Casters are way to strong: Show Your Work edition

[Schwann145]

If I'm being honest, I'm kinda tired of the hyperbole.
Thread after thread (because it's truly a timeless topic) where more than one person takes the position that casters in tier4 are so strong they're basically unstoppable. They trample all over demon lords and devil princes and godly avatars multiple times a day.

Well, two things:
1) You mean Wizards, not "casters." Clerics aren't doing this. Warlocks aren't doing this. Druids aren't doing this. Bards aren't doing this. Maaaaybe Sorcerers but not really - you mean Wizards and we all know it.
and
2) If your one of the folks who makes these arguments, it's time to show your work!

Drop your build in here. Let's see these unstoppable magical machine of arcane might.
•Whatever level.
•Whatever gear.
•Whatever straight or multi-class combination.
•Just make sure you include a thorough write-up and an explanation to support how it's so strong.

I hope this is fun, but I won't be holding my breath for examples. :smalltongue:

[Greywander]

Well, there's a lot of nuance to this whole discussion. Most casters would quickly find themselves in the past tense if they were ambushed by a martial. A martial's whole schtick is being good at fighting, so it's no surprise that they can down a caster if they get the jump on them. Of course, catching anyone by surprise will give you a big advantage, and the reverse (caster ambushing a martial) would also apply, but I do think a martial catching a caster by surprise gets more of a benefit than a caster catching a martial by surprise. In a fair fight with no surprise, the caster would likely win just due to how their resources are structured; martials are made for endurance, being still very effective even when out of resources, while casters can nova to tremendous effect but are next to useless when empty.

I think the issue is sort of two-fold. First, casters, and yes this means mostly wizards, are good at non-combat stuff. Wizards have Teleport and Plane Shift, but a martial has to walk everywhere or ask a favor from the wizard. And that's just one example. It's true that rogues and such can get really good with ability checks, and this lets rogues get away with a lot of crazy stuff, but it's still stuff that anyone could attempt, even if the odds of success were very low. But no amount of bonuses to ability checks will allow you to teleport halfway around the world. Magic, and particularly high level magic, allows you to do things that normal people could never attempt to do.

The second issue is resources. Now, it is true that the rogue can make as many ability checks as they like, and thus can pick locks all day while the wizard only has so many castings of Knock. The issue is that there seems to be a disconnect with how many encounters the devs expected players to be facing per adventuring day and the actual number of encounters most DMs throw at their players. This results in casters having spell slots to spare, allowing them to nova to increase their effectiveness.

I do think the gap in power is overstated, but that doesn't mean it isn't there. Honestly, I think this argument would mostly disappear if you just gave martials more utility abilities.

Personally, I find the power of high level spells to venture into "mythical" territory. Spells up to 5th level are pretty tame, even Raise Dead has a number of reasonable limitations placed on it, such as the 10 day time limit and the need for an intact body. It's not hard to foil, if you want to. True Resurrection, by comparison, can bring someone back up to 200 years later, and creates a new body from scratch.

Up to around 10th level or so, I think casters and martials are pretty fair compared to one another. In tier 3 and 4, casters start getting these mythical spells, and martials just get slightly better at fighting. Now, martials do get some cool abilities (and to be fair, they get really good at fighting), but they're not quite "mythical". I think a fair comparison to tier 4 casters would be stuff like the swordsman who can slice the tops off of mountains, or the thief who can steal intangible concepts. But a lot of folks don't seem to be interested in playing a "mythical martial", and capping levels at 10 doesn't seem amenable to them, either.

I know this isn't quite what you asked for, but I'm closer to neutral on this argument anyway. I just wanted to paint in broad strokes some of the reasons I, or others, might claim casters are too strong. I don't know that there's a specific build that exemplifies this, it's more down to the spells themselves and the resource structure used by most casters.

Also, let me throw out there that the warlock feels like a caster class that was designed using the principles for a martial class. Warlocks are much more resource-independent, relying on at-will abilities with a few short rest features. Using a pact magic slot is about on par with Action Surge, or Flurry of Blows with a Stunning Strike on every attack. Mystic Arcanum is akin to a finishing move. If every caster was built like a warlock, you might not see as many complaints about casters being so much stronger than martials.

[Willowhelm]

If I'm being honest, I'm kinda tired of the hyperbole.
Thread after thread (because it's truly a timeless topic) where more than one person takes the position that casters in tier4 are so strong they're basically unstoppable. They trample all over demon lords and devil princes and godly avatars multiple times a day.

Well, two things:
1) You mean Wizards, not "casters." Clerics aren't doing this. Warlocks aren't doing this. Druids aren't doing this. Bards aren't doing this. Maaaaybe Sorcerers but not really - you mean Wizards and we all know it.
and
2) If your one of the folks who makes these arguments, it's time to show your work!

Drop your build in here. Let's see these unstoppable magical machine of arcane might.
•Whatever level.
•Whatever gear.
•Whatever straight or multi-class combination.
•Just make sure you include a thorough write-up and an explanation to support how it's so strong.

I hope this is fun, but I won't be holding my breath for examples. :smalltongue:

This isn’t really a reasonable request. (Although I don’t doubt some members are quite capable of fulfilling it.)

I also disagree that it is intended or discussed as an issue that is only wizards.

Rather than having other people do all the work to show something that is mostly accepted, perhaps you could provide an example challenge or set of challenges?

Eg. An example encounter with specific environment, restrictions, creatures etc. You might find people more willing to engage with that.

As it is now you’re just asking for people to show OP builds are OP while dismissing the numerous threads where people have already demonstrated that.

[ProsecutorGodot]

Play a level 20 Moon Druid, Wild Shape to restore your hitpoints to full every turn. Retain full spellcasting ability. Shapechange your friend into an Ancient Brass Dragon, rain magical fire down on your enemies.

Play a level 20 Bard, pick Wish and Simulacrum. You are now able to do the infinite Simulacrum nonsense that you seem to believe is exclusive to a Wizard. Arcana Cleric can do this too.

Play a Sorcadin, taking just 2 levels in Paladin for armor proficiencies and their ability to smite, be a full caster with 9th level spells (Wish!) who can also smite more frequently than a 20th level straight Paladin.

This isn't exclusive to level cap either, it's around 13-14th level that Casters start to get the game changing 7th level spells where things really swing in their favor. T1 and T2 are well balanced and you can expect a martial and caster to be very competitive with eachother, T3 begins to widen the gap and T4 is when the casters take off in a full Phantom Steed sprint off into the sunset while Fighters are getting a 4th swing and Barbarian's are getting almost nothing.

[JNAProductions]

It’s also a heck of a lot less true than it was in 3rd and PF.

Casters are strong, no doubt-far, far better than martials out of combat.

In combat… they’re good. Nova harder than a martial, generally speaking, though you can run out of gas faster.

But this isn’t CoDzilla like there used to be.

[Teaguethebean]

I think a fair comparison to tier 4 casters would be stuff like the swordsman who can slice the tops off of mountains, or the thief who can steal intangible concepts. But a lot of folks don't seem to be interested in playing a "mythical martial", and capping levels at 10 doesn't seem amenable to them, either.

Honestly I think this concept would be really cool if multiclassing wasn't being used. The idea that your characters become godlike in whatever they do. Wizards can bend reality, druids can destroy civilizations, bards can beguile entire crowds to follow their will. I love the idea of a barbarian who can shake the earth with their roars, or a paladin that can become an avatar of their God invoking hellfire or overwhelming armies with the wrath of nature.

[Willowhelm]

Worth noting the OP doesn’t mention a comparison to martials. That isn’t what this thread is about (I hope)

[ProsecutorGodot]

Worth noting the OP doesn’t mention a comparison to martials. That isn’t what this thread is about (I hope)

A comparison to Martials is inevitable when you need to show that a Caster is strong, how much more effective they are at dealing with threats is usually how strength is defined.

[KorvinStarmast]

If I'm being honest, I'm kinda tired of the hyperbole.
Thread after thread (because it's truly a timeless topic) where more than one person takes the position that casters in tier4 are so strong they're basically unstoppable. They trample all over demon lords and devil princes and godly avatars multiple times a day. Not sure who is saying that. My experience is that if you set up the martials for success, they shred stuff. (Foresight cast on your paladin or barbarian or hexblade? Yeah, shred). (My Lore bard spent levels 11 through 20 doing stuff like this). Cast freedom of movement on your martial lead? For the next two encounters, all of those graspy tentacles and claws and jaws on big monsters can't restrain them). :smallsmile:


Drop your build in here. Let's see these unstoppable magical machine of arcane might.
Lore bard 19; Cha 20, Warcaster and Resilient Con. Magical secrets were:
Conjure Animals, Counterspell, Wall of Force, Bigby's Hand (should have gone telekinesis), Contingency, Simulacrum, Wish, Shapechange.

• Whatever gear.
Moon Touched blade 9rapier); Cubic Gate; +1 studded leather armor of Glamour, shadowbrand tattoo; medallion of non detection, McFurmaidh's Cittern (bard instrument).
Spell List: (from memory the final build is on Foundry somewhere, I got tired of DDB's quirks and stopped adding stuff to the sheet around level 17)

Blindness/Deafness, True Polymorph, Foresight, Feeblemind, Prismatic Spray, Slow, Dissonant Whispers, Vicious Mockery, Freedom of Movement, Dimension Door, Hold Monster, Greater Restoration, Hypnotic Pattern, Feather Fall, healing word, Raulthom's mental bolt... a few I can't remember now.

Very last level was 1 Warlock, Fathomless, for thematic reasons: Took comprehend languages and something else, and EB and Mind Sliver.

DM did not allow Sim Wish cheese, nor the chance to TP my sim into a CR 20 perm dragon. :smallfrown: Still had fun with dragons, though.

[quindraco]

If I'm being honest, I'm kinda tired of the hyperbole.
Thread after thread (because it's truly a timeless topic) where more than one person takes the position that casters in tier4 are so strong they're basically unstoppable. They trample all over demon lords and devil princes and godly avatars multiple times a day.

Well, two things:
1) You mean Wizards, not "casters." Clerics aren't doing this. Warlocks aren't doing this. Druids aren't doing this. Bards aren't doing this. Maaaaybe Sorcerers but not really - you mean Wizards and we all know it.
and
2) If your one of the folks who makes these arguments, it's time to show your work!

Drop your build in here. Let's see these unstoppable magical machine of arcane might.
•Whatever level.
•Whatever gear.
•Whatever straight or multi-class combination.
•Just make sure you include a thorough write-up and an explanation to support how it's so strong.

I hope this is fun, but I won't be holding my breath for examples. :smalltongue:

Without any constraints, the most powerful, unstoppable force in the game is an L17+ Genielock, and you will need house rules to change that. There's nothing fancy to the build: at L17 Genielocks can cast Wish 1/day using their Mystic Arcanum. Wish can simulate Simulacrum, and the Simulacrum clones will recover their 1/day Wish on a Long Rest as Simulacrum only stops slots from regenerating, not Mystic Arcana. This gives you infinite clones of the original Warlock, all of which have Wish.

Second place is an Arcana Cleric, which can cast Simulacrum for real (you said whatever gear, so infinite Powdered Ruby is on hand) or use Divine Intervention 1/week (you didn't specify a time constraint). Arcana Cleric clones have 1 L9 slot, the Wish spell prepared (since you haven't given a reason to prepare True Polymorph instead to provide Powdered Ruby), and their Divine Intervention regenerates, which can be explicitly used to cast Wish. That's 1 Wish ever + 1 per week per clone, and while they can be cast on the same day for 2 Wishes up front, Genielocks with infinite Wishes per clone win out, imho.

Third place is Wizards. Wizards can, regardless of subclass, create infinite clones each of which has 1 castable Wish using the Simulacrum spell only, and, critically, can use Glyph of Warding + Demiplane or a Bag of Holding (especially if Warforged) for casting a dizzying array of buffs onto themselves. I'm treating the Glyph of Warding trick as inferior to infinite Wishes, though.

Fourth place is Bards, which can make infinite clones with 1 Wish each, but because they're know-casters instead of prep-casters, they can't use the Glyph of Warding trick, and of course it's intrinsically crippling to be stuck with spells known instead of spells prepared.

Fifth place is Sorcerer 17/Warlock 3 with access to Greater Restoration, aka a Cocainelock, in particular because you said arbitrary gear, so I can assume infinite powdered diamond rather than infinite powdered ruby. This build has infinite L5 spell slots and 17 sorcery points at a clip (19 with Metamagic Adept if you assume the feat also raises a Sorcerer's SP cap). That's nowhere near as good as infinite Wishes, but something deeply weird is going on if you have problems you can't solve with infinite L5 spell slots. Since you said whatever gear, I'll point out that this build in particular thrives on access to a Mizzium Apparatus, which will open it up to casting every Sorcerer or Warlock spell in the game with those L5 slots, rather than being sharply limited by spells known.

Since your premise is obliterating demon lords and devil princes and I've covered every pure caster except Druid, I'll point out that a level 20 Moon Druid is very challenging for most demon lords and devil princes to take down. However, this is fundamentally comparable to how hard it is for them to take down a level 15+ Zealot Barbarian (who has even more infinite hit points than the Druid does) - it's just that you only asked about roflstomping demon lords with casters, not for ways for casters to do it better than martials can. The L20 Circle Druid is no laughing matter - e.g. it can and probably will have Foresight up.

So there you have it. A way using any of the full progression casters or warlocks to roflstomp demon lords and devil princes.

[Ganryu]

Bardcher

Lvl 14 bard, no need for 20.

Crossbow expert, sharpshooter, simulacron(No infinite chain needed!), haste, find greater steed.

Why, hello 14 attacks per turn with +10 damage per hit on half of them.

Honestly, I think bards are worse in this category than wizards. Wizards have limits.

[Frogreaver]

If I'm being honest, I'm kinda tired of the hyperbole.
Thread after thread (because it's truly a timeless topic) where more than one person takes the position that casters in tier4 are so strong they're basically unstoppable. They trample all over demon lords and devil princes and godly avatars multiple times a day.

Well, two things:
1) You mean Wizards, not "casters." Clerics aren't doing this. Warlocks aren't doing this. Druids aren't doing this. Bards aren't doing this. Maaaaybe Sorcerers but not really - you mean Wizards and we all know it.
and
2) If your one of the folks who makes these arguments, it's time to show your work!

Drop your build in here. Let's see these unstoppable magical machine of arcane might.
•Whatever level.
•Whatever gear.
•Whatever straight or multi-class combination.
•Just make sure you include a thorough write-up and an explanation to support how it's so strong.

I hope this is fun, but I won't be holding my breath for examples. :smalltongue:

No one claims casters don't need parties. Limited action economy and limited concentration spells keeps them from being 1 man armies. Though wish: simulacrum can essentially double a casters action economy and spell slots (which is really strong but still no where near another 2-3 party members).

Instead the claim I hear and believe is that casters in tier 4 are much stronger than martials. But it doesn't sound like that is the claim you are interested in discussing.

[Greywander]

Worth noting the OP doesn’t mention a comparison to martials. That isn’t what this thread is about (I hope)
Rereading the OP, you might be right. But then the question is, too strong for what? Yeah, a high level character can melt faces, but that's to be expected. That's kind of what it means to be high level. Can a wizard 1v1 a demon lord? Eh, I'm skeptical, but if they can it's probably by abusing certain spell interactions. Like Sickening Radiance + Wall of Force, using a simulacrum to get the second concentration slot.

So long as high level PCs are balanced against one another, I don't think it matters so much if one can 1v1 a demon lord or other powerful monster. Again, that's what it means to be high level. If you don't want players to be that powerful, cap the level lower. The only problem is when only some classes are that powerful, and others are not. Hence why this topic generally devolves into "casters vs. martials".


Honestly I think this concept would be really cool if multiclassing wasn't being used. The idea that your characters become godlike in whatever they do. Wizards can bend reality, druids can destroy civilizations, bards can beguile entire crowds to follow their will. I love the idea of a barbarian who can shake the earth with their roars, or a paladin that can become an avatar of their God invoking hellfire or overwhelming armies with the wrath of nature.
If I were to redo the game from scratch, I'd probably do it in such a way that all abilities scale up. Kind of like how even dipping one level into a caster class still lets you upcast those spells to 9th level. And actually, there was one major overhaul I'd been thinking about, which I don't know if I'll ever get around to fleshing out and writing up, where each class would get "spells" and have full caster progression, but could be fluffed as being non-magical. Though the reasons for that was more to do with how this overhaul would handle classes: each class would be cut down to just four levels, and each time you finished one class, you'd choose a new one to progress, gaining a total of five classes by 20th level. Because of the weirdness of the mix'n'match nature of that system, making everyone casters seemed like the easiest way to handle it.

[LudicSavant]

Rather than having other people do all the work to show something that is mostly accepted, perhaps you could provide an example challenge or set of challenges?

Eg. An example encounter with specific environment, restrictions, creatures etc. You might find people more willing to engage with that.

Aye. Give us a concrete bar to exceed and we’ll show you a build or ten.

[Schwann145]

This isn’t really a reasonable request. (Although I don’t doubt some members are quite capable of fulfilling it.)

I also disagree that it is intended or discussed as an issue that is only wizards.

Rather than having other people do all the work to show something that is mostly accepted, perhaps you could provide an example challenge or set of challenges?

Eg. An example encounter with specific environment, restrictions, creatures etc. You might find people more willing to engage with that.

As it is now you’re just asking for people to show OP builds are OP while dismissing the numerous threads where people have already demonstrated that.

I'm avoiding providing the challenge myself for two reasons:
1) I'm giving you the opportunity to build everything to your advantage.
2) If I build the challenge, you *don't* win. You're Icarus flying too close to the sun and your hubris will see you fall to your demise. The avatar of Bane doesn't care about your parlor tricks and will freely overpower them and punish you. Lloth or Asmodeus will do the same.
Heck, there are a handful of mortals your level 20 caster can't beat. Ioulaum comes to mind. Elminster these days, now that he's a Weave-hacker/cheater. They can't beat the avatars and demon lords and devil princes either.

To your second point, I must fully concede that it's clearly not only Wizards, as has been demonstrated above. It's also classes that can steal spells from the Wizard spell list - wannabe Wizards, if you will. :P

[Angelalex242]

Wouldn't want to forget those 20th level clerics...

"I have lots of simulacrums with Wish!"

Cleric: Thus sayeth the Lord my God: Nope. "Divine Intervention!"

[Hael]

Well, two things:
1) You mean Wizards, not "casters." Clerics aren't doing this. Warlocks aren't doing this. Druids aren't doing this. Bards aren't doing this. Maaaaybe Sorcerers but not really - you mean Wizards and we all know it.


Wizards are definitely the worst offender, but bards/sorcerors and druids are not that far away. Certain warlocks and clerics are also not that far behind either.

The problem is already apparent with very unoptimized, bog standard vanilla monoclasses, I mean its pretty obvious that a Twilight/peace cleric is a little overtuned or that the Shepherd druids summons are outshining the martials by a pretty significant factor.

[LudicSavant]

I'm avoiding providing the challenge myself for two reasons:
1) I'm giving you the opportunity to build everything to your advantage.
2) If I build the challenge, you *don't* win. You're Icarus flying too close to the sun and your hubris will see you fall to your demise. The avatar of Bane doesn't care about your parlor tricks and will freely overpower them and punish you. Lloth or Asmodeus will do the same.
Heck, there are a handful of mortals your level 20 caster can't beat. Ioulaum comes to mind. Elminster these days, now that he's a Weave-hacker/cheater. They can't beat the avatars and demon lords and devil princes either.

To your second point, I must fully concede that it's clearly not only Wizards, as has been demonstrated above. It's also classes that can steal spells from the Wizard spell list - wannabe Wizards, if you will. :P

Well, then I'm not sure what you want anyone to show you that hasn't already been shown.

[Azuresun]

If I'm being honest, I'm kinda tired of the hyperbole.
Thread after thread (because it's truly a timeless topic) where more than one person takes the position that casters in tier4 are so strong they're basically unstoppable. They trample all over demon lords and devil princes and godly avatars multiple times a day.

Well, two things:
1) You mean Wizards, not "casters." Clerics aren't doing this. Warlocks aren't doing this. Druids aren't doing this. Bards aren't doing this. Maaaaybe Sorcerers but not really - you mean Wizards and we all know it.



You noticed that too?

Forums: OMG, sorcerers suck! Warlocks don't get enough spells! Buff everything!

Also Forums: OMG, spellcasters break the game!!!!

There's a very insidious tendency in balance discussions to always use the outlier as the standard, and then assume everything else should be buffed to match it. Even then, this assumes the wizard always has every spell they want, always has it prepared when it's needed, and that no busted loopholes ever get closed.



Play a level 20 Moon Druid, Wild Shape to restore your hitpoints to full every turn. Retain full spellcasting ability. Shapechange your friend into an Ancient Brass Dragon, rain magical fire down on your enemies.

Play a level 20 Bard, pick Wish and Simulacrum. You are now able to do the infinite Simulacrum nonsense that you seem to believe is exclusive to a Wizard. Arcana Cleric can do this too.

Play a Sorcadin, taking just 2 levels in Paladin for armor proficiencies and their ability to smite, be a full caster with 9th level spells (Wish!) who can also smite more frequently than a 20th level straight Paladin.

Level 20? You mean the level that only a tiny, tiny fraction of campaigns will ever reach? The one that will only make up a tiny portion of the campaign? The one that will probably be some big climactic game-ending battle, so who cares if they get to feel like gods?

In real campaigns (rather that whiteroom forum talk), level 20 is completely and utterly irrelevant.

[Chaos Jackal]

So, let me see if I get this right.

First, you're tired of the claims of caster supremacy. You're accusing those supporting it of hyperbole while simultaneously using hyperbole yourself.

Then, you claim it's only wizards that are extremely powerful at high levels, and later on you say that it's by "stealing" the wizard's tricks. If you have a class feature that allow you access to other lists, that's not being a wannabe whatever, that's just using your class properly. A bard taking find greater steed with Magical Secrets isn't a wannabe paladin, and one taking simulacrum isn't a wannabe wizard. They're just effective bards, and yes, they can break the game at high levels.

Then you ask for builds. But you don't provide a challenge, a situation, a benchmark, or anything really. And further down the thread you're claiming that you're not setting the challenge, likely because then the challenge would involve things with no statblocks, or possibly statblocks you'd make that would be far beyond any realistic attempt at an encounter, if the examples you're giving and tone of your post are any indication.

What is even the point of this then? To see if people can come up with ways to beat existent high-CR statblocks? There are threads upon threads, here and elsewhere, of how to solo Zariel, or the Tarrasque, or a number of other high-CR opponents. And it's far from just nuclear wizards too. Have your pick. Or we can reproduce some here, if you want them collected.

Is it actually a caster/martial comparison? Because there's really no point in discussing how someone with 9th-level spells is superior to someone with a sword subject to the game's limitations. That's not a matter of opinion, that's a fact.

Is it maybe to see how often people will use perceived "exploits" in their attempts? Don't worry, builds don't use simulacrum loops or glyph of warding death chambers, because nobody sane would ever allow these. There's no point in a challenge if the answer is "I bring an arbitrary number of copies of myself and nuke everything in sight." It is a theoretical possibility, but nobody really takes infinite loops into account when talking about class power.

Or is it that you wanna prove you can't win an arms race against the DM, because they can present you with something that is immune to everything you have, has insane numbers, ridiculous abilities, or any combination of those? Again, no need to worry, most are already aware that you can't beat the DM in an arms race.

You're misrepresenting the entire issue right off the bat, address claims people don't make, take them out of context, or misunderstand them, then issue your own challenge, except you don't say what the challenge is. Peruse The Eclectic Collection of Fun and Effective Builds (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?583957-An-Eclectic-Collection-of-Fun-and-Effective-Builds) if you like. It has a ton of caster builds, including the aforementioned nuclear wizard, nigh-invulnerable abjurers, super-healers and mass controllers from various classes and warlocks that can do everything all day. No exploits either. Or, if you're OK with stupid RAW, read up on the aforementioned infinite loops, if you haven't already. If you've been through that and haven't been satisfied all this time, you won't be satisfied here either. So if your ultimate play here is "satisfy me, else I'm not impressed", well, it's not on anyone other than you.

What's the point of this "exercise"? What do you want, other than venting through hyperbole?

[ProsecutorGodot]

Level 20? You mean the level that only a tiny, tiny fraction of campaigns will ever reach? The one that will only make up a tiny portion of the campaign? The one that will probably be some big climactic game-ending battle, so who cares if they get to feel like gods?

In real campaigns (rather that whiteroom forum talk), level 20 is completely and utterly irrelevant.

I think I was pretty clear that the major issues crop up starting at level 13, primarily due to 7th+ level spells being far more powerful relative to spells of previous levels where the most defining factors of those spells, barring rare exceptions like Polymorph, is how high their damage numbers go. Once you get to 7th+ level spells you get the more abstract power level utility spells; Teleport, Plane Shift, Simulacrum, Forcecage and Symbol, just to name a few. These spells open up a whole host of potential power plays for spellcasters if used correctly and can completely break the game if abused.

I only started at level 20 because it was an easy answer to the OP's extremely open ended question, which explicitly allowed for any and all variables.

[Kane0]

Well, two things:
1) You mean Wizards, not "casters."

2) If your one of the folks who makes these arguments, it's time to show your work!

Drop your build in here. Let's see these unstoppable magical machine of arcane might.
•Whatever level.
•Whatever gear.
•Whatever straight or multi-class combination.
•Just make sure you include a thorough write-up and an explanation to support how it's so strong.

I hope this is fun, but I won't be holding my breath for examples. :smalltongue:

1) Please don't presume to know what someone else thinks or means to say in advance, it's usually considered poor form.

2) I'm not one of them, but if you want a somewhat scientific approach you need to provide a claim that is testable and falsifiable in order to. The more variables that can be identified and controlled for the better.

For example: one PC of any level with feats and multiclassing enabled using all WoTC published material, equipped with any gear they so desire. The rest of the party will consist of three human sidekicks of equal level to the PC, warrior, expert and spellcaster using the cleric list. None of these sidekicks have magical equipment aside from what the PC can provide from abilities, features and spells.
The challenge will be one full adventuring day of six fully randomized encounters, four of which will be Hard and two of which will be Deadly. The order and setting of these encounters will also be randomized (it would be good if we can have six preset battlefields to draw from), and the party will be able to short rest after every two encounters. All statblocks from published material are available for the random pool to draw from. For each short or long rest (minimum 1 from starting the day at the end of a long rest) one random social or exploration challenge will be added from a level appropriate pool.

In order to be considered superior, the PC must be responsible for the party surviving and succeeding in all the above encounters and situations over other potential candidates.

[tokek]

I do think the gap in power is overstated, but that doesn't mean it isn't there. Honestly, I think this argument would mostly disappear if you just gave martials more utility abilities.



Or magic items.

In my tier 3 campaign that's been running a long while the monk character has a Cubic Gate.

My ranger in that game was allowed to spend his enormous fortune on a Voyager Staff - which I am very sparing in the use of to avoid overshadowing the Warlock who has teleportation circle spell.

I have said this many times - there are more magic items in the game than spells and if you exclude them from your games or your discussions then you have distorted both and skewed the game as a result. Where some people (not you) insist that everything has to be a class feature it really pushes a class-based system like D&D into being more one-dimensional than it needs or wants to be.

[Dr. Murgunstrum]

This is a slam dunk:

Wizard: T4: Simalacrum/Wish. No Fighter or Rogue can touch you in terms of reshaping reality.

T3: Teleport and Geas. I can use Geas to create a squadron of former NPCs that now serve me as faithful bodyguards. Flee across the continent while the Geased NPCs do the dirty work.

Bard: Magical secrets, emulate what is listed here. Or Geas a bunch of pets.

Cleric: Divine intervention, sugar godly gives me the ability to alter reality. Nuff said, but let’s throw in the fact I can use planar binding and summon celestial to create an army of shape shifting thunder snakes.

Druid: replace shape shifting thunder snakes with elementals. An army for all seasons! Couple with Wind Walk and Plant Teleport while the Martials can only walk!

Sorcerer: a khadgar who still has Wish and teleport. The worst of the lot for agency, but still better than Martials who have to walk and can’t bend reality.

[Dr.Samurai]

If I'm being honest, I'm kinda tired of the hyperbole.
Thread after thread (because it's truly a timeless topic) where more than one person takes the position that casters in tier4 are so strong they're basically unstoppable. They trample all over demon lords and devil princes and godly avatars multiple times a day.

Well, two things:
1) You mean Wizards, not "casters." Clerics aren't doing this. Warlocks aren't doing this. Druids aren't doing this. Bards aren't doing this. Maaaaybe Sorcerers but not really - you mean Wizards and we all know it.
and
2) If your one of the folks who makes these arguments, it's time to show your work!

Drop your build in here. Let's see these unstoppable magical machine of arcane might.
•Whatever level.
•Whatever gear.
•Whatever straight or multi-class combination.
•Just make sure you include a thorough write-up and an explanation to support how it's so strong.

I hope this is fun, but I won't be holding my breath for examples. :smalltongue:
I don't know much about casters AND I'm currently super busy... but, I'm intrigued. I think I will aim for some demon prince or archdevil with a wizard and see what can be done. Maybe over the weekend, I don't know.

[Pildion]

If I'm being honest, I'm kinda tired of the hyperbole.
Thread after thread (because it's truly a timeless topic) where more than one person takes the position that casters in tier4 are so strong they're basically unstoppable. They trample all over demon lords and devil princes and godly avatars multiple times a day.

Well, two things:
1) You mean Wizards, not "casters." Clerics aren't doing this. Warlocks aren't doing this. Druids aren't doing this. Bards aren't doing this. Maaaaybe Sorcerers but not really - you mean Wizards and we all know it.
and
2) If your one of the folks who makes these arguments, it's time to show your work!

Drop your build in here. Let's see these unstoppable magical machine of arcane might.
•Whatever level.
•Whatever gear.
•Whatever straight or multi-class combination.
•Just make sure you include a thorough write-up and an explanation to support how it's so strong.

I hope this is fun, but I won't be holding my breath for examples. :smalltongue:

Well, until Tier 2 I think Martials are better then Casters. At least until level 5 they are. When 3rd level spells come online then casters can start 1 shoting encounters (looking at you Fireball\Hypnotic Pattern). By the end though

HexBlade1>Lore Bard19 that takes Simulacrum and Wish with True Polymorph is just as broken as any Wizard. The Bard is in HalfPlate + Shield, and the Shield spell on top of that!

Artificer1>Divination Wizard19 This guy can look at your, cast PlaneShift to ether plane of elemental water or fire, hand you your failing roll and smile... while wearing HalfPlate + Shield and the shield spell. This comes online at level 14 too, not 17.

To your point though, I don't see Clerics \ Warlocks or Sorcerers breaking the game like Wizards\Bards do. Without a badly cast Wish anyways haha.

[Frogreaver]

1) Please don't presume to know what someone else thinks or means to say in advance, it's usually considered poor form.

2) I'm not one of them, but if you want a somewhat scientific approach you need to provide a claim that is testable and falsifiable in order to. The more variables that can be identified and controlled for the better.

For example: one PC of any level with feats and multiclassing enabled using all WoTC published material, equipped with any gear they so desire. The rest of the party will consist of three human sidekicks of equal level to the PC, warrior, expert and spellcaster using the cleric list. None of these sidekicks have magical equipment aside from what the PC can provide from abilities, features and spells.
The challenge will be one full adventuring day of six fully randomized encounters, four of which will be Hard and two of which will be Deadly. The order and setting of these encounters will also be randomized (it would be good if we can have six preset battlefields to draw from), and the party will be able to short rest after every two encounters. All statblocks from published material are available for the random pool to draw from. For each short or long rest (minimum 1 from starting the day at the end of a long rest) one random social or exploration challenge will be added from a level appropriate pool.

In order to be considered superior, the PC must be responsible for the party surviving and succeeding in all the above encounters and situations over other potential candidates.

All that predefining the ‘test’ does is allow for Scrodinger’s casters to pick the spells and builds that best overcome that challenge. IMO it’s not at all a good way to resolve the question.

[ZRN]

The OP's challenge might be more fun/make more sense flipped around. He's essentially asking, "How could Dr. Strange beat Batman?" and the answer is, logically, any number of ways. A caster has magical powers that defy the laws of physics, and a guy who's good (even Batman good) at fighting and/or sneaking around isn't realistically going to be able to win that matchup easily.

