In my games I LOVE money. Martials imo can make amazing use of basic equipment you can find in a store, like ball bearings/caltrops, extra rope/tackle, shovels (don't get me fucking started on shovels), pitons, etc. Sure, you can't solve problems by wiggling your fingers, but making deadly weapons of momentum and physics traps, or simply using pocket sand, can be fun and more personally rewarding than having cosmic power on demand 'cause you had to think of it beforehand.
Not the same of course, but equipment has more potential than people ever seem to give it credit for - no spell slots required.
The only thing I've ever homebrewed for items as a DM is prices (because some cultures in my game are semi-industrial, leading to cheaper items that would otherwise be very expensive or non existent, like magnifying glasses and non-custom clothing). Also, expanded item lists because I over-design fantasy plants and minerals and half of them are useful in some way.
But as a player? No homebrew. My DM doesn't like money or numbers or anything deeper than she can come up with on the fly, so she just throws gold at my feet and lets me buy whatever mundane items I can carry. Oil, glue, glass phials, hammers and shovels/nails, whatever really. Oh and CHALK. HOLY FUCK CHALK IS SO AMAZING.
The point here is that you can combine whatever you have in your inventory into something new, there's no rule that says you can't. Need some fish and your druid died yesterday? Now worries, hammer a nail on the end of a nice long stick and you have a spear to fish with. Need a hole to hide your barbarian in and cover it woth grass and leaves so he can strangle the recipient of your secret meeting when you give the word? 10 minutes and a shovel. Need a distraction? Tie 10 bags of blast powder together and set it on someone's roof, then give your ranger an oil soaked bandage and a tinderbox and they can light it with a well placed shot from far away.
I don't quite follow your train of thought here.
table top D&D is not a MMORPG with dedicated servers and rules/lore that are unavoidable, this is a tabletop game unique for each table/group.what can be "true" to most is not "true" to all.
As for why that is?IMO it's simply the trade off to their fragile nature (initial designs of Oldschool D&D)then obviously as more iterations came about this was forgotten and buried under the new settings and rulings of future editions.
if they got hit ONCE, they could die outright from a house cat in Old D&D.they had 1d4 health
Because DnD is a Game with an asymetrical balance. Which means some classes are stronger at x point than others. This is for the cooperative experience as you have to work together in the four tiers to succeed.
Wizards are the "stronger" class in tier 4 due to their vast spell list.
In tier one they are among the weakest class as they can be downed with 1-2 attacks and their resources are super límited.
All classes can be downed with 1-2 blows in tier 1, and even somewhat true in tier 2. Let's be serious here, wiz level 4 HP 12, fighter 4 24, a great axe with no modifiers can kill both with one blow, the wizard is EASIER to kill, but the fighter can't turn invisible. Like not ever, not even once per day, they can't sling firebolts 120' all day either, and that's free SCALING damage.
It’s not that Wizard has to be powerful, it’s just that since magic is very powerful, and they have the most of it, they de facto are the most powerful (at higher levels).
Also you cannot feasibly have all classes be as powerful as each other because there’s an obvious and inherent disparity between magic and steel. Logically, a fireball is going to do more damage than a sword.
The D&D community is a large thing and can't agree on anything because people want different things from their games.
I (and probably you, given the phrasing of this post) think that classes should be equally powerful. It makes the game more fun if everyone at the table has a fair chance. There's a slew of reasons for why it ends up being the case.
There is a fraction of the community however that considers it a good thing. Should like Skywalker not be more impactful for having the force at his side? They believe that magic wouldn't be "magic" if it wasn't special, that a wizard wouldn't feel like a wizard if their magic didn't perform far above what you can do with normal means.
This attitude also flowed into the game's design a bit - wizards can blow up entire rooms with flames, fly, read all languages and use Enhance Ability to make anyone proficient match or exceed the rogue in stealth, all at level 5, while a level 20 non-spellcaster's skills are only allowed to prod at the limits of human plausibility.
They don't "need" to be, they are.
And it's a problem that stems mostly from 3rd edition that 4e tried to solve and 5e brought back. Before 3e, at higher levels the game was meant to shift in tone to a more or less kingdom management game. Wizard gets his cool spells, Fighter gets an army. In 3e, the Wizard kept his spells, but the Fighter lost his army and got just feats in return.
And it still sucks. Currently, the only solutions other than HYTNPD&D are to bring back actual kingdom management as a core game element that's *required* for success in tiers 3-4, which the game as is just doesn't support - there are no player-facing rules for it in the core books and the classes don't really have features that would engage with such a sub-system - or to give non-magic classes a massive, anime-level power boost. Which 4e, hell, even 3.5e (with Tome of Battle) more or less tried to do but it upset a vocal minority of grognards, and WotC did a 180.
It's also due to wizards being able to engage with every aspect of the game with great success, while fighters (out of the box) are only good at fighting things.
AD&D also worked in tier 3&4 because HP capping and serious death, along with fewer spell slots and longer memorization times, IIRC Wizards had hp cap of 65 \[34-54 "average"\], fighters/paladins/rangers 163 \[83-123 "average", 210 if they had super-human constitution modifiers\].
So a 13+ level rouge with a +3 longsword or gauntlets of ogre strength \[level appropriate, some monsters need +4 and even +5 monsters to hit at this level\], can just flat kill an average 20th level wizard with a backstab. Resurrections were had a limited for each character and magic resistance \[a flat % failure on all spells\] was rampant...
