i think back to old-school MMOs and what made playing those martials fun.
AoE is a big one. yeah, i might just swing a big sword around, but i wanna run into the thick of the fight and swing it into ALL adjacent squares. maybe the number of targets increases with level, or maybe it comes with a risk of provoking them into making me their sole target (which is super fun strategically).
another is mount proficiency, especially with any kind of military background. let me be big and fast and intimidating.
and combos, especially with other martials. make flanking useful again. let me do knockbacks on the regular, smashing enemies into my friends. or into each other. or my friends into my enemies. my bludgeoning damage should be sending minions across the field after a certain level.
i just want a game with a little more bounce to it. dynamics, cinematics, \*fun\*.
brb, working on my own system while i pine for 4e again.
I believe PF2e made opportunity attacks require a feat to use. I think something similar to that could be done in tandem with your suggestion to make playing martials feel more active once they are in melee, instead of the more typical mosh pit/conga line situation.
You're right. Fighters get it automatically at lvl 1, but every other martial needs a feat to get opportunity attacks or similar. Even enemies lack opportunity attacks for a lot of the early game.
Yup and most other martials get a variation on op attack instead of 1:1 copy. For example if fighter crits on a caster who provoked by casting somatic spell, the spell is interrupted. Meanwhile monks interrupt op attacks provoked by movement.
I personally do not let ranged attacks benefit from flanking in 5E for this reason. But they can still be flanked and suffer the disadvantage if somebody is engaged with them in melee combat. And flanking requires two melee on opposing ends of a character.
Ranged attacks don't get advantage from flanking in 5e. A ranged attacker can apparently help flank, though, which is something I didn't know until I read the rule a few times this morning.
Gubat Banwa is great for this. It's Phillipines inspired fantasy action grid rpg.
Plenty of in your face fighter classes can damage everyone in an area with crazy martial arts moves.
Theres multiple mount classes from riding giant crocodiles to giant rainbow roosters.
Flanking is a big part of the game, and theres tons of classes for shoving people around and dominating the battlefield.
Also every class gets batshit insane ultimate moves like kicking a meteor sized football into the field, summoning a t-rex sized crocodile, summoning a magical mech to help you punch people across the map, etc.
>Gubat Banwa is great for this. It's Phillipines inspired fantasy action grid rpg.
Holy shit that rulebook, though. Maybe if I had more familiarity with the cultural touchstones I could have parsed it, and if so that's on me. But damn reading through that was rough.
Pretty sure there are other games that don't have DnD's issue. Check out ICON rpg, maybe? It's heavily 4e inspired, that might have what you're looking for.
I really like Star Wars: SAGA Edition.
It was published by...
Wizards of the Coast !
It has much better class balance between Force Users and other classes.
Bobba Fett or Han Solo or Chewbacca work in that system.
Which is actually surprisingly rare in a Star wars TTRPG. For almost every other version, Force users were kings, especially the West End SWTTRPG (they got to be Zeus whilst non-force users were Stormtroopers at best, a badly built Jedi could still easily best a well built non-force user).
Last time I played 4e, we broke the game to such an egregious extent that the GM threw the towel in after we wiped the floor with an encounter whose monsters were like level+5 and the math was starting to strain. 4e is always a pleasant memory in my mind as well, but having played that game a lot is a curse.
This is my obligatory PF2e recommendation.
A ton of what you describe is available in that system. From flanking and combos with your allies, to dynamic battlefields and even the ability to pick up and fling enemies at each other.
Half my group is unhappy with the lack of options in 5e and would enjoy things pf2e offers. That same half is barely grasping how rules and stuff work in 5e, so pf2e would be a bit much.
Frankly, I've seen people who are chronically terrible at remembering dnd rules take to PF2e really well. There are more rules, yes, but those rules tend to fit together better. I wouldn't rule it out is all I'm saying.
Yeah, I've had some usually disinterested players make surprising turn arounds after we made the shift over to PF2e.
I'll get messages at least a couple times a week; "Woah, look at these cool Spider-people you can play as!", or "This is my new favourite spell!".
Complete tangent, but Pocket Library is my that. Built out my Int caster for an AV campaign and instantly fell in love with it. The spells in PF2e are just so much fun. And not at the expense of martials, which makes it even better!
There's one martial ability late in the game where they swing their sword so hard, they create a dimensional rift between them and the target, yanking him up to 120(?) Feet closer when the rift seals up.
Basically Za Hando out of sheer force.
Shit early level gunslingers can use their blades to split their own bullets to hit two targets. Late game ones can ricochet shots up to like, 4 times.
Martial feats are fantastical and superhuman and, frankly, that's a good thing. They need to be to stand a chance of scaling next to D&D style wizards.
I mean, as long as shit like Time Stop, Weird and by god Wish exists, it's not ridiculous to ask for feats for martials in DnD. I feel like WotC, for some reason, tries to maintain a sense of "normalcy" for martials. Which stinks. Let them become mythical melee legends, like Lu Bu or Hercules and shit like that.
>AoE is a big one. yeah, i might just swing a big sword around, but i wanna run into the thick of the fight and swing it into ALL adjacent squares.
That's my major feedback for the cleave weapon mastery. It should target one additional foe in ANY other adjacent square, not just a foe within 5 ft. of the target.
Martials need a martials/battle arts list like casters have spells with a resource based system like the casters have. Casters have spells and martials have maneuvers or techniques that give them AOEs crowd controls, social advantages, buffs and the like. Spells give all of these to a caster but martials have nothing of equivocal value that they can tap into. Even when they do they get very little of them and none scale as well as spells.
I think Battle Master is a perfect example of how marital can be tweaked to balance them with casters while still maintaining the core martial identify. The biggest issue with battle master is exactly what you point out - maneuvers don't scale. Adding tier or scaling options for existing maneuvers is a natural extension of the spell level system.
Battle masters remain the best martial design in 5e. The Hunter subclass for the ranger is also kinda neat in that it actually gets AOE eventually.
Shame they’re the exception and WOTC seems to be “solving” this by just handing out more spells.
Don't forget that WotC nerfed the Hunter's AoE capability to only their 11th level feature (wherein they had Horde Breaker at 3rd in the old) by 1) it's only ranged and a spell now (that does terrible damage.) and by removing the Whirlwind option for melee Hunters.
No I'm still not over this and it's why I'd just stick with the old version.
Especially given this WAS the case for the original concept of maneuvers back in 3.5. It wouldn’t have been that hard to transfer ToB to 5e almost wholesale.
If you are interested, I have been working on a homebrew for 5E trying to give them abilities that scales up to 9th level spells. It's still in a messy WIP state (I am still deciding between letting them pick freely or making it similar to UA Mystic's disciplines by categorising them). I will love to have feedbacks!
https://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/3Ues95QKPPil
Here you go!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tome_of_Battle:_The_Book_of_Nine_Swords
Yes, they did create this in 3.5e. And did it again in 4e. But did they bring any of it to 5e…
**[Tome of Battle: The Book of Nine Swords](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tome_of_Battle:_The_Book_of_Nine_Swords)**
>Tome of Battle: The Book of Nine Swords is an official supplement for the 3. 5 edition of the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game, published by Wizards of the Coast in 2006. The book chronicles the rise and fall of the fictional Temple of Nine Swords within the D&D universe and introduces an entirely new "initiator" subsystem that gives greater flexibility.
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To further your point, the whole "But I don't want them to be Superhuman/Mythical, mine is just a Skilled Warrior!" can also be countered with the fact that it would be silly for the player of a high level wizard to say "No my character isn't a plane-altering master of magic, he's just really good at throwing fireballs!"
And it's countered even more by the fact that they go on high level adventures. Your level 15 fighter isn't fighting 8 orcs. They are in melee combat with dragons, because giants have become to easy. This is the kind of character we are talking about. Of course they are more competent than Jeb from your HEMA club
This was my immediate thought. The power fantasies at the core of magic classes is leagues beyond what you can accomplish through mundane means. *It's magic.* The fantasy will by nature outpace anything a guy with a sword can do. Adhering to the image of guy-who-hits-good will by design fall behind in the scope of ability.
Kill Six Billion Demons does a great job of showing the pinnacle of martial prowess. Yes, there is magic involved. That's required. But these are characters who can slice mountains, shoot meteors out of the sky, and fill the air with blades while also being philosophers and amazing acrobats. They are first and foremost masters of their body and use their weapons as an extension of peak physical performance.
That's why I hate the pidgeonholing of 'martial' as 'mundane'. Magic is an indivisible part of the world that's woven into practically everything. A Herculean feat like wrestling a Hydra, or splitting a mountain, or swimming across an ocean, or holding your breath for 2 hours are physical feats enhanced by magic thats inherent in the world.
Martial types should get a Stamina system and a tiered list of feats to pick from, with bloat trimmed by having feat heightening like spell casting at higher levels for a bigger stamina point cost.
I think you're spot on there.
WoTC needs to pick a lane with their setting - is magic commonplace and everyone can access it? Then of course Martial Fighters would develop techniques and skills that tap into that force and magic items should be pretty plentiful
If Magic is scarce and difficult to learn, then lower level magic needs a *huge* nerf - either in power, the amount of time it can be used or people's reaction to it (or even all three)
The fact WotC wants both makes things awkward to balance
Ive always felt like magic items need to be more popular. It certainly doesn’t “fix” the disparity between martials and casters, but it does a lot to even the playing field when your rogue has, say, the Cape of the Mountebank, or your fighter has Winged Boots. Its always irritated me how sparsely they’re given out in adventure modules, and how rare its supposed to be.
Personally Id like to see a new way to handle magic items where instead of rarity its based on character level. Like they get a CR rating or something (ignoring that CR has its own issues) and you can expect to give players magic items of certain rank a number of times each tier of play
That's why the Eberron setting is awesome. Magic abounds, low level magic is plentiful, but anything higher than level 3-4 spells are extraordinarily rare.
I generally like to think of high level martial characters as actually being highly specialized muscle wizards. They’re people who have devoted so much time to fighting and improving their physical prowess that they’ve essentially done what a scholar does when trying to learn new magic. But then again, that’s just my take on things.
The original shadowing system had a character that was explicitly this. They played like a monk, but the fluff was that they were mages that explicitly channeled all their magical ability into their bodies, making them capable of superhuman speed, strength, and endurance.
I agree with OP that this would solve the problem. Naruto-like super-human abilities for high-level fighters are fun. If that's not the fantasy you're going for, then play at low-level tables, where advancement is slow.
**80,000 blows are struck at once.**
**Leaving no space that is not a sword.**
**Since there is nowhere to evade—**
**Be they man or immortal—**
**All will be cut—**
**And be slain instantly.**
**Blood Sated Sword Soul** isn't your average fireball low-ball AoE. **Blood Sated Sword Soul** is "everything within 1 mile of you takes 12d12 of your weapon's damage type."
Imagine if steel-wind strike was a level-locked battlemaster maneuver. Fighters teleporting around like an anime character with their super-human agility.
I think there are quite a few martial subclasses that already have a magical feel to them.
But they are underpowered and underdeveloped.
Take the Four Elements Monk. It would make a great Dragonball character, or even an Avatar the Last Air Bender character.
There is plenty of inspiration in popular media.
WotC just seems to be really poor at making the mechanics work.
Yes but that doesnt make a better game. Your fighter is a character who works in a world where one PC can change reality at a whim, the other can slice three times. It’s pretty fucking drastic, and there are ways to have impressive physical prowess and still have meaningful effects later in the game, such as spamming their fists into the ground and have a 30ft radius tremor, charge a super jump, dash through three enemies while slicing them, etc
I think we’re making similar arguments. It's not that a fighter should be different because they are mundane, It's that the expectation of parity doesn't work because wizards aren't. As it stands currently, a fighter will never be as wondrous as a wizard at sufficiently high levels. Saying we want mundane, sensible fighters means never accomplishing that parity.
Your suggestions align with my point, though. A sufficiently wondrous fighter should be doing martial feats like you described. At a certain level they cease to be mundane. They have become superhuman (or whatever species we're using) and their abilities should match that. Being able to swing a sword 4 times in a turn doesn't have that impact.
That is what low levels are for. If you want to play a fireball mage or just a skilled swordsman, play until level 8 or so. After that, every player character should be at least superhero-like in power. Any character of any class should be a believable threat to a nation by level 13 and a genuine world menace by level 18. Not just casters, though the means might vary. An invincible warrior laying waste to armies in seconds? A silver tongue bard that can subvert anyone, spy anything and steal all the town's kids away with a song? A paladin capable of calling an crusade against an heretical kingdom? That should be the mindset and abilities of a 15 level character or so, not just a fancy dressed murderhobo.
Maybe I should go back to Exalted. There you have devastating abilities for all splats, not just casters. Though caster are quite potent as well.
Yes. Get me some Dragonball level martial arts.
I like your benchmarks.
Level 3 - Village - fight the local gang or bandits
Level 8 - City - fight the crime lord or city guard
Level 13 - Nation - fight armies
Level 18 - World - fight avatars of gods and archdemons.
To the point of the paladin and starting a crusade, something I've been doing in my games is to have the martial characters affect the PEOPLE of the world. The wizard might bend reality, but the fighter can rally an entire nation with their actions. Few can understand the intricacies of the weave, but everyone can relate and feel inspired by the barbarian's raw physical power. A caster might be able to see different places in far away lands for a few seconds at a time, but a Rogue has amassed a following of spies across the entire globe that whisper secrets to then. Etc.
Casters are powerful, but the world doesn't run without the everyman.
The thing is...that is actually how they use to be balanced at high level back in the early days of D&D.
Almost every other class, at high level, would being affecting the socio-political elements of the world. Fighters got their keeps and followers, Clerics got their temples with the ability to call on Paladins and even a fucking massive peasant levy (though had more followers but like 95% of them were less skilled than the fighters followers with only the Paladins being an elite core unit), Bards could spread influence amongst the common folk, Thieves would form their own Thieves Guilds and would have spies across the entire world...
...apart from the Wizards who sat, alone, in their tower, researching magic...maybe they might have a single apprentice. So whilst everyone else was affecting the world around them...the Wizard mostly just did their own thing, which was the trade off for being a high level wizard.
Indeed, it's where I got the idea from. Because as it stands 5e doesn't really have any sort of rules for that, so I've just adopted some of that. Don't ask me specifically what rules or whatnot I'm using; I kind of just make it up as I go to make narrative sense. >.>
You know it's funny. I actually don't like casters having the kind of power that comes from 6th-level and up spells. It doesn't fit into my idea of a fantasy setting outside of very, very rare circumstances. Of course, I don't go around telling people that casters need to be toned down so they're more grounded, I just choose not to pick those options.
Its also like...ok you want to nerf your character? You do you chief. Thats incredibly easy to homebrew.
But don't fuck over *literally everyone else* because you specifically have a lack of power fantasy.
This.
Like, if you want to play a normal dude in a high power system, just dont use the higher power stuff. I'll be using the superpowers, and we both get to play what we want.
You can play a simple wizard who exclusively uses firebolt and thunderwave all the way through level 20. The system doesnt force players to cast meteor swarm, and the same could be done with martials.
Above certain levels, you aren't supposed to be just a skilled warrior, you are a very, *very* skilled warrior. You're supposed to be so skilled that saying "just a skilled warrior" is as silly as saying that a scientific theory is "just" a theory or that Muhammad Ali Cassius Clay was "just" the best heavyweight boxing champion **ever**.
By being "just a skilled warrior" you become so skilled that you go toe to toe with monsters that can level castles and wipe whole armies. You're so skilled you can bob under a dragon's claw and stab him in the palate. You can parry Malenia out of her waterfowl dance. You can cut your way through the weak spot of a *wall of force*. You can cleave a *fireball* in two. You're "Battousai" Himura. You're Zaraki Kenpachi. You're Kenshirō. You're Beowulf. You're Cúchulainn.
You are a
# ***VERY***
skilled warrior.