Which is why the conflict is almost always set up the other way around in comics: how does Batman beat Dr. Strange? Or in this case, if we name a powerful caster, how can an equal level and similarly-equipped martial character take them down? How much luck and material advantage does he/she need?

[5eNeedsDarksun]

The OP's challenge might be more fun/make more sense flipped around. He's essentially asking, "How could Dr. Strange beat Batman?" and the answer is, logically, any number of ways. A caster has magical powers that defy the laws of physics, and a guy who's good (even Batman good) at fighting and/or sneaking around isn't realistically going to be able to win that matchup easily.

Which is why the conflict is almost always set up the other way around in comics: how does Batman beat Dr. Strange? Or in this case, if we name a powerful caster, how can an equal level and similarly-equipped martial character take them down? How much luck and material advantage does he/she need?

The closest example I've had recently was our (I believe) 16th level group fighting Tiamat. The wizard struggled to do much and the martials for the most part took her down. I'd also be interested in wizard options when the enemy is immune to almost everything.

[tokek]

This is a slam dunk:

Wizard: T4: Simalacrum/Wish. No Fighter or Rogue can touch you in terms of reshaping reality.

T3: Teleport and Geas. I can use Geas to create a squadron of former NPCs that now serve me as faithful bodyguards. Flee across the continent while the Geased NPCs do the dirty work.

Bard: Magical secrets, emulate what is listed here. Or Geas a bunch of pets.

Cleric: Divine intervention, sugar godly gives me the ability to alter reality. Nuff said, but let’s throw in the fact I can use planar binding and summon celestial to create an army of shape shifting thunder snakes.

Druid: replace shape shifting thunder snakes with elementals. An army for all seasons! Couple with Wind Walk and Plant Teleport while the Martials can only walk!

Sorcerer: a khadgar who still has Wish and teleport. The worst of the lot for agency, but still better than Martials who have to walk and can’t bend reality.


The thing is that any character can do some of that in a typical tier 4 campaign that actually does all the things that the DMG lays out for the DM.

Characters are not limited to their class features. If anyone comes back quoting that one out of context tweet from many years ago I think I will just scream. Magic items are part of the game, they are an important part of the game with a number of distinct rules entries second only to monsters in the game. There is nothing stopping a barbarian from having access to amazing stuff in tier 4 except a DM who is for some reason mentally dominated by some tweet from all that time ago that was never reflected in the actual published rules.

Yes the casters can do a wider variety of these things and more regularly (usually) but that is the core of their class identity. That is not the only way to access these top tier abilities in the game nor was it ever intended to be.

If you choose to play a game with no magic items I'm not going to accuse you of badwrongfun but I have never seen such an extremely limited game and I would have no interest whatever in playing in one. There is no point discussing only part of the game and pretending that it is in some way the whole game - so lets actually include all the magic items up to Legendary in any discussion of tier 4 play.

[Unoriginal]

The OP's challenge might be more fun/make more sense flipped around. He's essentially asking, "How could Dr. Strange beat Batman?" and the answer is, logically, any number of ways. A caster has magical powers that defy the laws of physics, and a guy who's good (even Batman good) at fighting and/or sneaking around isn't realistically going to be able to win that matchup easily.


That's just the Guy at the Gym fallacy with extra sprinkles.

1) Realistically, Batman wins this encounter by punching Doctor Strange in the face once, because magic isn't realistic, making Strange just a surgeon with minimal combat training and Batman can K.O. an heavyweight boxer even in his most down-to-earth versions. You can't pick-and-choose where realism should apply.

2) Having magic powers does not automatically means said magic power can help you take out someone who is good at fighting and/or sneaking "any number of ways", or protecting you from them. "Defying the laws of physics" is not the same as being exempt from every concerns and consequences. Even Dr Strange, who has considerably more power than the typical Marvel magic user, can't just snap his fingers and have an answer for everything his opponents throw at him in situations where it matters.



Which is why the conflict is almost always set up the other way around in comics: how does Batman beat Dr. Strange?

100% untrue. Comic books matchups are about *entertainment*, like pro wrestling. If the protagonist is a fighting sneaky type, then them being up against a magic user will be a struggle because struggles are interesting and fill pages. On the other hand, if the protagonist is a magic user, then them being up against a fighting sneaky type will be a struggle because struggles are interesting and fill pages.

The only time a matchup won't be a struggle is when it's used to show how X is far above Y (either to establish the character, as a joke, or show the stakes of the rest of the story), but the magic user is far from always being the X in this equation.

[Hael]

The closest example I've had recently was our (I believe) 16th level group fighting Tiamat. The wizard struggled to do much and the martials for the most part took her down. I'd also be interested in wizard options when the enemy is immune to almost everything.

There was just a thread a few months ago where we had lvl 13s fighting Tiamat successfully. The party was necessarily mostly casters (lvl 13 martials would struggle).

A wizard is necessary for wall of force/force cage/leomonds hut as well as some early round speed (phantom steed). Barring that, its a force multiplier with simulacrum. The wizards secondary options involve summoning. Getting a few planar bound Tashas summons provide high, steady dps that rivals any martials.

But yes, if you go in blind, without some forethought, due to the nature of the encounter wizards are going to struggle.

[Atranen]

The closest example I've had recently was our (I believe) 16th level group fighting Tiamat. The wizard struggled to do much and the martials for the most part took her down. I'd also be interested in wizard options when the enemy is immune to almost everything.

This checks out with the (few) high level combats that I've played.

It seems like most of the "casters are overpowered" suggestions rely on exploiting a small number of spells or other tricks that are technically allowed in the rules but in my experience would be frowned upon at the table.

It's true that the optimization window of casters can be pushed further. If you play in a game where everyone loves your super powered character, casters might be better. But I doubt this is the typical experience.

[Dr.Samurai]

Yeah, even just taking a cursory look at Demogorgon and all of its abilities I thought to myself "how does a wizard attack this thing?".

But I fully admit that I am not very familiar with casters at all, as I prefer the much cooler and more badass martials :smallcool:.

[Damon_Tor]

I'm in the minority of people who believe that (a) casters are more powerful than martials and (b) they totally should be. It's not a problem. If a wizard cannot bend reality to his whims by the time he reaches max level then the system does not do justice to the archetype. D&D is not a competition. It's cooperative storytelling. "Balance" is neither required nor desired.

[Angelalex242]

Well, I, the Paladin player, rub my hands with glee when I see Demogorgon, cause I was born for this, and prepare my Holy Avenger.

[PhoenixPhyre]

If a wizard cannot bend reality to his whims by the time he reaches max level then the system does not do justice to the archetype.

Uh, wat? There's a lot more wizard archetypes than just "omnipowerful reality warper." In fact, there are generally severe limits. And lots of backfiring when hubris-filled wizards think they're omnipowerful.

[Psyren]

I'm in the minority of people who believe that (a) casters are more powerful than martials and (b) they totally should be. It's not a problem. If a wizard cannot bend reality to his whims by the time he reaches max level then the system does not do justice to the archetype. D&D is not a competition. It's cooperative storytelling. "Balance" is neither required nor desired.

Agreed to an extent. "Bend reality to his whims" is a pretty big exaggeration of how spells work; not even Wish can achieve all your "whims."

[tokek]

There was just a thread a few months ago where we had lvl 13s fighting Tiamat successfully. The party was necessarily mostly casters (lvl 13 martials would struggle).

A wizard is necessary for wall of force/force cage/leomonds hut as well as some early round speed (phantom steed). Barring that, its a force multiplier with simulacrum. The wizards secondary options involve summoning. Getting a few planar bound Tashas summons provide high, steady dps that rivals any martials.

But yes, if you go in blind, without some forethought, due to the nature of the encounter wizards are going to struggle.

That was one of the less useful discussions here IMO.

Why would any DM make Tiamat the smallest possible size for a Gargantuan creature? Any larger at all and force cage is useless, wall of force is not much better.

But it was fairly typical of the "casters OP" style of discussion. Far too many assumptions, starting with an assumption of a DM who sets everything up to make the casters look great.

I too have done a tier 4 vs Tiamat combat. The damage output was dominated by the martials and half casters. The wizard did alright but was unspectacular. Tiamat would not have fitted into a silly little force cage because the DM was not a fool.

[PhoenixPhyre]

That was one of the less useful discussions here IMO.

Why would any DM make Tiamat the smallest possible size for a Gargantuan creature? Any larger at all and force cage is useless, wall of force is not much better.

But it was fairly typical of the "casters OP" style of discussion. Far too many assumptions, starting with an assumption of a DM who sets everything up to make the casters look great.

I too have done a tier 4 vs Tiamat combat. The damage output was dominated by the martials and half casters. The wizard did alright but was unspectacular. Tiamat would not have fitted into a silly little force cage because the DM was not a fool.

I agree. Solving the "make all assumptions/DM rulings in favor of the casters" problem solves a huge swath of the issue. Solving the "making all assumptions/DM rulings against the non-casters" (slightly exaggerated with all, but this is basically Guy at the Gym taken to the extreme, and something we do see pretty regularly in slightly less extreme forms on these forums) solves another big swath of things.

[Xervous]

Well, I, the Paladin player, rub my hands with glee when I see Demogorgon, cause I was born for this, and prepare my Holy Avenger.

This and only this, a DPR grinder waiting to be delivered to the final shin kicking cutscene by the grace of the GM and casters. Or at least that’s what I’d say about a fighter. Paladin has unique things it can do other than combat numbers

On another note, are we venturing towards a Same Game Test here?

[Psyren]

On another note, are we venturing towards a Same Game Test here?

5e's lack of static DCs thankfully makes such an exercise, if not impossible, largely pointless.

[Teaguethebean]

It seems like most of the "casters are overpowered" suggestions rely on exploiting a small number of spells or other tricks that are technically allowed in the rules but in my experience would be frowned upon at the table.


Are you calling simulacrum and forcecage "technically allowed" I feel like they are pretty thoroughly not a cheeky exploit.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Are you calling simulacrum and forcecage "technically allowed" I feel like they are pretty thoroughly not a cheeky exploit.

forcecage on a gargantuan entity is only technically allowed (and only if the DM decides it fits). But yeah, it's a borked spell that needs rework.

Simulacrum can be a cheeky exploit, but is generally just a borked spell from the get go.

[Dr.Samurai]

I'm in the minority of people who believe that (a) casters are more powerful than martials and (b) they totally should be.
As someone that enjoys participating in these discussions, I'll clarify that I don't care if casters are stronger than martials. I don't care if anyone in my party is "stronger" than me. I'm also not looking to be "as strong" as anyone, and I especially don't want to magically transform into a demigod later in the game. I just want to be able to do cool stuff. I want to be able to realize tropes. And it seems to me that if you're playing a martial, D&D thinks you mostly just want to move around and swing your sword.

[Chaos Jackal]

Yeah, even just taking a cursory look at Demogorgon and all of its abilities I thought to myself "how does a wizard attack this thing?".

I suppose you mean outside of the, admittedly cliche and boring but nonetheless effective, "throw a forcecage and then something like sickening radiance/faithful hound/wall of light and/or ranged attacks, because high-CR statblocks without teleportation are really poorly thought out"?

[ZRN]

That's just the Guy at the Gym fallacy with extra sprinkles.

Is Batman a guy at the gym? He can't punch through mountains or anything but he certainly finds a way to be effective against magical/superpowered enemies without using magic himself. I certainly don't have anything against options and subclasses that allow martials to do epic feats of strength/speed/courage/charm/etc, but clearly there should also be a space for Badass Normal types like Batman who hold their own without supernatural powers.


2) Having magic powers does not automatically means said magic power can help you take out someone who is good at fighting and/or sneaking "any number of ways", or protecting you from them. "Defying the laws of physics" is not the same as being exempt from every concerns and consequences. Even Dr Strange, who has considerably more power than the typical Marvel magic user, can't just snap his fingers and have an answer for everything his opponents throw at him in situations where it matters.

Yes, that's exactly my point. A high-level D&D caster is actually far MORE limited than Dr. Strange because the player can't just invent a cool new power for him to deus ex machina his way out of a jam like a comic book writer can. So maybe it would be fun to consider specific high-level caster characters and how a high-level martial character would go about taking them down.


On the other hand, if the protagonist is a magic user, then them being up against a fighting sneaky type will be a struggle because struggles are interesting and fill pages.

Does this ever happen? Are there comics where Dr. Strange has a hard time fighting, like, a really good judo guy or a cat burglar or something? I feel like that's not a thing.

[Psyren]

Is Batman a guy at the gym? He can't punch through mountains or anything but he certainly finds a way to be effective against magical/superpowered enemies without using magic himself. I certainly don't have anything against options and subclasses that allow martials to do epic feats of strength/speed/courage/charm/etc, but clearly there should also be a space for Badass Normal types like Batman who hold their own without supernatural powers.

He does it with gadgets, which in D&D parlance would be magic items.

I'm personally fine with martials having additional attunement slots to represent this kind of thing. One houserule I liked was that you can use your concentration on a floating attunement slot, which for most martials would give them an extra slot that casters likely wouldn't have access to.



Does this ever happen? Are there comics where Dr. Strange has a hard time fighting, like, a really good judo guy or a cat burglar or something? I feel like that's not a thing.

The comics version of Shang Chi is (or at least was) just "a really good judo guy" and he's taken on multiple spellcasters I'm pretty sure.

Post-MCU I expect him to be a bit more explicitly supernatural though.

[Xervous]

5e's lack of static DCs thankfully makes such an exercise, if not impossible, largely pointless.

From what I recall the various tasks were rather open ended and mainly served to highlight what typical hurdles a class needed to clear in a given bracket (5e will have far fewer), as well as to what degree a class either had opened ended tools or was forced to rely on other characters.

If every class has the exact same solution available for a given task then the task isn’t a good filter on classes. If we lack a reference point for how D&D is to be played the results can be turned around to speak on how well the tasks are fitted to the classes. The lack of static skill DCs does little to undermine an attempt at a same game test when ‘rally the townsfolk against the bandits’ has always ever been a valid solution. ‘Rally the townsfolk’ is now just a poor filter.

[Unoriginal]

I'm in the minority of people who believe that (a) casters are more powerful than martials and (b) they totally should be. It's not a problem. If a wizard cannot bend reality to his whims by the time he reaches max level then the system does not do justice to the archetype. D&D is not a competition. It's cooperative storytelling. "Balance" is neither required nor desired.

"D&D isn't a competition but casters totally should be better than everyone else" is certainly among the weirdest take on the question I've ever seen.

[Throne12]

So the reason I see why casters are so powerful is they have 16+ spells by the time hey hit 20th lv. And these spells have powerful effects. So this got me thinking. Why not give Martial classes more abilities and powers? I don't mean give them more damaging stuff but give them more combat options and out of combat abilities. So on a level up a fighter get 1 or maybe 2 new abilities. Where a wizard get 2 new spells and a class ability or 2. It those 2 spells that is the problem they are 2 new abilities/options for the wizard.

I think if we have more feats with level requirements and giving martials more feat slots ivthink this could help make this gap smaller.

[Unoriginal]

Is Batman a guy at the gym?

You're the one arguing that he is, by declaring that "realistically" he would have troubles against a magic user because magic users "defy the laws of physics".


Uh, wat? There's a lot more wizard archetypes than just "omnipowerful reality warper." In fact, there are generally severe limits. And lots of backfiring when hubris-filled wizards think they're omnipowerful.

Indeed.

Archetypically, the wizard is much more often the "character who know stuff but needs the hero to do stuff" (either as the one who find the hero, or as someone the hero seeks for information)" or the "bad guy with weird power who meets their end on the hero's blade".

EDIT:



Does this ever happen? Are there comics where Dr. Strange has a hard time fighting, like, a really good judo guy or a cat burglar or something? I feel like that's not a thing.

Do you want Dr Strange in particular or any magic using hero would do?

[Willowhelm]

Once again. Pointing out the OP wasn’t about martial vs casters. It’s about casters being overpowered. Let’s not go down casters vs martials again…

No specific encounter. No specific definition of over powered. Nothing to actually engage in discussion about. Just an opinion about other peoples opinions and a vague call to action for other people to spend their time doing… something?

I don’t see anything useful coming out of this unless the OP lays the groundwork for what their actual position is and how it can be demonstrated to be true or false.

[Hael]

That was one of the less useful discussions here IMO.

Why would any DM make Tiamat the smallest possible size for a Gargantuan creature? Any larger at all and force cage is useless, wall of force is not much better.

But it was fairly typical of the "casters OP" style of discussion. Far too many assumptions, starting with an assumption of a DM who sets everything up to make the casters look great.
.

I completely disagree. The end of the thread contained ideas (and an actual fight) where forcecage was not used. A grappler to restrain was needed. But I mean this was an extreme example where metagaming, prefight setup, high lvl optimization is needed for 4 lvl 13 characters to face one of the hardest fights in 5e without the aid of many given magic items. The whole thing was actually setup to heavily disfavor the party. Without assumptions, the essence of the strategy is sound and really not that hard to replicate in less extreme circumstances and where the odds aren’t heavily stacked against the party.

Wall of force is used as a barrier to hide behind given a restrained Tiamat, and that is really the key as it eliminates most sources of AOE damage. The rest is just trying to keep the main tank alive (which is not that difficult with resistances/immunities, high ac/saves and things like peace cleric swapping in disposable summons).

The point is, wall of force, a Tasha summon and simulacrum (say the party fighter) is more than enough to justify the place of a wizard in the party. A class that is almost uniquely and specifically disadvantaged in this one particular high lvl fight, which is not really representative of any other.

[Frogreaver]

I suppose you mean outside of the, admittedly cliche and boring but nonetheless effective, "throw a forcecage and then something like sickening radiance/faithful hound/wall of light and/or ranged attacks, because high-CR statblocks without teleportation are really poorly thought out"?

A wizard can kill a single enemy without teleportation that fits into a force cage 1 or 2 times per day?

That’s a big investment to kill 1 enemy. And that’s assuming he doesn’t lose concentration, doesn’t get counterspelled, isn’t in an anti magic field, no one uses dispel magic, etc.

[Psyren]

"D&D isn't a competition but casters totally should be better than everyone else" is certainly among the weirdest take on the question I've ever seen.

It's not weird at all. Broadly speaking, magic should be more capable than not-magic, and more magic should mean more capable.


From what I recall the various tasks were rather open ended and mainly served to highlight what typical hurdles a class needed to clear in a given bracket (5e will have far fewer), as well as to what degree a class either had opened ended tools or was forced to rely on other characters.

If every class has the exact same solution available for a given task then the task isn’t a good filter on classes. If we lack a reference point for how D&D is to be played the results can be turned around to speak on how well the tasks are fitted to the classes. The lack of static skill DCs does little to undermine an attempt at a same game test when ‘rally the townsfolk against the bandits’ has always ever been a valid solution. ‘Rally the townsfolk’ is now just a poor filter.

The trouble is that with static DCs, you can reasonably estimate how difficult something like "rally the townsfolk" or "contact the underground resistance leader" is in a vacuum. Whereas in 5e, you may not even be able to roll much less determine your odds of success because it's all dependent on how that encounter or situation is designed.

[KorvinStarmast]

I have said this many times - there are more magic items in the game than spells and if you exclude them from your games or your discussions then you have distorted both and skewed the game as a result. Magic items are an integral part of the fiction and the game. Yes.

The closest example I've had recently was our (I believe) 16th level group fighting Tiamat. The wizard struggled to do much and the martials for the most part took her down. I'd also be interested in wizard options when the enemy is immune to almost everything. Legendary saves are an interesting obstacle to caster functions.

Magic items are part of the game, they are an important part of the game with a number of distinct rules entries second only to monsters in the game. There is nothing stopping a barbarian from having access to amazing stuff in tier 4 except a DM who is for some reason mentally dominated by some tweet from all that time ago that was never reflected in the actual published rules. This. And a good example is Cubic Gate. :smallsmile:


If you choose to play a game with no magic items I'm not going to accuse you of badwrongfun I'd be sorely tempted to, given that magic rings and magic swords and magic boots have become hard coded elements of the game.

That's just the Guy at the Gym fallacy with extra sprinkles.

Even Dr Strange, who has considerably more power than the typical Marvel magic user, can't just snap his fingers and have an answer for everything his opponents throw at him in situations where it matters. When saving throws are involved, a whole bunch of magic gets squelched sometimes. (My long running frustration with sacred flame informs this observation).

Comic books matchups are about *entertainment*, like pro wrestling. The 'comic book villain' aspect of pro wrestling certainly stands out.

Uh, wat? There's a lot more wizard archetypes than just "omnipowerful reality warper." Just read Turjan of Mir again the other day; yep. Also, Robin Hobbs' "the Skill" and "the Wit" magic system leads to a lot of 'power with limitations' that are buckets of goodness. One of Cugel (Vance) the Clever's adventure arcs was triggered by a spell going wrong, as it was cast, which teleported him somewhere that he didn't want to be.

I too have done a tier 4 vs Tiamat combat. The damage output was dominated by the martials and half casters. The wizard did alright but was unspectacular. Tiamat would not have fitted into a silly little force cage because the DM was not a fool. Had a fruitful discussion a while back on 'does an adult dragon really fit into the wall of force sphere' (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25304405&postcount=1) that you may want to consider. With the wings spread a general consensus was "nope, too big for the wall to fit around" ....


Why not give Martial classes more abilities and powers? I don't mean give them more damaging stuff but give them more combat options and out of combat abilities. This has been a topic of discussion for five or six years, at least.

[PhoenixPhyre]

It's not weird at all. Broadly speaking, magic should be more capable than not-magic, and more magic should mean more capable.


Why? Why is this a baseline assumption? Magic is different than non-magic. But different is not necessarily better. Or worse. Just not the same. And not all magic is spells. In D&D world, magic is in and through everything. Just not spell-magic.

[Anymage]

A wizard can kill a single enemy without teleportation that fits into a force cage 1 or 2 times per day?

ThatÂ’s a big investment to kill 1 enemy. And thatÂ’s assuming he doesnÂ’t lose concentration, doesnÂ’t get counterspelled, isnÂ’t in an anti magic field, no one uses dispel magic, etc.

Forcecage doesn't require concentration and can't be dispelled. It's really strong for its purpose of keeping someone in place. Possibly too strong, but you're going to have some overpowered and underpowered options when you have as many options as D&D has spells. The ability to cherry pick from those options can get problematic, but that would get pushback from people who are into the D&D wizard as the D&D wizard.


It's not weird at all. Broadly speaking, magic should be more capable than not-magic, and more magic should mean more capable.

Magic in most stories also comes with restrictions to prevent the magic users from just snapping their fingers and winning. Autowin protagonists are boring, and autowin antagonists are both boring and frustrating. Some of those restrictions map poorly to D&D (making magic costly and time consuming is a hard sell when someone wants to be a character whose main shtick is casting spells), some are quite compatible (a pyromancer is quite handy when you need to set something on fire, but less so outside of his element). "Magic" is super strong when the examples you gravitate to come closest to the D&D wizard, but there are oodles of other magic archetypes who could serve as inspiration just as easily.

[5eNeedsDarksun]

That was one of the less useful discussions here IMO.

Why would any DM make Tiamat the smallest possible size for a Gargantuan creature? Any larger at all and force cage is useless, wall of force is not much better.

But it was fairly typical of the "casters OP" style of discussion. Far too many assumptions, starting with an assumption of a DM who sets everything up to make the casters look great.

I too have done a tier 4 vs Tiamat combat. The damage output was dominated by the martials and half casters. The wizard did alright but was unspectacular. Tiamat would not have fitted into a silly little force cage because the DM was not a fool.

That basically describes our experience with Tiamat; the martials and Paladin were the stars. The wizard did manage to effectively buff those characters and did some damage. He had a simulacrum, and that did have a multiplier effect; it's just that what was being multiplied wasn't that impactful in the first place.

[PhoenixPhyre]

"Magic" is super strong when the examples you gravitate to come closest to the D&D wizard, but there are oodles of other magic archetypes who could serve as inspiration just as easily.

And the argument "D&D wizards should be super powerful because D&D wizards are super powerful" is rather circular and confuses is with ought. That's saying "fighters should be weak because fighters are weak." It's not really an argument other than saying "I like it this way." And matters of taste don't make for convincing arguments.

Magic isn't fundamentally or intrinsically stronger or weaker than anything else. That's a setting/system definition question and you could go either way.

[ZRN]

You're the one arguing that he is, by declaring that "realistically" he would have troubles against a magic user because magic users "defy the laws of physics".

To make my own general preferences clear, I think that the entire point of having character levels is to indicate that everyone of the same "level" is generally equally competent. So yes, obviously a level 20 fighter should be as useful in the game as a level 20 wizard. But when the wizard teleports himself to another dimension or traps his enemy in a forcecage, the fighter... can't do that. That doesn't mean the fighter is less "powerful" overall, much less that he's less essential to the party's success in a cooperative game like D&D, but it does mean that he's got to be more creative in overcoming the wizard's advantages. (On the flipside, the wizard knows that the fighter's main advantage is "rapidly killing anything that gets within 5 feet of him," which is easier to predict.)


Do you want Dr Strange in particular or any magic using hero would do?

I'm genuinely interested to see interesting examples of this for any magic-using hero. Not because I doubt it happens but because no examples come to my mind, and it sounds fun to read.

[Frogreaver]

Forcecage doesn't require concentration and can't be dispelled. It's really strong for its purpose of keeping someone in place. Possibly too strong, but you're going to have some overpowered and underpowered options when you have as many options as D&D has spells. The ability to cherry pick from those options can get problematic, but that would get pushback from people who are into the D&D wizard as the D&D wizard.

Just dispel the spell actually killing the force caged creature or knock the wizards concentration off for it.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Just dispel the spell actually killing the force caged creature or knock the wizards concentration off for it.

Can't dispel it--don't have a clear path to target (because forcecage). And even if you aren't slowly dying, the creature in the cage can't break the wizard's concentration...because they're in the cage.

Forcecage (and wall of force) both need ways to be broken from the inside without being a powerful wizard (or someone else with the right spells). For one thing, it's highly unthematic for "force barriers" to be impervious to everything, including monsters the size of a house.

[Dr.Samurai]

I'm really hoping we get some mock battles in this thread as per OP :smallfrown:

[tokek]

So the reason I see why casters are so powerful is they have 16+ spells by the time hey hit 20th lv. And these spells have powerful effects. So this got me thinking. Why not give Martial classes more abilities and powers? I don't mean give them more damaging stuff but give them more combat options and out of combat abilities. So on a level up a fighter get 1 or maybe 2 new abilities. Where a wizard get 2 new spells and a class ability or 2. It those 2 spells that is the problem they are 2 new abilities/options for the wizard.



Like magic items perhaps? Which are in the game already.

Why try to push everything in the game into being class features? I genuinely don't understand why people would want to do that.

[ZRN]

Can't dispel it--don't have a clear path to target (because forcecage). And even if you aren't slowly dying, the creature in the cage can't break the wizard's concentration...because they're in the cage.

Forcecage (and wall of force) both need ways to be broken from the inside without being a powerful wizard (or someone else with the right spells). For one thing, it's highly unthematic for "force barriers" to be impervious to everything, including monsters the size of a house.

Just thematically, it makes me mad that an immovable rod has an 8000lb weight limit and can be moved with a Strength check, but forcecage can block a falling moon apparently.

[LudicSavant]

I'm really hoping we get some mock battles in this thread as per OP :smallfrown:

You'd probably have better luck getting that making your own thread, for reasons pointed out by folks like Kane0, Willowhelm, and Chaos Jackal on page 1.

[Psyren]

Why? Why is this a baseline assumption? Magic is different than non-magic. But different is not necessarily better. Or worse. Just not the same. And not all magic is spells. In D&D world, magic is in and through everything. Just not spell-magic.

I didn't say "better," I said "more capable." A swiss army knife is more capable than a single screwdriver, but sometimes the screwdriver is the ideal tool for the job. It's less complicated to use, often easier to acquire, etc. (Sure, being more capable can sometimes = better, but that's not guaranteed.)

As for why, it's a trope of the fiction that D&D operates under that magic lets characters do things they couldn't without it. Tropes are not laws of course; any given campaign world can have wildly different approaches to magic than any other.

[SharkForce]

Like magic items perhaps? Which are in the game already.

Why try to push everything in the game into being class features? I genuinely don't understand why people would want to do that.

if those magic items are not explicitly items that amplify non-caster abilities or are otherwise unavailable to casters, I can't even begin to imagine what you think you could ever hope to prove with them in terms of one character archetype being overly powerful.

sure, the fighter can teleport if you give them a magic item that lets them teleport... but that has nothing to do with them being a fighter. a wizard, a cleric, a random peasant, or even a familiar can potentially do the exact same thing.

[Dienekes]

Like magic items perhaps? Which are in the game already.

Why try to push everything in the game into being class features? I genuinely don't understand why people would want to do that.

So, you're only as good as the items you pick up?

Personal opinion of course. But the gadgeteer is a fine character concept, really. But, it is pretty far from what a lot of players want out of a game. Hell Mike Mearls, one of the lead designers of 5e even recognized that there is a desire for the character to have agency and be powerful on their own accord when he wrote the Iron Heroes system.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Just thematically, it makes me mad that an immovable rod has an 8000lb weight limit and can be moved with a Strength check, but forcecage can block a falling moon apparently.

Yeah. And there are tons of examples of a caster putting up a barrier and having to struggle to maintain it against purely physical force from the outside. CF the Suicide Mission of ME2. And big things just powering through barriers on the force of their own strength or by hitting it enough that it fails.

I had a thread about adding a bypass to all of the force barrier spells (including tiny hut). Options included
* allowing a STR check to walk through the wall.
* allowing it to break from damage (giving it HP, an AC, and possibly resistance)
* allowing attacks against it to trigger concentration saves (or a parallel mechanism for the non-concentration spells).

Personally, I'm fed up with the "must have spells to counter spells, but spells also counter steel (ie non-spells)" mentality. Unless we wanted to go the route of spells against spells and steel against steel, so casters would be much less capable against anything that didn't cast spells. Let a physical damage type get in range of your caster? He's in deep trouble. Which means dropping most of the non-counter-spell defenses and escape abilities casters have. And not letting them pick up much in the way of non-spell capabilities either. Want to be a full caster? You have to give up the ability to do non-caster stuff very well[1]. Just like if you want to be a non-caster, you have to give up the ability to do caster stuff very well at all. And then good definitions of what those (caster vs non-caster stuff) mean. Probably easier to just add more countermeasures so that spells and non-spells can counter each other, just in different ways and with different tradeoffs.


I didn't say "better," I said "more capable." A swiss army knife is more capable than a single screwdriver, but sometimes the screwdriver is the ideal tool for the job. It's less complicated to use, often easier to acquire, etc. (Sure, being more capable can sometimes = better, but that's not guaranteed.)

As for why, it's a trope of the fiction that D&D operates under that magic lets characters do things they couldn't without it. Tropes are not laws of course; any given campaign world can have wildly different approaches to magic than any other.

A swiss army knife is a worse screwdriver than a screwdriver. It can do other things as well. Just not as good as any dedicated instrument in those things. But what people want from magic is to have both, it seems. To be a screwdriver just as well as a dedicated screwdriver (or even better) AND be a better knife than a dedicated knife AND ...

And "it should be this way because it is this way" is confusing is and ought (and rather circular). It is this way because people took all the limiters off back in the day. That was a mistake that should be rectified, not baked in as a hard default assumption about magic in general. There's nothing intrinsic to D&D that says magic has to be better (and make no mistake, people want magic to be outright better than non-magic, even in this thread) than non-magic. Or that the distinction between magic/non-magic (in the in-universe sense, not in the game-mechanics sense) has to exist at all. Everything has magic. A fighter is no more non-magic than a wizard; the wizard casts spells as his magic. The fighter attacks more than anyone else can as his. Are these two magics balanced currently? No. But they're not conceptually different, alien things in a D&D world. They're all expressions of the background magic that is in and through everything.

[tokek]

So, you're only as good as the items you pick up?

Personal opinion of course. But the gadgeteer is a fine character concept, really. But, it is pretty far from what a lot of players want out of a game. Hell Mike Mearls, one of the lead designers of 5e even recognized that there is a desire for the character to have agency and be powerful on their own accord when he wrote the Iron Heroes system.

Magic items are central to the fantasy genre and have the 2nd highest count of unique rules in the game after monsters - why pretend they don't exist?

