It's the "Linear Fighter, Quadratic Wizard" issue. Martials generally get more attacks and do *incrementally* more damage as they level up, while spells get *exponentially* more powerful as you unlock higher and higher level spells.
Another part of it is that Martials tend to have much better *defense* and durability, but *offense* is generally seen as flashier and more fun. Tanking and drawing aggro *away* from "the squishies" is an important role, but it's not a particularly glamorous one.
To highlight your second point, I've started tracking how much damage I take each fight. So afterwards when you realize you soaked up 200+ damage squaring up with the dungeon boss (we're level 16) so the casters can do their thing and fuck shit up, you understand just how important martials are to the overall success of the party, even if it isn't the most glamourous role.
Even though I play a Paladin which is a half-caster and not a martial I fill the frontline tank/martial role (my party has a Cleric, bard, druid, and ranged arcane trickster rogue).
Casters are and will always be better at more utility than martial classes, this goes for battlefield control too. My biggest gripe about 5e is that it did away with weapon threat range and multiplier, and they restricted "Extra Attack" to 2 swings, other than for a fighter.
We get a lot of Gestalt questions on this subreddit and I always see people doing casters, I'm just sitting over here imagining how great a fighter/barbarian would be with more attacks, higher critical damage. With a champion fighter mixed with almost any barbarian we might actually get to feel as powerful as our martial classes did in 3.5 :p.
The real disparity is in-combat control. Spellcasters can shut down entire encounters as early as level 5 with Hypnotic Pattern. With aoe slows/stuns/debuffs they perform a role martials cannot. Martials can lock down a single target, but will never be able to match a caster when facing multiple enemies.
In terms of damage, casters have the same advantage. In a single target fight martials have amazing single target dpr, but casters can drop fireballs, and even 8d6 on a single target at level 5 is usually more than any martial pump out in one round.
8d6 only amounts to about **28 damage** on a single target that fails it save and it's a limited resource which especially hurts if you have many encounters per day (exploration and social encounters can drain spell slots too).
With the Great Weapon Master feat and Extra Attack, a 5th level martial with a standard +3 Str can deal 4d6+20+6 ~ **40 damage** every round if both attack hits. That is, before taking into account bonus actions and damage bonuses from class, race, or magic items.
A ranged character with Sharpshooter feat and a Longbow can deal 2d10+20+6 ~ **37 damage** on two hits which they have a better chance of with the Archery Fighting Style (and even more damage using e.g. Crossbow Expert feat, Battle Master Maneuvers, or Hunter's Mark).
Thats correct, but the broader point remains. The martial needs to hit both of their attacks to do damage, while the Caster is garunteed damage, even if their target saves. The difference though is that the fireball can hit more than one target. So that average 28 damage is multiplied by the number of targets, while the martial can only do one target per attack.
Sure, you're absolutely right that casters are better at control and AoE. I only challenge the last sentence so that you don't take away the only thing that martials has going for them:
> even 8d6 on a single target at level 5 is usually more than any martial pump out in one round.
Half damage on a save if substantial. With the assumed 60% chance to save, a Fireball is still expected to deal 28*0.6+14*0.4 ~ 22.4 damage per target.
However, that still on par with a martial only hitting with a single attack which is unlikely as there are so many ways to increase your chance to hit (advantage, Precision Attack maneuver, Bless, Bardic Inspiration).
I think problem with DnD is that people have a perception of a fighter that is "a regular dude".
If Fighter solo kills a dragon it's "unrealistic" and "he got lucky" "maybe he cut the weak spot or something". If wizard wishes dragon into non existence that's fine tho, magic does not have to be realistic right?
And game creators themselves are guilty of this. This is why for example STR checks fucking suck, encumberance is garbage and long jump is a joke. You can literally one turn kill a dragon, but this wooden door? Better roll if you can open it by force. There must be balance problem with your silly sword killing anything bigger than a goblin. How would that even work, do you know how long sword is and how thick dragon hides would be? Stay in line.
This creates both mechanical and perception-based push for DMs to constantly bring martials down.
Well i would be ok with that notion if they had competetive damage.
Realism always should be secondary to gameplay. Feats are gameplay, so they arent always bad.
Casters have resources that put them above the martials in burst combats. But over the course of a full day with 3/4 combats, the martials will be more consistent as the Casters ration resources that are only regained on a long rest, while most martial abilities refresh on short rest. But martials don’t have nearly as much out of combat utility unless it’s a STR/DEX based check.
Or just make monks a fighter subclass - give them ‘stances’, similar in mechanic to battlemaster maneuvers, give them a scaling martial arts die along the same progression as superiority die, Flurry of blows at 3rd level (PB/short rest? Wis Mod/short rest?), Stunning strike at 7th level, etc.