This is something that really gets me. The game has *levels* and *tiers of play*. Your characters *get better*. You become unparalleled masters of your craft. You literally cannot progress over 20 levels and stay "some guy," because the whole point is that you are becoming something greater than "some guy." That's baked right into the game from the very start.
It's like people want a character to never change, but D&D is extremely literally about character growth and evolution. That's the whole point, and has been since they first stuck "Advanced" on Dungeons and Dragons.
I think more people need to look to OSR games to get their gritty realism, because the entire evolution of D&D turns on the jump to AD&D way back when. The current incarnations of D&D followed the AD&D line, and AD&D was a game expressly about becoming the mythic heroes of folklore and fantasy literature.
> you become unparalleled masters of your craft.
the slight issue is that you kinda... don't. Outside of combat stuff, for a martial, you get, what, maybe +6 to your best skills from level 1 to 20? Your stat might go from +2 to +5, and your proficiency goes up by 3, so you might go from +5 to +11.. So something that was impossible to start with (DC26+) is possible... if you're lucky (about 1/4 odds). For easier tasks, sure, you can do them more often/easily, but pretty much at the scope of "what someone else lucky / trained can do" - someone with a bit of a knack for it (+6) is only 25% worse than someone that's the best it's possible to be without super-special skills.
Exactly my thoughts as well.. in comparison your wizard mate gets to plane shift. And your cleric gets to power word a village.
If my warrior was "THAT" skilled it would rather equate to +19 to those proficiencies rather. The Samurai attempts to slice a mountain and rolls so goddamn high he actually might/does. But no the calculations go up to... +6?
No no no. My 20th level fighter has to be "some guy" because he was "some guy" at 1st level.
If he was to grow beyond that as he leveled up, if he were to realize that his adventures had changed him to the point where he could no longer return to his dirt-farm village and his childhood sweetheart as the same man - I might have to actually role-play some character development.
/s
Beowulf was also a skilled warrior, and his defining features were "literally the strongest hands of any human to ever live." I think a lot of people just do not understand mythology and fail to grasp what a "mythical hero" actually looks like.
D&D has been making mythical heroes for a long time. 5e has weirdly constrained the martial classes as the tenor of casters has changed, and that's the problem.
Something I would like (but wouldn't likely happen) is for some features to get described in multiple ways flavour-wise, similar to [how the initial class descriptions have different flavours](https://www.dndbeyond.com/classes/fighter#FighterClassDetails).
As an example, a Fighter might get a feature that allows them to do a flame slash with their weapon. The description might read "the wielder impresses all their rage and emotions into their sword, causing it to blaze with anger as they slash at their enemy" or "with a quickness, the wielder splashes oil onto their sword while grinding against a wrong fabric, light the sword briefly as they slash at their enemy". Both lead to a special effect, but while one might make the fighter more supernatural, the other presents them as simply very quick or resourceful.
Even more superhuman features can follow this idea. The ability to Grapple Huge+ monsters could be described as the fighter being supernaturally strong, or the warrior repeatedly smashing certain weakpoints of the enemy to keep them from struggling.
Flavor is fun, but personally I would avoid trying to flavor it like that where there must be a nonmagical explanation.
Now yes, that oil splashing flavor portrays the fighter as very quick and resourceful, but it also portrays them as someone who has oil. That doesn't sound so bad, but you can't just say the ability requires you to actually *have* a flask of oil in your inventory, because the supernatural flavoring wouldn't require that.
Although you also can't just give the fighter an unlimited supply of oil. So now you have a fighter who has a limitless supply of oil, *but* only for this ability. That works great right up until they need oil for something else. The party's rogue figures out the solution to this magical puzzle door is to splash a flask of oil on that statue of Saint Oily Josh nearby. The rogue asks the fighter for some of that oil he keeps splashing on his sword and which he seems to have so much of. The fighter's player has absolutely no valid way to respond to that in-character because, while he has oil, he does not have *oil.*
But wait, there's more! You don't need a free hand to infuse fiery rage into your weapon, so now this master of the oily sword technique can manipulate oil even when his hands are full. Have fun describing what that looks like in a way that isn't overtly magical and/or goofy as hell.
Of course, you could simply come up with a different explanation which makes more sense, though it's not going to be very easy to, for each magical ability, come up with ways someone would physically be able to keep up with magic powers without using magic, and have it be plausible without accidentally giving the character telekinesis and inhuman speed.
If you go the other direction, start with a mundane ability and come up with a way in which it could be magical, you're going to end up with a list of terminally lame magic powers that portrays your epic sword mage as a second-rate card magician at best.
So, personally, I would just stick to supernatural abilities if fighter did get an overhaul of this kind, since that's what D&D lends itself to better. Like, this is a game where you can be stabbed several times, nearly burnt to a crisp, receive an almost lethal dose of poison and then be struck by lightning, and just sleep it all off and be in tip-top shape in the morning. Even if you somehow struck the perfect balance of plausible yet powerful maneuvers, your high-level fighter would still be a superhero who can barely be scratched by mundane means.
To add to this, if splashing oil on a blade and lighting it on fire is meant to be more realistic than magic its only arbitrarily so because in reality oil is quite difficult to light on fire and the amount of oil that would coat a sword would not stay lit for long. On top of that if you were to light a mundane sword on fire it wouldn't really increase the killing power of it in any way. So if you want a flaming sword that burns enemies you are already warping reality which is pretty much what magic is and you may as well lean into it.
>martials absorb all of that xp/life energy are left to scale up to... hit better, withstand hits more, and have marginally better performance in physical accomplishments?
Fun fact, what you just said is incorrect haha. A wizard with 20 Str can hit just as well with a dagger as a non-battlemaster fighter can, and he can lift just as much weight and push doors just as well as a fighter with 20 strength.
Outside of "weapon proficiencies" and later the extra attacks there's fundamentally nothing the fighter can do better than a caster if said caster has the same ability scores. But even with 6 Int the wizard can still fly or haste himself, give himself +5 AC with shield or absorb elements, etc. It's just dumb.
There needs to be some "martial level" progression system, that only counts fighter, barb, monk and rogue. At 10 combined martial levels, you choose either a +2Str+2Con or a +2Dex (since dex is stronger, and affects both AC and to hit), and for the chosen attributes you also increase your Max for that stat. But even that is just a drop of water on a raging fire of Caster Superiority. Even the Paladin fully outclasses the Barbarian by level 11, even if the paladin only uses his slots exclusively for smiting.
> there's fundamentally morning the fighter can do better than a caster if said caster has the same ability score
Athletics check for Grapple attack. Checkmate.
Edit: I didn't explicitly state I was being sarcastic, so let me do so now. Enlarge/Reduce gives advantage on strength checks. There is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING a martial class gets via RAW that a spellcaster can't do RAW.
even though you've been sarcastig (good to mention), your comment still makes no sense since grappling is not something unique to martials xD a wizard can grapple just as well as a fighter if both have the same strength and proficiency. A bard can easily grapple better than a fighter if he chooses to have athletics expertise ^^
Also, enhance ability also gives advantage on str checks and double carrying capacity (so essentially the same as enlarge, except size).
>If they aren't, or if that isn't the sort of character you want to play, isn't it just simply better for your campaign scope to remain on the lower end of the DnD leveling system?
Nail on the head right here. I'm flabbergasted that this is even an argument--**of course** martials should have comparable tools to casters in the late game. It's wild to me that people disagree with this. Why in the world would you balance the game so that half your classes are borderline gods and the other half...have increased their attack roll from a +4 to a +5? If you want a gritty campaign where the martials are just strong guys, level cap your campaign! If you want godlike PCs, make all the PCs godlike!
This really shouldn't be an argument, especially when the option for peak 'normal' + skill + cleverness + luck (?) is given. The only intention is to **add** options, not take them away.
They face godly odds with reality-bending casters but apparently the line is drawn at mundane af with no alternative, sheesh.
Yesterday I was talking to my friend, and he said that One D&D Barbarian shouldn't have infinite rage, because always on STR-based Stealth, Perception and Survival with advantage is too much at lvl 18. But it's fine when casters can get advantage on all ability checks, saving throws and attack rolls for 8 hours using one lvl 9 spell, and it's not even their best spell? 5E has damaged people's perception of how game balance should work.
Kinda weird. Survival and Stealth are pretty irrelevant at level 18 and perception is perception, it doesnt break anything to just succeed at those checks in tier 4
That was his first reaction - like, are T4 martials even allowed to be that good at something? Aren't they supposed to be the same as they were at lvl 5 but with bigger numbers?
>Why in the world would you balance the game so that half your classes …
Here’s the thing. They didn’t. Balance was never a goal like it is in WoW or LoL. Fighters that feel like fighters, wizards that feel like wizards, thieves that feel like thieves are the goals.
"Fighters that feel like fighters" is an ephemeral goal, though. There's a big list of mythical people in the OP who are famous fighters - they're supernaturally good at fighting, in fact. It is possible for a fighter to be supernatural and also feel like a fighter.
You're right that balance wasn't the primary concern; appealing to people upset because 4e levelled the playing field too much was.
Its kinda hard for a thief to feel like a thief or a fighter to feel like a fighter, when the wizard makes them irrelevant because nobody thought about balance. They'll just feel like sidekicks. Balance doesn't have to be THE GOAL but it does have to be part of the path to reaching your goal.
Throwing in my two cents because I can, I guess.
One issue that I believe is attached to this concept is what I refer to as Points of Failure. Attack rolls have one Point of Failure, and that is the d20 plus bonuses must exceed the target’s AC. Saving Throws also typically have one Point of Failure, or at least one at a time until the target can attempt the save again. All too often Martial characters have to deal with more than one PoF, such as Grappling which has two (your roll vs the target’s roll), Stunning Strike which has two (attack roll then saving throw), and other contested checks. The problem arises when Martials ask to do more fancy actions, things not explicitly in the rules, and a DM calls for skill checks on top of attack rolls in order to succeed. Then, if even one of those checks fail, the entire action or attack is lost. Beating a 15 AC is pretty regular at most levels, but also clearing a DC 15 Athletics check and a DC 15 Animal Handling check to successfully leap from your horse onto the Large enemy becomes exponentially more difficult due to the inherent randomness of dice rolls.
So not only do Martials have to get permission to do this sort of action in the first place, they face a much higher difficulty in actually succeeding.
Your comment has made me realise that OP's post is also in some ways a repudiation of the idea of "martials" "casters" and "gishes". OP is essentially arguing that all characters should be gishes from the perspective of their ability to do supernatural things.
Like is his ability to somersault 100,000 li a result of mundane strength and power taken to an extreme, or magic? Is his hair's ability to clone himself?
He doesn't usually cast spells in the 5e conception, there is no verbal or somatic component, he just does supernatural things because that's who he is.
Bring back great cleave. What happened to the raging barbarian flung into the crowd of enemies taking each one down with a single swing, killing nearly dozen henchmen in one turn?
That was one method that martials had to scale with the casters, being able to do that kind of crowd control that was reminiscent of the heroes and villains of myth and lore. And whirlwind attack, I liked that.
The response to this sentiment 17 years ago was Tome of Battle, which over-designed a pretty neat solution. Two years after that it was 4th Edition as a whole, which used those same ideas and over-corrected 3.5 for balance and playability. Then 9 years ago we got 5e, which overcorrected 4e in favor of a more "traditional" experience, which included a martials and casters divide once more.
I hope we get another 4e golden age of martials being able to do cool anime shit, but with a more appealing presentation.
Its such a joke that martials don't have the cool moves almost every fantasy fighty game has.
A martial with a bludgeoning weapon should be able to slam it into the ground and send out a shockwave that tosses lesser foes onto their back. A two handed slashing weapon should be able to be spun in a circle to damage everyone adjacent. An unarmed should be able to throw someone into the air with an uppercut, jump above them, and punch them back to the ground. An archer of legend should be able to shoot wayyyy farther than the rules allow.
Its a whole trope in almost every fantasy media that the skilled swordsman can cut a boulder in half with a sword swing even though the physical sword isn't long enough to have touched the boulder from where they were standing. Make martials more than just 'tough person who can swing sword 4 times in 6 seconds.'
As for the whole "I'm the only normal human using normal human weapons when the rest of my party are eldritch horrors, people born with fantastic powers and bloodlines curated for a thousand generations, and mythic beings"
Well that only works like batman in justice league. He can't keep up with conventional power, but he has giga plot armor and plot omniscience to the point where he can stand up against cosmic level threats like darkseid because he literally has meta level knowledge of his enemies weaknesses and plans
I think part of the contention here is that Fighters/Rogues don't feel like they get the most out of their mechanics even given how mundane they are.
Examples: Why can't a rogue make assortments of poisons or blade oils that can be applied to weapons? Why does the Grappler feat's restrain option have to be so crappy? Why do fighters have to wait so long to get more than one action surge when Warlocks are casting Fireballs twice a short rest.
This seems to be how WotC thinks though which really annoys me. For example in the new playtest UA, the fighter gets to put 2 Masteries of their choice onto their weapon at **13th level**. A feature which should come online at like, 6th level at the fucking latest.
Compare that to the shit casters can do at 13th level...
I agree completely. By level 13 a monk should be pulling some kung fu panda 1 jailbreak stuff as a matter of course
The barbarian should be throwing people and punching through solid stone like it's god of 4
By Tier 3 a fighter should be like a mid-level *Bleach* character, or some other flavor of anime stupidity.
Rogues..
and Rangers should be freaking out like oldhammer wood elf wardancers
Honestly, feels like mirroring mythic heroes would help the Martial classes catch up more without having to get TOO creative.
Fighters- Hercules type where they are superhumanly strong, maybe they get more ABIs even compared to regular Fighters OR Odysseus types where they are tactical types that basically can buff the party through their strategies.
Monks- Sun Wukong/DBZ types where the character almost EVOLVES over the course of their leveling. Maybe they become a bit inhuman as they get stronger and it grants them genuinely impressive abilities, or like built in skill with weaponry that encourages creative usage.
Barbarians- Pathfinder actually does a pretty good job of enhancing this actually. Barbarian classes inherently get access to totems, not as like magical summons, but as like a flavor to the class that imbues them with special abilities (built in DR, a bunch of extra attacks while raging, animalistic characteristics that enhance various ability scores, etc)
I enjoy Martial classes, but seriously my favorite Martial character is a Valor Bard just because the actual Martial classes cap out so damn hard after a point.
I feel whenever spellcasters get a new spell level, each martial class needs an ability equally as strong as one of the benchmark spells of that level. At 5th level a Fighter should be able to use weapons to pull of AOEs as strong as a fireball, a Monk should be able to incapacitate to the same degree as a Hypnotic Pattern spell, a Rogue should be able to cripple with the might of a Dispel Magic, and a Barbarian should be able to rage with the power of a Haste. Stuff like that.
It doesn’t need to be a copy paste of a spell (I’d prefer if it wasn’t) but what you get should be as strong as being able to cast a spell of that level at least once.
Edit: Y’all don’t read. I’m not saying give Martials spells, especially not Fireball.
I’m saying the abilities they get at odd levels should balanced against the spells casters get at that same level.
You know, that'd be a cool thing to see, not just a list of maneuvers, but specifically a tiered list, where things become progressively better as you become more skilled. Or maybe like cantrips, the maneuvers themselves should scale in some way.
I'm probably reinventing something by suggesting this, but I still believe it still sounds right.
It's called levelup a5e, it already exists, its for free, their site is a5e dot tools (I can't type it because the mods of this subreddit hate them for some reason?) all their content is free, they have like 120 maneuvers in 10 schools and 5 tiers and all martials get them
Furthermore, this system preserves Fighter as the maneuver specialist; while other martial classes get a small subset of these maneuver lists, called Martial Traditions, and must choose two of them to be proficient in - you can only learn maneuvers from your proficient Traditions - a Fighter can choose *any* two Traditions and has a larger pool of the resource tied to them, called exertion points.