Any discussion of the game that does not include the fact that magic items exist and grant an additional range of abilities to characters is essentially not discussing the game of D&D as published or as played at any table I have ever seen. Its pointless.

[Dienekes]

Magic items are central to the fantasy genre and have the 2nd highest count of unique rules in the game after monsters - why pretend they don't exist?

Any discussion of the game that does not include the fact that magic items exist and grant an additional range of abilities to characters is essentially not discussing the game of D&D as published or as played at any table I have ever seen. Its pointless.

True, but the extent is somewhat varied. LotR has a magic ring no one can really use, a few swords that glow, and some wizards have staves. I can't think of much more.ASOIAF has glass candles, and I think 1 gem that has some weird illusion magic attached to it, and a horn that burns people's lungs. They're accent pieces or story points more than something that can be listed as part of a character's abilities. And when they are, it's usually only one or two per character.

But, if you're trying to be a great warrior and leader, and all you have to show for it is your long list of magic items? You're really not all that great at either. You're just rich. Which again, Gageteer is definitely and totally a character concept that can work.

But we're also discussing class balance here. And, magic items are class agnostic. Now, there are some powerful ones that are weapons which are a bit more exclusive. But for the most part the ability to solve problems, or, in other words, utility, often aren't.

Unless casters don't get magic items, but the martials do. Then it's kinda irrelevant to the discussion.

As Throne12 said, the problem is the caster's 16+ abilities. If magic items create +X such abilities and casters get 16+X, and martials only get X, well, the problem hasn't been solved.

[Psyren]

A swiss army knife is a worse screwdriver than a screwdriver. It can do other things as well. Just not as good as any dedicated instrument in those things. But what people want from magic is to have both, it seems. To be a screwdriver just as well as a dedicated screwdriver (or even better) AND be a better knife than a dedicated knife AND ...

The swiss army knife in this analogy has "screw points" that it can use to be a screwdriver or to do its other functions, and when those run out it loses a great deal of functionality (if not all of it). It's not hard to design scenarios where that drawback matters, and that is the solution to making both tools valuable even when one can sometimes be used in place of the other.



And "it should be this way because it is this way" is confusing is and ought (and rather circular). It is this way because people took all the limiters off back in the day. That was a mistake that should be rectified, not baked in as a hard default assumption about magic in general. There's nothing intrinsic to D&D that says magic has to be better (and make no mistake, people want magic to be outright better than non-magic, even in this thread) than non-magic. Or that the distinction between magic/non-magic (in the in-universe sense, not in the game-mechanics sense) has to exist at all. Everything has magic. A fighter is no more non-magic than a wizard; the wizard casts spells as his magic. The fighter attacks more than anyone else can as his. Are these two magics balanced currently? No. But they're not conceptually different, alien things in a D&D world. They're all expressions of the background magic that is in and through everything.

If the fighter, by swinging his sword, can do all the things spells can do, why would spells need to exist? What makes them special or interesting?

[SharkForce]

But we're also discussing class balance here. And, magic items are class agnostic. Now, there are some powerful ones that are weapons which are a bit more exclusive. But for the most part the ability to solve problems, or, in other words, utility, often aren't.

Unless casters don't get magic items, but the martials do. Then it's kinda irrelevant to the discussion.

As Throne12 said, the problem is the caster's 16+ abilities. If magic items create +X such abilities and casters get 16+X, and martials only get X, well, the problem hasn't been solved.

that isn't *necessarily* true. if magic items give +1,000 "points" worth of abilities, and being a level 20 wizard gives 16 "points" worth and being a level 20 fighter gives only 4 "points" worth, magic items pretty near level the playing field.

of course, it also makes your class largely irrelevant and meaningless, making everyone essentially have the class "person with magic items", at which point we may as well ask why anyone even *has* a class, so I'm certainly not recommending that, but you totally *can* solve the class imbalance problem with magic items... just, the result probably won't feel much like D&D any more.

[PhoenixPhyre]

The swiss army knife in this analogy has "screw points" that it can use to be a screwdriver or to do its other functions, and when those run out it loses a great deal of functionality (if not all of it). It's not hard to design scenarios where that drawback matters, and that is the solution to making both tools valuable even when one can sometimes be used in place of the other.


Except that's fragile. As we've seen. Because the trend is to keep removing limits on spells, while we keep adding them to non-spells. Spells need hard, system-set limits on what they can and can't do. Because otherwise spell creep means they can do everything and do it better and more frequently than non-spells can. Which makes spells the only valid way of interacting with anything interesting.



If the fighter, by swinging his sword, can do all the things spells can do, why would spells need to exist? What makes them special or interesting?

If a wizard, by swinging his wand, can do all the things a fighter can with his sword, why do fighters need to exist? What makes them special or interesting? That's a lot closer to the state we're in. And it's a bad state.

I'd prefer if spells can do 30%[1] of what a sword is best at and a sword can do 30% of what spells are best at. And that those two areas are roughly equal in size (if not in content). No exclusive competencies, but neither one is better in the other's specialty. Right now, the trend seems to be that spells can do 110% of what a sword can do and sword can do ~0% of what spells are good at and that people are treating that as if it's self-evidently correct and not only that but necessary. As if anything other than total spell supremacy in all aspects is a sign that the archetypes aren't being met.

[1] numbers pulled from thin air. I was going on the "1/3 caster" idea. But certainly less than 100%

[Psyren]

If a wizard, by swinging his wand, can do all the things a fighter can with his sword, why do fighters need to exist? What makes them special or interesting?

That wand has "fighter points." I know you consider that to be "fragile" but I vastly prefer it to the alternatives.

[Unoriginal]

It's not weird at all.

Claiming that X is not a competition but that Y should be ahead of Z is definitively a weird take. No matter the context.

[Psyren]

Claiming that X is not a competition but that Y should be ahead of Z is definitively a weird take. No matter the context.

5e is not a competitive game.

[tokek]

if those magic items are not explicitly items that amplify non-caster abilities or are otherwise unavailable to casters, I can't even begin to imagine what you think you could ever hope to prove with them in terms of one character archetype being overly powerful.

sure, the fighter can teleport if you give them a magic item that lets them teleport... but that has nothing to do with them being a fighter. a wizard, a cleric, a random peasant, or even a familiar can potentially do the exact same thing.

It has everything to do with "are casters too powerful because they can teleport".

In general magic items are just higher impact if the character would not otherwise have a way to replicate the effect. Winged Boots are a big deal on a fighter who needs to go punch things, on a Wizard it means they can switch to preparing another spell and maybe save a spell slot sometimes.

The whole "casters break the game with Wish spell" discussion ignores that there is more than one item in the game which grants a Wish spell. The idea that only a few classes can possibly access this magic is simply not true - or at least not in a game where all the rules are fully in play. One more casting of Wish is not that big a deal for a Wizard with the spell, on a martial character it can let them access some powerful lasting benefits.

Which is before we even discuss things like Spell Tattoos which replicate spells up to 5th level for anyone to use.

Casters do these things more often and more freely because its their class identity that they do this stuff on a daily basis but the fundamental premise that other characters cannot do it is based on excluding a huge part of the game from the discussion. Which is artificially constraining and of little to no relevance in any likely game that most people will be playing.

[Anymage]

But we're also discussing class balance here. And, magic items are class agnostic. Now, there are some powerful ones that are weapons which are a bit more exclusive. But for the most part the ability to solve problems, or, in other words, utility, often aren't.

Unless casters don't get magic items, but the martials do. Then it's kinda irrelevant to the discussion.

As Throne12 said, the problem is the caster's 16+ abilities. If magic items create +X such abilities and casters get 16+X, and martials only get X, well, the problem hasn't been solved.

If the wizard can already fly and teleport and the item lets you fly and/or teleport, it appreciably enhances the fighter's capabilities while just saving the wizard a spell slot. That's an advantage towards fighters.

Of course this does have issues of its own. If you can use as many items as you can carry, the fighter's ability on paper to get more out of an item means little when the wizard carrying the item is still more effective than having the fighter along. If there are bottlenecks to using items, that caps the fighter's capabilities while the wizard still gets to enjoy all their spells. And many people do find that having their capabilities depend on their item sheet is not the feel they want. More fictional characters are defined by one signature item than by a plethora thereof.

(There's also the fact that we have to separate items that give additional abilities from ones that just make you better at what you were already going to be doing anyways. +3 weapons are strong and sought after, but don't really let the martial do anything more than hit things harder. That's a separate and tangential discussion, though.)


The swiss army knife in this analogy has "screw points" that it can use to be a screwdriver or to do its other functions, and when those run out it loses a great deal of functionality (if not all of it). It's not hard to design scenarios where that drawback matters, and that is the solution to making both tools valuable even when one can sometimes be used in place of the other.

Fighters have not one, but two pools of "fighter points" they have to mind. The first is their HP, which as people expected to be on the front line they're going to burn through rapidly. And while a wizard who runs out of spell slots will be reduced to plinking with cantrips, the fighter who runs out of HP dies.

The second is expected impactful actions per in-game day. Between rounds of combat and critical skill rolls, there are only a finite number of these that happen until the party has a long rest and the casters refresh their slots. The fighter's theoretical ability to keep swinging at a training dummy all day long isn't so relevant if you only have one or two big combats per day, so the wizard can cast a leveled spell each round and still have slots left over for utility.


5e is not a competitive game.

You're right in that pure PvP concerns are a distraction.

You're wrong in that players won't naturally gravitate towards stronger options. Or feel upset if someone else can do their defining shtick only better. To 5e's credit it has kept these tamped down until levels are in the mid to late teens, so they aren't too problematic. Just because 5e has reined things back from the 3.5 days does not mean that we shouldn't still be mindful of what can happen when we let casters go wild, and take steps to avoid letting that happen again.

[Trask]

The only reliable way to address this issue without houseruling the game is to make long resting less easy to do and put more encounters between long rests. Once I did that these kinks in the game smoothed out like a laundered sheet.

[SharkForce]

It has everything to do with "are casters too powerful because they can teleport".

In general magic items are just higher impact if the character would not otherwise have a way to replicate the effect. Winged Boots are a big deal on a fighter who needs to go punch things, on a Wizard it means they can switch to preparing another spell and maybe save a spell slot sometimes.

The whole "casters break the game with Wish spell" discussion ignores that there is more than one item in the game which grants a Wish spell. The idea that only a few classes can possibly access this magic is simply not true - or at least not in a game where all the rules are fully in play. One more casting of Wish is not that big a deal for a Wizard with the spell, on a martial character it can let them access some powerful lasting benefits.

Which is before we even discuss things like Spell Tattoos which replicate spells up to 5th level for anyone to use.

Casters do these things more often and more freely because its their class identity that they do this stuff on a daily basis but the fundamental premise that other characters cannot do it is based on excluding a huge part of the game from the discussion. Which is artificially constraining and of little to no relevance in any likely game that most people will be playing.

being able to cast wish 1-3 times *ever* and *IF* you're lucky enough to get your hands on that specific item is not remotely equivalent to being able to cast it day after day. particularly since wish is an example of a spell that allows you to convert downtime into usable resources for later.

spell tattoos are likewise limited in availability, and single use.

teleport is a little bit closer, except it still has nothing to do with being a fighter (or a wizard, cleric, druid, etc). and yes, the spellcaster does in practical terms get to prepare another power because teleport (or equivalent) is no longer necessary which means that the gap is still about the same. it very, VERY slightly improves the situation, because if we give both the fighter and the wizard a +1 to the amount of versatility they have we're going to have a very slightly better ratio, but it still isn't going to be close.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Fighters have not one, but two pools of "fighter points" they have to mind. The first is their HP, which as people expected to be on the front line they're going to burn through rapidly. And while a wizard who runs out of spell slots will be reduced to plinking with cantrips, the fighter who runs out of HP dies.

The second is expected impactful actions per in-game day. Between rounds of combat and critical skill rolls, there are only a finite number of these that happen until the party has a long rest and the casters refresh their slots. The fighter's theoretical ability to keep swinging at a training dummy all day long isn't so relevant if you only have one or two big combats per day, so the wizard can cast a leveled spell each round and still have slots left over for utility.


Right. That latter one is the big binding concern. That's what I meant about "fragile"--people playing slightly differently (fewer impactful actions that might burn resources per day) means huge swings in power. And even reduced to cantrips, a full caster is still operating at a significant fraction of a martial in combat. This is also why magic items don't work unless those magic items are giving capabilities as big as a caster's biggest spell slots (which very very few actually do, especially rechargeably)--the action economy cost is the binding constraint. Being able to do it all day rarely matters in any way.

And this doesn't even begin to get at the whole host of things fighters just can't even begin to do. A caster can do everything a fighter can (and any attempt to set limits is met with howls of outrage), and can do it reasonably well even with just cantrips. Not great, mind, but enough to have an impact in combat. A caster can also do a thousand and one extra things, and get to change their loadout every day (for full-list and wizard casting). To replicate that with magic items, they'd have to be drowning in items and attunement slots. Which starts to cause worldbuilding issues a long time ago.

Edit: to have parity just on resource constraints, you'd have to make it so that casters got really 1 big thing per short rest and then a couple small things. Max. Because that's about how often a fighter gets to action surge + use other resources. You're looking at 5-6 spell slots total. For the entire day. Of all levels combined. And then constrain them to having only a few spells prepared/learned. Roughly 1/3 to 1/4 as many as they do now

[Psyren]

Fighters have not one, but two pools of "fighter points" they have to mind. The first is their HP, which as people expected to be on the front line they're going to burn through rapidly. And while a wizard who runs out of spell slots will be reduced to plinking with cantrips, the fighter who runs out of HP dies.

The second is expected impactful actions per in-game day. Between rounds of combat and critical skill rolls, there are only a finite number of these that happen until the party has a long rest and the casters refresh their slots. The fighter's theoretical ability to keep swinging at a training dummy all day long isn't so relevant if you only have one or two big combats per day, so the wizard can cast a leveled spell each round and still have slots left over for utility.

Everyone has #1. As for #2... I mean, if disparity is the concern, the solution or at least improvement there should be blindingly obvious.


You're right in that pure PvP concerns are a distraction.

You're wrong in that players won't naturally gravitate towards stronger options. Or feel upset if someone else can do their defining shtick only better. To 5e's credit it has kept these tamped down until levels are in the mid to late teens, so they aren't too problematic. Just because 5e has reined things back from the 3.5 days does not mean that we shouldn't still be mindful of what can happen when we let casters go wild, and take steps to avoid letting that happen again.

1) I agree that we should be intentional about design to avoid going back to 3e levels of disparity. However, I don't see any concerns of that with current design. If anything, Tasha's showed more love to martials than ever, certainly more than early books like the PHB and SCAG did.

2) I am sure there are some martial players who "feel upset" when they look at spellcasters, despite not choosing to be a spellcaster themselves. But I think most martial players do know what they're in for with that choice.

[Throne12]

Like magic items perhaps? Which are in the game already.

Why try to push everything in the game into being class features? I genuinely don't understand why people would want to do that.

Because not every table uses magic items that why many classes have abilities to grant there weapon or unarmed attack with magic to over come Resistance. I've played in a game that lasted 2 years every Saturday we played and I never filled my 3rd attunement slot. It can hinder the player if the DM says I'm not handing out magic items.

[Frogreaver]

2) I am sure there are some martial players who "feel upset" when they look at spellcasters, despite not choosing to be a spellcaster themselves. But I think most martial players do know what they're in for with that choice.

It's not whether 'they know what they are in for' but whether 'they should be in for that to begin with'.

[Throne12]

Magic items are central to the fantasy genre and have the 2nd highest count of unique rules in the game after monsters - why pretend they don't exist?

Any discussion of the game that does not include the fact that magic items exist and grant an additional range of abilities to characters is essentially not discussing the game of D&D as published or as played at any table I have ever seen. Its pointless.

Not all tables us magic items I played at a few with low to non.



Also I can't remember playing with anyone that's taken a Martial character fully to lv20 without Multi classing. Besides barbarians and thats only because they can't use/ Concentrate on spells while raging and there 20lv ability it to strong to pass up.

[Bovine Colonel]

Or is it that you wanna prove you can't win an arms race against the DM, because they can present you with something that is immune to everything you have, has insane numbers, ridiculous abilities, or any combination of those? Again, no need to worry, most are already aware that you can't beat the DM in an arms race.

I get the impression from OP's second post that it's this one.



2) If I build the challenge, you *don't* win. You're Icarus flying too close to the sun and your hubris will see you fall to your demise. The avatar of Bane doesn't care about your parlor tricks and will freely overpower them and punish you. Lloth or Asmodeus will do the same.
Heck, there are a handful of mortals your level 20 caster can't beat. Ioulaum comes to mind. Elminster these days, now that he's a Weave-hacker/cheater. They can't beat the avatars and demon lords and devil princes either.

OP, it's obvious that any DM can throw an unwinnable encounter at (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RocksFallEveryoneDies) any party and find some in-universe reason to justify it (you seem to be assuming Forgotten Realms). No one has ever claimed otherwise. People have been assuming that the DM won't do such a thing, because that would be bad DMing unless the party has made some kind of catastrophic mistake. The baseline for every discussion on this topic is that the problem presented can be solved by some hypothetical party of the appropriate level, ideally without exploits that snap the game system in two. Under this assumption I think it's clear that a well-played high-level caster is more likely to be able to solve a given problem than a well-played high-level non-caster.

If you would like to dispute this with a challenge, and are unwilling to say what the challenge is, why don't you at least show a non-caster or half-caster who can overcome this encounter, or series of encounters, which is impossible for casters?

[tokek]

Not all tables us magic items I played at a few with low to non.

I've been invited onto tables that did not permit some classes. An incomplete or limited game of D&D is not the complete game. Playing at one of those tables is a very different experience and as "we left a chunk of the game out" will differ wildly depending on what is left out I don't feel its very useful in a more general discussion of the full game.

When I hear something like that I wonder what is going through the mind of the DM running it, sounds grim to me if I'm honest and I neither know nor care if the balance of such a weird skew game is bad.

[Frogreaver]

An incomplete or limited game of D&D is not the complete game.

D&D is created to provide options and content for a world to be filled with. Curating some of those options into a world that players explore and learn about is exactly what D&D is about!


When I hear something like that I wonder what is going through the mind of the DM running it, sounds grim to me if I'm honest and I neither know nor care if the balance of such a weird skew game is bad.

I'd suggest such games are much more normal than you presume.

[SharkForce]

I've been invited onto tables that did not permit some classes. An incomplete or limited game of D&D is not the complete game. Playing at one of those tables is a very different experience and as "we left a chunk of the game out" will differ wildly depending on what is left out I don't feel its very useful in a more general discussion of the full game.

When I hear something like that I wonder what is going through the mind of the DM running it, sounds grim to me if I'm honest and I neither know nor care if the balance of such a weird skew game is bad.

well, given that magic items are not supposed to be a requirement, the game should be balanced appropriately to work without them.

as an added benefit, if it is then when you add magic items in it doesn't matter who gets them for the most part, because nobody is relying on them to shore up the weaknesses in their abilities.

[JNAProductions]

I've been invited onto tables that did not permit some classes. An incomplete or limited game of D&D is not the complete game. Playing at one of those tables is a very different experience and as "we left a chunk of the game out" will differ wildly depending on what is left out I don't feel its very useful in a more general discussion of the full game.

When I hear something like that I wonder what is going through the mind of the DM running it, sounds grim to me if I'm honest and I neither know nor care if the balance of such a weird skew game is bad.

So, if you leave out, say, Thunderwave-is that an incomplete/limited game?

And is there a difference between "No one is allowed to play Druids" and "No one decided to play a Druid"? Maybe in principle, but not so much in the actuality, it seems to me. Unless you're at a table with 12 or more players, you'll be missing at least one class-and even if you have 12 players, and even if they all choose different classes (and none dip into Homebrew or play an Artificer or something), you'll still miss subclasses, spells, feats...

[Kane0]

All that predefining the ‘test’ does is allow for Scrodinger’s casters to pick the spells and builds that best overcome that challenge. IMO it’s not at all a good way to resolve the question.

No it doesn't, because even the wildcard PC still doesn't know what the random encounters will be ahead of time, nor will they know in what order or the terrain it will take place in. There will be known factors like the encounter difficulty range (hard and deadly only), frequency and availability of rests but the mage cannot know before the test begins whom they will face nor how many of them and thus select their spells and items to counter it. The point is that any given build is going in blind to a full, tough adventuring day of all the things D&D adventures tend to entail and so should prepare for anything as best they can. There must be some form of limitations placed on this exercise for sanity's sake so for example if the PC is able to use divination magic to gather information on upcoming encounters it cannot be used until the challenge actually starts.

Of course, we would be wanting a big sample size for best accuracy, not a single run for each build that might roll favourable encounters and terrain.

[Unoriginal]

I'm genuinely interested to see interesting examples of this for any magic-using hero. Not because I doubt it happens but because no examples come to my mind, and it sounds fun to read.

Well not a read example, but the first thing that comes into mind is the Teen Titans cartoon, where the sorceress Raven is confronted to foes that would fit the description more than a few times (most notably Slade and Red X).

[arnin77]

Since people are asking for a scenario to put their builds against; and since I'd rather read those builds than Batman vs Dr Strange or Swiss Army Knife vs Screwdriver nit-pick arguments.... I'll just put this out there (and just so you all know; I have extremely limited experience with full casters as I usually play a frontliner or skirmisher myself..an even less experience as a DM)

I'll just start it off with this - and I have no idea if it's a good or bad example:

Your Wizard (or caster? i forget now if this is wizards or casters) build vs a Pit Fiend. I believe that's what someone said earlier.... can a Wizard 1v1 a Pit Fiend? I'm curious to know... I think Wizards are powerful but I don't know if they could do it and I'd love to see if they could... also, if that's too high/low I can just pick a different monster..

Looking forward to some builds!! (Also I love the Evoker.. played one to level 7 but he got turned to stone lol... would love to see what a straight up Evoker or the Hexvoker could do!)

... also just let me know if I need to change the parameters or add anything to make this better :)

[Frogreaver]

Since people are asking for a scenario to put their builds against; and since I'd rather read those builds than Batman vs Dr Strange or Swiss Army Knife vs Screwdriver nit-pick arguments.... I'll just put this out there (and just so you all know; I have extremely limited experience with full casters as I usually play a frontliner or skirmisher myself..an even less experience as a DM)

I'll just start it off with this - and I have no idea if it's a good or bad example:

Your Wizard (or caster? i forget now if this is wizards or casters) build vs a Pit Fiend. I believe that's what someone said earlier.... can a Wizard 1v1 a Pit Fiend? I'm curious to know... I think Wizards are powerful but I don't know if they could do it and I'd love to see if they could... also, if that's too high/low I can just pick a different monster..

Looking forward to some builds!! (Also I love the Evoker.. played one to level 7 but he got turned to stone lol... would love to see what a straight up Evoker or the Hexvoker could do!)

... also just let me know if I need to change the parameters or add anything to make this better :)

The basic simulcarum + sickening radiance + forcecage combo ends this encounter. As long as Wizard or Simulcarum goes before the pit fiend I think it's essentially game over with no damage taken.

[Trask]

Any 1 creature is going to hard pressed to challenge a caster. An ideal benchmark encounter IMO would involve a few potent (but not extremely powerful) creatures, maybe 2-3.

[Dork_Forge]

The basic simulcarum + sickening radiance + forcecage combo ends this encounter. As long as Wizard or Simulcarum goes before the pit fiend I think it's essentially game over with no damage taken.

This isn't a given, Fireball beats Forcecage for range for one, but more parameters need to be given, a Pit Fiend is not an adequate challenge for a 20th level character.

[arnin77]

Well I’d say that’s pretty powerful… lol

Does that same combo work against an ancient white dragon? Same CR 20

I was just using 1@CR20 for since that’s a medium encounter for 4@Level 20 characters but it’s twice a deadly encounter for 1@Level 20 character based on the online calculator I found.

Alternatively - would that combo/build work against 2 pit fiends/white dragons?

[Gignere]

This isn't a given, Fireball beats Forcecage for range for one, but more parameters need to be given, a Pit Fiend is not an adequate challenge for a 20th level character.

Eh I don’t know based on their abilities and stats a pit fiend will likely wreck a level 20 martial. Just flying and kiting martials would make it unbeatable. Even if it just stands there and just trade attacks the pit fiend is likely going to win.

[Dork_Forge]

Well I’d say that’s pretty powerful… lol

Does that same combo work against an ancient white dragon? Same CR 20

I was just using 1@CR20 for since that’s a medium encounter for 4@Level 20 characters but it’s twice a deadly encounter for 1@Level 20 character based on the online calculator I found.

Alternatively - would that combo/build work against 2 pit fiends/white dragons?

How much rope you give the caster matters, these kinds of things turn from 1 caster to that caster and their simulacrum and whatever they can bind or summon whilst cajoling you for information to metagame with divinations.

The kind of stuff that would rarely, if ever, actually happen in a wide number of games.


Eh I don’t know based on their abilities and stats a pit fiend will likely wreck a level 20 martial. Just flying and kiting martials would make it unbeatable. Even if it just stands there and just trade attacks the pit fiend is likely going to win.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised this turned into a "Well it would wreck a martial" with the implication being it wouldn't wreck a caster.

Martials have a higher ranged potential than casters and Fireballs at will is more threatening to casters. Standing there trading blows as the only encounter of the day would not go well for the pit fiend with a lot of martials, dumping all of your resources in one go is potent enough to overcome most enemies you might expect to normally wipe the floor with a character, monsters rarely have the same nova capacity or resilience to said nova.

[arnin77]

How much rope you give the caster matters, these kinds of things turn from 1 caster to that caster and their simulacrum and whatever they can bind or summon whilst cajoling you for information to metagame with divinations.

The kind of stuff that would rarely, if ever, actually happen in a wide number of games.

Yeah I guess it depends since it's really just 1 encounter too when they are designed to be having more per day... pretty tough to set up parameters for this I guess...

(For me anyways lol)

[Frogreaver]

Eh I don’t know based on their abilities and stats a pit fiend will likely wreck a level 20 martial. Just flying and kiting martials would make it unbeatable. Even if it just stands there and just trade attacks the pit fiend is likely going to win.

Especially with 3x hold monsters per day and a DC 21 for it.

[LudicSavant]

Since people are asking for a scenario to put their builds against; and since I'd rather read those builds than Batman vs Dr Strange or Swiss Army Knife vs Screwdriver nit-pick arguments.... I'll just put this out there (and just so you all know; I have extremely limited experience with full casters as I usually play a frontliner or skirmisher myself..an even less experience as a DM)

I'll just start it off with this - and I have no idea if it's a good or bad example:

Your Wizard (or caster? i forget now if this is wizards or casters) build vs a Pit Fiend. I believe that's what someone said earlier.... can a Wizard 1v1 a Pit Fiend? I'm curious to know... I think Wizards are powerful but I don't know if they could do it and I'd love to see if they could... also, if that's too high/low I can just pick a different monster..

Looking forward to some builds!! (Also I love the Evoker.. played one to level 7 but he got turned to stone lol... would love to see what a straight up Evoker or the Hexvoker could do!)

... also just let me know if I need to change the parameters or add anything to make this better :)

A Pit Fiend has no suitable counter to being tossed in a Wall of Force with a Mordenkainen's Faithful Hound, so that's one way of dealing with it.

A Hexvoker could just kill it in one turn with a Macross Missile Massacre (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=23998967&postcount=170) (and indeed, this would work against far deadlier things than a Pit Fiend), making most 1v1 matchups easy. But in a party they don't even need to do that, they could do a small, resource-efficient fraction of their nova and it'll still be enough for the party to finish it in one round.

Heck, a party of straight or mostly-straight Evokers could just use at-will Spell Mastery magic missiles to mop it up. (You could even have it be a balanced, practical, well-rounded party of all Evokers. One is a Jorasco Halfling that covers the party's healing, one is a Retvoker that frontlines). Such a party can dish out over 200 unmissable damage in a round without spending a single slot.

You could easily augment that damage with any slots, big or small -- not that you really need to. For example you could use one of the Tasha's summons which basically just adds a martial to your party for an hour.

The Pit Fiend doesn't really have any kind of defenses or attacks that are super helpful for it here. They can inflict fear and poison, but that screws over martials, not casters. It can waste its action on single-target Hold Monster, in which case your Simulacrum will just break you out if you actually fail the save. Magic Resistance has no effect on the usual anti-fiend spells. Its Fire-based attacks aren't strong enough to do a lot through Absorb Elements. So it's basically stuck just flying at you and using melee. You can even just kite the thing. Or you could just face tank it! Even if it gets to you, it only has like ~63 DPR against AC 24 (medium armor + shield + Shield), less with other caster defenses (Protection from Evil and Good knocks it down to ~33, and that's just a level 1 spell).

There's a lot of options here. And not a lot for the Pit Fiend.

[Dork_Forge]

Especially with 3x hold monsters per day and a DC 21 for it.

Why would that be more of an issue for martials than casters?

[Frogreaver]

How much rope you give the caster matters, these kinds of things turn from 1 caster to that caster and their simulacrum and whatever they can bind or summon whilst cajoling you for information to metagame with divinations.

The kind of stuff that would rarely, if ever, actually happen in a wide number of games.

Wish + Simulcarum is a fairly straightforward caster buff. No one said anything about binding or summoning a bunch of other stuff.


I guess I shouldn't be surprised this turned into a "Well it would wreck a martial" with the implication being it wouldn't wreck a caster.

Martials have a higher ranged potential than casters and Fireballs at will is more threatening to casters. Standing there trading blows as the only encounter of the day would not go well for the pit fiend with a lot of martials, dumping all of your resources in one go is potent enough to overcome most enemies you might expect to normally wipe the floor with a character, monsters rarely have the same nova capacity or resilience to said nova.

I guess there's a chance for the martial if the pit fiend starts 600ft away and has no possible cover against a Fighter with SS and a longbow. Pretty much any other scenario and the martial is toast though. Possibly a Paladin can kill it by burning divine smite as fast as possible.


Why would that be more of an issue for martials than casters?

Counterspell. Class Wisdom Saving throw proficiency. A simulcarum to dispel magic on you if you are targeted.

[arnin77]

An Evoker that frontlines?! I must know what this is :)

[Dork_Forge]

Wish + Simulcarum is a fairly straightforward caster buff. No one said anything about binding or summoning a bunch of other stuff.

This is where these kinds of conversations often go on the forums, casters and what they can do with prep is a common argument.


I guess there's a chance for the martial if the pit fiend starts 600ft away and has no possible cover against a Fighter with SS and a longbow. Pretty much any other scenario and the martial is toast though. Possibly a Paladin can kill it by burning divine smite as fast as possible.

Why on earth would the Pitfiend need to be at extreme range? And do you have any actual example or evidence for martials having no chance? There's a lot of martial build that would stand a good chance of winning, and my stance is that casters aren't a guaranteed win either.


Counterspell. Class Wisdom Saving throw proficiency. A simulcarum to dispel magic on you if you are targeted.

Counterspell is not a reliable counter to an 8th level spell.

Nor is Wis save prof from a class convincing as a superior argument:

-In the kinds of levels that this is talking about a Monk and Rogue would both have Wisdom save proficiency from their main class features, both with a good chance of having decent Wis modifiers too.

-The Fighter class not only gets the most ASIs, but can easily be SAD making a higher Wis mod easier to get, with subclasses having their own solutions like the Samurai straight up getting Wis save prof in Tier 2. Oh and then there's Indomitible for second chances for all Fighters.

-Rangers are likely to have a good Wis mod and there are multiple subclasses with defenses for Dominate Monster.

-Paladins are Paladins

Barbarians are the only ones that are particularly exposed (and even then not all of them) and this can be dealt with by grabbing Res:Wis or taking multiple different races.

And by the way: Not all casters get Wis saves and/or Counterspell

[Trask]

And by the way: Not all casters get Wis saves and/or Counterspell

Sounds like it circles back to the point in the OP. This "problem" is chiefly about wizards, or at least the popular perception of how powerful wizards are.

[Dork_Forge]

Sounds like it circles back to the point in the OP. This "problem" is chiefly about wizards, or at least the popular perception of how powerful wizards are.

I would agree with this and what was said earlier, it's usually Wizards or other casters with Wizard spells/dips that are brought up.

Occasionally the obvious OP capstone of the Moon Druid, which is hardly an argument of casters as a whole, it's a single subclass afterall.

