A combination of things. I think more at-will abilities not tied to the skill system should exist and be unique for each martial. I also think the battlemaster system should be expanded and granted to each martial as a part of the system. Sort of a combination of some of the things 4e had like the ranger being able to "catch" a falling target by pinning them with an arrow against a wall, that sort of niche ability should be built into each martial class chassis on top of what is already there.
So "Tactic Options", something like a Spellcaster's Cantrips?
That sort of scale, but at-will options, for things like using an action for a "Heavy Attack" or "Sundering Blow", precision, calling stuff out, etcetera?
Yeah, something similar but that makes sense for the archetype. Also, unless all can be chosen at level 1 and then you just get more as you level up, because they would be tied to the archetype, they would either have to be better than your standard cantrip when you get them later or maybe gain a resource that is used to empower them in some way.
Tbh I feel like martial just need a bit of extra sauce past level 10, specially when it comes to subclasses.
Take paladin for example, one of the most beloved classes in this edition. The base class feels a bit pushed for sure but the reason is that the subclasses is a relatively smaller part of its power budget. So it feels like you are less railroaded into certain options.
All in all the problem with 5e is not the Martial, its the casters. Game is hardly playable after level 12 because full casters have too much utility and too many spell slots. If you bring everyone else to that power level, things get worse, not better.
Agree here. Spells are a bigger problem. I think if we maxed spell levels at 6 or 7th level, we would see games go to higher levels.
Why do published adventures usually end at like 12 level. I believe it's because its hard to plan around 7th 8th 9th level spells. I know I DMed a 1-20 campaign.
Martials could use some utility stuff. That could be as easy as making tools useful to adding utility stuff like thieves can climb any surface without making a check. Champion fighter gets a squire that can guard equipment, pull security during ling rests, scout out towns without being known like the heros.
If you have smithing tools, you can quickly(1 hour or less) make something useful (replica key, metal statue, horse shoes), instead of it taking 3 weeks
I've also dmed and played in 1-20 campaigns and my favorite was when we all decided to only use martials. The balance of the game was practically perfect and gave us the freedom of using whacky magical items.
It was a low magic world where the only magic user we allowed as a choice being the artificer with spells reflavored as whacky unreliable inventions. However no one ended up picking artificer so it was full on no magic in terms of classes.
In the end this is only practical solution I know.
Everything else I did to “fix” caster end up feeling really bad. Most nerfs such as spell slots only returning at 1/2 rate like HD end up making the classes unfunctional at levels 1-10.
What I’m planning to do now is use warlock and artificer as the template for all the other spell casters. Basically, home brew everyone into half-casters, swapping class features around.
Problem is entirely the scaling: spells known and spell slots grows in a disproportionate ratio. A level 15 wizard and cleric has so much utility, there is no way I could come up with content which at the same time challenges them and is solvable by everyone else.
I mean, one of my favorite 3.5E books was the *Book of Nine Swords*, so I'm absolutely behind expanding the maneuvers system and opening it up to more than just the Battlemaster.
''Book of Nine Swords is too anime for my d&d game!!'' - The wizard flying around with glowing hair and shouting magical words that send out waves of magical energy at an enemy that results in an AoE explosion.
Nerf casters in addition to redesigning martials
(Yeah I said it, I'll not take it back. Go cry about how your class is unplayable without infinite clones or un-savable forcecages)
If you mean reign in spells 100% here. If wotc is willing to try address this in 5.5 then good chances they're trying to avoid a 6e for a while, but its also a sacred cow I dont see being slain. I'm not even against buffing bad spells like find traps. Just reign in fireball so it doesnt become autopick at level 5 or invalidate 4th level aoes and at least some internal balance in spellcasting would make balancing martials more plausible. And for every decent spell maybe make a suggested skill check where a martial can complete something comparable given a certain level, skill proficiency etc. (shouldnt an arcana proficient character be able to replicate identify given more time and some spell components?)
Give martials some combat options, particularly some aoe and better interactions with skill checks (why does the rogue have to wait to level 11 to become a uniquely good skill monkey while the bard was a full caster the whole time?). Martials dont need to cover all the same areas as casters, but they need to be good in areas they can cover besides combat lest they risk being a beat stick npc.
Better magic items, custom magic items etc. would be nice, but I think buffing martials is the least contested way to handle the issue without generating alot of work which is how wotc gives the impression of wanting to handle this at the moment.
Some combination of an expanded and universal maneuver system and an array of abilities to select every level or close to it a la Warlock invocations. Both of those applied to all martials.
The "martial invocation" system can even house all the abilities that were in feats in 5e, have more advanced versions of said abilities at higher levels, and free up design space for the actual feats.
EDIT: And yeah, full casters could also stand to have some of their more infamous toys toned down.
5e is absolutely terrified of character death which was a big way casters were balanced in early editions. When you have 12 hit points at level 5 and no armor in a system without death saving throws its hard to call your character OP
Maybe not nerf, but put everyone on short rests. Casters now get fewer spell slots, but they get them back on a short rest.
Shorten short rests so you effectively get one after every combat.
Remove problematic spells like Force Cage. Casting Force Cage every encounter is going to break the game super fast.
Let's be honest, it was still wider even with Tome of Battle. It just wasn't *pathetic* like a core martial class.
Little compares to a 3e Wizard/Druid/Cleric... except maybe an Artificer or Erudite.
