One D&D Identifying and Fixing Foundational Issues with 5e (e.g. Martial v Casters) [Archive]

Stangler

2022-10-05, 12:06 PM

There are a lot of foundational issues with 5e but one of the most talked about issues in terms of balance and design issues in 5e is the martial v caster divide and I think it starts with the massive difference in the foundation of caster progression vs martial progression.

The spell slot table offers relatively steady increases in terms of both power and options for all casters. Increases in power come from both more uses of spells but also access to spells that keep getting more powerful. All the while the number of options at a caster's disposal are increasing. It also works to undo one of the major weaknesses of casters early on which is running out of resources during an adventure day unless the adventure day also sees an increase in rounds. Their cantrips also scale up increasing their baseline damage. Once this foundation is established differentiation between caster classes is then established through spell selection and additional features on top of the spell progression.

When looking for the common foundation of progression for martial classes I am not sure there even is one. Extra attack at level 5 is close but even with that there is the rogue exception. The advantage in HPs and access to armor progression is something but not a lot. The fighter has extra attack at 11 and 20 which really count for a strong core to their class but as progression goes it is very spiky and even though it adds power it doesn't really add options. Rogue sneak attack progression on the other hand is far more consistent. If you consider these two options I think the rogue progress serves as a much better foundation to build off of than the fighter but there are ways to smooth out the fighter progress so that it doesn't feel so uneven. Each class gets something to help them scale up but without a common foundation it becomes largely uneven.

If I was WotC I would take a step back and decide on a way to provide some means of common progression for martial classes that can serve as a foundation for everything else. When comparing them to casters I would try and decide what are the pros and cons of martials v casters. I don't expect martials to have the breadth of options of casters or the concentrated power of high level spells like wish but there is clearly room to carve out an advantage for them. The most obvious place to start with a martial progression is the actual power and options they have with regards to their martial prowess (i.e. their weapon).

So when I look at the revised Hunter I see them losing power attack (-5/+10), horde breaker, and volley. If I was personally responsible for rebuilding a foundation for all martial classes these three features would 100% be part of that foundation. Obviously no one knows what WotC is doing but my money is that they are rebuilding the foundation of martial progression.

At this point there is still plenty more to talk about with regards to the martial and caster divide but I think at the core of addressing the issue is a foundation for non martials that impacts combat and non combat by having a progression in terms of both power and options. Casters have a foundation that can support those 4 things and martials do not.

There are also other foundational issues that impact the Ranger. TWF losing the BA requirement is a foundational improvement because it allows other features to build off of the BA without taking away from the damage of those options like HM. Freeing up the BA for Hunter's mark means it is built on top of a 3 attacks per round base which provides a bigger benefit than a 2 attacks per round base. HM losing the concentration requirement means other spells can be built on assuming HM is up. So one foundational issue can easily lead to new foundational issues both good and bad. Personally I think HM is too powerful and becomes an ability that the Ranger ALWAYS wants on which isn't so much a choice as a feature.

So am I the only one that sees things this way? I am an optimist by nature so I think WotC is working on these issues but I know others have doubts. What are some other foundational issues in 5e that you think need fixing? I think the foundational issues of 5e is a major reason people don't tend to play the higher levels so it is worth thinking about them. The assumed adventure day could be considered a foundational issue of course and that is a massive can of worms. Plenty to talk about.

deadman1204

2022-10-05, 04:46 PM

animorte

2022-10-05, 04:59 PM

I truly look forward to seeing all that is in store for martials when they release the martial base classes for us to annihilate with our criticism and disagreements. Then I’ll get back to you.

Overall the simplest way that I could possibly describe my position is that casters have spells that are just too strong.

I have played a campaign (and some other one-shots) where nothing above a half-caster existed and it was easily one of the best experiences I’ve ever had. The sense of balance was much more evident. Big blasting and encounter-ending moments still happened and problems were solved with spells, but it was just a bit less.

Several problems with this are about the nature of Power Creep. When you bump something up and empower more things on more ways, the designers (and the community) very much frown upon taking any of that away. So the obvious answer is to try bumping up the martials, which it looks like they’re doing gradually while also experimenting with different forms of caster balance. They’re not doing a bad job of it so far, from what I can tell.

DrLoveMonkey

2022-10-05, 05:12 PM

Stangler

2022-10-06, 08:37 AM

Should we also discuss either buffing casters at low levels or nerfing martials at low levels?
You basically say all the advantages that martials have at lower levels are not meaningful, even though they are hugely impactful compared to a wizard getting like 2 spells for the entire day.

I think it is meaningful that casters start weak and end strong. I think that falls under a design decision about clear pros and cons of these types of characters. Martials are never going to get a spell like Wish either. I am not really trying to weigh in too much on what the exact right balance between martials and casters is from level to level because I think that discussion is largely subjective. What I am pushing is that idea that no matter what the design decision is there is a clear need to give martials a better foundation of growth with the 4 major factors considered (combat v non combat and power v options).

Thunderous Mojo

2022-10-06, 10:02 AM

Martials are never going to get a spell like Wish either..

Magic Items can provide Marital PCs access to Wish. Luckblades and Rings of Three Wishes have been around since 1977.

Clerics, Druids, Artificers and most Warlocks also never receive innate access to the Wish spell neither. Given, that T4 play is reputedly rarely engaged in by casual players, even most Wizards and Sorcerers will never access the spell.

Certain spells, (Simulacrum and Wish come to mind), should not be automatically available to players. Those are Orange Tier, Legendary powers.

It is fine for Legendary things to require quests, and time to acquire, and not be automatically gained at level up.

Stangler

2022-10-06, 10:32 AM

I think the adventuring day is definitely a foundational problem, which is somewhat mitigated by the Gritty Realism option in the DMG.

For one it definitely hampers the caster-martial disparity. At low levels it's actually pretty manageable, but you have to hammer your party with encounters, like 10/day, seriously.

It's also got an effect on short rest dependent classes. Like a Warlock who's in 3 encounters a day with no short rests in between is going to way under perform.

I think though, that may be too big a problem for a 1/2 edition.

The adventure day is the foundation in which all of the spells and abilities that are restored on a short or long rest are built. With large discrepancies from table to table or even session to session on how many encounters and short rests there are before a long rest the balance of everything is shifted.

This interacts with the foundation of caster progression which is a strong reliance on once per day spell slots. The number and power of which grow over time. Hit dice are to a certain extent also a core aspect of the issue because they are the resource martials tend to be spending throughout the long rest period (day or week). As a martial the need to long rest is almost always decided by HP considerations. So if casters are able to go longer as they level up then it is also important to look at how front line martials are doing with the HPs.

I also think the advantage martials have over casters early on (1 to 4) means that adopting gritty realism rules can really hurt casters early on which discourages the adoption of those rules if a group is starting at level 1. Even as a martial it feels like a wizard is a liability early on. That dynamic can be fun for some but certainly not for everyone.

Dr.Samurai

2022-10-06, 10:35 AM

Magic Items can provide Marital PCs access to Wish. Luckblades and Rings of Three Wishes have been around since 1977.

Clerics, Druids, Artificers and most Warlocks also never receive innate access to the Wish spell neither. Given, that T4 play is reputedly rarely engaged in by casual players, even most Wizards and Sorcerers will never access the spell.

Certain spells, (Simulacrum and Wish come to mind), should not be automatically available to players. Those are Orange Tier, Legendary powers.

It is fine for Legendary things to require quests, and time to acquire, and not be automatically gained at level up.
This is an interesting idea and I think it makes sense and parallels the type of question a character might go on to discover a legendary artifact weapon or armor.

That's actually another thing; artifacts and legendary weapons seem rather underwhelming in this edition... is that just me?

Greywander

2022-10-06, 10:54 AM

Dr.Samurai

2022-10-06, 11:01 AM

Stangler

2022-10-06, 11:28 AM

Thunderous Mojo

2022-10-06, 11:31 AM

Sol

2022-10-06, 11:39 AM

Psyren

2022-10-06, 11:41 AM

Greywander

2022-10-06, 11:47 AM

Cutting off the tops of mountains and wrestling rivers doesn't actually do anything. It sounds nice (but not really), but it won't actually accomplish anything.

Casters right now don't blow up the tops of mountains or wrestle rivers. These are not actual encounter resolutions.
Applying this mentality to casters would be like thinking Teleport is only useful for grocery shopping and has no practical value in an actual adventure. What if there is an enemy fortress on top of the mountain? What if a massive river is about to flood the city? You say these aren't encounter resolutions, but they are for specific encounters.

And obviously these were just a few examples of the types of abilities high level martials should have. If the fighter can cut mountains, they can probably cut a lot of other things, too. And that wouldn't be the only supernatural ability they would get. After all, it's not like casters only learn one spell. We could imagine that maybe martials might have about as many mythical feats they can perform as casters have spells, though there are other ways to balance it.

Last time this topic came up, someone suggested an ability for rogues that lets them turn a non-DEX saving throw into a DEX save, allowing them to e.g. dodge poison or mind control. That's certainly something that would be of practical use, and fits really well with the concept of a rogue as a mythical ability.

Dr.Samurai

2022-10-06, 11:49 AM

This reads like a 4e tactical-combat-only-no-roleplay sort of post, which is weird to me because 4e had superhuman martials.

You're right that those specific examples of martial superheroism are unlikely to come in handy once initiative has been rolled, but...don't you think that those skillsets would translate to monster slaying, in a better way than is currently mapped by martial progression?

Also, not every encounter is necessarily combat. *both* of the referenced (and likely metaphorical) martial demigods would present very convenient, epic salvation to a town being flooded, in a way equal but not superior to a high level druid or wizard.
I play a martial to fight things in combat. The fantasy of being a martial that can also wrestle storms sounds to me like the person should play a caster that can cast Control Weather.

Tier 3 and above martials should have things like Perma-Haste; when they roll initiative they are under the effects of a non-magical Haste effect, because they are that fast in combat. Things like "your number of reactions in a round increases by your proficiency bonus" and "you can make a number of attacks equal to your Strength score" or "your permanently under the effects of a nonmagical Freedom of Movement because you're implacable".

These effects are actually relevant to what a martial does, which is fight in combat. And they don't require the martial transforming into a different creature. Martials are so good that they can attack more, react faster, move more quickly, are harder to hit, can't be grabbed, etc etc etc.

If people can't handle these types of adjustments, I don't think we should even begin considering wrestling rivers and chopping mountain tops in half.

All that said, I'm not opposed to that because I know people want to see it. I just don't want it to be part of the base martial, because I don't want it for my character. I don't need to compete with True Resurrection or Teleport or Wish because I'm playing a martial and I'm not interested in bringing people back from the dead or bamfing around the world, otherwise I would have picked wizard. But can I compete with something like Meteor Swarm? Sure, make martials faster at high levels and give them AoE weapon attacks. Why not?

And to Thunderous Mojo's point, part of the issue is that casters are just getting more and more and more with every edition, and changing the dichotomy and making it worse and worse and worse. But the idea that that should change is outright dismissed. Martials should instead become casters without spells.

Xervous

2022-10-06, 12:06 PM

There’s three legs to the issue.

1. The decision to use or not use spells is a matter of casters deciding how encounters progress. Martials generally only get to resolve encounters once the casters have decided spell or no spell, and throughout this resolution the casters that refrained can still opt to choose spell. Encounters that Martials can decide tend to be a question of the martial beating the casters in initiative to deal with said trivial encounter.

2. Martials enjoy few to no explicit noncombat guarantees while casters have guarantees on top of whatever the GM whitelists the players to do.

3. The game does not highlight these differences in capabilities, nor impress upon the GM the impact of handling things (like skills, noncombat interactions, and special actions in combat) differently or the same for casters and Martials.

Eliminate 1 and you get part of 4e where everyone is a DPS stick on the same budget, or you get Shadowrun where the decker hides while the sam fights.

Eliminate 2 and you’re again getting the 4e “only part of the game your character has features for interacting with is combat, or close enough.” Or you give Martials unique defined options they can assert.

Eliminate 3 and GMs will be far more likely to think about what they need to do for their table, talk with their players about the subject, and come to a conclusion without watching 4 videos, reading 3 blogs, and seeing 2 threads get locked discussing the topic.

In short, pick one fix.

A. Make it so Martials and casters clearly play the same parts of the game in a similar way
B. Make it so Martials and casters each clearly don’t get to play all parts of the game.
C. Arm the GM with knowledge of the differences between the classes and inform them how different approaches have different outcomes. Presented with options, the GM makes an informed choice on how they handle the asymmetry.

Greywander

2022-10-06, 12:07 PM

I don’t think this is necessarily true.
A 20th level AD&D single classed Magic User could easily have 40 HP maximum, (or less).

A single classed 20th level AD&D Fighter, likely would have over 100 HP.
[...]
5e is built in such a manner that a Fighter does not necessarily have more HP, better Saving Throws, or a native substantial damage advantage on weapon attacks, compared to Magic.
Yeah, one way to handle the disparity is to go back to casters suffering from crippling overspecialization. I feel like they moved away from that intentionally, though, likely because a lot of people didn't find it fun. There probably is a way to make it more fun, but I think a lot also just depends on the mindset of the players. Those kind of players don't make up as much of their customer base anymore.

I keep seeing this "solution" and I have to wonder why the folks who want it are even playing D&D when things like Exalted exist.
That's fair, if you have issues with any system, then the better solution might be to find a different system. But the reason you keep seeing this solution is because people keep complaining about martial-caster disparity in 5e.

Keltest

2022-10-06, 12:18 PM

That's fair, if you have issues with any system, then the better solution might be to find a different system. But the reason you keep seeing this solution is because people keep complaining about martial-caster disparity in 5e.

People say it a lot, but when I ask people what they think the wizard does that the fighter should instead, they don't have a lot of answers. There's a couple recurring spells that cause problems, but other than that I don't think there's actually too much of an issue outside of white room scenarios.

pothocboots

2022-10-06, 12:33 PM

People say it a lot, but when I ask people what they think the wizard does that the fighter should instead, they don't have a lot of answers. There's a couple recurring spells that cause problems, but other than that I don't think there's actually too much of an issue outside of white room scenarios.

Have you considered you may be asking the wrong question? Instead of limiting the scope of what the fighter should get to wizard capabilities, have you ever just asked what a fighter should get?

For example, a fighter should natively get more actions in their turn at 11 and higher. A barbarian should be able to leap across a battlefield freely, things like that.

Phhase

2022-10-06, 12:36 PM

Make casting provoke an attack of opportunity. Make taking damage while casting force a concentration check. Make being grappled force a concentration check. That should go a long way.

Keltest

2022-10-06, 12:42 PM

Have you considered you may be asking the wrong question? Instead of limiting the scope of what the fighter should get to wizard capabilities, have you ever just asked what a fighter should get?

For example, a fighter should natively get more actions in their turn at 11 and higher. A barbarian should be able to leap across a battlefield freely, things like that.

Except I've never seen anyone actually come out and say the fighter is too weak/doesn't do enough except in comparison to casters. So comparing it to casters seems like the correct question

Xervous

2022-10-06, 12:54 PM

Make casting provoke an attack of opportunity. Make taking damage while casting force a concentration check. Make being grappled force a concentration check. That should go a long way.

The fighter wants to cross a 100ft chasm, he asks the GM. The wizard wants to cross a 100ft chasm, he asks the GM then casts a spell if he doesn’t like the answer. They’re not really playing the same game.

Stangler

2022-10-06, 12:59 PM

These effects are actually relevant to what a martial does, which is fight in combat. And they don't require the martial transforming into a different creature. Martials are so good that they can attack more, react faster, move more quickly, are harder to hit, can't be grabbed, etc etc etc.

II'm playing a martial and I'm not interested in bringing people back from the dead or bamfing around the world, otherwise I would have picked wizard. But can I compete with something like Meteor Swarm? Sure, make martials faster at high levels and give them AoE weapon attacks. Why not?.

I think the most obvious solution to combat is giving martials the fighter attack progression and martial feat progression that includes abilities that are increasingly powerful. Including both Single Target, AOE and some CC options. Combat in terms of doing damage is one of the easiest issues to address though.

I think the second issue of mobility and competing with meteor swarm or other higher level caster abilities gets way more complicated, especially when you are limiting yourself in terms of the sources of your power. At level 5 the game is already giving out fly as a way to expand the problems PCs are not only able to face but overcome. For a fighter without magic there is simply no way to compete without magic. The obvious solution is magic items but casters also get magic items. So once again there is a foundational disconnect between how the sources of power compare to one another.

I am not saying it is impossible to achieve what you want but it definitely limits options and pushes credibility to the point that it seems pointless to even try.

Dr.Samurai

2022-10-06, 01:08 PM

Keltest

2022-10-06, 01:16 PM

Stangler

2022-10-06, 01:19 PM

It's not obvious to me that we need to "solve" for all of these issues.

As an example, Xervous' comment seems fine to me. If the fighter needs to cross a chasm and can't fly over it, then it's an expedition either around or through (climbing down and across and back up).

This is just such a strange complaint to me. At a time when the caster can get everyone across, why does my fighter specifically need to be able to get across this chasm by flying?

I personally don't think martials have to do all the things that casters can do. One of them masters spells and uses magic. The other one fighters with a sword. These are two different things and we should expect them to be different.

The issue is that 100ft chasm is a challenge that makes sense at lower levels but as the PCs progress the world will present them with increasingly difficult challenges. The foundation of the casters support this but your no magic martial doesn't. When the game gets to the point that they are slaying Ancient Dragons it is time for the 100ft chasm to no longer be a challenge or it starts to break down conceptually. I am not saying a system can't just ignore this problem but I think it is pretty clear that the desire to limit martials creates problems both conceptually and with the game mechanics that can be offered to them.

In comics the no magic martials use technology to supplement their power and I think that is probably the only real solution in T3 and T4 for no inherent magic martials. Even in T2 it is often necessary.

Obviously this issue extends beyond the 100ft chasm and the players can always just do the thing where they fly their friends over. After awhile that gets a bit... stale.

Melil12

2022-10-06, 01:23 PM

Thunderous Mojo

2022-10-06, 01:31 PM

The fighter wants to cross a 100ft chasm, he asks the GM. The wizard wants to cross a 100ft chasm, he asks the GM then casts a spell if he doesn’t like the answer. They’re not really playing the same game.

This statement is, somewhat, inaccurate.
My 13th level Psi-Warrior will fly when they please, catch boulders with their mind, can manhandle someone like the best of bouncers, and barring that, knock someone around with their mind.

Winged Boots are an uncommon item.
Quite frankly, under resourced PCs seems to be a common issue that exacerbates the ‘martial/caster’ divide debate.

Boots of Flying are the Honda Accords of D&D…in other words: the item is supposed to be not that rare.

Spells for Magic Users used to be loot. There was no guarantee one found Fireball.

I will state this, I’ve read 4 separate persons, on two different Discord servers advocate for PC HP reduction/governors ala 2e AD&D, this week alone.

If part of the appeal of playing a badass Warrior, is being able to imagine being a paragon of toughness and resiliency, then the game probably needs to better model this.

Dr.Samurai

2022-10-06, 01:34 PM

Saelethil

2022-10-06, 01:35 PM

KorvinStarmast

2022-10-06, 01:40 PM

Magic Items can provide Marital PCs access to Wish. Luckblades and Rings of Three Wishes have been around since 1977. Technically, Wish as a spell since 1975(GH), Ring of Three Wishes 1974(M&T), and Luckblade 1977(DMG) :smallwink:

Certain spells, (Simulacrum and Wish come to mind), should not be automatically available to players. Those are Orange Tier, Legendary powers. Limiting wish to found rings or boons from deities/patrons might be a narratively satisfactory approach.

It is fine for Legendary things to require quests, and time to acquire, and not be automatically gained at level up. The game audience is conditioned to get stuff when "ding!" level up occurs. That conditioning isn't necessarily from D&D, but from related games via other platforms.

Things like "your number of reactions in a round increases by your proficiency bonus" and "you can make a number of attacks equal to your Strength score" or "your permanently under the effects of a nonmagical Freedom of Movement because you're implacable". Of these three, I like the first one best for Fighters, Rangers, Barbarians and Paladins. Not sure about monks, but probably.

Martials should instead become casters without spells. That thought could use a bit more fleshing out.

Make casting provoke an attack of opportunity. Opportunity attack. :smallwink:

Make taking damage while casting force a concentration check. It already does, and one someone's turn they can cast a spell; does that allow an automatic interrupt? That clutters up a turn.

Make being grappled force a concentration check. That should go a long way. Probably an idea that most folks can get behind.
But with that, you need to make it possible for the idea of being behind the martials meaningful; zones of control and such since currently, on their turn, a lot of PCs and NPCs can ignore who they are running past to get at the 'second row'

Dr.Samurai

2022-10-06, 01:45 PM

On a smaller scale than what has been proposed already. In a one-shot a few weeks ago I let full Maritals (not 1/2 casters) add their “Martial Level” to their long and high jump and 1/2 casters to add 1/2 their level. The Barbarian was the only one to take advantage of it but I thought it added a bit more mobility and superhuman ability without feeling supernatural.
I love the trope of hulk leaping :smallbiggrin:.

That thought could use a bit more fleshing out.
Well I was being sarcastic that people want martials to essentially have magic powers just so they can compete with the ever ramping up power levels of casters.

Stangler

2022-10-06, 01:48 PM

I am left wondering why, if the 100ft chasm is no longer a challenge at higher levels, it is assumed it should still be there? If my fighter can fly, why put the chasm there? If my fighter can't fly but you don't want to have an expedition to circumnavigate it, why put the chasm there?

Because at higher levels you have an ancient dragon to deal with and the mobility implications of that have grown exponentially since level 5 when a 100 ft chasm was a challenge. Flying is trivial to a high level wizard. When high level fighters are challenged by things that a high level wizard finds trivial it will create problems conceptually and mechanically for the game.

Once again this is just one example of a problem that becomes trivial for casters that martials have no innate progression system that gives them ways to deal with it. If there are other types of problems that martials are just better at then fine but there isn't that either.

Saelethil

2022-10-06, 01:53 PM

I love the trope of hulk leaping :smallbiggrin:.

:smallbiggrin: A flying enemy thought it would be safe 40’ up but it was close enough to a 3 story building for the level 15 Barbarian to get a running start, jump to the top of the building, and jump to it from the building. It was glorious.

Dr.Samurai

2022-10-06, 01:55 PM

Because at higher levels you have an ancient dragon to deal with and the mobility implications of that have grown exponentially since level 5 when a 100 ft chasm was a challenge. Flying is trivial to a high level wizard. When high level fighters are challenged by things that a high level wizard finds trivial it will create problems conceptually and mechanically for the game.

Once again this is just one example of a problem that becomes trivial for casters that martials have no innate progression system that gives them ways to deal with it. If there are other types of problems that martials are just better at then fine but there isn't that either.
Ancient dragons have a breath weapon that needs to recharge, and a frightful presence. Apart from that, they only have melee attacks. Their legendary actions are melee attacks. Their lair actions typically require a lair that likely has a ceiling and limits mobility to a degree.

If they stay up in the air and just wait for their ability to recharge, or if they fly, land and attack, and fly away, just use ranged attacks against them.

The problem is that if you're not a dedicated archer, your ranged attacks suck. The solution to that is not that martials should fly, it's that martials should be lethal with all manner of weapons.

I understand that this is just one example, but I want to point out that I don't think even this example leads to the conclusion people are arriving at.

Thunderous Mojo

2022-10-06, 01:56 PM

The game audience is conditioned to get stuff when "ding!" level up occurs. That conditioning isn't necessarily from D&D, but from related games via other platforms.

Getting stuff, doesn’t, necessarily, mean having to immediately get the best stuff. Powerful things, in MMOs are balanced by factors such as difficulty of acquisition.

Indeed, part of the psychological appeal that MMO raids had was that extreme rewards also meant extreme difficulty. Overcoming that difficulty, is a large part of the appeal.

Actually, this could apply to some Gary Gygax modules as well.😉

NichG

2022-10-06, 01:56 PM

ZRN

2022-10-06, 01:58 PM

Because at higher levels you have an ancient dragon to deal with and the mobility implications of that have grown exponentially since level 5 when a 100 ft chasm was a challenge. Flying is trivial to a high level wizard. When high level fighters are challenged by things that a high level wizard finds trivial it will create problems conceptually and mechanically for the game.

Once again this is just one example of a problem that becomes trivial for casters that martials have no innate progression system that gives them ways to deal with it. If there are other types of problems that martials are just better at then fine but there isn't that either.

It depends what kind of problems we're talking about. If there was a rule that, e.g., druids were irreparably colorblind, that would create a disparity between them and other casters - it just wouldn't really matter to overall game balance.

You could argue the same is true here, at least in a setting with regular access to magical items. The fighter can't fly or teleport, so he has to get his hands on magic boots or go find a runic gate when he wants to do those things. True, wizards DON'T rely on magic items to do a broad array of fantastic things, but if that just means they're spending their gold on scrolls and fancy robes rather than enchanted boots, that doesn't actually impact gameplay much.

Xervous

2022-10-06, 02:20 PM

I am left wondering why, if the 100ft chasm is no longer a challenge at higher levels, it is assumed it should still be there? If my fighter can fly, why put the chasm there? If my fighter can't fly but you don't want to have an expedition to circumnavigate it, why put the chasm there?

Xervous' point about 'not playing the same game' is the essential thing, not the specific example about the chasm.

I don’t care if it’s a chasm, a teleportation (misty step or w/e) permeable wall, or a merchant refusing to give you the time of day. The point is that the caster is often not constrained to the same decision making process as the martial, and that this is the system’s baseline state. Furthermore, the game does not inform the GM of this asymmetry, so any decisions to do something like being more permissible on martial skill checks is on or above level of contemplation as discovering coffeelock.

Worse, coffeelock was unintended while this is the intended state for Martials and casters. And if it’s explicitly the design intent, why doesn’t it say so on the tin?

Dr.Samurai

2022-10-06, 02:22 PM

If one person thinks the game is about getting into tactical level skirmishes and trading blows with things...
Yeah, that's called D&D. The entire game is built around tactical level skirmishing and fighting things.

@Xervous: I agree that more should go into the text explaining this to DMs. I often find my DM is more open to magical things with casters and not only less open for martials, but even more strict because of the perception that the martial should be more tightly bound by reality.

Telok

2022-10-06, 02:26 PM

I keep seeing this "solution" and I have to wonder why the folks who want it are even playing D&D when things like Exalted exist. The designers clearly don't want it, the majority of players don't seem to want it either, and even if

Because D&D is the 800 lb gorilla in the gaming room, the only rpg with wide advertising, and often the only rpg people will play or run no matter how much they complain about it. Its like living in a town where people only eat junk fast food because those are the only signs & adverts they see and they're used to it. Could be a great deli just down the street but the menu is unfamiliar and it's a whole extra 2 minutes to travel so they never go.

I haven't been a player in a non D&D game for around 25 years now. I've run almost a dozen different games in different systems, but I never get to play anything but the current flavor of D&D because people are such damn sheep about it.

Xervous

2022-10-06, 02:29 PM

Yeah, that's called D&D. The entire game is built around tactical level skirmishing and fighting things.

@Xervous: I agree that more should go into the text explaining this to DMs. I often find my DM is more open to magical things with casters and not only less open for martials, but even more strict because of the perception that the martial should be more tightly bound by reality.

In keeping with the intent of 5e, I agree there should be more explanations given in the core books. While I’d love to see more concrete options available to Martials it runs against part of the design intent of delivering expected sacred cows (things that are integral to D&Ds perceived identity). A hazardous tool with no warnings is risky in the hands of the unlearned. Tell people what the system does beyond the obvious numbers and they’ll be able to make informed decisions on how they run their tables.

Thunderous Mojo

2022-10-06, 02:30 PM

Xervous' point about 'not playing the same game' is the essential thing, not the specific example about the chasm. If one person thinks the game is about getting into tactical level skirmishes and trading blows with things, and another person thinks the game is about making sure that combat never actually happens by removing the root causes of combat before they take hold, then there's a potential for conflict if the table if they can't figure out how to have both. Now add to that that the person trying to have epic heroic fights has less power to make the game about that than the guy who wants to do nation-building and ascent to godhood, and there's why it manifests as a problem about disparity.

Misaligned Player priorities isn’t solely a class based problem.
A persuasive player, with Expertise in a social skill, can talk their way out combat.

The 3e Bard could infamously acquire a Ridiculous amount of Skill Synergies, and the Epic Player’s Handbook, indeed had static DCs for effects such as squeezing out of a Forcecage.

Also Magic can impede Magic. The Throne room in a Fantasy Great Britain, might have a Hallow-like effect, that prevents Charm Magic from functioning.

Misaligned Player goals can lead to strife, even if everyone was playing characters with identical stats.

NichG

2022-10-06, 02:33 PM

Misaligned Player priorities isn’t solely a class based problem.
A persuasive player, with Expertise in a social skill, can talk their way out combat.

The 3e Bard could infamously acquire a Ridiculous amount of Skill Synergies, and the Epic Player’s Handbook, indeed had static DCs for effects such as squeezing out of a Forcecage.

Also Magic can impede Magic. The Throne room in a Fantasy Great Britain, might have a Hallow-like effect, that prevents Charm Magic from functioning.

Misaligned Player goals can lead to strife, even if everyone was playing characters with identical stats.

Sure, but in the particular example of Martial vs Caster disparity despite multiple decades of debates on this there isn't any real lasting progress towards resolution at the level of system design, because fundamentally it cannot be resolved by system design.

You can make a system that says 'the game is about X and not Y' or 'the game is about Y and not X', but since the player base D&D spans includes large camps of people who very strongly only want X or very strongly only want Y, any particular decision to focus on one versus the other will split the playerbase. Like we saw with 4e.

Xervous

2022-10-06, 02:37 PM

Sure, but in the particular example of Martial vs Caster disparity despite multiple decades of debates on this there isn't any real lasting progress towards resolution at the level of system design, because fundamentally it cannot be resolved by system design.

The stool has three legs. Make everyone play the same game, make it so everyone plays a different part of the game, or warn users that a neutral GM will inherently favor certain classes.

Dr.Samurai

2022-10-06, 02:40 PM

MadBear

2022-10-06, 02:46 PM

I've always been a huge fan of the idea that leveling up represents the buildup of magical energy in the body, and this is how wizards/sorcerers/clerics are able to cast more powerful spells as they level. If I was a designer I'd consider making magical items a bigger part of the system, because the idea for martials would be that they are the battery that powers powerful magical items.

That +5 holy avenger is only slightly magical in the hands of a peasant who has almost no magical buildup. From a design perspective, I'd give martials the ability to use more/better magical items with the fluff reason being that casters are expending a large portion of their magical buildup on spells. The downside with this is that you'd have to make magical items more reliably findable or attainable. I know 4e's version of this was being able to turn any magical item into another at a minor cost, and that went over like a lead balloon. So I don't know what the best answer is, only that I think that'd be a fun and unique way to bridge the martial/caster divide.

Keltest

2022-10-06, 02:49 PM

Xervous

2022-10-06, 02:51 PM

Stangler

2022-10-06, 02:54 PM

Ancient dragons have a breath weapon that needs to recharge, and a frightful presence. Apart from that, they only have melee attacks. Their legendary actions are melee attacks. Their lair actions typically require a lair that likely has a ceiling and limits mobility to a degree.

If they stay up in the air and just wait for their ability to recharge, or if they fly, land and attack, and fly away, just use ranged attacks against them.

The problem is that if you're not a dedicated archer, your ranged attacks suck. The solution to that is not that martials should fly, it's that martials should be lethal with all manner of weapons.

I understand that this is just one example, but I want to point out that I don't think even this example leads to the conclusion people are arriving at.

As I have said the issues are both conceptual and game mechanics. Conceptually an ancient dragon just picks the fighter up and drops them off a cliff. Or breaths fire when they have it. Or drops rocks on them from afar. The conceptual idea of a no magic martial facing off against a massive dragon is a tough sell. Your desire to ignore the need for the fighter to be magical is a conceptual problem that gets increasingly worse as casters and enemies get more powerful. The power of casters and enemies shouldn't be limited by your desire for no magic martials.

Of course you can always just have the one punch man approach where no magic martial prowess is blatantly not tied to reality and effectively becomes magic anyway.

I feel like this side tangent is losing sight of the fundamental issue which is that in terms of both power and flexibility spell progression is hard to keep up with for martials. There is a need both in terms of game mechanics and conceptualization that allows them to keep up in a way that still allows for interesting gameplay for everyone involved.

Psyren

2022-10-06, 02:54 PM

But the reason you keep seeing this solution is because people keep complaining about martial-caster disparity in 5e.

Complaining seems to be all they're willing to do. That's not going to convince WotC to change anything when the market is drowning you all out with its wallet. What you should do is organize, make an alternate system or subsystem that does what you want successful, and then point to that and say "see, this is what we want, and we're willing to pay for it!"

Bring back ToB maneuvers, maritals become per encounter creatures and leave casters to daily resources.

Once per turn you get to use one of your maneuvers in place of an attack or use your BA to fuel extra actions.

Attack and use BA to gain DR/bonus ac/temp Hp/more attacks/ ect once per encounter.

Attack and replace one of your attacks with X maneuver once per encounter that: (Stuns/Sickens/disadvantage/advantage/temp HP/clears condition/adds elemental dmg)

As you level your get more options … maybe even ones that provide spell effects.

^ This is a good example - the proposal above would mean a lot of design time. If you want them to allocate resources to that, you need to show them there's high demand for it. The last time they did ToB was a proving ground for 4e, and they got burned on that, so I won't lie and say you don't have an uphill battle to get them to revisit that - but it's still your best option.

Have you considered you may be asking the wrong question? Instead of limiting the scope of what the fighter should get to wizard capabilities, have you ever just asked what a fighter should get?

For example, a fighter should natively get more actions in their turn at 11 and higher. A barbarian should be able to leap across a battlefield freely, things like that.

They can get those things now without a bunch of new buttons or maneuvers being stuffed into the system. Next question.

Because D&D is the 800 lb gorilla in the gaming room, the only rpg with wide advertising, and often the only rpg people will play or run no matter how much they complain about it. Its like living in a town where people only eat junk fast food because those are the only signs & adverts they see and they're used to it. Could be a great deli just down the street but the menu is unfamiliar and it's a whole extra 2 minutes to travel so they never go.

I haven't been a player in a non D&D game for around 25 years now. I've run almost a dozen different games in different systems, but I never get to play anything but the current flavor of D&D because people are such damn sheep about it.

And that sucks, but if "move away from the thing that's selling" is what you want them to do, you're going to have to put forth that effort.

NichG

2022-10-06, 02:58 PM

So... where exactly does the disparity come in? Is it people playing martials upset that they aren't as strong as wizards? Is it wizards annoyed that the martials aren't keeping up? Is it DMs that can't balance between the two?

I play as a martial and, as I've said many times, I couldn't care less that the wizard can fireball and fly and scry and disintegrate. I could be doing all of those things if I wanted to. But I don't. And I'm wondering if there really are all of these people that play martials and get upset, or if something else is going on.

Well I think there's three or four groups of players (roughly) with varying levels of tolerance of the other groups.

One group may take your position that 'D&D is fundamentally about the tactical skirmish minigame'. That's fine if they're playing with other people primarily from that group, whether those people are playing martials or casters.

But then introduce someone from the group that takes the position 'D&D is about ascending to godhood, interacting with weird fantastical abstractions, and doing epic gonzo stuff' and there can be conflict.

Even worse if you introduce someone from the oldschool style of 'D&D is about player cleverness in avoiding actually engaging with the uncertain parts of the system at all - if you ever roll dice or get into a fight, that means you failed'.