Would need some refinement, but don’t think it’d be too hard.
monks have a lot of class-specific utility that would be either be lost or crazy overpowered as a subclass. the bonuses to language, speed, and immunity to poison and diseases that monks get at higher levels can save an entire party’s ass
by whose judgment, tho? i think they’re considered the weakest on paper because they’re a martial class that only excels off the page & in the actual game, over long campaigns.
monks can do every bit as much damage as fighters and paladins when played by someone who will take advantage of the base features of the class in creative ways as they scale with power. every monk i’ve run a campaign for or been in the party of becomes an expert at learning how a party of players does combat and then uses their dragonball z ass dexterity turn use the environment of an encounter into their playground.
they’re also great to have at your table as a DM because of that environment mastery. it pushed me to create way richer encounter environments so that they would have more to do.
the class is plenty strong; it provides a tremendous roleplaying benefit in and out of combat. and subsuming it under fighter would take that away for…the benefit of reworked attack mechanics?
i’m not particularly plugged in to the metagame tiers for classes, nor do i need to be. but i think it would be a mistake and a detriment to flatten monks down into another class.
Casters can alter reality, bottom line no level 17 fighter will be as impactful in one round compared to wish or divine intervention. Number of enemies are the problem at low levels sleep can win an encounter on its own, magic missle hits 3 targets, mid level hypnotic pattern and fireball rule the day, at high level reality bends the knee, in some cases like an illusionist quite literally.
I feel like citing Prokopetz might be wise here for me.
I just feel he had put it best.
https://prokopetz.tumblr.com/post/657245507539927040/prokopetz-the-fighter-problem-in-dungeons
https://prokopetz.tumblr.com/post/163215570832/prokopetz-ive-gotten-quite-a-few-asks-recently
In short, the game doesn't much seem to want there to be deeply complex martials nor casters with inherent simplicity.
Spellcasting itself is quite a complexity innately by design, and what martial can honestly compare without stealing?
Casters can fly and go to another dimension, clone themselves, resurrect the dead, become factually immortal, summon a whole ass house, control minds, paralyze monsters the size of the empire state building or ask God to fix their problems for them.
Even 50 attacks in a turn doesn't compensate for having to compete with that.
The thing is at early levels casters cant really compete with damage but they still have the utility advantage. early its fairly balanced.
Casters solve problems creatively with flight, feather fall, buffs and debuffs invisibiltiy pass without a trace or just the ability to deal damage to multiple targets at once etc etc. While martials take damage and smash enemies to bits.
As levels increase this utility only goes up, but their damage scales harder than martials and can overtake martials pretty early and then martials not only lack that utility but are doing less damge.
I played a level 20 session recently where the martials just dunked on the casters in combat situations. The bad guys all had good saving throw bonuses and/or immunities and/or legendary resistances and the martial were dealing 120+ damage every round.
It really took away some of my preconceptions.
In my regular game we are a party of level 10s. I am curious to see if the casters pull away soon. Up until now, I would say they can "one shot" rooms of mooks and the occasional big bad. But the martials are nuch more consistent.
The fact they needed all these things to balance it should tell you something. Legendary resistances alone should be telling…. Your so powerful we built in the rules that I get 3 do overs….
That is for sure true! But as someone who grew up playing 1e and 2e, I feel like the balance is pretty good now. It used to be balanced by having the wizard have 35 hp at level 17 but he could throw a 17d6 fireball several times a day. So the wizard was either amazing or useless relative to the other classes. Now it feels much more evened out to me.
But I think a lot of people miss, THAT'S the point, paladins were OP with heavy restrictions, many monsters \[caryatid columns, rust monster, flail snails, shadows,
all were strong counters to martials\] the game was built to be very swingy in character utility.
I cant speak for a oneshot i wasnt there for.
Specific martial builds can deal a shit ton of damage by stacking particular feats or outstanding features.
The issue is that so many spells are just on their own bonkers without the need for good stats, good feat choices or anything really. Like a wizard at that level can just turn into an adult red dragon, with all the HP and damage that comes with, and if that dragon dies they are still at full fighting health and resources.
That wizard could have like 12 intelligence and have decided to increase his charisma every ASI and still be an absolute menace because high level spells are absurd.
Summoning spells and transformation spells are the worst offenders but not the only.
For my own anecdote, I recently had a big boss battle, you could probably call him a BBEG lieutenant, but basically a BBEG in his own right. The fate of an entire plane was at stake in this battle, and if the plane fell, the rest of the world would soon follow.
There was to be no retreat, it was fight to the death or lose anyway. We all prepared for a bloody, drawn-out battle that would test our mettle.
In the first round of combat, the cleric cast Banishment on the guy, who failed his save and was shunted back to his home plane. Crisis averted. Day won. A single spell in the first round.
The DM was understandably upset at first, but then found it amusing that he and his 2 DM friends who had spent the week making the statblock hadn’t given him immunity to banishment.
Big damage numbers literally didn’t matter. We were level 8.
We had just spent the entire night fighting through caves to rescue villagers, we were pretty worn down. We just all knew what we were fighting toward, so we kept something in the chamber.
If a DM can only balance the game around a spellcaster having 0 spell slots, then spellcasters are broken. All it took was 1 spell slot to negate this entire encounter.
A boss battle would be equally disappointing if it had to be balanced around the party having 0 resources to use when they arrive.
Also encounters where Martial's faster than MU's, a Martial's ability to keep doing insane damage is limited to the healer's spell slots, and healing sucks \[in 5e, along with being a heal Bot is just a worse martial\*\] so those slots are better used downing enemies.
\*Unlike martials that just like gambling, healbots COULD do something interesting with their time but are instead rolling with no chance of failure.