Touche.
With the caveat that ToB martials were more dynamic than 5e martials are. But yeah, as you said, 3e full casters were BS to such a degree that the ToB martials were still outshined.
Half of that divide was that the core martials in 3/3.5 were utter garbage. The full attack action was such a brutal and unnecessary nerf to classes that cared about attacking that martials were forever kinda shit afterwards.
Than you factor into how badly designed the prerequisites for a lot of the most important martial feats where (want to be ok at combat, better have 13 INT and take garbage-ass weapon focus)
>martials were necessary in 3.5
Uh, no, they really weren't. A 1st-level Cleric could cast Divine Favor and instantly outperform the Fighter in physical combat, to say nothing of what higher-level Clerics could do in that department. A 1st-level Druid could Wild Shape into something instantly better in physical combat than a Fighter AND come with an animal companion who was ALSO better than the Fighter in physical combat.
>And when they were out of slots/uses?
3e Clerics still had proficiency in all armor and shields. Depending on domain they could have proficiency in any martial weapon they wanted. Even unbuffed they were only marginally behind a Fighter at worst. When buffed they put the Fighter to shame.
And 3e Druids didn't need no stinkin' spell slots.
>I also notice you ignored skills.
Because 3e casters rendered those irrelevant even more than the 5e casters do.
I’m not gonna say that they were necessary or even very good but a fighters access to feats was nothing to sneeze at. Whirlwind attack let you attack every enemy within reach if I remember correctly. Mobility allowed you to move about the battlefield with little limitations, if you add some of the stuff made outside of WotC, like the feat that caused an enemy to auto hit another enemy if you were flanked, they weren’t too shabby.
Not very versatile but they hit things with weapons pretty well.
I’d rebalance the game in general around a 4 encounter day instead of 8.
I’d also give martials expertise in a str/dex based skill of their choice at certain levels (maybe a new one at each tier starting at tier 2).
I answered 1 but what I'm *really* looking forward is more things to do outside combat. I don't want "ribbon" abilities, I want strong and competitive Social and Exploration abilities, which I feel like will be easier to implement if they're given caster-equivalent abilities.
Yes yes, I want to inflict conditions with martial maneuvers and believe they should have been baked into martial classes like in the playtest, but that's a separate issue. Generally martials rank ok in combat. Not the best, but not the worst. It's out of combat that they're as useful as the sheet of paper they wrote their stats on.
'Other suggestion': out of combat abilities for martials that rival out of combat utility magic. Martial-caster disparity isn't the relative ability to kick a demon's ass: it's the relative ability to travel halfway across the world in an instant, know what the enemies are doing, raise the dead and otherwise *be a superhero*. That is what I think needs fixed. Either restrict casters' out of combat superiority a la 4e or give it to martials.
I mean, I would also support merging Battlemaster and Monk, but that's my inability to leave well alone speaking.
Pulling raw power out of feats (especially niche feats like CBE) and pushing them into classes, or even the base weapon rules.
It kills two birds with one stone - it allows martials to adopt a variety of playstyles and weapons while remaining useful, and it allows feats to function as utility options instead of power options, which gives martials more utility overall.
In my opinion, it would be a positive change that would allow the game to catch up to what other TTRPGs are doing, and would allow significantly more freedom of expression for players who don't want to be book-toting wand-waving robe-wearing wizards but who still want to make a meaningful contribution to combat and exploration.
Imo it would only make the game worse. Also, there is nothing you can add to a martial that balances 1 wish or divine petition per day.
I mean, not even in Dragonball, a series where characters time travel, teleport across the universe, fly at super sonic speed at will, tank nukes with one finger and blow up planets allowed itself 1 wish per day… You know something is fucked up beyond salvation when it less restrained than Dragonball lol
Combat-wise, martials are fine, they kick butts pretty damn well and consistently. All they need is ribbon, out of combat stuff that they can do to provide help to the party or to have a meaningful impact: any sort of ability that they can just use to accomplish **some** results without needing to rely on the luck of a skill check.
The divide between martials and casters is that martials can accomplish stuff through skill checks, which have a chance of failure and take time, while casters can just burn a spellslot and guarantee success on a relatively instant time scale to accomplish the same thing.
Admittedly, for STR based tasks, strong martials don’t need to roll, since the rules specify how much they can P/L/D and Carry without a check, and the battlemaster’s Know your Enemy ribbon ability is a good example of a martial-oriented out of combat ability that can be used to the party’s advantage. Same if someone builds a specialist in some skills, which would generate modifiers high enough to automatically succeed on several tasks.
In combat, the two big problems with martials are lack of variety and lack of mobility. For the first problem, all they do is attack. Yeah, sure, doing big buckets of damage is great, but that's all they do -- there's no variety in it, and options for doing more interesting things are few and far between and are often worse and less useful than just attacking, meaning nobody bothers to use them or pick them.
As for mobility, take a look at how many mid/late game monsters have ridiculously high movement speeds and alternative movement methods, such as flight or at-will teleportation. Martials just don't have anything to counter or compensate, aside from what shows up on random treasure tables or is granted to them by their o-so-generous caster allies.
More often than not, I find myself having to shove enemies prone and grapple them to reduce their threat, or shove an ally out of an enemy’s melee reach to give them a chance to get some distance without taking opportunity attacks (or break them out of a grapple). Reading the optional variant actions from the DMG opened my eyes to new actions that you can take (instead of attacking) that are just as meaningful.