Because now those people are basically bidding to make the game 'not about stuff that is solved by hitting things with swords'. And playing casters gives those people more tools to push for their vision of the game. Meaning that the person playing the martial is still potentially 10x as competent as their characters in combat, but somehow combats where that would matter just happen less and less, and are more decided by things like making preparations or setting up gimmicks. Instead of going through the jungle and fighting or befriending the dangerous creatures on the way, fighting past the guards and the three generals of the demon king, etc, the game becomes about planning how to surprise the demon king on the toilet and kill them with an alpha strike before they get a chance to act, and all of the protections the demon king might employ and the possible counters to those protections and so on. Or it becomes about 'hey, could we just open up an Ether Gap under the demon king's kingdom and suck the entire thing into the void between planes?' sorts of things.

You also have discontent when you get players who thought they were signing up for tactical minigame, found that that's not what the game was going to be about, wanted to participate in the other thing, and found they had nothing to actually make contact with it.

Or, flip it around, lets say the DM and everyone really pushes 'this is going to be about the fights', makes house-rules to nerf the big plotty spells, etc. Then the people playing casters and wanting that other stuff are likely to see 'we don't want to play this type of game' as instead being 'we don't want casters to do casterly stuff - they should just be a refluffed archer'. So they don't want to play that and generally refuse to accept the 'fixes'. Because fundamentally those fixes don't allow the game to be about the things they play the game to explore. That's basically what happened with 4e - perfectly good game if what you want to do is the tactical minigame, terrible game if you want a game about experiencing going around a fantasy world and developing personal power and importance within that world.

Any individual table basically doesn't have a problem on average, so its not even that important of a discussion. But we get these threads at least once a week because, in aggregate, there is no single system that would solve this for everyone, and it seems like 99% of people misidentify the problem as 'oh if we just had the *right* nerf, it would fix everything' or 'oh if we just had the *right* buff it would fix everything' without engaging with the question of 'what do the people playing these things actually want the game to be about?'

Keltest

2022-10-06, 02:59 PM

In the case of <desired task> the martial player queries the GM for permission. Permission is qualified or denied, and the martial player jumps through the hoop or does nothing. The caster has the option of skipping the query, and of doing <task> anyways in spite of whatever hoop is presented, and often in spite of most denials.

There are players who dislike having to play casters in order to get access to abilities that situationally circumvent the GM’s opinion. They want to know what their character can do for at least some noncombat scenes, to broaden their options and input on the scene.

Edit: as above with Keltest’s example, lacking any such overrides means you wait to jump through the hoop until everyone has passed on using an override ... or the GM intervenes on the meta level.
Eh. Except for certain GMs, the permission thing is overrated. Fighter: "I pull out my bow, tie an arrow to the rope, shoot it across the chasm and climb across." More potential failure points, but no resources expended.

Dr.Samurai

2022-10-06, 03:07 PM

As I have said the issues are both conceptual and game mechanics. Conceptually an ancient dragon just picks the fighter up and drops them off a cliff. Or breaths fire when they have it. Or drops rocks on them from afar.
This is rabbit hole that none of us will get out of. Conceptually, an ancient creature of incredible physical power and genius level intellect and wisdom won't be taken out by a wizard either. Someone of an ancient dragon's charisma likely has their own pet wizards. If you want to decouple the game from its mechanics, we can speculate all day and night on how an encounter would actually go against an ancient dragon.

The conceptual idea of a no magic martial facing off against a massive dragon is a tough sell.
The sell is a team of highly competent adventurers that bring a variety of skills and abilities to the table in dealing with a massive dragon. Saying "this team needs to be all wizards or all demigods or some mixture of these" is 1000% boring and uninteresting.

Your desire to ignore the need for the fighter to be magical is a conceptual problem that gets increasingly worse as casters and enemies get more powerful.
So I keep seeing people say. And I've never come across it at a table.

The power of casters and enemies shouldn't be limited by your desire for no magic martials.
I'm guessing the "your" here is in the general sense. Leave me a non-magical martial. Make all the demigod martials you want. Make more storm-wrestlers than you can fit in Tornado Alley. Grant spellcasters every weapon and armor proficiency you want and 14 Extra Attacks. Just leave me a non-magical martial.

The people I currently play with don't have a need to play a character that can do everything all at once. Thank the gods.

I feel like this side tangent is losing sight of the fundamental issue which is that in terms of both power and flexibility spell progression is hard to keep up with for martials. There is a need both in terms of game mechanics and conceptualization that allows them to keep up in a way that still allows for interesting gameplay for everyone involved.
"everyone involved"

Again I ask, who has the problem with the fighter going up against the dragon?

EDIT: I agree though that martials can use some flexibility and some power, especially outside of combat.

Stangler

2022-10-06, 03:16 PM

Dr.Samurai

2022-10-06, 03:17 PM

I think you bring up some good points. I agree with the idea of martials getting more/better magical items. I feel like one of the problems with martials in general is that they need a source of power that can keep up with caster having magic as a source of power. I am less worried about doing more damage but there is a lot more potential in that Holy Avenger than the +5 weapon.
I agree with this as well. The default is +x to attack/damage, when martials can make better use of weapons/armors that open up opportunities in and out of combat.

Psyren

2022-10-06, 03:20 PM

Eh. Except for certain GMs, the permission thing is overrated. Fighter: "I pull out my bow, tie an arrow to the rope, shoot it across the chasm and climb across." More potential failure points, but no resources expended.

This. And the beauty of 5e is that you can quickly adjudicate stuff like that even if the designers forgot to.

ZRN

2022-10-06, 03:25 PM

So... where exactly does the disparity come in? Is it people playing martials upset that they aren't as strong as wizards? Is it wizards annoyed that the martials aren't keeping up? Is it DMs that can't balance between the two?

I've seen some DMs say that they've had players give up on certain characters (e.g. barbarians) because they didn't have enough mobility to keep up on the battlefield. I think there are also some players who want D&D to encompass the incredibly common comic/anime trope of a dude with superhuman strength/speed/etc. who doesn't have to wiggle his fingers and mumble magic words to use those abilities, which IMHO could be mostly solved with a few appropriate martial subclasses. Agreed, though, that if I choose to play a fighter I'm not mad that I'm unable to cast Plane Shift, because had I wanted to cast Plane Shift I'd have played a wizard.

Melil12

2022-10-06, 03:29 PM

^ This is a good example - the proposal above would mean a lot of design time. If you want them to allocate resources to that, you need to show them there's high demand for it. The last time they did ToB was a proving ground for 4e, and they got burned on that, so I won't lie and say you don't have an uphill battle to get them to revisit that - but it's still your best option.

Totally right they got burned bad by 4e. I don’t propose going that far.

Have a small set group (like Battle Master Maneuvers) that’s every martial can pull from once an encounter.

They can expand it as they create new books ect. And than make the Battle master who already focuses on these maneuvers even better. Like they can recall ones previously used and can keep more ready.

Psyren

2022-10-06, 03:30 PM

Totally right they got burned bad by 4e. I don’t propose going that far.

Have a small set group (like Battle Master Maneuvers) that’s every martial can pull from once an encounter.

They can expand it as they create new books ect. And than make the Battle master who already focuses on these maneuvers even better. Like they can recall ones previously used and can keep more ready.

We haven't gotten the Warrior UA yet - maybe BM maneuvers will be their Group's "thing."

Dr.Samurai

2022-10-06, 03:31 PM

I've seen some DMs say that they've had players give up on certain characters (e.g. barbarians) because they didn't have enough mobility to keep up on the battlefield. I think there are also some players who want D&D to encompass the incredibly common comic/anime trope of a dude with superhuman strength/speed/etc. who doesn't have to wiggle his fingers and mumble magic words to use those abilities, which IMHO could be mostly solved with a few appropriate martial subclasses. Agreed, though, that if I choose to play a fighter I'm not mad that I'm unable to cast Plane Shift, because had I wanted to cast Plane Shift I'd have played a wizard.
I prioritize mobility as well because I know as a melee character there will be times that are challenging to stay on an enemy or reach them.

I think a superhuman martial is appropriate and there should be subclasses to that effect (there are magical ones now that can do magical things). I would play a superhuman subclass and just dial down and explain my abilities differently. I played an Eagle Totem barbarian and described their "fly" ability at level 14 as giant leaps.

Stangler

2022-10-06, 03:33 PM

I agree with this as well. The default is +x to attack/damage, when martials can make better use of weapons/armors that open up opportunities in and out of combat.

Well my initial intent of this thread was to discuss fixing the problems inherent in the foundation of martial progression as opposed to get bogged down in everyone's different opinion about the martial caster divide.

At this point I feel like if I was in charge I would;

All "martials" getting the fighter progression in attacks.
Expanded Martial Feats to include things like power attack, AOE, CC, and buffs/de-buffs.
Clear magical item progression assumptions that include impacts beyond combat
Expansion of skill system including skill feats
Magical and non Magical Counters to Magic for PCs and Enemies

I think that is a good place to start.

Dr.Samurai

2022-10-06, 03:35 PM

Well my initial intent of this thread was to discuss fixing the problems inherent in the foundation of martial progression as opposed to get bogged down in everyone's different opinion about the martial caster divide.

At this point I feel like if I was in charge I would;

All "martials" getting the fighter progression in attacks.
Expanded Martial Feats to include things like power attack, AOE, CC, and buffs/de-buffs.
Clear magical item progression assumptions that include impacts beyond combat
Expansion of skill system including skill feats
Magical and non Magical Counters to Magic for PCs and Enemies

I think that is a good place to start.
Apologies for my part in derailing the thread.

I think the list you have there sounds like a great place to start.

Given that many magic items have a history to them, one of the justifications for a clear magical item progression could be something along the lines of "legacy" weapons and "sentient" items that are looking for the next hero (read: martial) to wield them. This won't be to everyone's taste, but throwing it out there for in-game potential at some tables.

ZRN

2022-10-06, 03:39 PM

Apologies for my part in derailing the thread.

I think the list you have there sounds like a great place to start.

Given that many magic items have a history to them, one of the justifications for a clear magical item progression could be something along the lines of "legacy" weapons and "sentient" items that are looking for the next hero (read: martial) to wield them. This won't be to everyone's taste, but throwing it out there for in-game potential at some tables.

Probably the best (only?) way to have a magical item progression that doesn't devolve to character shopping lists is something I believe someone suggested upthread, having many/most magic items progress with the character's level. Boots of Springing and Striding let you fly for brief periods at character level 11+ and so on.

Critical Role did/does a narrative version of this where their powerful relics get "unlocked" to higher levels at appropriate character moments.

Melil12

2022-10-06, 03:42 PM

Yeah, I don’t expect it … and the BM its self is a strong Fighter subclass. And the best example of a martial until you get to magical teleporting shadows or Magic Runes that give magical powers.

Thunderous Mojo

2022-10-06, 03:45 PM

ar. The conceptual idea of a no magic martial facing off against a massive dragon is a tough sell..

Which is why Sigurd had a magic blade, in mythology.

Falling damage is capped at 120 Hit Points of non-magical bludgeoning damage. A 6th level Barbarian, with a 16 Constitution and Rage activated could fall to Earth from near orbit, and live.

Meanwhile, a 6th level Wizard, doesn’t have that many spells in their spellbook, if their only source of spells is from leveling. They could have the Fly spell…..they also may not.

The DMG, has rules for improvised damage.
Huge sized creatures, in my game routinely sit on characters doing damage, applying the Restrained condition, and possibly adding Suffocation as well.

Fighters and others, can take it.

clash

2022-10-06, 03:59 PM

I think the game is too strict with what is allowed to be an at will ability for martials. For example aoe attacks or control attacks like tripping, etc should become at will at higher levels when the martial is better at fighting. Also the size of creatures suseptable to ride maneuvers should increase
I want to see a barbarian use a dragons momentum to flip it over his head into the ground Rogues should be automatically invisible whenever they hide in shadow and rangers the same when outdoors. Give fighters a climb speed and swim speed making them physical paragons. Monks have some stuff right. They can run up walls and across water.

What do you all think of abilities that aren't strictly speaking mythic but giving them stuff they can do at will and automatically that spellcasters still need to use spell slots for regardless of the level.

AntiAuthority

2022-10-06, 04:12 PM

You know, I'm just imagining some alternate universe where DND exists, but public opinion on this topic was reversed and how this would still sound if that were the case. And just to be safe, no one should take this as a personal attack.

(Begin Hypothetical Universe)

In this alternate universe, magic users/magicians would be capped out at David Copperfield, Houdini or Chris Angel levels of power, maybe slightly more when they hit Level 20, but they can pull off complicated maneuvers with enough prep time... And martial characters would be mowing down hordes of enemies with a single attack action, jumping thousands of miles as a normal part of their movement speed, regenerate from damage constantly (even during combat), can cleave holes in reality, talk to animals, have nigh-invulnerable skin, know some actual magic spells like certain mythological warriors (for example, a spell to turn invisible, a spell to increase strength, a spell to teleport, etc.) and can do everything the magician classes can but better... Like, magicians can make things disappear using mirrors while martials can physically move large objects faster than the eye, magicians can call upon doves and rabbits while martials can call upon mythological beasts, a magician can throw glitter in someone's eye while a martial can kick up a dust storm that envelopes a city block, magicians being able to guess which card you picked while martials being able to guess what you'll do within the next few weeks of your life, etc.

In this universe, the people demanding that magic users become more in line with mythological gods like Zeus, superhero comics like Dr. Strange or anime characters like Ainz Ooal Gown... But they're told they're trying to ruin DND for what it is. After all, magic of that scale isn't realistic, but we DO have magicians IRL and none of them are that powerful. They're told to get that anime-loving trash out of their beloved DND, and how it only makes sense that real humans be bound by the limitations of real people...

When those asking why it's only fair that the martials get to become that powerful, but magic users don't... Well, the martial supremacists say, "Well, of course it makes sense. Hercules is a martial, Cu Chulainn is a martial, Kratos is a martial, Sun Wukong is a martial, Superman is a martial... It's only logical that the martial classes be this powerful."

When the magic users bring up, "Most of those people aren't purely humans, some are gods/demi-gods/aliens/whatever."

The martial supremacists say, "Yeah but... They're martials. But let's look at you... Your magician wants to be like Zeus... He's a god. Is your character a god? Or Dr. Strange, he's backed by supernatural entities... Is your magician backed by supernatural entities? Then how does it make sense they get god-like power? It breaks immersion in the setting."

And the "normal magician supporters" agree with the martial supremacists, by saying, "Yeah, some of us just want to play normal guys and gals that are getting by with just their wits, sleight of hand and clever misdirection. We don't want to play demigods or such, that's just boring."1

The magician players that want magicians to get a buff and be regarded as superhuman, bring up the fact that dragons exist in this fantasy world, monsters exist, gods exist... It's already unrealistic, and why someone training their body to become a blatantly supernaturally powerful being is more realistic than someone training their minds to produce similar results.

The "normal magician supporters" and martial supremacists then say, "Well, just because those fantasy elements exist doesn't mean that we can allow just about anything into our game. Just because one thing isn't realistic doesn't mean everything should be. The lore supports superhumanly powerful warriors. Besides, if magicians could become strong enough to... Say, resurrect the dead or call down meteors from the sky, why would anyone bother picking up a sword? It goes against the worldbuilding. And besides... DND tried to make magic users stronger with 4E, and everyone hated that game, so it turns out that the majority of DND players like casters to be normal people, while martials become god-like in power."

The magician players that WANT buffs state that literally is a double standard, and 4E's failure might have only been a one-time thing/not have anything to do with the disparity.

The martial supremacists and "magician supporters" then state, "Look, we LIKE that magicians are just regular people standing next to literal gods of war and death. It's good to have an everyman character. Besides... There are plenty of non-divinely powered martials like Big Knife Olsa having a sword that could double as a bridge, Beowulf could swim for days without rest or holding his breath and Roland made a gorge while trying to break his sword... It fits with the source fiction DND is trying to emulate, and that's of martial characters with insane physical prowess. Besides, they're balanced... You see, the martial characters can only split an island in half X amount of times per day before they need to rest and recharge it, while your magicians can throw glitter in people's faces for much longer... And sure, a martial could literally fill an entire town with glitter/dust to blind their enemies vs you doing it for only one or two people at most, but they can only do that for so many times a day!"

So the buff magician players are accused of trying to ruin the game and told they should go play "something else" that doesn't break their immersion. Even though the earlier editions of the game outright compare magicians/magical characters to mythological deities and sorcerers2, it just won't change their minds.

(End hypothetical universe.)

In other words, don't be a supremacist, let all classes be supernaturally powerful if you want balance, or you can bring down one class to be comparable to the other if they're too high powered... But the current metric isn't working. There needs to be some kind of baseline for what a character of X Level should be capable of, rather than two different baselines for characters in the same game.

1 Despite what the above tone may suggest, I can understand this, as not everyone wants to play a god upon a certain level, and this extends to both martial and magical players. The thing is that those characters are fairly low level concepts (being somewhat threatened by random mooks), though I suppose this issue may come from which baseline the characters are working from.

2 This is a real thing. AD&D 2E uses examples of Fighters like Hercules, Cu Chulainn, Beowulf and Siegfried to draw inspiration from... The whole "mythological/high powered warrior" bit isn't a foreign concept to DND or the fantasy.

Amechra

2022-10-06, 05:28 PM

A. Make it so Martials and casters clearly play the same parts of the game in a similar way
B. Make it so Martials and casters each clearly don’t get to play all parts of the game.
C. Arm the GM with knowledge of the differences between the classes and inform them how different approaches have different outcomes. Presented with options, the GM makes an informed choice on how they handle the asymmetry.

Controversial statement: you could fix a lot of the "martial vs. caster" issues if you just had a flat rule that stopped casters from casting their big combat spells on the first round of combat.

Like, if you compare at-will damage capabilities, martial characters beat up casters and take their lunch money. The issue is that all of the rounds where the Wizard is casting Firebolt and feeling jealous of the Fighter's mighty weapon swings happen after all of the rounds where the Wizard fried a ton of goblins with Fireball or Banished a big demon. Give martial characters a turn or two to do their thing, and then let casters slam the "we are done with combat now" button.

Is everyone aware of the Iron Triangle? "Cheap, Fast, Good: pick two"? D&D has an equivalent triangle for out-of-combat problem solving, in the form of "doesn't have a meaningful cost (Cheap), doesn't take much in-game time (Fast), doesn't have a chance of failure (Good): pick two".

The thing about that triangle is that non-casters are essentially forced to pick the first two items on that list (skill checks are Cheap and Fast), while casters have free reign to pick any pair they want, since they have access to rituals (Cheap and Good) and spells (Fast and Good). That seems a bit... lopsided.

I could actually see splitting up that access between different types of spellcasters — maybe divine casters get Ritual Casting (because they're using the power of nepotism to get things done), but don't get "normal" out-of-combat spells, while arcane casters are exactly the opposite (because why go to Wizard School if you aren't going to violently assert your iron will over the laws of man and nature?)

...

As for issues with individual spells and the fact that D&D magic is super sloppy when it comes to boundaries, the source of the problem is that D&D has historically decided to make it so everything that NPC wizards can do should be spells that are (theoretically) learnable by player wizards.

Which is honestly really silly. That's why Simulacrum (aka "you thought you were fighting Dr. Doom, but it was actually a robot duplicate!") is a spell that any 13th level Wizard can pick up. Except that when players use it, it isn't an "oh, shoot, you killed the villain too fast..." option, it's a "cool, I can double my offensive power by cloning myself!" option.

Same goes for stuff like Clone (should be a magic item, not a spell), Leomund's Tiny Hut (should also be a magic item, like some kind of magical tent or something), Wish (why is a quest reward something that high-level wizards get to spam?), and so on and so forth.

Stangler

2022-10-06, 05:50 PM

Apologies for my part in derailing the thread.

No worries on derailing, that is inevitable with any caster v martial discussion. I appreciate your comments even if I don't always agree with them.

I think the list you have there sounds like a great place to start.

Given that many magic items have a history to them, one of the justifications for a clear magical item progression could be something along the lines of "legacy" weapons and "sentient" items that are looking for the next hero (read: martial) to wield them. This won't be to everyone's taste, but throwing it out there for in-game potential at some tables.

I think the need for more RPing in general around weapons would be great. That is a pretty standard aspect of a lot of hero journey's. Whether it is some ancient relic or something the hero helped find the materials to create it should matter. Re-forged swords may be cliche because of Aragorn but I don't know anyone that wouldn't get excited about having that happen in their game.

animorte

2022-10-06, 07:54 PM

I appreciate your comments even if I don't always agree with them.

This is such a cool sentiment, by the way. It’s pretty much always how I feel. I genuinely appreciate other people’s effort in communication. I like to learn new things and different perspectives. I certainly have my own view and experiences, but one of the greatest things about this site is us all being able to share in a respectable and comfortable environment, for the most part.

MadBear

2022-10-06, 07:55 PM

Some random ideas around using magical items to balance the MVC divide.

Idea 1:

Attunement slots are reworked based on the type of caster you are.P
1. Pure Martials can attune to a number of items equal to their proficiency. Half casters can attune to a number of items equal to 1/2 their proficiency in items rounded down. Casters can attune to only 1 item until level 12. Then they can attune to 2 items. The fluff being too many magic items interferes with their casting. This would mean at low levels the martials have as many magic items as anyone else usually does, but in the upper tiers they get to use and have way more cool stuff maxing out at 6 items to everyone elses 3.

Idea 2:

Give pure martials a new ability that whenever they attune to a magic item, the DM can roll on a table (or pick freely from it if they prefer) and grants the item additional boons that only the pure martial has access too. Basically, they naturally bring more out of the weapon then other characters. You roll on a better table as the pure martial levels. This way a magic item is great for everyone, but for a martial it's even better. The DM can be encouraged after the roll to think about the items backstory and why the martial is able to pull better effects out of the weapon then others. You could even have the table split into 3 columns a boon for the social, exploration, and combat pillar, and the martial can only have a boon from each.

So for example maybe that +1 breast plate on a martial is a +1 breastplate of dread which grants them advantage on intimidation checks from levels 1-5, then the ability to force a creature who sees them to make a DC 14 Wisdom save or be frightened for 1 minute from levels 6-11 once per day (and the prior boon), at levels 12-16 the ability to be immune to fear, and finally at level 17 legendary intimidate, where they can choose to automatically succeed on an intimidate check once per day.

Elves

2022-10-06, 09:04 PM

The designers clearly don't want it, the majority of players don't seem to want it either,
They clearly do want it because half the classes in the game get those powers. Why don't the other half?

It's a fundamental, glaringly obvious problem with the game. People are just willing to handwave it away because they have preconceived notions about what a "martial" is (but the same people will sit down and watch a superhero flick...)

Psyren

2022-10-06, 09:14 PM

They clearly do want it because half the classes in the game get those powers. Why don't the other half?

You mean spells? No, they clearly don't want every class in the game to have spells. The one time they got close to that was probably the worst time in WotC's stewardship of D&D.

It's a fundamental, glaringly obvious problem with the game. People are just willing to handwave it away because they have preconceived notions about what a "martial" is (but the same people will sit down and watch a superhero flick...)

Nothing is stopping you from running superhero/caster martials if you want them.

Dr.Samurai

2022-10-06, 09:53 PM

No worries on derailing, that is inevitable with any caster v martial discussion. I appreciate your comments even if I don't always agree with them.
Thank you and I feel the same way :smallbiggrin:.

I think the need for more RPing in general around weapons would be great. That is a pretty standard aspect of a lot of hero journey's. Whether it is some ancient relic or something the hero helped find the materials to create it should matter. Re-forged swords may be cliche because of Aragorn but I don't know anyone that wouldn't get excited about having that happen in their game.
My Leonin Barbarian found his family's long lost Sunspear in our last campaign. The haft was broken and so it's power was reduced, but he could set about communing with the weapon, espousing the values of my people, and restoring it. He unlocked one ability before the campaign ended but didn't fully restore it. These types of things are awesome!

I think 5E's weapons are pretty lackluster. And martials are consigned to suck at ranged combat unless they use longbows, or have Very Rare/Legendary throwing weapons. Magic items should be a pillar unto themselves, which I suppose is what you're suggesting Stangler.

@Elves: I think Psyren answered your question. The other half don't have spells because the devs don't want them to. And I love it that others have preconceived notions, but you don't. It's always the "I" that's coming from the one true perspective, and everyone else has the bias.

Jervis

2022-10-06, 10:24 PM

Not sure anyone in here has mentioned it yet, and i'm usually pretty skeptical of WotC in general so i can see why people would make assumptions, but we don't know what the warriors will do yet. For all we know battle master maneuvers are part of each of their kits at base and we get ToB 2.0 and casters end up weaker in comparison. I have a few observations for the rules as they exist.

Change Lightly Armored to a level 4 feat and make Weapon Training into a level 1 feat in it's place. WotC overvalues martial weapons and undervalues armor. IMO i don't mind Lightly and Moderatly armored being rolled into the same half feat but free at level 1 is a bit out there, conversely no one will care that a bard can get his rapiers back wizards can run into melee with a greatsword.

Battle Master should be a default part of the warrior kit. Ideally the travesty that is Ki should be put out of its misery with features that previously used Ki becoming free, being removed, or using superiority dice. Stunning Strike being a monk exclusive maneuver would be a good thing, making the disengage/dash free (yes that's a rogue thing but they outright said that experts steal from other classes) with a dodge costing a superiority die would be acceptable, flurry should probably be a manuver with baseline monk damage being buffed to compensate for having less ammunition. Tracking class level Ki isn't hard but having a smaller but more impactful resource pool would be a improvement. Barbarian and Monk need some proper scaling past level 5. Rage needs help and the barbarian crit features need to burn in a fire, they are not useful and equate to a almost nonexistent damage buff. Fighter is basically the same with BM build in in addition to subclass features.

Killing the SS and GWM meta is a good thing and i will die on this hill. Needing a feat to be "good" by optimization standards at all is bad design. I'm hopeful that the warriors get buffs like the above though the state of ranger has me worried for other halfcasters. I really hope the change to those feats stands with warriors and half casters getting a buff over all.

Psyren

2022-10-06, 10:42 PM

Change Lightly Armored to a level 4 feat and make Weapon Training into a level 1 feat in it's place. WotC overvalues martial weapons and undervalues armor. IMO i don't mind Lightly and Moderatly armored being rolled into the same half feat but free at level 1 is a bit out there, conversely no one will care that a bard can get his rapiers back wizards can run into melee with a greatsword.

Agreed, I don't know what they were thinking. They turned every race into Mountain Dwarves. Worse than that even, since this comes with Shields.

Killing the SS and GWM meta is a good thing and i will die on this hill. Needing a feat to be "good" by optimization standards at all is bad design. I'm hopeful that the warriors get buffs like the above though the state of ranger has me worried for other halfcasters. I really hope the change to those feats stands with warriors and half casters getting a buff over all.

Yeah I really like the new design of these feats. They're nice to have on a build that aims for those types of weapons, and while they've been heavily nerfed, they're also half-feats so it doesn't really matter. GWM in particular is nice now that it doesn't feel mandatory on strength builds.

Thunderous Mojo

2022-10-06, 11:59 PM

GWM in particular is nice now that it doesn't feel mandatory on strength builds.

GWM was never mandatory.
(Sub)Classes that add bonus damage, or characters that are equipped with weapons that add bonus dice to damage, likely will want to favor accuracy.

Goobahfish

2022-10-07, 01:07 AM

I think it is meaningful that casters start weak and end strong.

I hate this as an underlying assumption. Level 1 casters are awful in that they basically have do two mediocre things then pew-pew. That said, level 1 martials are awful because... oops, they dead.

The adventure day is the foundation in which all of the spells and abilities that are restored on a short or long rest are built.

Another thing I hate. Casters have a 'per day' logic and most martials don't really.

---

Honestly, the way I think about it is through the lens of Naruto... yep... Naruto. If half the players are getting giant fireballs, creating mountains and teleporting from place to place, there has to be a Rock Lee who can punch and kick but somehow still keep up. What this means is that martials need to be able to leap unrealistic distances, lift unrealistic weights and move at unrealistic speeds. Otherwise... it just cannot work.

Psyren

2022-10-07, 01:50 AM

GWM was never mandatory.
(Sub)Classes that add bonus damage, or characters that are equipped with weapons that add bonus dice to damage, likely will want to favor accuracy.

I know it wasn't, hence "feel."
And yes, plenty of solid builds didn't use it, but I still saw it in more 2H builds than not. (I watch a lot of D&D youtubers.)

Jervis

2022-10-07, 01:56 AM

I hate this as an underlying assumption. Level 1 casters are awful in that they basically have do two mediocre things then pew-pew. That said, level 1 martials are awful because... oops, they dead.

Another thing I hate. Casters have a 'per day' logic and most martials don't really.

---

Honestly, the way I think about it is through the lens of Naruto... yep... Naruto. If half the players are getting giant fireballs, creating mountains and teleporting from place to place, there has to be a Rock Lee who can punch and kick but somehow still keep up. What this means is that martials need to be able to leap unrealistic distances, lift unrealistic weights and move at unrealistic speeds. Otherwise... it just cannot work.

TBH i'm not a fan of big number as a martial balance mechanic. I agree they need more control features and more things they can do than just hit hard to end encounters but cutting mountains in half doesn't necessarily need to be it. I use to be entirely of the opinion that martials should lean more towards caster feats in terms of what they could do, and i still think a system that uses a hybrid of ToB style maneuvers and 5e battle master superiority dice could allow for martials that do more with conditions and some supernatural effects than just hit things without feeling like a caster with a sword; but I do think there are ways to make nonmagical characters that can reasonably fit in with casters in a party and hold up against the same monsters without leaning entirely into the anime route.

The thing that made me come to this conclusion was, ironically, a anime.

Demon Slayer's main antagonist -a shape shifting demon king has 7 hearts and 5 brains, can regenerate from nearly any attack that doesn't kill him instantly, moves near the speed of sound, can kill anyone with a single touch, and can weaponize any part of his body to whips that can cut people in half, and was nearly immortal- was beaten so badly by a guy who was a mostly normal human that it traumatized his genetics such that any demon he created after that was afraid of anyone so much as using the same fighting style and would experience flashbacks to the time their creator had to hold his head in place with arm stumps to stop himself from dying. The human in question's only power was perceiving weaknesses and moving fast. That is to say, if you're good enough at chopping things up, you don't need to be stronger than them.

From this you can get my personal low effort fix for martials that doesn't involve just big number or making them casters. This isn't the solution i would necessarily use but its what i make for people who're discontent with the current state of the game but don't want the "anime" effect. Assume class features that overlap with these become something else.

1: Nonmagical characters have strictly better initiative than casters, no wizard will under any circumstances have a initiative better than a fighter of equivalent level without resources. Fighters, rogues, barbarians, and monks get a scaling bonus to initiative checks equal to proficiency at that level, note not actually proficiency in initiative as to stop dips. multiclassing between the 4 stacks. Additionally those same classes get the ability to reroll initiative rolls if the d20 roll is less than class level. This rule is the only one that messes with other classes because it replaces the war wizards int to initiative and twilight cleric's ability to give anyone advantage on initiative with the ability to give someone else int to initiative and advantage on initiative respectively so it only benefits others.

2: As above any of those nonmagical classes have additional move speed equal to 5xprof, again caster levels don't count towards this. Monks get their bonus on top of this.

3: Fighter, Monk, and Barbarian add half their level to their strength score for determining jump distance and carry weight, not actual checks or damage mind you.

4: Those same three get expertise in athletics and flat strength checks by default.

5: Lastly GWM and SS aren't a thing (this was based on 5e rules mind you so no new version of those feats), any weapon attack made by those four classes can take a penalty equal to their prof to their attack rolls to add double prof to damage.

Limited testing hasn't shown any problems with those outside of barbarians not having to take a feat to get good at grappling but that's not the end of the world, its good mundane control. This isn't the fix i would use if i were in the writers room, as i said before i don't like SS and GWM, but it's suppose to be a minimalist fix.

Elves

2022-10-07, 05:45 AM

You mean spells?
No one said spells. The person you quoted said martials should "become mythological heroes with supernatural abilities". There are many ways to do that without spells.

You can't balance a mythological character with supernatural powers against a mundane character. (At least, not unless the supernatural powers are too inconvenient to be fun or too weak to be a class's main gameplay.)

Nothing is stopping you from running superhero/caster martials if you want them.
You could say this to any suggestion and act as if you had refuted it. I'm talking about the published game. This is the 5e forum, not homebrew.

I love it that others have preconceived notions, but you don't. It's always the "I" that's coming from the one true perspective, and everyone else has the bias.
I'm not saying my subjective ideas of what a martial should be are better than someone else's. I'm talking from an objective mechanical perspective about how to balance different units in this game.

A real-world character can't be balanced with a character who has powerful supernatural abilities (unless you create undesirable forms of gameplay like crippling personal costs). Either both characters have to get supernatural powers or neither do if you want a balanced game.

Otherwise you have to accept some classes being worse, which is a case of using your preconceived fluff notions to stifle what the natural mechanical design would be for this game,. That's what isn't the right path.

DrLoveMonkey

2022-10-07, 07:12 AM

There's a couple recurring spells that cause problems, but other than that I don't think there's actually too much of an issue outside of white room scenarios.

Just to bring it out of the white room for a second, here are a couple of scenarios that actually happened in the last campaign that I played as a rogue alongside a wizard and a warlock. My rogue had good strength, dex and expertise in athletics, acrobatics, slight of hand, and stealth.

Problem 1: We were framed for murder, stuck in a room in the castle with a dead body.

My solution was to climb up the chimney to escape, dragging the others along or leaving a rope for them.

What we went with was just letting ourselves be taken into custody because between the wizard and warlock we could dimension door the entire party at any time so we didn’t really risk anything by trying to explain, and anyway tue chimney was too small to crawl up.

Problem 2: we were exploring the ruins of an ancient civilization of giants and other big humanoids, and encountered a huge sarcophagus that we needed to get into

My solution was to sink pitons into it where we could wedge them, then rope all of them together into one line and pull the top off with athletics.

What we ended up doing was polymorphing the wizard into a giant ape because it could just lift the lid off and gently set it down, and besides the lid as described as pretty smooth and hard so there wasn’t a lot of opportunity to hammer in pitons.

Problem 3: we got teleported to a strange island, with no idea the layout and no clue where to go.

My solution was to climb the tallest tree I could find and use my telescope in combination with my survival skill to find out where we could go.

What we ended up doing was the wizard cast fly on themselves and soared thousands of feet into the sky, getting a layout of the whole island in one shot with essentially aerial photography.

Problem 4: there’s a 100 foot tall massive natural barrier wall, no idea what’s on the other side, maybe something we want, or want to avoid.

My solution was to climb up and sink spikes and rope hooks the whole way in case anyone wanted to follow me.

What we went with was double dimension door to the top because my way needed extended rolls that could have resulted in massive damage for a fall.

Problem 5: we were scouting out a cave network for some kind of cult activity we heard of.

My solution, take my cloak of Elvenkind and creep up to find out what lay ahead.

What we ended up doing was sending the wizards familiar, because owls have darkvision, and if we risked me going ahead and I got caught then we need to rescue me, and anyway an owl in a cave doesn’t really tip you off in the same way as a cloaked person covered in daggers. Besides in a lot of the cave rooms there wasn’t any cover big enough for me to hide behind, making stealth impossible.

Problem 6: we really had to get across this small continent FAST and we’d never been to the other side before.

My solution was to throw my hands up and leave it to the pros.

The wizard used Illusory Reality to make a massive pulley elevator that lifted us high high into the air, and then he teleported us as far to the horizon as he could, since your teleport is perfect if you are currently looking at where you’re teleporting. Repeat until the distance was covered.

I could go on. The only in game balancing factor is that many of those spells can only be cast a certain number of times per day, but on any day that we weren’t pressed hard that isn’t a factor.

Also hopefully this gives some context to the discussion of what casters are doing that martians aren’t competing with, at least from my perspective.