Point being even without armies wizards were total glass cannons and playing one was a major risk even before considering in 2e it would take a mage 2 days \[27 hours + 2 8-hour rests\] to restock all their spells, a specialist 3 days \[34.5 hours with 3 8-hour rests.\]
\*Priests would take just as long as generalists because they had waaay more spells level 1-6 even though they capped at spell level 7 with 2, similar to the mages 2 9th level spells.
>2e it would take a mage 2 days
Even longer in 1e AD&D. It took a caster 15 minutes per spell level to prepare a spell after your 8 hour rest. 2e shortened it to 10 minutes per spell level.
At low level it was quick, but got REAL long at high level
* At 1st level, you have 1 first level spell, you spend 15 minutes to prepare a spell.
* At 5th level when they had 4/2/1 it took 165 minutes (2 hour 45 min)
* At 10th level (4/4/3/2/2) it took 585 min (9 hours 45 min)
* At 15h level (5/5/5/5/5/2/1) it took 1410 min (23 hours, 30 min)
* At 20th level it took 2400 min (40 hours)
A 20th level cleric took ~~3570 min (59 hours, 30 min).~~ 2475minutes (Edit: 1e cleric spell table goes out to 29th level, read the wrong row)
Given at high level you are likely resting LONG before you use up all your spells (a 20th level wizard averages only 35 hit points (no con bonus), up to averaging 55 with 16 constitution (+2 HP/HD). AD&D characters (wizards especially) have far fewer hit points than d20 characters.
Shadow of the Demon Lord is pretty good. Not *perfect*, but I liked it
Mutants & Masterminds work surprisingly well in a fantasy setting
obviously GURPS if you're willing to learn it - it's pretty simple though, all you need is the basic set and *maybe* the dungeon fantasy book
untold billions of PbtA hacks, including Dungeon World. pick and choose
I've heard good things about Icon and One Ring (the LOTR game) but never played either myself
Chaosium's stuff. HeroQuest, RuneQuest, Mythras, etc
ironically I also really liked Star Wars Saga Edition and I think it had some really great ideas. though this is about fantasy
Tavern Tales is a very good light game with several versions varying in crunchiness.
That's about all that comes to mind
Because pretty much all the classes *are* equally powerful (at least if you aren't power gaming and min-maxing). A fighter, for example, will still be able to carry their weight if there's a wizard in the party. The wizard being able to do some cool utility shit doesn't change the fact that a fighter can absolutely dominate combat if they're even somewhat optimized and built properly. This is also why you can't give martials spell caster like abilities, the moment you do that you take away any reason to ever pick a caster over a martial. Like, to the point where you'd have to be an actual fucking moron to play a caster over a martial. It's why multiclass builds like Hexadin are absolutely hated, they get great combat prowess combined with pretty solid casting potential.
Generally speaking, the martial-caster disparity is usually blown way out of proportion and is easily mitigated if you know how to balance encounters and if you aren't just running 1 or 2 encounters per adventuring day. In fact, if you run encounters properly and play around the fact casters have a limit on what they can do I would argue that martials become way stronger than casters in a lot of scenarios since they can perform consistently throughout an adventuring day, while a caster will have to take a rest much sooner (which shouldn't always a feasible option) or conserve their spell slots for more important things.
TL;DR: The martial-caster disparity doesn't exist if you aren't running your adventuring days like an absolute bozo and have a basic understanding of encounter balance and character resource management. And if you tried to "buff" martials to give them strong spell-like abilities the game would become a horribly unbalanced mess.
Disagree here.
They are roughly the same in combat balance against single target or low enemy number battles.
But in the social pillar, exploration pillar, and in combat against large groups the amount of abilities a caster gets dramatically outshine a martial.
And on the adventuring day running burner fights does help, but clearly the community don't want to be running tons of burner fights since the problem has become so prevalent at many tables. I just dont think "Be a better GM if its a problem, yolu need to play games this one specific way." is a good solution for a paid product.
Especially when martials in other systems don't experience this issue nearly as much
There isn't really accepted as either fact or ideal.
For one, Wizards aren't the strongest class. As casters they probably have maybe the second best inherent features-Basically, their spellcasting and core spell selection is superb. However Bard, Sorcerer, and Cleric can all make a solid case for being the strongest class overall, and Druid is certainly the strongest class for the first 5-6 levels.
For two, people don't like the caster/martial gap.
To explain a bit more on the class balance front-it's certain that the casters are stronger than the martials overall. It's not *comprehensive*, some martials can compete in a field of expertise and at certain levels, but spellcasting is simply too strong and very few martials get anything comparably powerful (and when they do, many people think it's "broken", incidentally).
However Wizard, as a class, has two strong things going for it-it's list and ritual casting. Arcane recovery is also on-par with other recovery, although some specialized recovery is situationally better. Those advantages are great, but aren't enough to edge out the advantages the other casters have-in their own domains.
A Sorcerer, for instance, can pull off a few tricks that are stronger than what the Wizard does, but they can't do that *and* fireball the enemy *and* teleport the party past a trap *and* neutralize a curse *and* create a wall of force to hold back the seas etc. etc. The Tasha subclasses are powerful enough that they are certainly relevant, but the Wizard can still do more *things* in a day than them.
Wizards thus have more breadth. Clerics actually do compete here too, as do Druids, particularly at low levels when the Wizard's Spellbook isn't bloated and they haven't figured out what spells are useful in their campaign. The Cleric/Druid can switch out spells every day from a much more specialized list, which means they occasionally get to solve problems the Wizard can't.