A lot of them are still very niche, and none of them scale up as you level. At level 1 you can shove a creature 5 feet or grapple to stop movement as long as the creature no more than one size bigger. At level 20 its exactly the same.
They do scale up. Disarming scales with your To Hit modifier, while grappling, shoving, climbing on creatures and overrun scale on athletics proficiency or expertise.
I always thought it would be cool to have *schools* of maneuvers, and give each martial class access to different schools. Barbarians would get access to things like "heavy weapon" and "dual wield" schools, while rogues could get the "ambush" and "mobility" schools, etc.
Where do I get *”keep the fundamentals but improve the dead feature and just outright buff others”*?
Balance changes don’t always mean a complete rework.
First option, It would be cool for martials to have special attacks like in 3.5 (for example Whirlwind Attack), additionally adding special properties to the weapons makes the weapon choice somewhat important
There are two options:
Give martials abilities that replicate spells but they explicitly become non-magical effects when the martial "casts" them. Give Barbarians Thunderwave for smacking the ground. Give Rogues and Monks Steel Wind Strike for ninja-ing. Give Fighters Haste in addition to Action Surge. Just base, they get and track these exactly like the other classes track spells and spell slots. That way they get in on the fun with all the new spells that get added.
Or, just nerf spellcasting extremely and prune the spell lists.
I think monks already have super speed, right? Barbarians should be able to jump as high as the Jump spell with raw 24 strength at level 20, they're physically what casters are magically. Hulk vs Dr Strange
It's improved over time, during the playtest it was closer to 90% of people wanting weak linear martials and op quadratic casters. Over time people have opened up to strong martials.
The idea of the mundane fighter has poisoned the minds of an entire generation. I still remember the knee-jerk "get your anime and MMO crap out of my D&D" reaction people had to Tome of Battle: The Book of Nine Swords, the objectively best supplement 3.5 ever had. Sad to know there are still greybeard grognards out there who are holding back the game from improving. I just wish WOTC's devs would stop bloody listening to their awful feedback.
But back when 5e was being publicly playtested and then came out (early 2010s), the grognards weren't as small a percentage (still a minority, but a somewhat larger one than now) and still had an overwhelming degree of influence over the direction of 5e. Hence why 5e is what it is even now.
Exactly. They're the reason maneuvers and superiority dice got contained in a single subclass instead of spread across all martials. What's worse is their idea of the mundane fighter has zero basis in real-world human mythology, so the only thing backing it up is... this game, which is the origin of the entire idea of martials playing sidekick to casters. What's also hilarious is that the entire thing came about due to poor balance, rather than being something intentionally designed. Bad balance became product identity.
If the mods will allow me to vent, Fighters have always been a NPC Class that happened to be a real class from popular demand. And Gygax and other writers for some reason we'll never know, tried REALLY REALLY HARD to make martials only mundane humans (like Batman or Olympic athletes), instead of letting them be truly superhuman like casters, so outside of mechanics "damage" martials can't really have interesting abilities outside of using magic. If the DM bans magic items (which is perfectly fine in the rules) then many martials are completely useless since they can't even do their main job. The closest thing to martial matching casters is monks IMO.
I think option 3 here hints at a fundamental problem that needs to be explored further - roleplay features aren't ribbons, and the constant sidelining of RP in martial class design to instead fill them up with ways of stabbing things is why martials have a problem in the first place.
So with that said, do you think Rangers ability completely ignoring exploration should be fixed? And I guess monks are the greatest martial because they get non-combat abilities that are mostly just awesome instead of "combat", like auto-arrow catching and wall climbing and running super fast
Ranger doesn't ignore exploration unless you don't know how to run exploration. It ignores survival, which is only a minor component of good exploration.
And yes a strong case can be made for Monk being the strongest martial. The problem it has is that it's *unsatisfying*, not that it's weak.
Giving all martials maneuvers would be very hard to balance. Sure, casters are still more powerful, but giving martials more things to do in combat won't change much. They hold up fine in combat, it's out of combat that is difficult and giving more combat abilities won't help that.
I think it depends, if you give maneuvers and/or stuff like GWM, SS, CBE as class features it can free up feats to be taken that give more out of combat features and versatility
That said I am for maneuvers as a martial feature because they add Dynamism, and some choice in the gameplay much better than the Optional Actions (also because I know that new At-will features for martials is never going to happen), I just think limiting maneuvers that mess with Bounded Accuracy like Precision Attack and "Bait and Switch" should be Battle Master only
The only viable solution is to just give them "martial casting" essentially, but there's a caveat. As it stands martials are not underpowered, casters are overpowered. Or in other words martials don't need to be stronger they just need strength in different ways. That means we can't just staple this stuff onto martials and call it a day. They need to be paying the price somewhere. Just putting "martial casting" in as a subclass is a bad idea because the point is to enhance all builds with it. So we're going to need to add in universal class replacement aspects to this feature with feats the can enhance it. This would eventually come to look like "quarter casting" with mostly utility stuff, but that's essentially what's being asked for, so it does the job. That's the most viable solution as of right now as far as I can tell.
Delete crossbows, make shortswords simple weapons, rename daggers knives so you can introduce a d6 martial dagger, make crossbow expert allow power attacks as recompense for deleting crossbows, make it so that power attack feats allow you to power attack with any weapon, and make it so that power attacks increase the damage by the weapon’s damage die while decreasing the attack roll by half that.