Goobahfish

2022-10-07, 07:47 AM

TBH i'm not a fan of big number as a martial balance mechanic

Not sure I really understood this. The proposed changes aren't too bad really. Having faster, higher initiative martials seems very 'weird' for D&D but really isn't gamebreaking or anything.

In general though, I tend to be a bigger fan of activated abilities. For martials it could be as simple as, you get X adrenaline dice (more at higher martial levels). They don't scale like spells, but you can use them to get extra stuff (adrenaline surge, rage, a free dash or +D8 to an Athletics check). If the martials had more of this explicit synergy in the same way casters do, it would make them feel a bit more worthwhile, especially for less 'dippish' multiclassing.

The only other thing I think that really needs to be addressed is that Extra Attack really doesn't work properly in D&D once multi-classing is introduced. If I am a level 3 Barb/level 2 fighter... no Extra Attack. If I am a level 3 wizard/level 2 cleric I do get my level 3 spell slots (even if I miss out on the spells).

Some of your suggestions like the extra initiative and speed sort of address some of the inherent 'martial synergy' you would need to bridge a bit of the gap.

Stangler

2022-10-07, 08:21 AM

In general though, I tend to be a bigger fan of activated abilities. For martials it could be as simple as, you get X adrenaline dice (more at higher martial levels). They don't scale like spells, but you can use them to get extra stuff (adrenaline surge, rage, a free dash or +D8 to an Athletics check). If the martials had more of this explicit synergy in the same way casters do, it would make them feel a bit more worthwhile, especially for less 'dippish' multiclassing.

The idea of a once per day spell slot like resource and a list of abilities like spells but thematic towards martials is a way to go. Different schools of martial discipline to mirror schools of magic. It is hard to keep up with the concentrated power of spell casting with just at will abilities or things like battle maneuvers.

Psyren

2022-10-07, 08:43 AM

No one said spells. The person you quoted said martials should "become mythological heroes with supernatural abilities". There are many ways to do that without spells.

You can't balance a mythological character with supernatural powers against a mundane character. (At least, not unless the supernatural powers are too inconvenient to be fun or too weak to be a class's main gameplay.)

If you don't mean spells, what "supernatural powers that half the classes in the game get but the other half don't" are you referring to then?

I'm not saying my subjective ideas of what a martial should be are better than someone else's. I'm talking from an objective mechanical perspective about how to balance different units in this game.

A real-world character can't be balanced with a character who has powerful supernatural abilities (unless you create undesirable forms of gameplay like crippling personal costs). Either both characters have to get supernatural powers or neither do if you want a balanced game.

Otherwise you have to accept some classes being worse, which is a case of using your preconceived fluff notions to stifle what the natural mechanical design would be for this game,. That's what isn't the right path.

You're right that this is the objective way to make a balanced game. If everyone gets the same or comparable powers at each level, everyone will be balanced against one another.
Where you are mistaken is believing that "balance" between classes is, or should be, the game's highest design priority.
As long as imbalance doesn't go too far, Depth > Balance as a priority.

Keltest

2022-10-07, 09:26 AM

Just to bring it out of the white room for a second, here are a couple of scenarios that actually happened in the last campaign that I played as a rogue alongside a wizard and a warlock. My rogue had good strength, dex and expertise in athletics, acrobatics, slight of hand, and stealth.

Problem 1: We were framed for murder, stuck in a room in the castle with a dead body.

My solution was to climb up the chimney to escape, dragging the others along or leaving a rope for them.

What we went with was just letting ourselves be taken into custody because between the wizard and warlock we could dimension door the entire party at any time so we didn’t really risk anything by trying to explain, and anyway tue chimney was too small to crawl up.

Problem 2: we were exploring the ruins of an ancient civilization of giants and other big humanoids, and encountered a huge sarcophagus that we needed to get into

My solution was to sink pitons into it where we could wedge them, then rope all of them together into one line and pull the top off with athletics.

What we ended up doing was polymorphing the wizard into a giant ape because it could just lift the lid off and gently set it down, and besides the lid as described as pretty smooth and hard so there wasn’t a lot of opportunity to hammer in pitons.

Problem 3: we got teleported to a strange island, with no idea the layout and no clue where to go.

My solution was to climb the tallest tree I could find and use my telescope in combination with my survival skill to find out where we could go.

What we ended up doing was the wizard cast fly on themselves and soared thousands of feet into the sky, getting a layout of the whole island in one shot with essentially aerial photography.

Problem 4: there’s a 100 foot tall massive natural barrier wall, no idea what’s on the other side, maybe something we want, or want to avoid.

My solution was to climb up and sink spikes and rope hooks the whole way in case anyone wanted to follow me.

What we went with was double dimension door to the top because my way needed extended rolls that could have resulted in massive damage for a fall.

Problem 5: we were scouting out a cave network for some kind of cult activity we heard of.

My solution, take my cloak of Elvenkind and creep up to find out what lay ahead.

What we ended up doing was sending the wizards familiar, because owls have darkvision, and if we risked me going ahead and I got caught then we need to rescue me, and anyway an owl in a cave doesn’t really tip you off in the same way as a cloaked person covered in daggers. Besides in a lot of the cave rooms there wasn’t any cover big enough for me to hide behind, making stealth impossible.

Problem 6: we really had to get across this small continent FAST and we’d never been to the other side before.

My solution was to throw my hands up and leave it to the pros.

The wizard used Illusory Reality to make a massive pulley elevator that lifted us high high into the air, and then he teleported us as far to the horizon as he could, since your teleport is perfect if you are currently looking at where you’re teleporting. Repeat until the distance was covered.

I could go on. The only in game balancing factor is that many of those spells can only be cast a certain number of times per day, but on any day that we weren’t pressed hard that isn’t a factor.

Also hopefully this gives some context to the discussion of what casters are doing that martians aren’t competing with, at least from my perspective.

Honestly, the real problem here sounds like that the obstacles aren't meaningful. With one exception you had such a glut of options for navigating them that it didnt matter what you picked, especially since you had no other use for the resources expended. This is a case of the party not having nearly enough to do in a given adventuring day, not a disparity in martials vs casters as such.

Also, Teleport isnt perfect even if you can see the destination. Theres still a 25% chance of failure. Its also a 7th level spell, so you can only cast it 3 times. So it sounds like your DM was simply not following the rules correctly unless we have different ideas of what "small continent" means.

Stangler

2022-10-07, 09:48 AM

DrLoveMonkey

2022-10-07, 09:51 AM

Honestly, the real problem here sounds like that the obstacles aren't meaningful. With one exception you had such a glut of options for navigating them that it didnt matter what you picked, especially since you had no other use for the resources expended. This is a case of the party not having nearly enough to do in a given adventuring day, not a disparity in martials vs casters as such.

Sort of, yes. My original post talks about how basically the only martial-caster balance is the adventuring day. The wizard could do anything I could do, and do it better, more reliably, and on top of that could do a dozen things I could never hope to attempt.

The only thing is, I can do the things I can do all day, whereas the wizard has a limit, theoretically. What should have happened instead of the giant ape polymorph is the athletics based equipment solution because the wizard should have been basically completely out of spell slots by that time, and certainly not left with as powerful a spell as a 4th level one.

In practice though I find that:

1. A lot of DMs don’t do the adventuring day, it’s like 1-2 encounters.

2. At higher level the wizards resources are limited, but vast. At 9th level you have three 4th level slots and can short rest for a 4th. It’s already a lot.

3. Especially at higher level it becomes kind of annoying that there’s plenty of things you need the wizard for, but barely anything you need the fighter or rogue for. If you need to plane shift the fighter/rogue are helpless without the wizard, but there’s really no time the wizard goes “please, mighty Barbarian, I can’t possibly do this thing, I need someone of your skill and strength”

Not sure it can be fixed with a half edition change since it’s so baked in.

clash

2022-10-07, 09:55 AM

Honestly, the real problem here sounds like that the obstacles aren't meaningful. With one exception you had such a glut of options for navigating them that it didnt matter what you picked, especially since you had no other use for the resources expended. This is a case of the party not having nearly enough to do in a given adventuring day, not a disparity in martials vs casters as such.

Also, Teleport isnt perfect even if you can see the destination. Theres still a 25% chance of failure. Its also a 7th level spell, so you can only cast it 3 times. So it sounds like your DM was simply not following the rules correctly unless we have different ideas of what "small continent" means.

I have a different takeaway. The obstacles are meaningful for his rogue character and would give him a chance to shine. The obstacles aren't meaningful for the caster characters in the party. Whether that's a result of resource management not being enforced or not it's still an issue. If exploration is a core pillar of the game and the obstacles are only meaningful for half the classes that's a problem in and of itself.

This comes back to the crux of the fire issue with the phb ranger for me. The core places it is supposed to excel it instead bypasses entirely. It's not a very engaging experience.

That being said bypassing obstacles with magic can be extremely satisfying and a type of engagement in itself. I just think it illustrates that a better balance point is needed.

Keltest

2022-10-07, 09:58 AM

The capacity of magic to make obstacles relatively meaningless sounds like the real problem in those examples. To a certain extent magic users, especially wizards, are just playing by a different set of rules. It is a given that a world has walls to stop people but in a world of magic users there would need to be barriers to them. So I think that magic itself needs obstacles to overcome where maybe they need to rely on non magical means to overcome some challenge.

More explicit counters to magic would go a long way to evening out the divide. Especially in terms of out of combat considerations.

I dont see it as a problem as such, because theyre using a limited resource to do it. Opportunity cost is the nominal balancing factor here, but since its the only thing theyre doing that adventuring day, theres no reason for them to restrain themselves. You can burn a spell slot and D-door people across at no risk, or you can do it the long way, save the spell slot for something else, but have risk that people might fail the check.

Sustainability versus convenience has pretty much always been the dividing line between martials and casters except for the really high end magic effects like plane shift.

Stangler

2022-10-07, 10:10 AM

Thunderous Mojo

2022-10-07, 10:15 AM

Thank you and I feel the same way :smallbiggrin:.
I think 5E's weapons are pretty lackluster. And martials are consigned to suck at ranged combat unless they use longbows, or have Very Rare/Legendary throwing weapons. Magic items should be a pillar unto themselves, which I suppose is what you're suggesting Stangler.

Homebrewing to the rescue!
The idea of items as a ‘Pillar of play’ is an interesting idea.
I strongly encourage you to toss the idea to WotC during feedback.

I know it wasn't, hence "feel."
And yes, plenty of solid builds didn't use it, but I still saw it in more 2H builds than not. (I watch a lot of D&D youtubers.)

Yeah, which is why I think it is good once in awhile to throw out the disclaimer, that people’s ‘feelings’ might just not be accurate,

GWM can be useful, but it isn’t essential.

Sharpshooter is essential, and frankly cool as well.
The idea of always being able to make the longest shot, and never having to worry about an errant shot due to cover, is appealing to me.

MoiMagnus

2022-10-07, 10:18 AM

I have a different takeaway. The obstacles are meaningful for his rogue character and would give him a chance to shine. The obstacles aren't meaningful for the caster characters in the party. Whether that's a result of resource management not being enforced or not it's still an issue. If exploration is a core pillar of the game and the obstacles are only meaningful for half the classes that's a problem in and of itself.

My takeaway is slightly different too:
The solutions suggested by the rogue were solutions reasonable for "Tier 1 & early 2" play. The situations in which the team was placed was for the most part also of this Tier, so not really interesting to handle for the spellcasters that were late Tier 2 or latter.

IMO interesting challenges at high level are of the kind "You're in free fall in an hopefully infinite hole (with some other stuff falling), and your target is the ancient undead dragon with a magical armour and spells that flies around and want you dead, deal with it." [Example taken from a game I've played in].

And it's true that outside of having OP magical objects, the rogue can have some issues when participating in those challenges.

Though some GM can allow some very crazy use of magic objects outside of what's explicitly described in the DMG given a successful skill check, and with those GMs I think the Rogue would be able to compete thanks to its expertise.

2D8HP

2022-10-07, 10:29 AM

Look, at first level and immediately afterwards playing a “martial” is great fun: swinging swords, sneaking around, lobbing arrows - I love all that!

At high levels though other players insist that my PC stands between themselves and the antagonist as a “meat shield” while the cast some spell or another.

That isn’t fun!

What sane mortal wants to be a meat shield?

Plus I can’t do the sneaking around and lobbing arrows from behind cover if my PC is the cover!

High levels are lame!

What I want the game to emulate is:

Hristomilo laughed cacklingly and grinned, showing his huge upper incisors, while Slivikin chittered in ecstasy and bounded the higher.
The Mouser hurled Cat's Claw with no better result — worse, indeed, since his action gave two darting smog-strands time to curl hamperingly around his sword- hand and stranglingly around his neck. Black rats came racing out of the big holes at the cluttered base of the walls.
Meanwhile other strands snaked around Fafhrd's ankles, knees and left arm, almost toppling him. But even as he fought for balance, he jerked Vlana's dagger from his belt and raised it over his shoulder, its silver hilt glowing, its blade brown with dried rat's-blood.
The grin left Hristomilo's face as he saw it. The sorcerer screamed strangely and importuningly then and drew back from his parchment and the table, and raised clawed clubhands to ward off doom.
Vlana's dagger sped unimpeded through the black web — its strands even seemed to part for it — and betwixt the sorcerer's warding hands, to bury itself to the hilt in his right eye.
He screamed thinly in dire agony and clawed at his face.
The black web writhed as if in death spasm.
The cucurbits shattered as one, spilling their lava on the scarred table, putting out the blue flames even as the thick wood of the table began to smoke a little at the lava's edge. Lava dropped with plops on the dark marble floor.
With a faint, final scream Hristomilo pitched forward, hands still clutched to his eyes above his jutting nose, silver dagger-hilt still protruding between his fingers.
The web grew faint, like wet ink washed with a gush of clear water.
The Mouser raced forward and transfixed Slivikin and the huge rat with one thrust of Scalpel before the beasts knew what was happening. They too died swiftly with thin screams, while all the other rats turned tail and fled back down their holes swift almost as black lightning. - Ill Met in Lankhmar (1970) by Fritz Leiber

and

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5-spxkPxGRk

Do that!

High level or low level, just do that!

Maybe eliminate “caster” classes altogether, the magicians are supposed to be the antagonists!

“Balance” issues have been there at the start of D&D.

I can very much remember how in the very late 1970's and early ‘80's it was hard to get anyone to play a "Magic User" (even when the Intelligence score roll was higher their Strength), simply because at low levels they had the least they could do (and the lowest hit points).
Most everyone played "Fighting-Men" to start, but those few who played for "the long game" found that "Magic Users" vastly overpowered other classes at high levels. Thematically and for "world building" it made sense, magicians should be rare, and "the great and powerful Wizard" should be more fearsome then the "mighty Warrior".

But as a game?

Having separate classes each doing their unique thing is more fun, and always hanging in the back while another PC does everything isn't, and being a “meat shield” most definitely isn’t fun!

While in theory Magic-Users became the most powerful characters (it even suggested so in the rules:

1974 - Dungeons & Dragons Book 1: Men & Magic,
(Page 6)

"Magic-Users: Top level magic-users are perhaps the most powerful characters in the game, but it is a long hard road to the top, and to begin with they are very weak, so survival is often the question, unless fighters protect the low-level magical types until they have worked up."...)

IIRC, in practice Mages were so weak that no one I knew played them long. We only did it when we rolled badly or (briefly) wanted a challenge, so I never saw many Mages past second level that weren't NPC's at my usual tables.

Besides being weaker at low levels Magic-Users (as Wizards were then called) also took longer to gain levels ‘cause back then it took more XP for them to gain levels compared to other classes (each class gained levels at different XP points).

I still prefer orthodox (TSR) D&D at higher levels, but reformed (5e WD&D) is a fine game, probably the best version of D&D at first level there is.

Frankly as a player I just don’t have much interest in the shenanigans of the spell casters, as long as my PC gets to lob some arrows I’m happy.

The old TD&D way was to have mages be very weak until somewhere between level 15 to 20, which is a sort of “balance”.

Xervous

2022-10-07, 10:36 AM

Slipjig

2022-10-07, 10:37 AM

The issue is that 100ft chasm is a challenge that makes sense at lower levels but as the PCs progress the world will present them with increasingly difficult challenges. The foundation of the casters support this but your no magic martial doesn't. When the game gets to the point that they are slaying Ancient Dragons it is time for the 100ft chasm to no longer be a challenge or it starts to break down conceptually. I am not saying a system can't just ignore this problem but I think it is pretty clear that the desire to limit martials creates problems both conceptually and with the game mechanics that can be offered to them.

This only creates a problem if you are playing an all-martials party. If you are playing a mixed party, I don't expect the Fighter to solve the "cross the gap" problem simply any more than I expect the dumped-CHA Wizard to solve the "negotiate with the soverign" problem. I mean, the Fighter CAN solve the gap problem, but it involves climbing gear and a series of Athletics checks.

And if for some reason you ARE playing an all-martials-with-no-magic-items party, your DM is just going to have to account for that in adventure design. A 100' chasm will be a genuine challenge. Flying monsters will be a genuine challenge for a mostly-melee party (unless you prepare the battlefield for them). It's not a bad game, but it's a fundamentally different game.

Dr.Samurai

2022-10-07, 10:41 AM

PhoenixPhyre

2022-10-07, 10:45 AM

Limited resources is effectively the counter to magic. If that is the only real counter to magic then it puts a lot of pressure on the game to successfully put a stress on the magic users resources. Other counters would make it so that there wasn't so much pressure on the game/DM to use resource management as a counter.

Resource management for casters changes a lot over time so these counters would make more sense the higher the players go in levels, T3 and T4 especially.

Also using resource management as a counter really defines a type of playstyle that not all tables may want. More options is better than less options.

Not only that, but resource management as counter to spellcasters, who otherwise would dominate means that one of a few things will happen (likely):
1) when the casters are out, the adventuring day switches to "find a way to take a rest". AKA the 5 minute working day.
2) when the casters are out and they can't rest, the casters are pretty-much dead weight and are miserable. Which isn't fun. When they're not out, they dominate and the martials aren't happy either.
3) everything works perfectly because everyone self-regulates.

Number 1 is the trivial, most common result. Number 2 (which is the other option for most groups at least some of the time) is just somebody being unhappy.
Note that 3, which is the only happy path here doesn't actually follow from either resource management or casters being naturally more powerful. In fact, it's in tension with both of those.

Much better, it seems, is to abandon this whole "I'm a caster so as long as I have spell slots I'm the master of all I survey" thinking. Casting spells should be one way of doing cool things. And everyone should have resources to do even more-cool things. Casting spells is not some favored state. Pull back some of the caster excesses[1], give martials some cool things and, yes, magic. Just not spells. Some of which may take resources. <sarcasm>Oh No</sarcasm>. And fix up the multiclassing/armor situation to make it clear that no, it's not a trivial dip for better-than-martial AC.

Spells are a subset of "magic" which is a subset of "ways to do cool things." Not, as it has become (and as D&Done seems to be pushing) the only way to do cool things.

[1] Really, there aren't too many. Some out-of-band spells, a few too many spell slots, a few other tweaks.

Keltest

2022-10-07, 10:48 AM

On the given examples my takeaway is that the rogue and the wizard are not quite playing the same game.

1. Party queries GM on scenario
2. Wizard determines if the scene is worth using a spell on
(3). Rogue gets to attempt something if the wizard opted for no spell.

What examples can people come up with where the rogue would be the deciding factor at 2, and the wizard would be waiting to make an attempt at (3)?

Combat maybe, but since the wizard expends resources to do their thing and the rogue does not, I don't think youve quite made the point you think you have.

Dont look at it as individuals competing against each other, do the calculus as the entire team navigating the obstacles.

First you look to see if you can just bypass the problem without spending anything or risking anything.

Then you look to see if you can spend a resource to bypass the problem without risk. If yes, weigh the value of doing so versus hanging on to the resouce.

Then, if you opted not to use a spell/scroll/potion/expendable minion/whatever, look to see if you can solve the problem with risk and no expenditure of resources.

And then, finally, if none of the above solutions have been viable, consider spending resources for a risky solution.

You could literally make a flow chart for the basic decision making process here, and the only reason the wizard wouldnt get first crack at a problem is if you changed them to not expend resources but have risk, like a martial.

Well, why should the wizard get to be the deciding factor in the first place? It's not clear to me that "has spells" makes someone team leader, or allows them to use resources willy nilly without anyone else's consideration.

"I can open this with reusable tools and resources."

"Or I can cast a 4th level spell to do it."

*crickets*

I cannot begin to tell you how many times this exact conversation has gone in my group. I have somebody who is both a spotlight hog and likes to play wizards.

PhoenixPhyre

2022-10-07, 10:51 AM

Combat maybe, but since the wizard expends resources to do their thing and the rogue does not, I don't think youve quite made the point you think you have.

Dont look at it as individuals competing against each other, do the calculus as the entire team navigating the obstacles.

First you look to see if you can just bypass the problem without spending anything or risking anything.

Then you look to see if you can spend a resource to bypass the problem without risk. If yes, weigh the value of doing so versus hanging on to the resouce.

Then, if you opted not to use a spell/scroll/potion/expendable minion/whatever, look to see if you can solve the problem with risk and no expenditure of resources.

And then, finally, if none of the above solutions have been viable, consider spending resources for a risky solution.

You could literally make a flow chart for the basic decision making process here, and the only reason the wizard wouldnt get first crack at a problem is if you changed them to not expend resources but have risk, like a martial.

I cannot begin to tell you how many times this exact conversation has gone in my group. I have somebody who is both a spotlight hog and likes to play wizards.

IMO, no one should have "solve/bypass the problem without risk" abilities for any problem. Every ability should either have risk or require teamwork. Or the thing being bypassed wasn't actually a problem. The fact that casters do (but not really as many as you think, because with the chasm the solution needs to work for the whole party, not just one person, and casters really don't have that ability) is the underlying problem. Win buttons in a team game are bad for everyone, even if they cost resources. Because it warps the game around the people who have them.

Keltest

2022-10-07, 10:56 AM

IMO, no one should have "solve/bypass the problem without risk" abilities for any problem. Every ability should either have risk or require teamwork. Or the thing being bypassed wasn't actually a problem. The fact that casters do (but not really as many as you think, because with the chasm the solution needs to work for the whole party, not just one person, and casters really don't have that ability) is the underlying problem. Win buttons in a team game are bad for everyone, even if they cost resources. Because it warps the game around the people who have them.

"I can burn my 3rd level spell slot to clear the rubble out of this tunnel, but that means I wont have it to cast Slow if we run into a combat on the other side."

Like I said, opportunity cost. This isnt even a hypothetical, this is an actual decision I have had to make with my current character in the current campaign. No risk of failure at the current task does not mean no risk at all.

I also pretty strongly disagree with the notion that nobody should have abilities that work reliably. That just leads to frustration.

PhoenixPhyre

2022-10-07, 11:01 AM

"I can burn my 3rd level spell slot to clear the rubble out of this tunnel, but that means I wont have it to cast Slow if we run into a combat on the other side."

Like I said, opportunity cost. This isnt even a hypothetical, this is an actual decision I have had to make with my current character in the current campaign. No risk of failure at the current task does not mean no risk at all.

Here's the thing. Either resource costs are binding but when resources are used they're win buttons, in which case the game becomes a 5 minute working day quest. Or they're not binding and the casters just romp over everything. Which is the more common case.

Win buttons are bad for games. Even with opportunity costs, because calibrating those costs is basically impossible to do wholesale. And it has to be done wholesale, otherwise Imbalance Finds a Way.

And you can have reliable abilities, but they just can't by themselves fix issues. It's only the combination of different abilities from different people that fixes problems.

Dr.Samurai

2022-10-07, 11:13 AM

I cannot begin to tell you how many times this exact conversation has gone in my group. I have somebody who is both a spotlight hog and likes to play wizards.
Although it's not related, this reminds me of Serenity when the reavers are after them...

Jayne: Sure wish I had some grenades right about now!

Mal: Sorry, I used them to get rid of some rats in the cargo hold!

BRC

2022-10-07, 11:26 AM

Here's the thing. Either resource costs are binding but when resources are used they're win buttons, in which case the game becomes a 5 minute working day quest. Or they're not binding and the casters just romp over everything. Which is the more common case.

Win buttons are bad for games. Even with opportunity costs, because calibrating those costs is basically impossible to do wholesale. And it has to be done wholesale, otherwise Imbalance Finds a Way.

And you can have reliable abilities, but they just can't by themselves fix issues. It's only the combination of different abilities from different people that fixes problems.

Eh, I feel like "No win buttons" depends a LOT on whether the problem is Simple or Complex.

A simple problem might be something like "How do we climb this wall?" to which Spider-Climb is a win-button, you send somebody up the wall and they tie a rope up there for everybody else to use. I'm fine with that being a win-button, since the problem you've solved is very simple.

A complex problem "How do we infiltrate this castle" shouldn't have a win-button, and generally doesn't. Even Invisibility is stopped by closed doors.

More generally, I feel like the issue is that the whole system was built for a game style: A dungeon-crawl heist where the goal was to extract as much treasure as possible, that is no longer standard. It works pretty well when the opportunity cost is real because the goal is to push as far as you can before stopping, and "Stopping" is the only way to refresh spell slots.

The issue is that outside of "Here is a dungeon, get as far as you can before you have to leave", it's pretty hard for a DM to craft a scenario where the players are encouraged to keep going as long as they can before long resting, and so spell slots quickly reach a point where it's less an opportunity cost, and more a judgement call of "How many more problems am I likely to encounter before the next checkpoint when we can rest without consequences".

My current game has a system to encourage pushing forwards, every long rest incurs a corruption cost (And you can sleep without long-resting, so "Time" and "Adventuring Time" are tracked differently), but that's not really something that can be generalized. Still, I think that adding some sort of cost to a long-rest, at least while the PC's are actively "On an Adventure" as it were, is a good solution to encourage players to value their spell slots, since using one means shortening your adventuring day, and the goal becomes to complete the adventure with as few long-rests as possible.

Psyren

2022-10-07, 11:38 AM

Here's the thing. Either resource costs are binding but when resources are used they're win buttons, in which case the game becomes a 5 minute working day quest. Or they're not binding and the casters just romp over everything. Which is the more common case.

If "5 minute workday" is both common and undesirable, that's a GM issue. Make a plot with some urgency in it. Force rationing of caster resources and track them across multiple sessions, that's what the character sheet is for.

Yeah, which is why I think it is good once in awhile to throw out the disclaimer, that people’s ‘feelings’ might just not be accurate,

GWM can be useful, but it isn’t essential.

Sharpshooter is essential, and frankly cool as well.
The idea of always being able to make the longest shot, and never having to worry about an errant shot due to cover, is appealing to me.

The accuracy of feelings is often irrelevant to their impact. Look up JC Penney Fair and Square Pricing for instance, or the McDonald's 1/3 pounder fiasco.

Sure, from a rational standpoint GWM is hardly necessary. But look up nearly any 2-handed Str build online that uses feats and it still gets recommended, just like every ranged build with feats is currently told to get SS. This will change that / break the "meta" and that's a good thing.

PhoenixPhyre

2022-10-07, 11:41 AM

Eh, I feel like "No win buttons" depends a LOT on whether the problem is Simple or Complex.

A simple problem might be something like "How do we climb this wall?" to which Spider-Climb is a win-button, you send somebody up the wall and they tie a rope up there for everybody else to use. I'm fine with that being a win-button, since the problem you've solved is very simple.

A complex problem "How do we infiltrate this castle" shouldn't have a win-button, and generally doesn't. Even Invisibility is stopped by closed doors.

Simple problems aren't really problems (without more things that make it a complex problem). Simply climbing a wall is just...you climb the wall. Unless there are reasons why that doesn't work (such as "there are guards patrolling"), and those stop spider-climb as well unless you go out of your way to make it work. Because simply "the wall is too slick to climb" is a bad problem from the get-go--it demands a spell as a solution, and the solution is perfect and without risk. It means that any party without that spell (or flight) is just SOL. Which is bad design.

Basically, any problem that can be solved by a single spell/ability/action wasn't a valid problem. Valid problems are more complex than that, inherently. DMs need to step up their game. This goes for exploration as well--if the only issue is "how do we carry/find enough food and water", that's not a substantive, interesting problem. But if food/water procurement is only one small piece of a larger puzzle/challenge (having to balance that with moving fast and moving quiet, in terrain that generally wants to eat you, etc) where a ranger's ability to just auto-find food means the challenge is lessened, but not overcome.

If "5 minute workday" is both common and undesirable, that's a GM issue. Make a plot with some urgency in it. Force rationing of caster resources and track them across multiple sessions, that's what the character sheet is for.

So fundamentally, it's "casters are superior creatures when they get to use their resources, but everyone has to agree to not actually let them use their resources very much at all because otherwise the game is no fun. So mostly they just have these potentials but have to sit and watch. But when they do get to use them, the martials just get to sit and watch and can't help" Fun. </sarcasm> No thanks. I'd rather have "casters have one way of doing cool things that have advantages in <circumstances that are likely to come up>. Martials have other ways of doing cool things that have advantages in <different circumstances that are likely to come up>." Balancing by resource costs just fundamentally has been proven to not work reliably. Or at all. It just says "you either get to be cool and overshadow everyone or you sit in the corner and do nothing. Except you, martials, who never get to be cool at all."

Psyren

2022-10-07, 11:45 AM

So fundamentally, it's "casters are superior creatures when they get to use their resources, but everyone has to agree to not actually let them use their resources very much at all because otherwise the game is no fun.

"You can't nova and sleep before every fight" is hardly "very much at all." Or if you see it that way, then complaining about caster supremacy is very odd.

PhoenixPhyre

2022-10-07, 11:50 AM

"You can't nova and sleep before every fight" is hardly "very much at all." Or if you see it that way, then complaining about caster supremacy is very odd.

The problem remains even if you stretch it out over time. You've got a hard binary between "can do everything (with resources)" and "can't do anything meaningful (without resources)." That's fundamentally broken and unstable as a gameplay setup.

Currently, on a hypothetical scale from 0 (can't contribute at all) to 10 (can do it all single-handedly), you have

a) casters (particularly wizards) who are 2-ish without resources and 9-ish with resources.
b) martials who are at best 4-ish all the time.

A better plan would be for everyone to sit at 4-ish on most things (with a couple 2s and a couple 6s) and have resources that can add a couple points to some of those (either shoring up a weakness temporarily or turning a strength into something strong). But everyone should be able to contribute meaningfully at all times and no one should be able to overpower things singlehandedly. Resources should be "now I do extra cool thing", not "I have to spend this to do anything of worth".

DrLoveMonkey

2022-10-07, 11:56 AM

Combat maybe, but since the wizard expends resources to do their thing and the rogue does not, I don't think youve quite made the point you think you have.

Dont look at it as individuals competing against each other, do the calculus as the entire team navigating the obstacles.

Right, so we did that and it just so often comes out that the resources are cheap enough to not be worth the risk.

Like the 100 foot wall climb thing.

I could attempt the climb, it’s all kinds of shale so it’s craggy with big handholds but also brittle and not super well held together, a very difficult climb(DC 25). I’m level 10 with athletics expertise and 12 str so my bonus is +9. If I fail the first roll I fall and take 5d6 damage, fail the second I fall and take 10d6 damage. Got a 25% chance of making each roll, which means a total chance of success about 5% of getting both in one attempt. If the roll is only regular difficult I have a much better, but still awful, 25%.

Or the wizard uses a 4th level spell from this pile…

Level 1: 4
Level 2: 3
Level 3: 3
Level 4: 3
Level 5: 1+1

The only time you would ever even consider letting the rogue do his thing is if you either have been, or expect to be, in need of the other 14 spell slots for the rest of the day. If your typical adventuring day is like 1-2 fights and 1-2 challenges like the wall thing, it’s a no-brainer.

The full, like seriously full, adventuring day is the only thing that balances it out.

And there’s just a whole hell of a lot of DMs who find that style of game difficult to write, or justify, or tiring to run.

Dr.Samurai

2022-10-07, 12:01 PM

I mean... DC 25 is just a neon sign that says "Caster must use spells". It's not even really a question.

NichG

2022-10-07, 12:04 PM

Whether or not it makes sense to have 'win buttons' is a matter of the level of abstraction of the game. Generally you aren't resolving the finest details of anything. You aren't usually asking people what extension or contraction the various muscles in their character's body are at, etc. Characters can walk across a room without playing a minigame of QWOP, because that's not the level of abstraction that is appropriate to the game at hand.

So there are 'atomic actions' - these are things that a player should be able to just have their character do by saying they do it without having to resolve things more finely (note: that doesn't mean it always auto-succeeds or can't be interrupted or blocked or have side-effects, it just means that its a single unit of play). Appropriate atomic actions vary from game to game. 'I walk to this location within 30 feet' for example is an appropriate atomic action for combat scale stuff, but its too fine-grained for wilderness exploration. In that case you probably want 'I march for eight hours northward' or equivalents.

A 'win button' is really just that there is some situation where manipulating that situation would not be an atomic action, except for that particular ability which turns it into an atomic action. That's why adding a 25% failure chance to teleport doesn't actually prevent teleport from bypassing wilderness exploration. It makes that atomic action have a different cost or risk profile, but it doesn't change the fact that 'wandering through the jungle, getting into fights, dealing with supplies' might involve hundreds of actions but 'I cast teleport' encompasses the entire thing in one action. If you want the game to be at that level of abstraction, its perfectly reasonable to have it be an atomic action, but then you should also have things like going to a temple in the jungle be summed up into a single Survival check or something like that.

So basically if the level of abstraction of 'dealing with an enemy nation' is choosing where to drop a nuke, if you aren't consistent across player experiences with providing ways to engage at that level of abstraction its going to cause the sort of problems mentioned up-thread. And if you want to playing a game about 'dealing with an enemy nation' via dozens of individual-level skirmishes, each with dozens of moves, then don't give someone a nuke to drop unless you also want to give them the power to unilaterally decide the level of abstraction to play at.

I don't think its impossible to design a game where people can essentially 'bid' to determine the level of abstraction, where high level of abstraction moves can zoom the action out but low level of abstraction moves can also zoom the action in. But I don't think 'resource limits' are going to cut it. Probably 'time' would be the strongest factor. If every non-combat spell took 10 minutes per spell level squared to cast for example, then a high abstraction action of 'I cast Earthquake to reduce the enemy's castle into ruins' can easily be interrupted by low abstraction actions taking place around it 'the enemy caster is preparing a ritual to sink the castle, lets fight past their guards and engage them in melee - and oh look, that only took 30 minutes and they still had 600 left on the ritual'.

Xervous

2022-10-07, 12:05 PM

Well, why should the wizard get to be the deciding factor in the first place? It's not clear to me that "has spells" makes someone team leader, or allows them to use resources willy nilly without anyone else's consideration.

"I can open this with reusable tools and resources."

"Or I can cast a 4th level spell to do it."

*crickets*

At a rules and structure level, there’s only the GM stopping the wizard from preempting the rogue on such uncertain, extended tasks. The players may bicker over it being a waste, spotlight stealing or whatever. Or they might not. Similarly there’s only the wizard player making the decision (rarely the GM) to use the ability when the rest of the party asks. All decision paths involve the wizard before their conclusion, they do not necessarily involve the rogue.

I’ll ask again if you have an example of a pivotal rogue scene. I’ll provide one.

There is a book with important information in it that the party is uncertain of trusting due to potential obscuring enchantments. The wizard proposes using detect magic, which can yield false negatives and positives.
The wizard might also consider identify, which is slow. The inquisitive rogue cuts through all this with Unerring Eye and states definitively whether or not the book is 100% magically clean.

DrLoveMonkey

2022-10-07, 12:16 PM

I mean... DC 25 is just a neon sign that says "Caster must use spells". It's not even really a question.