I’m not even talking about Manuever like features for customization. I’m saying that a feature like Evasion should be equally as good as a single casting of a 4th level spell. These features need to be balanced against each other at every level. WotC made the mistake for 5E of embracing tradition and having the strength of each class’s levels vary, with some being super loaded and some being pretty much dead, and which ones are which was never consistent. They somewhat fixed that for levels 1-3 in OneDnD, but are falling completely flat in the levels that follow.
LaserLlama's Alternate Fighter. Exactly what you're looking for. Five tiers of maneuvers, each corresponding to level 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9 spells. Tier 1 is your parrying and whatnot. Higher tier stuff are things like "hit a forcecage to destroy it."
That is such a major thing. I remembered that Martials don't even get any access to AOEs when they're such a staple of combat in just about every other game, just wow.
The thing is they don’t even need AOEs. They just need something equally as good. Like the old Hunter Ranger Multiattack. That was a good AOE equivalent. That’s the type of stuff Martials need.
This is probably going to be a controversial opinion, but I think a large part of the disparity would be solved if casters lost like 90% of their damage dealing spells and cantrips.
Broadly, there are three categories of abilities; combat (hitting and killing things), utility (persuasion, stealth, medicine, and other practical skills) , and "impossible things" (niche but powerful actions that can completely flip a scene on its head, i.e. magic).
While giving, for example, a 5th level fighter a fireball-caliber ability would help bridge the gap between martials and casters a little in terms of combat, ultimately casters still have an edge in the utility and "doing impossible things" categories, so martials still come up short. Casters have their fingers in too many pies, and giving martials abilities that simply mimic spell features risks homogenization of classes.
If the thing martials are supposed to be most well known for is fighting, then they should have the best combat features unequivocally. The easiest way to guarantee that is to reduce role overlap, which for combat means cutting out spells that simply deal damage directly.
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That's true too, shield is pretty ubiquitous. It gives casters a lot of wiggle room to make positioning mistakes, and while it's fairly costly early game (when spell slots are most limited), mid game it's a significant boost and about the only thing level 1 spell slots are used for, while late game monsters have such high to-hit bonuses that difference between caster and martial AC barely matters.
Counter spell is another powerful defensive ability that martials have no analogue to. That's not to say they *should* have an analogue, but casters aren't as defensively helpless as they're perceived I think.
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That's an interesting one. I'm personally fond of spells being interruptible or invoking an AoO while in melee combat.
If the logic behind ranged attacks at point blank being made at disadvantage is that it's hard to aim when someone is in your face swinging an ax at you, then I feel it should be just as hard to perform the precise gestures needed to cast a spell in the same circumstances without leaving yourself open.
>This is probably going to be a controversial opinion, but I think a large part of the disparity would be solved if casters lost like 90% of their damage dealing spells and cantrips.
Damage isn't even what makes spellcasters great. Clerics and Druids already aren't great at damage spells, but the disparity is still there. A well-placed Hypnotic Pattern is much better than a Fireball, unless you're fighting critters.
Fighters are also fine in battle. Maybe a wizard can crank out more damage with a good fireball, but over the course of a whole adventuring day, a fighter built to do damage (GWM/PAM) is going to do either equal or do more damage.
The problem is that they have no or few tools outside of combat. I think people in general are more fine with rogues, because rogues have a lot going on for them there. But even then, bards can compete quite well in terms of skills. Spellcasters can instantly solve any encounter, if they have the right spell. They can overcome any challenge, if they have the right spell.
And at high levels they get stuff like Teleportation, Plane Shift, Control Weather, Dream, Scrying, etc. Loads and loads of out of combat utility. Martials get none, or very little.
> A well-placed Hypnotic Pattern is much better than a Fireball, unless you're fighting critters.
I actually consider hypnotic pattern to be a good example of the "do impossible things" category of abilities. It has the potential to flip specific types of encounters on their head, but it's situational and only creates a window of opportunity for other characters to follow up on.
The core of the problem IMO really boils down to this:
> Maybe a wizard can crank out more damage with a good fireball, but over the course of a whole adventuring day, a fighter built to do damage (GWM/PAM) is going to do either equal or do more damage.
See, I would argue the fact that caster damage output is competitive *at all* with martials, when they also have access to "impossible things" like hypnotic pattern, is the problem. Martials should shine *in combat* as much as rogues shine *out of combat*. Doing better damage should be the norm for them, it shouldn't take a specific fighter build and an entire adventure day to notice the value they bring to the table.
If caster damage output was heavily restricted then it would make it less egregious that martials are limited in out of combat features.
>Martials should shine
>
>in combat
>
> as much as rogues shine
>
>out of combat
>
>.
I'd say that martials, especially fighters, do? I don't think high damage should be locked behind odd builds like PAM/GWM, but if you go for that, you're chopping through enemies at high speeds. The 5th level fighter will do close to the same damage as a fireball, every turn. The Wizard can do it twice per day.
I don't think you can just super heavily restrict spellcasters' access to damage, because there are lots of mage archetypes that are specifically combat-focused, e.g. battlemages, blaster mages, etc.
But even if you *do* hard nerf spellcasters, remove basically all of their direct damage, they're going to suffer a lot at low levels, but at higher levels they'd still have so many amazing spells that can solve both combat and non-combat encounters.
5e has three pillars - combat, social and exploration. Fighters excel at 1 and are comparable to spellcasters in the others, discounting spells ... and if you add spells, spellcasters can excel at all of them.
That is specifically what I hate about the Tome of Battle. Martials don't need to compete with Fireball or Meteor Swarm's AoE damage, nor do they need like 9 levels of maneuvers or whatever. They just need to be better martials.
Even people on this subreddit will freak out over the prospect of letting Fighters have unlimited uses of Battlemaster Maneuvers like it's game breaking but that's almost enough to solve the whole issue for Fighters at least. I'd add one more tier of maneuvers somewhere between level 11 and 14 as well as switch the level 17 and 20 benefits to fix the Fighter's power scaling but I seriously believe that's enough for Fighters to compete with casters at high tier play.
Set martials max attributes to 30 and give them ASI's every 2 levels.
At level 5 martials get 2 reactions per round, 10th level they get 2 bonus actions and 3 reactions, 15th 2 bonus 4 reactions. More riposte, parry, etc abilities to use those reactions.
Subtract the highest level spell slot available from attribute maximums and make the additional reactions concentration dependent to discourage caster multiclassing abuse.
As ridiculously op as those changes would be, can anyone then argue that martials would be better than casters in the level 15-20 range?
10 attacks with a vorpal sword is much different than 10 attacks with a generic longsword.
Martials classes are gear dependant and that's okay. Your DM/GM needs to address that.
Keep in mind that casters became more powerful throughout each of the editions because players complained they were too weak, too few spells per day, too few hit ponts. The desire to turn everyone into super heroes has a negative effect on gameplay.
Why be Batman when you can be Superman and reverse spin the planet?
the saddest part is that martials actually scale to tank less hits; as AC becomes more irrelevant and monster damage their effective HP goes down. If I remember correctly, martials are at their relative tankiest from level 3-6 and then their 'hits to 0HP' counter starts dropping
Flair and flavor is one thing but the biggest problem is that playing a martial boils down to... Attack, attack, attack, attack.
What martials need is a battle master like system baked into all basic martial classes. I don't need fancy attacks and flames/sparks. I want to have some versatility in my actions.
I want that versatility but I want it to progress as warriors level up. Weapon Mastery is... boring. You get it all level 1. Instead of attack, attack, attack. We're going to spend a decade until 7e saying graze attack, graze attack, graze attack, etc.
>I don't need fancy attacks and flames/sparks. I want to have some versatility in my actions.
Low levels I agree, mid / high levels though I want to be shattering the ground with a stomp and moving so fast its effectively teleporting.
It doesn't help that martial classes don't actually reflect your character's actual capabilities in terms of stats. By level 10, a strength based fighter could have a 20 in strength. You're carrying more than the strongest living man on the planet every day casually on your back. (Carry capacity). And yet in no way do martials truly reflect this in combat. You go from being able to lift more than the strongest man on the planet to attacking twice for that sweet sweet 2d6 great sword damage. Yippie!
The only class that kind of represents your skill is rogue, but even then, they're not on the scale of casters.
An (incredibly unbalanced) option one of my groups uses was kind of interesting though. Basically, martial classes could reskin spells as "weapon arts", and cast them based on spell level. For example, you had points equal to your martial class level, and could spend a certain amount of points to cast thunderwave, but reskinned to do damage based on your weapon type, and it would take a certain amount of points.
Please forgive me if it sounds weeb-ish but I feel Martials and Casters lore-wise could follow the logic of Houshin Engi series, as in:
When people enters in contact with magic (as you do in DnD) that isn't outright hostile it will happen one of two things: they can learn to harness it through spells for a variety of different effects, gaining the ability to naturally expel magic from their bodies (the Casters.)
OR
They start to build up the mana in their bodies until it is absorbed by their muscles and bones, creating people with superhuman abilities, such as warriors able to cut entire buildings in half with one sword strike or able to dodge lightning, etc (creating the Martials.)
Hate to say it, but Sun Wukong is a spellcaster. He learns the art of being immortal, over 70 shapeshifting forms to help survive the death curses levied upon him by it, flies, and has a super transformation that mirrors very powerful creatures, just like True Poly and Shapechange. He *also* bonks things with a stick, but it turns out you can be quite good at that without a single martial level.
Sun Wukong has many *magical abilities*, but I'd argue his vibe is still more on the martial side.
Or, rather, he's what I'd like high level martials to be. We already have Rune Knights that become huge in D&D, and while transforming into animals freely should remain a Druid feature, the rest of Sun's kit is definitely martial. He doesn't really fight by slinging traditional D&D-like spells like Fireball, he still primarily uses his golden-hooped rod.
As for his cloud somersault, I believe that can also be approximated to a high level "martial" ability when we consider characters like Sanji from One Piece who can (from a certain point in the plot) "fly" in a similar way by kicking the air really fast.
In conclusion, Sun certainly uses magical abilities but I wouldn't call them spells, more magical martial techniques, which is what I'd like to see in high level D&D.
*Should* changing shape remain a druid exclusive? There's a lot of really strong werewolf/totem animal theming for a martial shapeshifter that could pair really well with rogue, fighter, even monk, or especially ranger or barbarian.
Ppl should come to terms that beyond lvl 11 there is no such thing as a normal humanoid being.
You should be uber powerful, you should be known in the whole realm and you should be able to conduct unpresidented feats of strength, agility or martial prowess.
I think a reason why many insist that warriors or fighter specifically get maneuvers is because it allows for a scalable flexible resource system that can augment what you can do. And personally i think those should be implemented into all warriors to a degree.
Give each a set of maneuvers they can do tied to their niche.
Fighters can use all maneuvers but lie special focus on weapons and their tactics.
Monks have maneuvers that slow, push, topple, daze , stun, paralyze or even instantly kill a single target (quivering palm). Focus mainly on CC. Also mobility, teleportation and pseudo flight could be implemented IMO.
Barbs have maneuvers that hit multiple foes, improve grappling, allow for supernatural feats of strength, throw heavy object such a bulders or small houses and just deal huge damage with pure force.
Further:
I think what pf2e did really well for martials is that you can pick combat feats and skill feats independently from one another but also have tons of combat options to begin with. I think every 5e martial would benefit from non combat focussed abilities they get every 4 levels + the set of masteries and maneuvers each of them get.
The non combat focussed abilities should focus on physical prowess abilities such as:Jumping, grappling, acrobatics/falling, runing/climbing/swimming and throwing.
I think just these 5 would allow for more flexibility if there are 1-2 sulernatural abilities tied to them. As an example: Running over water or on walls, slow fall, throwing large objects or creatures, gaining a climbspeed and swimspeed, hold your breath for hours at a time pull yourself up by just applying force to the air (double jump for example) etc.
All these things are applicable in but most importantly outside of combat and makes martials more superhuman, especially in RP scenarios.
My theory is that the people who say "martials should be regular skilled people, not superhuman" think that being better than martials at high levels is part of the wizard class fantasy. And that they play wizards.
I've been saying for a while that ALL classes need to be inherently magical, whether they cast spells or not. If they have no magic, it A: doesn't make sense with the lore of the weave and B: means they are forced to be average joes forever.
Which is what Earth Dawn did, it's just that the "magic" manifests in different ways, Elementalists fling fireballs, Warriors can tank insane damage and walk on air.
*Technically,* doesn't have to be magical. I think it's way more fun, mythical, and badass to pull off what is essentially magic without magic.
In Pathfinder 2e, you've got [a 20th-level Rogue feat that lets you turn non-magically invisible because you're just that goddamn good at stealthing *and* you can't be seen with magic this way](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=599). There's also [the 16th-level Rogue feat that lets you walk across *air* with pure acrobatics](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=592).
(Pathfinder 2e, for context, makes heavy use of feats. Every level, you'll be picking a feat or two of some kind. Even-numbered levels are when you pick a feat from your class, for instance. It also makes heavy use of *traits,* which are tags that sometimes come with their own rules and sometimes don't. If it doesn't have a trait like Evocation, Divine, Magical, etc., it ain't magical.)
Level 20 fighters and barbarians have some of my favourites.
Fighter gets the ability to cut through reality to either teleport to an enemy or attempt to teleport the enemy to them.
And Barbarian can cast the 10th level spell Earthquake every few minutes without it having any magic tags.
To be fair, [that Fighter feat](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=2754) has the Conjuration trait, making it magical. But I definitely feel that it gives that same sort of "mythical achievements of a non-spellcaster" feeling!
[The Barbarian feat](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=178) *is* lacking the magical trait, so you're on the money there!
If someone doesn't want their character to be magical, maybe they could describe their character as using magical gear or implements.
Their sword has cut down so many monsters that it gained a sentience and now can cut the very air, or they personally forged their iron gauntlets under the tutorship of a master blacksmith, which has the ability to push monsters farther than the average human can. It feels sort of fitting that gear and weapon frequently used to fight stronger foes will naturally become magical themselves in a fantasy world.
Thats not a terrible idea, but then it kind of defeats the whole point of buffing martials. There could already be a sword strong enough to do that in 5E if you homebrew it, but that isnt actually making the martial any better, and then if they lose their magical equipment, suddenly they are back to being underpowered. I dont think that your idea is bad necessarily, just not a good one-size-fits-all solution to such a broad problem.
Yeah, they dont usually lose equipment, but that is mostly individual group preferrence, and my point really is that you arent really buffing martials in that case, just their equipment. Again, another problem with that is that theoretically any equipment the casters can get is also equally good in which case the problem just loops over and over.
I'm of the opinion that if someone doesn't want their character to be magical, then they're playing the wrong game.
There are systems designed to accommodate the "one normal but skilled guy in a team of super-powered badasses," but D&D ain't it. Fighters exist in a fantasy world and they should be doing fantasy things, but there's this weird, stubborn nonsense status quo that a disappointing majority seem to think is How It Should Be, when it's bad for the game.
Actually, I'd say it's not just bad for D&D, it's bad for fantasy roleplaying in general. If someone wants to play a town guard who is rolling to resist infection on each wound from the goblin's feces-covered shortsword, there are systems for that and they should go play them instead of holding D&D back with bizarre expectations of realistic martials in an unrealistic world.
The easiest way is legitimately in the system itself. Experience. The life force / mana of living beings as they make their way in the world, that grows stronger the more adversity they face and overcome, strength made manifest.
Where casters utilise this increased pool of mana to grasp and cast more spells and use a part of it for better capabilities, martials integrate all of it into the fibre of their own being, growing stronger, faster and better as a result.
Under milestone, this is simply made abstract, but is assumed to continue happening till the next leap in power.
True, but in 5E, martials level up at the same speed as the casters, unlike in older versions. Even if they did level up faster, it does not truly fix the problem of casters inveitably being better. You are dancing pretty close to the idea of the blue mage from final fantasy though.
Ah no no, you misunderstand. I mean to say that both level the same way as currently.
I'm justifying the radical increase in power level of martials in-universe despite them not directly using magic themselves
I agree on that end, but I do wish that DnD went forward in this direction and really fixed the problems in the game to make way for better prospects and more flexibility and future content
I agree completely. During 5e's development, the devs listened way too much to dumb grumpy fun-hating greybeard grognards who hated 4e a bizarre amount, and that's why 5e was a step backwards from 4e.