[Frogreaver]

This is where these kinds of conversations often go on the forums, casters and what they can do with prep is a common argument.

Okay. But this is a very minimal amount of prep.


Why on earth would the Pitfiend need to be at extreme range? And do you have any actual example or evidence for martials having no chance? There's a lot of martial build that would stand a good chance of winning, and my stance is that casters aren't a guaranteed win either.

Because if the pit fiend gets close he will beat down the fighter long before the fighter beats him down (strong magic items can change the calculus though).

And I'm not seeing how the pitfiend beats the caster with a simulcarum up? Maybe you can elaborate there.


Counterspell is not a reliable counter to an 8th level spell.

Hold Monster is a 5th level spell. What 8th level spell?


Nor is Wis save prof from a class convincing as a superior argument:

-In the kinds of levels that this is talking about a Monk and Rogue would both have Wisdom save proficiency from their main class features, both with a good chance of having decent Wis modifiers too.

I think that's a fair point for the Fighter, Rogue and Monk.

Rogue sucks in a 1v1 fight. I think monks stand a decent change. Will take a beating but can come out on top.


-The Fighter class not only gets the most ASIs, but can easily be SAD making a higher Wis mod easier to get, with subclasses having their own solutions like the Samurai straight up getting Wis save prof in Tier 2. Oh and then there's Indomitible for second chances for all Fighters.

Indominatble is only good if you are using it on a save you have a good chance of success on. Otherwise it's pretty marginal. Wisdom saves with resilient wisdom still won't be great against a 21 save dc, but are better than I gave initial credit for.


-Rangers are likely to have a good Wis mod and there are multiple subclasses with defenses for Dominate Monster.

I'm not seeing a Ranger succeed here at all.


-Paladins are Paladins

Agreed


Barbarians are the only ones that are particularly exposed (and even then not all of them) and this can be dealt with by grabbing Res:Wis or taking multiple different races.


The flying issue will get them. Fireball vs 2x longbow attacks


And by the way: Not all casters get Wis saves and/or Counterspell

Isn't sorcerer the only one that doesn't? That's kind of the exception that makes the rule, no?


Sounds like it circles back to the point in the OP. This "problem" is chiefly about wizards, or at least the popular perception of how powerful wizards are.

Probably the biggest offending spells are wish, counterspell and forcecage. Shield and absorb elements go a long way on the defensive front as well.

[Dr.Samurai]

Barbarians are the only ones that are particularly exposed (and even then not all of them) and this can be dealt with by grabbing Res:Wis or taking multiple different races.
You're grabbing the wrong thing!

Just grab the Pit Fiend!

Rage gives you Advantage on Strength Checks, and Reckless Attack gives you Advantage on Attack Rolls. They cancel the effects of Frightened, and since the Pit Fiend can't move away, you don't need to move closer!

With Proficiency in Athletics and a 24 Strength, we're looking at a straight +13 vs the Pit Fiend's +8. If your barbarian has been manhandling stuff throughout their career, they may have picked up Skill Expert and now we're looking at +19 vs the Pit Fiend's +8, and that's while Frightened. (But keep in mind... no matter what the Pit Fiend never has a higher than 25% chance to break your grab, because you have Indomitable Might set to at least 24, so the Pit Fiend has to roll at least a 16.)

With a +13 to attack rolls, you can swing with a mundane silvered longsword and hit the Pit Fiend on a 6, while Frightened, dealing 15 damage on a hit. That's 30 damage a round across your two attacks, or 300 damage over the full minute, which means a dead Pit Fiend.

Some notes:

Obviously if you are Frightened before reaching the Pit Fiend, you can't move closer. But the Fear Aura only works on creatures that begin their turns within 20ft of it. Given that the Barbarian likely has a 40ft speed, and can move half their speed when they rage (Instinctive Pounce optional feature), it's likely they can move in and establish a Grab before they have to save vs Fear. It really depends on if the Pit Fiend just swoops on down and Initiative starts then. If the Pit Fiend is flying you might be out of range of the Fear Aura, but if the Pit Fiend is flying so that they are within 20ft of the ground, the barbarian can make a running high jump; they leap vertically 10ft (3+str) and can reach 1.5x height. Assuming 6ft height, that's a vertical reach of 19ft, so you're nabbing that Pit Fiend and bringing it back down to the ground with you. Again, it depends on how the encounter begins. (Also, DM can allow an Athletics check to jump higher.)

The Pit Fiend is dealing way more damage than the barbarian on it's full attack (even taking Rage resistance into account), so the barbarian can't just stand there and trade blows with it (especially with a dinky longsword, but a free hand is needed to grab). But the point is if the barbarian can grab the Pit Fiend, he can likely keep that grab for a while even while Frightened, and the rest of the party can wreck it.

Hold Monster is the doozy here, as a DC 21 Will save is still a tough save even with Resilient. Maybe we're talking +8 if we're being generous, against DC 21. Mage Slayer is obviously helpful here but that's hardly guaranteed, especially on a build with Resilient AND a 14 Wisdom. Need allies or magic items here.

On the flip side, no subclass features assumed or used, or magic items (apart from a silvered sword).

EDITED TO ADD: I actually forgot, after grabbing it just Shove the Pit Fiend PRONE. Then you don't have to use Reckless Attack and grant the Fiend Advantage, and it also has Disadvantage against you. Though I honestly don't know what barbarian AC is supposed to look like at these levels. I love my unarmored characters, but I don't think that's really feasible without high stats rolled.

[Dork_Forge]

Okay. But this is a very minimal amount of prep.

Yes, but what you're prepping gets significantly weaker, very quickly (assuming this is just Wish+Simulacrum).


Because if the pit fiend gets close he will beat down the fighter long before the fighter beats him down (strong magic items can change the calculus though).

...Based on what? You're just saying it but there's no reason this wouldn't happen to casters with a lower resting AC, less hit points and a worse Con save.

The obvious notes for the Fighter are... obvious. Action Surge with goodies like maneuvers, Fighting Spirit, Runes, telekinetic pushes and so on and so forth.


And I'm not seeing how the pitfiend beats the caster with a simulcarum up? Maybe you can elaborate there.

Kiting with Fireballs, rushing with overwhelming force in melee, skirmishing even. In a war of attrition the devil wins and the nova alternative the casters don't have a clear path to success that isn't hoping trap+kill cheese works.


Hold Monster is a 5th level spell. What 8th level spell?


I was thinking Dominate MOnster, but the point holds. 5th level spells are also not an auto-success on a check that for the majority of casters using CS, will be D20+mod.



Rogue sucks in a 1v1 fight. I think monks stand a decent change. Will take a beating but can come out on top.

How do Rogues suck in a 1v1? They have good defenses against all aspects of the Devil's attacks (Uncanny Dodge, Evasion, Wis saves) with an additional ASI to play with.

If it's about getting Sneak Attack... that really isn't a problem in 1v1s for a lot/most of Rogues.


Indominatble is only good if you are using it on a save you have a good chance of success on. Otherwise it's pretty marginal. Wisdom saves with resilient wisdom still won't be great against a 21 save dc, but are better than I gave initial credit for.

Indomitable will always be worth using if you have any chance of making the save, which Fighers very much can have.

And you can't have this both ways, either Wis saves matter or they don't. Getting the save from your class doesn't magically make it better than getting it from Res::Wis, if anything you're more likely to have a better Wis score from the latter as it's forcing a score increase.


I'm not seeing a Ranger succeed here at all.

You can't see any Ranger succeeding at this at all? Then here's some food for thought:

Gloom Stalker: already a great offense, but they have Wis saves that you value so much and access to Greater Invisibility to touch lightly on them.

Horizon Walkers: have an insane amount of durability in Tier 3 from Spectral Defense

Monster Slayers: Are actually amazing against creatures that cast spells that rely on saves, seriously. d6 to the roll, Counter Spell as a subclass ability, and the ability to automatically succeed against saves if you hit with a reaction attack...

Swarmkeepers: Can give themselves resistance to damage whilst teleporting away, can prone the flying devil from range...

Drake Wardens: Really high burst damage, flying mount, on-demand resistance....



The flying issue will get them. Fireball vs 2x longbow attacks

If this hurts Barbarians, then casters have little to no recourse against a flying enemy with a high damage long-range option.

This is of course ignoring the several flying races, the high mobility of a Beast and the potential to fly for a Totem.


Isn't sorcerer the only one that doesn't? That's kind of the exception that makes the rule, no?

Bard and Sorcerer, which is 2 out of 6 or 33% of total fullcasters. When a rule doesn't apply to a third of what it's referring to, it's hardly the exception makes the rule.

They also have zero reason to have a good Wis mod.


Probably the biggest offending spells are wish, counterspell and forcecage. Shield and absorb elements go a long way on the defensive front as well.

The majority of spells/abilities that come up in these discussion are Wizard based or also accessible to them. There's a very strong trend for people to say caster, then act like it's just a Wizard with a shrodingers spell list.


There was just a thread a few months ago where we had lvl 13s fighting Tiamat successfully. The party was necessarily mostly casters (lvl 13 martials would struggle).

A wizard is necessary for wall of force/force cage/leomonds hut as well as some early round speed (phantom steed). Barring that, its a force multiplier with simulacrum. The wizards secondary options involve summoning. Getting a few planar bound Tashas summons provide high, steady dps that rivals any martials.

But yes, if you go in blind, without some forethought, due to the nature of the encounter wizards are going to struggle.

Since this was given as an example those seeing it should have important context:

-This relied on favourable DM rulings

-Casters is misleading, as the damage was primarily done by Sharpshooting archers regardless their spell slots

-This was ran more than once, retaining the same favourable initiative, with Tiamat making questionable decisions and not making use of the verticality of the map the runner was unaware of.




@DrSamurai, I appreciate all you wrote, but I had no concern about the fear whatsoever and was only referring to the Hold Monster.

[Dr.Samurai]

@DrSamurai, I appreciate all you wrote, but I had no concern about the fear whatsoever and was only referring to the Hold Monster.
Ah, I totally missed that.

So which barbarians do you think are not totally exposed to Hold Monster?

[Dork_Forge]

Ah, I totally missed that.

So which barbarians do you think are not totally exposed to Hold Monster?

Ignoring the racial and feats they can use to patch the weakness, the Zealot has Fanatical Focus, Wild Magic can use Unstable Backlash to try and break concentration.

If it's Wis saves in general then Beserker gives some coverage for fear and charmed.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I just want to say that D&D is not a solo game. I don't think 1v1 means much for any case. Because that's not what the system is designed or intended for.

Instead, I'd look at taking a party that isn't built around supporting the special character, say a basic rules party (fighter/wizard/thief/cleric), and replacing the appropriate role with your build for an entire random module, run by the book. With no special rulings on your behalf, purely as written. Effectively a "Value Add/Value over Replacement" scenario. Harder to do, but much more meaningful and less easily skewed and Schrodinger'd.

And no, you don't get to micro manage the other character's actions either.

[Kane0]

I just want to say that D&D is not a solo game. I don't think 1v1 means much for any case. Because that's not what the system is designed or intended for.

Instead, I'd look at taking a party that isn't built around supporting the special character, say a basic rules party (fighter/wizard/thief/cleric), and replacing the appropriate role with your build for an entire random module, run by the book. With no special rulings on your behalf, purely as written. Effectively a "Value Add/Value over Replacement" scenario. Harder to do, but much more meaningful and less easily skewed and Schrodinger'd.

And no, you don't get to micro manage the other character's actions either.

I think we're on the same page

[Hael]

This is where these kinds of conversations often go on the forums, casters and what they can do with prep is a common argument.


I would say its the reverse. The only prayer for monsters in these scenarios are totally unrealistic, impossible arena worlds where the caster in question starts 30 feet away, with no prep, no items etc as if it was a freshly rolled character in a video game. Even then it really requires the 9th lvl spell to not go off (requiring a 1 round initiative win and kill

In reality, Lvl 20 casters have divination available to them, enormous arrays of skills, money and influence. With prep work, they have access to powerful options like planar binding that potentially trivialize almost every encounter in the game.

In fact, from experience, the only way to beat casters are basically DMs that will say ‘and now a god moves you to the aforementioned arena world’, copious use of anti magic fields and surprise events where you overwhelm the casters action economy (so eg multiple spell casters)

You think that a lvl 20 full caster can’t take a pitfiend? Which one?

[Bovine Colonel]

I just want to say that D&D is not a solo game. I don't think 1v1 means much for any case. Because that's not what the system is designed or intended for.

Instead, I'd look at taking a party that isn't built around supporting the special character, say a basic rules party (fighter/wizard/thief/cleric), and replacing the appropriate role with your build for an entire random module, run by the book. With no special rulings on your behalf, purely as written. Effectively a "Value Add/Value over Replacement" scenario. Harder to do, but much more meaningful and less easily skewed and Schrodinger'd.

And no, you don't get to micro manage the other character's actions either.

I'd suggest instead that the submitted build be added to a basic rules party (say a melee fighter, skill monkey rogue, healbot cleric, blaster wizard) rather than replacing a member. That way it's easier to not just compare performance of builds within a party role but also compare party roles with one another between parties, which seems more appropriate to the thread's premise to me. Otherwise I agree with this.

[Angelalex242]

For 1 v 1 Pit Fiend...

Paladins do this the best...they're literally designed for it!

I'd have Clerics up next...if they can't get it done, be sure that 'Thus Sayeth the Lord my God' can.

And it's all downhill from there.

[tokek]

well, given that magic items are not supposed to be a requirement, the game should be balanced appropriately to work without them.

as an added benefit, if it is then when you add magic items in it doesn't matter who gets them for the most part, because nobody is relying on them to shore up the weaknesses in their abilities.

Are you relying on that one tweet for this? Because I know of no other source for this belief that we should disregard the second most numerous set of rules in the game (only monsters have more distinct rules entries).

[Schwann145]

A lot of people seem to be (willfully?) missing my point, which is thus:

There is an all-too-common opinion that floats around pretty regularly that high level (tier 4, 17+, etc) spellcasters are just so powerful, on their own, that they don't even need a party anymore, and can walk all over encounters that are meant to not be walked all over, because of RAW shenanigans or just the sheer power of spell design. Encounters like Lords of Hell, Princes of the Abyss, Godly Avatars, etc. are the claim oft-times.

And then people get all salty that I "didn't provide a specific scenario." I very clearly outlined the type of enemy and said none of the other details (location, items available, etc) mattered to me, because I think the argument is bunk.

I don't think you can take your spellcaster and solo any of the Lords of the Nine (none of them have stats anyway - they're *that* strong).
I don't think you can take your spellcaster and solo Tiamat's Avatar (and Tiamat is a lesser diety, so avatars only get stronger from her statblock).
I don't think you can take your spellcaster and solo Baphomet.
I don't think you can take your spellcaster and solo Demogorgon.
I don't think you can take your spellcaster and solo Fraz-Urb'luu.
I don't think you can take your spellcaster and solo Graz'zt.
I don't think you can take your spellcaster and solo Juiblex.
I don't think you can take your spellcaster and solo Orcus.
I don't think you can take your spellcaster and solo Yeenoghu.
I don't think you can take your spellcaster and solo Zuggtmoy.

Keeping in mind that a Pit Fiend a) is an inherent spellcaster itself and knows the strength of magic, b) has inhumanly high Intelligence, and c) has incredibly high Wisdom - I think if the DM played it to it's strengths, it would also give any level 20 caster a serious run for it's money. And a Pit Fiend is a less powerful foe than the claims being made much of the time.

And that's a big part of it - the way the spellcaster wins against the above? The DM playing the monster incredibly stupidly and giving every possible advantage to the player, even when it's totally outside of the monster's character, intellect, etc.

And that's not even touching how your spells are going to get through ridiculously high ability scores, typically with proficiency (a higher proficiency value than players get, btw) in most (if not all) the important saves, many times advantage on saves against spells, and legendary resistances.

(And remember - monsters can have magic items too. Do you think that treasure you get from killing them just pops out of their dead corpse like in Diablo? Do you think a General of the Nine Hells is coming to a fight naked and unprepared? lol)

[tokek]

So, if you leave out, say, Thunderwave-is that an incomplete/limited game?



There are more magic items in the game than there are spells. So the appropriate comparison would be asking if leaving all spells out of the game results in an incomplete game?

If the only way to access magic in a game is through being a caster then you inherently skew the game toward casters. But that is not what the published rules of the game do, so why do we keep seeing these discussions coming around time after time? From responses here maybe some people really are trying to play games with few or no magic items, maybe that one tweet really has done all this damage causing all this endless discussion.

When we talk about casters being too strong we need to talk about the fact that many of the things we are discussing are available to all characters via magic items. That access may be less reliable or reusable - after all reliable reusable access to them is the core identity of the caster classes - but they still have access. By late tier 3 or into tier 4 which usually prompt these discussions a typical (i.e. following published guidelines) game will have a variety of reasonably powerful magic items in play.

[Bovine Colonel]

I don't think you can take your spellcaster and solo any of the Lords of the Nine (none of them have stats anyway - they're *that* strong).

Well of course not. An encounter against an enemy too strong to have stats is a Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies encounter (in other words bad DMing; if the PCs have some sensible reason to want to defeat such an enemy a good DM would introduce an in-universe way to make it happen). More to the point, a class doesn't need to have the potential to defeat a Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies encounter to be "way too strong" from a game balance perspective.

To address the rest of your post, I'm getting the impression that you're measuring the power of a PC class by how far the PC can go toward defeating certain Forgotten Realms or other in-universe villains (with published statblocks or otherwise), but those villains are only names unless the DM has some reason to have them make direct appearances in front of the PCs. Tiamat and Graz'zt and Orcus and all the rest are tools for the DM to use to provide challenges to the party. Canon is a combination of the DM's narration, the players' decisions, and the results of dice rolls. Published material may be useful for the DM to draw ideas from, or to set common expectations between DM and players, but unless it directly comes up in-game then for all practical purposes it doesn't exist.

The only useful measurement of a class's overall power level from a game balance perspective is a comparison with other allowed classes; the high-end published statblocks are used on forums as an arbitrary benchmark to facilitate that comparison. Regardless of how unrealistic you think it is for a caster to solo* an intelligently-played Zariel or Yeenoghu, it's flat-out impossible without unfair advantages for a martial character of the same level to get anywhere near as close -- and this is the point of the exercise.

* As PhoenixPhyre pointed out above, it's more useful to compare the performance of classes within a baseline party than in solo encounters.

[tokek]

The only useful measurement of a class's overall power level from a game balance perspective is a comparison with other allowed classes; the high-end published statblocks are used on forums as an arbitrary benchmark to facilitate that comparison. Regardless of how unrealistic you think it is for a caster to solo* an intelligently-played Zariel or Yeenoghu, it's flat-out impossible for a martial character of the same level to get anywhere near as close -- and this is the point of the exercise.

* As PhoenixPhyre pointed out above, it's more useful to compare the performance of classes within a baseline party than in solo encounters.

If we were to benchmark it would make sense to benchmark in a "typical" party and using a published high level adventure. Sadly the main example of a high level adventure is Dungeon of the Mad Mage so we don't have many benchmarking opportunities.

I will point out that the moment you put this into a dungeon environment things change a lot - there are other challenges there to be dealt with so a pure combat caster build might actually do pretty badly.

But also you need to consider that the earlier levels of the dungeon would have existed and sort of assume some ratio of player success in grabbing the magic items there. That impacts play a lot.

[Bovine Colonel]

If we were to benchmark it would make sense to benchmark in a "typical" party and using a published high level adventure. Sadly the main example of a high level adventure is Dungeon of the Mad Mage so we don't have many benchmarking opportunities.

I will point out that the moment you put this into a dungeon environment things change a lot - there are other challenges there to be dealt with so a pure combat caster build might actually do pretty badly.

Agreed. I went along with the example of soloing a high-level monster since it was in OP's latest post, but it does make more sense to test character builds in a complete set of challenges. I think people who benchmark builds by soloing Tiamat or another statblock do so just because it's fun. (Not that there's anything wrong with that!)


But also you need to consider that the earlier levels of the dungeon would have existed and sort of assume some ratio of player success in grabbing the magic items there. That impacts play a lot.

In practice yes, but I think that's a bit beyond the scope of this thread. The idea seems to be evaluating the power level of classes without taking individual player behavior into account, though I realize the two are closely linked.

--

In my previous post I said that the only useful measurement of a class's power level is a comparison between other classes, which is not completely accurate. One reason we might want to know how strong a class is has nothing to do with comparing with other classes, and that's the DM's need to present appropriate challenges to the party regardless of class composition.

I think this is the root of the idea OP objected to in the initial post; a caster may not become powerful enough to threaten an arbitrarily high-CR statblock, but it's quite easy for a high-level caster PC to create major headaches for the DM by being extremely difficult to plan around. Thus the idea of "high-level casters can do anything": maybe not literally anything, but a high-level caster can certainly invalidate huge chunks of DM preparation by casting divination spells to resolve an open question, or teleporting somewhere the DM didn't expect them to go, or enchanting an important NPC, or turning a very difficult encounter into a cakewalk with a well-placed Wall of Force, or just deleting a bad guy with big damage numbers. To a DM trying to maintain narrative tension by keeping the PCs' heads just above water, an unexpected use of a spell can definitely feel like "casters can do anything".

[Chaos Jackal]

There is an all-too-common opinion that floats around pretty regularly that high level (tier 4, 17+, etc) spellcasters are just so powerful, on their own, that they don't even need a party anymore, and can walk all over encounters that are meant to not be walked all over, because of RAW shenanigans or just the sheer power of spell design. Encounters like Lords of Hell, Princes of the Abyss, Godly Avatars, etc. are the claim oft-times.

They are not the claim oft-times, because most of those things don't have blocks. The claims, which aren't that hyperbolic most of the time as you present them in your own hyperbolic argument, typically refer to things that are statted, in which case yes, it actually is the case.


And then people get all salty that I "didn't provide a specific scenario." I very clearly outlined the type of enemy and said none of the other details (location, items available, etc) mattered to me, because I think the argument is bunk.

People simply questioned what exactly was your point. When a good number of those answering point out that you're not being clear, you maybe wanna rethink your presentation rather than claim others are salty. You obviously didn't "very clearly outline" the type of enemy, you blasted right off with accusations of claims people aren't making (or are only making in figures of speech; you get the whole "spellcasters are gods" is a relative description, right?) and you made it worse with your second post when you threw in things that aren't even actual enemies.

But hey, you've finally provided something concrete.


I don't think you can take your spellcaster and solo any of the Lords of the Nine (none of them have stats anyway - they're *that* strong).

Zariel does, and there's plenty of suggestions and ideas on how to take her down... before lv20 to boot. Here's a thread from these forums (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?610039-Can-a-13th-level-pc-beat-zariel), and there are others here and elsewhere.
The rest of the nine indeed don't have stats, and are thus irrelevant; "you can't beat something that doesn't exist" is kind of a moot point.


I don't think you can take your spellcaster and solo Tiamat's Avatar (and Tiamat is a lesser diety, so avatars only get stronger from her statblock).
I don't think you can take your spellcaster and solo Baphomet.
I don't think you can take your spellcaster and solo Demogorgon.
I don't think you can take your spellcaster and solo Fraz-Urb'luu.
I don't think you can take your spellcaster and solo Graz'zt.
I don't think you can take your spellcaster and solo Juiblex.
I don't think you can take your spellcaster and solo Orcus.
I don't think you can take your spellcaster and solo Yeenoghu.
I don't think you can take your spellcaster and solo Zuggtmoy.

A number of them can most certainly be solo'd. Forcecage tactics, nuclear wizard-style builds and shapechange are things off the top of my head that can do the job with a number of those, though not all of them. For a full build example, a nuclear wizard (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=23998967&postcount=170) winning initiative (which isn't hard against many of these things) can just delete plenty of them in one round. A bog-standard bard, warlock or wizard with no build specifics except a ranged attack summon, a persistent area damage effect or some other form of consistent ranged attack can just use a combination of wall of force and forcecage on something like Demogorgon, Baphomet or Yeenoghu (I mention both spells because of the 1/day teleport, in case they use it to escape and attack rather than just run away) and slowly melt them to death. Shapechange can just allow you to go toe-to-toe with a few of those, since you essentially get to add a full caster on top of any creature up to CR20. There are other ways too. Really, it doesn't take that much most of the time. You don't even need specific or specialized builds, just a few generally useful spells and decent stats and you're golden. No Scrodinger's caster, which people throw around a lot despite it rarely being the case.

Some of those fights aren't doable. But a good deal of them are.

Now, before I move ahead, a disclaimer. Obviously this is just white room theorycrafting. A demon lord will likely be surrounded by a mass of powerful minions even if you manage to somehow teleport right in their faces, and will certainly have some nasty gauntlet ready for you if you don't go straight at them or whatever. You're not gonna be able to beat every demon in the abyss. Nobody is able to. But if you put a caster and a demon lord in the same room and lock the door, you might wanna be careful with your betting afterward.


Keeping in mind that a Pit Fiend a) is an inherent spellcaster itself and knows the strength of magic, b) has inhumanly high Intelligence, and c) has incredibly high Wisdom - I think if the DM played it to it's strengths, it would also give any level 20 caster a serious run for it's money. And a Pit Fiend is a less powerful foe than the claims being made much of the time.

And that's a big part of it - the way the spellcaster wins against the above? The DM playing the monster incredibly stupidly and giving every possible advantage to the player, even when it's totally outside of the monster's character, intellect, etc.

So, I'll repeat it here, just in case it gets missed above. People don't claim you can solo a hundred demons and the demon prince behind them. They're just pointing out that the statblocks, as they are, don't offer much against casters utilizing their full toolkit. Sure, if the demon lord hides in their scry-proof, teleport-proof chamber and has the lair actions or their madness do the job, of course they'll win if the caster stumbles around wasting their time.

But, guess what. The casters also aren't stupid. They're not gonna walk into a demon lord's lair alone. But if said demon lord is summoned in the main square or whatever? Yeah, their reign of terror will be very short. Basically, don't put them face to face with the caster. It won't end well for them if that happens, no matter the place. Which is usually the point made by those saying that casters can take on high-CR opponents on their own.


And that's not even touching how your spells are going to get through ridiculously high ability scores, typically with proficiency (a higher proficiency value than players get, btw) in most (if not all) the important saves, many times advantage on saves against spells, and legendary resistances.

You can bypass those, as shown above.


(And remember - monsters can have magic items too. Do you think that treasure you get from killing them just pops out of their dead corpse like in Diablo? Do you think a General of the Nine Hells is coming to a fight naked and unprepared? lol)

Yeah, OK. But so can the casters. Kind of a wash, really.

And now, for an extra part addressing the "nobody is able to" I mentioned earlier...

If you actually exploit the RAW, we're getting to stupid levels. Do you know when you can actually just walk into a demon lord's lair? When, instead of yourself, you send in an arbitrary number of simulacra, each with their own summons and whatever other bs you'd normally be able to pull off. Or filling a demiplane with high-level glyph of warding casts, then cast demiplane to open the portal and buff yourself with every spell in existence. Or just use your simulacra for safe wish casts. Or be really loose with your reading of shapechange and claim it can stack effects of different forms. Or make an army of golems or silver dragons through true polymorph.

But that's not the kind of thing to pull even in theorycrafting, because, as I said in my previous post, taking advantage of an infinite loop doesn't prove anything.

But see, more basic forms of these things are still extraordinarily powerful. Having "only one" simulacrum is still an incredibly strong effect. Having planar bound minions is huge. A friendly silver dragon or loyal golem that you polymorphed into being and treated well enough for it to stick around is another layer. Taking over some extra-good body with magic jar is always an option.

Can casters defeat anything? Of course not. Can you buff, equip or otherwise alter enemies to make them capable of stopping a caster? Certainly.

Can casters, as far as the statblocks are concerned, defeat a lot of single opponent challenges on their own? Yes, without a doubt.

Can someone else, other than casters, fight even in a white-room scenario and claim to have a chance against so many of the printed statblocks? Definitely not.

And if we start going into party dynamics, the whole thing becomes much, much tougher for Team Monster when facing a group of lv20 casters. But since we're talking solo, I'll leave this for another time.

[Warlush]

So am I wrong or did not a single person actually accept the OP's challenge?

[tokek]

In practice yes, but I think that's a bit beyond the scope of this thread. The idea seems to be evaluating the power level of classes without taking individual player behavior into account, though I realize the two are closely linked.



I think that is a flaw with this thread if we take that as a constraint.

The underlying question seems to be can we build a level-appropriate caster that can walk through a realistic set of challenges so easily that they render the challenges meaningless. Can we build a caster who can clear a whole appropriate level of the dungeon of the mad mage without breaking into a sweat?

I will agree however that if we can do that with no magic items at all and it still happens then there is something about that caster build that needs looking at. So to that extent its a useful discussion, my issue is that if adding a couple of magic items onto the build would change the result - and these items exist in earlier levels of DotMM - then we are not really assessing the problem correctly. My expectation is that nobody will come up with that build - but that including magic items might cause the experience of those challenges being too easy anyway.

(My secondary expectation is that some non-caster builds when equipped with good magic items might also do too well. Magic is magic whether it comes from your class features or from elsewhere. The most high-impact class dip I ever saw was a Monk who took a Druid level in order to be able to use a Staff of the Woodlands)

[Eldariel]

For 1 v 1 Pit Fiend...

Paladins do this the best...they're literally designed for it!

I'd have Clerics up next...if they can't get it done, be sure that 'Thus Sayeth the Lord my God' can.

And it's all downhill from there.

Uh, Diviners have a pretty good shot on level 7. I think that qualifies as "best" with Portent + Banishment (Polymorph also does pretty decently). Pit Fiends lack LR. Bladesinger Archer wins 1v1 on level 13 at range and it has no ways to close the gap. And level 13 Wizard can use Forcecage+whatever too. In general, Wizard is the best 1v1 class in the game since it doesn't need to numerically fight the enemy. Pally meanwhile is pretty bad since it needs to get to melee range. As ever, numbers are the least relevant part of the game.

[Sneak Dog]

So am I wrong or did not a single person actually accept the OP's challenge?

Cleric 15, life. Lets go standard array and hill dwarf because I like dwarfs.

Str 13
Dex 10
Con 18 (14+2+2)
Wis 20 (15+1+4)
Int 12
Cha 8

Feats are optional, so lets assume no and get three ASIs spread around con/wis. With channel divinity, spells like flame strike, spiritual weapon, guardian of faith and spirit guardians we'll contribute sufficient damage to be competitive in combat. With heavy armour, a shield and 18 constitution, maintaining concentration should be mostly fine so spirit guardians will do wonders.

Being a cleric with 18 constitution, we've a solid hp pool, and whomever gets hit gets healed. We're probably the greatest tank in the party, able to take hits and heal those who can't take hits. Beating barbarian by virtue of being able to heal those who need it and having good AC. Maybe a paladin beats us though.

So lets go prepare some spells.
Bless, cure wounds, lesser restoration, spiritual weapon, beacon of hope, revivify, death ward, guardian of faith, mass cure wounds and raise dead are all granted for free.
(5) Inflict wounds, flame strike, spiritual weapon, guardian of faith, spirit guardians should cover the offence.
(7) Healing word, lesser restoration, cure wounds, revivify, mass cure wounds, raise dead, remove curse, mass healing word should cover our healing. We'll prepare resurrect or regenerate when necessary.
(4) Bless, beacon of hope, death ward, heroes' feast should cover our buffing options. Not great, but it'll have to do.
(16 spells total prepared)
So we death ward ourselves at the start of the adventuring day. We go blow a 3rd or 4th level spell on spirit guardians on easy fights augmented with cantrips. Use hit dice to recover from those. On a hard fight we've 5 high level spell slots to blow on flame strike. Guardian of faith is also a cheap 60 damage. We've three 3rd level slots for mass healing words, and channel divinity is amazing in a fight to the end. Combat contribution should be covered well enough, no worse than a fighter. There may well be better spells to use too. Eh.

We've prepared 16 spells, 10 of which are domain spells. We get to prepare 20 spells. So we now get 14 spells for absolutely dominating the non-combat scene for when our ability checks, which are no worse than a fighter's, aren't sufficient. Oh, remember to add guidance to most ability checks.
Speak with dead. Tongues. Planar ally. Divination. Zone of truth. Create food and water (though our survival is great, so this shouldn't be necessary). Daylight. Dispel magic. True seeing. Scrying. Legend lore. Locate object. Enhance ability. Plane shift.

