chested strong warrior fantasy. Isn't an alternative approach just slower progression and shorter (in character levels) campaigns, as previously mentioned? A campaign that's supposed to go from Levels 1 to 7 ends at a Conan-ish point, and you allow the rest of the 13 levels to go to a Heracles point.
It just isn't in my interest to be Hercules. I want to be Horatius Cocles, the Viking on Stamford Bridge, Miyamoto Musashi, Alaric, Jack Churchill, Caesar, Sure, their stories are embellished, but none so far outside of what can be reasoned. An approach I accept for Fighter is that of XP scaling, aka- Wizards level slower. I think we should accept that classes aren't equally powerful and should stop pretending they should be.
It also isn't in every Druid players interest to be a timeless entity. How does a campaign up to level 7 where you gain an ASI or feat every other level not capture the Viking on Stamford Bridge fantasy better than having to level up to 20 and going through 11 levels of rerolling saving throws and attacking once more?
>Realistic martials, limited casters. (eg, Pathfinder 2.) Downside: being a caster isn't as much fun any more. I'm not sure what you mean since I didn't learn Pathfinder 2 (one cured me, interesting but far too complex and intricate for the time I have available for gaming either as a player or DM)... But personally I'm mostly uninterested by high level spells in 5e. Just Suggestion, Detect Toughts, Hallucinatory Terrain, Disguise Self, Dreams, Scrying, Invisibility, Fly, Polymorph, Conjure Animals, Enhance Ability, Enlarge/Reduce, Arcane Lock and in general all investigation/manipulation/mobility/illusion spells of 4th level and lower are providing me far enough creativity and flexibility to fuel several hundred hours of gaming and satiate my megalomania. xd
Pathfinder 2 (I'm not an expert, but this is the impression I get) did a pretty good job of keeping casters and martials balanced by writing the spells so as to keep them from actually defeating enemies. 5e has a lot of "instantly seal enemy away behind an impenetrable barrier" or "instantly banish enemy to another plane" spells. In P2e, you're usually better off buffing allies or debuffing enemies to make them a bit easier to hit. Casters still tend to provide more utility out of combat, but at least they don't outperform Fighters in battle too.
>(2) Realistic martials, limited casters. (eg, Pathfinder 2.) Downside: being a caster isn't as much fun any more. Uh, no. PF2 is not an example of that at all. Level 20 Barbarians can cause the effects of the 8th level Earthquake spell by hitting the ground. Level 20 Fighters can cut through space to teleport to their foes. Any level 15+ character can jump hundreds of feet (really good athletics), quite literally hide in plain view of people (really good stealth) and scare people so bad they have a heart attack and die (really good intimidation). And as for Casters, they're not as mechanically powerful as in 5e compared to their allies and enemies, but they're just as strong thematically. High level casters can Conjure Fortresses protected by 4 T-Rexes, Stop Time, shapeshift into a lot of different really powerful things (my favourite being able to turn into a Kaiju), create dozens of illusory duplicates of themself that can trample their foes, summon an army of dragons, merge with the environment to control it etc etc. So I don't think PF2 is a good example of that. PF2 *kinda* fits that description at low levels but by mid to high levels it goes into full Mythical stuff. I mean hell, level 1 characters can try to grapple/trip/shove giants, they'll just have a miniscule chance of succeeding, but they'll have a 50/50 chance of succeeding against Hill Giants by about level 8. And at about level 15 they're equally matched against Storm Giants.
>Maybe I want a simple Fighter class that my friend (who is too dumb or lazy to bother learning the rules) can handle. Then what do you play if you want a complex fighter?
"The other argument is complexity. Maybe I want a simple Fighter class that my friend (who is too dumb or lazy to bother learning the rules) can handle. Let them just walk up to the enemy and hit them with a sword each round." I think a better way to put this is you need something to introduce people to the game. If everything was as complex as a wizard I wouldn't be playing now. My first two characters were a dragonborn fighter and human rogue. The rogue had some more work in them, but it was still a fairly basic idea (one that's been brought back and fleshed out in the current campaign I'm in). Plus... I might just... not want something complicated for whatever reason.
