Go hard at Martial/Caster Divide: More Attacks and better martial Multiclassing

[Damon_Tor]

I'm suggesting a global boost to the number of attacks made by martial classes in general:

All Warrior Classes (Fighters, Barbarians and Monks) get an extra attack at levels 5, 10, 15, and 20.
"Semi-Martials" (which I will define here as Paladins, Rangers and Rogues) get an extra attack at levels 5 and 15.

Extra attacks stack via multiclassing in a manner similar to casters' spell slots after the first extra attack: thereafter every two levels of a semi-martial class counts as one level of a warrior class in determining when they can get their next extra attack. Subclasses which gain extra attack do not advance this progression, though if you gain an extra attack from such a feature it will stack normally.

[Mastikator]

What would the ripple effects on game balance be? And wouldn't fighters lose their niche thing (having more extra attacks)?

[Just to Browse]

What problem do you solve by giving non-fighter martial classes more damage at levels 10+?

[RSP]

In a recent similar thread, I suggested similar, but without the multi class stacking (to give a reason to stick with a class as opposed to getting all the martial front loaded features and all the EA), and just got rid of the Fighter class as all martials were now getting there “thing”. Other martial classes could still take Fighter subclasses.

I thought it was an interesting idea that avoids a complete Fighter class rebuild to make up for losing their speciality.

[Skrum]

I'm in favor of this idea, but this would be just the beginning.

Other features I think the fighter, barb, monk, ranger, and rogue all need:
- a saving throw defensive ability at level 8ish (additional proficiencies, a legendary resistance-esque ability, maybe an Ironheart Surge type status effect ender, etc)
- an AoE option at level 11ish. Casters will still be king of AoE, but something like whirlwind or similar would at least give martial classes some coverage
- an AC or other base defensive boost at 13ish. Monster attack bonus begins to outscale AC in T3, and plate/shield aren't going to cut it. They need more defense to remain in melee combat
- additional "epic" uses of skills at level 15ish. Swimming up waterfalls. Jumping tall buildings in a single bound. Wrestling a cloud giant. Cowing an army with a glare. *15 levels* of rogue or fighter, and you're basically still the same character you were at level 3. Meanwhile reality has become optional for the wizard and cleric.

Extra attacks at least lets these classes scale their damage in a semi-appropriate way for t3 and 4. But doing single target damage is like the bare minimum of what they are supposed to be competent at. They need more.

[Selion]

I'm suggesting a global boost to the number of attacks made by martial classes in general:

All Warrior Classes (Fighters, Barbarians and Monks) get an extra attack at levels 5, 10, 15, and 20.
"Semi-Martials" (which I will define here as Paladins, Rangers and Rogues) get an extra attack at levels 5 and 15.

Extra attacks stack via multiclassing in a manner similar to casters' spell slots after the first extra attack: thereafter every two levels of a semi-martial class counts as one level of a warrior class in determining when they can get their next extra attack. Subclasses which gain extra attack do not advance this progression, though if you gain an extra attack from such a feature it will stack normally.

Martials are already good in what they do, the problem is that what they do is limited in versatility compared to spellcasters.
Bumping up martials' damage would just make spellcasters feel useless in dmg department, thus invalidating the existence of blasters, which have never been the problem, at the same time utility/control spellcasters won't be affected at all by such a change, it would just rescale the damage of PC and the hp of monsters.
The right way to act, in my opinion, is giving martial classes ways to feel useful outside of combat, or to act strategically during combat. Basically, they just need more options.

[Dork_Forge]

Serious questions:

When was the 'martial caster divide' about non Fighter's not making enough attacks? I thou ght that position rested on martial 'needing' more OOC features?

You don't seem to have explained in the OP what would happen to the Fighter, seeing as your change would eradicate a chunk of its design space, nor how it would handle GWM and SS just spiraling further out into standout options.

[JNAProductions]

Martials would also end with five attacks, rather than the Fighter's four at level 20.

So, a Barbarian at level 20 would be rocking five attacks at +13 for 2d6+11 each.
That's 90 damage, assuming 100% hit rate/0% crit rate. And no magic items.

[Goobahfish]

Alternative suggestion.

Remove Con bonus to HP every level. Reintroduce restrictions about casting spells in armour. Watch the casters squirm before they die :D

[Dork_Forge]

Alternative suggestion.

Remove Con bonus to HP every level. Reintroduce restrictions about casting spells in armour. Watch the casters squirm before they die :D

I like this, but maybe remove Con to HP every level for casters only, widen the gap a bit more.

[JackPhoenix]

Alternative suggestion.

Remove Con bonus to HP every level. Reintroduce restrictions about casting spells in armour. Watch the casters squirm before they die :D

And bring back opportunity attacks against fools who try to cast spells within sword range.

[LudicSavant]

The thing about just giving 'em more attacks is that their single target damage is mostly fine (even if optimized casters can still do more). It's pretty much everything else I'm worried about.

Though I guess in this case it is at least focusing more on the backloaded scaling than the frontloaded scaling (which, if you're gonna boost their damage, is where they'd need it more).

Another thing worth noting is that the more attacks you provide, the more magic weapons and per-attack buffs swing things.

[5eNeedsDarksun]

I think there's broad based agreement that the current system regarding spell slots stacking and the ability to upcast being fairly good, while a character who gets repeated Extra Attack gets... nothing is crap. So martials need something, however some people are going to die on the hill of: The fighter gets a 3rd attack at 11th, so we can't give the multi classer a 3rd sooner.
I like efficient solutions for house rules, which is why I like the idea in the current thread of bumping Rogues SA dice to d8s; it's easy and scales well. As far as stacking extra attack, I'm not sure. I did propose getting a feat at 10th, then trading the next feat gained for a 3rd attack. That would leave the single classed Fighter as the first to get a 3rd attack at 11th.

[Dork_Forge]

I think there's broad based agreement that the current system regarding spell slots stacking and the ability to upcast being fairly good, while a character who gets repeated Extra Attack gets... nothing is crap. So martials need something, however some people are going to die on the hill of: The fighter gets a 3rd attack at 11th, so we can't give the multi classer a 3rd sooner.
I like efficient solutions for house rules, which is why I like the idea in the current thread of bumping Rogues SA dice to d8s; it's easy and scales well. As far as stacking extra attack, I'm not sure. I did propose getting a feat at 10th, then trading the next feat gained for a 3rd attack. That would leave the single classed Fighter as the first to get a 3rd attack at 11th.

The Extra Attack stacking problem is really remedied by classes getting another feature at 5th, currently only the Fighter doesn't do that. If you go 5.5 Monk Ranger you don't get a dead level, you get 2nd level spells and Stunning Strike.

[Goobahfish]

This was something I found very alarming in the shift from 3.5 to 5 (what? there was a 4th?).

Casters, who originally were almost impossible to meaningfully multiclass (every caster had its own spell progression) suddenly became very effective upon multiclassing (except you Warlock). Meanwhile Martials who were originally the better target for multiclassing went backwards.

Why?

Well, the designers decided that 6th level spells were the important epoch in the grand power-balancing scheme... then decided only fighters get 4 attacks.

The big issue is that the extra attack chart would be pretty sparse... especially compared to spells which change every level.

1... 5.... 10.... 15....
Half levels would be 1.... 10 ....

Base-attack was definitely 'more elegant' while simultaneously far 'less elegant'.

Moreover, the 5e issue is that so much is geared around Level 5. Extra attack! Overpowered Level 3 spells! Sucks to be an Artificer (alchemist at least) or a Rogue (Uncanny dodge is ok really)!

[lordshadowisle]

As a few others have said, damage isn't the main complaint with the martial/caster divide. Versatility is, both outside and inside of combat.

[stoutstien]

IMO 5e already toes the line when individual turns take too long to resolve even if the had it planned out beforehand. Adding in more attacks wouldn't actually change much besides this due to the fact HP attrition seems to always self regulate at both the design and table levels. You either rapidly find stronger/bigger threats or the threats themselves become stronger.

Outside of the list of subclasses that are just lacking, damage isn't the issue to begin with. Damage is something everyone can do so it's a matter of them over budgeting it in some cases and not having fleshed out concepts in other ones.

For example the RK fighter isn't anywhere near the highest damage option for fighter but in is arguably the best because of everything else it bring to the table on top of the fighter chassis that already has decent damage.

[Frogreaver]

IMO, without a full system rewrite the martial/caster divide in late tiers cannot be solved.

However, making martials the undisputed champions of single target damage does at least give them a clear niche and that might be balanced enough for most people.

I’m not sure on this exact implementation but the idea behind it seems solid.

[Tanarii]

More attacks and better Multiclassing are exactly the opposite of what is needed.

Remove the ability for arcane casters to dip for armor. Without armored arcane casters, there is no martial / caster divide.

Re-introduce random encounters as core rules. When time is meaningless, you cannot have an effective campaign. Without 5MWDs, there is no martial / caster divide.

(Edit: Alternatively make all resources encounter based and return to full at the start of each encounter. But for this to work you have to strictly lock down that nothing happens outside an encounter, no "free play" that has any kind of in-universe outcome at all. Also no encounters that wrap around other encounters, e.g. an exploration / social 'skill challenge' encounter that surrounds one or more combat encounters.)

However, they absolutely could make some martials more fun to play in combat, so they don't just feel like "I attack" machines. But extra attacks and MOAR DAMAGE doesn't help with that at all. Martials are not lacking in damage. Most of them are fairly lacking in interesting things to do in combat other than attack, and not be squishy like arcane casters are.

[Xervous]

At its core, MvC is about the classes being so different that it’s questionable if they are playing the same game. This isn’t a question of mere numeric differences that will be resolved by making casters extra fragile.

Martials lack options. The universally accessible, unreliable skill system does not lend them aid. They have few or no ways to uniquely Martial through an obstacle or scene. They do not obtain level appropriate features for at least half of their progression.

You can strip the game down to the Numbah go Bigguh progression of 4e wherein you just throw bigger piles of numbers at bigger piles of HP, eradicating most utility functions everywhere. Or you can let Martials get tier 3 and tier 4 abilities.


As an example, how outlandish would a L10 thief rogue be if it had all the features of a L20 thief except for keeping the 5d6 sneak attack and typical ASIs for the level?

[Dr.Samurai]

This doesn't address the martial/caster disparity, but I disagree that martials don't need more attacks.

I don't think D&D martials fulfill tropes very easily. More attacks means you'll take a monster down more quickly, which feels more heroic.

It also allows for more interesting mechanics if you also lean into the "in place of an attack" mechanic. I feel much better knocking an enemy Prone with the Shove action when it takes up one of the three attacks on my Rune Knight, than when it takes half of my Barbarian's attacks.

"Damage is not a problem" in that the game wants CR 2 monsters to still be relevant to level 16 Fighters. But that, to me, is a problem.

So yeah, more attacks, more damage, total system revamp.

[Skrum]

Fun fact, barbarians' expected damage goes *down* from level 8 to 11. The monsters' AC goes up, but the barbarian gets nothing to compensate. Looking at the rest of the barbarian levels, if a barb caps their strength at level 8, they *get no meaningful damage increase at all for the next 12 levels (besides prof bonus going up).* Aside from getting better items, a barbarian will do less and less damage as monster AC (not to mention HP) go up and up and up. Even looking at subclasses, the damage added is sparse and very low (like beast barb's Infectious Fury dealing 2d12 prof/LR)

Rogues have SA, which scales much too slowly. It does less and less percent of a monster's hit points as the levels go up. In terms of the damage it deals as a percent of a monster's hit points, SA never gets better than it was at level 1.

And that's just the raw stats against a target dummy. The amount of saving throws characters face as they go up in level goes up as more and more foes are either spellcasters or have spell-like abilities. DC's go up as well, but saving throws do not change at all aside from the saves a character is proficient in. This means most classes are going to be rolling with the same -1, maybe a +0 that they had at level 1 against DC's that are pushing closer to 20 in T3 and T4. The outcome of this is they will lose more and more rounds to being incapacitated, stunned, slowed, etc. Ergo, especially if they can't "nova" and capitalize on the rounds they do get to attack, their damage drops even further. This problem with saving throws affects all classes of course, but it's *more* of a problem for classes that are supposed to be dealing damage - they aren't using a save or die/suck effect that they only need a single action to get off (and the monster to fail against). To do damage, they need to be able to act effectively round over round.

So, I actually disagree - damage IS a problem for these classes. Fighter has the best scaling since they get 3rd and 4th attacks, paladins get improved divine smite, rangers get volley/multi-attack, but these abilities are...I mean I struggle to call them adequate. A character should not be getting *worse* relative to the foes they face as they go up in level, but that's exactly where martial classes are unless there's a pretty extreme level of optimization/itemization.

[Dr.Samurai]

Fun fact, barbarians' expected damage goes *down* from level 8 to 11. The monsters' AC goes up, but the barbarian gets nothing to compensate. Looking at the rest of the barbarian levels, if a barb caps their strength at level 8, they *get no meaningful damage increase at all for the next 12 levels (besides prof bonus going up).* Aside from getting better items, a barbarian will do less and less damage as monster AC (not to mention HP) go up and up and up. Even looking at subclasses, the damage added is sparse and very low (like beast barb's Infectious Fury dealing 2d12 prof/LR)

Rogues have SA, which scales much too slowly. It does less and less percent of a monster's hit points as the levels go up. In terms of the damage it deals as a percent of a monster's hit points, SA never gets better than it was at level 1.

And that's just the raw stats against a target dummy. The amount of saving throws characters face as they go up in level goes up as more and more foes are either spellcasters or have spell-like abilities. DC's go up as well, but saving throws do not change at all aside from the saves a character is proficient in. This means most classes are going to be rolling with the same -1, maybe a +0 that they had at level 1 against DC's that are pushing closer to 20 in T3 and T4. The outcome of this is they will lose more and more rounds to being incapacitated, stunned, slowed, etc. Ergo, especially if they can't "nova" and capitalize on the rounds they do get to attack, their damage drops even further. This problem with saving throws affects all classes of course, but it's *more* of a problem for classes that are supposed to be dealing damage - they aren't using a save or die/suck effect that they only need a single action to get off (and the monster to fail against). To do damage, they need to be able to act effectively round over round.

So, I actually disagree - damage IS a problem for these classes. Fighter has the best scaling since they get 3rd and 4th attacks, paladins get improved divine smite, rangers get volley/multi-attack, but these abilities are...I mean I struggle to call them adequate. A character should not be getting *worse* relative to the foes they face as they go up in level, but that's exactly where martial classes are unless there's a pretty extreme level of optimization/itemization.
https://media.tenor.com/L5iXX9_u5rcAAAAC/shia-labeouf-clapping.gif

[Just to Browse]

Structurally, "martial damage is too low" isn't really an issue. Barbarians and Rogues specifically need help at T3+, but that doesn't mean that all martial classes need help at T3+. Most importantly -- not all martial classes need help in the same ways. Like you noted, Paladins and Fighters actually do quite a bit of damage at high levels. Rangers can lean on a decent suite of spells and receive significant boosts from recent post-Tasha's subclasses.

Actual problems include saves & non-damage defenses (as you've noted), out-of-combat contributions, and enemy access. But these are mostly unaffected by handing more attacks to monks and paladins. And the proposed systemic fixes also carry problems, like homogeonizing high-level martial classes even more than they currently are.

Isolated problems are best addressed with isolated fixes. If Barbarians and Rogues don't deal enough damage starting in around mid-T2, you can fix these problems by just patching those classes. I'd argue your designs will be better for it, because you will be better-able to tailor your fixes to precise levels and your updated classes will actually feel different from one another, instead of being 5 variants on "Extra Attack + Bonus Damage".

[Amnestic]

Fun fact, barbarians' expected damage goes *down* from level 8 to 11. The monsters' AC goes up, but the barbarian gets nothing to compensate. Looking at the rest of the barbarian levels, if a barb caps their strength at level 8, they *get no meaningful damage increase at all for the next 12 levels (besides prof bonus going up).* Aside from getting better items, a barbarian will do less and less damage as monster AC (not to mention HP) go up and up and up. Even looking at subclasses, the damage added is sparse and very low (like beast barb's Infectious Fury dealing 2d12 prof/LR)


This is predicated on monster AC scaling up outside of a barbarian's to hit ability.

Does it? Perhaps if you fight nothing but CR=Character Level dragons (though even then it scales up generally from 18 at CR7 to 20 at CR20). Their hit points increases drastically, but their armour class does not - it keeps pace (or dips slightly behind) your proficiency bonus growth, compounded if magic item progression is in the mix.

An 8th level barbarian with a capped strength and no magic weapon (+8 total) hits a CR=Level dragon on a 10+ (ignoring reckless here, for simplicity).

A 19th level barbarian (+11 to hit)...doesn't have a dragon equivalent, but it does have a Balor at 19AC. At 20th, they go up to +13, vs. a CR=Level dragon's AC of 20. 7 needed to hit, instead of 10.

Above CR20, dragon AC caps out at 22, which is a 9 required to hit. Better than the 10 that the 8th level barb had, though not by much. Tarrasque stretches it to 25 but...if you're regularly fighting the Tarrasque as a bread-and-butter monster I think it's fair to say your campaign is not normal.

Chances are you're also fighting a fair amount of lower CR creatures whose AC doesn't keep climbing, and likely capped out at ~18, if that.

[Zhorn]

Tanarrii's covered most of the major points I was going to say; so...

just imagine this block is repeating all those points again

As for a follow up on the more attacks stance;

It also allows for more interesting mechanics if you also lean into the "in place of an attack" mechanic. I feel much better knocking an enemy Prone with the Shove action when it takes up one of the three attacks on my Rune Knight, than when it takes half of my Barbarian's attacks.
To that I'd say instead of more attacks, have each of the martials getting enhancements or options for attacks that can tie into, be further enhanced by, or bolster those actions and conditions.
There are existing feats and some class features in these directions along with the upcomming weapon mastery system (which while I think still needs refining) is a positive step.

While I'm not fond of stealing stuff away from the Battle Master, a martial superiority option with maneuvers is more favourable to me than just adding more attacks.

Or like with Unarmed Fighting Style and Tavern brawlers adding into the grappler concept; I could see design space for the muscle bound Barbarian mixing in grabs/chokes/slams into their attack styles, having their class feature enhancing those as outright attacks, or making the conditions they inflict grant additional benefits for follow up weapon attacks. So it's less of a "I give up an attack to grapple/shove" but instead "I'm a more effective attacker by doing this"

The martials with more attacks are encouraged to mix it up with doing different things with each attack; and those with fewer attacks have those attack functions be on par with regular attacks.

Then there's looking at options like the Hunter Ranger has; where getting into a position when if your enemies are arranged in a certain way you can spend a whole action on a special attack like Whirlwind or Volley


"Damage is not a problem" in that the game wants CR 2 monsters to still be relevant to level 16 Fighters. But that, to me, is a problem.
That's a little missing the context of what was meant there. Relevant as in they can still deal damage without being outside of the hit range thanks to bounded accuaracy. On a long adventuring day (none of this 5MWD) those hits are adding up. Similar for the lower level mooks that are being 1-hit; adding a could of goblin minions sniping and taking cover behind trees while the party is facing the 'serious' threat are still relevant in attrition style play.
It's the kind of addition to put in encounters to keep positioning and line of sight relevant even when the Barbarian/Fighter has got the BBEG in some tank'n'spank location.

I thing the DMG really needed a few good example encounter breakdowns, show some turn-by-turn monster plays to show that low CR monsters contributing in high level encounters. Not everything needs to be dealing 25% max hp damage per hit to be relevant.

[Skrum]

Structurally, "martial damage is too low" isn't really an issue. Barbarians and Rogues specifically need help at T3+, but that doesn't mean that all martial classes need help at T3+. Most importantly -- not all martial classes need help in the same ways. Like you noted, Paladins and Fighters actually do quite a bit of damage at high levels. Rangers can lean on a decent suite of spells and receive significant boosts from recent post-Tasha's subclasses.

Actual problems include saves & non-damage defenses (as you've noted), out-of-combat contributions, and enemy access. But these are mostly unaffected by handing more attacks to monks and paladins. And the proposed systemic fixes also carry problems, like homogeonizing high-level martial classes even more than they currently are.

Isolated problems are best addressed with isolated fixes. If Barbarians and Rogues don't deal enough damage starting in around mid-T2, you can fix these problems by just patching those classes. I'd argue your designs will be better for it, because you will be better-able to tailor your fixes to precise levels and your updated classes will actually feel different from one another, instead of being 5 variants on "Extra Attack + Bonus Damage".

See I think the fighter and paladin only look good cause the totally anemic barbarian and monk are making them look good by comparison. The real question though is if a 16th level fighter can fight as well as a 16th level wizard can wizard. And I think the answer is obviously no.

[Skrum]

This is predicated on monster AC scaling up outside of a barbarian's to hit ability.

This is exactly what happens from 8-11. The barb gets no ASI/feat, and the only ability they get is Brutal Critical, the worst ability in the game. If expected AC goes up by 1, which it does for CR 8 to CR 11, the barb just lost damage. It's very very slight, to the point where you wouldn't even notice in play, but I'm making the point for effect - a character is supposed to be getting *better* as they gain levels, not treading water.



Does it? Perhaps if you fight nothing but CR=Character Level dragons (though even then it scales up generally from 18 at CR7 to 20 at CR20). Their hit points increases drastically, but their armour class does not - it keeps pace (or dips slightly behind) your proficiency bonus growth, compounded if magic item progression is in the mix.

An 8th level barbarian with a capped strength and no magic weapon (+8 total) hits a CR=Level dragon on a 10+ (ignoring reckless here, for simplicity).

A 19th level barbarian (+11 to hit)...doesn't have a dragon equivalent, but it does have a Balor at 19AC. At 20th, they go up to +13, vs. a CR=Level dragon's AC of 20. 7 needed to hit, instead of 10.

Above CR20, dragon AC caps out at 22, which is a 9 required to hit. Better than the 10 that the 8th level barb had, though not by much. Tarrasque stretches it to 25 but...if you're regularly fighting the Tarrasque as a bread-and-butter monster I think it's fair to say your campaign is not normal.

Chances are you're also fighting a fair amount of lower CR creatures whose AC doesn't keep climbing, and likely capped out at ~18, if that.

Technically you are correct; the rise in proficiency bonus will out scale monster AC, meaning a barb won't actually lose damage through T3 and 4. But "more damage" via not missing quite as often...that's really weak tea. In play, it certainly won't *feel* like my damage is going up - especially for a barb that is probably using reckless and rarely has problems hitting anyway. And weapon damage is going to remain the same - let's say, 2d6+str+rage bonus+10 for GWM. They'll do that at level 4 when they got GWM, and they'll do that at 18 cause they've gotten basically nothing for the 14 levels they've gained in barbarian. I think my point stands.

[Just to Browse]

See I think the fighter and paladin only look good cause the totally anemic barbarian and monk are making them look good by comparison. The real question though is if a 16th level fighter can fight as well as a 16th level wizard can wizard. And I think the answer is obviously no.

The 16th-level fighter can consistently deal single target damage better than a 16th-level wizard can deal damage. A 16th-level paladin can generally burst a single target better than a 16th-level wizard as well. That's why I'm skeptical of the idea that more Extra Attack is going to solve the problem--it mostly just amplifies the one thing that martial characters are already good at.

If we can identify various places where our 16th-level martials are underperforming, why aren't we targeting out fixes towards those places?

[Dr.Samurai]

As for a follow up on the more attacks stance;

To that I'd say instead of more attacks, have each of the martials getting enhancements or options for attacks that can tie into, be further enhanced by, or bolster those actions and conditions.
There are existing feats and some class features in these directions along with the upcomming weapon mastery system (which while I think still needs refining) is a positive step.

While I'm not fond of stealing stuff away from the Battle Master, a martial superiority option with maneuvers is more favourable to me than just adding more attacks.

Or like with Unarmed Fighting Style and Tavern brawlers adding into the grappler concept; I could see design space for the muscle bound Barbarian mixing in grabs/chokes/slams into their attack styles, having their class feature enhancing those as outright attacks, or making the conditions they inflict grant additional benefits for follow up weapon attacks. So it's less of a "I give up an attack to grapple/shove" but instead "I'm a more effective attacker by doing this"

The martials with more attacks are encouraged to mix it up with doing different things with each attack; and those with fewer attacks have those attack functions be on par with regular attacks.

Then there's looking at options like the Hunter Ranger has; where getting into a position when if your enemies are arranged in a certain way you can spend a whole action on a special attack like Whirlwind or Volley
I'm okay with all this.

I think that because there are other issues with the martial classes, such as out of combat utility and defenses, etc. people reflexively think that more attacks is not warranted. And I don't agree. And I don't agree that their damage is "fine" or "good".

Warriors mow down enemies in stories. Casters can do that in the game. Martials can't unless they're smiting. GWM is seen as a problem and it's being nerfed, so the idea is that a martial should be doing 1d8+4 and should consider that to be perfectly suitable.

I don't agree. Martials attack with weapons, it makes sense those attacks would get stronger and faster and more numerous to some degree.

I've made the point before but it strikes me as odd design that a wizard can cast Haste on a fighter and grant them an additional action, speed boost, and AC boost, but for some reason a barbarian or fighter can't get "Adrenaline Rush" and activate an additional action, speed boost, and AC boost. Why are these abilities solely the purview of spellcasters?

There's a lack of will/imagination with martial design. I don't think they need to be capped at 2 anemic attacks.


That's a little missing the context of what was meant there. Relevant as in they can still deal damage without being outside of the hit range thanks to bounded accuaracy. On a long adventuring day (none of this 5MWD) those hits are adding up. Similar for the lower level mooks that are being 1-hit; adding a could of goblin minions sniping and taking cover behind trees while the party is facing the 'serious' threat are still relevant in attrition style play.
It's the kind of addition to put in encounters to keep positioning and line of sight relevant even when the Barbarian/Fighter has got the BBEG in some tank'n'spank location.

I thing the DMG really needed a few good example encounter breakdowns, show some turn-by-turn monster plays to show that low CR monsters contributing in high level encounters. Not everything needs to be dealing 25% max hp damage per hit to be relevant.
Part of the reason this attrition can happen is because Martials, even at higher levels, are not one-shotting these enemies and wiping them from the map. That bandit captain you fought at level 5... it still takes you 2-3 turns to beat him at level 16.

[titi]

I don't think making multiclassing better is ever a good choice.

What they should rather do is give martials abilities that makes players want to keep leveling in that specific class : the UA fighter's undomitable and unconquerable are good exemples of this : they're fun, powerfull and makes for some very cool moment.

[Amnestic]

Proficiency bonus goes up from +3 to +4 at 9th. If AC increases by one point from 8-11, then Barb maintains their to hit chances simply by virtue of gaining any level.




Technically you are correct; the rise in proficiency bonus will out scale monster AC, meaning a barb won't actually lose damage through T3 and 4. But "more damage" via not missing quite as often...that's really weak tea. In play, it certainly won't *feel* like my damage is going up - especially for a barb that is probably using reckless and rarely has problems hitting anyway. And weapon damage is going to remain the same - let's say, 2d6+str+rage bonus+10 for GWM. They'll do that at level 4 when they got GWM, and they'll do that at 18 cause they've gotten basically nothing for the 14 levels they've gained in barbarian. I think my point stands.

I mean, they do get rage damage scaling. It's not much, but it's something.

I guess in the meantime they can scale horizontally - get more Con perhaps, maybe grab a Res: Wis to slot in that all important "lack of save" gap you mentioned above.

Your point absolutely doesn't stand because you said barbarians get worse at hitting enemies as they level up. They don't. Mathematically, they get better by the most simple of metrics and once you factor in fighting lower CR creatures it goes even higher. Numerically they do improve on both to hit and damage between 8 and 19 (and again at 20) regardless of their ASIs.

That 'dead' with Brutal Critical 9th level does bump their rage damage by +1 per attack, so +2/turn. It's more towards their damage than Fighters get at 9th with Indomitable.

I am not going to say I think Barbarians are perfect as written - I've applied a number of houserules myself* but their damage being debatably lacking vs. other martials doesn't really seem like the crucial problem to solve if your goal is "fixing the martial vs. caster divide".

*

Battlerager is not Dwarf exclusive
Battleragers no longer use spiked armor, instead they may add spikes to any armor they're wearing or to themselves (gaining the effect of spikes while unarmored) over the course of short or long rest. Magical armor makes the spikes magical, magical bonuses to armor work as a bonus to the spikes.
Berserker Barbarian's Frenzy can be used without incurring exhaustion once, refeshing on a short rest.
Barbarian Unarmoured Defense is now calculated as Strength and Constitution modifiers, instead of Dexterity and Constitution.
At level 6, Barbarian rage uses now refresh on a short rest.
Barbarian rage damage now scales as if it were proficiency bonus, however still requiring barbarian levels to scale.
At 9th level they add twice their Brutal Critical dice to their total jump, shove, and throwing distance in feet, and reduce any fall damage taken by the same amount.
At 13th level Barbarians gain the Focused Rage feature. When they fail an intelligence, wisdom, or charisma saving throw they can choose to immediately roll their Brutal Critical dice to the save, potentially turning the failure into a success. If it still fails, their rage immediately ends. This feature can be used once per Rage.
At 17th level, Barbarians gain the Cut Faster feature. If a Barbarian ends a round with their Rage active, they can choose to roll their Brutal Critical dice and add it to their initiative count. This can be done at the end of each round, so long as their Rage is active.

[Trask]

I'll echo the points above that in my experience, martial damage isn't the problem, (at least not in a properly run adventuring day), but the scope of spells eclipsing the capabilities of skills and improvised actions as levels increase.

I don't think there is any way to truly fix this without massive changes (4e-ifying the game) and I'm personally not a fan of givings martials "buttons" that let them sprout superpowers, but I think that one thing, previously mentioned in this thread, is important to note in finding a path forward; how much easier it's become to cast spells in combat.

1. no OA's for casting in melee
2. no interruption of spells
3. no declaring actions
4. the proliferation of bonus action teleports and other "get out of jail free cards"
5. the shedded limitations of Vancian casting
6. the increase in caster survivability through HD and easy multiclassing
7. unlimited damage and utility in the form of cantrips

All of the above contributes to this disparity.

Ever since original D&D casters have had more or less the same capabilities and advantages over martials that they have now, the difference is how vulnerable they were. Wotc has been shoring up those vulnerabilities since 3e, and whatever martials have gotten hasn't made up the difference.

My suggestion, if any, would be to reintroduce some of the drawbacks of spellcasting and the vulnerability of casters

[Skrum]

Proficiency bonus goes up from +3 to +4 at 9th. If AC increases by one point from 8-11, then Barb maintains their to hit chances simply by virtue of gaining any level.



I mean, they do get rage damage scaling. It's not much, but it's something.

I guess in the meantime they can scale horizontally - get more Con perhaps, maybe grab a Res: Wis to slot in that all important "lack of save" gap you mentioned above.

Your point absolutely doesn't stand because you said barbarians get worse at hitting enemies as they level up. They don't. Mathematically, they get better by the most simple of metrics and once you factor in fighting lower CR creatures it goes even higher. Numerically they do improve on both to hit and damage between 8 and 19 (and again at 20) regardless of their ASIs.

That 'dead' with Brutal Critical 9th level does bump their rage damage by +1 per attack, so +2/turn. It's more towards their damage than Fighters get at 9th with Indomitable.

I am not going to say I think Barbarians are perfect as written - I've applied a number of houserules myself* but their damage being debatably lacking vs. other martials doesn't really seem like the crucial problem to solve if your goal is "fixing the martial vs. caster divide".

*

Battlerager is not Dwarf exclusive
Battleragers no longer use spiked armor, instead they may add spikes to any armor they're wearing or to themselves (gaining the effect of spikes while unarmored) over the course of short or long rest. Magical armor makes the spikes magical, magical bonuses to armor work as a bonus to the spikes.
Berserker Barbarian's Frenzy can be used without incurring exhaustion once, refeshing on a short rest.
Barbarian Unarmoured Defense is now calculated as Strength and Constitution modifiers, instead of Dexterity and Constitution.
At level 6, Barbarian rage uses now refresh on a short rest.
Barbarian rage damage now scales as if it were proficiency bonus, however still requiring barbarian levels to scale.
At 9th level they add twice their Brutal Critical dice to their total jump, shove, and throwing distance in feet, and reduce any fall damage taken by the same amount.
At 13th level Barbarians gain the Focused Rage feature. When they fail an intelligence, wisdom, or charisma saving throw they can choose to immediately roll their Brutal Critical dice to the save, potentially turning the failure into a success. If it still fails, their rage immediately ends. This feature can be used once per Rage.
At 17th level, Barbarians gain the Cut Faster feature. If a Barbarian ends a round with their Rage active, they can choose to roll their Brutal Critical dice and add it to their initiative count. This can be done at the end of each round, so long as their Rage is active.




I can't tell if you're "well ackschually"-ing me or think the barb is largely fine, but I think the more salient point is we just disagree. Barbs get extra attack at 5th and get only very marginal damage increases until they get their capstone (so marginal that I barely count them). That's 14 levels with no notable improvements at the thing that is supposed to be a core strength for the barb.

I'm picking on the barb cause I think it's the most obvious case for martials being anemic. For all intents and purposes, everyone knows the barb is weak.

[Pex]

What would the ripple effects on game balance be? And wouldn't fighters lose their niche thing (having more extra attacks)?

I doubt Fighters would be crying over it, but there's no harm to give them something new to be their thing despite already having Action Surge and Second Wind. Whatever it is can be anything you want, but having to give Fighters Something doesn't take away from the idea of giving all martials more attacks if one is inclined to give all martials more attacks.

[Skrum]

Ever since original D&D casters have had more or less the same capabilities and advantages over martials that they have now, the difference is how vulnerable they were. Wotc has been shoring up those vulnerabilities since 3e, and whatever martials have gotten hasn't made up the difference.

My suggestion, if any, would be to reintroduce some of the drawbacks of spellcasting and the vulnerability of casters

...Maybe? I know as soon as I say it there's gonna be 4 people to come out of the woodwork to pound the table over how much they love it when their characters die, but my strong suspicion is that people enjoy the game more when that doesn't happen. Especially when it's sudden and "random." 5e casters are superheroes. I joke about it all the time cause there's a few people at my table that still harbor sentiments of running a dark, gritty game when characters might get killed by an infected wound. But even those players, in practice, enjoy the feel of playing powerful, capable characters.

If casters remain as potent as they are, but the trade off is you might die from an errant arrow, like I don't think that's a recipe for fun. It's rarely fun to lose a long-term character you're invested in cause they fell down some stairs, or got hard countered by a grappling monster that's 6 CR's below them and they just couldn't do anything about.

People like feeling powerful. I'd be much more if favor of martials being similarly competent than trying to counterbalance casters by making them super fragile.

[Trask]

...Maybe? I know as soon as I say it there's gonna be 4 people to come out of the woodwork to pound the table over how much they love it when their characters die, but my strong suspicion is that people enjoy the game more when that doesn't happen. Especially when it's sudden and "random." 5e casters are superheroes. I joke about it all the time cause there's a few people at my table that still harbor sentiments of running a dark, gritty game when characters might get killed by an infected wound. But even those players, in practice, enjoy the feel of playing powerful, capable characters.

If casters remain as potent as they are, but the trade off is you might die from an errant arrow, like I don't think that's a recipe for fun. It's rarely fun to lose a long-term character you're invested in cause they fell down some stairs, or got hard countered by a grappling monster that's 6 CR's below them and they just couldn't do anything about.

People like feeling powerful. I'd be much more if favor of martials being similarly competent than trying to counterbalance casters by making them super fragile.

None of the advantages casters have gained would make them one-shottable if reversed. It would make them more frail and less capable when someone is up in their face, which IS the intended balance, but they would be basically fine, but more dependent on their front liners and good positioning to survive, which all sound like plusses to me. They're still able to take hits, don't die at 0 HP, gain HP with levels; have no fear, stray goblin arrows had little chance of one-shotting a 6th level B/X magic-user either.

Its too often IME that the wizard/cleric "backliner" is basically as tanky as the fighter/barbarian, especially as the latter's AC values fail to outpace monster attack bonuses.

As for the argument that it's not "fun" to play someone who is physically vulnerable (even though you can also warp reality), to which I would say the same thing Wotc has been saying to martials for years; Tough.

But it seems like balancing by creating weaknesses is unpopular in Wotc these days, its all about balancing by strengths. That has its drawbacks, in that everyone just feels overpowered and then the game gets power creep.

[5eNeedsDarksun]

I don't think making multiclassing better is ever a good choice.

What they should rather do is give martials abilities that makes players want to keep leveling in that specific class : the UA fighter's undomitable and unconquerable are good exemples of this : they're fun, powerfull and makes for some very cool moment.

While I don't think (most) multi-class builds should be better than default single classes, there should be interesting options that come close. (When I say most, it'd be difficult to design a game where every single m/c option among 100+ subclasses is worse). When I say interesting options, I'd much prefer a system that rewards going deeper into a class for a multi-class (if desired) than the current one generally does, as opposed to a 1-2 level dip, which lends itself more to power gaming than role playing.

That said, there is a single limiting 'feel bad and is bad' factor that discourages Rangers, Paladins, Fighters, Monks, and Barbarians from actually doing this, and it's the fact you get NO stacking benefit from hitting 5th level in a 2nd class. Meanwhile Rangers, Artificers, and Paladins can m/c with full casters after getting Extra Attack and their spell slots stack in a way that is quite elegant IMO.

I'm not in the camp that says Martials are bad, though outside of Paly they do often start to get outclassed more often in tier 3. They're playable, often will a little help from the DM (usually me) as we get into later levels. My main point is that I'd like (me and my players) to be able to have more martial m/c options without feeling like we're getting screwed right at the point (10th level) where casters are starting to really bring it in lots of combats.

[KorvinStarmast]

I thought that position rested on martial 'needing' more OOC features? IMO, the Fighter's attack progession ought to be 1/2/3/4 at levels 1/5/11/17 which is symmetrical to the cantrip boost ... and then better capstone at level 20.

Remove the ability for arcane casters to dip for armor. Without armored arcane casters, there is no martial / caster divide. Good suggestion. (I admit to an old school bias in this regard).

Re-introduce random encounters as core rules. When time is meaningless, you cannot have an effective campaign. Without 5MWDs, there is no martial / caster divide.
Not a bad suggestion. It also helps new DM's with pacing.

My suggestion to address part of what the OP is asking for:

Barbarians, Fighters, Rangers, Paladins and Monks, each as a class, need to have a built-in Reaction that is similar to an Opportunity Attack but is not an attack: I'll tentatively name it In the Scrum but a better name could be found.

a. If a creature tries to move past the B/F/R/P/M within their reach, they can choose to use a Reaction to make the shove action (which is similar to an OA in that it is a special form of attack) (Yes, this is an opportunity cost as regards reactions).

b. If an ally is about to fall or get shoved/moved, the B/F/R/R/M can use a reaction to counter the shove or stop the fall. {1}

{1} I've a friend who home brewed somehthing like this for cliffside battles, will go and find it and then post the details.

If you want to give it to Rogues that's fine too.

[Skrum]

None of the advantages casters have gained would make them one-shottable if reversed. It would make them more frail and less capable when someone is up in their face, which IS the intended balance, but they would be basically fine, but more dependent on their front liners and good positioning to survive, which all sound like plusses to me. They're still able to take hits, don't die at 0 HP, gain HP with levels; have no fear, stray goblin arrows had little chance of one-shotting a 6th level B/X magic-user either.

Its too often IME that the wizard/cleric "backliner" is basically as tanky as the fighter/barbarian, especially as the latter's AC values fail to outpace monster attack bonuses.

As for the argument that it's not "fun" to play someone who is physically vulnerable (even though you can also warp reality), to which I would say the same thing Wotc has been saying to martials for years; Tough.

But it seems like balancing by creating weaknesses is unpopular in Wotc these days, its all about balancing by strengths. That has its drawbacks, in that everyone just feels overpowered and then the game gets power creep.

Fair enough! FWIW, I was just thinking the other day that casters should feel more threatened when someone gets to melee range with them - specifically, spells should trigger OA's. I would be in favor of at least playtesting that and seeing how it went.

Directionally, I don't disagree with you, but I think I'm just skeptical of risk/reward style balancing. "I can warp reality, but I'm also allergic to air," to give an extreme example, is not a good way to balance. Most of the time, the result is going to be a crippling drawback that makes the character unplayable and/or unfun, or they rather trivially bypass the drawback and are incredibly overpowered.

[stoutstien]

Their damage is mediocre but you could give barbs a feature that deal 1000000 damage and they would still be in the same boat they are in now. Easily avoidable melee combatant with a huge blind spot for mental saves and a lack of tools for challenges that don't involve smacking HP.

[Frogreaver]

Their damage is mediocre but you could give barbs a feature that deal 1000000 damage and they would still be in the same boat they are in now. Easily avoidable melee combatant with a huge blind spot for mental saves and a lack of tools for challenges that don't involve smacking HP.

I’ll gladly play the 1,000,000 damage barb. Thanks!

[stoutstien]

I’ll gladly play the 1,000,000 damage barb. Thanks!