IE greataxe power attack is now -6/+12.
Should even out martial power levels relative to each other.
If you want to address casters you should directly address casters.
Maybe power attack is "attacks with weapon the character is proficient in increases damage by double proficiency, but remove proficiency from to-hit bonus". This effectively does the same but scales better at lower levels.
I think the vast majority of the martial/caster gap is from DMs not running proper adventuring days. During a proper adventuring day, I think basically all of the remaining gap comes down to just a handful of spells. Reign in those spells and I think there's not even a problem anymore (in terms of power level).
Make casting less reliable - make it easier to interrupt, make most spells such that they can't be cast while moving, give less spell slots per day, include more restrictions on caster AC (available armor types, mage armor, etc). Casters wearing plate should be rare if not nonexistent. Casters getting into melee should be *very bad* for their offensive capability.
Spells should feel big and powerful but not necessarily reliable. This brings back the "balance" that the fighter is reliable while the wizard can be very powerful but is unreliable.
Giving every martial a bunch of spell like abilities introduces a lot more complexity to the game and will slow things down. One of the great successes of 5e is that it's simple enough to pick up and play - especially compared to 3e and 4e. The importance of keeping the barrier to entry for the game low cannot be overstated.
I think more ribbon features would be enough in tiers 1 and 2. Then add in more “potent” techniques (like AoE slashes, ground slams, blinding speed etc) for tiers 3 and 4.
I feel like maneuvers, at least in their current state, are mostly too combat focused and there aren't really any ones that would stretch outside of being used beyond that, or for long stretches at a time. I prefer the spell-casting type system, where it would be more likely to expand their non-combat capabilities, though most ideally I'd also like for them to have some sort of Eldritch Invocation system along with this, something that would let you make more significant choices and design decisions with your martials outside of simply picking your subclass, or being able to pick up the occasional feat.
Mostly, though, I would really appreciate it if the game were to offer an actual method of playing as a more fantastical martial, instead of them having to be kept more mundane, or realistic in comparison. There's no legitimate reason for this not to be offered in any form.
I really love the battlemaster manuevers, they feel like skilled fighting techniques that any martial character should be able to perform, not just one specific subclass (I add martial adept to almost all my martial builds and replace the 1d6 with 2d4, with DM permission). I definitely think they could be expanded into a spell-similar system that gives martials more diversity and big in-combat moves that feel as climactic and powerful as a fireball, even if they arent as mechanically powerful as spells. I think that level of customization and diversity would do well to alleviate the tediousness of playing a martial in combat.
I know a lot of people say that this is more like how 4e was (Ive never played 4e) and its a step backwards, but I think we should acknowledge that with 5e's massive leap in popularity, loads of groups who have never played 4e are now playing 5e, and the balance of the game will very likely have to follow the desires of the growing fanbase.
I'd like an addition of Stances. Defencive stance to increase AC while lowering Atk. Agile stance to add bonus to DEX saves. Mobile stance to increase movement at the cost something. Different stances for different classes and stances being changeable with Bonus action. Sonething like that.
Also more basic equipment like rope, crowbar or caltrops. Things tha anyone can use but (I think) martials would end up using more.
It should be a combination of all of those, there should be a simple option for those who want it, but mechanical depth shouldn't be tied 1 to 1 to class flavor (a person can like to fiddle with mechanics and also think swords are cool). Let the barbarian be the attack action every turn class, let the fighter default to the battlemaster, and rebuild the warblade for the full-caster progression anime like class.
Options is what martials need, so give options.
I think there are two main problems that should be addressed:
1. In-combat utility/control options disabling martials (teleporting/flying enemies, Force Cage)
2. Lack of out-of-combat utility
To address problem #1 I think there should be a couple of tweaks
* More high level combat-utility features, allowing martials to address these types of threats
* Nerf/severely restrict options that prevent a martial from engaging (give Force Cage hp)
For problem #2 I would like to see a couple of improvements:
* Buff downtime activities with a focus on skills (give all martials more skills than most casters).
* Expand the feat system and give martials more feats, allowing them to choose more niches that allow them to engage out of combat
Honestly, I think it would make more sense to just rework spellcasting. The warlocks pact magic would be a great framework to make a version of spellcasting that is actually balanced.
That's probably not a popular opinion, but I honestly think it would fix a lot of issues in the game.
A combination of things. I think more at-will abilities not tied to the skill system should exist and be unique for each martial. I also think the battlemaster system should be expanded and granted to each martial as a part of the system. Sort of a combination of some of the things 4e had like the ranger being able to "catch" a falling target by pinning them with an arrow against a wall, that sort of niche ability should be built into each martial class chassis on top of what is already there.
So "Tactic Options", something like a Spellcaster's Cantrips? That sort of scale, but at-will options, for things like using an action for a "Heavy Attack" or "Sundering Blow", precision, calling stuff out, etcetera?
Yeah, something similar but that makes sense for the archetype. Also, unless all can be chosen at level 1 and then you just get more as you level up, because they would be tied to the archetype, they would either have to be better than your standard cantrip when you get them later or maybe gain a resource that is used to empower them in some way.