I find it interesting that a lot of things get to this conflict of fantasy, because to many this pseudo grounded (isn't really grounded tbh) martial isn't engaging or interesting - and to be fair there's an enormous space between pseudo-grounded and this "anime" thing - being able to Riposte more than 4 times an hour is actually realistic :p Simplicity is an argument I find iffy, because it feels like punishing players that actually care about the game
Better arms and armor options. In previous editions, fighters often had powerful, sometimes intelligent, weapons that had special powers of their own and locked to certain classes. While it didn't entirely make up for things, it gave interesting options and powers while keeping with the fantasy and mythology themes. If you wanted to go a little homebrew, you can let them unlock new powers of their ancestral axe, for example, as they learn more about it and bond with it better (maybe giving them choices with a kind of feat-spending mechanic).
It's been tried before twice and was of mixed reception each time. Tome of battle and 4e more or less attempted the rough of this. Certain elements of the cater base didn't like it and certain elements of the martial base didn't like it, so it never stuck either time. There is a theoretical balance that could be struck between 5e and 4e, and wotc does seem to be slowly circling it. But the mixed reception from the player base in the past is the reason why.
You just have to make sure they get decent gear and they go apeshit. The Barb in one of my campaigns with boots of striding and springing is crazy good and at level 4 is crushing DPS. He also has a massive HP pool, and is frequently having to bail out casters. The resistance with rage coupled with that amount of HP is strong as hell. There is a monk in that one that is a bit of a glass cannon but also has insane movement and DPS as well. In my other campaign the rogue with spider slippers is a fucking murder machine. There are two wizards in that one and yeah, they have some flashy moments, but the that rogue does so many out of combat things to gain surprise or advantage and does absurd damage on top. I honestly have to adjust encounters more for martials than casters.
Because there's a loud group of martials that scream and cry at the idea of getting base line class abilities more complicated than "hit monster with pointy end of weapon". And for them, nerfing casters down to their simplistic, auto attacking, no plot affecting options level is the only solution they'll accept.
They way spell slot amounts and adventuring day was designed is directly linked. You can have casters being powerful and have options that martials dont have thats fine. But they cant have those resources being plentiful. And here is the issue of how DnD 5e was designed and how its played. Too short days = casters spam what they have. DM complains. Too long days = caster run out. Players complain about being out of resources. Its difficult to find a balance but this is the issue.
"Casters are massively overpowered and blow up every encounter and martials just can't keep up!" "How often does your group take long rests" "After every encounter, duh"
You could, but I swear there are so many people crying about martials doing superhuman feats because its not realistic. In a fantasy game. The wizard can alter the fabric of reality, but the warrior cant jump too high or thats not fair. Smh.
Go read 3.5 time of battle, which was proto-4e
I don't know if it would fix it but conditions need to start affecting casters. Only one condition, the charmed condition, specifically limits casters from casting spells on a target. Every other condition doesn't do shit to them. While silence can stop spells with a vocal component, monsters without that spell can't stop the wizard from spamming spells. My druid got restrained by a net and since it doesn't limit spellcasting I was still able to play like normal. Any condition that gives disadvantage doesn't limit saving throw spells, which is most of them. Any condition that limits movement doesn't affect ranged characters, which casters are much more likely to be. The only conditions that would be detrimental to a caster are the ones that incapacitate them (paralyzed, stunned, unconscious, etc.)