Well they were pretty close to that back in 3.x and still mediocre after a point.

Actually don't think they have ever gotten them to point I'd call satisfactory. Even in 4e when they are arguably the highest damaging class they still feel paper thin.

[titi]

Their damage is mediocre but you could give barbs a feature that deal 1000000 damage and they would still be in the same boat they are in now. Easily avoidable melee combatant with a huge blind spot for mental saves and a lack of tools for challenges that don't involve smacking HP.

Which is exactly why they changed rage to have out-of-combat use. I just whish you had a bit more rages

[Skrum]

feel paper thin.

I didn't even get into this when I was complaining about the barb's faults, but absolutely, they are not as tough as they should be. If their resistance applies, they're great. When it doesn't, they drop very quickly. And the player has absolutely no way to address this.

My inclination would be to make their damage reduction method not as strong as resistance, but have it apply to most/all things. They need some kind of defense they can count on, and not just be randomly screwed over by an encounter.

Logically I know it was, but if I was looking at this class from first principles, I would think it wasn't play tested beyond 5th level. They are the most frontloaded-but-drop-off-quickly class in the game. They simply don't get the tools to remain effective.

[stoutstien]

I didn't even get into this when I was complaining about the barb's faults, but absolutely, they are not as tough as they should be. If their resistance applies, they're great. When it doesn't, they drop very quickly. And the player has absolutely no way to address this.

My inclination would be to make their damage reduction method not as strong as resistance, but have it apply to most/all things. They need some kind of defense they can count on, and not just be randomly screwed over by an encounter.

Logically I know it was, but if I was looking at this class from first principles, I would think it wasn't play tested beyond 5th level. They are the most frontloaded-but-drop-off-quickly class in the game. They simply don't get the tools to remain effective.

My WIP barbarian has been the most challenging class to tackle. It's still in 100 pieces in the workshop.

I know what I want them to be just not sure how.

[Hael]

Fair enough! FWIW, I was just thinking the other day that casters should feel more threatened when someone gets to melee range with them - specifically, spells should trigger OA's. I would be in favor of at least playtesting that and seeing how it went.
.

That was one of the very first homerules we made when we changed from Pathfinder1 to 5e. 5e as a general rule feels horrible for positional play, b/c its so easy to move in this game and it also massively devalues tanks/melee range martials and so forth. Very few things are sticky in 5e, and its just way too easy and common to be able to escape (or ignore) the consequences of melee range enemies.

It is very much one of the more underrated problems in the game design.


I personally think 6e should go back to a multiple OA type of design, or at least something that boosts the damage or accuracy thereof.

[Dork_Forge]

I can't tell if you're "well ackschually"-ing me or think the barb is largely fine, but I think the more salient point is we just disagree. Barbs get extra attack at 5th and get only very marginal damage increases until they get their capstone (so marginal that I barely count them). That's 14 levels with no notable improvements at (1)the thing that is supposed to be a core strength for the barb.

I'm picking on the barb cause I think it's the most obvious case for martials being anemic. (2)For all intents and purposes, everyone knows the barb is weak.

Emphasis mine for ease of reply.

1) I will never understand this. I don't know why anyone would look at the Barbarian core class and go 'these are primarily damage dealers.'

They primarily scale in durability. Their whole schtick is durability. D12 HD compounding, insulation against getting caught out of Rage, protection from dropping to 0, protection from dropping Rage. The Barbarian in 5e has always primarily been about durability and it continues to scale in that regard past 5th level just fine.

People looking at a Barbarians core damage options and then complaining they're weak are complaining that this screwdriver makes a poor hammer.

The same notion applies to the Monk. Martials =/= only damage in 5e and they haven't since the PHB, mismatched expectations are largely the issue.

2) I have never met anyone that holds that position, don't hold it myself and can only see why someone would think that in whiteroom damage calc comparisons. So no, 'everyone knows the barb is weak' is not the case.


IMO, the Fighter's attack progession ought to be 1/2/3/4 at levels 1/5/11/17 which is symmetrical to the cantrip boost ... and then better capstone at level 20.


I like this, I've never really liked that a 4th attack is a capstone, the jump between 3rd and 4th was always too big and out of sync with other classes' power jumps.

[Theodoxus]

I don't think making multiclassing better is ever a good choice.

What they should rather do is give martials abilities that makes players want to keep leveling in that specific class : the UA fighter's undomitable and unconquerable are good exemples of this : they're fun, powerfull and makes for some very cool moment.

1000% this. I'd ban MCing completely and offer magic initiate style feats for common class abilities at most. You really want to rage as a rogue, feat tax, baby!


I didn't even get into this when I was complaining about the barb's faults, but absolutely, they are not as tough as they should be. If their resistance applies, they're great. When it doesn't, they drop very quickly. And the player has absolutely no way to address this.

My inclination would be to make their damage reduction method not as strong as resistance, but have it apply to most/all things. They need some kind of defense they can count on, and not just be randomly screwed over by an encounter.

Logically I know it was, but if I was looking at this class from first principles, I would think it wasn't play tested beyond 5th level. They are the most frontloaded-but-drop-off-quickly class in the game. They simply don't get the tools to remain effective.

I'm of the opposite opinion. I'd go full bore PF2 style. Rage for a full minute, no stopping outside of something like Calm Emotions. Once you're done, need to rest for a minute, but then can hulk out again. All. Day. Long.


As for more attacks, my thought is to tie it to Proficiency Bonus (shock), but with a twist. You can take 1 action per PB, but can perform an attack with only 1/2 of the actions, rounded up, and get a second action for the other half; like shove, off-hand attack, a half-move disengage, or other options. So, tier 1, you can make 1 attack and 1 secondary action. At 5th level, you can make 2 attacks and 1 secondary action. At 9th, 2 and 2, 13th, 3 attacks, 2 secondary, and 17th you get 3 of each. (and since 1 of those secondary can be an off-hand attack, you still get 4 attacks by 17th.)

I like the idea of expanding options, but I think it's pretty funny it ends up feeling very 4th Ed... more options for martials... hmm...

[Trask]

My inclination would be to make their damage reduction method not as strong as resistance, but have it apply to most/all things. They need some kind of defense they can count on, and not just be randomly screwed over by an encounter.

Maybe something like the new heavy armor master, getting damage reduction equal to your proficiency bonus, and it applies to all damage. I've read talk about how the barbarian's rage feature is hugely central to the class as designed, and left a meager power budget to spread around the rest of the features. I don't know yet whether I agree, but I think its a point worthy of consideration whenever toying with the idea of houseruling Rage.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Maybe something like the new heavy armor master, getting damage resistance equal to your proficiency bonus, and it applies to all damage. I've read talk about how the barbarian's rage feature is hugely central to the class as designed, and left a meager power budget to spread around the rest of the features. I don't know yet whether I agree, but I think its a point worthy of consideration whenever toying with the idea of houseruling Rage.

The problem with damage resistance as a flat number is that it's
* completely OP vs low damage amounts. Even DR 2 means that your average skeleton is doing 2.5 DPR instead of 4.5. So things like quicklings (lots and lots of 1d4 + 1 attacks) become useless very quickly.
* basically worthless against high damage rolls. Chopping off 2-6 damage off of a 50 point hit is chump change (relative to current resistance chopping 25 damage off.

That's hard to balance.

And frankly, the whole "things can bypass it" fear is...overrated IMO (at least in 2014 D&D, who knows what they'll do in 2024). The number of monsters whose primary damage output (ie a majority of their DPR) comes from non-BPS damage is...tiny. Like single digits. And being a bear barbarian reduces those to basically nil.

Resistance to BPS basically means you're taking half of all damage unless you're fighting an obligate spell-caster (ie the archmage stat block). And those are rare. Even dragons do most of their damage via physical attacks.

[stoutstien]

The problem with damage resistance as a flat number is that it's
* completely OP vs low damage amounts. Even DR 2 means that your average skeleton is doing 2.5 DPR instead of 4.5. So things like quicklings (lots and lots of 1d4 + 1 attacks) become useless very quickly.
* basically worthless against high damage rolls. Chopping off 2-6 damage off of a 50 point hit is chump change (relative to current resistance chopping 25 damage off.

That's hard to balance.

And frankly, the whole "things can bypass it" fear is...overrated IMO (at least in 2014 D&D, who knows what they'll do in 2024). The number of monsters whose primary damage output (ie a majority of their DPR) comes from non-BPS damage is...tiny. Like single digits. And being a bear barbarian reduces those to basically nil.

Resistance to BPS basically means you're taking half of all damage unless you're fighting an obligate spell-caster (ie the archmage stat block). And those are rare. Even dragons do most of their damage via physical attacks.

Id rather just double their HP and be done with it. Having everything ties to rage is huge mistake.

[Dr.Samurai]

Emphasis mine for ease of reply.

1) I will never understand this. I don't know why anyone would look at the Barbarian core class and go 'these are primarily damage dealers.'

They primarily scale in durability. Their whole schtick is durability. D12 HD compounding, insulation against getting caught out of Rage, protection from dropping to 0, protection from dropping Rage. The Barbarian in 5e has always primarily been about durability and it continues to scale in that regard past 5th level just fine.

People looking at a Barbarians core damage options and then complaining they're weak are complaining that this screwdriver makes a poor hammer.

The same notion applies to the Monk. Martials =/= only damage in 5e and they haven't since the PHB, mismatched expectations are largely the issue.
It's not a mismatch in expectations though if we're going by tropes and fiction. Warriors kill things in stories. D&D has a robust magic system with hundreds of options for spellcasters, and a tiny bare bones weapon combat system where the martial gets to attack attack attack.

D&D does not do justice to how warriors should be. So sure, you can look at the class features and say "your expectations are out of whack if you think they're meant to deal damage primarily", but I'll turn around and say "wotc is out of whack for thinking this is what a warrior is supposed to be like".

I mean... the first to get Frightened by a monster? No ability to parry attacks? Everything split by weapon type, ability score, feats, subclass, etc. so can't be well rounded and have to focus on one thing?

Hi, I'm a medieval knight. I am lethal with a polearm, a sword, a bow and arrows, I can fight on foot or from horseback, I can grapple my opponent and fight unarmed, I fight alongside a war dog.

Hi, I'm a D&D martial. I have to specialize in my weapon types, which costs feats or subclass features. To fight with a bow and polearm, I have split my attributes between two ability scores. If I want a war dog, I have to be a ranger, but if I want a sturdy mount, I have to be a paladin. Unarmed fighting is for monks. For most of the game I have two attacks, so it takes me multiple rounds to kill stuff. Yay...

It's a travesty.

2) I have never met anyone that holds that position, don't hold it myself and can only see why someone would think that in whiteroom damage calc comparisons. So no, 'everyone knows the barb is weak' is not the case.
Yeah, I don't think the barbarian is weak either. It really depends on table styles. I'm guessing my games look different to Skrum's.

[Infernally Clay]

I think a nice, simple baseline improvement for martial classes would be to apply proficiency bonus to both attack and damage rolls to reflect that they aren't just getting better at hitting things but also hitting them where it hurts. I would also suggest changing fighting styles so that all martial classes can innately acquire them and they scale with class levels to promote sticking with one class.

These are, however, only a minor fix.

The major fix should come in the form of, as I called them in another thread, "martial cantrips". Basically take the Battle Master maneuvers, throw away the superiority die, let Fighters pick three at first level and learn three more as they gain Fighter levels and then improve the damage at 5th, 11th and 17th level.

Then allow Fighters to innately replace one weapon attack per turn with a martial cantrip, with subclasses allowing them to replace more weapon attacks per turn with martial cantrips, giving them exclusive martial cantrips or empowering existing ones.

Finally, create a feat or fighting style that will allow Rogues, Paladins, Barbarians, Rangers or Monks to pick a couple martial cantrips and replace one weapon attack per turn with either of them. Everyone gets martial cantrips but only Fighters get the best and only Fighters can use more than one per turn, allowing them to remain the best at their niche.

[JackPhoenix]

Hi, I'm a medieval knight. I am lethal with a polearm, a sword, a bow and arrows, I can fight on foot or from horseback, I can grapple my opponent and fight unarmed, I fight alongside a war dog.

Hi, I'm a D&D martial. I have to specialize in my weapon types, which costs feats or subclass features. To fight with a bow and polearm, I have split my attributes between two ability scores. If I want a war dog, I have to be a ranger, but if I want a sturdy mount, I have to be a paladin. Unarmed fighting is for monks. For most of the game I have two attacks, so it takes me multiple rounds to kill stuff. Yay...

Hi, I'm an actual D&D martial. I don't have to specialize in my weapon types, but I can if I want to. To fight with a bow and a polearm, I simply pick up one. Sure, I probably won't be a master at using both, but I'll be at least competent. Or simply split my attributes between two ability scores, that's why I get ASIs. If I want a war dog, I'll buy one, and ranger is considered a martial anyway. Same with a horse and a paladin. Unarmed fighting isn't something anyone with a lick of sense would pick as a primary option (there's a reason why people carry weapons instead of trying to punch their enemies), but I can knock out an average person with one hit with my starting strength. For most of the game, it takes me multiple rounds to kill stuff (depending on what the vague definition of "stuff" refers to), just like everyone else, as unlike the medieval knight, I don't live where everyone's a 4-hp commoner.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Id rather just double their HP and be done with it. Having everything ties to rage is huge mistake.

I mean...that would work. Give them 2d12 + 2xCON hp/level and no resistance.


My current overhaul splits rage into two pieces:

Rage gives you
* advantage on checks and saves using STR/CON/DEX
* resistance to BPS

and costs a relatively small amount of your short rest resources and lasts basically as long as you're willing to spend a bonus action. And can be activated by taking a reaction as well.

The offensive pieces come from a different feature I call "Furious Blow"--expend your short rest resource to add another damage die. Spend more to add more. When you do this, you gain Focus, which you can expend for other abilities:

- 2+: spend Focus to gain advantage on a WIS save against charm/frighten/incapacitate effects
- 15+: while you have Focus, make saves at advantage against magical effects.
- Juggernaut (subclass) 3+: impose disadvantage on an attack against anyone else or grant other targets advantage on saves if the attacker/caster is in your reach. Normally costs resource, but expend Focus to get it for free.
- Whirlwind (subclass) 10+: expend focus to automatically succeed (if otherwise possible) on an attempt to deceive someone about your intent or deceive them into giving you information.

Most of the other features don't depend on rage at all anymore.


The resource in question is Stamina, and barbarians get level + CON per short rest. Furious blow costs 1 ( and scales at 1 damage die per additional 2 spent), rage costs 2. So you can rage a lot. 2x/short rest at level one, assuming you don't do anything else and have +3 CON.

[Frogreaver]

1. In general martial durability isn't high enough when compared to caster durability. Casters either need alot less durable or martials need alot more durability. Numerous ways this can be achieved. Not sure i've seen my favorite listed yet. Class level should be part of the AC formula and Fighters should get more of this component than Wizards.

2. Appropriate martial shenanigans are never going to fictionally match the kind of magic available to 5e casters. Unpopular option 1 - greatly tone down the magic. Unpopular option 2 - give fighters a tanking and single target damage niche. This means wizards should never approach Fighter single target damage no matter what they do. Or to say it another way the best Wizard should be no more than 1/2 as good at single target damage as the fighter. Better skills couldn't hurt either. I'd say option 2 is much more practical.

3. Martials should naturally get more mobility than casters and this should improve with level! There's no way a level 1 fighter should be moving just as fast as a level 20 fighter.

4. There should be no concentration boosting abilities/feats, as part of martial/caster balance revolves around caster concentration being breakable.

Goal shouldn't be to make fighters perfectly equal to wizards in all respects, it should be to provide them a niche that wizards cannot trivially encroach on and to make wizard abilities less guaranteed.


It's not a mismatch in expectations though if we're going by tropes and fiction. Warriors kill things in stories. D&D has a robust magic system with hundreds of options for spellcasters, and a tiny bare bones weapon combat system where the martial gets to attack attack attack.

D&D does not do justice to how warriors should be. So sure, you can look at the class features and say "your expectations are out of whack if you think they're meant to deal damage primarily", but I'll turn around and say "wotc is out of whack for thinking this is what a warrior is supposed to be like".

I mean... the first to get Frightened by a monster? No ability to parry attacks? Everything split by weapon type, ability score, feats, subclass, etc. so can't be well rounded and have to focus on one thing?

Hi, I'm a medieval knight. I am lethal with a polearm, a sword, a bow and arrows, I can fight on foot or from horseback, I can grapple my opponent and fight unarmed, I fight alongside a war dog.

Hi, I'm a D&D martial. I have to specialize in my weapon types, which costs feats or subclass features. To fight with a bow and polearm, I have split my attributes between two ability scores. If I want a war dog, I have to be a ranger, but if I want a sturdy mount, I have to be a paladin. Unarmed fighting is for monks. For most of the game I have two attacks, so it takes me multiple rounds to kill stuff. Yay...

It's a travesty.

Yeah, I don't think the barbarian is weak either. It really depends on table styles. I'm guessing my games look different to Skrum's.

Or maybe we need to lean into that MAD more. Perhaps certain schools should require different stats as well. Enchantment magic requires Charisma. Necromancy Wisdom. Evocation Int. Etc. Then separate out feats by each school. Suddenly all casters have the same dillema as the Fighters. Make them feel our pain!

[Goobahfish]

There is a lot here...

I think the big design consideration which actually makes this difficult is the survivability of casters and the odd scaling of martials.

The survivability of casters comes down to the fact that +4 Con is equivalent from going from wizard to fighter. With con bonuses being ~ +2 minimum as mandatory, it is really... D10 for wizards, D12 for clerics/druids, D12+1 for fighters, D12+2 for barbs. Wizards and Sorcerers already got an arbitrary die-roll increase. Moreover bound accuracy actually makes HP less valuable.

Also... being prone is effectively meaningless when you stand up for free (3.5 triggered OA). Also, casting spells triggered OA.

Moreover, there is the class design

When casters go up levels, their spells become regularly more powerful. Level 4 Fireball? 9D6. Even when multi-classing their cantrips scale for some inane reason.

Martials are weird.

They receive 90% of their perks at level 1 (Armour and Weapon proficiencies) and then get a bump at level 5 (assuming single class)... then... it becomes very haphazard. There really isn't a lot of 'add damage' abilities and certainly not consistent scaling ones (outside of paladins/rogues). Even those seem pretty trite (barbarian bonus damage goes from +2... to +4). This basically relegates them to dips for casters...

Instead of extra attacks, you could just have them add half their "total levels" to one weapon attack each turn... or something like that. Or permanent bonuses to their attack (i.e., +1/+2 etc). I suppose the idea is that this comes through magic items etc... but wizards get them too.

[tKUUNK]

Seem to see folks comparing a martial's single-target damage to the 28 damage done by say a fireball, and calling it balanced.

Sure. Until there are multiple targets. Now that fireball is dealing 50 to 100+ damage. So it's not a fair comparison.

Now in theory, the caster can throw limited fireballs. This applies only if & when the DM is able to challenge the party's resource management.

There's room to increase the martials' single target damage. You would not be stepping on casters' toes. Or yeah, give martials free shoves. Let them throw enemies 30' through the air, or blind enemies with a fistful of sand. Let them make unlimited opportunity attacks. Make it dangerous to stand anywhere near a martial. Force the enemy to flee from strong melee characters. Make positioning matter. That would be fun.

Also agree that skill use is at times unreliable and weak to the point that a skill which could have been a fun story telling + game mechanic element is often eclipsed by the use of magic. The skill roll was poor, but not to worry, this spell automatically works...no roll needed...you may thank your wizard AGAIN. yawn.

I love playing martials anyway because it allows me to focus on the story and RP rather than worrying about solving the party's next challenge with another spell. I just don't get it when folks are blind to the martial / caster divide. Maybe they've never played past level 5.

[LudicSavant]

I mean... the first to get Frightened by a monster? No ability to parry attacks? Everything split by weapon type, ability score, feats, subclass, etc. so can't be well rounded and have to focus on one thing?

Hi, I'm a medieval knight. I am lethal with a polearm, a sword, a bow and arrows, I can fight on foot or from horseback, I can grapple my opponent and fight unarmed, I fight alongside a war dog.

Hi, I'm a D&D martial. I have to specialize in my weapon types, which costs feats or subclass features. To fight with a bow and polearm, I have split my attributes between two ability scores. If I want a war dog, I have to be a ranger, but if I want a sturdy mount, I have to be a paladin. Unarmed fighting is for monks. For most of the game I have two attacks, so it takes me multiple rounds to kill stuff. Yay...

It's a travesty.

This is a big part of the problem IMHO. Martials are often too conceptually narrow, and often have to keep re-investing in the same ability just to keep it up to speed.

[Tanarii]

Martials damage is plenty compared to an arcane caster unless the DM is allowing a 5MWD. In a typical adventuring site that goes longer than an adventuring day worth of encounters (including random encounters) and has a large number of them combat encounters, it's more than just plenty. Long rest casters struggle to keep up.

On the combat front, arcane casters could stand to be a little more fragile (14 Con +1 hp/level, 18 Con +2 hp/level), and maybe heavy armor martials a little harder to hit (+1 AC for heavy armor). The latter would incidentally also boost HA clerics. They could even balance things so that MA was +1AC and HA +2AC. But it absolutely would need some rebalancing.

We could go back to arcane spells not working in close combat and failing in armor, but if armor isn't easily accessible by a small Multiclassing dip and pumping Con isn't as automatic / beneficial, it'd probably achieve the same results.

Of course, if pure combat martials that tend to not have good skills to back it up (primarily Fighters and Barbarians) aren't going to get something more useful for out of combat encounters, there's a fairly solid argument to be made that they should be significantly better in combat. Of course, that means they'll be more common in a heavy combat campaign. Not sure that'd count as a bad thing though.

[Frogreaver]

This could also help, Fighter level 4 ability. When you gain +str from an asi or feat gain an equal amount of +dex. Or vice versa.

[Dr.Samurai]

Or maybe we need to lean into that MAD more. Perhaps certain schools should require different stats as well. Enchantment magic requires Charisma. Necromancy Wisdom. Evocation Int. Etc. Then separate out feats by each school. Suddenly all casters have the same dillema as the Fighters. Make them feel our pain!
Lol

DM: Nice job everyone, you level up to 5.

Wizard: Sweet, I learn Fireball!!

DM: Nice pick. It deals 1d8 damage to one target!

Wizard: Really, that's it? I thought it'd be stronger. I thought I'd do more with my spells.

DM: Well, you don't have to "specialize" in all your spells. You can just "pick one" if you want, and you'll be "at least competent". If you want to target more enemies and increase the damage, you can take the Great Fireball Master feat. It's totally broken and they're going to nerf it next edition but for now you can take this totally bonkers feat and everyone will call you a power gamer and complain about how good it is.

Wizard: Okay, just seems strange I have to grab a feat for this style to be good.

DM: Baseline is good. 1d8 is amazing. It means you're "competent". Take it and like it you ungrateful cur. Now what other spell are you grabbing?

Wizard: I guess I'll take Enemies Abound.

DM: ... I mean, okay...

Wizard: What is it?

DM: Well, it's an enchantment spell so, you know the DC for enchantment spells is based on Charisma. You dumped yours so the DC for Enemies Abound will be... 10, instead of 14.

Wizard: Well I need a good intelligence for my spells, and dexterity for my AC, and constitution for my Concentration checks, how am I supposed to fit in a bonus to Charisma?

DM: "That's what ASIs are for."

Wizard: But I had to use that to take Great Fireball Master just so my attack can actually do something!

DM: You know... I'm starting to think you're asking for too much. It sounds like... like 1d8 damage to a single target isn't good enough for you or something. Like... you want to be more than "competent" in your spellcasting style. And now you want to cast Evocation AND Enchantment spells equally as well? Maybe we should just throw out the books and let you do WHATEVER YOU WANT, WOULD YOU LIKE THAT YOU PSYCHO?!?!?!?!


Honestly, the divide would really require an entire system rewrite. But nothing about any of this makes me think that WotC actually believes Martials should be more than a walking HP blob that wields a weapon for 1d8+mod damage a couple of times. And so long as they have that attitude, no system rewrite will change anything.

[Frogreaver]

Martials damage is plenty compared to an arcane caster unless the DM is allowing a 5MWD. In a typical adventuring site that goes longer than an adventuring day worth of encounters (including random encounters) and has a large number of them combat encounters, it's more than just plenty. Long rest casters struggle to keep up.

On the combat front, arcane casters could stand to be a little more fragile (14 Con +1 hp/level, 18 Con +2 hp/level), and maybe heavy armor martials a little harder to hit (+1 AC for heavy armor). The latter would incidentally also boost HA clerics. They could even balance things so that MA was +1AC and HA +2AC. But it absolutely would need some rebalancing.

We could go back to arcane spells not working in close combat and failing in armor, but if armor isn't easily accessible by a small Multiclassing dip and pumping Con isn't as automatic / beneficial, it'd probably achieve the same results.

Of course, if pure combat martials that tend to not have good skills to back it up (primarily Fighters and Barbarians) aren't going to get something more useful for out of combat encounters, there's a fairly solid argument to be made that they should be significantly better in combat. Of course, that means they'll be more common in a heavy combat campaign. Not sure that'd count as a bad thing though.

The delta between 5MWD and what you describe as 'longer than an adventuring day worth of encounters' is huge. Even if you are right that in such a day the caster struggles 1) that situation is extremely rare and 2) in adventuring days far longer than 5MWD the fighter greatly struggles to keep up.

[Zhorn]

This could also help, Fighter level 4 ability. When you gain +str from an asi or feat gain an equal amount of +dex. Or vice versa.
That's mostly just more numbers bloat and is the same type of solution as giving more attacks, doing nothing for the skillset divide.

[Dork_Forge]

Id rather just double their HP and be done with it. Having everything ties to rage is huge mistake.

This seems less interesting, getting to a Barbarian with traps or before they get the chance to rage adds something more interesting than just a blob more HP.


It's not a mismatch in expectations though if we're going by tropes and fiction. Warriors kill things in stories. D&D has a robust magic system with hundreds of options for spellcasters, and a tiny bare bones weapon combat system where the martial gets to attack attack attack.

I feel like you pivoted from Barbarian to martial as a whole, whilst the weapon system could be more robust, martial certainly kill stuff in 5e.

What comes to mind for Barbarian to me is durability, honestly a pretty good representation that popped to mind is that buff sailor-looking boi from the Thomas Jane Punisher movie.


D&D does not do justice to how warriors should be. So sure, you can look at the class features and say "your expectations are out of whack if you think they're meant to deal damage primarily", but I'll turn around and say "wotc is out of whack for thinking this is what a warrior is supposed to be like".

I mean, I was talking about the Barbarian specifically, every martial 'warrior' being about damage is going to be really boring with this many classes.


I mean... the first to get Frightened by a monster? No ability to parry attacks? Everything split by weapon type, ability score, feats, subclass, etc. so can't be well rounded and have to focus on one thing?

Hi, I'm a medieval knight. I am lethal with a polearm, a sword, a bow and arrows, I can fight on foot or from horseback, I can grapple my opponent and fight unarmed, I fight alongside a war dog.

Hi, I'm a D&D martial. I have to specialize in my weapon types, which costs feats or subclass features. To fight with a bow and polearm, I have split my attributes between two ability scores. If I want a war dog, I have to be a ranger, but if I want a sturdy mount, I have to be a paladin. Unarmed fighting is for monks. For most of the game I have two attacks, so it takes me multiple rounds to kill stuff. Yay...

It's a travesty.

Jack Phoenix touched on this but you're not describing D&D martial at all, they're incredibly well rounded with little investment required, vastly different to a warrior in actual history or even most stories. After all, when you think bow and arrow you don't think knight in armor, you're more likely to think Robin Hood, a specialist of well known skill. I mean, even what you're saying, and I assume there's some sarcasm or exaggeration, doesn't really hold up.

- Anyone can buy a horse or wardog, we're given prices for them for a reason. You just get to be better at those things if you specialise, the whole point of specialisation.

- Unarmed Fighting had multiple avenues of support from the PHB, nowadays the feat makes it easier than ever, nevermind the abundance of natural weapon races. Everyone is proficient with their unarmed strike, being better than the baseline is, y'know, a specialty.

- It should take multiple rounds to kill something that isn't a minion-level creature, anything else is changing the pace of the game and has nothing to do with martial.

To clarify, I'm not saying martials are perfect, 5e overall certainly isn't, but this post just felt like it really missed the mark.


Yeah, I don't think the barbarian is weak either. It really depends on table styles. I'm guessing my games look different to Skrum's.

I'm shocked that some tables represented on here are so vastly different to form some of these opinions.


1. In general martial durability isn't high enough when compared to caster durability. Casters either need alot less durable or martials need alot more durability. Numerous ways this can be achieved. Not sure i've seen my favorite listed yet. Class level should be part of the AC formula and Fighters should get more of this component than Wizards.

I don't really think this is that far off, besides some maybe problematic spells I think the biggest misstep is the Druid getting medium armor and shields. It doesn't feel good thematically, steps on the Cleric's toes as the armored caster, and makes the class with Wild Shape needlessly tanky.


2. Appropriate martial shenanigans are never going to fictionally match the kind of magic available to 5e casters. Unpopular option 1 - greatly tone down the magic. Unpopular option 2 - give fighters a tanking and single target damage niche. This means wizards should never approach Fighter single target damage no matter what they do. Or to say it another way the best Wizard should be no more than 1/2 as good at single target damage as the fighter. Better skills couldn't hurt either. I'd say option 2 is much more practical.

Option 2 sounds and feels good.


3. Martials should naturally get more mobility than casters and this should improve with level! There's no way a level 1 fighter should be moving just as fast as a level 20 fighter.

A lot of them do though, Monks get scaling throughout, Barbarians get a boost at 5th and with Tasha's get that half Dash on Rage, Rogues get Cunning Action, Paladins get Find steed, Rangers get Longstrider and maybe a mount, Fighters have the easiest time grabbing Mobile if they want. Martials are generally much more mobile than casters, with the exception of costly teleporting they don't all get anyway.

If this was going to be changed then it should just move movement from race to class, set the martial base movement higher than casters then let the boosts for some martials go from there.


4. There should be no concentration boosting abilities/feats, as part of martial/caster balance revolves around caster concentration being breakable.

I agree with this in general, I think being good at maintaining concentration should be limited to the Sorcerer's Con prof. I think this could be resolved with the base Concentration save DC not being just 10, but incorporating prof mod maybe.




Seem to see folks comparing a martial's single-target damage to the 28 damage done by say a fireball, and calling it balanced.

Sure. Until there are multiple targets. Now that fireball is dealing 50 to 100+ damage. So it's not a fair comparison.

Hoo boy flawed comparison is flawed. Yes the leveled spell that the caster can only do a few times a day (and sacrifices doing other things to do) should have a higher ceiling than the at-will damage of a martial.

Though you seem to just handwave things like positioning, monsters saving, and if you do have 4+ targets (which is what you're saying seems to suggest) then there's the problem of overkilling and wasting damage because that number of monsters in 5e is minion territory.


Now in theory, the caster can throw limited fireballs. This applies only if & when the DM is able to challenge the party's resource management.

I don't think the default should be assuming that the DM is failing to do this, especially since the assumptions often fall to casters just being able to do in and out of combat stuff at any time.

And frankly, this 'caster' argument irritates me because this isn't a 'caster' argument. Fireball is on 2 out of 6 fullcaster spell lists and some subclass lists. Like far too often it turns into Wizard vs martials without explicitly saying so.


There's room to increase the martials' single target damage. You would not be stepping on casters' toes. Or yeah, give martials free shoves. Let them throw enemies 30' through the air, or blind enemies with a fistful of sand. Let them make unlimited opportunity attacks. Make it dangerous to stand anywhere near a martial. Force the enemy to flee from strong melee characters. Make positioning matter. That would be fun.

Martial single target damage isn't lacking to begin with, if there is going to be changes to single target damage then just yank scaling from caster's cantrips.


Also agree that skill use is at times unreliable and weak to the point that a skill which could have been a fun story telling + game mechanic element is often eclipsed by the use of magic. The skill roll was poor, but not to worry, this spell automatically works...no roll needed...you may thank your wizard AGAIN. yawn.

Such as....? Genuinely curious of examples of this.


I love playing martials anyway because it allows me to focus on the story and RP rather than worrying about solving the party's next challenge with another spell. I just don't get it when folks are blind to the martial / caster divide. Maybe they've never played past level 5.

I don't get the caster martial divide as it's so often toted on forums, I've played 5e since 2015, played all tiers of the game and DM long-running campaigns in Tier 3 and beyond.

[Frogreaver]

That's mostly just more numbers bloat and is the same type of solution as giving more attacks, doing nothing for the skillset divide.

We can bandaid the skill divide a bit but in the end Martial exploits cannot stay thematically appropriate and also contend with high level spells in power and versatility. It’s impossible. The only solution left is to create a strong combat niche for the fighter that cannot be touched by the wizard.

[Rukelnikov]

Martials doing a lot more damage would actually be detrimental to them by T3 if not before.

Lets say a standardly optimized lvl 11 Martial is dealing 100 DPR, that means creatures HP will go up, because a CR 11 monster will be made challenging for a lvl 11 character*, so maybe the standard for CR 11 monsters will now be floating around 300 HP. For the martials there would be no change whatsoever the average bump to their damage is partially negated by the increase in monster HP. However, the damage of spells and similar abilities stays the same, so now they aren't as useful, what does this mean?

Well, it means caster will double down even more into winning fights without having to deal HP damage, so if the martial spends round 1 and 2 dealing 200 damage to a 300 hp enemy, and then that enemy is suggested out of the fight, then the martial added absolutely nothing offensively to this combat, since the damage dealt was made irrelevant by the non damaging methods of ending fights used by the casters, and now the caster divide is even bigger than before since they are playing different games. Martials are playing a race to 0 HP, while casters are playing save or lose, making any damage dealt to the monsters largely irrelevant. Currently the difference is, many casters can still opt to go for damage options, and that means casters can help martials in their race to 0 hp, if they couldn't then martials would be worse off.

*if the lvl 11 character deals 10000 DPR then the CR 11 monster will have 30000 HP, and so on.

[stoutstien]

I mean...that would work. Give them 2d12 + 2xCON hp/level and no resistance.


My current overhaul splits rage into two pieces:

Rage gives you
* advantage on checks and saves using STR/CON/DEX
* resistance to BPS

and costs a relatively small amount of your short rest resources and lasts basically as long as you're willing to spend a bonus action. And can be activated by taking a reaction as well.

The offensive pieces come from a different feature I call "Furious Blow"--expend your short rest resource to add another damage die. Spend more to add more. When you do this, you gain Focus, which you can expend for other abilities:

- 2+: spend Focus to gain advantage on a WIS save against charm/frighten/incapacitate effects
- 15+: while you have Focus, make saves at advantage against magical effects.
- Juggernaut (subclass) 3+: impose disadvantage on an attack against anyone else or grant other targets advantage on saves if the attacker/caster is in your reach. Normally costs resource, but expend Focus to get it for free.
- Whirlwind (subclass) 10+: expend focus to automatically succeed (if otherwise possible) on an attempt to deceive someone about your intent or deceive them into giving you information.

Most of the other features don't depend on rage at all anymore.


The resource in question is Stamina, and barbarians get level + CON per short rest. Furious blow costs 1 ( and scales at 1 damage die per additional 2 spent), rage costs 2. So you can rage a lot. 2x/short rest at level one, assuming you don't do anything else and have +3 CON.



Close to what I was working on for them.

Only real difference is mine has a building fury mechanic where barbarians get more dangerous the longer a fight drags out with a threshold ( based on their Con) in place of focus. They become increasingly more dangerous as it builds or they can dump it for a massive spike in mitigation/avoidance if needed. An example is they can dump it to pass certain saves or nullify an attack.

I gives them the niche of "Deal with me now or else I'll hit you so hard your ancestors will feel it"


This can used out of combat as well. This allows them to preform the greatest feats of raw power given enough attempts. (Situation permitting). Think Hercules trying to pick something up and he has to build up to it.

[Xervous]

We can bandaid the skill divide a bit but in the end Martial exploits cannot stay thematically appropriate and also contend with high level spells in power and versatility. It’s impossible. The only solution left is to create a strong combat niche for the fighter that cannot be touched by the wizard.

Sounds like it’s a flawed concept if a class isn’t allowed to get a proper progression of unique, level relevant features for more than one pillar of play.

[Rukelnikov]

Sounds like it’s a flawed concept if a class isn’t allowed to get a proper progression of unique, level relevant features for more than one pillar of play.

Why? Does each class need unique level relevant features for every pillar at every level? I sincerely think that would be awful

Classes being better at things than other classes is pretty basic for the idea of classes to work, otherwise fluff is the only difference and then why have classes?

[Dr.Samurai]

I feel like you pivoted from Barbarian to martial as a whole, whilst the weapon system could be more robust, martial certainly kill stuff in 5e.
Didn't mean to, but the point remains for barbarian as well. The barbarian trope isn't just "durable". They should have damage as a primary ability because that's the point of warriors. War is in the name. Enduring attacks is one thing, but making attacks and killing your enemy is the thing you do.

1d8+mod over and over and over again doesn't feel like a lethal combatant.

What comes to mind for Barbarian to me is durability, honestly a pretty good representation that popped to mind is that buff sailor-looking boi from the Thomas Jane Punisher movie.
Great scene!

I mean, I was talking about the Barbarian specifically, every martial 'warrior' being about damage is going to be really boring with this many classes.
Well there's something to be said about consolidating martials into fewer classes so we're not separating all of these concepts and forcing martials to choose one over the other. But no, I think they can all do damage and still be different and interesting.

Jack Phoenix touched on this but you're not describing D&D martial at all, they're incredibly well rounded with little investment required, vastly different to a warrior in actual history or even most stories. After all, when you think bow and arrow you don't think knight in armor, you're more likely to think Robin Hood, a specialist of well known skill. I mean, even what you're saying, and I assume there's some sarcasm or exaggeration, doesn't really hold up.
You're referring to the baseline, which I am saying is anemic. If a knight shoots you with a bow, you're likely very dead or severely wounded. If a D&D fighter shoots you with a bow, you've taken 7 damage and you're still roflstomping around the battlefield doing as you please.

Yes, I am fully aware that any fighter is proficient with all weapons. That goes without saying. There's very little to do with these weapons but attack. Your polearm gives you reach but very little else, unless you "specialize". Your fighting styles are pathetic. Your shield does absolutely nothing but bump our AC up, and for some reason it has to be a strapped on shield that requires an action to don or doff, rather than a handheld shield.

I'm not even touching on the fact that knights were also very skilled, and the D&D martial, apart from rogue and ranger, is, by design, lousy at skills.

- Anyone can buy a horse or wardog, we're given prices for them for a reason. You just get to be better at those things if you specialise, the whole point of specialisation.

Firstly, they die very easily. So you'll be buying new dogs and horses often.

Secondly, the whole point of my comment is that the game forces you to spend too much on "specialization". The baseline is too low and anemic. "What are you complaining about? Your fighter can mount a horse by default. That's just like... baseline rules man. And you don't even take a penalty while fighting from horseback! But if you want more than that, invest a feat (if they're allowed in your game)."

- Unarmed Fighting had multiple avenues of support from the PHB, nowadays the feat makes it easier than ever, nevermind the abundance of natural weapon races. Everyone is proficient with their unarmed strike, being better than the baseline is, y'know, a specialty.
Right, and it seems like the baseline is fine for you and others. I think 1+Str damage, and a very pared down grappling system is not what I'm referring to. I get that you and JackPhoenix see the words "Unarmed Strike" and "Grapple" and think it's all been addressed. I disagree.

- It should take multiple rounds to kill something that isn't a minion-level creature, anything else is changing the pace of the game and has nothing to do with martial.
Funny. I've seen casters at my table wipe out several enemies in one go. I don't know what "minion-level" means in this context, but my barbarian wasn't going to replicate that feat with his spear and shield style.

To clarify, I'm not saying martials are perfect, 5e overall certainly isn't, but this post just felt like it really missed the mark.
I may not have conveyed what I meant clearly, but I don't agree that damage is "okay" for martials. Especially, as others have pointed out, given how vulnerable they are to crowd control and enemy positioning.

And I don't know why weapons/fighting styles can't already have features baked into them without forcing a martial to spend a feat or Fighting Style feature to unlock it. Shields are a notorious example of something that just doesn't speak to the trope at all. If you just look across the aisle at how casters pick and choose their styles and tools, it's night and day.

It's not clear to my why martials can't have resource features that do things like severely damage monsters, save-or-die effects, impose conditions, dramatically improve their speed/AC/attacks/saves/etc for a limited duration.

Martial damage is "fine" for the current system. For me, it's not fine for feeling like an actual heroic fantasy warrior.