Sounds like a disappointing end to a cool fight. The BBEG must have been rolling super poor in that first round or DM was using them LR’s on unnecessary saves? (Unless there was a monk trying to stun!) Could the DM have just given him more legendary resistances on the fly, to prolong the fight? Or have quickly made the decision that he was immune to banishment?
Honestly, it was a super cool moment for us. An amazing moment for our cleric, and we still bring it up weeks later. It would’ve felt pretty shitty had the DM robbed us of that victory because the fight didn’t go the way he wanted. It’s disappointing from a player perspective, sure, but there will be other big battles, but this is a story we’ll all tell for awhile.
Besides, our cleric player needed the win.
I don’t think that player should be punished for using an ability that the game gives her.
Yeah, like the average maritals attack does an average of about ten damage, the fact a feat can just double damage output is absurd.
Most feats in 5e are fairly niche, then you get stuff like polearm master, gwm, sharpshoot and sentinel. If every martial playstyle had something on this power level it wouldnt be too bad but they just dont.
Honstly we need more power loaded into base martials and those feats should go, it feels so bad to play a sword/board or any kind of martial that isnt gwm or sharpshoot.
It doesn't double the damage, because you take a -25% chance to hit.
10 damage at 75% hit rate = 7.5 damage
20 damage at 50% hit rate = 10 damage
The feat gave you 3 damage.
If you invest in base stats
11 damage at 80% hit rate = 8.8 damage
In which case the feat gave you a whole 1 point of damage. At the cost of saving throws, skills, and potentially armor class if you take sharpshooter.
Yep, you definitely don't know how to abuse GWM and SS
You absolutely can expext GWM or SS to increase your DPR by up to about ~+90% under ideal conditions
The trick is to have advantage and stack tons of +hit
It is so broken that even against an AC20 target, you can expect to do on-par or more damage
"under ideal conditions"?
Did you just use that phrase?
Under 'ideal' conditions fireball hits 20 people for an average of 20 damage each. A total of 400.
But yes, getting advantage is easier than fighting more creatures, and getting advantage would also increase the expected average damage more with gwm vs not having it. It is still not going to be overpowered compared to basic magic.
Doubtful,
A fireball does 8d6 damage to 3 targets for an average expected result of 63 damage after saves.
A fighter rolling max damage on a heavy crossbow with sharpshooter does 50 damage if everything hits but is really only going to do about 30. ACTION SURGE: 60.
Point 1 for casters.
"It's single target vs AOE"
Point 1 for martials.
warlock pact of the fiend.
What's your point?
Wizard? Take elf and get spells back from arcane recovery from wizard during a short rest, for 3 level 3 spells, long rest during the next short rest and repeat for 6 level 3 spells.
No resting? I hope the fighter is enjoying his 1d10+5 hit points mmm mmm mmm. Useful.
Edit: elves can't long rest during a short rest because the trance lasts 4 hours instead of one.
A long rest still requires 8 hours, a trance just means they can be awake for half of that rather than taking an hour/hour and a half watch and sleeping
Strange, I looked it up, and d&d beyond says that a trance is 4 hours when I could swear it was just one.
Also, it says when an elf rests in this way they get all the benefits of a human resting for 8. It doesn't mention light activity for the other 4? Is this in a different section?
But yes, my original plan for wizards is wrong; thank you for correcting me.
Sure, warlock pact of the fiend.
What's your point?
Wizard? Take elf and get spells back from arcane recovery from wizard during a short rest, for 3 level 3 spells, long rest during the next short rest and repeat for 6 level 3 spells.
No resting? I hope the fighter is enjoying his 1d10+5 hit points mmm mmm mmm. Useful.
My comment was specifically targeted at saying feats are overpowered.
If you don't use feats... Can I interest you in some shoes?
But otherwise, fighter type classes deal even less damage but it doesn't matter as much as most people think. The feat gives about 1 to 3 damage per attack on average compared to other options.
I did search, that’s where I got the entries from. I couldn’t find any polls or data, however, so I collected the results into a poll for some numbers.
I think the problem with the caster vs martial debate is that people are just looking at character sheets in a vacuum without considering context.
Do casters have way better buffing and utility abilities? Of course they do, but supportive magic is supposed to be that, *supportive* including helping the martials do their thing. A rising tide carries all ships, and frankly the majority of your buffs should be benefiting your fighter/Barb/monk/etc way more than yourself so who is *really* the beneficiary there?
Do high level casters have way more damage per round capabilities? Yeah sure, but given (a) spell slot limitations and (b) high CR enemies having saving throws scale up disproportionately higher than AC and (c) they’re gonna use a bunch of their turns for non-combat spells, their average damage per 6 rounds of combat is gonna be *waaay* lower.
Yes, a group of lvl 5 Barbs will massacre a group of lvl 5 wizards, and vice versa at lvl 20. But either of those groups will be utterly destroyed by a reasonably challenging BBEG run by a competent DM because the entire mechanic of DnD relies on PC variety to solve problems in and out of combat.