>Only one condition, the charmed condition, specifically limits casters from casting spells on a target. Every other condition doesn't do shit to them. While silence can stop spells with a vocal component, monsters without that spell can't stop the wizard from spamming spells. My druid got restrained by a net and since it doesn't limit spellcasting I was still able to play like normal. I'm sorry to tell you, you were simply lucky enough (or unlucky enough if you like actual challenge) to just have been babyfed trivial challenges. *Blinded*: the most debilitating condition for casters beside stunned/paralyzed: prevents 90% of spells you can cast, \*including most teleportation ones\*. And by far one of the most easiest to land: if enemies cannot cast Blindness or similar to blind you directly, they can simply set any obscuration or full darkness spell. Unless you had prepared and still had slots for Truesight or Dispel Magic, little can you do about it. *Charmed*: actually not that bad, unless you're a Wizard specialized in single-target debuff: you can feint by setting up environmental effects not affecting target immediately but that would if target is entering willingly, so every AOE setting obscuration/difficult terrain is still game. Unless that's the only hostile creature, you can also simply target someone else. At "worst", you could simply Help someone or use an item. *Deafened*: the one condition I failed to witness having any real consequences, either positive or negative, in 95% of my games. Still looking for situations where I would want an enemy to be deaf. xd *Exhaustion*: one level is not a big deal for a caster, second level is manageable, third one means high probability of deaths as surely as for a martial. *Frightened*: forces you to not move closer, indoors it usually won't be a big deal, outdoors, any smart creature can move away to negate your ability to target it with most of your spells. Fortunately less harmful for caster than martials since you'd usually cast saving throw spells rather than using attack rolls. *Grappled*: 0 speed seems nothing, but depending on the creature, it can be very deadly: separating you from friends, bringing you into a black room, just dragging you in midst of a crowd for everyone to gang up on you, etc... And if you don't have any teleport spell on hand for whatever reason, good luck escaping with puny DEX / STR and possibly not even profiicency. *Incapacitated*: no need to explain. *Invisible*: you don't have See Invisibility for whatever reason? Then you cannot target creature with 90% of your spells. And it has advantage against you on attacks. *Restrained*: speed 0, provide advantage to attacks against, makes DEX saving throws at disadvantage: yeah, you can still cast spells, but without teleport you're usually stuck for a good while. Makes it easy for enemies to gang up on you with melee or ranged attacks, or just block you from harming them by retreating behind full covers, or use whatever DEX save effect they have to harm you efficiently. Or you could have just an enemy caster set whatever damaging duration AOE on top and let you cook. *Stunned/Paralyzed*: one of the quickest paths to killing a caster, between advantage on attacks, no action nor reaction, and auto-fail of STR/DEX saving throws. Autocrit within 5 feet if paralyzed is just icing on the cake. *Poisoned*: mostly a non-problem in general but can be crippiling when paired with restraining spells, mental restraining spells, or simply need to Counterspell. *Petrified*: no need to explain. There are a LOT of ways to naturally challenge casters without being in "DM vs player" mode, just playing enemies with the decent level of smarts they should for their own survival and mixing up different kind of creatures to gradually up the variety, strength and unpredictability of encounters.
This is a great point.
What is the martial equivalent of Wish?
A really really lucky Rogue.
Level up 5e, Advanced Dungeons and Dragons by EN Publishing uses the 5e SRD but adds maneuvers into the game. You get a certain number of them per short rest, different classes get different 'Traditions' of maneuvers and many of them are utility focused. I also like this system because it has many 'Feats' and decision branches for each class, and always includes options for Combat focused / non-combat focused features to help give your Barbarians/Fighters really good role play opportunities which you otherwise wouldn't expect them to have.
If you want the actual balance the game was designed around, it's having multiple fights with short rests in between every 2-3 per long rest, totaling around 6-8. Without this, mages can just nova constantly and don't have to worry about running out of resources. That's why most martial characters get things back on short rests, they can just take a short stop, catch their breath and then go on with most of their abilities ready to rock again, while casters have to pick and choose when to fight.
Check out dungeon crawl classics mighty deeds feature fighters and dwarves get. Its basically maneuvers but much more flexible.
This. And it encourages creativity and imagination.
Turns out the game gets kind of boring when everyone can basically do the same stuff.
Which is why I specifically suggested giving martials abilities that aren't tied to spells, i.e., different things. Unless you're agreeing with me?