[Zhorn]

That's mostly just more numbers bloat and is the same type of solution as giving more attacks, doing nothing for the skillset divide.We can bandaid the skill divide a bit but in the end Martial exploits cannot stay thematically appropriate and also contend with high level spells in power and versatility. ItÂ’s impossible. The only solution left is to create a strong combat niche for the fighter that cannot be touched by the wizard.
Hats off to Rukelnikov for covering this detail before I could

-snipped, but worth reading-
At high level play; casters have much better options to end fights rather than just the raw damage route. Why concern yourself with topping the damage charts when the enemy is just a failed save or two away from ending the encounter?
Sure; caster can pull off some impressive numbers; but outside of the 5MWD that's not going to be sustainable and will drop off fast.
A martial's nova potential is also nothing to sneeze at; but their sustained DPR also holds up pretty well, and for much longer than the casters in attrition style play.
Only looking at encounter balance through the lens of white room with full resources will always yield skewed results. And when you are runnign the game in a way outside of the design intent, it's hard to take complaints about the self inflicted problem seriously.
This is not an insult; just stating a frustration at proposed solution to a problem that doesn't exist in the game's base form.
Proposed solutions that only increase numbers - and especially suggestions that increase them at low levels - are missing the point.
Just play some longer adventuring days. Not white rooms. PLAY. The numbers problem doesn't exist in the way described when attrition play is used.

The utility and variability of play for martials in the higher tiers? Now that's a discussion that can be taken seriously.



Sounds like itÂ’s a flawed concept if a class isnÂ’t allowed to get a proper progression of unique, level relevant features for more than one pillar of play.Why? Does each class need unique level relevant features for every pillar at every level? I sincerely think that would be awful

Classes being better at things than other classes is pretty basic for the idea of classes to work, otherwise fluff is the only difference and then why have classes?
To be fair Rukelnikov; Xervous sounds more on your line of reasoning than given credit for. Perhaps it's just being lost in translation, but it's more just a lamentation of a shoehorned identity only existing in a single facet, not that there's specialization in one area.

I know for my table; outside of combat we are having to leverage the martials background and backstory heavily for them to be useful on a narrative layer.
- The Barbarian is heavily involved in survival, tracking, wilderness knowledge, and beat handling.
- The monk is dealing with a lot of astral elements, lore keeping on legends and matters of higher beings.
- Our previous fighter dealt a lot with statecraft, intrigue of the court, and navigating the politics of nobles.
- Our current paladin deals with research into the occult and arcane.
etc etc etc
In combat, they all do an excellent job of putting up the big numbers over a long day, and are regularly outperforming the casters because encounters are not a one-and-done for the day.
But outside of the battlefield; we're doing a lot of heavy lifting that doesn't come natively from their class progression.
The casters however are getting plenty of raw utility just from the variability of casting with purely by-the-book spell picks.

[Skrum]

Re: barbarians and durability

Ok I want to clarify this and identify exactly what bothers me about a barb's resistance.

Generally speaking, a barb IS tough. Most damage is of the B/P/S variety. And when that's the case, barb plays well. Yes they have much less armor, but they make up for it by having an effective MASSIVE pool of hit points.

But - sometime around level 6, 7ish, other damage types start to appear quite a bit more frequently. Yes, a lot of monsters are still doing part of the damage as B/P/S. But a lot have rider damage: claw damage + 2d6 necrotic. Sting + 4d10 poison. A breath weapon that does 4d8 cold. It's quite common, and if we're thinking about barbs as having "twice the hit points," that means they are weak to ALL of the rider damage. That is really significant, and something the player can do nothing about. The party is fighting vampire spawn and a wraith and the barb is now a 17 AC front liner with absolutely no ability to mitigate a significant damage type of the enemy.

At a design level, barbs have ALL of their eggs in the rage/resistance basket, because somehow, they are less able to wear heavy armor than a wizard is. To me, being usually tough but occasionally hosed is a real let down. Toughness forms a component of character identity, because being able to just shrug off attacks is awesome and iconic. But then the wrong enemy shows up and suddenly my barb is getting crushed and like, how tough is he really.

I mean, imagine if there were random enemies that had like "+6 to hit if the opponent's AC is at least 21." Obviously this makes no sense, but the point is, characters that get very high AC have a far more reliable version of defense than the barb does.

[Frogreaver]

Martials doing a lot more damage would actually be detrimental to them by T3 if not before.

Lets say a standardly optimized lvl 11 Martial is dealing 100 DPR, that means creatures HP will go up, because a CR 11 monster will be made challenging for a lvl 11 character*, so maybe the standard for CR 11 monsters will now be floating around 300 HP. For the martials there would be no change whatsoever the average bump to their damage is partially negated by the increase in monster HP. However, the damage of spells and similar abilities stays the same, so now they aren't as useful, what does this mean?

Well, it means caster will double down even more into winning fights without having to deal HP damage, so if the martial spends round 1 and 2 dealing 200 damage to a 300 hp enemy, and then that enemy is suggested out of the fight, then the martial added absolutely nothing offensively to this combat, since the damage dealt was made irrelevant by the non damaging methods of ending fights used by the casters, and now the caster divide is even bigger than before since they are playing different games. Martials are playing a race to 0 HP, while casters are playing save or lose, making any damage dealt to the monsters largely irrelevant. Currently the difference is, many casters can still opt to go for damage options, and that means casters can help martials in their race to 0 hp, if they couldn't then martials would be worse off.

*if the lvl 11 character deals 10000 DPR then the CR 11 monster will have 30000 HP, and so on.

If I had meant the game needed martials to do more damage and monsters to get more hp I would have said that.

But that’s not actually my proposal. Nor is it something that must happen in order to raise martial damage.

[KorvinStarmast]

The major fix should come in the form of, as I called them in another thread, "martial cantrips". Basically take the Battle Master maneuvers, throw away the superiority die, let Fighters pick three at first level and learn three more as they gain Fighter levels and then improve the damage at 5th, 11th and 17th level.

Then allow Fighters to innately replace one weapon attack per turn with a martial cantrip, with subclasses allowing them to replace more weapon attacks per turn with martial cantrips, giving them exclusive martial cantrips or empowering existing ones.

Finally, create a feat or fighting style that will allow Rogues, Paladins, Barbarians, Rangers or Monks to pick a couple martial cantrips and replace one weapon attack per turn with either of them. Everyone gets martial cantrips but only Fighters get the best and only Fighters can use more than one per turn, allowing them to remain the best at their niche. Have you play tested this? I am intrigued by your approach here.

Sad to see no love for In The Scrum:

Barbarians, Fighters, Rangers, Paladins and Monks (BFMPR) have (gained, starting at level 1, a Reaction that is similar to an Opportunity Attack but is not an attack: I'll tentatively name it In the Scrum but a better name could be found. You add this feature just as you add "spell casting" feature to the class description for a wizard or sorcerer ...

In The Scrum (another name for this is fine, like Melee Adept)


When a creature tries to move past you, and is within your reach, you can use a Reaction to take the Shove action against that creature. (Per Chapter 9) {1}

Also. If an ally within your reach is about to fall, get shoved or be knocked prone, you can as a reaction make an Athletics check in an attempt to stop the fall, shove, or prone condition. {2}

If you want to give it to Rogues that's fine, but I am mostly focusing on the Fighter and Barbarian here.

{1} This is the OA using the special form of attack that is a shove. Yes, this represents an opportunity cost as regards reactions.
{2} I've a friend who home brewed somehthing like this for cliffside battles, will go and find it and then post the details.

I also like the idea of getting additional OAs as a reaction for barbarians, fighters, Monks, Paladins, and Rangers that as proficiency bonus goes up. Or, maybe only ZBarbarians and Fighters ought to get this benefit.

[Frogreaver]

Sounds like it’s a flawed concept if a class isn’t allowed to get a proper progression of unique, level relevant features for more than one pillar of play.

What social and exploration features do you propose to give them to match up to the power and versatility of 6th+ level spells?

[Infernally Clay]

Re: barbarians and durability

Ok I want to clarify this and identify exactly what bothers me about a barb's resistance.

Generally speaking, a barb IS tough. Most damage is of the B/P/S variety. And when that's the case, barb plays well. Yes they have much less armor, but they make up for it by having an effective MASSIVE pool of hit points.

But - sometime around level 6, 7ish, other damage types start to appear quite a bit more frequently. Yes, a lot of monsters are still doing part of the damage as B/P/S. But a lot have rider damage: claw damage + 2d6 necrotic. Sting + 4d10 poison. A breath weapon that does 4d8 cold. It's quite common, and if we're thinking about barbs as having "twice the hit points," that means they are weak to ALL of the rider damage. That is really significant, and something the player can do nothing about. The party is fighting vampire spawn and a wraith and the barb is now a 17 AC front liner with absolutely no ability to mitigate a significant damage type of the enemy.

At a design level, barbs have ALL of their eggs in the rage/resistance basket, because somehow, they are less able to wear heavy armor than a wizard is. To me, being usually tough but occasionally hosed is a real let down. Toughness forms a component of character identity, because being able to just shrug off attacks is awesome and iconic. But then the wrong enemy shows up and suddenly my barb is getting crushed and like, how tough is he really.

I mean, imagine if there were random enemies that had like "+6 to hit if the opponent's AC is at least 21." Obviously this makes no sense, but the point is, characters that get very high AC have a far more reliable version of defense than the barb does.

Kinda makes me miss the damage reduction that Barbarians had back in 3.5e. Perhaps on top of rage providing resistance against certain damage types, Barbarians should just go back to innately ignoring certain amounts of damage from all incoming attacks and each Barbarian subclass can provide resistance against certain damage types while raging.

What if you gave Barbarians damage reduction equal to their class level to encourage them to avoid multiclassing? A 10th level Barbarian knocking off 10 damage from every attack that comes their way would be pretty dang enticing

Even a 5th level Barbarian knocking off five damage from all incoming attacks would be pretty sweet. A CR 5 creature like a werebear does 10~15 damage per hit depending on the type of attack it uses and it makes sense that a Barbarian would be able to shrug off a decent chunk of that.


Have you play tested this? I am intrigued by your approach here.

I might do. I should really write up the design in full and maybe set up a game here to see how it works out.

[titi]

If a knight shoots you with a bow, you're likely very dead or severely wounded. If a D&D fighter shoots you with a bow, you've taken 7 damage and you're still roflstomping around the battlefield doing as you please.

If a knight shoot me with a bow, then I'd probably be dead, but if that knight shoots a soldier in armor with a bow, then that's a lot less likely. And more importantly : if a fantasy knight shoots a fantasy demon with a bow, then that demon isn't going to die in one hit. Martials in DnD deal good damage; they also fight ennemies with a lot of hp.

Also, in real-life, it wasn't uncommon for horses to die in battle at all (we have tales of knights needing several spare horses for just 1 battle).

Lastly : I think it was introduced in 4th edition, but basically : a minion is an ennemy that dies whenever it's hit by an attack or fails a damaging saving throw.

[Dr.Samurai]

If a knight shoot me with a bow, then I'd probably be dead, but if that knight shoots a soldier in armor with a bow, then that's a lot less likely.
The D&D default is that it will never ever happen. Because hit points are what they are, and damage doesn't scale up apart from increasing your mod (max +5). So your D&D knight is never going to get an arrow shot off and kill something. Not until they've already hit it half a dozen times, or someone else has damaged it.

Ancient humans hunted megafauna into extinction with pointy sticks, and in D&D these beasts and monstrosities laugh at the 1d6+3 spear attack.

And more importantly : if a fantasy knight shoots a fantasy demon with a bow, then that demon isn't going to die in one hit. Martials in DnD deal good damage; they also fight ennemies with a lot of hp.
Yes, in your mind you're scaling up "fantasy demon" to be very tough. But you're not scaling up "fantasy knight" to be very lethal. So for you the damage is good.

Also, in real-life, it wasn't uncommon for horses to die in battle at all (we have tales of knights needing several spare horses for just 1 battle).
Sure. But this is a fantasy game. My point about the IRL medieval knight is that the knight's suite of abilities spans all the martial classes and feats. But in the game, it forces you to choose which one of these things you want to do. It's pointing out the treatment of martial specialization.

So it's two things:

1. There should be a benefit to mounted combat above an increase in Speed, and you shouldn't have to take a feat to gain that benefit. This goes back to the idea that fighting/weapon styles should be robust sub systems that martials can engage with without having to select which one they want to do and then need to start investing into it to go above "baseline" which is often "nothing".

2. The mount should be durable enough to survive most encounters. We have stories that include Sleipnir, Shadowfax, Pegasus, Battle-Cat, etc. But the faithful heroic mount trope goes to Paladin. The other martials can just use a normal mount and purchase a new one every time it dies. For all the talks about "D&D is not a simulation", I don't know why we have to settle for "well, in real life Knights would have to have spare warhorses around, so lets go with that instead of cool fantasy mounts".


Lastly : I think it was introduced in 4th edition, but basically : a minion is an ennemy that dies whenever it's hit by an attack or fails a damaging saving throw.
Yes, but there isn't a mechanic like that in 5E, so I'm not sure what was being referred to. The point remains that I have seen casters take down enemies in one turn, and I'm not sure why that should only be something casters can do.

Instead, it's a meme that you can safely and easily ignore a martial and walk right past them because their weapon attacks hit like pillows.

[clash]

Probably I topic for homebrew but I had a thought on this. What if we added a mechanic for telling blows and more tactical combat.

Telling Blow:
Anytime a creature is hit with a weapon attack they must roll a d20 and add their cr to the roll against a DC equal to 8+str or dex+ proficiency. If they succeed the weapon attack was a telling Blow and the creature is instantly reduced to 0 hp. For every condition that would add advantage to the attack increase the DC by 2. A creature that is at less than half their maximum hp only adds half their cr to the roll.

I haven't run any numbers because the idea just came to me but if you could balance it right, sure it makes combat more complicated but it adds real value to decisions like do I show him prone or attack him? It lets martials wipe out low cr creatures easily. Makes combat more cinematic while keeping damage relevant to a degree.

As an addition to telling blows I would also codify additional maneuvers that weapon attacks can be swapped for to temporarily blind, poison, burn or frighten enemies to give them even more decision points and ways to stack advantages.

A fighters third attack becomes invaluable. A monks unarmed strikes start looking better when they could be a telling Blow. A rangers volley or arrows can slay a whole group of weaker enemies instantly. Let barbarians add their rage damage to the DC of the telling blows and maybe swap brutal critical for an ability that increases the DC further. Something like Decapitate

[Xervous]

Why? Does each class need unique level relevant features for every pillar at every level? I sincerely think that would be awful

Classes being better at things than other classes is pretty basic for the idea of classes to work, otherwise fluff is the only difference and then why have classes?

I am not suggesting the No Dead Levels approach. I am looking at fighter and seeing 0 (meaningful) things in the upper half that expand movement options, expand information gathering capabilities, add options for social interactions, or give the player a special license to improvise (like Nolzur’s Marvelous Pigments). Conceptually, the class has not moved up to the current tier, it is still playing the same game as previous tiers, just with bigger numbers. Spider Climb with extra jumping distance isn’t as potent as flight, but the difference is in degrees of usefulness rather than one character having the advanced movement and the other not.

At the core of this, I’m saying that a class concept which rules out getting T3/T4 appropriate abilities at every turn is a flawed concept.


What social and exploration features do you propose to give them to match up to the power and versatility of 6th+ level spells?

Precise short range teleportation, no LoS requirement.

ability to look back in time at a location, or for an item on hand.

A mental chime rings for the character wherever someone knowingly speaks a falsehood.

Each of these is sure to leave their mark on a campaign. None of these examples are a wizard’s grab bag of tricks, but they are impactful abilities a class can leverage for upper tier scenes.

Looking back in time a character could glean the patrol schedule to avoid the storm giants. They might trace a recently slaughtered bandit back through time to his hideout.

The lie detector is not perfect interrogation, but it can still be heavily leveraged for social interactions.

Casually disregarding walls and obstacles doesn’t need much elaboration.

[Frogreaver]

Precise short range teleportation, no LoS requirement.

ability to look back in time at a location, or for an item on hand.

A mental chime rings for the character wherever someone knowingly speaks a falsehood.

Each of these is sure to leave their mark on a campaign. None of these examples are a wizard’s grab bag of tricks, but they are impactful abilities a class can leverage for upper tier scenes.

Looking back in time a character could glean the patrol schedule to avoid the storm giants. They might trace a recently slaughtered bandit back through time to his hideout.

The lie detector is not perfect interrogation, but it can still be heavily leveraged for social interactions.

Casually disregarding walls and obstacles doesn’t need much elaboration.

So spells under a different name…. And worse, level 2 Spells already perform functions very similar to most of these abilities. Misty step, spider climb, zone of truth. The other effects can be achieved via many of the divination spells which cover a variety of levels.

IMO. You aren’t actually solving the problem, you are simply shrinking the gap a bit, but worse you are doing so by overtly magical means, which is acknowledgment that the abilities you want martials to have for other pillars need to be magic to keep up as well. Yet there’s a good bunch of us who want non-magical fighters to be viable. Please don’t take that away!

[PhoenixPhyre]

So spells under a different name…. And worse, level 2 Spells already perform functions very similar to most of these abilities. Misty step, spider climb, zone of truth. The other effects can be achieved via many of the divination spells which cover a variety of levels.

IMO. You aren’t actually solving the problem, you are simply shrinking the gap a bit, but worse you are doing so by overtly magical means, which is acknowledgment that the abilities you want martials to have for other pillars need to be magic to keep up as well. Yet there’s a good bunch of us who want non-magical fighters to be viable. Please don’t take that away!

Ok, I'm curious. What non-magical effects not replicated by spells would you suggest? That's what you're asking, right? Something that isn't magical either explicitly or implicitly and spells can't do it.

This is especially hard because there's a spell for everything. And if there isn't a spell yet, there will be in the next splat. D&D spells are fundamentally unbounded. There is no "spells can't do this" niche available. As such, you can make this argument about everything. There's always a spell that could do that thing. Or one could be trivially written. The reverse is not true, and this whole "I want to be non-magic but do the things magic does" argument runs afoul of it. D&D magic is a proper superset of D&D non-magic, as written. As such, anything non-magic can do (thematically and conceptually, not talking mechanics here)...magic can do as well, and probably better.

If you want "non-magic" to keep up with magic...you have to either limit magic to have niches it can't touch (have fun with the howls of outrage from the wizard players out there) or you have to have magic with the identifying marks filed off. AKA 4e "powers" or 3e ToB "maneuvers".

[Theodoxus]

The question is, why can't the fighter get an attack option similar to fireball? Limit it to a few times a day. Oh wait, then we're in 4th Edition territory, and that's "bad."

Since it'll never pass muster for some people, arguing about it on the interwebs is a losing proposition. You'll never, ever, get WotC to make anything remotely fair for martials, so why bother? Mod your game and chive on.

These discussions are interesting because of the concepts that come out of them, that can be used to mod. Which makes it frustrating when folks come along and poopoo them 'because WotC'.


Ok, I'm curious. What non-magical effects not replicated by spells would you suggest? That's what you're asking, right? Something that isn't magical either explicitly or implicitly and spells can't do it.

This is especially hard because there's a spell for everything. And if there isn't a spell yet, there will be in the next splat. D&D spells are fundamentally unbounded. There is no "spells can't do this" niche available. As such, you can make this argument about everything. There's always a spell that could do that thing. Or one could be trivially written. The reverse is not true, and this whole "I want to be non-magic but do the things magic does" argument runs afoul of it. D&D magic is a proper superset of D&D non-magic, as written. As such, anything non-magic can do (thematically and conceptually, not talking mechanics here)...magic can do as well, and probably better.

If you want "non-magic" to keep up with magic...you have to either limit magic to have niches it can't touch (have fun with the howls of outrage from the wizard players out there) or you have to have magic with the identifying marks filed off. AKA 4e "powers" or 3e ToB "maneuvers".

ETA: this is an excellent question, and I think the problem (especially posed in this thread) is the difference between mundane, and martial. There shouldn't be anything mundane in D&D. It's a fantasy game, chock full of magic, and magical thinking. Healing all wounds by sleeping 8 hours? That's magical. Attacking 4 times in 6 seconds, with telling blows? That's magical. Being able to shrug off (bearbarian) or block (shield mastery) dragon breath? That's magical.

This is exactly the same problem people had with the Book of Nine Swords, they were thinking 'a mundane human can't swing a sword fast enough to create fire'. And that's wrong thinking. Please, stop confusing martial with mundane, and maybe we'll get a better game out of it.

[Dr.Samurai]

Re "Magic with the identifying marks filed off"

I don't think this is a given. As an example, some spells (less so in 5E) are save-or-dies, where the enemy has to make a saving throw or die. Given that weapons are designed to literally kill people, it makes sense to me that a fighter, as an example, can have an ability to use called Decapitate where the target of his attack has to make a saving throw or die. If it saves it takes a bunch of damage instead.

I would not consider this magic. I would consider this a common sense ability that someone with mastery of a sword or axe could potentially do.

I get your point that magic can already do virtually anything, but I wouldn't want to suggest that therefore anything we try to do with martials is going to have to be "magic by another name" if we don't want to limit spellcasters instead.

Going back to an example I gave earlier in the thread about Haste... yeah, it's a spell. But why should it be a spell instead of a martial ability? If we can imagine a super competent martial, why can't they engage something like "Combat Focus" and get more attacks, speed, and AC? Yeah, we can say it's magic by another name but that's simply because they've given everything over to magic already. I don't think that means it's wrong or bad though or that we're making martials magical.

[GeneralVryth]

Where are magic items in this discussion? Because they are usually the great equalizer/answer, both in the lore and mechanically.

If you want a world where martials more or less feel bound by physics and the rules of the real world
and you want casters that feel powerful magically
and you want them to be feel balanced with each other

Then the only real option is martials need magic, and because of there theme it needs to come from outside themselves. Hence magic items.

That's already the case in many 5e, it's also one of the many reasons martials do more damage in actual play than in the white room. Because beyond levels 5 and 6 it's usually not d8+mod damage for an attack that has gotten thrown around a lot in this thread, it's usually d8+mod+weapon bonus + maybe some non B/P/S elemental damage. Not mention the accuracy bonus.

Beyond that, how many items provide some sort of flight or other mobility bonus? What about items that grease the wheels socially either by making deceit easier or easier to spot, or some other bonus?

It seems like the logical thing to me is instead of bifurcating the game by making martials so good at combat that casters want to avoid it while martials want to avoid anything but combat (which means some group is always going to be unhappy in play), it's wiser to bring them closer together in all pillars. And since we are limited by our 3 tenets from earlier the logical solution is making martials better with magic items.

So for an actual proposal, what if the attunement was dropped by 1 or 2 for all characters, and martials got abilities increasing their attunement limit by 1/2/3 (maybe Fighters/Rogue/Barbarians get 2 or 3 more, Monks/Paladins/Rangers 1 or 2 more). Ideally I would combine that with some improved but not clearly magical higher level abilities for the martial classes as a combined solution.

[Xervous]

So spells under a different name…. And worse, level 2 Spells already perform functions very similar to most of these abilities. Misty step, spider climb, zone of truth. The other effects can be achieved via many of the divination spells which cover a variety of levels.

IMO. You aren’t actually solving the problem, you are simply shrinking the gap a bit, but worse you are doing so by overtly magical means, which is acknowledgment that the abilities you want martials to have for other pillars need to be magic to keep up as well. Yet there’s a good bunch of us who want non-magical fighters to be viable. Please don’t take that away!

In the absence of any suggestions of your own, my observation about flawed concepts stands. It’s not that we cannot produce characters with relevant ability sets, it’s that some concepts exclude the possibility of obtaining relevant abilities. If you define a fighter as peak human and write out every bit that smacks of the supernatural or superhuman, you’re never leaving the lower tiers unless you mix in the sort of authorial powers that keep Batman relevant. More than anything, I’d wager D&D consumers are more unified in aversion to narrative powers.

[Theodoxus]

Re "Magic with the identifying marks filed off"

snip


snip

See, this is what I'm talking about. Both of you are conflating martial with mundane, and forcing the linear warrior quadradic caster paradigm onto your perception of the game.

The average D&D fighter is as gifted as the most incredibly honed real world humans. Average. D&D. Fighter. Not the tier 4 demigods the game eventually allows, the 2nd level dudes - match up to the Olympians in our world.

[Trask]

The part where I split from posters like Theodoxus in my opinion is that, as someone who prefers martial characters in RPGs, I don't want magical effects wrapped in martial features. I don't want to swing my sword so fast it bursts into flame, create "echoes of myself", or teleport with sheer force of will. Its not the kind of fiction I like for martial characters. I'm okay with healing fast, because HP is abstract anyways. I'm okay with attacking many times in a round, because attacks are abstract anyways, it all just represents fighting ability and skill. I'm even okay with blocking dragonfire with a shield, because its theoretically possible to shield yourself from an explosion with any shield-like surface.

I kind of dislike to reach for out of D&D sources, but its similar to how many would feel Batman, or Green Arrow, or Iron Man's characters were ruined if they one day sprouted superpowers, that's just not the point of those characters to many, in the same way that a fighter developing magic abilities isn't the point. Yes the "base reality" of D&D is a "heroic reality", but I still like to separate that out from what is explicitly called magic. I want magic to feel like magic, spellcasters are their own thing entirely and treated as such, not just a higher degree of magic-user compared to a fighter and barbarian who also use it somehow. Just my opinion.

As for a 2nd level fighter matching up to an Olympian, I think that's a big overstatement. Even low-level fighters are strong compared to the weakest members of the D&D world, but they are certainly not anything close to gods. Neither are even the highest level D&D characters if the DM doesn't want them to be. There's this fixation with magic and achieving godhood in the D&D community that leaves me scratching my head, what's wrong with being a mortal fantasy hero who slays giants and dragons but doesn't get TOO big a head about it? Does every guild-artisan who sold his shop to buy some magic lessons and start an adventuring career have to become a god now?

I'm OKAY with not having all the capabilities that magic allows when I play a martial, because if I did, or even had capabilities close to it, spells wouldn't be very magical would they? A spell, an attack, whats the difference? Just the way its packaged? That's not fun either, when I do play a magic-user, or have someone in my party who is playing one, I LIKE to marvel at their wondrous abilities, be grateful that they are there to help us. I want to have that moment where I yell at the wizard player "DO SOMETHING" while my fighter holds back the monster over the bridge at Khazad-Dum because I know he always has some spell to save us in his back pocket. It feels archetypal, party driven, it feels like D&D.

Skill proficiencies, improvised actions, magic items, and good roleplaying are enough for me to be happy, AS LONG AS I ALSO FEEL that magic-users have their weaknesses. They need to be protected, their magic can be interrupted, or countered by unholy/low magic zones, magic resistant monsters, silences, the list can go on forever. I want the magic-user to also be grateful that there's a big stupid strong fighter in the front line, keeping the horde of bloodthirsty redcaps at bay. D&D used to have more of these kinds of things, and has shed too many of them, doesn't use them enough, or never had them in the first place (looking longingly at GURPS Magic rules...) Now we need our fighters to become z-fighters to keep up, and that's not what I want either.

EDIT: I didn't mean to sound snarky or grumpy or ranty, I'm just struggling to express how I feel the D&D martial experience has failed me and how misaligned I feel with the current trendy ideas on how to fix it. These threads come up so often, it almost makes me want to throw up my hands and pretend the divide isn't an issue. Kind of like how WotC does.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Re "Magic with the identifying marks filed off"

I don't think this is a given. As an example, some spells (less so in 5E) are save-or-dies, where the enemy has to make a saving throw or die. Given that weapons are designed to literally kill people, it makes sense to me that a fighter, as an example, can have an ability to use called Decapitate where the target of his attack has to make a saving throw or die. If it saves it takes a bunch of damage instead.

I would not consider this magic. I would consider this a common sense ability that someone with mastery of a sword or axe could potentially do.

I get your point that magic can already do virtually anything, but I wouldn't want to suggest that therefore anything we try to do with martials is going to have to be "magic by another name" if we don't want to limit spellcasters instead.

Going back to an example I gave earlier in the thread about Haste... yeah, it's a spell. But why should it be a spell instead of a martial ability? If we can imagine a super competent martial, why can't they engage something like "Combat Focus" and get more attacks, speed, and AC? Yeah, we can say it's magic by another name but that's simply because they've given everything over to magic already. I don't think that means it's wrong or bad though or that we're making martials magical.

Two things. First...again with the "fighter == can only do combat" stuff. Combat is not the weak point of martials. They already do system-expected amounts of damage. I was asking for (as the things I was responding to did) about non-combat stuff. Where the whole "yeah, he's just a normal guy with normal training" stuff breaks down hard.

Here's the thing. The game assumes that instant-killing your opponent is not a normal thing. Not even for the big things like dragons. If you just say "ok, anyone who is good at weapons can do this" (which is what you're saying), then the question is raised "why can't dragons or other NPCs do it?" Heck, why can't the ranger, who is also skilled with weapons, do it as well as his other stuff? Why do you need to be a fighter to do this?

Fundamentally, the idea of a fighter as just "a normal person who is normally good with weapons but nothing really special and does normal person stuff" (aka mundane) conflicts with the idea of locking stuff to classes in the first place. Because there's nothing in the fiction that says that a ranger, wizard, or anyone else can't do that and more.

Now I'm all for giving fighters fun abilities. My WIP overhaul literally gives them an escalating ability called Deathblow. Where they can spend stamina (a SR resource) to instant kill anything with less than X HP--if they have more HP, they can either refund the stamina or save-vs-stun it instead. And at higher levels, the threshold goes up and it becomes free for lower HP things. It gives fighters a "flash step" pseudo-teleportation effect. But I make no bones that these aren't fantastic abilities well beyond what is normal for people. And I call the "fighter" armsman instead and explicitly call it out as a fantastic weapon master class, not some generic, mundane "normal dude" class.

[Dr.Samurai]

The question is, why can't the fighter get an attack option similar to fireball? Limit it to a few times a day. Oh wait, then we're in 4th Edition territory, and that's "bad."
For as much as 4E was maligned, a lot of solutions to gripes with 5E look mysteriously like implementations of 4E mechanics. Which I don't mind at all :smallcool:.

I agree re Fireball. Why should casters be the only ones that can hit multiple enemies regularly? Why should this be a level 11 Ranger subclass feature? Remember the Spring Attack feat chain in 3rd edition? Painful. 4E came along and said here are some encounter powers where you can move around and hit a bunch of enemies. Everyone complained, and now here we are. Move+Attack for the martial...


This is exactly the same problem people had with the Book of Nine Swords, they were thinking 'a mundane human can't swing a sword fast enough to create fire'. And that's wrong thinking. Please, stop confusing martial with mundane, and maybe we'll get a better game out of it.
Well, hang on... not wanting to light my sword on fire has nothing to do with martial vs mundane. It's that... I don't want to light my sword on fire. That's not the theme/trope/aesthetic that I am going for with my warrior characters.

Tome of Battle was fine because it had styles that were largely not overtly supernatural. You didn't have to be a Desert Wind practitioner and light everything on fire to use Tome of Battle.

See, this is what I'm talking about. Both of you are conflating martial with mundane, and forcing the linear warrior quadradic caster paradigm onto your perception of the game.
Huh?

I'm talking about an always on Haste effect for fighters, giving them save-or-dies, and agree with your comment about AoE damage.

I just think that this can all be accomplished without saying "the fighter is magical and fighting with magic". There's area between "guy at the gym" and "magical fighter" that can be explored and hasn't been. The baseline for martials in D&D is currently lower than the Marianas Trench. The point I was making is just because we're suggesting letting the martial move into a crowd of enemies and hit them all with an attack, similar to Fireball, doesn't mean we want to make the fighter "magical" and are granting them "spells". It means we think D&D fighters should be able to move so quickly and strike so accurately that they can have these AoE style attacks and use them as an action.

No need to get caught up on the labeling.

The average D&D fighter is as gifted as the most incredibly honed real world humans. Average. D&D. Fighter. Not the tier 4 demigods the game eventually allows, the 2nd level dudes - match up to the Olympians in our world.
A tier 1 fighter throws a spear at a D&D boar and can't kill it even if he rolls max damage. So godly, much olympian.

The part where I split from posters like Theodoxus in my opinion is that, as someone who prefers martial characters in RPGs, I don't want magical effects wrapped in martial features. I don't want to swing my sword so fast it bursts into flame, create "echoes of myself", or teleport with sheer force of will. Its not the kind of fiction I like for martial characters. I'm okay with healing fast, because HP is abstract anyways. I'm okay with attacking many times in a round, because attacks are abstract anyways, it all just represents fighting ability and skill. I'm even okay with blocking dragonfire with a shield, because its theoretically possible to shield yourself from an explosion with any shield-like surface.

I kind of dislike to reach for out of D&D sources, but its similar to how many would feel Batman, or Green Arrow, or Iron Man's characters were ruined if they one day sprouted superpowers, that's just not the point of those characters to many, in the same way that a fighter developing magic abilities isn't the point. Yes the "base reality" of D&D is a "heroic reality", but I still like to separate that out from what is explicitly called magic. I want magic to feel like magic, spellcasters are their own thing entirely and treated as such, not just a higher degree of magic-user compared to a fighter and barbarian who also use it somehow. Just my opinion.
All agreed. There should be room in the game for this at all levels.

[LudicSavant]

The part where I split from posters like Theodoxus in my opinion is that, as someone who prefers martial characters in RPGs, I don't want magical effects wrapped in martial features. I don't want to swing my sword so fast it bursts into flame, create "echoes of myself", or teleport with sheer force of will. Its not the kind of fiction I like for martial characters. I'm okay with healing fast, because HP is abstract anyways. I'm okay with attacking many times in a round, because attacks are abstract anyways, it all just represents fighting ability and skill. I'm even okay with blocking dragonfire with a shield, because its theoretically possible to shield yourself from an explosion with any shield-like surface.

I kind of dislike to reach for out of D&D sources, but its similar to how many would feel Batman, or Green Arrow, or Iron Man's characters were ruined if they one day sprouted superpowers, that's just not the point of those characters to many, in the same way that a fighter developing magic abilities isn't the point.

I can appreciate this perspective and moreover, I think that it's unnecessary to compromise it. The power ceiling for the fluff concept of the Fighter is way higher than what's been explored in 5e. With a bit of creativity they could have far more utility, no sword beams required (in fact sword beams wouldn't even help; it's just "a ranged attack")

[PhoenixPhyre]

I can appreciate this perspective and moreover, I think that it's unnecessary to compromise it. The power ceiling for the fluff concept of the Fighter is way higher than what's been explored in 5e. With a bit of creativity they could have far more utility, no sword beams required (in fact sword beams wouldn't even help; it's just "a ranged attack")

Ok, As I asked @Frogreaver. Lay it out. What non-combat, non-magical, ordinary-guy abilities should they have that would be relevant?

[GeneralVryth]

See, this is what I'm talking about. Both of you are conflating martial with mundane, and forcing the linear warrior quadradic caster paradigm onto your perception of the game.

The average D&D fighter is as gifted as the most incredibly honed real world humans. Average. D&D. Fighter. Not the tier 4 demigods the game eventually allows, the 2nd level dudes - match up to the Olympians in our world.

Conflating implies a misunderstanding. I axiomatically stated at the beginning of my post what the tenets I was trying to achieve were:



If you want a world where martials more or less feel bound by physics and the rules of the real world
and you want casters that feel powerful magically
and you want them to be feel balanced with each other


Just because you disagree with those tenets does not make them wrong. It just means you probably shouldn't be trying to play a game trying to achieve them. I don't even necessarily always agree with them because it's a question of theme. But some people (myself included at times) like the theme of the worlds those tenets create.

It's like you are arguing in a Star Wars game that non-Force using humans should be able to be able to levitate things by waving their arms really fast. That's not the theme that world is trying to achieve.

[stoutstien]

Ok, As I asked @Frogreaver. Lay it out. What non-combat, non-magical, ordinary-guy abilities should they have that would be relevant?

Moral checks/ alternative social interactions- scrawny wizards might kill you, big guy with a axe will kill you. Mundane guy with a sword hanging out with clerics and druids should command a lot of respect from the commons.

Not radiating magic- setting thing but in my world magic has a frequency that some creatures are sensitive to. Could expand on this idea with other things that trigger when magic is used it even exist near by. * I have a few NPCs that are effectively blind to nonmagical creatures.*

[PhoenixPhyre]

Just because you disagree with those tenets does not make them wrong. It just means you probably shouldn't be trying to play a game trying to achieve them. I don't even necessarily always agree with them because it's a question of theme. But some people (myself included at times) like the theme of the worlds those tenets create.

It's like you are arguing in a Star Wars game that non-Force using humans should be able to be able to levitate things by waving their arms really fast. That's not the theme that world is trying to achieve.

Personally, I disagree that martials (ie "non-magic") should be or are (from a worldbuilding/thematic point of view, including published settings) limited to the laws of physics of our universe. But if you accept that (even for the sake of argument), I think the latter paragraph and the rest of things holds.

I see martials as having a Charles Atlas superpower--one gained by training themselves hard enough. Sure, they may (or may not) have flashy, overtly, obviously "magical" powers. But that doesn't mean they're bound by the RL laws of physics in any meaningful way. They're bound by their own thematic rules, but not the laws of physics.


Moral checks/ alternative social interactions- scrawny wizards might kill you, big guy with a axe will kill you. Mundane guy with a sword hanging out with clerics and druids should command a lot of respect from the commons.

Not radiating magic- setting thing but in my world magic has a frequency that some creatures are sensitive to. Could expand on this idea with other things that trigger when magic is used it even exist near by. * I have a few NPCs that are effectively blind to nonmagical creatures.*

Ok, so why can't a ranger be a big guy with an axe? What thematically stops that from happening? And how do you know he's mundane? Narratively, that's just the Batman problem (aka Authorial Fiat/ipse dixit). There's no reason that being mundane should do any of that, and especially not why being one (and only one!) flavor of mundane should (aka class features). And the scrawny wizard can, both narratively and mechanically, kill you just as fast or faster. And where does that leave all the ones who shouldn't thematically be "big guys with axes"?

And the worldbuilding is that everything is part of the background magic, but only some people can manipulate that magic actively. The whole "magic is just tacked on and external" thing fails as a matter of coherent worldbuilding.

[KorvinStarmast]

Probably I topic for homebrew but I had a thought on this. What if we added a mechanic for telling blows and more tactical combat.


Anytime a creature is hit with a weapon attack they must roll a d20 and add their cr to the roll against a DC equal to 8+str or dex+ proficiency. If they succeed the weapon attack was a telling Blow and the creature is instantly reduced to 0 hp. For every condition that would add advantage to the attack increase the DC by 2. A creature that is at less than half their maximum hp only adds half their cr to the roll.

I haven't run any numbers because the idea just came to me but if you could balance it right, sure it makes combat more complicated but it adds real value to decisions like do I show him prone or attack him? It lets martials wipe out low cr creatures easily. Makes combat more cinematic while keeping damage relevant to a degree.

As an addition to telling blows I would also codify additional maneuvers that weapon attacks can be swapped for to temporarily blind, poison, burn or frighten enemies to give them even more decision points and ways to stack advantages.
Too fiddly. Not saying it's a bad idea, but it is too fiddly for the basic attempt at simplifying that 5e was going after.

Where are magic items in this discussion? Because they are usually the great equalizer/answer, both in the lore and mechanically.
They figured this out in OD&D in 1974, in Monsters and Treasure. :smallbiggrin: (That's where the magic items are).

As Tanarii had pointed out in either this thread or another one, the other QWLF problem that WotC and only WotC created was that as you level up your saves don't get better as a function of your level.
That mechanic there (from the saving throw tables in Original D&D, AD&D 1 and 2e, BECMI, etc) was reflected in the saving throw tables by class, and that meant that any spell you cast as a magic user / wizard was less likely to succeed as the level of your oponents went up, whether or not your were a PC spell caster or NPC spell caster.

I am sure that Cooke and friends explained somewhere 'why they did that' for the spell save DC and the saving throw bit.

In 5e, if you are proficient in a save your spell saving throw will succeed more often, but as you go up in level the enemy spall save DCs tend to go up so you are net negative. Your chance to save in proficient saves stays roughtly the same, or is slightly better, and your saves on non proficient saves get dramatically worse.

That approach is a contributor to the imbalance between martial and magical power as levels increase.

[Xervous]

I don’t really see Batman as an ideal to be held up for martials in D&D. Batman is a character in single author fiction, he enjoys whatever foresight and contrivances are necessary to produce an interesting story. On one hand, he could be an Old Man Henderson who is outmaneuvering the GM rather than leveraging the mechanics of the character. On the other hand he could be a character in a narrative storytelling game where the player can revise reality as part of normal play. Blades in the Dark with its flashbacks is precisely how the Caped Crusader delivers a lot of his winning twists, manufacturing a convenient solution to the current problem by revising or otherwise writing in the past.

As a mechanic, I strongly believe most people would find “you can always find a new drinking buddy to give you the lowdown” to be misplaced in D&D. No mind control, no assumed membership in some band of brothers, you are just narratively assured of it. D&D isn’t that sort of game, characters can’t be designed to be carried by narrative favor. Any character can get carried by narrative favor, but when it happens it doesn’t say much about the fitness of the class for the task being waved aside.