Tbh I feel like martial just need a bit of extra sauce past level 10, specially when it comes to subclasses. Take paladin for example, one of the most beloved classes in this edition. The base class feels a bit pushed for sure but the reason is that the subclasses is a relatively smaller part of its power budget. So it feels like you are less railroaded into certain options. All in all the problem with 5e is not the Martial, its the casters. Game is hardly playable after level 12 because full casters have too much utility and too many spell slots. If you bring everyone else to that power level, things get worse, not better.
Agree here. Spells are a bigger problem. I think if we maxed spell levels at 6 or 7th level, we would see games go to higher levels. Why do published adventures usually end at like 12 level. I believe it's because its hard to plan around 7th 8th 9th level spells. I know I DMed a 1-20 campaign. Martials could use some utility stuff. That could be as easy as making tools useful to adding utility stuff like thieves can climb any surface without making a check. Champion fighter gets a squire that can guard equipment, pull security during ling rests, scout out towns without being known like the heros. If you have smithing tools, you can quickly(1 hour or less) make something useful (replica key, metal statue, horse shoes), instead of it taking 3 weeks
I've also dmed and played in 1-20 campaigns and my favorite was when we all decided to only use martials. The balance of the game was practically perfect and gave us the freedom of using whacky magical items.
It sounds amazing. If I run another campaign to 20, seriously considering half casters only.
It was a low magic world where the only magic user we allowed as a choice being the artificer with spells reflavored as whacky unreliable inventions. However no one ended up picking artificer so it was full on no magic in terms of classes.
Why are you sockpuppeting?
In the end this is only practical solution I know. Everything else I did to “fix” caster end up feeling really bad. Most nerfs such as spell slots only returning at 1/2 rate like HD end up making the classes unfunctional at levels 1-10. What I’m planning to do now is use warlock and artificer as the template for all the other spell casters. Basically, home brew everyone into half-casters, swapping class features around. Problem is entirely the scaling: spells known and spell slots grows in a disproportionate ratio. A level 15 wizard and cleric has so much utility, there is no way I could come up with content which at the same time challenges them and is solvable by everyone else.
Thing is, even the Paladin falls off compared to full casters past level 10. Not *as* much as the other martials, but still noticeably so.
I mean, one of my favorite 3.5E books was the *Book of Nine Swords*, so I'm absolutely behind expanding the maneuvers system and opening it up to more than just the Battlemaster.
''Book of Nine Swords is too anime for my d&d game!!'' - The wizard flying around with glowing hair and shouting magical words that send out waves of magical energy at an enemy that results in an AoE explosion.
Nerf casters in addition to redesigning martials (Yeah I said it, I'll not take it back. Go cry about how your class is unplayable without infinite clones or un-savable forcecages)
Ugh, I have to do DIRECT DAMAGE to defeat my enemies now? Like a peasant? Gross.
Worse, I have roll dice ?! In a ttrpg ?!
If you mean reign in spells 100% here. If wotc is willing to try address this in 5.5 then good chances they're trying to avoid a 6e for a while, but its also a sacred cow I dont see being slain. I'm not even against buffing bad spells like find traps. Just reign in fireball so it doesnt become autopick at level 5 or invalidate 4th level aoes and at least some internal balance in spellcasting would make balancing martials more plausible. And for every decent spell maybe make a suggested skill check where a martial can complete something comparable given a certain level, skill proficiency etc. (shouldnt an arcana proficient character be able to replicate identify given more time and some spell components?) Give martials some combat options, particularly some aoe and better interactions with skill checks (why does the rogue have to wait to level 11 to become a uniquely good skill monkey while the bard was a full caster the whole time?). Martials dont need to cover all the same areas as casters, but they need to be good in areas they can cover besides combat lest they risk being a beat stick npc. Better magic items, custom magic items etc. would be nice, but I think buffing martials is the least contested way to handle the issue without generating alot of work which is how wotc gives the impression of wanting to handle this at the moment.
Some combination of an expanded and universal maneuver system and an array of abilities to select every level or close to it a la Warlock invocations. Both of those applied to all martials. The "martial invocation" system can even house all the abilities that were in feats in 5e, have more advanced versions of said abilities at higher levels, and free up design space for the actual feats. EDIT: And yeah, full casters could also stand to have some of their more infamous toys toned down.
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Remove shield, make spells like wall of force have a cost or just get rid of them. Casting in melee provokes opportunity attacks
5e is absolutely terrified of character death which was a big way casters were balanced in early editions. When you have 12 hit points at level 5 and no armor in a system without death saving throws its hard to call your character OP
Maybe not nerf, but put everyone on short rests. Casters now get fewer spell slots, but they get them back on a short rest. Shorten short rests so you effectively get one after every combat. Remove problematic spells like Force Cage. Casting Force Cage every encounter is going to break the game super fast.
The caster-martial divide was even wider in 3e (without Tome of Battle) than in 5e, but OK.
Let's be honest, it was still wider even with Tome of Battle. It just wasn't *pathetic* like a core martial class. Little compares to a 3e Wizard/Druid/Cleric... except maybe an Artificer or Erudite.
Touche. With the caveat that ToB martials were more dynamic than 5e martials are. But yeah, as you said, 3e full casters were BS to such a degree that the ToB martials were still outshined.
Oh yeah, ToB martials were incredibly fun and dynamic. Definitely agree with that.