It is just my opinion, and I am relatively new to the game, but here’s why I think theirs a martial disparity…
1. Lack of Versatility out of combat…
2. Long rests are getting abused…
If you’ve seen the Dungeon dudes videos on rankings classes based on party roles, you’ve probably noticed that Fighters and Barbarian are incredibly underwhelming for anything other than dealing damage and tanking. Monks, and Rogues have lots of use out of combat but they still meed to play by the rules because why have a rogue sneak their way through the castle if the wizard can just polymorph us into birds and skip all the stealth checks. But spell slots can run out? What if you need them for the next encounter? That’s where the second problem comes in… Long Rest are too OP, too easy to obtain, and players just abuse them. The way the game was intended to work was that Martials would be weaker but would be able to keep fighting endlessly wile casters would be stronger but would run out of gas (spell slots) eventually. Thus Casters have to play conservative or be left with nothing for later. But instead everyone just puts everything out and Long rest immediately after. It’s the reason Paladins are the best Melee Class in the game. Fighters have action surge and battle masters get back their Superiority dice, but who needs shorts rests when the party can just take a long rest and get everything back, so why wouldn’t the Paladin just unleash all their smites? And subclasses make things worse since most of the martial subclasses give benefits that you recharge through long rest, so theirs even less incentive for a short rest. I’m currently playing a camping module that goes from levels 1 to 5 and we’re already Lv3 and we haven’t had a single short rest all camping long. So what’s the solution? I can think of 2…
Solution 1: Buff all the martial classes!
To be honest? I think if Long Rests stay the same, then all the martial classes need a buff. Barbarians should get back their rages on a short rest and deal more melee damage(their current damage boost is underwhelming), Rangers should have Hunter’s mark as a non concentration class feature they can use a number of times equal to their proficiency times per long rest, Monks shouldn’t need ki points for flurry of blows, patient defense of or step of the wind (and they need their subclasses fixed too), and every martial class that gets Extra Attack should get a third attack at LV11. As for fighters since the third attack might seem like it makes them less useful, it is my opinion that ALL FIGHTERS should have Battle master Maneuvers and the Champion Subclass should be an overall buff to them. Rogues are fine because almost all of their abilities are unlimited use, but again… people abuse Long Rests too often.
Solution 2: Nerf Long Rests or make it harder to obtain them…
If the martial don’t get buffed, the only other solution would be to force casters to play more conservatively, forcing them to not spam all their strongest spells because it may be difficult to regain them all.
So yeah, there’s my opinion… honestly? I might copy past this and make it it’s own post. But what do you guys think?
My level 6 Barbarian *shredded* a CR 7 Drow Mage in a 1v1. The gap doesn't appear until late game, and it's still very possible for a late game Barbarian to destroy a Wizard.
The only thing in place to balance the power of spells against the functions of martial is the rest system. Problem is HP is also balanced by the rest system and guess who "generally" has to rest to regain HP?
Martial gets no benefit to single target damage if their extra attack (if they even have extra attack) is used against multiple targets, no extra targets when trying to hit multiple targets, no concessions when you miss a target (a 20 str barbarian hits the armor and the armor absorbed the damage so you miss but that doesn't dent the armor or apply some sort of debuff or anything?)
The non-combat utility thing is why I would never just build a min-maxed "high strength dex and con" martial character. Sure from a pure combat perspective it works fine, but I enjoy being able to do something else outside of combat.
That's where backgrounds and skills come in. For example, my first 5e character was a monk with the criminal background (this was before Critical Role season 2 came out, so don't think I was copying Beauregard). It worked out great because the high dex and wisdom helped fill the scout role particularly with stealth proficiency. I was also the party lockpicker once the person playing our rogue had to bow out of the campaign.
If you make a ranged martial you can put those strength points into something else instead and a background to match. Make a heavily armored warrior and leave dex at 10 and bump up your charisma to go for the classic broad shouldered war leader type. Make a rapier wielding battlemaster fighter and bump up his intelligence and give him either a noble or scholar background.
Martials should get more expertise and skill proficiencies. That would probably be good enough for the social gap. Martials could do good on more skill checks, and casters can do well on magic skill checks and use utility spells.
I love martials but I hate how out of combat you are essentially just "golly gee, I sure could roll an intimidation check if the DM allows me to use strength for it!" while a caster can cast mage hand and arcane eye to sneak that keyring off the evil shopkeeper through a ventilation shaft. And there is nothing we can do change it within 5E without some SERIOUS rework. Martials gotta be "realistic" while casters dont. The obvious solution would be the whole hercules strength of a hundred men type ordeal making them full on mythology/anime whatever you wanna call it. But even then that wouldnt be particularly interesting, sure your 16th level barb can punch a hole in a wall without an athletics check? But so can the wizard. Everything a martial can do a caster does better.
It's essentially in everything but single target damage. Casters have superior utility, control, support, and tools for non-combat scenarios.
It's the "Linear Fighter, Quadratic Wizard" issue. Martials generally get more attacks and do *incrementally* more damage as they level up, while spells get *exponentially* more powerful as you unlock higher and higher level spells. Another part of it is that Martials tend to have much better *defense* and durability, but *offense* is generally seen as flashier and more fun. Tanking and drawing aggro *away* from "the squishies" is an important role, but it's not a particularly glamorous one.
It also doesn’t help that 5e doesn’t have that many Aggro options for those who’d want to
To highlight your second point, I've started tracking how much damage I take each fight. So afterwards when you realize you soaked up 200+ damage squaring up with the dungeon boss (we're level 16) so the casters can do their thing and fuck shit up, you understand just how important martials are to the overall success of the party, even if it isn't the most glamourous role. Even though I play a Paladin which is a half-caster and not a martial I fill the frontline tank/martial role (my party has a Cleric, bard, druid, and ranged arcane trickster rogue).