Batman does whatever the author wants him to. Batemann the fighter does what his character sheet says and what the GM allows. With the current structuring and presentation of D&D, the only thing that’s reliable is what a player gets to put on their sheet. Either you change what the fighter puts on his sheet, or you change the system to move some of that Allow power out of the GM’s hands. I believe doing the latter is a faster path to “it’s not D&D”.

[Trask]

Batman does whatever the author wants him to. Batemann the fighter does what his character sheet says and what the GM allows.

Very quotable. It reminds me of another quotable post I saw that went something like, "In a fantasy novel where the hero doesn't use it, magic is less effective than a sword to the neck. In a fantasy novel where the hero does, its stronger than everything else."

[Frogreaver]

Re "Magic with the identifying marks filed off"

I don't think this is a given. As an example, some spells (less so in 5E) are save-or-dies, where the enemy has to make a saving throw or die. Given that weapons are designed to literally kill people, it makes sense to me that a fighter, as an example, can have an ability to use called Decapitate where the target of his attack has to make a saving throw or die. If it saves it takes a bunch of damage instead.

I would not consider this magic. I would consider this a common sense ability that someone with mastery of a sword or axe could potentially do.

I get your point that magic can already do virtually anything, but I wouldn't want to suggest that therefore anything we try to do with martials is going to have to be "magic by another name" if we don't want to limit spellcasters instead.

Going back to an example I gave earlier in the thread about Haste... yeah, it's a spell. But why should it be a spell instead of a martial ability? If we can imagine a super competent martial, why can't they engage something like "Combat Focus" and get more attacks, speed, and AC? Yeah, we can say it's magic by another name but that's simply because they've given everything over to magic already. I don't think that means it's wrong or bad though or that we're making martials magical.

Neither of those abilities as you described feel magical to me. I’m fine with them. Yet they don’t really help much outside the combat pillar. They aren’t like magical teleportation, mind reading, divination, etc. like the other specifically mentioned abilities.

They primarily help with combat and do next to nothing to close any gaps elsewhere.

[stoutstien]

Personally, I disagree that martials (ie "non-magic") should be or are (from a worldbuilding/thematic point of view, including published settings) limited to the laws of physics of our universe. But if you accept that (even for the sake of argument), I think the latter paragraph and the rest of things holds.

I see martials as having a Charles Atlas superpower--one gained by training themselves hard enough. Sure, they may (or may not) have flashy, overtly, obviously "magical" powers. But that doesn't mean they're bound by the RL laws of physics in any meaningful way. They're bound by their own thematic rules, but not the laws of physics.



Ok, so why can't a ranger be a big guy with an axe? What thematically stops that from happening? And how do you know he's mundane? Narratively, that's just the Batman problem (aka Authorial Fiat/ipse dixit). There's no reason that being mundane should do any of that, and especially not why being one (and only one!) flavor of mundane should (aka class features). And the scrawny wizard can, both narratively and mechanically, kill you just as fast or faster. And where does that leave all the ones who shouldn't thematically be "big guys with axes"?

And the worldbuilding is that everything is part of the background magic, but only some people can manipulate that magic actively. The whole "magic is just tacked on and external" thing fails as a matter of coherent worldbuilding.

Eh. I'm all for world logic but magic in and of itself isn't logical if anything it's whimsy and should be paradoxical. Trying to make it logical is exactly the cause of them running into the lack of setting any parameters for it because logically magic is the absence of limits. It's integral thematically but tacked on mechanically

[Trask]

D&D is a poor canvas on which to apply consistent and logical worldbuilding anyways. Its the definition of a high-fantasy kitchen sink, down its bones, from the very first day it was published. Not to disparage attempts at serious worldbuilding, but I definitely do not think that is it's strength as a game.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Eh. I'm all for world logic but magic in and of itself isn't logical if anything it's whimsy and should be paradoxical. Trying to make it logical is exactly the cause of them running into the lack of setting any parameters for it because logically magic is the absence of limits. It's integral thematically but tacked on mechanically

Ok, so mark you down for the "coherent worldbuilding isn't important." I'm very much the opposite. And that "lack of setting any parameters for it because logically magic is the absence of limits" means you can never even hope to balance magic with non-magic. Magic is literally unbounded, non-magic is bounded. The two cannot every hope to even slightly coexist in a game without pure authorial fiat. Count me out of that.

It also makes for uninteresting worlds and narratives--magic as deus ex machina means the answer to every question is "do magic". Magic solves everything without any problems, because any "no, you can't" means you're putting limits on the absence of limits.

I'd much rather recompile the laws of nature in the fantasy world to incorporate what we (in RL) call magic. And then build ideas around that. Much more likely to produce something useful both at the game and at the narrative level.

@Trask those are not contradictions. You can do a lot of improvement, and you can simply not put constraints on it that it doesn't demand and get a lot closer. The game itself does not say that there is a hard magic/non-magic divide. In fact, it says the opposite, that background magic is in and through everything. And that spells are just one of many ways of "doing magic". It's just that some people insist that unless you're casting spells you have to be limited by a cramped view of what the guy at the gym can possibly do. Reject that unforced axiom and everything else works fine. You can get consistent worldbuilding fairly easily, actually.

[stoutstien]

Ok, so mark you down for the "coherent worldbuilding isn't important." I'm very much the opposite. And that "lack of setting any parameters for it because logically magic is the absence of limits" means you can never even hope to balance magic with non-magic. Magic is literally unbounded, non-magic is bounded. The two cannot every hope to even slightly coexist in a game without pure authorial fiat. Count me out of that.

It also makes for uninteresting worlds and narratives--magic as deus ex machina means the answer to every question is "do magic". Magic solves everything without any problems, because any "no, you can't" means you're putting limits on the absence of limits.

I'd much rather recompile the laws of nature in the fantasy world to incorporate what we (in RL) call magic. And then build ideas around that. Much more likely to produce something useful both at the game and at the narrative level.

No I'm very much a fan of coherent world building. I just don't think magic should be the least common denominator.

I want magic to be bound but DnD doesn't so that the part I'm at odd with as far as 5e is concerned. The only thing that limits magic in the system is the fact it hasn't been printed yet. You want to talk about batman logic spell in DnD have been that for a long time.

I just think logic makes a poor parameter for magic. The reason there isn't a spell that does X or a magical ability that does Y doesn't exist is because it can't by virtue of magics inherently paradoxical nature. It does work of scale, math, or any fathomable conception of measurement.

Why isn't there a bigger fire ball? Attempts to do so backfire horribly.

[Frogreaver]

Ok, I'm curious. What non-magical effects not replicated by spells would you suggest? That's what you're asking, right? Something that isn't magical either explicitly or implicitly and spells can't do it.

This is especially hard because there's a spell for everything. And if there isn't a spell yet, there will be in the next splat. D&D spells are fundamentally unbounded. There is no "spells can't do this" niche available. As such, you can make this argument about everything. There's always a spell that could do that thing. Or one could be trivially written. The reverse is not true, and this whole "I want to be non-magic but do the things magic does" argument runs afoul of it. D&D magic is a proper superset of D&D non-magic, as written. As such, anything non-magic can do (thematically and conceptually, not talking mechanics here)...magic can do as well, and probably better.

If you want "non-magic" to keep up with magic...you have to either limit magic to have niches it can't touch (have fun with the howls of outrage from the wizard players out there) or you have to have magic with the identifying marks filed off. AKA 4e "powers" or 3e ToB "maneuvers".

I don’t think any abilities short of spell casting or what amounts to spell casting under a different name will solve the exploration and social pillar problems. There are things we can do to shrink those gaps a little, but they are going to fundamentally remain. Don’t get me wrong, I’m for shrinking the gaps! But I’m not for pretending that’s an actual solution to the problem being described.

My issue isn’t with whether a spell could do it, it’s with whether a spell or some kind of obviously supernatural ability is fictionally is the way to do it. Teleportation falls into that category. A save or die attack does not. Being able to without fail spot lies is clearly magical/supernatural. Being able to enter a state for a short time where you move faster, attack faster and dodge better (aka haste like) seems as easily described as rage or extreme exertion and concentration as it is by magic. It’s not about whether there’s a spell, it’s about the thematics of the ability in question.

Your last paragraph nearly sums up my position. But you left off the third option. Establish a combat niche for the fighter. Damage and tanking seem ideal, though I’m not against other effects either. If the fighter is good enough at fighting his lack in the other pillars is far less concerning.

[Dr.Samurai]

Neither of those abilities as you described feel magical to me. I’m fine with them. Yet they don’t really help much outside the combat pillar. They aren’t like magical teleportation, mind reading, divination, etc. like the other specifically mentioned abilities.

They primarily help with combat and do next to nothing to close any gaps elsewhere.
Yeah I was commenting on the "it's magic or nothing" part of the conversation, as opposed to seeking out-of-combat abilities.

Honestly, the travel/exploration stuff is of little significance to me, because it's not that important most of the time. It's not important to me that, if I have to explore underwater, my character is able to breathe water with some sort of innate talent. If I get a magical item, or a blessing from a fey quest giver, or the caster casts a spell, it makes no difference to me. I don't bean count to check how many things I can do on my own, which is how I feel these conversations go sometimes (not accusing you of that).

Like... I'm not moved by an argument like "oh, you can't push this button to breathe underwater, but I can" or "oh, you can't push this button to teleport, but I can". It's like yeah, you're the caster lol. You have spells. But casting a spell (read: marking off its use on your character sheet) to breathe underwater or teleport is not super interesting. I don't feel like I'm missing out on some insanely fascinating part of the game. It's a non-thought. Oh you have Water Breathing? Great, we use that. Ok, now we're underwater, what's next?

I think more skill proficiencies will be helpful in general. I like the rules in TCE on skill proficiencies interacting with tool proficiencies for Advantage. Fighters, barbarians, paladins, and monks(?) shouldn't get bare bones skills just because they are warriors. Animal Handling should allow you to develop a loyal mount and/or faithful companion that can withstand combat (something like a sidekick maybe but not as powerful). Any of Persuasion, Intimidation, or Deception(?) should be able to get you something like retainers from the Knight background, servants of one form or another that can expand your influence in the world while you're out adventuring. Expand on hunches with Insight, bring back something like Skill Tricks maybe?

I don't think you're ever going to "bridge the gap" so to speak. And my aim is not to do that. I just want more interesting ways to engage with the game world as a martial. I don't need to "keep up" with the caster. Haven't had that issue at my table yet *knock on wood*.

[Theodoxus]

First, I want to say, by Olympian, I meant our real life Olympic athletes, not the gods of Olympus. I thought that was obvious in context, apparently I was wrong.

Second:


Yeah I was commenting on the "it's magic or nothing" part of the conversation, as opposed to seeking out-of-combat abilities.

Honestly, the travel/exploration stuff is of little significance to me, because it's not that important most of the time. It's not important to me that, if I have to explore underwater, my character is able to breathe water with some sort of innate talent. If I get a magical item, or a blessing from a fey quest giver, or the caster casts a spell, it makes no difference to me. I don't bean count to check how many things I can do on my own, which is how I feel these conversations go sometimes (not accusing you of that).

Like... I'm not moved by an argument like "oh, you can't push this button to breathe underwater, but I can" or "oh, you can't push this button to teleport, but I can". It's like yeah, you're the caster lol. You have spells. But casting a spell (read: marking off its use on your character sheet) to breathe underwater or teleport is not super interesting. I don't feel like I'm missing out on some insanely fascinating part of the game. It's a non-thought. Oh you have Water Breathing? Great, we use that. Ok, now we're underwater, what's next?

I think more skill proficiencies will be helpful in general. I like the rules in TCE on skill proficiencies interacting with tool proficiencies for Advantage. Fighters, barbarians, paladins, and monks(?) shouldn't get bare bones skills just because they are warriors. Animal Handling should allow you to develop a loyal mount and/or faithful companion that can withstand combat (something like a sidekick maybe but not as powerful). Any of Persuasion, Intimidation, or Deception(?) should be able to get you something like retainers from the Knight background, servants of one form or another that can expand your influence in the world while you're out adventuring. Expand on hunches with Insight, bring back something like Skill Tricks maybe?

I don't think you're ever going to "bridge the gap" so to speak. And my aim is not to do that. I just want more interesting ways to engage with the game world as a martial. I don't need to "keep up" with the caster. Haven't had that issue at my table yet *knock on wood*.

I agree with this. About the only time 'how do we interact with this environment we're not acclimated to' should be relevant, is when no one in the party has means to overcome it, and the quest giver doesn't help either. But that's part of the encounter building, not inherent to the game itself.

Here's a thought. What if martials used the 4th Edition style AEDU, getting nifty powers and utility abilities usable at varying recharge rates, so they get fun riders, or added damage and can make some pretty interesting non-combat actions, but casters retain their 5E styling, so they're stuck with spell slots and known/prepared spells et. al. Since a big backlash from 4E was every class felt samey with AEDU, so Fighters were just Wizards with swords and Wizards were just Fighters with wands, this would keep a definitive divide while playing to both systems strengths for their respective groups.

I'm not sure what to do with the half-casters... maybe let the individual player decide which side of the fence they want to play on?

[PhoenixPhyre]

Your last paragraph nearly sums up my position. But you left off the third option. Establish a combat niche for the fighter. Damage and tanking seem ideal, though I’m not against other effects either. If the fighter is good enough at fighting his lack in the other pillars is far less concerning.

I disagree entirely. Because the only way to do that is make others incapable of doing damage or tanking. And once you have one class in that niche...the rest can't follow. So you get one mundane. And now, DMs are in a bad state:

- If they have a mundane, they have to write all their combats around those capabilities. And everyone else is a 5th wheel.
- If they don't have a mundane, then they have to radically tone down combat.

WoW had that issue in early years--either you had a warrior tank specced in a certain way or you failed. Having one made everything way easier, so any other tanks? Out in the cold. Not acceptable IMO.

Being OP in one area does not make being incapable in another acceptable. All it does is warp the game badly. No one should be incapable in any (broadly speaking) area. It's ok to be more capable in one area than another, but not incapable. Or overpoweringly capable.

Imagine you had 15 virtual points to distribute over the 3 pillars. An equally-balanced class would have 5/5/5. My opinion is that no one should be able to get into a state where they have 0 in any pillar. Or 10 in any pillar. In fact, I'd say 1-2 should be avoided. So you could have classes that sit 3/7/5 (in any order) or 4/6/5 or many other combinations. But "I can only fight" should be avoided like a plague.

Personally, short-range teleports don't have to be explicitly "magical". You're just moving so fast that it (mechanically) acts like teleportation. My WIP Armsman class gets Flash Step at level 13:



Starting at 13th level, you have learned to move so fast over short distaneces that it appears you can teleport. When you move on your turn, you can choose to instead teleport to the chosen location as long as you have a clear path to the target location and it is no further than your speed would allow. The clear path to the target does not have to be in a straight line, but you cannot pass through areas too small to squeeze through.


Slightly more restricted than a real teleport (no ignoring walls), but also at will. Plus you can pick up skill tricks which include things like literally balancing on air. Or actively forcing open a portal to another plane (at high level). That latter one's explicitly magical, the first one isn't.

One subclass of fighters gets the ability to predict what will cause people to react badly:



Starting at 10th level you've become particularly adept at predicting what will cause controversy--words are weapons too. As such, you can add twice your proficiency bonus to any Charisma check you make to defuse tense situations. In addition, when an ally you can hear makes a Charisma (Persuasion) check and you Help them, they can add your Charisma (Persuasion) modifier to theirs when resolving the check.


Another is so cold-blooded that they are much more resistant to fear/charm/domination (getting expertise on saves against such things and being able to suppress them via act of will both for themselves and others they touch).

Etc.

------

One of the core pieces of my WIP is to make everyone magical and non-magical. Everyone gets Aether (which is used to fuel any magical ability). Everyone gets a base ability called "Focus"--as a reaction, add your proficiency bonus to an INT/WIS/CHA check or save (spending Aether). Aether also fuels spells and all explicitly magical abilities--if it uses Aether or is called out as magical, it is (including for things like counter-magic). Stamina is the generic non-magic resource everyone gets. And everyone can use Exert (like focus, but for STR/DEX/CON checks and saves); people in armor or with shields can use Deflect--basically a 1 attack shield with the ability to counter, shield (the spell) now lasts a longer time but lets you use Aether to Deflect instead of Stamina (at the cost of initial aether).

Casters also don't get armor beyond light armor except rarely, and there's no dips for armor. You're a full caster? Attacks are your bane. You will have lower AC. Want to gish? Take one of the half-caster gish classes. And many, if not most, utility effects are now effectively 4e rituals--anyone can learn and use them, it just takes finding someone to teach you or finding/buying a scroll somewhere. And they have different limits (not spell slots). So a fighter wants to teleport (long distances)? Well, he can just like an arcanist. Both need to have the proper incantation available. Some classes get a few for free, but that's only a few. And spells in general end at 5th level. With higher-"level" effects being Legendary, which are more like Mystic Arcana, but not quite.

[Frogreaver]

Yeah I was commenting on the "it's magic or nothing" part of the conversation, as opposed to seeking out-of-combat abilities.

Honestly, the travel/exploration stuff is of little significance to me, because it's not that important most of the time. It's not important to me that, if I have to explore underwater, my character is able to breathe water with some sort of innate talent. If I get a magical item, or a blessing from a fey quest giver, or the caster casts a spell, it makes no difference to me. I don't bean count to check how many things I can do on my own, which is how I feel these conversations go sometimes (not accusing you of that).

Like... I'm not moved by an argument like "oh, you can't push this button to breathe underwater, but I can" or "oh, you can't push this button to teleport, but I can". It's like yeah, you're the caster lol. You have spells. But casting a spell (read: marking off its use on your character sheet) to breathe underwater or teleport is not super interesting. I don't feel like I'm missing out on some insanely fascinating part of the game. It's a non-thought. Oh you have Water Breathing? Great, we use that. Ok, now we're underwater, what's next?

I think more skill proficiencies will be helpful in general. I like the rules in TCE on skill proficiencies interacting with tool proficiencies for Advantage. Fighters, barbarians, paladins, and monks(?) shouldn't get bare bones skills just because they are warriors. Animal Handling should allow you to develop a loyal mount and/or faithful companion that can withstand combat (something like a sidekick maybe but not as powerful). Any of Persuasion, Intimidation, or Deception(?) should be able to get you something like retainers from the Knight background, servants of one form or another that can expand your influence in the world while you're out adventuring. Expand on hunches with Insight, bring back something like Skill Tricks maybe?

I don't think you're ever going to "bridge the gap" so to speak. And my aim is not to do that. I just want more interesting ways to engage with the game world as a martial. I don't need to "keep up" with the caster. Haven't had that issue at my table yet *knock on wood*.

Yea. The DM is going to give us an adventure. If it requires water breathing and we don’t have it then he will either provide a way to get it, possibly an adventure to acquire it, or we will just end up on a totally different adventure. I’ve never once felt like I missed out due to not having that kind of ability.

Then there’s also this - most exploration abilities either 1) get you treasure you otherwise would miss (not very likely in my games) or 2) allow you to bypass an encounter or 3) allow you get get in advantageous positions before an encounter. All good things but none are mandantory in order to play the game.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Yea. The DM is going to give us an adventure. If it requires water breathing and we don’t have it then he will either provide a way to get it, possibly an adventure to acquire it, or we will just end up on a totally different adventure. I’ve never once felt like I missed out due to not having that kind of ability.

Then there’s also this - most exploration abilities either 1) get you treasure you otherwise would miss (not very likely in my games) or 2) allow you to bypass an encounter or 3) allow you get get in advantageous positions before an encounter. All good things but none are mandantory in order to play the game.

This feels like a really cramped version of exploration to me. Sure, if all you care about is combat, that's fine. In which case there really isn't a major gap except at super-high levels of optimization. And that's mostly due to a small handful of broken effects (simulacrum, minionmancy, polymorph).

But there's a lot of the game beyond just that.

[GeneralVryth]

Personally, I disagree that martials (ie "non-magic") should be or are (from a worldbuilding/thematic point of view, including published settings) limited to the laws of physics of our universe. But if you accept that (even for the sake of argument), I think the latter paragraph and the rest of things holds.

I see martials as having a Charles Atlas superpower--one gained by training themselves hard enough. Sure, they may (or may not) have flashy, overtly, obviously "magical" powers. But that doesn't mean they're bound by the RL laws of physics in any meaningful way. They're bound by their own thematic rules, but not the laws of physics.


That's actually closer to my preferred fiction as well. I tend to think of mid to high level martials in comparison to something like Captain America. Mind you, I also don't think class levels are inherently special, and being a level 1 or 2 Fighter doesn't suddenly make you one of the best warriors in the nation. I detest the commoner statblock and think it would be better renamed as a child statblock. I tend to assume most adults would close to some level 1 to 3 NPC equivalent of a class.



Here's a thought. What if martials used the 4th Edition style AEDU, getting nifty powers and utility abilities usable at varying recharge rates, so they get fun riders, or added damage and can make some pretty interesting non-combat actions, but casters retain their 5E styling, so they're stuck with spell slots and known/prepared spells et. al. Since a big backlash from 4E was every class felt samey with AEDU, so Fighters were just Wizards with swords and Wizards were just Fighters with wands, this would keep a definitive divide while playing to both systems strengths for their respective groups.

I'm not sure what to do with the half-casters... maybe let the individual player decide which side of the fence they want to play on?

So pretty kind of like what they are already doing with the new weapon traits, plus various short rest abilities like action surge? The only thing missing is the daily category which is where martials tend to have theme issues anyways.

[Frogreaver]

This feels like a really cramped version of exploration to me. Sure, if all you care about is combat, that's fine. In which case there really isn't a major gap except at super-high levels of optimization. And that's mostly due to a small handful of broken effects (simulacrum, minionmancy, polymorph).

But there's a lot of the game beyond just that.

I don’t only care about combat. It’s just I don’t see needing to take a detour as an exploration failure. It’s just a different path with its own set of challenges to overcome.

[Theodoxus]

So pretty kind of like what they are already doing with the new weapon traits, plus various short rest abilities like action surge? The only thing missing is the daily category which is where martials tend to have theme issues anyways.

I guess, though the current iteration by WotC looks like a 240 SD youtube video in greyscale compared to what 4E offered.

[titi]

Ancient humans hunted megafauna into extinction with pointy sticks, and in D&D these beasts and monstrosities laugh at the 1d6+3 spear attack.
Ancient humans did not 1v1 megafauna. In DnD, if you throw 20 people with 1d6+3 pointy sticks at a megafauna, it won't laugh for long.
.

Yes, in your mind you're scaling up "fantasy demon" to be very tough. But you're not scaling up "fantasy knight" to be very lethal. So for you the damage is good.

Except if it's a paladin, or a rogue, or I just started counting multiples attacks rather than just looked at one die and said "That's pathetic". If your problem is that DnD scale damages by making more attacks, asks your DM if you can reflavor multiples rolls into 1 big attack.


Sure. But this is a fantasy game. My point about the IRL medieval knight is that the knight's suite of abilities spans all the martial classes and feats. But in the game, it forces you to choose which one of these things you want to do. It's pointing out the treatment of martial specialization.
No it doesn't ? An IRL knight won't fight half naked, ignoring blows that should kill him on the spot. An IRL knight won't suddenly have it's sword glow with holy power. An IRL knight won't sneak around on the battlefield and backstab unsuspecting ennemies. And IRL knights aren't known for their archery why was it your example ?

So it's two things:


1. There should be a benefit to mounted combat above an increase in Speed, and you shouldn't have to take a feat to gain that benefit. This goes back to the idea that fighting/weapon styles should be robust sub systems that martials can engage with without having to select which one they want to do and then need to start investing into it to go above "baseline" which is often "nothing".

I don't have a problem with that, but a big reason 5e is so popular is it's simplicity, so be carefull.


2. The mount should be durable enough to survive most encounters. We have stories that include Sleipnir, Shadowfax, Pegasus, Battle-Cat, etc. But the faithful heroic mount trope goes to Paladin. The other martials can just use a normal mount and purchase a new one every time it dies. For all the talks about "D&D is not a simulation", I don't know why we have to settle for "well, in real life Knights would have to have spare warhorses around, so lets go with that instead of cool fantasy mounts".

Or you could take the cavalier subclass, or the mounted feat, if you don't want your mount to die so easily.
I'd rather have some class/subclass be good at keeping their mount alive rather than every martial, because then martials who don't have a mount (because it's not what the player imagined) would be feeling left out. I wouldn't be against more mounted subclass, tho.



Yes, but there isn't a mechanic like that in 5E, so I'm not sure what was being referred to. The point remains that I have seen casters take down enemies in one turn, and I'm not sure why that should only be something casters can do.
Rogue. Paladin (well it's a half-caster).
And any martial with magic items that increase damage or burst.


Instead, it's a meme that you can safely and easily ignore a martial and walk right past them because their weapon attacks hit like pillows.

This is the first time I've ever heard of this meme.

[Dr.Samurai]

Two things. First...again with the "fighter == can only do combat" stuff.
I didn't say that, but it is easier to imagine combat like abilities that I would like and that might be called "magic" under the definition you were using.

Combat is not the weak point of martials.
It's a weak point of martials, for sure.

Like, I know some of you keep saying over and over again that it's fine but... it isn't. It can be a whole lot more. Way more. As in depth as the current spellcasting system and even moreso.

It doesn't have to go all the way there of course. But there's a lot in between.

They already do system-expected amounts of damage.
And as I've already said, the system sucks. The baseline sucks. It's low, way too low. I enjoy playing martials but D&D gives them the shaft. Hard.

Here's the thing. The game assumes that instant-killing your opponent is not a normal thing. Not even for the big things like dragons. If you just say "ok, anyone who is good at weapons can do this" (which is what you're saying), then the question is raised "why can't dragons or other NPCs do it?" Heck, why can't the ranger, who is also skilled with weapons, do it as well as his other stuff? Why do you need to be a fighter to do this?
It's an example to get a point across. Just because it has similar mechanics to a "spell" doesn't make it "magic".

And I'm talking about PC martials. NPCs and monsters need not apply. One doesn't have to mirror the other.

Fundamentally, the idea of a fighter as just "a normal person who is normally good with weapons but nothing really special and does normal person stuff" (aka mundane) conflicts with the idea of locking stuff to classes in the first place. Because there's nothing in the fiction that says that a ranger, wizard, or anyone else can't do that and more.
See all my other posts in this thread where I'm complaining about exactly this. Yes, it is terrible design, IMO, that animal companions, powerful mounts, multi-attacks, damage resistance, unarmed fighting, etc are all locked behind separate classes/subclasses/feats/etc.

Yes, normal warriors were proficient in a number of different weapons and styles and had animal companions/mounts and were skilled in various skills. I don't see why D&D martials can't start there. The current baseline "competence" is anemic.

Now I'm all for giving fighters fun abilities. My WIP overhaul literally gives them an escalating ability called Deathblow. Where they can spend stamina (a SR resource) to instant kill anything with less than X HP--if they have more HP, they can either refund the stamina or save-vs-stun it instead. And at higher levels, the threshold goes up and it becomes free for lower HP things. It gives fighters a "flash step" pseudo-teleportation effect. But I make no bones that these aren't fantastic abilities well beyond what is normal for people. And I call the "fighter" armsman instead and explicitly call it out as a fantastic weapon master class, not some generic, mundane "normal dude" class.
I don't get caught up on this as much as you do, except that I think you sort of disparage the people that don't agree with you. BUT... normal dudes deliver "Deathblows" all the time. Like... all the time. Like, a normal person can kill another person or beast with a weapon very very very easily. And moreso when trained. And combat is lethal even for trained warriors. Stun an opponent? It's called knocking the wind out of them, hitting the groin, temple, neck, solar plexus, choking them out, etc. This is all MUNDANE stuff that MUNDANE people can do but "fantastic weapon master olympians" can't do in D&D. Correction... the game forces you to be a monk if you want to "stun" someone in combat, another example of separating all this out across the classes.

[Trask]

Correction... the game forces you to be a monk if you want to "stun" someone in combat, another example of separating all this out across the classes.

GURPS, (which has fantastic support for melee maneuvers), would let you try and "Slam" the opponent, run at them and collide into them like a linebacker, dealing damage based on distance traveled and knocking down/stunning. Doesn't seem like it would be hard to port to 5e, or even at odds with the game system, I agree.

I'd say the same for things like Reckless Attack, couldn't anyone decide to attack recklessly? I might even go a step farther, why couldn't I fight defensively? Maybe as an add-on to Extra Attack, when you Dodge you can make a weapon attack with disadvantage as a bonus action. Even further; it would be fantastic to have something like the AD&D Fighter's "Combat Dominance", where they could make one attack against every creature around them if they were all of 1 HD or less. In 5e terms, maybe lift the Cleric "Destroy Undead Table" for the CR scaling, and just port that right over. You could do the same for Rogue, but instead of more attacks, make it an instant kill if they hit with Sneak Attack.

Just spitballing but those sound really cool to me, and not particularly broken either.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I don't get caught up on this as much as you do, except that I think you sort of disparage the people that don't agree with you. BUT... normal dudes deliver "Deathblows" all the time. Like... all the time. Like, a normal person can kill another person or beast with a weapon very very very easily. And moreso when trained. And combat is lethal even for trained warriors. Stun an opponent? It's called knocking the wind out of them, hitting the groin, temple, neck, solar plexus, choking them out, etc. This is all MUNDANE stuff that MUNDANE people can do but "fantastic weapon master olympians" can't do in D&D. Correction... the game forces you to be a monk if you want to "stun" someone in combat, another example of separating all this out across the classes.

Here's the thing. Real-life people have 4 (D&D) HP (edit: ok, maybe 10 max). And even level 1 martials can deliver deathblows to them all day long, no issue.

Real life people are not D&D people. Reasoning from real life makes things go wonky--everyone should just always fall over dead in a single hit from any real combatant. Making that change even slightly shatters the entire system into a million tiny pieces. It breaks all the abstractions. And reduces the entire game to a solved problem.

D&D characters (and the foes they face) are supernaturally (and I use that word on purpose) resilient to damage (whether you're talking about luck, actual meat, or whatever). For reference, the only real save or die (not just massive damage, but actual "you die") spell is 9th level and quite limited. So no, I reject the idea that save-or-dies have a (low-level) place. Or that you can just say "well, any real person can do it with a weapon, so any fighter should just trivially be able to do it." That shatters the game entirely. And makes it very unfun.

[JackPhoenix]

The D&D default is that it will never ever happen. Because hit points are what they are, and damage doesn't scale up apart from increasing your mod (max +5). So your D&D knight is never going to get an arrow shot off and kill something. Not until they've already hit it half a dozen times, or someone else has damaged it.

The D&D default is that it'll happen pretty often. Everyone on this forum would count like 4-hp commoner, and even most combatants would be guards, bandits and similar, with about 15 hp or less. Your issue is that you have skewed view of what a normal inhabitant of D&D world is like. PCs and the stuff they fight as they level up are abnormal.


Ancient humans hunted megafauna into extinction with pointy sticks, and in D&D these beasts and monstrosities laugh at the 1d6+3 spear attack.

So did the megafauna. That's why hunting them was a job for a whole tribe, and took much more than a single poke with a pointy stick.


Yes, in your mind you're scaling up "fantasy demon" to be very tough. But you're not scaling up "fantasy knight" to be very lethal. So for you the damage is good.

The fantasy knight is pretty lethal. The issue is that you're looking at the wrong enemies. Killing a demon or a dragon should be something the knight struggles with, not the meaning of the D in DPR.


Sure. But this is a fantasy game. My point about the IRL medieval knight is that the knight's suite of abilities spans all the martial classes and feats. But in the game, it forces you to choose which one of these things you want to do. It's pointing out the treatment of martial specialization.

And, as mentioned, your point isn't true. No IRL knight was a Robin Hood-tier archer, champion jouster, unbeatable swordsman and more all at the same time.


2. The mount should be durable enough to survive most encounters. We have stories that include Sleipnir, Shadowfax, Pegasus, Battle-Cat, etc. But the faithful heroic mount trope goes to Paladin. The other martials can just use a normal mount and purchase a new one every time it dies. For all the talks about "D&D is not a simulation", I don't know why we have to settle for "well, in real life Knights would have to have spare warhorses around, so lets go with that instead of cool fantasy mounts".

Nothing stops you from getting a cool fantasy mount. All those examples are unique to specific individuals, gained through various means, not a standard issue everyone got just because.


Yes, but there isn't a mechanic like that in 5E, so I'm not sure what was being referred to. The point remains that I have seen casters take down enemies in one turn, and I'm not sure why that should only be something casters can do.

And I've seen martials take down enemies in one turn. It's absolutely not something only casters can do.


*snippity snip for length*

I agree with pretty much everything in this post.

[tKUUNK]

The part where I split from posters like Theodoxus in my opinion is that, as someone who prefers martial characters in RPGs, I don't want magical effects wrapped in martial features. I don't want to swing my sword so fast it bursts into flame, create "echoes of myself", or teleport with sheer force of will. Its not the kind of fiction I like for martial characters. I'm okay with healing fast, because HP is abstract anyways. I'm okay with attacking many times in a round, because attacks are abstract anyways, it all just represents fighting ability and skill. I'm even okay with blocking dragonfire with a shield, because its theoretically possible to shield yourself from an explosion with any shield-like surface.

I kind of dislike to reach for out of D&D sources, but its similar to how many would feel Batman, or Green Arrow, or Iron Man's characters were ruined if they one day sprouted superpowers, that's just not the point of those characters to many, in the same way that a fighter developing magic abilities isn't the point. Yes the "base reality" of D&D is a "heroic reality", but I still like to separate that out from what is explicitly called magic. I want magic to feel like magic, spellcasters are their own thing entirely and treated as such, not just a higher degree of magic-user compared to a fighter and barbarian who also use it somehow. Just my opinion.

As for a 2nd level fighter matching up to an Olympian, I think that's a big overstatement. Even low-level fighters are strong compared to the weakest members of the D&D world, but they are certainly not anything close to gods. Neither are even the highest level D&D characters if the DM doesn't want them to be. There's this fixation with magic and achieving godhood in the D&D community that leaves me scratching my head, what's wrong with being a mortal fantasy hero who slays giants and dragons but doesn't get TOO big a head about it? Does every guild-artisan who sold his shop to buy some magic lessons and start an adventuring career have to become a god now?

I'm OKAY with not having all the capabilities that magic allows when I play a martial, because if I did, or even had capabilities close to it, spells wouldn't be very magical would they? A spell, an attack, whats the difference? Just the way its packaged? That's not fun either, when I do play a magic-user, or have someone in my party who is playing one, I LIKE to marvel at their wondrous abilities, be grateful that they are there to help us. I want to have that moment where I yell at the wizard player "DO SOMETHING" while my fighter holds back the monster over the bridge at Khazad-Dum because I know he always has some spell to save us in his back pocket. It feels archetypal, party driven, it feels like D&D.

Skill proficiencies, improvised actions, magic items, and good roleplaying are enough for me to be happy, AS LONG AS I ALSO FEEL that magic-users have their weaknesses. They need to be protected, their magic can be interrupted, or countered by unholy/low magic zones, magic resistant monsters, silences, the list can go on forever. I want the magic-user to also be grateful that there's a big stupid strong fighter in the front line, keeping the horde of bloodthirsty redcaps at bay. D&D used to have more of these kinds of things, and has shed too many of them, doesn't use them enough, or never had them in the first place (looking longingly at GURPS Magic rules...) Now we need our fighters to become z-fighters to keep up, and that's not what I want either.

I was going to snip more of this quote but it sums up how I feel nearly exactly. well said.

Martials don't need to worry about resource expenditure like casters. Martials can fill their niche all day long....now they just need a niche. lol. I feel like they had a niche in 3.5e D&D even though folks will no doubt remind me casters were even more ridiculous back then (you could stack buffs to the moon and back. But you could buff the whole party... which enabled the melee to do their thing...so it felt a lot more cooperative than it does now).

Also, someone wrote about a Decapitation ability. (sorry, using phone so it's too hard to go back and find the quote) THAT was a great idea.

[Theodoxus]

I still like the idea of using a mechanic similar to how Rage works in Diablo 4; where minor attacks build up a resource pool that can then be used to deal more, or specialized, or more specialized damage.

But I get 'another resource to track?!? bleh!' But if the base attacks were sufficient (probably wouldn't change from what we have) then things like Champion would be the baseline with a pretty bland specialized attack, like "After 10 hits with your weapon, your next attack that hits automatically crits. If the attack roll was a crit for this attack, the attack instead does 3x normal damage instead of 2x."

[Amnestic]

I still like the idea of using a mechanic similar to how Rage works in Diablo 4; where minor attacks build up a resource pool that can then be used to deal more, or specialized, or more specialized damage.

But I get 'another resource to track?!? bleh!' But if the base attacks were sufficient (probably wouldn't change from what we have) then things like Champion would be the baseline with a pretty bland specialized attack, like "After 10 hits with your weapon, your next attack that hits automatically crits. If the attack roll was a crit for this attack, the attack instead does 3x normal damage instead of 2x."

To me it's less "another resource to track" and more "will it ever actually see use?" An average combat might last 3 rounds, so six (potential) attacks total. Sometimes more, sometimes less, but finding the sweet spot for it actually being available isn't gonna be easier.

If you let it stack 'between' combats, then you start worrying about the "bag of rats" issue where they'll stack it up between combats, and at that point do the deisgners just assume they'll always have it active on the first hit? If so, why not just change the mechanic to activate on the first hit regardless? Gloomstalker style.

If it resets on initiative, then dialling in how many attacks (successful or otherwise) to 'charge' your resource is gonna be difficult, and there'll be some encounters - maybe a lot of encounters - where you never get to activate it. Does that feel good? Or does it turn into Brutal Critical 2.0 - a generally 'bad' feature?

I like the idea of a character 'charging up' over time but I'm not sure D&D's combat mechanics are generally suited for it. I would be happily proven wrong though.

[stoutstien]

To me it's less "another resource to track" and more "will it ever actually see use?" An average combat might last 3 rounds, so six (potential) attacks total. Sometimes more, sometimes less, but finding the sweet spot for it actually being available isn't gonna be easier.

If you let it stack 'between' combats, then you start worrying about the "bag of rats" issue where they'll stack it up between combats, and at that point do the deisgners just assume they'll always have it active on the first hit? If so, why not just change the mechanic to activate on the first hit regardless? Gloomstalker style.

If it resets on initiative, then dialling in how many attacks (successful or otherwise) to 'charge' your resource is gonna be difficult, and there'll be some encounters - maybe a lot of encounters - where you never get to activate it. Does that feel good? Or does it turn into Brutal Critical 2.0 - a generally 'bad' feature?

I like the idea of a character 'charging up' over time but I'm not sure D&D's combat mechanics are generally suited for it. I would be happily proven wrong though.

My solution was to have fury stack on:
attack
being attacked
Failing a save
Certain subclass features

On average they build 2-3 levels a round which is where I want them

[Theodoxus]

I'm always ok with 'start with resource' on initiative style mechanics. I think D&D in general has always been far too conservative with powers and resources. I'd be ok with kind of a 2E restyling of attacks, where they had 5 attacks every four rounds, scaling up to 2 attacks a round. Only this would be something like 'after four attacks, you can use your finisher', and have it build up from there, until eventually, every time you attack, the next attack can be the more powerful finisher.

I haven't given the idea any napkin math time, so I don't know where the potential break points for the escalation should be, but gut feeling, increases in PB would be my starting point and see where it goes from there.

[Dr.Samurai]

GURPS, (which has fantastic support for melee maneuvers), would let you try and "Slam" the opponent, run at them and collide into them like a linebacker, dealing damage based on distance traveled and knocking down/stunning. Doesn't seem like it would be hard to port to 5e, or even at odds with the game system, I agree.

I'd say the same for things like Reckless Attack, couldn't anyone decide to attack recklessly? I might even go a step farther, why couldn't I fight defensively? Maybe as an add-on to Extra Attack, when you Dodge you can make a weapon attack with disadvantage as a bonus action. Even further; it would be fantastic to have something like the AD&D Fighter's "Combat Dominance", where they could make one attack against every creature around them if they were all of 1 HD or less. In 5e terms, maybe lift the Cleric "Destroy Undead Table" for the CR scaling, and just port that right over. You could do the same for Rogue, but instead of more attacks, make it an instant kill if they hit with Sneak Attack.

Just spitballing but those sound really cool to me, and not particularly broken either.
Agreed.

Here's the thing. Real-life people have 4 (D&D) HP (edit: ok, maybe 10 max). And even level 1 martials can deliver deathblows to them all day long, no issue.
Real life people are not D&D people. Reasoning from real life makes things go wonky--everyone should just always fall over dead in a single hit from any real combatant. Making that change even slightly shatters the entire system into a million tiny pieces. It breaks all the abstractions. And reduces the entire game to a solved problem.
"D&D people are not real people therefore dealing a lethal blow is magical, not mundane."

Not a strong argument.

D&D characters (and the foes they face) are supernaturally (and I use that word on purpose) resilient to damage (whether you're talking about luck, actual meat, or whatever).
Yes. I think we all know this. Assume I know this too. I'm talking about how 2 attacks at 1d8+mod stack up against this "supernatural resilience" to damage, and what it feels like to play a warrior in D&D that has to hack things a half dozen times before they die.