Hence why I’m glad 5.5 is getting some more codification for that kind of thing. Is a climb like that supposed to be that hard? I don’t know.

Either way though at DC 20 your chance goes up to 25%. At DC 15 it goes to 56%. Even at DC 15 being level 10 with expertise, and class abilities that help specifically, the only reason I’m making that attempt is if the wizard is empty, or flat out refuses to spend the spell slot for fear there might be an even more applicable use later in the day.

Keltest

2022-10-07, 12:26 PM

Hence why I’m glad 5.5 is getting some more codification for that kind of thing. Is a climb like that supposed to be that hard? I don’t know.

I feel like this is a strange question to ask. At the end of the day, the DM is the one making the setting. It is, definitionally, supposed to be that hard, because thats how hard they wanted it to be. Is it reasonable that they want it that hard? Who knows. There could be a lot going on beind the scenes that the players dont know about to justify it being that hard, or maybe the DM just has a phobia of climbing rock walls and its influencing their decision making process. But "supposed to be" implies that there is some sort of objectively correct number that needs to be codified in the rules so that people dont have badwrongfun and deviate from it.

Dr.Samurai

2022-10-07, 12:28 PM

Hence why I’m glad 5.5 is getting some more codification for that kind of thing. Is a climb like that supposed to be that hard? I don’t know.

Either way though at DC 20 your chance goes up to 25%. At DC 15 it goes to 56%. Even at DC 15 being level 10 with expertise, and class abilities that help specifically, the only reason I’m making that attempt is if the wizard is empty, or flat out refuses to spend the spell slot for fear there might be an even more applicable use later in the day.
Yeah skill DCs are a little unforgiving in this edition.

That said, with a +9 you should have a 75% of succeeding at DC 15. Also, next level Reliable Talent makes your roll an auto 19, which is almost beating Hard DCs automatically. Maybe this should come online sooner? I don't know.

Climbing kit would help prevent fall damage as well.

That said, such a long climb is really a matter of "how are you doing this, roll the dice" and the DM describes it, unless there's a combat or hazard or something. But if it's going to be a VERY HARD DC, where the best climber in the party barely has a chance of pulling it off, it may as well be a wall of lava.

Dr.Samurai

2022-10-07, 12:44 PM

A real-world character can't be balanced with a character who has powerful supernatural abilities (unless you create undesirable forms of gameplay like crippling personal costs). Either both characters have to get supernatural powers or neither do if you want a balanced game.
I don't agree with this because I think you and I will likely disagree on what is "crippling" and what is "supernatural" and what is "balanced".

To that point, I think it's fine to warp what "martial" means as a "nonmagical" warrior. The game has already decided that fighters can attack 4 times on their turn. Is that too much? Is that literally 4 times or is it an abstraction? Is 6 times too many? A fighter moves at 30ft, a barbarian at 40ft, a monk at 50ft. Are any of these too fast for a nonmagical martial? What about 60ft or 70ft?

For me, turns and rounds and attacks are all blurry and can easily be abstractions used as data points for a narrative. The fighter didn't literally miss 2 attacks and then land another 2, but whatever happened the fighter did deal 26 damage to the giant.

So I don't have an issue with buffing or adjusting these types of combat buttons on martials to make them faster and able to target more enemies or impose conditions, etc.

But adding "supernatural" abilities like creating earthquakes or punching thunderstorms IS fundamentally different to just being a martial. And given that all caster classes are getting more and more options to basically BE martials on top of casters, I don't see the need to move the needle on martials all that much. You want to swing your sword so fast that you create gale force winds? Play a caster and cast Control Winds and then say you're waving your sword around. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.

Otherwise you have to accept some classes being worse, which is a case of using your preconceived fluff notions to stifle what the natural mechanical design would be for this game,. That's what isn't the right path.
Respectfully, I don't think "everyone gets super powers" is the "natural mechanical design" for the game. That's YOUR preconceived notion.

Snowbluff

2022-10-07, 12:48 PM

I dont see it as a problem as such, because theyre using a limited resource to do it. Opportunity cost is the nominal balancing factor here, but since its the only thing theyre doing that adventuring day, theres no reason for them to restrain themselves. You can burn a spell slot and D-door people across at no risk, or you can do it the long way, save the spell slot for something else, but have risk that people might fail the check.

Sustainability versus convenience has pretty much always been the dividing line between martials and casters except for the really high end magic effects like plane shift.

Indeed, opportunity cost is often ignored by people calling for caster nerfs.

It's a foundational part of the design for casters that they have to use their abilities and resources judicially, lest they be worse than useless, IE increasing the difficulty of fights via their presences but not meaningfully contributing to them. "Spell casting" is basically just short hand for unique effects which share a long rest resource. As such, the martial caster divide really rests with the management of this resource.

What does this mean for the game overall? Martials are simple and casters are complicated. Martials are low risk and casters are high risk. Martials are designed to be easier to operate while casters are designed for invested and mindful player. The problem is that by divorcing the efficacy from a caster's any one action or spell could easily mean that a caster is useless for any given cost. Giving a similar effect to a martial would likely mean giving it to them with little to no resource cost, due to how martial identity is firmly couched in being low-resource management. The "martials" that aren't subject to this are literally spellcasters.

So my opinion over all? Eh. It's not worth fixing because fixing it would likely mean ruining the uniqueness and efficacy of various spells, turning them into glorified taxes for meeting the same level of efficacy as someone A-clicking their way through turns.

Psyren

2022-10-07, 12:57 PM

The problem remains even if you stretch it out over time. You've got a hard binary between "can do everything (with resources)" and "can't do anything meaningful (without resources)." That's fundamentally broken and unstable as a gameplay setup.

It's really not. Casters are artillery, and that's how artillery works.

A better plan would be for everyone to sit at 4-ish on most things (with a couple 2s and a couple 6s) and have resources that can add a couple points to some of those (either shoring up a weakness temporarily or turning a strength into something strong). But everyone should be able to contribute meaningfully at all times and no one should be able to overpower things singlehandedly. Resources should be "now I do extra cool thing", not "I have to spend this to do anything of worth".

Casters don't "overpower things singlehandedly" unless your encounters are badly designed. Even Keltest's example (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?650309-One-D-amp-D-Identifying-and-Fixing-Foundational-Issues-with-5e-(e-g-Martial-v-Casters)/page4&p=25602776#post25602776) you were responding to - "I can use my spell slot to get us past this obstacle, or I can rely on the martials to do it and have a Slow on the other side" - will still need the martials to actually be the ones to kill whatever is waiting over there, maybe with the help of some cantrip spam.

DrLoveMonkey

2022-10-07, 01:00 PM

I feel like this is a strange question to ask. At the end of the day, the DM is the one making the setting. It is, definitionally, supposed to be that hard, because thats how hard they wanted it to be. Is it reasonable that they want it that hard? Who knows. There could be a lot going on beind the scenes that the players dont know about to justify it being that hard, or maybe the DM just has a phobia of climbing rock walls and its influencing their decision making process. But "supposed to be" implies that there is some sort of objectively correct number that needs to be codified in the rules so that people dont have badwrongfun and deviate from it.

Kiiind of. Like for example if we had this from the book.

Example climbing DCs:

5: dry stacked stone wall
10: Stacked stone and mortar castle wall
15: Cut and fitted stone castle wall
20: Smooth cliff face wall with tiny, round, and sparse handholds
25: Gravely, loose cliff face during a howling, ripping high wind
30: storm wracked seaside cliff face, covered in algae, on a moonless night

That to me says that a rock wall during a calm day with good hand and footholds, but is somewhat unreliable shouldn’t be DC25, since a way worse rock wall with the complication of a blasting wind is 25.

Psyren

2022-10-07, 01:02 PM

Kiiind of. Like for example if we had this from the book.

Example climbing DCs:

5: dry stacked stone wall
10: Stacked stone and mortar castle wall
15: Cut and fitted stone castle wall
20: Smooth cliff face wall with tiny, round, and sparse handholds
25: Gravely, loose cliff face during a howling, ripping high wind
30: storm wracked seaside cliff face, covered in algae, on a moonless night

That to me says that a rock wall during a calm day with good hand and footholds, but is somewhat unreliable shouldn’t be DC25, since a way worse rock wall with the complication of a blasting wind is 25.

For more on why I would oppose every atom of this, see the Codifying thread

DrLoveMonkey

2022-10-07, 01:37 PM

For more on why I would oppose every atom of this, see the Codifying thread

Well with the system we have now I ended up with a 1-20 campaign where my expert rogue defaulted to letting the wizard do the things that were smack dab in the middle of his focus because it is indeed “very hard” to climb a rock wall, and you can’t really argue that it’s not.

Psyren

2022-10-07, 01:53 PM

Dr.Samurai

2022-10-07, 01:55 PM

Well with the system we have now I ended up with a 1-20 campaign where my expert rogue defaulted to letting the wizard do the things that were smack dab in the middle of his focus because it is indeed “very hard” to climb a rock wall, and you can’t really argue that it’s not.
Some people believe in the following things that require a game with very very very little codified rules. Like, really really really dumbed down mechanics:

1. All DMs are super experts that can adjudicate everything expertly in real time and have no use for codified rules or even suggestions.

2. The game is played by evil nasty players that "weaponize" charts. That's right, they take charts from the books, pages of them, and they use them as weapons on these super expert DMs. These expert DMs, it seems, have a weakness. Charts are their kryptonite. So when these evil players take these pages with charts on them, and weaponise them against the DMs, they are powerless to defend themselves.

3. Also, these evil players that weaponize charts are also newbies that don't know the rules and can't handle decisions or any complexity greater than 0, on a scale of 1 to 10. So the rules have to be suuuuuuuper bland and dumbed down so it doesn't confuse them.

So when you take all of that into consideration, you create the perfect system.

BRC

2022-10-07, 02:01 PM

Simple problems aren't really problems (without more things that make it a complex problem). Simply climbing a wall is just...you climb the wall. Unless there are reasons why that doesn't work (such as "there are guards patrolling"), and those stop spider-climb as well unless you go out of your way to make it work. Because simply "the wall is too slick to climb" is a bad problem from the get-go--it demands a spell as a solution, and the solution is perfect and without risk. It means that any party without that spell (or flight) is just SOL. Which is bad design.

Basically, any problem that can be solved by a single spell/ability/action wasn't a valid problem. Valid problems are more complex than that, inherently. DMs need to step up their game. This goes for exploration as well--if the only issue is "how do we carry/find enough food and water", that's not a substantive, interesting problem. But if food/water procurement is only one small piece of a larger puzzle/challenge (having to balance that with moving fast and moving quiet, in terrain that generally wants to eat you, etc) where a ranger's ability to just auto-find food means the challenge is lessened, but not overcome.
That's fair. Simply problems are not sufficiently interesting to be considered "Problems" by themselves, and complex problems are usually made up of multiple simple ones.

So fundamentally, it's "casters are superior creatures when they get to use their resources, but everyone has to agree to not actually let them use their resources very much at all because otherwise the game is no fun. So mostly they just have these potentials but have to sit and watch. But when they do get to use them, the martials just get to sit and watch and can't help" Fun. </sarcasm> No thanks. I'd rather have "casters have one way of doing cool things that have advantages in <circumstances that are likely to come up>. Martials have other ways of doing cool things that have advantages in <different circumstances that are likely to come up>." Balancing by resource costs just fundamentally has been proven to not work reliably. Or at all. It just says "you either get to be cool and overshadow everyone or you sit in the corner and do nothing. Except you, martials, who never get to be cool at all."

So, and I agree this doesn't reflect the reality of 5e, but the philosophy seems to be that there are two approaches to everything: Risk or Resource.

There is a wall, it is difficult to climb, difficult enough that doing so requires a check.

The idea is that Martials MUST take the "Risk" route, but are compensated by being better at it due to better physical stats and access to more general skills like Athletics and Acrobatics.

Casters are worse at stuff, but have the option to take the "Resource" route, spending spell slots to auto-succeed. Spider-Climb is an ideal example, since it's basically just "Auto-Succeed an Athletics check to climb"

This isn't an INHERENTLY terrible system, but it's implementation doesn't work for reasons you and others have stated, but I'm going to reiterate two big ones that stand out to me.

1) The lack of "Soft Failure" in D&D beyond the pretty minimal "inspiration" system. Meaning that if you're forced into the "Risk" option, it's not that interesting. Most of the time, it's just "Well, guess I better roll these dice and hope".
Other systems, usually ones with meta-resources, have natural ways to introduce "Succeed at a cost" and other forms of soft-failure, which makes "Risk" options a lot more palatable and engaging. There are outcomes besides "Total Success" and "Total Failure" so taking risks feels better, you might take some lumps from bad rolls, but you can keep pushing.

2) The fact that spellcaster resources are not really enforced beyond low levels unless you specifically build a scenario with lots of "Spell Taxes" in it to make sure your casters have to conserve their power, or create an open-ended scenario where the goal is "Do as much as possible before the next long rest" rather than "Achieve these objectives".

The result is that casters who CAN push their win-buttons do, casters who CAN'T probably fail, and non-casters usually just have no choice but to roll the dice and see if they fail.

You could fix it, but it would mean ripping the whole spellcasting system out and starting over.

A bandaid fix would be to introduce a third tier of rest, and you can only "Long Rest" so many times before taking a "Super Rest" of a week or whatever, to make it easier to push players to go as far as they can before long resting.

DrLoveMonkey

2022-10-07, 02:08 PM

Did you put your expertise in Athletics? Even with 8 Str, that would put you on par with a level 20 Barbarian with 20 Strength and Athletics Proficiency.

And if you didn't invest in Athletics or Strength at all but still wanted to be good at climbing things, there are rules in Tasha's to let you change your proficiencies. Or you could pick up Skill Expert at some point across 20 levels of play.

Yep, I had at least 12-13 strength and expertise in athletics. Giving me a +9, and thus DC 25 checks had a 75% chance of failure. If the consequences were dire, like falling a long way, or alerting the guards of the fortress to our infiltration, just let the wizard do it.

Okay athletics wasn’t my complete min-max focus. I wasn’t a strength rogue who put my 16 into strength and had 20 by level 8, but it wasn’t my dump stat. As the skill focused, adventuring exploration, rogue class who dedicated one of my expertise choices to athletics it would be nice if there was ever an opportunity to use it without the wizard raising a finger and saying “you know, if I cast this spell we can do that, and you won’t have to worry about getting unlucky and falling to your death, and also we won’t have to split the party because we’ll all be able to go”

Psyren

2022-10-07, 02:10 PM

All DMs are super experts that can adjudicate everything expertly in real time and have no use for codified rules or even suggestions.

Or are not cripplingly afraid of making adjustments as they play. Those exist too :smallsmile:

Yep, I had at least 12-13 strength and expertise in athletics. Giving me a +9, and thus DC 25 checks had a 75% chance of failure.

Meaning you were routinely getting DC 25 ability checks in Tier 2. That's totally fair.

DrLoveMonkey

2022-10-07, 02:18 PM

Meaning you were routinely getting DC 25 ability checks in Tier 2. That's totally fair.

Is it…not? Where’s the advice on that? All it says is things which are very hard are DC 25.

The DM shows this picture: https://www.alamy.com/oil-bearing-shale-cliff-face-of-jurassic-coast-and-shoreline-strewn-image151021341.html

And says “this is a very hard climb, so DC 25” and…yeah, yeah it is a very hard climb. Look at it, if someone asked you if it looked very hard to climb you would say yes. If someone asked me to climb that they’d basically be asking me to commit elaborate suicide. So when the wizard offers to snap his fingers* and just take us up there rather than me risking an embarrassing and painful, possibly deadly, series of falls, I’m taking it.

*of couse the finger snapping would just be theatrics, DD is verbal only

Dr.Samurai

2022-10-07, 02:26 PM

Yeah, that's the issue with those guidelines. Exactly how hard is Hard and Very Hard or Medium or Easy?

Put your arms to the side, palms up, and lift your shoulders, because nobody knows.

DrLoveMonkey

2022-10-07, 02:33 PM

Yeah, that's the issue with those guidelines. Exactly how hard is Hard and Very Hard or Medium or Easy?

Put your arms to the side, palms up, and lift your shoulders, because nobody knows.

Indeed, also very hard to whom? Because a level 20 rogue with expertise in the skill and a 20 in the stat trivially accomplishes anything less than DC 27. It’s certainly not hard for them. So I have to assume it means how hard for the average person, which definitely pushes the DCs up.

Ignimortis

2022-10-07, 02:33 PM

The core issue of martial-caster disparity is that people don't actually want to change how it is. It's stuck in an endless loop that looks like this:

10 High level casters are stronger than high level martials
20 Nerf casters
30 "Noooo, magic is supposed to be powerful!"
40 Give high level martials supernatural abilities allowing them to perform mythical feats
50 "Noooo, I want to just be a normal person!"
60 GOTO 10

The actual solution is that high level martials become mythological heroes with supernatural abilities: swordsmen who can cut the tops off mountains, thieves who can steal intangible concepts, barbarians who can wrestle rivers and storms, etc. Then, if you want to be a "normal person", you just cap levels to before you get those mythical abilities.

Like, if you just capped everyone to level 10, you don't see nearly as much martial-caster disparity. But that's not an appealing option to a lot of people. See the infinite loop above. But the reason the disparity exists is because martial classes are essentially capping themselves at level 10 (in terms of how strong their class features are) while casters are permitted to advance to 20. Meteor Swarm, Wish, Teleport, True Resurrection, these and many others dwarf anything a "normal person" could accomplish, so if you want to stay competitive then you can't stay a "normal person".
QFT, /thread, really.

Because D&D is the 800 lb gorilla in the gaming room, the only rpg with wide advertising, and often the only rpg people will play or run no matter how much they complain about it. Its like living in a town where people only eat junk fast food because those are the only signs & adverts they see and they're used to it. Could be a great deli just down the street but the menu is unfamiliar and it's a whole extra 2 minutes to travel so they never go.

I haven't been a player in a non D&D game for around 25 years now. I've run almost a dozen different games in different systems, but I never get to play anything but the current flavor of D&D because people are such damn sheep about it.
For the last five years, I have tried to persuade three of the four GMs I know and keep in touch with to give Exalted a try at least once a year. None actually want to.

And before someone says "then run it yourself", it doesn't actually work this way. I've run multiple games that I kinda wanted to play myself, including Shadowrun, older editions of D&D, and, on one occasion, a homebrew system, and the players mostly liked it (aside from one SR game) - but none wanted to GM the games. "Forever GM" is a real thing that is quite common.

Some people believe in the following things that require a game with very very very little codified rules. Like, really really really dumbed down mechanics:

1. All DMs are super experts that can adjudicate everything expertly in real time and have no use for codified rules or even suggestions.

2. The game is played by evil nasty players that "weaponize" charts. That's right, they take charts from the books, pages of them, and they use them as weapons on these super expert DMs. These expert DMs, it seems, have a weakness. Charts are their kryptonite. So when these evil players take these pages with charts on them, and weaponise them against the DMs, they are powerless to defend themselves.

3. Also, these evil players that weaponize charts are also newbies that don't know the rules and can't handle decisions or any complexity greater than 0, on a scale of 1 to 10. So the rules have to be suuuuuuuper bland and dumbed down so it doesn't confuse them.

So when you take all of that into consideration, you create the perfect system.
Indeed. I don't really get why those super GMs even need a system in the first place, it's not like they can't perfectly read their players' expectations and align them with their own on an action-to-action basis.

Is it…not? Where’s the advice on that? All it says is things which are very hard are DC 25.
And once again, "easy/hard" proves to be possibly the worst way to mark a DC. "Very hard" is entirely subjective on multiple levels - both perception and actual ability. Juggling three or four balls doesn't look particularly hard from the outside. Try doing it yourself, though. On the other hand, I think that climbing a tree without sturdy low branches is hard. I'm pretty sure a lot of you would disagree.

Psyren

2022-10-07, 02:33 PM

Is it…not? Where’s the advice on that? All it says is things which are very hard are DC 25.

It specifically says "you can use {a DC higher than 20}, but do so with caution and consider the level of the characters" - DMG 238. If your DM wants to ignore that (or fails to read it), that's up to them, but you absolutely do get to argue (or vote with your feet.) Moreover, if you tell them you're not having fun and they say "tough cookies, I think 25 is appropriate for your level 8 character despite it being a 70% chance of failure for a level 20 character with maxed ability score and proficiency!" there's really not much any book can do about that. It's not like the bonus characters get from proficiency at each level is a secret.

DrLoveMonkey

2022-10-07, 04:31 PM

It specifically says "you can use {a DC higher than 20}, but do so with caution and consider the level of the characters" - DMG 238. If your DM wants to ignore that (or fails to read it), that's up to them, but you absolutely do get to argue (or vote with your feet.)

I’m level ten! Three levels ago the wizard was turning into King Kong and tearing open giant stoneworks with his giant monkey hands. How long until I can drop DC 25 on my rogue?

Moreover, if you tell them you're not having fun and they say "tough cookies, I think 25 is appropriate for your level 8 character despite it being a 70% chance of failure for a level 20 character with maxed ability score and proficiency!" there's really not much any book can do about that. It's not like the bonus characters get from proficiency at each level is a secret.

Well I certainly wouldn’t expect a max level fighter with proficiency to have almost a three quarters chance of failing a very hard task that they’re specifically focused in.

There’s a tiny bit of a problem though, because there actually are a scant few actual set DCs in the book, and many in published adventures. One of them being breaking out of iron manacles DC 20.

Hold the god damned phone.

Overpowering and breaking out of an iron chain is “hard”?

I wouldn’t even call it “nearly impossible”. An iron chain can lift a mid-size sedan, you’re not breaking out of it. You might have a chance if you’re Hafthor Bjornsson, but I have my doubts, you’d need the perfect leverage.

If that’s the scale of feat we’re talking about then yeah, scaling that cliff is like DC 15 for sure, if not less.

Goobahfish

2022-10-07, 04:46 PM

1) The lack of "Soft Failure" in D&D beyond the pretty minimal "inspiration" system. Meaning that if you're forced into the "Risk" option, it's not that interesting. Most of the time, it's just "Well, guess I better roll these dice and hope".
Other systems, usually ones with meta-resources, have natural ways to introduce "Succeed at a cost" and other forms of soft-failure, which makes "Risk" options a lot more palatable and engaging. There are outcomes besides "Total Success" and "Total Failure" so taking risks feels better, you might take some lumps from bad rolls, but you can keep pushing.

This is basically the crux of a lot of the issues with Martials/Casters.

Like... 90% is that martials can be very 'one-note' (i.e. barbarian/champion) and the other is that when they do engage with the other pillars, it feels very... save-or-die-ish.

D&D does not have good... climbing rules, swimming rules, stealth rules, interrogation rules, survival rules, lockpicking rules...

Climb check... or fall.
Swim check... or drown.
Stealth check... or doomed.
Lockpick check... trivial or impossible.

Now a good DM can fix this with some experience which becomes... pseudo-house rules. You fail your first lock-pick, you damage the lock so now it looks like it has been picked. You fail again... your tool gets jammed in the lock, make another check or damage your thieves tools. If you fail 3 times, it just wasn't meant to be. Two attempts have a VERY high chance of success, Three even higher.

Stealth... you can keep track of a 'cover' score and that goes up and down with each success and failure etc etc.

But these aren't codified (which is not necessarily a bad thing) except for casters who go... I cast X and get result Y. I cast Disguise Self and now I am a perfect replica of whoever I want to be... don't even really need a disguise check right? Because I couldn't possibly be awful at 'art' and have stuffed up my spell. If Disguise Self just gave you advantage on such checks... I think most people wouldn't have this caster/martial divide because the wizard can't cheat-code their way to avoiding the conflict. Their spells are still useful, but not 'I win' buttons.

As mentioned above, if you have to choose between a 95% from a rogue with a risk of catastrophic failure and a 1 spell slot (100%), that isn't really even a choice. It looks like a choice, but catastrophic failure is infinitely bad. The issue is that often you are looking at 70% chance of catastrophic failure which discourages Martials from doing 'heroic' things and then focus on enabling the wizard to 'recharge'.

Dr.Samurai

2022-10-07, 05:01 PM

This is basically the crux of a lot of the issues with Martials/Casters.

Like... 90% is that martials can be very 'one-note' (i.e. barbarian/champion) and the other is that when they do engage with the other pillars, it feels very... save-or-die-ish.

D&D does not have good... climbing rules, swimming rules, stealth rules, interrogation rules, survival rules, lockpicking rules...

Climb check... or fall.
Swim check... or drown.
Stealth check... or doomed.
Lockpick check... trivial or impossible.

Now a good DM can fix this with some experience which becomes... pseudo-house rules. You fail your first lock-pick, you damage the lock so now it looks like it has been picked. You fail again... your tool gets jammed in the lock, make another check or damage your thieves tools. If you fail 3 times, it just wasn't meant to be. Two attempts have a VERY high chance of success, Three even higher.

Stealth... you can keep track of a 'cover' score and that goes up and down with each success and failure etc etc.

But these aren't codified (which is not necessarily a bad thing) except for casters who go... I cast X and get result Y. I cast Disguise Self and now I am a perfect replica of whoever I want to be... don't even really need a disguise check right? Because I couldn't possibly be awful at 'art' and have stuffed up my spell. If Disguise Self just gave you advantage on such checks... I think most people wouldn't have this caster/martial divide because the wizard can't cheat-code their way to avoiding the conflict. Their spells are still useful, but not 'I win' buttons.

As mentioned above, if you have to choose between a 95% from a rogue with a risk of catastrophic failure and a 1 spell slot (100%), that isn't really even a choice. It looks like a choice, but catastrophic failure is infinitely bad. The issue is that often you are looking at 70% chance of catastrophic failure which discourages Martials from doing 'heroic' things and then focus on enabling the wizard to 'recharge'.
And this may be compounded in 1D&D if fighters, barbarians, and monks can’t get Expertise. So they’ll just have their prof and mod for those default 15 DCs we all love so much.

DM: hmm…. 15 is default so I want this to be a little challenging so I’ll make it 20. Go ahead fighter.

Telok

2022-10-07, 05:12 PM

Yeah, that's the issue with those guidelines. Exactly how hard is Hard and Very Hard or Medium or Easy?

Put your arms to the side, palms up, and lift your shoulders, because nobody knows.

Thats why when I researched military research into vision, spotting, and hiding, the checks system thing I wrote for the game had pictures. Plus it turns out that any dice setup that produces bell curves can be adapted pretty easily. "can't be done, too many variables" they said. Bull****. All the peices are there, the military did the hard work, you just have to want to.

What's a hard perception check? Look at the pic.

Amechra

2022-10-07, 05:12 PM

I dont see it as a problem as such, because theyre using a limited resource to do it.

I think one of the things to consider is that "limited" is a very relative term.

If my 3rd level Druid casts Pass Without Trace and it resolves an encounter (because, I dunno, it helps the party sneak out of prison), I used a very valuable resource to do so. If my 9th level Druid casts Pass Without Trace and it resolves an encounter... it was basically free, because it's not like using my 2nd level spells for combat is the best use of my action anymore.

Despite spellcasters getting a bunch of spell slots as they level up, you could make the reasonable argument that the number of combat relevant spell slots that they have remains relatively constant. As a result, casters slowly accrue a bunch of resources that they can use for non-combat problem solving.

OACSNY97

2022-10-07, 05:22 PM

Thats why when I researched military research into vision, spotting, and hiding, the checks system thing I wrote for the game had pictures. Plus it turns out that any dice setup that produces bell curves can be adapted pretty easily. "can't be done, too many variables" they said. Bull****. All the peices are there, the military did the hard work, you just have to want to.

What's a hard perception check? Look at the pic.

Wow! That sounds really cool. Do you happen to remember any particularly good resources I could use to learn about it too?

Thanks!

Telok

2022-10-07, 05:43 PM

Wow! That sounds really cool. Do you happen to remember any particularly good resources I could use to learn about it too?

Thanks!

In spoiler, all available on web, copied from pdf because I couldn't find some of my old posts. This list isn't absolutely everything, Google is a starting point.
Bibliography
(just in case you really want to replicate some
of this for yourself)
AD-753 600 TARGET DETECTION AND
RANGE ESTIMATION
James A. Caviness, et al
Office of the Chief of Research and
Development (Army), November 1972

RESEARCH MEMORANDUM,
MOONLIGHT AND NIGHT VISIF1LITY
Thomas F. Nichols and Theodore R. Powers
USAIHRU, January 1964
https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/AD0438001.pdf

Jungle Vision IL: Effects of Distance,
Horizontal Placement, and Site on Personnel
Detection in an Evergreen Rain forest
Dobbins, D.A. et al.
U.S. Army Tropic Test Center, Fort
Clayton, Canal Zone, March 1965.

The Effects of Observer Location and
Viewing Method on Target Detection with
the 18-inch Tank-Mounted Searchlight
Louis, Nicholas B.
HumRRO Technical Report 91, June 1964.

Report Bibliography on Target Detection
and Range Estimation
ASTIA, Humans, Armed Forces Technical
Information Agency, Arlington, Virginia,
November 19 60.

Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
Predictions of Sighting Range Based Upon
Measurements of Target and Environmental
Properties
Jacqueline I. Gordon.
http://misclab.umeoce.maine.edu/education/VisibilityLab/reports/SIO_63-23.pdf

Memorandum RM-6158/1-PR, Target
Detection Through Visual Recognition: A
Quantitative Model
H.H. Bailey, February 1970
https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_memoranda/RM6158z1.html

RESEARCH ON VISUAL TARGET
DETECTION PART I DEVELOPMENT
OF AN AIR-TO-GROUND DETECTION/
IDENTIFICATION MODEL
Margaret E. Franklin, John A. Whittenburg
June 1965
Detection of random low-altitude jet aircraft
by ground observers (Tech. Memo. 7-60;
AD 238 341)

AD-758 875: CAPABILITIES OF
GROUND OBSERVERS TO LOCATE,
RECOGNIZE, AND ESTIMATE
DISTANCE OF LOW- FLYING
AIRCRAFT
Robert D. Baldwin
Human Resource's Research Organization,
March 1973

OACSNY97

2022-10-07, 06:07 PM

In spoiler, all available on web, copied from pdf because I couldn't find some of my old posts. This list isn't absolutely everything, Google is a starting point.
Bibliography
(just in case you really want to replicate some
of this for yourself)
AD-753 600 TARGET DETECTION AND
RANGE ESTIMATION
James A. Caviness, et al
Office of the Chief of Research and
Development (Army), November 1972

RESEARCH MEMORANDUM,
MOONLIGHT AND NIGHT VISIF1LITY
Thomas F. Nichols and Theodore R. Powers
USAIHRU, January 1964
https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/AD0438001.pdf

Jungle Vision IL: Effects of Distance,
Horizontal Placement, and Site on Personnel
Detection in an Evergreen Rain forest
Dobbins, D.A. et al.
U.S. Army Tropic Test Center, Fort
Clayton, Canal Zone, March 1965.

The Effects of Observer Location and
Viewing Method on Target Detection with
the 18-inch Tank-Mounted Searchlight
Louis, Nicholas B.
HumRRO Technical Report 91, June 1964.

Report Bibliography on Target Detection
and Range Estimation
ASTIA, Humans, Armed Forces Technical
Information Agency, Arlington, Virginia,
November 19 60.

Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
Predictions of Sighting Range Based Upon
Measurements of Target and Environmental
Properties
Jacqueline I. Gordon.
http://misclab.umeoce.maine.edu/education/VisibilityLab/reports/SIO_63-23.pdf

Memorandum RM-6158/1-PR, Target
Detection Through Visual Recognition: A
Quantitative Model
H.H. Bailey, February 1970
https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_memoranda/RM6158z1.html

RESEARCH ON VISUAL TARGET
DETECTION PART I DEVELOPMENT
OF AN AIR-TO-GROUND DETECTION/
IDENTIFICATION MODEL
Margaret E. Franklin, John A. Whittenburg
June 1965
Detection of random low-altitude jet aircraft
by ground observers (Tech. Memo. 7-60;
AD 238 341)

AD-758 875: CAPABILITIES OF
GROUND OBSERVERS TO LOCATE,
RECOGNIZE, AND ESTIMATE
DISTANCE OF LOW- FLYING
AIRCRAFT
Robert D. Baldwin
Human Resource's Research Organization,
March 1973

Thanks for posting your bibliography. Really nice to have the resources collected in a helpful starting place.

Psyren

2022-10-07, 08:17 PM

I’m level ten! Three levels ago the wizard was turning into King Kong and tearing open giant stoneworks with his giant monkey hands. How long until I can drop DC 25 on my rogue?

...Does your DM not realize that DC 25 would be crazy hard for someone with max ability score and proficiency at level 10 either? That's 80% chance of failure! Proficiency bonus by level is very plainly shown in the rules. I'm trying to be sympathetic but I have doubts that your DM is internalizing the material.

There’s a tiny bit of a problem though, because there actually are a scant few actual set DCs in the book, and many in published adventures. One of them being breaking out of iron manacles DC 20.

Hold the god damned phone.

Overpowering and breaking out of an iron chain is “hard”?

Yeah, it requires both talent (strength) and training (athletic prowess) to do reliably. And if you're missing one of those, you probably need magic to make up the difference. Not sure what's so shocking about that. (Then again, I'm not even sure why they needed to codify it, but oh well.)

I wouldn’t even call it “nearly impossible”. An iron chain can lift a mid-size sedan, you’re not breaking out of it. You might have a chance if you’re Hafthor Bjornsson, but I have my doubts, you’d need the perfect leverage.

If that’s the scale of feat we’re talking about then yeah, scaling that cliff is like DC 15 for sure, if not less.

How would Hafthor compare to a D&D Barbarian in your eyes? Or even a Str Fighter or a Paladin?

Telok

2022-10-07, 09:29 PM

Psyren

2022-10-07, 09:57 PM

Maybe the DM dosen't do stats math in their head? I had one who thought three 30% chances of not dying equaled one 90% chance. If the game requires real-time probability calculations at the table then maybe it ought to either say that on the cover or give some advice & examples on how the probabilites work.

You don't even need the percentage though. Just "a level 10 character with maximum ability score and proficiency needs a 16 on the die to beat DC 25." I don't need a stats degree to know that 16 on a d20 is big number.

Telok

2022-10-07, 10:55 PM

You don't even need the percentage though. Just "a level 10 character with maximum ability score and proficiency needs a 16 on the die to beat DC 25." I don't need a stats degree to know that 16 on a d20 is big number.

You're doing math in your head again. Ever written help files for non technical people? Its like that. You can't go around assuming that because something is easy or obvious to you that it will be so for them. Just because you've memorized what prof bonus are at what levels, assume someone will have a 20 stat, and easily math out what they'll need to roll doesn't mean others will.

If you're writing a game for newbies or the lowest common denominator you have to make it work pretty much out of the box. If your "easy & approachable" rules start breaking down when people who don't do probability type math all the time then there's a problem with either the rules or your idea of "easy & approachable". Personally I don't mind less "easy" when I'm DMing if I feel I'm getting a good return on the effort, but I've run across a number of DMs who really need system math that just works without having to be able to math out on the fly if something labelled "hard" is just a bit under a 50/50 chance or more like a 1/6 chance.

Thunderous Mojo

2022-10-07, 11:26 PM

Indeed. I don't really get why those super GMs even need a system in the first place, it's not like they can't perfectly read their players' expectations and align them with their own on an action-to-action basis.

Kids playing make believe don’t have a system. Kids interact with each other when playing and make up a system.

RPG games are about the inter-subjective…and the inter-subjective is fluid.

And once again, "easy/hard" proves to be possibly the worst way to mark a DC. "Very hard" is entirely subjective on multiple levels - both perception and actual ability. Juggling three or four balls doesn't look particularly hard from the outside. Try doing it yourself, though. On the other hand, I think that climbing a tree without sturdy low branches is hard. I'm pretty sure a lot of you would disagree.