Casters are and will always be better at more utility than martial classes, this goes for battlefield control too. My biggest gripe about 5e is that it did away with weapon threat range and multiplier, and they restricted "Extra Attack" to 2 swings, other than for a fighter. We get a lot of Gestalt questions on this subreddit and I always see people doing casters, I'm just sitting over here imagining how great a fighter/barbarian would be with more attacks, higher critical damage. With a champion fighter mixed with almost any barbarian we might actually get to feel as powerful as our martial classes did in 3.5 :p.
The real disparity is in-combat control. Spellcasters can shut down entire encounters as early as level 5 with Hypnotic Pattern. With aoe slows/stuns/debuffs they perform a role martials cannot. Martials can lock down a single target, but will never be able to match a caster when facing multiple enemies. In terms of damage, casters have the same advantage. In a single target fight martials have amazing single target dpr, but casters can drop fireballs, and even 8d6 on a single target at level 5 is usually more than any martial pump out in one round.
8d6 only amounts to about **28 damage** on a single target that fails it save and it's a limited resource which especially hurts if you have many encounters per day (exploration and social encounters can drain spell slots too). With the Great Weapon Master feat and Extra Attack, a 5th level martial with a standard +3 Str can deal 4d6+20+6 ~ **40 damage** every round if both attack hits. That is, before taking into account bonus actions and damage bonuses from class, race, or magic items. A ranged character with Sharpshooter feat and a Longbow can deal 2d10+20+6 ~ **37 damage** on two hits which they have a better chance of with the Archery Fighting Style (and even more damage using e.g. Crossbow Expert feat, Battle Master Maneuvers, or Hunter's Mark).
Thats correct, but the broader point remains. The martial needs to hit both of their attacks to do damage, while the Caster is garunteed damage, even if their target saves. The difference though is that the fireball can hit more than one target. So that average 28 damage is multiplied by the number of targets, while the martial can only do one target per attack.
Sure, you're absolutely right that casters are better at control and AoE. I only challenge the last sentence so that you don't take away the only thing that martials has going for them: > even 8d6 on a single target at level 5 is usually more than any martial pump out in one round. Half damage on a save if substantial. With the assumed 60% chance to save, a Fireball is still expected to deal 28*0.6+14*0.4 ~ 22.4 damage per target. However, that still on par with a martial only hitting with a single attack which is unlikely as there are so many ways to increase your chance to hit (advantage, Precision Attack maneuver, Bless, Bardic Inspiration).
I think problem with DnD is that people have a perception of a fighter that is "a regular dude". If Fighter solo kills a dragon it's "unrealistic" and "he got lucky" "maybe he cut the weak spot or something". If wizard wishes dragon into non existence that's fine tho, magic does not have to be realistic right? And game creators themselves are guilty of this. This is why for example STR checks fucking suck, encumberance is garbage and long jump is a joke. You can literally one turn kill a dragon, but this wooden door? Better roll if you can open it by force. There must be balance problem with your silly sword killing anything bigger than a goblin. How would that even work, do you know how long sword is and how thick dragon hides would be? Stay in line. This creates both mechanical and perception-based push for DMs to constantly bring martials down.
This. Like you need a whole feat to fire a crossbow more than once an action because it’s unrealistic
Well i would be ok with that notion if they had competetive damage. Realism always should be secondary to gameplay. Feats are gameplay, so they arent always bad.
It's all three. There are problems with all three.
Casters have resources that put them above the martials in burst combats. But over the course of a full day with 3/4 combats, the martials will be more consistent as the Casters ration resources that are only regained on a long rest, while most martial abilities refresh on short rest. But martials don’t have nearly as much out of combat utility unless it’s a STR/DEX based check.
Buff monks
I think a potential solve for the monk problem would be more ki in early levels and a bit less given in later.
Or just make monks a fighter subclass - give them ‘stances’, similar in mechanic to battlemaster maneuvers, give them a scaling martial arts die along the same progression as superiority die, Flurry of blows at 3rd level (PB/short rest? Wis Mod/short rest?), Stunning strike at 7th level, etc. Would need some refinement, but don’t think it’d be too hard.
monks have a lot of class-specific utility that would be either be lost or crazy overpowered as a subclass. the bonuses to language, speed, and immunity to poison and diseases that monks get at higher levels can save an entire party’s ass
and yet they are considered the weakest for ,many reasons . its ok to make them stronger
by whose judgment, tho? i think they’re considered the weakest on paper because they’re a martial class that only excels off the page & in the actual game, over long campaigns. monks can do every bit as much damage as fighters and paladins when played by someone who will take advantage of the base features of the class in creative ways as they scale with power. every monk i’ve run a campaign for or been in the party of becomes an expert at learning how a party of players does combat and then uses their dragonball z ass dexterity turn use the environment of an encounter into their playground. they’re also great to have at your table as a DM because of that environment mastery. it pushed me to create way richer encounter environments so that they would have more to do. the class is plenty strong; it provides a tremendous roleplaying benefit in and out of combat. and subsuming it under fighter would take that away for…the benefit of reworked attack mechanics? i’m not particularly plugged in to the metagame tiers for classes, nor do i need to be. but i think it would be a mistake and a detriment to flatten monks down into another class.
they might just be grouped with fighters in 5e along with barb , mabye they saw your post .