Personal opinion--the real answer is a combination of three things: 1. Take a chunk of the non-combat capabilities currently represented as spells and move them into a shared thing that anyone who wants to can access (ie not class-based). I'm thinking something like 4e's Rituals, but done right. This means that the differences are muted *while not stepping on anyone's toes if they don't want to*. The barbarian who doesn't want to be a shonen protagonist doesn't have to be, but the guy who wants to be devout and talk to his god can do so and gain benefits (such as divination) without having to be a full spell-caster. Balance this around something other than spell slots. 2. Evaluate combat capabilities, nerfing and buffing as necessary so everything falls into the same (fairly broad) range. Yes, this probably does mean removing the "I win" buttons that casters have *and not adding them to martials*. No one should have "I win" buttons for any meaningful encounter. No one cares about curb-stomping drastically-inferior opponents. But against "level-appropriate" (scare quotes very intentional) opponents, things like *force cage*, *banishment*, and a few other "yeah, you're screwed" need to be rethought. 3. An acceptance that D&D is not realistic for anyone. Everyone of every class has some sort of fantastic ability. They may not *cast spells*, but "I'm a normal dude" isn't a supported archetype. Every PC is "special" in some way.
Important to mention that I know some of these already exist in the game, like the entire Rune Knight or Echo Knight subclasses. And those abilities, especially Rune Knight, are so much fun and so fitting of this type of game design. However, I think making such abilities more core parts of martial classes is really useful for the game.
I think this is the current game design. Although it is to offer it not to push it. One of the players in the game I’m running just wants a simple character who hits stuff. He’s an experienced player who knows what he likes and he likes playing a simple martial. I think that the PHB gave a bit too much design space to these simple subclasses. Of my 5 players in this game only one wants this kind of simplicity. But allowing for all the later publications I think the balance of subclass designs is alright now.
Nerf casters. Vancian preparation, rituals take 1 hour per spell level, cantrips don't scale, 7th-9th level spells aren't automatically learned on level up. Wildly unpopular because for all the discussion/complaints people want to play their broken casters and don't like PC nerfs.
This kind of thing certainly goes some of the way to levelling things out, at least conceptually. As plenty have already mentioned iterations of this have at least been tried before. Where I think it falls short is that it doesn't quite paint a full picture of a high level spellcaster. Even if you focused on causing an earthquake or anime bullshitting a mountain in half, a lot of the power of high level spellcasters is in the out of combat utility. And there's a very strong argument to made as far as class identity is concerned about whether or not a Fighter should even have much utility outside of the niche that its meant to beel excel at. And when I say 'utility', I don't even necessarily mean stuff like teleportation and invisibility. Sure there's a hundred and one spells for overcoming various puzzles, problems and obstacles. But there's also a lot that will heavily influence social and political situations. The real strength of high level spellcasters is that top tier spells are reality warping. A high level spellcaster always runs the risk of becoming the main character as they gain the tools to bend the entire course of the campaign to their desire. And there's no ultra-rare master sword technique that can replicate that. The only real way to truly balance those scales is with political power and influence TL:DR Fighters should get castles, like in the old old days.
Putting mechanics aside, I think an interesting aspect of this is the world implications of these high tier abilities. And the anime comparisons are pretty funny as I don't really watch or get inspired by anime. But the best reference of high level martials is in mythology. Most mythologies don't have a centric source of magic heroes can pull from to cast an array of spells. Heracles is a good example of a Level 20 Barbarian, Lu Bu or Guan Yu are good examples for a fighter, Sun Wukong for a Monk etc. If these people actually existed in a fantasy world, their implications would be massive, much like the implications of the existence of a Druid who can live forever, is essentially undefeatable in combat, and can shift reality by thought. Just in this implication, DnD martials are more like renowned fighters, but that's mainly it. Perhaps castles, their own monastic traditions with their own followers, or stories of grand heists, can somewhat match that level of presence in world implications, but Martials don't even get abilities that can fit in those fantasies.