Why can't martials increase that damage to have some devastating strikes?

For reference, the only real save or die (not just massive damage, but actual "you die") spell is 9th level and quite limited.
So replace that with Save-or-Suck, or AoE, or Buff spell, or whatever else you need for the point to be made.

So no, I reject the idea that save-or-dies have a (low-level) place.
I never promoted this.

Or that you can just say "well, any real person can do it with a weapon, so any fighter should just trivially be able to do it." That shatters the game entirely. And makes it very unfun.
Nice weasel word there in "trivially". Enjoy your 2 attacks at 1d8+mod. Amazing... and you can do it with a sword, and with a club, and with a bow, and with a polearm. Fantastic. Mission accomplished. The D&D fighter everyone! Can't be improved! We're at peak design!

Designer: I was thinking we could give the martials a prof/day ability where, on a hit, the enemy has to make a saving throw or suffer more damage or a debilitating effect, to represent grievous wounds from weapon strikes.

Design Team: Nah, D&D people aren't real people. We don't care about what real people can do here. While you're in this room, forget whatever you think you know about history, combat, medieval weapons, myths, etc. We don't care about that stuff. We will decide what "weapons" can or can't do.

Designer: Got it. So... no improvement to martial damage?

Design Team: Not one bit! Their damage is perfect for the system.

Designer: Ok, got it. Moving on... should we cap the wizard's Steel Wind Strike at 6d10 damage with their weapon and against 5 enemies, or let them upcast it for more d10s and more targets?

Design Team: Great question... let's really think on this, I want to make sure we get it right... it's important that wizards can zip around the battlefield hitting a handful of enemies for more damage than anyone else.

Yeah, absolutely brilliant.

[Tanarii]

The delta between 5MWD and what you describe as 'longer than an adventuring day worth of encounters' is huge. Even if you are right that in such a day the caster struggles 1) that situation is extremely rare and 2) in adventuring days far longer than 5MWD the fighter greatly struggles to keep up.
I disagree on both points. IMX going past the standard adventuring day is far more common than a 5MWD, and fighters, the other 5 martials (including Paladins and Rangers), and warlocks don't struggle to keep up at all in that situation.

[Saelethil]

I'll join those saying that martial damage doesn't scale very well. Obviously it's not the only problem they have but I think a lot of their other problems would be helped a lot by a couple more skill proficiencies and clear guidance in the DMG stating that martial characters should be capable of fantastical feats of all sorts and that the DCs for the sort of things that characters in action and low fantasy media do on the regular should be reasonable. A lot of good suggestions for actual abilities have been made but I think many of them could just be listed as examples of what a successful check could result in.

As for mobility, an idea I had while reading through this thread is to make a general rule, "Whenever you make a weapon attack, unarmed, or use another ability that replaces an attack in the attack action (e.g. shove or grapple), you can move 5 feet afterword as a part of that attack." The wording would need to be cleaned up and at some point the rogue should probably get a bonus to their movement speed to keep them far enough ahead of a fighter carving their way across a battlefield but this would be a modest boost to mobility early on that would most often be used by martials and wouldn't need to eat into the classes power budgets.

For damage, I'm partway through reworks of the martial classes right now. I'm pretty happy with my fighter, which only got a couple damage related tweaks: making maneuvers a baseline ability (d4-d6-d8); giving the second use of Action Surge and Second Wind at 8, the third at 13, and the fourth as a part of the new capstone, and moving the 4th attack back to 17.
These changes were based on discussions I've had with the other DMs in my group and the current DM is letting me rebuild my current character with these changes. (6 fighter/1 rogue)
I'm midway through the ranger and barbarian at the moment but I'm sure the results of all of my martial reworks would be considered "O.P." by many here and WotC.

[Xervous]

I'll join those saying that martial damage doesn't scale very well. Obviously it's not the only problem they have but I think a lot of their other problems would be helped a lot by a couple more skill proficiencies and clear guidance in the DMG stating that martial characters should be capable of fantastical feats of all sorts and that the DCs for the sort of things that characters in action and low fantasy media do on the regular should be reasonable. A lot of good suggestions for actual abilities have been made but I think many of them could just be listed as examples of what a successful check could result in.

If it's not enumerated options for skills, it's left in the GM's hands. Wizard gets to Wizard, Cleric gets to Cleric, but Fighter is whatever your GM decides it gets to be. If every class worked by the GM's whimsy they'd all be playing the same game, and would all be balanced in their lack of innate features. That's not how D&D works, the casters have abilities that do what they say on the tin. You can compare WYSIWYG options, you can as a system designer balance them against each other. You can't know how +3 to (Skill) will help a class beyond the defined functionality of the skill, and short of defining more concrete uses you simply can't guarantee more stuff for that skill. The skill system is supposed to be an open ended option for all characters to interact with the world. If the skill system is supposed to be the one thing carrying martials, you no longer are asking the GM to be a neutral arbiter in handling skills. "Martials get to do better stuff with skills", how much better? Hard to say. It's an invitation to fiat the martials up to however good the GM thinks they should be, without any necessity for consistency or clarity. Again, perfectly fine if this is how it works for everyone, but this would very much be turning the game into Martial-May-I with casters as an optional measuring stick.

[tKUUNK]

Second attempt answering Dork Forge re: how Skills can be eclipsed by Magic. First post vanished into the internet. :/

1. Fail a climb check up the ice wall? np...levitate or fly works, no roll required.

2. fail to persuade the guard? fine. Charm or Sleep should do it.

3. The Barbarian made of human steel rolls low and can't break down a stuck door. Wizard uses Knock. No roll required. Done.

4. Maximilian's Earthen Grasp is essentially a grapple, but RAW, you're stuck making STR saving throws against it instead of wriggling free with Athletics or Acrobatics. So in this case you can't even attempt to use the (arguably very relevant) skill. If you're a rogue with expertise in one of those skills this would be especially obnoxious.

Don't get me wrong: Skills failin art of the fun! But say, X times per long rest, why can't the strong guy simply CHOOSE to burst a stuck door? Can't the rogue once per day just decide they are getting up the ice wall, and that's that? Or no, only magic can ever do things without a chance of failure?

And btw, the fighter's Indomitable ability should provide an auto-success, not just a reroll. Just sayin'.

[PhoenixPhyre]

And btw, the fighter's Indomitable ability should provide an auto-success, not just a reroll. Just sayin'.

This I'm totally on board with.

[Rukelnikov]

Hats off to Rukelnikov for covering this detail before I could

Thanks!


To be fair Rukelnikov; Xervous sounds more on your line of reasoning than given credit for. Perhaps it's just being lost in translation, but it's more just a lamentation of a shoehorned identity only existing in a single facet, not that there's specialization in one area.

I know for my table; outside of combat we are having to leverage the martials background and backstory heavily for them to be useful on a narrative layer.
- The Barbarian is heavily involved in survival, tracking, wilderness knowledge, and beat handling.
- The monk is dealing with a lot of astral elements, lore keeping on legends and matters of higher beings.
- Our previous fighter dealt a lot with statecraft, intrigue of the court, and navigating the politics of nobles.
- Our current paladin deals with research into the occult and arcane.
etc etc etc

If I'm reading correctly, the barbarian's background is a typical born and raised in a tribe of barbarians and because of that has it a bit easier with things related to survival, tracking, wilderness knowledge and beast handling, right? Those are areas your character has to be familiar with given their upbringing, I think its perfectly fine, expected even, that they have impact on your character, but if that same character with that same background would have been a Sorcerer born and raised in a tribe of barbarians, he would have roughly the same background benefits right?

In my group background is usually something more than just 2 skills and a ribbon. Most things from you characters past already come with a lot of "necessary" implied background, for instance if your character studied in an academy, they necessarily know a lot of people (have contacts) in their area of study, and if its an important academy at least some of those contacts have a higher than average station, like very knowledgeable professors or a very successful peer. In the kind of sandbox campaigns my group plays those kinds of things come up regularly.


In combat, they all do an excellent job of putting up the big numbers over a long day, and are regularly outperforming the casters because encounters are not a one-and-done for the day.
But outside of the battlefield; we're doing a lot of heavy lifting that doesn't come natively from their class progression.
The casters however are getting plenty of raw utility just from the variability of casting with purely by-the-book spell picks.

I understand the out of combat disparity. But for instance if that gap could be closed a bit via making skill proficiencies more powerful, would that be ok? Does it need to come from class?

Problem is, the most effective way for non casters to have comparable out of combat utility to casters and stay in theme, would be giving them meta powers, like it happens in many other systems like WoD or TBZ, stuff like:

I Know a Guy

You always know someone relevant for whatever task you have in mind

That would always be relevant, and not out of theme for a Rogue or Bard. However, I don't know if I'd like that kind of feature in DnD. I like it in TBZ, and it works ok enough in WoD (though we houserule a lot of them), but that kind of plot manipulation seems to run a bit counter to the crunchy tactical game that DnD has usually been for me. It seems more in line with the system to say


I'll Find a Guy

Whenever you make an ability check to find or make a contact, you can treat a d20 roll of 9 or lower as a 10.

But then you have the problem of "But in MY table, that's a ribbon that's eating into my budget!!", and the logical step would be, ok lets have a couple features where you can pick from, we can call them Roguish Invocations, and then people will complain its too complex or there's too much choice or some such.


If I had meant the game needed martials to do more damage and monsters to get more hp I would have said that.

But that’s not actually my proposal. Nor is it something that must happen in order to raise martial damage.

But that's not something the system can do, the DM will decide how long a combat they want to aim for, if they want the dragon to be durable enough to last about 5 turns, they'll put a dragon durable enough to last about 5 turns. So if the DM decided for an about 5 rounds durable BBEG, we will have casters on one side trying to stick 4 spells which is their win condition and on the other side noncasters trying to race the dragons HP to 0 which is their win condition, and now the party is effectively split cause they have different win conditions.

[Goobahfish]

If you want a world where martials more or less feel bound by physics and the rules of the real world
and you want casters that feel powerful magically
and you want them to be feel balanced with each other

The fact that a paralyzed character can be hit with a greataxe to the head and not die... indicates that D&D isn't exactly 'real world physics'.

No matter how you try to dig yourself out of that hole, you are doing so by invoke non-earth physics. Ergo, please leave all earth-physics at the door. We may let some of the earth physics through in piecemeal fashion when it suits us, but it isn't a blank cheque.

D&D just is not 'that game' and any attempt to make it 'that game' is either doomed to failure or selective blindness.

----

The issue here (I think) is that wizards can cast 'wall of stone'. Now, there is literally no mundane/martial equivalent to wall of stone. There is nothing in the martial kit that lets you instantly build barriers or bridges mid-combat or in non-combat situations. It just doesn't work that way.

So, the question is... what do martials do? Well, they swing swords. Some of them have resources for 'big sword swings'.

We also have rogues. They have lots of skills. Out of combat a rogue should (on average) be better than a fighter. At pretty much everything... across the board. So, unless they have an explicit OOC class ability, martials have an 'exploration ceiling'. Worse than rogues.

What are fighters good for? Combat.

What is D&D? 95% Combat. (This is a bold claim, but what I refer to here is the rules. While many D&D games feature a lot of non-combat, it is very poorly codified).

For a game that is 95% Combat, classes which are 'poor at combat' will feel 'unbalanced'. Hence, casters have had all of this combat-inflation going on (free cantrips, higher HP etc). Their spells are pretty powerful too and often outstrip players.

Now, we don't want combats to drag and 'missing is not fun' so monsters will all die in 3 rounds.

---

Honestly, I think martials need something akin to adrenaline points, which can be used to do fixed things like double a jump distance, add a flat bonus to a Strength check etc. These can either be used in combat to add damage OR out of combat to lift portcullises or do epic feats of 'fightering'. Without something akin to that, no amount of 'balancing' is going to fix the problem. Fighters will almost definitionally feel 'average' because they are. Wizards will feel epic, because level 9 spell slots feel epic.

However, champion fighters are simple. I attack.. derr...

[Rukelnikov]

Second attempt answering Dork Forge re: how Skills can be eclipsed by Magic. First post vanished into the internet. :/

1. Fail a climb check up the ice wall? np...levitate or fly works, no roll required.

2. fail to persuade the guard? fine. Charm or Sleep should do it.

3. The Barbarian made of human steel rolls low and can't break down a stuck door. Wizard uses Knock. No roll required. Done.

4. Maximilian's Earthen Grasp is essentially a grapple, but RAW, you're stuck making STR saving throws against it instead of wriggling free with Athletics or Acrobatics. So in this case you can't even attempt to use the (arguably very relevant) skill. If you're a rogue with expertise in one of those skills this would be especially obnoxious.

Don't get me wrong: Skills failin art of the fun! But say, X times per long rest, why can't the strong guy simply CHOOSE to burst a stuck door? Can't the rogue once per day just decide they are getting up the ice wall, and that's that? Or no, only magic can ever do things without a chance of failure?

And btw, the fighter's Indomitable ability should provide an auto-success, not just a reroll. Just sayin'.

I'm very in favour of having like "When you fail at a skill check you are proficient with, you can spend 1 point of plot armor to succeed instead" (you'd have PB/LR plot armor points, which would fuel many features)

5e has some of those, there's Rogue's 20 and I'm pretty sure there was at least one more, but lvl 20 is kinda meh, 1/SR skill chekcs only could be an early T2 feature and it would be fine.

[Zhorn]

If I'm reading correctly, the barbarian's background is a typical born and raised in a tribe of barbarians and because of that has it a bit easier with things related to survival, tracking, wilderness knowledge and beast handling, right? Those are areas your character has to be familiar with given their upbringing, I think its perfectly fine, expected even, that they have impact on your character, but if that same character with that same background would have been a Sorcerer born and raised in a tribe of barbarians, he would have roughly the same background benefits right?

In my group background is usually something more than just 2 skills and a ribbon. Most things from you characters past already come with a lot of "necessary" implied background, for instance if your character studied in an academy, they necessarily know a lot of people (have contacts) in their area of study, and if its an important academy at least some of those contacts have a higher than average station, like very knowledgeable professors or a very successful peer. In the kind of sandbox campaigns my group plays those kinds of things come up regularly.
Yes; the issue here is all that utility is needing to be homebrewed in, while casters due to the sheer volume of spells available to your have a ton of utility options already existing before any homebrew enters the equation. And their selection of options only ever increase with later books adding more and more spells.
I'm not against more spell additions; but it is frustrating when WotC's go to response for everything is "let's make it a spell". I replied to a prior survey as much when so many background/race features were just "you can cast [x] spell", lazy design.

I understand the out of combat disparity. But for instance if that gap could be closed a bit via making skill proficiencies more powerful, would that be ok? Does it need to come from class?
If it doesn't come from the class, then it's not addressing the disparity from the lens of 'caster vs martial'.
I can only speak to the experiences of my table; but we're only ever needing to implement these homebrew features for the martials since the casters are rarely without an option to pursue from what's available to them via RAW.
Sure a sorcerer could lean on their background the same as their barbarian counterpart; but experience is showing they don't and will instead just cast a spell.

[titi]

Agreed.

"D&D people are not real people therefore dealing a lethal blow is magical, not mundane."

Not a strong argument.

Not what he said. He said lethal blows would break the system :


Reasoning from real life makes things go wonky--everyone should just always fall over dead in a single hit from any real combatant. Making that change even slightly shatters the entire system into a million tiny pieces

Also, you keep saying "attacks at 1d8+mod" or "1d6+mod". Does your hypotetical martial not have a subclass ? Or even a class for that matter ? What martial has nothing to bumps his damage ?

[Rukelnikov]

Yes; the issue here is all that utility is needing to be homebrewed in, while casters due to the sheer volume of spells available to your have a ton of utility options already existing before any homebrew enters the equation. And their selection of options only ever increase with later books adding more and more spells.

Well, tbh, I don't consider anything from the background example "homebrew", its roleplay, the characters don't pop out of a machine, they had lives beforehand, if the DM refuses to engage with anything from a characters past, I think that's outside the expected.


I'm not against more spell additions; but it is frustrating when WotC's go to response for everything is "let's make it a spell". I replied to a prior survey as much when so many background/race features were just "you can cast [x] spell", lazy design.

It is lazy design indeed, template design, I don't have a problem with some features being like that, but I don't like that most features have started to turn into that, not because of spells, I have nothing against them, but because of uniqueness. If a Race's big feature is cast these 3 spells and add them to your lists, then that race is less unique, because their big thing can be replicated fairly simple by class levels or feats, and I prefer more distinct and unique features in the character building blocks.


If it doesn't come from the class, then it's not addressing the disparity from the lens of 'caster vs martial'.

well in a way it is, If caster has 10 things to do and martial has 3, then caster has 3.3x times as many things to do, we add each of them 3 more things, now its 13 vs 6, so we went from 3.3x to 2.16x, and some of these new options are likely to overlap with spells, meaning they may not even be new options for casters.

I already explained why I think it'd be hard to give martials on theme almost always relevant stuff to do, either give them meta powers, or make them more a la carte like the warlock.


I can only speak to the experiences of my table; but we're only ever needing to implement these homebrew features for the martials since the casters are rarely without an option to pursue from what's available to them via RAW.
Sure a sorcerer could lean on their background the same as their barbarian counterpart; but experience is showing they don't and will instead just cast a spell.

Personally I draw from my background in most my PCs, my Sorlock was a Merchant before being a Sorcerer or Warlock, both in the order of events and how he saw himself, a merchant that went on adventures to fund his trading enterprises, not an adventurer that made some money on the side by trading. As such I was usually studying the markets of whatever town we passed by, making prices logs, and usually procuring some trade good that seemed cheap to sell later on where it seems expensive. But I could've done that with any class. And none of that is homebrew either, that's roleplaying.

[Kane0]

1. Fail a climb check up the ice wall? np...levitate or fly works, no roll required.

2. fail to persuade the guard? fine. Charm or Sleep should do it.

3. The Barbarian made of human steel rolls low and can't break down a stuck door. Wizard uses Knock. No roll required. Done.

4. Maximilian's Earthen Grasp is essentially a grapple, but RAW, you're stuck making STR saving throws against it instead of wriggling free with Athletics or Acrobatics. So in this case you can't even attempt to use the (arguably very relevant) skill. If you're a rogue with expertise in one of those skills this would be especially obnoxious.


I liked how 4e handled Knock actually, instead of 'it just works' it merely replaced the thievery check with an arcana check. You could do the same with charms letting you roll arcana instead of persuasion, and earthen grasp arcana instead of athletics.

Wouldnt help with stuff beyond the realm of skills like summons, BFC, buffs, etc but it could be one step towards parity.

[Zhorn]

Well, tbh, I don't consider anything from the background example "homebrew", its roleplay, the characters don't pop out of a machine, they had lives beforehand, if the DM refuses to engage with anything from a characters past, I think that's outside the expected.
...
Personally I draw from my background in most my PCs, my Sorlock was a Merchant before being a Sorcerer or Warlock, both in the order of events and how he saw himself, a merchant that went on adventures to fund his trading enterprises, not an adventurer that made some money on the side by trading. As such I was usually studying the markets of whatever town we passed by, making prices logs, and usually procuring some trade good that seemed cheap to sell later on where it seems expensive. But I could've done that with any class. And none of that is homebrew either, that's roleplaying.
I can respect that there are other high-engagement players that will leverage as much aspects about their character's identity as possible in play.
But experience has taught many of us that high-engagement players are not the majority. High engagement players have a tendency to progress towards being DMs, and we all know the imbalance between available DMs and players. It's just a harsh reality that there are far more low engagement players than high engagement.
Low engagement types tend to need a blatantly highlighted thing on there character sheets blaring "USE THIS".
It's an extension of the trouble we have teaching some (*cough* many *cough*) players about exercising agency and dnd being a game of unbounded imagination, and even some that do get past that hurdle still overshoot into "I roll persuasion for the king I just met to give me the thrown".
It would be neat if we could rely on all types of players to easily navigate the unwritten components of the game to exercise the good roleplaying and narrative freedom of expression that makes them all masters of proposing and finding solutions or at least courses of action in the outside-of-combat aspects of play... "If everyone could just" is one of those solutions that sounds simple but isn't feasible. "if everyone could just" is the type of imaginative play that if it were possible; the utility aspect of the martial vs caster divide would never come up as a problem.
Players as a majority need the handholding that comes with features given through there class to be printed on their sheets. I'd like it to be different, but it's not.

[Rukelnikov]

I can respect that there are other high-engagement players that will leverage as much aspects about their character's identity as possible in play.
But experience has taught many of us that high-engagement players are not the majority. High engagement players have a tendency to progress towards being DMs, and we all know the imbalance between available DMs and players. It's just a harsh reality that there are far more low engagement players than high engagement.
Low engagement types tend to need a blatantly highlighted thing on there character sheets blaring "USE THIS".
It's an extension of the trouble we have teaching some (*cough* many *cough*) players about exercising agency and dnd being a game of unbounded imagination, and even some that do get past that hurdle still overshoot into "I roll persuasion for the king I just met to give me the thrown".
It would be neat if we could rely on all types of players to easily navigate the unwritten components of the game to exercise the good roleplaying and narrative freedom of expression that makes them all masters of proposing and finding solutions or at least courses of action in the outside-of-combat aspects of play... "If everyone could just" is one of those solutions that sounds simple but isn't feasible. "if everyone could just" is the type of imaginative play that if it were possible; the utility aspect of the martial vs caster divide would never come up as a problem.
Players as a majority need the handholding that comes with features given through there class to be printed on their sheets. I'd like it to be different, but it's not.

Well, DnD markets itself as entry level TTRPG, so it has to be new player friendly, in particular new TTRPG player friendly. As I said, I'd give martials invocation-like features with a grab bag of non combat centered stuff for them to pick from. Or give buttons to skill proficiencies, but that has to be treaded lightly lest the whole skill system comes crushing down overshadowed by its own buttons.

oWoD backgrounds or lots of nWoD merits could be starting points for such features.

[Trask]

The fact that a paralyzed character can be hit with a greataxe to the head and not die... indicates that D&D isn't exactly 'real world physics'

D&D Hit points definitely do demonstrate a degree of supernatural toughness, I agree. But the way I also interpret them is something like luck or plot armor in some cases as well. You and the ogre you were fighting fell from a great height, well you hit some branches on the way down to slow your fall, while the ogre just went splat. The assassin tried to stab you while you were sleeping, but you turned just in time and he only slashed up the side of your neck. You were paralyzed and an orc swings a greataxe at you, well maybe you just tank that hit because you're super tough.

[Witty Username]

In 5e, if you are proficient in a save your spell saving throw will succeed more often, but as you go up in level the enemy spall save DCs tend to go up so you are net negative. Your chance to save in proficient saves stays roughtly the same, or is slightly better, and your saves on non proficient saves get dramatically worse.


A thing I have been poking around related to this is giving the martial side characters better saving throws.
Like say if as a tier 3 point every martial got additional save proficiencies (sans paladin, as aura of protection does roughly the same thing already).

[Amechra]

A thing I have been poking around related to this is giving the martial side characters better saving throws.
Like say if as a tier 3 point every martial got additional save proficiencies (sans paladin, as aura of protection does roughly the same thing already).

For the sake of comparison, here's the saving throw table for 1e Fighters:



Level

vs. Death
vs. Petrification
vs. Wand
vs. Breath
vs. Spell


0th
25%
20%
15%
5%
10%


1st
35%
30%
25%
20%
20%


3th
40%
35%
30%
25%
25%


5th
50%
45%
40%
40%
35%


7th
55%
50%
45%
45%
40%


9th
65%
60%
55%
60%
50%


11th
70%
65%
60%
65%
55%


13th
80%
75%
70%
80%
65%


15th
85%
80%
75%
85%
70%


17th
90%
85%
80%
85%
75%



(No, I don't know why there was a pattern for every single save progression other than the one that resists breath weapons.)

To compare, here's what a 5e Fighter's Str, Con, and Wis save progressions look like at those levels against a DC of 11 + 1/2 their level (which is what you get if you fight a creature with CR = your level), assuming that both ability scores started at 14 and never got improved, while Strength starts at 16 and gets bumped up at 4th and 8th:



Level

Str Save

Con Save
Wis Save


1
75%
70%
60%


3
70%
65%
55%


5
75%
65%
50%


7
70%
60%
45%


9
75%
60%
40%


11
70%
55%
35%


13
70%
55%
30%


15
65%
50%
25%


17
65%
50%
20%



On the one hand, your chance of succeeding on a save at low levels is WAY higher... but even your best save effectively gets a -2 over the course of 16 levels, with saves that were merely decent at lower levels (like your Wis save) dropping down to low-level 1e character levels of success. It's arguably even worse than that, because Wis saves become more prevalent as you level up, so you get the double whammy of getting worse at a save that you need to make more often.

[paladinn]

I haven't been following this thread that closely. But I wonder, could/would the new weapon mastery mechanics from OneD&D play into this, and how?

[Tanarii]

"Spells are more sure than skills" is really only a problem with, again, 5MWDs ... and certain high level campaign breaking spells. (The latter of which are all well known, and incidentally Pf2 handled it by making them all Uncommon.)

The problem with skills is that casters are automatically really good at some of the best skills. Wizards are primary Int, Bards/Warlocks/Sorcerers primary Cha, and Clerics/Druids primary Wis. Out of the martials, only Rogue/Monk/Ranger compete being always primary Dex for the first two and typically primary Dex for the last.

Fighter/Barbarian/Paladin as primary Str are good at Athletics which is great for combat. But they're 1-3 pts behind any other class in any other ability (skills) check inherently because of the ability check system.

Now ... 5e is a very flexible ability check system and 1-3 points behind shouldn't be killer. But many DMs have the majority of out of combat check be 3e style checks: One Check to Rule Them All (highest person in party rolls) plus Scale for a Specialist (set a fairly high DC). The unfortunate downside of this trend is it strongly encourages players to specialize in something or not bother trying. So you get a single Face, a Loremaster, maybe an animal handler/survivalist ... and everyone else just picks up Perception, Athletics/Acrobatics, and Stealth.

5e skills don't have to be a problem like that, but given the way most DMs and WotC products use them, they often are.

Honestly, I think at this point they need to either divorce ability scores from class abilities, or divorce them from skills.

[Xervous]

I haven't been following this thread that closely. But I wonder, could/would the new weapon mastery mechanics from OneD&D play into this, and how?

If they had the daring to print stuff that amounts to more than fiddly numbers and low tier effects, maybe. As printed it’s just a numbers patch as they rip off other damage sources.

[OldTrees1]

To compare, here's what a 5e Fighter's Str, Con, and Wis save progressions look like at those levels against a DC of 11 + 1/2 their level (which is what you get if you fight a creature with CR = your level), assuming that both ability scores started at 14 and never got improved, while Strength starts at 16 and gets bumped up at 4th and 8th:

-snip nice charts-

On the one hand, your chance of succeeding on a save at low levels is WAY higher... but even your best save effectively gets a -2 over the course of 16 levels, with saves that were merely decent at lower levels (like your Wis save) dropping down to low-level 1e character levels of success. It's arguably even worse than that, because Wis saves become more prevalent as you level up, so you get the double whammy of getting worse at a save that you need to make more often.

So if comparing against an enemy with CR=0.5 * your level, the DC drops by 1/4 your level and thus the save increases by 5%* level/4 (round down)? This adjusted table might be applicable for groups of enemies (while the original one is applicable for solo).



Level

Str Save

Con Save
Wis Save


1
75%
70%
60%


3
70%
65%
55%


5
80%
70%
55%


7
75%
65%
50%


9
85%
70%
50%


11
80%
65%
45%


13
85%
70%
45%


15
80%
65%
40%


17
85%
70%
40%



Here we see one save go up, another stay level, and the 3rd still goes down. Even with these more charitable assumptions we still see saves getting worse.

[5eNeedsDarksun]

For the sake of comparison, here's the saving throw table for 1e Fighters:



Level

vs. Death
vs. Petrification
vs. Wand
vs. Breath
vs. Spell


0th
25%
20%
15%
5%
10%


1st
35%
30%
25%
20%
20%


3th
40%
35%
30%
25%
25%


5th
50%
45%
40%
40%
35%


7th
55%
50%
45%
45%
40%


9th
65%
60%
55%
60%
50%


11th
70%
65%
60%
65%
55%


13th
80%
75%
70%
80%
65%


15th
85%
80%
75%
85%
70%


17th
90%
85%
80%
85%
75%



(No, I don't know why there was a pattern for every single save progression other than the one that resists breath weapons.)

To compare, here's what a 5e Fighter's Str, Con, and Wis save progressions look like at those levels against a DC of 11 + 1/2 their level (which is what you get if you fight a creature with CR = your level), assuming that both ability scores started at 14 and never got improved, while Strength starts at 16 and gets bumped up at 4th and 8th:



Level

Str Save

Con Save
Wis Save


1
75%
70%
60%


3
70%
65%
55%


5
75%
65%
50%


7
70%
60%
45%


9
75%
60%
40%


11
70%
55%
35%


13
70%
55%
30%


15
65%
50%
25%


17
65%
50%
20%



On the one hand, your chance of succeeding on a save at low levels is WAY higher... but even your best save effectively gets a -2 over the course of 16 levels, with saves that were merely decent at lower levels (like your Wis save) dropping down to low-level 1e character levels of success. It's arguably even worse than that, because Wis saves become more prevalent as you level up, so you get the double whammy of getting worse at a save that you need to make more often.

5e saves are weird. Period. Your table lays this out well. Somehow there should be some progression to saves that a character doesn't have proficiency in; probably 1/2 proficiency would be reasonable. Pretty much every character I've had tries to get Wis saves by 12th regardless of class, otherwise you're just regularly subject to the suck effect of many save or suck spells/ effects. The only thing I'd say in defense of Fighters and Rogues is that you get an extra ASI by this point to deal with the problem.

[Dork_Forge]

I wasn't going to reply again here just because the thread moved like two whole pages when I saw the last reply to me, but since this one is pretty recent and short I'll address it


Second attempt answering Dork Forge re: how Skills can be eclipsed by Magic. First post vanished into the internet. :/

As someone who's PC crashes multiple times a day, I feel this so hard.



1. Fail a climb check up the ice wall? np...levitate or fly works, no roll required.

This is a pretty good example, I can still see it being a bit iffy to get the whole party across an obstacle in that manner though, tying off a rope is a for scaling is still a sleight of hand check.

Personally this is part of why I like Tabaxi Rogues, climbing is effortless and resourceless.



2. fail to persuade the guard? fine. Charm or Sleep should do it.

Okay this doesn't make sense, Charm is just advantage on social checks, not an auto success or mind control. Sleep is also just a risk since it's a roll and the guards HP should be unknown.

Solution 1 isn't as advertised and Solution 2 isn't more compelling than knocking them out with no lethal damage. After all, visibly casting a spell at the guard after failing a persuasion should really trigger initiative anyway.



3. The Barbarian made of human steel rolls low and can't break down a stuck door. Wizard uses Knock. No roll required. Done.

Knock is a terrible substitute:

1) The sound is likely more audible than just retrying to break down the door
2) Thieves tools would be more likely for most doors anyway, which is also far more reliable with the prevalence of Expertise and Thieves Tools.
3) Knock gets you absolutely nowhere if there is more than one lock. Say, a key lock and a crossbar.

I had a Wizard use Knock because he didn't want to wait for the Ranger to use Thieves Tools to break into a Hobgoblin base, the noise resulted in an entire dungeon marshaling into a single armyesque encounter.



4. Maximilian's Earthen Grasp is essentially a grapple, but RAW, you're stuck making STR saving throws against it instead of wriggling free with Athletics or Acrobatics. So in this case you can't even attempt to use the (arguably very relevant) skill. If you're a rogue with expertise in one of those skills this would be especially obnoxious.

I really don't know why you brought this one up? Monsters rarely have Athletics prof to begin with and PCs getting Maximilians Earthen Grasp cast on them is an incredibly rare and niche situation?

Like if this is meant to be Earthen Grasp is better than grappling... It isn't?

Earthen Grasp gives you one shot a turn at it, targeting what is traditionally a strong monster save to do so. Grappling replaces a single attack and uses a skill that's incredibly easy to stack in the PC's favour. Barbarians would get advantage, dedicated grapplers should have high mods through Expertise and features.

Like, if I wanted to make a reliable grappler I'd probably slide in something like Soul knife, who can add Expertise and a Psi die if they fail initially.

Oh and grappling doesn't require concentration or the ability to see, isn't Counter Spellable etc.

Maybe I'm missing something, but this seems like an inferior option, not better.



Don't get me wrong: Skills failin art of the fun! But say, X times per long rest, why can't the strong guy simply CHOOSE to burst a stuck door? Can't the rogue once per day just decide they are getting up the ice wall, and that's that? Or no, only magic can ever do things without a chance of failure?

Martials aren't restricted to skills to accomplish things that aren't 'I smack that person' and frankly some of what you're describing is on the DM. Yes, the Barbarian should be able to just burst down doors, they're incredibly strong after all and rolling low and failing is stupid, but you also shouldn't be putting unnecessary rolls between a character and progression and there is guidance to just let them do it if they take time to.



And btw, the fighter's Indomitable ability should provide an auto-success, not just a reroll. Just sayin'.

I'm not super against this, but I never understood the hate Indomitable got to begin with. Maybe it's baggage from previous editions I don't understand, people often talk on here about how Fighter's used to be great at saves in general.

[DammitVictor]

I'm suggesting a global boost to the number of attacks made by martial classes in general:

All Warrior Classes (Fighters, Barbarians and Monks) get an extra attack at levels 5, 10, 15, and 20.
"Semi-Martials" (which I will define here as Paladins, Rangers and Rogues) get an extra attack at levels 5 and 15.

As others have pointed out, this doesn't really do much to address the heart of the problem, and it exacerbates another pernicious D&D problem: it would slow combat down.

I didn't intend this houserule to be a martial buff, but that's what it does in practice: combine Extra Attacks when targeting a single enemy. Extra Attack I is a single attack roll with a crit range of 19-20; it hits once on a miss and twice on a hit, and a 19 is one critical and a 20 is two criticals. Extra Attack II is a single attack roll with a crit range of 18-20 and on a miss it hits once and on a hit, hits three times. For Sneak Attack and Smite, a critical applies to the same number of dice. This is the first substantial buff.

The second substantial buff is that you can split Extra Attack II into two Extra Attack Is against two targets. You can split Extra Attack III into two Extra Attack IIs or three Extra Attack Is. I'm not going to go off in the weeds about my other houserules, but there are several "fighter" classes that get Extra Attack II or III, and several more "rogue" classes that get Extra Attack (at a higher level) and can buy into Extra Attack II at an even higher level.

I intend to also go through and make sure most martial classes have a variety of At-Will or Encounter "mundane" AOE attacks available to them, before even considering Path of War type shenanigans.


Alternative suggestion.

Remove Con bonus to HP every level. Reintroduce restrictions about casting spells in armour. Watch the casters squirm before they die :D

Fewer Hit Points, more Hit Dice, and "magical healing" only allows you to spend your Hit Dice more efficiently.


I think there's broad based agreement that the current system regarding spell slots stacking and the ability to upcast being fairly good, while a character who gets repeated Extra Attack gets... nothing is crap. So martials need something, however some people are going to die on the hill of: The fighter gets a 3rd attack at 11th, so we can't give the multi classer a 3rd sooner.

Every (sub)class that grants Extra Attack stacks for Extra Attack. Every class that grants Extra Attack only stacks half for Extra Attack II. It's possible to get Extra Attack III and another 11th level offensive feature, but it's not trivial.


...Maybe? I know as soon as I say it there's gonna be 4 people to come out of the woodwork to pound the table over how much they love it when their characters die, but my strong suspicion is that people enjoy the game more when that doesn't happen.

I love it when my characters lose and suffer. Main reason I don't love it when they die is it means they stop losing and suffering.

I love my power fantasies, too, but they're all the sweeter for the brutal defeats. And vice versa.


1. In general martial durability isn't high enough when compared to caster durability. Casters either need alot less durable or martials need alot more durability. Numerous ways this can be achieved. Not sure i've seen my favorite listed yet. Class level should be part of the AC formula and Fighters should get more of this component than Wizards.

Yeah, I like this a lot. And I think armor should provide damage reduction, and/or other benefits, so that it remains better than Unarmored Defense.


3. Martials should naturally get more mobility than casters and this should improve with level! There's no way a level 1 fighter should be moving just as fast as a level 20 fighter.

Yes. I don't think the Monk class should be removed from D&D because it doesn't belong in D&D; I think it should be removed because everything it does should be part of being "martial" or just "higher than 6th level".

[LudicSavant]

And more importantly : if a fantasy knight shoots a fantasy demon with a bow, then that demon isn't going to die in one hit.

That's not true of an awful lot of fantasy and mythic heroes. One clean shot is a trope that's old as dirt.

[titi]

That's not true of an awful lot of fantasy and mythic heroes. One clean shot is a trope that's old as dirt.

You're right. My bad

But it's far from the majority of stories (that I know at least). And in the same vein, it's possible to one-shot big monsters in DnD, but it's restricted (mostly to paladin and rogue).

Personnaly I think it's good because making it easier to one-shot ennemies would force DMs to throw more ennemies at their players, which would increase the amount of things they need to keep track of in combat

[Goobahfish]

Fewer Hit Points, more Hit Dice, and "magical healing" only allows you to spend your Hit Dice more efficiently.

I like your style :smallbiggrin:

I think being able to heal more regularly (up to a limit), but being less 'one-battle' tough would go a long way here.


That's not true of an awful lot of fantasy and mythic heroes. One clean shot is a trope that's old as dirt.

Bard is he, of the race of Dale, of the line of Girion.

---

This is one thing I really did like about 4E (though not precisely the implementation) was the idea of Minions. Some creatures should 'fall easier' than others, especially to non-resource abilities. Having 1HP minions wasn't exactly the best solution, but the idea was there. Being able to 'one-shot' enemies feels really good.

Hence, back in 3.5/PF I had the rule. If a crit would do at least half of the creature's remaining HP, kill the creature. This would mean any crit against a mook that didn't quite finish it off, would definitely finish it off, but preserve big-bads so they don't just get 'crit-fished'. That said, if half-way through the battle (after it is beaten down a bit), someone does that glorious crit...

[JackPhoenix]

That's not true of an awful lot of fantasy and mythic heroes. One clean shot is a trope that's old as dirt.

Even more common trope in mythology is the protagonist and whatever he's fighting battling for hours, a day and a night, or even longer. Which, ironically (and understandably), also doesn't work well in D&D... a commoner with Eldritch Claw Tattoo (to get through the immunity) could punch a (cooperative, just standing there, obviously) Tarrasque to death in less than 11 hours. Standard level 1 fighter with Moon-Touched (long)Sword (to also get through the immunity) does it just under 1.9 hours. A level 20 fighter, who maxed his attack ability score and doesn't use any class abilities other than Extra Attack, feats or magic items other than the same Moon-Touched Sword (for the same reason) takes less than 5 minutes.


Bard is he, of the race of Dale, of the line of Girion.

Perfectly compatible with how HP work. After all, the last hit is the only one that really counts. Also, that incident gave us Arrows of (dragon) Slaying to make the job even easier.

[Dienekes]

Perfectly compatible with how HP work. After all, the last hit is the only one that really counts. Also, that incident gave us Arrows of (dragon) Slaying to make the job even easier.

The issue, I think, comes from how the narrative and the mechanics don't really feel the same.

Let's take Bard and Smaug. In the books, Smaug is an unstoppable tank. It did not matter where you struck him, he wasn't slowing down, and destroying everything in his path. Then a message is sent to Bard, with the information on the weak point. And Bard has to prepare, he needs to wait for the dragon to fly overhead, observe the weak point with his own eyes, take his last implied magic arrow and takes the 1 in a million shot.

You -can- model that with Smaug's hp gets lower and lower until one arrow kills him. But it doesn't feel at all like that kind of fantasy. If we wanted to model that with a D&D style game, it would probably need to rework the game so powerful boss monsters are almost puzzles. The team has to first survive from the brutal destruction, find the weak point, and put all their effort into getting that one good hit with several characters lending aid and empowerment to get that position to work.

Which sounds fun. But isn't really how D&D is structured, and so trying to make that fantasy work often falls flat.

[Trask]

Yeah its just not how D&D has ever worked. And there are also downsides to systems that work that way (IMO). Lets take GURPS. There, shooting a dragon in the eye gives you a -9 to your Bow skill and does a x4 damage multiplier, and in a game where HP levels are relatively flat and the abilityavoid damage is what makes a character more powerful, that works. You could even, as a GM, add in a Smaug-like weak spot with an even higher damage multiplier and harder to hit than the eye. The thing is that now you have entire characters devoted to shooting out eyeballs (no seriously) and there has to be whole sections on example monsters (has no brain, so doesn't take x4 from hits to the skull) which is in some ways just as annoying as D&D's slog fights.