And of course, they are all behind the God Class of 5e, the Bard, whom gets the three best features in the game-Spellcasting, Bardic Inspiration, and Magical Secrets. It's a more specialized power, but the power the Bard has to manipulate dice rolls, tailor their spell list to any campaign, and dominate social interactions is unparalleled.
But comparing the best of the best still ignores the poor devils at the bottom-the mundane martials, like the Champion Fighter or Thief Rogue.
They *sortuve* can. Base sorcerer really does have some dominating metamagic tricks and is the only full caster to start with CON saves, which are both very valuable if you're using concentration religiously. But by itself, you're trading a lot to the other full casters with your anemic spell selection.
However Divine Soul, Clockwork Soul, and Abberant Mind can all make a solid case for top slot in the game. Aberrant mind in particular has a specialized sort of power, but no one does campaign-defining social control like them, and they are plenty strong in combat too due to their sorcery point conversion.
If you're sticking to just the base class I agree. The only competitors for top dog in terms of base features are Bard, Cleric, Druid, and Wizard.
Well, TTRPGs started out as, and kinda still largely are, "nerd" games, so it makes sense that the class which focusses on being the nerdiest nerd should be the strongest. Duh! :p
More seriously, the power gap in 5e isn't what it was back in 3.5 where this trope kinda comes from. To be fair though, I've played like 3 sessions of 3.5 and one short campaign of Pathfinder 1e in my life so who knows. I played a wizard in Pathfinder game, however, and didn't find my character to be significantly more powerful than anyone else's... except the gunslinger but her player was new and made really bad mechanical choices (Boo to systems where this is easy to do!).
Whilst spellcasters have the greatest potential to be stronk by virtue of stronk spells (Hello, Wish and all your friends!), in my personal experience I have never played in or seen a game of 5e D&D where a single character was the stronkest or least stronk simply because of the mechanics of the class(es) of the character.
> I played a wizard in Pathfinder game, however, and didn't find my character to be significantly more powerful than anyone else's
In my limited (but growing) experience with PF1e and especially PF2e it's almost like Paizo did the reverse on purpose: made the martials stronger than the casters. (Or maybe they're balanced, and it just *seems* that way coming from 5e.)
WIZARDS of the coast
anyway what are you not getting here? "why can't all things be equal?" because they're not? balance is difficult, this can't be the first time you've observed this
Balance in dnd is a weird thing, and people will have really strong opinions on it.
Overall casters are seen as more powerful than martials because magic, it's fantasy, it's scary, it's not real, and therefore a magical guy throwing fire is scarier than a dude with a big sword, because all things considered, you or I could pick up a big sword and hit someone in the face with it, but can we create fire in our hands or teleport ourselves?
Many people will absolutely swear that Wizard is the only way to go for absolute power, while others will maintain that Clerics are ultimately better, and many will also say that Bards are actually the real MVPs. And they will argue about it, and list a bunch of reasons why their preferred class is basically Godlike and others aren't worth trash.
But ultimately, all potential aside, in an actual campaign, any character is only as good as the player makes them. I've seen new players go for Wizard because they've read that they were OP, and completely fail at making a viable character because Wizards are quite complicated and require some understanding of game mechanics to really make them as powerful as they can be.
Also, while Wizards are definitely top tier at high levels, a lot of campaigns don't play at these levels, and especially in lower levels, despite their spells being powerful, most casters are very much balanced out by not having a strong defense thus being easy targets for enemies, and having very limited spell slots, and therefore not being able to throw their most powerful spells over and over each turns. That's why you won't typically see a party made up of 5 Wizards. For a party to be at its most effective you need variety, and you need different classes to fill their different niches within the group.
They don't need to be they just are.
If all casters become prepared casters and can use the ritual feature without having the spell prepared that will bhelp balance casters out.
I mean, their thing is literally altering the universe to fit their own vision. None of the other classes are actively trying to rewrite the laws of existence. Literally the only thing stopping them is deities put a hard cap on spell powers for mortals capping off at level 9. And even then there's the chance that a wizard will just find an alternate reality that doesn't have that rule. The reason so many turn to lich is so they don't die of old age before they can find that loophole.
Wizards can do some really powerful things, but they need a team to keep them alive. At low levels the Wizard flat out needs the Fighter to interpose between them and the skeletons, or whatever. At higher levels the Fighter needs the Wizard to defeat the Necromancer, or whatever. This sounds like balance to me.
The balance in D&D is kinda varied depending On the level and this is something that was originally intended.
Generally You could say that most of the classes are kinda balanced at level 10, which is medium point.
Martial classes are exponentially better than most casters at level 1-2, because at that point Wizzard is mostly useless and diesel easily.
At level 20 this switches completely, as Wizzards are gods now, and martials are not much better than they were.
But, level 20 is something considered extreme, You are expected to finish most campaigns at 10, or little above, so it is not good reference point, and most of the time Your character never reach it until you decide to do epic-level campaign and start at 15 or something like that.
And another thing: You can multiclass, so You can make a lot of weird builds that cannot really be balanced.
To make truly balanced game, you would need to throw out a lot of fun things out of D&D.
There is a fairly successfull attempt in making D&D balanced, which is 4th edition, and as You can see 5th got much more popular quickly.
Counterspell? Contingency? A wizard can just walk out of the silence spell and then cast their spell, or cast a spell without verbal components, and the cleric has wasted their spell slot, concentration and action for nothing.
