My Current Final Answer to Caster/Martial Disparity

[Cluedrew]

So I participated in many very long threads on this topic. I have even spun up some of my own to try and focus on particular sub-parts of it. I was thinking about creating another one but I realized that I don't have another idea. Baring a new revelation I think I am done and I have my answer. It has taken many revisions to get here and it may someday change again, but for now here is my answer.

One last thing before we get started. What is Caster/Martial Disparity? Basically it is any systematic imbalance between characters that uses magic and those that don't. A power option between one caster and one martial does not count (unless there is only one of either). Now the definition of magic is a bit fuzzy especially with things like sufficiently advanced technology, but one bit of fuzziness I would like to cut out of this thread is non-mystic fantastic abilities are not magic. I am going by the look-and-feel view of magic, not the world-building one.* As a simple example, for the purposes of this thread someone who is twice as strong as a human could be just because they trained that hard is not magic.

Step 0: Decide if you want to balance casters and martials at all. If that isn't what you want then you don't have to. Just make sure that it is clear that they are not supposed to be balanced to avoid any badly placed expectations. The remaining points all assume that the answer to this question is yes, you do want them to be balanced.

Balance Concepts: So the first step is to make sure the image of the caster and the martial in your head are balanced. If they are not everything else is only a patch on top of a broken core. One refrain I hear a lot is "How can you balance a reality warper or and a guy who swings a stick." The answer is you change one of them. You either scale the caster down or scale the martial up. Or if they scale individually (such as D&D's 20 level range) make sure they have hit the same scaling points. Again this is all conceptual work; if your caster can create pocket dimensions then the martial might have to be able to smash the wall between worlds.

Game Check: A lot of concepts have some narrative components that don't translate to games very well. The classic example is that in many stories casters are held back by some story constraint. Such as a need to avoid attention or some global balance concern that is even bigger than the events of the story. How do you represent these limits in a game? Well I could try to come up with some solutions either you need to come up with ways to transport them into the game or you have to not rely on them.

Implementation: Here is a big blob of do all the usual implementation, balancing and play-testing work you would use while working on any new content. There is quite a lot of thinks packed in here, but it is so completely generic I am not going to go into detail about it.

Expanding Abilities: Again this is kind of generic, make sure when you add content later things are still balanced. But there is a special note here because such extreme different types of abilities and power sources there is often a structural difference between them. Which means one can be much easier to expand than the other. Don't just expand the easy one as that will increase its power and leave the other behind. Traditionally this is the caster to getting access to more and more magic while the martial's abilities remain locked to the core game's skill system.

And that is it. All of these could be unpacked or add more examples (most would be casters outstripping martials, but this can go either way) but I think this should get across the high level idea. There are related issues like world-building around new abilities people have, but ultimately I think the process is the same for mystic and non-mystic fantastic abilities, its just your starting seed is a little different.

To summarize this entire thing if you want to solve caster/martial disparity you will have to work at it from the very beginning – before any actual rules are created – to the very end – to the release of the last expansion.

Spoiler: * More on Magic

Show

Magic is a word that means a lot of different things in different contexts. For instance how people say something is magic when they don't understand it or the many historic definitions I have learned while studying its past. But there are two that are relevant here and they can be hard to tell apart.

The Literary Definition of Magic: Magic is anything explicitly added to the world that does not exist in real life; from classic wizardry to advanced technology to superhuman conditioning. This definition is mostly concerned with setting and world-building.

The Aesthetic Definition of Magic: Magic is anything that has the same aesthetics (look-and-feel) of magic in traditional sources such as fork-lore and mythology. This definition is even harder to pin down exactly and is more concerned with imagery.

Now you can create balanced characters across the caster/martial divide with both views of magic. Although the first gives you an exact cap on power level. But ultimately I'm using the second because I think that is the one most people are actually referring to. Although these same guidelines can be used if you want to use the first, but it will limit what you can do on the martial side.

[NigelWalmsley]

Balancing casters and martials isn't really a special problem. No one asks "how do I balance Monks and Rangers" or "how do I balance archery and TWF" (or at least, not with the same furor and frequency). The reality is that balancing things is pretty simple. You figure out what balance means, and you iterate on your design until you hit your target. You don't need special tips for balancing casters and martials, you just need to be willing to do the work. Most people aren't, but that's because designing games takes a lot of work and isn't all that rewarding.

[Psyren]

Step 0: Decide if you want to balance casters and martials at all. If that isn't what you want then you don't have to. Just make sure that it is clear that they are not supposed to be balanced to avoid any badly placed expectations. The remaining points all assume that the answer to this question is yes, you do want them to be balanced.

Balance Concepts: So the first step is to make sure the image of the caster and the martial in your head are balanced. If they are not everything else is only a patch on top of a broken core. One refrain I hear a lot is "How can you balance a reality warper or and a guy who swings a stick." The answer is you change one of them. You either scale the caster down or scale the martial up. Or if they scale individually (such as D&D's 20 level range) make sure they have hit the same scaling points. Again this is all conceptual work; if your caster can create pocket dimensions then the martial might have to be able to smash the wall between worlds.