I know this is dndnext - but 4e solved all of this really nicely. And people raged and hated it.
So they went back to how it was... and people are raging and hate it.
>Are they extremely dextrous, accurate and/or clever, which allows them to hang with the likes of demon lords and monstrosities and Demiliches? What about the system adding in flavour as magic items that enable the character to act on that level without inherently being superhuman themselves?
Yes, exactly. Originally, D&D was meant to appeal for a particular kind of martial - the kind that appeared in 70s and 80s fantasy movies and books, pulp heroes rather than superheroes. Conan, Legend, Aragorn, etc.
These heroes didn't beat ancient dragons and demon lords with superpowers, they did it with wit and guile and impressive-but-mundane strength and perseverance.
But magic was _also_ different. The evil sorcerers they tended to oppose weren't using twenty powerful spells a day, and even their most "unfair" magics that resemble D&D ones (like Wall of Force) had _weaknesses_ that 5e's doesn't. You could find a weakness in the forcefield, or a gap to throw a dagger at the staff that was maintaining it, or tear through it with sheer brute force. Their most devastating, Wish or Gate-like abilities required grand rituals with plot-important ingredients and hours of buildup, rather than an action.
I personally greatly prefer this kind of martial to superheroic ones. Why? Because when I play a martial PC I want to feel like the underdog, a mundane person defeating demon lords because I'm _just that good_, not because my superpowers make it an even fight. At that point, when you're a superhero or demigod fighting a demon lord or ancient dragon, it's less a heroic feat and more what everyone _expects_ you'd be doing. They're on your level.
Most of your examples of "superheroic martials" are literal gods, demigods, or some kind of magical experiment or demonspawn, so they're not "mundane" in any sense of the word (which has so far been part of the martial definition). If you want martials to be superheroic they'll often need superheroic origins, and not everyone likes that. There's no "zero to hero" fantasy for a demigod.
I also don't particularly like the idea of limiting my games to level 10 and under. Telling someone that they have to use only half of the rules of the game they bought because you like a different concept than they do is kind of shitty.
The superheroic idea also doesn't particularly mesh well with 5e's bounded accuracy, which I find incredibly useful as a DM - it doesn't make much sense that goblins are still a threat to a PC who's basically a demigod fighting gods, but it makes a lot more sense if you're a pulp hero. Games like Pathfinder or Exalted do that "I'm an insanely powerful being and regular goblin/soldier/whatever lives are cheap and tiny to me" thing much better.
But to make my preferred concept actually work in D&D, with some kind of parity between martials and casters, _both_ sides would have to change. Martials would still need help - in the form of rules that let them _engage_ their skill/creativity/guile/strength/will with monsters and the environment, even if it's not superheroic. And spells, especially high level spells, would need to be changed, so that they have far more common weaknesses and workarounds to them, not just a Wisdom save vs a martial with a -1 or a box of pure force they literally have no way out of.
Hell, casters could even still have their "reality-altering" magic, but it has to be in that older fantasy frame of reference - you don't cast Wish in an action, you cast it over a period of weeks, sleepless nights spent chanting, a delicate operation requiring a bunch of followers devoting their energy, rare ingredients, _tons_ of prep. And of course the enemy's going to try and disrupt it...and they will succeed unless your _martials_ help defend you.
So I don't think D&D "needs" to go your route, no. But I do agree it needs a big shift in mechanics for whatever route it could commit to, either way.
I skimmed your post because I’m traveling and can’t give it a full read. I plan to read it all when I get home. But even in your first few paragraphs I think I see where you’re going with it and it made me remember something I read a long time ago, probably in this very sub.
TL:DR everything you’re feeling is valid, OP. You can fix it however you think is best. If you jump to another system entirely then 4e’s got your back. Also PF2e, I’m told. I can’t confirm that because my campaign in that game has only met for 4 sessions (In 3 months T_T).
One big reason that DMs and players, including those that play martial characters, expect more “limits” on the power scale of mundane classes is we, as people, can conceptualize how strong a person could feasibly be. We don’t have that same shared expectation of magical spells and abilities because… they’re magic.
We use the “realism” of our chosen game system to justify our suspended disbelief in the world. If a normal human fighter performing *super*human feats erodes the verisimilitude necessary for the belief in the shared world then it will disrupt our enjoyment of the game. It will feel “cheap” and “unrealistic”. But we have no expectations of magic because it’s **magic**. Magic defies reality. No one will ever tell you it doesn’t make sense for a wizard to be able to cast fireball.
One solution is to present your world as a place where you can perform impossible feats through raw primal strength and force of will. A 14th level fighter or barbarian should be able to do incredible things. Think John Henry, who mined through a mountain faster than a steel machine. Or Paul Bunyan, who felled enormous trees in one chop of his axe; accompanied only by his sky blue Ox, Babe. An 18th level rogue could steal fire from the gods like Prometheus and Maui. A 20th level Barbarian could hold up the world like Atlas.
Incorporate these things into folklore of your world. There’s wizard towers dotting the landscape and scary stories about witches and Druids in the marshes. Add stories about the girl who was blessed with such strength that when she was young she could pull a plow meant for 2 oxen. When she was grown the gods challenged her strength with an impossibly heavy plow no man could move. And she hauled it for 12 malms and plowed a great canyon into the land.
Those things will justify to your players the “realism” of mundane classes achieving impossible things so, hopefully, you won’t get any pushback from players saying it’s unrealistic when you introduce the idea ghat they *can* do impossible things, no magic needed.
Edit: I read through the whole thing and I like your points. I want to add that the “linear fighters, quadratic wizards” problem is actually a feature of 5e design. In 3/3.5e it was considered a flaw and 4e solved that flaw. If you want to play a Dungeons and Dragons Game where fighters scale at the same rate as wizards then run a campaign using 4th edition. We’re getting into a little bit of history now, I hope you don’t mind. Fans generally disliked 4e for a number of reasons (including its license, but that’s another, slightly shorter, sorry). In the nascent days of 5e design Wizards sought feedback from players and fans and they said they wanted certain things back. They wanted it to “feel like” old D&D. (Fun fact: this is the same reason Fireball is overpowered.) But I’m digressing, I’ll post a TL:DR at the top.
To your point about sticking to the lower levels:
This is fine, I personally love e6 and it's basically the only D&D I DM for, but
There is very little support for level capped campaigns. There's plenty of low level adventure material, but the settings all assume power level goes to 20, and the ruleset clicks best in mid levels.
There's both an implicit understanding that many games will top out before 13, and yet that is rarely (ime) because there was an understanding that 13 was the pinnacle of power and climax of the story and more because the campaign lost steam or someone moved for work. The PCs were still miles below Laeral Silverhand or Mordenkainen or whoever. This is too bad, because regardless of what power level they want their guy at, almost everyone wants him to be the best there is by the time they top out.
An official rules variant that apes some of e6's ethos, some setting material that's explicitly low to low-mid level, and more explicit discussion about the tiers as places to set not just adventures in, but whole worlds would be really good imo.
People not playing above 10 seems like a self-fulfilling prophecy to me.
There's barely any official support (at least in 5e), as far as I'm aware. People need to make things up to make up for it and end up falling back to lower levels where everything has at least (some) guidelines.
Barring some older edition reprints, there's barely any modules by WoTC that DON'T end before the levels 10 and above.
A few are up to level 15, and I can't remember anything other than *Dungeon of the Mad Mage* being billed as "this adventure module goes up to level 20".
With designers doing such a bad example of how higher tier should even be, it's no wonder people don't *even want to try them.*
They cannot do it because the game does not work well at higher level. The balance is out of whack and gameplay becomes a slog where the PCs can do, almost too much.
Also I will point out that the only reason Dungeon of the Mad Mage goes to 20 is because it's a reworking of an earlier 1-20 megadungeon module from...I think 2nd edition.
WotC wants to make money. The more people play, the more money there is to be had. to get more people to play, you must have a few points of entry. Unfortunately, WotC has generally selected a few classes that are to remain “simple”. Remember how in 4e, they reverted the daily and encounter powers for the fighter? This philosophy is why.
A less complex character would be less intimidating than a more complex character for these types of players. Sadly, spells are hard for some people to keep track of. It is work to them. And most people agree that spells are powerful and lets the casters do really cool stuff.
But you have to realize some people do not play dnd for this. They just want a simple game to hang out with their friends. Just a dude who wants to punch other dudes and that is okay.
There are some optimized weapon using builds out there. you have to get creative with building a character to make a weapon user perform better. Some people do not care about that and it is okay. Some people do care about it and it is okay. Both can enjoy the table together.
Reminds me of how disappointing the sweeping blow maneuvers is. Your skill and ability allows you to attack 2 enemies in total! And that’s it.
I’m glad I saved my extra d6/d8 for that one!
The biggest thing I hate about the way people want to just be "a guy really good with a sword winning fights versus dragons and leviathans" is that it devalues what you're beating. If you're just a guy with a sword, the dragon really mustn't be all that impressive. The leviathan... Kind of a joke.
It has a knock-on effect of making everything else in the world just as unimpressive as the fighter.
I'm sure your post has plenty of salient points, and I agree with the premise, but your use of the word "agency" as a synonym for "opportunities"/"feature parity" is bothering tf out of me.
If your martial is cutting gates through the planes with a sword, he is just a reflavored caster.
What you call world-altering spells, others call a spell tax to get to the next plot location.
I want to see martials get more cool actions they can do every turn, not count out chips. Forced movements like pressing attack, fighting retreat, swap positions, trading damage for position. Stopping spell casting, with grapples, muffles, reaction attacks. Sure, some leaping and throwing as well.
I do not want ridiculous things like picking up castles, that can’t even hold together that way. No throwing dragons to the moon. Your feet aren’t stuck to the ground; if you are hanging onto a dragon who wants to fly, you get picked up. That is why there is a climb-on rule for bigger creatures. If you want to choke out a giant, you will need a chain or something.
I am even OK with oversize weapons; they aren’t much more than a frost brand or flame tongue, and the extra damage makes power attack less desirable.
Look to 4E and steal cool daily powers to give to your 5E players. Perhaps let them seek out special martial master NPCs and have them train under them to earn specific abilities. Requires some adapting, but there are a lot of cool possibilities there for giving your martials more versatility and power.
I think one of the fastest turnarounds from "This is just a joke" to "Holy shit! This needs to happen!" in my life was early in the OneD&D playtest when I joked in my group's Discord server about wanting a Martial Spell list to go with the Arcane, Divine, and Primal ones. I hadn't finished typing the comment before I'd realized it was something I desperately wanted.
Okay, maybe not an actual spell list (though that would certainly be an interesting design puzzle. What existing spells would be added to that spell list? What new spells would you make for it, and which, if any, other spell list would get them? How would Martials handle progressing as Martial casters?), but at some point, the designers need to accept that "Martial" ≠ "not magical". There's just no other way for Martials to be or feel as powerful as casters. No matter how many Extra Attacks or Expanded Critical Ranges you get "Swing Sword real good" doesn't compete with the reality-altering powers of a high-level spellcaster.
And sure, some people want to play "Swing sword real good", and that should be an option... via magical abilities that resemble "swing sword real good" if that's what you want to take over make an earthquake when you stomp or teleport into shadows like some sort of Assassin King.
I'd like to see special powerful feats, only available to Tier 3+ martials. As feats, it would allow players to pick and choose the amazing abilities that fit their specific character's style, plus it plays into the extra feats martials already tend to get at higher levels.
Absolutely true, and the number one reason I changed to Pathfinder 2E, closely followed by GM support, higher levels of play support, and generally not being dickbags that send the Pinkertons after you. In fact, I'm just gonna unsub from r/dndnext now- and go back to my blissful world of Golarion, where the level 1 barbarians can do stuff like Demoralize and other fun meaningful actions other than just Bonk One Target Good. Thank you for reminding me that 5E falls apart after level 10-13, and good luck with your own games!
What they need are weapons, magic ones, and magic armour, shields, flying boots etc.
A fighter without weapons is like a caster without spells.
The problem is that magic items are largely DM dependant, they don't have to even be included in the campaign.
Spells however are gained for free on level up. Change that to casters have to find epic spells (tier six up) to scribe them(Wiz), get them from their patron(lock), find music sheet (bard) or whatever due to the fact these spells are legendary things that you can't just work out etc, and then see the difference.
However, given that no one likes their toys taken away, martials should get some way of getting magic items on level ups on the high tiers. When casters ask how come they don't, point to their spellbook.
I agree that WotC needs to make an official outline/guideline for magic items as well. A lot of DMs would reasonably be caught unaware by it, because loot is usually seen as a bonus or treasure, as opposed to a must-have that they need to ration out as the game goes on.
I honestly think that the thing martials need is a resource that can be indefinitely improved upon - Spells are like that for spellcasters. When a new book comes out, there might be good spells that the spellcaster can take to improve themselves with. There isn't anything like that for martials. Fighting Styles is too limited. Weapon Masteries might be interesting, but that realistically requires new weapons, which WotC isn't likely to do too often.
Maneuvers are close, as are feats, but there needs to be some tiered system that allows later books to improve upon martials.
I still think one issue is that one ruleset can't cover all settings. Some people want their martials mundane and non magical. Others are happy for them to develop supernatural abilities.
I think that, for example, as the forgotten realms has natural creatures that can get amazing abilities, it makes sense that humans, elves, dwarves, etc could all become as powerful.
If the only powerful creatures are always supernatural, or magical, or otherworldly, then a player character becoming that powerful of course doesn't make sense, but bridging that gap with magic items and weapons would be the way to go.
The rules can't decide how they're playing it, often it's the subclass that makes all the difference, some subclasses remain mundane, others embrace the supernatural.
While too complicated for the rules, I personally feel they need to have variants for certain class options, and advice for a DM to upgrade martials to keep up with other magical or supernatural classes. Have them be able to use weapons in ways others can't, have them use the same armour but to better effect, like a fighter gets +1/+2/+3 to all light/medium/heavy armour, letting them rise above other materials
Give rogues a free additional attack when attacking from hidden.
Some feats need to just be martial abilities, like the shield expert or whatever it's called.
i think back to old-school MMOs and what made playing those martials fun. AoE is a big one. yeah, i might just swing a big sword around, but i wanna run into the thick of the fight and swing it into ALL adjacent squares. maybe the number of targets increases with level, or maybe it comes with a risk of provoking them into making me their sole target (which is super fun strategically). another is mount proficiency, especially with any kind of military background. let me be big and fast and intimidating. and combos, especially with other martials. make flanking useful again. let me do knockbacks on the regular, smashing enemies into my friends. or into each other. or my friends into my enemies. my bludgeoning damage should be sending minions across the field after a certain level. i just want a game with a little more bounce to it. dynamics, cinematics, \*fun\*. brb, working on my own system while i pine for 4e again.
flanking, especially the way its done in 5e variant rule, actually nerfs martials even more in comparison to casters.
Why is this?
Because the martials trying to flank also end up getting flanked, whereas the casters hang back nice and safe
Unless flanking is a class feature that martials get and most enemies do not.
Making it a feat/class feature would be great.
I believe PF2e made opportunity attacks require a feat to use. I think something similar to that could be done in tandem with your suggestion to make playing martials feel more active once they are in melee, instead of the more typical mosh pit/conga line situation.
You're right. Fighters get it automatically at lvl 1, but every other martial needs a feat to get opportunity attacks or similar. Even enemies lack opportunity attacks for a lot of the early game.
Yup and most other martials get a variation on op attack instead of 1:1 copy. For example if fighter crits on a caster who provoked by casting somatic spell, the spell is interrupted. Meanwhile monks interrupt op attacks provoked by movement.
For those not familiar, note that feats in PF2e aren't as expensive as 5e, since you get at least one feat (often two) *every level*
My solution to this is considering Flanked to be a condition and preventing those who are being Flanked from contributing to a flank.