And that's where the fighter gets outclassed. The fighter can't reach the demon based on its class features alone. The cleric can. The fighter must open the magical barrier in a 'proper' way. The cleric can try guidance plus dispel magic and with a 3rd level slot, have a 58% chance to dispel a 9th (!) spell level barrier. The cleric doesn't need to quest to gain advice from an oracle, they are the oracle. (Do try to avoid using these spells, and stick to ability checks whenever possible when danger is afoot. Spell slots can be used to nova battles instead of non-combat encounters.)

At 5th level, the cleric can give the fighter guidance so the fighter is basically making skill checks as though they were level 15. Because in those ten levels, the fighter's proficiency level goes up by a whopping +2. Casters are way too strong. They actually gain non-combat power appropriate to their combat power.

[Warlush]

Cleric 15, life. Lets go standard array and hill dwarf because I like dwarfs.

Str 13
Dex 10
Con 18 (14+2+2)
Wis 20 (15+1+4)
Int 12
Cha 8

Feats are optional, so lets assume no and get three ASIs spread around con/wis. With channel divinity, spells like flame strike, spiritual weapon, guardian of faith and spirit guardians we'll contribute sufficient damage to be competitive in combat. With heavy armour, a shield and 18 constitution, maintaining concentration should be mostly fine so spirit guardians will do wonders.

Being a cleric with 18 constitution, we've a solid hp pool, and whomever gets hit gets healed. We're probably the greatest tank in the party, able to take hits and heal those who can't take hits. Beating barbarian by virtue of being able to heal those who need it and having good AC. Maybe a paladin beats us though.

So lets go prepare some spells.
Bless, cure wounds, lesser restoration, spiritual weapon, beacon of hope, revivify, death ward, guardian of faith, mass cure wounds and raise dead are all granted for free.
(5) Inflict wounds, flame strike, spiritual weapon, guardian of faith, spirit guardians should cover the offence.
(7) Healing word, lesser restoration, cure wounds, revivify, mass cure wounds, raise dead, remove curse, mass healing word should cover our healing. We'll prepare resurrect or regenerate when necessary.
(4) Bless, beacon of hope, death ward, heroes' feast should cover our buffing options. Not great, but it'll have to do.
(16 spells total prepared)
So we death ward ourselves at the start of the adventuring day. We go blow a 3rd or 4th level spell on spirit guardians on easy fights augmented with cantrips. Use hit dice to recover from those. On a hard fight we've 5 high level spell slots to blow on flame strike. Guardian of faith is also a cheap 60 damage. We've three 3rd level slots for mass healing words, and channel divinity is amazing in a fight to the end. Combat contribution should be covered well enough, no worse than a fighter. There may well be better spells to use too. Eh.

We've prepared 16 spells, 10 of which are domain spells. We get to prepare 20 spells. So we now get 14 spells for absolutely dominating the non-combat scene for when our ability checks, which are no worse than a fighter's, aren't sufficient. Oh, remember to add guidance to most ability checks.
Speak with dead. Tongues. Planar ally. Divination. Zone of truth. Create food and water (though our survival is great, so this shouldn't be necessary). Daylight. Dispel magic. True seeing. Scrying. Legend lore. Locate object. Enhance ability. Plane shift.

And that's where the fighter gets outclassed. The fighter can't reach the demon based on its class features alone. The cleric can. The fighter must open the magical barrier in a 'proper' way. The cleric can try guidance plus dispel magic and with a 3rd level slot, have a 58% chance to dispel a 9th (!) spell level barrier. The cleric doesn't need to quest to gain advice from an oracle, they are the oracle. (Do try to avoid using these spells, and stick to ability checks whenever possible when danger is afoot. Spell slots can be used to nova battles instead of non-combat encounters.)

At 5th level, the cleric can give the fighter guidance so the fighter is basically making skill checks as though they were level 15. Because in those ten levels, the fighter's proficiency level goes up by a whopping +2. Casters are way too strong. They actually gain non-combat power appropriate to their combat power.

Thank you for accepting and stepping up to the challenge.

[Sneak Dog]

Thank you for accepting and stepping up to the challenge.

I even got the thread title in the conclusion :D
Should've probably picked bard though. They get things like polymorph and massive ability check bonuses. Ah well.

[Unoriginal]

Being a cleric with 18 constitution, we've a solid hp pool, and whomever gets hit gets healed. We're probably the greatest tank in the party, able to take hits and heal those who can't take hits. Beating barbarian by virtue of being able to heal those who need it and having good AC. Maybe a paladin beats us though.

Having high AC isn't tanking. Healing isn't tanking either.



And that's where the fighter gets outclassed. The fighter can't reach the demon based on its class features alone. The cleric can.

I'm sorry, I don't get that part. Which demon?

[Xervous]

Having high AC isn't tanking. Healing isn't tanking either.

What is tanking then, and what is required to accomplish it in a satisfactory manner?

[Sneak Dog]

Having high AC isn't tanking. Healing isn't tanking either.



I'm sorry, I don't get that part. Which demon?

On the tanking, fair enough I suppose. Tanking by virtue of forcing the enemy to attack you and only you is almost non-existant in 5e though. Spirit guardians helps by creating difficult terrain? I guess? High AC definitely helps by letting the cleric frontline and hope they don't get ignored. The healing is more of a supportive role.
Using a more expanded definition of tanking, where the aim is to mitigate as much enemy damage as possible, regardless whether you prevent or heal it, this build is an amazing tank.

The OP mentions casters trampling demon lords. I'm of the opinion that the combat balance in 5e is pretty decent though. A bit hamfisted with how legendary saves work, but the end result is a pretty ok balance even between martials dishing out good old raw damage and casters doing a whole variety of things.

[Dr.Samurai]

Ignoring the racial and feats they can use to patch the weakness, the Zealot has Fanatical Focus, Wild Magic can use Unstable Backlash to try and break concentration.
Ok right, so really they all have this exposure. Fanatical Focus can help obviously, assuming the barbarian gets to Rage before the Pit Fiend casts Hold Monster.

I just want to say that D&D is not a solo game. I don't think 1v1 means much for any case. Because that's not what the system is designed or intended for.
I don't think these types of measured approaches are what the OP is reacting to though so... it isn't really helpful here.

I do think it will be virtually impossible for a caster to realistically one-shot an archfiend or something (barring Forcecage/Sickening Radiance or something). But it's still possible to show how well they can do generally before we say something like "probably need magic items here, or an ally" etc.

[Unoriginal]

What is tanking then, and what is required to accomplish it in a satisfactory manner?

Tanking is making so your teammates do not get hit, or if they are hit to diminish the effects on the spot.

That can be accomplished in several ways. An Ancestral Barbarian tanks by helping the team resist damage, for example.



The OP mentions casters trampling demon lords.

I got that, but you mentioned the Fighter couldn't reach the demon with their feature alone, while a Cleric could. I don't see any of the Demon Princes with something preventing Fighters to reach them but not Clerics.

[Sneak Dog]

I got that, but you mentioned the Fighter couldn't reach the demon with their feature alone, while a Cleric could. I don't see any of the Demon Princes with something preventing Fighters to reach them but not Clerics.

Ah. That would be a question of natural habitats. The natural habitat of most people is the material plane, whereas demons reside in another often unpleasantly hot plane. Plane shift takes care of this. Having 30 ft. land speed with your two legs less so. The fighter would be required to search for other solutions.
(Try burning an orphanage and picking a fight with an upright paladin five levels above you. Might work.)

[Unoriginal]

Ah. That would be a question of natural habitats. The natural habitat of most people is the material plane, whereas demons reside in another often unpleasantly hot plane. Plane shift takes care of this. Having 30 ft. land speed with your two legs less so. The fighter would be required to search for other solutions.
(Try burning an orphanage and picking a fight with an upright paladin five levels above you. Might work.)

Ah, I see now. Thank you for clarifying.


Have to know, though: would you say that requiring a specific item in order to reach X place means that you cannot reach said place with your class features alone?

[Dr.Samurai]

Ah. That would be a question of natural habitats. The natural habitat of most people is the material plane, whereas demons reside in another often unpleasantly hot plane. Plane shift takes care of this. Having 30 ft. land speed with your two legs less so. The fighter would be required to search for other solutions.
(Try burning an orphanage and picking a fight with an upright paladin five levels above you. Might work.)
Cleric needs a very specific tuning fork that... does not come as a class feature by the way.

[Sneak Dog]

Ah, I see now. Thank you for clarifying.


Have to know, though: would you say that requiring a specific item in order to reach X place means that you cannot reach said place with your class features alone?

The tuning fork is an absolute mystery. Can you make one yourself? Are they available for buying? Only for some planes? Could you buy one from a native of that plane by casting planar ally, or ask them to attune an existing untuned one? 250g cost implies it's not an incredibely rare and expensive item. Probably available in major trade hubs.

Heh, if plane shift doesn't work, planar ally may well work instead.

[tokek]

Cleric 15, life. Lets go standard array and hill dwarf because I like dwarfs.



So I had a quick scan through the two levels of Dungeon of the Mad Mage that are for that level of character.

I think the first of them this build would do pretty darned well. There are lots of undead there and clerics always have a very strong game into undead.

The second of them is a different story and there is one related set of encounters in which I think this character would struggle to do much and might be needing to roll hot on divine intervention to stay alive. They would certainly not be carrying the party with ease. I don't want to spoiler it massively but lets just say that if you don't have the means to avoid your enemy seeing you coming and you can't withstand difficult Int saves its a bad news day. Really I don't see this build being super-strong into that level at all (Caverns of Ooze chapter) but maybe someone will point out what I am missing.

[JNAProductions]

There are more magic items in the game than there are spells. So the appropriate comparison would be asking if leaving all spells out of the game results in an incomplete game?

If the only way to access magic in a game is through being a caster then you inherently skew the game toward casters. But that is not what the published rules of the game do, so why do we keep seeing these discussions coming around time after time? From responses here maybe some people really are trying to play games with few or no magic items, maybe that one tweet really has done all this damage causing all this endless discussion.

When we talk about casters being too strong we need to talk about the fact that many of the things we are discussing are available to all characters via magic items. That access may be less reliable or reusable - after all reliable reusable access to them is the core identity of the caster classes - but they still have access. By late tier 3 or into tier 4 which usually prompt these discussions a typical (i.e. following published guidelines) game will have a variety of reasonably powerful magic items in play.

I don’t think anyone has said “never use magic items ever”.

But there’s a vast difference between “no magic items” and “not the exact magic items you need”.

[Frogreaver]

So I had a quick scan through the two levels of Dungeon of the Mad Mage that are for that level of character.

I think the first of them this build would do pretty darned well. There are lots of undead there and clerics always have a very strong game into undead.

The second of them is a different story and there is one related set of encounters in which I think this character would struggle to do much and might be needing to roll hot on divine intervention to stay alive. They would certainly not be carrying the party with ease. I don't want to spoiler it massively but lets just say that if you don't have the means to avoid your enemy seeing you coming and you can't withstand difficult Int saves its a bad news day. Really I don't see this build being super-strong into that level at all (Caverns of Ooze chapter) but maybe someone will point out what I am missing.

Okay, now take a Str Fighter and let's talk about if there's any place where he excels?

[tokek]

Okay, now take a Str Fighter and let's talk about if there's any place where he excels?

If you want a discussion on whether Str based fighters are too strong for the game then start another discussion for it somewhere. That is not this discussion and I'm really not aware of this as a common opinion.

[Xervous]

Tanking is making so your teammates do not get hit, or if they are hit to diminish the effects on the spot.

That can be accomplished in several ways. An Ancestral Barbarian tanks by helping the team resist damage, for example.



So there are several. Would you say such tanking options are plentiful and well distributed to the point that they likely/always feature in a party? My impression is that they’re somewhat rare and often limited in scope, tending to focus on single target suppression.

[Sneak Dog]

So I had a quick scan through the two levels of Dungeon of the Mad Mage that are for that level of character.

I think the first of them this build would do pretty darned well. There are lots of undead there and clerics always have a very strong game into undead.

The second of them is a different story and there is one related set of encounters in which I think this character would struggle to do much and might be needing to roll hot on divine intervention to stay alive. They would certainly not be carrying the party with ease. I don't want to spoiler it massively but lets just say that if you don't have the means to avoid your enemy seeing you coming and you can't withstand difficult Int saves its a bad news day. Really I don't see this build being super-strong into that level at all (Caverns of Ooze chapter) but maybe someone will point out what I am missing.

Sounds like they're doing just fine combat-wise. Being at least on-par with a fighter in terms of combat contribution. Perhaps not damage per se, but contribution nevertheless. Good. And then they smash fighters outside of combat with a variety of options martials don't have, on top of having the options fighters do have (abillity checks) with the added bonus of guidance or even enhance ability.

[tokek]

Sounds like they're doing just fine combat-wise. Being at least on-par with a fighter in terms of combat contribution. Perhaps not damage per se, but contribution nevertheless. Good. And then they smash fighters outside of combat with a variety of options martials don't have, on top of having the options fighters do have (abillity checks) with the added bonus of guidance or even enhance ability.

Well they are obviously not coming close to the consistent damage output of a martial doing 2 or 3 attacks per turn but they have enough other things going on to still be powerful and good, for at least as long as their spell slots hold out. Especially on the level with a lot of undead, a cleric or paladin will generally tend to shine in that situation.

Ii still think the rest of the party will have plenty to do and I think there are places where the cleric posted would be wise to let someone else shine or risk character death.

[Unoriginal]

So there are several. Would you say such tanking options are plentiful and well distributed to the point that they likely/always feature in a party? My impression is that they’re somewhat rare and often limited in scope, tending to focus on single target suppression.

I wouldn't call them plentiful, and they are not available to all classes in the same ammount (to the point some classes can't really tank without at least a feat), but I wouldn't call them rare or necessarily focusing on single target suppression.

A Barbarian's 'I make myself easier to hit' is a tanking ability, strictly speaking. Not the best, obviously, but it does incentivise enemies to target the Barbarian rather than the other PCs (if the NPCs follow said incentive is another question).

But it's true there are less tanking options than say, healing ones.

[Dork_Forge]

I would say its the reverse. The only prayer for monsters in these scenarios are totally unrealistic, impossible arena worlds where the caster in question starts 30 feet away, with no prep, no items etc as if it was a freshly rolled character in a video game. Even then it really requires the 9th lvl spell to not go off (requiring a 1 round initiative win and kill

In reality, Lvl 20 casters have divination available to them, enormous arrays of skills, money and influence. With prep work, they have access to powerful options like planar binding that potentially trivialize almost every encounter in the game.

In fact, from experience, the only way to beat casters are basically DMs that will say ‘and now a god moves you to the aforementioned arena world’, copious use of anti magic fields and surprise events where you overwhelm the casters action economy (so eg multiple spell casters)

You think that a lvl 20 full caster can’t take a pitfiend? Which one?


Do you realise that you very quickly went into proving my point that these conversations often descend into talking about what casters can do with prep in a vacuum?

And starting 30 feet away is hyperbolic, it's exceedingly common for monsters to have superior mobility to the average PC, with built-in speed bumps predominantly belonging to... well not casters. I DM two games a week regularly, with often higher-level one-shots and I've never used anti-magic fields to challenge casters, not once. You want to challenge casters? Take away the ability to see the monster (so many ways), run up to them and hit them in the face, have someone capable of Counterspell/Dispel Magic etc. It really isn't that hard to challenge a caster.

And I think most casters would struggle/fail to do this and the answers presented here are most likely going to rely on certain flavours of cheese like the already mentioned 'nuclear Wizard' that relies on a multiclass and rules interaction that most players wouldn't know exists and a lot would turn their nose up to (and that is defeated by not being close enough, not being able to see them etc. etc.). Or Simulacrum, Force Cage! and so on, relying on a very small subset of poorly tuned spells.


Uh, Diviners have a pretty good shot on level 7. I think that qualifies as "best" with Portent + Banishment (Polymorph also does pretty decently). Pit Fiends lack LR. Bladesinger Archer wins 1v1 on level 13 at range and it has no ways to close the gap. And level 13 Wizard can use Forcecage+whatever too. In general, Wizard is the best 1v1 class in the game since it doesn't need to numerically fight the enemy. Pally meanwhile is pretty bad since it needs to get to melee range. As ever, numbers are the least relevant part of the game.

Banishing something isn't 'winning' the same way actually killing it is, and you're assuming a favourable low portent, which is another hallmark of these conversations.


Cleric 15, life. Lets go standard array and hill dwarf because I like dwarfs.

Str 13
Dex 10
Con 18 (14+2+2)
Wis 20 (15+1+4)
Int 12
Cha 8

Feats are optional, so lets assume no and get three ASIs spread around con/wis. With channel divinity, spells like flame strike, spiritual weapon, guardian of faith and spirit guardians we'll contribute sufficient damage to be competitive in combat. With heavy armour, a shield and 18 constitution, maintaining concentration should be mostly fine so spirit guardians will do wonders.

Being a cleric with 18 constitution, we've a solid hp pool, and whomever gets hit gets healed. We're probably the greatest tank in the party, able to take hits and heal those who can't take hits. Beating barbarian by virtue of being able to heal those who need it and having good AC. Maybe a paladin beats us though.

So lets go prepare some spells.
Bless, cure wounds, lesser restoration, spiritual weapon, beacon of hope, revivify, death ward, guardian of faith, mass cure wounds and raise dead are all granted for free.
(5) Inflict wounds, flame strike, spiritual weapon, guardian of faith, spirit guardians should cover the offence.
(7) Healing word, lesser restoration, cure wounds, revivify, mass cure wounds, raise dead, remove curse, mass healing word should cover our healing. We'll prepare resurrect or regenerate when necessary.
(4) Bless, beacon of hope, death ward, heroes' feast should cover our buffing options. Not great, but it'll have to do.
(16 spells total prepared)
So we death ward ourselves at the start of the adventuring day. We go blow a 3rd or 4th level spell on spirit guardians on easy fights augmented with cantrips. Use hit dice to recover from those. On a hard fight we've 5 high level spell slots to blow on flame strike. Guardian of faith is also a cheap 60 damage. We've three 3rd level slots for mass healing words, and channel divinity is amazing in a fight to the end. Combat contribution should be covered well enough, no worse than a fighter. There may well be better spells to use too. Eh.

We've prepared 16 spells, 10 of which are domain spells. We get to prepare 20 spells. So we now get 14 spells for absolutely dominating the non-combat scene for when our ability checks, which are no worse than a fighter's, aren't sufficient. Oh, remember to add guidance to most ability checks.
Speak with dead. Tongues. Planar ally. Divination. Zone of truth. Create food and water (though our survival is great, so this shouldn't be necessary). Daylight. Dispel magic. True seeing. Scrying. Legend lore. Locate object. Enhance ability. Plane shift.

And that's where the fighter gets outclassed. The fighter can't reach the demon based on its class features alone. The cleric can. The fighter must open the magical barrier in a 'proper' way. The cleric can try guidance plus dispel magic and with a 3rd level slot, have a 58% chance to dispel a 9th (!) spell level barrier. The cleric doesn't need to quest to gain advice from an oracle, they are the oracle. (Do try to avoid using these spells, and stick to ability checks whenever possible when danger is afoot. Spell slots can be used to nova battles instead of non-combat encounters.)

At 5th level, the cleric can give the fighter guidance so the fighter is basically making skill checks as though they were level 15. Because in those ten levels, the fighter's proficiency level goes up by a whopping +2. Casters are way too strong. They actually gain non-combat power appropriate to their combat power.

Plate+Shield is not a high AC in Tier 3, nor is just having a high AC tanking and healing is an entirely different role.

You're placing value in Flame Strike, despite half of its damage being commonly resisted/immune to and don't seem to be recognising the trap casters, particularly healers, fall into: limited action economy and spell restrictions. Once the party becomes damaged and you're throwing out heals your spells are limited. Once you get smacked in the face, you're making Concentration checks to not lose the spells you're relying on.

The Guidance thing is incredibly hyperbolic, despite what seems to be popular opinion Fighters aren't devoid of OOC abilities at all.

[Sneak Dog]

Well they are obviously not coming close to the consistent damage output of a martial doing 2 or 3 attacks per turn but they have enough other things going on to still be powerful and good, for at least as long as their spell slots hold out. Especially on the level with a lot of undead, a cleric or paladin will generally tend to shine in that situation.

Ii still think the rest of the party will have plenty to do and I think there are places where the cleric posted would be wise to let someone else shine or risk character death.

Fighter, sword and board, 20 strength, dueling style + defence style, level 15, champion. 2 easy 4-round combats after which a short rest is expected. Lets assume 65% accuracy for both fighter attacks and cleric saves. The AC of the fighter is one higher than the cleric. So HP loss is nearly the same. Not quite, but lets say the +1 AC and second wind are reasonably equal to a casting or two of cure wounds by the life cleric.

Fighter deals 1d8+7 damage with their battleaxe with three attacks per round, and an action surge for another set of attacks in one of the two encounters. That's effectively 9 rounds of attacking for 27 attacks. 15% chance of 1d8 bonus damage.
27 * ( 11.5*0.65 + 4.5*0.15 ) = 220 damage.

Cleric meanwhile spends a 3rd level slot on 3d8 spirit guardians both fights, then just cantrips their 3d8 sacred flame. Lets say the cleric hits 2 foes with spirit guardians each round. With a 35 ft. diameter that seems reasonable. Again we simplify, 65% chance of failed dexterity save.
3d8 spirit guardian damage, 2 targets, 8 rounds, half damage on save:
8 * 2 * ( 13.5 * 0.65 + 13.5 / 2 * 0.35) = 178 damage
Sacred flame, 6 rounds:
6 * ( 13.5 * 0.65) = 53 damage
Total damage 178 + 53 = 231 damage

... hold up. I think I went wrong somewhere. Or champion is awful? Lets go with battlemaster instead. Four superiority dice, five utilising relentless. Lets keep it simple and assume they're spent on trip attacks and they'll get 3 rounds where their 2nd and 3rd attacks have advantage due to a succesful trip attack, and their action surge attacks have advantage.

First off, five superiority dice are worth 27.5 damage.
A normal round of attacks is 3 attacks, 65% hit chance, 1d8+7 damage + 5% of 1d8 bonus damage (critical hit). We'll have 8 rounds total, so 5 rounds of these.
5 * 3 * ( 11.5*0.65 + 4.5*0.05 ) = 115.5 damage
Now 3 rounds where the 2nd and 3rd attack have advantage due to successful trip attacks, meaning the first attack has 65% accuracy (yes, still need to factor this in) and follow-up attacks have 87.75% chance to hit. Also, action surge means 3 more attacks with advantage.
3 * 1 * ( 11.5*0.65 + 4.5*0.05 ) + 3 * 2 * ( WP ) + 3 * (WP) = 118 damage
where WP = ( 11.5 * 0.8775 + 4.5*0.0975 ) = 10.53 | (It's how much damage one advantaged weapon attack deals.)
27.5 + 115.5 + 118 = 261 total damage.

Ok. A third level spell plus three cantrips shouldn't equal a basic fighter's damage. Either I was wrong about damage output being balanced, or my math is wrong -,-

It might be my premise. Is a 4 round combat too long? 65% hit chance too low?

Edit: Found a significant battlemaster math error. Fixed. Went from 221 damage to 261 damage.

[Dork_Forge]

Fighter, sword and board, 20 strength, dueling style + defence style, level 15, champion. 2 easy 4-round combats after which a short rest is expected. Lets assume 65% accuracy for both fighter attacks and cleric saves. The AC of the fighter is one higher than the cleric. So HP loss is nearly the same. Not quite, but lets say the +1 AC and second wind are reasonably equal to a casting or two of cure wounds by the life cleric.

Fighter deals 1d8+7 damage with their battleaxe with three attacks per round, and an action surge for another set of attacks in one of the two encounters. That's effectively 9 rounds of attacking for 27 attacks. 15% chance of 1d8 bonus damage.
27 * ( 11.5*0.65 + 4.5*0.15 ) = 220 damage.

Cleric meanwhile spends a 3rd level slot on 3d8 spirit guardians both fights, then just cantrips their 3d8 sacred flame. Lets say the cleric hits 2 foes with spirit guardians each round. With a 35 ft. diameter that seems reasonable. Again we simplify, 65% chance of failed dexterity save.
3d8 spirit guardian damage, 2 targets, 8 rounds, half damage on save:
8 * 2 * ( 13.5 * 0.65 + 13.5 / 2 * 0.35) = 178 damage
Sacred flame, 6 rounds:
6 * ( 13.5 * 0.65) = 53 damage
Total damage 178 + 53 = 231 damage

... hold up. I think I went wrong somewhere. Or champion is awful? Lets go with battlemaster instead. Four superiority dice, five utilising relentless. Lets keep it simple and assume they're spent on trip attacks and they'll get 3 rounds where their 2nd and 3rd attacks have advantage due to a succesful trip attack, and their action surge attacks have advantage.

First off, five superiority dice are worth 27.5 damage.
A normal round of attacks is 3 attacks, 65% hit chance, 1d8+5 damage + 5% of 1d8 bonus damage (critical hit). We'll have 8 rounds total, so 5 rounds of these.
5 * 3 * ( 11.5*0.65 + 4.5*0.05 ) = 115.5 damage
Now 3 rounds where the 2nd and 3rd attack have advantage due to successful trip attacks, meaning the first attack has 65% accuracy (yes, still need to factor this in) and follow-up attacks have 87.75% chance to hit. Also, action surge means 3 more attacks with advantage.
3 * 1 * 0.65 * ( WP ) + 3 * 2 * 0.8775 * ( WP ) + 3 * 0.8775 * (WP) = 78 damage
where WP = ( 11.5*0.65 + 4.5*0.0975 ) = 7.91375 | (It's how much damage one advantaged weapon attack deals.)
27.5 + 115.5 + 78 = 221 total damage.

Ok. A third level spell plus three cantrips shouldn't equal a basic fighter's damage. Either I was wrong about damage output being balanced, or my math is wrong -,-

It might be my premise. Is a 4 round combat too long? 65% hit chance too low?

Champion is the weakest Fighter, a widely held opinion and primarily because it's meant to be the simplest Fighter for people to play, as for if you're doing something wrong, yes:

-Immediately a 15th level Battle Master has 6 SD, not 5, so the damage from them should be 33 on average, not 27.5.

- You're assuming hitting two enemies every single turn with Spirit Guardians, not accounting for the possibility not having two people to hit (either not being in range, or one dies and another doesn't move into range)

-I might be wrong, but I don't see any accounting for losing concentration, which the Fighter doesn't need to worry about

-You're using 8 round for Spirit Guardians... why? And 6 for Sacred Flame? As far as I'm aware the accepted average duration for combat is 3 rounds. The longer the combat the more this favours the ongoing AOE you're having hit two creatures every turn.

[Eldariel]

Banishing something isn't 'winning' the same way actually killing it is, and you're assuming a favourable low portent, which is another hallmark of these conversations.

It's as much winning as killing since killed Pit Fiends simply respawn in the Hells. And I didn't assume a favourable low Portent, I said "has a reasonable shot" with the chance of losing being the case where said Portent isn't available. Play 100 matches with a level 7 Diviner and level 7 anything else vs. a Pit Fiend and the Diviner will have by far the greatest success rate, which was my point, not that it wins in every case (deterministic victories are extremely rare in D&D and mostly in the domain of higher level Wizards, as it happens, and they're very rare in level 7 PC vs. CR 20 monster fights).

Though Portent Polymorph and entombing it inside the earth is actually probably the best option since that prevents it from reforming in the Hells, sealing it away in a much more significant fashion.

[Sneak Dog]

Champion is the weakest Fighter, a widely held opinion and primarily because it's meant to be the simplest Fighter for people to play, as for if you're doing something wrong, yes:

-Immediately a 15th level Battle Master has 6 SD, not 5, so the damage from them should be 33 on average, not 27.5.

- You're assuming hitting two enemies every single turn with Spirit Guardians, not accounting for the possibility not having two people to hit (either not being in range, or one dies and another doesn't move into range)

-I might be wrong, but I don't see any accounting for losing concentration, which the Fighter doesn't need to worry about

-You're using 8 round for Spirit Guardians... why? And 6 for Sacred Flame? As far as I'm aware the accepted average duration for combat is 3 rounds. The longer the combat the more this favours the ongoing AOE you're having hit two creatures every turn.

First off, corrected a math error in my previous post while writing this post. The battlemasters damage is looking a lot better now.

Easy combat, the life cleric has high AC and constitution. Yeah, concentration ain't high on the worry list especially as it's two easy combats. Lets say we lose one round of concentrating. I did miss the superiority dice scaling, that's a total of 6 superiority dice. Excellent. Hard to use relentless now, so that simplifies things. Now lets reduce the fights 3 rounds. I will stick to two targets on spirit guardians and not losing concentration for an easy fight. Spirit guardians area is huge and one should cast some other spell in an easy fight against a single foe. Like command - grovel or

2 easy 4-round combats after which a short rest is expected.

Champion:
21 * ( 11.5*0.65 + 4.5*0.15 ) = 171 damage.
Cleric
5 * 2 * ( 13.5 * 0.65 + 13.5 / 2 * 0.35) = 111 Spirit guardians damage
4 * ( 13.5 * 0.65) = 35 sacred flame damage
146 total damage
Cleric casting spiritual weapon instead of spirit guardians
6 * ( 9.5*0.65 ) = 37
6 * ( 13.5 * 0.65) = 53
37 + 53 = 90 damage
... that's worse than single-target spirit guardian damage. Hah, the budget single-target damage of this build is awful, should probably prepare commmand instead of inflict wounds for single-target easy fights, and command the foe to grovel or drop while the party hits them with damage. Luckily, as cleric, we can.

Battlemaster fighter
Ok. This one gets complicated now. Dangit. No. I'm not going to do all the complicated math. I'm just going to split the difference between normal and advantage accuracy/damage. Normal accuracy is 65%, advantage is 88%, average (65%+87.75%)/2 = 76.375% and I'll eyeball the crit chance at 8%. (Yes, I've been rounding in the text.) So I'll roll with 6 rounds of a normal attack followed by two advantaged attacks, and an action surge of advantaged attacks.
6 superiority dice:
33 damage (Guaranteed damage, we'll only use them on attacks we actually hit.)
5 rounds of attacking with questionable advantage for the 2nd and 3rd attacks:
5 * ( 11.5*0.65 + 4.5*0.05 ) + 5 * 2 * ( 11.5*0.76375 + 4.5*0.08 ) = 130 damage
Action surge, 3 attacks with guaranteed advantage:
3 * ( 11.5*0.8775 + 4.5*0.0975 ) = 32 damage
33 + 130 + 32 = 195 total damage

Yeah, fighter is significantly better when not spending big resources in 3 round combats. Phew. Started to get a little worried there, as this is essentially a fighter at full nova.

Reminder by the way that I don't think casters are particularly excessive in combat. Casters are way too strong outside it. Where all this math is irrelevant.

[Willie the Duck]

There is an all-too-common opinion that floats around pretty regularly that high level (tier 4, 17+, etc) spellcasters are just so powerful, on their own, that they don't even need a party anymore, and can walk all over encounters that are meant to not be walked all over, because of RAW shenanigans or just the sheer power of spell design. Encounters like Lords of Hell, Princes of the Abyss, Godly Avatars, etc. are the claim oft-times.

For what it's worth (yes, practically nothing) I don't think that this is a commonly held belief. I think you had it more right in the Original Post that it was the hyperbole. As in, a hyperbolic statement meant to evoke an actual opinion -- that tier 4 spellcasters have a massively disproportionate group contribution and set of capabilities, as compared to others (particularly non-casters or 1/3 casters), and wildly moreso than in lower tiers. Maybe a spellcaster can't solo Lords of Hell, but if their planar allies and summoned monsters and simulacrum-wish chains (and just double action economy and spell loadout from simulacrum) and force-caging enemies which do fit in the force cage (and have little recourse to free themselves) and so on do a massively disproportionate amount of the heavy lifting of the quest to defeat the Lords of Hell, people are still going to be upset with the disparity regardless of whether the hyperbolic scenario does or does not survive a proof-of-concept scenario.

I guess I'm asking what you think this would actually prove?

[Eldariel]

... that's worse than single-target spirit guardian damage. Hah, the budget single-target damage of this build is awful, should probably prepare commmand instead of inflict wounds for single-target easy fights, and command the foe to grovel or drop while the party hits them with damage. Luckily, as cleric, we can.