I think there is a missing step here, which is for the GM to define what "balance" means to them. Should the casters and martials be able to solve all the exact same problems? If yes, are they using the same mechanical methods, with the same potential drawbacks? Or if no, does "balance" mean you're bringing different specialists to the team that are equally useful but in different ways?

To use your own example of the caster making a pocket dimension while the martial smashes/cuts his way into one - can the martial's technique be dispelled or counterspelled? Is he making something that doesn't yet exist, or is he merely opening a door to something that someone else had to create? Can he control any of the properties of the pocket that he is accessing? Can he control who gains access after he's opened that door, including the duration it stays open?

Most people aren't, but that's because designing games takes a lot of work and isn't all that rewarding.

Not to mention, most of the audience (outside of message boards) may not care that much, as long as the disparity isn't too egregious for the game to function. That could be folded into "reward" however.

[Cluedrew]

Balancing casters and martials isn't really a special problem. […] The reality is that balancing things is pretty simple. You figure out what balance means, and you iterate on your design until you hit your target. You don't need special tips for balancing casters and martials, you just need to be willing to do the work.

Agreed to the first but I disagree that balancing things is pretty simple. I think balancing a game is an incredibly complex task and you need special tips for everything you might want to balance. Especially when you want to have very diverse options that connect their flavour and mechanics together. But I think there are "special tips" - balance considerations that are particularly important to keep in mind - for any given balance topic.

I think there is a missing step here, which is for the GM to define what "balance" means to them.

GM/System designer actually, but it is a good point either way. And these is how balanced everything is. Is within 5% of perfect balance (under the bold assumption we can measure balance as a percentage) good enough or do we need within 0.1%?

I am trying to focus on issues that seem particularly troublesome for caster/martial and I'm not sure if this is a particular issue for that. Do you think it is?

[Psyren]

GM/System designer actually, but it is a good point either way. And these is how balanced everything is. Is within 5% of perfect balance (under the bold assumption we can measure balance as a percentage) good enough or do we need within 0.1%?

I am trying to focus on issues that seem particularly troublesome for caster/martial and I'm not sure if this is a particular issue for that. Do you think it is?

My take is that this is an easy problem to solve, if that is truly your main priority - let everyone do the same things the same ways. So the martial who "cuts through to a pocket dimension" can be dispelled or counterspelled, his ability is detectable as magic, has limits on when he learns that power, has slots that govern how many times per day he can do it, it provokes when used etc. This ability would thus be able to be perfectly balanced with an equivalent spell.

Of course, the drawback to doing it that way is that you end up with homogeneity. If you want balance without that, that's where things start to get more complicated.

[Asisreo1]

I think martials are fairly well balanced with casters. I know, controversial, but let me explain: most casters have very little in the ways of defense.

Wizard's weaknesses are basically anything that does alot of damage or gets into melee, other spellcasters are big because a wizard usually won't have the necessary proficiency in the saves; best bet for them would be counterspell (a resource) and pray.

Clerics, in general, don't get great defensive options and they have to go into specific subclasses to get these defenses; their weakness would be melee martials and spellcasters. They don't have access to shield or counterspell. (Though they have shield of faith, that doesn't help as a reaction.)

Druids can actually be a psuedo-half-caster by means of Moon's Wild Shape. The problem is that this doesn't give them proficiency in dexterity nor anyway to work around that. You can't cast spells in wildshape but you can continue to concentrate on one, meaning you'll probably just be using 1 concentration spell any given combat encounter. A land druid is the actual full caster version of the druid. They still don't have nearly the options that a wizard does in terms of spellcasting, and that's their compromise. Their weakness would be ranged combatants and spellcasters. They don't have access to shield or counterspell.

Bards are a mostly support class. They have so little in terms of defense outside of their spells and cutting words or bonus proficiencies depending on your subclass. Even with those, their weakness would be melee fighter. They don't have shield.

Sorcerers are very squishy. Going Draconic can help but ultimately a person getting into melee against a sorcerer will slap them around. They have unorthodox saving throws, too. Their weakness is mind controlling spellcasters, evocations spellcasters, and martials (especially melee).

Warlocks can get good defensive options with their invocations but they're effectively a martial in attack pattern since they mostly rely on EB. Their weakness is melee martials, though.

[KineticDiplomat]

And there is, of course, the best answer: don't play D&D. Play a game that isn't about casters gaining the ability to shape the world and defy physics every six seconds while martials hit things somewhat harder with their sword.

Trying to balance D&D to be anything other than high maguc power fantasy is a bit of a losing effort, because it IS high magic power fanstasy. And wouldn't you know it, half dragons with divine lineage who can literally twist dimensional reality are better at that sort of thing than people with slightly bigger swords.

On top of which, D&D is a bit of a crap system to begin with. It was the first big one, but being first doesn't mean best for all time. Concepts have moved on, gameplay has moved on, and you don't have to deal with someone trying to mathematically perfect what a level 13 half devil caster does versus a level 13 human monk, because there are plenty of games not about that. There are some that even take the perfectly sensible step of not letting you be nigh-unto-a-god (and some that, by focusing on being a god very specifically, do it far better.)

Want to get past a horrible design flaw in a game half a century old? Play a better game.

[Psyren]

I think martials are fairly well balanced with casters. I know, controversial, but let me explain: most casters have very little in the ways of defense.