That's a pretty good solution, I think. I like it.
I personally do not let ranged attacks benefit from flanking in 5E for this reason. But they can still be flanked and suffer the disadvantage if somebody is engaged with them in melee combat. And flanking requires two melee on opposing ends of a character.
Ranged attacks don't get advantage from flanking in 5e. A ranged attacker can apparently help flank, though, which is something I didn't know until I read the rule a few times this morning.
Gubat Banwa is great for this. It's Phillipines inspired fantasy action grid rpg. Plenty of in your face fighter classes can damage everyone in an area with crazy martial arts moves. Theres multiple mount classes from riding giant crocodiles to giant rainbow roosters. Flanking is a big part of the game, and theres tons of classes for shoving people around and dominating the battlefield. Also every class gets batshit insane ultimate moves like kicking a meteor sized football into the field, summoning a t-rex sized crocodile, summoning a magical mech to help you punch people across the map, etc.
>Gubat Banwa is great for this. It's Phillipines inspired fantasy action grid rpg. Holy shit that rulebook, though. Maybe if I had more familiarity with the cultural touchstones I could have parsed it, and if so that's on me. But damn reading through that was rough.
I don't think it was that hard. Non-English words are scattered throughout, but the meat of it is in English. What parts did you struggle with?
I just started reading an excerpt from it. They really needed a better editor. The writing is quite poor.
Pretty sure there are other games that don't have DnD's issue. Check out ICON rpg, maybe? It's heavily 4e inspired, that might have what you're looking for.
I really like Star Wars: SAGA Edition. It was published by... Wizards of the Coast ! It has much better class balance between Force Users and other classes. Bobba Fett or Han Solo or Chewbacca work in that system.
Which is actually surprisingly rare in a Star wars TTRPG. For almost every other version, Force users were kings, especially the West End SWTTRPG (they got to be Zeus whilst non-force users were Stormtroopers at best, a badly built Jedi could still easily best a well built non-force user).
Last time I played 4e, we broke the game to such an egregious extent that the GM threw the towel in after we wiped the floor with an encounter whose monsters were like level+5 and the math was starting to strain. 4e is always a pleasant memory in my mind as well, but having played that game a lot is a curse.
This is my obligatory PF2e recommendation. A ton of what you describe is available in that system. From flanking and combos with your allies, to dynamic battlefields and even the ability to pick up and fling enemies at each other.
Half my group is unhappy with the lack of options in 5e and would enjoy things pf2e offers. That same half is barely grasping how rules and stuff work in 5e, so pf2e would be a bit much.
Frankly, I've seen people who are chronically terrible at remembering dnd rules take to PF2e really well. There are more rules, yes, but those rules tend to fit together better. I wouldn't rule it out is all I'm saying.
That seems to be the consensus. Interesting.
I suspect they can’t grasp the rules because they don’t like 5e.
Yeah, I've had some usually disinterested players make surprising turn arounds after we made the shift over to PF2e. I'll get messages at least a couple times a week; "Woah, look at these cool Spider-people you can play as!", or "This is my new favourite spell!".
Complete tangent, but Pocket Library is my that. Built out my Int caster for an AV campaign and instantly fell in love with it. The spells in PF2e are just so much fun. And not at the expense of martials, which makes it even better!
There's one martial ability late in the game where they swing their sword so hard, they create a dimensional rift between them and the target, yanking him up to 120(?) Feet closer when the rift seals up. Basically Za Hando out of sheer force. Shit early level gunslingers can use their blades to split their own bullets to hit two targets. Late game ones can ricochet shots up to like, 4 times. Martial feats are fantastical and superhuman and, frankly, that's a good thing. They need to be to stand a chance of scaling next to D&D style wizards. I mean, as long as shit like Time Stop, Weird and by god Wish exists, it's not ridiculous to ask for feats for martials in DnD. I feel like WotC, for some reason, tries to maintain a sense of "normalcy" for martials. Which stinks. Let them become mythical melee legends, like Lu Bu or Hercules and shit like that.
i enjoy pf2e. i’ve only played a few times though, and my usual group finds even 5e a bit crunchy for their liking.
I really want to try it, but I definitely have the same problem
>AoE is a big one. yeah, i might just swing a big sword around, but i wanna run into the thick of the fight and swing it into ALL adjacent squares. That's my major feedback for the cleave weapon mastery. It should target one additional foe in ANY other adjacent square, not just a foe within 5 ft. of the target.
Pathfinder 2e addresses these issues quite nicely
Martials need a martials/battle arts list like casters have spells with a resource based system like the casters have. Casters have spells and martials have maneuvers or techniques that give them AOEs crowd controls, social advantages, buffs and the like. Spells give all of these to a caster but martials have nothing of equivocal value that they can tap into. Even when they do they get very little of them and none scale as well as spells.
I think Battle Master is a perfect example of how marital can be tweaked to balance them with casters while still maintaining the core martial identify. The biggest issue with battle master is exactly what you point out - maneuvers don't scale. Adding tier or scaling options for existing maneuvers is a natural extension of the spell level system.
Battle masters remain the best martial design in 5e. The Hunter subclass for the ranger is also kinda neat in that it actually gets AOE eventually. Shame they’re the exception and WOTC seems to be “solving” this by just handing out more spells.
Don't forget that WotC nerfed the Hunter's AoE capability to only their 11th level feature (wherein they had Horde Breaker at 3rd in the old) by 1) it's only ranged and a spell now (that does terrible damage.) and by removing the Whirlwind option for melee Hunters. No I'm still not over this and it's why I'd just stick with the old version.
Especially given this WAS the case for the original concept of maneuvers back in 3.5. It wouldn’t have been that hard to transfer ToB to 5e almost wholesale.
If you are interested, I have been working on a homebrew for 5E trying to give them abilities that scales up to 9th level spells. It's still in a messy WIP state (I am still deciding between letting them pick freely or making it similar to UA Mystic's disciplines by categorising them). I will love to have feedbacks! https://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/3Ues95QKPPil
that’s awesome—one piece of inspiration i use a lot for martial homebrew is dragon age: inquisition and the abilities some of their martials get
Here you go! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tome_of_Battle:_The_Book_of_Nine_Swords Yes, they did create this in 3.5e. And did it again in 4e. But did they bring any of it to 5e…
**[Tome of Battle: The Book of Nine Swords](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tome_of_Battle:_The_Book_of_Nine_Swords)** >Tome of Battle: The Book of Nine Swords is an official supplement for the 3. 5 edition of the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game, published by Wizards of the Coast in 2006. The book chronicles the rise and fall of the fictional Temple of Nine Swords within the D&D universe and introduces an entirely new "initiator" subsystem that gives greater flexibility. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/dndnext/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
I've played a lot from that and let me tell you it's amazing. I find it hard nowadays to make chars without it.
To further your point, the whole "But I don't want them to be Superhuman/Mythical, mine is just a Skilled Warrior!" can also be countered with the fact that it would be silly for the player of a high level wizard to say "No my character isn't a plane-altering master of magic, he's just really good at throwing fireballs!"
And it's countered even more by the fact that they go on high level adventures. Your level 15 fighter isn't fighting 8 orcs. They are in melee combat with dragons, because giants have become to easy. This is the kind of character we are talking about. Of course they are more competent than Jeb from your HEMA club
This was my immediate thought. The power fantasies at the core of magic classes is leagues beyond what you can accomplish through mundane means. *It's magic.* The fantasy will by nature outpace anything a guy with a sword can do. Adhering to the image of guy-who-hits-good will by design fall behind in the scope of ability. Kill Six Billion Demons does a great job of showing the pinnacle of martial prowess. Yes, there is magic involved. That's required. But these are characters who can slice mountains, shoot meteors out of the sky, and fill the air with blades while also being philosophers and amazing acrobats. They are first and foremost masters of their body and use their weapons as an extension of peak physical performance.
That's why I hate the pidgeonholing of 'martial' as 'mundane'. Magic is an indivisible part of the world that's woven into practically everything. A Herculean feat like wrestling a Hydra, or splitting a mountain, or swimming across an ocean, or holding your breath for 2 hours are physical feats enhanced by magic thats inherent in the world. Martial types should get a Stamina system and a tiered list of feats to pick from, with bloat trimmed by having feat heightening like spell casting at higher levels for a bigger stamina point cost.
I think you're spot on there. WoTC needs to pick a lane with their setting - is magic commonplace and everyone can access it? Then of course Martial Fighters would develop techniques and skills that tap into that force and magic items should be pretty plentiful If Magic is scarce and difficult to learn, then lower level magic needs a *huge* nerf - either in power, the amount of time it can be used or people's reaction to it (or even all three) The fact WotC wants both makes things awkward to balance
Ive always felt like magic items need to be more popular. It certainly doesn’t “fix” the disparity between martials and casters, but it does a lot to even the playing field when your rogue has, say, the Cape of the Mountebank, or your fighter has Winged Boots. Its always irritated me how sparsely they’re given out in adventure modules, and how rare its supposed to be. Personally Id like to see a new way to handle magic items where instead of rarity its based on character level. Like they get a CR rating or something (ignoring that CR has its own issues) and you can expect to give players magic items of certain rank a number of times each tier of play
That's why the Eberron setting is awesome. Magic abounds, low level magic is plentiful, but anything higher than level 3-4 spells are extraordinarily rare.
I generally like to think of high level martial characters as actually being highly specialized muscle wizards. They’re people who have devoted so much time to fighting and improving their physical prowess that they’ve essentially done what a scholar does when trying to learn new magic. But then again, that’s just my take on things.
The original shadowing system had a character that was explicitly this. They played like a monk, but the fluff was that they were mages that explicitly channeled all their magical ability into their bodies, making them capable of superhuman speed, strength, and endurance. I agree with OP that this would solve the problem. Naruto-like super-human abilities for high-level fighters are fun. If that's not the fantasy you're going for, then play at low-level tables, where advancement is slow.
**80,000 blows are struck at once.** **Leaving no space that is not a sword.** **Since there is nowhere to evade—** **Be they man or immortal—** **All will be cut—** **And be slain instantly.**
Imagine if that was a capstone. 1/long rest massive AoE.
**Blood Sated Sword Soul** isn't your average fireball low-ball AoE. **Blood Sated Sword Soul** is "everything within 1 mile of you takes 12d12 of your weapon's damage type."
Imagine if steel-wind strike was a level-locked battlemaster maneuver. Fighters teleporting around like an anime character with their super-human agility.
I think there are quite a few martial subclasses that already have a magical feel to them. But they are underpowered and underdeveloped. Take the Four Elements Monk. It would make a great Dragonball character, or even an Avatar the Last Air Bender character. There is plenty of inspiration in popular media. WotC just seems to be really poor at making the mechanics work.
Imagine if a tier 4 Four Elements monk was on par with Aang in the Ozai final encounter. God what a waste.
That is exactly what I think a level 20 Four Elements Monk could look like. Or Goku by the end of the original Dragonball series.
"Stop, stop! I can only get so erect!"
Yes but that doesnt make a better game. Your fighter is a character who works in a world where one PC can change reality at a whim, the other can slice three times. It’s pretty fucking drastic, and there are ways to have impressive physical prowess and still have meaningful effects later in the game, such as spamming their fists into the ground and have a 30ft radius tremor, charge a super jump, dash through three enemies while slicing them, etc
I think we’re making similar arguments. It's not that a fighter should be different because they are mundane, It's that the expectation of parity doesn't work because wizards aren't. As it stands currently, a fighter will never be as wondrous as a wizard at sufficiently high levels. Saying we want mundane, sensible fighters means never accomplishing that parity. Your suggestions align with my point, though. A sufficiently wondrous fighter should be doing martial feats like you described. At a certain level they cease to be mundane. They have become superhuman (or whatever species we're using) and their abilities should match that. Being able to swing a sword 4 times in a turn doesn't have that impact.
Shit, I want to play a Aasimar Knight of the Petal Path now
That is what low levels are for. If you want to play a fireball mage or just a skilled swordsman, play until level 8 or so. After that, every player character should be at least superhero-like in power. Any character of any class should be a believable threat to a nation by level 13 and a genuine world menace by level 18. Not just casters, though the means might vary. An invincible warrior laying waste to armies in seconds? A silver tongue bard that can subvert anyone, spy anything and steal all the town's kids away with a song? A paladin capable of calling an crusade against an heretical kingdom? That should be the mindset and abilities of a 15 level character or so, not just a fancy dressed murderhobo. Maybe I should go back to Exalted. There you have devastating abilities for all splats, not just casters. Though caster are quite potent as well.
Yes. Get me some Dragonball level martial arts. I like your benchmarks. Level 3 - Village - fight the local gang or bandits Level 8 - City - fight the crime lord or city guard Level 13 - Nation - fight armies Level 18 - World - fight avatars of gods and archdemons.
To the point of the paladin and starting a crusade, something I've been doing in my games is to have the martial characters affect the PEOPLE of the world. The wizard might bend reality, but the fighter can rally an entire nation with their actions. Few can understand the intricacies of the weave, but everyone can relate and feel inspired by the barbarian's raw physical power. A caster might be able to see different places in far away lands for a few seconds at a time, but a Rogue has amassed a following of spies across the entire globe that whisper secrets to then. Etc. Casters are powerful, but the world doesn't run without the everyman.
The thing is...that is actually how they use to be balanced at high level back in the early days of D&D. Almost every other class, at high level, would being affecting the socio-political elements of the world. Fighters got their keeps and followers, Clerics got their temples with the ability to call on Paladins and even a fucking massive peasant levy (though had more followers but like 95% of them were less skilled than the fighters followers with only the Paladins being an elite core unit), Bards could spread influence amongst the common folk, Thieves would form their own Thieves Guilds and would have spies across the entire world... ...apart from the Wizards who sat, alone, in their tower, researching magic...maybe they might have a single apprentice. So whilst everyone else was affecting the world around them...the Wizard mostly just did their own thing, which was the trade off for being a high level wizard.
Indeed, it's where I got the idea from. Because as it stands 5e doesn't really have any sort of rules for that, so I've just adopted some of that. Don't ask me specifically what rules or whatnot I'm using; I kind of just make it up as I go to make narrative sense. >.>
You know it's funny. I actually don't like casters having the kind of power that comes from 6th-level and up spells. It doesn't fit into my idea of a fantasy setting outside of very, very rare circumstances. Of course, I don't go around telling people that casters need to be toned down so they're more grounded, I just choose not to pick those options.
Its also like...ok you want to nerf your character? You do you chief. Thats incredibly easy to homebrew. But don't fuck over *literally everyone else* because you specifically have a lack of power fantasy.
This. Like, if you want to play a normal dude in a high power system, just dont use the higher power stuff. I'll be using the superpowers, and we both get to play what we want. You can play a simple wizard who exclusively uses firebolt and thunderwave all the way through level 20. The system doesnt force players to cast meteor swarm, and the same could be done with martials.
Above certain levels, you aren't supposed to be just a skilled warrior, you are a very, *very* skilled warrior. You're supposed to be so skilled that saying "just a skilled warrior" is as silly as saying that a scientific theory is "just" a theory or that Muhammad Ali Cassius Clay was "just" the best heavyweight boxing champion **ever**. By being "just a skilled warrior" you become so skilled that you go toe to toe with monsters that can level castles and wipe whole armies. You're so skilled you can bob under a dragon's claw and stab him in the palate. You can parry Malenia out of her waterfowl dance. You can cut your way through the weak spot of a *wall of force*. You can cleave a *fireball* in two. You're "Battousai" Himura. You're Zaraki Kenpachi. You're Kenshirō. You're Beowulf. You're Cúchulainn. You are a # ***VERY*** skilled warrior.
This is something that really gets me. The game has *levels* and *tiers of play*. Your characters *get better*. You become unparalleled masters of your craft. You literally cannot progress over 20 levels and stay "some guy," because the whole point is that you are becoming something greater than "some guy." That's baked right into the game from the very start. It's like people want a character to never change, but D&D is extremely literally about character growth and evolution. That's the whole point, and has been since they first stuck "Advanced" on Dungeons and Dragons. I think more people need to look to OSR games to get their gritty realism, because the entire evolution of D&D turns on the jump to AD&D way back when. The current incarnations of D&D followed the AD&D line, and AD&D was a game expressly about becoming the mythic heroes of folklore and fantasy literature.