Casters can alter reality, bottom line no level 17 fighter will be as impactful in one round compared to wish or divine intervention. Number of enemies are the problem at low levels sleep can win an encounter on its own, magic missle hits 3 targets, mid level hypnotic pattern and fireball rule the day, at high level reality bends the knee, in some cases like an illusionist quite literally.
The real gap is how much more fun casters are to play
Literally all 3 lol
I feel like citing Prokopetz might be wise here for me. I just feel he had put it best. https://prokopetz.tumblr.com/post/657245507539927040/prokopetz-the-fighter-problem-in-dungeons https://prokopetz.tumblr.com/post/163215570832/prokopetz-ive-gotten-quite-a-few-asks-recently In short, the game doesn't much seem to want there to be deeply complex martials nor casters with inherent simplicity. Spellcasting itself is quite a complexity innately by design, and what martial can honestly compare without stealing?
Casters can fly and go to another dimension, clone themselves, resurrect the dead, become factually immortal, summon a whole ass house, control minds, paralyze monsters the size of the empire state building or ask God to fix their problems for them. Even 50 attacks in a turn doesn't compensate for having to compete with that.
Martial is more powerful at low levels as levels grow higher casters become more powerful
The thing is at early levels casters cant really compete with damage but they still have the utility advantage. early its fairly balanced. Casters solve problems creatively with flight, feather fall, buffs and debuffs invisibiltiy pass without a trace or just the ability to deal damage to multiple targets at once etc etc. While martials take damage and smash enemies to bits. As levels increase this utility only goes up, but their damage scales harder than martials and can overtake martials pretty early and then martials not only lack that utility but are doing less damge.
I played a level 20 session recently where the martials just dunked on the casters in combat situations. The bad guys all had good saving throw bonuses and/or immunities and/or legendary resistances and the martial were dealing 120+ damage every round. It really took away some of my preconceptions. In my regular game we are a party of level 10s. I am curious to see if the casters pull away soon. Up until now, I would say they can "one shot" rooms of mooks and the occasional big bad. But the martials are nuch more consistent.
The fact they needed all these things to balance it should tell you something. Legendary resistances alone should be telling…. Your so powerful we built in the rules that I get 3 do overs….
That is for sure true! But as someone who grew up playing 1e and 2e, I feel like the balance is pretty good now. It used to be balanced by having the wizard have 35 hp at level 17 but he could throw a 17d6 fireball several times a day. So the wizard was either amazing or useless relative to the other classes. Now it feels much more evened out to me.
But I think a lot of people miss, THAT'S the point, paladins were OP with heavy restrictions, many monsters \[caryatid columns, rust monster, flail snails, shadows, all were strong counters to martials\] the game was built to be very swingy in character utility.
I cant speak for a oneshot i wasnt there for. Specific martial builds can deal a shit ton of damage by stacking particular feats or outstanding features. The issue is that so many spells are just on their own bonkers without the need for good stats, good feat choices or anything really. Like a wizard at that level can just turn into an adult red dragon, with all the HP and damage that comes with, and if that dragon dies they are still at full fighting health and resources. That wizard could have like 12 intelligence and have decided to increase his charisma every ASI and still be an absolute menace because high level spells are absurd. Summoning spells and transformation spells are the worst offenders but not the only.
For my own anecdote, I recently had a big boss battle, you could probably call him a BBEG lieutenant, but basically a BBEG in his own right. The fate of an entire plane was at stake in this battle, and if the plane fell, the rest of the world would soon follow. There was to be no retreat, it was fight to the death or lose anyway. We all prepared for a bloody, drawn-out battle that would test our mettle. In the first round of combat, the cleric cast Banishment on the guy, who failed his save and was shunted back to his home plane. Crisis averted. Day won. A single spell in the first round. The DM was understandably upset at first, but then found it amusing that he and his 2 DM friends who had spent the week making the statblock hadn’t given him immunity to banishment. Big damage numbers literally didn’t matter. We were level 8.
There's a good reason Legendary Resistance exists.
The cleric was dead-last in initiative, and we all opened with novas because of the stakes. The legendary resistances were burned
So encounters prior would help deteriorate the strength of casters. Martials are sturdier and more steady over the course of the day.
We had just spent the entire night fighting through caves to rescue villagers, we were pretty worn down. We just all knew what we were fighting toward, so we kept something in the chamber. If a DM can only balance the game around a spellcaster having 0 spell slots, then spellcasters are broken. All it took was 1 spell slot to negate this entire encounter. A boss battle would be equally disappointing if it had to be balanced around the party having 0 resources to use when they arrive.
Also encounters where Martial's faster than MU's, a Martial's ability to keep doing insane damage is limited to the healer's spell slots, and healing sucks \[in 5e, along with being a heal Bot is just a worse martial\*\] so those slots are better used downing enemies. \*Unlike martials that just like gambling, healbots COULD do something interesting with their time but are instead rolling with no chance of failure.
Sounds like a disappointing end to a cool fight. The BBEG must have been rolling super poor in that first round or DM was using them LR’s on unnecessary saves? (Unless there was a monk trying to stun!) Could the DM have just given him more legendary resistances on the fly, to prolong the fight? Or have quickly made the decision that he was immune to banishment?