Not that controversial given that you're talking about 5e specifically While some disparity still exists there, which grows at higher levels like in most other iterations of D&D, the gap is small enough that most players don't care.

Want to get past a horrible design flaw in a game half a century old? Play a better game.

"Finding a better game" isn't really the challenge, folks on this subforum alone will suggest dozens. The challenge rather is getting your friends to play the "better game" with you. That's a big reason why so many folks turn to modifying D&D instead of abandoning it.

[Ignimortis]

I think martials are fairly well balanced with casters. I know, controversial, but let me explain: most casters have very little in the ways of defense.

The point that you have missed is that D&D isn't a PvP game.

The disparity is not in how well every class can kill the other or even (in 5e) combat parity, because 5e was designed around HP damage as the main way to win any combat. The disparity is that a Wizard can do twelve different things out of combat that would be useful, while a Fighter can do two, all of which can be done by the Wizard on the same level or better, and at the same time the Wizard isn't much worse than the Fighter in combat, just somewhat worse (and sometimes even better).

[KineticDiplomat]

I have found that a willingness to GM a not D&D game goes a long way to getting everyone at the table to admit they really don’t like D&D that much. And often they’ll start floating ideas of their own.

The best part? Because most games have avoided the pitfalls of D&D’s overly specific math requirements, GMing many other systems requires little more than a basic grasp of the rules and the willingness to tell a world. Most people run screaming from GMing because D&D makes it a hideous labor...but it doesn’t have to be.

[Jay R]

The easiest way to balance martial and casters is to play at levels where they are more-or-less balanced. In original D&D, the assumption was that once you reach 9th or 10th level, the game is pretty much over. The rules say that you stop adventuring, clear out an area, the Fighter builds a keep, and becomes a Lord. He* raises an army and fights other armies.

The problem isn’t balance. The problem is high-level characters. Once you can easily sack a dungeon and slay a dragon, the game of Dungeons and Dragons is over.

[Psyren]

I have found that a willingness to GM a not D&D game goes a long way to getting everyone at the table to admit they really don’t like D&D that much. And often they’ll start floating ideas of their own.

The best part? Because most games have avoided the pitfalls of D&D’s overly specific math requirements, GMing many other systems requires little more than a basic grasp of the rules and the willingness to tell a world. Most people run screaming from GMing because D&D makes it a hideous labor...but it doesn’t have to be.

For many of us, "math" isn't a dirty word
Kidding aside, I do understand your point - there are certainly systems that are easier to pick up and GM than 5th edition is (and even that is arguably the easiest edition of D&D to pick up and learn in... well, ever) - but ease of adoption is only one selling point for a game. Being able to resolve many types of conflict with defined rules and calculations is not a bug, but a feature for numerous playgroups. I personally think 5e is as "rules light" as D&D is likely to get, though 6e could always prove me wrong.

The point that you have missed is that D&D isn't a PvP game.

The disparity is not in how well every class can kill the other or even (in 5e) combat parity, because 5e was designed around HP damage as the main way to win any combat. The disparity is that a Wizard can do twelve different things out of combat that would be useful, while a Fighter can do two, all of which can be done by the Wizard on the same level or better, and at the same time the Wizard isn't much worse than the Fighter in combat, just somewhat worse (and sometimes even better).

I don't think he was bringing up their weaknesses in a PvP sense. Rather, it shows that even if those casters have more capabilities, they have limited resources with which to use those capabilities, and not having martials around (or trying to steal all their thunder if they are around) means their already limited resources get taxed even more heavily. (Remember, 5e has no bonus spells, and the concentration mechanic also limits the buffs they can maintain concurrently quite heavily.)

The easiest way to balance martial and casters is to play at levels where they are more-or-less balanced. In original D&D, the assumption was that once you reach 9th or 10th level, the game is pretty much over. The rules say that you stop adventuring, clear out an area, the Fighter builds a keep, and becomes a Lord. He* raises an army and fights other armies.

The problem isn’t balance. The problem is high-level characters. Once you can easily sack a dungeon and slay a dragon, the game of Dungeons and Dragons is over.

If this were truly the intent though, they wouldn't be printing high-level material - monsters, spells and items for characters well above 10th level. If balance is your be-all and end-all then stopping at those mid-levels makes sense, but that should be a playgroup choice rather than a system limitation.

[Zarrgon]

I think I might have two more concepts to add:


Game World Power Level More then anything else this creates Caster/Martial Disparity. Very quickly casters gain the ability to alter reality....but then they adventure in a dull mundane world made out of sticks and mud. Anything the makes the game world not like 1000 AD Earth. There is this odd obsession of wanting things to be just like historical Earth, but at the same time having reality warping magic. Even a simple concept of better saves resistances works. Though this leads to:

The 800 Pound Gorilla The big one no one even wants to acknowledge or talk about: creating the disparity by taking magics side. Or more simply, the bias for magic. And this is huge and very wide spread. Even hint that magic might have some sort of limit will get people to freak out. They will demand all magic must be free to warp all reality always. And this is not just about pure mechanical rules, but it's also about play styles. When combat happens and, amazingly yet again, the caster characters never get seriously attacked. The same way that, amazingly, any event or encounter ignores the casters. This is the classic: Everyone will laugh and say 'martial suck' when a martial character can't fight a ghost, but every one will scream insanely if the world has even a single anti magical area as it's wrong to negatively effect the caster characters.