Spiritual Weapon is not Concentration so you can just have both (and upcast if desired). Or just take Telekinetic, knock an enemy to Spirit Guardians 1/turn to double proc it and go from there; more damage than Spiritual Weapon, and slot-free. And Toll the Dead is the better damage spell for 3d12+1d8 with Blessed Strikes at this point.

R1 for like rank 5 Spirit Guardians + Telekinetic for 10d8 + 5d8 at Spirit Guardians rate, followed by R2 for Toll the Dead for 3d12+1d8 (pretty much automatic that targets are damaged since Spirit Guardians does half damage on save) + 5d8 + 5d8 + either Telekinetic for another 5d8 (depends on if you wanna take OA to leave the threat range of an enemy to reproc it or if there's another enemy to Telekinetic) or like 2d8+5 from level 4 Spiritual Weapon.

EDIT: Or minimal contribution of level 3 SG for 3d8+3d8 Telekinetic+3d8 followed by Toll the Dead for 3d12+1d8 and Spirit Guardians for 3d8+3d8 and the optional extra use of Telekinetic potentially for 3d8 more. Which is still pretty solid and only costs a single level 3 slot, which at this point can be recovered at SR 2/day thanks to Harness Divine Power.

EDIT#2: BM can also increase their damage significantly, of course, by taking feats (SS/XBE or GWM/PAM) but that does cost them their shield while the Cleric has no such cost on their additional damage options.

[Teaguethebean]

I don't think you can take your spellcaster and solo Baphomet.
I don't think you can take your spellcaster and solo Demogorgon.
I don't think you can take your spellcaster and solo Fraz-Urb'luu.
I don't think you can take your spellcaster and solo Graz'zt.
I don't think you can take your spellcaster and solo Juiblex.
I don't think you can take your spellcaster and solo Orcus.
I don't think you can take your spellcaster and solo Yeenoghu.
I don't think you can take your spellcaster and solo Zuggtmoy.

Following the stat blocks forcecage+sickening radiance kills Baphomet, Zuggtmoy, Yeenoghu, Orcus, Fraz-Urb'luu, and Juiblex. Legit all of them but Graz'zt falls to a level 13 wizard, warlock, or bard. Of course I am sure you could argue that their would be minions and other such occurrences. But in that instance then 2 lv13s could do it by forcecaging themselves away as well. Actually a single wizard, sorcerer, or bard could once they have wish for a simulacrum. That is the second caster.

[tokek]

For what it's worth (yes, practically nothing) I don't think that this is a commonly held belief. I think you had it more right in the Original Post that it was the hyperbole. As in, a hyperbolic statement meant to evoke an actual opinion -- that tier 4 spellcasters have a massively disproportionate group contribution and set of capabilities, as compared to others (particularly non-casters or 1/3 casters), and wildly moreso than in lower tiers. Maybe a spellcaster can't solo Lords of Hell, but if their planar allies and summoned monsters and simulacrum-wish chains (and just double action economy and spell loadout from simulacrum) and force-caging enemies which do fit in the force cage (and have little recourse to free themselves) and so on do a massively disproportionate amount of the heavy lifting of the quest to defeat the Lords of Hell, people are still going to be upset with the disparity regardless of whether the hyperbolic scenario does or does not survive a proof-of-concept scenario.

I guess I'm asking what you think this would actually prove?

I tend to agree.

Its far more informative to look at actual published adventures and work through what might happen. Some of what is considered a complete slam-dunk in white room analysis is highly chancy in actual published materials (due to all sorts of features which can be illusions/counters/whatever). Its almost like we are not allowed to consider that the encounter design is allowed to make design allowances for things like force cage - yet they absolutely are allowed to be so designed.

But any white room analysis is just what it is - and unless your DM is bad at encounter design its far more unreliable than that analysis would indicate. If the only variable in the analysis is to increase the CR then the analysis is not representing a very interesting or involving game IMO.

[Trask]

Following the stat blocks forcecage+sickening radiance kills Baphomet, Zuggtmoy, Yeenoghu, Orcus, Fraz-Urb'luu, and Juiblex. Legit all of them but Graz'zt falls to a level 13 wizard, warlock, or bard. Of course I am sure you could argue that their would be minions and other such occurrences. But in that instance then 2 lv13s could do it by forcecaging themselves away as well. Actually a single wizard, sorcerer, or bard could once they have wish for a simulacrum. That is the second caster.

I've read this scenario several times and it always includes Forcecage in some way. That spell is just stupidly broken, a huge outlier in power that doesn't necessarily represent the power of a caster on average.

[Hael]

Do you realise that you very quickly went into proving my point that these conversations often descend into talking about what casters can do with prep in a vacuum?

And starting 30 feet away is hyperbolic, it's exceedingly common for monsters to have superior mobility to the average PC, with built-in speed bumps predominantly belonging to... well not casters. I DM two games a week regularly, with often higher-level one-shots and I've never used anti-magic fields to challenge casters, not once. You want to challenge casters? Take away the ability to see the monster (so many ways), run up to them and hit them in the face, have someone capable of Counterspell/Dispel Magic etc. It really isn't that hard to challenge a caster.
.

Thats b/c having prep is really and should really be the default state of a lvl 20 caster. They have been lvl 17+ for many, many game sessions. That does mean if they have wish, shapechange, TP or divine intervention, that they have done their due diligence in buffing their characters with permanent upgrades. Resistances, simulacrums, summons, money, knowledge/foresight/divinitation, find greater steeds, familiars, setting up their demiplanes and so forth.

That does incidentally mean that they are likely going to be *faster* than typical martials due to such things as find greater steed. So the game for a DM is how best to deny them those toys. Its actually rather silly, you spend a lot of sessions boosting them up, and then you have to take it all away one way or another with some clever DMing which is ultimately predictable as there arent that many different ways to do it.

[Dr.Samurai]

I've read this scenario several times and it always includes Forcecage in some way. That spell is just stupidly broken, a huge outlier in power that doesn't necessarily represent the power of a caster on average.
I think that's why the OP is relevant; show the work. I suspect that Trask is right. If every time it's Forcecage/Sickening Radiance and/or Simulacrum shenanigans, we know we're mostly talking about overtuned spells.

[Eldariel]

I've read this scenario several times and it always includes Forcecage in some way. That spell is just stupidly broken, a huge outlier in power that doesn't necessarily represent the power of a caster on average.

Wall of Force accomplishes broadly the same. Both are broken but both are also the peak of Wizard offensive power. Of course the best spells are the ones you use in fights like these, especially with how thin a caster's arsenal gets: you don't want to waste time on save-or-X spells due to Legendary Resistance so you're almost forced to either use minionmancy or no-save effects (in addition to the Walls, there's Telekinesis and Bigby's as relevant ones but obviously Walls are way better due to bypassing rolls). Still, it's an outlier in power but it's a Wizard's (or a Bard's or a Sorcerer's) ability so it has to be considered.

When we speak of martials, we don't disregard Battlemaster's best maneuver (Precision Strike) either, nor the reaction maneuvers, even though they are huge outliers power-wise (dealing upwards to 20-40 damage on various chassis instead of the usual 1d12). These conversations aren't about "This class minus its strongest tools..", it's "This class..." The strongest tools are often the very problem we're dealing with here, why these classes are such outliers even combat power wise.


I think that's why the OP is relevant; show the work. I suspect that Trask is right. If every time it's Forcecage/Sickening Radiance and/or Simulacrum shenanigans, we know we're mostly talking about overtuned spells.

It's inevitably about overtuned spells since you can define "overtuned" to be "anything that outshines martials in combat"; even if that's a vast number of spells, if we define those as overtuned, casters are fine since casters' main power are the spells and thus if spells are overtuned, casters are overtuned and if spells are balanced, casters are balanced. It's a moot difference to make. The slightly more useful point is how thick the peak is: if we concede that with all the spells in the game, casters do indeed rule the roost pretty easily should they choose to use those, the next question then is how many spells need to be nerfed or banned to bring them in line, which is a comment on how broadly overpowered they are in this sense.

[Frogreaver]

I've read this scenario several times and it always includes Forcecage in some way. That spell is just stupidly broken, a huge outlier in power that doesn't necessarily represent the power of a caster on average.

It mostly comes down to a handful of spells or spell combinations. Very few of which involve spells not on the wizard spell list. Many of which also require particularly permissive DM rulings, all of which require those slots not already being expended in a previous encounter.

A wizard can use forcecage once or twice in an adventuring day. A large portion of white room wizard power stems from treating such spells as if you can use them like fire bolt.

With all that said I believe casters are very strong and overshadow martials even with those overpowered spells and spell combos especially in tier 3 and 4, but the divide isn’t quite as large as many believe.

[Eldariel]

It mostly comes down to a handful of spells or spell combinations. Very few of which involve spells not on the wizard spell list. Many of which also require particularly permissive DM rulings, all of which require those slots not already being expended in a previous encounter.

A wizard can use forcecage once or twice in an adventuring day. A large portion of white room wizard power stems from treating such spells as if you can use them like fire bolt.

With all that said I believe casters are very strong and overshadow martials even with those overpowered spells and spell combos especially in tier 3 and 4, but the divide isn’t quite as large as many believe.

The big thing to realise here is that you generally don't have Baphomet-level encounters very frequently so you don't need Forcecage-level power all that frequently either. And Wall of Force often suffices to much the same end provided you have someone (including your Simulacrum) else providing the DoT; Wall of Force + Forcecage you can cast in 4-5 encounters per day on Tier 3 which is a significant chunk of fights in a high level campaign. It's unlikely that you'll face more than 4-5 fights that warrant a Wall of Force-level resolution effect on most of your adventuring days so you'll be fine using that on everything it works on (you've even got the resources to couple it with Pyrotechnics or Fog Cloud or Sleet Storm or whatever in a typical party to ensure most typical escape options don't work). At any rate, being able to deal with 4-5 CR 25+ scale adversaries on Tier 3 seems very much out of line compared to what most other classes get (and yes, Wall of Force is Wizard and Bard only while Forcecage is Wizard/Bard/Warlock - it's true that Clerics, Druids, and Sorcerers, while potent, aren't nearly as scary in Tier 3 anymore compared to how hard they dominate Tier 2)

[Trask]

The thing is with spells like Forcecage/Wall of Force they bypass saving throws completely which throws things off in high level play. They are the peak of caster power and so yes naturally in a combat sim they should be taken into account, but if that sim reveals that its really just a handful of spells doing the heavy lifting then the problem lies with those spells, which presents a much easier and more solvable issue than addressing "caster power", just adjust problematic spells. It wouldn't be hard to do either, give those spells a saving throw to negate their effects.

I think this is the most important point. Providing a saving throw is what makes the tremendous effects of spells feel "fair" in comparison to martials and congruous with the intended game experience. Enemies have options, failure to entrap the enemy is a possibility, and so martials regain some ground here doing what they do best; hitting things until they die and in general being more useful in a snap instance rather than a meticulously crafted battle plan.

Simulacrum is harder to deal with because its more broadly usable, there isn't any one specific cheese (besides wish cheese but that seems to be more well known and generally disliked).

[tokek]

I think that's why the OP is relevant; show the work. I suspect that Trask is right. If every time it's Forcecage/Sickening Radiance and/or Simulacrum shenanigans, we know we're mostly talking about overtuned spells.

We are also assuming perfect knowledge, which the stat blocks should be telling us we don't have but I wonder how many DMs really run their big bads as being smart?

Zariel - can alter self to look like any of her minions
Demogorgon - major image at will
Bel - mislead

etc

That's without even considering what powers their minions might have or any lair actions etc.

I mean of course you can lead with True Sight and line up your Force Cage for another turn but now you are letting them have at least one turn to mess you up first. Possibly two depending on initiative rolls. I mean Fraz-urb'luu could use a lair action to just simulacrum the wizard and have them force cage themselves for fun - because they were fool enough to prepare the spell.

Force Cage is too good for 7th level IMO but the idea that it breaks the game by itself does rely on the encounter design being very simple, or in the favour of the wizard, and I really don't know why it would be with these supposedly intelligent foes.

[Trask]

Force Cage is too good for 7th level IMO but the idea that it breaks the game by itself does rely on the encounter design being very simple, or in the favour of the wizard, and I really don't know why it would be with these supposedly intelligent foes.

That is a good point, these sims do rely on the white room model of CRPG-like simplicity. However speaking as a confessed non-strategic mastermind there is a limit to the kind of tactics I can employ as a DM, whether by my own limitations as a DM or if it just doesn't feel plausible in the moment. It can also IMO lead to a slippery slope of adversarial DMing where the DM has to constantly employ trickery and formidable strategy to provide a challenge, which can sometimes feel like trying to "win D&D". I don't want to win D&D, I just want a flexible yet resilient set of tools and expectations that I can employ for my NPCs without always fearing dread combos.

I will say that I am somewhat fortunate that the players I've had show restraint with these kinds of tactics, but when things are looking grim they almost always use them to save their skins, which often just makes the preceding combat feel performative.

[Hael]

That is a good point, these sims do rely on the white room model of CRPG-like simplicity.

I just started playing Solasta recently (which is a pretty good game), and its amusing how most of the things we talk about are faithfully represented in that setting... And to be clear, you would expect a CRPG setting to heavily favor martials, b/c you can't do crazy inventive things that a DM might approve with spells in that setting (like using your mage hand to tip over a rock, that creates an avalanche that blocks a pass), whereas the martials are at near full force (and will have access to lots of guarenteed magic weapons etc). But even there, casters start to rapidly dominate the pure combat encounters once you hit tier2 (clerics are likely the best class in the game). And that's with most of the heavy duty RAW shenanigans excised from the game.

[tokek]

That is a good point, these sims do rely on the white room model of CRPG-like simplicity. However speaking as a confessed non-strategic mastermind there is a limit to the kind of tactics I can employ as a DM, whether by my own limitations as a DM or if it just doesn't feel plausible in the moment. It can also IMO lead to a slippery slope of adversarial DMing where the DM has to constantly employ trickery and formidable strategy to provide a challenge, which can sometimes feel like trying to "win D&D". I don't want to win D&D, I just want a flexible yet resilient set of tools and expectations that I can employ for my NPCs without always fearing dread combos.

I will say that I am somewhat fortunate that the players I've had show restraint with these kinds of tactics, but when things are looking grim they almost always use them to save their skins, which often just makes the preceding combat feel performative.

For me its more about playing monsters to their type. Archdevils in particular should be absolute masters of lies and deceit. I will make a big deal of that. Its about telling interesting distinct stories , some monsters are big bruisers others are sly cunning liars.

But when looking at classes its important to understand that the risk of being fooled should be real and impacts differently on different classes. Generally the cost of attacking the wrong thing for a resourceless class like a rogue or fighter is the loss of an action, the cost of doing so for a caster may be the only slot they have of a high enough level for that attack for the whole day. To this extent the casters are strong but brittle, if you only have one big shot the risk of it going astray should prey on the player's mind. D&D is not a tabletop wargame of perfect player knowledge, it is a roleplaying game of uncertainty and missing information.

[Trask]

I just started playing Solasta recently (which is a pretty good game), and its amusing how most of the things we talk about are faithfully represented in that setting... And to be clear, you would expect a CRPG setting to heavily favor martials, b/c you can't do crazy inventive things that a DM might approve with spells in that setting (like using your mage hand to tip over a rock, that creates an avalanche that blocks a pass), whereas the martials are at near full force (and will have access to lots of guarenteed magic weapons etc). But even there, casters start to rapidly dominate the pure combat encounters once you hit tier2 (clerics are likely the best class in the game). And that's with most of the heavy duty RAW shenanigans excised from the game.

I watched my friend play this game and I what I saw corroborates your experience. Its kind of inevitable to some degree that it becomes a caster's world at high levels. I've made my peace with that, especially since its so much more balanced than 3rd edition which is what I played before 5th edition. Magic items can make up the difference for martials and I make sure there are plenty of powerful magic swords around with spell-like effects at high levels (which also happens to be one of the reasons why martial dips for casters bug me. "No, Blackrazor will not consent to be used by a mere wizard, it is destined for the fighter's hand!)


Generally the cost of attacking the wrong thing for a resourceless class like a rogue or fighter is the loss of an action, the cost of doing so for a caster may be the only slot they have of a high enough level for that attack for the whole day. To this extent the casters are strong but brittle, if you only have one big shot the risk of it going astray should prey on the player's mind. D&D is not a tabletop wargame of perfect player knowledge, it is a roleplaying game of uncertainty and missing information.

Fair, and also reflects my experience (a certain instance comes to mind when as a player where my wizard comrade cast Maze on an illusion of the Tarrasque, ouch!) Still, I would prefer to not have to play around any kind of "I-win buttons" at all. I think they're contrary to spirit of a game which values cooperation.

[Unoriginal]

I just started playing Solasta recently (which is a pretty good game), and its amusing how most of the things we talk about are faithfully represented in that setting... And to be clear, you would expect a CRPG setting to heavily favor martials, b/c you can't do crazy inventive things that a DM might approve with spells in that setting (like using your mage hand to tip over a rock, that creates an avalanche that blocks a pass), whereas the martials are at near full force (and will have access to lots of guarenteed magic weapons etc). But even there, casters start to rapidly dominate the pure combat encounters once you hit tier2 (clerics are likely the best class in the game). And that's with most of the heavy duty RAW shenanigans excised from the game.

It's because no matter how much the casters are limited by the computer game, the NPCs' AIs are even more limited by necessity.

Against pre-programed, mostly-rigid AIs its logical that the player-controlled caster gets a *significant* edge.

Which is also what happens in white room theorycrafting, most of the time.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Still, I would prefer to not have to play around any kind of "I-win buttons" at all. I think they're contrary to spirit of a game which values cooperation.

I agree. And this is my big fundamental problem with things like forcecage. Winning that way (forcecage the boss with a persistent damage effect) isn't fun. Not for the DM, not for the other players, and not, really, for the wizard (unless winning is all that matters to them). It feels cheap--you just push a couple buttons and poof, no interaction, boss dies as you watch. Can't even break concentration--forcecage isn't concentration[1]! It's like playing with god-mode enabled...in a multiplayer game.

[1] which is its own pile of :wat:.

[KorvinStarmast]

The thing is with spells like Forcecage/Wall of Force they bypass saving throws completely which throws things off in high level play. So does sleep. :smallbiggrin: (But I understand the point you are making)

[Eldariel]

We are also assuming perfect knowledge, which the stat blocks should be telling us we don't have but I wonder how many DMs really run their big bads as being smart?

Zariel - can alter self to look like any of her minions
Demogorgon - major image at will
Bel - mislead

etc

That's without even considering what powers their minions might have or any lair actions etc.

I mean of course you can lead with True Sight and line up your Force Cage for another turn but now you are letting them have at least one turn to mess you up first. Possibly two depending on initiative rolls. I mean Fraz-urb'luu could use a lair action to just simulacrum the wizard and have them force cage themselves for fun - because they were fool enough to prepare the spell.

Force Cage is too good for 7th level IMO but the idea that it breaks the game by itself does rely on the encounter design being very simple, or in the favour of the wizard, and I really don't know why it would be with these supposedly intelligent foes.

I don't really agree with your last paragraph. How does it rely on things being in favour of the Wizard or encounter design being simple? Regardless of encounter design, a no-save "I win" vs. vast majority of the monsters in the game including most demon lords is pretty insane: it doesn't matter that they might have some (comparatively weak; Wizards have better ones on this level already) tools to avoid detection or do misdirection, that does not change the fact that the ability is a win against them if used against them. And if your encounter design is thus that the PCs will never ever have the ability to affect the opponent, what does it matter what abilities the PCs have? Of all the PC classes, Wizard has easily the largest amount of tools to ensure they get to use their abilities on the enemy so this isn't exactly an argument against the class: if Wizard can fail, everyone else is likely to fail way harder there. To see this, we just need to do a comparison side-by-side again: try and beat the same encounter design you'd use on a Wizard/party with Wizard on a level 13 Fighter or Barbarian or party of martials or whatever. The same encounter design that might cost 1 round to a Wizard will probably make a Barbarian or a Fighter waste a bunch of turns: they don't have Trueseeing or magic detection spells or similars. Overall all of this just serves to showcase how ridiculous Wizards on this level are compared to basically all the other classes save maybe Bards.

Also, in general for PCs of these levels, one turn is not enough for any of the demon lords to win. And Wizard specifically has no trouble dealing with Forcecage: it's literally the one class that has an automatic solution at their fingertips on an earlier level (though also Sorc/Bard/Warlock/Paladin have a pretty reasonable shot at teleporting out thanks to their solid Cha-saves, at least if the Wizard isn't a Diviner; and anyone with Shapechange or True Polymorph can just get Legendary Resistance form and teleport/plane shift out). And we're talking about a single level 13 PC vs. a CR 2X thing. That's not supposed to be a fight where the CR 2X creature needs to not only be clever but superclever to the point that it can never ever be within casting range of the PC so that said PC is aware of it (and the PC isn't exactly dumb either, with likely 20 Intelligence and mastery of all sorts of magic).


EDIT: To put it into perspective, a Fighter ability equivalent to Forcecage would be something like Actually True Strike: "1/LR: Choose an enemy within 100'. Your attack strikes true piercing your enemy's vitals fatally. No attack roll. No save. Target dies, unless said enemy can [an extremely rare ability, say, use Wish]. No, you don't even need line of sight."

You could still use all kind of subterfuge on DM part to fight that but fact is, that ability is going to constrict you to an extreme degree and force you to design all encounters around it (leading to all being samey since there are so few ways to avoid said ability).

EDIT#2: If Forcecage at least consumed its material component, that wouldn't fix anything but it would give it one axis of moderation. Though it's still too strong and should honestly be a 9th level spell as written.

[Trask]

So does sleep. :smallbiggrin: (But I understand the point you are making)

If I told GitP that three goblins will get Slept, nobody panics, because it's all 'part of the plan'. But when I say that one little pit fiend will get Forcecage'd to death, well then everyone loses their minds! :smallbiggrin:

[Kane0]

Havent got far into Solasta yet but once Tier 2 hits I have definitely felt the casters get a big leg up in encounters. That said my favourite PC in the party is the hunter ranger.

[arnin77]

What is a Retvoker?

[Frogreaver]

The big thing to realise here is that you generally don't have Baphomet-level encounters very frequently so you don't need Forcecage-level power all that frequently either. And Wall of Force often suffices to much the same end provided you have someone (including your Simulacrum) else providing the DoT; Wall of Force + Forcecage you can cast in 4-5 encounters per day on Tier 3 which is a significant chunk of fights in a high level campaign. It's unlikely that you'll face more than 4-5 fights that warrant a Wall of Force-level resolution effect on most of your adventuring days so you'll be fine using that on everything it works on (you've even got the resources to couple it with Pyrotechnics or Fog Cloud or Sleet Storm or whatever in a typical party to ensure most typical escape options don't work). At any rate, being able to deal with 4-5 CR 25+ scale adversaries on Tier 3 seems very much out of line compared to what most other classes get (and yes, Wall of Force is Wizard and Bard only while Forcecage is Wizard/Bard/Warlock - it's true that Clerics, Druids, and Sorcerers, while potent, aren't nearly as scary in Tier 3 anymore compared to how hard they dominate Tier 2)

I think Wall of Force + Sickening Radiance (or other concentration dot) is alot more balanced just because of the concentration aspect. It takes 2 actions. 2 concentration slots (leaving the casters doing mostly cantrips the rest of the encounter), 2 fairly high level spell slots, and all that to defeat a single enemy (and only those without countermeasures or that aren't too large to fit in the wall of force).

[SharkForce]

It's because no matter how much the casters are limited by the computer game, the NPCs' AIs are even more limited by necessity.

Against pre-programed, mostly-rigid AIs its logical that the player-controlled caster gets a *significant* edge.

Which is also what happens in white room theorycrafting, most of the time.

it still says something that the casters have the tools to exploit this vulnerability much harder than the non-casters.

I mean, it isn't like when you bring in a wizard the AI is a *different* AI from when you bring in a fighter.

if one class is far better at creating and exploiting vulnerabilities than the other, but also does well even without exploiting those vulnerabilities, that class is stronger.

if we take a category of classes and compare them to another category and find the same, you have a definite trend, and while wizards are probably the *worst* offender, it isn't like they're the only ones who get good spells. sure, some of the biggest offenders are wizard-only, but it isn't like bards can't use mass suggestion to turn an encounter against mooks into a recruiting opportunity at level 11 or druids can't polymorph a 5 HP ally into a 144 HP giant ape with more damage than the party fighter at level 7.

[Frogreaver]

if one class is far better at creating and exploiting vulnerabilities than the other, but also does well even without exploiting those vulnerabilities, that class is stronger.

This would be a strong case if wizard abilities were at will. They aren't. The number of vulnerabilities a wizard gets the opportunity to exploit is hard capped. All the 'powerful' tricks that get brought up, the wizard usually can't do them many times per day. And as they actually select spells at level up, spells to prepare at the start of the day, and actually use spell slots for those spells - their available choices tend to become more and more constrained. The threat of this occurring also constrains their choices earlier in an adventuring day as well, for fear they will have used something that they later needed. This threat of future need is a strong power limitation because it keeps the Wizard in the 'fog of war' and thus prevents him from forming the perfect response to the set of challenges he is going to face.

[Eldariel]

I think Wall of Force + Sickening Radiance (or other concentration dot) is alot more balanced just because of the concentration aspect. It takes 2 actions. 2 concentration slots (leaving the casters doing mostly cantrips the rest of the encounter), 2 fairly high level spell slots, and all that to defeat a single enemy (and only those without countermeasures or that aren't too large to fit in the wall of force).

Well, Sickening Radiance has alternatives: Conjure Bonfire, Cloud of Daggers, Wall of Light, etc. Some of those are much lower in slot consumption. I don't think Concentration does terribly much since the spell makes the strongest target in the fight impotent to threaten it.

[LudicSavant]

An Evoker that frontlines?! I must know what this is :)

Yeah. It's why Evoker was mentioned as one of the better/slept-on frontliner options in the tanking team (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25359510&postcount=4) thread.

You can basically just take a Hexvoker (which already gives you stuff like Armor of Agathys, Eldritch-Knight-like AC with a lot more resources to fuel it, etc), and toss on stuff like Warcaster -- which happens to work with the Curse Magic Missile combo for the same reason Eldritch Blast does (https://twitter.com/jeremyecrawford/status/908469121502736384).

It's very much about embracing the idea of... kind of like how while Sentinel says "you cannot move," but Booming Blade says "moving is a trap option." I've often said that the goal of a tank (such as an Ancestral Guardian) is to ruin the enemy's decision tree.

In this case, the enemy's decision tree is made out of lava.

You can make attacking you in melee rather... suicidal. You have a very high potential in terms of retributive spells -- Hellish Rebuke, Armor of Agathys, Fire Shield, Contingency (Armor of Agathys or Overchanneled Fire Shield), Flames of Phlegethos (in the tiefling version), and Hexblade's Curse boosting every proc... and I haven't even mentioned anything that uses Concentration yet.

You can make the "target an ally instead" option also suck by, say... having your friends stand inside of a Sculpted Sickening Radiance and other Evoker control tricks (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=24880828&postcount=5), Counterspelling something targeting them, Curse Magic Missiling (https://twitter.com/jeremyecrawford/status/908469121502736384) the person who tries to walk away from you with Warcaster so that they explode into giblets if they try to attack someone other than you, disengaging allies with Telekinetic bonus actions, that sort of thing.

Your defenses are active, not passive, so you basically need to know the class well enough to know which trap card to play and when. But it totally works. :smallsmile:

[SharkForce]

This would be a strong case if wizard abilities were at will. They aren't. The number of vulnerabilities a wizard gets the opportunity to exploit is hard capped. All the 'powerful' tricks that get brought up, the wizard usually can't do them many times per day. And as they actually select spells at level up, spells to prepare at the start of the day, and actually use spell slots for those spells - their available choices tend to become more and more constrained. The threat of this occurring also constrains their choices earlier in an adventuring day as well, for fear they will have used something that they later needed. This threat of future need is a strong power limitation because it keeps the Wizard in the 'fog of war' and thus prevents him from forming the perfect response to the set of challenges he is going to face.

how many times do you need to do those powerful tricks, though?

I mean, if you mass suggestion once to turn a group of enemies into your allies, it lasts the full adventuring day. if you upcast it, it can last months. polymorph lasts an hour and stands a reasonable chance of getting you through at least a couple of encounters at significantly increased effectiveness. true polymorph lasts indefinitely. planar binding can last up to a year. geas can last permanently. antipathy/sympathy can last several days.

I mean, you won't necessarily have enough of your absolute best spells to use in *every* combat, but if you're facing a variety of different difficulty challenges in a day and you turn 2-3 deadly or hard encounters into effectively easy (or lower) challenges, leaving the party with only medium and easy such that no resources are particularly needed (and thus allowing you to just use your lower level spells without worrying too much about spending too many resources), isn't that good enough?

I mean, we're not talking about a level 1 spellcaster with only 2-3 spells per day here, we're talking tier 3. level 11 means you have a level 6, 2 level 5, and 3 level 4 spells (possibly more, depending on class, but that's a bare minimum). that could be, for the sake of argument, a mass suggestion, 2 walls of force, and 3 polymorphs available for the harder fights, with spells like web and hypnotic pattern in reserve for easier fights where you don't want to use your big options (the spells will change depending on class, but in general you'll still tend to have some pretty impactful options... stone to mud, bones of the earth, summon celestial + planar binding, banishment, hero's feast, or even just upcasting select lower level spells... certainly other classes feel a bit less impressive than the wizard's formidable spell list, but it isn't like they're lacking in effective spells that can make difficult encounters a lot easier).

plus, those spells I've just pointed out... it isn't like you are going to use up all of your spells known/prepared to have a decent list of combat options on hand either, so there's room to fit in utility.

certainly, there is a limit to how often you can do it, but the limit isn't *that* restrictive by the time we get into tier 3 and 4.

[Kane0]

Drop your build in here. Let's see these unstoppable magical machine of arcane might.
•Whatever level.
•Whatever gear.
•Whatever straight or multi-class combination.
•Just make sure you include a thorough write-up and an explanation to support how it's so strong.


The current caster i'm playing is a Hobgoblin Efreeti Chainlock from 1 to 20. Long story short is this Hobgoblin is a witch that was was exiled from her native clan after being exposed in a post-apocalyptic setting, and took up a 'partnership' with a fire elemental found wandering the desert. She specializes in burning and binding with some psychic powers on the side.
Stats: Rolled pretty well (Str 11, Dex 15, Con 16, Int 13, Wis 14, Cha 18)
ASIs: Telepathic, Metamagic Adept (Empower & Subtle), Fey Touched (Bless), Inspiring Leader, Lucky
Invocations: Beguiling Influence, Eldritch Mind, Voice of the Chain Master, Investment of the Chain Master, Ghostly Gaze, Whispers of the Grave, Chains of Carceri, Witch Sight. I'm tempted to swap something for Tomb of Levistus though.
Spells: Mage Hand, Mind Sliver, Minor Illusion, Cause Fear, Charm Person, Invisibility, Suggestion, Counterspell, Dispel Magic, Enemies Abound, Fireball, Magic Circle, Sending, Summon Fey/Shadowspawn/Undead (I've changed it around a lot trying to find what I like best), Banishment, Sickening Radiance, Planar Binding, Scrying, Mental Prison, Plane Shift, Feeblemind, Psychic Scream. Plus the freebie Bless, Misty Step, Detect Thoughts and whatever Limited Wish gets used for.
Equipment: Its a low magic setting so her one and only magic item thus far is a Wand of Paralysis which is her pride and joy (and a big reason she doesn't have any Hold spells). That said she has received a boon that gives her the Wildfire Druid's Spirit as a familiar option, so that would be a fair use of an attunement slot.

So I guess it's not the most optimized or gamebreaking build out there, but I have noticed a trend that there is little she can't contribute meaningfully to without the DM rendering others in the party pretty much useless or accidentally TPKing us. Though maybe that's just a function of my being more experienced and knowledgable than said DM. She isn't really built for raw damage output, so if you can peel her away from her familiar and stop her from getting away it wouldn't be that hard to put her six feet under.