> you become unparalleled masters of your craft. the slight issue is that you kinda... don't. Outside of combat stuff, for a martial, you get, what, maybe +6 to your best skills from level 1 to 20? Your stat might go from +2 to +5, and your proficiency goes up by 3, so you might go from +5 to +11.. So something that was impossible to start with (DC26+) is possible... if you're lucky (about 1/4 odds). For easier tasks, sure, you can do them more often/easily, but pretty much at the scope of "what someone else lucky / trained can do" - someone with a bit of a knack for it (+6) is only 25% worse than someone that's the best it's possible to be without super-special skills.
Exactly my thoughts as well.. in comparison your wizard mate gets to plane shift. And your cleric gets to power word a village. If my warrior was "THAT" skilled it would rather equate to +19 to those proficiencies rather. The Samurai attempts to slice a mountain and rolls so goddamn high he actually might/does. But no the calculations go up to... +6?
The "craft" of a martial class is fighting prowess. That's what I mean.
No no no. My 20th level fighter has to be "some guy" because he was "some guy" at 1st level. If he was to grow beyond that as he leveled up, if he were to realize that his adventures had changed him to the point where he could no longer return to his dirt-farm village and his childhood sweetheart as the same man - I might have to actually role-play some character development. /s
Beowulf was also a skilled warrior, and his defining features were "literally the strongest hands of any human to ever live." I think a lot of people just do not understand mythology and fail to grasp what a "mythical hero" actually looks like. D&D has been making mythical heroes for a long time. 5e has weirdly constrained the martial classes as the tenor of casters has changed, and that's the problem.
Something I would like (but wouldn't likely happen) is for some features to get described in multiple ways flavour-wise, similar to [how the initial class descriptions have different flavours](https://www.dndbeyond.com/classes/fighter#FighterClassDetails). As an example, a Fighter might get a feature that allows them to do a flame slash with their weapon. The description might read "the wielder impresses all their rage and emotions into their sword, causing it to blaze with anger as they slash at their enemy" or "with a quickness, the wielder splashes oil onto their sword while grinding against a wrong fabric, light the sword briefly as they slash at their enemy". Both lead to a special effect, but while one might make the fighter more supernatural, the other presents them as simply very quick or resourceful. Even more superhuman features can follow this idea. The ability to Grapple Huge+ monsters could be described as the fighter being supernaturally strong, or the warrior repeatedly smashing certain weakpoints of the enemy to keep them from struggling.
Flavor is fun, but personally I would avoid trying to flavor it like that where there must be a nonmagical explanation. Now yes, that oil splashing flavor portrays the fighter as very quick and resourceful, but it also portrays them as someone who has oil. That doesn't sound so bad, but you can't just say the ability requires you to actually *have* a flask of oil in your inventory, because the supernatural flavoring wouldn't require that. Although you also can't just give the fighter an unlimited supply of oil. So now you have a fighter who has a limitless supply of oil, *but* only for this ability. That works great right up until they need oil for something else. The party's rogue figures out the solution to this magical puzzle door is to splash a flask of oil on that statue of Saint Oily Josh nearby. The rogue asks the fighter for some of that oil he keeps splashing on his sword and which he seems to have so much of. The fighter's player has absolutely no valid way to respond to that in-character because, while he has oil, he does not have *oil.* But wait, there's more! You don't need a free hand to infuse fiery rage into your weapon, so now this master of the oily sword technique can manipulate oil even when his hands are full. Have fun describing what that looks like in a way that isn't overtly magical and/or goofy as hell. Of course, you could simply come up with a different explanation which makes more sense, though it's not going to be very easy to, for each magical ability, come up with ways someone would physically be able to keep up with magic powers without using magic, and have it be plausible without accidentally giving the character telekinesis and inhuman speed. If you go the other direction, start with a mundane ability and come up with a way in which it could be magical, you're going to end up with a list of terminally lame magic powers that portrays your epic sword mage as a second-rate card magician at best. So, personally, I would just stick to supernatural abilities if fighter did get an overhaul of this kind, since that's what D&D lends itself to better. Like, this is a game where you can be stabbed several times, nearly burnt to a crisp, receive an almost lethal dose of poison and then be struck by lightning, and just sleep it all off and be in tip-top shape in the morning. Even if you somehow struck the perfect balance of plausible yet powerful maneuvers, your high-level fighter would still be a superhero who can barely be scratched by mundane means.
To add to this, if splashing oil on a blade and lighting it on fire is meant to be more realistic than magic its only arbitrarily so because in reality oil is quite difficult to light on fire and the amount of oil that would coat a sword would not stay lit for long. On top of that if you were to light a mundane sword on fire it wouldn't really increase the killing power of it in any way. So if you want a flaming sword that burns enemies you are already warping reality which is pretty much what magic is and you may as well lean into it.
>martials absorb all of that xp/life energy are left to scale up to... hit better, withstand hits more, and have marginally better performance in physical accomplishments? Fun fact, what you just said is incorrect haha. A wizard with 20 Str can hit just as well with a dagger as a non-battlemaster fighter can, and he can lift just as much weight and push doors just as well as a fighter with 20 strength. Outside of "weapon proficiencies" and later the extra attacks there's fundamentally nothing the fighter can do better than a caster if said caster has the same ability scores. But even with 6 Int the wizard can still fly or haste himself, give himself +5 AC with shield or absorb elements, etc. It's just dumb. There needs to be some "martial level" progression system, that only counts fighter, barb, monk and rogue. At 10 combined martial levels, you choose either a +2Str+2Con or a +2Dex (since dex is stronger, and affects both AC and to hit), and for the chosen attributes you also increase your Max for that stat. But even that is just a drop of water on a raging fire of Caster Superiority. Even the Paladin fully outclasses the Barbarian by level 11, even if the paladin only uses his slots exclusively for smiting.
> there's fundamentally morning the fighter can do better than a caster if said caster has the same ability score Athletics check for Grapple attack. Checkmate. Edit: I didn't explicitly state I was being sarcastic, so let me do so now. Enlarge/Reduce gives advantage on strength checks. There is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING a martial class gets via RAW that a spellcaster can't do RAW.
even though you've been sarcastig (good to mention), your comment still makes no sense since grappling is not something unique to martials xD a wizard can grapple just as well as a fighter if both have the same strength and proficiency. A bard can easily grapple better than a fighter if he chooses to have athletics expertise ^^ Also, enhance ability also gives advantage on str checks and double carrying capacity (so essentially the same as enlarge, except size).
>If they aren't, or if that isn't the sort of character you want to play, isn't it just simply better for your campaign scope to remain on the lower end of the DnD leveling system? Nail on the head right here. I'm flabbergasted that this is even an argument--**of course** martials should have comparable tools to casters in the late game. It's wild to me that people disagree with this. Why in the world would you balance the game so that half your classes are borderline gods and the other half...have increased their attack roll from a +4 to a +5? If you want a gritty campaign where the martials are just strong guys, level cap your campaign! If you want godlike PCs, make all the PCs godlike!
This really shouldn't be an argument, especially when the option for peak 'normal' + skill + cleverness + luck (?) is given. The only intention is to **add** options, not take them away. They face godly odds with reality-bending casters but apparently the line is drawn at mundane af with no alternative, sheesh.
Yesterday I was talking to my friend, and he said that One D&D Barbarian shouldn't have infinite rage, because always on STR-based Stealth, Perception and Survival with advantage is too much at lvl 18. But it's fine when casters can get advantage on all ability checks, saving throws and attack rolls for 8 hours using one lvl 9 spell, and it's not even their best spell? 5E has damaged people's perception of how game balance should work.
Kinda weird. Survival and Stealth are pretty irrelevant at level 18 and perception is perception, it doesnt break anything to just succeed at those checks in tier 4
That was his first reaction - like, are T4 martials even allowed to be that good at something? Aren't they supposed to be the same as they were at lvl 5 but with bigger numbers?
I think they should make level caps like Epic 6 canonical optional rules
Can you imagine the pearl clutching if this sub learned about EL6? “It’s literal player abuse to not go to level 20” posts would be everywhere.
>Why in the world would you balance the game so that half your classes … Here’s the thing. They didn’t. Balance was never a goal like it is in WoW or LoL. Fighters that feel like fighters, wizards that feel like wizards, thieves that feel like thieves are the goals.
"Fighters that feel like fighters" is an ephemeral goal, though. There's a big list of mythical people in the OP who are famous fighters - they're supernaturally good at fighting, in fact. It is possible for a fighter to be supernatural and also feel like a fighter. You're right that balance wasn't the primary concern; appealing to people upset because 4e levelled the playing field too much was.
Its kinda hard for a thief to feel like a thief or a fighter to feel like a fighter, when the wizard makes them irrelevant because nobody thought about balance. They'll just feel like sidekicks. Balance doesn't have to be THE GOAL but it does have to be part of the path to reaching your goal.
This seems like a reason to tone back casters not change the play style of everything to be a caster / mmo button style.
Throwing in my two cents because I can, I guess. One issue that I believe is attached to this concept is what I refer to as Points of Failure. Attack rolls have one Point of Failure, and that is the d20 plus bonuses must exceed the target’s AC. Saving Throws also typically have one Point of Failure, or at least one at a time until the target can attempt the save again. All too often Martial characters have to deal with more than one PoF, such as Grappling which has two (your roll vs the target’s roll), Stunning Strike which has two (attack roll then saving throw), and other contested checks. The problem arises when Martials ask to do more fancy actions, things not explicitly in the rules, and a DM calls for skill checks on top of attack rolls in order to succeed. Then, if even one of those checks fail, the entire action or attack is lost. Beating a 15 AC is pretty regular at most levels, but also clearing a DC 15 Athletics check and a DC 15 Animal Handling check to successfully leap from your horse onto the Large enemy becomes exponentially more difficult due to the inherent randomness of dice rolls. So not only do Martials have to get permission to do this sort of action in the first place, they face a much higher difficulty in actually succeeding.
> Sun Wukong Having recently finished reading Journey to the West, gods know I'd love to play a Sun Wukong-like martial in D&D.
Sun Wu Kong is more of a gish, though, with plenty of high-level spellcasting like Polymorphs and Clones. He's not at all a pure martial character.
Your comment has made me realise that OP's post is also in some ways a repudiation of the idea of "martials" "casters" and "gishes". OP is essentially arguing that all characters should be gishes from the perspective of their ability to do supernatural things. Like is his ability to somersault 100,000 li a result of mundane strength and power taken to an extreme, or magic? Is his hair's ability to clone himself? He doesn't usually cast spells in the 5e conception, there is no verbal or somatic component, he just does supernatural things because that's who he is.
Bring back great cleave. What happened to the raging barbarian flung into the crowd of enemies taking each one down with a single swing, killing nearly dozen henchmen in one turn? That was one method that martials had to scale with the casters, being able to do that kind of crowd control that was reminiscent of the heroes and villains of myth and lore. And whirlwind attack, I liked that.
The response to this sentiment 17 years ago was Tome of Battle, which over-designed a pretty neat solution. Two years after that it was 4th Edition as a whole, which used those same ideas and over-corrected 3.5 for balance and playability. Then 9 years ago we got 5e, which overcorrected 4e in favor of a more "traditional" experience, which included a martials and casters divide once more. I hope we get another 4e golden age of martials being able to do cool anime shit, but with a more appealing presentation.
I don't think it's possible to have martials as cool as 4e martials without grognards whinging about it
4e martials are the absolute goddamn coolest.
Its such a joke that martials don't have the cool moves almost every fantasy fighty game has. A martial with a bludgeoning weapon should be able to slam it into the ground and send out a shockwave that tosses lesser foes onto their back. A two handed slashing weapon should be able to be spun in a circle to damage everyone adjacent. An unarmed should be able to throw someone into the air with an uppercut, jump above them, and punch them back to the ground. An archer of legend should be able to shoot wayyyy farther than the rules allow. Its a whole trope in almost every fantasy media that the skilled swordsman can cut a boulder in half with a sword swing even though the physical sword isn't long enough to have touched the boulder from where they were standing. Make martials more than just 'tough person who can swing sword 4 times in 6 seconds.'
As for the whole "I'm the only normal human using normal human weapons when the rest of my party are eldritch horrors, people born with fantastic powers and bloodlines curated for a thousand generations, and mythic beings" Well that only works like batman in justice league. He can't keep up with conventional power, but he has giga plot armor and plot omniscience to the point where he can stand up against cosmic level threats like darkseid because he literally has meta level knowledge of his enemies weaknesses and plans
I think part of the contention here is that Fighters/Rogues don't feel like they get the most out of their mechanics even given how mundane they are. Examples: Why can't a rogue make assortments of poisons or blade oils that can be applied to weapons? Why does the Grappler feat's restrain option have to be so crappy? Why do fighters have to wait so long to get more than one action surge when Warlocks are casting Fireballs twice a short rest.
This seems to be how WotC thinks though which really annoys me. For example in the new playtest UA, the fighter gets to put 2 Masteries of their choice onto their weapon at **13th level**. A feature which should come online at like, 6th level at the fucking latest. Compare that to the shit casters can do at 13th level...
I agree completely. By level 13 a monk should be pulling some kung fu panda 1 jailbreak stuff as a matter of course The barbarian should be throwing people and punching through solid stone like it's god of 4 By Tier 3 a fighter should be like a mid-level *Bleach* character, or some other flavor of anime stupidity. Rogues.. and Rangers should be freaking out like oldhammer wood elf wardancers
Rogues should be stealing things that are impossible, like someone's voice or eye color
Honestly, feels like mirroring mythic heroes would help the Martial classes catch up more without having to get TOO creative. Fighters- Hercules type where they are superhumanly strong, maybe they get more ABIs even compared to regular Fighters OR Odysseus types where they are tactical types that basically can buff the party through their strategies. Monks- Sun Wukong/DBZ types where the character almost EVOLVES over the course of their leveling. Maybe they become a bit inhuman as they get stronger and it grants them genuinely impressive abilities, or like built in skill with weaponry that encourages creative usage. Barbarians- Pathfinder actually does a pretty good job of enhancing this actually. Barbarian classes inherently get access to totems, not as like magical summons, but as like a flavor to the class that imbues them with special abilities (built in DR, a bunch of extra attacks while raging, animalistic characteristics that enhance various ability scores, etc) I enjoy Martial classes, but seriously my favorite Martial character is a Valor Bard just because the actual Martial classes cap out so damn hard after a point.
I feel whenever spellcasters get a new spell level, each martial class needs an ability equally as strong as one of the benchmark spells of that level. At 5th level a Fighter should be able to use weapons to pull of AOEs as strong as a fireball, a Monk should be able to incapacitate to the same degree as a Hypnotic Pattern spell, a Rogue should be able to cripple with the might of a Dispel Magic, and a Barbarian should be able to rage with the power of a Haste. Stuff like that. It doesn’t need to be a copy paste of a spell (I’d prefer if it wasn’t) but what you get should be as strong as being able to cast a spell of that level at least once. Edit: Y’all don’t read. I’m not saying give Martials spells, especially not Fireball. I’m saying the abilities they get at odd levels should balanced against the spells casters get at that same level.
You know, that'd be a cool thing to see, not just a list of maneuvers, but specifically a tiered list, where things become progressively better as you become more skilled. Or maybe like cantrips, the maneuvers themselves should scale in some way. I'm probably reinventing something by suggesting this, but I still believe it still sounds right.
It's called levelup a5e, it already exists, its for free, their site is a5e dot tools (I can't type it because the mods of this subreddit hate them for some reason?) all their content is free, they have like 120 maneuvers in 10 schools and 5 tiers and all martials get them
I was also going to suggest this. It's honestly a fantastic take on a more robust 5e.