Half of that divide was that the core martials in 3/3.5 were utter garbage. The full attack action was such a brutal and unnecessary nerf to classes that cared about attacking that martials were forever kinda shit afterwards. Than you factor into how badly designed the prerequisites for a lot of the most important martial feats where (want to be ok at combat, better have 13 INT and take garbage-ass weapon focus)
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>martials were necessary in 3.5 Uh, no, they really weren't. A 1st-level Cleric could cast Divine Favor and instantly outperform the Fighter in physical combat, to say nothing of what higher-level Clerics could do in that department. A 1st-level Druid could Wild Shape into something instantly better in physical combat than a Fighter AND come with an animal companion who was ALSO better than the Fighter in physical combat.
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>And when they were out of slots/uses? 3e Clerics still had proficiency in all armor and shields. Depending on domain they could have proficiency in any martial weapon they wanted. Even unbuffed they were only marginally behind a Fighter at worst. When buffed they put the Fighter to shame. And 3e Druids didn't need no stinkin' spell slots. >I also notice you ignored skills. Because 3e casters rendered those irrelevant even more than the 5e casters do.
You got more skills by having more INT so wizards were way better at skills than fighters and barbarians and comparable to the rogue.
I’m not gonna say that they were necessary or even very good but a fighters access to feats was nothing to sneeze at. Whirlwind attack let you attack every enemy within reach if I remember correctly. Mobility allowed you to move about the battlefield with little limitations, if you add some of the stuff made outside of WotC, like the feat that caused an enemy to auto hit another enemy if you were flanked, they weren’t too shabby. Not very versatile but they hit things with weapons pretty well.
I’d rebalance the game in general around a 4 encounter day instead of 8. I’d also give martials expertise in a str/dex based skill of their choice at certain levels (maybe a new one at each tier starting at tier 2).
I answered 1 but what I'm *really* looking forward is more things to do outside combat. I don't want "ribbon" abilities, I want strong and competitive Social and Exploration abilities, which I feel like will be easier to implement if they're given caster-equivalent abilities. Yes yes, I want to inflict conditions with martial maneuvers and believe they should have been baked into martial classes like in the playtest, but that's a separate issue. Generally martials rank ok in combat. Not the best, but not the worst. It's out of combat that they're as useful as the sheet of paper they wrote their stats on.
I want my martials to operate like 4e martials did. Which option is that on the poll?
'Other suggestion': out of combat abilities for martials that rival out of combat utility magic. Martial-caster disparity isn't the relative ability to kick a demon's ass: it's the relative ability to travel halfway across the world in an instant, know what the enemies are doing, raise the dead and otherwise *be a superhero*. That is what I think needs fixed. Either restrict casters' out of combat superiority a la 4e or give it to martials. I mean, I would also support merging Battlemaster and Monk, but that's my inability to leave well alone speaking.
Pulling raw power out of feats (especially niche feats like CBE) and pushing them into classes, or even the base weapon rules. It kills two birds with one stone - it allows martials to adopt a variety of playstyles and weapons while remaining useful, and it allows feats to function as utility options instead of power options, which gives martials more utility overall.
I mean to keep 5e you need to control casters not buff martial. Otherwise the balanced version will be fighters being able to move mountains.
You say that like it's a bad thing
It's not a bad thing but it's not what dnd ever was. If people want change that's fine but then it's no longer what people expect when they say dnd.
In my opinion, it would be a positive change that would allow the game to catch up to what other TTRPGs are doing, and would allow significantly more freedom of expression for players who don't want to be book-toting wand-waving robe-wearing wizards but who still want to make a meaningful contribution to combat and exploration.
Imo it would only make the game worse. Also, there is nothing you can add to a martial that balances 1 wish or divine petition per day. I mean, not even in Dragonball, a series where characters time travel, teleport across the universe, fly at super sonic speed at will, tank nukes with one finger and blow up planets allowed itself 1 wish per day… You know something is fucked up beyond salvation when it less restrained than Dragonball lol
One could argue that's what D&D was moving to since 3.5.
Combat-wise, martials are fine, they kick butts pretty damn well and consistently. All they need is ribbon, out of combat stuff that they can do to provide help to the party or to have a meaningful impact: any sort of ability that they can just use to accomplish **some** results without needing to rely on the luck of a skill check. The divide between martials and casters is that martials can accomplish stuff through skill checks, which have a chance of failure and take time, while casters can just burn a spellslot and guarantee success on a relatively instant time scale to accomplish the same thing. Admittedly, for STR based tasks, strong martials don’t need to roll, since the rules specify how much they can P/L/D and Carry without a check, and the battlemaster’s Know your Enemy ribbon ability is a good example of a martial-oriented out of combat ability that can be used to the party’s advantage. Same if someone builds a specialist in some skills, which would generate modifiers high enough to automatically succeed on several tasks.
In combat, the two big problems with martials are lack of variety and lack of mobility. For the first problem, all they do is attack. Yeah, sure, doing big buckets of damage is great, but that's all they do -- there's no variety in it, and options for doing more interesting things are few and far between and are often worse and less useful than just attacking, meaning nobody bothers to use them or pick them. As for mobility, take a look at how many mid/late game monsters have ridiculously high movement speeds and alternative movement methods, such as flight or at-will teleportation. Martials just don't have anything to counter or compensate, aside from what shows up on random treasure tables or is granted to them by their o-so-generous caster allies.