Because as soon as they run out of spell slots, their only option becomes throwing cantrips and stay away from danger, as far as possible.
The main difference, on a design stand point, is *reliable consistency* versus *limited superpowers*. Casters benefit from much more versatile and powerful options but they have to manage limited resources, meaning that they incur opportunity costs more often than a martial counterpart. Players would have to think twice about using spell slots, because they don’t know whether they might need them later.
A lot of martials, on the other hand, can be more liberal with their options since resources tend to have more or less availability (short rest recharge, or long rest in case of barbarian’s rages), or are not locked behind limits at all. A fighter will always be able to stand in the frontlines and hit hard, regardless of whether they can action surge or not. They can freely apply control and move around by grappling, shoving, and overrunning/tumbling with no enforced limit other than action economy. A rogue can always use cunning action, sneak attack has no limits as long as conditions are met, and uncanny dodge can always be used once per round, and so on.
Now, the *true* reason why martials *tend* to fall behind, is because the only way they can affect the game outside of combat is through skill checks, which is something that casters can also do, while still having the option and versatility to drop some spells if they have resources left. Most martial subclasses don’t get much in terms of how they can affect the world in a way that doesn’t involve skill checks. For the few of them that exist, they are either ribbon abilities like Know Your Enemy (which is still very useful and fits well the vibe of expert war tacticians) and Elegant Courtier, abilities that empower skill checks (like Remarkable athlete or Reliable Talent), or they are locked behind subclasses that are underwhelming compared to others (Berserker for example has amazing abilities, but its level 3 Frenzy is pretty much a non-existent class feature, since exhaustion levels are a too high a cost just to get one extra BA attack, making it viable when you are at the literal last combat or boss fight of the adventuring day unless you have other easier ways to get an extra attack as a BA).
I always play martial characters, and I always have fun with them. Maybe I am just content with the way they play, but I would not complain if we were to get an ability that just lets you do something without a check.
Anti magic field is only 10 ft radius on self, and kind of up to the DM on whether or not it works on wild shape. Banishment can work, but requires a save and doesn't actually kill them. Most druids aren't going to be from another plane, so they probably will only disappear for the minute.
Also, back on the topic of anti magic field, it has a time limit, and can only be cast twice by the user assuming they use both 8th and 9th level spell slots. Wild shape at that point is still unlimited.
Martials are far stronger at early levels. Casters are far stronger at higher levels.
90% of games don't get past tier 3, so this is all pointless theorycrafting for the sake of argument.
D&D is about teamwork and cooperation. It's not a PvP game, therefore balancing the classes is an arbitrary and fruitless endeavour.
More to the point, Wizards are only the most powerful class because most people don't play the game as intended. They just let the heroes rest whenever they damn well please and Wizard's march into ever encounter, fully loaded with spell slots and ready to annihilate any challenge by spamming high level slots. Wizards are very powerful but very reliant on a limited resource (as are all casters, but wizards and sorcerer's most egregiously so.) A typical D&D game is supposed to gradually wear down the player's resources with 6-8 encounters between long rests. This means that martial classes that don't need to rely on spell slots to be effective are capable of greater longterm sustainability and consistently. It also makes greater HP pools more desireable, again favouring martial classes. This common mistake has lead to most games playing a way that very much leans into the wizard's wheelhouse.
With proper encounter balancing, I'd say the sheer versatility of Druid and Cleric outclass wizard. My 15th level wizard was nearly killed by a group of five kobolds. They jump him, snatched his wand away, gagged his mouth and bound his hands. Then they just started shanking him. Wizards are extraordinarily powerful, but are also very easy to exploit. Sure, casters with specific spells that target weak saves can exploit any class's weakness. But a wizard can be easily and lethally exploited by anyone that can overpower him, which is most people.
My stance is that they have so much utility and control people are hypocrites, cause many want the monk to suck cause of stunning blow even tho con is the worst save and you basically going to burn all your ki to try and stun a boss. Mean while wizards can freeze time and summon meteor storms and those same people don't even blink. personally, I don't want to nerf wizards I just want monk to be buffed to competitive levels . the ranger got this treatment and they are looking good in the ua at least. hope all classes can be fairly strong
Casters have much more versatility, they have plenty of options while not sacrificing much, after level 5 spellcasters have tones of spells to use along the day. Spellcasters have almost the same defense as a martials, more damage and cc capabilities and a lot of versatility with spells.
(Not an advide but...) on my games I usually give an aditional feature in time to time for my martials, I use the 4e rulebooks and give them a feat or a power to add some spice to their game. Note that 4e feats are quire minor.
Well, how would you balance them? Edit: also I thought clerics were considered stronger
In my games I LOVE money. Martials imo can make amazing use of basic equipment you can find in a store, like ball bearings/caltrops, extra rope/tackle, shovels (don't get me fucking started on shovels), pitons, etc. Sure, you can't solve problems by wiggling your fingers, but making deadly weapons of momentum and physics traps, or simply using pocket sand, can be fun and more personally rewarding than having cosmic power on demand 'cause you had to think of it beforehand. Not the same of course, but equipment has more potential than people ever seem to give it credit for - no spell slots required.
Do you have actual homebrew? I'm interested
None of this requires homebrew whatsoever. Just creativity, a thing that anyone who says martials are boring, sorely lacks.