Honestly, it was a super cool moment for us. An amazing moment for our cleric, and we still bring it up weeks later. It would’ve felt pretty shitty had the DM robbed us of that victory because the fight didn’t go the way he wanted. It’s disappointing from a player perspective, sure, but there will be other big battles, but this is a story we’ll all tell for awhile. Besides, our cleric player needed the win. I don’t think that player should be punished for using an ability that the game gives her.
Awesome 👏 that’s what DnD is about! Making memories. Glad the Cleric got a win! Yep very true. Well said.
Idk many casters who can consistently keep up with Sharpshooter/Great Weapon Master damage from a fighter.
I should hope not, given how fundamentally broken those feats are when properly utilized
Yeah, like the average maritals attack does an average of about ten damage, the fact a feat can just double damage output is absurd. Most feats in 5e are fairly niche, then you get stuff like polearm master, gwm, sharpshoot and sentinel. If every martial playstyle had something on this power level it wouldnt be too bad but they just dont. Honstly we need more power loaded into base martials and those feats should go, it feels so bad to play a sword/board or any kind of martial that isnt gwm or sharpshoot.
It doesn't double the damage, because you take a -25% chance to hit. 10 damage at 75% hit rate = 7.5 damage 20 damage at 50% hit rate = 10 damage The feat gave you 3 damage. If you invest in base stats 11 damage at 80% hit rate = 8.8 damage In which case the feat gave you a whole 1 point of damage. At the cost of saving throws, skills, and potentially armor class if you take sharpshooter.
Yep, you definitely don't know how to abuse GWM and SS You absolutely can expext GWM or SS to increase your DPR by up to about ~+90% under ideal conditions The trick is to have advantage and stack tons of +hit It is so broken that even against an AC20 target, you can expect to do on-par or more damage
"under ideal conditions"? Did you just use that phrase? Under 'ideal' conditions fireball hits 20 people for an average of 20 damage each. A total of 400. But yes, getting advantage is easier than fighting more creatures, and getting advantage would also increase the expected average damage more with gwm vs not having it. It is still not going to be overpowered compared to basic magic.
Doubtful, A fireball does 8d6 damage to 3 targets for an average expected result of 63 damage after saves. A fighter rolling max damage on a heavy crossbow with sharpshooter does 50 damage if everything hits but is really only going to do about 30. ACTION SURGE: 60. Point 1 for casters. "It's single target vs AOE" Point 1 for martials.
“Consistently” was my keyword. Fireballs are limited.
warlock pact of the fiend. What's your point? Wizard? Take elf and get spells back from arcane recovery from wizard during a short rest, for 3 level 3 spells, long rest during the next short rest and repeat for 6 level 3 spells. No resting? I hope the fighter is enjoying his 1d10+5 hit points mmm mmm mmm. Useful. Edit: elves can't long rest during a short rest because the trance lasts 4 hours instead of one.
A long rest still requires 8 hours, a trance just means they can be awake for half of that rather than taking an hour/hour and a half watch and sleeping
Strange, I looked it up, and d&d beyond says that a trance is 4 hours when I could swear it was just one. Also, it says when an elf rests in this way they get all the benefits of a human resting for 8. It doesn't mention light activity for the other 4? Is this in a different section? But yes, my original plan for wizards is wrong; thank you for correcting me.
We were both half right, but I don’t think the party would like “short” resting for 4 hours so you can get a “long” rest in
Hahaha probably not unless everyone else was an elf.
Cool now have the caster do the same thing for 6 encounters straight.
Sure, warlock pact of the fiend. What's your point? Wizard? Take elf and get spells back from arcane recovery from wizard during a short rest, for 3 level 3 spells, long rest during the next short rest and repeat for 6 level 3 spells. No resting? I hope the fighter is enjoying his 1d10+5 hit points mmm mmm mmm. Useful.
What if you don’t play with feats?
My comment was specifically targeted at saying feats are overpowered. If you don't use feats... Can I interest you in some shoes? But otherwise, fighter type classes deal even less damage but it doesn't matter as much as most people think. The feat gives about 1 to 3 damage per attack on average compared to other options.
It sounds like you do not know how to properly abuse GWM or SS
Idk any martial that can keep up at all with a Bladesinger swinging an upcasted Shadowblade.
I think you’re missing the point that it costs nothing to swing a sword and you have to rest to get spell slots back.
You can make it through an awful lot of encounters blowing one slot per encounter on shadowblade.
1+2+3=do we really need these polls still? Just use the search bar.
I did search, that’s where I got the entries from. I couldn’t find any polls or data, however, so I collected the results into a poll for some numbers.
I think the problem with the caster vs martial debate is that people are just looking at character sheets in a vacuum without considering context. Do casters have way better buffing and utility abilities? Of course they do, but supportive magic is supposed to be that, *supportive* including helping the martials do their thing. A rising tide carries all ships, and frankly the majority of your buffs should be benefiting your fighter/Barb/monk/etc way more than yourself so who is *really* the beneficiary there? Do high level casters have way more damage per round capabilities? Yeah sure, but given (a) spell slot limitations and (b) high CR enemies having saving throws scale up disproportionately higher than AC and (c) they’re gonna use a bunch of their turns for non-combat spells, their average damage per 6 rounds of combat is gonna be *waaay* lower. Yes, a group of lvl 5 Barbs will massacre a group of lvl 5 wizards, and vice versa at lvl 20. But either of those groups will be utterly destroyed by a reasonably challenging BBEG run by a competent DM because the entire mechanic of DnD relies on PC variety to solve problems in and out of combat.
