Video

Honestly why would you ever play a martial over a caster or half caster? Paladin and ranger are so much better than fighter and rogue.

I pretty much agree with everything in this video except when you said that nerfing spells wasn’t a viable solution. My personal solution would be to both nerf strong spells (and buff weak ones) and then also grant martials level-scaling features. It’s the best course of balancing things on both ends imo. Too bad nothing of the sort has occurred, and the martial/caster divide is still very much present in 5e2024……..

Someones mad they cant play martial characters correctly...womp womp

The nice part about martials for me is simplicity, I don't have to worry about what I will do next turn and I can take my turn quickly

"Muh magic is more betterer than ur sword!" -you Fighter within 5ft and mage slayer feat. "Get bonked nerd."

I don't play DnD but really?? In a setting where magic is everything and everything is possible, physical classes are kept extremely mundane, boring and weak. Instead of IDK, taking some inspiration from Hercules or Superman.

I don't care what anyone's opinion is on the subject: spells are too strong in general, particularly all the save-or-suck and save-or-die spells at high level that can win encounters in a single cast. No amount of supernatural abilities added to martial classes will make up for single spell slots ending encounters. Nerf casters already.

Do people take account for components when casting the spells anymore?

The only reasoning against doing this that I can see is that martials provide a simple introduction for new players, so they can focus on the broader mechanics of the game. As someone who has always played casters, I tend to disagree. I did fine being put in on the deep end from the get-go, but maybe that's just me.

Thoughts on half casters like Eldritch Knight and Arcane Trickster?

factor in magic items?

Saying that shield "might as well be a cantrip" and factoring in basically unlimited uses of it seems wildly to me. I don't know about you, but even if casters use all of their spell slots exclusively for Shield at level 5, that might at best last a single encounter (and they are giving up on their ability to use their offensive stuff that you were so high on before). Really, it seems like most of this video is assuming a single combat encounter lasts 2-3 rounds, and that the party only has a handful of encounters in a day. In games I'm in, generally combat lasts 5 turns for a quick encounter, and up to 30 for a particular big one (eg: fighting in a major battle of a war). If you compare cantrip casters to the martial classes, the marials win every day. Plus, this also fails to consider the synergistic parts (eg: hasting your fighters).

Spells used to have material components, including burning a certain amount of gold per cast and encounters per long rest are adjusted to be much higher than the average table (2-3)... Play as intended give casters no time to rest and make several smaller encounters before planned encounters.

I really like what FFd20 did. Spells were totally overhauled, nearly uniformly standardized, and utility options were nerfed. In base 3.X, wizards reach a point where adventuring becomes impossible. They can scry into a dungeon to find exactly what they want to find, they can teleport in and out to grab it, and then spend the rest of the day drinking tea or reading a nice book. The counter to that is, "Now everything is lined with lead!", which is the same as saying, "Those spells are now banned from the game".

The answer for most games should be to nerf magic and buff martial, for 5e and 'totally not 6e' D&D the answer is to buff the living F out of Fighter, Monk, Rogue and Barb...so agreed. Also they don't have to be 'supernatural' I understand what you mean but Pathfinder (and I think this is a 3e thing) have something called 'extraordinary abilities' which is litterally anything that the classes get that isnt 'magic', so using that naming or similar theme would be good.

Nobody wants balance. You know what was balanced to the nines? 4e. Most balanced dnd of all time. Literally every class is ultimately the same. And guess what? That's BORING. The problem is you're playing 5e. Whole system is legit trash. I can also 100% guarantee you're strawmanning fighters and steelmanning wizards. It's so painfully obvious. And I don't even play this dumpster fire of a game.

i agree with everything when it comes to balance and martial players feeling underpowered or left behind but to remedy this i make it a point in worldbuilding to get it across to my players that in a world of magic and dragons and demons, the guy with a sword and bow is not gonna be able to do much. magic items can remedy this, but any magic item(specifically weapons) powerful enough to close the power gap between casters and martials, has to be some kind of big question reward or a treasure that the party sought out or a part of their backstory or it feels weird

How many encounters are you people running? Not just simulating, running. How many long rests are you giving your players? How are your sub-level 8 players consistently getting the enemies to fall for their spell saves? How are they succeeding spell saves more than the martials? Why aren't you rolling for HP and stats? Are you making casters use components? How are your casters learning so many spells so quickly? What gear are you giving out? There are a million-and-one mechanics made to DRASTICALLY breach this gap, but it feels like nobody ever uses them. I don't care what that chart says, I have been DMing public games for years, and regardless of what people brought out to the table, the martials almost always last longer. I do agree that martials definitely need WAAAY more choices though. Now, if you really and truly feel like, regardless of any of my previous input, casters are better, just add cooldowns instead of giving Fighters supernatural features. Just replace "per long rest" with "per 3 turns", and 9/10, your martials will be on par with casters in games that lack any of the other 1,000+ balancing measures implemented to bridge this problem.