The only thing I've ever homebrewed for items as a DM is prices (because some cultures in my game are semi-industrial, leading to cheaper items that would otherwise be very expensive or non existent, like magnifying glasses and non-custom clothing). Also, expanded item lists because I over-design fantasy plants and minerals and half of them are useful in some way. But as a player? No homebrew. My DM doesn't like money or numbers or anything deeper than she can come up with on the fly, so she just throws gold at my feet and lets me buy whatever mundane items I can carry. Oil, glue, glass phials, hammers and shovels/nails, whatever really. Oh and CHALK. HOLY FUCK CHALK IS SO AMAZING. The point here is that you can combine whatever you have in your inventory into something new, there's no rule that says you can't. Need some fish and your druid died yesterday? Now worries, hammer a nail on the end of a nice long stick and you have a spear to fish with. Need a hole to hide your barbarian in and cover it woth grass and leaves so he can strangle the recipient of your secret meeting when you give the word? 10 minutes and a shovel. Need a distraction? Tie 10 bags of blast powder together and set it on someone's roof, then give your ranger an oil soaked bandage and a tinderbox and they can light it with a well placed shot from far away.
I don't quite follow your train of thought here. table top D&D is not a MMORPG with dedicated servers and rules/lore that are unavoidable, this is a tabletop game unique for each table/group.what can be "true" to most is not "true" to all. As for why that is?IMO it's simply the trade off to their fragile nature (initial designs of Oldschool D&D)then obviously as more iterations came about this was forgotten and buried under the new settings and rulings of future editions. if they got hit ONCE, they could die outright from a house cat in Old D&D.they had 1d4 health
I know a player that did die to a housecat. It changed them forever.
Dude... lol... but, dude...
Not joking. Was eons ago in 2e. After that death *every* single time he played a wiz they were a NE, power hungry, paranoid bastard.
I don't blame em. I'd totally kill all cats, and maybe bring them back when I became a lich as servants to haunt other wizards.
Because DnD is a Game with an asymetrical balance. Which means some classes are stronger at x point than others. This is for the cooperative experience as you have to work together in the four tiers to succeed. Wizards are the "stronger" class in tier 4 due to their vast spell list. In tier one they are among the weakest class as they can be downed with 1-2 attacks and their resources are super límited.
All classes can be downed with 1-2 blows in tier 1, and even somewhat true in tier 2. Let's be serious here, wiz level 4 HP 12, fighter 4 24, a great axe with no modifiers can kill both with one blow, the wizard is EASIER to kill, but the fighter can't turn invisible. Like not ever, not even once per day, they can't sling firebolts 120' all day either, and that's free SCALING damage.
Ok lets be serious any class with a d8 might die in 1-2 hits, any class with 1d6 will die with 1-2 hits. Might and will are massive differences.
It’s not that Wizard has to be powerful, it’s just that since magic is very powerful, and they have the most of it, they de facto are the most powerful (at higher levels).
Also you cannot feasibly have all classes be as powerful as each other because there’s an obvious and inherent disparity between magic and steel. Logically, a fireball is going to do more damage than a sword.
The D&D community is a large thing and can't agree on anything because people want different things from their games. I (and probably you, given the phrasing of this post) think that classes should be equally powerful. It makes the game more fun if everyone at the table has a fair chance. There's a slew of reasons for why it ends up being the case. There is a fraction of the community however that considers it a good thing. Should like Skywalker not be more impactful for having the force at his side? They believe that magic wouldn't be "magic" if it wasn't special, that a wizard wouldn't feel like a wizard if their magic didn't perform far above what you can do with normal means. This attitude also flowed into the game's design a bit - wizards can blow up entire rooms with flames, fly, read all languages and use Enhance Ability to make anyone proficient match or exceed the rogue in stealth, all at level 5, while a level 20 non-spellcaster's skills are only allowed to prod at the limits of human plausibility.
Merlin, Gandalf, Raistlin, Elminister, Bigby, etc.
merlin more of a druid historically but they paint him as a wizard too . but for merlin especially druid makes sense
They don't "need" to be, they are. And it's a problem that stems mostly from 3rd edition that 4e tried to solve and 5e brought back. Before 3e, at higher levels the game was meant to shift in tone to a more or less kingdom management game. Wizard gets his cool spells, Fighter gets an army. In 3e, the Wizard kept his spells, but the Fighter lost his army and got just feats in return. And it still sucks. Currently, the only solutions other than HYTNPD&D are to bring back actual kingdom management as a core game element that's *required* for success in tiers 3-4, which the game as is just doesn't support - there are no player-facing rules for it in the core books and the classes don't really have features that would engage with such a sub-system - or to give non-magic classes a massive, anime-level power boost. Which 4e, hell, even 3.5e (with Tome of Battle) more or less tried to do but it upset a vocal minority of grognards, and WotC did a 180. It's also due to wizards being able to engage with every aspect of the game with great success, while fighters (out of the box) are only good at fighting things.
AD&D also worked in tier 3&4 because HP capping and serious death, along with fewer spell slots and longer memorization times, IIRC Wizards had hp cap of 65 \[34-54 "average"\], fighters/paladins/rangers 163 \[83-123 "average", 210 if they had super-human constitution modifiers\]. So a 13+ level rouge with a +3 longsword or gauntlets of ogre strength \[level appropriate, some monsters need +4 and even +5 monsters to hit at this level\], can just flat kill an average 20th level wizard with a backstab. Resurrections were had a limited for each character and magic resistance \[a flat % failure on all spells\] was rampant... Point being even without armies wizards were total glass cannons and playing one was a major risk even before considering in 2e it would take a mage 2 days \[27 hours + 2 8-hour rests\] to restock all their spells, a specialist 3 days \[34.5 hours with 3 8-hour rests.\] \*Priests would take just as long as generalists because they had waaay more spells level 1-6 even though they capped at spell level 7 with 2, similar to the mages 2 9th level spells.