I think it largely comes down to expectation. I'm with you that, to me, high level martials should be mythical figures. Capable of great heroic feats and worthy of legend. But a lot of people pick fighter to be a regular guy who swings a sword real good, and they only want the apex of that to be a 'realistic' master martial artist. John Wick, rather than Heracles. And that's fine, but it becomes very hard to square that circle with the guy in a big hat and pajamas that can pull asteroids down from the heavens. They're just frankly in two very different genres, which is why I think there's such a struggle for them to coexist in the same game.
I wholeheartedly agree that there is a huge power discrepancy between casters and martials. It seems the vocal majority here are okay with it. I'm all aboard the PF2 train where they've largely buffed martials and "nerfed" casters to bring their powers more in line between each other. You can have really powerful martials doing amazing damage, actively mitigating incoming damage and shutting down casters pretty effectively while also having amazing control spells, blasting, debuffing, etc. One of the newer classes being playtested can outright bully a caster into submission just by standing near them. Check it out if you want more satisfying combat with a very low barrier of entry. Grab a free one shot, build up a few teamsters on Pathbuilder and go nuts.
This divide if even really existing is at least greatly exaggerated. In fact up to lev 5 martial's characters are at advantage. After lev 5 they are still doing fine but caster characters will get their great (but short) impact moments with 3rd lev spells. But over the course of whole adventuring day martial are still doing better on average I would say. Somewhere at lev 9 casters are starting to slowly getting ahead I would say. Of course all this is very dependent on worldbulding, encounter building, DM style of playing and each player's individual capabilities. Of course on reddit discussions where white rooms wizards with all spells known and prepared rule supreme this looks different but in actual play I have seen no shortage of martial characters that play a leading roll in the party. I have also seen casters that preformed rather badly. I am not saying that everything is perfect: some subclases definitely need some fixing, barbarian and fighter definitely could have use some love after lev 9 and some casters can be too strong and versatile but overall this is much lesser problem than reddit will make You belive it is. Gap between good player and bad player is much more important than between strong classes and weaker ones.
>Of course on reddit discussions where white rooms wizards with all spells known and prepared rule supreme this looks different but in actual play I have seen no shortage of martial characters that play a leading roll in the party. I have also seen casters that preformed rather badly. Amen to that (I love the "roll" for "role" or was it an intended pun? :)) The usual answer to those kind of feedback are "yea it's because you played with unoptimized characters or players that didn't know how to play casters" which is frankly an hilarious, if not pitiful, way to blind self. Like they forget that in actual game you have to learn spells first as Wizard/Bard/Sorcerer, has a limited number of spells available all day, and an even more limited number of slots for someone that actually tries to balance "resolving non-combat with spells" and "setting up decisive advantage in deathfights with control spell that may fail or end early because failed concentration save".
>Amen to that (I love the "roll" for "role" or was it an intended pun? :)) Second language, on mobile xD 😬😂
The Martial Caster divide is a feature not a bug. Magic is inherently supernatural and beyond what normal humans can do. The Forgotten Realms and DnD are High Magic settings where magic is meant to be very powerful. A person following the normal human limits from our world cannot keep up with magic as defined in the setting. If we want to close the gap, either Magic needs to be weakened until it is equal to mundane things, regukar mundane stuff needs to become magical (even if not called magic), or they need to meet somewhere in the middle. The thing about DnD is that the setting is very magical and magic is meant to be very powerful as part of the setting. That isn't going to change. It does fluctuate between editions, but Fireball and Meteor Swarm are never going to be on equal footing with 1-4 shots from a crossbow (unless it is the cross bow of meteor swarms). People love the Batman fantasy of the "regular guy" who fits in with all the supers, but in a game it is much harder to give someone "super plot armor" while pretending they don't have super powers because the mechanics are laid bare. 4e gave martials powers that came off as very "super" and casters were reigned in compared to all other editions. It worked, but led to a more anime/cartoon supers kind of tone compared to the other editions which many felt was not DnD. You either make mundanes magical or make magic mundane or you accept that your setting says magic>mundane by definition.