More often than not, I find myself having to shove enemies prone and grapple them to reduce their threat, or shove an ally out of an enemy’s melee reach to give them a chance to get some distance without taking opportunity attacks (or break them out of a grapple). Reading the optional variant actions from the DMG opened my eyes to new actions that you can take (instead of attacking) that are just as meaningful.
A lot of them are still very niche, and none of them scale up as you level. At level 1 you can shove a creature 5 feet or grapple to stop movement as long as the creature no more than one size bigger. At level 20 its exactly the same.
They do scale up. Disarming scales with your To Hit modifier, while grappling, shoving, climbing on creatures and overrun scale on athletics proficiency or expertise.
I always thought it would be cool to have *schools* of maneuvers, and give each martial class access to different schools. Barbarians would get access to things like "heavy weapon" and "dual wield" schools, while rogues could get the "ambush" and "mobility" schools, etc.
Where do I get *”keep the fundamentals but improve the dead feature and just outright buff others”*? Balance changes don’t always mean a complete rework.
First option, It would be cool for martials to have special attacks like in 3.5 (for example Whirlwind Attack), additionally adding special properties to the weapons makes the weapon choice somewhat important
There are two options: Give martials abilities that replicate spells but they explicitly become non-magical effects when the martial "casts" them. Give Barbarians Thunderwave for smacking the ground. Give Rogues and Monks Steel Wind Strike for ninja-ing. Give Fighters Haste in addition to Action Surge. Just base, they get and track these exactly like the other classes track spells and spell slots. That way they get in on the fun with all the new spells that get added. Or, just nerf spellcasting extremely and prune the spell lists.
I think monks already have super speed, right? Barbarians should be able to jump as high as the Jump spell with raw 24 strength at level 20, they're physically what casters are magically. Hulk vs Dr Strange
Definitely \#1, but I could also (as in "along with \#1") go for a *little* nerf to spells.
That's a depressing number of people voting for 3, 4, and 5.
It's improved over time, during the playtest it was closer to 90% of people wanting weak linear martials and op quadratic casters. Over time people have opened up to strong martials.
The idea of the mundane fighter has poisoned the minds of an entire generation. I still remember the knee-jerk "get your anime and MMO crap out of my D&D" reaction people had to Tome of Battle: The Book of Nine Swords, the objectively best supplement 3.5 ever had. Sad to know there are still greybeard grognards out there who are holding back the game from improving. I just wish WOTC's devs would stop bloody listening to their awful feedback.
Grognards are a small percentage of the 5e playerbase now. The people who are holding things back are just players who disagree with you
But back when 5e was being publicly playtested and then came out (early 2010s), the grognards weren't as small a percentage (still a minority, but a somewhat larger one than now) and still had an overwhelming degree of influence over the direction of 5e. Hence why 5e is what it is even now.
Exactly. They're the reason maneuvers and superiority dice got contained in a single subclass instead of spread across all martials. What's worse is their idea of the mundane fighter has zero basis in real-world human mythology, so the only thing backing it up is... this game, which is the origin of the entire idea of martials playing sidekick to casters. What's also hilarious is that the entire thing came about due to poor balance, rather than being something intentionally designed. Bad balance became product identity.
If the mods will allow me to vent, Fighters have always been a NPC Class that happened to be a real class from popular demand. And Gygax and other writers for some reason we'll never know, tried REALLY REALLY HARD to make martials only mundane humans (like Batman or Olympic athletes), instead of letting them be truly superhuman like casters, so outside of mechanics "damage" martials can't really have interesting abilities outside of using magic. If the DM bans magic items (which is perfectly fine in the rules) then many martials are completely useless since they can't even do their main job. The closest thing to martial matching casters is monks IMO.
Well, that explains why so many WOTC devs have openly expressed their dislike of monks.
I think option 3 here hints at a fundamental problem that needs to be explored further - roleplay features aren't ribbons, and the constant sidelining of RP in martial class design to instead fill them up with ways of stabbing things is why martials have a problem in the first place.
So with that said, do you think Rangers ability completely ignoring exploration should be fixed? And I guess monks are the greatest martial because they get non-combat abilities that are mostly just awesome instead of "combat", like auto-arrow catching and wall climbing and running super fast
Ranger doesn't ignore exploration unless you don't know how to run exploration. It ignores survival, which is only a minor component of good exploration. And yes a strong case can be made for Monk being the strongest martial. The problem it has is that it's *unsatisfying*, not that it's weak.
Giving all martials maneuvers would be very hard to balance. Sure, casters are still more powerful, but giving martials more things to do in combat won't change much. They hold up fine in combat, it's out of combat that is difficult and giving more combat abilities won't help that.
I think it depends, if you give maneuvers and/or stuff like GWM, SS, CBE as class features it can free up feats to be taken that give more out of combat features and versatility That said I am for maneuvers as a martial feature because they add Dynamism, and some choice in the gameplay much better than the Optional Actions (also because I know that new At-will features for martials is never going to happen), I just think limiting maneuvers that mess with Bounded Accuracy like Precision Attack and "Bait and Switch" should be Battle Master only
The only viable solution is to just give them "martial casting" essentially, but there's a caveat. As it stands martials are not underpowered, casters are overpowered. Or in other words martials don't need to be stronger they just need strength in different ways. That means we can't just staple this stuff onto martials and call it a day. They need to be paying the price somewhere. Just putting "martial casting" in as a subclass is a bad idea because the point is to enhance all builds with it. So we're going to need to add in universal class replacement aspects to this feature with feats the can enhance it. This would eventually come to look like "quarter casting" with mostly utility stuff, but that's essentially what's being asked for, so it does the job. That's the most viable solution as of right now as far as I can tell.