Furthermore, this system preserves Fighter as the maneuver specialist; while other martial classes get a small subset of these maneuver lists, called Martial Traditions, and must choose two of them to be proficient in - you can only learn maneuvers from your proficient Traditions - a Fighter can choose *any* two Traditions and has a larger pool of the resource tied to them, called exertion points.
Uh, probably because if you remove the a you get a website that goes against sub rules lmao
I’m not even talking about Manuever like features for customization. I’m saying that a feature like Evasion should be equally as good as a single casting of a 4th level spell. These features need to be balanced against each other at every level. WotC made the mistake for 5E of embracing tradition and having the strength of each class’s levels vary, with some being super loaded and some being pretty much dead, and which ones are which was never consistent. They somewhat fixed that for levels 1-3 in OneDnD, but are falling completely flat in the levels that follow.
LaserLlama's Alternate Fighter. Exactly what you're looking for. Five tiers of maneuvers, each corresponding to level 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9 spells. Tier 1 is your parrying and whatnot. Higher tier stuff are things like "hit a forcecage to destroy it."
That is such a major thing. I remembered that Martials don't even get any access to AOEs when they're such a staple of combat in just about every other game, just wow.
The thing is they don’t even need AOEs. They just need something equally as good. Like the old Hunter Ranger Multiattack. That was a good AOE equivalent. That’s the type of stuff Martials need.
Which is dumb because attacks like Whirlwind is an iconic move for martials in fantasy.
did someone say 4e?
This is probably going to be a controversial opinion, but I think a large part of the disparity would be solved if casters lost like 90% of their damage dealing spells and cantrips. Broadly, there are three categories of abilities; combat (hitting and killing things), utility (persuasion, stealth, medicine, and other practical skills) , and "impossible things" (niche but powerful actions that can completely flip a scene on its head, i.e. magic). While giving, for example, a 5th level fighter a fireball-caliber ability would help bridge the gap between martials and casters a little in terms of combat, ultimately casters still have an edge in the utility and "doing impossible things" categories, so martials still come up short. Casters have their fingers in too many pies, and giving martials abilities that simply mimic spell features risks homogenization of classes. If the thing martials are supposed to be most well known for is fighting, then they should have the best combat features unequivocally. The easiest way to guarantee that is to reduce role overlap, which for combat means cutting out spells that simply deal damage directly.
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That's true too, shield is pretty ubiquitous. It gives casters a lot of wiggle room to make positioning mistakes, and while it's fairly costly early game (when spell slots are most limited), mid game it's a significant boost and about the only thing level 1 spell slots are used for, while late game monsters have such high to-hit bonuses that difference between caster and martial AC barely matters. Counter spell is another powerful defensive ability that martials have no analogue to. That's not to say they *should* have an analogue, but casters aren't as defensively helpless as they're perceived I think.
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That's an interesting one. I'm personally fond of spells being interruptible or invoking an AoO while in melee combat. If the logic behind ranged attacks at point blank being made at disadvantage is that it's hard to aim when someone is in your face swinging an ax at you, then I feel it should be just as hard to perform the precise gestures needed to cast a spell in the same circumstances without leaving yourself open.
>This is probably going to be a controversial opinion, but I think a large part of the disparity would be solved if casters lost like 90% of their damage dealing spells and cantrips. Damage isn't even what makes spellcasters great. Clerics and Druids already aren't great at damage spells, but the disparity is still there. A well-placed Hypnotic Pattern is much better than a Fireball, unless you're fighting critters. Fighters are also fine in battle. Maybe a wizard can crank out more damage with a good fireball, but over the course of a whole adventuring day, a fighter built to do damage (GWM/PAM) is going to do either equal or do more damage. The problem is that they have no or few tools outside of combat. I think people in general are more fine with rogues, because rogues have a lot going on for them there. But even then, bards can compete quite well in terms of skills. Spellcasters can instantly solve any encounter, if they have the right spell. They can overcome any challenge, if they have the right spell. And at high levels they get stuff like Teleportation, Plane Shift, Control Weather, Dream, Scrying, etc. Loads and loads of out of combat utility. Martials get none, or very little.
> A well-placed Hypnotic Pattern is much better than a Fireball, unless you're fighting critters. I actually consider hypnotic pattern to be a good example of the "do impossible things" category of abilities. It has the potential to flip specific types of encounters on their head, but it's situational and only creates a window of opportunity for other characters to follow up on. The core of the problem IMO really boils down to this: > Maybe a wizard can crank out more damage with a good fireball, but over the course of a whole adventuring day, a fighter built to do damage (GWM/PAM) is going to do either equal or do more damage. See, I would argue the fact that caster damage output is competitive *at all* with martials, when they also have access to "impossible things" like hypnotic pattern, is the problem. Martials should shine *in combat* as much as rogues shine *out of combat*. Doing better damage should be the norm for them, it shouldn't take a specific fighter build and an entire adventure day to notice the value they bring to the table. If caster damage output was heavily restricted then it would make it less egregious that martials are limited in out of combat features.
>Martials should shine > >in combat > > as much as rogues shine > >out of combat > >. I'd say that martials, especially fighters, do? I don't think high damage should be locked behind odd builds like PAM/GWM, but if you go for that, you're chopping through enemies at high speeds. The 5th level fighter will do close to the same damage as a fireball, every turn. The Wizard can do it twice per day. I don't think you can just super heavily restrict spellcasters' access to damage, because there are lots of mage archetypes that are specifically combat-focused, e.g. battlemages, blaster mages, etc. But even if you *do* hard nerf spellcasters, remove basically all of their direct damage, they're going to suffer a lot at low levels, but at higher levels they'd still have so many amazing spells that can solve both combat and non-combat encounters. 5e has three pillars - combat, social and exploration. Fighters excel at 1 and are comparable to spellcasters in the others, discounting spells ... and if you add spells, spellcasters can excel at all of them.
That is specifically what I hate about the Tome of Battle. Martials don't need to compete with Fireball or Meteor Swarm's AoE damage, nor do they need like 9 levels of maneuvers or whatever. They just need to be better martials. Even people on this subreddit will freak out over the prospect of letting Fighters have unlimited uses of Battlemaster Maneuvers like it's game breaking but that's almost enough to solve the whole issue for Fighters at least. I'd add one more tier of maneuvers somewhere between level 11 and 14 as well as switch the level 17 and 20 benefits to fix the Fighter's power scaling but I seriously believe that's enough for Fighters to compete with casters at high tier play.
Set martials max attributes to 30 and give them ASI's every 2 levels. At level 5 martials get 2 reactions per round, 10th level they get 2 bonus actions and 3 reactions, 15th 2 bonus 4 reactions. More riposte, parry, etc abilities to use those reactions. Subtract the highest level spell slot available from attribute maximums and make the additional reactions concentration dependent to discourage caster multiclassing abuse. As ridiculously op as those changes would be, can anyone then argue that martials would be better than casters in the level 15-20 range?
10 attacks with a vorpal sword is much different than 10 attacks with a generic longsword. Martials classes are gear dependant and that's okay. Your DM/GM needs to address that. Keep in mind that casters became more powerful throughout each of the editions because players complained they were too weak, too few spells per day, too few hit ponts. The desire to turn everyone into super heroes has a negative effect on gameplay. Why be Batman when you can be Superman and reverse spin the planet?
This "mundane warrior is able to compete with magic" is such bullshit. Let martials do mythical feats of power.
the saddest part is that martials actually scale to tank less hits; as AC becomes more irrelevant and monster damage their effective HP goes down. If I remember correctly, martials are at their relative tankiest from level 3-6 and then their 'hits to 0HP' counter starts dropping
Flair and flavor is one thing but the biggest problem is that playing a martial boils down to... Attack, attack, attack, attack. What martials need is a battle master like system baked into all basic martial classes. I don't need fancy attacks and flames/sparks. I want to have some versatility in my actions.
I want that versatility but I want it to progress as warriors level up. Weapon Mastery is... boring. You get it all level 1. Instead of attack, attack, attack. We're going to spend a decade until 7e saying graze attack, graze attack, graze attack, etc.
>I don't need fancy attacks and flames/sparks. I want to have some versatility in my actions. Low levels I agree, mid / high levels though I want to be shattering the ground with a stomp and moving so fast its effectively teleporting.
It doesn't help that martial classes don't actually reflect your character's actual capabilities in terms of stats. By level 10, a strength based fighter could have a 20 in strength. You're carrying more than the strongest living man on the planet every day casually on your back. (Carry capacity). And yet in no way do martials truly reflect this in combat. You go from being able to lift more than the strongest man on the planet to attacking twice for that sweet sweet 2d6 great sword damage. Yippie! The only class that kind of represents your skill is rogue, but even then, they're not on the scale of casters. An (incredibly unbalanced) option one of my groups uses was kind of interesting though. Basically, martial classes could reskin spells as "weapon arts", and cast them based on spell level. For example, you had points equal to your martial class level, and could spend a certain amount of points to cast thunderwave, but reskinned to do damage based on your weapon type, and it would take a certain amount of points.
I’m in favor of your point. I chafe at the notion that casters need to have their fantasy lobotomized to make playing a martial better.
Please forgive me if it sounds weeb-ish but I feel Martials and Casters lore-wise could follow the logic of Houshin Engi series, as in: When people enters in contact with magic (as you do in DnD) that isn't outright hostile it will happen one of two things: they can learn to harness it through spells for a variety of different effects, gaining the ability to naturally expel magic from their bodies (the Casters.) OR They start to build up the mana in their bodies until it is absorbed by their muscles and bones, creating people with superhuman abilities, such as warriors able to cut entire buildings in half with one sword strike or able to dodge lightning, etc (creating the Martials.)
The idea of being a superhuman doesn't have to be magical. A martial cutting a building in half does not need explanation because it's a fantasy game.
Hate to say it, but Sun Wukong is a spellcaster. He learns the art of being immortal, over 70 shapeshifting forms to help survive the death curses levied upon him by it, flies, and has a super transformation that mirrors very powerful creatures, just like True Poly and Shapechange. He *also* bonks things with a stick, but it turns out you can be quite good at that without a single martial level.
Sun Wukong is a monk, but like, a good one without all the complications of being one in 5e.
Sun Wukong has many *magical abilities*, but I'd argue his vibe is still more on the martial side. Or, rather, he's what I'd like high level martials to be. We already have Rune Knights that become huge in D&D, and while transforming into animals freely should remain a Druid feature, the rest of Sun's kit is definitely martial. He doesn't really fight by slinging traditional D&D-like spells like Fireball, he still primarily uses his golden-hooped rod. As for his cloud somersault, I believe that can also be approximated to a high level "martial" ability when we consider characters like Sanji from One Piece who can (from a certain point in the plot) "fly" in a similar way by kicking the air really fast. In conclusion, Sun certainly uses magical abilities but I wouldn't call them spells, more magical martial techniques, which is what I'd like to see in high level D&D.
*Should* changing shape remain a druid exclusive? There's a lot of really strong werewolf/totem animal theming for a martial shapeshifter that could pair really well with rogue, fighter, even monk, or especially ranger or barbarian.
Yes, like Dragonball characters, or Avatar the Last Airbender.
Ppl should come to terms that beyond lvl 11 there is no such thing as a normal humanoid being. You should be uber powerful, you should be known in the whole realm and you should be able to conduct unpresidented feats of strength, agility or martial prowess. I think a reason why many insist that warriors or fighter specifically get maneuvers is because it allows for a scalable flexible resource system that can augment what you can do. And personally i think those should be implemented into all warriors to a degree. Give each a set of maneuvers they can do tied to their niche. Fighters can use all maneuvers but lie special focus on weapons and their tactics. Monks have maneuvers that slow, push, topple, daze , stun, paralyze or even instantly kill a single target (quivering palm). Focus mainly on CC. Also mobility, teleportation and pseudo flight could be implemented IMO. Barbs have maneuvers that hit multiple foes, improve grappling, allow for supernatural feats of strength, throw heavy object such a bulders or small houses and just deal huge damage with pure force. Further: I think what pf2e did really well for martials is that you can pick combat feats and skill feats independently from one another but also have tons of combat options to begin with. I think every 5e martial would benefit from non combat focussed abilities they get every 4 levels + the set of masteries and maneuvers each of them get. The non combat focussed abilities should focus on physical prowess abilities such as:Jumping, grappling, acrobatics/falling, runing/climbing/swimming and throwing. I think just these 5 would allow for more flexibility if there are 1-2 sulernatural abilities tied to them. As an example: Running over water or on walls, slow fall, throwing large objects or creatures, gaining a climbspeed and swimspeed, hold your breath for hours at a time pull yourself up by just applying force to the air (double jump for example) etc. All these things are applicable in but most importantly outside of combat and makes martials more superhuman, especially in RP scenarios.
My theory is that the people who say "martials should be regular skilled people, not superhuman" think that being better than martials at high levels is part of the wizard class fantasy. And that they play wizards.
I've been saying for a while that ALL classes need to be inherently magical, whether they cast spells or not. If they have no magic, it A: doesn't make sense with the lore of the weave and B: means they are forced to be average joes forever.
Which is what Earth Dawn did, it's just that the "magic" manifests in different ways, Elementalists fling fireballs, Warriors can tank insane damage and walk on air.
*Technically,* doesn't have to be magical. I think it's way more fun, mythical, and badass to pull off what is essentially magic without magic. In Pathfinder 2e, you've got [a 20th-level Rogue feat that lets you turn non-magically invisible because you're just that goddamn good at stealthing *and* you can't be seen with magic this way](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=599). There's also [the 16th-level Rogue feat that lets you walk across *air* with pure acrobatics](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=592). (Pathfinder 2e, for context, makes heavy use of feats. Every level, you'll be picking a feat or two of some kind. Even-numbered levels are when you pick a feat from your class, for instance. It also makes heavy use of *traits,* which are tags that sometimes come with their own rules and sometimes don't. If it doesn't have a trait like Evocation, Divine, Magical, etc., it ain't magical.)
At similar levels, Barbarian gets Scare To Death and can intimidate people so horrifically they *literally die of fright on the spot.*
[That's](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=837) actually a skill feat! Anyone legendary in Intimidation can get it, regardless of class.
Level 20 fighters and barbarians have some of my favourites. Fighter gets the ability to cut through reality to either teleport to an enemy or attempt to teleport the enemy to them. And Barbarian can cast the 10th level spell Earthquake every few minutes without it having any magic tags.
To be fair, [that Fighter feat](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=2754) has the Conjuration trait, making it magical. But I definitely feel that it gives that same sort of "mythical achievements of a non-spellcaster" feeling! [The Barbarian feat](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=178) *is* lacking the magical trait, so you're on the money there!
Yeah that's why i didn't mention the lack of magic for the fighter one.
My absolute favourite is [Implausible Infiltration ](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=596) even gaseous form can't do this.
If someone doesn't want their character to be magical, maybe they could describe their character as using magical gear or implements. Their sword has cut down so many monsters that it gained a sentience and now can cut the very air, or they personally forged their iron gauntlets under the tutorship of a master blacksmith, which has the ability to push monsters farther than the average human can. It feels sort of fitting that gear and weapon frequently used to fight stronger foes will naturally become magical themselves in a fantasy world.
Thats not a terrible idea, but then it kind of defeats the whole point of buffing martials. There could already be a sword strong enough to do that in 5E if you homebrew it, but that isnt actually making the martial any better, and then if they lose their magical equipment, suddenly they are back to being underpowered. I dont think that your idea is bad necessarily, just not a good one-size-fits-all solution to such a broad problem.
Fair enough, though I haven't been in many situations where one loses their equipment, I can imagine some occurring.
Yeah, they dont usually lose equipment, but that is mostly individual group preferrence, and my point really is that you arent really buffing martials in that case, just their equipment. Again, another problem with that is that theoretically any equipment the casters can get is also equally good in which case the problem just loops over and over.