Guess we're going to ignore the dumb damage rogues can do while unseen, damage that makes Fireball seem tame. Not like DMs can't look to exploit the weaknesses of casters, spellcasting components. Restraints, Silence, Abjuration magic, and surprise all devastate an overwhelming number of casters, few build to prepare for such instances because DMs don't attempt to steal from the wizard. Restricting magical components and gold inhibits what spells casters can use if a DM monitors the requirements of spells. Martials are far less dependent on these things and can be more ready at the drop of a dime. Magic Missile and multi attacks threaten a mage's concentration of a spell and Abjurations like Counterspell and Dispel Magic instantly end attempts at powerful spells.

Who gives a shit about the fuckass high meta abusing min-maxing bullshit. Do whatever is fun or cool, even if its mechanically worse than other things in the game.

-4e gave martials abilities as cool as spellcasters, where they were roughly equivalent in power each level, everyone hated it. -Also, I'm not sure its fair to compare damage per round up to level 20 when 90% of campaigns dont reach level 10 -Why would we compare the damage of a base fighter to a base wizard, the assumption (as far as I know) from as far back as OD&D was that the fighter scaled worse, but made up for it with better magic items, acting like the existence of wizard magic items on par with martial magic items means that those items are equally prevalent is silly. - Wisdom, constitution, and dexterity are the best saves, not intelligence and charisma, you dont have to worry about really any debilitating charisma save until you fight people with 4th level spell slots, anyone would take constitution over charisma or int saves. -Why are we saying casters have more effective health? this is the most convoluted back breaking part, if you take the average (not a druid) caster against the average martial, martial has more stamina, not sure why wed be like "well if my caster takes a level in artificer, has absorb elements, shield, and is a dwarf with the durable feat, he's more tanky than the average fighter," cool. -I think the reason they got rid of the seperate EXP tracks for casters and non-casters was because not only did it take longer to level up, you were more likely to die doing it, so it was doubly hard to hit those high levels, which was double dipping and bad design, the existence of a prior seperate xp track in past editions does not automatically mean that the imbalance is not ok -I don't think the linear fighter vs quadratic wizard is a good or bad thing, take a game like League of Legends, each character has the same xp threshold, but there are still early game and late game champs, why is it suddenly a bad design to have the same in a TTRPG, what is bad design is to have a class like a fighter have no real interesting options for subclasses

13:40 Barbarian player here, didn't understand a word you said until here. Good vid, could've just said that instead of all the fancy gibberish i couldn't understand😂

D&D 3.5e fixed this issue with the Tome of Baltte: Book of Nine Blades.

Pathfinder 2e Thats my comment

I just gave fighters more actions through their dex modifier and made it so if a fighter is within melee range of a caster and that caster uses a spell with a somatic component than the fighter gets an opportunity attack which if the caster fails the saving throw interrupts the spell, this way fighters have a way to combat casters they just need to be smart, additionally there are a handful of tools to negate magic like silver’s’lead mist bombs which disable the casting of magic within the AoE, silvered weapons prevent healing and touching lead will deplete spell slots. I also removed counter spell and made an interceptor wizard class that focuses on identifying and replicating spells so that they can either disable the spell within a radius or increase the slot cost of casting it.

It's funny how in video games, it's the opposite, martials are overpowered because of the abundance of magic items.

Haha barbarian go brrr

im telling you when my former table said they wouldn't learn another system cuz it's too much reading then put a my hero academia module in 5e...

Hey, sounds like you're talking about the Book of Nine Swords.

I would agree if only it manifested as an actual problem to be solved. What do I mean by this? Well first and foremost d&d is roleplay centred and as a result I have found more often than not coming to a table and the DM is like: "I see you all want to play martial characters, we should probably include some casters." The reason for this is simple: people come to roleplay (first and foremost), not destroy encounters like a video game. There are of course players who do care just about optimising builds and parties but more often than not this isn't the case, and there are tables that can cater to that mentality. Martials don't suck; they do everything they are supposed to do, of course can always be improved. Martials just are underpowered compared to (in world) individuals who are literally powered by gods, study magic, etc. For me it feels right that a guy who hits hard isn't quite the same level of power as someone who invokes their god.

4 ideas tondeal with them, gremishkas, susser flowers, silence and antimagic fields. all used in moderation and allowing for combat puzzle solving.

I'm not sure if this is a good idea since I'm new to DnD but I think giving Martials some form of currency like spell slots to spend on martial-esque moves like "Double Slash" or something could work. Or maybe give them a cool passive like "For every kill they can keep attacking." though the latter seems a little unbalanced.