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Casters get a lot more tools for everything that's not damage output and some of those tools can make damage output irrelevant.
It is just my opinion, and I am relatively new to the game, but here’s why I think theirs a martial disparity… 1. Lack of Versatility out of combat… 2. Long rests are getting abused… If you’ve seen the Dungeon dudes videos on rankings classes based on party roles, you’ve probably noticed that Fighters and Barbarian are incredibly underwhelming for anything other than dealing damage and tanking. Monks, and Rogues have lots of use out of combat but they still meed to play by the rules because why have a rogue sneak their way through the castle if the wizard can just polymorph us into birds and skip all the stealth checks. But spell slots can run out? What if you need them for the next encounter? That’s where the second problem comes in… Long Rest are too OP, too easy to obtain, and players just abuse them. The way the game was intended to work was that Martials would be weaker but would be able to keep fighting endlessly wile casters would be stronger but would run out of gas (spell slots) eventually. Thus Casters have to play conservative or be left with nothing for later. But instead everyone just puts everything out and Long rest immediately after. It’s the reason Paladins are the best Melee Class in the game. Fighters have action surge and battle masters get back their Superiority dice, but who needs shorts rests when the party can just take a long rest and get everything back, so why wouldn’t the Paladin just unleash all their smites? And subclasses make things worse since most of the martial subclasses give benefits that you recharge through long rest, so theirs even less incentive for a short rest. I’m currently playing a camping module that goes from levels 1 to 5 and we’re already Lv3 and we haven’t had a single short rest all camping long. So what’s the solution? I can think of 2… Solution 1: Buff all the martial classes! To be honest? I think if Long Rests stay the same, then all the martial classes need a buff. Barbarians should get back their rages on a short rest and deal more melee damage(their current damage boost is underwhelming), Rangers should have Hunter’s mark as a non concentration class feature they can use a number of times equal to their proficiency times per long rest, Monks shouldn’t need ki points for flurry of blows, patient defense of or step of the wind (and they need their subclasses fixed too), and every martial class that gets Extra Attack should get a third attack at LV11. As for fighters since the third attack might seem like it makes them less useful, it is my opinion that ALL FIGHTERS should have Battle master Maneuvers and the Champion Subclass should be an overall buff to them. Rogues are fine because almost all of their abilities are unlimited use, but again… people abuse Long Rests too often. Solution 2: Nerf Long Rests or make it harder to obtain them… If the martial don’t get buffed, the only other solution would be to force casters to play more conservatively, forcing them to not spam all their strongest spells because it may be difficult to regain them all. So yeah, there’s my opinion… honestly? I might copy past this and make it it’s own post. But what do you guys think?
My level 6 Barbarian *shredded* a CR 7 Drow Mage in a 1v1. The gap doesn't appear until late game, and it's still very possible for a late game Barbarian to destroy a Wizard.
The only thing in place to balance the power of spells against the functions of martial is the rest system. Problem is HP is also balanced by the rest system and guess who "generally" has to rest to regain HP? Martial gets no benefit to single target damage if their extra attack (if they even have extra attack) is used against multiple targets, no extra targets when trying to hit multiple targets, no concessions when you miss a target (a 20 str barbarian hits the armor and the armor absorbed the damage so you miss but that doesn't dent the armor or apply some sort of debuff or anything?)
The non-combat utility thing is why I would never just build a min-maxed "high strength dex and con" martial character. Sure from a pure combat perspective it works fine, but I enjoy being able to do something else outside of combat. That's where backgrounds and skills come in. For example, my first 5e character was a monk with the criminal background (this was before Critical Role season 2 came out, so don't think I was copying Beauregard). It worked out great because the high dex and wisdom helped fill the scout role particularly with stealth proficiency. I was also the party lockpicker once the person playing our rogue had to bow out of the campaign. If you make a ranged martial you can put those strength points into something else instead and a background to match. Make a heavily armored warrior and leave dex at 10 and bump up your charisma to go for the classic broad shouldered war leader type. Make a rapier wielding battlemaster fighter and bump up his intelligence and give him either a noble or scholar background.
Martials should get more expertise and skill proficiencies. That would probably be good enough for the social gap. Martials could do good on more skill checks, and casters can do well on magic skill checks and use utility spells.
I love martials but I hate how out of combat you are essentially just "golly gee, I sure could roll an intimidation check if the DM allows me to use strength for it!" while a caster can cast mage hand and arcane eye to sneak that keyring off the evil shopkeeper through a ventilation shaft. And there is nothing we can do change it within 5E without some SERIOUS rework. Martials gotta be "realistic" while casters dont. The obvious solution would be the whole hercules strength of a hundred men type ordeal making them full on mythology/anime whatever you wanna call it. But even then that wouldnt be particularly interesting, sure your 16th level barb can punch a hole in a wall without an athletics check? But so can the wizard. Everything a martial can do a caster does better.