To me, that shows me that stories are stories, and games are games. The only way to get a story experience is to play a story game, which D&D (and GURPS) are not. They are crunchy combat simulators that have their own internal logic, and that can have its own benefits too. There's a reason where all playing this game and not Dungeon World.

But I think if you really wanted to have Bard kill Smaug in D&D 5e, its possible to approach that fiction. First off, give Bard his Black Arrow (Arrow of Dragonslaying), and give Smaug a weak spot that makes him vulnerable to damage when he gets hit there, but make it AC 30. Obviously Bard hits with a Natural 20. Add in that when he takes more than, say, 25 damage in that spot (reachable with the arrow, sharpshooter, and high Dex) he must make a Con save vs DC 25 or become stunned until he can make a save, which he gets at the end of each of his turns. He fails and gets stunned, which makes him fall in the water, which is LAVA to a Red Dragon, he fails a few times more until he is submerged, at which point he dies (its my theory that the water really killed Smaug in the end anyways, in one of Tolkien's letters I read that water is death to dragons).

Its a lot of hoops to jump through, but that's what you get when trying to emulate specific scenes. IMO most fantasy heroes have OP stats anyways, like nothing lower than a 15 in most cases.

[Goobahfish]

Yeah its just not how D&D has ever worked. And there are also downsides to systems that work that way (IMO). Lets take GURPS. There, shooting a dragon in the eye gives you a -9 to your Bow skill and does a x4 damage multiplier, and in a game where HP levels are relatively flat and the abilityavoid damage is what makes a character more powerful, that works. You could even, as a GM, add in a Smaug-like weak spot with an even higher damage multiplier and harder to hit than the eye. The thing is that now you have entire characters devoted to shooting out eyeballs (no seriously) and there has to be whole sections on example monsters (has no brain, so doesn't take x4 from hits to the skull) which is in some ways just as annoying as D&D's slog fights.

To me, that shows me that stories are stories, and games are games. The only way to get a story experience is to play a story game, which D&D (and GURPS) are not. They are crunchy combat simulators that have their own internal logic, and that can have its own benefits too. There's a reason where all playing this game and not Dungeon World.

But I think if you really wanted to have Bard kill Smaug in D&D 5e, its possible to approach that fiction. First off, give Bard his Black Arrow (Arrow of Dragonslaying), and give Smaug a weak spot that makes him vulnerable to damage when he gets hit there, but make it AC 30. Obviously Bard hits with a Natural 20. Add in that when he takes more than, say, 25 damage in that spot (reachable with the arrow, sharpshooter, and high Dex) he must make a Con save vs DC 25 or become stunned until he can make a save, which he gets at the end of each of his turns. He fails and gets stunned, which makes him fall in the water, which is LAVA to a Red Dragon, he fails a few times more until he is submerged, at which point he dies (its my theory that the water really killed Smaug in the end anyways, in one of Tolkien's letters I read that water is death to dragons).

Its a lot of hoops to jump through, but that's what you get when trying to emulate specific scenes. IMO most fantasy heroes have OP stats anyways, like nothing lower than a 15 in most cases.

I think that D&D could be improved by treating some monster encounters more like skill encounters (a bit like this) or puzzles. Monsters that have multiple ways to be destroyed where HP smashing is the least effective are always far more interesting encounters.

I remember there was a monster (from an entirely different system) where you could either fight it (it was a Golem with a bajillion HP) OR you could shoot a hole in its breastplate and try to knock out its heart (requiring two difficult shots - it was too high to hit from the ground). Or, you could try hit its fuel source (some kind of synthetic blood in this case) and then try make it bleed out, or both.

Things like tricking a red dragon into being submerged (convenient water tower) which knocks out its breath weapon and gives it disadvantage on attacks is a 'softer' example.

[Frogreaver]

I think that D&D could be improved by treating some monster encounters more like skill encounters (a bit like this) or puzzles. Monsters that have multiple ways to be destroyed where HP smashing is the least effective are always far more interesting encounters.

I remember there was a monster (from an entirely different system) where you could either fight it (it was a Golem with a bajillion HP) OR you could shoot a hole in its breastplate and try to knock out its heart (requiring two difficult shots - it was too high to hit from the ground). Or, you could try hit its fuel source (some kind of synthetic blood in this case) and then try make it bleed out, or both.

Things like tricking a red dragon into being submerged (convenient water tower) which knocks out its breath weapon and gives it disadvantage on attacks is a 'softer' example.

IMO. Those kind of things work better in vastly different styles of games. I don't think D&D would be better by trying to emulate those.

[PhoenixPhyre]

IMO. Those kind of things work better in vastly different styles of games. I don't think D&D would be better by trying to emulate those.

On this we agree. I've never met a puzzle boss I enjoyed.

[Dr.Samurai]

To clarify the point I was making about the bow and arrows... there is a massive divide between real life weapons, and D&D weapons, and it really changes how martials feel vs how they are portrayed.

I am not suggesting that a bow should one-shot an enemy, let alone a powerful enemy like a high-ranking demon.

I am suggesting that the base-line martial ability with a weapon; that is, the "proficiency" that nay-sayers refer to as "competence" is not enough, in my eyes, to qualify as "yeah, martials are proficient with all weapons so they do map to real life warriors in that way". They don't, because the weapons are pitiful. The damage is pitiful. When I say a knight was skilled with a bow and arrow, I don't mean he literally knew how to loose arrows from a bow and ping his enemies for a little bit of damage, allowing him the versatility to still contribute to the combat if an enemy is at a distance. The response of "a D&D warrior can pick up any weapon and attack with it" is missing the point.

Even the new Weapon Mastery system still forces THE FIGHTER, of all classes, to select a few Weapon Mastery traits instead of simply knowing all of them. It's absurd, as if we're barely holding back the heat death of the universe if the fighter unlocked every weapon mastery in the game at level 1.

Point taken about the difference between stories and games. But both are constructs and can created to depict/work however the author wants.

[titi]

To clarify the point I was making about the bow and arrows... there is a massive divide between real life weapons, and D&D weapons, and it really changes how martials feel vs how they are portrayed.

I am not suggesting that a bow should one-shot an enemy, let alone a powerful enemy like a high-ranking demon.

I am suggesting that the base-line martial ability with a weapon; that is, the "proficiency" that nay-sayers refer to as "competence" is not enough, in my eyes, to qualify as "yeah, martials are proficient with all weapons so they do map to real life warriors in that way".

Except that's not the goal of 5e at all. 5e isn't realistic, and it isn't trying to be. It's trying to map out to fantasy tropes, and in fantasy tropes, knights have a shining armor, a lance and a sword.

Is 5e succeding in mapping out fantasy tropes would be a more interesting question, but clearly it's not the one you're arguing about.


They don't, because the weapons are pitiful. The damage is pitiful.

And again, no it isn't. I've never felt like I did poor damage while playing martials, nor did I ever felt like my friends playing martials did poor damage. And I know I'm not the only one because the general consensus is that damage is not the problem of martials.


When I say a knight was skilled with a bow and arrow, I don't mean he literally knew how to loose arrows from a bow and ping his enemies for a little bit of damage, allowing him the versatility to still contribute to the combat if an enemy is at a distance. The response of "a D&D warrior can pick up any weapon and attack with it" is missing the point.

It's beside the point, but I'm curious : why a knight with a bow ? I'm not going to say it never happened in real life, but it's a very strange example considering the big image everyone has of the knight's weapons are the lance and sword.

But also, the reason why people on the battlefield had (and still have) mutliple weapons isn't because they were expert in all of them; it was to be more versatile and still contribute even when their main weapon could not help them : A lance for the charge, a sword for the melee, a dagger if they were grappled, some had a mace specifically to fight heavily armored foes.

But here's the thing : That kind of versatility in 5e is useless. The most you'll ever need is a ranged weapon and a melee weapon. Because there isn't much of a difference between hitting people with a mace or a sword, except maybe the damage die.


Even the new Weapon Mastery system still forces THE FIGHTER, of all classes, to select a few Weapon Mastery traits instead of simply knowing all of them. It's absurd, as if we're barely holding back the heat death of the universe if the fighter unlocked every weapon mastery in the game at level 1.

I don't see how that would make for more interesting characters.
In the first place, fighters start with 3 masteries. What fantasy characters use more than 3 different weapons except those who specifically have hundred of weapons ?

[Amechra]

Honestly, the issue with HP is just that there's been insane HP inflation since early D&D, especially once you get into higher level monsters. A pit fiend in 5e has a little over five times as much HP as a pit fiend in 2e, despite unoptimized damage not scaling nearly as much (though it has gone up)

If you want to get some idea as to why, compare the following two parties, both with mediocre stats:

2e (8th level)

A S&B Fighter with a longsword specialty. Makes 2x longsword attacks for 1d8+2 damage each. Average damage: 13
A Thief with a longsword. Makes a single longsword attack for 1d8 damage, but can stab someone in the back for 3d8 damage if they catch them by surprise. Average damage: 4.5 (13.5 vs. surprised).
A Cleric thwacking someone with a mace. Makes 1x mace attack for 1d8 damage. Average damage: 4.5
A Mage plinking away with a crossbow. Makes 1x crossbow attack for 1d4 damage. Average damage: 2.5
Total party damage: 24.5, though it can go up to 33.5 if you're lucky.


5e (8th level, 16 in main stat, 14 in other relevant stats)

A S&B Fighter with the Dueling fighting style. Makes 2x longsword attacks for 1d8+5 damage each. Average damage: 19
A Rogue with a shortbow. Makes a single bow attack for 5d6+3 damage unless sneak attack isn't possible (stuff like Steady Aim makes Sneak Attack very likely). Average damage: 20.5 (6.5 when no sneak attack)
A Cleric using Radiant Flame with Blessed Strikes. Average damage: 13.5
A Wizard casting Firebolt. Deals 2d10 damage. Average damage: 11.
Total party damage: 64 a round, 50 if sneak attack doesn't happen.


Notice how we went from the Fighter comfortably making up the majority of the party's damage outside of "big" fights (and it'd be even more biased towards the Fighter if they were optimized and/or rolled decent stats) to being a more equal partner in the damage-dealing business. That might seem nice and fair, but it has a ton of knock-on effects on how the game is structured (especially since the 2e Fighter's Thac0 was 3-5 points better than everyone else's, so their accuracy was a lot better).

In 2e, monster design only really needed to consider the party's Fighter-adjacent classes (at least as far as HP is concerned), especially since they were the only ones whose damage really scaled all that much (the Thief's Backstab did get better as they leveled up, but it was FAR more situational than 5e's sneak attack). This in turn meant that, as long as the Fighters (and Paladins/Rangers/etc) were doing their job, the rest of the party could do other stuff. This worked really well with early D&D's "combat is a failure state" model, and offered quite a bit of flexibility to do stuff like, say, have the party Mage perform a ritual while everyone else guards them (I guarantee you won't miss the d4 :p)

Meanwhile, over in 5e, everything has to be designed as if everyone is contributing damage-wise, because everyone's damage makes up a big enough chunk of the pie to matter. If the Cleric takes a turn off to heal or the Rogue can't manage to get a Sneak Attack, you've lost just over a fifth of your party's total damage for that round, which is big enough to be noticeable. Especially when, again, the monster design expects that damage to be there.

(I have more thoughts on this, but I also have work in just over four hours. I should probably get a little​ bit of sleep. :p)

[Rukelnikov]

Honestly, the issue with HP is just that there's been insane HP inflation since early D&D, especially once you get into higher level monsters. A pit fiend in 5e has a little over five times as much HP as a pit fiend in 2e, despite unoptimized damage not scaling nearly as much (though it has gone up)

If you want to get some idea as to why, compare the following two parties, both with mediocre stats:

2e (8th level)

A S&B Fighter with a longsword specialty. Makes 2x longsword attacks for 1d8+2 damage each. Average damage: 13
A Thief with a longsword. Makes a single longsword attack for 1d8 damage, but can stab someone in the back for 3d8 damage if they catch them by surprise. Average damage: 4.5 (13.5 vs. surprised).
A Cleric thwacking someone with a mace. Makes 1x mace attack for 1d8 damage. Average damage: 4.5
A Mage plinking away with a crossbow. Makes 1x crossbow attack for 1d4 damage. Average damage: 2.5
Total party damage: 24.5, though it can go up to 33.5 if you're lucky.


5e (8th level, 16 in main stat, 14 in other relevant stats)

A S&B Fighter with the Dueling fighting style. Makes 2x longsword attacks for 1d8+5 damage each. Average damage: 19
A Rogue with a shortbow. Makes a single bow attack for 5d6+3 damage unless sneak attack isn't possible (stuff like Steady Aim makes Sneak Attack very likely). Average damage: 20.5 (6.5 when no sneak attack)
A Cleric using Radiant Flame with Blessed Strikes. Average damage: 13.5
A Wizard casting Firebolt. Deals 2d10 damage. Average damage: 11.
Total party damage: 64 a round, 50 if sneak attack doesn't happen.


Notice how we went from the Fighter comfortably making up the majority of the party's damage outside of "big" fights (and it'd be even more biased towards the Fighter if they were optimized and/or rolled decent stats) to being a more equal partner in the damage-dealing business. That might seem nice and fair, but it has a ton of knock-on effects on how the game is structured (especially since the 2e Fighter's Thac0 was 3-5 points better than everyone else's, so their accuracy was a lot better).

In 2e, monster design only really needed to consider the party's Fighter-adjacent classes (at least as far as HP is concerned), especially since they were the only ones whose damage really scaled all that much (the Thief's Backstab did get better as they leveled up, but it was FAR more situational than 5e's sneak attack). This in turn meant that, as long as the Fighters (and Paladins/Rangers/etc) were doing their job, the rest of the party could do other stuff. This worked really well with early D&D's "combat is a failure state" model, and offered quite a bit of flexibility to do stuff like, say, have the party Mage perform a ritual while everyone else guards them (I guarantee you won't miss the d4 :p)

Meanwhile, over in 5e, everything has to be designed as if everyone is contributing damage-wise, because everyone's damage makes up a big enough chunk of the pie to matter. If the Cleric takes a turn off to heal or the Rogue can't manage to get a Sneak Attack, you've lost just over a fifth of your party's total damage for that round, which is big enough to be noticeable. Especially when, again, the monster design expects that damage to be there.

(I have more thoughts on this, but I also have work in just over four hours. I should probably get a little​ bit of sleep. :p)

Very nice post, thanks.

[Dr.Samurai]

Except that's not the goal of 5e at all. 5e isn't realistic, and it isn't trying to be. It's trying to map out to fantasy tropes, and in fantasy tropes, knights have a shining armor, a lance and a sword.
I didn't say this was the goal of 5E and it is missing the mark. If you're going to quote every one of my posts, please pay closer attention to what I'm saying.

I'm speaking specifically to those tropes. Warriors are badass in tropes. They are... fine, in D&D. Yes, they can (and do) kill monsters. I know, I play them exclusively. But the knight in shining armor with the sword and lance is also not really portrayed well in D&D, in my opinion. It's armor (that virtually anyone can get proficiency in by the way) and a sword, which does some base damage. That's it. ANYTHING BEYOND THAT requires some sort of feature for the Fighter to select.

Oh, I see you have Heavy Armor. Wow. So fancy. I have Medium Armor, my AC is only 1 point behind yours, teehee.

Oh, I see you guys have armor, wow, so tanky. I have spells, my AC can sky-rocket past yours whenever I need it to.

Oh, you have a sword attack? You do 1d8+3? Wow, me too, because anyone with base proficiency only does weapon damage+mod.

It's all very baseline/default/nothing.


Is 5e succeding in mapping out fantasy tropes would be a more interesting question, but clearly it's not the one you're arguing about.

I'm not sure you're clear on anything I'm saying, to be honest, except that you have to reply and disagree.


And again, no it isn't. I've never felt like I did poor damage while playing martials, nor did I ever felt like my friends playing martials did poor damage. And I know I'm not the only one because the general consensus is that damage is not the problem of martials.
As I've said numerous times now, it's not a problem if you accept the system is okay as is. And I'm saying I don't. See Amechra's post where he outlines how the slices of damage pie have shifted across the party over editions and the monster HP has inflated, and combat has become the assumed default, instead of the other way around.


It's beside the point, but I'm curious : why a knight with a bow ? I'm not going to say it never happened in real life, but it's a very strange example considering the big image everyone has of the knight's weapons are the lance and sword.
Because my point is that warriors were lethal in a variety of ways. The issues I have is that:

1. The baseline default of the martial feels very low. It doesn't feel like a lethal warrior. (This is particularly true as you level up. The warrior just doesn't scale that much.)
2. If you want to do ANYTHING beyond the default baseline damage, the game forces you to "specialize", devoting your subclass, feats, and features to a single style of fighting. So when I complain that the game divides martials along all of these specializations, despite the fact that warriors were expert swordsman, grapplers, horsemen, etc. people reply that the fighter is "competent" (read: proficient) in everything. They can make unarmed attacks for 1+str damage, they can use any weapon for weapon die+mod, and they can ride a horse for more speed. And I say to that... it's all jars and jars of weak sauce.

But also, the reason why people on the battlefield had (and still have) mutliple weapons isn't because they were expert in all of them; it was to be more versatile and still contribute even when their main weapon could not help them : A lance for the charge, a sword for the melee, a dagger if they were grappled, some had a mace specifically to fight heavily armored foes.
You don't have to be an expert to be lethal. The D&D fighter doesn't have to one-hit-kill things to feel more dangerous.

But here's the thing : That kind of versatility in 5e is useless. The most you'll ever need is a ranged weapon and a melee weapon. Because there isn't much of a difference between hitting people with a mace or a sword, except maybe the damage die.
Correct. Because the combat system is bare bones and anemic. There's nothing to it. Choose a weapon, and hit for some damage. Pew pew pew.

I don't see how that would make for more interesting characters.
I think it would, if the weapon masteries themselves were more interesting.

But it's the attitude of the game toward the martials. Here is the fighter, master of fighting, and he has to select his masteries, and never ever gets to gain all of them. He can't find a manual to learn combat maneuvers, feats, fighting styles, or weapon masteries.

Here is the wizard. He can learn every spell in the game, far more impactful than any fighting style. Two wizards in a party can double up on spells at level up since they can just share what they know with each other through scribing scrolls.

It's just a different attitude between one and the other, and this attitude that WotC has makes people think that this is exactly how it should be.

In the first place, fighters start with 3 masteries. What fantasy characters use more than 3 different weapons except those who specifically have hundred of weapons ?
If it doesn't matter why not just give it to the fighters as a demonstration of their mastery? They don't even get it at higher levels, capping out at 5 masteries.

Why let the wizard have this open ended potential, but the fighter has to choose a single fighting style, and gets a handful of masteries?

Honestly, the issue with HP is just that there's been insane HP inflation since early D&D, especially once you get into higher level monsters. A pit fiend in 5e has a little over five times as much HP as a pit fiend in 2e, despite unoptimized damage not scaling nearly as much (though it has gone up)

If you want to get some idea as to why, compare the following two parties, both with mediocre stats:

2e (8th level)

A S&B Fighter with a longsword specialty. Makes 2x longsword attacks for 1d8+2 damage each. Average damage: 13
A Thief with a longsword. Makes a single longsword attack for 1d8 damage, but can stab someone in the back for 3d8 damage if they catch them by surprise. Average damage: 4.5 (13.5 vs. surprised).
A Cleric thwacking someone with a mace. Makes 1x mace attack for 1d8 damage. Average damage: 4.5
A Mage plinking away with a crossbow. Makes 1x crossbow attack for 1d4 damage. Average damage: 2.5
Total party damage: 24.5, though it can go up to 33.5 if you're lucky.


5e (8th level, 16 in main stat, 14 in other relevant stats)

A S&B Fighter with the Dueling fighting style. Makes 2x longsword attacks for 1d8+5 damage each. Average damage: 19
A Rogue with a shortbow. Makes a single bow attack for 5d6+3 damage unless sneak attack isn't possible (stuff like Steady Aim makes Sneak Attack very likely). Average damage: 20.5 (6.5 when no sneak attack)
A Cleric using Radiant Flame with Blessed Strikes. Average damage: 13.5
A Wizard casting Firebolt. Deals 2d10 damage. Average damage: 11.
Total party damage: 64 a round, 50 if sneak attack doesn't happen.


Notice how we went from the Fighter comfortably making up the majority of the party's damage outside of "big" fights (and it'd be even more biased towards the Fighter if they were optimized and/or rolled decent stats) to being a more equal partner in the damage-dealing business. That might seem nice and fair, but it has a ton of knock-on effects on how the game is structured (especially since the 2e Fighter's Thac0 was 3-5 points better than everyone else's, so their accuracy was a lot better).

In 2e, monster design only really needed to consider the party's Fighter-adjacent classes (at least as far as HP is concerned), especially since they were the only ones whose damage really scaled all that much (the Thief's Backstab did get better as they leveled up, but it was FAR more situational than 5e's sneak attack). This in turn meant that, as long as the Fighters (and Paladins/Rangers/etc) were doing their job, the rest of the party could do other stuff. This worked really well with early D&D's "combat is a failure state" model, and offered quite a bit of flexibility to do stuff like, say, have the party Mage perform a ritual while everyone else guards them (I guarantee you won't miss the d4 :p)

Meanwhile, over in 5e, everything has to be designed as if everyone is contributing damage-wise, because everyone's damage makes up a big enough chunk of the pie to matter. If the Cleric takes a turn off to heal or the Rogue can't manage to get a Sneak Attack, you've lost just over a fifth of your party's total damage for that round, which is big enough to be noticeable. Especially when, again, the monster design expects that damage to be there.

(I have more thoughts on this, but I also have work in just over four hours. I should probably get a little​ bit of sleep. :p)
Very interesting post Amechra, thank you for sharing. Looking forward to anything else you have to say on it if/when you do get a chance.

[Dork_Forge]

I didn't say this was the goal of 5E and it is missing the mark. If you're going to quote every one of my posts, please pay closer attention to what I'm saying.

I'm speaking specifically to those tropes. Warriors are badass in tropes. They are... fine, in D&D. Yes, they can (and do) kill monsters. I know, I play them exclusively. But the knight in shining armor with the sword and lance is also not really portrayed well in D&D, in my opinion. It's armor (that virtually anyone can get proficiency in by the way) and a sword, which does some base damage. That's it. ANYTHING BEYOND THAT requires some sort of feature for the Fighter to select.

Oh, I see you have Heavy Armor. Wow. So fancy. I have Medium Armor, my AC is only 1 point behind yours, teehee.

Oh, I see you guys have armor, wow, so tanky. I have spells, my AC can sky-rocket past yours whenever I need it to.

Oh, you have a sword attack? You do 1d8+3? Wow, me too, because anyone with base proficiency only does weapon damage+mod.

It's all very baseline/default/nothing.


Maybe I'm misreading this, but it looks like you're saying just proficiency should be harder to get/more impactful than just prof to accuracy instead of relying on features to enhance the baseline?

Just trying to get things straight, since it looks like at times you're comparing core class features that take up the majority of design space (Spellcasting) against just... swinging a sword for some reason?




Honestly, the issue with HP is just that there's been insane HP inflation since early D&D, especially once you get into higher level monsters. A pit fiend in 5e has a little over five times as much HP as a pit fiend in 2e, despite unoptimized damage not scaling nearly as much (though it has gone up)

If you want to get some idea as to why, compare the following two parties, both with mediocre stats:

2e (8th level)

A S&B Fighter with a longsword specialty. Makes 2x longsword attacks for 1d8+2 damage each. Average damage: 13
A Thief with a longsword. Makes a single longsword attack for 1d8 damage, but can stab someone in the back for 3d8 damage if they catch them by surprise. Average damage: 4.5 (13.5 vs. surprised).
A Cleric thwacking someone with a mace. Makes 1x mace attack for 1d8 damage. Average damage: 4.5
A Mage plinking away with a crossbow. Makes 1x crossbow attack for 1d4 damage. Average damage: 2.5
Total party damage: 24.5, though it can go up to 33.5 if you're lucky.


5e (8th level, 16 in main stat, 14 in other relevant stats)

A S&B Fighter with the Dueling fighting style. Makes 2x longsword attacks for 1d8+5 damage each. Average damage: 19
A Rogue with a shortbow. Makes a single bow attack for 5d6+3 damage unless sneak attack isn't possible (stuff like Steady Aim makes Sneak Attack very likely). Average damage: 20.5 (6.5 when no sneak attack)
A Cleric using Radiant Flame with Blessed Strikes. Average damage: 13.5
A Wizard casting Firebolt. Deals 2d10 damage. Average damage: 11.
Total party damage: 64 a round, 50 if sneak attack doesn't happen.


Notice how we went from the Fighter comfortably making up the majority of the party's damage outside of "big" fights (and it'd be even more biased towards the Fighter if they were optimized and/or rolled decent stats) to being a more equal partner in the damage-dealing business. That might seem nice and fair, but it has a ton of knock-on effects on how the game is structured (especially since the 2e Fighter's Thac0 was 3-5 points better than everyone else's, so their accuracy was a lot better).

In 2e, monster design only really needed to consider the party's Fighter-adjacent classes (at least as far as HP is concerned), especially since they were the only ones whose damage really scaled all that much (the Thief's Backstab did get better as they leveled up, but it was FAR more situational than 5e's sneak attack). This in turn meant that, as long as the Fighters (and Paladins/Rangers/etc) were doing their job, the rest of the party could do other stuff. This worked really well with early D&D's "combat is a failure state" model, and offered quite a bit of flexibility to do stuff like, say, have the party Mage perform a ritual while everyone else guards them (I guarantee you won't miss the d4 :p)

Meanwhile, over in 5e, everything has to be designed as if everyone is contributing damage-wise, because everyone's damage makes up a big enough chunk of the pie to matter. If the Cleric takes a turn off to heal or the Rogue can't manage to get a Sneak Attack, you've lost just over a fifth of your party's total damage for that round, which is big enough to be noticeable. Especially when, again, the monster design expects that damage to be there.

(I have more thoughts on this, but I also have work in just over four hours. I should probably get a little​ bit of sleep. :p)

This was very interesting! Can I ask why you decided to go with a +3 modifier for the 5e comparison?

As presented the Fighter is doing about 29.7% of the damage, but factoring in ASIs to main stats (which favours the Fighter's bonus ASI and disfavours the casters, who don't add their mod to the cantrip damage as standard) would change the party damage to 70. This makes the Fighter's share of the damage to 32.9%, with the Rogue constituting 32.1%. Meaning the Fighter is the primary damage dealer (and their damage more reliable than the Rogue), with the casters combined doing about a 3rd of the damage despite being half of the party. The Fighter here is actually doing well considering that agnostic of feats, 8th level is a sore comparison point seeing as that's when Blessed Strikes comes online and Rogues have a smooth scaling damage progression rather than jumps like the Fighter.

And this is just base at will of the core class, seeing as Fighters typically get more damage out of their subclasses than any of the other points of comparison, the shift would likely be higher in most combinations.

[KorvinStarmast]

Honestly, the issue with HP is just that there's been insane HP inflation since early D&D, especially once you get into higher level monsters. A pit fiend in 5e has a little over five times as much HP as a pit fiend in 2e, despite unoptimized damage not scaling nearly as much (though it has gone up)

If you want to get some idea as to why, compare the following two parties, both with mediocre stats:

2e (8th level)

A S&B Fighter with a longsword specialty. Makes 2x longsword attacks for 1d8+2 damage each. Average damage: 13
A Thief with a longsword. Makes a single longsword attack for 1d8 damage, but can stab someone in the back for 3d8 damage if they catch them by surprise. Average damage: 4.5 (13.5 vs. surprised).
A Cleric thwacking someone with a mace. Makes 1x mace attack for 1d8 damage. Average damage: 4.5
A Mage plinking away with a crossbow. Makes 1x crossbow attack for 1d4 damage. Average damage: 2.5
Total party damage: 24.5, though it can go up to 33.5 if you're lucky.


5e (8th level, 16 in main stat, 14 in other relevant stats)

A S&B Fighter with the Dueling fighting style. Makes 2x longsword attacks for 1d8+5 damage each. Average damage: 19
A Rogue with a shortbow. Makes a single bow attack for 5d6+3 damage unless sneak attack isn't possible (stuff like Steady Aim makes Sneak Attack very likely). Average damage: 20.5 (6.5 when no sneak attack)
A Cleric using Radiant Flame with Blessed Strikes. Average damage: 13.5
A Wizard casting Firebolt. Deals 2d10 damage. Average damage: 11.
Total party damage: 64 a round, 50 if sneak attack doesn't happen.


Notice how we went from the Fighter comfortably making up the majority of the party's damage outside of "big" fights (and it'd be even more biased towards the Fighter if they were optimized and/or rolled decent stats) to being a more equal partner in the damage-dealing business. That might seem nice and fair, but it has a ton of knock-on effects on how the game is structured (especially since the 2e Fighter's Thac0 was 3-5 points better than everyone else's, so their accuracy was a lot better).

In 2e, monster design only really needed to consider the party's Fighter-adjacent classes (at least as far as HP is concerned), especially since they were the only ones whose damage really scaled all that much (the Thief's Backstab did get better as they leveled up, but it was FAR more situational than 5e's sneak attack). This in turn meant that, as long as the Fighters (and Paladins/Rangers/etc) were doing their job, the rest of the party could do other stuff. This worked really well with early D&D's "combat is a failure state" model, and offered quite a bit of flexibility to do stuff like, say, have the party Mage perform a ritual while everyone else guards them (I guarantee you won't miss the d4 :p)

Meanwhile, over in 5e, everything has to be designed as if everyone is contributing damage-wise, because everyone's damage makes up a big enough chunk of the pie to matter. If the Cleric takes a turn off to heal or the Rogue can't manage to get a Sneak Attack, you've lost just over a fifth of your party's total damage for that round, which is big enough to be noticeable. Especially when, again, the monster design expects that damage to be there.

(I have more thoughts on this, but I also have work in just over four hours. I should probably get a little​ bit of sleep. :p) And yet, with the Fighter's contribution nerfed, we still get the whinging on this forum about how OP PAM, or PAM/GWM is. :smallcool:,

[titi]

Edit :

That was too aggressive of me. I apologize.

I'll rephrase :

I do not understand why you are defering to real-life so much, and then say you're "speaking specifically to those tropes". It seems to me that you're conflating real-life warriors and fantasy tropes.

[Dork_Forge]

And yet, with the Fighter's contribution nerfed, we still get the whinging on this forum about how OP PAM, or PAM/GWM is. :smallcool:,

I don't think they're overpowered in an absolute statement kind of way, but they are warping from a decision making decision point of view when looking towards damage building. This doesn't need them to be nerfed per se, the decision tree could just be widened a bit.

[Rukelnikov]

And yet, with the Fighter's contribution nerfed, we still get the whinging on this forum about how OP PAM, or PAM/GWM is. :smallcool:,


I don't think they're overpowered in an absolute statement kind of way, but they are warping from a decision making decision point of view when looking towards damage building. This doesn't need them to be nerfed per se, the decision tree could just be widened a bit.

I think PAM/GWM is very strong early on compared to other melee options, its not very strong compared to everything else in the game (I still think a PHB Sorlock spamming 2 Ago Blasts a round is a better damage dealer from lvl 11 onwards)

[titi]

If it doesn't matter why not just give it to the fighters as a demonstration of their mastery? They don't even get it at higher levels, capping out at 5 masteries.

Why let the wizard have this open ended potential, but the fighter has to choose a single fighting style, and gets a handful of masteries?

About why fighter don't get all masteries at the same time.

I think it's precisely because it doesn't matter. Unless you specifically build a character to switch out weapons every attack, the 3 masteries you got at lvl1 are enough even at lvl20. But the fact that you have to choose them anchors your character. And if you don't life the anchor, you can just change it during a long rest by switching your weapon masteries
(your comparison of the wizards' spells and the weapons masteries doesn't work, by the way, because you can learn every masteries, you just can't get them all in the same time, much like a wizard can't prepare all his spells the same day)

I do agree with you about fighting styles, tho. There is no reason why you couldn't learn more fighting styles as you go up in level (plus it would force them to give something else to champion).

[Tanarii]

And yet, with the Fighter's contribution nerfed, we still get the whinging on this forum about how OP PAM, or PAM/GWM is. :smallcool:,
It's OP if you expect the 6 martials to do 1/4 of party damage across the adventuring day instead of 50%.
(As a grognard I definitely would be perfectly fine with the latter, but the 2nd point below still needs to be addressed.)

It's OP if you expect equivalent damage output for all 6 martials regardless of weapon load out (except S&B).

[Dr.Samurai]

Maybe I'm misreading this, but it looks like you're saying just proficiency should be harder to get/more impactful than just prof to accuracy instead of relying on features to enhance the baseline?

Just trying to get things straight, since it looks like at times you're comparing core class features that take up the majority of design space (Spellcasting) against just... swinging a sword for some reason?
Yes. I don't think Martials get enough out of base proficiency. It doesn't separate them that much from non-martials, nor does it do a lot to speak to tropes or real life warriors.

Reach is a major advantage in actual combat, but in D&D you have to get a subclass or take a feat in order to strike at enemies closing in on you. There's very few counter attacks, and again they require specific subclasses or feats/weapons.

There were no fire-breathing dragons in real life, but in fantasy knights use shields to block their breath weapon. You need a feat to do that, and you don't gain the bonus to saves against it if it's targeting other people, and in fact you can't protect other people with it in this way.

I think there's a lot of room for improvement to make martials have more interesting features and ways to interact in combat.

With regards to damage, I think I feel more like a "competent" warrior with my current GWM fighter than all the other times I played without it. And I'm fighting a lot of high HP monsters that don't go down in a single turn, but I still feel like I'm dealing significant damage and I can get them in two turns and go after the other ones surrounding us. I'm not just chipping away and hoping the casters throw down some giant AOEs to deal the bulk of the damage for the rest of us to finish off. I'm the primary damage dealer, and that makes sense to me as the warrior in the party.

Now... I don't think that should be an option only for heavy weapons, I think all warriors should feel this way to play. But that's not the system we currently have.

[Skrum]

If we're comparing martial classes to pop culture, here's some benchmarks I would love to see the game lean in to

- A 5th level martial class should feel like playing Aragorn. Highly skilled within several distinct and disparate topics, a potent and inspiring leader, and incredibly deadly in combat (cutting down scores of lessor enemies or going toe to toe with greater ones)

- A 10th level martial class should feel like playing Himura the Battosai. Your feats of prowess are beyond the imagination or comprehension of lessor warriors, and your skill and speed with a weapon have reached an almost mystical level

- A 15th level martial class should feel like playing Hercules. Your strength and general aptitude are so great you are never caught "unprepared." You always have an option, because the rules of physics don't apply to you the same way they do lessor mortals

- A 20th level martial class should feel like playing Superman. You have essentially transcended worldly boundaries, and only the most potent foes pose a true challenge to you

=================

IMO, 5e does a decent-ish job getting martials to Aragorn. Probably not by 5th level, and not that cleanly, but I would say that is the trope/image 5e has in mind for the martial classes, and they more or less do it. But they never reach Battosai, much less Hercules, much less Superman.

And of course, the full casters aren't so bounded. At a bare minimum, they're Gandalf (similar in combat to the warrior, toe to toe, but also capable of magics entirely beyond the scope of martials or mortals). Honestly though, they're really more like Dr Strange.

I truly don't understand the lack of inspiration behind martial class design, when there's so many tropes, characters, and fantasy worlds to pull from. Matt Mercer had an interesting video about game design and how the mechanics of a game help create and promote the story/vibe. His observation is that 5e just doesn't have a vision for what kind (flavor) of game we're supposed to be playing with it. Is it gritty and dark? Is it superheroes? Is it high fantasy? The answer is "none of the above." And there's no more obvious place to see this in the disparity between the classes.

[Trask]

Some people say they don't like things that should be class features turned into spells, and I agree. What I also don't like is things that should be basic options turned into class features (or feats).

I think what I'd really like to see is more options built into the Attack action, and base action system in general. Setting aside poached class features for a moment, what if all combatants could choose to "Fight Recklessly" and conversely "Fight Defensively". It would be nice to have the Samurai's "Rapid Strike" as a base option, as well as maybe "Defensive Duelist", with perhaps a drawback that when you use it you have disadvantage on attacks using the weapon you parried with until the end of your next turn. Naturally things like GWM perhaps SHOULD have been base options to begin with, maybe as part of the Heavy property, or a fighting style at the least, given how essential they are for a martial to reach caster damage. Things like that would be nice.

[KorvinStarmast]

It's OP if you expect the 6 martials to do 1/4 of party damage across the adventuring day instead of 50%.
(As a grognard I definitely would be perfectly fine with the latter, but the 2nd point below still needs to be addressed.)
I'd prefer the martials to do the majority of the damage, though, but that might put me in the grognard camp.

[Dr.Samurai]

Some people say they don't like things that should be class features turned into spells, and I agree. What I also don't like is things that should be basic options turned into class features (or feats).

I think what I'd really like to see is more options built into the Attack action, and base action system in general. Setting aside poached class features for a moment, what if all combatants could choose to "Fight Recklessly" and conversely "Fight Defensively". It would be nice to have the Samurai's "Rapid Strike" as a base option, as well as maybe "Defensive Duelist", with perhaps a drawback that when you use it you have disadvantage on attacks using the weapon you parried with until the end of your next turn. Naturally things like GWM perhaps SHOULD have been base options to begin with, maybe as part of the Heavy property, or a fighting style at the least, given how essential they are for a martial to reach caster damage. Things like that would be nice.
I agree with all of this, and in some sense this is what I'm trying to convey, albeit poorly.

I'd prefer the martials to do the majority of the damage, though, but that might put me in the grognard camp.
If I started in 3.0 edition, can I be a grognard? Because I'd also prefer this as well lol.

[Saelethil]

It's OP if you expect the 6 martials to do 1/4 of party damage across the adventuring day instead of 50%.
(As a grognard I definitely would be perfectly fine with the latter, but the 2nd point below still needs to be addressed.)

I’m not sure how often I fit the criteria for a grognard but I don’t see how this is such a controversial stance. I get that it it doesn’t quite fit the 5e design philosophy but a group without a martial should have to approach problems in very different ways.

[Anymage]

If we're comparing martial classes to pop culture, here's some benchmarks I would love to see the game lean in to

- A 5th level martial class should feel like playing Aragorn. Highly skilled within several distinct and disparate topics, a potent and inspiring leader, and incredibly deadly in combat (cutting down scores of lessor enemies or going toe to toe with greater ones)

You'd need to give martials a lot more skill options, and blur a lot of class lines to do this. It's kind of hard for fighters to get this when on the one hand you have rogues calling the skill niche and paladins/barbarians/rangers (and even monks to a degree) all staking out various fighting niches. An ideal D&D hack might either reconsolidate various fighting types under one umbrella or else splinter casters into focused casting styles, but I don't see either happening without wide scale user revolt.


I'd prefer the martials to do the majority of the damage, though, but that might put me in the grognard camp.

I don't mind martials having a different damage profile, where martials are better for things like sustained single target damage while casters do AOE or high risk/high reward damage better. (E.G: Disintegrate, which hits like a truck if it connects but wastes your turn and a high level spell slot if the enemy saves.) Martials get to enjoy big numbers against priority targets, everybody is happy. Martials just doing better damage, however, either means that you shift to casters being left behind in a martial meta or else casters focusing on alternate win conditions that are unfun for martials because their damage is irrelevant compared to the caster's "do they make or fail this save" game.

It's different in a game with better niche protection and table time split more evenly between the relevant pillars. If the muscle in my heist game game shines when it's time to throw down but the face and the hacker also have roughly the same amount of spotlight time, it all works out. If big, involved set piece battles are the norm, I expect players to learn and put points into fighting skills because I'm pretty clearly telling them that this is what we're focusing most of our time on.

[Goobahfish]

Honestly, the issue with HP is just that there's been insane HP inflation since early D&D, especially once you get into higher level monsters. A pit fiend in 5e has a little over five times as much HP as a pit fiend in 2e, despite unoptimized damage not scaling nearly as much (though it has gone up)

If you want to get some idea as to why, compare the following two parties, both with mediocre stats:

2e (8th level)

A S&B Fighter with a longsword specialty. Makes 2x longsword attacks for 1d8+2 damage each. Average damage: 13
A Thief with a longsword. Makes a single longsword attack for 1d8 damage, but can stab someone in the back for 3d8 damage if they catch them by surprise. Average damage: 4.5 (13.5 vs. surprised).
A Cleric thwacking someone with a mace. Makes 1x mace attack for 1d8 damage. Average damage: 4.5
A Mage plinking away with a crossbow. Makes 1x crossbow attack for 1d4 damage. Average damage: 2.5
Total party damage: 24.5, though it can go up to 33.5 if you're lucky.


5e (8th level, 16 in main stat, 14 in other relevant stats)

A S&B Fighter with the Dueling fighting style. Makes 2x longsword attacks for 1d8+5 damage each. Average damage: 19
A Rogue with a shortbow. Makes a single bow attack for 5d6+3 damage unless sneak attack isn't possible (stuff like Steady Aim makes Sneak Attack very likely). Average damage: 20.5 (6.5 when no sneak attack)
A Cleric using Radiant Flame with Blessed Strikes. Average damage: 13.5
A Wizard casting Firebolt. Deals 2d10 damage. Average damage: 11.
Total party damage: 64 a round, 50 if sneak attack doesn't happen.