In the games I play in, martials are often balanced by versatility in the way we end up roleplaying our attacks. Our DM will allow us to target specific body parts, for instance slashing a leg to reduce movement speed or breaking an arm to prevent the use of two handed weapons. Usually requires pretty high rolls, but it's a good buff in my opinion. Definitely a lot more balancing that needs to be done, but something like that being standard would be nice.

1 year later Still ain’t fixed.

I will point out that your tarrasque is just as vulnerable to "flying archer man" as before, its just that they need to do more damage per round, and need a wizard to pop around the corner with a wish when they bring it down. Outside of that the tarrasque is still vulnerable to the most classic cheese of them all

Because ever since 3rd Edition the game is no longer being played as intended by the designers! Sorry, but where did this "idiot" idea of characters being balanced come from? The original premise of the character party was for the Fighter types to provide a physical barrier for the initially weak but eventually stronger Magic Users. Remember no matter how powerful the MU's spell may be they still need the freedom to cast the spell. Any interruption to casting such as being hit, silenced, restrained in some way negates the spell and the MU loses the spell until its rememorize. Also any metallic armour prevents magic use to the point that dual class Fighter/Magic users are restricted to leather armour at best if they still want to cast spells. In the earlier editions (up to 2nd?) the game expected the players to enlist henchmen/hirelings, subject to Charisma, to help protect the more vulnerable magic users. Part of the point of role-playing is the interaction between the various characters where the strengths of one is supposed to cover the weaknesses of another thus promoting team play to achieve the desired outcome or goal. The different level up tables for the different classes is part of that variation in a classes Abilities. I have forced myself to watch some of these videos on why play a Fighter and nearly every one starts from weird play balance issue. Real life is not balanced, one person cannot do everything alone. They need to find others to supply the skills etc that are lacking. I started playing D&D at the start of the 1980's and we never had this issue. I think this whole everyone must be balanced notion is a large part of the growth of the "Old School Renaissance" is because of players getting disillusioned with direction of the recent versions. Castles and Crusades uses 3rd Edition mechanics but has returned to the 1st and 2nd edition game philosophy including separate levelling tables for the character classes. If players insist on wanting game balance direction the way 5th Ed has evolved then maybe the should play solo or play a computer game like skyrim because that is no reason to be in a group any more.

It’s really disappointing to see one dnd doing basically nothing to give martials properly scaling features.

Watched this intro 50 times

Imagine thinking any of the above classes are bad... tell me you suck at the game without telling me lol.

People don’t want balance. 5E sells very well without balance. 4E had balance and it sucked

I know people shit on Pathfinder for nerfing casters, but my current PF2 campaign playing a Psychic has been great. I actually have to decide on casting a spell that might fail but deal tons of damage, casting a spell that wont fail but buffs my fighter or run for cover and ensure my safety every turn.

I mean spell casters and dnd 5e characters do generally need to be nerfed. I feel that the trade of being a caster with cantrips is that they should do less damage, just generally. I’d reduce most cantrips damage by a die type, eliminate cantrip damage scaling, and make the ability of eldritch blast to gain more beams a warlock feature that applies to all damage dealing cantrips. I also find it helps in general with maintaining grounding for the players if I reduce what they get back from a long rest and have long rest resets happen after a week of extended rest. Rather than getting all their hit points and hit dice back having the characters just get their hit dice back for example, and spell casters getting only a number of spell slot levels equal to their proficiency bonus or maybe half of their spell casting level. Then again I now find myself mostly running for games without hit point creep and with an unbuild chance of catastrophic failure to casting spells

I also prefer casters to martial, but because of flavor, not because of power gaming. Shooting an ice laser will always have more character than hitting a guy with a sword. My problem with martial is like of they tool casters and instead of having spells you just "made a magical attack" that's how martial feel

I’ve always thought that martials should be more anime. Teleporting magic sword man, like Ichigo from Bleach, is basically my favorite kind of character. I know that’s boring to some, but…too bad it’s cool. I still really enjoy playing rogue though, except when there’s a bard in the party. Bards are cool, but it sucks how they basically just get the Rogue’s entire niche, but better…

I disagree with giving fighters supernatural abilities. Its just a bandaid of magic by any other name

This is why I like paladin. They're fun for roleplay, and also have some magic, but considerably less than actual castet classes.

this is still the best video on this issue, also we should nerf casters _and_ buff martials, we need a Warriors of the peaks to fight the Wizards of the coast.

shoutout to pathfinder 2nd edition which, among literally hundreds of other similarly awesome things, lets gunslingers attack two adjacent targets by holding a knife in front of their gun and cutting the bullet in half.

Just be stronger nerd lmao

The company is called "Wizards of the Coast" of course they have a spellcasting bias Ive honestly gotten more and more into savage worlds over dnd. The swingy damage system makes multiple attacks really shine because any one attack might be absolutely devastating.