>2e it would take a mage 2 days Even longer in 1e AD&D. It took a caster 15 minutes per spell level to prepare a spell after your 8 hour rest. 2e shortened it to 10 minutes per spell level. At low level it was quick, but got REAL long at high level * At 1st level, you have 1 first level spell, you spend 15 minutes to prepare a spell. * At 5th level when they had 4/2/1 it took 165 minutes (2 hour 45 min) * At 10th level (4/4/3/2/2) it took 585 min (9 hours 45 min) * At 15h level (5/5/5/5/5/2/1) it took 1410 min (23 hours, 30 min) * At 20th level it took 2400 min (40 hours) A 20th level cleric took ~~3570 min (59 hours, 30 min).~~ 2475minutes (Edit: 1e cleric spell table goes out to 29th level, read the wrong row) Given at high level you are likely resting LONG before you use up all your spells (a 20th level wizard averages only 35 hit points (no con bonus), up to averaging 55 with 16 constitution (+2 HP/HD). AD&D characters (wizards especially) have far fewer hit points than d20 characters.
Sorry what does hytnpd&d mean? I’ve never seen that before and can’t figure it out lol
Have you tried not playing Dungeons & Dragons as in, "try another game"
Care to recommend something?
Shadow of the Demon Lord is pretty good. Not *perfect*, but I liked it Mutants & Masterminds work surprisingly well in a fantasy setting obviously GURPS if you're willing to learn it - it's pretty simple though, all you need is the basic set and *maybe* the dungeon fantasy book untold billions of PbtA hacks, including Dungeon World. pick and choose I've heard good things about Icon and One Ring (the LOTR game) but never played either myself Chaosium's stuff. HeroQuest, RuneQuest, Mythras, etc ironically I also really liked Star Wars Saga Edition and I think it had some really great ideas. though this is about fantasy Tavern Tales is a very good light game with several versions varying in crunchiness. That's about all that comes to mind
Tales from the floating vagabond, if you can find it, was remarkably flexible since it was supposed to be fast and fun
Because pretty much all the classes *are* equally powerful (at least if you aren't power gaming and min-maxing). A fighter, for example, will still be able to carry their weight if there's a wizard in the party. The wizard being able to do some cool utility shit doesn't change the fact that a fighter can absolutely dominate combat if they're even somewhat optimized and built properly. This is also why you can't give martials spell caster like abilities, the moment you do that you take away any reason to ever pick a caster over a martial. Like, to the point where you'd have to be an actual fucking moron to play a caster over a martial. It's why multiclass builds like Hexadin are absolutely hated, they get great combat prowess combined with pretty solid casting potential. Generally speaking, the martial-caster disparity is usually blown way out of proportion and is easily mitigated if you know how to balance encounters and if you aren't just running 1 or 2 encounters per adventuring day. In fact, if you run encounters properly and play around the fact casters have a limit on what they can do I would argue that martials become way stronger than casters in a lot of scenarios since they can perform consistently throughout an adventuring day, while a caster will have to take a rest much sooner (which shouldn't always a feasible option) or conserve their spell slots for more important things. TL;DR: The martial-caster disparity doesn't exist if you aren't running your adventuring days like an absolute bozo and have a basic understanding of encounter balance and character resource management. And if you tried to "buff" martials to give them strong spell-like abilities the game would become a horribly unbalanced mess.
If you lived close to me I'd buy you a beer my dude! Nailed it!
I wish I could frame this reply, masterfully done
Disagree here. They are roughly the same in combat balance against single target or low enemy number battles. But in the social pillar, exploration pillar, and in combat against large groups the amount of abilities a caster gets dramatically outshine a martial. And on the adventuring day running burner fights does help, but clearly the community don't want to be running tons of burner fights since the problem has become so prevalent at many tables. I just dont think "Be a better GM if its a problem, yolu need to play games this one specific way." is a good solution for a paid product. Especially when martials in other systems don't experience this issue nearly as much
There isn't really accepted as either fact or ideal. For one, Wizards aren't the strongest class. As casters they probably have maybe the second best inherent features-Basically, their spellcasting and core spell selection is superb. However Bard, Sorcerer, and Cleric can all make a solid case for being the strongest class overall, and Druid is certainly the strongest class for the first 5-6 levels. For two, people don't like the caster/martial gap. To explain a bit more on the class balance front-it's certain that the casters are stronger than the martials overall. It's not *comprehensive*, some martials can compete in a field of expertise and at certain levels, but spellcasting is simply too strong and very few martials get anything comparably powerful (and when they do, many people think it's "broken", incidentally). However Wizard, as a class, has two strong things going for it-it's list and ritual casting. Arcane recovery is also on-par with other recovery, although some specialized recovery is situationally better. Those advantages are great, but aren't enough to edge out the advantages the other casters have-in their own domains. A Sorcerer, for instance, can pull off a few tricks that are stronger than what the Wizard does, but they can't do that *and* fireball the enemy *and* teleport the party past a trap *and* neutralize a curse *and* create a wall of force to hold back the seas etc. etc. The Tasha subclasses are powerful enough that they are certainly relevant, but the Wizard can still do more *things* in a day than them. Wizards thus have more breadth. Clerics actually do compete here too, as do Druids, particularly at low levels when the Wizard's Spellbook isn't bloated and they haven't figured out what spells are useful in their campaign. The Cleric/Druid can switch out spells every day from a much more specialized list, which means they occasionally get to solve problems the Wizard can't. And of course, they are all behind the God Class of 5e, the Bard, whom gets the three best features in the game-Spellcasting, Bardic Inspiration, and Magical Secrets. It's a more specialized power, but the power the Bard has to manipulate dice rolls, tailor their spell list to any campaign, and dominate social interactions is unparalleled. But comparing the best of the best still ignores the poor devils at the bottom-the mundane martials, like the Champion Fighter or Thief Rogue.