[Bovine Colonel]

I suppose while people are posting builds I should present my data point as well. I'm running a divination wizard in a modified Tomb of Annihilation playthrough. My DM is pretty carefree about rewards, though, which means my character (and the other party members) have a superabundance of published and custom magic items. On the other hand, my character is nowhere near Tier 4 and showing signs of disproportionate power. I've already decided to pretend Simulacrum doesn't exist to avoid completely taking over the game.

LN Half-elf Wizard (Divination) 12
Str 8, Dex 14, Con 12, Int 20, Wis 14, Cha 14
Feat: Alert
Relevant magic items: Dagger of warning, Staff of Fire, custom ring with 3 uses of Subtle metamagic per day, Wand of Magic Missile

Spellbook:
Cantrips: Fire Bolt, Message, Mold Earth, Minor Illusion, Mind Sliver
1st level: Absorb Elements, Alarm, Charm Person, Comprehend Languages, Detect Magic, Faerie Fire, Find Familiar, Fog Cloud, Grease, Identify, Mage Armor, Magic Missile, Shield, Silent Image, Tenser's Floating Disk, Unseen Servant
2nd level: Blindness/Deafness, Hold Person, Invisibility, Levitate, Misty Step, Phantasmal Force, Scorching Ray, Suggestion, Web
3rd level: Blink, Clairvoyance, Counterspell, Dispel Magic, Fireball, Fly, Hypnotic Pattern, Sending, Water Breathing, Tiny Servant
4th level: Arcane Eye, Fabricate, Greater Invisibility, Otiluke's Resilient Sphere, Polymorph, Stone Shape
5th level: Animate Objects, Contact Other Plane, Passwall, Rary's Telepathic Bond, Scrying, Wall of Force
6th level: Contingency, Scatter, True Seeing

Bold represents currently-prepared spells while italics represent rituals.

Flavius's primary role is gathering information outside of combat so the party can make decisions. The main tools for this are Find Familiar, Arcane Eye, and Contact Other Plane. In particular, Contact Other Plane can be cast a few times just before a long rest since Flavius has portents on top of a good Int save, and there's a Paladin in the party. Flavius also enables in-person scouting with Invisibility, circumvents obstacles with tools like Suggestion and Polymorph, and has a long list of self-preservation methods including Misty Step, Blink, and Greater Invisibility. Rary's Telepathic Bond enables party coordination in complicated encounters.

In-combat, Flavius's job is to fix the current most pressing problem, whatever it may be. He doesn't need to output damage or hold a front line since the Sorlock and Vengeance Paladin excel at both, so he can stand behind cover and use spells to enable them to do their jobs. That could take the form of a Hypnotic Pattern or Fireball to prevent the front line from being overrun, Otiluke's Resilient Sphere or Wall of Force to isolate enemies, Counterspells to lock down enemy casters with Greater Invisibility as cover to get in range, Scatter to emergency-reposition the party, or (on one occasion in T2) having his owl familiar carry a Tiny Servant wielding a Wand of Magic Missile so the Tiny Servant's blindsight could be used to break the concentration of a fleeing invisible caster.

Flavius is not the party's win condition in combat (in that he doesn't do damage outside the occasional Fireball), but I'd say he's probably the most impactful party member overall as a force multiplier. A lot of this is in his ability to make the DM answer questions, but he can also turn a losing combat into one that favors the PCs with one action in a wide variety of situations.

The reason Flavius doesn't have any teleportation or scrying-sensor spells prepared is because we're about to enter the final tomb, and we've been given to understand that those spells won't work inside. Please no spoilers on anything I don't already know!

* We did lose one fight after Flavius blew 2 concentration checks trying to set up a Wall of Force-Transmuted Cloudkill-Silence combo. That one's mostly on positioning mistakes, since the target could attack at short range through the Wall of Force and Flavius wasn't able to get far enough away.

[tokek]

I don't really agree with your last paragraph. How does it rely on things being in favour of the Wizard or encounter design being simple?

I mean that the encounter is simplistic. The enemy is clear and obvious and the caster knows which enemy is which and can choose to target the main opponent. Its basically "The enemy is so stupid or arrogant that they are as good as dead on arrival"

That does not fit the genre that Vancian magic comes from at all.

[Eldariel]

I mean that the encounter is simplistic. The enemy is clear and obvious and the caster knows which enemy is which and can choose to target the main opponent. Its basically "The enemy is so stupid or arrogant that they are as good as dead on arrival"

That does not fit the genre that Vancian magic comes from at all.

But how does the power of Forcecage depend on that? I see it more resilient than most options to complex scenarios, with solid range, lack of sight or targeting, etc.

[tokek]

But how does the power of Forcecage depend on that? I see it more resilient than most options to complex scenarios, with solid range, lack of sight or targeting, etc.

If you force cage an illusion or decoy what have you achieved?

If your DM never throws those sorts of challenges and problems at you then your encounters are simplistic.

I went back and skimmed a couple of levels of Dungeon of the Mad Mage. Sure enough within a couple of pages of looking there is an encounter clearly designed to bait out your once-per-day big spell with a decoy. Its a potentially deadly encounter too so you don't have time to mess around - I re-read it and immediately recalled my initial impression that a well built rogue (or equivalent stealth build on another martial) was the best answer to that problem.

[Unoriginal]

it still says something that the casters have the tools to exploit this vulnerability much harder than the non-casters.

I mean, it isn't like when you bring in a wizard the AI is a *different* AI from when you bring in a fighter.

if one class is far better at creating and exploiting vulnerabilities than the other, but also does well even without exploiting those vulnerabilities, that class is stronger.

No. That is not how any of this works.

A video game AI is limited. That is a fact. A class that has options which can exploit the gaps in tactics the AI has due to said limitations is not stronger.

It isn't a different AI whether you show up with a wizard or with a fighter, true, but that just demonstrates my point: a player can and will adapt their tactics to what they are facing, while an AI can't (past a certain point, at least).

People out here have been making challenges about beating games like Dark Soul without getting hit once, or beating it as a lvl 1 with no weapon. And people have succeeded those challenges, because AIs are predictable and relying on patterns that can be learned.

To put it a different way: take a spellcasting enemy. Do they adapt their tactics the way a player-controlled spellcaster can?

Obviously, they cannot.

Now take an AI-controlled spellcaster vs a player-controlled fighter. Do you really think that the outcome would be the same if who controlled what was inverted?

In a game with an actual DM, when said DM plays the NPCs are more than unfeeling robots with limited tactics who will fight to the death no matter what, spellcasting is nowhere as potent as it would be against an AI doing the above.

The mere concept of *positioning* can make a Fireball go from devastating (ex: if thrown on a group of enemies all packed) to too-many-issues-to-use (ex: same group of enemies as before, but now they're flanking each PC in pair, and the pairs are so far from each other you can at best hit one pair and one PC). And that's only one factor that needs to be taken into account when playing with people vs playing against AI or against a set script for white room theorycrafting.

And to compound the issue, yes, a video game will most likely not address all the 'you can do that' rulings of a DM, massively restricting characters.

Saying 'combats in this video game often work the way wizards-are-strongee advocates say combats work ' is not a compliment. It's saying wizards-are-stronger advocates think that you can replace the DM with an unthinking algorythm that ignores key parts of the game and major tactical concerns, and often there is no difference.

[Frogreaver]

how many times do you need to do those powerful tricks, though?

If we were to judge why the forums think a Wizard is so powerful - every time, because when discussing Wizard strength those extremely limited use tricks are just about all that get brought up.


I mean, if you mass suggestion once to turn a group of enemies into your allies, it lasts the full adventuring day. if you upcast it, it can last months.

Mass suggestion doesn't turn enemies into allies. You can make them do a shortly stated action that isn't an obviously harmful act to them. This example is just more evidence that alot of caster power comes from making spells stronger than written.


polymorph lasts an hour and stands a reasonable chance of getting you through at least a couple of encounters at significantly increased effectiveness. true polymorph lasts indefinitely.

If you are talking about the level of Wizard that can cast Forcecage, polymorph isn't that strong anymore.


I mean, you won't necessarily have enough of your absolute best spells to use in *every* combat, but if you're facing a variety of different difficulty challenges in a day and you turn 2-3 deadly or hard encounters into effectively easy (or lower) challenges, leaving the party with only medium and easy such that no resources are particularly needed (and thus allowing you to just use your lower level spells without worrying too much about spending too many resources), isn't that good enough?

It's not just whether you have your best spell for every combat. You often won't even be using your best spells at the best time in the adventuring day. You have no way of knowing if it's better to save the spell or use it now - meaning you won't be using things at maximum efficiency - which is how Caster proponents always assume spells get used for these discussions.


I mean, we're not talking about a level 1 spellcaster with only 2-3 spells per day here, we're talking tier 3. level 11 means you have a level 6, 2 level 5, and 3 level 4 spells (possibly more, depending on class, but that's a bare minimum). that could be, for the sake of argument, a mass suggestion, 2 walls of force, and 3 polymorphs available for the harder fights, with spells like web and hypnotic pattern in reserve for easier fights where you don't want to use your big options (the spells will change depending on class, but in general you'll still tend to have some pretty impactful options... stone to mud, bones of the earth, summon celestial + planar binding, banishment, hero's feast, or even just upcasting select lower level spells... certainly other classes feel a bit less impressive than the wizard's formidable spell list, but it isn't like they're lacking in effective spells that can make difficult encounters a lot easier).

Sure. I'm not saying casters suck. They are strong. But outside spells like simulcarum and forcecage they aren't THAT much stronger than martials.


plus, those spells I've just pointed out... it isn't like you are going to use up all of your spells known/prepared to have a decent list of combat options on hand either, so there's room to fit in utility.

Spell lists are much less flexible than they are made out to be. A level 11 Wizard prepares 15ish spells.

Mage Armor
Shield
Absorb Elements
Misty Step
Dimension Door

Invisibility

Magic Missile
Web
Fireball
Hypnotic Pattern
Haste
Banishment
Polymorph

Counterspell
Dispel Magic

That's 15 spells already - and they are often some of the more talked about ones. I only took 4 spells that have out of combat uses.

I didn’t even have room for 5th and 6th level spells before I have to start making some significant decisions about which spells to prepare. And that’s with me being pretty choosy about the lower level spells I take.


certainly, there is a limit to how often you can do it, but the limit isn't *that* restrictive by the time we get into tier 3 and 4.

The gap between the best spell in a given situation and an above average spell in a situation is often quite large. In practice you’ll be mostly using your spells at above average moments.

[KorvinStarmast]

Saying 'combats in this video game often work the way wizards-are-strongee advocates say combats work ' is not a compliment. It's saying wizards-are-stronger advocates think that you can replace the DM with an unthinking algorythm that ignores key parts of the game and major tactical concerns, and often there is no difference. I am reminded of a web page from the late 90's for Diablo (original game) by a guy called Bolty where he illustrated his telekill technique that rendered Hell difficulty succubi a much lesser challenge for Warriors than without it. (My first run through that game on Hell diff with Warrior had some trouble with ranged attackers before I adapted. My Rogue had no such problems).

[SharkForce]

No. That is not how any of this works.

A video game AI is limited. That is a fact. A class that has options which can exploit the gaps in tactics the AI has due to said limitations is not stronger.

It isn't a different AI whether you show up with a wizard or with a fighter, true, but that just demonstrates my point: a player can and will adapt their tactics to what they are facing, while an AI can't (past a certain point, at least).

People out here have been making challenges about beating games like Dark Soul without getting hit once, or beating it as a lvl 1 with no weapon. And people have succeeded those challenges, because AIs are predictable and relying on patterns that can be learned.

To put it a different way: take a spellcasting enemy. Do they adapt their tactics the way a player-controlled spellcaster can?

Obviously, they cannot.

Now take an AI-controlled spellcaster vs a player-controlled fighter. Do you really think that the outcome would be the same if who controlled what was inverted?

In a game with an actual DM, when said DM plays the NPCs are more than unfeeling robots with limited tactics who will fight to the death no matter what, spellcasting is nowhere as potent as it would be against an AI doing the above.

The mere concept of *positioning* can make a Fireball go from devastating (ex: if thrown on a group of enemies all packed) to too-many-issues-to-use (ex: same group of enemies as before, but now they're flanking each PC in pair, and the pairs are so far from each other you can at best hit one pair and one PC). And that's only one factor that needs to be taken into account when playing with people vs playing against AI or against a set script for white room theorycrafting.

And to compound the issue, yes, a video game will most likely not address all the 'you can do that' rulings of a DM, massively restricting characters.

Saying 'combats in this video game often work the way wizards-are-strongee advocates say combats work ' is not a compliment. It's saying wizards-are-stronger advocates think that you can replace the DM with an unthinking algorythm that ignores key parts of the game and major tactical concerns, and often there is no difference.

the fact that the AI can be easily made to adapt for fighter play (as evidenced by the fact that it works just fine against them) but has a hard time adapting to wizard play suggests there is a pretty substantial difference.

sure, people *can* do dark souls challenges where they never get hit or whatever. but I bet those take a ton of practice and probably a whole bunch of attempts. someone who pulls that sort of thing off has a lot of specialized skills for that one scenario and a lot more system mastery than an average person. it most certainly does not reflect a typical player's experience.

@frogreaver: polymorph is just an example to show that it can start even earlier, plus it provides a bunch of utility (flight, tunneling, climbing, swimming, crowd control, reconnaissance, it's a handy option that lets you solve plenty of non-combat challenges too). also, depending on the books your campaign uses, polymorph may actually still be exceptionally strong at level 11. the only thing keeping it from being powerful up to level 20 is a lack of beasts to polymorph into, after all. heck, I know I've seen some "beasts" in stuff that is marked as legal for adventurer's league where if anything polymorph is *more* powerful than before in comparison when you get to the right levels...

regarding mass suggestion: while it won't work against every enemy, there are a lot of enemies where "come work for me and I'll pay you more money than you're getting" is a perfectly reasonable suggestion. certainly more reasonable than "give away your livelihood as a knight to the next peasant you meet" which is the explicit example in the books. it isn't universal, but a lot of enemies that a typical PC group will be facing are not known for their extreme loyalty.

if you use a high enough level slot, it is even possible that a group you used mass suggestion on *months* ago is still following you around and making hard challenges easy today.

also, I have to say your spell list looks a little weird to me. I mean, I guess if you're *specifically* a blaster-oriented wizard you might still be packing magic missile at level 11, but most wizards won't need that. many won't even have fireball at level 11, at least not as a standard option (if they know they're going someplace with a lot of mooks to deal with perhaps, but fireball's heyday was 6 levels ago, by this level you use it for niche scenarios not as your first option). I have doubts about preparing both misty step and dimension door, and while I see many choosing counterspell I don't find dispel magic to be nearly as common (the ability to dispel an effect *after* it has screwed you over is far less valuable than the ability to prevent the effect entirely, and it is often more effective to target the enemy or their ability to concentrate than the spells they're casting on themselves).

and of course, if you have another spellcaster in the party, they'll be covering some roles and utility options as well with their spells (and subclass features, for that matter).

[Frogreaver]

@frogreaver: polymorph is just an example to show that it can start even earlier, plus it provides a bunch of utility (flight, tunneling, climbing, swimming, crowd control, reconnaissance, it's a handy option that lets you solve plenty of non-combat challenges too). also, depending on the books your campaign uses, polymorph may actually still be exceptionally strong at level 11. the only thing keeping it from being powerful up to level 20 is a lack of beasts to polymorph into, after all. heck, I know I've seen some "beasts" in stuff that is marked as legal for adventurer's league where if anything polymorph is *more* powerful than before in comparison when you get to the right levels...

We are talking tier 3+ right? So let's stay focused on that. Polymorph by tier 3 is an okay spell. It's not dominating combats by this time but is still useful in them - and it still can double for out of combat utility as you note above. So it's a good spell. But it's not the kind of spell that is pushing Wizards significantly ahead of martials at this point.


regarding mass suggestion: while it won't work against every enemy, there are a lot of enemies where "come work for me and I'll pay you more money than you're getting" is a perfectly reasonable suggestion. certainly more reasonable than "give away your livelihood as a knight to the next peasant you meet" which is the explicit example in the books. it isn't universal, but a lot of enemies that a typical PC group will be facing are not known for their extreme loyalty.

If 'working for me' includes fighting beside me then that's obviously harmful and the spell states it's effects are negated if you ask them to do something obviously harmful. So feel free to recruit all the allies you want with mass suggestion. None will be the fighting kind.


also, I have to say your spell list looks a little weird to me. I mean, I guess if you're *specifically* a blaster-oriented wizard you might still be packing magic missile at level 11, but most wizards won't need that. many won't even have fireball at level 11, at least not as a standard option (if they know they're going someplace with a lot of mooks to deal with perhaps, but fireball's heyday was 6 levels ago, by this level you use it for niche scenarios not as your first option). I have doubts about preparing both misty step and dimension door, and while I see many choosing counterspell I don't find dispel magic to be nearly as common (the ability to dispel an effect *after* it has screwed you over is far less valuable than the ability to prevent the effect entirely, and it is often more effective to target the enemy or their ability to concentrate than the spells they're casting on themselves).

and of course, if you have another spellcaster in the party, they'll be covering some roles and utility options as well with their spells (and subclass features, for that matter).

So there's 4 spells you aren't a fan of. No problem. Feel free to actually make your own list. The point isn't that this is the best spell list imaginable, but it's a solid starting point to show that even Wizards in tier 3 are extremely limited by spell preparation in the effects they can access in a given day. Compare to white room Wizards that always have the perfect spell prepared, always have the slot remaining for it, always use it at the perfect moment, and never have to worry about what's coming later in the adventure, or what came before. There's a substantial difference in white room Wizard power and Wizard power at an actual table.

[Dork_Forge]

Have some catching up to reply to in the thread, but this should be quickly addressed:




regarding mass suggestion: while it won't work against every enemy, there are a lot of enemies where "come work for me and I'll pay you more money than you're getting" is a perfectly reasonable suggestion. certainly more reasonable than "give away your livelihood as a knight to the next peasant you meet" which is the explicit example in the books. it isn't universal, but a lot of enemies that a typical PC group will be facing are not known for their extreme loyalty.

You are either misremembering the example, or you are giving far too much value to a horse. The example is a knight giving their horse to the first peasant they meet, which has nothing to do with their livelihood, they'd just buy (or request) another horse.


if you use a high enough level slot, it is even possible that a group you used mass suggestion on *months* ago is still following you around and making hard challenges easy today.

Making hard challenges easy sounds like they're risking their lives fighting for you, which is what the domination spell is for, not suggestion. This sounds like spell over reach.


also, I have to say your spell list looks a little weird to me. I mean, I guess if you're *specifically* a blaster-oriented wizard you might still be packing magic missile at level 11, but most wizards won't need that. many won't even have fireball at level 11, at least not as a standard option (if they know they're going someplace with a lot of mooks to deal with perhaps, but fireball's heyday was 6 levels ago, by this level you use it for niche scenarios not as your first option). I have doubts about preparing both misty step and dimension door, and while I see many choosing counterspell I don't find dispel magic to be nearly as common (the ability to dispel an effect *after* it has screwed you over is far less valuable than the ability to prevent the effect entirely, and it is often more effective to target the enemy or their ability to concentrate than the spells they're casting on themselves).

I don't understand your position on some of these spells:

-Misty Step & Dimension Door: The bonus action nature of Misty Step is its main appeal, whilst the range of DDoor is overkill for in combat use unless you're fleeing in a known direction. You also don't just stop using lower-level slots when higher level ones become available when they can do the job just fine.

Magic Missile - Auto hit force damage is always useful, I'd hardly call a Wizard blaster orientated for keeping it handy in a game that revolves primarily around combat.

Fireball - This is another case of why wouldn't you just use a 3rd level spell if it would do the job? Or what about when you're out of higher level slots, or want to conserve them? Despite common whiterooming casters don't just magically have their best resources to hand when they're needed most, that's part of the player's resource management.

Counterspell vs Dispel Magic - These are entirely different and you're looking at them both from an enemy caster casting in combat perspective. Counter Spell won't do diddly against the buff spells the enemy applied before heading into combat, nor will it free your ally from a debuff, or disable a spell based obstacle whilst exploring. There's easily value for both here, just ideally you'd want to have Dispel prepared by another character like a Druid to free up your list and slots.

And your criticism seems to imply that you should just abandon spells, never preparing them again once a similar role spell at a higher level is unlocked. By that token why would you ever Dimension Door once you knew Teleport?


and of course, if you have another spellcaster in the party, they'll be covering some roles and utility options as well with their spells (and subclass features, for that matter).


Except they might not, or they might prefer to spend their slots on a single type of play, or they could be a Warlock, or you might not want to put all of your eggs in a single casting basket.


There's a substantial difference in white room Wizard power and Wizard power at an actual table.

The tagline of my memoirs.

[SharkForce]

so out of curiosity, if polymorph isn't shining in combat (and while it isn't shining *nearly* as bright as it did at level 7, I would say it is still shining), what exactly do you call the *fighter's* ability to cause someone to suddenly go from ~10 HP to ~140 and inflict sustained damage shockingly close to what a level 11 fighter can sustain, plus adding in the restrained condition?

because really, I can't help feeling that I must be missing *something* here because I can't think of *anything* the fighter does that compares. almost as if that level 4 spell slot is having a huge impact on that combat which a non-spellcaster would struggle to compare with.

and of course, this is without even talking about the fact that I EXPLICITLY pointed out that some supplements have beasts that go up to the low teens in CR, and some of those beasts quite frankly look like their CR is at least a few points too low.

regarding mass suggestion: if the mooks felt that fighting was harmful to them, they wouldn't be doing it in the first place and you could just walk past without fighting. regarding the knight being able to just pull another horse out of their ass or whatever it is people think is happening, a warhorse costs 400 gp. no, a knight is not going to just casually request another one.

4 spells being freed up means 4 more utility spells, plus the fact that polymorph provides a lot of utility. sounds like we're up to around 8 powerful utility options, compared to what a non-spellcaster would be bringing... doesn't sound that bad to me.

regarding specific spells: magic missile does pretty minor damage unless you have stuff that boosts it (assuming your DM uses that interpretation of how damage boosts work with magic missile. I for one haven't met a DM that does). now, if you *are* a hexvoker (that nuking specialist I mentioned earlier) and your DM allows you to dial it up to 11 then by all means, prepare it. for others, at level 11? as a level 3 spell slot you'd be looking at an average of 17.5 guaranteed damage to a single target. or an average of 3.5 guaranteed damage 5 times. I'm supposed to believe I just can't bear to give that up? personally, I think I'll be able to make that sacrifice just fine, thanks.

misty step and dimension door: either I need to be able to move someone else (dimension door) or I don't. misty step may as well cost an action for a wizard, because the cantrip I get to cast alongside it certainly isn't awe-inspiring. if I do need to move someone else, I feel like that calls for a comparison... after all, why is this character responsible for getting another character out of trouble? shouldn't a warrior who is an expert at combat have some tools for this sort of scenario? why can't they get themselves out of trouble? why are we relying on the wizard (or other spellcaster) to provide the tools that allow the warrior types to do their job?

fireball: again, useful if there's a big pile of mooks, and if you know they're going to be coming I can see adding it to your prepared list. otherwise, no. it isn't that good outside of that one scenario by this time. at level 5, it was dealing quite respectable damage even to enemies near your CR. at level 11, enemies can easily have over 100 health even when they're mooks. 28 damage, save for half, is really not that impressive any more... unless I have some reason to believe there is going to be a horde of CR 4 mooks being held at a chokepoint all trying to dogpile their way through, fireball is not going to have a huge impact.

dispel magic: ummm.. how is counterspell *not* removing the magic effects your enemy is trying to use? why would I waste valuable spell slots and more importantly actions dispelling an enemy buff, when the buff is probably an inconvenience at worst? isn't it better to hit the one concentrating on the buff and make them drop it either from losing concentration or otherwise losing the ability to concentrate?

regarding warlocks not bringing utility: pardon me, but why wouldn't they? they can know 11 spells at level 11. do you really think their 3 level 5 spell slots per short rest need that much variety in *combat* spells?

[Dork_Forge]

regarding mass suggestion: if the mooks felt that fighting was harmful to them, they wouldn't be doing it in the first place and you could just walk past without fighting. regarding the knight being able to just pull another horse out of their ass or whatever it is people think is happening, a warhorse costs 400 gp. no, a knight is not going to just casually request another one.

Fighting is always going to be potentially harmful, people do dangerous jobs in real life because they pay more (or they find them more exciting) than safe jobs, or because they feel that's all they can do. There's no situation you're suggesting a combat won't be harmful to someone participating in it.

And who cares if it costs 400GP? It's a knight not a local baker, I never said it would be insignificant, but the notion that their entire livelihood revolves around a horse that is likely to die or be injured (and then put down) in combat, or that the knight will simply out live, is outrageous. This also assumes that absolutely every little thing a knight does is on the back of a warhorse.

What follows I think shows a thought process of: if I'm casting a spell it must be really powerful or one of the best options at this level, or something similar to it, because I can't parse it otherwise.


regarding specific spells: magic missile does pretty minor damage unless you have stuff that boosts it (assuming your DM uses that interpretation of how damage boosts work with magic missile. I for one haven't met a DM that does). now, if you *are* a hexvoker (that nuking specialist I mentioned earlier) and your DM allows you to dial it up to 11 then by all means, prepare it. for others, at level 11? as a level 3 spell slot you'd be looking at an average of 17.5 guaranteed damage to a single target. or an average of 3.5 guaranteed damage 5 times. I'm supposed to believe I just can't bear to give that up? personally, I think I'll be able to make that sacrifice just fine, thanks.

Again, auto hitting force damage. Sometimes you just need to hit the thing, or damage typing becomes a problem. Fighting multiple casters? Then throw one missile at each of them to force concentration checks.


misty step and dimension door: either I need to be able to move someone else (dimension door) or I don't. misty step may as well cost an action for a wizard, because the cantrip I get to cast alongside it certainly isn't awe-inspiring. if I do need to move someone else, I feel like that calls for a comparison... after all, why is this character responsible for getting another character out of trouble? shouldn't a warrior who is an expert at combat have some tools for this sort of scenario? why can't they get themselves out of trouble? why are we relying on the wizard (or other spellcaster) to provide the tools that allow the warrior types to do their job?

You're completely ignoring the increased range of Dimension Door, and the very nice boon of not needing to see where you're going.

I also have no idea why you're talking about saving martials, Clerics and Druids have neither spell and Bards only have DDoor, and even then just because a spell is on your spell list doesn't mean they actually have it at that moment.

Caster =/= Wizard

And martials are more likely to have the means to escape a situation mundanely (which also mean cheaper, and that can't be Countered).

As for why are you saving a team mate period? Not only for a variety of teamwork reasons (you need to get the Rogue across a distance so that they can open the door, the healer to a downed person or whatever) but also:

Turn order.

You might choose to get someone out of danger because the monster goes in the turn order before them, and is likely to down/kill them.

Though in a team game the attitude of 'why should x help z' is not a good start.


fireball: again, useful if there's a big pile of mooks, and if you know they're going to be coming I can see adding it to your prepared list. otherwise, no. it isn't that good outside of that one scenario by this time. at level 5, it was dealing quite respectable damage even to enemies near your CR. at level 11, enemies can easily have over 100 health even when they're mooks. 28 damage, save for half, is really not that impressive any more... unless I have some reason to believe there is going to be a horde of CR 4 mooks being held at a chokepoint all trying to dogpile their way through, fireball is not going to have a huge impact.

It doesn't have to wipe out a horde of mooks, it can simply be a decent damage option to two or three enemies for, what in Tier 3, would be a fairly cheap resource. Again, it's not your best leveled stuff or nothing, but there's 0 reason why you'd be fighting equal or greater CR creatures all the time.


dispel magic: ummm.. how is counterspell *not* removing the magic effects your enemy is trying to use? why would I waste valuable spell slots and more importantly actions dispelling an enemy buff, when the buff is probably an inconvenience at worst? isn't it better to hit the one concentrating on the buff and make them drop it either from losing concentration or otherwise losing the ability to concentrate?

I'm not really sure why I needed to explain this but sure:

Counterspell isn't going to do anything to anything that's precast, or that you didn't have a reaction for when it was cast.

And it's not necessarily a single buff or concentration... it's every spell on them, many of which might not need concentration. But since you clearly need more convincing here's a list of some non-concentration, stackable buffs:

Longstrider
Mage Armor
Fire Shield
Mirror Image
Blink
Aid
Death Ward

And then there are fun things like, why try and break the enemy caster's concentration on a Hasted ally, when you can just dispel Haste on the affected creature.

Although you didn't address the using Dispel on traps and objects thing at all, which can easily come up in exploration or loot.


regarding warlocks not bringing utility: pardon me, but why wouldn't they? they can know 11 spells at level 11. do you really think their 3 level 5 spell slots per short rest need that much variety in *combat* spells?

You're acting like they got to choose their 11 spells at the same time, rather than building that list over time, but that isn't even what I was talking about.

I was saying that Warlocks need to think carefully what to spend their few slots on and many are hesitant to spend them in case they need them.

[Bovine Colonel]

Disclaimer: Dork_Forge raised the point that Caster =/= Wizard, which I'm going to ignore because it was made after I started writing this post and I'm playing a Wizard in a game. I can't say a whole lot about other classes.



Mage Armor
Shield
Absorb Elements
Misty Step
Dimension Door

Invisibility

Magic Missile
Web
Fireball
Hypnotic Pattern
Haste
Banishment
Polymorph

Counterspell
Dispel Magic

That's 15 spells already - and they are often some of the more talked about ones. I only took 4 spells that have out of combat uses.

I didn’t even have room for 5th and 6th level spells before I have to start making some significant decisions about which spells to prepare. And that’s with me being pretty choosy about the lower level spells I take.

Taking into account some of the discussion that's happened since this post, what do you think of the following spell list:

Mage Armor*
Shield*
Absorb Elements*

Invisibility for your party scouts
1-2 of Misty Step, Mirror Image*, Blink*, or Greater Invisibility* for self-defense depending on how well the rest of the party can protect you
Levitate, Phantasmal Force*, Suggestion, Banishment*, Otiluke's Resilient Sphere, or Hold Monster* to remove an enemy from combat
Misty Step, Levitate, Fly, or Dimension Door for general mobility and bypassing physical barriers
Web* or Hypnotic Pattern*, depending on how much you value the additional benefits of Hypnotic Pattern vs not hitting the same save as Mass Suggestion

Counterspell*
Tiny Servant, Fabricate, or any summoning spell depending on how creative you feel

Arcane Eye
Polymorph

Animate Objects* or Bigby's Hand*
Wall of Force

Mass Suggestion

Then for filler you can throw in Blindness/Deafness*, Web*, Dispel Magic, and/or Fireball* depending on what other party members can do and how much you value your concentration.

Spells with * are primarily used in combat.

In addition to the prepared list, an 11th level wizard has a list of spells which are not prepared but still useful:
Contingency is the one non-ritual on this list, of course. I won't go into detail but there are a lot of options here depending on the campaign, DM, and party.

Useful rituals include:
Alarm
Comprehend Languages
Detect Magic
Find Familiar
Identify
Unseen Servant

Leomund's Tiny Hut
Water Breathing

Contact Other Plane
Rary's Telepathic Bond

Spells I think are particularly useful are bolded.

All of which should be considered as non-combat options in addition to the 15-16 spells on the Wizard's prepared list, and some of which are hugely impactful.

Obviously I've left a lot of room in the prepared list for current campaign objectives, party capabilities, and personal preference - but all of that is information the Wizard player has access to and should consider when preparing spells. If there's a frontlining Spirit Guardians Cleric in the party you probably don't need Web. If most of the party is martial damage dealers, you don't need Animate Objects or any blasting spell. If the main villain is a caster and the party has decided to storm the villain's hideout, the Wizard player should obviously bring Dispel Magic. If you expect the adventuring day to happen outside on relatively open ground (say, because you're in a war campaign) then Clairvoyance is more efficient than Arcane Eye, or you can leave both spells out and have your party scout climb a tree or hill or building. If you're wrong you can always resort to scouting with a familiar.

The prepared list here obviously doesn't cover every possible situation, but I think it covers most of them. You won't have a save-or-suck spell to attack every saving throw, but I don't think that's necessary when you can instead solve, or at least make soluble, the majority of problems and trust the party to handle what's left. It's definitely much easier for a Wizard to gather information, bypass social and exploratory obstacles, turn difficult encounters into easy ones by splitting up or temporarily knocking out enemies, and rescue party members who've gotten in over their heads, all in the same day, than it is for a non-caster or half-caster to do the same. Part of the reason Wizards are strong in T3 is that they can fill whatever gaps are left in the rest of the party; as long as the other party members can do something, a Wizard can handle most situations so that in total the party doesn't run into an unwinnable encounter or impassable obstacle.