Again…the game is inter-subjective.
DCs are not a ‘true representation’ any more than the Cinema Motif of being shot in the leg is a wound you can slap a bandaid on, and all is fine.

If someone finds themselves and their group, unable to parse or develop the meaning of “Easy” or “Hard” as it pertains to a task in their game….then no advice or chart is likely to help.

Hell, I’m tempted to publish a “Big Book of DCs” on DM’s Guild.
Apparently there is a market for such a product.

Jervis

2022-10-08, 12:02 AM

I think one of the things to consider is that "limited" is a very relative term.

If my 3rd level Druid casts Pass Without Trace and it resolves an encounter (because, I dunno, it helps the party sneak out of prison), I used a very valuable resource to do so. If my 9th level Druid casts Pass Without Trace and it resolves an encounter... it was basically free, because it's not like using my 2nd level spells for combat is the best use of my action anymore.

Despite spellcasters getting a bunch of spell slots as they level up, you could make the reasonable argument that the number of combat relevant spell slots that they have remains relatively constant. As a result, casters slowly accrue a bunch of resources that they can use for non-combat problem solving.

Picking Druid as your example of why high level casters don’t use low level spells was perhaps Ill advised seeing that Fairy Fire exists

Thunderous Mojo

2022-10-08, 12:17 AM

You're doing math in your head again..

One could also count on one’s fingers pretty darn quick as well.

“Needing to roll a 16 on a D20….one, two, three, four, five.”
“Five times Five is….”

About as difficult as figuring out how much to tip on a dinner check.

Plenty of D&D groups, imbibe alcoholic drinks while playing, and still can manage the basic maths, involved.

Jervis

2022-10-08, 12:35 AM

You're doing math in your head again. Ever written help files for non technical people? Its like that. You can't go around assuming that because something is easy or obvious to you that it will be so for them. Just because you've memorized what prof bonus are at what levels, assume someone will have a 20 stat, and easily math out what they'll need to roll doesn't mean others will.

If you're writing a game for newbies or the lowest common denominator you have to make it work pretty much out of the box. If your "easy & approachable" rules start breaking down when people who don't do probability type math all the time then there's a problem with either the rules or your idea of "easy & approachable". Personally I don't mind less "easy" when I'm DMing if I feel I'm getting a good return on the effort, but I've run across a number of DMs who really need system math that just works without having to be able to math out on the fly if something labelled "hard" is just a bit under a 50/50 chance or more like a 1/6 chance.

How is d20 math hard? Dnd probability is the easiest system in the world to figure out.

Leon

2022-10-08, 01:10 AM

Psyren

2022-10-08, 01:55 AM

You're doing math in your head again.

No, I own dice. They can buy a starter set if they don't, that's what they're for.

DrLoveMonkey

2022-10-08, 04:53 AM

...Does your DM not realize that DC 25 would be crazy hard for someone with max ability score and proficiency at level 10 either? That's 80% chance of failure! Proficiency bonus by level is very plainly shown in the rules. I'm trying to be sympathetic but I have doubts that your DM is internalizing the material.
I’m sure he can do the math, but if the DC chart said that very easy/easy/medium etc. we’re 2/4/5/6/8/10 then I wouldn’t be getting a DC 25 check to climb that cliff.

The issue you’re trying to say is, how awesome do I think my rogue should be? Once you figure that out, then agree with your DM about what the DC of each check should be. I want to know how powerful they’re supposed to be.

Like imagine you’re learning a new system, know nothing about it. It’s a d6 pool system, minimum size one, maximum ten, and any die that comes in 4+ is a success. So basically you can expect about half your pool in successes.

The book then says that easy checks are 1, medium are are 3, hard are 5, and nearly impossible is 7.

One of your players picks a character class called a Tree Knight. They’re described as warriors of the forest kingdom of Elway, and the vanguard against the dark things which dwell in the nearby mountains. They’ve got the full 10 dice to their Athletics ability right off the bat, very good, average roll of 5 successes.

You’re going though the game it feels kind of like DnD, you’re adventuring in dungeons, difficulty 2 roll to climb out of a steep pit, difficulty 3 to swing vine-to-vine through the woods. Weirdly though one of the other players is playing an alchemist, and his brews seem to do insane things. Like explode entire hillsides and control minds. He has to pay gold for each ingredient though so who knows, maybe you’re just giving out too much treasure.

Then you come across one of the sections with the warships, a 32-pound naval cannon. It has a section at the bottom though that says “a character shot by one of these weapons may attempt a difficulty 2 athletics roll to catch the canon ball before it hits them, if they roll 4 successes instead, they swing the ball around and hurl it at a target of their choosing, exploding on impact and dealing double damage as the character adds his own strength to the ball”

Ah, okay, the tree knight isn’t Conan or Aragorn, they’re Goku. When you called for a difficulty 7 roll to lift a damaged portcullis gate, you really should have called for a difficulty 1-2 roll. What’s a difficulty 7 roll? I don’t know, probably smash through a fortress wall with a single punch.

With that context I now understand the dynamic between alchemist and tree knight better.

Yeah, it requires both talent (strength) and training (athletic prowess) to do reliably. And if you're missing one of those, you probably need magic to make up the difference. Not sure what's so shocking about that. (Then again, I'm not even sure why they needed to codify it, but oh well.)
How is it not shocking? Do you realize how strong an iron chain is? Why would you ever guess that “hard” difficulty implies superhuman strength?

Hard lets you do superhuman feats, very hard a step beyond that, and nearly impossible is a step beyond that even.

How would Hafthor compare to a D&D Barbarian in your eyes? Or even a Str Fighter or a Paladin?

No idea, I have no clue how strong a DnD Barbarian is supposed to be. My best clue is they can snap iron chain with relative ease so they surpass Hafthor for sure, but the only reason to think that is because there is an example of that kind of feat and how difficult they would find it.

Ignimortis

2022-10-08, 05:47 AM

Like imagine you’re learning a new system, know nothing about it. It’s a d6 pool system, minimum size one, maximum ten, and any die that comes in 4+ is a success. So basically you can expect about half your pool in successes.

The book then says that easy checks are 1, medium are are 3, hard are 5, and nearly impossible is 7.

One of your players picks a character class called a Tree Knight. They’re described as warriors of the forest kingdom of Elway, and the vanguard against the dark things which dwell in the nearby mountains. They’ve got the full 10 dice to their Athletics ability right off the bat, very good, average roll of 5 successes.

You’re going though the game it feels kind of like DnD, you’re adventuring in dungeons, difficulty 2 roll to climb out of a steep pit, difficulty 3 to swing vine-to-vine through the woods. Weirdly though one of the other players is playing an alchemist, and his brews seem to do insane things. Like explode entire hillsides and control minds. He has to pay gold for each ingredient though so who knows, maybe you’re just giving out too much treasure.

Then you come across one of the sections with the warships, a 32-pound naval cannon. It has a section at the bottom though that says “a character shot by one of these weapons may attempt a difficulty 2 athletics roll to catch the canon ball before it hits them, if they roll 4 successes instead, they swing the ball around and hurl it at a target of their choosing, exploding on impact and dealing double damage as the character adds his own strength to the ball”

Ah, okay, the tree knight isn’t Conan or Aragorn, they’re Goku. When you called for a difficulty 7 roll to lift a damaged portcullis gate, you really should have called for a difficulty 1-2 roll. What’s a difficulty 7 roll? I don’t know, probably smash through a fortress wall with a single punch.

With that context I now understand the dynamic between alchemist and tree knight better.

Slightly off-topic (or not?), but that's basically what I want high-level martials to be able to do. I want to catch cannonballs with my bare hands and send them back when I'm playing a double-digit level STR-focused character. Punch through three meters of thick stone wall, too. Only fair, really, with Wizard getting to crash meteors on people and tear open planar boundaries.

Sneak Dog

2022-10-08, 07:08 AM

Is it tho? a problem that WotC have "fix".

A lot of words go into it being a problem but from experience its only a forum issue of white rooms and maybes.

Magic a whole does need a good shake upside down but not for any Caster/Non divide, its just too safe in this game, it has great power but no drawback for that ability other than a mediocre slot spent. Every other system I have that has a form of magic has a cost to it and a chance for that same power to be very bad to the people using with it. This maybe just me but wizards are exceeding boring, they have magic and that's that. They rely on that magic to do everything, they could do with having less magic and more variety.

You can't even roughly balance a +5 to a specific ability check against a spell that lets you automatically perform a reasonably impressive feat of that specific ability check unless you have a way to figure out what a +5 means.
Is +5 to athletics better than tripling your jumping distance with the jump spell?

If this is the case either the system is poorly balanced or it shouldn't ask these questions. D&D5e asks these questions.

Leon

2022-10-08, 08:00 AM

If this is the case either the system is poorly balanced or it shouldn't ask these questions. D&D5e asks these questions.

It asks maybe but people on forums will spend inane amounts of time in circular arguments over any answer that one might give or get.

animorte

2022-10-08, 08:34 AM

It asks maybe but people on forums will spend inane amounts of time in circular arguments over any answer that one might give or get.
It’s almost like we’re a bunch of NASCAR drivers, right?

I love this community, despite its flaws. I love that I can completely respectfully disagree with this one person specifically while on another thread simultaneously having that same person’s back on a different argument entirely. I love our various perspectives and experiences.

Thunderous Mojo

2022-10-08, 08:51 AM

Slightly off-topic (or not?), but that's basically what I want high-level martials to be able to do. I want to catch cannonballs with my bare hands and send them back when I'm playing a double-digit level STR-focused character. Punch through three meters of thick stone wall, too. Only fair, really, with Wizard getting to crash meteors on people and tear open planar boundaries.

One could theoretically do all of the above, currently in 5e.
A 6th level Monk, has Magic Fists, and could indeed catch a cannonball and throw it back.

Another non-monk character might be able to do some of this as well, given a DM that is willing to allow ad-hoc actions. As a DM, I would allow a player to make a Strength check, to hold onto a cannonball that struck them.

The character is going to take the damage from the attack, but high level martial have bunches, and bunches of hit points, so this most likely won’t be an issue.

Objects, by RAW, in 5e do not have very many Hit Points.
A 10’ section of wall made from stone has AC 17, and 27 Hit Points.

What typically inhibits a fighter from tearing down houses with their bare hands, is the Damage Threshold number, the DM assigns to the structure, which is entirely within the purview of the DM.

The endowment of the DM to determine the Damage Threshold is a “feature and not a bug”, as it allows for tonal changes from campaign to campaign, without having to add or remove a whole host of rules.

A D&D campaign that wanted to highlight how super heroic the PCs are, could simply determine that Objects have no or low Damage Thresholds.

A 20 Strength character does at least 6 points of damage per unarmed strike. That means this PC only needs 5 licks to punch to the center of a Tootsie Pop wall, that has a Damage Threshold of Zero.

A 20th level Fighter in a D&D Super Heroic game could Action Surge, and punch through a wall, and attack creatures on the other side, on the same round.

Sounds like Superman, to me.

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse1.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOVP. 4QAeibgzG4sPp21ZXx0f4AHgFo%26pid%3DApi&f=1&ipt=dbbadddd46e55c85f5b1dbf5fad8a42d929f6d3fbb634f 0920e9a2f9bdfdf31a&ipo=videos

Ignimortis

2022-10-08, 09:01 AM

One could theoretically do all of the above, currently in 5e.
A 6th level Monk, has Magic Fists, and could indeed catch a cannonball and throw it back.

Another non-monk character might be able to do some of this as well, given a DM that is whiling to allow ad-hoc actions. As a DM I would allow a player to make a Strength check, to hold onto a cannonball that struck them.

The character is going to take the damage from the attack, but high level martial have bunches, and bunches of hit points, so this most likely won’t be an issue.

Objects, by RAW, in 5e do not have very many Hit Points.
A 10’ section of wall made from stone has AC 17, and 27 Hit Points.

What typically inhibits a fighter from tearing down houses with their bare hands, is the Damage Threshold number, the DM assigns to the structure, which is entirely within the purview of the DM.

The endowment of the DM to determine the Damage Threshold is a “feature and not a bug”, as it allows for tonal changes from campaign to campaign, without having to add or remove a whole host of rules.

A D&D campaign that wanted to highlight how super heroic the PCs are, could simply determine that Objects have no or low Damage Thresholds.

A 20 Strength character does at least 6 points of damage per unarmed strike. That means this PC only needs 5 licks to punch to the center of a Tootsie Pop wall, that has a Damage Threshold of Zero.

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse1.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOVP. 4QAeibgzG4sPp21ZXx0f4AHgFo%26pid%3DApi&f=1&ipt=dbbadddd46e55c85f5b1dbf5fad8a42d929f6d3fbb634f 0920e9a2f9bdfdf31a&ipo=videos

Aside from Monk, this is, again, all DM-dependent (and even the cannonball is DM-dependent - it might be a targeted attack with a roll, in which case a Monk can at least try, or a non-attack roll effect, in which case you can't do anything). That is really the crux of the issue. Martials have to be allowed to be awesome by the DM. Casters just do things because the mechanics say they do things. Why does Wizard get to cast Gate, Wish, and Meteor Swarm without DM permission?

I certainly don't think it's easy to cast a Fireball, so can a Wizard roll me a DC 25 (Very Hard) Arcana check each time he wants to cast Fireball? I'd even be down to letting them do it all day long, as long as they keep beating the DC 25 Arcana check. But, of course, each attempt takes an action. And, of course, I figure it's even harder to reduce something to constituent atoms or change something's shape on all levels, so Polymorph or Disintegrate will be DC 30.

Keltest

2022-10-08, 09:13 AM

Aside from Monk, this is, again, all DM-dependent (and even the cannonball is DM-dependent - it might be a targeted attack with a roll, in which case a Monk can at least try, or a non-attack roll effect, in which case you can't do anything). That is really the crux of the issue. Martials have to be allowed to be awesome by the DM. Casters just do things because the mechanics say they do things. Why does Wizard get to cast Gate, Wish, and Meteor Swarm without DM permission?

I certainly don't think it's easy to cast a Fireball, so can a Wizard roll me a DC 25 (Very Hard) Arcana check each time he wants to cast Fireball? I'd even be down to letting them do it all day long, as long as they keep beating the DC 25 Arcana check. But, of course, each attempt takes an action. And, of course, I figure it's even harder to reduce something to constituent atoms or change something's shape on all levels, so Polymorph or Disintegrate will be DC 30.

Cannons actually have stats in the DMG. They are indeed attack rolls, but they deal like 10d10 damage, so unless its an exceptionally unlucky cannonball it will probably deal more damage than a monk can typically deflect.

But getting back to the point, if somebody wants to play a superhero game and the DM is running lord of the rings, thats not a system problem, either the DM is failing to adequately respond to what the players want or the player(s) are/is refusing to respect the tone of the game. The solution isnt to try and bend the game into submission, its to talk to each other like freaking adults and make sure everyone is on the same page.

And frankly, the DM is entirely within their rights to say "Simulacrum doesnt exist in my game. Gate doesnt exist in my game. Wish doesnt exist in this game." It happens all the time, especially on these forums, so lets not act like DMs hands are tied or anything when it comes to preventing wizards from breaking the game.

Thunderous Mojo

2022-10-08, 09:16 AM

Aside from Monk, this is, again, all DM-dependent

My, (somewhat), facetious response is that: it seems like the lot of you all need better DMs.

If one were to ‘hardwire’ Super Hero-ism as the default mode in D&D that would turn off the Gritty Realism crowd, and vis versa.

That is why people need to think and talk to each other about what sort of game they want to run, and how to achieve that.

If your D&D playing experience is online pick up games, with different participants each time, then I can see how rule aspects being DM dependent, might never allow for the tonal shifts you want.

Of course, one could always attempt to assemble players locally, (population permitting), and run the game you want.

GURPS exists….quite a bit of what some people have been clamoring for is in GURPS.

Ignimortis

2022-10-08, 09:33 AM

My, (somewhat), facetious response is that: it seems like the lot of you all need better DMs.

If one were to ‘hardwire’ Super Hero-ism as the default mode in D&D that would turn off the Gritty Realism crowd, and vis versa.

That is why people need to think and talk to each other about what sort of game they want to run, and how to achieve that.

If your D&D playing experience is online pick up games, with different participants each time, then I can see how rule aspects being DM dependent, might never allow for the tonal shifts you want.

Of course, one could always attempt to assemble players locally, (population permitting), and run the game you want.

GURPS exists….quite a bit of what some people have been clamoring for is in GURPS.

Just use levels for what they're supposed to be and are even claimed to be by the developers. Level 2 is for Gritty Realism who run from orcs, level 17 is for superheroes who save entire worlds. I don't think there's anyone on this board who advocates for superheroes from level 1 to 20, or even level 5 to 20. most, it's people saying "yeah, martials need to be outright superhuman at double digits, and not only in the "I can take 20 arrows to the face before dying" way".

What you're suggesting, instead, is "the GM should do all the work and twist the rules hard enough to make something maybe potentially work, and in practice ignore how the game actually works mechanically in favor of spontaneously allowing players to do things".

GURPS does not actually do superheroics anywhere well. It's rooted in semi-realistic basics that keep impacting higher-power play in dissonant ways. But it is similar to your suggestion in the way that the GM must actually work not only on the setting and the plot and the NPCs, but also on the rules themselves, because GURPS is less a finished game and more a set of building blocks that you need to learn to operate.

Talionis

2022-10-08, 10:05 AM

Bring back ToB maneuvers, maritals become per encounter creatures and leave casters to daily resources.

Once per turn you get to use one of your maneuvers in place of an attack or use your BA to fuel extra actions.

Attack and use BA to gain DR/bonus ac/temp Hp/more attacks/ ect once per encounter.

Attack and replace one of your attacks with X maneuver once per encounter that: (Stuns/Sickens/disadvantage/advantage/temp HP/clears condition/adds elemental dmg)

As you level your get more options … maybe even ones that provide spell effects.

This would be my solution. Tome of Battle was a lot of fun. It had a spread of stances and maneuvers that were interesting, useful, and impactful. Some of the paths were Gish-like but others could easily be seen as just mundane. In all it provided a spell like system that scaled into higher tier campaigns.

My tweak to this would be using a “non-caster” level for this ToB system so it is directly supposed to balance some against casting for mundanes. Character level minus Caster Level equals ToB level. This would allow Rogue Barbarian multi classes to stack in some way akin to Cleric and Wizard levels stacking for caster level. It would also give 1/2 progression to Paladin, Artficer, and Ranger. It would also 2/3 progression Arcane Trickster and Eldritch Knight.

tiornys

2022-10-08, 01:21 PM

5E specifically has a serious problem with the theory of balancing between high power/limited resources and steady contribution. In short, there's no need to be a (pure) martial to provide the latter. Five levels of Ranger gets you 80-90% of the class's overall martial contribution while also gaining half casting, and then you can easily multiclass full caster. Similarly, Paladin has strong incentives to multiclass full caster once they reach level 6-7, and the only reason they go past level 5 is because of their powerful magical auras. Any Cha-based caster that wants it can access all-the-time good DPR from 2 levels of Warlock.

5E also has a serious problem with the idea of "good melee characters" because there is so little incentive to be in melee. Unlike some earlier editions of D&D, melee characters in 5E don't inherently deal higher damage than ranged characters. Unlike earlier editions of D&D, melee characters in 5E exert very little area control thanks to opportunity attacks being tied to their reaction. Unlike earlier editions of D&D, ranged characters suffer minimal penalties when engaged by melee. Unlike earlier editions of D&D, spellcasters suffer minimal penalties when engaged by melee. No offensive reason to go melee. No control/defensive reasons to go melee. These issues are foundational to 5E and it's impossible to fix martial characters without addressing them.

With no incentive to run pure martials for DPR, a party is instead incentivized towards having as much spellcasting as they can get away with. With minimal incentives for melee oriented characters and the ease of armoring up a full caster, a party can get away with being almost entirely full casters. Resource pressure? A full party of spellcasters has more than enough resources to cover multiple standard adventuring days with spell slots to spare thanks to the sheer volume of "I win" buttons they can access available across all three pillars of play.

5E casters don't just "tend to outshine" 5E martials. 5E casters obsolete 5E martials.

Keltest

2022-10-08, 01:49 PM

5E also has a serious problem with the idea of "good melee characters" because there is so little incentive to be in melee. Unlike some earlier editions of D&D, melee characters in 5E don't inherently deal higher damage than ranged characters. Unlike earlier editions of D&D, melee characters in 5E exert very little area control thanks to opportunity attacks being tied to their reaction. Unlike earlier editions of D&D, ranged characters suffer minimal penalties when engaged by melee. Unlike earlier editions of D&D, spellcasters suffer minimal penalties when engaged by melee. No offensive reason to go melee. No control/defensive reasons to go melee. These issues are foundational to 5E and it's impossible to fix martial characters without addressing them.

I disagree with this pretty strongly. The incentive for being in melee is that you can do so on your own terms and exercise more control over the battlefield. Most monsters are melee, so theres a very good chance youll be in melee whether you like it or not, and while you can technically make an archer who has no problems being in melee, all youve really done is take away the penalties for being attacked. An actual dedicated melee character on the other hand can build into it, being more prepared to be charged by a big dumb monster and protect themselves, or prevent an enemy from retreating. Archers and casters also have a feat tax if they dont want to be punished for using their ranged options in melee (which, again, is going to be unavoidable to a point) whereas melee characters do not, saving them resources which can be spent to build on the things they want to be doing.

tiornys

2022-10-08, 02:28 PM

I disagree with this pretty strongly. The incentive for being in melee is that you can do so on your own terms and exercise more control over the battlefield. Most monsters are melee, so theres a very good chance youll be in melee whether you like it or not, and while you can technically make an archer who has no problems being in melee, all youve really done is take away the penalties for being attacked. An actual dedicated melee character on the other hand can build into it, being more prepared to be charged by a big dumb monster and protect themselves, or prevent an enemy from retreating. Archers and casters also have a feat tax if they dont want to be punished for using their ranged options in melee (which, again, is going to be unavoidable to a point) whereas melee characters do not, saving them resources which can be spent to build on the things they want to be doing.
Not sure what you mean by "you can do so on your own terms". How does this apply to the decision to go primarily melee instead of primarily ranged?

The control that a melee character exercises by being in melee is more illusion than reality. It works at many tables, partly because of lingering influence from earlier editions/other gaming systems where melee presence exercises real control, and partly because many DMs consciously or unconsciously play into the illusion. The reality is that a melee character optimized to exert melee-level control can maybe exert hard control on one enemy. Maybe. And without that optimization, they're limited to maybe exerting soft control on one enemy.

And yes, most monsters are melee. That plays directly into the idea of building around ranged attacks and spellcasting and using area movement denial to exert real control against the monsters. Grease, Entangle, Spike Growth, Web--these spells in combination with readily accessible forced movement effects form a more effective "front line" than characters intended to be frontliners.

The feat tax issue for ranged characters could be relevant, but the feat in question is highly desirable anyway for the bonus action attack clause alone. In as much as it's a tax, melee characters face a similar tax. Casters have numerous options to be effective without making ranged attacks or to exit melee at minimal cost, especially when teamwork is involved (e.g. Telekinetic has no chance of failure when used on a willing ally).

Keltest

2022-10-08, 02:30 PM

Not sure what you mean by "you can do so on your own terms". How does this apply to the decision to go primarily melee instead of primarily ranged?

The point I was making is that realistically, it isnt a decision. Youre going to be in melee sometimes, period. You can either choose to be in melee all the time and be good at it, or gamble on being able to be in ranged enough to justify being worse in melee when it does come up.

Telok

2022-10-08, 02:40 PM

How is d20 math hard? Dnd probability is the easiest system in the world to figure out.

Not on you personally, more generally. I'm getting massive deja vu here. This "I understand all the math and have it internalized so everything's perfect" is the exact argument I saw being made 20+ years ago for keeping thac0 and negative AC progression when 3e was coming out.

Are people really arguing that because probability math is easy for them, then we should keep a subset of rules that will often fail & frustrate a DM who uses them without understanding the math behind it? Because that's what I'm hearing & seeing. I see DMs who don't check probabilities because the math isn't easy for them, and those DMs get upset when players go for spell solutions and the barbarians & such are sad they can't make half of the average strength skill checks. Then here I hear that everything's perfect and the DMs should be told "git gud noob" or kicked out of DMing because people who find probability math easy have figured out they should avoid rolling checks as much as possible.

DrLoveMonkey

2022-10-08, 02:46 PM

My, (somewhat), facetious response is that: it seems like the lot of you all need better DMs.

If one were to ‘hardwire’ Super Hero-ism as the default mode in D&D that would turn off the Gritty Realism crowd, and vis versa.

My, (somewhat), facetious response is that: it seems like the lot of you all need better DMs.

If one were to ‘hardwire’ Super Hero-ism as the default mode in D&D that would turn off the Gritty Realism crowd, and vis versa.

Okay, so let's say you're playing a game where the DM has decided the power level is like, LotR, specifically the movies because honestly the books are definitely more mythic tier power.

DM: Okay guys, you reach the abandoned fortress. You're here to clear it out and make sure the group of refugees following you a day back have a place to stay. You've heard from the rumors you gathered that the portcullus is stuck because the counterweight ropes all rotted through, what do you do?

Fighter: Can I try to lift it?

DM: No, it's way too heavy.

FT: Okay, maybe we should try to break in another way to fix the mechanism... can I try a grappling hook on the wall and then climbing up?

DM: Yes, but climbing a smooth hempen rope while carrying all your gear, armor, weapons, tools you need to fix the mechanism is going to be super hard, and if you fall, well...falling 30 feet in a gritty realistic setting isn't so safe.

FT: Hmm....

Wizard: I turn into a 50 foot tall gorilla and yank the portcullis up.

DM: Yep, that works, King Kong can absolutely do that.

FT: What?

WZ: Okay, then I'll explore the courtyard, make sure it's all good, then I'll go back to human form and we can go to the keep to see what's up.

DM: Yep, so in the dungeon there's a door that's riveted shut! You see through the grate in the window a scroll case....it almost looks like the one King Daril said contained the map to his cousin's buried treasure.

FT: whoooaaa! Even with finders fees that could make us rich! Okay how can I pry this open?

DM: It's got like 200 rivets, your best bet is probably picking through the stone around it and getting it out that way, but they've sunk in so many it will still take a whole day. You're nowhere near strong enough to do it any faster. Do you want to abandon your mission to clear out the fortress to get the scroll? Keeping in mind that you need to move out tomorrow when the refugees arrive.

FT: Damn, good question. Are we that greed-

WZ: I cast misty step, teleport into the room, pick up the scroll, look around to see if there's anything else interesting, and teleport out.

FT/DM: Yep, okay.

DM: So you have the scroll, your next adventure, heading upstairs there's one lone person who lives here, when he sees you, he throws his oil lamp to the ground! Saying if he can't have his house nobody can! The flames begin to spread all over the floor, the carpet, the wooden tables, everything will burn.

FT: Oh-no, oh-no. Okay I'm going to run through the room flipping tables out of the way, and grabbing a blanket to try and extinguish the flames. God damn him!

DM: Okay the banquet tables are pretty big, gonna have to start giving me athletics checks.

WZ: I cast tidal wave.

DM: Okay the room fills with water, extinguishing all the flames and saving the keep. Now you gotta fix the portcullis mechanism though, it's snapped high up in the roof of the gatehouse.

FT: Okay, this is my thing. I want to take off my armor, won't need it I hope, and climb up there to try and see what's wrong.

DM: Okay, it's dark, do you take a torch?

FT: No I can't risk it.

DM: Good call, gimme an athletics roll to get up there and navigate all around the area.

WZ: I cast Light on the fighter's pendant.

DM: Okay now the whole area lights up

FT: Yeah thanks man

DM: Looks like you need to start winding the rope around the drum, give me an acrobatics check, failure means you fall all the way down to the stone floor though so if you've got any tricks, now's the time, DC 20.

FT: I'll spend inspiration then, my dex isn't so good. Okay then, here we go!......Aw balls.

DM: Unfortunately you slip and plummet to the ground, taking-

WZ: I cast featherfall.

DM: Okay you float gently to the ground.

WZ: Now I cast fly, and fly up there to do the windings.

DM: Okay you easily fly circles around the drum, re-winding the rope.

So the DM uses skill DCs to control how epic and super the players get to be. Well the martial players anyway, because the spell slingers do not have an open ended power level that the DM can modify per campaign. You're a level 3 sorcerer, you can fly, period. A DM can always rule that certain spells don't exist, but if you had codified skills you could just do that with the martials too, and in fact it'd be way easier.

tiornys

2022-10-08, 02:48 PM

The point I was making is that realistically, it isnt a decision. Youre going to be in melee sometimes, period. You can either choose to be in melee all the time and be good at it, or gamble on being able to be in ranged enough to justify being worse in melee when it does come up.
Hmm, ok. I see what you're saying now. However, I don't agree that you can choose to be in melee all the time; you can choose to be good in melee certainly, but even with a majority of monsters being melee there are plenty that are effective at range and difficult to engage with melee. Melee characters have a much harder time dealing with flying enemies than ranged characters, and the primary solutions for melee characters in those scenarios are magic-based solutions.

In any case, I'd say that gamble you describe is absolutely worthwhile in 5E. Characters should plan on ways to be effective in melee and/or ways to exit melee when needed, but (for optimal tactics) melee should never be plan A.

Keltest

2022-10-08, 02:53 PM

Okay, so let's say you're playing a game where the DM has decided the power level is like, LotR, specifically the movies because honestly the books are definitely more mythic tier power.

DM: Okay guys, you reach the abandoned fortress. You're here to clear it out and make sure the group of refugees following you a day back have a place to stay. You've heard from the rumors you gathered that the portcullus is stuck because the counterweight ropes all rotted through, what do you do?

Fighter: Can I try to lift it?

DM: No, it's way too heavy.

FT: Okay, maybe we should try to break in another way to fix the mechanism... can I try a grappling hook on the wall and then climbing up?

DM: Yes, but climbing a smooth hempen rope while carrying all your gear, armor, weapons, tools you need to fix the mechanism is going to be super hard, and if you fall, well...falling 30 feet in a gritty realistic setting isn't so safe.

FT: Hmm....

Wizard: I turn into a 50 foot tall gorilla and yank the portcullis up.

DM: Yep, that works, King Kong can absolutely do that.

FT: What?

WZ: Okay, then I'll explore the courtyard, make sure it's all good, then I'll go back to human form and we can go to the keep to see what's up.

DM: Yep, so in the dungeon there's a door that's riveted shut! You see through the grate in the window a scroll case....it almost looks like the one King Daril said contained the map to his cousin's buried treasure.

FT: whoooaaa! Even with finders fees that could make us rich! Okay how can I pry this open?

DM: It's got like 200 rivets, your best bet is probably picking through the stone around it and getting it out that way, but they've sunk in so many it will still take a whole day. You're nowhere near strong enough to do it any faster. Do you want to abandon your mission to clear out the fortress to get the scroll? Keeping in mind that you need to move out tomorrow when the refugees arrive.

FT: Damn, good question. Are we that greed-

WZ: I cast misty step, teleport into the room, pick up the scroll, look around to see if there's anything else interesting, and teleport out.

FT/DM: Yep, okay.

DM: So you have the scroll, your next adventure, heading upstairs there's one lone person who lives here, when he sees you, he throws his oil lamp to the ground! Saying if he can't have his house nobody can! The flames begin to spread all over the floor, the carpet, the wooden tables, everything will burn.

FT: Oh-no, oh-no. Okay I'm going to run through the room flipping tables out of the way, and grabbing a blanket to try and extinguish the flames. God damn him!

DM: Okay the banquet tables are pretty big, gonna have to start giving me athletics checks.

WZ: I cast tidal wave.

DM: Okay the room fills with water, extinguishing all the flames and saving the keep. Now you gotta fix the portcullis mechanism though, it's snapped high up in the roof of the gatehouse.

FT: Okay, this is my thing. I want to take off my armor, won't need it I hope, and climb up there to try and see what's wrong.

DM: Okay, it's dark, do you take a torch?

FT: No I can't risk it.

DM: Good call, gimme an athletics roll to get up there and navigate all around the area.

WZ: I cast Light on the fighter's pendant.

DM: Okay now the whole area lights up

FT: Yeah thanks man

DM: Looks like you need to start winding the rope around the drum, give me an acrobatics check, failure means you fall all the way down to the stone floor though so if you've got any tricks, now's the time, DC 20.

FT: I'll spend inspiration then, my dex isn't so good. Okay then, here we go!......Aw balls.

DM: Unfortunately you slip and plummet to the ground, taking-

WZ: I cast featherfall.

DM: Okay you float gently to the ground.

WZ: Now I cast fly, and fly up there to do the windings.

DM: Okay you easily fly circles around the drum, re-winding the rope.

So the DM uses skill DCs to control how epic and super the players get to be. Well the martial players anyway, because the spell slingers do not have an open ended power level that the DM can modify per campaign. You're a level 3 sorcerer, you can fly, period. A DM can always rule that certain spells don't exist, but if you had codified skills you could just do that with the martials too, and in fact it'd be way easier.

All youve really done is portray a DM with a double standard in favor of the wizard. Giant Apes still have stats, and they only have a couple more points into Athletics than a martial with proficiency and 18 Str. Letting the ape succeed automatically when the fighter cant even try is just blatant favoritism. So you arent exactly portraying this as anything other than a DM problem.

Psyren

2022-10-08, 03:00 PM

I’m sure he can do the math, but if the DC chart said that very easy/easy/medium etc. we’re 2/4/5/6/8/10 then I wouldn’t be getting a DC 25 check to climb that cliff.

So because your DM can't figure out how to enable level 10 martials to have fun at their table, the rest of us shouldn't be allowed to use high DCs?

Again, if you expressly tell them you're not having fun because your character doesn't feel capable, and their response is to tell you to sod off, that isn't a book problem. An adult conversation about misaligned expectations for the game is needed.

The issue you’re trying to say is, how awesome do I think my rogue should be? Once you figure that out, then agree with your DM about what the DC of each check should be. I want to know how powerful they’re supposed to be.

Yes, of course the goal should generally be to make your fantasy character feel awesome. That's usually why people engage in escapism in the first place. "Most of the challenges that face your group should be ones they're likely to succeed at" isn't rocket science - it's literally described in the book. (Assuming of course that for your group, "having fun" means succeeding more often than you fail.) The DM routinely throwing DC 25 or higher challenges at your level 10 character is little different than if every combat encounter you faced was a fight to the death against Orcus; sure they can do that, but you're probably not going to have fun if they do.

No idea, I have no clue how strong a DnD Barbarian is supposed to be. My best clue is they can snap iron chain with relative ease so they surpass Hafthor for sure, but the only reason to think that is because there is an example of that kind of feat and how difficult they would find it.

"Even 1st-level characters are heroes, set apart from the common people by natural characteristics, learned skills, and the hint of greater destiny that lies before them." - DMG 37

A level 1 barbarian in starting gear can fight a bear or a gorilla and has decent odds of not just surviving, but of winning. Even Level 1 martials are superhuman by the standards of our world, and they only go up from there. If your DM can't figure that out with what the game is already giving them and they don't care that you're not having fun, bloating the books with dozens more pages is not going to help.

DrLoveMonkey

2022-10-08, 03:05 PM

All youve really done is portray a DM with a double standard in favor of the wizard. Giant Apes still have stats, and they only have a couple more points into Athletics than a martial with proficiency and 18 Str. Letting the ape succeed automatically when the fighter cant even try is just blatant favoritism. So you arent exactly portraying this as anything other than a DM problem.

Wait, are you saying that a fighter in the down to earth realistic setting is supposed to be almost as strong as a 50 foot tall gorilla? How does that work? The fighter isn’t superhuman, and a 50 foot ape absolutely is.