And need less to say, putting the two together makes things even worse.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

On top of which, D&D is a bit of a crap system to begin with. It was the first big one, but being first doesn't mean best for all time. Concepts have moved on, gameplay has moved on, and you don't have to deal with someone trying to mathematically perfect what a level 13 half devil caster does versus a level 13 human monk, because there are plenty of games not about that. There are some that even take the perfectly sensible step of not letting you be nigh-unto-a-god (and some that, by focusing on being a god very specifically, do it far better.)

Want to get past a horrible design flaw in a game half a century old? Play a better game.

I have found that a willingness to GM a not D&D game goes a long way to getting everyone at the table to admit they really don’t like D&D that much. And often they’ll start floating ideas of their own.

The best part? Because most games have avoided the pitfalls of D&D’s overly specific math requirements, GMing many other systems requires little more than a basic grasp of the rules and the willingness to tell a world. Most people run screaming from GMing because D&D makes it a hideous labor...but it doesn’t have to be.

The extent to which other systems are obviously better than D&D at doing [thing] and how people obviously hate/are tired of D&D and D&D is this clunky old relic that is obviously outclassed by the new hotness is vastly overblown.

You want to run a game about playing a character of godlike power and think that D&D is crap for that because it's an overly-mathy game with tons of fiddly bits and very little inter-class balance at high levels? Well, guess what? Turns out that if you focus on the worst points of a game and pretend other games do it better, everything sounds like crap!

Amber Diceless is a shallow game where the numbers are purely deterministic, the main mechanic is fast-talking the DM, and the GM is lucky if two PCs ever spend more than the first ten minutes of the campaign in the same Shadow. Exalted is a pretentious game where you'll quickly get sick of names and descriptions generated using the Ultimate Lotus Flowery Language Technique, solar exalted are always and universally Better Than You, and combat is more rocket tag than D&D ever could be. Nobilis is an ultra-high-concept game where you basically go through character creation twice and then play Exalted with less mechanical rigor and less adherence to internal consistency than a recent Doctor Who season. Scion is a fairly generic game with all the paint-by-numbers problems of a late-stage White Wolf game, a total lack of target numbers anywhere in the book, and less of a fleshed-out setting than the Greek gods' Wikipedia page. And so on and so forth.

The idea that everything besides D&D is balanced, simple, easy to GM, etc. and switching systems will magically fix your problem is the same kind of myopic "D&D is a perfect universal game and you can run anything with it with a bit of tweaking" take from the opposite perspective, and you rarely hear opposition to those sorts of "[Game] rules, D&D droolz" statements because lots of people start with D&D, don't like it, switch to a new system or systems they like better, and start evangelizing, and you basically never hear from (A) people who start with D&D, try other systems, and end up going back to D&D not because new systems are scary but because they actually like it better or (B) people who start with something obscure, don't like it, switch to D&D, and start evangelizing that.

For many of us, "math" isn't a dirty word
Kidding aside, I do understand your point - there are certainly systems that are easier to pick up and GM than 5th edition is (and even that is arguably the easiest edition of D&D to pick up and learn in... well, ever) - but ease of adoption is only one selling point for a game. Being able to resolve many types of conflict with defined rules and calculations is not a bug, but a feature for numerous playgroups. I personally think 5e is as "rules light" as D&D is likely to get, though 6e could always prove me wrong.

Indeed. For all that people give D&D a lot of crap about having too-complicated and excessive math, it's incredibly solid at the low-mid levels in every edition and in 3e it's both more solid at more levels and provides the kind of "casual realism" that a bunch of other games wish they could. 3e D&D hangs together much better than any White Wolf game, for instance...and that says very little about the talent and competence of 3e's main design team (which was considerable, don't get me wrong) and much more about just how bad White Wolf was at math.

Personally, I'd say that (leaving out all the rules-light games with trivial math) only Shadowrun 4e and GURPS come close to 3e's solidity, and while those games' math are much better in many areas, the fact that Shadowrun (A) has Matrix rules that are just totally borked and (B) has a magic/tech/mundane balance triangle in theory but is nicknamed "Magicrun" for a reason, and GURPS (A) has point value assignments that break down when you try to do the genre-mixing that's a major selling point of the system and (B) is more of a build-your-own-game system than a game system with a higher barrier to entry on the GM side, mean that D&D holds together better on the whole.

[Xervous]

The kitchen sink design of D&D has hamstrung it somewhat in providing comparable progressions across the board. I deem it no failure of the system, merely a demonstration of the good old garbage in equaling garbage out.

The quintessential fighter is a static, dull, incompetent concept that tends to read off more like a mook template than an actual player class. In a game with multiple modes of player engagement, the fighter only being able to put numbers on the damage scoreboard is a facet that stems from the general concept. If the game is all about punching things and taking their stuff he’s in line to be the star of the show, but cast in a more diverse plot it’s painful how much a one trick pony he is.

The concept is further limiting in that it does not allow for progression comparable to other archetypes. While mobility, information gathering and other plot interacting effects accrue in the hands of other classes the fighter is just a numerically scaled up version of his lower level self.