To address more recent posts, I think Magic Missile is an example of a spell that isn't necessary often enough to warrant a spot on a non-blasting T3 Wizard's daily prepared list. If the party runs into a rare situation involving multiple casters with concentration buffs, maybe Magic Missile would come in handy, but also maybe other party members can take the spotlight for once. For all other encounters, a cantrip works just fine. Similarly with Dispel Magic: most days you won't need to take multiple buffs off casters. And if party members die because the Wizard didn't have Dispel Magic prepared, I'd say that's the Wizard player's fault for not paying enough attention to the narrative to realize the enemy might have casters powerful enough that their buffs could mean the difference between defeat and victory.

The question isn't "can a caster [wizard, for the purposes of this post] handle every possible encounter" because the answer is obviously no, no build or character can. It's "are casters [wizards] too strong", with "too strong" defined however you like. A Wizard doesn't have to single-handedly solve every problem to be disproportionately strong both in comparison to other classes and from a DM prep perspective. It seems pretty clear to me that wizards in T3 are capable of handling a far wider variety of obstacles and challenges than non-casters or half-casters of the same level, built and played with the same degree of player experience and effort.

I am assuming of course that the DM is paying some attention to the narrative in a long-running game, which would naturally mean at any given moment that the party has some idea of who their most dangerous opponents currently are and why. Even Dungeon of the Mad Mage has the wizard Halaster in its premise, and I'd expect (not having played much of DotMM) a competent party to spend some time in each level figuring out who occupies it, how they want to tackle the challenges that are present, and what the next level is like before they go down. Outside of situations which are nigh-impossible for any party to account for, a Wizard player will be using that time to refine their prepared spell list.

[Frogreaver]

[11th-level wizard, 20 Intelligence]Mage Armor*
Shield*
Absorb Elements*

Invisibility for your party scouts
1-2 of Misty Step, Mirror Image*, Blink*, or Greater Invisibility* for self-defense depending on how well the rest of the party can protect you
Levitate, Phantasmal Force*, Suggestion, Banishment*, Otiluke's Resilient Sphere, or Hold Monster* to remove an enemy from combat
Misty Step, Levitate, Fly, or Dimension Door for general mobility and bypassing physical barriers
Web* or Hypnotic Pattern*, depending on how much you value the additional benefits of Hypnotic Pattern vs not hitting the same save as Mass Suggestion

Counterspell*
Tiny Servant, Fabricate, or any summoning spell depending on how creative you feel

Arcane Eye
Polymorph

Animate Objects* or Bigby's Hand*
Wall of Force

Mass Suggestion

Then for filler you can throw in Blindness/Deafness*, Web*, Dispel Magic, and/or Fireball* depending on what other party members can do and how much you value your concentration.

Spells with * are primarily used in combat.


So maybe actually make your selections. The whole point is to be able to discuss what all an actual Wizard brings to the table as opposed to a Schrodinger Wizard.



In addition to the prepared list, an 11th level wizard has a list of spells which are not prepared but still useful:
Contingency is the one non-ritual on this list, of course. I won't go into detail but there are a lot of options here depending on the campaign, DM, and party.

Useful rituals include:
Alarm
Comprehend Languages
Detect Magic
Find Familiar
Identify
Unseen Servant

Leomund's Tiny Hut
Water Breathing

Contact Other Plane
Rary's Telepathic Bond

Spells I think are particularly useful are bolded.

Yes. Rituals exist. Your point appears to be that they count for utility. I'm in agreement. But the point I made was that Wizards are left with a pretty small subset of the spells that get cited as good for their prepared spells. That's a big difference in power compared to a white room Wizard that has every good always prepared and a Wizard in actual play that doesn't.


Obviously I've left a lot of room in the prepared list for current campaign objectives, party capabilities, and personal preference - but all of that is information the Wizard player has access to and should consider when preparing spells. If there's a frontlining Spirit Guardians Cleric in the party you probably don't need Web. If most of the party is martial damage dealers, you don't need Animate Objects or any blasting spell. If the main villain is a caster and the party has decided to storm the villain's hideout, the Wizard player should obviously bring Dispel Magic. If you expect the adventuring day to happen outside on relatively open ground (say, because you're in a war campaign) then Clairvoyance is more efficient than Arcane Eye, or you can leave both spells out and have your party scout climb a tree or hill or building. If you're wrong you can always resort to scouting with a familiar.

It's still just a guess about what you are going to need and what is going to be most useful.


The prepared list here obviously doesn't cover every possible situation, but I think it covers most of them. You won't have a save-or-suck spell to attack every saving throw, but I don't think that's necessary when you can instead solve, or at least make soluble, the majority of problems and trust the party to handle what's left. It's definitely much easier for a Wizard to gather information, bypass social and exploratory obstacles, turn difficult encounters into easy ones by splitting up or temporarily knocking out enemies, and rescue party members who've gotten in over their heads, all in the same day, than it is for a non-caster or half-caster to do the same. Part of the reason Wizards are strong in T3 is that they can fill whatever gaps are left in the rest of the party; as long as the other party members can do something, a Wizard can handle most situations so that in total the party doesn't run into an unwinnable encounter or impassable obstacle.


You've not given an actual prepared list.


The question isn't "can a caster [wizard, for the purposes of this post] handle every possible encounter" because the answer is obviously no, no build or character can. It's "are casters [wizards] too strong", with "too strong" defined however you like. A Wizard doesn't have to single-handedly solve every problem to be disproportionately strong both in comparison to other classes and from a DM prep perspective. It seems pretty clear to me that wizards in T3 are capable of handling a far wider variety of obstacles and challenges than non-casters or half-casters of the same level, built and played with the same degree of player experience and effort.

I think there's a good argument that the martials enable that. If casters and wizards had to go through the whole adventuring day without martial at-will and short rest abilities available they wouldn't be left with the slots to complete the adventuring day.


I am assuming of course that the DM is paying some attention to the narrative in a long-running game, which would naturally mean at any given moment that the party has some idea of who their most dangerous opponents currently are and why. Even Dungeon of the Mad Mage has the wizard Halaster in its premise, and I'd expect (not having played much of DotMM) a competent party to spend some time in each level figuring out who occupies it, how they want to tackle the challenges that are present, and what the next level is like before they go down. Outside of situations which are nigh-impossible for any party to account for, a Wizard player will be using that time to refine their prepared spell list.

Why make assumptions that aren't guaranteed. I mean it seems obvious to me that if you always assume the best case for the Wizard then there's no wonder why you feel Wizard's are so strong.

*Just a reminder. I think Wizards are strong too. Just outside Forcecage and Wish: Simulcarum I don't find them stronger than martials to the degree that gets argued.


so out of curiosity, if polymorph isn't shining in combat (and while it isn't shining *nearly* as bright as it did at level 7, I would say it is still shining), what exactly do you call the *fighter's* ability to cause someone to suddenly go from ~10 HP to ~140 and inflict sustained damage shockingly close to what a level 11 fighter can sustain, plus adding in the restrained condition?

because really, I can't help feeling that I must be missing *something* here because I can't think of *anything* the fighter does that compares. almost as if that level 4 spell slot is having a huge impact on that combat which a non-spellcaster would struggle to compare with.

As you note above, Polymorph allows a character to fight about as well as a Fighter using no resources (A position I don't fully agree with but for the sake of discussion I'm willing to grant). A concentration spell being used at level 11 that at best mimics a resourceless fighter isn't really an effect significantly stronger than a level 11 Fighter is it?


4 spells being freed up means 4 more utility spells, plus the fact that polymorph provides a lot of utility. sounds like we're up to around 8 powerful utility options, compared to what a non-spellcaster would be bringing... doesn't sound that bad to me.

7 actually (since you are trading 1 spell I counted for utility for one of your 8 utility spells).

But more importantly this takes your combat options down to 5 spells.

Web
Hypnotic Pattern
Haste
Polymorph
Banishment

That's a pretty thin combat list. Sometimes it will be really strong due to the encounter really favoring web, hypnotic pattern or banishment. But there's also going to be many potential encounters where such a list has fairly minimal effects.


regarding mass suggestion: if the mooks felt that fighting was harmful to them, they wouldn't be doing it in the first place and you could just walk past without fighting. regarding the knight being able to just pull another horse out of their ass or whatever it is people think is happening, a warhorse costs 400 gp. no, a knight is not going to just casually request another one.

regarding specific spells: magic missile does pretty minor damage unless you have stuff that boosts it (assuming your DM uses that interpretation of how damage boosts work with magic missile. I for one haven't met a DM that does). now, if you *are* a hexvoker (that nuking specialist I mentioned earlier) and your DM allows you to dial it up to 11 then by all means, prepare it. for others, at level 11? as a level 3 spell slot you'd be looking at an average of 17.5 guaranteed damage to a single target. or an average of 3.5 guaranteed damage 5 times. I'm supposed to believe I just can't bear to give that up? personally, I think I'll be able to make that sacrifice just fine, thanks.

misty step and dimension door: either I need to be able to move someone else (dimension door) or I don't. misty step may as well cost an action for a wizard, because the cantrip I get to cast alongside it certainly isn't awe-inspiring. if I do need to move someone else, I feel like that calls for a comparison... after all, why is this character responsible for getting another character out of trouble? shouldn't a warrior who is an expert at combat have some tools for this sort of scenario? why can't they get themselves out of trouble? why are we relying on the wizard (or other spellcaster) to provide the tools that allow the warrior types to do their job?

fireball: again, useful if there's a big pile of mooks, and if you know they're going to be coming I can see adding it to your prepared list. otherwise, no. it isn't that good outside of that one scenario by this time. at level 5, it was dealing quite respectable damage even to enemies near your CR. at level 11, enemies can easily have over 100 health even when they're mooks. 28 damage, save for half, is really not that impressive any more... unless I have some reason to believe there is going to be a horde of CR 4 mooks being held at a chokepoint all trying to dogpile their way through, fireball is not going to have a huge impact.

dispel magic: ummm.. how is counterspell *not* removing the magic effects your enemy is trying to use? why would I waste valuable spell slots and more importantly actions dispelling an enemy buff, when the buff is probably an inconvenience at worst? isn't it better to hit the one concentrating on the buff and make them drop it either from losing concentration or otherwise losing the ability to concentrate?

I can discuss all of these, but that's really moving the discussion to the weeds. I gave you the option of selecting your own level 11 list. Why quibble over the spells I inserted when you can just pick your own? State your replacements and let's actually discuss.

[Waazraath]

And starting 30 feet away is hyperbolic, it's exceedingly common for monsters to have superior mobility to the average PC, with built-in speed bumps predominantly belonging to... well not casters. I DM two games a week regularly, with often higher-level one-shots and I've never used anti-magic fields to challenge casters, not once. You want to challenge casters? Take away the ability to see the monster (so many ways), run up to them and hit them in the face, have someone capable of Counterspell/Dispel Magic etc. It really isn't that hard to challenge a caster.

Late to the party, but dropping by to illustrate this point. I recently DM'd a boss fight against one of the Elemental Princes, as a stand-alone dungeon crawl. Had a pretty optimized party, 3 1/3 caster (out of 4 characters): hobgoblin abjurer, twilight cleric, swords bard, arcane trickster. Level 14, feats no mc, standard equipment conform dm guidelines (p35), only limitation was spells with expensive components (didn't want to hand out those for free, cause I think those need to be earned). The party didn't have a chance in against the CR 18 Prince (assisted by a CR8 or something wizard, but she hardly did anything except for being invisible and not being around to be hit). Party consisted of 3 pretty good optimizers, and the guy playing the swords bard whose grasp of statistics is "everything has a 50% chance of working because either it works or it doesn 't". But still.

Spoiler: if you might play this campaign once, you might consider not reading further.

It was butchery. I never tpk'd a party this hard in decades of DnD. The fight was against Yan-C-Bin, the air elemental prince. Legendary actions, lair actions, abilities, all are battlefield control: move people around, make them deaf, make them blind, create vision barriers with cloudkill and sleet storm. Between lack of vision, not being able to be where they wanted to be, and a barrage of very high saving throws that led to inevitibly a lot of failed concentration checks, the party did jack (and jack left town, for those knowing the reference). I don't think a party of martial characters would have succeeded in killing him, but at least they would have done more than the miserable 20-30 hp of damage (a few hits with a spiritual weapon, mabye 1 hit from the rogue without sneak attack or by the swords bard). Biggest contribution was from the twilight cleric which provided everybody with ungodly much hp and who cast cirlce of power which prevented a lot of damage and status effects (up until the inevitable failed concentration save). A decent fighter archer would have done more damage than this entire party with just 1 round of shooting.

[LudicSavant]

Late to the party, but dropping by to illustrate this point. I recently DM'd a boss fight against one of the Elemental Princes, as a stand-alone dungeon crawl. Had a pretty optimized party, 3 1/3 caster (out of 4 characters): hobgoblin abjurer, twilight cleric, swords bard, arcane trickster. Level 14, feats no mc, standard equipment conform dm guidelines (p35), only limitation was spells with expensive components (didn't want to hand out those for free, cause I think those need to be earned). The party didn't have a chance in against the CR 18 Prince (assisted by a CR8 or something wizard, but she hardly did anything except for being invisible and not being around to be hit). Party consisted of 3 pretty good optimizers, and the guy playing the swords bard whose grasp of statistics is "everything has a 50% chance of working because either it works or it doesn 't". But still.

Spoiler: if you might play this campaign once, you might consider not reading further.

It was butchery. I never tpk'd a party this hard in decades of DnD. The fight was against Yan-C-Bin, the air elemental prince. Legendary actions, lair actions, abilities, all are battlefield control: move people around, make them deaf, make them blind, create vision barriers with cloudkill and sleet storm. Between lack of vision, not being able to be where they wanted to be, and a barrage of very high saving throws that led to inevitibly a lot of failed concentration checks, the party did jack (and jack left town, for those knowing the reference). I don't think a party of martial characters would have succeeded in killing him, but at least they would have done more than the miserable 20-30 hp of damage (a few hits with a spiritual weapon, mabye 1 hit from the rogue without sneak attack or by the swords bard). Biggest contribution was from the twilight cleric which provided everybody with ungodly much hp and who cast cirlce of power which prevented a lot of damage and status effects (up until the inevitable failed concentration save). A decent fighter archer would have done more damage than this entire party with just 1 round of shooting.

Sounds like your players weren't prepared to play the vision and movement game. I think that has more to do with them than whether or not they were casters, since the tools to play that game definitely exist.

My own players are quite used to dealing with that kind of thing. For example, in the last campaign I ran the very first adventure I put together involved players going into a dungeon filled with mind-controlling siren song... so of course they plugged their ears like it was the Odyssey. The bad guys were planning for this possibility, and used their lack of hearing against them to set up their ambush. They used Pyrotechnics to turn their torches into areas of blinding fog (in an already pitch black environment), surrounded them with high AC hobgoblin knights on a narrow choke point, while bonus action Hiding goblins were firing at them, and non-sight-dependent AoEs were getting dropped on the party. All while uncovering their ears would expose them to a mind-controlling effect every round. That was at level 4, IIRC, and was one of like 5 encounters that day.

For another example, in the current adventure I'm running, the first encounter (of several in the day) consisted of Summer Eladrin archers making full use of their base 50 foot movement speed and bonus action teleports, leaping from treetop to treetop, using said trees for cover bonuses, and preventing people from moving closer with their fear aura. All while dryads ran interference, staying out of line of sight and repositioning across the giant-size map with their tree stride and using stuff like Entangle. That was one of the easier encounters of the day, but I know some groups would just not have been able to engage with the kiting enemy in any effective way.

These sorts of things can just wreck players who aren't ready to deal with it.


A decent fighter archer would have done more damage than this entire party with just 1 round of shooting.

So would a Warlock.

[Nagog]

If I'm being honest, I'm kinda tired of the hyperbole.
Thread after thread (because it's truly a timeless topic) where more than one person takes the position that casters in tier4 are so strong they're basically unstoppable. They trample all over demon lords and devil princes and godly avatars multiple times a day.


Many believe this because they create such characters and encounters in 100% white space, and build them specifically for such encounters. With spellcasters being so versatile (and having dozens of choices for customization each level up in spells chosen), they can be entirely specialized for one or two things.

As for them all being Wizards, you're 100% right. Wizards get a TON of spells that they can use with prep time, alongside some of the best instantaneous spells also available to Sorcerers and a few other classes. In that same whitespace where these characters are created and fight their battles, the non-existent DM has given these characters unlimited prep time.

[tokek]

Late to the party, but dropping by to illustrate this point. I recently DM'd a boss fight against one of the Elemental Princes, as a stand-alone dungeon crawl. Had a pretty optimized party, 3 1/3 caster (out of 4 characters): hobgoblin abjurer, twilight cleric, swords bard, arcane trickster. Level 14, feats no mc, standard equipment conform dm guidelines (p35), only limitation was spells with expensive components (didn't want to hand out those for free, cause I think those need to be earned). The party didn't have a chance in against the CR 18 Prince (assisted by a CR8 or something wizard, but she hardly did anything except for being invisible and not being around to be hit). Party consisted of 3 pretty good optimizers, and the guy playing the swords bard whose grasp of statistics is "everything has a 50% chance of working because either it works or it doesn 't". But still.


It may not be directly the same issues but when we did the end of Strahd I noticed how an enemy that plays hide and seek is incredibly hard to tackle with levelled spells. The issue is that you want to use Ready actions to hit them when they pop up to attack but that consumes your concentration and your reaction and if the enemy holds back for a turn it consumes your spell slot for nothing in return. If Strahd plays a tricky game he can make it too expensive to hold anything but cantrips ready and even that stops you maintaining any good buffs.

Martial characters can largely switch to ranged attacks, ready them, and that attack costs only their reaction. Playing hide and seek vs good ranged or all-rounder martial characters can be very painful, its like kicking a porcupine.

Its a thing that gets ignored in white room analysis but the Ready action is really punishing on casters.

[Gignere]

It may not be directly the same issues but when we did the end of Strahd I noticed how an enemy that plays hide and seek is incredibly hard to tackle with levelled spells. The issue is that you want to use Ready actions to hit them when they pop up to attack but that consumes your concentration and your reaction and if the enemy holds back for a turn it consumes your spell slot for nothing in return. If Strahd plays a tricky game he can make it too expensive to hold anything but cantrips ready and even that stops you maintaining any good buffs.

Martial characters can largely switch to ranged attacks, ready them, and that attack costs only their reaction. Playing hide and seek vs good ranged or all-rounder martial characters can be very painful, its like kicking a porcupine.

Its a thing that gets ignored in white room analysis but the Ready action is really punishing on casters.

I don’t think you can ready extra attacks. The martial is hurting just as much if not more if casters are readying leveled cantrips whereas the martials are doing 1 single attack, except for rogues assuming they somehow still get sneak attacks.

You should try and ready spells or attacks that can trap the guerilla tactics baddy. One of my former party we had a moon Druid and he shifts into rocktopus so his ready attacks also restrains the mob. That was super effective.

[Hael]

Martial characters can largely switch to ranged attacks, ready them, and that attack costs only their reaction. Playing hide and seek vs good ranged or all-rounder martial characters can be very painful, its like kicking a porcupine.

Its a thing that gets ignored in white room analysis but the Ready action is really punishing on casters.

I dont really understand. You lose half of your attack damage (more if you are a fighter).

Meanwhile something like a warlock is getting a good chunk of his potential damage.

[Waazraath]

Sounds like your players weren't prepared to play the vision and movement game. I think that has more to do with them than whether or not they were casters, since the tools to play that game definitely exist.

...

These sorts of things can just wreck players who aren't ready to deal with it.

...

So would a Warlock.

Partly, yes (also for the Warlock). On the other hand: what was crippling as well was the fact that long rest resources were blown due to all the failed concentration saves - animated objects, fly, see invisibility - a bunch of them got shot down before achieving anything. Other spells were used for healing (healing word and heal), revify, dispel magic, and more, and it wasn't the first fight of the day (though the dungeon is extremely weak compared to the boss fight). The fight dragged on for a round of 10, and (thanks to the cheese cleric with loads of temp hp and circle of power) at the end of the fight, everybody was feeling the pain of having the high level slots spended before hp became an issue.

[Eldariel]

Late to the party, but dropping by to illustrate this point. I recently DM'd a boss fight against one of the Elemental Princes, as a stand-alone dungeon crawl. Had a pretty optimized party, 3 1/3 caster (out of 4 characters): hobgoblin abjurer, twilight cleric, swords bard, arcane trickster. Level 14, feats no mc, standard equipment conform dm guidelines (p35), only limitation was spells with expensive components (didn't want to hand out those for free, cause I think those need to be earned). The party didn't have a chance in against the CR 18 Prince (assisted by a CR8 or something wizard, but she hardly did anything except for being invisible and not being around to be hit). Party consisted of 3 pretty good optimizers, and the guy playing the swords bard whose grasp of statistics is "everything has a 50% chance of working because either it works or it doesn 't". But still.

Spoiler: if you might play this campaign once, you might consider not reading further.

It was butchery. I never tpk'd a party this hard in decades of DnD. The fight was against Yan-C-Bin, the air elemental prince. Legendary actions, lair actions, abilities, all are battlefield control: move people around, make them deaf, make them blind, create vision barriers with cloudkill and sleet storm. Between lack of vision, not being able to be where they wanted to be, and a barrage of very high saving throws that led to inevitibly a lot of failed concentration checks, the party did jack (and jack left town, for those knowing the reference). I don't think a party of martial characters would have succeeded in killing him, but at least they would have done more than the miserable 20-30 hp of damage (a few hits with a spiritual weapon, mabye 1 hit from the rogue without sneak attack or by the swords bard). Biggest contribution was from the twilight cleric which provided everybody with ungodly much hp and who cast cirlce of power which prevented a lot of damage and status effects (up until the inevitable failed concentration save). A decent fighter archer would have done more damage than this entire party with just 1 round of shooting.

This is why I always think parties should always have a ranged type. There's no reason it can't be a caster though: the best Archers on this level are Swords Bards and Bladesingers anyways. And Warlocks work for vast majority of the possible enemies too. Though casters already have plenty of ways to fight mobile enemies: Dimension Door, Haste, shapechanging magic, Summon Celestial, etc. It's one thing if they don't use them: it's not just Yan-C-Bin: Solars, Zariel, many demon princes, etc. have a similar set of powers. Mostly this feels to me like a bunch of players expecting a plain oldfashioned slugfest and finding themselves in a tactical battle - classes not withstanding that's going to be rough.

[Waazraath]

This is why I always think parties should always have a ranged type. There's no reason it can't be a caster though: the best Archers on this level are Swords Bards and Bladesingers anyways.

Eh, no? Not in general (Battlemaster CBE/SS should perform better damage wise, probably something like Samurai with EA/SS as well), and definitely in this specific scenario where up to 3 concentration saves had to be made per round, up to DC 24. Caster archers can be fine but are depending for a large part on being buffed by concentration spells. Casting those costs often an action and/or bonus action, and loosing those buffs immediately is crippling for their DPR. Not using spell buffs leavs them poor man's fighters. Even Warlocks get some of their damage from Hex (assuming they still use it, but no real reason against casting it in the morning and immediately take a short rest afterwards) which quickly ends.


Though casters already have plenty of ways to fight mobile enemies: Dimension Door, Haste, shapechanging magic, Summon Celestial, etc. It's one thing if they don't use them:

Again, these are useless in this scenario. Dimension door was used, caster spend a 4th level slot and a round, and gets flinged (flung?) away the next lair action 3d6x10 ft (or finds Yan-C-Bin 100ft away, or finds himself in a sleet storm or cloudkill). Haste is a terrible idea, not only does it cost a turn but it also wasted the next turn cause one of those concentratin saves will likely be failed - several party members had it available but everybody was smart enough not to use it in this fight. Summoning, shapechanging (polymorph) - all concentration spells which are useless in this scenario.
Exactly this wasting of rounds by spells that don't do anything or are gone again the next turn made casters in this fight perform rather badly, compared to a simple fighter archer, or martials in general (if enough mobility to close the distance, which is a thing) - at least on the turns that they get to do something, they do something (damage) instead of wasting a turn.

[LudicSavant]

the miserable 20-30 hp of damage (a few hits with a spiritual weapon, mabye 1 hit from the rogue without sneak attack or by the swords bard)

The fight dragged on for a round of 10, and (thanks to the cheese cleric with loads of temp hp and circle of power)

You had a Swords Bard with apparently 10 rounds to act, and they (plus the entire party combined) somehow ended up doing 20-30 damage. That's not something that's gonna happen with tactical players accustomed to the kiting and vision game just because of some knockback and cloudkills/sleet storms. That's something that's gonna happen with, well... this:


the guy playing the swords bard whose grasp of statistics is "everything has a 50% chance of working because either it works or it doesn't". But still.

___


Battlemaster CBE/SS should perform better damage wise, probably something like Samurai with EA/SS as well), and definitely in this specific scenario where up to 3 concentration saves had to be made per round, up to DC 24. Caster archers can be fine but are depending for a large part on being buffed by concentration spells. Casting those costs often an action and/or bonus action, and loosing those buffs immediately is crippling for their DPR. Not using spell buffs leavs them poor man's fighters. Even Warlocks get some of their damage from Hex (assuming they still use it, but no real reason against casting it in the morning and immediately take a short rest afterwards) which quickly ends.

Stuff like "losing Concentration on a spell" isn't going to be enough to lead to "20-30 damage over 10 rounds for the entire party combined." There's gotta be more going wrong there, because even if your "poor man's Fighter" assertion was true, a poor man's Fighter does more damage than that.

To me, it just looks like a textbook case of players being unprepared for a certain kind of matchup. Enemies like Yan-C-Bin or others (like, say, Titivilus) can basically stop players unaccustomed to dealing with kiting and vision from playing the game. That goes for both martials and casters. After all, there are an awful lot of martials that would have more trouble engaging Yan-C-Bin than a decent fighter archer, too.

What's more, Yan-C-Bin has ways to make life difficult for fighter archers, too -- he can kite behind full cover walls or even through cracks in walls with Air Form, on top of messing with their vision and movement. At which point that Fighter might be wishing for some of those tools you deemed "useless" like Dimension Door delivering him to a position to unleash his Action Surge combo (even if he's gonna get knocked back after).

[Eldariel]

Eh, no? Not in general (Battlemaster CBE/SS should perform better damage wise, probably something like Samurai with EA/SS as well), and definitely in this specific scenario where up to 3 concentration saves had to be made per round, up to DC 24. Caster archers can be fine but are depending for a large part on being buffed by concentration spells. Casting those costs often an action and/or bonus action, and loosing those buffs immediately is crippling for their DPR. Not using spell buffs leavs them poor man's fighters. Even Warlocks get some of their damage from Hex (assuming they still use it, but no real reason against casting it in the morning and immediately take a short rest afterwards) which quickly ends.

Sure, without buffs a caster archer isn't stronger than a Fighter: but a caster and their simulacrum [which you, granted, effectively banned with the material component rule - in the adventure path, they'd easily have treasure for all the casting they might want to do by that point] are likely to outperform a martial even without a buff (it's like having a free Action Surge every round). And this particular scenario has a lot of Concentration breakers; it's actually kind of a poor example for archers though because, assuming you fought in the cave, it's a cramped area and the ranges are short enough that you're fine without an archer.


Again, these are useless in this scenario. Dimension door was used, caster spend a 4th level slot and a round, and gets flinged (flung?) away the next lair action 3d6x10 ft (or finds Yan-C-Bin 100ft away, or finds himself in a sleet storm or cloudkill). Haste is a terrible idea, not only does it cost a turn but it also wasted the next turn cause one of those concentratin saves will likely be failed - several party members had it available but everybody was smart enough not to use it in this fight. Summoning, shapechanging (polymorph) - all concentration spells which are useless in this scenario.
Exactly this wasting of rounds by spells that don't do anything or are gone again the next turn made casters in this fight perform rather badly, compared to a simple fighter archer, or martials in general (if enough mobility to close the distance, which is a thing) - at least on the turns that they get to do something, they do something (damage) instead of wasting a turn.

But they are not useless. They're tools that need to be deployed appropriately to be useful: e.g. Dimension Door can be used to get someone in melee range to deliver some telling hit [though in this case, it's probably not necessary since again the cavern is small enough that you can probably just reach everything you care about with spells - trying to get a few Sneak Attacks off with the Arcane Trickster might've been worth it though], if need be, while Haste (not useful in that particular fight due to not really needing it; the ranges are short enough) is for long range fighting and kiting. If they were wasted, that's a matter of using them wrong. The Concentration is not exactly undoable: while the DCs are pretty high, if they have +10ish range and rerolls, a Bless+Leadership stack from Planar Bound Couatl could make them favoured on all those checks.

There are many avenues to pursue as a party of casters here but provided by your description, they failed to produce a coherent strategy. Which is actually what seems to produce these assumptions: casters can absolutely stumble and be used horribly if their powers are not used in a tactically sound way. There's more complexity to caster play, especially against hypermobile enemies like Yan (though the book's classification of a "CR18" is a bit of a misnomer: it's a much more formidable fight than a Pit Fiend, a Planetar, a Balor or similar. Its proper CR especially with the lair actions is much closer to CR 22-25 range), which means that there's more room to screw up but that does not detract from their power but the player competence.


Yan is annoying because he has no real reason to be there to be full attacked at all: even a Fighter (or any martial) Archer is reduced to a single readied attack a round if not first in initiative if he simply chooses to use his teleport or form shifting to not be an available target. This is where the party needs mobility effects to force the issue and actually engage with him. A blind Fighter forced to attack with readied actions is not much better than anything the party had going on for them.

[Frogreaver]

Seems like an easy way to resolve this.

Let one of the caster advocates take the exact party with whatever spells they had prepped and slots left into a mock encounter set up exactly the same. If possible let the same DM run the enemies as did against the players.

Let’s see what happens.

[Willowhelm]

Seems like an easy way to resolve this.

Let one of the caster advocates take the exact party with whatever spells they had prepped and slots left into a mock encounter set up exactly the same. If possible let the same DM run the enemies as did against the players.

Let’s see what happens.

I’d like to see this.

A while ago there was another challenge where ludic produced a generalist build. (It might have been a jorasco generalist?) He had a party of just that build repeated 4 times. I’d like to see how that would fare too. As it is not being built just for this specific encounter it would seem a fair test.

Edit: I don’t remember the original thread but I believe the build ended up in the eclectic builds thread as: The Celestial Giftlock (Or “The Ever-Living Generalist”)

https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25029862&postcount=1095

[Frogreaver]

IÂ’d like to see this.

A while ago there was another challenge where ludic produced a generalist build. (It might have been a jorasco generalist?) He had a party of just that build repeated 4 times. IÂ’d like to see how that would fare too. As it is not being built just for this specific encounter it would seem a fair test.

Thanks.


Regarding the 4 wizard party,

The original party relied on no multiclassing. Are the proposed wizards multiclass wizards?

I doubt we will ever agree on resource attrition for such a party. Part of this challenge is related to the resource attrition.

Also, the spell list being overly geared for combat could also be a problem (even if itÂ’s not specifically geared toward this combat).

Also, knowing the exact enemy and being able to look up his stat block and abilities favors a full caster party much more due to their potential versatility. Part of the challenge involves not having perfect information to make perfect decisions. A normal party has much fewer decision points than a full caster party - meaning even with info most actions (especially by martials) are likely to be similar.

[LudicSavant]

I’d like to see this.

A while ago there was another challenge where ludic produced a generalist build. (It might have been a jorasco generalist?) He had a party of just that build repeated 4 times. I’d like to see how that would fare too. As it is not being built just for this specific encounter it would seem a fair test.

It was this one: The Ever-Living Generalist (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25029862&postcount=1095).

I was originally going to make a party of 4 different Warlocks with complementary schticks, but the writeup was getting too big / taking too long to write to adequately explain how to play 4 very different builds with lots of options and synergies, and I was afraid people would just go tl;dr, so I just repeated the healer build 4 times because it was already more than sufficient to the task. :smalltongue:

But yeah. They certainly weren't built specifically for Yan-C-Bin, so feel free to use 'em.