In 2e, <snip>

Meanwhile, over in 5e, <snip>
(I have more thoughts on this, but I also have work in just over four hours. I should probably get a little​ bit of sleep. :p)

Likewise with Fighter vs Mage HP. A level 5 2nd wizard had... 5D4 plus (+10 if you were lucky enough to have a 16 CON). A fighter had 5D10 (with up to +20 depending on CON).



Oh, I see you have Heavy Armor. Wow. So fancy. I have Medium Armor, my AC is only 1 point behind yours, teehee.

Oh, I see you guys have armor, wow, so tanky. I have spells, my AC can sky-rocket past yours whenever I need it to.

Oh, you have a sword attack? You do 1d8+3? Wow, me too, because anyone with base proficiency only does weapon damage+mod.

It's all very baseline/default/nothing.


I think this is probably the biggest 'craptastic' part about Martials. Heavy Armour isn't very good... it is better, but +1 isn't really a huge deal. And it is available with a level 1 dip.

Martial weapon proficiency... is like... +1 damage. Again, available with a level 1 dip.

Now, a level 1 dip in a caster gives you a cantrip, which auto-scales at level 5 (to become Martial-weapon competitive) and level 11 (to become Martial-weapon superior).

What do martials actually get? A fighting style (level 2) - again dippable. Extra attack at level 5. Extra attack doesn't stack (creating dead levels), doesn't merge between different martials (i.e. 2 Ranger/3 Fighter is painful). Then 'class features'. Class features do not have any inherent synergy (class feature from class X doesn't usually progress class feature from class Y).


Yes. I don't think Martials get enough out of base proficiency. It doesn't separate them that much from non-martials, nor does it do a lot to speak to tropes or real life warriors.

Now, I'm not suggesting a return to 3.5E feat trees, but in 3.5, Fighters got lots of Feats, and Weapon Specialisation was a thing requiring a 4 level dip in Fighter. 5E really needs something which is equivalent, something which effectively replaces the need for GWM/PAM as 'default damage feats' and something that isn't just another feat/class-feature-tax.

Here is a rough example.

Fighting Styles:

Two-Weapon Fighting. When you engage in two-weapon fighting, you can add your ability modifier to the damage of the second attack. If you have at least X levels in 'Martial Classes', you may perform an attack with your off-hand as part of the attack action (no bonus action required).

Great Weapon Fighting. When you roll a 1 or 2 on a damage die, you may re-roll them (yada yada yada). When you have at least X levels in 'Martial Classes', whenever you roll the maximum on a die-roll for damage, you may roll an additional die (maybe too powerful but you get the idea).

Protection. Reaction => Disadvantage. When you have at least X levels in 'Martial Classes', you gain advantage on saves vs AOE and may apply this bonus to allies 'behind you'.

Heavy Armour Thing => You gain damage reduction 1 while wearing Heavy Armour. For every 3 levels in Martial Classes, this increases by +1.

The 'tax' here is just gluing together martial classes in the same way you glue together casters with spell-slots. You could have a similar progression for Extra Attack etc.

This would give martials a very different feel, especially for multi-classing. Casters seem to get 90% of being a martial with a 2-level dip, whereas Martials get... cantrips and some level 1 spells with a 2-level caster dip, something they probably didn't even want to begin with whereas the caster is still hurling fireballs, just in heavy armour and a shield and swinging a greataxe too if that interests them.

[Tanarii]

You guys know cantrips do about 1/2 of a typical Martial's damage right?

And that's before you start putting optional rules like GWM, PAM, SS, etc etc into play.

[JNAProductions]

You guys know cantrips do about 1/2 of a typical Martial's damage right?

And that's before you start putting things like GWM, PAM, SS, etc etc into play.

I think the point is that a one-level dip in a martial weapons class gets you +1 to +2.5 damage. (1d6 to 1d8, of 1d8 to 2d6.)
Whereas a one-level dip in a caster class gets you 1d10 damage at level one, 2d10 at level five, and scaling again at eleven and seventeen.

A dedicated martial damage-dealer will outdamage cantrips for sure. But cantrips are very low-investment.

[Tanarii]

When's that actually relevant though? The ability to use a weapon or cantrip depends entirely on primary/secondary ability score.

So, like ... for Bards maybe? They can dip Sorcerer/Warlock for a decent Cha attack cantrip?

Edit: Oh, I thought of the classic example! Paladorcs and Paladocks. They dip Cha cantrip for a weak-but-better-than-using-Dex-8 ranged attack. :smallamused: So yeah, if Paladin is your Knight in Shining Armor archetype, it's relevant.

I suppose the same could be broadly be considered true for a Fighter. They're unlikely to be Cha secondary, but Cha or Int is likely to be higher than Dex. But if a fighter wants that they're probably already an EK.

[Goobahfish]

When's that actually relevant though? The ability to use a weapon or cantrip depends entirely on primary/secondary ability score.

So, like ... for Bards maybe? They can dip Sorcerer/Warlock for a decent Cha attack cantrip?

Edit: Oh, I thought of the classic example! Paladorcs and Paladocks. They dip Cha cantrip for a weak-but-better-than-using-Dex-8 ranged attack. :smallamused: So yeah, if Paladin is your Knight in Shining Armor archetype, it's relevant.

I suppose the same could be broadly be considered true for a Fighter. They're unlikely to be Cha secondary, but Cha or Int is likely to be higher than Dex. But if a fighter wants that they're probably already an EK.

It is a fair point that cantrips aren't as good as a heavy investment in weapon damage. But you need to invest at least 5 levels in a single martial class for this to be true. Beyond 5 levels... a lot of the martial classes begin to feel a bit lack-lustre because except for fighter, they don't get that 'big boost' or even a small progressive boost.

Tis why paladocks/sorcadins etc. feel so outrageous.

Now, because I haven't been super clear. Here is my theory.

As a caster, when you dip artificer or hexblade or cleric for proficiencies, you get this extra stuff. Yes, it sets your casting back a bit, but not really. Often you get to keep your spell progression but get to pump your AC to near 'good' levels.

Most importantly, you still 'feel' like a caster. You are probably still slinging spells and your primary source of 'powa' is magic.

You can also mix casters pretty easily because cantrips still scale and spell slots add.

As a martial though, dipping spellcaster can give you a few spells and cantrips, which don't really synergize with your playstyle (weapon/armour/HP). You risk delaying extra attack at level 5 (which is where a lot of campaigns spend time) basically neutering yourself. You get nothing much from multi-classing martials and it is never worthwhile to double level (to level 5) two martials because you create a dead-level. You don't even really get much extra in survivability because it is mostly a couple of HP in a game where dropping to zero is mostly inconsequential and Healing Word exists. You are in general more MAD than casters (Strength, Dex, Con) - assuming you want a ranged option.

So it feels pretty lame all round. The worst part is, that when the game basically says 'single-class to level 5', there isn't much to go for after that. When wizards are casting wish and teleport, you are getting a slight damage boost.

Things like free scaling for cantrips is just salt in the wounds :D

[titi]

I mean, at the end of the day, multiclassing is an optional rule, it's no suprise it's not very balanced

[5eNeedsDarksun]

It is a fair point that cantrips aren't as good as a heavy investment in weapon damage. But you need to invest at least 5 levels in a single martial class for this to be true. Beyond 5 levels... a lot of the martial classes begin to feel a bit lack-lustre because except for fighter, they don't get that 'big boost' or even a small progressive boost.

Tis why paladocks/sorcadins etc. feel so outrageous.

Now, because I haven't been super clear. Here is my theory.

As a caster, when you dip artificer or hexblade or cleric for proficiencies, you get this extra stuff. Yes, it sets your casting back a bit, but not really. Often you get to keep your spell progression but get to pump your AC to near 'good' levels.

Most importantly, you still 'feel' like a caster. You are probably still slinging spells and your primary source of 'powa' is magic.

You can also mix casters pretty easily because cantrips still scale and spell slots add.

As a martial though, dipping spellcaster can give you a few spells and cantrips, which don't really synergize with your playstyle (weapon/armour/HP). You risk delaying extra attack at level 5 (which is where a lot of campaigns spend time) basically neutering yourself. You get nothing much from multi-classing martials and it is never worthwhile to double level (to level 5) two martials because you create a dead-level. You don't even really get much extra in survivability because it is mostly a couple of HP in a game where dropping to zero is mostly inconsequential and Healing Word exists. You are in general more MAD than casters (Strength, Dex, Con) - assuming you want a ranged option.

So it feels pretty lame all round. The worst part is, that when the game basically says 'single-class to level 5', there isn't much to go for after that. When wizards are casting wish and teleport, you are getting a slight damage boost.

Things like free scaling for cantrips is just salt in the wounds :D

I'd agree with most of what you wrote, except one bit. Dipping spellcaster for a martial can fill an empty concentration slot; Bless alone stays relevant for the whole game, and while you likely can't pre-cast in every battle you only need to a few times per day to use up your slots without impacting action economy. Find Familiar is another great pick for a martial. The other thing is a bit of a wild card: magic items. Just one level of a caster class gives you access to things you just can't do if the right item comes up. Speaking from experience, Prayer Beads are way better on a martial with Cleric dip than they are on a full Cleric.

[KorvinStarmast]

If I started in 3.0 edition, can I be a grognard? Because I'd also prefer this as well lol. Only if you sit on the porch with me, sip Geritol(TM), and tell the kids to get off of the lawn. :smallbiggrin:

I mean, at the end of the day, multiclassing is an optional rule, it's no surprise it's not very balanced It is fit for purpose, but the core problem is (IMO) that Charisma has become a spell casting stat. :smallyuk:

[Frogreaver]

Only if you sit on the porch with me, sip Geritol(TM), and tell the kids to get off of the lawn. :smallbiggrin:
It is fit for purpose, but the core problem is (IMO) that Charisma has become a spell casting stat. :smallyuk:

Fun fact. At level 11 the fire bolt cantrip at 16 int will outperform the 2 attack extra attack and a longbow with 16 dex in dpr. Firebolt in tier 2 isn’t very far off from bow damage either given the 16 stat comparison.

[Dork_Forge]

Fun fact. At level 11 the fire bolt cantrip at 16 int will outperform the 2 attack extra attack and a longbow with 16 dex in dpr. Firebolt in tier 2 isn’t very far off from bow damage either given the 16 stat comparison.

That's not really surprising, casting stats doesn't benefit raw damage of Firebolt, which scales internally, but does the longbow, which scales on mod increases and class features.

Its just not really a practical comparison, a Fighter with longbow at level 11 with 20 Dex (ignoring superior accuracy from Archery) is actually appropriate:

Firebolt: 16.5

Longbow x3: 28.5

Never mind that the longbow is more reliable (more attacks) and more likely to trigger crits.

I could live with a 5e where can trips didn't just scale like they do, but comparisons like this really muddy things for no clear purpose.

[Hael]

That's not really surprising, casting stats doesn't benefit raw damage of Firebolt, which scales internally, but does the longbow, which scales on mod increases and class features.
I could live with a 5e where can trips didn't just scale like they do, but comparisons like this really muddy things for no clear purpose.

The amount of times a full caster will actually use a cantrip in tier3 is tiny and probably not for the damage in the first place. At lvl 11, a full caster has 16 slots per lr, not counting racials/features or magic items, which means they can cast a lvled spell in almost every round under most adventuring day assumptions. Unless you play the most grindy day imaginable, its difficult to see firebolt being used for anything that isn’t cleanup (where the fight is decided already) or for utility (eg setting objects on fire).

They are much more relevant for that sort of thing in tier1/2.

[Tanarii]

I mean, at the end of the day, multiclassing is an optional rule, it's no suprise it's not very balancedAbsolutely. There was basically no playtesting done for Multiclassing or feats. They need DM monitoring and adjustment to make them work.



It is fit for purpose, but the core problem is (IMO) that Charisma has become a spell casting stat. :smallyuk:
Definitely a massive problem.

But 3e/5e style Multiclassing is inherently broken. As in there's no way to make it fit the purpose. At best, you can kind of make it limp along by not abusing the worst cases. Especially armor dips for arcane squishy casters. (Which apparently includes Bard now ... :smalltongue:)


Fun fact. At level 11 the fire bolt cantrip at 16 int will outperform the 2 attack extra attack and a longbow with 16 dex in dpr. Firebolt in tier 2 isn’t very far off from bow damage either given the 16 stat comparison.
Only if you assume they don't find a magic weapon. And even then you had to make a weird assumption about Dexterity to make the numbers work.

And it is far off in Tier 2.

[Frogreaver]

That's not really surprising, casting stats doesn't benefit raw damage of Firebolt, which scales internally, but does the longbow, which scales on mod increases and class features.

Its just not really a practical comparison, a Fighter with longbow at level 11 with 20 Dex (ignoring superior accuracy from Archery) is actually appropriate:

Firebolt: 16.5

Longbow x3: 28.5

Never mind that the longbow is more reliable (more attacks) and more likely to trigger crits.

I could live with a 5e where can trips didn't just scale like they do, but comparisons like this really muddy things for no clear purpose.

Comparison is great for showing the resource investment required to equal a cantrip. Which is the point being made - martials have to invest far to much for far too little. Even the fact that we are simply comparing to being *better than a cantrip* is enough of a point in its own right.

Also, the cherry picking of the only martial that gets a third attack really muddied the waters.

[Theodoxus]

That's not really surprising, casting stats doesn't benefit raw damage of Firebolt, which scales internally, but does the longbow, which scales on mod increases and class features.

Its just not really a practical comparison, a Fighter with longbow at level 11 with 20 Dex (ignoring superior accuracy from Archery) is actually appropriate:

Firebolt: 16.5

Longbow x3: 28.5

Never mind that the longbow is more reliable (more attacks) and more likely to trigger crits.

I could live with a 5e where can trips didn't just scale like they do, but comparisons like this really muddy things for no clear purpose.

Swap firebolt with agonizing EB then... the fighter might be slightly ahead due to Archery, but their AC is just as bad as the warlock, and they don't have supporting spells to boot. If the warlock grabbed Medium Armor proficiency, or went Hexblade, their AC will be better (shield alone, with a chance to get shield as well.)

But then, this showcases Kevin's point about CHA casting...

[Dr.Samurai]

For me this conversation about cantrips makes me ask... Why should casters be able to compete with martial at-will attacks at all? To the point about "why would they even use cantrips, they have 16 spell slots to use in a day?", that's right, so why make sure they have an at-will attack? Because we also make sure they can cast in melee while being threatened, that they can easily get armor and weapon proficiencies, can choose to get Extra Attack, have more hit points than they ever have had, etc etc etc PLUS all of their spell slots and all the myriad of spells they can choose from.

And we're like "yeah but their cantrips don't out-compete a level 11 fighter".

People complained that it's not fun to play a wizard that's run out of spells and has to rely on a light crossbow. So casters were given at-will spell attacks in 4th edition and now 5th edition. But I guess it's also not fun to play a wizard with lower hit points, or that can't make weapon attacks and wear armor, or cast spells with no problem when there's a giant monster in their face.

Rangers didn't want to go through the problem of replacing a dead animal companion, so now rangers are conjurers of cheap tricks and summon a beast spirit instead. But when I complain about warriors having mounts and war dogs, I'm told "anyone can buy a horse or mastiff" and "in the real world, knights had to have replacement horses for when they died, so what's the problem?".

When do we turn around and change things for martials to make them more fun?

[Trask]

I don't think cantrips are OP compared to Extra Attack/Sneak Attack, but I think they are kind of OP compared to low-level spells. It quickly becomes the case that Firebolt becomes a far better use of your action for taking out mooks than spending a spell slot on Magic Missile, Chromatic Orb, or Inflict Wounds. And now the caster can reserve all their low level spells for defense and utility, removing yet another decision point for casters in the course of daily resource expenditure that already favors them.

Not to mention the unlimited nature of cantrips gives casters even MORE of an edge over martials for out of combat utility. Who needs Persuasion when you have Friends? Who needs medicine when you have Spare the Dying? Water pouring into a locked room? Put away your thieves' tools, I have Shape Water. This part I think might even be more important than the damage aspect.

Yes shooting a light crossbow at early levels does suck. Yes being having to make hard choices between what spells to use sucks when you have so few. I just think that is part of the D&D experience, in the same way that becoming a Wish casting, friend resurrecting, demi-plane creating archmage is also.

EDIT: Also a light crossbow/sling isnt even actually all that bad until 5th level. Your damage is actually roughly comparable to martials! And once you're 5th level, you're already at a comfortable level of daily spell slots for typical adventuring, not to mention any scrolls, wands, or staves you might have.

[Amnestic]

Rangers didn't want to go through the problem of replacing a dead animal companion,

More specifically, parties didn't want to put their entire adventure on hold to replace a dead animal companion. Or, the alternative, have the ranger play without a subclass for an extended period of time.

The soft result of that would be that people wouldn't pick beastmaster as a subclass, since it would be more trouble than it was worth.



But when I complain about warriors having mounts and war dogs, I'm told "anyone can buy a horse or mastiff" and "in the real world, knights had to have replacement horses for when they died, so what's the problem?".

When do we turn around and change things for martials to make them more fun?

I mean, I'm not against Cavalier fighters getting the ability to cast Find Steed or a fighterised ritual version of it ("You call on your allies to deliver you a new horse at the end of a short or long rest, don't think too much about it"). Or a fighter subclass that gets a war dog pet. You could probably staple Beastmaster onto the fighter chassis with minimal changes just fine even, or make an alternative that played similarly.

I have to be honest though, I'm not really seeing the thread of argument between nerfing cantrip damage (I'm not even against it tbh) and fighters ("warriors") getting mounts/war dogs.

[Dr.Samurai]

More specifically, parties didn't want to put their entire adventure on hold to replace a dead animal companion. Or, the alternative, have the ranger play without a subclass for an extended period of time.

The soft result of that would be that people wouldn't pick beastmaster as a subclass, since it would be more trouble than it was worth.
Decouple it from the class, and make it a feature of Animal Handling. Then you're not losing your subclass feature if it dies, and can carry on until you can get a new one. Mounts and animal companions aren't a "ranger" thing, they're a "protagonist" thing. No need to gatekeep it behind the ranger class.

I have to be honest though, I'm not really seeing the thread of argument between nerfing cantrip damage (I'm not even against it tbh) and fighters ("warriors") getting mounts/war dogs.
It's not an argument so much as an observation that the developers were prepared to make a lot of quality of life improvements for casters and open up their play style across the board. But martials continue to be constrained to this "each class/subclass specializes in one thing, and it's not that broad" approach.

[titi]

I don't see how nerfing cantrips (which exists to make casters be able to do something at low levels) would lessen the martial/caster divide at high level.

High level casters change the battlefiled with leveled spells

[Theodoxus]

I don't relish going back to 3.PF style cantrips either... 1d3 that never scales? It basically begs the question 'what's the point'?

Now, I'd be ok with cantrips being harder to cast in armor. Maybe they do -1 damage per level of armor, or are -1 to hit per level (or both!) to encourage unencumbered casters. I also kinda like the Strain system from AGE. Sure, you can cast spells in armor, but it's going to cost you more spell points (I'm not sure how that would work in a slot based system, but I'm a fan of point regardless).

HP bloat is an issue I've had for a LONG time. I'm glad 5E pulled back from 4Es massive 1st level HPs, but I could see something like only getting Con mod HP except for levels you get an ASI. (this would also probably curtail multiclassing, and that would be a godsend). But I would also make healing cheaper if I were to do that. Combats would be a little swingier on the damage side, a good crit could take out a PC, but if every combat started with everyone topped off, and in-combat healing was a bit more forgiving, it would be a decent trade.


I don't see how nerfing cantrips (which exists to make casters be able to do something at low levels) would lessen the martial/caster divide at high level.

High level casters change the battlefield with leveled spells

What's the point of cantrips scaling then? I mean, I understand where you're coming from, but if that's the general idea, then cantrips can just start at 2d6 with a rider, or 2d8 without one, and never scale up. Let EB be the lone one, since Warlocks aren't getting 16+ spells a day like primary casters.

[Amnestic]

I don't see how nerfing cantrips (which exists to make casters be able to do something at low levels) would lessen the martial/caster divide at high level.


If you chopped their scaling in half (eg. 1st/11th instead of 1/5/11/17) they can still do stuff at low levels without potentially overshadowing martial damage (even if it doesn't crop up as often by virtue of them using levelled spellslots instead).

EB could/would need its own adjustments due to the way warlock is set up, obvs. Special boys that they are.
Artificers might need their own version too, since they're half-casters.


Decouple it from the class, and make it a feature of Animal Handling. Then you're not losing your subclass feature if it dies, and can carry on until you can get a new one. Mounts and animal companions aren't a "ranger" thing, they're a "protagonist" thing. No need to gatekeep it behind the ranger class.

Taming an animal with animal handling seems like a downtime activity. I'm not against adding that as an option but it's not the sort of thing that's viable regularly, and if you decouple it from a (sub)class then chances are high that the 'narrative' of a Beastmaster becomes inaccessible for the vast majority of campaigns. I think that would be a shame, personally, as a fan of such archetypes.

While there are complaints you can levy against the Primal Spirits it's not hard to treat it in-universe as a "real" pet for the most part (assuming you never trade it out for a different version, as I'm sure many may choose not to do), it's just one that's a lot easier to 'heal' if it does go down, unlike the standard beast (which is still available if someone does want to pick it).

[Dr.Samurai]

I think having both options is a fine solution. Keeps it open for others to take part in, but maintains a more convenient option for the ranger as a subclass. Whatever works best at a table is likely what will see use. :smallcool:

[titi]

What's the point of cantrips scaling then? I mean, I understand where you're coming from, but if that's the general idea, then cantrips can just start at 2d6 with a rider, or 2d8 without one, and never scale up. Let EB be the lone one, since Warlocks aren't getting 16+ spells a day like primary casters.

Maybe they could, but would it be better ?

I don't see why we need to change cantrips at all, honestly. I'd rather take this time to think about ways to make high-level martials more fun

[Trask]

HP bloat is an issue I've had for a LONG time. I'm glad 5E pulled back from 4Es massive 1st level HPs, but I could see something like only getting Con mod HP except for levels you get an ASI. (this would also probably curtail multiclassing, and that would be a godsend). But I would also make healing cheaper if I were to do that. Combats would be a little swingier on the damage side, a good crit could take out a PC, but if every combat started with everyone topped off, and in-combat healing was a bit more forgiving, it would be a decent trade.

I agree with the intent, but that would make martials hardly tankier than casters. HP bloat is real though, for PCs and monsters and its a thorny problem to solve because a lot of it is counterbalanced by low AC values on the monster side of things, which means that their AC's would have to increase, which eliminates one of 5e's basic conceits, that you hit often to whittle down a strong opponent. I recall that a designer of 5e stated that with bounded accuracy, HP and damage, not AC or attack bonuses, is the primary increase in power that a character sees.

I wouldn't be averse to tackling it though. IMO there are two clear issues that could be addressed from my experience with the game, regarding HP bloat. Martial HP could be reduced, but only if Heavy armor is better at protecting you than it already is, and caster HP needs to be harder to increase in general. I'm playing in a game right now as a Rune Knight fighter at 12th level, and both my party Warlock and Wizard are within 20 HP of my total because they can just pump CON after their casting ability is at 20. And its happened in other campaigns. Its never felt right.

[Theodoxus]

Couple solutions to the caster's 20 Con problem. 1) take a page from yesteryear and have attribute mods scale differently, and provide a bigger bonus to martial facing classes. (How you adjust for multiclassing, I'm not sure - but I guess if you're going to delay your spell casting to pick a few more HP, that might be sufficient pain). So, a 20 Con for a Fighter might grant +4 HP and allow for regeneration, say +1 HP per hour of travel, and + Level on a Short Rest (with or without HD expenditure). While a 20 Con for a Wizard might grant +2 HP with no additional bennies.

2) Do what I do and have armor hit points. It's primarily for the monster side, where I split the HP in half, half goes to armor, and can be whittled down, or bypassed on a hit that's over their AC - but on the player side, granting AHP based on class level would work really well. Say, a 5th level Fighter in Scale, getting 10 AHP per Fighter level, and a 4th Wizard/1st Fighter also in scale would get 10 AHP for the Fighter level, but none for the Wizard. Yes, their AC would be the same, but the Wizard's armor would probably get chewed up a lot faster, even if they were trying to avoid getting hit...

I like AHP (while disparaging HP bloat) because it's not just a ton of HP on top of HP, but can be bypassed with good hits, crits, magic, etc.

[Dr.Samurai]

I'm playing in a game right now as a Rune Knight fighter at 12th level, and both my party Warlock and Wizard are within 20 HP of my total because they can just pump CON after their casting ability is at 20. And its happened in other campaigns. Its never felt right.
I'm not quite in your shoes but I'm also playing a level 12 Rune Knight and a giant crit me for over 40 damage, and I didn't have an enemy target to redirect the attack to with my rune. So the druid, in Giant Scorpion form, says "redirect it to me, I can take the hit". And my eye twitched, but I did it, and the DM asked the druid player if he was sure and he said "yeah, I'll still have HP left over in this form, and if it goes to 0 I'll just change back to my halfling form".

And yeah, great use of both abilities and better to take the HP from the wildshape form than for my fighter to be low on HP. But... it didn't seem right lol.

[Trask]

I'm not quite in your shoes but I'm also playing a level 12 Rune Knight and a giant crit me for over 40 damage, and I didn't have an enemy target to redirect the attack to with my rune. So the druid, in Giant Scorpion form, says "redirect it to me, I can take the hit". And my eye twitched, but I did it, and the DM asked the druid player if he was sure and he said "yeah, I'll still have HP left over in this form, and if it goes to 0 I'll just change back to my halfling form".

And yeah, great use of both abilities and better to take the HP from the wildshape form than for my fighter to be low on HP. But... it didn't seem right lol.

Yeah that might tweak my nose too. I'd be glad to not take such massive damage of course, but its kind of deflating to be out AC'd by Armor + Shield and out HP'ed by Wild Shape. I thought I was the tank :smallconfused:

That segues into another possible dimension to this whole discussion. Martial damage is one dimension, but tankiness is another where I feel almost every single martial except the Barbarian falls short of expectations. Maybe the Paladin as well, but only vs. saving throws.

[PhoenixPhyre]

There is not a single level where a cantrip even Agonizing EB outperforms a baseline martial (champion fighter with greatsword, no feats). Even if the fighter isn't action surging. The only levels it outperforms a simplistic rogue are 5-6, 11-12, and 17-18. And then only by a smigin (~0.5 dpr). And "regular" cantrips are way worse. A non-evocation wizard's firebolt sits at max 62% of the simplistic rogue, generally lower (between ~40% and ~55%).

Scaling cantrips are not a significant numerical issue. And serve a reasonable role IMO.

[Trask]

There is not a single level where a cantrip even Agonizing EB outperforms a baseline martial (champion fighter with greatsword, no feats). Even if the fighter isn't action surging. The only levels it outperforms a simplistic rogue are 5-6, 11-12, and 17-18. And then only by a smigin (~0.5 dpr). And "regular" cantrips are way worse. A non-evocation wizard's firebolt sits at max 62% of the simplistic rogue, generally lower (between ~40% and ~55%).

Scaling cantrips are not a significant numerical issue. And serve a reasonable role IMO.

That is completely true, but setting aside their combat role, isn't it off-kilter that the classes which already overcontribute to the non-combat pillars of the game, even without cantrips, also get free and unlimited use of not-insignificant magical effects? A few cantrips make certain skills straight up redundant (Spare the Dying vs Medicine, Mending vs Tool Proficiencies, Friends vs Persuasion). Ok that last one isn't quite redundancy but its still performing a significant chunk of that skill's role for nothing other than the opportunity cost of selecting the cantrip.

[PhoenixPhyre]

That is completely true, but setting aside their combat role, isn't it off-kilter that the classes which already overcontribute to the non-combat pillars of the game even without cantrips also get free and unlimited use of not-insignificant magical effects? A few cantrips make certain skills straight up redundant (Spare the Dying vs Medicine, Mending vs Tool Proficiencies, Friends vs Persuasion). Ok that last one isn't quite redundancy but its still performing a significant chunk of that skill's role for nothing other than the opportunity cost of selecting the cantrip.

That's a completely different problem that has nothing to do with scaling cantrips. Because none of those scale at all.

Solve the root of the problem, not the symptoms.

And I'd say that two of those (mending and friends) are straight-up worse than their non-spell counterparts. friends has that nasty clause at the end and really doesn't get you much (no, charmed is not "you'll do whatever I want"), and mending has a real limited set of uses. I've never actually seen either come up at all.

[JackPhoenix]

And I'd say that two of those (mending and friends) are straight-up worse than their non-spell counterparts. friends has that nasty clause at the end and really doesn't get you much (no, charmed is not "you'll do whatever I want"), and mending has a real limited set of uses. I've never actually seen either come up at all.

Friends isn't even charmed condition, it's HALF of it. It lacks the "can't attack you" part. Though it can't be used on hostile creatures, so that's *usually* not an issue. I've seen plenty of use for Mending, though, but that's mostly for roleplay purposes, together with Prestidigitation. People don't want to look like they just went through a battle.

[Trask]

That's a completely different problem that has nothing to do with scaling cantrips. Because none of those scale at all.

Solve the root of the problem, not the symptoms.

True but but in my personal opinion, as I stated upthread, scaling cantrips do pose a bit of a balance issue, not with their damage outperforming martials, but with the adventuring day. In easy encounters, I've seen it pretty often that casters will just stick to their cantrips and hardly use lower level spells, which lets them hoard those spell slots for Shield or Absorb Elements spam and other such things that make casters feel overwhelmingly powerful in the span of a single encounter.

I don't think the threat this poses to balance is huge by itself, but it is something to consider. Casters have just gotten so many little quality of life benefits over the years (unlimited scaling cantrips, no AoO on casting in 5 ft, no more vancian magic, higher HD, easier multiclassing, ritual casting) that all seem relatively innocuous in a vacuum, but when combined together, they compound and create classes that have few weaknesses and many, many strengths.

[titi]

Alice the spellcaster and Bob the martial are playing together. Bob feels like, because his character cannot do much in social encounters, he's not playing the social half of the game. The DM realising this, decides to remove Alice ability to be useful in combat, thus making not play the combat half of the game.
This is horrible DMing.

Give martials out of combat stuff, rather than removing casters combat stuff.



Also :

In easy encounters, I've seen it pretty often that casters will just stick to their cantrips and hardly use lower level spells, which lets them save those slots for Shield or Absorb Elements spam and other such things that make casters feel overwhelmingly powerful in the span of a single encounter.

Oh no, casters have it easy during easy encounters, what a tragedy ! What did you expect ? That they would blow all their spell slots and then be forced to spam cantrips against actual difficult encounters ?

[PhoenixPhyre]

True but what's been suggested at upthread is that perhaps unlimited cantrips as a concept are a mistake. In my personal opinion, as I stated earlier also, scaling cantrips do pose a bit of a balance issue, not with their damage outperforming martials, but with the adventuring day. In easy encounters, I've seen it pretty often that casters will just stick to their cantrips and hardly use lower level spells, which lets them save those slots for Shield or Absorb Elements spam and other such things that make casters feel overwhelmingly powerful in the span of a single encounter.

I don't think the threat this poses to balance is huge by itself, but it is something to consider. Casters have just gotten so many little quality of life benefits over the years that seem innocuous at first blush, but when combined together (unlimited scaling cantrips, no AoO on casting in 5 ft, no more vancian magic, higher HD, easier multiclassing, ritual casting), they compound each other.

I agree with the latter paragraph in principle. I don't see the prior as a problem at all. "Fixing" unlimited cantrips just makes people feel worse without actually addressing any significant balance concerns, because there aren't any significant balance concerns around unlimited, scaling cantrips. It's debating about the effect of the hood ornament on fuel economy for a fully loaded semi.

The core of the issue is
- too many spell slots relative to adventuring day length. Especially at higher levels.
- spells do too much, and have too few restrictions[1].
- spells scale in two different (at least) ways, both of which are linear or better. Non-spell things are limited to either not scaling at all or sub-linear scaling along a single axis.
- The dev team thinks that anything that could possibly be interesting must be a spell because wizards have to have access to everything interesting

Basically, if you tune everyone to be where the top of the range is now, the game falls apart and you're left with "everyone's a caster". Martials need better scaling on their abilities (and just more of them), casters need worse scaling on their core spells and spell slots (not cantrips, those don't even move any needle at all) and a few restrictions on things like casting in armor, and a bunch of effects need to be moved out of the "it's a spell, so only spellcasters get access to it" bucket and into somewhere anyone can access.

[1] such as being able to trivially pick up armor proficiency and not incurring OAs on casting...and even if you do incur an OA, it's just damage and doesn't interrupt the spell.

[Frogreaver]

There is not a single level where a cantrip even Agonizing EB outperforms a baseline martial (champion fighter with greatsword, no feats). Even if the fighter isn't action surging. The only levels it outperforms a simplistic rogue are 5-6, 11-12, and 17-18. And then only by a smigin (~0.5 dpr). And "regular" cantrips are way worse. A non-evocation wizard's firebolt sits at max 62% of the simplistic rogue, generally lower (between ~40% and ~55%).

Scaling cantrips are not a significant numerical issue. And serve a reasonable role IMO.

I donÂ’t disagree but it rather misses the point being made. In order for martials in general to surpass cantrips in tier 3/4 for both melee and ranged attacks (all martials, not just fighters) they typically require a fairly heavy investment of ASIÂ’s and/or feats. Even then, without extreme optimization they arenÂ’t really doing that much more than cantrips. Note that level of optimization required to get them to significantly outperform cantrips in both melee and ranged means the character isnÂ’t really doing very much else.

ThereÂ’s 2 ways to solve the problems highlighted by comparing martials melee and ranged damage to cantrips and thatÂ’s either nerf cantrips (which as has rightfully been mentioned doesnÂ’t do much since so much contribution in higher tiers is spells), or buff martials in combat and require less optimization / fewer build resources to get them to the point of surpassing cantrips in both melee and ranged damage.

[JackPhoenix]

True but but in my personal opinion, as I stated upthread, scaling cantrips do pose a bit of a balance issue, not with their damage outperforming martials, but with the adventuring day. In easy encounters, I've seen it pretty often that casters will just stick to their cantrips and hardly use lower level spells, which lets them hoard those spell slots for Shield or Absorb Elements spam and other such things that make casters feel overwhelmingly powerful in the span of a single encounter.

Remove scaling cantrips, and they'll shoot a crossbow instead of using a cantrip. If the encounter's easy, they won't waste spells on it anyway.


I donÂ’t disagree but it rather misses the point being made. In order for martials in general to surpass cantrips in tier 3/4 for both melee and ranged attacks (all martials, not just fighters) they typically require a fairly heavy investment of ASIÂ’s and/or feats. Even then, without extreme optimization they arenÂ’t really doing that much more than cantrips. Note that level of optimization required to get them to significantly outperform cantrips in both melee and ranged means the character isnÂ’t really doing very much else.

ThereÂ’s 2 ways to solve the problems highlighted by comparing martials melee and ranged damage to cantrips and thatÂ’s either nerf cantrips (which as has rightfully been mentioned doesnÂ’t do much since so much contribution in higher tiers is spells), or buff martials in combat and require less optimization / fewer build resources to get them to the point of surpassing cantrips in both melee and ranged damage.

Why would *everyone* have to outperform cantrips in *both* melee and ranged combat? A barbarian's player doesn't care if a wizard's player does better with a Firebolt than himself with a bow or a thrown javelin... he doesn't want to use a bow anyway. He wants to hit things with his axe (or sword, or whatever) in melee. A player of an archer doesn't care if a spellcaster can hit harder with Shocking Grasp than he can with a shortsword (and the caster propably can't, anyway). He doesn't want to be in melee, he wants to shoot things, otherwise, he wouldn't play an archer.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I donÂ’t disagree but it rather misses the point being made. In order for martials in general to surpass cantrips in tier 3/4 for both melee and ranged attacks (all martials, not just fighters) they typically require a fairly heavy investment of ASIÂ’s and/or feats. Even then, without extreme optimization they arenÂ’t really doing that much more than cantrips. Note that level of optimization required to get them to significantly outperform cantrips in both melee and ranged means the character isnÂ’t really doing very much else.

ThereÂ’s 2 ways to solve the problems highlighted by comparing martials melee and ranged damage to cantrips and thatÂ’s either nerf cantrips (which as has rightfully been mentioned doesnÂ’t do much since so much contribution in higher tiers is spells), or buff martials in combat and require less optimization / fewer build resources to get them to the point of surpassing cantrips in both melee and ranged damage.

No. This is simply not true. And I posted the data in the post you quoted. A no optimization champion fighter with a greatsword beats cantrips at every level without using action surge. A brain-dead rogue (shortbow, no advantage) is only very marginally beaten by the best cantrip at a couple of levels.


https://i.ibb.co/sv9tPTs/Screenshot-2023-07-25-at-11-03-03-AM.png (https://ibb.co/99HGvxy)

[Trask]

Oh no, casters have it easy during easy encounters, what a tragedy ! What did you expect ? That they would blow all their spell slots and then be forced to spam cantrips against actual difficult encounters ?

No, I expect that they'll use some of their weaker spells to deal with the problem and save their powerful spells for the tougher fights, instead of having all their powerful spells AND most of their weaker ones. I hardly EVER see casters above tier 2 run out of spell slots entirely during an adventuring day, and even in tier 2 its rare. But to my mind, that's exactly what should happen! They should be almost spent at the end of an adventuring day, that's the point of a game that uses resource expenditure as a feature of play.

EDIT: Much of this argument is predicated on the true-ism that the 5 minute adventuring day is common at many tables, I know its common at mine. If you truly are running 5+ encounters per day (you madman) then maybe it isn't an issue for you. YMMV.


Martials need better scaling on their abilities (and just more of them), casters need worse scaling on their core spells and spell slots (not cantrips, those don't even move any needle at all) and a few restrictions on things like casting in armor, and a bunch of effects need to be moved out of the "it's a spell, so only spellcasters get access to it" bucket and into somewhere anyone can access.

Scaling on many low levels spells is already quite bad, if you make them worse then they really will be strictly worse than cantrips in almost every respect, and those spell slots will only see use as utility slots. Except ritual casting also has that covered, so really they'll be shield and absorb elements slots. That's what I see anyways.

[PhoenixPhyre]

No, I expect that they'll use some of their weaker spells to deal with the problem and save their powerful spells for the tougher fights, instead of having all their powerful spells AND most of their weaker ones. I hardly EVER see casters above tier 2 run out of spell slots entirely during an adventuring day, and even in tier 2 its rare. But to my mind, that's exactly what should happen! They should be almost spent at the end of an adventuring day, that's the point of a game that uses resource expenditure as a feature of play.

EDIT: Much of this argument is predicated on the true-ism that the 5 minute adventuring day is common at many tables, I know its common at mine. If you truly are running 5+ encounters per day (you madman) then maybe it isn't an issue for you. YMMV.

In a 5mwd environment, you need to have way fewer spell slots period for this to be true. Like...4-6 total.

Personally, the 5mwd thing is a pathological broken case. Fixing for that breaks everything else and requires rewriting the entire game from the ground up.

[Dr.Samurai]

I don't think the threat this poses to balance is huge by itself, but it is something to consider. Casters have just gotten so many little quality of life benefits over the years (unlimited scaling cantrips, no AoO on casting in 5 ft, no more vancian magic, higher HD, easier multiclassing, ritual casting) that all seem relatively innocuous in a vacuum, but when combined together, they compound and create classes that have few weaknesses and many, many strengths.
Agreed. I caught some flak upthread for suggesting that the system should just provide benefits with weapons or mounts without martials needing to choose a specific class, fighting style, feat, subclass, etc.

But at some point in design, people sat at a table and said "Casters should be able to cast in armor if they're proficient, and that proficiency should be pretty easy to get, and they shouldn't draw attacks of opportunity if they're threatened in melee when spellcasting, and we should give them at-will magic that scales with level, and let them cast some spells without using spell slots, and no more vancian spellcasting, etc."

And the list goes on. Better multiclassing, more hit points. Now races grant spells known that automatically get added to their list.

Where's the love for the martials?

Remember, people argue (including in this thread) that D&D isn't trying to mimic reality. It's all made up and pure D&Disms. So the design around martials isn't trying to adhere to any sort of real thing. It's literally just D&D design that martials are these hyper-segregated anemic baselines from which the casters get to acquire some of their features but also get full spellcasting.

[Trask]

In a 5mwd environment, you need to have way fewer spell slots period for this to be true. Like...4-6 total.

Personally, the 5mwd thing is a pathological broken case. Fixing for that breaks everything else and requires rewriting the entire game from the ground up.

The closest I ever got to feeling like I "solved" the 5MWD is in a dungeon crawl environment. When I switched to 5e for the first time, around halfway through its life cycle, I ran the Caves of Chaos and made my own levels beneath it that turned into a full-blown megadungeon.