If D&D wasn’t burdened by the weight of tradition and could shave off the stubs of classes that got stretched from a 1-5 progression to their 1-20 presentations and replace them with concepts that touched upon more modes of involvement while having thematic paths to grow to match the assumed scope of adventures.

Fighter and co. suck because their concepts are incomplete and not fully applicable to the range of play seen in D&D. Build a class off a good concept and scale it properly and then a discussion on disparity between the unique subsystems by which the various classes interact with the world will be able to start.

[Willie the Duck]

Balancing casters and martials isn't really a special problem. No one asks "how do I balance Monks and Rangers" or "how do I balance archery and TWF" (or at least, not with the same furor and frequency). The reality is that balancing things is pretty simple. You figure out what balance means, and you iterate on your design until you hit your target. You don't need special tips for balancing casters and martials, you just need to be willing to do the work. Most people aren't, but that's because designing games takes a lot of work and isn't all that rewarding.

Although not a special problem, I think balancing magic to not-magic is decidedly harder of a task. If nothing else because there are so many spells, so many different problems against which they are leveraged in D&D (especially compared to archery and twf, which are just alternate avenues towards HP damage on opponents), and very early on in the game the designers decided to give away vast swaths of all things possible to a couple of magical classes (an alternate version of the game where different types of magic were more stringently siloed would be easier to balance than one where a single wizard can solve combat, dungeon-crawling, transport, knowledge, and social issues).

[Asisreo1]

Not that controversial given that you're talking about 5e specifically While some disparity still exists there, which grows at higher levels like in most other iterations of D&D, the gap is small enough that most players don't care.

Okay, when I wrote this, I didn't realize I was on the general RPG forum. Thought this was tagged under 5e lol.

[Asisreo1]

The point that you have missed is that D&D isn't a PvP game.

The disparity is not in how well every class can kill the other or even (in 5e) combat parity, because 5e was designed around HP damage as the main way to win any combat. The disparity is that a Wizard can do twelve different things out of combat that would be useful, while a Fighter can do two, all of which can be done by the Wizard on the same level or better, and at the same time the Wizard isn't much worse than the Fighter in combat, just somewhat worse (and sometimes even better).

Okay, it was obvious I was talking about 5e, but a lack of defense is not something purely PvP, in any system. No matter what system you run, there's bruisers and archers and skirmishers and spellcasters as NPC's. These are going to appear as opposition to your party and it's important to see these weaknesses.

Out of combat, of course it depends on the system. Usually, though, the melee-er gets to bypass traps and react against the environmental hazards better than a spellcaster which usually doesn't make the damage-reducing roll and usually has less HP to spare when they take the damage. In this way, fighters are still good for the defensive aspect of the out-of-combat game. This does greatly depend on how much out-of-combat is developed anyways.

[Cluedrew]

My take is that this is an easy problem to solve, if that is truly your main priority - let everyone do the same things the same ways.

Well my main priority is to design a fun role-playing game. Balance on the level of everyone can make a meaningful contribution most of the time contributes to that but so does diversity so the easy way out doesn't work. Nor does the other one some others mentioned actually.

Why I just don't play D&D: I already don't play D&D, not usually at least, its not that I hate it but it just doesn't mesh with the types of games I enjoy so why use it? Really I just mine it for examples and metaphors because no one would understand if I tried to compare a practitioner of the way of the winding river and a wrama.

I think I might have two more concepts to add: [...] Game World Power Level [...] The 800 Pound Gorilla [or pro-magic bias]

Pro-magic bias is one that get mentioned and I have butted my head against before. I'm not sure if the setting power level is a problem for caster/martial disparity on its own but I have seen it combine with pro-magic bias where people will happily handwave magic but demand world building for any physically themed changes to the world.

So I guess question your biases should be in there but unfortunately I don't really have a process for that.

Fighter and co. suck because their concepts are incomplete and not fully applicable to the range of play seen in D&D. Build a class off a good concept and scale it properly and then a discussion on disparity between the unique subsystems by which the various classes interact with the world will be able to start.

Yeah this is the Balance Concepts thing, I have proposed various visions of higher level ideas of the fighter (like the super-human, the solider or the noble) but people rarely like them or suggest their own. There just seems to be a blank spot there that people don't want to fill in. That is one of the mysteries I haven't been able to solve.

[Pex]

A spellcaster plane hopping and creating demi planes does not mean a warrior needs to be able to punch the veil between worlds and do the same thing. The warrior is then just a spellcaster by another name. The warrior should be doing his own special wow things. It could be just as fantastical such as jumping across a 200 ft wide ravine, or if you need more verisimilitude he can climb down one side 500 ft deep then climb the other in an hour without risk of failure. The spellcaster can fly. The warrior can jump 30 ft up, grapple a flying enemy, and bring him down to the ground. The spellcaster brings someone dead 5 days back to life. The warrior does CPR bringing back to life someone dead for 5 minutes.

I'm in the raise the warrior camp to bring balance if you need it. They can do similar things as spellcasters in some cases but total quid pro quo is not needed. Spellcasters are entitled to do their own wow special things.