Besides giant apes are huge size, their lift capacity is 120x their strength score, when a fighter’s is only 30, and the fighter. If they’ve got 20 strength tue difference is 600 pounds to 2,760 pounds.

Moreover the DM sets the DCs based on their gritty realistic campaign tone right? For that a fighter doesn’t even get to roll, there’s no way he’s lifting that enormous pile of iron. A giant ape though? Yeah it makes sense for that to happen.

PhoenixPhyre

2022-10-08, 03:19 PM

Wait, are you saying that a fighter in the down to earth realistic setting is supposed to be almost as strong as a 50 foot tall gorilla? How does that work? The fighter isn’t superhuman, and a 50 foot ape absolutely is.

Besides giant apes are huge size, their lift capacity is 120x their strength score, when a fighter’s is only 30, and the fighter. If they’ve got 20 strength tue difference is 600 pounds to 2,760 pounds.

Moreover the DM sets the DCs based on their gritty realistic campaign tone right? For that a fighter doesn’t even get to roll, there’s no way he’s lifting that enormous pile of iron. A giant ape though? Yeah it makes sense for that to happen.

Giant apes in D&d are 15 ft, not 50.

DrLoveMonkey

2022-10-08, 03:24 PM

So because your DM can't figure out how to enable level 10 martials to have fun at their table, the rest of us shouldn't be allowed to use high DCs?

Again, if you expressly tell them you're not having fun because your character doesn't feel capable, and their response is to tell you to sod off, that isn't a book problem. An adult conversation about misaligned expectations for the game is needed.
Yes, but why might there be misaligned expectations for what my character can do? There's no misaligned expectations for what the sorcerer or druid can do. Nobody is disappointed when they cast Feather Fall and their DM tells them that the spell slows their decent, but only enough to keep them alive at 5hp, and they land prone because that's what they expected the spell to do. Your party just leaped from a flying airship after all, you can't expect a first level spell to just completely negate all that damage, and leave you standing on your feet for good measure!

Yes, of course the goal should generally be to make your fantasy character feel awesome. That's usually why people engage in escapism in the first place. "Most of the challenges that face your group should be ones they're likely to succeed at" isn't rocket science - it's literally described in the book. (Assuming of course that for your group, "having fun" means succeeding more often than you fail.) The DM routinely throwing DC 25 or higher challenges at your level 10 character is little different than if every combat encounter you faced was a fight to the death against Orcus; sure they can do that, but you're probably not going to have fun if they do.
I agree, and the reason Orcus doesn't show up is because he's CR 26 and the book does a pretty good job letting you know that he's not something for level 3 characters to be tangling with.

What level should a martial character be able to easily scale a 100 foot tall cliff? "The level that you THINK a martial character should be able to easily scale a 100 foot tall cliff" is very unhelpful.

What level should a wizard be able to fly at? Fifth. Fifth level is when a wizard can fly. I don't have to sit there, working with my players, deciding if true flight really is appropriate for 5th level, in this campaign, at this time. It just is, and if we don't like it we can change it.

"Even 1st-level characters are heroes, set apart from the common people by natural characteristics, learned skills, and the hint of greater destiny that lies before them." - DMG 37

A level 1 barbarian in starting gear can fight a bear or a gorilla and has decent odds of not just surviving, but of winning. Even Level 1 martials are superhuman by the standards of our world, and they only go up from there. If your DM can't figure that out with what the game is already giving them and they don't care that you're not having fun, bloating the books with dozens more pages is not going to help.

Hafthor Bjornsson is absolutely set apart from the common people, that doesn't make him superhuman.

And if martial characters are definitely superhuman, because a level 20 fighter can easily kill a stone golem with nothing but an iron sword, then what's the argument that open-ended DCs let you choose how epic the characters are? It's just that there's really great rules set down for the kinds of epic, superhuman enemies you can fight, but not the kinds of epic, superhuman deeds you can perform.

Brookshw

2022-10-08, 03:27 PM

GURPS does not actually do superheroics anywhere well. It's rooted in semi-realistic basics that keep impacting higher-power play in dissonant ways.

Nah, you just need to set the points appropriately, around 800-1000 if you're looking for something about X-Men level. Also, while can do a lot with BS, consider using Powers and Supers.

Keltest

2022-10-08, 03:30 PM

DrLoveMonkey

2022-10-08, 03:30 PM

Giant apes in D&d are 15 ft, not 50.

Oh true, 15 feet is probably more likely. That's still 2-3 times the height of the fighter, and even if the fighter was as massive as a gorilla it weighs 30 times what he does. The physical power difference is massive.

DrLoveMonkey

2022-10-08, 03:32 PM

A castle portcullis could weigh 5 tons if it was on the sturdy side, so yeah, saying the ape is large enough is indeed fairly arbitrary.

So yeah, having a gate that a fighter couldnt open but a giant ape can is an arbitrary distinction to screw the fighter. Its actually pretty incredibly specific.

It is NOT arbitrary to say that a Huge size ape with a strength score of 23 is stronger than a fighter. In every single measurable attribute and game statistic the ape has the fighter beat.

Keltest

2022-10-08, 03:35 PM

It is NOT arbitrary to say that a Huge size ape with a strength score of 23 is stronger than a fighter. In every single measurable attribute and game statistic the ape has the fighter beat.

Right, but at that point, use the skill system. If youre going to let the wizard muscle the gate up, let the fighter try too. Saying its too heavy for the fighter (even though its on a mechanism, so its not like he's lifting it unassisted) but its light enough for the ape to automatically succeed is just favoritism.

Psyren

2022-10-08, 04:23 PM

Yes, but why might there be misaligned expectations for what my character can do? There's no misaligned expectations for what the sorcerer or druid can do. Nobody is disappointed when they cast Feather Fall and their DM tells them that the spell slows their decent, but only enough to keep them alive at 5hp, and they land prone because that's what they expected the spell to do. Your party just leaped from a flying airship after all, you can't expect a first level spell to just completely negate all that damage, and leave you standing on your feet for good measure!

Of course that exists for casters too, there are literally dozens of spells that require adjudication. What specific benefit do you get from casting Minor Illusion or Thaumaturgy? What does "visually or thematically similar" mean when you're teleporting somewhere you've never been? How dangerous is it to cast Blink? What does it mean to be a "friendly acquaintance" when you charm someone? Spells are littered with such language.

I agree, and the reason Orcus doesn't show up is because he's CR 26 and the book does a pretty good job letting you know that he's not something for level 3 characters to be tangling with.

Yeah, and it does the same for DC 25. Is d20 + number truly that complicated?

And even if it somehow is for a given DM, again, you telling them you're not having fun is the wakeup call for a rational one. Or should be, anyway.

Hafthor Bjornsson is absolutely set apart from the common people, that doesn't make him superhuman.

I agree, his hand-to-hand odds against a grizzly bear or a silverback are probably not great. So it sounds like we're aligned that a level 1 Barbarian could outperform him. So why then would an even stronger or higher level one being able to break manacles be so farfetched?

And if martial characters are definitely superhuman, because a level 20 fighter can easily kill a stone golem with nothing but an iron sword, then what's the argument that open-ended DCs let you choose how epic the characters are? It's just that there's really great rules set down for the kinds of epic, superhuman enemies you can fight, but not the kinds of epic, superhuman deeds you can perform.

There's detailed rules for monsters because there's demand for those. They're a good use of designer time because not everyone can imagine the capabilities of a golem or a dragon or a kraken. But anybody can imagine climbing a stone wall. Moreover, calibrating such a wall to each party's abilities (i.e. not setting it at DC 25 for a level 10 character) is really not hard.

Goobahfish

2022-10-08, 07:25 PM

If one were to ‘hardwire’ Super Hero-ism as the default mode in D&D that would turn off the Gritty Realism crowd, and vis versa.

Not a criticism, but one thing I find a bit difficult to grasp is how a person can claim 'gritty realism' in a game with objective magic and deities...

Like... if you were doing some kind of very 'low-magic' system that might make sense (i.e. wizards only ever get very low level spells etc). Trying to make a game that can please both crowds is functionally impossible though because while you can slide the DCs up and down, that affects one group of players far more than the other (i.e. martials vs casters). The sort of 'lame approach' is to restrict spell recovery but that isn't 'realistic', just 'hard'.

animorte

2022-10-08, 09:15 PM

Not a criticism, but one thing I find a bit difficult to grasp is how a person can claim 'gritty realism' in a game with objective magic and deities...

The first time I saw this, I laughed for that exact reason. And I laugh every time people start using “realistic” as a term to compare or define this game. If the game sets standards in a certain direction, that’s fine.

Sneak Dog

2022-10-09, 06:11 AM

Yeah, and it does the same for DC 25. Is d20 + number truly that complicated?

And even if it somehow is for a given DM, again, you telling them you're not having fun is the wakeup call for a rational one. Or should be, anyway.

There's detailed rules for monsters because there's demand for those. They're a good use of designer time because not everyone can imagine the capabilities of a golem or a dragon or a kraken. But anybody can imagine climbing a stone wall. Moreover, calibrating such a wall to each party's abilities (i.e. not setting it at DC 25 for a level 10 character) is really not hard.

First off, telling a GM you're not having fun is good. But analysing why is a giant pain. There can be a hundred reasons. Humans are excellent at knowing when they dislike something and awful at knowing why. The why has to be reverse engineered, it's weird.

Now for DCs, they don't fit smoothly in the system. The GM works with a nicely calibrated and easy to understand CR system for all combat encounters. But for DCs there is nearly no guidance and it does not function like CR does. If one uses the same challenges with the same DCs from level 5 to 15 it'll work just fine. Most characters don't scale significantly in their ability check prowess with bounded accuracy. If a GM doesn't realise this and sets them as they set CR then problems occur.
And that's before we have casters taking the spotlight with more and more powerful spells to overcome these same challenge while the fighter gets maybe two relevant class features over those ten levels.

Keltest

2022-10-09, 06:24 AM

First off, telling a GM you're not having fun is good. But analysing why is a giant pain. There can be a hundred reasons. Humans are excellent at knowing when they dislike something and awful at knowing why. The why has to be reverse engineered, it's weird.

Now for DCs, they don't fit smoothly in the system. The GM works with a nicely calibrated and easy to understand CR system for all combat encounters. But for DCs there is nearly no guidance and it does not function like CR does. If one uses the same challenges with the same DCs from level 5 to 15 it'll work just fine. Most characters don't scale significantly in their ability check prowess with bounded accuracy. If a GM doesn't realise this and sets them as they set CR then problems occur.
And that's before we have casters taking the spotlight with more and more powerful spells to overcome these same challenge while the fighter gets maybe two relevant class features over those ten levels.

"I'm not having fun because you tell me I cant do anything and then turn around and let the wizard do everything."

Its not exactly a 400 page mystery novel here.

Sneak Dog

2022-10-09, 06:55 AM

"I'm not having fun because you tell me I cant do anything and then turn around and let the wizard do everything."

Its not exactly a 400 page mystery novel here.

There's systems I play where the answer to that is 'except for that time you solo won that encounter, and the time you trivialised that entire set of challenges forever again, and all the times you almost deal more damage than the rest of the party combined.' There's players where the answer is to point them at all the things they have on their character sheet and aren't using.
After that, the GM gets to ask whether the problem is insufficient encounters per day, DCs being set not according to the rules, or whether this character is supposed to be bad at these challenges. Or any of another dozen causes. When trying out a new system and getting this complaint, figuring out where the problem is can be a 400 page mystery novel. Or, well, however many pages the core rulebooks have.

Now I'm a bit more cynical having played a whole bunch of systems and I don't assume each is a well written and balanced piece of art. I am happy to not assume I'm missing something in the rules and instead just calling out the system as having issues. But sheesh does 5e not make it trivial to figure out the cause. Yet it also calls out the GM to just fix it themselves somehow with the rulings not rules philosophy.

Keltest

2022-10-09, 08:53 AM

There's systems I play where the answer to that is 'except for that time you solo won that encounter, and the time you trivialised that entire set of challenges forever again, and all the times you almost deal more damage than the rest of the party combined.' There's players where the answer is to point them at all the things they have on their character sheet and aren't using.
After that, the GM gets to ask whether the problem is insufficient encounters per day, DCs being set not according to the rules, or whether this character is supposed to be bad at these challenges. Or any of another dozen causes. When trying out a new system and getting this complaint, figuring out where the problem is can be a 400 page mystery novel. Or, well, however many pages the core rulebooks have.

Now I'm a bit more cynical having played a whole bunch of systems and I don't assume each is a well written and balanced piece of art. I am happy to not assume I'm missing something in the rules and instead just calling out the system as having issues. But sheesh does 5e not make it trivial to figure out the cause. Yet it also calls out the GM to just fix it themselves somehow with the rulings not rules philosophy.

The existence of any given answer or response is a lot less important than the speaking of the concern. The point is to open up a dialogue and identify what changes in player and/or DM behavior need to take place, if any. Not to prove one side or the other right.

Dr.Samurai

2022-10-09, 09:21 AM

Yeah, it's super easy to adjudicate table conversations about the rules and how to optimize fun for everyone. Super easy. Super duper easy.

These guys are right. Watch. I'm going to show you right now. The easiest thing you could ever do. Here we go:

"Actually, these tables and charts are guidelines to assist with creating DCs. They aren't set in stone benchmarks for players to go by. Rather, they are meant for DMs to use. Because I know all the conditions and circumstances in a scenario, you should always expect that the DCs I use will deviate from the guidelines."

Bam. Look at that. I wrote a sentence and this will solve all issues at the table. DC Guideline Charts for everyone!!!

Sneak Dog

2022-10-09, 10:22 AM

The existence of any given answer or response is a lot less important than the speaking of the concern. The point is to open up a dialogue and identify what changes in player and/or DM behavior need to take place, if any. Not to prove one side or the other right.

Yes, and there will be a lot of misidentification. Because humans are excellent at knowing when they dislike something, and awful at knowing why. Misidentifying the why leads to solutions to non-existant problems. Once properly identified, a GM or player group still needs to put on a designer hat and design a solution that is good, which doesn't cause more issues later down the line.

That's why we have professional game designers try their hardest to provide the best game that will cause a minimum amount of issues. Because the professionals have more time and knowledge to identify the common dislikes, figure out why's and design good solutions. That's their job, to do that for their (broad) audience.

But because a lot of issues are perceived with the differences between spellcasters and non-spellcasters (martials) and the designers of D&D don't seem to be solving these issues this thread and many like it pop up. With people attempting to identify problems, solve them, and argue against those identifications. And to get on to the main topic:

So am I the only one that sees things this way? I am an optimist by nature so I think WotC is working on these issues but I know others have doubts. What are some other foundational issues in 5e that you think need fixing? I think the foundational issues of 5e is a major reason people don't tend to play the higher levels so it is worth thinking about them. The assumed adventure day could be considered a foundational issue of course and that is a massive can of worms. Plenty to talk about.

I see bounded accuracy as applied to ability checks as a huge problem. It is the only way for martials to interact with the world beyond engaging in combat, and it does not scale in level. A level 5 wizard going to level 15 gets significant non-combat powers. Huge paradigm-shifting spells may become available. A barbarian gets a tiny bonus to proficient ability checks between those levels and probably a strength ASI or two. But they'd still be attempting the exact same challenges outside of combat, just succeed a little more often. (In combat they'd laugh at the foes they faced at level 5...)

The lack of explicit weaknesses for spellcasters beyond resource management is a problem. Fitting in easy but resource-draining encounters is kind of boring and the paradigm requires the GM to put constant pressure onto the players every adventuring day. Because spellcasters dominate any five minute workday. Martials don't fare well on long adventuring days anyway. Their hp drains quite well, and to regain that eats hit dice or magic. A paladin may well have more longevity than a fighter because the fighter runs out of hit points faster. I'd say martials are pretty average? It might be better to bring a spellcaster that can heal over a fighter for long adventuring days? So I'd suggest de-emphasizing the balancing of classes based around a single length of adventuring day.

Lastly, balance classes roughly between each of the three pillars. Give every class roughly balanced amounts of stuff to do in each pillar. Rangers may get some more exploration power, fighters some more combat power, wizards some more exploration power, bards some more social. A rough balance is fine, but right now a fighter has practically no social nor exploration features.

Psyren

2022-10-09, 01:37 PM

Yes, and there will be a lot of misidentification. Because humans are excellent at knowing when they dislike something, and awful at knowing why. Misidentifying the why leads to solutions to non-existant problems. Once properly identified, a GM or player group still needs to put on a designer hat and design a solution that is good, which doesn't cause more issues later down the line.

"I'm not having fun because DC 25 is nearly impossible for a level 10 character even when they have max ability score and proficiency. I know that because the maximum bonus for ability score is +5 and the proficiency bonus at level 10 is +4. One solution might be to use a DC lower than 25 if the goal is for my character to succeed at things they're supposed to be good at more often than they fail."

Not seeing what's so herculean about that.

Thunderous Mojo

2022-10-09, 02:00 PM

Not a criticism, but one thing I find a bit difficult to grasp is how a person can claim 'gritty realism' in a game with objective magic and deities...

Like... if you were doing some kind of very 'low-magic' system that might make sense (i.e. wizards only ever get very low level spells etc). Trying to make a game that can please both crowds is functionally impossible though because while you can slide the DCs up and down, that affects one group of players far more than the other (i.e. martials vs casters). The sort of 'lame approach' is to restrict spell recovery but that isn't 'realistic', just 'hard'.

5e is able to ‘please both sides’ by having a modular base system.
Games meant to be more challenging can:

One can add in more Death Effects, in a vein similar to a Banshee’s Wail.
One can use, Dismemberment rules from the DMG, to make Revivify less applicable.
Poison, can kill, instead of just doing damage.
One can use tactics

Perhaps, I am misreading your post, but it seems to boil down to:
“I can’t imagine X style, so therefor X style of play won’t work”.

Plenty of persons, have described their ‘grittier’ style games both here and at other venues online. ‘Imagining that those games don’t work’, is a bit dismissive, I think.

Sneak Dog

2022-10-09, 02:56 PM

"I'm not having fun because DC 25 is nearly impossible for a level 10 character even when they have max ability score and proficiency. I know that because the maximum bonus for ability score is +5 and the proficiency bonus at level 10 is +4. One solution might be to use a DC lower than 25 if the goal is for my character to succeed at things they're supposed to be good at more often than they fail."

Not seeing what's so herculean about that.

Perhaps they should have gotten expertise and advantage. That would make DC 25 a breeze. From 25% to 82% chance of success. But they didn't so they ought to be bad at this now? Except I happen to know that's also not the case. Fighters should be able to contribute to non-fighting challenges and by the core rulebooks without multiclassing they cannot gain expertise.

Using lower DCs brings issues. Now they could've achieved this high level challenge at low levels. Gatekeeping checks by banning characters without a good ability score, proficiency or both, as you are used to, brings issues. There is no guidance on when to gatekeep and why. This may not be an issue for you, but it is an issue for D&D catering to a large audience, many of which inexperienced GMs. It's also explicitely not what the designers intended if we read the rules and take the interview into account where a designer proclaims everyone should be able to attempt every check.

My suggestion is still to not apply bounded accuracy to ability checks. Just let players have big bonuses at higher levels, so they can succeed at DCs at level 15 they couldn't hope to at level 5. Make it scale similar to combat prowess to eliminate that dissonance. Both for players what their characters are capable of and for the GM what scale of challenges are appropriate. Spells already scale like this anyway for both non-combat and combat challenges. It's nothing new to D&D 5e.

ShadeRaven

2022-10-09, 02:59 PM

The foundational issue with the martial v caster is that casters with proper spell selection have the opportunity to solve multiple types of problems both within and without their area of specialization while martials have to specialize in order to even be able to solve problems in their area of specialization.
A fighter can become very good at hitting things with his sword and the moment he have to fight someone at range - he is out of the game. Pulling a bow simply does not work, because without specialization he is laughably incompetent in that.
A rogue can become very good at sneaking and the moment he meets someone with blindsight - he is out of the game.

A wizard can become very good at controlling the minds of his opponents and the moment he is faced with a mindless opponent he can... summon a monster to kill it, teleport away, become invisible, blast it with fire, banish it to another realm, wish for it to become awakened and then control its mind...

A martial should have baseline competence at killing and disabling oponents both at range and in melee plus achieving almost supernatural effects with at least 2 separate skill/tool proficiencies and then have the option to specialize in one of those approaches to problem resolution. A greataxe wielding 15th level barbarian facing against a young red dragon should have a reasonable chance to toss a harpoon at it, pull it to the ground, wrestle and intimidate it into submition and then use it as an effing mount to storm the evil wizard's castle... instead of being forced to toss javelins with 25% chance to hit for 1d6+2 damage because of range disadvantage and his 14 Dex.

PhoenixPhyre

2022-10-09, 03:17 PM

A wizard can become very good at controlling the minds of his opponents and the moment he is faced with a mindless opponent he can... summon a monster to kill it, teleport away, become invisible, blast it with fire, banish it to another realm, wish for it to become awakened and then control its mind...

If and only if they're Schrodinger's wizard who has all spells prepared. Because, in practice, they don't. Not in 5e at least. You're coming from an obviously 3e perspective (mindless isn't a thing in 5e) and it shows.

ShadeRaven

2022-10-09, 03:41 PM

If and only if they're Schrodinger's wizard who has all spells prepared. Because, in practice, they don't. Not in 5e at least.
A 15th level wizard has about 12 prepared spells? I don't know what kind of wizard will in practice run around with Incendiary Cloud, Delayed Blast Fireball, Immolation, Investiture of Flame, Fire Shield, Dragon's Breath, Melf's Minute Meteors, Fireball, Scorching Ray, Flaming Sphere, Aganazzar's Scorcher, and Shield so that when he faces a flying red dragon - he has to stand next to the sword and board fighter and toss Rays of Frost at the thing whole combat long.

Psyren

2022-10-09, 03:55 PM

Perhaps they should have gotten expertise and advantage. That would make DC 25 a breeze. From 25% to 82% chance of success. But they didn't so they ought to be bad at this now? Except I happen to know that's also not the case. Fighters should be able to contribute to non-fighting challenges and by the core rulebooks without multiclassing they cannot gain expertise.

The point is that any level 10 would be "bad at" a DC 25 check. It's not rocket science to realize that such a high difficulty should be used sparingly until higher levels.

But again, even if it's somehow not readily apparent - I'm still not seeing what's so bad about having an adult conversation and adjusting based on that. This isn't a MMORPG where you have to wait for a monthly balance patch; talk to your DM. Nobody should be expecting perfection, but they should definitely be expecting correction.

Using lower DCs brings issues. Now they could've achieved this high level challenge at low levels. Gatekeeping checks by banning characters without a good ability score, proficiency or both, as you are used to, brings issues. There is no guidance on when to gatekeep and why. This may not be an issue for you, but it is an issue for D&D catering to a large audience, many of which inexperienced GMs. It's also explicitely not what the designers intended if we read the rules and take the interview into account where a designer proclaims everyone should be able to attempt every check.

My suggestion is still to not apply bounded accuracy to ability checks. Just let players have big bonuses at higher levels, so they can succeed at DCs at level 15 they couldn't hope to at level 5. Make it scale similar to combat prowess to eliminate that dissonance. Both for players what their characters are capable of and for the GM what scale of challenges are appropriate. Spells already scale like this anyway for both non-combat and combat challenges. It's nothing new to D&D 5e.

Bounded accuracy is built into the game's DNA. Where would you be getting these "big bonuses" from? Do you let players raise their ability scores above 20?

Telok

2022-10-09, 04:29 PM

But again, even if it's somehow not readily apparent - I'm still not seeing what's so bad about having an adult conversation and adjusting based on that.

https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/drama.png

Basically some people aren't adults, some people aren't good at taking criticism/advice, some people aren't good at giving criticism/advice, some people take advice as criticism and/or personal attacks, etc, etc. Simply put; people are complicated.

Keltest

2022-10-09, 04:56 PM

https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/drama.png

Basically some people aren't adults, some people aren't good at taking criticism/advice, some people aren't good at giving criticism/advice, some people take advice as criticism and/or personal attacks, etc, etc. Simply put; people are complicated.
If you try and talk to your DM like an adult and they respond by throwing a tantrum, you've stepped a couple ways beyond a game issue and should consider looking for a new DM.

Psyren

2022-10-09, 05:27 PM

https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/drama.png

Basically some people aren't adults, some people aren't good at taking criticism/advice, some people aren't good at giving criticism/advice, some people take advice as criticism and/or personal attacks, etc, etc. Simply put; people are complicated.

Solving people is a red herring. You don't have to solve "people"; just the very tiny subset you play with in that campaign. Yes, that will sometimes mean you end up with different rulings and compromises for different tables - welcome to D&D.

Also, what Keltest said.

Telok

2022-10-09, 06:23 PM

If you try and talk to your DM like an adult and they respond by throwing a tantrum, you've stepped a couple ways beyond a game issue and should consider looking for a new DM.

Who said anything about tantrums? I just said its not as simple as a blithe "oh just talk at them and it'll be great" brush off.

animorte

2022-10-09, 06:33 PM

Who said anything about tantrums? I just said its not as simple as a blithe "oh just talk at them and it'll be great" brush off.

There’s a lot that can go into the talking part of that though.

Goobahfish

2022-10-09, 07:30 PM

5e is able to ‘please both sides’ by having a modular base system.
Games meant to be more challenging can:

One can add in more Death Effects, in a vein similar to a Banshee’s Wail.
One can use, Dismemberment rules from the DMG, to make Revivify less applicable.
Poison, can kill, instead of just doing damage.
One can use tactics

Perhaps, I am misreading your post, but it seems to boil down to:
“I can’t imagine X style, so therefor X style of play won’t work”.

Plenty of persons, have described their ‘grittier’ style games both here and at other venues online. ‘Imagining that those games don’t work’, is a bit dismissive, I think.

Ha ha... well my remark was a bit tongue in cheek.

I think there is something to be said for more 'dirty' D&D. Food, water etc. being a thing. Poisons being more realistic. Serious injuries being a part of the game (like dismemberment or broken ankles).

However, D&D doesn't do an 'across the board' version of gritty realism very well. At least not in a way where you can turn a dial and get what you want. Mostly because of spells. There are a few things you can do with spells. Make them less available (rests being harder - something that is in the gritty realism rules I believe) or less reliable (roll a dice and they fail, or wild magic kaboom stuff). However, because the effects of magic are pretty 'heavily prescribed', it is more difficult to modify them in a way that is more satisfying for a 'gritty realist' approach in a simple straightforward and consistent way.

My example of Disguise Self is good. If Disguise self simply granted you the equivalent of a Disguise Kit use, perhaps with a slight advantage, then having a sliding DC would affect both abilities roughly equivalently. If the Fly spell actually required some effort to use and had a reasonable chance of stuffing up mid-flight or some other 'inconvenient' downside then again, it might be possible to easily play with the game balance/realism aspect.

From a metaphysics point of view though, it is kind of hard (re the Divine/Arcane debate elsewhere) because of certain preconceptions. For example... are gods also unreliable (i.e. do Divine Spells half work?). Arcane spells being unreliable 'feels' right but Divine spells... I.e. gods doing half-arsed favours... seems pretty off.

So just saying this cliff is hard to climb affects martials in a very real way but spellcasters with spiderclimb or fly not at all. So it becomes a defacto gritty realism for mundane folks but more like... hard mode for spellcasters (i.e. more challenges, few slots) which isn't precisely the same thing. It is harder, but not more realistic.

Psyren

2022-10-09, 08:38 PM

Who said anything about tantrums? I just said its not as simple as a blithe "oh just talk at them and it'll be great" brush off.

I never said conversations like that are guaranteed to be easy, but if even one of the players is just not having fun then they're necessary.

From a metaphysics point of view though, it is kind of hard (re the Divine/Arcane debate elsewhere) because of certain preconceptions. For example... are gods also unreliable (i.e. do Divine Spells half work?). Arcane spells being unreliable 'feels' right but Divine spells... I.e. gods doing half-arsed favours... seems pretty off.

It might not be something they can work around. Like if you want to make a world with unreliable magic, you can make it an issue with the Weave itself. As of 5e, every official world has one, even if it's not named or works slightly differently. (Strictly speaking, every 3.5 published world had one too.)

PhoenixPhyre

2022-10-09, 08:46 PM

First, D&D gods aren't perfect. Not by a long shot. Not even in their own domains.

Second, divine spells still involve a cleric. One whose focus, faith, and devotion, while great...isn't perfect.

Third, there's still a world out there, and the world isn't a nice controlled space.

Put the three together, channeling an imperfect spell imperfectly through an imperfect person into an imperfect world and...well...you get what you get.

Goobahfish

2022-10-09, 09:15 PM

It might not be something they can work around. Like if you want to make a world with unreliable magic, you can make it an issue with the Weave itself. As of 5e, every official world has one, even if it's not named or works slightly differently. (Strictly speaking, every 3.5 published world had one too.)

Indeed, the main point I was making is that making that work around is much more effort in some cases than in others. Because a lot of the exploration pillar is 'hazy', you can say 'you need to do x in this situation' which affects non-magical character in a DM 'whimish' kind of way.

However, because spells are so codified, you are limited to either:
* Broad changes (like rests)
* List changes (adding/removing certain spells)
* Tweaks (a lot of work)

The first two aren't more 'realistic per se' because 'realistic magic' is a bit of a non-sequitur.

So by default, making a setting more grimy usually hits martials in a 'everything is hard to do' kind of way (high DCs) and casters in a 'you can't do as much' kind of way. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but the point is that I don't think D&D was designed with this in mind, rather it feels more tacked on and the amount of work to make it work is substantial.

First, D&D gods aren't perfect. Not by a long shot. Not even in their own domains.

Second, divine spells still involve a cleric. One whose focus, faith, and devotion, while great...isn't perfect.

Third, there's still a world out there, and the world isn't a nice controlled space.

Put the three together, channeling an imperfect spell imperfectly through an imperfect person into an imperfect world and...well...you get what you get.

Indeed. I would say I can imagine prayers falling on deaf ears or the god being 'not so powerful' as reasonable work-arounds. But even then, that seems more like a 'campaign setting' toggle than anything to do with 'realism'. Again though, I would point out that the 'low work' way of making the game harder for casters isn't really making things harder in a similar way to making things harder for martials. If anything it makes casters seem more powerful (because of magic's codification... I fly/am Invisible/teleport).

I've played other systems where magic didn't have this "spend resource => guaranteed effect" style that D&D has for spells (except for monster saves). Rather, there was more 'did you actually cast said spell successfully' was an element of the system or did you have sufficient mana (which was locally limited - i.e. a roll rather than a long-standing pool).

I think any call for 'gritty realism' basically lays bare some of the intrinsic issues with how D&D handles the magical/non-magical divide. It does seem true that suggesting 'super-human' fighters differentially narrows the exploration gap between martials and casters simply because of the way the rules are set up generally. Likewise 'gritty realism' extends that gap.

Ignimortis

2022-10-10, 02:20 AM

Telok

2022-10-10, 02:58 AM

I never said conversations like that are guaranteed to be easy, but if even one of the players is just not having fun then they're necessary.

Great! So you agree with me that it'd be nice if we didn't need to find ways to convincingly tell people they're bad gamers/dms and get them to stop dming or to go read random forum posts telling them how they're stupid or don't read the books?

Because what I don't see is people saying that dms have hard times with adjucating weapon attacks and responses that those dms obviously didn't read the books. I don't see people saying dms have a hard time setting spell save dcs and responses that those dms need to be dumped like a toxic ex. I don't see people saying dms call for initative rolls too much and responses that those dms are stupid because thry don't calculate probability in their heads. I don't see people say their dms can't handle running combats and responses that those dms need to watch youtubes until they can run a fight with three goblins.

What I do see every time this stuff comes up is that any dm having any issue with the ability check system is responses ridiculing the dm's reading & math abilities, saying they should be dumped, saying they need to go outside the rulebooks to find out how to play the game right, and saying "i don't have a problem at my table so the game is perfect and you're wrong". Every time someone mentions an issue with the ability checks some variation on "the system is great you just need the fix your dm or dump them" gets trotted out without engaging the point that, yes there really are dms having problems with this subsystem as its written and presented.

Waazraath

2022-10-10, 03:21 AM

The point in all of these threads is basically the same.

You have to actively try as a GM to lift martials up. You have to actively try as a GM to push casters down. By default, using the provided math (and even the example DCs from the adventure paths) and the mechanics of the game as written, there is an issue that casters just do things, including things that simply cannot be replicated in any other way and things that obviate any non-magical solution, while martials have to try very hard to do anything that is above the standard low-level difficulty of 12-15, which usually provide quite unimpressive and grounded results.

Some people, for reasons I still cannot fully comprehend, consider this to be fine, because it apparently allows the GM to "regulate" the power level of their game. To which I say "why cannot the GM regulate martials-with-explicit-abilities in the same way they would a caster?". If the GM has this sort of power, it is equally applicable to anything in the game. And forbidding stuff or crossing things off a list is far, far easier than adjudicating spur-of-the-moment decisions or homebrewing your own content.

From my point of view, this just looks like an emotional attachment to having worlds where Wizards rule, others drool. If that wasn't the default outcome of presented mechanics, there wouldn't be a thread after thread after thread about it. If it weren't a common occurrence, there wouldn't be a years-long discussion about how this is a problem.

Appealing to "but D&D 5e is popular, therefore that's the right way to do it" is improper - popularity is very rarely based solely or even primarily on the quality of the product, and that's fully the case with 5e - D&D has been the biggest fish on the market since time immemorial, for many people it's literally synonymous with "tabletop role-playing games", and 5e's release has coincided with massive influx of new players into the hobby in general (the influx preceded 5e's release, starting somewhere around 2012-2013).

Therefore, there is a commonly recognized issue that needs fixing. I do not think WotC will do anything to fix it, any time soon, because 4e burned them and 5e was a runaway success and they are unwilling to experiment in any way, shape or form, because they have a golden goose on their hands and don't want to let go until absolutely necessary (also because they took all the wrong lessons from 4e's relative failure). But that doesn't mean the issue isn't there or that it's good design or that having a half-baked system that offloads most of designer responsibilities onto the GM is the right way to do things.

The point of all these threads is that there is a very vocal minority who argues these points, again, and again, and again, but that they are simply not true in most games I've seen, as well as games played as intended and written. You say "the DM has to to actively to push casters down", but I'd argue the contrary: they are often actively and arteficially empowered. In years and years of the tedious 'martals vs caster' threads that have come by, I've seen the most egrorious caster favoritism in examples given. DM's and players ignoring recommendations on the adventuring day (oh wow when doing 1 encounter/day the LR-dependent classes seem much stronger!), ignoring M/S compoments and free hands, assuming all (including special and expensive) components being always available, going way beyond RAW of spells (charms to solve social encounters, invisibility to become undetectable, casting 'knock' without alerting everybody in the vicinity), allowing a 5ft square spell to target several creatures ('cause you can put it on an intersection on the grid!'), having casters get more money between adventures 'because they can use magic!' etc. etc..

Is it all perfect? No. I think it's a missed chance to not have both simple and complex martials, half-casters and casters; I think it's ridiculous how simplified they made the weapon system (1 page no special abilities) vs 24043540 pages of spells; minionmancy can really be an issue (though the full story is that any character can hire a bunch of minions, so it's more a point where players in general need some self-restraint here, not just casters); and at the highest levels there is some issue with a few outliers spells like wish, simulacrum and force cage.

But the biggest part of the issue is people not reading the bloody manual, torturing the rules up to the point that it's almost cheating to get spells do things never intended, and DM's being bad at their job. The thing is, people get really annoyed when they are told this and discussions can get a bit nasty, so a lot of people just stopped arguing that there really isn't a balance issue in 5e. But I'm pretty confident that for the vast majority of players, there (still) isn't.