I had PLENTY of tricky traps to detect and heal from, and a LOT of environmental hazards that needed bypassing with magic. I had so many broken bridges to cross with fly or wall of force. I had about a million arcane locks that needed dispelling. And of course, many jerkish illusions for magic-users to waste their big spells on. Basically you need to play it like old-school D&D. It was fun. But that's pretty much the only time that I felt it wasn't an issue.

[Frogreaver]

No. This is simply not true. And I posted the data in the post you quoted. A no optimization champion fighter with a greatsword beats cantrips at every level without using action surge. A brain-dead rogue (shortbow, no advantage) is only very marginally beaten by the best cantrip at a couple of levels.


https://i.ibb.co/sv9tPTs/Screenshot-2023-07-25-at-11-03-03-AM.png (https://ibb.co/99HGvxy)


You cherry picked fighter - the only class with more than 2 attacks. Try not doing that.

You also refuse to consider that casters get multiple cantrips (or ones that target saves) and so perform just as well in melee as at range with cantrips.

As an example, a cool greatsword wielding ranger does 12 damage per hit with 2 hits if maxing str. While if he also has 16 dex he does 7.5 damage per hit with 2 hits for a bow.

At level 17 shocking grasp does 18 damage on a hit. Fire bolt does 22.

18 vs 24 for melee
15 vs 22 for ranged

Ranger can use spells to enhance his damage… but so can the wizard.

[PhoenixPhyre]

You cherry picked fighter - the only class with more than 2 attacks. Try not doing that.

You also refuse to consider that casters get multiple cantrips (or ones that target saves) and so perform just as well in melee as at range with cantrips.

As an example, a cool greatsword wielding ranger does 12 damage per hit with 2 hits if maxing str. While if he also has 16 dex he does 7.5 damage per hit with 2 hits for a bow.

At level 17 shocking grasp does 18 damage on a hit. Fire bolt does 22.

18 vs 24 for melee
15 vs 22 for ranged

Ranger can use spells to enhance his damage… but so can the wizard.

...I also showed the brain-dead rogue. Which outperformed the best cantrip (or tied, within measurement error) at all levels. And underperforms all the other no-optimization martials. So no.

Rangers, in particular, get massive dpr benefits from their subclass. Which you're ignoring.

[Frogreaver]

...I also showed the brain-dead rogue. Which outperformed the best cantrip (or tied, within measurement error) at all levels. And underperforms all the other no-optimization martials. So no.

Rogues also continue to scale past the 2 attack mark that most martials get. More cherry picking IMO.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Rogues also continue to scale past the 2 attack mark that most martials get.

But if the rogue is the floor for the martials as I showed it was...

[Trask]

I agree with PhoenixPhyre that cantrips damage isn't too high. Its their unlimited nature I think is a problem. Even archers don't have unlimited arrows by RAW (although I suspect many tables don't run it that way). In a theoretical niche running battle, like a siege, casters are all-day combat capable when even fighters arent.

What if they were limited and recharged on a short rest? That might go a long way towards making short rests more appealing in general, and in turn lengthening the adventuring day.

Eldritch blast could perhaps be an exception, easy to do if it was a class feature (which it should be).

[Frogreaver]

But if the rogue is the floor for the martials as I showed it was...

Rogues aren’t the floor unless you are talking very specific optimized builds. Basic Rogues out scale basic Paladin, ranger, barbarian and fighters at most levels.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I agree with PhoenixPyre that cantrips damage isn't too high. Its their unlimited nature I think is a problem.

What if they were limited and recharged on a short rest? That might go a long way towards making short rests more appealing in general, and in turn lengthening the adventuring day.

I don't see the unlimited nature as a problem at all. Any more than making a sword swing limited. They're trivial things that don't do much at low levels and aren't used much at high levels. Making them limited doesn't do anything balance wise.

I do think that more things for most classes should recharge on short rests. Something like cut the number of spell slots for casters in half or more and then let them recharge some chunk more regularly on a short rest.


Rogues aren’t the floor unless you are talking very specific optimized builds. Basic Rogues out scale basic Paladin, ranger, barbarian and fighters at most levels.

Not sure where you're getting your numbers. A subclass-less ranger with a longbow and archery style and a monk using no ki are the only ones that are not above the brain-dead rogue. Giving them actual features removes the issue entirely.

And the brain-dead rogue is really brain dead.

Edit: and the best cantrip is only mostly on par with the worst martial in my data set. Never significantly ahead. Most cantrips are ~50% of the worst martial at every level.

[Dr.Samurai]

I'm okay with at-will cantrips. I imagine that people play casters to cast spells and don't really want to resort to using weapons if they don't have to. At-will cantrips seems more tropey and appropriate than the sorcerer pulling out their trusty sidearm (Gandalf and Dresden be damned).

My point is that there is this super helpful and engaged attitude when we think about what casters need.

But with martials there's this dysfunction we can't get over about how to make them. As someone that doesn't want to see my fighter turn into Superman at higher levels, I include myself in that group. But I think there is this massive void between where we are now, and Superman, that will allow for more interesting and fun martial characters at the table. The changes I see suggested are usually not enough for me (give them some out of combat abilities) or not something I'm interested in (walking on air, carrying mountains, creating hurricanes, etc.).

But if I just look at some high level spells... things like Invulnerability, Foresight, Blade of Disaster, and Mind Blank are all things that can be redesigned as high level martial abilities. Someone mentioned earlier a feature akin to Turn Undead where if a martial attacks a creature of a certain CR or lower it is just killed.

The game needs, IMO:

1. To commit to a more robust weapon combat system that allows martials to do interesting things even before we get into their features.
2. Protect martial features and better delineate martials from their proficiencies, so that martials and spellcasters are more separated.
3. Create interesting higher level features for martials to look forward to, instead of improving on their current features. (I would not like to see the earthquake stomp type stuff, but others would. The point is they need something at these levels that are cool, interesting, and make you want to reach them.)

[Theodoxus]

But if the rogue is the floor for the martials as I showed it was...

You're also looking at it like a WoW style target dummy to maximize our DPS rotation...

You're not looking at the opportunity cost of being in melee, taking the incoming damage. The caster, at range, hiding from melee and using cover to maximize their defense against incoming missile and magic fire is getting all the benifit without any of the risk.

It's easy to take pieces of the puzzle and try to solve for X, but doing so massively weights Y to the point of being out of balance. It's why white room debates ultimately prove less productive than otherwise expected.

[PhoenixPhyre]

You're also looking at it like a WoW style target dummy to maximize our DPS rotation...

You're not looking at the opportunity cost of being in melee, taking the incoming damage. The caster, at range, hiding from melee and using cover to maximize their defense against incoming missile and magic fire is getting all the benifit without any of the risk.

It's easy to take pieces of the puzzle and try to solve for X, but doing so massively weights Y to the point of being out of balance. It's why white room debates ultimately prove less productive than otherwise expected.

Not really. That baseline rogue? He's ranged. In fact, he can go a lot higher by playing those same games.

I'm comparing like to like. And the gaps are huge, to the point that it's very clear to me that cantrips are not a problem. There are problems. Yes. Cantrips? Not one of them. Or if it is a problem, it's way down the low-hanging-fruit list. There are a lot of much more pressing, much better cost-benefit ratio issues.

[Trask]

. Someone mentioned earlier a feature akin to Turn Undead where if a martial attacks a creature of a certain CR or lower it is just killed.

That was me, I'm glad someone else likes the idea. I'm actually very enamored with it TBH. The idea of using the Cleric's Destroy Undead table for other things seems really fertile to me. A Rogue instantly killing a creature of appropriate CR when they hit with sneak, a Fighter getting one free attack against each creature of appropriate CR, a Barbarian scoring an automatic critical hit against a creature of appropriate CR. It wouldn't help against higher CR challenges, but its a start.



The game needs, IMO:

1. To commit to a more robust weapon combat system that allows martials to do interesting things even before we get into their features.
2. Protect martial features and better delineate martials from their proficiencies, so that martials and spellcasters are more separated.
3. Create interesting higher level features for martials to look forward to, instead of improving on their current features. (I would not like to see the earthquake stomp type stuff, but others would. The point is they need something at these levels that are cool, interesting, and make you want to reach them.)

You definitely don't need to reach for superheroes/anime to make martials better. Even "mundane" options like Battle Cries that give buffs, instant kill mechanics when the target is below 50 HP, options built right into the Attack action will scale all by themselves.

I think what would also help is more interesting options built into common magic items. Gauntlets of Ogre Power could let you throw rocks as a giant does, and even do superhero like groundpounds if you want, that seems like a good compromise (because I'm kind of with you, I don't necessarily want to see "earthquake stomp" or somesuch as a Barbarian feature). Martial magic items don't need to be strictly +X and 2d6 fire.

[Tanarii]

There's plenty of room to improve baseline martials to make them more fun. Both 4e and PF2 did it. Of course, both are just a bit more crunchy and battlemat oriented than 5e, but I don't think that's required. Because Forbidden Lands also did it, and it doesn't use a battle mat and isn't incredibly crunchy, unsurprisingly as it is somewhat OSR in feel.

But one thing that may be needed is casters needing a touch of nerfing to at Epic (17-20) levels. Not necessarily having the feet cut out from under them back to BECMI/AD&D levels (as long as you don't ignore the restrictions on casters, which many folks did), or even 4e/PF2 levels.

Otoh 5e is a lot better than 3e, and personally I've found arcane casters don't catch up to martials even in high Tier 2, as long as they aren't allowed to MC dip for armor and don't run a 5MWD. So I don't really see a need for a caster nerf. But lots of folks seem to think they particularly break down in high Tier 3 and in Tier 4.

tl;dr: Martials are fine in terms of power in Tier 1, Tier 2, and low Tier 3 ... that doesn't mean they couldn't be a lot more fun!

[Frogreaver]

There's plenty of room to improve baseline martials to make them more fun. Both 4e and PF2 did it. Of course, both are just a bit more crunchy and battlemat oriented than 5e, but I don't think that's required. Because Forbidden Lands also did it, and it doesn't use a battle mat and isn't incredibly crunchy, unsurprisingly as it is somewhat OSR in feel.

But one thing that may be needed is casters needing a touch of nerfing to at Epic (17-20) levels. Not necessarily having the feet cut out from under them back to BECMI/AD&D levels (as long as you don't ignore the restrictions on casters, which many folks did), or even 4e/PF2 levels.

Otoh 5e is a lot better than 3e, and personally I've found arcane casters don't catch up to martials even in high Tier 2, as long as they aren't allowed to MC dip for armor and don't run a 5MWD. So I don't really see a need for a caster nerf. But lots of folks seem to think they particularly break down in high Tier 3 and in Tier 4.

tl;dr: Martials are fine in terms of power in Tier 1, Tier 2, and low Tier 3 ... that doesn't mean they couldn't be a lot more fun!

Fully Agreed!

[PhoenixPhyre]

Otoh 5e is a lot better than 3e, and personally I've found arcane casters don't catch up to martials even in high Tier 2, as long as they aren't allowed to MC dip for armor and don't run a 5MWD. So I don't really see a need for a caster nerf. But lots of folks seem to think they particularly break down in high Tier 3 and in Tier 4.

tl;dr: Martials are fine in terms of power in Tier 1, Tier 2, and low Tier 3 ... that doesn't mean they couldn't be a lot more fun!

I can agree with this.

[Frogreaver]

Not sure where you're getting your numbers. A subclass-less ranger with a longbow and archery style and a monk using no ki are the only ones that are not above the brain-dead rogue. Giving them actual features removes the issue entirely.

Rogue at level 17 can do.
1d6+1d6+5 + 9d6 = 43.5 melee damage (shortsword+shortsword)
1d6+5 + 9d6 = 40 ranged damage (shortbow)

Paladin at level 17 will do (being generous and assuming 16 dex)
2d6+5 + 4.5 *2 = 33 melee damage (greatsword)
1d8+3 *2 = 15 ranged damage (longbow)

Factoring in no crit accuracy - assuming 60% chance to hit at +5 stat. (crits benefit rogues more anyways)

Level 17
Rogue DPR = 33.7 melee/33.6 ranged (ranged rogue assumes advantage from steady aim, melee rogue assumes TWF no style or feat)
Paladin DPR = 19.8 melee/7.5 ranged (paladin assumes greatsword and longbow).
Wizard Cantrip DPR = 10.8 melee/13.2 range (shocking grasp/firebolt)
Dex Fighter DPR = 17.1 melee/19.95 ranged (rapier/longbow and archery style)

[Xervous]

My concern with most Martials is that an existence built on resourceless or low cap throughput combat proficiency and a void of unique reliable noncombat features puts them in a bad place. It falls to the GM and the players to work against the way the system encourages approaching obstacles. The characters with resources decide if the scene is worthy of an expenditure, and only then the characters lacking resources or features get to grind away at what is left of the situation with mundane skills, attacks, or freeform interaction with the world. You could give martials 90% of the combat damage budget, but that just emphasizes they’re chainsaws to be lugged around for removing combat-trees in the path. For wilderness exploration, going to a grand ball, investigating a murder, there’s no big way to do Fightery things unless the GM prompts for initiative. To me that’s not a class, it’s an MMO DPS spec.

[Waazraath]

But one thing that may be needed is casters needing a touch of nerfing to at Epic (17-20) levels. Not necessarily having the feet cut out from under them back to BECMI/AD&D levels (as long as you don't ignore the restrictions on casters, which many folks did), or even 4e/PF2 levels.

Otoh 5e is a lot better than 3e, and personally I've found arcane casters don't catch up to martials even in high Tier 2, as long as they aren't allowed to MC dip for armor and don't run a 5MWD. So I don't really see a need for a caster nerf. But lots of folks seem to think they particularly break down in high Tier 3 and in Tier 4.

tl;dr: Martials are fine in terms of power in Tier 1, Tier 2, and low Tier 3 ... that doesn't mean they couldn't be a lot more fun!

Fits my experience over all.

"More fun" is ymmv though - I personally would like more options (both in character building as in play) for some classes, but we also had folks on the forum not wanting to play anything more complicated than a fighter champion. Pleasing everybody is difficult here, if you want both classes with a lot of and very few options the chance is pretty big that the ones with lots of options find ways to counter their weak points, or have some overtuned power missed in play testing.

[Frogreaver]

My concern with most Martials is that an existence built on resourceless or low cap throughput combat proficiency and a void of unique reliable noncombat features puts them in a bad place. It falls to the GM and the players to work against the way the system encourages approaching obstacles. The characters with resources decide if the scene is worthy of an expenditure, and only then the characters lacking resources or features get to grind away at what is left of the situation with mundane skills, attacks, or freeform interaction with the world. You could give martials 90% of the combat damage budget, but that just emphasizes they’re chainsaws to be lugged around for removing combat-trees in the path. For wilderness exploration, going to a grand ball, investigating a murder, there’s no big way to do Fightery things unless the GM prompts for initiative. To me that’s not a class, it’s an MMO DPS spec.

I’d characterize that a bit differently. Casters usually hold their resources unless a scene cannot be overcome without them or there’s a clear, present and large enough benefit to using the resource in the scene now. Though maybe in actual play a little of both is going on.

[PhoenixPhyre]

My concern with most Martials is that an existence built on resourceless or low cap throughput combat proficiency and a void of unique reliable noncombat features puts them in a bad place. It falls to the GM and the players to work against the way the system encourages approaching obstacles. The characters with resources decide if the scene is worthy of an expenditure, and only then the characters lacking resources or features get to grind away at what is left of the situation with mundane skills, attacks, or freeform interaction with the world. You could give martials 90% of the combat damage budget, but that just emphasizes they’re chainsaws to be lugged around for removing combat-trees in the path. For wilderness exploration, going to a grand ball, investigating a murder, there’s no big way to do Fightery things unless the GM prompts for initiative. To me that’s not a class, it’s an MMO DPS spec.

That's my "move a bunch of the utility effects outside of the spell system" prong on things that need to be addressed well before anything really combat-related. As long as there are only

- ability checks, which casters are at least as good at as martials, if not better, and casters have a multitude of ways to avoid needing them or buff them that martials don't have
- spells...that martials don't have and that have tons of things that ability checks just flat can't do

You'll never find a solution that actually works. You'd either need to make ability checks into "martial utility spells" and basically disallow casters from making ability checks at all (yeah, I'd rather not do this) or you need to break some things out of the spell corral entirely. My 5e hack has a (back-portably fairly trivially) form of that latter thing, moving ~100 spells into incantations, sorta a beefed up 4e rituals thing.

[KorvinStarmast]

For me this conversation about cantrips makes me ask... Why should casters be able to compete with martial at-will attacks at all? ...
Because we also make sure they can cast in melee while being threatened, that they can easily get armor and weapon proficiencies, Some of that can be dealt with via tweaking Multiclassing rules. I do not care for the "one level dip to get heavy armor" rubbish for arcane full casters.

As to the cast while in melee, either require an ability check, or give a fizzle chance based on {some criterion}. Which Oh By The way needs a companion rule that allows martials to actually slow down the zerg rush in the early game. (See my previous post about reaction based ability for all fighters and barbarians to as a reaction shove or trip or knock prone someone trying to go past them, related to OA rules .... )

People complained that it's not fun to play a wizard that's run out of spells and has to rely on a light crossbow. Try having to use darts. (Grognard moment completed)
Note: all Fighters ought to get the Mounted Combatant feat for free as a class feature at level 1. :smallyuk:

I've seen plenty of use for Mending, though, but that's mostly for roleplay purposes, together with Prestidigitation. People don't want to look like they just went through a battle. It's a fun cantrip, Prestidigitation is. :smallsmile:

The closest I ever got to feeling like I "solved" the 5MWD is in a dungeon crawl environment. When I switched to 5e for the first time, around halfway through its life cycle, I ran the Caves of Chaos and made my own levels beneath it that turned into a full-blown megadungeon.

I had PLENTY of tricky traps to detect and heal from, and a LOT of environmental hazards that needed bypassing with magic. I had so many broken bridges to cross with fly or wall of force. I had about a million arcane locks that needed dispelling. And of course, many jerkish illusions for magic-users to waste their big spells on. Basically you need to play it like old-school D&D. It was fun. But that's pretty much the only time that I felt it wasn't an issue. Maybe the time Mearls spent with the OSR crew was time well spent after all.

[Goobahfish]

I'd agree with most of what you wrote, except one bit. Dipping spellcaster for a martial can fill an empty concentration slot; Bless alone stays relevant for the whole game, and while you likely can't pre-cast in every battle you only need to a few times per day to use up your slots without impacting action economy. Find Familiar is another great pick for a martial. The other thing is a bit of a wild card: magic items. Just one level of a caster class gives you access to things you just can't do if the right item comes up. Speaking from experience, Prayer Beads are way better on a martial with Cleric dip than they are on a full Cleric.

Ha ha ha, yeah, getting some level 1 spells can be pretty useful. Fog Cloud, Absorb Elements, Shield etc.


For me this conversation about cantrips makes me ask... Why should casters be able to compete with martial at-will attacks at all?

It's not an argument so much as an observation that the developers were prepared to make a lot of quality of life improvements for casters and open up their play style across the board. But martials continue to be constrained to this "each class/subclass specializes in one thing, and it's not that broad" approach.

Exactly this.


I wouldn't be averse to tackling it though. IMO there are two clear issues that could be addressed from my experience with the game, regarding HP bloat. Martial HP could be reduced, but only if Heavy armor is better at protecting you than it already is, and caster HP needs to be harder to increase in general. I'm playing in a game right now as a Rune Knight fighter at 12th level, and both my party Warlock and Wizard are within 20 HP of my total because they can just pump CON after their casting ability is at 20. And its happened in other campaigns. Its never felt right.

Yep... again, a weird benefit for casters. Usually more SAD than martials so free CON.


The core of the issue is
- too many spell slots relative to adventuring day length. Especially at higher levels.
- spells do too much, and have too few restrictions[1].
- spells scale in two different (at least) ways, both of which are linear or better. Non-spell things are limited to either not scaling at all or sub-linear scaling along a single axis.
- The dev team thinks that anything that could possibly be interesting must be a spell because wizards have to have access to everything interesting

This is partially true, but given that this is part of what makes D&D 'fun' for casters, it is difficult to work with.

---

It seems my points have be somewhat misconstrued (forest for the trees). Honestly, cantrip scaling isn't actually that bad. As pointed out (numerous times) by others, cantrips do not do the same damage as martials. What has changed is the ratio of damage that casters can present without spells... by a lot. I mean... a lot a lot.

My general point is that: cantrips require literally no investment. 1 level investment = max cantrip power. The point here is that casters have been designed in a way that does not punish them as much for multiclassing. The main punishment casters get for MCing is that they don't get their high level toys as early which (because they have amazing high level toys) is kind of punishing.

My general point is that martials, just don't scale/synergize at all. Martials are far more likely to get some of their power budget from bonus actions (Rogue, TWF, Monk, Hunter's Mark), which is a finite resource which doesn't synergize. Extra attack... doesn't synergize. So, we have a series of classes which have all this 'awkwardness' when the MC. Yet, at high level, they also seem to 'taper off' into irrelevance. Monster HP and PC HP bloat seems to outstrip damage substantially:
Consider...
Level 1: 1 HD, 1 attack
Level 5: 5 HD, 2 attacks

So the extra damage fighters receive kind of falls down a hole of HP bloat in a 'losing arms race'. To keep 'real pace', you need to invest in a couple of badly designed feats (GWM, SS) and even then, it becomes quite 'sloggish'.

Martials aren't that much 'tougher' than casters. Healing spells generally don't scale off your Hit Dice so the only thing that really makes a Martial really tougher than casters is an extra HP or two/level (within a single encounter) and a 'presumably higher AC'. Casters in Heavy Armour with little investment plus a magical stacking Shield spell... bad design.

So yes, cantrips scale and are an unlimited resource (I have no real issue with this. I actually like wizards being regularly wizardly rather than ad-hoc rangering). But they are designed within the system in a far more forgiving way that Extra Attack (which I see as more core to martials than cantrips are to casters). That to me, is quite frankly, bad design.

---

Things I would like to see change.

Attack progression fixed to be more forgiving.
Fighting styles fixed to be me forgiving.
Caster HP and easy armour access reined in.
I think a rebalancing of the game around 3 attacks at level 11? (rather than 2 attacks max for most classes). Fighter can still get 4 and maybe some other more interesting things?

And yes... things for Martials to do outside of combat. And yes, making things like mounts and pets less class features but rather adventure rewards/downtime-activities which have a chance at being viable.

[Dork_Forge]

The amount of times a full caster will actually use a cantrip in tier3 is tiny and probably not for the damage in the first place. At lvl 11, a full caster has 16 slots per lr, not counting racials/features or magic items, which means they can cast a lvled spell in almost every round under most adventuring day assumptions. Unless you play the most grindy day imaginable, its difficult to see firebolt being used for anything that isn’t cleanup (where the fight is decided already) or for utility (eg setting objects on fire).

They are much more relevant for that sort of thing in tier1/2.

I DM and play tier 3 and beyond and this does not match my experience at all and is based on very flawed assumptions. Here are some problems with that logic:

- It assumes that there are damage or control spells at every spell level that will remain relevant as the cantrips scale. This rarely reflects a caster's spell list.

- It completely ignores that slots can be consumed in a non-competitive manner. Bonus actions, reactions, and out-of-combat. Throwing a cantrip like Firebolt is one of the better uses of a caster's action when they're doing something like Misty Step or Sanctuary.

- 25% of those 16 slots are just 1st level, with the numbers heavily skewed in general to lower level slots. Slots that are likely to be eaten up with stuff like Shield, Mage Armor, and Absorb Elements on casters where the Firebolt comparison is relevant. Or heck, Healing Word on most of the ones where it isn't.


Comparison is great for showing the resource investment required to equal a cantrip. Which is the point being made - martials have to invest far to much for far too little. Even the fact that we are simply comparing to being *better than a cantrip* is enough of a point in its own right.

Also, the cherry picking of the only martial that gets a third attack really muddied the waters.

Investment is not a great word, the 'investment' made in the comparison is just... leveling up? No dedication of resources, feats, etc. And we are comparing 'better than a cantrip' because that's what was being talked about for some reason, that it's being talked about is not really indicative of anything.

The cherry-picking comment is also, frankly, irksome. Fighter is a bog standard example of a martial and applicable in the 'longbow vs Firebolt' comparison, since they are able to go melee or ranged in equal measure. But fine, if you're going to see that as 'cherry-picking,' let's do the rounds, shall we?

Firebolt baseline: 16.5

Fighter (longbow, no style consideration): 28.5

Rogue (shortbow): 29.5

Paladin (longsword, no style): 28

Monk (unarmed): 28.5

Barbarian (Maul, no Rage, no crit consideration): 24

Ranger (longbow, no style, no HM): 19

So, every single martial exceeds the Firebolt as baseline test. And it's very important to note that this is not actually reflective of martial damage, particularly at such a high level:

- It doesn't factor in crits, which favours the martials.
- It doesn't factor in Fighting Styles at all.
- Monks not spending Ki despite having 11 per SR.
- Rangers not using Hunter's Mark or Favored Foe, despite having no reason (resource wise) to not be using one or the other in every combat at this level.
- Barbarians not Raging despite, realistically, having enough at 11th level to Rage in most, if not all, encounters.
- No subclass considerations, despite some classes, the Ranger in particular, depending on their subclass for damage scaling.

TL:DR

Every single martial beat Firebolt for at-will damage without considering subclasses, Fighting Styles, Resources etc. No cherry-picking, no investment beyond just being the class.


Swap firebolt with agonizing EB then... the fighter might be slightly ahead due to Archery, but their AC is just as bad as the warlock, and they don't have supporting spells to boot. If the warlock grabbed Medium Armor proficiency, or went Hexblade, their AC will be better (shield alone, with a chance to get shield as well.)

...why make that swap? It's not comparable at all. Eldritch Blast is basically a class feature because of Pact Magic and it requires an invocation, a significant investment that really undermines the whole 'no investment' argument.

The 'AC is just as bad' also makes zero sense. If you're talking about Dex-based martials, which it appears you are, then there's zero reason the AC would be the same. Dex is a secondary stat for a Warlock and a primary stat for the martial.

The whole 'but what if medium armor of Hexblade' thing makes even less sense, as you keep adding investment choices onto the caster side of the equation, but not the martial. It makes no sense.

What if the martial was a Thri-kreen, using a shield with their bow and the equivalent of +1 studded leather?

I really don't get the point.


But then, this showcases Kevin's point about CHA casting...

It literally does no such thing. What mental stat is used only matters when talking about the uses of the stat. So unless talking about Cha-saves or skills, Cha casting is entirely irrelevant and removing it as a casting stat would just make MCing problems worse as Int and Wis would become more MC-able.

Warlock could be Int-based and nothing about what you said would change.

[Skrum]

I would favor something like giving fighter, ranger, monk, barb, and paladin an extra attack schedule that scaled like cantrips - 2 attacks at level 5, 3 attacks at level 11, and 4 attacks at level 16. These levels would stack as far as gaining new attacks.

Rogues could then get extra attack, which they badly need, w/o going "full warrior." They get 2 attacks at level 5, but it doesn't progress beyond that. Rogue levels would be 1/2 advancement for the purposes of getting more attacks.

Fighters should then have Action Surge be usable much more frequently - give it a 1 minute cooldown. This would effectively let them use it every encounter. Give them an additional use at level 10, and a third use at level 19. Should also be patched to only allow non-spell actions.

Monks and paladins already get good abilities that would synergize with extra attacks, but barb would need something else. I'm a fan of barb being the "cut down swaths of enemies" class, so something with cleaving (like applying any overkill damage to another enemy within reach), and then having that ability scale/improve, is where my head is at. Ranger would probably need something else too - I'd like to see hunter's mark/favored foe revisited to improve its reliability, as that's the quintessential Ranger ability. Letting them use it without concentration at level 10 maybe, and then also scaling the damage better.

[Dork_Forge]

Rogues could then get extra attack, which they badly need, w/o going "full warrior." They get 2 attacks at level 5, but it doesn't progress beyond that. Rogue levels would be 1/2 advancement for the purposes of getting more attacks.


...What?

How is martial damage not living up to things right now?

And if this is about caster damage and you're making sweeping changes... why is it pushing martials instead of nerfing casters? One is less likely to mess up system expectations than the other.

[Skrum]

...What?

How is martial damage not living up to things right now?

And if this is about caster damage and you're making sweeping changes... why is it pushing martials instead of nerfing casters? One is less likely to mess up system expectations than the other.

I said what I said. Rogues need extra attack, among other things. And if monk, ranger, barb, and paladin are getting 4 attacks, it would be a good time to give rogues 2. Even if it's just from a pure quality of life standpoint, it really sucks to get a single attack and then whiff. Oh well, turn over.

I mean I guess this really goes to show how differently tables play the game, and how that shapes what people think of classes. But rogues might be the weakest class in the game. It's them or barbs.

Edit: martial damage doesn't live up to what it's supposed to do because 1) it's their main contribution to combat, and 2) they're not even good at it without some combination of GWM, SS, and good items. They literally need to be optimized with optional rules (granted, rules that most people use) and given specific items or they will underperform at one of their core features.

[PhoenixPhyre]

...What?

How is martial damage not living up to things right now?

And if this is about caster damage and you're making sweeping changes... why is it pushing martials instead of nerfing casters? One is less likely to mess up system expectations than the other.

Yeah. I agree. Because it's more than just inter-class comparisons--you have to compare to the monsters. And they're clearly based around a baseline of current martial damage output. And not the hyper-optimized SS/CBE (etc) builds.

I just did a casual analysis using the data I have available[1]--from level 1-20, the average "rounds to kill solo" for the brain-dead rogue[2] build against monsters of CR = level is...incredibly stable. Mean 6.8, Median 6.9, Standard deviation 1. Min: 4.1 (level 1), Max: 8.2 (level 20); disregarding the endpoints the min is 5.57 (level 3) and the max is 7.7 (level 10). That kind of constancy just doesn't happen by accident--it's one more (large) piece of evidence that baseline, low-optimization martial damage is what the entire system is designed around. That is, medium-optimization casters (and other high-optimization types, caster or martial) are outside the system's expectations. That is, they're doing more damage than the system expects; the martials aren't doing less. If you just buff martials to match the (higher-than-expectations) others, you end up with a spiral and the system just falls apart entirely.

If we map that onto the "3 round" idea[3], that indicates that the party should be doing something like 2-2.5x the brain-dead rogue total. And the brain-dead rogue is just about the floor of current martial builds. Simply giving the rogue TWF (instead of a single shortbow) increases them to roughly 1.3x, which is fairly close to a champion fighter with a GS who doesn't use Action Surge.

It should also be noted that CR = level overestimates (by a lot) the system-expected median monster CR. No, the system does not expect that you're fighting mostly CR = level + X Deadly++ fights.

So if you increase base martial damage by a factor of ~1.5 (ish, more or less depending on the actual class), you're looking at rewriting every bit of the monsters and monster/encounter-building guidelines. Minimum.

[1] all MM, Volos, MToF monsters, using their actual HP, not the book value, which is effective HP after accounting for resistances (mostly), which rarely apply in this case.
[2] Shortbow, 16 DEX + 2 each ASI until capped, gets sneak attack ~100% of the time but never has advantage. No magic items or feats. You can do a lot better than this with very simple optimizations.
[3] which isn't gospel, but it's based on the monster building guidelines. If you extend the "lifetime" of an enemy, the required damage goes down, not up.

[Frogreaver]

Investment is not a great word, the 'investment' made in the comparison is just... leveling up? No dedication of resources, feats, etc. And we are comparing 'better than a cantrip' because that's what was being talked about for some reason, that it's being talked about is not really indicative of anything.

The cherry-picking comment is also, frankly, irksome. Fighter is a bog standard example of a martial and applicable in the 'longbow vs Firebolt' comparison, since they are able to go melee or ranged in equal measure. But fine, if you're going to see that as 'cherry-picking,' let's do the rounds, shall we?

Firebolt baseline: 16.5

Fighter (longbow, no style consideration): 28.5

Rogue (shortbow): 29.5

Paladin (longsword, no style): 28

Monk (unarmed): 28.5

Barbarian (Maul, no Rage, no crit consideration): 24

Ranger (longbow, no style, no HM): 19

So, every single martial exceeds the Firebolt as baseline test. And it's very important to note that this is not actually reflective of martial damage, particularly at such a high level:


This isn't actually the full story though. It's definitely not the part of the story i've been repeatedly talking about when I've made those claims.

To reiterate - Take those martials you just listed with a melee setup and compute their ranged damage with a bow. It's much lower. Of the rest, the fighter and rogue are the only ones that still outperform the firebolt cantrip with a bow at level 17. *And the Fighter only does so because you made him a dex instead of str fighter.

[Dork_Forge]

This isn't actually the full story though. It's definitely not the part of the story i've been repeatedly talking about when I've made those claims.

To reiterate - Take those martials you just listed with a melee setup and compute their ranged damage with a bow. It's much lower. Of the rest, the fighter and rogue are the only ones that still outperform the firebolt cantrip with a bow at level 17. *And the Fighter only does so because you made him a dex instead of str fighter.

W..what?

- Why would you compare the ranged damage of the Paladin, Monk, and Barbarian, classes that are very much intended to be melee-primary? The game expects them to be in melee, that's why their class supports being in melee.

- Why on earth would I use a Str-focused Fighter in a longbow comparison? Seriously? On a Fighter in particular, that just screams self-sabotage in a comparison for a non-realistic reason.

And why have the goalposts now leapt from 11th to 17th level?

This hamstringing of martials for a comparison is really getting tedious.

Martials uniformly get features that enhance their damage output from their core class. That is not true of casters, since the spells they pick can range from different niches and so damage bumps normally come from the subclass (with the one exception of Clerics at 8th). Ignoring how martials are designed (with a bunch of supportive features) to compare to a cantrip, which scales because casters don't get the equivalent is weird and pointless.

May as well talk about how squishy a Wizard or Sorcerer is, with no armor profs and a d6 and ignore the fact they're meant to use their spells to compensate for that.

Seriously, this twisted comparison doesn't say anything about martial performance because no one plays their martial PC deliberately ignoring their features and shoe-horning melee characters into ranged roles, without supporting features, and still expect competitive damage.

[PhoenixPhyre]

W..what?

- Why would you compare the ranged damage of the Paladin, Monk, and Barbarian, classes that are very much intended to be melee-primary? The game expects them to be in melee, that's why their class supports being in melee.

- Why on earth would I use a Str-focused Fighter in a longbow comparison? Seriously? On a Fighter in particular, that just screams self-sabotage in a comparison for a non-realistic reason.

And why have the goalposts now leapt from 11th to 17th level?

This hamstringing of martials for a comparison is really getting tedious.

Martials uniformly get features that enhance their damage output from their core class. That is not true of casters, since the spells they pick can range from different niches and so damage bumps normally come from the subclass (with the one exception of Clerics at 8th). Ignoring how martials are designed (with a bunch of supportive features) to compare to a cantrip, which scales because casters don't get the equivalent is weird and pointless.

May as well talk about how squishy a Wizard or Sorcerer is, with no armor profs and a d6 and ignore the fact they're meant to use their spells to compensate for that.

Seriously, this twisted comparison doesn't say anything about martial performance because no one plays their martial PC deliberately ignoring their features and shoe-horning melee characters into ranged roles, without supporting features, and still expect competitive damage.

Amen. The cherry-picking and goalpost moving here is...yeah. Something to behold.

----------

I just redid the math above using the DPR of the brain-dead rogue vs a creature of CR = level / 2 (closer to the system's expected median enemy) and calculated Rounds to Kill (solo) against the same monster data set:

The average RTK is 3.41, Median = 3.54 (level 1 is an outlier), Std Deviation 0.4, Min 2.63 (level 1/CR 1/2), Max 4.04 (level 10/CR 5). Note that Median +- 1 STD Deviation almost encompasses the entire data set. That's not a broad peak, that's pretty darn near a delta function.

[Skrum]

Yeah. I agree. Because it's more than just inter-class comparisons--you have to compare to the monsters. And they're clearly based around a baseline of current martial damage output. And not the hyper-optimized SS/CBE (etc) builds.

I just did a casual analysis using the data I have available[1]--from level 1-20, the average "rounds to kill solo" for the brain-dead rogue[2] build against monsters of CR = level is...incredibly stable. Mean 6.8, Median 6.9, Standard deviation 1. Min: 4.1 (level 1), Max: 8.2 (level 20); disregarding the endpoints the min is 5.57 (level 3) and the max is 7.7 (level 10). That kind of constancy just doesn't happen by accident--it's one more (large) piece of evidence that baseline, low-optimization martial damage is what the entire system is designed around. That is, medium-optimization casters (and other high-optimization types, caster or martial) are outside the system's expectations. That is, they're doing more damage than the system expects; the martials aren't doing less. If you just buff martials to match the (higher-than-expectations) others, you end up with a spiral and the system just falls apart entirely.

If we map that onto the "3 round" idea[3], that indicates that the party should be doing something like 2-2.5x the brain-dead rogue total. And the brain-dead rogue is just about the floor of current martial builds. Simply giving the rogue TWF (instead of a single shortbow) increases them to roughly 1.3x, which is fairly close to a champion fighter with a GS who doesn't use Action Surge.

It should also be noted that CR = level overestimates (by a lot) the system-expected median monster CR. No, the system does not expect that you're fighting mostly CR = level + X Deadly++ fights.

So if you increase base martial damage by a factor of ~1.5 (ish, more or less depending on the actual class), you're looking at rewriting every bit of the monsters and monster/encounter-building guidelines. Minimum.

[1] all MM, Volos, MToF monsters, using their actual HP, not the book value, which is effective HP after accounting for resistances (mostly), which rarely apply in this case.
[2] Shortbow, 16 DEX + 2 each ASI until capped, gets sneak attack ~100% of the time but never has advantage. No magic items or feats. You can do a lot better than this with very simple optimizations.
[3] which isn't gospel, but it's based on the monster building guidelines. If you extend the "lifetime" of an enemy, the required damage goes down, not up.


Not trying to be rude, but "the system is designed for martial characters to be bad so we shouldn't improve them" is extremely unattractive to me. I'd much rather crank up the difficulty of the monsters (starting by using the DMG's own monster stats by CR table) than condemn half the classes to purgatory. If all the classes were so limited, than we wouldn't even be having this conversation, but casters already broke it. By 7th level a caster has *multiple ways* to greatly outstrip these "expectations."

At my table, we've addressed this by making sure that weapons are readily available that add damage dice to attacks, as well as custom defensive items that can shore up weaknesses for classes that lack options. It's a huge help. But to me, when the problem is so obvious, it would be better to take a little more deliberate thought to the underlying mechanics and fix them.

[Dr.Samurai]

Not trying to be rude, but "the system is designed for martial characters to be bad so we shouldn't improve them" is extremely unattractive to me. I'd much rather crank up the difficulty of the monsters (starting by using the DMG's own monster stats by CR table) than condemn half the classes to purgatory. If all the classes were so limited, than we wouldn't even be having this conversation, but casters already broke it. By 7th level a caster has *multiple ways* to greatly outstrip these "expectations."
Quoted for truth.

This is what I've been saying. It's the system, the system, the system.

Martial damage is not fine, unless you accept that the system is fine.

[Amechra]

So, my further thoughts (if my computer lets me write them down — it crashed the last time I tried to post this):

The problem with martial characters is that the game is no longer designed in a way that makes "martial characters" as a category make sense. Back in 2e, "deals good damage and has good AC and HP" was a full party role because combat wasn't a core part of the experience like it is now. Like, the base Fighter in 2e was literally just "solid stats, deals a bit more damage with weapons they specialize in, +1/2 attack every six levels" and that was enough. In 5e, though, everyone's supposed to be decent at fighting, because it's at least half of the experience. So having a class whose whole thing is "I'm good at fighting" is... well, isn't everyone? And, unlike the Paladin or the Ranger, the Fighter does not have the built-in justification for non-combat stuff because it's the Fighter. It fights. That's what the name means.

The Fighter class is a fossilized remnant of when D&D was a very different game, kinda like encumbrance or summoning spells. The game does have space for non-magical characters, but they need to be built around archetypes that make sense both inside and outside of combat (like, say, the Ranger (yeah, i know) or the Rogue). Because everyone's a Fighter on this blessed day.

...

Honestly, a lot of D&D's problems in general can be blamed on how D&D's spellcasting system is a pile of hot garbage from a design perspective. Like, if you came up to me and described the Cleric's intended play experience and asked me to design that class, I'd probably give you something that got a Guiding Bolt/Sacred Flame/Spiritual Weapon combo as their core combat schtick, a few religion-y class features, and a pool of Divine Favor that you could spend to heal, Turn Undead, or fuel Domain abilities. It'd probably fit on four-ish pages, not counting subclasses.

I would not give you a class that got 25 picks off of a list of 80-odd things, with all of those core Cleric-y things being hidden on that list, topped off with a messy, over-granular resource system and the need to cross-reference your choices whenever you so much as sneeze. That's just... what? No? Why?