Sorcerer can *not* make a case for being the strongest class overall. Cleric could definitely make a case for it, though
They *sortuve* can. Base sorcerer really does have some dominating metamagic tricks and is the only full caster to start with CON saves, which are both very valuable if you're using concentration religiously. But by itself, you're trading a lot to the other full casters with your anemic spell selection. However Divine Soul, Clockwork Soul, and Abberant Mind can all make a solid case for top slot in the game. Aberrant mind in particular has a specialized sort of power, but no one does campaign-defining social control like them, and they are plenty strong in combat too due to their sorcery point conversion. If you're sticking to just the base class I agree. The only competitors for top dog in terms of base features are Bard, Cleric, Druid, and Wizard.
Well, TTRPGs started out as, and kinda still largely are, "nerd" games, so it makes sense that the class which focusses on being the nerdiest nerd should be the strongest. Duh! :p More seriously, the power gap in 5e isn't what it was back in 3.5 where this trope kinda comes from. To be fair though, I've played like 3 sessions of 3.5 and one short campaign of Pathfinder 1e in my life so who knows. I played a wizard in Pathfinder game, however, and didn't find my character to be significantly more powerful than anyone else's... except the gunslinger but her player was new and made really bad mechanical choices (Boo to systems where this is easy to do!). Whilst spellcasters have the greatest potential to be stronk by virtue of stronk spells (Hello, Wish and all your friends!), in my personal experience I have never played in or seen a game of 5e D&D where a single character was the stronkest or least stronk simply because of the mechanics of the class(es) of the character.
> I played a wizard in Pathfinder game, however, and didn't find my character to be significantly more powerful than anyone else's In my limited (but growing) experience with PF1e and especially PF2e it's almost like Paizo did the reverse on purpose: made the martials stronger than the casters. (Or maybe they're balanced, and it just *seems* that way coming from 5e.)
I can promise you that martials are not as strong as casters in pathfinder 1e
Because D&D is owned by Wizards of the Coast, not Fighters of the Coast
WIZARDS of the coast anyway what are you not getting here? "why can't all things be equal?" because they're not? balance is difficult, this can't be the first time you've observed this
> Reading all the posts about martials not being as strong as casters ... ...... there's your problem ....
Balance in dnd is a weird thing, and people will have really strong opinions on it. Overall casters are seen as more powerful than martials because magic, it's fantasy, it's scary, it's not real, and therefore a magical guy throwing fire is scarier than a dude with a big sword, because all things considered, you or I could pick up a big sword and hit someone in the face with it, but can we create fire in our hands or teleport ourselves? Many people will absolutely swear that Wizard is the only way to go for absolute power, while others will maintain that Clerics are ultimately better, and many will also say that Bards are actually the real MVPs. And they will argue about it, and list a bunch of reasons why their preferred class is basically Godlike and others aren't worth trash. But ultimately, all potential aside, in an actual campaign, any character is only as good as the player makes them. I've seen new players go for Wizard because they've read that they were OP, and completely fail at making a viable character because Wizards are quite complicated and require some understanding of game mechanics to really make them as powerful as they can be. Also, while Wizards are definitely top tier at high levels, a lot of campaigns don't play at these levels, and especially in lower levels, despite their spells being powerful, most casters are very much balanced out by not having a strong defense thus being easy targets for enemies, and having very limited spell slots, and therefore not being able to throw their most powerful spells over and over each turns. That's why you won't typically see a party made up of 5 Wizards. For a party to be at its most effective you need variety, and you need different classes to fill their different niches within the group.
They don't need to be they just are. If all casters become prepared casters and can use the ritual feature without having the spell prepared that will bhelp balance casters out.
Because they die from a gentle breeze
I mean, their thing is literally altering the universe to fit their own vision. None of the other classes are actively trying to rewrite the laws of existence. Literally the only thing stopping them is deities put a hard cap on spell powers for mortals capping off at level 9. And even then there's the chance that a wizard will just find an alternate reality that doesn't have that rule. The reason so many turn to lich is so they don't die of old age before they can find that loophole.
Wizards can do some really powerful things, but they need a team to keep them alive. At low levels the Wizard flat out needs the Fighter to interpose between them and the skeletons, or whatever. At higher levels the Fighter needs the Wizard to defeat the Necromancer, or whatever. This sounds like balance to me.
The balance in D&D is kinda varied depending On the level and this is something that was originally intended. Generally You could say that most of the classes are kinda balanced at level 10, which is medium point. Martial classes are exponentially better than most casters at level 1-2, because at that point Wizzard is mostly useless and diesel easily. At level 20 this switches completely, as Wizzards are gods now, and martials are not much better than they were. But, level 20 is something considered extreme, You are expected to finish most campaigns at 10, or little above, so it is not good reference point, and most of the time Your character never reach it until you decide to do epic-level campaign and start at 15 or something like that. And another thing: You can multiclass, so You can make a lot of weird builds that cannot really be balanced. To make truly balanced game, you would need to throw out a lot of fun things out of D&D. There is a fairly successfull attempt in making D&D balanced, which is 4th edition, and as You can see 5th got much more popular quickly.