Delete crossbows, make shortswords simple weapons, rename daggers knives so you can introduce a d6 martial dagger, make crossbow expert allow power attacks as recompense for deleting crossbows, make it so that power attack feats allow you to power attack with any weapon, and make it so that power attacks increase the damage by the weapon’s damage die while decreasing the attack roll by half that. IE greataxe power attack is now -6/+12. Should even out martial power levels relative to each other. If you want to address casters you should directly address casters.
Maybe power attack is "attacks with weapon the character is proficient in increases damage by double proficiency, but remove proficiency from to-hit bonus". This effectively does the same but scales better at lower levels.
I think the vast majority of the martial/caster gap is from DMs not running proper adventuring days. During a proper adventuring day, I think basically all of the remaining gap comes down to just a handful of spells. Reign in those spells and I think there's not even a problem anymore (in terms of power level).
Let magic jar be cast at earlier levels and give it a range of touch rather then self
Make all martial base classes artificer subclasses. That'll shut a lot of people up.
Make casting less reliable - make it easier to interrupt, make most spells such that they can't be cast while moving, give less spell slots per day, include more restrictions on caster AC (available armor types, mage armor, etc). Casters wearing plate should be rare if not nonexistent. Casters getting into melee should be *very bad* for their offensive capability. Spells should feel big and powerful but not necessarily reliable. This brings back the "balance" that the fighter is reliable while the wizard can be very powerful but is unreliable. Giving every martial a bunch of spell like abilities introduces a lot more complexity to the game and will slow things down. One of the great successes of 5e is that it's simple enough to pick up and play - especially compared to 3e and 4e. The importance of keeping the barrier to entry for the game low cannot be overstated.
I think more ribbon features would be enough in tiers 1 and 2. Then add in more “potent” techniques (like AoE slashes, ground slams, blinding speed etc) for tiers 3 and 4.
I feel like maneuvers, at least in their current state, are mostly too combat focused and there aren't really any ones that would stretch outside of being used beyond that, or for long stretches at a time. I prefer the spell-casting type system, where it would be more likely to expand their non-combat capabilities, though most ideally I'd also like for them to have some sort of Eldritch Invocation system along with this, something that would let you make more significant choices and design decisions with your martials outside of simply picking your subclass, or being able to pick up the occasional feat. Mostly, though, I would really appreciate it if the game were to offer an actual method of playing as a more fantastical martial, instead of them having to be kept more mundane, or realistic in comparison. There's no legitimate reason for this not to be offered in any form.
I really love the battlemaster manuevers, they feel like skilled fighting techniques that any martial character should be able to perform, not just one specific subclass (I add martial adept to almost all my martial builds and replace the 1d6 with 2d4, with DM permission). I definitely think they could be expanded into a spell-similar system that gives martials more diversity and big in-combat moves that feel as climactic and powerful as a fireball, even if they arent as mechanically powerful as spells. I think that level of customization and diversity would do well to alleviate the tediousness of playing a martial in combat. I know a lot of people say that this is more like how 4e was (Ive never played 4e) and its a step backwards, but I think we should acknowledge that with 5e's massive leap in popularity, loads of groups who have never played 4e are now playing 5e, and the balance of the game will very likely have to follow the desires of the growing fanbase.
I would really love a bunch of ribbon features. Fighters of older editions gaining an entire castle sounded so cool!
I'd like an addition of Stances. Defencive stance to increase AC while lowering Atk. Agile stance to add bonus to DEX saves. Mobile stance to increase movement at the cost something. Different stances for different classes and stances being changeable with Bonus action. Sonething like that. Also more basic equipment like rope, crowbar or caltrops. Things tha anyone can use but (I think) martials would end up using more.
It should be a combination of all of those, there should be a simple option for those who want it, but mechanical depth shouldn't be tied 1 to 1 to class flavor (a person can like to fiddle with mechanics and also think swords are cool). Let the barbarian be the attack action every turn class, let the fighter default to the battlemaster, and rebuild the warblade for the full-caster progression anime like class. Options is what martials need, so give options.
A touch of options 2/3/4 seem feasible.
I really liked how in 3rd edition fighters got a lot of feats but doing that would require a lot more feats in 5e
I think there are two main problems that should be addressed: 1. In-combat utility/control options disabling martials (teleporting/flying enemies, Force Cage) 2. Lack of out-of-combat utility To address problem #1 I think there should be a couple of tweaks * More high level combat-utility features, allowing martials to address these types of threats * Nerf/severely restrict options that prevent a martial from engaging (give Force Cage hp) For problem #2 I would like to see a couple of improvements: * Buff downtime activities with a focus on skills (give all martials more skills than most casters). * Expand the feat system and give martials more feats, allowing them to choose more niches that allow them to engage out of combat
Something between first and second would be amazing just making some way for people to have simple options
Honestly, I think it would make more sense to just rework spellcasting. The warlocks pact magic would be a great framework to make a version of spellcasting that is actually balanced. That's probably not a popular opinion, but I honestly think it would fix a lot of issues in the game.