[SunderedWorldDM]

Alternatively, you could make magic and martial characters more cross-compatible within your campaign. Your fighter can delve into the crypt to find a magical schema to forge the Blade of Dusk again, and follow it up with tense negotiation with the last surviving Runespeaker to get Urgdod, the Rune of Icy Death, so that you can inscribe it onto the Blade of Dusk. Then after you've gotten that business sorted, fight through the cults of Yormunsk to enter a planar portal to show the demon lord who killed your parent's who's boss.

Your martial characters are capable of doing epic, badass magical things. You can just give them the narrative impetus to do so. Especially if you flavor your martial's advancement in terms of reputation. Your 3rd level fighter is the "Prizewinner of the Champion's Arena" now, and everyone in the area will recognize them on sight as such. Once they get to level 5, they are "the best duelist in the realm", and they can use that reputation to secure audience with nobles.

Martial characters can feel as awesome and epic as spellcasters do. You just need to escape the confines of mechanical thinking and consider the scale of their story instead.

[Rhyltran]

Again, as I mentioned in another thread, this isn't as big of a deal as people make it out to be and many people over blow the problem by their own biases towards the subject. A lot of people claim the Fighter can't teleport, fly, go invisible, or handle situations the same way the wizard can.. except.. of course this isn't true and the Fighter can do all of these things. In a single game with all the books available and with access to magical items/gear/optimization/prestige classes.. it isn't hard to build a fighter that can handle any problem that exists out there. It might require more system mastery than the wizard and sure the wizard might be able to do the same thing (even easier) but at the end of the day a Fighter can still solve all the problems that the game presents to him. Since the discussion is literally high level play we have access to prestige classes that can raise a class up a tier or two we have access to 760,000 gold of WBL.

The problem only comes when people want their Fighter to do everything a wizard can without the use of magical items but in the end DnD doesn't support that kind of play (which is why wealth by level is a thing.) It's also why, especially for martial characters, other source books (and online resources) should be open. Once this is the case and the players have some experience, it isn't hard to build a viable character no matter what starting base you originate from. Their are so many ways to boost attributes, beef up saves, get immunity to level drain, have access to true seeing, a mode of transportation, a way to fly, and so much more that just about any problem can truly be solved outside of player PvP.

The true difficulty comes with balancing encounters for higher level players. Regardless what they start as. When a monk can be built to solo the elder evils, everyone can break the game with enough know how.

[KineticDiplomat]

No, not every game is better than D&D. Just a great number of them, certainly enough that you can find a better way to play virtually any story type than D&D, any combat type, any power level, any era. D&D's ability to be just-above-bad at everything doesn't mean you should play it instead of games that are good at things you want.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

No, not every game is better than D&D. Just a great number of them, certainly enough that you can find a better way to play virtually any story type than D&D, any combat type, any power level, any era. D&D's ability to be just-above-bad at everything doesn't mean you should play it instead of games that are good at things you want.

There are many games that claim to do certain settings/themes/combat styles/etc. better than D&D, but this certainly doesn't always hold.

Riddle of Steel claims to be the best at intricate Medieval close quarters tactical combat, but in practice it falls down hard when you have more than two combatants at a time and gives you very few actually mechanically meaningful options. And that's its only claim to fame; even fans try to ignore the clunky and obviously unbalanced character creation, the sketchy and deliberately unbalanced magic system, and so on.

GURPS claims to be the best at statting out characters in detail in any time period or genre, but "shoot dude with fire" and "send message to faraway dude" spells in the various magic supplements strongly assume a generic low-magic Medieval European fantasy setting and point values break down if you try to make such characters in urban fantasy settings where guns and cell phones are a thing. This is somewhat alleviated by there being tons of GURPS resource books out there for different settings/genres/eras/etc., but each one you add makes the GM's job harder and makes the likelihood of mis-pointing-for-the-current-setting rise proportionally.

Shadowrun claims to be the best at providing players with consistent magical physics and role-limited magicians, but bound spirits > you and you can enchant motorcycles to go significant fractions of the speed of sound and break both the setting and the vehicle rules. And I hope you weren't planning to play a gish type, enchanter, or other kind of magician, because they suck or don't exist, and let's not even talk about the poor technomancer who gets the short end of the magic and decking sticks.

White Wolf claims to be the best at running "mixed supernatural" groups like a vampire/werewolf/mage/ghost teamup, but every single splat was incompatible with every other in ways both dramatic and subtle, and White Wolf couldn't math their way out of a paper bag with a GPS and a lightsaber.

Meanwhile, the D&D engine is versatile enough that the 3e third-party publishers gave us dozens of novel settings in dozens of genres during the OGL boom, 5e third-party publishers have tons of genre-mashup and D&D-conversion products up on DM's Guild, and 4e third-party publishers...existed, I presume. Are any of those somewhat-tweaked D&D variants going to be as good at handling a given genre-tone-power-era combination as a game dedicated to that particular one? Not in the slightest, obviously (but then again, neither will "universal" systems like GURPS or Fate). But D&D is much closer to "halfway-decent at anything" than "second-worst at everything" than people like yourself give it credit for.

[Psyren]

Well my main priority is to design a fun role-playing game. Balance on the level of everyone can make a meaningful contribution most of the time contributes to that but so does diversity so the easy way out doesn't work. Nor does the other one some others mentioned actually.