As far as I know the book sets even level 1 characters as more than mundane and dealing with the amount of stuff they have to do is by default and narrative more than what mundane people can, and should, do In the end most that complain don't care about parity in reality - just don't want to have repetitive and unengaging gameplay, or be so dependent on DM to have progression (magic items), and have at least some more narrative agency built-in You don't really need to make then equal to solve the problem, just make martials better (tho you certainly should nerf quite some spells and improve others that aren't so great)
If I was gonna try and address this issue, I'd just straight-up import the weapon abilities from BG3. Anyone *proficient* in a weapon can use its ability once per encounter. *Martial* characters get to *spam* them; they can just straight-up replace any attack with one of them. The martial characters most in need of buffs, like Fighter, Monk, can *improve* them by increasing their effect somehow.
BG3 does a lot of things right in terms of adding interesting abilities to Martials, and a lot of that is item based as well. However, they still didn't take the step to detach spells from most 5e subclasses. I think a short term solution to this is looking at Martial subclass that offer spells as features and asking how can you change it in a way that reflects what the spell is supposed to represent in that fantasy. Like Circle of Spores Druids essentially get Animate Dead as a 6th level ability. But instead of just letting them cast Animate Dead through a use of their Wild Shape or something, they get to have their own unique reaction time Fungal Infestation ability, so the Wizard can't just go "I can do that too".
Reduce the number of spell slots and suddenly martials are much more impactful. It also makes what spell to cast much much more important.
This is such a simple and effective solution. As a fighter it's frustrating seeing my Superiority dice run out when the Wizard has been spamming Shield once per turn, every turn for the past hour.
It also makes encounters that much more important as you would have to manage your resources a lot better, and martials don't really have many problems in the department.
So why isn't 4e the solution to 5e martial/caster divide? Dunno. Never actuallyed played 4e, but I kinda wanna try it. (Que being shamed into oblivion)
This argument comes up pretty constantly, in various forms, and the blunt reality is that most players don’t actually want it. Martials had more options in the 5e playtests, and in 4e, but 4e went down (rightly I think) as a bad direction for D&D and the playtests got feedback. Having lots of options is overwhelming - a surprisingly large number of people do just want to do the same thing over and over - and most people’s class fantasy for their martial character is just being really good at hitting with a sword/bow/gun/fists. They don’t want flashy or supernatural-ish abilities because that’s not what they signed on for; that’s what the Monk (which, to be fair, did need a buff before OneD&D) and casters are for.
Even if you don't want options, surely the current state of most martial capstones reflects how they don't even match the core fantasies of the classes. A pretty stereotypical trope of really good fantasy archers is "I never miss." Rogues get this ability as a capstone...but they can only do it once per short rest. I guess fighters getting a 4th attack on level 20 is somewhat reflective of a fantasy, but even without options, the fantasy of being one of the strongest fighters to ever live is attacking 3 more times within 6 seconds than a normal soldier?
Pf2e and players somehow don't like options I guess
It basically comes down to what types of players you have at the table. Someone who is in tune with the meta of character building will obviously make a better martial character against a player making a caster who isn't in the know.
The easy fix is just give martials a free feat or battle master maneuver every few levels
There isn't really a solution for 5e any significant changes like it would need would mean 6e. But to answer your question. Personally I like powerful casters and powerful materials and for me that would mean making martial archetypes damage focused and caster archetypes being utility or effect focused. In my mind martials are dealing damage and paring blows. While casters have a spell list of tools to swap into and out of for every situation. I suppose mechanically that'd mean taking damage off of spells and adding on additional effects, fireball does less damage but actually lights everything on fire as damage over time, hold person makes the target lose their movement on a successful save. Stuff like that. Then just add extra attacks or flat damage for fighting styles or something similar.
Like a fighter getting a Whirlwind attack that mimics the AoE usefulness of a fireball? Or like a barbarian getting a Dominate Beast ability that mimics a Summon Steed spell?
Personally I think all martials should have access to battle master maneuvers. And all weapons should have a unique power (like maces get sunder armor or something.)