Ignimortis

2022-10-10, 04:01 AM

The point of all these threads is that there is a very vocal minority who argues these points, again, and again, and again, but that they are simply not true in most games I've seen, as well as games played as intended and written. You say "the DM has to to actively to push casters down", but I'd argue the contrary: they are often actively and arteficially empowered. In years and years of the tedious 'martals vs caster' threads that have come by, I've seen the most egrorious caster favoritism in examples given.
Not my experience. And considering that these issues keep getting raised up on every board dedicated to 5e that I see, and that these issues actually do not get raised on, say, the PF2 boards that I see (there's no talk of that particular problem at all, possibly because it doesn't really exist in PF2), it is a system-endemic problem rather than a GM problem.

DM's and players ignoring recommendations on the adventuring day (oh wow when doing 1 encounter/day the LR-dependent classes seem much stronger!).
Sure, that happens. It's perhaps the most common issue, and it needs fixing, too, because the adventuring day is BOGUS. The adventuring day does not function if you're trying to have any situation that doesn't involve active dungeon delving where time is a meaningful constraint. And designing every single plot of the game to be extremely time-sensitive (i.e. taking a week or two more will be a failure) and every day having multiple encounters that somehow do not make martials lose HP at a proportionally faster rate than post-5 casters spend spells - that's pretty hard. Maybe the underlying system is faulty, yes?

Ignoring M/S compoments and free hands, assuming all (including special and expensive) components being always available, going way beyond RAW of spells (charms to solve social encounters, invisibility to become undetectable, casting 'knock' without alerting everybody in the vicinity), allowing a 5ft square spell to target several creatures ('cause you can put it on an intersection on the grid!'), having casters get more money between adventures 'because they can use magic!' etc. etc..
Never had that happen to me in 6 years of play, despite the martial-caster disparity being evident in all campaigns that went beyond level 8 or so. Every spell use was within the rules of spellcasting and rules of the spell, unless you engage in robotic logic of "this spell says it can provide a 9-course banquet for 100 people, but if you try to feed 500 people with that food a bit more scarcely, it won't work". Invisibility still required you to try and be stealthy, casters wielded their foci or had free hands, components vary in availability, etc. This did not change the fact that casters simply could meaningfully and powerfully engage with far more parts of the game than martials.

But the biggest part of the issue is people not reading the bloody manual, torturing the rules up to the point that it's almost cheating to get spells do things never intended, and DM's being bad at their job. The thing is, people get really annoyed when they are told this and discussions can get a bit nasty, so a lot of people just stopped arguing that there really isn't a balance issue in 5e. But I'm pretty confident that for the vast majority of players, there (still) isn't.
The thing is, running the system as intended and written is not conductive to anything but big dungeon crawls. 5e works perfectly fine for the first 10 or even 12 levels if you're stuck in a huge great honking dungeon that has roaming enemies and consequences for clearing out a room but then leaving for a day off. If you're actually doing a plot-based game that does occasionally involve dungeons, but those dungeons are intended to be cleared in a single day - you will not actually run the game as intended, because there will be days that simply do not involve enough encounters to meaningfully drain casters of magic. Or days that there are no encounters at all and casters can turn their slots towards resolving other problems. And yet, from what I see, it's by far the most common way the game is run, because ever since Baldur's Gate it was the direction D&D was headed, and the adventuring day formula is not complementary to that at all.

But even in the perfect scenario of a megadungeon, you need counters to magic. See Dungeon of the Mad Mage (I think that was the one? there 100% was a 5e published megadungeon like that) where the aforementioned dungeon was warded against most magics that can break the low-level dungeoncrawling routine, like teleportation. It's not warded against people cutting through walls with swords for some reason. Either it's to encourage DMs to let martials shine by bypassing several rooms through incredible skill and strength, or because the game does not expect you to be able to do that.

Thunderous Mojo

2022-10-10, 09:00 AM

The point in all of these threads is basically the same.

You have to actively try as a GM to lift martials up. You have to actively try as a GM to push casters down.

This strikes me as a gross oversimplification.
Does a DM have to “actively push down” a 1st level Sorcerer?
Does a DM have to lift up a 1st level Barbarian?
Does a DM have to lift up a Paladin?

I would argue the answer to those questions, generally, is ‘No’.

Some people, for reasons I still cannot fully comprehend,…..

Ugg.

… consider this to be fine, because it apparently allows the GM to "regulate" the power level of their game. To which I say "why cannot the GM regulate martials-with-explicit-abilities in the same way they would a caster?".

I am utterly confused here. Presuming that these “Explicit Abilities” you want Martials to have, have nothing to deal with sex….I’m not sure what is even meant by the phrase “Explicit Ability”.

Battlemaster Maneuvers are straightforward abilities that often do extra damage, activate on a hit and cost little to no Action Economy, and will often add in additional effect riders, as well.

Are Battlemaster Maneuvers not ‘Explicit’ Enough?

The thing is, running the system as intended and written is not conductive to anything but big dungeon crawls.

I’m not interested in changing your opinion, you are welcome to your beliefs. This statement quoted above, however, is quite simply, phrased so broadly, that the statement is not Sound, in my opinion.

Thank you for sharing, but at this juncture, I simply disagree.

Psyren

2022-10-10, 09:37 AM

The point of all these threads is that there is a very vocal minority who argues these points, again, and again, and again, but that they are simply not true in most games I've seen, as well as games played as intended and written. You say "the DM has to to actively to push casters down", but I'd argue the contrary: they are often actively and arteficially empowered. In years and years of the tedious 'martals vs caster' threads that have come by, I've seen the most egrorious caster favoritism in examples given. DM's and players ignoring recommendations on the adventuring day (oh wow when doing 1 encounter/day the LR-dependent classes seem much stronger!), ignoring M/S compoments and free hands, assuming all (including special and expensive) components being always available, going way beyond RAW of spells (charms to solve social encounters, invisibility to become undetectable, casting 'knock' without alerting everybody in the vicinity), allowing a 5ft square spell to target several creatures ('cause you can put it on an intersection on the grid!'), having casters get more money between adventures 'because they can use magic!' etc. etc..
...
But the biggest part of the issue is people not reading the bloody manual, torturing the rules up to the point that it's almost cheating to get spells do things never intended, and DM's being bad at their job. The thing is, people get really annoyed when they are told this and discussions can get a bit nasty, so a lot of people just stopped arguing that there really isn't a balance issue in 5e. But I'm pretty confident that for the vast majority of players, there (still) isn't.

This.

Great! So you agree with me that it'd be nice if we didn't need to find ways to convincingly tell people they're bad gamers/dms and get them to stop dming or to go read random forum posts telling them how they're stupid or don't read the books?

DMs who refuse to listen to their players or take any corrective action when their players expressly tell them they're not having fun are indeed bad DMs in my view. I have no qualms about holding that opinion. However, I never said they should "stop DMing"; they won't ever improve their skills by simply giving up. This game is for everyone, so long as they are open to learning from feedback.

What I do see every time this stuff comes up is that any dm having any issue with the ability check system is responses ridiculing the dm's reading & math abilities, saying they should be dumped, saying they need to go outside the rulebooks to find out how to play the game right, and saying "i don't have a problem at my table so the game is perfect and you're wrong". Every time someone mentions an issue with the ability checks some variation on "the system is great you just need the fix your dm or dump them" gets trotted out without engaging the point that, yes there really are dms having problems with this subsystem as its written and presented.

I'm not denying that DMs, even some experienced ones, can have trouble adjudicating something open-ended. Again, I don't think anyone should be expecting perfect DMing day one of a campaign. But what is reasonable to expect is that DMs will listen to feedback and course-correct, and that includes (for example) realizing that DC 25 checks are almost impossible for even specialized level 10 characters to hit consistently even if they didn't arrive at that conclusion simply via the math.

And equally important, I have yet to see a proposed "cure" that is better than the "disease" here. "To save DMs from even the possibility of making mistakes, we should codify a bunch of handcuffs for everyone" or "Let's add a handful of examples, which won't solve anything since they'll have to adjudicate everything outside of those examples anyway just like they do now" are both ineffective solutions relative to the added design time and pagecount they would require. And that's assuming you even trust WotC to be able to codify things in a universally or even generally agreeable way, of which their Jump Action attempt leaves me very doubtful.

Because what I don't see is people saying that dms have hard times with adjucating weapon attacks and responses that those dms obviously didn't read the books. I don't see people saying dms have a hard time setting spell save dcs and responses that those dms need to be dumped like a toxic ex. I don't see people saying dms call for initative rolls too much and responses that those dms are stupid because thry don't calculate probability in their heads. I don't see people say their dms can't handle running combats and responses that those dms need to watch youtubes until they can run a fight with three goblins.

None of those are things that should require adjudication :smallconfused: swinging a weapon, ranking initiative, or determining the success of a saving throw are simply calculations. Ability checks are completely different; being open-ended is what allows them the possibility of being relevant and interesting in all three pillars regardless of game theme or style. It's what allows players who want grittier Game of Thrones style martials, and those who want a more wuxia Rings of Power style with acrobatic stunts, to play the same game.

Ignimortis

2022-10-10, 09:41 AM

This strikes me as a gross oversimplification.
Does a DM have to “actively push down” a 1st level Sorcerer?
Does a DM have to lift up a 1st level Barbarian?
Does a DM have to lift up a Paladin?

I would argue the answer to those questions, generally, is ‘No’.

It is not a question of "do you have to" as in "you are obligated to". The intended meaning was "achieving X (bringing either martials up or casters down) requires far more active conscious effort than vice versa". Currently, the game played by the rules, discounting the parts where the GM has to make a judgement call, does not provide you with a different state of affairs.

Let me phrase it differently. Both casters and martials operate on a whitelist standard - you have things you can just do, and possibly other things you have to ask your admin (GM) to allow you to do, adding them to the whitelist. However, casters' list contains pretty much all of martials' whitelist, plus another hundred positions. Therefore, if you intend on doing many different things, it is almost always preferable to play a caster, because their "allowed by default" list is noticeably larger and contains 95% of martials' list, as well.

I am utterly confused here. Presuming that these “Explicit Abilities” you want Martials to have, have nothing to deal with sex….I’m not sure what is even meant by the phrase “Explicit Ability”.

Battlemaster Maneuvers are straightforward abilities that often do extra damage, activate on a hit and cost little to no Action Economy, and will often add in additional effect riders, as well.
Explicit as in "unambiguous" and "not dependent on DM to function". Like spells. Like class features. Battlemaster maneuvers are indeed explicit abilities, although of very narrow focus and unremarkable power compared to many other abilities. There are many issues with BM maneuvers, but yes, those are explicit abilities that a BM Fighter gets.

I would like, however, for martials to get:
1) Noticeably more powerful features as they level up. BM maneuvers are hardly equivalent even to level 2 spells, and when level 9 spells enter play, maneuvers still do the same thing as they did 14 levels ago.
2) Noticeably broader features as they level up, including non-combat features. Maneuvers, before Tasha's, simply did not, and their implementation in Tasha's is...rather lacking, because any utility they provide out of combat is yet again "you do slightly better at a single skill check out of a limited list, but the results of the check are still fully dependent on the DM".

Consider, for instance, these two skill feats. Scare to Death (https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=837) and Cloud Jump (https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=767). They provide their users with explicit abilities somewhat appropriate to their level. They are utterly independent of the DM's judgement - at level 15, I can pick up Cloud Jump and now my Long Jump distance is a minimum of 75 feet, and my High Jump is a minimum of 25 feet. That is on a roll of 1, of course - otherwise it can be as long as 135 and 45 feet respectively. Or I could take Scare to Death and have my PC get gaze so heavy that the target can have a heart attack from sheer threatening aura of the character.

Could these feats be written less obtusely? Certainly, PF2 excels at "but don't let players have too much fun". Are they still a far more solid foundation for high-level powers than what 5e does? I'd say that yes, they are, considering that 5e barely does anything at all and, at best, tells you "either pick up magic or sort it out with your GM".

Stangler

2022-10-10, 10:06 AM

I think you can ignore casters and still see a problem with both martials and the skill system in 5e that could use fixing. Many of the problems involve how they scale up in capacity as well as offer clear options for the players. While it is nice to have an open skill system that can allow all sorts of options sometimes it is good just being able to point to a rule establishing what can be done.

PF2 is worth looking at as a system and there are ways to implement some of their concepts into 5e. Bonus action to use skill abilities in combat with clear options and benefits would be big. A guide to skill progression that builds in inherent growth in abilities by level beyond your modifier. Better attack options and potential counters to magic users. Better scaling.

As we see more of one D&D roll out I think it is worth paying close attention to the feat system, skill system, bonus action, and abilities that add to the attack action with no additional action cost. So far so good.

animorte

2022-10-10, 10:12 AM

I think you can ignore casters and still see a problem with both martials and the skill system in 5e that could use fixing.

As we see more of one D&D roll out I think it is worth paying close attention to the feat system, skill system, bonus action, and abilities that add to the attack action with no additional action cost. So far so good.

Agreed and definitely agreed. I’m ok with what I’m seeing thus far, with some minor modifications (naturally to suit my personal tastes, and nothing more, as every single one of us can admit to).

Telok

2022-10-10, 01:36 PM

... But what is reasonable to expect is that DMs will listen to feedback and course-correct, and that includes (for example) realizing that DC 25 checks are almost impossible for even specialized level 10 characters to hit consistently even if they didn't arrive at that conclusion simply via the math.

And equally important, I have yet to see a proposed "cure" that is better than the "disease" here. "To save DMs from even the possibility of making mistakes, we should...
See, again with the system being perfect and its all on the dm who needs to be fixed. Again with the assumption the game mechanics are the best they can be and its the players fault that this one subsystem fails even if the other subsystem works just fine for those same people.

...None of those are things that should require adjudication :smallconfused: swinging a weapon, ranking initiative, or determining the success of a saving throw are simply calculations. Ability checks are completely different; being open-ended is what allows them the possibility of being relevant and interesting in all three pillars ...

Why? Why are attacks stupid simple and never need adjucation? Why are saves simple and never questioned? Why are ability checks completely different? Why is D&D 5e combat boring me to tears? We fought a blahrog last night and the most interesting part was chasing down the caster minion to break a banishmemt spell on our ranger. The balrog itself? Stupid beat stick that got tanked by the clerics & a warlock spamming upcast armor of agathys. Even the dm didn't like the balrog because it was boring.

Attacks (talking basic weapon & spell shots) are simple because the players are only allowed to roll to hit and damage. They have no option to do anything. You can't grab an opponent's shield, can't wind up for one big hit at the expense of leaving yourself open, can't put someone in an arm lock and stop their attacks, can't do lots of parries while waiting for them to make a mistake and then take that attack, can't take a shot at someone's head when they didn't bother to wear a helmet with their plate harness. Attacks are "simple" because so much choice and freedom have been stripped from the game.

You can do exactly the same with the ability checks, strip out all nuance & player freedom to make them like attacks. Or you could make attacks more open andcrequire adjucation; is that unarmored head shot "hard" because its smaller or "medium" because theres no helmet? You want more freedom? Its more work for the dm & players and you need decent guidelines & teaching in the books. What 5e has right now is two extremes and no guidance on the differences. Combat has simplified out all freedom & adjucation, ability checks are freeform "make it up". The only subsystem between these two extremes is spell casting. It still has areas of freedom that let players try to do stuff, yet it's defined enough that there's no questions on how most of it works, and many people think spells are too open ended and useful.

But guess what? The spells are the only part of the game that strikes any balance between freeform "dm makes everything up" and combat's button pushing of "roll attack, roll damage, rinse, repeat". Guess what parts of the game my entire group likes best? Combat is a dull slog of mechanical button pushing hit point drain that the players & dm are getting progressively more tired of and annoyed with. Ability checks are lol-random coin flip results kn top of dm fiat that the dm & players are done with. Spell casting, especially stuff that isn't pure combat focus damage junk, is the only oart of the mechanics with both effective mechanical structure and enough flexibility for us to use our imaginations.

And for the record; no I don't think wotc will get their head out of their ass and actually fix something properly. They haven't since the ToB/Bo9S errata, which still isn't fixed and hasn't been admitted to.

Snowbluff

2022-10-10, 02:40 PM

DMs who refuse to listen to their players or take any corrective action when their players expressly tell them they're not having fun are indeed bad DMs in my view. I have no qualms about holding that opinion. However, I never said they should "stop DMing"; they won't ever improve their skills by simply giving up. This game is for everyone, so long as they are open to learning from feedback.

I'm not denying that DMs, even some experienced ones, can have trouble adjudicating something open-ended. Again, I don't think anyone should be expecting perfect DMing day one of a campaign. But what is reasonable to expect is that DMs will listen to feedback and course-correct, and that includes (for example) realizing that DC 25 checks are almost impossible for even specialized level 10 characters to hit consistently even if they didn't arrive at that conclusion simply via the math.

And equally important, I have yet to see a proposed "cure" that is better than the "disease" here. "To save DMs from even the possibility of making mistakes, we should codify a bunch of handcuffs for everyone" or "Let's add a handful of examples, which won't solve anything since they'll have to adjudicate everything outside of those examples anyway just like they do now" are both ineffective solutions relative to the added design time and pagecount they would require. And that's assuming you even trust WotC to be able to codify things in a universally or even generally agreeable way, of which their Jump Action attempt leaves me very doubtful.

See, again with the system being perfect and its all on the dm who needs to be fixed. Again with the assumption the game mechanics are the best they can be and its the players fault that this one subsystem fails even if the other subsystem works just fine for those same people.

I actually think Psyren was making a pretty astute point about the game here. Complaints from GMs about 5e are often that of inexperienced ones who are uncomfortable with exercising their agency over the game, and "solutions" to "problems" with it are often contrary to the edition's strengths.

A GM should have a good idea of how difficult they want an obstacle to be. This is a part often of a narrative, which is so heavily in the purview of the GM that to enforce fixed DCs could cause issues in a narrative. This avoids situation where a check can be trivialized or made impossible by a player with RAW. Combat, on the other hand, has hard rules because the challenges within it are not meant to be insurmountable nor trivialized innately. The classes have hard and set rules for how they work in combat, and to match them the enemies do as well, so everyone has a clear understanding of what they can and cannot do.

Take for example, 4e. The basic scaling of a skill check outstrips the associated skill. This is pretty awful when you try to use Easy/Medium/Hard DCs but if the only person with both training and stat investment in a skill isn't available, a check can quickly become literally impossible, even if it would hypothetically be feasible for a layman. 3.5, on the other hand, had Diplomacy rules that could easily disrupt narratives for their effects and DCs being easily attainable for even the most massive effect.

As to the remedies, I think looking backwards at the very self-antiquated PF2 causes similar problems. The ODD jump rule codifies using your action purely for movement, which is an onion of terribleness.

Sorinth

2022-10-10, 02:48 PM

But these aren't codified (which is not necessarily a bad thing) except for casters who go... I cast X and get result Y. I cast Disguise Self and now I am a perfect replica of whoever I want to be... don't even really need a disguise check right? Because I couldn't possibly be awful at 'art' and have stuffed up my spell. If Disguise Self just gave you advantage on such checks... I think most people wouldn't have this caster/martial divide because the wizard can't cheat-code their way to avoiding the conflict. Their spells are still useful, but not 'I win' buttons.

As mentioned above, if you have to choose between a 95% from a rogue with a risk of catastrophic failure and a 1 spell slot (100%), that isn't really even a choice. It looks like a choice, but catastrophic failure is infinitely bad. The issue is that often you are looking at 70% chance of catastrophic failure which discourages Martials from doing 'heroic' things and then focus on enabling the wizard to 'recharge'.

The disguise kit vs spell actually highlights how the "problem" (It's really more of a type of playstyle) is the DM letting magic do more then it says it does and/or being stingy when it comes to what skills can do. Nowhere does it say Disguise Self makes a perfect replica, in fact it's very clearly not perfect because an Investigation check vs your spell save will reveal the disguise. The only real difference between the disguise kit vs spell is whether it's an opposed skill check or a saving throw to figure out the disguise and the prep time that was required to put on the disguise (An action vs 1-30min).

One important thing to keep in mind is that given time the skill check also simply just works, with enough time you can create a convincing disguise because it's a DC 20 to copy a humanoid's appearance (From XGtE) and it's clearly something you can retry until success (DMG rules on skills), so if you have the time/maybe money the disguise kit also works 100% just like the spell. After that if you arouse suspicion in your disguise there will be rolls to determine whether someone sees through the disguise or not, and that's true whether you use magic or not.

Psyren

2022-10-10, 03:14 PM

See, again with the system being perfect and its all on the dm who needs to be fixed. Again with the assumption the game mechanics are the best they can be and its the players fault that this one subsystem fails even if the other subsystem works just fine for those same people.

I never said the system is perfect. I'm open to the possibility that the mechanics can be improved - but definitely not in the way you and those like you have been proposing.

Why? Why are attacks stupid simple and never need adjucation? Why are saves simple and never questioned? Why are ability checks completely different?

Because attacks and saves are binary - either you hit your target and affect it (usually via damage ), or you miss. For saves, either you fail and the spell takes effect, or you pass and there's a partial effect or nothing, but those effects are still limited to the text of the spell.

Ability checks have an infinitely larger possibility space than that, because not only are the objectives themselves far more varied than hit/miss, the consequences of success and failure are larger too. PHB 174: "{A success means} the creature overcomes the challenge at hand. Otherwise it's a failure, which means the character or monster makes no progress toward the objective, or makes progress combined with a setback determined by the DM." What counts as an "objective" or a "challenge?" What counts as "progress?" What counts as a "setback?" Because none of those terms are rigidly defined in the rules the way "attack" and "saving throw" are, it's literally as open-ended as your DM wants it to be, which means it's as fun, varied and exciting as your DM wants it to be too. They just need to be creative.

Why is D&D 5e combat boring me to tears?

I mean, every time I answer questions like this one honestly you say I'm being mean to your hypothetical DMs or something but... I think you can guess what my response is going to be here too. :smalltongue:

And for the record; no I don't think wotc will get their head out of their ass and actually fix something properly. They haven't since the ToB/Bo9S errata, which still isn't fixed and hasn't been admitted to.

You do have options besides "pray for WotC to change" and "feel miserable every time initiative is rolled" you know. Options that mean you can still play 5e even.

Goobahfish

2022-10-10, 05:36 PM

The disguise kit vs spell actually highlights how the "problem" (It's really more of a type of playstyle) is the DM letting magic do more then it says it does and/or being stingy when it comes to what skills can do. Nowhere does it say Disguise Self makes a perfect replica, in fact it's very clearly not perfect because an Investigation check vs your spell save will reveal the disguise. The only real difference between the disguise kit vs spell is whether it's an opposed skill check or a saving throw to figure out the disguise and the prep time that was required to put on the disguise (An action vs 1-30min).

One important thing to keep in mind is that given time the skill check also simply just works, with enough time you can create a convincing disguise because it's a DC 20 to copy a humanoid's appearance (From XGtE) and it's clearly something you can retry until success (DMG rules on skills), so if you have the time/maybe money the disguise kit also works 100% just like the spell. After that if you arouse suspicion in your disguise there will be rolls to determine whether someone sees through the disguise or not, and that's true whether you use magic or not.

#1: "Otherwise, the extent of the illusion is up to you" (i.e., not the DM) is explicit text in the spell. I want to look exactly like 'that guy there'. Inspecting requires a whole action.
#2: If a DM lets you retry a Disguise check, it makes very little sense. How do you know whether your disguise is right or wrong? DC = 20 is a really high DC. This is a check that should be rolled in secret because unless you have a reason to know your disguise has a problem (which ought be governed by your Disguise skill), there isn't a real reason to re-roll.

---

Also... Alter Self is even more permissive. Misty Step vs a 30 ft gap compared to a 30 ft jump. I mean nitpicking an individual example doesn't change the argument. The codification of spells makes them far more reliable and attractive to players than DM whim for solving problems. Even if you have a permissive DM who makes most things easy, you are still going to be risking potentially catastrophic consequences (i.e. Stealth... i.e. Disguise... i.e. Leaping...)

Because attacks and saves are binary - either you hit your target and affect it (usually via damage ), or you miss. For saves, either you fail and the spell takes effect, or you pass and there's a partial effect or nothing, but those effects are still limited to the text of the spell.

Am I missing something or did you totally miss the point here. Wasn't the hypothetical that they don't need to be? If D&D had whimsical combat, the DM could say, your attack hits, knocking their weapon aside giving you some minor bonus on the next turn. Or it was only a glancing blow (because the target's AC was 20 this round for reasons). The monster falls to one knee.

Actually, with 'Good DMs' this can actually be a lot of fun. Weird minor circumstance bonuses rewarding better described actions. I try to hit them in the head (higher AC but better chance of crit) etc. None of this is in 5e and having some of it would probably make Martial characters feel a lot more fun (and some players would cry because they hate complexity and crunch). A champion fighter sounds a lot like playing 'snakes and ladders' to me... it is your turn, what do you do? I... roll my dice??

Final Argument
There is an inherent contradiction in arguing that the merit of a game is its lack of rules. Any game can be poorly codified.

However, what it means in practice, is that every table is running their own game. The DCs for the same task will vary from table to table. As martials only way of interacting with 'exploration' and 'social' pillars is through this framework, they are subject to whims. Casters are not. Many spells let them just 'do stuff'.

Thus... martials are far more sensitive to 'DM mistakes' than casters. I'm not sure this point can be meaningfully argued against. You can make a claim whether this is a good or bad thing, but the underlying point remains fairly solid. The interpretation of DC checks is highly vague (especially if you just use the core rules) whereas the interpretation of spell effects are far more permissive (because some interpretations would contradict the text). Obviously lots of people here are say 'is fine'. Others are saying... 'is unfair'. I'm definitely sympathetic to the latter (I've had DMs who ask for needless checks but let casters get away with 'cos spell'). It is a consequence of the design of the game. I don't think that is an opinion. Like... it doesn't happen at all tables, but the distribution of tables does seem to indicate there are plenty of tables where things go wrong and chalking that up to 'bad DMing' is like saying 'this road is safe and doesn't need repair because I didn't have an accident... speed limits are unnecessary because the make my commute longer and I haven't had an accident'.

I mean... is there a single caster in D&D which is the equivalent of the champion?

Sorinth

2022-10-10, 06:16 PM

#1: "Otherwise, the extent of the illusion is up to you" (i.e., not the DM) is explicit text in the spell. I want to look exactly like 'that guy there'. Inspecting requires a whole action.
#2: If a DM lets you retry a Disguise check, it makes very little sense. How do you know whether your disguise is right or wrong? DC = 20 is a really high DC. This is a check that should be rolled in secret because unless you have a reason to know your disguise has a problem (which ought be governed by your Disguise skill), there isn't a real reason to re-roll.

Wouldn't "looking like that guy over there" depend on things like perception and/or how familiar you are. What if that guy over there has a visible birthmark, if you're seeing it from 60' away chances are you'll end up with a similar birthmark but not a perfect imitation.

As for knowing whether your disguise is good or not, it's called a mirror. If you make a poor disguise and look in a mirror you can tell it's a poor disguise.

Like people have said, when it comes to spells, especially those who talk about how spells solve everything it's usually a case where they are super permissive with magic because it's magic (I saw a complete stranger once an hour ago but I can perfectly recall every minute detail about how they look which will fool even those super familiar with them), and super restrictive for non-magic stuff (Looking in a mirror is too much).

It's perfectly fine to play that way if that's the style of game you like, but it's not a style that is being forced upon you by the ruleset. At best it's forced upon you by assumptions that aren't actually RAW.

Also... Alter Self is even more permissive. Misty Step vs a 30 ft gap compared to a 30 ft jump. I mean nitpicking an individual example doesn't change the argument. The codification of spells makes them far more reliable and attractive to players than DM whim for solving problems. Even if you have a permissive DM who makes most things easy, you are still going to be risking potentially catastrophic consequences (i.e. Stealth... i.e. Disguise... i.e. Leaping...)

Let's not forget this isn't a random example, this is your example that you then said was a good example of the "problem". It's not nitpicking to point out that the problem is actually due to assumptions you've made. If you are super permissive with magic and not with non-magic you're going to end up with a game where magic is the best solution to every problem. The problem you're facing isn't about how permissive the DM is, it's that there's a double standard. If it's a spell we give it the benefit of the doubt and treat it in the most permissive way or most powerful interpretation, if it's not a spell then we don't and we ignore the advice in the DMG about just letting players succeed at stuff and insist on both a die roll and catastrophic consequences on a failed roll instead of going with success at a cost.

If you are the DM and encountering this spells solve everything, skills are risky then my advice would be to challenge your assumptions, the rules are more often then not vague and can be interpreted in different ways, choose a way that provides what you feel is a better play experience.

Thunderous Mojo

2022-10-10, 06:26 PM

#
However, what it means in practice, is that every table is running their own game.

That is generally not an issue, as stable games tend to have the same participants. Variance between tables, would only be an issue, if one primarily plays ‘pick up games’.

All characters, regardless of class, are subject to the Ability Test rules, and all classes have some abilities that will “Just Work”, under the right circumstances.

A Fighter’s Second Wind and Extra Attack features, do not have specific counters, such as Counterspell.

A Blind Fighter, can still make attacks at Disadvantage, whereas a many spells will simply not work. Strengths also define weakness.

A 20 STR character can just jump 20’, in the right circumstances, just as Misty Step, in the correct situation, will just work.

The divide is simply not a great as you are portraying it, in my opinion.

Telok

2022-10-10, 07:17 PM

I actually think Psyren was making a pretty astute point about the game here. Complaints from GMs about 5e are often that of inexperienced ones who are uncomfortable with exercising their agency over the game, and "solutions" to "problems" with it are often contrary to the edition's strengths.

A GM should have a good idea of how difficult they want an obstacle to be. This is a part often of a narrative, which is so heavily in the purview of the GM that to enforce fixed DCs could cause issues in a narrative. This avoids situation where a check can be trivialized or made impossible by a player with RAW. Combat, on the other hand, has hard rules because the challenges within it are not meant to be insurmountable nor trivialized innately. The classes have hard and set rules for how they work in combat, and to match them the enemies do as well, so everyone has a clear understanding of what they can and cannot do.

See, I can't agree. I know I've spoken of several inexperienced dms I knew who quit on games because they couldn't hack the d&d 5e random ability check results of modules meeting the d20. But right now I've got a 30 year veteran dm, good friend, run several different systems. Eas, in fact, the last person to dm the last non-d&d game I played in 20 years ago. This dm has the same complaints, rather more insightfully framed, as the novices did. I won't dm 5e because I have similar complaints and don't want to deal with asking if its ok to call for a roll every single time a player wants to try anything.

Now, "have a good idea of how difficult they want an obstacle" sounds nice, but it's saying the dm needs to know how likely the characters are to succeed at any given task and adjust things to suit. Every time. For everything. Except combat & spells. Its work, its room for errors or mistakes, it calls for knowing the characters bonuses and doing rough probability math in your head. Every time. For everything. Except combat and spells. Because the advice the dms get is "dc 15 is medium/average and make the rest up yourself". And you know what? Anything you're rolling an ability check for is, by system math, a challenge that's neither trivial nor insurmountable. Unless you need a spell you don't have or can cast a spell that trivializes the check. Maybe we should put little math tests in the dmg? "You must be able to solve this 'how likely will the pc fail' word problem or you shouldn't dm because you don't know math."

But combat? Every combat that's not deadly+ is supposed to be trivial. Because the system needs the characters to slog through a whole bunch of them every adventuring day in order to work as intended. Yet here the casters don't autowin with a single spell (barring edge cases like 1st level sleep on 3 gobbo or forcecage on a stupid beat stick solo encounter). Here the game math & bounded accuracy work great. Here even the novices can blindly follow instructions in the books and have a decent game without worrying about asking for too many rolls and shafting fighters. Without having a caster slap down an autowin spell that does everything the barbarian brings to the encounter but better.

Your bit "classes have hard and set rules for how they work in combat, and to match them the enemies do as well, so everyone has a clear understanding of what they can and cannot do" is exclusive to combat and magic. Why? Why shouldn't the barbarian's player know if the character can be intimidating? Why shouldn't the wizard's player know if the character can read runes? Why shouldn't the rogue's player know if the character can sneak past a sleeping dog? Then turn it around. Why should they know a goblin can't whap them with stunning fist? Why should they know the exact ac of anyone wearing plate? Why should they know that they can't be taken down by less than 10 hits from an ogre? Why should martials be unable to know what their characters can do out of combat while casters are able to know those things? Why should a character's ability to bribe a guard be mostly dependent on the player's ability to convince the dm to a low dc insread of dependent on the character's stats & abilities?

Yeah, I've got my personal beefs with 5e. That its combat has been reduced to slow dull formulaic picking options off lists. That out of combat your options are cast a spell, sweet talk the dm, or "freeform with coin flips". I think that "d20+mods vs dc for evah!" is a sacred cow that needs slaughtering*. But if its the only game I get to play I'll definitely complain about it.

* no, seriously, you want to flip coins you can drop the stupid d20+5 vs dc15 for jumping or whatever you try. Good stat plus proficient plus a running start? Flip three coins and if any are heads you succeed. Read runes? Bad stat but you have a book and there were similar ones earlier? Plus two coins, minus one, flip your coin and see if its heads. Tell me that isn't simpler, more reliable, and at least as easy to adjucate as "can they, should they, am i asking for too many rolls, who gets to try, whats their score, how hard do i want it to be, math out the dc, negotiate over using a different stat, ok now you roll, but not you, and you get a different dc".

Dr.Samurai

2022-10-10, 07:34 PM

greenstone

2022-10-10, 08:34 PM

My fighter gets swarmed. Just by sheer numbers they drag me to the ground. All start swinging with Advantage. My fighter dies. Frodo is captured and the ring is returned to Sauron. Middle Earth is doomed.

But at least low level enemies are still a threat amirite?!

I think the base cause of this is that we want to play different power levels. Some of us want to play Conan, some of us want to play Cú Chulainn, some of us want to play Hawkeye, some of us want to play Superman and the Silver Surfer.

The issue for the game is that one ruleset can't really handle all of these levels of heroics and superheroics.

For example, the GURPS Celtic Myth book had an encounter where a character threw four spears, jumped onto the first spear while it was in the air, jumped from there to the second spear, then the third spear, then the fourth spear, then jumped into the air and cut his foe into quarters, each quarter was then hit by one of the spears.

That is a level of superheroics that neither Aragorn or Conan get even close to. How can one RPG game system handle both levels? How can it handle both levels in the same party?

I think the D&D authors need to decide on a power level and just say, "Our system works with this pwoer level. You could use it for anything different, but then wonky things happen and we take no responsibility."

Thunderous Mojo

2022-10-10, 08:36 PM

Is Bounded Accuracy a foundational issue in this regard?

Is this the reason my level 11 fighter only has a 17% chance to kill an orc with one hit? Just watching Fellowship of the Ring and seeing Aragorn mow through orcs at Amon Hen is just awesome. Then I thought, can my Rune Knight do this? Hmm... d12+4 on a hit... need to roll an 11 or 12 on the damage die to kill an orc...

So... on average takes two hits to kill 1 orc. My fighter gets swarmed. Just by sheer numbers they drag me to the ground. All start swinging with Advantage. My fighter dies. Frodo is captured and the ring is returned to Sauron. Middle Earth is doomed.

But at least low level enemies are still a threat amirite?!

This artifact of gameplay is less about Bounded Accuracy, and more about Hit Point Bloat. Given that Monsters of the Multiverse is supposed to be compatible with the upcoming edition, it would seem Hit Point bloat is still going to be with us in the future.

While I think 5e has the correct balance for mooks, in the sense that hordes of creatures can overwhem foes that are individually much more powerful…..
…….I also agree that some sort of Melee AoE would be a boon to the game, as well as some sort of ability that would allow Martials to outright just Slay some foes in a single strike.