Why I just don't play D&D: I already don't play D&D, not usually at least, its not that I hate it but it just doesn't mesh with the types of games I enjoy so why use it? Really I just mine it for examples and metaphors because no one would understand if I tried to compare a practitioner of the way of the winding river and a wrama.

I was only using D&D for examples too. My main point is system-agnostic, and could be summed up as follows:

When you're designing your system, you have to decide not just what a magic-user and a non-magic-user can do, but how they do it. And part of that "how" includes the advantages and drawbacks to each approach. All of those things ultimately play a role in "balance."

As one (again, system-agnostic) example - if a spellcaster can use magic to unlock a door in under six seconds, while a thief with his lockpicks will take a full minute to do the same thing, that is clearly unbalanced in favor of the caster, and there's no reason to go with the thief because the caster's approach is objectively better. But that's comparing the two approaches in a vacuum; in reality the true obstacle may have additional factors to consider. Maybe the caster can only do that 3 times, but there are 7 locked doors the party needs to get through. Or maybe the caster can do it all 7 times, but at the cost of the lightning he needs to help fight whatever is behind Door 5. Or casting that 7 times makes him too tired/drained to recall everyone back out in an emergency. Or perhaps he has enough unlocking spells to get the party through every door, but they all require a loud magic word that alerts the enemies inside ,while the lockpicks don't. Maybe the spell has more than one, or even ALL of those disdavantages.

Are the two approaches still unbalanced against one another? That is the kind of thing that makes "balance" discussions less straightforward.

[Ignimortis]

Shadowrun claims to be the best at providing players with consistent magical physics and role-limited magicians, but bound spirits > you and you can enchant motorcycles to go significant fractions of the speed of sound and break both the setting and the vehicle rules. And I hope you weren't planning to play a gish type, enchanter, or other kind of magician, because they suck or don't exist, and let's not even talk about the poor technomancer who gets the short end of the magic and decking sticks.

White Wolf claims to be the best at running "mixed supernatural" groups like a vampire/werewolf/mage/ghost teamup, but every single splat was incompatible with every other in ways both dramatic and subtle, and White Wolf couldn't math their way out of a paper bag with a GPS and a lightsaber.

Neither of those claim to do these things. Crossover games have been absolute trash in OWoD and I distinctly remember the authors saying that you probably shouldn't try to do that. NWoD was designed to be crossover-friendly and from what I've heard (never played it myself), it works somewhat well, if the narrative has a reason for all y'all to stick together instead of doing your own stuff.

Meanwhile Shadowrun was always about mages being superior in a way, both morally and mechanically. It's one of the major problems of the game and the setting, really. The GM is supposed to beat mages down with IC tools, but it's poor design and doesn't hold up in the modern editions mechanically. Consistent magical physics were a thing, though - until 5e rolled around and CGL's poorly-paid freelancers messed everything up, but that can be said of many things in 5e (let's not even start with 6e). Before that, though, there were three major rules that couldn't be broken - no resurrection, no fortune-telling/foresight, no teleportation. These three things fix a lot of issues with magic utility by itself, really, and if the fourth was "no direct mind/body control", spellcasting in Shadowrun could've probably been one of the best conceptually.

Oh, and technomancers don't suck if you know how to play them - they're just not "a decker who uses their brain as a deck" and aren't good if played like that.

[Cluedrew]

I'm in the raise the warrior camp to bring balance if you need it. They can do similar things as spellcasters in some cases but total quid pro quo is not needed. Spellcasters are entitled to do their own wow special things.

The problem with this in D&D is that there are so few wow special things left that spell-casters haven't got a spell for already. What good is a ranger when you can teleport, a rogue when you can knock or a fighter when you can summon minions? Actually still something, I'm not going that hard on it, but it is still precariously close between the specialist and the wizard who picked up a few spells on the side.

Of course you could pump up the non-casters up to match entirely, but there is a point a which everything starts feeling the same to me if you do that. So my answer is mostly in the raise the warrior (and the scout, doctor, scholar, tracker and diplomat) camp but a bit of put more limits on the caster. Although a lot of that also just comes as part of the restructuring of caster to give it a more distinct feel. But that is a topic in its own right.

The problem only comes when people want their Fighter to do everything a wizard can without the use of magical items but in the end DnD doesn't support that kind of play (which is why wealth by level is a thing.)

I know I was just complaining about people rejecting visions of the high level fighter but this is the one I can never quite get behind. Its not out of the question, I've got some characters like that, but a fighter whose strength is "we have taken caster abilities and given you them in the form of equipment" feels like a half-caster beside a fighter who can do the same through training or someone who has a completely different set of abilities through training. I suppose the ultimate solution would be to support multiple kinds of high-level fighters, what a revolutionary idea.

On D&D's Quality: I am happy to hear how other systems handle caster/martial disparity, or how setting and power level effect the issue. This is not about D&D's quality in general please send that to a different thread.

To Psyren: Oh that makes sense. Making everything the same feels like one of those cures worse than the disease things.

[Zarrgon]

The problem with this in D&D is that there are so few wow special things left that spell-casters haven't got a spell for already. What good is a ranger when you can teleport, a rogue when you can knock or a fighter when you can summon minions? Actually still something, I'm not going that hard on it, but it is still precariously close between the specialist and the wizard who picked up a few spells on the side.