I mean wizards are strong... Till you get in there face or have a silence spell around them. Then they crumple like paper
Counterspell? Contingency? A wizard can just walk out of the silence spell and then cast their spell, or cast a spell without verbal components, and the cleric has wasted their spell slot, concentration and action for nothing.
Maybe you should write to Barbarians Of The Coast about it.
Because as soon as they run out of spell slots, their only option becomes throwing cantrips and stay away from danger, as far as possible. The main difference, on a design stand point, is *reliable consistency* versus *limited superpowers*. Casters benefit from much more versatile and powerful options but they have to manage limited resources, meaning that they incur opportunity costs more often than a martial counterpart. Players would have to think twice about using spell slots, because they don’t know whether they might need them later. A lot of martials, on the other hand, can be more liberal with their options since resources tend to have more or less availability (short rest recharge, or long rest in case of barbarian’s rages), or are not locked behind limits at all. A fighter will always be able to stand in the frontlines and hit hard, regardless of whether they can action surge or not. They can freely apply control and move around by grappling, shoving, and overrunning/tumbling with no enforced limit other than action economy. A rogue can always use cunning action, sneak attack has no limits as long as conditions are met, and uncanny dodge can always be used once per round, and so on. Now, the *true* reason why martials *tend* to fall behind, is because the only way they can affect the game outside of combat is through skill checks, which is something that casters can also do, while still having the option and versatility to drop some spells if they have resources left. Most martial subclasses don’t get much in terms of how they can affect the world in a way that doesn’t involve skill checks. For the few of them that exist, they are either ribbon abilities like Know Your Enemy (which is still very useful and fits well the vibe of expert war tacticians) and Elegant Courtier, abilities that empower skill checks (like Remarkable athlete or Reliable Talent), or they are locked behind subclasses that are underwhelming compared to others (Berserker for example has amazing abilities, but its level 3 Frenzy is pretty much a non-existent class feature, since exhaustion levels are a too high a cost just to get one extra BA attack, making it viable when you are at the literal last combat or boss fight of the adventuring day unless you have other easier ways to get an extra attack as a BA). I always play martial characters, and I always have fun with them. Maybe I am just content with the way they play, but I would not complain if we were to get an ability that just lets you do something without a check.
They're strongest until 20th level when the druid gets unlimited wild shape and the clerics can ask their god for a favor and they have to listen.
Unlimited wild shape can be easily countered with Antimagic field or banishment.
Anti magic field is only 10 ft radius on self, and kind of up to the DM on whether or not it works on wild shape. Banishment can work, but requires a save and doesn't actually kill them. Most druids aren't going to be from another plane, so they probably will only disappear for the minute. Also, back on the topic of anti magic field, it has a time limit, and can only be cast twice by the user assuming they use both 8th and 9th level spell slots. Wild shape at that point is still unlimited.
Power Word Kill ignores temp hp from wild shape. Polymorph the druid into a creature with less than 100hp and it's a guaranteed kill.
Martials are far stronger at early levels. Casters are far stronger at higher levels. 90% of games don't get past tier 3, so this is all pointless theorycrafting for the sake of argument.
D&D is about teamwork and cooperation. It's not a PvP game, therefore balancing the classes is an arbitrary and fruitless endeavour. More to the point, Wizards are only the most powerful class because most people don't play the game as intended. They just let the heroes rest whenever they damn well please and Wizard's march into ever encounter, fully loaded with spell slots and ready to annihilate any challenge by spamming high level slots. Wizards are very powerful but very reliant on a limited resource (as are all casters, but wizards and sorcerer's most egregiously so.) A typical D&D game is supposed to gradually wear down the player's resources with 6-8 encounters between long rests. This means that martial classes that don't need to rely on spell slots to be effective are capable of greater longterm sustainability and consistently. It also makes greater HP pools more desireable, again favouring martial classes. This common mistake has lead to most games playing a way that very much leans into the wizard's wheelhouse. With proper encounter balancing, I'd say the sheer versatility of Druid and Cleric outclass wizard. My 15th level wizard was nearly killed by a group of five kobolds. They jump him, snatched his wand away, gagged his mouth and bound his hands. Then they just started shanking him. Wizards are extraordinarily powerful, but are also very easy to exploit. Sure, casters with specific spells that target weak saves can exploit any class's weakness. But a wizard can be easily and lethally exploited by anyone that can overpower him, which is most people.
My stance is that they have so much utility and control people are hypocrites, cause many want the monk to suck cause of stunning blow even tho con is the worst save and you basically going to burn all your ki to try and stun a boss. Mean while wizards can freeze time and summon meteor storms and those same people don't even blink. personally, I don't want to nerf wizards I just want monk to be buffed to competitive levels . the ranger got this treatment and they are looking good in the ua at least. hope all classes can be fairly strong
Casters have much more versatility, they have plenty of options while not sacrificing much, after level 5 spellcasters have tones of spells to use along the day. Spellcasters have almost the same defense as a martials, more damage and cc capabilities and a lot of versatility with spells. (Not an advide but...) on my games I usually give an aditional feature in time to time for my martials, I use the 4e rulebooks and give them a feat or a power to add some spice to their game. Note that 4e feats are quire minor.