Goobahfish

2022-10-10, 09:01 PM

Wouldn't "looking like that guy over there" depend on things like perception and/or how familiar you are. What if that guy over there has a visible birthmark, if you're seeing it from 60' away chances are you'll end up with a similar birthmark but not a perfect imitation. As for knowing whether your disguise is good or not, it's called a mirror. If you make a poor disguise and look in a mirror you can tell it's a poor disguise.

"But it is magic". The text of the spell is 'how you look is up to you'. It is far more difficult for a DM to say... well... but... to a spell which has explicit text describing capabilities than to work with a section of the rules where there are literally no descriptions at all. Disguise kit just makes you proficient. It is only in XGtE (which isn't actually in the core rules) where you get a ball-park of what is going on. Even then... a DC 20 check is hard and unreliable.

A mirror doesn't tell you something you don't know. Magic... who knows, it doesn't say that the player must know intricate details. It is especially vague, but a very 'non-generous' reading is that you can make yourself look like someone else (ala Mystique from X-men, Loki from the MCU etc). If your referent is fiction, magic making perfect imitations is the norm.

If you use a proper disguise kit, the average person immediately thinks of examples, most of which don't hold up to the same 'magical scrutiny'. There is a disguise kit, which grants proficiency. I suppose then there has to be a check or why have it at all. "DM rolls a check". Failure ensues.

This is a direct consequence of the implementation of the rules as written. It is a natural consequence. Of course you can work around it. I do too. That is because I (and probably you) have the experience to realise the maths and that letting spells do 'whatever' ends up with bad gameplay. But that is a meta-game that we play. Literally everything you have written relies on a large number of unwritten assumptions that leads to a good outcome. What I have written is a set of reasonable assumptions that leads to a bad outcome.

It's perfectly fine to play that way if that's the style of game you like, but it's not a style that is being forced upon you by the ruleset. At best it's forced upon you by assumptions that aren't actually RAW.

This encapsulates really the issue with this thread. The assumptions here are so embedded that it is hard to seem them.

You talk as if the style of play is just an obvious fact of reality which can be at whim switched between... I'm talking about how the game as written generates weird incentive structures that lead to bad outcomes, which to avoid relies on the experience that allows you to even make your point. You are so baked into your 'experience' that you aren't looking at the game objectively any more. Your statement doesn't make any sense unless you are experienced enough to know how to choose between the two.

PhoenixPhyre

2022-10-10, 09:38 PM

I think the D&D authors need to decide on a power level and just say, "Our system works with this pwoer level. You could use it for anything different, but then wonky things happen and we take no responsibility."

Strong agree. Every system (yes, including GURPS) has particular "sweet spots" as far as the power expressible both in the system and in the associated fiction. Going too much outside of that breaks things (or at least produces odd, fiction-mechanical-mismatch situations)

Dr.Samurai

2022-10-10, 09:49 PM

I am not sure that it has to do with power level so much, because high level martials are supposed to contend with higher level threats. But they can barely take out a CR 1/2 creature with a single sword strike.

Meanwhile, a 5th level wizard with a fireball can take out as many orcs as he can fit in the radius.

@Thunderous Mojo, I agree that AoE and Death strikes would be a welcome addition for martials. I'm not sure how it's bloat though, since these are just CR 1/2 orcs. What HP should they have?

Brookshw

2022-10-10, 10:02 PM

Strong agree. Every system (yes, including GURPS) has particular "sweet spots" as far as the power expressible both in the system and in the associated fiction. Going too much outside of that breaks things (or at least produces odd, fiction-mechanical-mismatch situations)

It would be interesting to see something that took warmahordes 'everything is broken' approach (maybe Exhaled? :smallconfused:), though I suspect they would have a certain rock-paper-scissor aspect to them; doubtful such a system would have much staying power.

Psyren

2022-10-10, 10:41 PM

Am I missing something or did you totally miss the point here. Wasn't the hypothetical that they don't need to be?

Yes, you can warp attack roll vs. AC or saving throw vs. save DC into something that needs more complex adjudication - but why? Hitting things and making skin-of-your-teeth saves is already inherently exciting, we've proven that for decades now.

However, what it means in practice, is that every table is running their own game. The DCs for the same task will vary from table to table. As martials only way of interacting with 'exploration' and 'social' pillars is through this framework, they are subject to whims. Casters are not. Many spells let them just 'do stuff'.

1) Enabling table variation is the point.

2) Casters can "just do stuff" until they can't. Which is easier to explain because spells are arbitrary - you run out for the day when the rules say you do, no further explanation necessary. And a great deal of their "stuff" needs adjudication too, adjudication is not a martial-only thing.

Thus... martials are far more sensitive to 'DM mistakes' than casters. I'm not sure this point can be meaningfully argued against. You can make a claim whether this is a good or bad thing, but the underlying point remains fairly solid.

Sure, but fixing it is fairly easy so the issue is overblown. Check if the martial player is having fun, if not, make adjustments. A balloon is solid too, that doesn't make it sturdy.

The interpretation of DC checks is highly vague (especially if you just use the core rules) whereas the interpretation of spell effects are far more permissive (because some interpretations would contradict the text). Obviously lots of people here are say 'is fine'. Others are saying... 'is unfair'. I'm definitely sympathetic to the latter (I've had DMs who ask for needless checks but let casters get away with 'cos spell'). It is a consequence of the design of the game. I don't think that is an opinion. Like... it doesn't happen at all tables, but the distribution of tables does seem to indicate there are plenty of tables where things go wrong and chalking that up to 'bad DMing' is like saying 'this road is safe and doesn't need repair because I didn't have an accident... speed limits are unnecessary because the make my commute longer and I haven't had an accident'.

Speed limits are fine but you can easily go too far. A 5mph speed limit will probably prevent 99.9% of accidents in perpetuity, and the few that do occur will result in almost no damage - but that's because you've slowed everyone to a crawl. Stopping accidents is laudable, but it's also one concern among many, and I would argue not even close to the being the primary concern.

I mean... is there a single caster in D&D which is the equivalent of the champion?

No, of course there isn't. The whole point of the Champion is to be a (sub)class that a player can use to jump into D&D alongside their friends with minimal pre-reading. A class that would need you to understand an entire additional chapter (i.e. the magic rules) would be antithetical to that concept.

Ignimortis

2022-10-10, 10:51 PM

This artifact of gameplay is less about Bounded Accuracy, and more about Hit Point Bloat. Given that Monsters of the Multiverse is supposed to be compatible with the upcoming edition, it would seem Hit Point bloat is still going to be with us in the future.

While I think 5e has the correct balance for mooks, in the sense that hordes of creatures can overwhem foes that are individually much more powerful…..
…….I also agree that some sort of Melee AoE would be a boon to the game, as well as some sort of ability that would allow Martials to outright just Slay some foes in a single strike.
But it is about bounded accuracy, at least in part. Due to the fact that 5e does not (commonly) include any meaningful defense that isn't AC or HP, and that ACs, due to bounded accuracy, have to stay at "can be hit" levels (a level 1 character can, in fact, hit a CR 20 dragon on a 15+, which is incredible - a 30% hit chance?!), then HP becomes the only reason why a level 5 party cannot defeat a CR20 dragon by being lucky. Therefore, things get bloated with HP very quickly - I have already expressed my distaste for the fact that a CR3-4 creature has enough staying power to survive at least a turn against any level party unless the party focuses on them. Most CR4+ creatures have 80+ HP, and no character in the game deals 80 damage in a turn without setup, a lucky crit, or resource expenditure.

But Bounded Accuracy and the system being simplified are to blame for this, also. There is no "resistance 15" that you can slap on a dragon to make it immune to low-level attacks and have high-level characters simply hit hard enough to overcome that. Instead, resistance halves damage, which means it doesn't prevent death by a thousand stings and still heavily hampers higher-level characters. Therefore, the only way to make the dragon survive a lucky string of hits by a level 5 party is to give it boatloads of HP - and that applies to every single creature in the game after CR1 or so. And thus, player damage also cannot grow much, because otherwise you'd have to put high-level creature HP in the thousands, and that goes against the goal to keep things simple AND against the goal to keep lower-level creatures as viable opponents.

I think the base cause of this is that we want to play different power levels. Some of us want to play Conan, some of us want to play Cú Chulainn, some of us want to play Hawkeye, some of us want to play Superman and the Silver Surfer.

The issue for the game is that one ruleset can't really handle all of these levels of heroics and superheroics.

For example, the GURPS Celtic Myth book had an encounter where a character threw four spears, jumped onto the first spear while it was in the air, jumped from there to the second spear, then the third spear, then the fourth spear, then jumped into the air and cut his foe into quarters, each quarter was then hit by one of the spears.

That is a level of superheroics that neither Aragorn or Conan get even close to. How can one RPG game system handle both levels? How can it handle both levels in the same party?

I think the D&D authors need to decide on a power level and just say, "Our system works with this pwoer level. You could use it for anything different, but then wonky things happen and we take no responsibility."
Levels. Levels literally exist. Aragorn is level 5. Conan is level 5. Cú Chulainn is level 15+.

A major part of these threads happening is that martials simply do get minor numerical bonuses instead of features that cannot be expressed by numbers. You're still playing someone who is conceivably Aragorn (but no ghost army, no artifact ancestral blade and no kingdom you're destined to rule) from level 5 to level 20, except Aragorn gets massively more good at not being killed, and slightly better at killing. Wizard, on the other hand, graduates from "first year Harry Potter" to "could beat Merlin, Gandalf and any three of Conan's sorcerous foes at once".

As I've said before, either make spellcasters play by the same power scale as martials (no spells above 6th circle would even be left in the game for PCs, and spellcasting would probably be more warlock-like without exponential growth of resources), or make martials scale similarly with levels. I would be fine with either, honestly.

Also, that Celtic Myth example is really cool. A bit overkill by end result, but the implied power is nice, and jumping from your own hurled weapon to another is *chef's kiss*.

No, of course there isn't. The whole point of the Champion is to be a (sub)class that a player can use to jump into D&D alongside their friends with minimal pre-reading. A class that would need you to understand an entire additional chapter (i.e. the magic rules) would be antithetical to that concept.
Take Warlock. Remove spellcasting and pacts (blade, tome, chain). Bake Eldritch Blast+Agonizing Blast into it. Make Invocations not reference spells or use spell slots and instead put the relevant text into them, and make them at-will. Give a few more invocations spread over 20 levels. Bam, you're done, you have a spellcaster that is scarcely more complex than a Champion. Does it cast spells like a Wizard? No. Does it use magic and look cool as hell? Sure does.

I also don't understand why every single class without innate spellcasting is similarly simple. Are they all "training wheels" classes?

Telok

2022-10-10, 11:03 PM

It would be interesting to see something that took warmahordes 'everything is broken' approach (maybe Exhaled? :smallconfused:), though I suspect they would have a certain rock-paper-scissor aspect to them; doubtful such a system would have much staying power.

Dungeons the dragoning. Older than 5e, starting my next year long campaign some time later this year. Oddly has the same dc chart 5e has but 15 really is 50/50 for a basic proficency normal person and mrlee pcs really are mook slaughtering monsters. Or I have stats for the Titanic and a martial artist that can sink it, potentially in one turn. Granted, that character's like a 6 months of almost weekly sessions by my xp scale, a bit under 3 months by the default rules. Plus they can start out being charismatic and smart in addition to denting small spaceships with their faces.

Thunderous Mojo

2022-10-10, 11:26 PM

But it is about bounded accuracy, at least in part. Due to the fact that 5e does not (commonly) include any meaningful defense that isn't AC or HP, and that ACs, due to bounded accuracy, have to stay at "can be hit" levels (a level 1 character can, in fact, hit a CR 20 dragon on a 15+, which is incredible - a 30% hit chance?!),

We have different aesthetic tastes. 3e is dead for me, and will remain so….great fun in it’s day…but a system that has essentially Kobayashi Maru scenarios, (situations where one cannot succeed) as balance points is to use the parlance of our times, pure jank.

A Dragon’s Frightful Presence also tends to boost their AC, as an army of mooks is likely to fail their Saving Throws.

Also keep in mind, the standard ORC statblock isn’t a dragon, and isn’t meant to fulfill the same role. Felling an Orc is a single blow, does seem like something a warrior should be able to do.

(4e had Kobolds with 22 hp. Hit Point Bloat has been a trend since 3e.)

3.5 various DR changes were mostly circumvented by the golf bag of weapons, and by adding bunches of modifiers to a weapon, while leaving the Numerical Plus itself low, only to use spells to reach Higher +X status.

Essentially, this style of design rewards optimization, and only penalizes the uninformed. 5e doesn’t escape this phenomena, but the system does mitigate it.

Psyren

2022-10-10, 11:30 PM

Take Warlock. Remove spellcasting and pacts (blade, tome, chain). Bake Eldritch Blast+Agonizing Blast into it. Make Invocations not reference spells or use spell slots and instead put the relevant text into them, and make them at-will. Give a few more invocations spread over 20 levels. Bam, you're done, you have a spellcaster that is scarcely more complex than a Champion. Does it cast spells like a Wizard? No. Does it use magic and look cool as hell? Sure does.

I also don't understand why every single class without innate spellcasting is similarly simple. Are they all "training wheels" classes?

1) Which invocations? You probably don't want Sculptor of Flesh, Undying Servitude or Sign of Ill Omen usable at-will in most games for instance. And what would you add in their place to fill out the other 20 levels?

2) That's a lot of text to reprint from the spells chapter when they could simply send you over there. Misty Visions is already at-will, and the spell it grants you is three paragraphs long, and even that won't tell you how your GM will adjudicate it. Master of Myriad Forms is 4. Minions of Chaos is 5. And that's not even counting the metatext that might also matter like spell school, spell level, duration etc.

Don't get me wrong, I think an Invoker class with no spell slots is a fun idea. But building one most certainly wouldn't be beginner friendly on either side of the DM screen. You and I could probably go through all the invocations and prune out the ones that would get it above Champion complexity, sure - but we're not the target audience for such an endeavor anyway.

Sorinth

2022-10-10, 11:48 PM

"But it is magic". The text of the spell is 'how you look is up to you'. It is far more difficult for a DM to say... well... but... to a spell which has explicit text describing capabilities than to work with a section of the rules where there are literally no descriptions at all. Disguise kit just makes you proficient. It is only in XGtE (which isn't actually in the core rules) where you get a ball-park of what is going on. Even then... a DC 20 check is hard and unreliable.

A mirror doesn't tell you something you don't know. Magic... who knows, it doesn't say that the player must know intricate details. It is especially vague, but a very 'non-generous' reading is that you can make yourself look like someone else (ala Mystique from X-men, Loki from the MCU etc). If your referent is fiction, magic making perfect imitations is the norm.

If you use a proper disguise kit, the average person immediately thinks of examples, most of which don't hold up to the same 'magical scrutiny'. There is a disguise kit, which grants proficiency. I suppose then there has to be a check or why have it at all. "DM rolls a check". Failure ensues.

This is a direct consequence of the implementation of the rules as written. It is a natural consequence. Of course you can work around it. I do too. That is because I (and probably you) have the experience to realise the maths and that letting spells do 'whatever' ends up with bad gameplay. But that is a meta-game that we play. Literally everything you have written relies on a large number of unwritten assumptions that leads to a good outcome. What I have written is a set of reasonable assumptions that leads to a bad outcome.

I'm sorry but if a mirror doesn't help it's because you don't really know what the person you want to disguise yourself as looks like and if that's the case the Disguise Self spell doesn't help. Hand waiving things and letting magic do whatever because who knows how magic really works is how you get the problem you have. Just don't do that and there's no more problem.

This encapsulates really the issue with this thread. The assumptions here are so embedded that it is hard to seem them.

You talk as if the style of play is just an obvious fact of reality which can be at whim switched between... I'm talking about how the game as written generates weird incentive structures that lead to bad outcomes, which to avoid relies on the experience that allows you to even make your point. You are so baked into your 'experience' that you aren't looking at the game objectively any more. Your statement doesn't make any sense unless you are experienced enough to know how to choose between the two.

100% agree that it's hard to know what assumptions you bring with you which is one reason it's good to talk things through after the game, especially if you are having bad outcomes. We all have our assumptions whether we are experienced or not, that's true for me and it's true for you. Every single person with read the rules and have a slightly differently interpretation so I find it strange that you say I can't be objective about the game as written but somehow you can and that your interpretation is the "true" interpretation of the RAW.

Ignimortis

2022-10-11, 12:37 AM

We have different aesthetic tastes. 3e is dead for me, and will remain so….great fun in it’s day…but a system that has essentially Kobayashi Maru scenarios, (situations where one cannot succeed) as balance points is to use the parlance of our times, pure jank.

A Dragon’s Frightful Presence also tends to boost their AC, as an army of mooks is likely to fail their Saving Throws.

Also keep in mind, the standard ORC statblock isn’t a dragon, and isn’t meant to fulfill the same role. Felling an Orc is a single blow, does seem like something a warrior should be able to do.

(4e had Kobolds with 22 hp. Hit Point Bloat has been a trend since 3e.)

3.5 various DR changes were mostly circumvented by the golf bag of weapons, and by adding bunches of modifiers to a weapon, while leaving the Numerical Plus itself low, only to use spells to reach Higher +X status.

Essentially, this style of design rewards optimization, and only penalizes the uninformed. 5e doesn’t escape this phenomena, but the system does mitigate it.
It is perfectly fine for a system to have situations where you cannot succeed. A level 1 or even level 5 party has no business winning a fight against a CR20 dragon. That's why it's CR20. One of my groups has tried to fight a CR14 dragon at level 7. We were paste by turn 2, and that is perfectly fair for a system to do that.

Now, if you mean "a system shouldn't have situations where one cannot succeed on a level-appropriate challenge despite investing into solving that kind of challenge", sure, that shouldn't be a thing. But I don't recall 3e doing that aside from the fact that a properly played high-CR enemy cannot be harmed by a level 20 Fighter without extensive prep on the Fighter's part or making massive mistakes. 5e took the easy way out (I call it "Bethesda's way") and instead of making it so that the Fighter 20 can contend with a spell-slinging, flying, devilishly cunning and still physically powerful Pit Lord, made the Pit Lord be a sack of hitpoints that has very little choice in tactics but to duke it out with the Fighter 20 in melee combat or run away.

Hit Point bloat was indeed a thing that started with 3e - but 3e also gave you the means to deal with it (sometimes excessive ones, as Ubercharger builds prove by reducing anything below four digits into red paste in a turn). Even a modestly optimized (and by that I mean "just don't play Tordek") 3e build can hit for low triple digits per turn if they get a full attack off, and their single attack is likely to do at least 30 damage by the sheer dint of STR+bonuses behind it, even if you roll a total of 2 on actual damage dice.

A level 20 no-frills Fighter with a +5 weapon (that the system says they should have, unlike 5e) can just Power Attack an orc for -10 to-hit, hit it on a roll of 2+ anyway, and that alone will bisect the orc beyond any doubt. 5e only allows this through GWM, which is 1) an optional rule 2) seems to be going away in 1D&D 3) does not extend to creatures that have maybe 50 HP instead.

As for "golf bag of weapons" - the fact that 3e did it in such a way does not mean you have to do it like that. How about, perhaps, making a creature with DR 15 that isn't penetrated by anything at all? It's just that your level 17 martial deals 50+ damage per strike and thus can still deal meaningful damage to the creature a level 1 character with their 10 damage per strike can't even touch properly.

You can design a system that doesn't require optimization to make a good character. It's not synonymous with "a Champion Fighter style of character has to be useful against all enemies at any level".

1) Which invocations? You probably don't want Sculptor of Flesh, Undying Servitude or Sign of Ill Omen usable at-will in most games for instance. And what would you add in their place to fill out the other 20 levels?

2) That's a lot of text to reprint from the spells chapter when they could simply send you over there. Misty Visions is already at-will, and the spell it grants you is three paragraphs long, and even that won't tell you how your GM will adjudicate it. Master of Myriad Forms is 4. Minions of Chaos is 5. And that's not even counting the metatext that might also matter like spell school, spell level, duration etc.

Don't get me wrong, I think an Invoker class with no spell slots is a fun idea. But building one most certainly wouldn't be beginner friendly on either side of the DM screen. You and I could probably go through all the invocations and prune out the ones that would get it above Champion complexity, sure - but we're not the target audience for such an endeavor anyway.
I could do that as a GM. I see no reason why game designers at WotC shouldn't. It'd certainly be better to add such a class rather than keeping, say, Wizard and Sorcerer side by side with extremely similar mechanics, lists, and flavour beyond "where do you get your magic from".

Leon

2022-10-11, 01:40 AM

(4e had Kobolds with 22 hp. Hit Point Bloat has been a trend since 3e.)

4e the edition where even a weedy ass wizard could start with 22 hp at level one

Kane0

2022-10-11, 03:20 AM

4e the edition where even a weedy ass wizard could start with 22 hp at level one

I did like PCs starting with Con score bonus HP instead of Con mod, but NPCs also getting it did feel a bit tedious.
You could play much longer at level 1 without feeling like a pane of glass in every fight, but you were still lacking half your powers so you still wanted to level ASAP anyways.
Bit of a missed opportunity if you ask me.

Stangler

2022-10-11, 07:55 AM

I see bounded accuracy as applied to ability checks as a huge problem. It is the only way for martials to interact with the world beyond engaging in combat, and it does not scale in level. A level 5 wizard going to level 15 gets significant non-combat powers. Huge paradigm-shifting spells may become available. A barbarian gets a tiny bonus to proficient ability checks between those levels and probably a strength ASI or two. But they'd still be attempting the exact same challenges outside of combat, just succeed a little more often. (In combat they'd laugh at the foes they faced at level 5...)

The lack of explicit weaknesses for spellcasters beyond resource management is a problem. Fitting in easy but resource-draining encounters is kind of boring and the paradigm requires the GM to put constant pressure onto the players every adventuring day. Because spellcasters dominate any five minute workday. Martials don't fare well on long adventuring days anyway. Their hp drains quite well, and to regain that eats hit dice or magic. A paladin may well have more longevity than a fighter because the fighter runs out of hit points faster. I'd say martials are pretty average? It might be better to bring a spellcaster that can heal over a fighter for long adventuring days? So I'd suggest de-emphasizing the balancing of classes based around a single length of adventuring day.

Lastly, balance classes roughly between each of the three pillars. Give every class roughly balanced amounts of stuff to do in each pillar. Rangers may get some more exploration power, fighters some more combat power, wizards some more exploration power, bards some more social. A rough balance is fine, but right now a fighter has practically no social nor exploration features.

I think there’s is a need to explicitly scale up the skill level of characters based upon level but I don’t think it has to be mathematical. A D.C. 15 check at level one is fundamentally different from one at 20 when I run games but it ends up being a bit squishy.

More clarity in terms of skills will help a lot and I think they are doing more things like that.

The lack of weakness is a big deal and I agree about hps being the constraint on martial characters. It was discussed earlier in the thread but my takeaway was more ways to counter magic in terms of both monsters and environment. Also better hp healing and toughness for martial characters to establish their niche.

Non combat pillars can definitely be a design challenge for the warrior classes. It is a hard issue to really crack without a big change to the underlying design. Possible for sure but difficult.

MarkVIIIMarc

2022-10-11, 09:40 AM

Since casters have a way to Hold Martials and prevent attacks, how about a way for martials to Counterspell with a Reaction Attack?

The two threads WERE right on top of eachother. I could not resist.

Psyren

2022-10-11, 09:45 AM

I could do that as a GM. I see no reason why game designers at WotC shouldn't. It'd certainly be better to add such a class rather than keeping, say, Wizard and Sorcerer side by side with extremely similar mechanics, lists, and flavour beyond "where do you get your magic from".

Sorcerers embody magic, which is why they can manipulate it via metamagic. Wizards study it, and I fully agree they're going to need something to replace their niche as the prepared caster who can theoretically learn the whole arcane list, but I'm way more optimistic that WotC can come up with a way to justify the Wizard's existence than I would be that they can come up with a balanced and beginner-friendly invocation-only class.

I think there’s is a need to explicitly scale up the skill level of characters based upon level but I don’t think it has to be mathematical. A D.C. 15 check at level one is fundamentally different from one at 20 when I run games but it ends up being a bit squishy.

More clarity in terms of skills will help a lot and I think they are doing more things like that.

The lack of weakness is a big deal and I agree about hps being the constraint on martial characters. It was discussed earlier in the thread but my takeaway was more ways to counter magic in terms of both monsters and environment. Also better hp healing and toughness for martial characters to establish their niche.

Non combat pillars can definitely be a design challenge for the warrior classes. It is a hard issue to really crack without a big change to the underlying design. Possible for sure but difficult.

What it boils down to is that DC 25 checks are extremely difficult - requiring talent, training, and magic or extreme luck to pull off. For those checks to be fun for martial players, they have to be reserved for the kinds of things that martials would need all those things to do. A rogue scaling a wall for a caper or tumbling past an ogre should definitely not count, rogues without magical assistance do those things all the time. But tumbling through a gelatinous cube or swimming through a maelstrom might need magic alongside a lot of talent and skill.

Equally important is modulating what happens on a failure so that the martial is not subject exclusively to punishing or slapstick outcomes, especially if they only fail by a tiny amount.

As for hit points being a martial constraint - with how forgiving 5e's default rest rules are this can be difficult to truly rely on as a difficulty factor. While I don't use the "gritty" variant rules personally, I can somewhat see the appeal.

Ignimortis

2022-10-11, 10:15 AM

Sorcerers embody magic, which is why they can manipulate it via metamagic. Wizards study it, and I fully agree they're going to need something to replace their niche as the prepared caster who can theoretically learn the whole arcane list, but I'm way more optimistic that WotC can come up with a way to justify the Wizard's existence than I would be that they can come up with a balanced and beginner-friendly invocation-only class.

The only reason either exists (at least in anything resembling their current form), really, is the desire to keep recognition high and to not stray from the "tried-and-true classics". Note how the only original classes in 5e compared to the 3e PHB were Warlock and Artificer, both are significantly changed from their 3e versions to the point they are not quite the same archetypes (I've heard that 5e Warlock is more 4e Warlock than 3e Warlock, haven't verified that myself).

While Warlock at least attempts some mechanical originality (short-rest spellcasting, narrow-ish list, doesn't actually get full casting in a proper form, is a lot more reliant on cantrips/EB than any other caster), Artificer is smushed into being another generic half-caster that, for the most part, feels like a mix of Wizard and Warlock with a "tinker" theme (and, sadly, is still one of the most entertaining classes of 5e for me, right after Monk).

In short, I do certainly agree that WotC in their current shape are unlikely to produce any decent new content more complicated than "new race, roll 3d20 to determine their unique features off this list". Which is a shame, to be sure.

Psyren

2022-10-11, 10:26 AM

The only reason either exists (at least in anything resembling their current form), really, is the desire to keep recognition high and to not stray from the "tried-and-true classics".

And? This might surprise you, but something being expected by the majority of your audience is not actually a bad reason to keep it, especially when doing so clearly doesn't hurt anything. (Certainly not commercially.)

Note how the only original classes in 5e compared to the 3e PHB were Warlock and Artificer, both are significantly changed from their 3e versions to the point they are not quite the same archetypes (I've heard that 5e Warlock is more 4e Warlock than 3e Warlock, haven't verified that myself).

While Warlock at least attempts some mechanical originality (short-rest spellcasting, narrow-ish list, doesn't actually get full casting in a proper form, is a lot more reliant on cantrips/EB than any other caster), Artificer is smushed into being another generic half-caster that, for the most part, feels like a mix of Wizard and Warlock with a "tinker" theme (and, sadly, is still one of the most entertaining classes of 5e for me, right after Monk).

Artificer absolutely has "mechanical originality." Most of that is outside of its spellcasting via the Infusions, but even its tool-sourced spellcasting has some interesting quirks. They lost some of that originality in 1DD now that they're no longer the only half casters that round up and can cast rituals natively, but even so.

Waazraath

2022-10-11, 01:41 PM

Not my experience. And considering that these issues keep getting raised up on every board dedicated to 5e that I see, and that these issues actually do not get raised on, say, the PF2 boards that I see (there's no talk of that particular problem at all, possibly because it doesn't really exist in PF2), it is a system-endemic problem rather than a GM problem.

Sure, that happens. It's perhaps the most common issue, and it needs fixing, too, because the adventuring day is BOGUS. The adventuring day does not function if you're trying to have any situation that doesn't involve active dungeon delving where time is a meaningful constraint. And designing every single plot of the game to be extremely time-sensitive (i.e. taking a week or two more will be a failure) and every day having multiple encounters that somehow do not make martials lose HP at a proportionally faster rate than post-5 casters spend spells - that's pretty hard. Maybe the underlying system is faulty, yes?

Well... here we go. Yes, if you don't follow recommendations on the number of encouters/day, the system won't work. That's why the recommendations are there, in the rules. I just can't get it into my head that there are people who willfully ignore what's in the rule books, to afterwards complain the system doesn't work. Like somebody who plays chess and decides that the white side gets 2 moves for every 1 move the black side can make, and then complains the game is unbalanced. Yes, of course it is!

We can argue about the merits of the balancing of the adventuring day. But two things on that. First, D&D has chosen (as every other edition except for 4th) to have a few different resoure management systems for different classes. Of old, it was only 'at will' and 'daily', 3.x experimented with a few new systems (e.g. maneuvers, soul binding with ability usable 1/5 rounds), 5e has at will, short rest and daily. So appearantly, D&D wants to have different systems - 4th wasn't exactly a succes, and part of the critique on that editions was 'classes felt to samey' - which I interpret as people wanting different systems. I know I do, and one of my pet peave is that late 3.5 with its wildely different systems which were all balanced was one of the great moments of the game. But I digress. The designers want different systems, 5e has at will / SR / LR. If you want class balance, you can do a few things. You can make the distinction between these very small (have loads of SR and LR resources which are in power hardly stronger than at will). This makes the difference mostly cosmetic, and isn't in line with D&D's history of having casters having a few very powerful spells. So the other thing you can do, is create a bandwidth of number of encounters in which very different systems overlap. Which is what we have. And which is more or less inevitable, if you want the distinction between at will / SR / LR-based to be meaningful.

Again, you can argue about the bandwidth chosen for 5e, if it's not too inflexible. But, and then I get to the second point: the rules already provides options if you do want to have shorter adventuring days. Give the SR/ulimited use classes powerful 1/day items - there are plenty. Use gritty rest rules. Design encounters specifically for balancing against 5 min. adventuring days. And yes, in this case LR-classes (casters) do cost the DM extra work. But that's the price for not following the guidelines in the first place. Deviating from those and then complaining it takes some work to make the game function seems... lazy?

The thing is, running the system as intended and written is not conductive to anything but big dungeon crawls. 5e works perfectly fine for the first 10 or even 12 levels if you're stuck in a huge great honking dungeon that has roaming enemies and consequences for clearing out a room but then leaving for a day off. If you're actually doing a plot-based game that does occasionally involve dungeons, but those dungeons are intended to be cleared in a single day - you will not actually run the game as intended, because there will be days that simply do not involve enough encounters to meaningfully drain casters of magic. Or days that there are no encounters at all and casters can turn their slots towards resolving other problems. And yet, from what I see, it's by far the most common way the game is run, because ever since Baldur's Gate it was the direction D&D was headed, and the adventuring day formula is not complementary to that at all.

But even in the perfect scenario of a megadungeon, you need counters to magic. See Dungeon of the Mad Mage (I think that was the one? there 100% was a 5e published megadungeon like that) where the aforementioned dungeon was warded against most magics that can break the low-level dungeoncrawling routine, like teleportation. It's not warded against people cutting through walls with swords for some reason. Either it's to encourage DMs to let martials shine by bypassing several rooms through incredible skill and strength, or because the game does not expect you to be able to do that.

Yes. Yes! That's where it works best. Cause that's the game: Dungeons and Dragons. You're supposed to go into that dungeon and have a big fat dragon at the end of it, in the simplest form. No, it is not designed for other stuff, but if you want to play something else, you can still make it work. Just put some effort in it! And the game isn't as limited as I'm making it sound here ('only works in dungeons') by the way, 3.5 Heroes of Battle is a wonderful book which describes how a battlefield campaign, with the party as an elite squad, can work perfectly as a dungeon as well.

The teleportation warding is afaics a relic of earlier editions version of the dungeon, when casting was more powerful and teleportation powers were a lot more game breaking. And besides, yes, that's part of simple decent world building - if casters are common, locations will have defenses against the magical just as well as they have against the mundane. Not having those defense is imo caster favoritism and/or DM not doing their job.

ZRN

2022-10-11, 02:55 PM

Sure, that happens. It's perhaps the most common issue, and it needs fixing, too, because the adventuring day is BOGUS. The adventuring day does not function if you're trying to have any situation that doesn't involve active dungeon delving where time is a meaningful constraint. And designing every single plot of the game to be extremely time-sensitive (i.e. taking a week or two more will be a failure) and every day having multiple encounters that somehow do not make martials lose HP at a proportionally faster rate than post-5 casters spend spells - that's pretty hard. Maybe the underlying system is faulty, yes?

If your problem as DM is that your campaign isn't paced to meet the expected long/short rest schedule, it's actually really easy to modify that schedule. Say a "short rest" takes 8 hours and a "long rest" takes a week of recuperation and study. I think that's even in the DMG, isn't it?

Saelethil

2022-10-11, 03:18 PM

If your problem as DM is that your campaign isn't paced to meet the expected long/short rest schedule, it's actually really easy to modify that schedule. Say a "short rest" takes 8 hours and a "long rest" takes a week of recuperation and study. I think that's even in the DMG, isn't it?

It is. Although I put a sliding scale on Long Rest from 48 hours somewhere safe and comfortable (like an inn in a safe settlement) to a full week (roughing it in bad weather). It works really well.

Yakk

2022-10-11, 03:47 PM

Psyren

2022-10-11, 03:54 PM

But the fighter, he's been reduced to "strong person at the gym" -- swing a sword, hard, fast, and is tough. That is it.

Champion is not the only Fighter. And even if it was, Champions can still do things like take on half a dozen opponents blindfolded and stay alive while covered in wounds. And that's before whatever other fantastic things they can pick up via feats.

Dr.Samurai

2022-10-11, 04:00 PM

D&D draws from a really strange mix of tropes.

For Wizards, it draws from "anything anyone with magic has ever done in fiction".

For Fighters, it draws from "anything a strong person at the gym has done".

Heroes of legend regularly do things that Fighters are not allowed to. Pretty much EVERY heroic legendary warrior type can do extraordinary things. But the fighter, he's been reduced to "strong person at the gym" -- swing a sword, hard, fast, and is tough. That is it.

But, any spellcaster type anywhere does a magical effect? It is probably on one of the spell lists in D&D, plus even more, and some spellcaster is able to cast it once per day at some level of experience.
To this point, it's why I'd prefer that half-casters just be straight up magical.

Like the description given earlier of someone throwing some spears then leaping on their spears and impaling their target after they've quartered them. To say that this aesthetic doesn't appeal to me is a major understatement.

Well, we have a hunter class, it happens to be magical... give it super duper leaping spear powers then. Break the mold of "fighter-lite + spells" and give the people that like this type of character what they want. A magical warrior. Not a spell slot warrior. A MAGICAL warrior that can do ridiculous physical stunts.

That then leaves me the fighter and barbarian as the more grounded (literally in this case) classes that speak more to the original games and stories that influenced the game in the first place. Even then, give them all types of magical subclasses if you want, but leave me some mundane ones so I can also have fun. Gygax didn't include archdevils and balrogs in the game assuming that the PC fighter was going to be pulling crazy stunts that would make a bollywood director blush. Fighters were still normal fighters at end game.