This is a big part about my point of having a different world. Before 3E, D&D was full of weird, strange and unknown stuff. But very little of it had hard crunchy mechanical rules: it just existed. Just take doors: An entrance might be blocked by tightly packed tree roots, and you would note that this is not "a door", so knock is useless. But note the martial character can still figure out how to open the lock (the skill even says it can open a puzzle lock, but I wonder how many use that).

more limits on the caster. Although a lot of that also just comes as part of the restructuring of caster to give it a more distinct feel. But that is a topic in its own right.

One of the big things 3E removed, and it has been gone ever since is the negative effects. And all the negative effects really limited casters. It was dangerous for a spellcaster to cast spells in The Abyss, for example....but note most martial things were not effected (they might be climbing a wall of bleeding eye balls...but it's mostly just a wall).


And I'll add the classic bias too: A spellcaster can pick from any spell in any book: should a DM even hint that they might restrict a spell casters spell choices and they will scream and whine and complain. Of course, should any martial character want any martial item, armor or weapon the DM must slam both fists down on the table and say "No"...because martial characters suck.

[Tanarii]

Besides 3e D&D, what other systems particularly suffer from caster / martial imbalance?

I mean, all you really have to do is identify why so many systems get it right, and one particular edition of one particular TRPG got it wrong.

[KineticDiplomat]

@ClueDrew

Fair enough. Two systems off the back of my head for comparison.

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay / Dark Heresy / Etc.

Methods of Balance: Serious Consequences, IC Discrimination, Magical Specialization

A better known one.

The universe for these games being what it is, it is more or less a given that continuously flashing your powers around is a great excuse for the GM to abuse you with misfortunes that do not need to be particularly fair. While IC balance methods are always softer than mechanics, the setting promotes their use heavily.

Beyond which, casting/praying for a spell is a potentially dangerous affair. The odds are about one in ten that something will go wrong in a way that is "merely obnoxious" like mutating the nearest living creature (party included), bleeding from your eyes, or going deaf. The odds are about 1/200 that you will get something "really bad", like your head exploding, going blind, or being cast out of grace by your god. And lots of chances to pick up corruption, which effectively ends that character when it gets high enough. Rather than say warriors can jump a mile, or a fireball is no different than a crossbow, they say "yes, this stuff is scary and dangerous and playing with powers no one knows or trusts. The price of power is that everyone fears you, and mechanically you have a real chance to kill yourself or TPK the entire party."

And then there's the simple matter that you can only actually learn in one area/god, and each spell represents a major investment of XP. You might realistically never know more than a handful. No flying-invisible-fireball flinging-magically seducing-better-than-everyone-at-everything wizards here.

Some variety in editions, but the 1/10 minor issue and 1/200 "Oh &*^%" issue in addition to the chance to simply fail your cast is a pretty good benchmarks for making consequences a thing.

Blade of The Iron Throne

Method of Balance: Low-Fantasy Spells, Split between Ritual/Instant Magic, Magic Specialization, Consequences.

Granted, this is a low fantasy game at heart, but since it seeks to emulate Sword & Sorcery pulp it needs to allow world devastating magic. It find the balance like so:

The spell list is almost entirely low fantasy. There are plenty of ominous things like witchfire, mesmerizing folks, and scrying the mists of the future, but virtually nothing along the lines of utility spells or rapid healing. In addition, the effects are appropriately Conan - controlling someone's mind makes them a clearly blank eyed near-zombie moving mindlessly to your demand for instance. Certainly has it's uses, but it isn't a story-bypassing skill.

Further, characters are limited in the fields they can study. Both in terms of little stuff, and in the pre-requisites needed to access big stuff. The more you invest at chargen, the more you know, but since chargen focuses as much on making true weaknesses in characters as strengths, going all in on magic will leave you badly exposed somewhere else.

To add to that, the "instant" spell types are of limited effectiveness and scale. Most of the instant stuff is more supporting cast than lead - cursing someone to reduce their dice pool for instance. This puts the specialist talkers/stalkers/killers in the limelight for most reactionary situations while allowing the magic user to shine during pre-planned events. For impressive stuff, you both need the time and effort to conduct a ritual - again, in the best low fantasy manner, if you're summoning a demon you should expect to have to conduct an actual blood sacrifice - and to specifically know how to pull that ritual off. In many cases that means knowing an Arcane Secret, the acquisition of which is recommended to be a 4 session minimum adventure centered specifically on finding it, with a decent chance of killing the character(s). And then they don't piss around. You want to level a city with a firestorm or rip someone's heart out of their body? Go ahead. Better hope it doesn't go wrong...

...because that can get bad. From simple loss of control of the spell to a demon deciding to kill you all for trying to compel it to your puny mortal wishes. I recall one game where the party wanted to summon a demon to, essentially, bring severe dysentery to a garrison they wanted to infiltrate. The GM said something to the effect of "you can absolutely do this and it will work. Just be aware that if your sorcerer fails this roll, there's a better than even chance this thing is going to rot your flesh on your bones for the impudence, and even if she succeeds, it will demand a price you might not want. And yeah, looking at the dice, it's about even which one you're gonna get."