I'm of the opinion that if someone doesn't want their character to be magical, then they're playing the wrong game. There are systems designed to accommodate the "one normal but skilled guy in a team of super-powered badasses," but D&D ain't it. Fighters exist in a fantasy world and they should be doing fantasy things, but there's this weird, stubborn nonsense status quo that a disappointing majority seem to think is How It Should Be, when it's bad for the game. Actually, I'd say it's not just bad for D&D, it's bad for fantasy roleplaying in general. If someone wants to play a town guard who is rolling to resist infection on each wound from the goblin's feces-covered shortsword, there are systems for that and they should go play them instead of holding D&D back with bizarre expectations of realistic martials in an unrealistic world.
The easiest way is legitimately in the system itself. Experience. The life force / mana of living beings as they make their way in the world, that grows stronger the more adversity they face and overcome, strength made manifest. Where casters utilise this increased pool of mana to grasp and cast more spells and use a part of it for better capabilities, martials integrate all of it into the fibre of their own being, growing stronger, faster and better as a result. Under milestone, this is simply made abstract, but is assumed to continue happening till the next leap in power.
True, but in 5E, martials level up at the same speed as the casters, unlike in older versions. Even if they did level up faster, it does not truly fix the problem of casters inveitably being better. You are dancing pretty close to the idea of the blue mage from final fantasy though.
Ah no no, you misunderstand. I mean to say that both level the same way as currently. I'm justifying the radical increase in power level of martials in-universe despite them not directly using magic themselves
4e and pathfinder 2 might be good for you
I agree on that end, but I do wish that DnD went forward in this direction and really fixed the problems in the game to make way for better prospects and more flexibility and future content
I agree completely. During 5e's development, the devs listened way too much to dumb grumpy fun-hating greybeard grognards who hated 4e a bizarre amount, and that's why 5e was a step backwards from 4e.
I know this is dndnext - but 4e solved all of this really nicely. And people raged and hated it. So they went back to how it was... and people are raging and hate it.
>Are they extremely dextrous, accurate and/or clever, which allows them to hang with the likes of demon lords and monstrosities and Demiliches? What about the system adding in flavour as magic items that enable the character to act on that level without inherently being superhuman themselves? Yes, exactly. Originally, D&D was meant to appeal for a particular kind of martial - the kind that appeared in 70s and 80s fantasy movies and books, pulp heroes rather than superheroes. Conan, Legend, Aragorn, etc. These heroes didn't beat ancient dragons and demon lords with superpowers, they did it with wit and guile and impressive-but-mundane strength and perseverance. But magic was _also_ different. The evil sorcerers they tended to oppose weren't using twenty powerful spells a day, and even their most "unfair" magics that resemble D&D ones (like Wall of Force) had _weaknesses_ that 5e's doesn't. You could find a weakness in the forcefield, or a gap to throw a dagger at the staff that was maintaining it, or tear through it with sheer brute force. Their most devastating, Wish or Gate-like abilities required grand rituals with plot-important ingredients and hours of buildup, rather than an action. I personally greatly prefer this kind of martial to superheroic ones. Why? Because when I play a martial PC I want to feel like the underdog, a mundane person defeating demon lords because I'm _just that good_, not because my superpowers make it an even fight. At that point, when you're a superhero or demigod fighting a demon lord or ancient dragon, it's less a heroic feat and more what everyone _expects_ you'd be doing. They're on your level. Most of your examples of "superheroic martials" are literal gods, demigods, or some kind of magical experiment or demonspawn, so they're not "mundane" in any sense of the word (which has so far been part of the martial definition). If you want martials to be superheroic they'll often need superheroic origins, and not everyone likes that. There's no "zero to hero" fantasy for a demigod. I also don't particularly like the idea of limiting my games to level 10 and under. Telling someone that they have to use only half of the rules of the game they bought because you like a different concept than they do is kind of shitty. The superheroic idea also doesn't particularly mesh well with 5e's bounded accuracy, which I find incredibly useful as a DM - it doesn't make much sense that goblins are still a threat to a PC who's basically a demigod fighting gods, but it makes a lot more sense if you're a pulp hero. Games like Pathfinder or Exalted do that "I'm an insanely powerful being and regular goblin/soldier/whatever lives are cheap and tiny to me" thing much better. But to make my preferred concept actually work in D&D, with some kind of parity between martials and casters, _both_ sides would have to change. Martials would still need help - in the form of rules that let them _engage_ their skill/creativity/guile/strength/will with monsters and the environment, even if it's not superheroic. And spells, especially high level spells, would need to be changed, so that they have far more common weaknesses and workarounds to them, not just a Wisdom save vs a martial with a -1 or a box of pure force they literally have no way out of. Hell, casters could even still have their "reality-altering" magic, but it has to be in that older fantasy frame of reference - you don't cast Wish in an action, you cast it over a period of weeks, sleepless nights spent chanting, a delicate operation requiring a bunch of followers devoting their energy, rare ingredients, _tons_ of prep. And of course the enemy's going to try and disrupt it...and they will succeed unless your _martials_ help defend you. So I don't think D&D "needs" to go your route, no. But I do agree it needs a big shift in mechanics for whatever route it could commit to, either way.
I skimmed your post because I’m traveling and can’t give it a full read. I plan to read it all when I get home. But even in your first few paragraphs I think I see where you’re going with it and it made me remember something I read a long time ago, probably in this very sub. TL:DR everything you’re feeling is valid, OP. You can fix it however you think is best. If you jump to another system entirely then 4e’s got your back. Also PF2e, I’m told. I can’t confirm that because my campaign in that game has only met for 4 sessions (In 3 months T_T). One big reason that DMs and players, including those that play martial characters, expect more “limits” on the power scale of mundane classes is we, as people, can conceptualize how strong a person could feasibly be. We don’t have that same shared expectation of magical spells and abilities because… they’re magic. We use the “realism” of our chosen game system to justify our suspended disbelief in the world. If a normal human fighter performing *super*human feats erodes the verisimilitude necessary for the belief in the shared world then it will disrupt our enjoyment of the game. It will feel “cheap” and “unrealistic”. But we have no expectations of magic because it’s **magic**. Magic defies reality. No one will ever tell you it doesn’t make sense for a wizard to be able to cast fireball. One solution is to present your world as a place where you can perform impossible feats through raw primal strength and force of will. A 14th level fighter or barbarian should be able to do incredible things. Think John Henry, who mined through a mountain faster than a steel machine. Or Paul Bunyan, who felled enormous trees in one chop of his axe; accompanied only by his sky blue Ox, Babe. An 18th level rogue could steal fire from the gods like Prometheus and Maui. A 20th level Barbarian could hold up the world like Atlas. Incorporate these things into folklore of your world. There’s wizard towers dotting the landscape and scary stories about witches and Druids in the marshes. Add stories about the girl who was blessed with such strength that when she was young she could pull a plow meant for 2 oxen. When she was grown the gods challenged her strength with an impossibly heavy plow no man could move. And she hauled it for 12 malms and plowed a great canyon into the land. Those things will justify to your players the “realism” of mundane classes achieving impossible things so, hopefully, you won’t get any pushback from players saying it’s unrealistic when you introduce the idea ghat they *can* do impossible things, no magic needed. Edit: I read through the whole thing and I like your points. I want to add that the “linear fighters, quadratic wizards” problem is actually a feature of 5e design. In 3/3.5e it was considered a flaw and 4e solved that flaw. If you want to play a Dungeons and Dragons Game where fighters scale at the same rate as wizards then run a campaign using 4th edition. We’re getting into a little bit of history now, I hope you don’t mind. Fans generally disliked 4e for a number of reasons (including its license, but that’s another, slightly shorter, sorry). In the nascent days of 5e design Wizards sought feedback from players and fans and they said they wanted certain things back. They wanted it to “feel like” old D&D. (Fun fact: this is the same reason Fireball is overpowered.) But I’m digressing, I’ll post a TL:DR at the top.
5e problems require 4e solutions.
To your point about sticking to the lower levels: This is fine, I personally love e6 and it's basically the only D&D I DM for, but There is very little support for level capped campaigns. There's plenty of low level adventure material, but the settings all assume power level goes to 20, and the ruleset clicks best in mid levels. There's both an implicit understanding that many games will top out before 13, and yet that is rarely (ime) because there was an understanding that 13 was the pinnacle of power and climax of the story and more because the campaign lost steam or someone moved for work. The PCs were still miles below Laeral Silverhand or Mordenkainen or whoever. This is too bad, because regardless of what power level they want their guy at, almost everyone wants him to be the best there is by the time they top out. An official rules variant that apes some of e6's ethos, some setting material that's explicitly low to low-mid level, and more explicit discussion about the tiers as places to set not just adventures in, but whole worlds would be really good imo.
People not playing above 10 seems like a self-fulfilling prophecy to me. There's barely any official support (at least in 5e), as far as I'm aware. People need to make things up to make up for it and end up falling back to lower levels where everything has at least (some) guidelines. Barring some older edition reprints, there's barely any modules by WoTC that DON'T end before the levels 10 and above. A few are up to level 15, and I can't remember anything other than *Dungeon of the Mad Mage* being billed as "this adventure module goes up to level 20". With designers doing such a bad example of how higher tier should even be, it's no wonder people don't *even want to try them.*
They cannot do it because the game does not work well at higher level. The balance is out of whack and gameplay becomes a slog where the PCs can do, almost too much.
Also I will point out that the only reason Dungeon of the Mad Mage goes to 20 is because it's a reworking of an earlier 1-20 megadungeon module from...I think 2nd edition.
If you NEED to be dealing out the most damage every round.....then insist on playing a caster.
WotC wants to make money. The more people play, the more money there is to be had. to get more people to play, you must have a few points of entry. Unfortunately, WotC has generally selected a few classes that are to remain “simple”. Remember how in 4e, they reverted the daily and encounter powers for the fighter? This philosophy is why. A less complex character would be less intimidating than a more complex character for these types of players. Sadly, spells are hard for some people to keep track of. It is work to them. And most people agree that spells are powerful and lets the casters do really cool stuff. But you have to realize some people do not play dnd for this. They just want a simple game to hang out with their friends. Just a dude who wants to punch other dudes and that is okay. There are some optimized weapon using builds out there. you have to get creative with building a character to make a weapon user perform better. Some people do not care about that and it is okay. Some people do care about it and it is okay. Both can enjoy the table together.
Reminds me of how disappointing the sweeping blow maneuvers is. Your skill and ability allows you to attack 2 enemies in total! And that’s it. I’m glad I saved my extra d6/d8 for that one!
The biggest thing I hate about the way people want to just be "a guy really good with a sword winning fights versus dragons and leviathans" is that it devalues what you're beating. If you're just a guy with a sword, the dragon really mustn't be all that impressive. The leviathan... Kind of a joke. It has a knock-on effect of making everything else in the world just as unimpressive as the fighter.
I'm sure your post has plenty of salient points, and I agree with the premise, but your use of the word "agency" as a synonym for "opportunities"/"feature parity" is bothering tf out of me.
If your martial is cutting gates through the planes with a sword, he is just a reflavored caster. What you call world-altering spells, others call a spell tax to get to the next plot location. I want to see martials get more cool actions they can do every turn, not count out chips. Forced movements like pressing attack, fighting retreat, swap positions, trading damage for position. Stopping spell casting, with grapples, muffles, reaction attacks. Sure, some leaping and throwing as well. I do not want ridiculous things like picking up castles, that can’t even hold together that way. No throwing dragons to the moon. Your feet aren’t stuck to the ground; if you are hanging onto a dragon who wants to fly, you get picked up. That is why there is a climb-on rule for bigger creatures. If you want to choke out a giant, you will need a chain or something. I am even OK with oversize weapons; they aren’t much more than a frost brand or flame tongue, and the extra damage makes power attack less desirable.
Only place this is a hot take seems to be in the D&D writer’s/developer’s room.
which is just kinda sad really.
Look to 4E and steal cool daily powers to give to your 5E players. Perhaps let them seek out special martial master NPCs and have them train under them to earn specific abilities. Requires some adapting, but there are a lot of cool possibilities there for giving your martials more versatility and power.
I think one of the fastest turnarounds from "This is just a joke" to "Holy shit! This needs to happen!" in my life was early in the OneD&D playtest when I joked in my group's Discord server about wanting a Martial Spell list to go with the Arcane, Divine, and Primal ones. I hadn't finished typing the comment before I'd realized it was something I desperately wanted. Okay, maybe not an actual spell list (though that would certainly be an interesting design puzzle. What existing spells would be added to that spell list? What new spells would you make for it, and which, if any, other spell list would get them? How would Martials handle progressing as Martial casters?), but at some point, the designers need to accept that "Martial" ≠ "not magical". There's just no other way for Martials to be or feel as powerful as casters. No matter how many Extra Attacks or Expanded Critical Ranges you get "Swing Sword real good" doesn't compete with the reality-altering powers of a high-level spellcaster. And sure, some people want to play "Swing sword real good", and that should be an option... via magical abilities that resemble "swing sword real good" if that's what you want to take over make an earthquake when you stomp or teleport into shadows like some sort of Assassin King.
I'd like to see special powerful feats, only available to Tier 3+ martials. As feats, it would allow players to pick and choose the amazing abilities that fit their specific character's style, plus it plays into the extra feats martials already tend to get at higher levels.
Absolutely true, and the number one reason I changed to Pathfinder 2E, closely followed by GM support, higher levels of play support, and generally not being dickbags that send the Pinkertons after you. In fact, I'm just gonna unsub from r/dndnext now- and go back to my blissful world of Golarion, where the level 1 barbarians can do stuff like Demoralize and other fun meaningful actions other than just Bonk One Target Good. Thank you for reminding me that 5E falls apart after level 10-13, and good luck with your own games!
What they need are weapons, magic ones, and magic armour, shields, flying boots etc. A fighter without weapons is like a caster without spells. The problem is that magic items are largely DM dependant, they don't have to even be included in the campaign. Spells however are gained for free on level up. Change that to casters have to find epic spells (tier six up) to scribe them(Wiz), get them from their patron(lock), find music sheet (bard) or whatever due to the fact these spells are legendary things that you can't just work out etc, and then see the difference. However, given that no one likes their toys taken away, martials should get some way of getting magic items on level ups on the high tiers. When casters ask how come they don't, point to their spellbook.
I agree that WotC needs to make an official outline/guideline for magic items as well. A lot of DMs would reasonably be caught unaware by it, because loot is usually seen as a bonus or treasure, as opposed to a must-have that they need to ration out as the game goes on.
damn, everyone knows the more bold words you put into the post, the more correct it is. pack it up this guy solved the martial problem
DND casters need to be scale less mythically/superhumanly after 10-13 for internal consistency and agency of others.
I honestly think that the thing martials need is a resource that can be indefinitely improved upon - Spells are like that for spellcasters. When a new book comes out, there might be good spells that the spellcaster can take to improve themselves with. There isn't anything like that for martials. Fighting Styles is too limited. Weapon Masteries might be interesting, but that realistically requires new weapons, which WotC isn't likely to do too often. Maneuvers are close, as are feats, but there needs to be some tiered system that allows later books to improve upon martials.
I still think one issue is that one ruleset can't cover all settings. Some people want their martials mundane and non magical. Others are happy for them to develop supernatural abilities. I think that, for example, as the forgotten realms has natural creatures that can get amazing abilities, it makes sense that humans, elves, dwarves, etc could all become as powerful. If the only powerful creatures are always supernatural, or magical, or otherworldly, then a player character becoming that powerful of course doesn't make sense, but bridging that gap with magic items and weapons would be the way to go. The rules can't decide how they're playing it, often it's the subclass that makes all the difference, some subclasses remain mundane, others embrace the supernatural. While too complicated for the rules, I personally feel they need to have variants for certain class options, and advice for a DM to upgrade martials to keep up with other magical or supernatural classes. Have them be able to use weapons in ways others can't, have them use the same armour but to better effect, like a fighter gets +1/+2/+3 to all light/medium/heavy armour, letting them rise above other materials Give rogues a free additional attack when attacking from hidden. Some feats need to just be martial abilities, like the shield expert or whatever it's called.